Red Couch
We sat on his red couch.
I agreed to the session because, well, I had no other plans
for the ‘day after you find out your husband’s been cheating on you for 3 years’.
Mr. Fell, the counselor, informed me that I’d been an “enabler”
“Take the rope off your waist, Scarlet. Let him climb back up himself” he said. And I agreed because it felt right, as agreeing often does.
And then we sat there. And little ice cubes stacked themselves between us, and the sun made its decent below the distant pines, and I said “nothankyou” to tea but I wanted to say, “fuck you” to Dan. I wanted to highlight, edit, delete myself out of this scene and fast forward to happy lawns and white fences and hammocks with strong arms around me that I could trust.
Can’t this be a dress rehearsal? On second thought, I think Ill play the little girl who doesn't grow up. The one who eats men like Pez and drives fast, always. The one whose eyes speak lifetimes but only give so much. Because I wont really go there. I wont really get in all the way but ill float beautifully on the surface like oil and ill shimmer so bright you wont ask me to go any deeper.
I know girls like this, and I hear the breeze in their voices. Lately mine has felt like burnt popcorn kernels, the ones left behind and just burn, don't pop. I feel stuck to my own pan and I don't want to scrape myself off. A part of me thinks, just throw it in the trash. It’s not worth salvaging, and then I remember I’m 4 signs in Scorpio, I feel emotions in one speed: tidal wave against small fishing village. And I need to breathe. It takes 12 deep breaths to reprogram your energy field they say. Well, 12 deep breaths takes me about 10 minutes and ill be damned if life hasn't changed at least a smidge in that fraction of time. So time is the common denominator? And still simultaneously doesn't exactly exist along with the rest of this reality?
I digress, I always do. Or is it more diverge? Because one thought cascades into a thousand others and I just sniff my way through, whichever has the most interesting fragrance finds my undivided attention, moment to moment.
We’re just human. I know this. And I don't blame him for the women, I blame him for the betrayal of not giving me an honest choice along the way. And still, I cant say what I would have done, because it never was so.
So all there is this. This red couch, this man who I used to build my life around, Mr. Fell and the striations of everything I thought I wanted that overlay the caves of everything I have yet to uncover.
Is there ever anything but this? All the things we “know” stitched into the fabric of the unknown. We’re equipped with a needle and left to unstitch ourselves from this fabric that is also ourselves. We’re set up to fail, balance, fail and balance again. And somehow through this become the string and the canvas, become the needlepoint itself.
I agreed to the session because, well, I had no other plans
for the ‘day after you find out your husband’s been cheating on you for 3 years’.
Mr. Fell, the counselor, informed me that I’d been an “enabler”
“Take the rope off your waist, Scarlet. Let him climb back up himself” he said. And I agreed because it felt right, as agreeing often does.
And then we sat there. And little ice cubes stacked themselves between us, and the sun made its decent below the distant pines, and I said “nothankyou” to tea but I wanted to say, “fuck you” to Dan. I wanted to highlight, edit, delete myself out of this scene and fast forward to happy lawns and white fences and hammocks with strong arms around me that I could trust.
Can’t this be a dress rehearsal? On second thought, I think Ill play the little girl who doesn't grow up. The one who eats men like Pez and drives fast, always. The one whose eyes speak lifetimes but only give so much. Because I wont really go there. I wont really get in all the way but ill float beautifully on the surface like oil and ill shimmer so bright you wont ask me to go any deeper.
I know girls like this, and I hear the breeze in their voices. Lately mine has felt like burnt popcorn kernels, the ones left behind and just burn, don't pop. I feel stuck to my own pan and I don't want to scrape myself off. A part of me thinks, just throw it in the trash. It’s not worth salvaging, and then I remember I’m 4 signs in Scorpio, I feel emotions in one speed: tidal wave against small fishing village. And I need to breathe. It takes 12 deep breaths to reprogram your energy field they say. Well, 12 deep breaths takes me about 10 minutes and ill be damned if life hasn't changed at least a smidge in that fraction of time. So time is the common denominator? And still simultaneously doesn't exactly exist along with the rest of this reality?
I digress, I always do. Or is it more diverge? Because one thought cascades into a thousand others and I just sniff my way through, whichever has the most interesting fragrance finds my undivided attention, moment to moment.
We’re just human. I know this. And I don't blame him for the women, I blame him for the betrayal of not giving me an honest choice along the way. And still, I cant say what I would have done, because it never was so.
So all there is this. This red couch, this man who I used to build my life around, Mr. Fell and the striations of everything I thought I wanted that overlay the caves of everything I have yet to uncover.
Is there ever anything but this? All the things we “know” stitched into the fabric of the unknown. We’re equipped with a needle and left to unstitch ourselves from this fabric that is also ourselves. We’re set up to fail, balance, fail and balance again. And somehow through this become the string and the canvas, become the needlepoint itself.
Wake me up Electric
I need a bigger house, big enough for me to get lost in some corner next to some window overlooking a rain-soaked garden or maybe it’s just trees that are just beginning to turn brown and gold and I can press my cheek against the cold glass and see the rain fall from the corner of my eye and just hold on there. Hold on right there because…
I think I just realized earlier that I’ve been living my life through the lens of another’s camera and trying to read between my own lines. But there’s some disconnect and even that word, “disconnect” feels all too clinical for this realization. It’s more like earthquakes and grandmother’s china, its more like my favorite wind-up teddy bear lost somewhere between Alabama and Georgia at some McDonalds off some highway exit. These are just what come to mind. And it’s probably much more than this. It’s probably everything I’ve ever known I “know”.
Still I don't want to wake up in this distant desert. The sun is reflecting off a million pieces of dust rising in the wind. But somehow its starting to burn more to keep my eyes closed.
There was a moment earlier when Kaleo was Skyping with Dan and then he was crying and then I saw a tear roll down Dan’s cheek and then felt my own and tasted it, and then there we were. Just. Right. There. You could make a whole new language from that one moment.
And Kaleo wants me to move back in with Dan and Dan wants to be out of debt and I think I want a new man, or more time, or a better body, or…I’m starting to question all of this. All of this I think I want, all of these “truths” I think I know. Because lately ive been cleaning up a lot of my own messes, and retrospect seems more microscopic than 20/20.
What do I do with this? Just let it steep? After too long the tea becomes sour and im not sure I won’t get too distracted for this not to happen. I fear ill be drinking sour tea the rest of my life and that my mouth might go numb before I taste something that wakes me up electric. I know all too well what happens when we rush it, Ive burned my own tongue and broken enough glasses to know sometimes, most the time I need to slow down.
Maybe that’s that lens Im living through, the kind with the shutter speed that somehow guesses the object’s next move. Maybe just go back to Polaroid. It takes time for moments to settle into us and even longer for memories to slough off. And those scabs serve a purpose. They aren’t just a layer between new and old. They are the old becoming new, the new becoming old. And really can we ever be anything else?
I think I just realized earlier that I’ve been living my life through the lens of another’s camera and trying to read between my own lines. But there’s some disconnect and even that word, “disconnect” feels all too clinical for this realization. It’s more like earthquakes and grandmother’s china, its more like my favorite wind-up teddy bear lost somewhere between Alabama and Georgia at some McDonalds off some highway exit. These are just what come to mind. And it’s probably much more than this. It’s probably everything I’ve ever known I “know”.
Still I don't want to wake up in this distant desert. The sun is reflecting off a million pieces of dust rising in the wind. But somehow its starting to burn more to keep my eyes closed.
There was a moment earlier when Kaleo was Skyping with Dan and then he was crying and then I saw a tear roll down Dan’s cheek and then felt my own and tasted it, and then there we were. Just. Right. There. You could make a whole new language from that one moment.
And Kaleo wants me to move back in with Dan and Dan wants to be out of debt and I think I want a new man, or more time, or a better body, or…I’m starting to question all of this. All of this I think I want, all of these “truths” I think I know. Because lately ive been cleaning up a lot of my own messes, and retrospect seems more microscopic than 20/20.
What do I do with this? Just let it steep? After too long the tea becomes sour and im not sure I won’t get too distracted for this not to happen. I fear ill be drinking sour tea the rest of my life and that my mouth might go numb before I taste something that wakes me up electric. I know all too well what happens when we rush it, Ive burned my own tongue and broken enough glasses to know sometimes, most the time I need to slow down.
Maybe that’s that lens Im living through, the kind with the shutter speed that somehow guesses the object’s next move. Maybe just go back to Polaroid. It takes time for moments to settle into us and even longer for memories to slough off. And those scabs serve a purpose. They aren’t just a layer between new and old. They are the old becoming new, the new becoming old. And really can we ever be anything else?
Bubbles
Tell me something new. Because I’m starting to think this is just the same song on a different scale. Maybe we need new instruments for this, something more personal. Can we use our own breath against the smoothness of our own bones? Or maybe we’ll find that primordial key in the space between our eyes when we lay perfectly still and naked next to one another.
The first function of mythology is a reconciliation of consciousness to the preconditions of its own existence. And then again like carbonation, we are the bubbles that come from beyond all categories and go beyond all categories but in the meantime they’re on their way up, or at least that's how they look.
I was saying to Bobby last night, its all grey. We’re just somewhere on the spectrum. Choices we make, and how close they feel to us when we make them. That’s how I know the next step is going to beautiful. I can feel these choices like cellophane against my soul sometimes and other’s, they feel more across the river. I think this has to be my evolution though. Because I’m sure there was a point when I was younger and my choices could be felt like the space between my skin and a distant star. So maybe that’s life: The expanse between us and our choices, or in other words, our external creations that beget each following internal choice. They are the seed to life. And we are the farmer. Maybe our own inner evolution is the condensing of distance between those parts of ourselves, I see this like the charge between atoms and maybe this whole time/space creation is what we’ve done in order to quantify to our souls how much space exists at any moment between the aspects of our individual beings.
It helps to arrange these thoughts outside of myself. I just wish sometimes they were chunkier, easier to differentiate the corners of. I could put them in my mouth, one at a time and feel them with my teeth and tongue like tribal people did when discovering something new, like children still do.
It would also be helpful if we had a kind of pyramid with predictable shadows and we could arrange ourselves on the steps, and take out these little symbols from the web of our mind and stack them into the contrast of sunlight.
We’ve just become too dependent on words that emerge. We have come to just trust that lying on our back the tide will move us eventually back to shore. And it will. Eventually. Its just that we can never be sure which shore we’ll end up on and we’ll miss the entire journey along the way if our eyes are closed to the sun and our back is against the water. We’ll just lazy ourselves to be this one shape from beginning to end and if that was the point then why did we come here with the ability of being so flexible?
We must move. Our tongues, our hips, our eyes, and trust and urge the words to tumble from our open mouths and onto the steps of our own pyramid. We must be barefoot. We must urge the light from the sky until we can just trust it will always come. And we must keep shortening the distance of creation. And it is the contraction of time and space and thus creation that will build this trust and it is the trust that will ignite the momentum, and this is life.
The first function of mythology is a reconciliation of consciousness to the preconditions of its own existence. And then again like carbonation, we are the bubbles that come from beyond all categories and go beyond all categories but in the meantime they’re on their way up, or at least that's how they look.
I was saying to Bobby last night, its all grey. We’re just somewhere on the spectrum. Choices we make, and how close they feel to us when we make them. That’s how I know the next step is going to beautiful. I can feel these choices like cellophane against my soul sometimes and other’s, they feel more across the river. I think this has to be my evolution though. Because I’m sure there was a point when I was younger and my choices could be felt like the space between my skin and a distant star. So maybe that’s life: The expanse between us and our choices, or in other words, our external creations that beget each following internal choice. They are the seed to life. And we are the farmer. Maybe our own inner evolution is the condensing of distance between those parts of ourselves, I see this like the charge between atoms and maybe this whole time/space creation is what we’ve done in order to quantify to our souls how much space exists at any moment between the aspects of our individual beings.
It helps to arrange these thoughts outside of myself. I just wish sometimes they were chunkier, easier to differentiate the corners of. I could put them in my mouth, one at a time and feel them with my teeth and tongue like tribal people did when discovering something new, like children still do.
It would also be helpful if we had a kind of pyramid with predictable shadows and we could arrange ourselves on the steps, and take out these little symbols from the web of our mind and stack them into the contrast of sunlight.
We’ve just become too dependent on words that emerge. We have come to just trust that lying on our back the tide will move us eventually back to shore. And it will. Eventually. Its just that we can never be sure which shore we’ll end up on and we’ll miss the entire journey along the way if our eyes are closed to the sun and our back is against the water. We’ll just lazy ourselves to be this one shape from beginning to end and if that was the point then why did we come here with the ability of being so flexible?
We must move. Our tongues, our hips, our eyes, and trust and urge the words to tumble from our open mouths and onto the steps of our own pyramid. We must be barefoot. We must urge the light from the sky until we can just trust it will always come. And we must keep shortening the distance of creation. And it is the contraction of time and space and thus creation that will build this trust and it is the trust that will ignite the momentum, and this is life.
Rotten Mango
I feel the wind through the window and cannot help but feel on one hand how it softly embraces my neck and arms and on the other how it feels just a little too cold, too jarring, too much.
I want to break something. No, I want to shatter something. Something fragile.
I’ve been comparing myself again, to people I don't really know, to people that seem to be doing things better than myself and I’m evaluating what I really have to offer. I’m still waiting for his call. I’m still waiting to know I’m wanted. I’m still building these sand castle dreams around the next step. And the point is, I’m exactly where I am. There is no next step. There is no tomorrow. There is just here and this wind that can either be soft or harsh and its how I’m feeling that makes it so.
Its just that how I feel is like one of those simulated cyclones in the glass tube and I’m colored all sorts of electric blue and yellows depending on the angle. But the point is, I’m just stuck in there and swirling and at any moment I find myself on the periphery, back against my own glass, watching the predictably unpredictable swirl, I can be sucked right back in. In an instant. And then not even realize it until I’m upside down pawing for the glass again.
Can’t I just throw my head against the table and watch the army emerge from the crack? Can’t I just let it all down. These clothes, this hair, and just stand naked in front of myself and only love what I see. Until then, how will I ever truly love anyone else? How will I ever be fully fulfilled by anything I do?
I’m at this all too familiar place again where I’m in my old clothes and I feel comfortable but at the same time I’m in another strange desert and there is this hunger I cant describe and I have to figure out what I can eat. And once I do, the sand turns to green and fruit falls from the sky only to turn back to desert once again with the first rotten mango.
I want to break something. No, I want to shatter something. Something fragile.
I’ve been comparing myself again, to people I don't really know, to people that seem to be doing things better than myself and I’m evaluating what I really have to offer. I’m still waiting for his call. I’m still waiting to know I’m wanted. I’m still building these sand castle dreams around the next step. And the point is, I’m exactly where I am. There is no next step. There is no tomorrow. There is just here and this wind that can either be soft or harsh and its how I’m feeling that makes it so.
Its just that how I feel is like one of those simulated cyclones in the glass tube and I’m colored all sorts of electric blue and yellows depending on the angle. But the point is, I’m just stuck in there and swirling and at any moment I find myself on the periphery, back against my own glass, watching the predictably unpredictable swirl, I can be sucked right back in. In an instant. And then not even realize it until I’m upside down pawing for the glass again.
Can’t I just throw my head against the table and watch the army emerge from the crack? Can’t I just let it all down. These clothes, this hair, and just stand naked in front of myself and only love what I see. Until then, how will I ever truly love anyone else? How will I ever be fully fulfilled by anything I do?
I’m at this all too familiar place again where I’m in my old clothes and I feel comfortable but at the same time I’m in another strange desert and there is this hunger I cant describe and I have to figure out what I can eat. And once I do, the sand turns to green and fruit falls from the sky only to turn back to desert once again with the first rotten mango.
Deja Vu
I see these faces around me that look like the smell of dry-cleaned suits, berber carpet and fluorescent lighting. Their pores like gaping mouths frozen into submission or apathy, or maybe there is no difference.
I see these faces that have had “life” slapped across them so many times they no longer feel anything unless it is shoved into their mouths and they don't even know how to pull their lips tight enough to not let it all in.
These are the grey-skinned 50 year olds asking how to introduce more vegetables into their diet. But that's not what they really want. These are the mouths that are so hungry for home they will feed it anything to not have to turn their teeth around and taste themselves.
So more protein, fewer carbs, balance fats and then why did YOU come here and what are YOU doing? And maybe you don't even ask yourself this in the quiet of your own bathroom in the stillness of bath water and the simplicity of gravity moving beads of water down bent knees.
But maybe there is a small and delicate part of you that must ask this to take each subsequent breath because if not, then why?
What good are a billion people on soil and rocks walking, doing, more, more, more?
It’s all the same in the end right? A eulogy an epitaph a mark on the earth--“this is where I was.”
I don't know the truth but I do know I can’t waste more than several breaths without trying to find it again and again. It’s those empty conversations, the “How are you doings?” the spreadsheets lining out all the next steps or the emails with more questions to answer--that leave me like a vacuum, internally. Pulsing slowly until I can come up for air again within my own skin.
I notice this about myself, that often I will stop just short of everything and turn back around.
It’s like ill drive cross country from one shore to the next and just before hitting the last state line, ill veer off the exit ramp and end up in some podunk bar ordering shitty beer. Then ill wake up the next day with a hangover and forget it all happened until once again I’m there, next to wall hangings of old 70’s actors and the sound of Shania Twain and it’ll be like oh yea “hasn't this happened before?”-- deja vu.
I see these faces that have had “life” slapped across them so many times they no longer feel anything unless it is shoved into their mouths and they don't even know how to pull their lips tight enough to not let it all in.
These are the grey-skinned 50 year olds asking how to introduce more vegetables into their diet. But that's not what they really want. These are the mouths that are so hungry for home they will feed it anything to not have to turn their teeth around and taste themselves.
So more protein, fewer carbs, balance fats and then why did YOU come here and what are YOU doing? And maybe you don't even ask yourself this in the quiet of your own bathroom in the stillness of bath water and the simplicity of gravity moving beads of water down bent knees.
But maybe there is a small and delicate part of you that must ask this to take each subsequent breath because if not, then why?
What good are a billion people on soil and rocks walking, doing, more, more, more?
It’s all the same in the end right? A eulogy an epitaph a mark on the earth--“this is where I was.”
I don't know the truth but I do know I can’t waste more than several breaths without trying to find it again and again. It’s those empty conversations, the “How are you doings?” the spreadsheets lining out all the next steps or the emails with more questions to answer--that leave me like a vacuum, internally. Pulsing slowly until I can come up for air again within my own skin.
I notice this about myself, that often I will stop just short of everything and turn back around.
It’s like ill drive cross country from one shore to the next and just before hitting the last state line, ill veer off the exit ramp and end up in some podunk bar ordering shitty beer. Then ill wake up the next day with a hangover and forget it all happened until once again I’m there, next to wall hangings of old 70’s actors and the sound of Shania Twain and it’ll be like oh yea “hasn't this happened before?”-- deja vu.
Now Autumn
Marked by the slow to warm mornings
and bite to the evening air.
My love, we appear to be seasonal.
Perhaps we were best at spring,
but when isn’t that the easy season? –most awaited melting, springing forth life. Now autumn, I know you in a whole new light.
The leaves changing from their predictable green
To a myriad of golds and tie-dyed rusts.
In summer, I never saw this coming. Perhaps naïve to be so caught up in the heat
of it all. Perhaps necessary to feel
so alive--if only for a brief eclipsed season of time.
and bite to the evening air.
My love, we appear to be seasonal.
Perhaps we were best at spring,
but when isn’t that the easy season? –most awaited melting, springing forth life. Now autumn, I know you in a whole new light.
The leaves changing from their predictable green
To a myriad of golds and tie-dyed rusts.
In summer, I never saw this coming. Perhaps naïve to be so caught up in the heat
of it all. Perhaps necessary to feel
so alive--if only for a brief eclipsed season of time.
Hum
She stood in the low tide--
Sun licked and salt kissed
Legs exquisite like a heron’s. She hummed
to herself—and became electric.
Her;
The way a sad song
Played beautifully can bring joy.
The way the last rays of evening light
Acquiesce to the dark of night.
Me;
At best a semicolon--
A momentary pause. At any instant,
Rendered mute by beauty.
Beyond the branch where I sat
there was nothing. Beyond her
green eyes reflecting the shiny sinews
of sardines-the fear of my breath
abstracting the perfection.
Sun licked and salt kissed
Legs exquisite like a heron’s. She hummed
to herself—and became electric.
Her;
The way a sad song
Played beautifully can bring joy.
The way the last rays of evening light
Acquiesce to the dark of night.
Me;
At best a semicolon--
A momentary pause. At any instant,
Rendered mute by beauty.
Beyond the branch where I sat
there was nothing. Beyond her
green eyes reflecting the shiny sinews
of sardines-the fear of my breath
abstracting the perfection.
Precious Drops
I write because to me, truth is the most beautiful thing.
I write because I need to. Words flurry like a winter storm
almost grounded. I struggle with this:
to take a pen and make these shapes
that somehow soothe my soul,
speak my meaning--are my essence.
I write for the joy, but mostly for the sweet momentary cure
of this ache that’s unceasing--
the size of a small fiery kernel
located somewhere
near the base of my spine, close to my uterus--
the birth
of something born while still being formed:
Little drops. Little pearly precious drops.
I write because I need to. Words flurry like a winter storm
almost grounded. I struggle with this:
to take a pen and make these shapes
that somehow soothe my soul,
speak my meaning--are my essence.
I write for the joy, but mostly for the sweet momentary cure
of this ache that’s unceasing--
the size of a small fiery kernel
located somewhere
near the base of my spine, close to my uterus--
the birth
of something born while still being formed:
Little drops. Little pearly precious drops.
kaleo
Feeling love
in the deepest sense-
how can I write this?
At the ordinate of belief and reason
there exists a single space
of infinite depth. Where sense no longer is made sense of
Where beauty is pure as breath. And all else
instantly disappears into that void between.
in the deepest sense-
how can I write this?
At the ordinate of belief and reason
there exists a single space
of infinite depth. Where sense no longer is made sense of
Where beauty is pure as breath. And all else
instantly disappears into that void between.
In the memory of rain
Sometimes water is not needed, some things can grow in the memory of rain.
I want to touch you from here---to see your green eyes fill with bated tears and the way they seem to hold me, even oceans away.
Let’s forget the last 10 years. Lets forget the coke, the X, and the pills.
Lets forget the mental institution.
Lets forget how you just tried to kill yourself, stabbing a hair away from the femoral artery.
We haven’t spoken in months. But I know you, like breath. I miss you.
Some people build whole cities in your heart.
Im not sure if its that im rushing or its that im realizing this is one moment stretched like a gummy worm and turning chalky at its sinews.
Im not sure what really grows at the junction of trust and apathy. I think its likely weeds. Beautiful weeds that grow magenta and lilac and outside of all our empty demands to disappear they continue to thrive here and we’ll continue to pretend we’ll get around to picking them but really just admire how the sunlight dances on their dew.
I wish to be you for a moment and not remind you of your beauty or how much you are loved or even how this is all a dream. I wish more to hold you from the inside with steady hands and feel you being held, completely.
I wish more for you to give up.
But not in that way of finding an artery with a sharp blade but in the way of giving it all up.
Letting it all rise belly-up to the surface like a billion tiny jellyfish.
Because the truth is in the spaces.
And life, real life, is in the synapse--The tiny firework we wish to milk from
and are born from each time we wake up
to the all the pockets of air in between.
I want to touch you from here---to see your green eyes fill with bated tears and the way they seem to hold me, even oceans away.
Let’s forget the last 10 years. Lets forget the coke, the X, and the pills.
Lets forget the mental institution.
Lets forget how you just tried to kill yourself, stabbing a hair away from the femoral artery.
We haven’t spoken in months. But I know you, like breath. I miss you.
Some people build whole cities in your heart.
Im not sure if its that im rushing or its that im realizing this is one moment stretched like a gummy worm and turning chalky at its sinews.
Im not sure what really grows at the junction of trust and apathy. I think its likely weeds. Beautiful weeds that grow magenta and lilac and outside of all our empty demands to disappear they continue to thrive here and we’ll continue to pretend we’ll get around to picking them but really just admire how the sunlight dances on their dew.
I wish to be you for a moment and not remind you of your beauty or how much you are loved or even how this is all a dream. I wish more to hold you from the inside with steady hands and feel you being held, completely.
I wish more for you to give up.
But not in that way of finding an artery with a sharp blade but in the way of giving it all up.
Letting it all rise belly-up to the surface like a billion tiny jellyfish.
Because the truth is in the spaces.
And life, real life, is in the synapse--The tiny firework we wish to milk from
and are born from each time we wake up
to the all the pockets of air in between.
Mosquito
I watched a mosquito land on my ring finger, probing its black and white speckled needle around until something felt just right. I wondered if I would feel when it punctured me.
Then the sting, and I watched as its abdomen pumped up and down siphoning me into him. This momentary transmission of body to body to body--I’ve heard it’s only the females that sting, they suck the blood to feed their unborn children.
I can sympathize. There are so many unborn children I want to feed within myself. I line up at the pump of this computer. I line up at the pump of unrequited lust, at the open sweaty palms of want. I line up for everything I think will fill this cup instead of lifting it just high enough to see the holes in the bottom.
What’s at the heart of these desires? Love? Connection? God? Goddamnit. Why is it that all my reflections turn into theological debate between 18 versions of myself?
I don't care if there is God. I don't care if I create all of this.
I care what pumps through the veins of this emotional body. I care what carries me into the next moment, the next—weightless—the undercurrent.
Ill be 76 one day and I wonder what will pump through me then, what kids will have been fed, which will still be unborn within this papier-mâché body?
Will I be that woman against the wall at dance, rocking and smiling, something so beautiful and complete with closed eyes and arms crossed--not tight, more just enveloping? Or will I not even know how to know myself. Maybe there is a point in knowing when lines blur and its like falling upwards.
I feel like we write ourselves into life. Like we are these carbon sketches in the medium of air and if you broke us down small enough into what makes up the atom you would find us as words. And the little engines of our cells would show us their fuel, how thoughts really do become matter.
There’s this human urge to bookend things. To complete things. To check things off the list. But then one day you look in the mirror and cant recognize yourself, your hands show your map of trajectories and maybe time feels a lot more like an ocean than a cubby. Maybe we begin to let the colors mix a little and get a little less out of compartmentalizing.
Maybe death is not when we run out of white space. Maybe death is the point when we see white space in a whole new light
Then the sting, and I watched as its abdomen pumped up and down siphoning me into him. This momentary transmission of body to body to body--I’ve heard it’s only the females that sting, they suck the blood to feed their unborn children.
I can sympathize. There are so many unborn children I want to feed within myself. I line up at the pump of this computer. I line up at the pump of unrequited lust, at the open sweaty palms of want. I line up for everything I think will fill this cup instead of lifting it just high enough to see the holes in the bottom.
What’s at the heart of these desires? Love? Connection? God? Goddamnit. Why is it that all my reflections turn into theological debate between 18 versions of myself?
I don't care if there is God. I don't care if I create all of this.
I care what pumps through the veins of this emotional body. I care what carries me into the next moment, the next—weightless—the undercurrent.
Ill be 76 one day and I wonder what will pump through me then, what kids will have been fed, which will still be unborn within this papier-mâché body?
Will I be that woman against the wall at dance, rocking and smiling, something so beautiful and complete with closed eyes and arms crossed--not tight, more just enveloping? Or will I not even know how to know myself. Maybe there is a point in knowing when lines blur and its like falling upwards.
I feel like we write ourselves into life. Like we are these carbon sketches in the medium of air and if you broke us down small enough into what makes up the atom you would find us as words. And the little engines of our cells would show us their fuel, how thoughts really do become matter.
There’s this human urge to bookend things. To complete things. To check things off the list. But then one day you look in the mirror and cant recognize yourself, your hands show your map of trajectories and maybe time feels a lot more like an ocean than a cubby. Maybe we begin to let the colors mix a little and get a little less out of compartmentalizing.
Maybe death is not when we run out of white space. Maybe death is the point when we see white space in a whole new light
Pelagic / hummingbird
I imagine us talking not around it, but under it. I imagine that the knowing of what each other knows is enough. Just enough. And that the warmness that expands like ink in water is the same for us both.
We gather ourselves in the oceans behind our hearts. Out here, in the pelagic, we are thousands of nautical miles from any shore of any cotenant. And so, we are lawless. Immune to the confines of what any group of men in uniforms put into place.
Its deeper and bluer and more clear here than I ever could have imagined. But its enough that our toes point in the direction of what lies beyond. And it’s enough that our eyes continue to find each other, suddenly and completely arrested.
Perhaps on another planet, at this very moment, we are waltzing. Perhaps in another life, I’m giving birth to you as I feel your body pulse and twist through me, and in that moment, also become you as your tiny lungs accept the strange weight of air. And perhaps it’s because of all of this that I suddenly feel electric next to you. There’s a current that runs through us and the salt water of our cells knows this fully.
And yet my mind feeds in tiny drops of red nectar from what is unknown. And this hummingbird heart rests at 250 bpm. But I know when to break and how to follow the seam that was stitched 28 years ago. I know with precision how to pluck each bright feather and I’m learning the discipline to molt.
We gather ourselves in the oceans behind our hearts. Out here, in the pelagic, we are thousands of nautical miles from any shore of any cotenant. And so, we are lawless. Immune to the confines of what any group of men in uniforms put into place.
Its deeper and bluer and more clear here than I ever could have imagined. But its enough that our toes point in the direction of what lies beyond. And it’s enough that our eyes continue to find each other, suddenly and completely arrested.
Perhaps on another planet, at this very moment, we are waltzing. Perhaps in another life, I’m giving birth to you as I feel your body pulse and twist through me, and in that moment, also become you as your tiny lungs accept the strange weight of air. And perhaps it’s because of all of this that I suddenly feel electric next to you. There’s a current that runs through us and the salt water of our cells knows this fully.
And yet my mind feeds in tiny drops of red nectar from what is unknown. And this hummingbird heart rests at 250 bpm. But I know when to break and how to follow the seam that was stitched 28 years ago. I know with precision how to pluck each bright feather and I’m learning the discipline to molt.
Write.
Write your truth. However it may come.
Prick your fingertip and let drops of yourself
scarlet across the blank white page, waiting in abandoned thirst
for you to arrive upon it.
Write like you peel a tangerine—one asymmetric piece at a time.
Write like you make love—slow, soft, with patient lips meeting lips,
Or, rip the clothes off al the syntax and fuck the shit out of all the vowels.
And I say vowels, because they seem supple, rounder, more fuckable. But if you like the hard lines of consonants then fuck that too.
Either way, open yourself.
Spread yourself, like butter across freshly warmed toast. Not like jelly, don't remain partially stuck to the silver knife. Let yourself go and forget
where you begin and the words end.
Forget where creamy meets toasted and just let it all be crumbs.
Write!
These crumbs you will follow back one day,
along the forested trail overgrown with a thousand shades of green.
You will find these crumbs like jewels and collect yourself in the deep pockets of eternal time.
Write!
Write the mundane shit. The non-esoteric, “un-evolved” feelings of wanting to run from your own skin. Dream yourself into a new language, in an old village where life has been decided long before you began.
There’s only so long you can turn your mug upside down and watch as the last drop of tea moves like Pac-Man against the ceramic, one direction at a time until it dries. It will dry. We must write our juice.
We must write while we can still tilt ourselves and traverse lines across the bottom edge of what makes us, us.
We must write ourselves into the fabric of everything we have yet become.
Write.
Because unlike your skin, hair, and bones, your words you take with you when you go.
Life, like land, is formed when fire meets air meets water, when thought meets emotion meets language—the edge of a moment.
Write like breath because it is.
Write like home because you are.
And build yourself, one fallen branch at a time, around yourself.
Build yourself with words that will outlive you, that will permeate the ground water—will penetrate the molten center—will saturate the mystery we must live into--
one. single. word. at. a. time.
Prick your fingertip and let drops of yourself
scarlet across the blank white page, waiting in abandoned thirst
for you to arrive upon it.
Write like you peel a tangerine—one asymmetric piece at a time.
Write like you make love—slow, soft, with patient lips meeting lips,
Or, rip the clothes off al the syntax and fuck the shit out of all the vowels.
And I say vowels, because they seem supple, rounder, more fuckable. But if you like the hard lines of consonants then fuck that too.
Either way, open yourself.
Spread yourself, like butter across freshly warmed toast. Not like jelly, don't remain partially stuck to the silver knife. Let yourself go and forget
where you begin and the words end.
Forget where creamy meets toasted and just let it all be crumbs.
Write!
These crumbs you will follow back one day,
along the forested trail overgrown with a thousand shades of green.
You will find these crumbs like jewels and collect yourself in the deep pockets of eternal time.
Write!
Write the mundane shit. The non-esoteric, “un-evolved” feelings of wanting to run from your own skin. Dream yourself into a new language, in an old village where life has been decided long before you began.
There’s only so long you can turn your mug upside down and watch as the last drop of tea moves like Pac-Man against the ceramic, one direction at a time until it dries. It will dry. We must write our juice.
We must write while we can still tilt ourselves and traverse lines across the bottom edge of what makes us, us.
We must write ourselves into the fabric of everything we have yet become.
Write.
Because unlike your skin, hair, and bones, your words you take with you when you go.
Life, like land, is formed when fire meets air meets water, when thought meets emotion meets language—the edge of a moment.
Write like breath because it is.
Write like home because you are.
And build yourself, one fallen branch at a time, around yourself.
Build yourself with words that will outlive you, that will permeate the ground water—will penetrate the molten center—will saturate the mystery we must live into--
one. single. word. at. a. time.
Cornflower Fields
My son asks why the sunflower is sad. Somehow knowing that when we pluck the pretty things we love and reinvent them into vases, they are already dead. And what is this for him? The end or beginning of momentary pause; a semi-colon to the continuum that is this beingness.
Its long bright petals weep a pool of yellow dust and I snort it like a line. Maybe, if I can consume it, it will consume me—If only for an eclipsed moment in time.
Ill spread my legs and invite all the beauty of this world. All of the heart-shaped eyes, and touch of newborn skin. The rusty sweetness of blood and the taste of fresh cream. And ill ice-skate over the edge, but just an inch. Just enough to feel the velocity of pure oxygen from under the nails of my toes. And then, without a question, fall back into the soft dust of cornflower fields. Where every cloud is a perfect word and I can arrange them like fridge poetry. I’ll turn on the ball of one red heel to my half iced birthday cake. Maybe leaving it just so--the contrast breeding appreciation for the rich chocolate that leaves a slight film at the back of my tongue.
My son asks why the sunflower is sad. Somehow knowing that when we pluck the pretty things we love and reinvent them into vases, they are already dead. And what is this for him? The end or beginning of momentary pause; a semi-colon to the continuum that is this beingness.
Its long bright petals weep a pool of yellow dust and I snort it like a line. Maybe, if I can consume it, it will consume me—If only for an eclipsed moment in time.
Ill spread my legs and invite all the beauty of this world. All of the heart-shaped eyes, and touch of newborn skin. The rusty sweetness of blood and the taste of fresh cream. And ill ice-skate over the edge, but just an inch. Just enough to feel the velocity of pure oxygen from under the nails of my toes. And then, without a question, fall back into the soft dust of cornflower fields. Where every cloud is a perfect word and I can arrange them like fridge poetry. I’ll turn on the ball of one red heel to my half iced birthday cake. Maybe leaving it just so--the contrast breeding appreciation for the rich chocolate that leaves a slight film at the back of my tongue.
Milky Heart Stone Wait
Everywhere I turn I seem to find another shadow- these whispers from the past echoing me into silence.
There’s nowhere to go. And still I move like a house-cat stalking a wolf.
Under full moonlight I paint my eyes with red dirt and swallow emptiness.
I will prepare one more night with fevered patience and white jasmine.
Curling and arching in a milky rhythm to the sound of distant rivers in distant lands with faster tongues and softer hearts. This was never meant to be easy.
And at the same time rusted wheelbarrows collide with the perfection of snowflakes and swallow deeply, sighing with unrequited release.
What are you here for?
Did you come to see the rivulet of jade flowers eat the night?
Did you come to wash yourself with other people’s prayers?
Perhaps you came to pray yourself, to crinkle into papyrus and quill across the page, only to fold origami into a blue glass bottle and throw yourself into an unnamed ocean.
And then, perhaps none of this.
Shadows bigger. Bodies smaller.
A crow falls unceremoniously from the opaque sky and lands nowhere.
Icicles dance sunlight onto morning doorsteps, and the first taste of a true love’s kiss must leave you wanting more.
Remember, the bridge always freezes before the road.
Everywhere I turn I seem to find another shadow- these whispers from the past echoing me into silence.
There’s nowhere to go. And still I move like a house-cat stalking a wolf.
Under full moonlight I paint my eyes with red dirt and swallow emptiness.
I will prepare one more night with fevered patience and white jasmine.
Curling and arching in a milky rhythm to the sound of distant rivers in distant lands with faster tongues and softer hearts. This was never meant to be easy.
And at the same time rusted wheelbarrows collide with the perfection of snowflakes and swallow deeply, sighing with unrequited release.
What are you here for?
Did you come to see the rivulet of jade flowers eat the night?
Did you come to wash yourself with other people’s prayers?
Perhaps you came to pray yourself, to crinkle into papyrus and quill across the page, only to fold origami into a blue glass bottle and throw yourself into an unnamed ocean.
And then, perhaps none of this.
Shadows bigger. Bodies smaller.
A crow falls unceremoniously from the opaque sky and lands nowhere.
Icicles dance sunlight onto morning doorsteps, and the first taste of a true love’s kiss must leave you wanting more.
Remember, the bridge always freezes before the road.
The Space between Splinters
I find myself lately; teeth clenched and tight lipped—reflections of my mother’s reflection. And it scares the shit out of me.
Who have I become? And what the fuck happened to all the chasms in between?
Like that old red view master, I’ve somehow clicked over some slides. And I can’t click back. I can’t click back until I start at the beginning. Ticking through each memory that still leaves me speechless and turgid with that sound that is made when every other sound is silenced.
Lately I just want to go home. To call my mom and get into my red convertible stacked high with garbage bags of dirty clothes. But this is it. This muffled staccato dirty laundry moment is all there is and all there ever was.
Presence. Patience. Petulance. And the pierced balloon of what should have been.
Sometimes while driving alone, I’ll get this visceral sense like a mental Chernobyl and ill peer into the fall-out and cracked splinters of myself to see overturned desks and the halted vibration of vacancy. Then suddenly all I can do is swat at the emptiness with tight hands, hoping to catch a mosquito in my palms.
I find myself lately; teeth clenched and tight lipped—reflections of my mother’s reflection. And it scares the shit out of me.
Who have I become? And what the fuck happened to all the chasms in between?
Like that old red view master, I’ve somehow clicked over some slides. And I can’t click back. I can’t click back until I start at the beginning. Ticking through each memory that still leaves me speechless and turgid with that sound that is made when every other sound is silenced.
Lately I just want to go home. To call my mom and get into my red convertible stacked high with garbage bags of dirty clothes. But this is it. This muffled staccato dirty laundry moment is all there is and all there ever was.
Presence. Patience. Petulance. And the pierced balloon of what should have been.
Sometimes while driving alone, I’ll get this visceral sense like a mental Chernobyl and ill peer into the fall-out and cracked splinters of myself to see overturned desks and the halted vibration of vacancy. Then suddenly all I can do is swat at the emptiness with tight hands, hoping to catch a mosquito in my palms.
Effervescence
We live like storage boxes. Stacked, labeled and surrendering with closed lids to the dust that must accumulate.
Who named this country? And dressed you and put you in a snow globe just to shake you, turn you back around, and watch the beauty descend?
When I close my eyes, I see things. Mostly rust colored sunbursts, but sometimes more. Sometimes I see whole movies being played out, sometimes I know what is to come and I can’t shut my eyes again to block it out.
I wonder if I have enough sounds and syllables to syntax this life. I wonder if Ill have enough air and empty space in between oxygen to slough off into truth. Into beauty with no apology. Into grace.
And I know that’s the “A train”, that's the metal and steam and rocks and dirt and grease stains that's ever been.
That's’ my home and just maybe in this life I will return and kiss the arid earth to life. Like when a magnet finds it’s mate- electric.
One thing is for sure, when the water is hot enough-steam escapes. It cant help itself. At approximately 100C a transformation occurs. When will it be your day? Hour? Minute? When will the unstoppable pulse of life lift you effervescently into new, into now?
We live like storage boxes. Stacked, labeled and surrendering with closed lids to the dust that must accumulate.
Who named this country? And dressed you and put you in a snow globe just to shake you, turn you back around, and watch the beauty descend?
When I close my eyes, I see things. Mostly rust colored sunbursts, but sometimes more. Sometimes I see whole movies being played out, sometimes I know what is to come and I can’t shut my eyes again to block it out.
I wonder if I have enough sounds and syllables to syntax this life. I wonder if Ill have enough air and empty space in between oxygen to slough off into truth. Into beauty with no apology. Into grace.
And I know that’s the “A train”, that's the metal and steam and rocks and dirt and grease stains that's ever been.
That's’ my home and just maybe in this life I will return and kiss the arid earth to life. Like when a magnet finds it’s mate- electric.
One thing is for sure, when the water is hot enough-steam escapes. It cant help itself. At approximately 100C a transformation occurs. When will it be your day? Hour? Minute? When will the unstoppable pulse of life lift you effervescently into new, into now?
