Friday 3/31/2006 11:58:00 PM

Can't see the stairs, but still I land on them. No need to fall any further than I already have.

To save yourself. And save yourself you must. If you are to be saved. Requires so much more give a damn than I'm willing to expend.

Can't look at the sun, but I know it's there. By virtue of the yellow in my window. Occasionally it makes me warm, but more often it only emphasizes how cold it can be.

There's often talk of turning over leaves. I don't know why. There's nothing under them.

There are moments in life when you know everything has changed. The covers are slightly colder. The pillows hiss a different sound as your head hits.

There are the kind you can abide and the kind you just ignore. Throughout it all, the stairs remain. Whether or not you can see them.

Thursday 3/30/2006 10:10:00 PM

The shape of him. So monotonous. Edge after edge of the same perpendicular. Every time he spoke I thought I was deaf. Because I could see the sound as it would chase through our silence in a wheel of colors, but I could never hear it. I'd watch his lips move. The dart of his gaze synchronized with them and wish I had some dictionary that could translate us for the other. Body and breath. Bend and poke. There will always be things we say to each other that simply lapse into the abyss. Of truth to lies. Intent to skin.

Our little soldiers with their heavy guns and broken triggers.

All our little vices nothing compared to how dependent we are on each other.

Empty bottles echoing the breath of strangers. As the bar looks on in stern accuse. As the smoke preempts the opening of that circuit. Turning over every stool. Finding myself in the residue.

Cliched portents do nothing for me now.

As the hour prescribes its last medicines.

Looking back, I might've understood had I only listened less.

Spare me any pretentious cures. The sickness is so much more interesting.

And that is how I know I loved them.

3/30/2006 09:21:00 PM

Cold misanthrope in blue socks. Saying you're different only makes it less so. Yet still you feel the tug of heavy argile on your ankles. The world clenching away from you in slow, metallic shrieks. An orphaned turbine without any fluid.

They said tomorrow, but I knew what it meant.

The angry lobster. Its claws removed. It builds like the night will. Insidiously the light hissing out of that balloon. It's deflated, but not empty.

All this nothing keeps me whole.

Wednesday 3/29/2006 11:32:00 PM

It's outside... Isn't it? Her thoughts moving in sketchy bubbles. Words not spoken. Life recycling itself. The tips of her fingers aglow like a burning cigarette. And just as hazardous to your health.

It's time... more than enough of it. So what do I do with it now? Leave the cockroaches to multiply inside these walls until everything is infested.

It's just friendship... or what I've mistaken for it. Sad kites on their way to the sun. Strings without fists.

It's too easy to turn out the light. Sit in the dark. The sounds just enough to keep me from hating who I am. Or worse yet, hating who I was when I tried to be someone they could know. Someone they might love. Or at least notice the hours we share as they kill us.

Alone is how soft. Melting bones and gathering skins. To build the effigy. To let her go, but never forget what she's taught me.

So much truth inside those tiny moments. The slender snake with a bulge in its belly. The culmination of the hunt, sadly, only sustenance.

Nothing greater.

One blink. Just one.

And it's all gone again.

Tuesday 3/28/2006 11:28:00 PM

The light went out as she stood there. And finally she could see.

Just a humble kitchen. Table and chairs waiting for people who aren't coming. Dull knives spreading butter on soft bread. Holes everywhere.

The lighters with their open lids. No flame. The cups with their missing bottoms. No satisfaction in killing the thirst before it happens.

Cold word factories spill over. Everything is polluted. This impetuous refinery does nothing. Filth will always be filth. Poison can't be turned into medicine.

But the tall smoke stacks both menace and promise as they turn the sky dark. The sun still hurts my eyes.

The light went out for no reason. No one touched the switch.

Monday 3/27/2006 10:57:00 PM

It was her disease. No one else's. Like every one is, no matter the name or how many others have had it. She owned it in her heart like child. She wore it in every movement like a second skin.

It was her disease. Hers alone and we all knew it.

But the cure. That always belonged to someone else.

We'd go to the pharmacy sometimes and look through the window at all the medicines we couldn't afford.

3/27/2006 09:25:00 PM

It's 6 in the morning on a Sunday. One of those dry days where nothing moves even when the wind blows. The flowers are mute. The tall weeds are still sleeping. And the trees, they don't give a damn.

It's the best way to see the world. When it's not looking back. When it doesn't know yet that I'm watching it.

Narrating life instead of just acting on the script.

And still able to be a part of the audience.

Taking pictures of nothing. Things everyday I pass by. The view through a fence. Everything kept at a distance. The curve of the road as it tunnels down over the horizon. Like the world goes on forever. The sound a lonely car make as its passes over the empty road like a purring lion.

There's no alone at the hour. In that place. Just the world not looking back. All mine to document.

Sunday 3/26/2006 10:22:00 PM

I don't listen anymore. The symphony in your search. Wordless epic of a hero who never won. Just let the ashes fall. It's not something that can be caught.

The soft frog with lips made of glass kisses the princess in her ugly pajamas. He doesn't change, but she does. So much thinner since. The lope of her skin as it travels over her skeleton like the cough of a dying wind over a leaf long since fallen.

Every night we wake up different. And every morning we're the same again.

Pillars of salt in the shadows of our gods.

The long song that never lets us listen. The hard lamb bathes in the mane of the lion. Wading arrogant in the threat. The sweet taste of carelessness like the scotch in father's words.

The squeeze of the socks around your ankles as you try to stand. It's just elastic and white cotton, but it makes such deep impressions.

You look at me and see a sparrow. Small, brown wings struggling against gravity. Too many feathers to remember. So many hollow bones. But you never ask, when I look at you, what it is that I see.

I don't listen anymore. The songs you tease me with.

Purple skies on the verge of opening up. The taste of curdled milk in your every breath. Like I deserved what you did to me. I was made for your pleasure. The dark enchantment of being used.

The pea wakes her up through all those many mattresses, but she still remembers who put it there.

Her dour prince.

Wearing the gown. Never to dance in it.

Wearing this fairy tale in every pore. This ever after so futile.

The gag of wine on your tongue as we tried to swallow what we hadn't chewed.

I choked on it.

Saturday 3/25/2006 10:47:00 PM

I drew the lines around the words. Accommodating what must be constant. I pleased the stroke until it was ready to fit everything inside it. That I needed it to hold.

Soft-sided suitcases with wheels under them. As we scurry toward the temporary stairways that will take us to places we've never been.

He never looked at me. I always wanted him to, but he wouldn't. He was a pumpkin with eyes cut out. Candle inside to make them light up. He had a cap where they'd scooped everything out, but I never could pick it up. Prove to myself that whatever was once inside had long since been discarded.

I made the words. Then. Now. Frivolous truths interfering with my own. There are no photographs other than the pictures that we draw. Every color. Every line. Chasing the arc of intent.

Stale salamander moves through the concrete jungle. So lost. So many scales that won't balance.

Press the clutch. Shift the gear. As if this gasoline would listen. Abide by the patterns we attempt to draw.

So quickly we go nowhere.

It's only second gear, but already we've stalled.

Friday 3/24/2006 11:50:00 PM

We never slept together. Actually slept. Unconscious under the same blankets.

We tried once. All drunk and stupefied by my demerol heart. So oblivious to the pain inflicted.

There were more than memories once. More than still photographs.

Drawing on filthy pages. Smooth ink bleeds passed the edge.

No lines.

Just where to start.

And where to stop.

Dining on love alfredo. Fatten us. Turn these frail skeletons into flesh.

All that time I thought I was getting closer to. That pale sunrise. That lack of orange.

All those hours listening. A vacuum.

wearing my transparency like a target.

satisfied. desperate to be.

your victim.

and now you are alone without your lamb.

and now you are a lion whose roar can no longer heard.

Thursday 3/23/2006 09:11:00 PM

Cold fist carnivals. Red drapes awash in vomit. There they laid; two beetles on their backs. The force of their own struggling spinning them.

The first swing is only to test their pitch. A decoy.

Sheets not to dread what's done. Or has been. Chokes the wrinkle down her spine. As the pleasure collapses under her weight.

He draws the map while inside her, but never goes there.

Sour apple sex. Instead of picking ripe fruit. Gathering what's already fallen. It clutched that branch to its last breath, but the branch had long ago decided to let go of it.

The stale remains. Absent-minded binders browse their past. With ink embedded too deep.

Throw it away.

Fool the closet into thinking it's empty again. That those cobwebs cling now to corners only. No pertinent typefaces. No hand-written edits.

Slide the door. Chase the drapes. As the terrace swallows the sunset. Coax the venom out of duplicitous blood. Fly the stairs. Young again. But still older than was hoped. Not what's put into it.

What's uncovered.

And still he keeps looking at what he refuses to see.

The motionless headboard. The shadows unchanging as they dig. Pillows discarded. Blank sheets.

And still he keeps searching the hole, though he knows it's always been empty.

Tuesday 3/21/2006 10:59:00 PM

Warm piss. Cold genitals. It's time to breathe again. Close your eyes. Open your mouth. Taste it.

Always anticipating the next one. And the one after that. It's time to sleep. Without the covers over your head. Find another way to keep the light out and the darkness in.

It's the length. It's the width. Everything inside. No perimeter.

It's not a dream.

The choke of dismissal as you auction off another friend.

It's not love. As your skin shivers with approval. Just something that wears its skin.

You're still awake. You never sleep.

Carrying your cage wherever you go. Never aware of what's inside it.

Monday 3/20/2006 10:54:00 PM

The truth wears stiletto heels. With faded denims. And loose blouses that show off her cleavage. As it ripples in her bra. Churns under her skin coaxing the undertow.

It tastes so different depending upon with whom you drink it. The bourbon in their grin challenging your stamina. The brandy in their press sweetening your blood. Why go over the mountain when you can just dig right through it. Exchange those pumps for cleats. Pull deep. Break the bat on that very first pitch.

I know how to undo the knot, but I choose to leave it there. Byproducts. Afterwards seek their origin.

Auburn dreams to waking up. In channels. Changing them. Button by button.

Movie references your only pardon when you're asked to remember something real.

You chew hard on the pages of your epic. Numbered pages for to fill in. But they've left you no crayons.

Metal heels resonate as she strides. Denim coughs against the rhythm of her thighs.

You strapped her to a wheeled chair and convinced her she was unable. But the second you turned your back she was running again. In piercing stilettos. In chafing denim. In every way there is to run.

Away.

And still want to go back again.

3/20/2006 09:44:00 PM

The pen was in her hand. Poised just above the paper like a missile frozen in time right before impact. The shadow of her face was the only words she'd written there. She looked down at it and thought I've already said too much.

It was cold again.

She abandoned the task, turned in her chair and looked out the window. Second floor view of gravel and halogen.

They're always out there. Moving, but you never see them. The world is dead. Or I am. In the way once you stop living it's so hard to start again.

It was night. Like it always is. When she tries to press the pen to the paper, but it always stops millimeters away from it. When she sits and listens to the freight train in her head. Blowing its horn. Rumbling endlessly off into nowhere. No telling what it's taking there.

She'd always had the songs, but the harder she'd try hear to them the softer they would play. She'd always had the words. Trembling from within the ink. But the more she wrote, the less she was able to say.

It was quiet again.

Sunday 3/19/2006 10:40:00 PM

It rang as soon as I left the house. To replenish all I'd wasted.

It rang again four hours later. No message. I listened that time. Left the plug intact. As the phone blinked and begged me to live again.

And I don't even know who was there.

Watch the snow fall. Catch it on your tongue. And all at once it's melted. Somethings are not meant to be had.

I've made it better. I've made it worse. It's a mood more than a choice. I've spread. Had people inserted. But it's the colors that lead there we want, not the pot of gold.

We don't change. We are coerced.

Every message gone unanswered. Every Sunday left to learn.

How little. How small a pocket you could push me into.

I was yours once. It's true.

But now again, I am my own.

It was a few more hours later that I heard that sound agian. I didn't know who was calling.

I didn't really want to know.

3/19/2006 09:53:00 PM

He said, "You're a hard person to get a hold of... Must be worth it."

But it wasn't true. I was there. Listening to the phone ring. Unsure whether I should answer.

Sometimes you're the one watching the leaf fall and others you are the leaf. And all you can remember, all the way down, is having once been attached to that tree.

Then there's the ground. So solid. Unyielding. You know you can't fall any farther, but you keep waiting.

Worth it. I don't know. Maybe. In the way that everything is. Life's a blade. But it won't draw any blood just laying there.

And that's what we want. Most of all. Isn't it. To reassure ourselves we are real. Can be heard and seen and touched by people we've only just met. That they will notice and come back. Or try to. If we let them.

He said it was the first time and the last. I didn't believe him, but I pretended to. His fragile conscious quivering in my palms.

I told him I couldn't. Wouldn't. But I already did. You try to lie only to yourself, but you always ending up lying to everyone.

I never answer the phone anymore unless I'm certain it's something I want to hear. And I know it never is.

Saturday 3/18/2006 11:10:00 PM

I tried to picture him in his gold blazer.

I tried to see through my stupor. To no avail. I always see better when I'm lost. Unfortunately. Close your eyes. Hear so much more. Because one sense always detracts from the other. That's just how it is. When you think you're whole.

The jacket hanging on the door asking if.

Being this way always makes me want to make it moreso. Encourage the fever.

Thinking about them always makes me wonder what I did wrong. No one's ever failed me. I've always failed them In that way that weak hearts tend to stay on the same page. Because trying to change would be too strenuous.

I like being different. But I hate it. Always have. They know why the caged bird sings, but they can't explain.

Alone tells stories when I'm not listening. About how willing I was to be someone else. To accommodate them.

As if this haze wouldn't wean. As if this tablet wouldn't know what I'd written upon.

So small. Such tiny print. Afraid to be seen.

We wonder where they go. And when we finally find out we're sorry for them. Because I always thought they were better than me.

And now that they're not I don't know what to believe in anymore.

3/18/2006 10:07:00 PM

It was repetition in its purest form. How he looked then as I looked. So helpless. So much a pin cushion. Waiting to be stabbed again.

And I saw the next week, the next month in his stare. I knew everything that would happen, but I didn't try to stop it. I just let it because it was a way to justify the pain.

Was it right? Of course it was. Was it wrong? Yes, definitely. It was everything human emotion could ever hope to be. Everything life wants from the moments that it dares.

So many angles covering so many degrees. We bend to let them enter. We break to let them leave.

Because that is what life is. Metal pinching to conform. To the flow of the water inside it. To get to the valve where it's finally released. The valve that eventually shuts it off.

We never touched the way we wanted to because there were so many layers in the way. The hours. The years. The ugly face of truth in every kiss.

We were never so good together as when we forgot ourselves. Took whatever would take us away. Like these wings had never been clipped.

It tasted so good, but it always, still does, burn my throat going down.

I don't believe in right or wrong. I never have.

Only what is.

3/18/2006 09:48:00 PM

The quaint combination of beer and cold medicine fluxes the electrodes in my brain again. For the first time in so long I'm not myself. Not my mentor nor my protege. Watching her from behind the cloak of this vaseline lens she's soft and frail. All those hard corners rounded over. All those sharp angles curve instead.

Maybe this is who I want to be. External. Existential. Effortless observer to all I could've lived.

Saturday went too quick. Self-imposed drudgery. Seeking success in careless favors. Poking at happiness's embryo. Another accidental abortion.

everything that leads me back to where it all began.

Nowhere.

Or someplace that looks the same. No smell. No sensory cues. The sound of turning pages all there is to dance to. The wail of binders clenching closed as I look for a cornerstone in those aged arches.

To draw it out. To know.

Collapse. Ruin.

There is no other way to rebuild.

Friday 3/17/2006 11:39:00 PM

Burnt match sticks. I am humor. I am ridicule.

The sky out there with its heavy folds. The darkness. Looking in.

I don't dare look out.

It's days like these I wish I had a friend.

Or possessed the ability to fashion one out of these slender threads.

Tell me one more time why I should want to live.

Tell me one more time how much you love your life. How happy you are since.

It tastes just like candy when I let myself remember how alone I am. Chocolate coated nightmares erupting from their shells. I wish I could remember how real sugar tastes. Not this chemical shit.

I know how cold winter is in short sleeves. How deep the ink must go to become permanent. I know. I know the way to get there. I just don't know why we'd want to.

Why isn't it enough just to have heard the song. Why must we own it. Yellow match sticks waiting to be red.

It's always on fire. Pierce the cartilage.

There's always room for another hole. Especially in such loose skin.

I'm not looking for it to fit. Just to wait while I try it on. And not be disappointed when it doesn't.

Thursday 3/16/2006 11:05:00 PM

This is the device. The sated engine. Formally.

There was nothing to say. Never is.

We cowards at the mercy of this pantheon of silence. We spectres loathing the night that moves us.

It was so real I choked on it. A gag in my mouth as the vomit convulsed. I should've died, but you never do when you want to.

It's a slow process.

There are roads to remember still. And headlights teasing windows. As the night usurped the moments we'd risked.

So indebted to the pain. So socially illiterate.

Everything I know I know because I've kept the splint. Traced the indentations dug as I stubbornly tried to walk on it.

Everything I tried to be knows me now better than I could ever hope to know it. The curtain. The soft gauze that pretends to shelter broken windows from the wind.

Looking out.

Seeing myself in all of them.

No goodbyes.

Just broken nails yearning the chalkboard.

I cry when no one's listening. I cry sometimes, but it won't be heard.

3/16/2006 10:07:00 PM

So much ever after. Stilted chambers in acceptance. And the dogged promiscuity of forgiveness.

it breathes.

the draining wheeze of a humiliated heart.

This loveless geisha in her watery robe. Closes her eyes as the waves are divided.

and she is seen again.

Now. Then. Ever.

the downtrodden whims of hopelessness fever another desire.

So much nothing I was to them.

Wednesday 3/15/2006 10:46:00 PM

This is the color of the end. Pastel and changeless. The truth folds under the weight of perception. We watch the cascade that fills the water. Trying to, but unable. To pinpoint the spot where that last penny was swallowed by the surface.

If we are. Or ever were. Alive. More than liars. This doorstep should remember our footprints. How long we stood there waiting for someone to answer our knocking.

How hard it was to push that button knowing it would be heard, but not necessarily acknowledged.

Like trampled flowers we imagine how the garden will be reborn again. When we are. How the seeds once broke open to be.

Like trampled flowers we remember how it once felt to stand up straight. To know that the sun was always waiting for us to look up. See it. As it always saw us.

Now dead roots are all that's left. Fallen fences.

How alive can I ever hope to be when everything they say. And don't say too. Stabs.

Always wanting me to know who they are. But never bothering to know who I am.

sometimes I don't rhyme, but this isn't one of them.

There is resolution in everything I've lost.

3/15/2006 09:55:00 PM

It puzzles me. This broken pencil with which you write. The sound it emits as you scrape it across the paper. A scream gagged. A wound too full of antiseptic.

It asks me why. I just nod and shrug. How to explain to oneself why those who take the most are always the ones i'm compelled to give more to. The only lines on this paper are the ones I've drawn in. They are jagged and weak. They are meant to be ignored. Scribbled over. Until I am able to see them from the other side. When the page has turned and all those pictures are lies.

We're never old enough to lose gracefully. Not something we really want.

We're all children when it comes time to be selfless. For those to whom we've promised it.

It's not the leash. It's the collar that's the restraint.

We set our feelings to appointments. Scheduling the grief and the joy. As if to imagine we can control what will harm us. What gives us hope.

But it never shows up when expected. And it never leaves when it should.

The heart is just like any other fruit. I was ripe once. Juices spilling over. Crisp flesh to bite into. That would bite back as they chewed.

But everything decays. Some things quicker than others.

Remembering how sweet it once tasted can't ever change how sour it is now. How old we've gotten since that vine first tempted.

It looks so much like spring, but it's still winter.

3/15/2006 12:48:00 AM

So much for karma.

Yellow brick roads take us to false wizards. Megaphones and curtains we wish we'd never looked behind.

The truth is only good to know if you're ready for it. If you can live with the void it leaves.

They'll sign the cards. They'll wrap the gifts. As if they could ever know what love really means to you. As though it's anything more than a zipper to them. Pull it open. Draw it closed. Manufacturing their happiness in double stitches and brass rivets.

Those 501, shrink to fit people.

They can't see the past in my words. Nor the future. Only themselves.

Monday 3/13/2006 11:28:00 PM

It was a long walk. There and back. Then there again. Always only taking some of what I needed. The weather was temperate and my feet were able. So I did. Choose to walk. There. And back.

Again. And again.

Enjoying the motion of moving toward what waited.

Dimpled chassis. Failing suspension. The taste of progress. I remember you then. In my empty tank. In my choking engine.

It was expensive. For what it was. Small terminals sheltered behind the scenes. But I imagined the difference they made as the sound and the impulse confronted.

None.

Really. But for the grace of self-delusion.

We walked. Scuffing our way between the buildings. More than warm enough. More than satisfied with the lethargy of the moment.

The thick grin of summer teasing at the base of the sun. Every day must aspire to be like this one.

So right.

So wrong.

Sunday 3/12/2006 10:07:00 PM

Broken wine glasses on the kitchen floor. Empty bottles in the fridge. The morning will clean them up. Tonight we only have each other. This last night together our only parting gift.

And then we'll go back to being ourselves.

Drinking alone.

Touching no one.

Breaking the bottles on purpose. Stepping on the pieces.

Because sometimes all I want is to remember the hurt. That something did live inside this skin once, even if now it's dead.

Left turns into heavy traffic. Parking spaces beside the water. Engine idling underneath us. Picking our moments like wild flowers.

Only parting gifts. A game show. Contestants without the answers.

Dents in the walls. Semi-tragic voicemails. Drinking alone. Listening to the phone trying to disconnect.

It tasted how I'd always imagined it. Hard to swallow. The gasp filling my gut. With a euphoric nausea.

His tongue like mouthwash. His fingers like broken glass.

And then there were only the parting gifts. The gameshow was over. We were ourselves again.

Drinking alone.

3/12/2006 09:29:00 PM

I was looking at her. Trying to memorize her hair. The slope of her cheekbones. The arc of her lips. So after she was gone I could still see her. Paint her. Keep her.

She had a small braid that teased her left shoulder. She wore a pink blouse with a hood on it. There was yellow in every word. Orange in every kiss. Because yellow is caution. And orange is danger.

I was young and trying too hard to be masculine.

I was drawing pictures with my eyes closed. Stabbing the paper.

She always spoke in past tense even when she was referring to the future. She always saw the end in everything. She had long nails she'd paint different colors. She wore lacey, white bras under her pink, hooded blouses.

She was young and trying too hard to be feminine.

I was learning her body. Fumbling with her pleasure.

The darkness was purple when we were together. Because purple is the bruise.

We were young. Trying too hard not to be.

We were a rainbow. Because a rainbow promises, but never has a treasure at its end.

Saturday 3/11/2006 11:30:00 PM

Your angry angel, her wings beat my tongue. So much wind. So much movement. To go nowhere.

Her halo. How soft it glowed. In this darkness. Life happening in spite of death. Arrow everpresent to counterbalance. To justify happiness.

because that's what it is. Reference. Opposites. All truths derived from the lies we've discovered.

There's no taste to this medicine anymore. What once was bitter, now is just water on my tongue. There's no rhythm to this pain. Just deaf stutters as the footprints make their stale impressions.

We go there. Take those tours.

But it's not where we live.

3/11/2006 09:17:00 PM

I know why you read. It's for the same reasons that I write. Because life is big and we need to take in it small portions.

There's sound and there's fury, but there's not much else. Take this microscope to my moments to see what I couldn't without.

The details. The pieces that create the whole.

The eyelash hairs at the base of its throat. Where its voice waits for something to say. The tiny pixels of color that make up its iris. Where vision debates with the arm of truth.

I know why you read. Slouching on those long ago devotions. When the future hadn't yet been decided. When I still reveled in my longing for you and you still had the privilege of rejecting it.

On paper it looks like we're making progress.

Toward what though?

On paper everything looks different. More merciful. Soft thoughts lend their shadows to the language. And we can taste those feelings in bite size portions. Chew them slowly and never need to swallow.

But there are no more pages turning yellow in my closet anymore. There's no more paper. No more messages.

Just reading. And writing.

Little pieces of having lived.

3/11/2006 12:30:00 AM

There are chances. When these lives pause to conjugate. Twist that cap and that train barrels down a different track.

So much like the paths that still wind through. Dense foliage heavy with the weight of descending rain. It's only the past, but it seems so real.

The sky is allowed to cry. Heal parched landscapes.

Life wants to flood, but puddles are all it makes.

These stairs don't have enough steps.

These feet pretend to move me, But I can't forget where I am.

So much to remind me.

It's easy to be humble when nothing wants you. It's easy to find perspective in so much loneliness. There are no heroes here. No villains.

Just people.

Friday 3/10/2006 11:11:00 PM

Time doesn't move at all until you get old enough. And then it moves too quickly.

you pour. you spill. you mix.
different flavors until
a new one is created from.

you wait. you watch. you smell.
as time alters everything.

what once was soft
turning hard.

what once was right,
now all wrong.

there's nothing in those
shadows that i haven't
already seen.

but i keep looking.

because there's nowhere
else left to go.

sometimes we say the
words, but they don't
make a sound.

sometimes the
silence staggers
in every verse.

Thursday 3/09/2006 10:38:00 PM

You'll say I was hopeless. We both know it's true. And I'll say I don't care. Never wanted the world out there.

We'll let the string fall from the balloon. As it makes its ascent toward the sun.

You'll say I'm too involved. And myabe I am, but so what.

You'll say I read life like an encyclopedia when it ought to be a poem. And it's true. How strange is that.

We'll never agree on anything except that it's over.

I am what you see if you'd only look close enough. I am not to be measured in moments. But prefer to be the measure of.

You'll say I'm just trying to prove all my liquids are solid. Bit it's the other way around. I wish I could remember how to fall. How it feels to be caught.

3/09/2006 09:28:00 PM

There were always lights. Crowded together in the darkness. Gasping for breath as the shadows would multiply to infinite measures.

There is always truth. In every thought. Only sometimes it is silent. Small pebbles which once were a mighty boulder. Now just dust between my toes.

Candy-coated demons melt in your mouth not in your hands.

Third person conversations with myself and I'm not on her side.

There always will be time to think. To write. To drink. But there never has been. Probably won't ever be a reason for any of them.

Even though I'm not driving anymore, I still keep checking the mirrors. Looking for the brake.

I know.

Always have.

Who I am.

There was never anything to explore. No journey to make. No backpack to reach into when change was needed. Just thinning shoulder straps and sealed zippers. Carrying nothing. Going nowhere.

They always knew I'd never change. Couldn't even if I wanted to. But that I'd give in. Crimp the veins until the blood had to go the other way.

I always knew this is who I'd be.

Highlighter on an empty page.

3/09/2006 09:24:00 PM

challenges determined.
stagger the
dismal dreams.

execution.
selection.
slouch the pages

in their retreat.

one pixel more
and it's too big.

one pixel less
and it's too small.

cannot make it fit.

Wednesday 3/08/2006 09:37:00 PM

It can all be summed up in a just a few fluid strokes. Lost blood darkening into white paper. Makeshift gauze swallows the pain. Holds the hole tight in its fist. As it slowly becomes that which it was meant to protect.

So many words wasted to say what the picture always did.

But it's the picture I can't look at. Can't let myself hear what it says.

A lifetime of dust and ashes. Broken glass not impeding. Shaky lines chase paths of memory into the thick forests where I cannot see. Curving with the shudder of my arm as it reaches toward something I know is there. They try to retreat, but unconsciously I push them forward.

It's as eager as any image is. Slave to a broken mind yearning for its freedom.

Papers everywhere. Distorted from waiting so long to be seen. Empty pens cough up their nothings.

Lost, little artist in her dark room. Swimming in the papers' disarray. So much black. And lines that never touch each other. Lost, little artist shuffles through her pictures, but never listens to them.

So afraid of what they might say.

Tuesday 3/07/2006 10:46:00 PM

There were outlines. Jagged and fat. We were coloring books. Full of those raw paper pages. And nothing else.

We'd whisper and dream of the colors. We'd read the labels with their savory names. Cornflower blues. Indian reds. And coppers. The names on their own were enough to fill us in.

We'd break the seal and revel in the grunt of the cardboard as it released all its rainbows. Held in such smooth shapes. Each tip a perfect cone. And the magnificent cylinders on which they perched.

I never wanted to use them. I just wanted to leave them new. Drink in the smell of their birth. Feast on their perfection still untouched by careless hands.

And read the labels. Imagine the colors by their words. More vibrant than they could ever be scratched into these faded outlines.

You can draw in a coloring book only once. And then you must move on to another.

Monday 3/06/2006 11:07:00 PM

I remember her hair. When I was young it was thick and dark. As I grew it grew steadily lighter and thinner until she was nearly bald.

I remember her dark side. When she'd get angry. Sharp fingernails and deeply tilted eyebrows. Partially drawn in.

Mascara before science discovered how to keep it from clumping. And rouge. On the cheekbones.

When I was little love was simply birthday presents and occasional ice cream. And family was everyone who had the same last name.

Her shoes. So many of them. Size six. All with the bulge on the right side where her feet bore that mysterious lump. Putting my small feet inside those rivers and letting them swim. 2, 3 inch heels in soft, cowhide leather. Blue and black and red.

Knee highs when she'd wear slacks.

Pink razors and soap to learn to shave your legs with.

Culers in her hair and woman sized bras in her chest of drawers.

Thick green carpet filling with cat hair. As she grew older. Bright white iceskates hanging in her closet mocking her refusal that she was getting older. Always. Everyday.

She never trust anyone. Not her child. Not her child's children. She loved herself more than anyone.

I go back to when I was young and she was the grandmother. And I wonder if all my childish love was wasted. Because it wasn't good enough later. When she wanted what we couldn't give her.

I wonder if it meant anything. Or were we just what she wanted then. Subjects upon her throne.

The offer of love so potent. Of course she took it. Just a child. Watching her apply her rouge. To her cheekbones. Examing the distorted shoes in her closet. So many.

What did she wear when she left us. What did she wear when she was alone?

Did she still rub that rouge into her cheeks. Did she still apply that clumpy mascara.

And why. Why did she make us leave her?

3/06/2006 10:33:00 PM

It was always at 2 am that he'd take his hundred icecubes out of the freezer. To fill the glass he'd sprinkle with scotch. He'd always have a few drinks there. Some jobs are different. It's okay. That's entertainment. He'd get home and have a few more. Because it was such a strenuous job. Being indispensable and all. Whatever would those viciously single people dance to if he weren't there to press play.

He worked nights. Always. That's what deejays do. Single's dances. Back in the day. Before internet dating. 50 and 60 somethings trying to get laid. They needed dark rooms and plenty of loud music if that was ever going to happen.

He worked nights. Would come home at 2 or 3 in the morning. All tensed up from pressing play. He'd change things while you were sleeping. A bicycle seat. A tape deck. Whatever. He'd 'make it better'.

We'd wake up to different things. Different speakers. Different pedals. Everything belonged to him. Our things. His. He was just letting us use them.

I'd scream and yell and try to make a point. But the harder I'd press the quicker that pencil tip broke. I'd scream because I wanted something to be mine. Not what he'd let me use of his.

Eventually he won. He'd managed to own everything, but he still had nothing.

3/06/2006 10:11:00 PM

I see the world through a telescope. It's all so distant though my eyes are being tricked into thinking it's close. Nearness is only perception. Light and lenses distributing reality in pragmatic doses. It's all so far away, but I can see all the details.

And it always makes me wonder how I look to it.

I think in rhythms. Words spinning on their platters and then I plunge this needle into their grooves and am able to hear them. Even without an amplifier I can still hear it whispering. Crackling and popping as it runs through the thistle and over the fallen leaves. It's always been a song. Music. If you listen carefully. If you follow the groove as it spirals toward the center.

Through sight. Through sound. It all seems so real. That we're easily convinced.

Vibrations carve their ridges and mimic the sound of. Light flanks the edges and draws those pictures in our heads.

But how can we ever be certain that it's real until we can touch it. And be touched by it.

I like the sound. I trust the telescope. But it's still not enough.

Sunday 3/05/2006 11:33:00 PM

He wondered why he was still there. Holding skins discarded. From faces he couldn't recall.

Melted lives with the eye holes still in them. Pooling like clay in his hands. Flesh crayons.

We don't change. We just listen better sometimes. To the sound of our lies.

He had everything he wanted. And nothing. One finger always on the clitoris of happiness. But its legs would never open.

What he wanted I suspect was proof. That he'd lived.

But where can we go. To know. Who we were before we chose them. Or know what we'd be if we hadn't.

He crackled like a radio. So lost in the airwaves. Without a word it always sounded so lost. So much water to tread. So many oceans to ask.

We used to say time will never know. Or prove us wrong.

But now we don't say anything at all.

Drawing with flesh colored crayons on broken skin.

3/05/2006 10:08:00 PM

Building the thorn from the point outward. It's no surprise there's blood at every interval.

But it's redder now. Wounds overlapping.

It snakes through every moment. Even those where it's not there.

We laid beside each other in the bed and listened quietly as the anger raged from the stereo. All my music was angry then. Because it was the only sound I could understand. I painted all those days using an empty palette.

We examined my fingers to see if the nail polish had changed. To reflect my mood. It never did change. Ever.

I'm too cold.

But that was back when I had nails long enough to color. Not chewed like they are now. Back when I could still feel with more than just skin.

Saturday 3/04/2006 11:00:00 PM

I nearly crumbled. Let all those pieces loose. Wondering. Needing to know. How real it is. Your everything.

I made myself sick with so much business. Again. On another saturday. Morning swallows night in that fitful way. Again and again, you tell yourself, just one more file.

I almost tried to see. To look at those faded photographs. And hear what the pictures would say. They mumbled from within the frames I have for them. And it sounded too hard to. Too uneven to try to hang them. Put more holes into those frail walls.

And so, the silence was sustained. For another night. Another year. Another lifetime of waiting.

For.

What has never waited for me. And never will.

I lose myself in them even after they're not there. I swim upstream because life is only real when it hurts. Or will soon.

Drawing your broken arteries through stumbling veins.

I look to say again sometimes, but I'm all out of hello's.

And I wonder in what pocket you keep yours.

Or if you'll ever wear those pants again.

And how you might look if you did.

3/04/2006 09:43:00 PM

Turning sharp on his left foot he looked back again. All charged up with departure, but not ready to leave.

I said goodbye and tried to sound like I meant it. I guess it must've worked because he gave me one last gentle hug and was gone before I had the time to gather the courage to say what I'd really wanted.

It doesn't make it untrue. It doesn't detract from what occurred. But every so often I think back and imagine how different it might've been.

Roiling in this darkness. The sound of truth the only song that ever plays all the way through. They look back only once. And that's if you're fortunate.

But that truth was such a long tunnel. I couldn't run fast enough.

And then you were gone.

The phantom of your last pause guards the entrance now.

And I look back from there. Every word a ghost.

Friday 3/03/2006 11:09:00 PM

It all teetered on the verge of being something. As so many things do.

I spent all day trying to do nothing. And not succeeding. In the way that the wind always blows. No matter how softly. In the syntax that defines how the program will function.

Holding the crayon. Unable to press it to the empty page.

I leaned into the shoulder of the moment and asked if it could let me know. How long a time it was in coming. How far it would be until the next.

Like their eyes are when you want to see what isn't there.

No moments of truth to wade softly through. All oceans.

Cold dominion.

With bottoms you'll never touch. And surfaces you'll never reach.

It's only change. That shadow on the mirror's edge as eyes confront. The slope of the rainbow as your treasure hunts you.

And we become what we want.

Or always were.

If we listen to ourselves. And can remember us.

Before this cold dominion took over.

3/03/2006 10:04:00 PM

I want to be. I am. Never knew.

Forgotten.

So long.

We are. Always have been. The last drink.

3/03/2006 09:30:00 PM

Soft totems stand beside. As night blooms under my skin. Drilling its images into palest flesh. Painted faces to represent the ones we don't show.

Not even to ourselves.

I used to ask questions. Untuck those wrinkledwings. Tug on that stubborn switch until the light would show.

They always would say you think too much. And I'd just shrug and wonder how you can ever think enough. Out on these oceans so vast without a boat. Can you swim too far, though you're nowhere near land, simply because you'll never get there? Is that what they meant?

It was different then. I'd look at the sky and see the possibility of flight. I'd look at the road and see all the places it could take me. Back when this skin wasn't so heavy yet and people were a delicacy I was still content only sampling.

Like rare wines you never swallow. Just taste and then spit out. You want the flavor, but not the effect of that beautiful poison.

Thursday 3/02/2006 10:15:00 PM

It was empty, but I told myself it wasn't and just kept trying to extract the last few drops of whatever had been inside that container.

It was empty, but I just kept forgetting. Putting it to my lips and waiting for something real to land on my tongue.

It's not that I didn't know the answer. I just couldn't explain how I got it. Show your work. That's what they always told me in school. But getting there and explaining how you did are two entirely separate talents.

I always used to fill in the answer and then go back and draw in the path. I mean, doesn't that make sense? You can't draw the map before you know your destination.

But every once in a while I couldn't explain how I did.

Get there.

And people are the same. With all their right angles and perpendiculars. Where n is the unknown variable. (this)that over him(her) equals us.

But how did we get there. And how do we get back?

3/02/2006 09:15:00 PM

So people are social creatures?

That's what they say.

Go figure.

It's like there's a cinder block in my brain. And someone's jackhammering it.

He waited an appropriate amount of time before responding to assure her he'd listened.

His hands began to speak before his voice did. Swimming through the space between them like salmon upstream. She watched them and thought of how it reminded her of typing. Words really are better without sound.

Whether you read them or push them out through your fingers. Whether they seep in through your eyes and are burned into your brain or swim through your blood and burst awkwardly out of your fignertips. They're better then. Without out voices and inflection to change the meanings. They are naked and exposed. Ripe and defenseless. And they can only say what you want them to.

"I miss you", was his response. His remedy.

"How can you miss me when I'm right here?"

"But you're not here. You never are."

The jackhammer stopped and the cinder block split into two halves.

She looked toward his hands for the words he hadn't said, but they were motionless. She glanced at his lips and saw nothing in their queue.

She reminded herself once more how useless sound is for communication. Imagined herself scribbling poems on his naked back. The words being traced by the shadows of her touching him.

If he could feel them in his skin would he know then.

Wednesday 3/01/2006 11:01:00 PM

I used to be. Used to know. Where I was wrong. Where I was right.

Everything was paperback. Pre-printed price. Easy to read. Every paragraph knew where the metaphor was going.

Old jeans easily remember how to fit.

Now it's just a decision I make based on how hard it is to fall asleep.

I used to hear the music. Now it's just the sound.

Emptying bagppipes. Spitting out failing melodies.

And I hardly listen. To the sounds they make. So much forgetting still to do.

She said she was gone, but I didn't believe her. Because that's what people say. Especially when they want you to notice that they're leaving.

We are tangled in each other. Trapped in the knots.

3/01/2006 10:22:00 PM

It's a swinging door. Every moment. Passing into and out of. The breeze from its constant movement your only indication that it ever was. In or out. There or gone.

No proof. Only The things around them they've altered. The shape of the light as it cascades down barren walls. The tick of the keys are you tap out another silent song.

No proof. Because there's no such thing.

Just evidence. For the trials.

Arguments. Convictions. Acquittals. Speculation. Eyewitnesses. But no proof.

Of anything.

I sat there in my pajamas and I challenged the silence to prove me wrong. Thinking so loud that I knew it could hear every thought. It just kept repeating everything I had not, but always meant to say.

I dropped the needle into the groove, but it wasn't weighted properly and skated over the entire scene. Actors frozen upon their stage. Dialogue halted.

The kind of pause that. That carefully enunciates every breath.

As if we were waiting.

For something to be said.

But the words would not oblidge us.

The doors were always open. Free to pass through from either side. There was always an entrance. Or an exit. Depending on what you wanted.

We only lacked the stairs.

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