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.

To The Ends

You may not understand this, the way my verbs

stick to nouns and decapitate adjectives

as they hurtle themselves up from my throat.

This glitch in communication-

the part where I couldn’t force

ripples of truth from my depths of discontent. Because

I never told you this, and it seems I never will, I can say it

now. Love doesn’t cover those years

but I don’t know what does. I wanted

your body. I wanted you to be

whole.

I wanted to grasp your demons and shatter them,

rip them limb from limb with the nakedness

of my fingers,

the same fingers that warmed the lengths

of your body, the ones that coursed you between

crashes of orgasms, the very fingers

that enclosed your hands

into my palms. And I never managed

to hold you tightly enough. Strapped to me like a bungee cord

and my heart suffered the lurch and drag

of your eclipsed mind from my waning strength, your charred

sense of truth from my hopes

for (our) balance. The stillness of destruction

would not let me breathe.

for later:

"She was certainly the spark for all I've done."

-Iron & Wine

This picture

Sketch the walls first:

the slates of color washed about strips of blank

canvas, unburdened by what may lie in this past

and shielded from what may yet come.

My heart is not like that. It never

has been.

But the walls streamline the scatter of my life

within these boundaries- the flourish of self

locked down by expectations and qualifications.

It doesn't ever matter

because my mind flails like a squid thrown from home.

Space divided by time and conflict; sometimes

I'm glad you're not here.

this is the way I want it:

Today, the scene is a kitchen.

Obviously, there's a level of irony here (where I've come from / where I'm going, if you will-- but also you: you in the wintry kitchen). There's also, you should know, a certain level of unbridled passion hanging over and fueling through this scene.

We are there, alone. Whoever was with us has left. It's dark, late, the season has changed and the warmth around us is a combination of words unspoken and kitchen mechanics.

I don't know who shifts, I don't know which one of us turns.

All I see is the blurred composition of our heads bending into one. Mouths locked, lips intertwined. My hands running the length of your back over and over again; your arms encircling my body with a sear of tentative fire.

It is so vivid today, I can nearly taste it. You. I can nearly taste you.

I'm a storyteller but I'm the worst kind

My muse has escaped me.

It struck me today- midday- because today was Talk About Poetry Finding You day, and there was Neruda with his infinitesimal pinpricks and Giovanni with her no-limits poetic explosion, and there I was: empty-minded.

I wrote because I told myself I had to, because I am trying to be more disciplined with my writing, and mostly because I always promise my poetry class that I will write every time they write. It's a fancy trick, that class. Last fall, I couldn't stop writing. Stanzas were thundering off the margins of my notebook. Theme, purpose, creativity itself deserted me: often, I was more a student than a teacher. I sat in the thick of creation.

But now. Muse? Whipped right out of me. I don't know when/how/why she left me. Maybe she's hiding. Maybe I've accidentally smothered her. Maybe I'm not suppose to know.

(Honestly: I think my muse collapsed into my Obscure Object, which undoubtedly caused some creative complications, and I'm not exactly willing to speak further on that at this moment.)

But a word (or many) about writing + me. I don't know when it began; it has simply always been there. It started full-force circa the age of 12 with highly improbably-set "novels" that I never finished. Then entered the journals, all but one of which are still hiding out in my closet, that captured an unbelievable amount of daily- though never mundane- details. [I forget the simplest things, but my memory is tightly wound and I never forget the things I want to remember.] Somewhere in the last two years of high school, I discovered blogging. My first blog (still alive, at times completely embarrassing, but ultimately totally entertaining- maybe just for me) carries on the tradition of the paper journals: detail after detail after detail. Some coding exists in place of real names, and I confess that I can't decipher all of it. When LiveJournal became "all the rage," I got one. Then a second. Then a third. Over the last eight years, I've opened at least 6 LiveJournals; today just three remain; one is infrequently updated.

Something happened in my transition from blogging to LJ-ing. I lost a part of my writer's voice in the shuffle. It took a couple of years for me to realize this, but I never did anything about it until two summers ago. I then returned to my original blog and brought a modified voice to it: that of someone who had learned the fine art of ambiguity.

But again, something was off. I needed that sensationalized clean slate, so I started fresh with a new blogspot (hello, clean slate). After a significant transfer of posts, the writing started to come back to me. The ambiguity hit a new all-time high, and the coding began again. I took this blog underground last winter or spring, but have since gone "live" once more. I'm still not sure how I feel about that, but I was tired of being undercover. I was tired of letting loose only to pull everything back in.

You can trace all of this ambiguity and vagueness to my Obscure Object- which, admittedly, has taken on a few different forms over the last 10 years. But this is another story for another (blog)post.

Maybe I don't need my Obscure Object-corrupted muse. I generally don't believe that I have one, and truthfully, I'm currently using it as an excuse for my lack of word-flow. Or maybe this is just a concrete representation of how much has changed in my life from this point one, two, even three years ago ----> to how my life exists today. Maybe I need to make more mix cds because I tell the best stories with other people's music and words. Maybe none of this makes sense.

Years ago, at what I now realize was an incredibly important and life-shaping proverbial fork-in-the-road, I wrote this: "...because everything here has been so 'almost.'"

It's true: almost.

this will go unsent.

I won't burden you with specifics, but here's the truth: I'm fucking crazy about you.

I'm not going to belabor my point with citing how long I've felt this way (longer than I'd like to admit) or how it came to be (slow, then with the speed of an undammed waterfall) or what I'd like you to say in response (ok, alright, me too, or not but it doesn't change a thing, it changes everything- for the better, for what we could be).

Years, actually.

Initially, that animal attraction swiped me, cut me. I saw you and I thought: Wow. I'd tell you this, but your reactions to things are so unpredictable, and I can barely say "hi" without stuttering and/or turning a fierce shade of the blush family when I see you, so maybe you'll read this and understand, but I bet not. The reading part. I think you'd understand. You would if you wanted to.

Process(ing)

Yesterday, my Voice of Reason told me that I'm living my life (finally?), and it's clear that the chains that tied me to her (great lakes) have been broken. Busted. Shot apart.

On one hand, I completely agree. I am being spontaneous (ie: trip to San Diego this weekend), social (spending a lot of time with my friends, especially Quack, and even going out), and the truth is, I do feel happy. Happier? Happy. I can't tell the difference, but I know I feel different.

On the other hand, I completely fucking disagree- but only on the chains being broken part. I dream about her (GL) far too often. About twice a week. And in every dream I have about her, we are getting back together. There is always kissing, and usually a segue into sex, if not flat-out nudity and sex. Her mom is almost always there (not during the sex, thankfully), and she makes a point to tell me how happy she is that I'm giving her daughter another chance. One dream, last week, her mom told me that she knows her daughter is doing better, but she's still not great, and she is simply grateful that I'm trying again.

I'm not trying again. There's been no contact since I told her to stop contacting me, and that was at the beginning of May. My birthday went by- no word. Her birthday eclipsed without me giving in. For a while, the fact that she didn't contact me hurt like hell. Some days, it still does. Most of the time, I'm grateful for the clear break.

But to say that the chains are broken... I wish with all my heart that I could agree. 98% of my heart, anyway. There is that lingering piece that still loves her and cares about her, even after all the hurt and bullshit she contributed to. That part, I really can't figure out except that she played such a big part in the past 3 years of my life, and to completely cut off my emotions is quite difficult for me. Don't get me wrong... if I could do it, I would. I know there's no sense in that 2%. It's not a desire to have her back in my life, or a want to pursue her again. It's just feelings that haven't let go.

So maybe the chain has lost its steely bind. Perhaps it's been replaced by fishing wire. Invisible, but it cuts. Those mornings, like today, when I wake up from a dream of reunion? (Last night's took place in my bedroom, but bigger with a sofa, and both of her sisters, and her mom [again, happy], and these weird poster-sized fragmented drawings from presumably the girl that she is with [whether just in the dream, or reality, too]. I ripped up one of the drawings. She then threw both of them away; they were scrawled with childlike writing [ironic] of how much this person loves and misses my ex. After she threw them away, she was struggling to take her shirt off, and she had quite the belly, and I said, "Wow, my love has gained some weight!" And I didn't care, I just wanted her, and we were together. Again.) The mornings don't hurt- they simply weigh heavy on my heart.

But I am moving on. I will see C today, continue to get to know her. I've pretty much dismissed S because of her weird little "I'm not psycho like that" thing, after seeing something that she assumed was something it wasn't. Sounds oh just a bit too similar to Great Lakes.

As for the Obscure Object? I'm at a loss there. My mouth and heart are itching to spill it- especially after what I was told last night, about her spending the least amount of time possible at home. But my brain resists, maybe knowing my heart better than I'd ever thought.

I just hate how I was feeling great over the last week, and today I've got this plague hanging over my head. All because of the tricks my mind plays on me while I'm sleeping.

catch & release

Flash interruption: here and (too quickly) gone. Her eyes were the most crystalline of blues-- and I think they always are, but I've somehow missed that. I don't miss it anymore; ever since she stopped being black and white and edged into this surreal world of piercing color, I can't miss any of it/her. I don't know how she's managed to keep me hooked for 3 years, but my god, the things I still want to do to her: over, and over, and over again.