(never again)

my girlfriend wants me to write in black and white
stray the obtuse to another universe
and i don't know if i can, but
i told her i'd try.

you see
the thing is
the problem exists
or the conflict permeates
i don't like to see you in permanent colors
i much prefer the shades
the maybes
the whatevers and the
i don't really know if that happened,
the
i don't know if you really exist.

in my world, here/now
you fall from gravity
disperse into foreign, untouchable lands.
i prefer it that way
after spending years entrenched in your solitude
your whims and disastrous mess
of a world:
a world i still think isn't concrete, isn't
real.

i said goodbye to you
when i told you "enough"
when i realized your lies and exclusions
far outweighed any semblance of truth you could muster.
because i guess that's the catch
your reality isn't real
which defeats the purpose of real-ity anyway.

if you want my truth, i can deliver it:
yes, i loved you.
yes, i believed in us.
yes, i tried to fix you.
yes, i realize, now, how fucking stupid i was.

ownership.
you were never mine.
you could never untangle yourself from the demons,
from the temptations, from the want
of others.
you taught me to self-exist
to not depend
to look at you through eyes clouded with regret.
you taught me
to leave.

what we had was disaster
imprinted with tiny stamps of affection
blistering fragments of love
or something like it.
i don't believe in perfect
and hadn't before you
so this mess you left me with
didn't make me believe
less or more
or at all.

sure, you loved me
in the way that only you could love.
not with your hands or mouth,
not even with your heart,
but with some fractured piece of your mind
that was bloodied and bent.
you wanted to love me.
i get that.
clearly.
and i loved you with most of my heart
except for that piece that was reserved for another.
it was love, okay. i accept.

but that is love
i wouldn't wish on anyone.

i tried to save you
in saving us.
i wanted to breathe life back into you
or make you see the world
the way i wanted to see it.
i wanted you
to be whole
and you couldn't do it.
that's fine -- i accept.
but, just for the record:
you didn't have to drag me through that with you.
i would have been fine,
better,
without it.
without you.

i wish i could write, now,
in this haze of blue moon,
what i loved about you but all i can think of
is your smile.
and how rare it was, so of course
when i actually saw it, in its realness,
i loved it.

i don't hate you, just so you know
but you don't
and i don't care much either way.
you broke these fantasy bones
tempered my optimism
and you made me weak.
but you and i
in our last goodbye
were finite
and i was free.

chris pureka would say
you were a lesson in losing
and lesson in letting go.
i wish i had known that
in june of 2006
or august of 2006 (i was blind then).
the decembers, always the decembers.

you see:
i don't know what was true.
your lies
and exclusions
exemptions
counteract any act of kindness
or love.
with you,
i don't know what was real
so it's easiest to simply say:
nothing
was real.

and yet you rest in me
this dark, troubled muse.
we bounce together
struggle against our mouths
you want to say no
and i keep saying
yes, yes, yes.
yes, breathe,
yes, release.
there is no space for you inside, here.
yes, let go.
yes.

In vino--- veritas

6:26 pm: Commence live-blogging of my night with plastic cups, wine, and maybe a Xanax because my neck still hurts and I can't seem to release its tension. I just purchased $63 of wine. No, I will not drink it all by myself in one night. See how I did that? Added that qualifier__ in one night. Amazing!
So here's what's going on. I'm dating myself. I've done this before; it's a great way to prepare myself for something/one. Not that I'm actively doing that. Slyly. Because the sky's cloudy. It's peppered with flecks of sunlight but I see lightning, too. Do I ever not speak in metaphors? I mean, seriously.a
For the record, I'm drinking out of a yellow plastic cup from Mama Kwan's in Kill Devil Hills, NC. Mama Kwan's is in Kill Devil Hills, that is. Not me. I'm in fucking blustery Northeast wherever.
Last night, I went to see Girlyman. Probably one of the most amazing Girly shows I've seen- and I've seen them, easily, 12 times. This is the fourth time I've seen them where I saw them last night, and I love it there because it's so incredibly small & therefore intimate. Love love love.
When I left, I realized I didn't want to talk to anyone. I was suppose to meet my friends, out. I didn't. I do that a lot. I went home instead and couldn't care less.

6:32 pm: My plastic cup is empty. I don't really wish I could say that my heart is empty. Because it's not. It's alive.

6:34 pm: Glass half-full; just killed the Blue Fish ... Riesling, I think. It was mostly killed from that night last week. The hot one. I don't think I drank any of it, then.
When I went to refill my glass NO MY CUP MY PLASTIC CUP, I found my black & white cat on top of the refrigerator. Convinced she was trying to steal my food. Asshole.

6:43 pm: I'm fine all day, I think of you at night. I. Love. Girlyman. When they played "Hey Rose" last night, which I totally quoted after aforementioned hotness of nights, Ty said: "This is my don't-knock-it-till-you-try- it song." KNEW IT. So appropo.

6:50 pm: Okay, let's talk about Vermont for a minute. "Everything's Easy" sometimes makes my heart jump a little, nothing major anymore. But I always think of Great Lakes when I hear this song. Obviously. I think it's really fucking great that I don't miss her. I also think it's really fucking great that I learned a lot from that relationship-- things that I will carry with me for a very long time.
What I find "not great" is the fact that my heart is so goddamn brittle. I don't particularly want to love anyone but that's almost a lie but anyway. Trust is a huge, huge thing for me now. I don't know how to trust anyone with my body, with my heart, with my anything. So I build these awesomely towering walls and push people off whenever they get too close to the top. I've done that a lot since, um, April. I don't really want to let anyone in. Okay, so that's a lie, too, but the truth: I don't want to let just anyone in.
What I also find "not great" is how I still want to punch that cunt directly in her lying psychotic face. Let it go, woman. Let it the fuck go.

6:58 pm: My plastic cup hath emptied itself. Again. I hope the next victim is cold enough for consumption.

7:10 pm: I finished the last bit of the Blue Fish-- which was actually a Pinot Grigio. Just opened the Yellow Tail Riesling. I think I preferred the Pinot.
Here's something I have some feelings about- this song: "Sleeping to Dream." It was played recently, after a night that I would like to call the Missed Opportunity of 2009 that Later Turned Into the Great Night of Holy Shit You Kiss Like You Mean It of a Few Days Later 2009. SO about that.
I have a lot of feelings about this, obvs, because I'm not suppose to have feelings about it, so of course I have feelings about it. That's how I roll, friends. That "not suppose to have feelings" part comes from a conversation that one or both parties may have muddied in the week that has passed due to wine and rationalization, however, it was said: No Feelings. Well guess what.
Wait, I have feelings about suppose. Is it supposed or suppose? I feel confused. Let's talk. I mean it. Not in that "we need to talk" doomsday way, but: let's talk. Let's lay it on the table with our hands (do you remember reaching for my hand?) and our words (we have plenty of those but mine tangle away whenever you're around but you talk a lot, especially after some wine, and I think that fucking rules I am sooo ordering a pizza in like 10 minutes). OH JESUS CHRIST GUESS WHAT JUST CAME ON MY iTUNES. I don't know why it's so hard to consider this
But back to my feelings about SLEEPING TO DREAM. I really liked waking up next to you. I liked waking up in those 2ish hours of sleep from near-daybreak to dawn when our arms were smashed together, sticking together actually, and I didn't want to peel away and you know what I don't think you did, either. Because you didn't.

7:17 pm: RT @TheDailyLove: If you want to move forward, forgive yourself, forgive them, accept that it happened, and learn from it & move. No moping.
Also: love Catie Curtis' "Strange."

7:31 pm: I want you. Yes, you. You know exactly who you are.

It's 7:44 pm and I'm drunk. DAMMIT! So. Want. Her. In. My. Bed. Right. Now. And may be drunk enough (hah not really) to text that.

8:02 pm: BBM from me to K --> Godfuckingdammit I **** **r
K responds: I know
I just ordered a pizza
HI DEEJ!!!!

8:14 pm: Eagles/Cowboys on the teevee behind me. Gino just Fbook im'd me re: my crush.
Let's talk about My Crush. She is beautiful. Singularly beautiful. She is such a ridiculously cool woman. We have a lot in common. We're compatible. I think she's wicked hot. I don't exactly know how she feels about me. I try super-hard to have zero expectations, and I do mostly okay with that, but listen, about those feelings: I cannot lie, here. I have feelings.

8:59 pm: Okay, everyone. I have consumed some pizza and decided that DEEJ and I are getting married, so I hope no one is offended by that. If you are, you better fucking speak up.
But, okay, truth: I cannot marry Deej when I so obviously want someone else. Deej, I adore you. And if things cease to exist between me & the Obscure Object, you know, we will fucking run away and be amazing together. :-)
I should stop drinking wine now because my stomach hurts already. WOW amateur.
But anyway, about those Feelings That I Said I Don't Have. I lied.
I was just told that if I didn't have feelings, I'd be a cold-hearted bitch. Which is for sure the truth, but the person that told me that doesn't know what I'm talking about, so...

Dear You:
I find you to be completely fucking amazing. I know you don't like hearing that- you seem to not know how to take compliments- but you are beautiful. Every inch of you: beautiful.
The parts of you that you don't like: beautiful.
I could, and will, luxuriate there all day/night/ever.
I wish you were here now.
Listen, seriously, I know I said I don't want feelings involved but I think you know I already have them. And I don't feel like hiding them. But I do because I'm doing this thing where I sit back and be "cool" while you process or do whateverthefuck it is but hang on my bff is here and she is kidnapping me so I have to go.

Tonight:

All you need to do, now, is send this simple word: Yes.

And if you do that, I will be there in less than 10 minutes.

Shameless because I want you more than I can say, and it's edged into something I can only show. With my hands, my mouth-- my words are secondary, missiles for a steady war of desire. I can't help it. I've tried. I can't.

I want you, you you, want, want: You.

It could be slow. I could kiss you with such sweetness, I could strip your layers one by one, seep into your body and melt into you.

Or it could be fast. (I generally think this is how it would be because I have been holding this in for so long.) Furtive. Passionate. Purposeful. Goal-oriented, and the goal is to fuck you until you can't think, breathe, feel. & all you can see is us.

To fuck you would be simple. To make love to you-- something entirely different, and:

I would be happiest with either.

these things

i want you here, to rest between my words
and to arch between my hands.
the weary path of secret signals
threads around the spaces between us.
and there is nothing within
save for passing thought
and the heady complexity
of trespassed desire.

so simple, so finite,
so thorough and thick.
i do not wish to coat this desire
with lies and presupposed suggestion.
i think you should know
this want? this yen?
this tireless repeat of your skin
flushed with mine, wrapped beneath
the lifting air of sunset, sunrise,
midday, evening: everywhere?

you and i:
maybe we should.

and i was brave / but you didn't know

weeks ago, i went to see melissa ferrick.
and i feel in love with her opening act. it was easy
because she was self-deprecating and had a beautiful voice, lyrics
that flittered past skin-deep, penetrating pieces of fragments of my shattered
everything where nothing
could make sense but sense itself.

tonight is a night, for me, full of riesling and xanax
because i cannot clear my mind but more importantly
my jaw is throbbing and there is no escape
because every time i stop myself from clenching my teeth
i think of you
and then i clench again
and the pattern continues, unlocking all my memories
and all the could-bes and maybe might still becomes.
but i know you don't want me as i want you
and even if you do
the way you hide it could shake me for years (as i guess it
already has), decimate my every caustic sense, the things that
work and the ideas that float. and my skin
floats, my hands are full of helium and i have misplaced
my legs. i don't care past the image of you and me,
the rattled, makeshift escalated chorus of coulds and woulds.

and this is my right now.
this perpetual itching ache, the daggers deflecting my heart,
and the unsteady waiver of my hands, hours later.
because they shook for forty-three minutes after i told you
that we were writing poems in class, and it would be quiet. you were hiding (my
face to yours, our palms barely reaching- we are
so terrifyingly alike that it breaks me apart and rips me into shape-shifting
glued shards of you[me] who this is and who we want to be) and your presence
was visceral, tangible, a veritable shake
to the core, i cannot stop drinking this wine even though
my heart
has returned to my chest's cavity, to its rightful place,
limping back from its sometime residence near my toes.
i cannot tell if my heart:
does it soar or does it fall,
dilating and storming through my body at the mere shock
of seeing you before me.

i do not yet understand
what exactly it is about you-
if it IS something or if this is a magical prelude
i have designed in my psyche, an occupation away
from the dismantling servitude of reality. maybe i write
best when i am drunk on riesling and high on xanax, and maybe i write
just as terribly well when i am trembling in syntax
of maybe-love and could-be more than lust.

i have the right idea
but i cannot whisper its fragments into your ear
because we cannot get close enough to see
what all there is we harbor.

my boat is sanctioned in the deepest of lakes;
your yacht sings solo softly in the saturated sea.
we could meet in the middle, not your ground nor
mine. we could spin, there, ribbons of fairytale
and dip our toes into the dazzling wisps of water.
i could swim in you for days.

you startle my senses.
i have broken pens and letters over this deaf infatuation.
i was told to exorcise you from me. exorcise the demons, you wicked
angel. i laughed today.
and my god, your body. your rounding, warming, malleable form.

i cannot recall my first name because this person at the keyboard
is not who i think i ever am.

i said today that i would make you a powerpoint:
"reasons why you should love me." but love is deceit.
love you, i would. adore you, i would.
the powerpoint would have pictures, and i would write you
a poem.
because the obvious amount of poems that i have already crafted
for you is not obvious, because you don't know of them.
which, i guess, is why i told you today:
"come down. it's quiet. we write."
you didn't come down, and i knew you wouldn't, but it's for the best
because forty-three minutes later:
my hands still shook and my breath still evaded me
as my heart thumped into my ankles
and i wish i could tell you.

You always play the madmen poets

Despite my self-imposed moratorium on imbibing alcohol, I totally imbibed last night, and happily so. I haven't gotten that phone call where I say, "Hey chica, ¿que pasa? ... Oh my God, this must have been from Saturday night. I was so [drunk]. Who do you think got it?" [Cue laughing teenage girl receiving the debaucherous picture. Cue my mortification.], so I must be in the clear for Embarrassing Moments of '08. Actually, okay, let's be real. Yes, I had several beers, and subsequently lost track of exactly how many beers I drank. And yes, I did a Pass the Jell-O Shot Power Hour. And then I probably had a few more J-shots. HOWEVER. I avoided the Dirty Girl Scouts because I knew from my Mind Eraser experience a few weeks ago (note: the cause of the self-imposed alcohol moratorium) that I would definitely not so much lose my mind (or the sensation that I have legs, as happened with the Eraser) but would probably lose my shit.

And you know what? No thanks on that.

As always, flutters of Lesbian Drama abounded. I'd told Quack pre-party that I was going to leave at the first sight of L.D. but nothing escalated to the point where I felt the need to flee. I amended the fact that I'd been going around saying that T was dead to me. I observed more than anything, except for when someone was telling me to strip and then, obviously, I became very focused on that. I also gave a lap dance or three to the Obligatory Straight Guy -- in my totally un-serious lap dancing way, of course. I lectured, I laughed, I bemoaned, I challenged, I rocked at beer pong, I avoided, I received a heartfelt inebriated chat about my self-esteem and how I am amazing and deserve better than what I have, I wish I had chocolate chip cookies right now, I saw some of my favorite females, I called first dibs (again), I did not lose my shit. Truly a successful night.

What happened then, are my dreams from last night. Morning. Whatev.

The major dream was the glacier/dock/Olsen twins debacle. I was on the dock, leaving someone somewhere, and the Olsen twins pushed me off of the dock. I landed on a huge sliver of a melting glacier [source: I watched/listened to "An Inconvenient Truth" yesterday morning because I now have 10 channels of Showtime and am basically never leaving my house ever again, what with my Robe and my TV and my general distaste for sub-par human beings] and started slowly gliding away. The water was an intensely dark, deep blue- but not a typical ocean blue / not one that I've seen, anyway. We're talking deep royal blue with silvery flickers of ice. In the dream, I'm thinking Mothereffer, what's with the Titanic eyebrow-freezing? Is this my penance for going by the name of Rose's tortured, pennyless lover? [Side note: Leo & Kate are teaming up again for a new movie. Something about a dysfunctional marriage I think? A glimpse of what life would have been had Jack not perished via an untimely frozen death?] As I float away, perhaps to my own untimely death, all I see is water, that deeply blue should-be-haunting water. My glacier drift bashes into a much larger glacier and I have totally shifted tense which is something I nail my students for all the time but whatev, this is my blog. I shall squash the need to remain in a singular verb tense. /// So I'm now a little, well, soaked from the glacier-bashing incident. But that doesn't matter so much because the water crests over me, pulls me under, and now I am drowning and shaking myself awake with my half-asleep (half-dead?) attempts to inhale properly and deeply.

I'm tired of drowning. Are drowning dreams the same as falling dreams? That whole If You Don't Wake Up Before You Hit The Ground, YOU SHALL PERISH thing? I've had my share of those, too, though not in a while. This is the first nearly-drowning dream, which goes hand in hand with my nearly-choking-to-death-on-my-own-saliva experience from Friday.