i cannot fight her.
10/14/2010 at 3:28 PM
I cannot win against the growling, lurking creature in the creases of my own grey matter. I have met her and she knows me well. All my attempts to contain her cruelty, her wanton flights of fancy, her absurd churlishness and childishness have been in vain. I know not what to do, or whom to tell. I know what she wants from me, and I have no power to give it to her. I cannot even give it to myself. She yearns air unsoiled, sights unseen, people untrammeled- things that may prevent this intellectual paralysis. She cannot be immersed in these dusty books and souvenirs of often-conquered territory. The rotting scent of mental atrophy has reached her already, and she pounds her fists against the contours of my skull in futility and begs for freedom. I have tried arguing, reasoning, and in my desperation, pleading, but she grants no quarter to my grown-up explanations.
She fights me, she will wear me down.
I have nowhere to hide.
She fights me, she will wear me down.
I have nowhere to hide.
In defense of the Indefensible
5/10/2010 at 7:07 AM
i think it's assumed that I will speak up for you now. That I will defend the hated, the malcontent, the mistreated bastards who use their emptiness as an excuse to attack the unexpecting, the unassuming, the naive and innocent. I will lay claim to your favorable traits, I will cover your darkness with flashlight patches and claim that it is not darkness, but complexity that makes evil so difficult to comprehend. I am the bitten hand that offers itself. Coddling the enemy, I hope for justification of my own defenses. I hope you shall prove my deepest fears and my most stalwart admonitions to be true, and I am taken aback in shock and hurt each and every time the viper strikes. I know somehow that this is not my place, that my pretenses of knowledge are weak and my adoration is blind, and yet I still find myself slicing off the ears of your attackers. I wish to become the mindless weapon, lacking in sense and moral hesitation, that can attack or defend these beasts that I have come to love. But I wish no more to see, to understand, what it is you do, who exactly you are and who you shall become. My deepest desire, this: to remain an outsider, a broken and forgotten fencepost on the furthest boundaries from the bloody hunting grounds.
these words fall so far short
4/6/2010 at 6:41 AM
I told you, although I think you were asleep for the first part. You know I love you, I said. I know you know. But I didn't know, not at first. These sorts of things just sneak up on me. But the thing is, and you probably don't know this because, you know, most people don't, but I've always had this thing about touching people, like since I was young. I'm bad at it, it makes me sort of nervous, unless I know the person really really well. Otherwise I don't like touching. Like ever, at all. I said, to emphasize, since you were curled up behind me and couldn't see me making my serious face. Like- what's the word for bear? I asked, growling and making the universal two-hands-raised-with-fingers-clawed symbol for "bear." Ay-uh, you mumbled, and I could hear your eyes were closed, but you still knew what I meant. Yeah, ayı, I said, um, like a trap? Like a bear trap? And I snapped my hands together, once, twice, for effect. That's what hands feel like to me. And I get this bad feeling, in the pit of my stomach. And your breathing changed, subtly. You don't like? You asked, your hand sliding down my arm, tentatively touching my fingers, testing my resolve. No no that's the thing, I replied, the thing is, you're different.
Mmmmh, you said, and your fingers laced between mine, one oversized fist, the size of two hearts beating together. Good. And honestly, that moment, with your hand covering mine, that was all I wanted in the first place.
Mmmmh, you said, and your fingers laced between mine, one oversized fist, the size of two hearts beating together. Good. And honestly, that moment, with your hand covering mine, that was all I wanted in the first place.
and the forecast is bleak
3/5/2010 at 6:25 AM
So I'm trying to forget. I've hidden your shirt in the back of my closet, the one I slept in when I was lonely, the one that still smelled like you, even after I washed it. That necklace you gave me is buried in a drawer, under scraps of paper and all the things I've forgotten I once planned to do. I still notice when I catch myself doing something you hate (and there are so many things you hate), but I don't make myself stop anymore. I no longer wonder what you'd think of my new shoes, or if all the times you wear that sweatshirt you feel a little closer to me. I know somehow you have managed to separate the parts of your life that I affected from the feelings you have for me, or the feelings you once had, and I'm trying to learn to do the same. The internal dialogues have slowly ceased- first the sad ones, then the angry ones, and now just the mundane things that make me think of you. Like any old wound, I hardly ever remember you. But in the overcast moments just before the clouds burst, just before the downpour, just before I'm drenched as I'm walking home from school- sometimes, there's still a hollow, empty ache. Sometimes I can still feel you.
with hope, if nothing else
1/31/2010 at 1:25 PM
To love, and to endure wordless doubt. To feel the distance like the hollow ache of a missing limb. To know, like a bloodstream memory, that seeping loneliness that comes with suffering and time. To belong in a place that you cannot love, and to love a place where you will never belong- this is the truest form of homelessness. This is what it is to be alone.
what i've been meaning to say
12/14/2009 at 9:08 PM
So let's talk about it now, the things that we don't say. Let's talk about pain and suffering and wanting to die. Let's go over the old stories, the ones rotting in your core, that you can't forget and you can't forgive and you can't, you can't let go of. These are the things we need to talk about. Not the weather, not your class schedule or your mother's newest remodeling job. Some things are real and brutal, and they'll linger under the surface until you force them up and out, like a parasite you can't breathe without. One conversation at a time, let's make this world a better place. Let's make this the beginning of a fresh chapter, one marked by healing and forgiveness. Let's do it, okay?
out of my comfort zone and into the political
11/30/2009 at 8:06 PM
The world is varied and people are different and everything about it is BEAUTIFUL, and I don’t understand why people can’t see that. Why politicians and red tape mean that tiny little details of life become hurricanes or finger-pointing hypocrisy because when somebody doesn’t fit, or somebody doesn’t belong, then somebody should make them go away. I WANT TO SEE DIFFERENCES. I want humanity to spread itself across a spectrum so wide and broad that its ends will never be found. I want to see what happens when lots of people are the same, and lots of people aren't, and nobody fights to put up walls between this kind of people and that kind of people. I respect the law and the need to be governed because anarchy helps no one, but I cannot respect the inclination to subvert uniqueness for the sake of what some would like to call the norm. We have no mode, no median, and no average when it comes to our style of existence! There is no measure of mindset and there can be no regulation of worldview. STOP TRYING. Freedom, in the absence of harm to others, should not be curtailed for the sake of uniformity. Or for anything else! There is room for all to breathe and pray and love and exist and there is no need for fences. If the actions of your neighbor occupy you more than your own actions, GET A LIFE. The government is made to protect people from other people, but not from their ideologies! Culture is fluid and it is changing every moment, and locking windows and doors will not keep it still. Locking hearts and minds will not stop its motion.
You can run but you cannot hide.
You can fight but you cannot win.
Culture will not remain static or satiated.
We are not finished here.
You can run but you cannot hide.
You can fight but you cannot win.
Culture will not remain static or satiated.
We are not finished here.
panic rising, sweat it out
5/5/2009 at 5:12 AM
I've got this funny habit see, I say what I mean and I mean what I say and even in dishonesty I've got a point to prove. Candor seeps from every open pore, and lately I've been sweating up a storm. I'm transparent, even more in what I try so hard to conceal. You can see this skin and spirit, this beating heart and pulsing passion, what I hold back and try so hard to ignore. I can't figure you out, I can't see past my own reflection in your mirrored aviators, I can't see the message in the meaning of your tinted intonations, because see I've misplaced my needle in your haystack of a head. I don't know where to turn with this and my palms are sweating, dizzy, and all I see is your shark tooth smile behind those glassy shades-
hmmm?
no darling, you're never fake.
hmmm?
no darling, you're never fake.
man down!
4/29/2009 at 10:58 AM
Have you been up yet? It's a war zone out there, I laugh, only half in jest. I wouldn't roll out of bed just yet. You don't want to see what's out there. But we've got to clean up. We've got to clean something. Clean everything.
Have you seen it yet? There are cigarette butts and they won't stop staring. They're crumpled up and angry, preparing to lash out at me, accusing me of crimes I don't yet remember. The newports have assembled and they're screaming at my attempt at ignorance- they've drawn my attention to the massacre of lemon slices surrounding oil slicks smelling of tequila. The marlboros are dispersed, comforting the hearts and spades left like orphans on the sticky countertop. The parliaments, ever so aloof, won't stop pointing, pointing to the empty bottle, pointing to the empty bible, hollering my unconscious blasphemy. I've got a qur'an on my bookshelf and it's glaring at me, daring me to take more than a passing glance. It's got issues with my bible and they fight like angels in my dreams. Almonds mourn their lost innocence, which hangs in the air like an unanswered question. They will have no answer; there is neither rhyme nor reason, no escape nor restitution. The cigarettes eavesdrop and they chatter, they congregate and judge severely as cigarettes are wont to do, as the forlorn beer cans nod serenely, tipping to one side and another, like so many tired old men at the end of another long night.
Have you seen it yet? There are cigarette butts and they won't stop staring. They're crumpled up and angry, preparing to lash out at me, accusing me of crimes I don't yet remember. The newports have assembled and they're screaming at my attempt at ignorance- they've drawn my attention to the massacre of lemon slices surrounding oil slicks smelling of tequila. The marlboros are dispersed, comforting the hearts and spades left like orphans on the sticky countertop. The parliaments, ever so aloof, won't stop pointing, pointing to the empty bottle, pointing to the empty bible, hollering my unconscious blasphemy. I've got a qur'an on my bookshelf and it's glaring at me, daring me to take more than a passing glance. It's got issues with my bible and they fight like angels in my dreams. Almonds mourn their lost innocence, which hangs in the air like an unanswered question. They will have no answer; there is neither rhyme nor reason, no escape nor restitution. The cigarettes eavesdrop and they chatter, they congregate and judge severely as cigarettes are wont to do, as the forlorn beer cans nod serenely, tipping to one side and another, like so many tired old men at the end of another long night.
center of a capital of a conglomerated country
3/10/2009 at 10:48 AM
I turn away just as the mosque wails its stale recorded message of devotion to a cause ancient as the sunlight slanting through the riot-geared police force protecting such innocent civilians (this time, I'm an innocent civilian) from yet another mimicry of democracy in the form of demonstration, the cops barking orders as the dogs stay in step, more menacing in their silence than the angry protest signs could ever be with their mottos, free of meaning, that block my view of the park and the sky and the chattering passers-by who speak in a language still foreign, and as I push away the shoe-shine boy and little girl selling stolen tissue packets I ponder on how these past two months have taught me much in the city that's named for an anchor because it holds the country down, but I've learned nothing more significant than this: there's still so much I've got to learn.
in other words, "woof."
2/23/2009 at 12:07 PM
I outgrew rabbits and squirrels at a young age. Cars, buses, nothing made a lasting impression. Toys and treats, balls and sticks and frisbees. The dust bunnies and sunbeams occupied me for a time- but never satisfied me. Then one night I saw the moon, and I knew I'd never seek the day again. Longing's like a drug, you know. So if you're asking why I howl, I guess... I've always needed something to chase.
thoroughly unromantic
2/23/2009 at 10:06 AM
I won't spew poetry about stars and planets and longing as a gravitational pull. You are no magnet to draw me, no flame to entrance me, no nectar to tempt me. Rather you are like the downward pull of tired eyelids- negligible at first, and yet the longer I resist the more likely I am to fall asleep at the wheel. In your voice I hear the ambulance, the beeping heartbeat monitor, the approaching death of self and former, selfish dreams. And yet I keep coming back for more.
starlight, starbright
2/13/2009 at 6:18 AM
And I'm afraid now that I can't live without this, one more door that I should have left, like well enough, alone. And I worry here by candlelight that I've got one more secret that may turn into one more lie, beautiful and tragic and one more reason to feel alone. Is this what I've become- a spark falling from a distant balcony, beautiful in its tenacity and short-lived effervescence? I am alight and aloft, a shooting star, wondrous in the right place and moment. Only as the stars align do I take my position as a sign from above, a life-changer, a bearer of much portent. Look closer and I am but the debris of something greater, something that might have been- but here, in my last moments of glowing, blinding energy, here is where I am most visible and most meaningful. In my brief, burnt existence I make even the stars seem plain. Here, I am unique and lovely. Here, I am memorable and worthy. Don't stare too hard, and I will be your burst of something supernatural and free. Before I pass beyond, I want to be something. I want to change someone. I want to save you.
but what if I'm not a bird?
2/11/2009 at 6:14 AM
Like a swallow leaning from a sheer cliff face, I fear this is the slow beautiful glide that ends inevitably in a splatter of unfulfilled hopes and promises on the canyon floor below. My wings have not yet developed, I must rely on you to be everything I've dreamed of, though I know I'll never learn to fly alone. I long to let go and soar, but it is such a dreadfully long way down and just once I want to feel your hand in mine before we hit the bottom.
no more bushels
2/5/2009 at 12:09 PM
I believe in beauty even when I can't see it and joy even when I can't feel it and I know love and faith and truth are real and will prevail, even as I feel this old familiar despair creeping up into the unprotected edges of my consciousness. I believe in trust and hope, even in the bleak corridor of loneliness and fear. I will not surrender to the terrors that whisper in the dusk as each new day wanes into the same darkness that enveloped me the night before. I will not abandon all that I know to be right and good and honest. These are the realities I will embroider into my soul, a soft but tangible reminder that in the cold and dark and empty places, this is not all that exists. I will be the shining lighthouse in the ocean and the pointing star in the night sky, if it takes everything I am. There's beauty out there somewhere, and I've got faith someday I'll find it. I've got faith, because it's all I've got left. I've got faith, and it's enough.
and in the end, all we've got is silence.
2/3/2009 at 6:12 AM
I have learned that there is no glory in this, no romance in the last final moments. There is no peace, nor is there that rumored calm acceptance. Instead, in the last panic-stricken breaths there is a desperate scrambling, spiked with resistance and futility and horror. No soothing dispatch of hard-earned wisdom, no final declarations of love, just clawing fingernails, heaving lungs and only one thought echoing in this, the last moment of existence:
If only -
If only -
we should all dance while we still have time
1/15/2009 at 12:00 PM
For people living on a different planet they stand awfully close and I'm starting to realize we're all bubble people in our own way, and our reflections are the only thing we see. Ethnocentric to the core, there are no differences that don't have their roots in sameness. We have the same belief in our superiority, our position in the center of the universe, and of course in our innate uniqueness. And I'm not just talking culturally. It makes me feel small to realize that everyone, everywhere feels secure in their overinflated place on the planet. We are so tiny and so insigificant my friends, and we trade politics in petty words and weapons while the stars roll their eyes and laugh at our blink of a generation and its exaggerated self importance. No matter how much is accomplished by one life, it is nothing to the majority of world- even in this era of glocalization and interconnected individuality. And yet I feel no despair at this, but rather a strange sense of freedom- the loosening of chains of self importance and the release from expectations. I am just one tiny nobody, and that is awfully beautiful.
four thousand
1/9/2009 at 11:26 AM
And you never know what you've got until you spend all your time looking for it and you never feel lost until you've got no way to be found. I believe that there is more than this, that distance and time are cruel but they are not the end. I believe in you, in the way I feel the hair on the back of my neck stand on end and the way some things are only visible from the corner of my eye. This ending will not finish us, there is no finality here, there is no death, just the unknown. I will embrace this change and this time and I will not fight it, though everything in me screams for the familiar. I miss you in the way my arms feel empty, my heart feels itchy, my clothes fit funny and I'm always trying to remember something and always looking for something, and that something is you, and you're far away. The way my tears hit the pillow on my first night here and the way my smile fits my face differently since I'm away- these are the ways I know I'll never replace you. The spaces between heartbeats, mankind's first understanding of time, this is how I'll measure our time apart. Not how the edges of your image (that's imprinted on my eyelids) will blur around the edges, not in how long it takes me to forget your laugh, but how many times my heart will keep its ragged tempo. I will measure distance in my ability to persevere, in my ability to go about life without you. I won't count down the days or hours or tears until we meet again. I will not cry.
Or at least, this is what I tell myself as I fade to dreams on a dampened pillow. Once again.
Or at least, this is what I tell myself as I fade to dreams on a dampened pillow. Once again.
I don't hear you in the falling leaves, not anymore.
12/29/2008 at 2:30 PM
my newest finale, we keep fighting through the brokenness and again, three hours later, i find myself screaming at a blackened sky and throwing pebbles at the stars because they're still not fucking listening and they're still not fucking mine, and i know that you are out there somewhere and you're not thinking of me, not listening to me, that I am one more face in one more crowd and I'm sick and fucking tired of being forgettable and replaceable. I'm tired of coming home to new people who mean more than i do, to new lips and new problems and new faces with new names that sound funny in my mouth, not far different from the strange feeling of your tongue against my teeth, drunken gnawing as we dig for meaning and we haven't quite got it right just yet, so you keep digging your hands through my hair and your tongue through my lips because the one you want isn't home, isn't here, isn't enough and after six drinks miles away seems a good enough reason to dig for something new. And again I find myself clawing at the midnight treetrunks because they won't answer me and neither will you, and all I want is for someone to think about me when i'm not around, to remind me that I mattered once upon a time to someone, to them, to you, that my witty turn of phrase and penchant for alliteration wasn't wasted on this fucking planet and that someone sees through my false attempts to hide, to run away, because we are born and die alone, but eventually this independence bullshit's gotta go. I want someone to know the name I call myself, I want someone to ask me why I act the way I do and someone who thinks about me even when I'm not around, because I'm not gonna be around much anymore. I want someone to be interested, to be sincere, because I'm just so tired of being a face that everybody recognizes and no one ever memorizes- being forgettable, being replaceable, being just one more mistake on a list someone makes when december grows long and we've got nothing better left to do tonight.
reflections on fog in my headlights
12/28/2008 at 3:38 AM
and again i feel the fading. dreams and optimism, creativity and joy and the little daily perks of knowing my existence means something to someone else, or at least hoping that maybe it might, maybe someday, maybe maybe. Fading self into background noises and foggy streets where we blur the lines of friendship one more time, for old times' sake, for next month and next year and all the chances we won't have to make the same mistakes once again. i feel the colors dim and i can feel the words come slower, more rigid and less playful, and it frightens me to know that this is the effect of one person and one very short semester. i can't remember why i loved waking up and why i tried so hard, but i know it had something to do with you.
Fading is harder each and every time.
Fading is harder each and every time.
fuck the transmission, this baby can MOVE
12/24/2008 at 8:35 PM
we spin around a corner, jerk, squeal, start again, and I gasp and you grab the handlebar, arms almost touching as you focus on the road and not the regulated distance in our breathing in and out while i try to focus elsewhere and reflect on how i just want to be a little more original, a little less forgettable, a little more mysterious, and a little less regrettable and i know you're of the opinion the responsibility is driven not by will but by determination and nose-to-the-grindstone fervor for the right thing, not the real things like my fingers brushing your retreating cheekbones and the trembling corners of your eyes and imagination making leaps into the future that is not in store for us even as i telepathically chant that this is not how our story ends, but with seven original stories in all the world what chance do we really have?
from one self fulfilled prophet to another
12/19/2008 at 8:39 PM
future seer, fortune teller, girl with all the answers, they call me with their problems and their self inflicted cancers and I write a prescription, I give absolution, I am a tear-stained shoulder and a crown of thorns and you know I'm here, there, here and so terribly reliable like a cricket on your shoulder I can always point the way, although listening isn't easy and forgetting isn't hard and I'm always just one bad mistake away from being the necessary shoulder yet again. So what happens when the shoulder needs a shoulder and the fortune teller needs her future changed? dream reader, mind bender, baby I am not all surface and I wish I could be, you make it look so free and easy and I find myself leaking my secrets to you like the downy feathers on the last night's mattress where I broke my fast with someone else, because all those secrets never granted intimacy, no skin to skin realities to our toe curling conversational climaxes, and again I turn to first name only strangers on whom I shudder my way to relief, eyes closed because all I see is you, and tonight I'll drink my dreams to blackness because I don't need a dream reader to know that in the end they all point to you.
fourteen days, by which of course I mean tomorrow
12/18/2008 at 11:35 PM
this is the art of forgetting, the art of letting go, the beautiful performance piece where you say you want to be alone and I say fine and you say fine and we part, and we both know we're full of shit but we never had a hold on each other, not one we could quantify or ever make sense of, not one that other people could see and talk about behind our backs when facebook stati change and they all comment, comment, comment, did you see her wall post about the weather because it was totally an oblique reference to his cowlicked insecurities and her clingy sticky notes and isn't this all just plain silly, because you hate facebook anyhow and I always forget my lines the night before the big exam when you promised not to leave, when we took one last look before catching planes and foreign fevers and changing lives forever, lives that needed meaning which is why we left, why we forget, why can't I just let go? I ask the gasping theater audience.
This is the part where one person claps and lemming-like they all applaud although nobody is sure if this really is the end or just one long fucking ellipsis.
This is the part where one person claps and lemming-like they all applaud although nobody is sure if this really is the end or just one long fucking ellipsis.
share and share alike, really, which is why I keep my curtains open at night
12/17/2008 at 5:38 PM
i believe in the found things, in transience, in looking in my neighbor's window at night because in long run, the creepiness is far outweighed by the human need to not be so alone. I write hope on dusty cars and snow banks because it never really lasts, but goddamn is it beautiful in the meantime. I only ever sing when I've got something important to say and I only ever dance when you start to walk away. The darkest places are where light is most beautiful, where clarity is precious and even the faintest spark becomes a wildfire in our minds because we hang on to the little things, like the short sweet breaths you took before you spoke, before you told me you were leaving, before I knew you were never coming back, but not before I knew it didn't make much of a difference anyways. We stack importance on security and realness and baby, one thing I've learned is that does not exist, that identity is a wash when you walk in and out of lives like temporary closets, and when the magician yanks the curtain away you're gone, again, and we clap like mad and assume that you'll be just around the next corner, really, because who really believes in all this magic shit anyways? The rain never lasts but neither do the flowers, every head's got its own headache but I've got no time for your stupid migraines because my neighbor's left his window open again and really, I just wish I wasn't so alone.
things that make me smile
11/10/2008 at 10:31 PM
october and november are always hard months for me.
things that make things easier:
when the song playing on my ipod ends just as I walk into my room.
packages that arrive just in time to distract me from life.
strangers that smile as you pass on the street.
seeing thoughts pass unspoken between other people.
people who embrace being outsiders.
deep, unadulterated belly laughs (my own and others').
waking up to a clear sunrise reflecting off the skyline.
the way a cigarette glows and glitters.
discovering something new about myself.
late night talks about old memories.
children's books.
people who whistle in public.
the way certain smells bring back memories.
urban art in unlikely places.
reconnecting with people.
connecting with people.
necking with people.
people.
things that make things easier:
when the song playing on my ipod ends just as I walk into my room.
packages that arrive just in time to distract me from life.
strangers that smile as you pass on the street.
seeing thoughts pass unspoken between other people.
people who embrace being outsiders.
deep, unadulterated belly laughs (my own and others').
waking up to a clear sunrise reflecting off the skyline.
the way a cigarette glows and glitters.
discovering something new about myself.
late night talks about old memories.
children's books.
people who whistle in public.
the way certain smells bring back memories.
urban art in unlikely places.
reconnecting with people.
connecting with people.
necking with people.
people.
