Sometimes I Like to Share

The Turtle and the Pup

2011-05-22T08:06:00.000-07:00

One day, a turtle fell from the sky.
He landed on his back and cracked his shell.
He tried to turn over but he could not
Until a pup came by and helped the turtle turn over.
"I love you," said the turtle to the pup.
The pup liked the sound of these words
And wagged its tail.

God, Singapore

2010-11-24T08:06:00.000-08:00

I do not feel Him
But I know that He is here.
Because of His Testaments
And because I have seen Him before
And because I have seen the evil one
In my dreams and on the corner
Holding a broken boom box
Staring.

When I was on the corner
doing His work
I have never been afraid
like that before
But I knew that He protected me
And so I was tormented but
confident
when a bloody woman
stood next to my bed
her hair loose, and she would not leave
for 3 months, though I asked and asked and asked.

And here in Singapore
I feel heavy
And wonder what it is like
to not know, and if I could ever
not know. It is not as bad as that summer
two years ago
But in some ways, it is:

Last month
I sat on the hot curbside and wondered
until I heard a song
and followed the tune
in forms of highs and lows
Mandarin
And I knew the song
was Truth
I heard it.

There are glimpses like that
But often I choose not to engage
not to defend
Not to speak
And sometimes, that is better because
it speaks more loudly
but sometimes it does not
And I know of those sometimes
And I feel saddened by it

For

He is what I know
And I am afraid
when I am not afraid
because that is when I know
that I am no longer trying.

2010-05-22T19:43:00.001-07:00

I'm not as articulate as I like to pretend.
I get angry
behind my eyes
When the pitter jabber pitter jabber
will be incessant
insufferable
insufferable
But no words to describe it
No words to describe the endless
Speaking. It drives me mad to
be mute about the things that matter.
And yet
Sometimes the whole world is still
and I cannot even contend with its silence.

Danny

2010-05-20T20:57:00.000-07:00

There is only nonsense in my head
and moving images of fiction
I love
The Firebrand
The Untamed:
Danny, my Danny.
Is coupling taming?
Not always.
For example - Bonnie and Clyde
Their togetherness was nothing for them.
So coupling the untameable
Leads to death
While coupling the tamed
With the untamed
Leads to sorrow
And maybe also death.
And what of those who watch and
shout and forewarn the folly of
"Patience standing on a pedestal
Smiling at grief?"
The performers and spectators
stumble on and off the
elevated ground.
I am one of them
And so are you.

2010-05-20T20:54:00.000-07:00

I am in love with a man
death did not take him away
birthing did.
He never came to be and I
who was created
know of this
and see glimpses of his almost-being-ness
In pictures at art exhibits
And in passing expressions.
Frederic, an 81 year old French man
told me that he loved me
but that age did our parting:
The arms of 60 years gathers more
than two world wars.
Did he know of my missing friend? -
how he slipped and fell into the
black abyss that all infants must
leap over
in order to gasp and fall
into the turning place

story intro

2010-05-19T23:09:00.001-07:00

There were four of them and none knew what to do with their lives. But there were more than four – thousands and hundreds of thousands – but here there were four. And they were all friends and called and free.

a conversation

2010-05-19T23:04:00.001-07:00

It’s been a long time
But we talked yesterday, father.
Oh, is that right?
Yes.
What did you do today?
I went to work and picked up the children from school. What did you do today? Is Mrs. Huh taking good care of you?
What?
Is Mrs. Huh taking good care of you?
Yes yes.
And what did you do today?
Oh well, you know.
Oh okay.
And What did you do today?
I went to work and picked up the children from school.
Oh the children are doing well?
Yes. Here they are.
Hello grandfather.
Oh, hello, hello!
We miss you grandfather.
Yes yes.
And did you eat well? I heard you haven’t been eating well.
That Mrs. Huh says things she shouldn’t.
Did you go on your walk today?
Not today. It was too hot.
But you should try and go on your walks when you can, they are good for you.
Yes. What did you do today?
I went to work and then picked up the children from school.
And what did you do today?
You asked me already father - I went to work
Yes and then? What did you do?
And then went on a marvelous run.
Oh did you?
Yes, behind the canyons and then through them. The sky was just like the time we went to Jejoodo. Do you remember that father?
Who?
Jejoodo for my sixteenth birthday, you took me there.
Of course of course.
Father you must eat well –
Of course of course.
And please I know it must be tiring but please listen to Mrs. Huh ---
Jejoodo, I took you on a boat ride, I Think.
Yes father, and please do ---
Are you coming soon?
I was just there last month.
Of course, of course.
We had the most delicious fish there didn’t we?
Yes.
Please do listen to Mrs. Huh she says you’re not taking care of yourself
What?
You must take better care ---
Okay, be strong then ---
Yes.
We’ll talk soon, yes? Goodbye.
Goodbye father.

And the bell rings

2010-02-23T20:14:00.001-08:00

CS Lewis called it a chessboard
God - light, land and sky
I call it a fighting box - everyone has a go.

Page 1 of Kimchee and Peanuts

2009-03-04T21:27:00.001-08:00

On April 17th 1987, the doctor was late when twenty-two pounds and three ounces of slimy plum-flesh burst into the world. Uma’s vaginaskin, which tore everywhere like a bloody shirt ripping at the sleeve, was never the same again.
Abba was there, trying to avoid the news reporters who wanted to know how it felt to be the father of the world’s largest baby. He was only hoping for a good delivery, and didn’t care if it was a boy or a girl, though he already had one little princess.
But Abba’s Abba and Uma – my Chin-Halabujee and Chin-Halmunee - were putting up no such accommodating fronts. They wanted their first-born son to give them a boy, and everyone else, including Uma, had to try and understand that “they were from a different time and generation.” So when Abba showed the baby to Chin-Halmunee, the first thing she did was pinch each fatty ankle, and pull them apart like the legs of a chicken.
She stared. “But where is the penis?”
“Our princess doesn’t have a penis, of course,” said Abba.
Chin-Halmunee quietly tucked the legs back together and pulled a blue towel with white stars up to the baby’s chin. Then she stood there, her hands not quite touching her because her large, spherical belly lifted them from her sides. Abba stood behind her and watched his mother’s thumb and pointer finger twitch in the air.
Last night, Abba’s parents had insisted on watching the birth, after the weight of the baby was determined to have surpassed the weight of another child named Dilshod born three years ago in Uzbekastan. The news was immediately picked up and reported by CNN and they had all watched from the overhanging television in the hospital room.
“So long Dilshod,” the newscaster had ended. Then appeared a picture of Abba, Chin-Halmunee, Chin-Halbujee, and Unnee lined up on either side of sleeping Uma. Surrounded by hospital equipment and with no one smiling, they looked like they were at a strange metallic funeral.
“We will be here, tomorrow,” Chin-Halmunee had said.
“But Umunee,” said Abba. “Don’t you think Myung-hee needs privacy?”
“Privacy? We are family. We will not be bringing in cameras or choirs of small children. Family is private, no?”
So the three of them had stood there, in Uma’s screams, Abba wearing a mouth mask, every breath fogging up his glasses. The first thing they saw was the baby’s five small fingers emerge and reach for the ceiling so desperately that they stretched far back on the palm.
“Our little boy!” Halmunee had laughed, and clapped her hands to hurry the baby into the world.
To Abba’s right was Chin-Halabjuee, who looked out the window at the rain. Through the reflection of the glass, he saw the baby’s folded face emerge and the great range of soft, peach hills rolling down her body. He could not rid himself of the anxiety that he was partly responsible for the baby’s terrible being. She was of him and yet not of him, and he felt a sense of bewilderment, from the moment he first saw her - a fist coming out of Uma.
“What is the matter?” asked Abba.
Chin Halbujee remained unmoved and began to motion with his hands, which he always did before speaking.
“She is so unfortunate looking. What will you do, Hyunee? A baby this big and this ugly will be sure to have a difficult life.”
Abba saw his genuine concern but could not help but smile because the baby was his and he loved her and thought she was not so terrible looking.
Suddenly, the door swung open and the air fractured with the electricity of news cameras. Out of the crackling light stepped one-and-a-half year old Unnee, who had a face that looked very much like Uma ‘s- beautiful. Her hair, in three ponytails, paddled like shiny fish fins through the hospital air.
Unnee would become a great singer, said Gomo, Abba’s sister. Unnee cried so much and so hard when she first found the world that God couldn’t have given her such a strong voice for nothing.
Right then, Unnee was grumpy from the general lack of hugs and pats and kisses over the past few days. She wanted to go home and sit in Abba’s lap and read stories and eat noodles with her fingers. But instead, she stood on a cold floor with no shoes, and saw something huge and wiggly lying next to Uma. That’s when she decided that she had had enough. Abba looked uneasy as a song began to form deep in Unnee’s stomach. It crept up through her chest, nestled into her vocal chords, and streamed lightly into the room.

This is the first sound I can remember.

Dancing

2009-02-21T11:28:00.000-08:00

It is beautiful
When every part of the body moves
When the legs shake from
Pushing up the weight of another body – pointed toes,
Arched foot, contorted
Gorilla pose like
Koko.
Or Couture.

Those of us who do not have
Every small muscle pushing out of our backs
Like a watermark map
Of intricate pully designs,

We do other things
Like
paint,
sing,
grow orchards
hold hands,
make instant noodles,
scribe nonsense.

Writers are ridiculous.

When they are suicidal
they cannot write -
they are too busy
Jumping off of buildings or chairs.

When they are pissed
It is OK to write -
I hear it is good therapy
And better than throwing
Your neighbor’s cat into your child’s
Swimming pool.

When things are sensationalized
To the point of tears
They cannot write -
Their participation in the arts
As over-excited drone receptors -
Is too disgusting
Even to themselves.

When they are happy
We
should not be writing
Within the confines of our
Carousels -

We should be running in the
Rain, snow, moon, comet
Swept outdoors
Dancing in the mud,
Painting on eachother’s
Wind-lit bodies -

And while it lasts,
This for which we are in hope,
We should be holding each
Other’s dew damp heads

And sleeping.

Until
The dreams between our eyelids
Crack open
To a state of utter speechlessness
in which every being begins to
kiss and fall down
and wamk and sing and cry
and rick-a-too-ta

Rick-a-too-ta

and write

and dance.

Who is John Updike?

2009-02-09T20:49:00.001-08:00

My control key has stopped working
I think there’s something stuck beneath it -
A stale crumb from a sandwich crust,
A baby cockroach, fatally curious about
the whirr contraption
A nail clipping
A tiny piece of carrot
A hardened ball of dust -
I’m thinking of John Updike.
He’s dead now and that is how I know about him.
Sure I’ve heard of him before –
“Updike writes books” and “Updike says lovely things,”
“Some of the things he says may even be true” – shalalalalala.
But, like Picasso – it took the passing of a soul.

I’ve always felt bad for
posthumously famous people.
Fame – it comes so rarely –
The famous should last long enough
to enjoy
the misery of utter, personal exposure;
to hear
the sound of anonymity running naked
out the door with a quiet laugh that sounds like *poof!*

If someone had sat me down and said -
Jean – you have to read this guy.
He is that good – you don’t have time?
Make time. He knows things.
I would have done it.
I think I would have done it.

Perhaps then I would understand
What the columnist from the New Yorker
Meant when, upon his death,
commemorated Updike as
“The perfect author to dip into.”

Can I dip into John Updike?
How do I do that?
Do I take my carrot fingers
And slip them in between the pages of
His creamy, literary dressing?
Must I dip or can I dunk or can I drown
Into this author, can I immerse myself
In anything at all – or is he a
La-dee-da kind of guy
who chameleonizes himself
like myself, who stands in front
Of a field and turns into a
Perfectly symmetrical, sun-burnt flower?

Now that he's dead
and I’ve read a few of his things,
I feel like I know this guy pretty well.
If I could,
I would have him over for tea, he and his
76-year-old grin that takes his face muscles
– all of them – and some of his
neck muscles too -
And I would say
“Now John, tell me what it means to be
part of the Protestant middle class,”
Or "John darling, shall we go to the races next week?"
Or “John Updike, where are you now?”

We Refused to be Eachother

2009-02-05T19:15:00.000-08:00

We refused to be eachother, you and I.
When I was 5 and you were 8,
I followed the deer and the snowstorms
and you watched television in the motel room.
We grew up there, up in the mountains
Next to the retreat center, two hours from
the nearest pizza joint, three steps from the graveyard.

I found out that
you were beautiful
because you could see the
sunlight in the breath of night
And everything you said was
better and wiser than
the gibberish-speak of our parents.

When Peter died, you told
me to pack my things
And we left and lived with
the fishermen who did not know about
Peter or his dying or who we were
and how we were not eachother.

When we saw the long-haired woman
rise up from her pillar of stone
you told me to be still
and so I was
though I was shaking.

When we returned at dawn,
we snuck into the barnyard and balanced ourselves on
the dusty wooden planks of the rafters
eighty feet above the ground.
When the light yawned between us
we could see the whispers of morning dust
settle onto the tops of our heads.
If I fall, you fall, you said.
Yes. Your eyes are blue, I said.

2009-01-23T20:59:00.000-08:00

Pride and Self-Entitlement
A Shakespearean Sonnet

Its fractured, couplet breaths silently mourn
The broken bell this light once more has rung
And we have marched ourselves all on our own
On wooden splints the leaves are halfway-hung.

Where does our corporal movement head from here?
My shoes are worn, but look, my hands are new
And you and I, His children, year by year
Have fallen short, our lovings few and few.

Come sunset, still the drawn out twain remains
No echoes, just the tilling, longing voice
And I, pressing the gravel down in shame
Am told to leave the line and sing, rejoice

For we have marched ourselves all on our own
The fractured, couplet breaths have been my own.

A Cinq-Cinquain

2009-01-04T20:30:00.000-08:00

A string
- white and red - ties
Ankle to ankle - but
They don’t know. It’s invisible.
then, the

pull - what's
that?- he's gone cloud
diving – or, perhaps, sea-
swimming with a herd of drunken
blue whales.

Or she's
floated off to
Milada lakadi
By way of puff sleeves - two hot air
balloons

Caught in
The clouds - the wait -
Of wind and rain and sighs
And tears - Movement not always of
the feet.

His pause
- her lips - in the
'oh' of silence - they hear
a whisper of string-swept ground - a
still stir.

"An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet,
regardless of time, place, or circumstance.
The thread may stretch or tangle,
but it will never break." - Ancient Chinese Myth

Cinquain: She is

2009-01-04T19:35:00.000-08:00

Stupid
like a flap-tongue
in purple darkness - not
lost enough to warrant excuse -
Stupid.

Villanelle of the Pathetic

2008-12-23T18:31:00.000-08:00

My bleeding sclera hides from blindness
My brain spreads clean and wry
My heart hurts from wanting kindness.

You have mastered the art of goodness
You have burned goodbyes
My bleeding sclera embraces blindness

I have seined the moving lightness
On their shadow forms rely
My heart hurts from wanting kindness

An inch of rain and spit as pittance
That’s all it takes for me to cry
My bleeding sclera turns from blindness

Shakespearean forms catch form’s loveliness
He has made men cry
Their hearts hurt from wanting kindness.

I hate fragility in trite-ful loneliness
I hate it when men cry
My bleeding sclera hurts from blindness
My heart hurts from wanting kindness.

Elegy - written in a sofa graveyard.

2008-12-21T21:55:00.000-08:00

You don't get it
You're always the same
Underdressed and
Underspent - and I'm kind of
like you
But a little less sure about
being uncertain.

What happened?
You don't remember anything
Or you do but you remember
it so so so differently than
I remember it
or how I thought
you would remember our
twelve-hour-straight-screams
About The Fountainhead, sex, Kurosawa
predetermination, your brother,
my mother -
and we found the secret passageways
in the basement and through the roofs
And we climbed up next to the
gargoyles and found suicide and
lovetape letters.

One said:

You remind me of three people.
One, because of your command over the kind and lost.
Two, because you take advantage of it.
Three, because you don't care.

Another said:

It's cold here.

You were willing to ask questions
And clean up my ginger ale puke.
I guessed how many items were
in your fridge - minimalism.

I told you that you were a genius
You said you were not.
You said I was beautiful
I said I was not.

This is terrible, the end
of a findingship.
I can't do it anymore.

Cimeon the Centipede

2008-12-14T08:47:00.000-08:00

Cimeon the Centipede was a warrior by sunlight. He knew the dawns and sunsets more than any other creature in the world. The 6 am light came slowly and quickly – when he blinked, it was gradual. When he closed his eyes, he heard the change - the woooo-woo-woo disappearing into the silence of a terrible, communal mourning. The white stillness always brought terror, and terror, thought Cimeon, was when immediate death seemed too far away.

To Cimeon, everything was white. It did not matter whether Cimeon kept his eyes open or shut – either way he could not see a thing. Cimeon did not know he was blind because he did not know about sight – seeing with the eyes, that is.

I am ready. I am ready with my mulch hat and each of my hairy arms armed with swiftness. Cimeon was a Centitrist. He took care of the wounded when the trembles came. The old and the too-young and the cocoons and the fireflies – they were the ones who suffered the most. Cimeon was agile. He could curl into spirals and circles and, if so inclined, he could form a perfect rhombus. He was gifted in that way – flexible and lovely.

There was nothing to do but wait. There was no preparation. When it struck two dongs from a far away hollow sound, Cimeon felt the quick numbness appear. Each time, he never knew if it would let go its circle hold, not until the moment when he moved one leg into the green darkness, and the rest of him followed.

There was nothing wrong with this living because he knew of nothing else. And though he could get ulcers, depression, high blood pressure, heart attacks, and chronic diarrhea from the level of stress any Centitrist must constantly encounter, Cimeon was, after all, only a very small centipede.

He heard the first quiet tone like the sound of a stick beating on a blade of grass.
“I feel like I will die soon,” said Cimeon.
The drumming stopped
“Then I will play your funeral march,” replied a voice.
The sound of his laugh was like the sound of snow – silent and windy and cold. Chaool dropped his stick and his blade of grass and walked to the head of Cimeon.
“How silly of you, I thought the mourning was coming.”
“Exactly my intention.”
“You are a boob.”
“I am a Nuamh.” Said Chaool, wiggling his antennae
“Then to your duties, you boobish Nuamh.”
“Tut, tut, tut,” said Chaool, and whistling in three part harmony, ran away on his two peach feet.

Cimeon crawled towards the Sight. The Sight was where all the grass creatures gathered, over the bodies of the dead. Here there was a deprivation of color – Cimeon had insisted along with the elder creatures – that there would be nothing but green. Green, said the other creatures, was a peaceful color, a color of satiated thirst and of sleep and of choruses produced by shifting mud. Cimeon imagined green to be somewhat like the sound of a quiet crunch or the feeling of the smooth, deep line of the snail’s mark. In any case, green seemed reasonable so green it was – anything to ease the constant horror.

They waited for the trembles and formed assembly lines, that ended with a Cintritist. Cimeon’s line was a little different. It was a spiral. But they had to, in some way, distinguish the Emergency unit from the rest of the injury lines
Cimeon, turned to a nearby Nuamh. “Have you seen Chaool?”
“A minute ago.”
“He must return soon before soon.”
“I think so.”
Cimeon was not expecting them for at least another minute, which was enough time to slowly crawl home, fix a meal, and crawl back. Time ran more slowly for the centipedes and the Nuamhs than the Wonzingers because the Wongzingers were at least three times the size of the centipedes. It made sense, for time to be relevant and regarded based on size, how much a creature moved or could move, or how much energy it produced or how quickly and deeply one could run.

One minute was plenty of time for Cimeon to stitch up twenty centipede legs, two worm worts, and six dalungeers. Cimeon looked at the sky, then at the grass, then at the lines and thought, indeed, now one minute has passed and no Chaool. He thought about going to find him and decided against it, reasoning that his spiral would lose their confidence without their leader in position.

He was right – most of the Nuamhs were cowards, but not Chaool. Half of him was of a different birthright and perhaps that had given him his presence and future. Cimeon enjoyed internalizing his thoughts and forming an inner dialogue.
“Hello Cimeon”
“Hello Cimeon.”
“I had the most lovely brine today.”
“Is your mother still alive?”
“Almost seven days old.”
“lovely. Pieces of books are lovely.”
"Do we hear that, Cimeon?"
“Yes, It is time.”

From somewhere far above the tallest blade and far beyond the bending bush came the call. It sounded something like, “reeeeeeeccccceeeeeeeessssssss!!!!”
Then the trembles came.

A Song of the Willows

2008-12-01T09:38:00.000-08:00

here it is
six plus days
when wimping
and whining
will not
fill up
our day
with
walloping
waywizer whompings.

Here we are
waygone we are
bygones we were
wayward we were
wayward we are
whencesoever, whereinsoever
all whomsoever fell down
our wherret whifflery trap?

Winward we roam
yet still at home
with whingers and fingers
and winglets.
Made in two
yet snapped into
windlestraw, weed
woolsack
and woolsey.

Here goes our song:
wither we have gone
whether have we won
we have surely
most assuredly
Stayed planted.

clip.3

2008-11-29T17:56:00.000-08:00

Unnee met this boy named Scott in PreSchool. Unnee fell in love too much. He had brown eyes and blond hair and was just a boy. Unnee wanted to play with him all the time and I just rolled my eyes and stayed in my room with my pencils. One time, Chin Halbujee and Chin Halmunee came over to stay with us. I remember Chin Halbujee's movements, but not his face or his body or his voice or his smell. Unless you count the smell of smoke, which was not his own smell but the smell of the fire he held between his fingers. Chin Halbujee moved like he had no joints. He moved like he could only go on for a little while longer and he moved in silence. His head nod was his language. It could mean - change the channel, go get me coffee, sit next to me, sit still, more rice please, and yes.

Sometimes, Chin Halbujee would forget about us and lock us outside. Then, Unnee and I had to amuse ourselves for hours until Uma got home. Sometimes, we would make boobie traps out of jump ropes, hula hoops, baseball bats, kick balls, sticks, string, chalk, and rusty nails.

Unnee and I were sitting in our room and I grew tired of us. Let's go outside, I said. Okay, Unnee said. We tried to crawl down the stairs on all fours like dogs, but that only worked when you were going in the up direction and could propel yourself forward with your arms. Going down, you had to use all your arm muscle to support your hanging weight and soon, it all ended up badly with both our bodies piled on the wooden floor. Unnee and I grabbed our swishy jackets - hers pink, mine green before I stepped outside to the wind world. When I turned around to say something - I forget what - I saw Unnee turn the lock.
"What are you doing?"
"Locking the door."
"How will we get back in?"
"We won't need to."
"Why?"
"Scott is coming to pick us up."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
Unnee was holding onto a rubber ball and I was holding on to nothing. Chin Halbujee was inside watching old Westerns on television. I could hear the sound of the gunshots and his mucus-coughing when I pressed my ear an hour later against the cold metal door. He watched a lot of TV. Chin Halbujee liked to watch TV and smoke, even though he was a genius. As a genius, he should have known better. I learned about smoking in school one day when everyone got an aluminum ash tray, a needle, and markers. Draw happy things on the ash trays, said Mrs. Klindenst. I drew a girl - me - with long black hair and a green dress. I had a big smile on my face because we were supposed to draw something happy. After we were all done, Mrs. Klindenst told us to turn the ash tray upside down, take the needle and poke twenty-five little holes onto the bottom. I counted, even though it was hard. Twenty-five holes.
Alright, Mrs. Klindenst said after I sat there waiting for everyone else to finish. Take this gift to a friend or family member who smokes. Smoking kills. Everyone, repeat after me. Smoking kills.
"Smoking kills," we all replied.
I turned my ash tray right-side up and looked at my picture - my body and once-smiling face was punctured with tiny pricks everywhere, my eyes poked out into two gaping holes. This was not nice. It was the first time I was frightened of myself. But I gave it to Chin Halbujee anyways and he kept it by his real, stone ashtray.

Unnee said we had to wait on the street next to our mailbox, 1386 Doe Trail Road. Scott would come to pick us up.
"But he doesn't drive."
"His mother is coming too."
"When did you talk to them?"
"Before."

I sat on the curb for a long time. The world was light and then became darker. I did not know what time it was - only that my legs hurt and my toes were cold. I was getting very warm in my jacket, zipped up to my nose. I was very warm when the air began to glow around us. It smelled like the moment before rain, when two fractured parts of the day clasp together in dry upheavel. A thunder battle was about to occur. Though my sight told me that the crash had not yet happened, I knew in my mind that the battle was fully under way. The darkness so bright, and the light so dark - both were sharp and present - so completely present in every single vibrating molecule that the world shook in its fullness. I could feel the shaking. To this very day I can feel the shaking. That's how I know when to hold my breath, plug my ears, stand still, and only use my eyes and nose to sense everything, even the dust, outlined in glowing blue.

The concentration of these living colors made part of me want to bleed so I could see what blood would look like in this moment of the world. I wanted my eyes to never let go of the wet colors, of the shades of blue and white and light. But I also knew how the world felt - yearning to be deeper - so that I could contain and be a part of such things. Just as I was about to stand up because I could no longer sit, I heard a car approach.

"Is it Scott?" I thought, but Unnee had her head on the grass and her eyes were closed. Blades of green fell between her lips and shivered with each passing of breath that came from Unnee's mouth and moved deeply into the dirt below the stone, the street, and the roots of any living thing.

I looked into a face that leaned out the car window. He was not a boy. His skin looked pale and translucent and his hair looked so shiny-black that it turned blue - as if the night sky had transcended onto the yawn of morning. He saw me and knew what it was like to live a few hours of each day in dreams. We drew one breath. I did not blink- but in the next fracture of time - he was never there - and in that moment I found out that, at the age of six, my dream mind had found out how to escape the cage of sleep.

clip.2

2008-11-28T13:30:00.001-08:00

I am on my hot pink Barbie bike and all the world is moving together in the opposite direction as me. The year is turning cold, and in order to compensate for the world’s nakedness, people are turning out more and more layered.

I think that in such moments as these, human expression falls short because of what we lose in each layer of translation. The soul takes the first, sharpest bite. Sometimes, if we are lucky, this lasts for more than a fleeting second. Then the twist-bang hits our hearts, which, mercifully, can only handle so much and acts as a sponge-octopus interpreter, with its six strip tentacles attached to our sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell, and breathing. Or it runs straight to our minds, which, made out of millions of tiny swinging axes, chips and chops at the liquid sensation pervading each air pocket of brain tube, sometimes spilling out of our ear and nose holes, into the wild outside air, to be caught by a passing stranger or friend who is then drawn out of his or her dazed walk and, for the first time in months, notices the trees. These pieces which our brain processor makes, then falls from us with the soft tapping of our eye lashes or lips, each blink or syllabic movement loosening crumbs of what we have in ourselves, like the nodding of a cigarette butt spitting out fragments of ash and fire. These molecular inadequacies are never again our own, and, in a whirl of shouts and bangs and screams, it whispers into the soul of someone else in order to try again.

I woke up from this dream

2008-11-23T04:13:00.001-08:00

You and I, we, all of us, were hiding in a large room above a restaurant. It was dark and quiet and we were frightened because all of Philadelphia was being overrun by demons. We heard the high pitched echoes of running feet hit the thin metal stairs of the fire escapes outside. There were also the softer, heavier sounds of feet hitting the floors above us. Though we did not know if the demons had found a way in, there were a thousand and ten floors above us, and two windows to every floor.
We told eachother, if you see one, keep your eyes closed. The demons possess you by spitting into your eyes. Sometimes we could also hear the echoes of desperate knocking on the side doors, or the rattling of windows. At first, we would go, we would try to help, I promise, we tried to help. But when one girl tried to help the little boy staring through the window, she herself was almost taken.
I thought of Sue and my parents. Where else is this happening? I asked. Someone turned on a radio, but only very very softly. On the news, it was reported that nowhere else was this happening. Maybe only in some parts of central United States. But the West Coast was free and all of the East coast except Pennsylvania was free. Philadelphia was where it started. Philadelphia, the radio voice hoped, was where it would end.
Almost everyone believed. We were all in our twenties and that made us old enough to know how to be like our parents or like our older folk and knew how to feel relieved when our loved ones did not share our doom. But I had my ear against the speaker, I pressed up against it hard so that the metal holes left small, circle, impressions on my ear. Layered behind the reporter’s voice, I heard screams. The uncertainty was horrifying, but I could not tell anyone because we all had family and the best, most hopeful thing at that moment was that they were not us.
There was a man in the room who loved me. In two minutes after I found myself in this place, I told him that I loved him too. I could not help it - I had to make up more hope because there was so little of it left. He grew confident and told the group that we all had to move downstairs and try to leave this building instead of waiting. It was our only chance to escape and there was a forest to our left that we could make our way through. Only we did not know what was in the forest or if the demons came from there. But we did all know that it was dark and there was nowhere else to go.
Our feet were quiet but our breathing was loud when we moved downstairs. It was a wide space and the room was perfectly round. There were heavy curtains hanging on golden rods and round tables with round chairs that had long, round backs and tiny, round feet. We each took a chair and lost ourselves in thoughts. But only for a little time because soon there was the sound of many loud whispers, of people planning and asking and cursing and crying and, perhaps, praying (I know that I did not pray), I began to think of how one man in the room had a car and could take me to my sister’s place. It was parked outside on the street, right in front of one of the windows. It was an old white van and if it still worked then we could drive away quickly. This was a better chance than running into the forest. I got up from my chair and went to he who was sitting on the floor. Will you take me in your van to see my sister? I asked. “Do you love me?” he asked. That’s when I remembered that I had forgotten two years of knowing this person, and then there was a thread of stories in my mind about myself and that person that I had not known before.
“Yes,” I told him. “Then we will go,” he said.
The first man I loved since the beginning of this story was tall and had dark hair. I remember myself sitting cross legged on the carpet floor and looking up to see him walk by me quickly.

Suddenly, we heard heavy knocking on the side door leading to our room. Mariya ran upstairs. “Where are you going?” I whisper-yelled. But she was already moving and I had to get up and follow her to try and make her understand what was happening so as not to let the demons in. But Mariya knew. When we got the second floor she walked towards a small door on the wall that I had not seen earlier and turned the knob. Inside, it was dusty. She climbed onto a stool and looked out the small, barred window, which showed us the side-entrance below us. Standing there were two men, talking. They were calm.

They are too calm, Mariya said. But how do we judge such things, I asked. They will always be too calm or too scared or too excited. There was no point in coming up here and pretending to be fair.

When we came back downstairs, all the curtains were down and I did not ask what happened. One of the windows, I noticed, was opened a little bit. I ran to the man with the and told him that we had to leave soon and to tell no one about our plan. Then I left to tell my two friends in the room to come with us, and telll no one, otherwise not one of us would get away. I think they agreed. But there was no point to all this because the two men Mariya and I had seen from uptairs were at the open window. I ran to it to close it but one of the men leaned forward and spit. I closed my eyes and felt wet on my cheek. I opened my eyes to struggle with the window when the man spit again and again and again and I tried hard to avoid my eyes. Then the second man smashed open the window. We all began to scream.

I ran. I ran to the other side of the room and went outside. I looked behind me and saw one woman become possessed. I ran around the corner with the hope of finding the van. But around the corner there were more demons or people who were pretending to be possessed. I could not tell what was real. So I ran back to the door of the building . It was locked. I cupped my hand above my eyes and leaned against the window. Inside I saw the circle room. Everyone was sitting in circles. Their clothes were dirty, torn, and bloody, but they had beautiful lined napkins on their laps. There were waiters holding trays of food. People were laughing and looked happy and it was the scariest thing I have ever seen because my mind knew that it was time for me to run. But there were people in the room whom I knew. And the thing that hurt my heart the most was that some people in that room were not possessed. And they would have to sit there and pretend forever. Just as my hand formed a fist and I almost knocked on the window, a face appeared. He was a waiter and smiled at me and wanted me to come in and dine away from the outside chaos. I saw his eyes and knew that I must go. So I began to run towards the forest. I heard the waiter call for help and I heard myself being chased towards the forest. I knew there would be no hope for me there but I had to run because there was nowhere else to go. What overpowered me more than the fear from running from demons, was the horror I felt when I thought about those left in the city who were not possessed. They would have to go on either pretending to also be possessed, or sit on their knees forever with their eyes closed, only hearing their own screams until their throats became bloody and the mystery of the sounds around them would force them to open their eyes. Then I saw in my mind these people curled on the gravel, screaming, and a dark figure crouched over their face, waiting and never leaving.

I ran. I ran and left this all behind and I felt terrible and I remembered seeing a tall man with dark hair sitting at a round table with glass through his chest. I ran. I ran and had started earlier than the two waiters coming after me.
My stomache was hot and I could not breathe but I was running and approaching the forest. I could not breath and it was hot but I was almost to the edge of the forest.

Though there was heat on my body and I was suffocating, I knew as the co-author of my dreams, that there was something ahead that would save me. And this why I did not give up and ran. I ran and reached the forest. I reached the first two trees. So did the demons. I ducked. They ducked. I felt their breaths on my neck and cried out and cried out and cried out. And though sometimes we do not receive answers and though sometimes many are left to continue to cry out, my cries were immediately answered. A woman appeared and stood by me and would not let the demons get me. The demons would try but she would not let them.

Soon, the prince demon showed up and tried to get me too. But she would not let him and she reached out behind her and encircled her arms around me. She stood in front of me as we turned around and around, she, trying to shield me with her body from the rotating demons. Keep your eyes closed, keep your eyes closed, she said.

ThePrince demon spoke. He rose from the ground and threw a scroll in the air and the woman caught it. “Begone,” the woman said. And the demon prince left. “Follow me,” the woman said. We left the forest and I followed her and her people. We walked slowly up a hill and I looked back. And what I could not see weighed heavily on my heart.

clip. - Chpt? - an end to the famine.

2008-11-18T17:57:00.000-08:00

Abba began to feel bad for us. Especially when we began to quote Oliver Twist which we had seen with Abba the day before the whole fiasco. Unnee and I would put on our dirty laundry, position ourselves in front of the door as Abba came in with his briefcase after work, smelling like the indoored outside; like paper and carpet and coffee and the interiors of cars.
“Please sir, may I have some more?” we’d cry in our terrible cockneyed English. “Please sir, just a little more!” “Us poor paupered children” “nothing to eat but a bit o bread and cheese.

Unnee and I fought over who got to sit in the shotgun seat so we both ended up sitting in the back. And then when we got the bright, giant orange sign, we fought over who got to sit in the cart.

“Jean-a,” said Abba, as he lifted Unnee up and pulled each of her legs through the metal holes in the cart. “But why, Abba?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer. Last time I tried to force my legs through the cart, I got stuck, and they had to call a guy in blue overalls to come to the store and cut open the cart with these big, thick scissors so I could get my legs out.

Unnee smiled as she gave herself an elevated panoramic view of the produce section. I was sad because I did not fit in the cart. So I held on to one side of Abba’s jacket and walked from the warm outside into the exciting cold, fruity, mist. The happiness of wet fruit was contagious. Soon I was imagining different dishes with the raw goodness in front of me transformed.

Not all fat children are fat because they like to eat. I was fat. And I loved to eat. I opened my mouth at the cold grocery store air and pretended to breathe in all of the red, green, orange, and yellow peppers. “It has truly been a long time,” said a pile of overriped avocados from a small bin next to the stacked cherry tomatoes. “Indeed,” said the kiwis, their high pitched voices blending in three-part harmony. “Where have you been?” they sang. “Where have you been, where have you been?”
“A long way off,” I sang back. “Over the woods and through the mountains to grandfather’s house, a long way off.”
“But why so far, but why so far?”
“Because I had to get away and there was nowhere else to go.”

I wandered to the strawberries as Abba walked over to the plums. He picked up one of the brightest ones, and gave it a little squeeze, which made it giggle and giggle as it tumbled into an open plastic bag where it would surely find death by suffocation. The strawberries were not any better off. Their appearance was truly alarming, and reminded me of Puzzles, the giraffe with a tumor whom I had seen at our class trip to the zoo last Fall. I couldn’t bear to watch them suffer so I moved to the next section, where all the organic red, purple and green grapes were engaged in a full scale war. I must have walked in after the end of a particularly epic battle because the few grapes which had not tumbled onto the floor were either crushed or completely pulpified. All except one.
“What happened?” I asked the small green grape.
“Death to all insurgents!” he cried.
“But what does that mean?” I asked.
“Follow me, the most powerful of them all! Or prepare for death!”
“But you are only a grape.”
“Prepare for death!”
“But you are only a grape.”
“Prepare for death!”
“Were you the cause of all this?”
“Follow me, or to prepare to meet your maker!”
“Who is the maker?” I asked.
“The one who…makes…things.” He said.
“Did he make me?”
“Indeed, you insolent fool.”
“did he make you?”
“Well, I suppose so.”
“So wouldn’t that make him more powerful than you?”
“…prepare for death!”

I placed a finger on either side of his curvatures and squeezed. “Eeek,” cried a small voice from the bottom of the bin. “You have killed our poor little Freddy.”

I ran to the bakery. “Wait, Jean-a!” called Abba, but I was already gone, a fugitive grape killer, running to the haven of the glass windows shielding the sweet green dinosaurs, the dark brown mice, and, my favorite, favorite friends.

I leaned my right cheek on the cool, clear plate, and sighed. There they were, all of them molded with butter, sugar, flour, and unformed chicken babies.
And there was a fresh new tray of my favorite, favorite friends, the cupcake panda bears. “Would you like one?” asked a lady behind the counter. I nodded my head hard.

The panda bears’ bodies and heads were made out of Oreos. The Oreos were perfect circles, every single one of them. I held one up to my eye, in front of the brown clock on the wall. Then I pressed my middle finger and my thumb together and snapped. The smooth sharp movement, separated the Oreo halves. “Goodbye, friend.” I whispered.

When we got the checkout aisle, all that was left of the panda was a cupcake wrapper. I looked up at the white-haired lady at the cashregister, who wore blue circle glasses. Only she didn’t look as old as halmunee. She didn’t even look as old as Uma. But she was definitely older than me. I did not understand why her hair was so white.
“Why is your hair white?” I asked.
She looked down at me through her blue owl glasses. “Was that from the bakery?” She asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“What was it?” she asked.
“A cupcake friend.” I replied.
She quickly punched in $1.30 on the tab.
“What is this?” asked Abba.
“Your daughter has a cupcake.”
“Jean-a, where did you get that?”
“The bakery. My cupcake friend.”
“Your what?”
“A panda.”
“Who said you could get that?”
“The lady at the bakery. She is very nice.”
“No Jean. I never said you could get a cupcake.”
“But she gave it to me.”
“For free?”
I actually didn’t know for sure whether she gave it to me or expected me to pay for it. I really didn’t know for sure.
I nodded my head.
“You sure?” He asked.
“They don’t just go about giving free cupcakes to all the…” – she eyed my belly –"hungry children in the store, you know,” said Owl Lady.
“My daughter says she gave it to her. But I will pay for it.” Said Abba.
I began to feel ashamed because I did not want to make Abba sad and $1.30 was a lot of money. But I also felt less guilty because Abba was going to pay for it and that would make everything better because we would not be almost steeling. Though Abba would still be sad.
“Well if she said she gave it to her, then she gave it to her,” said Owl Lady. “I will just have to talk to Barbara about it.”

In the car, I felt sick. That was the only time I ever skipped dinner.

2008-11-15T09:46:00.000-08:00

I fall in love about
3 times a day.
Once, with a gray hat -
thinly striped, not checkered -
that skates straight in the air
and into the light spots outside
Once with a brown leather bag
and black glasses
and scrub pants
And once with
a soul that runs up the
stairs, holding onto the metal
railing that sighs ice
through and through.

Jibberish, that's what
Jibberish and hair and
and mouths
and shoe bottoms.

Seeing Things

2008-11-14T21:28:00.000-08:00

Out on the porch landing,
My eyes reached towards
traffic,
windows, and cemented pits of water.
Laura talked about pessimism
as my mind swept up the light -
so pessimism became large and gray
and soft and damp
and it nibbled into the cracks of
street one crossing street two crossing
nerves and winks and
washed out synapses.
It fell through these hard things,
past minutes and sleep sighs and
onto yesterday, onto the moment
I believed that all
would be like the pointing hand -
moving - but only in
side side
tick
rounds.

I saw her and I saw the need and I
promised to her that I would pray.
In the moment my eyes stepped past these
frames, in between one stop
and the next, they grasped a shadow
that immediately slipped away
but in such a manner that it
moved past and through the human
face and neck and bust
and then left - to the next or
to the nothing.

I felt dis eased,
for I saw and knew
that I could not dwell on it
And I could not allow for that
one swing movement
to overtake the settled, rising mist.

God's Journal entry #6

2008-11-13T21:27:00.000-08:00

Today I grew frustrated with all the
Philadelphian orphan children asking for this and that
So I sighed hard, blowing the clothes off of all the
surrounding trees.
"We are naked!" cried the branches.
"Sucks to be you, huh?" replied all the trunks.
I am a good God, I said. Social equality for all.

This Blows

2008-11-06T10:01:00.000-08:00

Why am I so selfish and why can't I
go happy lucky?
Where has everyone gone
And what happened to the
Women like Gertrude, Virginia,
And terrible terrible Amy?
Man, I'm really depressed.
The rain runs horizontally
both ways at once. And
the force of the water is
pushing my face together in
permanent worry furrows.
Sometimes I call out but then
I hear my own pathetic voice, and
then I think - I wouldn't even
answer myself.
I see a man sitting with his legs parted
Over the sewer. The steam
dampens the bottom of his black coat,
and he's holding his hands to the sky
And laughing.

2008-09-28T22:57:00.000-07:00

I am angry at the water and the people.
I am angry at nothing.
I trample on puddles and other small things
To tell myself that I am angry.
I writhe beneath an endless line of stone arches
that press together, that press down the dust.
And half of me feels nothing
And half of me screams at the nothing I feel.
Too many people use nothing for
food and clothing and happiness and expression
But I mean it. I mean nothing, like
when I sleep with my eyes open
As I did yesterday and the night before.

Obedience is nothing
I do not know what to follow.
I made a pact with God.
If he takes away this deafening uncertainty
I will follow with all my heart.
But I don't know if these kinds of pacts
Are encouraged or allowed
But I made it
Because there is nothing else I can do now
And that is all I know.

Giving more than just some bread

2008-09-18T21:23:00.000-07:00

When do we ever become generous with ourselves?
What does that mean, to be generous?
The generation of generosity which we supposedly admire in
Pugs
Poetry
and
Priests -
is it authentic
Or do these sacks
of feathers and pencil discharges
hide behind their beautifying
modes of expression?

I for one have not yet learned to
give myself like water on cedars.
Yet I would like to learn how
to nod and wave and
smile
insufficiently
at the unstated desires of
you and you and you

Excerpts from Alaska

2008-09-12T19:47:00.001-07:00

In Angoon, Alaska, water meets land. There are boats, trucks, people dogs and bears, and we are here, breathing with them. Here, the dirt turns over, and the grass bows forward under the weight of morning rain. Shadows run parallel to folds and bends in the form of waves.

Tonight is my last night in Angoon. I think about my time here in pieces of days, like I’ve taken my long reel of memory film over the course of the week, and snipped it and re-arranged it according to words and colors and feelings. Here is one piece:

I’m looking at Frosty behind a folded green leaf and it’s wet outside. He’s telling me to try the raspberries, but I don’t want to because some of them are gray and dirty and I feel ashamed to tell him the reason for my hesitation. But then in silence he tells me its okay by turning his face towards me and plucking red bundles into his mouth. My heart soars at his teaching because I can only hope that we have done the same for him in our actions. I am excited, looking at his eyes and smelling the water-breeze and hearing the dogs barking because this all tells me that Frosty from Angoon is a great work of God yet to be completed.

Then the film skips to Tamara and her smile and her very blue eyes which I like better later when they are brown because she is more real without her colored contacts, and I don’t have to go through as many layers of otherness to get to her. Then she’s sharing her heart with me about her parents and her experienced abuse with sharp chain links. I want to scream because I am so enraged for her and her childhood and for her right now.

Then I see the back of a small dark head – it is baby Luke. Tamara is 21 years old, she is my age, and she might adopt him so that she can perhaps give him better and more. This is beautiful, I think to myself, but I also think she is too young. I love her and her love for baby Luke. My heart breaks for her and for the baby in her carriage.

Today I saw a bald eagle. Today I saw a bear. Today I saw a puppet show. Oh my God, it has been 1 week and I love them. How much more is your love for them, you who has known them outside of time, and utterly in full? So much of the broken beach’s pieces will be covered, immersed. All that will be left behind is the forgiveness of water until, again, more pieces roll forward in dirt and grime. Then, once again, forgiveness.

For the first time in my life, my heart feels no pull towards the distant mountains because I am where I am and I am full and it is good. Tomorrow, I know, the water will brim to the lips of the sea basin.

Some came and listened, some did not come at all, and some came but were not present. But every person, including myself, were in some way restless, and in this kind of readiness, there comes either trouble making, or the great decision to follow.

When we landed, where water meets land, we were tired, wet, and confused. But we all felt one word moving through the tops of trees, straight to the depths beneath our feet – restoration, restoration, restoration. In the morning, I sensed a static movement of the people beyond the docks. And yet, behind them, ahead of them, and through them, I felt You in us: the breathing and the pulsing of something other than reflections of darkness. Shadows left behind themselves and instead became the tangible contrast of the space between Your air and our faces. This is what came to be.

This morning I decided to run because my body felt full of sleep. I ran past homes with windows and blinds and plants. Nearby, there was the deck that stretches over the water like a long wooden arm pointing to the boats sleeping next to mountains. I stood on the deck, breathing with the wind, which then moved into me and then through me, past my lips, down through the floorboards, to the rocks and shells and the reflections below. It was beautiful and wonder-filling.

Some dogs moved like guards of the dust. They saw us, and smelling waves greater than ourselves, ran into the mist. Then, when I heard how even the clouds were silenced, I realized that everywhere, not just in Angoon, there awaits a fog so deep and dense, that it longs to descend on the streets and through the windows, enveloping in full, those who want to and therefore decide to, and therefore feel compelled to cry out.

And here is my prayer:

That the Tlingut voices will be heard from so far away, that the sound will be difficult to distinguish from shouts of thunder.

Confusion

2008-09-09T12:20:00.001-07:00

Is someone sitting here?, he asks.

(Behind him, past the window pane

There is a girl walking with barely any

Pants on).

Jeez, I say,

What?, he asks

No, I say

(But he is already setting his butt down

and throwing his feet on top of the

the air-conditioner).

Do you have a pencil, he asks

Why?, I ask

Excuse me?, he asks

No.

Alright.

Sorry, I lie.

You okay? He asks,

You okay? I ask,

What does that mean? He asks,

I don’t know, I say.

You’re confusing, he says

I’m confused, I say

We're all confused, he says

Thank God, I say.

scream

2008-08-06T21:06:00.001-07:00

i'm so anxious that my throat hurts
Just holding up my head makes my neck hurt
From kicking hard my legs hurt
And when it's hard my head hurts.

I've lost my glasses so my eyes hurt
When I run this fast my heart hurts
My heart hurts when I see the things
I've been seeing
It never stops because
When I sleep I'm always dreaming

But I get sick when I think of going home
And eating right and resting right and
being alright isn't being right
when it isn't right right here
where it rains every tuesday night
a few blocks away
where there's news on every night
that sounds exactly the same
From yesterday night's news
and every night's news
so there's no new news
there's screaming every night
and they're not my screams
so why don't I just shut the hell up.

2008-07-23T09:52:00.001-07:00

I need me some
poetic toilet paper.

2008-07-16T21:18:00.001-07:00

I
Just
Had
A
Crazy
Day.

today's thought

2008-07-03T23:46:00.000-07:00

I fell in love once
When our hands were
buried deep in snow and
our hearts burned blue,
glowing quick over the field,
lighting the edge of
gathered trees.

Then the forest collected
sweat and I watched
you slow and sway
up and down the
crossing paths,
finding mossy
stone fences and
disappearing
for years.

But this morning,
I was reading something
foreign and cold
when you
walked through me

And the wire moment
We pulsed
I told you
"you were brave for leaving,"

Though I really meant,
"Remember
the year we were
Planted into winter."

But you did not know
the time winding difference
between
trying to leave
and
trying to lose

You are blind to
Patience smiling at grief

Patriotic Pigeon

2008-07-01T09:15:00.001-07:00

Today I saw the most patriotic pigeon ever. I was sittting outside of Cosi eating my cobb-salad-with-tuna-instead-of-chicken, and I saw a very large female pigeon lurking nearby. But much to my surprise, when she turned around, I saw that her white underfeathers had streaks of red and blue - too splotchy and patterened on both wings to be spray-painted on.

That pigeon, I suppose, wasn't so bad as the other ones, but only because I judged it by something that was out of her power. Cheers!

Wake Up

2008-06-21T20:03:00.001-07:00

Wake up
The clouds are soaking up the light
Wake up
Hear the sun and people rise
Wake up
From seeking rest in restless dreams

Look up and see
Look down and breathe
Here we are
Again again again
But you’re there and
There and then

I Look up and see
I look down and breathe

2008-06-16T12:56:00.001-07:00

"Put your things down at once
and dance in the rain with me."
But I took the box and ran because I was afraid that it would get wet.
"I am not afraid of the thunder," I shouted.
But there he was with his back towards me, his shirt dipping in the line of his spine and his movements - so beautiful because they struggled.
When he jumped, he treaded air and his mouth was so sad.
And I thought, fuck all this pessimism about heartache-sarcasm.
Here is something to cry about.

The Attic

2008-06-14T10:05:00.000-07:00

In the attic there is
One desk
And no where to sit.
And the floor boards are each
Four inches apart
So that my lips fit through
Them and I can suck in
Cold tasteless air.
I am not afraid of falling
Through because I
Do not see what is
Underneath.
there is only a light, and beneath it
my dripping pen.

story

2008-05-31T17:58:00.000-07:00

Beneath the pink flowering tree, I saw a small grave sign, its name blurred with time. I thought, it must landmark a simpled, humbled person. And then I laughed at how I was, judging the dead by the size of granite and stone.

It had just rained before I stepped outside and into the cemetery. I couldn’t tell which part of me was sweat and which part was the scattered cubes of water mist, all which I thought were only there for myself, waiting for me to run and catch and cling them onto my arms. But then I looked at one of the bowing branches and pressed a petal between my forefinger and thumb. I felt that it was also wet - and in realizing that there was something more than myself, I felt relieved.

It was now past seven and I could see beyond the trees and down the street, people leaving their narrow homes and taking the last light. A shadow fell on the small grave sign from someone else’s pinnacle directly across the path. Before I left, I put both my palms on it, the tallest grave. I stared at the dust in the curves of Elliot – and felt the names of a man, his wife, and his three children echo in my hands.

A Conversation

2008-05-26T21:07:00.001-07:00

“What kind of peanuts are you looking for, my dear?” asked the old gentlemen wearing a white hat.
“I do not know what peanuts are,” replied the little girl in a yellow dress.
“Hadn’t you ought to know what you are looking for?”
“Oh, but I am much too afraid to ask, for the other children are sure to make fun.”
“What a shame, that such a fear should hold you back from the full knowledge of such delights as freshly ground peanut butter and, of course, my favorite - peanut ice cream with little marshmallows on top!”
“What are marshmallows?”
“They are soft bundles of heavenly goodness, my dear.”
“And what are peanuts?”
“Ah – as for that – I cannot tell you.”
“And why not?”
“Do you see this piece of stone?”
Elsie nods.
“Do read the inscription.”
“It says ‘Benjamin Richardson: loving father, devoted husband. Born Aug. 1, 1826, died Dec 10 1897.”
“Ah.”
“Well?”
“Well what do we now know about this Benjamin Richardson – except that his relatives had terrible taste in grave markers?”
“He was a loving father and devoted husband.”
“And?”
“And he died at age --71.”
“My my, a quick little mind for the young one. And yes, he seems to have stayed around for a good bit of time. But as for being a loving father and devoted husband – well, my dear, he may very well not have been a loving father--nor a father at all for that matter.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let us say that his --five --no--six children were all of them from different sires…” (leaning forward) “all with different spots of hair – gold, chestnut, berry red, orange, purple! ---heavens, how the man never knew. And his poor wife ---beside herself with grief from his abuse, would go back and forth like a little metronome ---tick-tock-tick-tock---from man ---tick--to man--tock---to man, seeking what I, my dear, call nothing more than coupling.”
“Sir, how could you say such things? You know nothing of ---(glancing at the stone) ---Mr. Benjamin Richardson. He may very well have been---“
“Possibilities, my dear. You mistake the possible for the definite ---a logical leap that might send one crashing into the most tragic, and might I add, otherwise avoidable circumstances in life!” (Leaning forward) “Careful!”
“Well then sir, what is the use of these possibilities, then? I may just as well say that (glancing at the stone) this Benjamin Richardson man was the king of all gracious fathers and good husbands, and that your--- if I may say so, sir,---rattle, sir, is mere ---bullyworst.”
“Bullyworst?”
“Bullyworst.”
“Ah yes, now you, my dear girl, are catching on quite deliciously. Possibilities---opinions---they are, all of them, synonymous. For I very well may tell you that peanuts are big and square and the most delightful shade of fluorescent pink imaginable, but all this comes down to---what was the word you used?---ah yes, bullyworst.
“But peanuts are peanuts and, surely sir, there must be some consensus on what they look, taste, or feel like.”
“Ah, I do agree with Thompson ---it is delightful to teach the young idea how to shoot---but in order to come to this accord, my dear, I myself must have somehow crossed the said delight, you see. Good opinions, even wrong opinions, are bred from experience my dear. I despise nothing more than the flibbertigibbets who go galavanting on with their half-prattle opinions without the slightest knowledge of actuality.”
“Well sir, then must we only know that which we have lived?”
“Nonsense! Is Asia to the right or left of Europe?”
“Well, it depends on which way one is facing, I suppose.”
“And how do you know?”
“I’ve see maps at school, sir.”
“Precisely, my dear.”
“Well then, I suppose I could say that peanuts are like purple balls of clay.”
“Do you believe this to be true?”
“Well, no sir.”
“Ah.”
“Well, what are peanuts then?”
“What are peanuts?”
“Yes what are peanuts?!”
“Well, don’t trouble yourself too much, my dear. Unless, of course, you really would like to know.”
“Sir, but you do forget one thing---“
“Not surprising at my age, my dear, but do tell.”
“You sir, are a hypocrite.”
“Delightful! And why is that, my dear?”
“Because you told me what a marshmallows were – you said that they were lovely bundles of heavenly goodness---“
“Soft bundles of heavenly goodness, my dear, soft bundles. Why, if all things soft were also lovely---“ (shuddering as he grasps a handful of a protruding belly)--“Marshmallows and peanuts are entirely different things. Though you shouldn’t take my word for it. But suppose I am a hypocrite.”
“Suppose you are.”
“Ah, the cry of any great protester. And yet my dear, I cannot help but wonder if this very fair description of my character may render my words nonetheless true.”

I go here or it comes to me

2008-05-17T20:49:00.001-07:00

Last night, I was a little boy looking into
A lake. I saw the shadows of old,
Dirty fish things and the muddy
Floor turning from the night’s rain.

I closed my eyes and these things came to me:

A hanging woman, her neck knotted in the
branches, her white skirt caught in
the leaves, her face blurry in the wind.

the gleam of a small brass
Handle, shiny and new on a dusty,
Locked drawer with nail marks
On the wood.

An old man on a gray cart behind me
using his hands to roll faster and faster -
I can only hear him -
his knuckles scratching the ground.

And nowhere is there breathing -
There is no taking in.

I feel tired
from all these years of
night torment.
And sometimes when I arrive,
they are no longer there -
they have moved into the day.

2008-05-17T19:29:00.000-07:00

The best way is simple and hard
But I have some words of truth
for you, for myself:
The best way is simple and hard
But I have some words of truth.

Angoon, Alaska

2008-05-10T10:36:00.000-07:00

By way of Seattle and Juneau, Alaskan Air and Ferry
You trust the aerodynamic experts who know all about
Turbulence.

No Peanut butter, no beef jerky, no salmon scented soap.
You are prepared for the Alaskan wild dogs
And the grizzly bears who grab garbage bags straight from
Your truck, just as you reach the town dump.

They are excused and curious creatures
At the lips of a gray pit.
Their questions litter everywhere
And the only thing you can do is drive away.

I will meet you there upstream.
Only there are we newcomers,
Unfamiliar with April -
Herring
Strangers to June -
Stacked silver salmon.

And when we get tired of fish
We will go to the water where the
Old Klinkut men pull up
Old wooden crates, hand over hand.

They will tell us that we must learn how to stand
More than this:
Humpback whales and still-born waves.

We return to the garbage hole.
So this is what it’s like to drop five hundred
And fifty-two feet instead of turning
To face you.
Angoon is anything but static.

Questions for Breakfast

2008-05-06T23:54:00.000-07:00

There are people running
Around in my
Househome kitchen
Wearing pink and green hats.
They have questions
that take on the form
of breakfast eggs:
boiled, stirred, hashed
double hashed and rung like
Putty.

They ask me,
What is a perfect high-five?
(I answer with my palm flat,
accelerating from
three inches behind the head).

But they ask other questions
that dance in my belly,
wanting to own
truths about
God – the God of Corn
Puffs, broccoli trees,
pigeon politicians and
clawed things.

Holding pancakes over their
Faces, they ask, “does he know
Me now? And how about now?”
And then as I answer,
they draw, with cold
sticks of butter,
up and down and in spirals
all over their legs.

But I have questions of my own.
Why is it intolerant to be certain?
I turn to the ones building igloos
Out of frozen Eggo boxes.

I ask, What do you eat with waffles?

They respond,
Do you have any syrup?
The kind in the lady bottle.
It is good, cheap, and always
Very sweet.

I think I'm being way too general, cryptic, and honest

2008-05-05T23:44:00.000-07:00

I.
I am self deprecating
Depreciating
Spiteful, vengeful, and pissed off.
I’m tired of finding words
To retranslate these colors
Inside of me, and I always stray
Far from the triggering idea.

Is this what it takes to write?
Mediocre writing nonetheless.
Then again, I don’t know what
That means anymore

II.
Yesterday someone told me I
Was overly critical. The first thing
I thought was, that’s because I
Criticize you, bitch. Then
I thought, that wasn’t very kind.

III.
Shit. I love to stare.

IV.
I really need to read the Bible more.
I’m always looking for cryptic adventures,
something other than
Whatever I am or have now. I think I
Have a tendency to put things off
That could possibly be good for me.

V.
I’ve never been in love and I don’t think
Its possible that I ever will. This
Might make some people very happy.

VI.
My friends are the most tolerant people
In the world. If I poured pineapple juice
On my head, they’d make me into a smoothie.

VII.
Sometimes, the second I see someone I immediately find them irresistibly interesting: Cindy, Helen, Matt, Amaka, Curtis, Jay, Robert, Stephen, Hannah, Alex, Josh. If one of these names is your name, and you think it is you then it is probably you. Just kidding.

VII.A.
Usually, when I approach someone who fascinates me, I’m not too worried about freaking anyone out because they end up being flattered and interested in return but once in a while I fear that I’ll come off as a creepster. So I just don’t say anything. So if I’m always awkwardly silent around you...

VII.B.
Sometimes after I get to know someone they’re not so interesting anymore.

VIII.
The way to get my attention is to be a golden doodle puppy. Or just be ridiculously confident and forward. I’m not talking about romantic relationships here. I’m talking about life in general. People are too damn passive.

VIII.A.
I met a BBC war-footage filmographer on the subway in Hollywood last summer. He almost dies every day. I guess that’s what it takes to be forward.

VIV.
Apparently I abandon people.

X.
Apparently I’ve been abandoned.

XI.
Apparently I’m lots of fun when I’m
Not feeling the way I’m feeling right now.
Or if I’m a little drunk.

XII.
Socially awkward people love me.
So did my fish named Potiphar.

Henry the Man Child

2008-05-05T09:32:00.001-07:00

Henry closes the door on his paper clips
And paints orange clouds and God’s eyes.
Numbers settle but oils roam but this is someone
Nomadic.

Henry is sorry for all the melted Oreos on the countertop.
He is sorry for his blonde and black curls and the marker
All over his hands which isn’t just purple but a true
Tyranian Indigo.

He loves his bright toy trucks and UFO stickers.
He loves his cheerios with almonds and chocolate
Syrup: cheerios for breakfast, cheerios for lunch,
Cheerios for dinner and il dolce.

Henry hates his magnetic nametag. He hates
His striped blue uniform and the smell of his
Matching blue socks. He hates his bright blue
Wig, his bright blue smile -

Henry is a blue clown.

What does it take to settle somewhere?
Age is so confusing.

Consumers

2008-05-04T17:44:00.000-07:00

I am really very hungry. Make me dinner?

All you need is two fresh chives.
Maybe also -
one garlic clove.

Maybe the clove and the chives will run
away naked and then
I will have nothing to eat but
thin garlic skin and white,
oniony
root hairs.

I'll grow these root hairs
on my head.
They will sprout into vegetables
(green beans, of course)
and short sheets of seaweed
for bangs.

Then, at the next apocalyptic famine,
people will crowd at my doorstep and say,
Come out, please. We would
Like to eat you.

All I will be able to do
is quietly lock my door
and watch television
in the bathtub

Then I will see myself
staring back on every station and
know how
it feels
to be wanted.

When it rains

2008-04-28T22:00:00.000-07:00

When it rains like this, I look harder at the light.
I open my eyes wide and know for certain
that things are alive.

Can you smell it -
The smell of every color arriving?
I remember you telling me

If you hadn’t known any better, you would
have thought I belonged there,
mixed in with the wet leaves.

When it rains like this, I want to taste
Everything. And my lips are red from
The sweetness of it all, because it takes more
Than the tongue to taste. It takes
Every part of the body.

I Hate Asking for Help and Approval

2008-04-28T00:38:00.001-07:00

I do not believe myself. But I will call to you as I hang
on the gray wire line, suspended somewhere
between the old oak cabin and your gimcrack house.

I will wrap my fingers around your metal voice, an electric
pulse blinking strange and bright above the dusty
slices of trees and the bowing curve of the hillside.

Beneath my dangling feet is the hollow lake – in it
the silent, flat liquid of sweat, heat, and piss. I can see
the thousand faded hairs of past campers
knotted into a thin floating net,
turning silver with every toll of five-o-clock thunder.

Is it hateful, my asking?

If I slide down, the wire will cut through my palm, and
my fingers will burn, fray, and bleed.
But I am too weak to climb the long way up

The water’s thin oil film shimmers with the wings of insects.
It is a window for the forgotten things
settled deep beneath. I do not want to break it

Though I cannot stay as I am.

For Now

2008-04-27T23:42:00.000-07:00

Your eyes are part window, part air, part light
So blue, that I know what they will
Look like when you’re old.
I saw them in flashes, cuts, close
And tight shots. Each time they came
To me, I felt as if I were
breathing in smoke.
Now I’m starting to feel dizzy
After the long hard blue of last year.
You’d think I act strangely, with
My foot flat on the door. But it is only
For a while that I keep myself in
Like this. Soon I will leave
Without the memory of you.

Restlessness, Transience

2008-04-26T08:11:00.000-07:00

The letter you sent me has been read and translated.
It was delivered by four grey geese, it was tied in purple ribbon.
When it fell into my hands it was spotted with mist and flimsy
From last night’s rain. Your seal was cracked, the black of dirt
And dust, a thin line collected between two circle halves.

I am sending a respose to inform you and the other people with
You that your men have refused to restore my walls and rebuild
My foundation. It was found that the city has a long history
Of rebellion and sedition, that powerful kings ruling
Over all the land – the taxes and tributes were paid directly
To them. But what do you fear? We are not those kings.
We are weak. We are small.

By now you must know that we survive for a different purpose.
I no longer rule. I have been searching in the archives and graves
For notions. I found out the truth about downfall:
Not one man’s kingdom escapes.

You must know that we are tired of your men’s presence.
You must know that we are tired of this restless turning over.
We are no longer worth the occupation. We have nothing left to
Offer, not even the fulfillment of revenge.

You will leave, you will allow me to understand satisfaction.
When you see that I am too crumbled, all your men will flee,
Past the broken gate, leaving millions of worm-trails in the sand.
These marks will remain for the night, and in the morning,
I will hear the plain wind. When no trace of your time remains

Here, I will be left alone to build.

Fear

2008-04-20T21:33:00.001-07:00

I had a dream about you last night
We were kissing and you smelled like smoke
We were in a greenhouse and we were sweating
Like the plants were sweating and I kept
On thinking, I need to go soon.
I leaned back and put all my weight
On my right hand at the edge of a glass table
But I lost my grip and in one slip
felt my palm split open.

You’re bleeding, you said
I know, I said
What happened
Nothing, I have to go.

I’m going to have a lot of things
Someday, you said
Things aren’t so important, I said.
Fuck that, they are.

In my dream
I remembered that it was only a
dream and I could do whatever the
hell I wanted so I left
I went outside and found myself
Walking on wet grass.
Then I saw the woman with no eyes
and long hair, the woman
Who killed me seven times
in the past thirteen years
And I had to run and keep on running
And I thought at least it was
Better than being in the greenhouse
Where you were too busy
With all the sharp plants to ever notice
that I fear so many things.

Dream Writing.3

2008-04-18T12:49:00.001-07:00

Kevin Spacey is Gay

It is a well-known fact that I love Kevin Spacey. He is one of those men who looks so creepy, that he circles around and becomes unbelievably attractive and…HOT. Imagine my dismay when I went to ShoWest over Spring Break, and found out he was rumored to be gay – and this was right before I saw him with one arm around Kate Bosworth…and the other around Jim Sturgess. Anyways, on March 31st, I started off writing a fiction piece late at night, woke up and found something else. I forgot about it and found it in one of my folders so here goes:

The world has disintegrated into millions of pieces of colorful glass, flying in slow motion, 3D dolby digital style towards my face. Little boxes taunt me just out of my line of peripheral vision and my mother calls me and tells me to the read the bible and not to forget to pray. But I don’t pray. Because tonight I found out that Kevin Spacey is gay. I mean. I guess it mkes sense, he does kind o f exude that bald-sih head-ish, creepy inense I-raped-your-children-in-the-face stare with an I’m goin g to rip out your stomache guts with my fingers each made out of one hundred ton pure bicep, what e’s no gay that doesnn’t make sense. But he does doth at kind of funny walk and he no wait, was holding on to kate Bosworth on the stage and luahging. Wha the t heck? That odesn’t make sense. Okay, I cant do this anymore with me pulling a small caravan of connected barrels except pigger and each box was carrying something. I have a spiral ring of colofl gemstones. Grea. I see a small fly or hornet no

Now I’m on the football field and something has definitely just fallen fron
Now a hal-f-

“you know, carrie ann, I bled my way out of thin situation.life was handed from you to me, notth e other way other

ohfuckdavid mamet . does not want your pity. David Mamet, Helen Hunt, Ang Lee and Robert Redford smiled from five screens around the room. I hated how my eyes flew to the screen and ignored the miniature realities on the stage far far far ahead of me. \

My head hurts a lot from all of this nonsense. I don’t think I can or really want to deal with it. Who made celebrities celebrities anyways? Did someone just bop them on the head and decide because this person is kind of good or kind of not so good in Brendan fraser’s tyle and then they would get al the power and prestige?
This odnesn’t make sne and I don’t make sense andymore eiter. I’m just a poor girl why don’t you just show me how to do it nad be done with it afterward?
Oh mu goddd it was a tradea guy from nestle chocolate is now I was worried about what they would al all sat well I punched you in the face but

I don’t know if I even like American 3 d films.

Courtesy Notice

2008-04-17T08:28:00.000-07:00

Today falls on 21 years
of myself
and I've just received notice
on a bubble gum wrapper:
you are now too old to be
Silly, Puerile
Wide-eyed and
Whimsical.

I read and nod wisely-
knowing full well I'll listen,
like I've always listened
like I've always roistered
around the carousel
run into skyscrapers and
always always always
acted my age.

2008-04-16T07:20:00.000-07:00

Here's what I've weaned from the previous post, the dream.2 (don't you love that word - weaned?)

BMrs. Ramberry of the Ramberrys
From North Dakota will scream
For an epidural and
Nurse Figazzato (who will
Die two days later from the heat)
Will shake his head and say
Too late, too late. I hate being
A man nurse.

Ten hours later, they will miss
The opportunity for a clean cut
Because my tiny little fist
Will want to taste the air
Though my feet remain twisting
in murk and darkness.

I will think to myself - It is nice,
this a warm place. But
Nonsense.
There is something else out there.

Then, Mrs. Ramberry’s vaginaskin
Will tear open with each
Of my wrigglings, like a shirt
ripping at the sleaveseam as
the flesh of a giant plum
bursts through - thin, purple, wet.

But as for me, I will only hear
The whoosh of suction and passing.
I will open my mouth
At the writhing world

And come out laughing
And clean.

Dream Writing.2

2008-04-15T21:30:00.001-07:00

Wrote this one last night - began as a poem/short piece about someone giving birth - inspired by a conversation I had with a friend about women not wanting to have children b/c of the pain involved. Well, it turned into this:

Mrs. Ramberry of the Ramberrys
Of North Dakota will scream

For an epidural and
Nurse Figazzato (who will

Die two days later from the heat)
Will shake his head and say

Too late, too late. I hate being
A man nurse.

Ten hours later, the doctor
Will stroll in and miss the

Opportunity for a clean cut
Because my tiny little fist

Will want to taste the air and
Know if leaving one murky
Why am I talking about one tree hill
The laugh a lot I wonder if wht she wass aing had anything todo swith goingot the lb.

I see you now okay now I know I’m not obsessed but kind owho is shwe taking abot hare we just a bunch of lclufth less. I there’s a bright red viper bug on these htnings will surely get I n the way of sushi by the public. It was cll. Tah they were stfffffffffffffffffffffff

Warm place for
Will be worthwhile.

Mrs. Ramberry’s vaginaskin
Will tear open, with each wriggling

like a shirt ripped at the sleaveseam
or the flesh of a plum bursting through

thin, purple

And even after the eleven stitches
Things down there will never

Be quite the same.

Sometimes

I was praying yesterday morning and I thought really hard give it to me give it to me don’t you love me don’t you love me but then I heard and then I thought well would be a bad influence abut is this something that’s speechless then or when guns come in his a different truth awell you know my mother you nw my other and I’ll never forgt arwreallly like how did I end up swith it yu’ere gonwell think aobut ik,,,,,,,

God's Journal Entry #26: My Return Policy

2008-04-14T13:31:00.000-07:00

Today I was the God of
Arnold, Sweinstein and Finkleton.
They asked me for better names
And I told them I was sorry
For giving them lame parents,
But once a name is named
Then there’s no name-backs -

Well what happens if I have a receipt?
Asked Finkleton.
Who do you think I am?
I roared and smote him with
Lightening.
Arnold and Sweinstein kept
Their mouths shut for the
Rest of the day.

Blessings, blessings,
Blessings, I told them.

Jazz

2008-04-14T12:46:00.001-07:00

You are called fiction.
Fiction. Noun. Story
Bullshit crap boohooey
banana oil
Whopper smoke.
Jazz.

You are the bum-bum notes,
syncopation
Ba-burn-burn-burn-burn
Jazz jazz burn,
jazz as in swing beat

jazz as in move me, blue me
pick-up, pick me up, pick me
up now
Chromaticized split
Realized wit
Hold my hand and
Recapitulate it

Lines

2008-04-13T10:36:00.001-07:00

Off the route 22 highway, behind the veiled power plant construction that won out fifty nine picketers in a two day stretch, the green and brown mosaic of trees and homes are cemented together by the streets of Allentown. I’ve heard somewhere that Pennsylvania has the second worst public roads. Naturally, the question follows – who comes first?

We always want to know who comes first, who comes last. Then those who fall somewhere in between- well, they fall and that’s that. But the problem with in-betweeners is that I am one of them. And I have always lived with the belief that behind me, there’s just one other person – someone who can’t help but walk slower than the rest of us because she only has one leg.

I might as well switch places with her, take behind me that long stretch of nothing. She would be so much more grateful than I to feel the breath of someone else on her back instead of the broad broad wind.

2008-04-10T23:57:00.001-07:00

I hate all the girls who love their “y”
Names like Tony and Johnny and Marky
And Joey…alright, well maybe not Marky
But Tony is really terrible. People pretend

Names are important and when they come
Up with their Rackstraw Robbins, they’re
so proud of themselves. So they
immediately come up with a
counterpart – something original
like Sally or Samantha.

The Bible is full of wonderful names
Like Habbakuk, Absalom, and Obediah -
Polysyllabic and foreign – but not
Intentionally foreign because Jesus
Came before all of us…right?

What happens if Jesus came tomorrow
And then we were on the other side
Of the testament line. I hate how now
I have to think of a really cool
Hipster way of introducing Jesus
because everyone’s thought
Of Jesus the motorcyclist or Jesus
The surfer or rock me sexy Jesus
With the hot swimmer bod. Hamlet 2
Sucks. Never watch it.

Why do I suck for talking about Jesus?

So I won’t talk about Jesus. I’ll talk about
Not Jesus. Like Swiss Miss. Swiss Miss
Is delicious because of its name.
Miss Swiss of Swissafornia who swissed
Her Miss and got a you know what
In the deal. And she didn’t know what to
Name it and neither did he so
They did the best thing any couple could
Do for mistakenly bringing another human
Being into the world of Woody Allen –
They saved her the anxiety
Of identity.
They left her nameless.

Gone Baby Gone

2008-04-05T00:50:00.000-07:00

It left me long ago after
My skin fell off like citrus peels.
It dusted off the flesh juice
And took my hands explaining
just in case I meet
someone.

It went to Angune, Alaska,
using all my welfare checks
and brought in a truck from
Juneau to chase down the grizzly bears

It smoked with fishermen,
laughing hard, trading hats
until one by
One they fell asleep
Dreaming in dollar pop vodka,
Basketball, and fish scales.

It remembered melted things
our booby traps and color wars
Hating the cello, loving ballet
And having to give up both.

It tasted the cold blue babble
Of The Secret Garden and
longed for dark-haired firebrands
who could write well and sing
well and look well and hold well
- it was so in love.

I waited for it to return
To me, I waited for nine long
years. The only thing I have
Is a postcard with it smiling,
My hands giving two thumbs up

Do Questions Come in Pairs?

2008-04-04T06:30:00.001-07:00

Are you here? Do you wear hats?
Should I check the box? Are you crying?
How loudly do you laugh? Do you have a beard?
What color is water, exactly? Will it rain tomorrow?
What did you get me? Who’s to say I won’t?
How is it like in Coffman Cove, Alaska? Do you know Leanna?
Am I Joey? Why can’t I sing?

Will I remember? Did I sigh?
Can you see it? Can I have some?
Are you here? Did you forget?
Who wants to quit? Why are you sleeping?
Are the presents grinning? Will you take it as a zero?
How do you feel about lox? Do you yawn at the opera?
Can I please have it now? Am I missing something?
Will you give it to me? Why not?

Knowing

2008-04-03T21:12:00.000-07:00

I hate the feeling
of knowing more than Mister.
Mr. Missed her Miss.
This knowing that I
know more
is like knowing that
when it rains
outside, the ground
gets wet
although I will always
hope that in the distance
a canopy stretches over
her feet catching
all the blue babble
Just like she says.

Correct a Misunderstanding

2008-04-02T06:41:00.000-07:00

I can hear them
Pick pick crinckle pick crinckle pick pick
I grab my floor lamp and pluck them from
the shadows, from the shifting,
plastic bags and I see the dips,
the sharp angles
of little jutting bones pressing out
all over their bodies.
They've come here from the
cold-worn outside and no one else
wants their pee-soaked feet.
So I give them little shoes
Four little shoes to wear
Little shoes made of aluminum
Aluminum and tea bag strings

And so they scatter
Running click click click
For mouse city
The five of them
whispering to eachother
The girl is not so bad after all
The girl is not so bad.

Dream Writing.1

2008-04-01T19:42:00.000-07:00

So sometimes I type in my sleep. Let me clarify - sometimes I type in my sleep. I'm typing on my laptop and my mind goes into stage 1 or 2 of sleep but my fingers keep typing and I end up typing up my dreams.

Here's what I wrote yesterday:

If I were you, I’d leave
Shouting
Stop consuming me
But you stay and for staying
I must stay and also say
I love you
Bird
I’m talking to a bird.
I’m talking to a bird
I’m talking to a bird
I’m…crazy

La da deed a dad a da
La da deed a dad a dad a
Dadadadadada
Dadadeedadeeda…dad?
Dad,
How did you wander this way
Weren’t you supposed to be in Canada
Or did mom send you this way
I won’t forgive her for not telling me
Now I’ve got jelly on my face
And no time to wash it off
Before you leave you leaving
Too

There’s no real point to this song
About a bird and my dad

About a bird and my dad
Your words, I forget them
The determined value
The sum and final debt
What does this mean
This “weighing thoughtfully”
Weight, measure, dwell
In
Selah selah selah
Selah
Selah selah selah

To hang
Weigh
Determin value
Measured
In our mourning selah
Weighed balances found wanting
Measure carefully the meaning
“weight thoughtfully”

I won’t sing of promises
That I will break
Because this sinner
Will forget and take
In my thoughts I will
Murder the happiness
Of others and string
from door
To door to door
And call it relationship
Loving in transience
Networking
Handshakes
Smiles
Business cards
No

I get it
Its okay
Pop pop pop
Ha ha ha ha
Fine fine fine fine
CHRIST
Ma ma ma
Ra ra ra riiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeee
Woo woo wooooo
Sh sh shhhhhh

You ask too much of me
I can’t go on I can’t go on
He’s beautiful and he tells me
Save yourself save yourself
I’m fine I’m fine I’m fine

I only fall in love
With fictional people
Who have locket hearts
And tragic flaws
You have shaken me and torn me open.

A Very Important Question

2008-03-30T20:32:00.000-07:00

Outside it’s black
And I’m holding onto Ezara
For dear dear life
And I can feel myself pressing
her sideways - Why?
Because I can’t walk straight.

She tells me it’s so fucking
Cold and I say I think we’re
Gonna die and she says why
Would you say that
Now we probably will.

And we do. We fall into
The bonfire knees first
Arms locked
Because someone thinks its
Funny to grab a branch and
Slap our legs and that
Buckle Snap Whomp
Is so fast that
Our palms stay flat, right
By our sides and we
Fall heavy, her face still bitter,
My mouth still open
From complaining
About the shit on the
Bottom of my sneakers.

Why is it like this anyway
Surprise surprise
I don’t feel like burning.
So I stand up and tell
Ezara, get up, fast,
I hate the heat, hurry up
We have things to do
But she’s
Busy stroking the flames
With her finger tips –
And the funny thing is
Nothing burns.

She looks at me when
I mention air and asks
Why?
I look at her and answer
Why?
But whatever she hears
Reaches out and gently
Pulls her ear down to the
Melting floor.

We'll see how long...

2008-03-30T20:30:00.000-07:00

I suck at commitment. So we'll see how long this thing lasts - but someone told me very recently that I should blog my writings and I thought - why not, it'll be a way to push me to write new material. So here goes....