reflection is not what the mirror provides

in pictures you are a ghost
legs tangled together
a trail of bruises, scratches, unidentified
mishaps line your calves
your thighs disappear beneath the bulk
of your laptop
and a cat stretches his paws
over your kneecap
i can't see your face,
your hands,
not even a torso
to distinguish a beating heart
i deprive you of life
in these shiny rectangles of "memory"
because you can't teach the heart to remember
lies

Every five years or so I look back on my life

.... and have a good laugh.

From 7.21.05:

I want: to shave my head, to cover my arms with ink, to further diminish my curves, to wear my glasses more often, to cut my wardrobe in half, to finish school, to get a job at an accepting alternative type high school where I am free to be who I want to be no matter what the day or month, to write and be successful with my craft.

And I will.


I penned that during the summer before my final year of undergrad work, while I was in a dying relationship with a woman I rarely see, and never speak to, now. I was working in a bookstore, which had its perks. I was fumbling through a world I didn't really fit into. At that time, I think I had about 3 tattoos.

I still want more, I still want to "cover my arms with ink."

I never shaved my head... the hair has grown, been chopped off twice, grown again, and now is short. And that's my comfort. For the moment, anyway. It's me. For now, I think.

I never got rid of my curves. I probably never will. These hips are here to stay, jutting as they are at times. I still don't love my curves, but I do love my body. 90% of the time, anyway, mostly.

I want lasik, not glasses.

I could be on an episode of Hoarders for the amount of t-shirts I own. And I'm not ashamed.

I finished school, quite well, and got that job teaching high school. But: this is not an alternative, terribly accepting place of employment. It's accepting enough, but I'm not protected, and truth be told, this is not the job I want for the rest of my working life. It's not even the job I aim to have in five years. In 8-9 short-ish months, I will be finished with my MA in English and then... then I can begin to find a new path.

Don't get me started on the writing. And how unbelievably it leaves me.



There is just so much more I want to be.

(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.

For H.D.

1

trophies of pain I've gathered. whose sorrow

do I shore up, in trifles? the weavings,

paintings, jewels, plants, I bought

with my heart's hope. rocks from the road

to Hell, broke pieces of statuary, ropes,

bricks, from the city of Dis.

encrusted. they surround me: nest

the horror of each act from which I saved

a dried, dismembered hand. poisoned

amulets, empty vials still fuming. their tears

saved longingly as my own. to have

"lived passionately" this secret

hoarding of passion. Truth turned against itself.

by Diane Di Prima

(my bold; my truth)

(give me my life's passion, in whatever form it may be)

(that passion, of course, outside of the love/lust/beauty passion I cultivate every moment with my love)

and then, there was:

what happened to passion

what happened to my desire to do this thing well,

this thing that pays,

that keeps me moving m-f,

that puts me in the direct line of fight

sometimes fire

i end up so exposed

and raw to the bone.

and passion (when outside these walls

wild and full and pure beauty)

is a misnomer

or i just haven't found it

here.

yesterday my girlfriend

(because she is secretly a lawyer)

made me see sides i didn't want to see

or think about

because obviously of course

she asked me questions

i've already asked myself.

i don't have the answers, really

now or ever

but really

i don't remember why i chose this

other than for my love of language

words

stories

hypotheses

theories

long-winded tall-tongued whirl-shake discussion.

i like symbolism, too.

and symbolically my presence here

is death, i think.

i am not fulfilled.

i am not moving forward.

i am entirely stagnant and impatient

save for those brilliant moments

the ones that re-root me

and answer "why?" with "yes."

when i get the urge to escape

wanting to run away

buy a farm

live in a tree

pack my cats (and my girl) and go

it's clear:

i need change.

so i dream of the west coast

of beginnings and continuations

of a slate unmarred by

a reign of unholy terror

sandwiched between attack dogs

and cannons too loose to trust.

i think maybe that is the worst part

that i have nowhere to go, here.

they have taught me to trust no one, not

a one of them.

largely because

they don't appear to trust me.

i have to be professional

in 45 small minutes

i have to buck up

slap a smile on

get my shit together

and be who i am

while being who they want me to be.

in a trickle of honesty

i don't know how i'm going to pull that off

it's too early in the year to cry

over such petty, bullshitty things.

or miscommunications.

or an intended-to-be helpful chat.

i tell my people

to suck it up

and move on.

they don't always listen

and apparently

neither do i.

putting the damage on

Sometimes I read things that I wrote and think

how naive can you be, really?


Incredibly, apparently.
Wow, past, how you slid right in beneath my radar and corrupted me into scenes of love, leaving me, ultimately, with sienna-tinged memories that belie the truth I could never--

then--

see with my eyes open, closed, squinted, or blinded.

Love, & its shades, its forms & malformations: each time, yes, it was love.
But each time was different. I think
the body, the mind/heart
train us to forget the straight-edge fine-line details
and live instead in a smear that shows
feelings existed
but little detail to frame a reference.
This is better than the last
or that was nothing compared to this
I think lies I told myself once upon a handful of years ago.

But:
This (here/now/Her) is incredible love.
Its excitement rivals any other because
there is no doubt, no fear,
no shades of grey.

the hunt: scent

My fingers smell like ginger, a vestige of the inari I just ate even though my stomach is in a State of Civil Unrest because it's an unruly bitch like that.

But -- anyway -- the ginger:

it reminds me of you.

And not because you ate some last night

because you didn't smell like it

but rather

like camping, sticky-sweet burnt sugar,

like air and desire and the utterly unmistakable

scent that is yours, yours alone,

that I want to drown in each time it slips

beneath my nose

trap it, keep it there,

always.

I like you best, us best, love best.

Like the first time I introduced you

to ginger & inari.

Snowstorm, I think, you gave me that look

like, really? You really want me

to eat this?

Or when we tried it at the sushi place

the other week

and you said "it's just like Wegmans."

Or when I got so excited about finding

ginger chews

at Queens

only to discover that they're actually

kind of disgusting and spicy-tangy

to the extreme.

And when I sink

into your skin

be it night, noon, morning,

(anywhere, any-when)

not wanting to come up for air

just melting,

breathing,

it is you

that I love best.

I had to find you / tell you I need you /

...tell you I set you apart. [coldplay]

The only thing I know about where we're going is that we're going there together. & aside from space and waste and life's blind fury-- I know we'll get there.

When, I don't know. Don't really care. Isn't time irrelevant, isn't it lose around its edges?

Don't we move between seams and hems and zippers?

One thread tug, one sheer slice, one empty escape.

I am yours.

Blind-sided Highway

Today, I cannot focus. And I am really, really trying.

Because today: I am stuck in yesterday.

I am stuck on your lips- such a gentle, quiet movement- resting on my neck. I am stuck on the feel of your palm drawing lines from my ankles to my hips, and back again, up again, back, up, again.

And your legs pushing against mine. The contrast of your paled skin against my skin that has sat beneath too many rays of sun and seems to be slightly burnished year round.

I used to think I could write you out of me, and that thought consistently collided with a fear that, yes, I'd someday be able to write you out of me- without ever touching you.

Now, I can't feel fear. I can only feel you. Your touch and mine, slinking together. Your hands in my hair- somehow always a surprise sensation. Our hips mashing as one. Those deeply-rooted kisses that come like bolts of lighting in the midst of rainstorms. And I feel the tremble of our thunder just was well as I hear it- low, lulling rolls that engorge with- there's no other word for it- passion.

Is this what it's like to live in the moment, the eternal here & now? Fuck, I have been missing so very much.

I realize that I won't write you out of me because a little over twelve hours later, I can still feel you inside of me.