Tuesday, March 30, 2010

i know it well.

"Hell is empty, / And all the devils are here!"
I.ii.

"O heaven, O earth, bear witness to this sound
And crown what I profess with kind event
If I speak true! If hollowly, invert
What best is boded me to mischief! I,
Beyond all limit of what else i' th' world,
Do love, prize, honor you."
"I am a fool / To weep at what I am glad of."
III.ii.

-The Tempest, William Shakespeare

Thursday, March 25, 2010

futures.

the world is melting into the hands of our children.
the moon paces an orange shore.
buckets of her ringlets hang over the dense sand.
you are in awe of what you are.
the ocean shakes her feather eyes.
tea-green waves whistle spontaneous songs.
do not ask the questions
your mothers can already answer.

and when your shifting hair is gone
when there is gray over your eyes
and when her stomach has grown for you
when your children have been named
when the orange sun still dances for you
hold her, still, in the holy light.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

dialogue.

"once i was baking a cookie. it was one of those sporadic days, when the motions of your body don't make any sense. my mother sat by, fatty limbs spread out on the glass kitchen table, sticking to the see-through thickness. i crafted the sugary body into the shape of an old man. his marshmallow cigarettes melted as i dunked him in orange juice. sopping, crumbling fingers drifted to the very bottom of the cup in liquid death. suddenly energized by it all, i added an entire army of chocolate chip men. 'nasty-tasting amalgamation,' mother whispered in her dozing daze. i didn't know she knew words. all of two suddens she woke up and saw the swirling people. baked and forgotten. and no one made it out."

Monday, March 22, 2010

alone in the planetarium.

if i could heat you up to a thousand degrees,
charcoal brickette, the end of a cigarette,
i would bind you to my hands and feet
and while your energy melted into mine,
i would make a run for it.

***

neon paint stains driving down your baby's chair. frothy little leg hairs, he is your mammal. you wonder when your great masterpiece will arrive. green dot grass sprouts, brings you home, makes you sick, sick with love. roof-top's shy song, rain wants to come in, rain wants to arrive, to spit in your perfumed hair. your baby is a man, older than yourself, who keeps your stuffy head dry.

asleep.

rusty bed holds me in.
bedsheets that sprout flowers.
the bodies inside dedicate their time
to keep the sun alive.
oh just shut me down, collapse me
force me to believe in anything but you
hope begins to blossom
in this dry season
along my little hairs.

sleepless.

the thunder woke me out of it,
the thunder in my head.

awkward.

take me away by my soul from my place in the sky.
take me in your limbs and remember me.
take what i am and make things right again.
i can live by the little hairs on you.
i can follow you.
but when the seasons come between us,
when you're grown up and gone,
will you forget the force between our eyes?
it rained all winter until you came.
the spring looked weary but you were sure.
and in the summer, when i wake,
maybe i'll be dreaming next to you.
i am selflessly waiting for you.

Monday, March 15, 2010

the astronaut

with nothing left to keep her sane, she flew.
Earth, a clean blue eye that would never again invade hers.
there were no visible people on the shores anymore.
the solitary dreamer knows
there is no such thing as science,
and society --  a black hole narrowly escaped.
she stretches her arms awhile, thankful
that she has grown up able
to fall off the face of the earth
any time she wants.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

my first blog award.

Much thanks to Jennifer Daiker of unedited for awarding me the "From Me to You" Blogging Award!


Saturday, March 13, 2010

remembering things.

suddenly time came pouring in through the holes in the roof. low, lovely lengths of time. squat cottage with weeds, a little girl running through time. jumping up to fetch the tiny golden apples off the trees. they are bruised and she is apprehensive of eating them. the weeds against her bare knees, young youth. sky sparkling, clutching her in its inverted palms. bare feet in a water pool. no chlorine to sting you. mother, her mother to protect you. golden apples breaking from the tree, share with the cream-colored rabbits. youth always in season. things ripening, becoming. flash of indifference. bungalow dreams in a little room that fits snugly you and your now. cards splayed out on plastic tables, names on thick tape on thick chairs. mosquitos want to play. blue, white. blue, white. china. israel. cups behind glass facing a fuzzy television screen. he conveniently lost his hearing. he will love you, they will all love you. fireworks behind the lake behind the casino that wasn't really a casino. seltzer water sprays your mouth. chopped liver. tuna fish. eggsalad. voices of the knowing, the been. they hand you this life, and now you know why.




black hot car top. he comes to you. he fumbles under young skies. sitting in blue. delegate the roles but he's waited so long and can't. soft strings around your neck. soon to be broken. by his fumbling fingers. buy him time. your name. talk of consequence. lives meet. lives touch. lips touch. you love him, too.




something dark gnawed at the big clay bowl in front of her, stealing her appetite. she would miss the taste of fresh lemons and cool sour cream coming together in her mouth. most of all, she would miss him. miss the feel of him. he said her body was a blessing, and now she had to damage it with this cafeteria food. where was the soul, the heat? they had talked as they chopped vegetables. she would hum to him and he would pull her close and they would know how alone they were together. how badly she wanted to reach again for the knife now. no, she couldn't harm him. it would change nothing. they had let each other go. it had been decided in the food court, in fact. but there was nothing to eat between them then. no more food from the heart. she remembered when he cancelled on their grocery shopping date the week before. how significant it all seemed, had seemed. on her tongue, she could taste the spices that he threw together in a bag. like her mother once did. she thought of how they both let her go, free to be.



Thursday, March 11, 2010

first of many sleep studies.

the sleepy chinaman points his toe. his thickly-rimmed black glasses slumps. he wears shadow as a mask over the top of his face, the bottom left to the dull sun that gives every little hair on his chin definition. they each mean something different. there is the small twisted one, the long out-of-place one, and the spiraling one that does not belong to him. it leans against his shoulder and he presses his ear against it as a thing of comfort for silent sleepers. his greasy mess of swirling hair reigns over his head as clouds, predicting a storm to come. for now, he will sleep. he will trust in the wheels and roads of this world, just as we all will. he will blink a few times and wake and the worried dust around him will smile and welcome him home. what a funny man, they will say, as he steps off the bus forever. on to the next passenger, they will say. on to the next sleeper. he wrinkles his nose and swirls around all the great ideas that have been watching him. they rest like dust over his khaki pants, over his pointed shoes. they make up what belongs in the sunlight over his arms and what belongs in shadows. they run their silent fingers through his hair and sing lullabies in his unresponsive ears. perhaps his mother wished it this way. perhaps she crafted him with skin, with glasses, with shelter that would protect him from the thoughts, from the knowing. perhaps all our mothers did. but sometimes we bleed, and let them in, anyway. maybe he dreams he is cloud-hopping. maybe he dreams he is dead. surely he does not dream himself a father.

i don't even know, man.

one single line dangles from the exhaustion pipe
extending out the rear of the car.
one single face speaks that line.
“where do we go,” it says.
we may never know.
one single line dangles across your walls,
in the room where you were born,
in the places where you dwell.
it asks you where you are going,
but you could never answer.
you’ve never returned home.
one single, dense line protrudes from your mouth
when you try to explain yourself.
will you ever know how?
it asks the questions for you,
you guess.
you could cut it, or burn it, or cherish it.
you could also, also welcome it.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

peter pan bus.

God scratched his nails into the sky to make a white chalk line of cloud trailing behind a gray airplane. of course, the plane wasn’t there anymore. but the sun rained onto the windows of the bus and lit up the dried stains of tears that made funny pictures in the light. they were at once bulging eyes, faces of dogs, crooked lines. the men were talking loudly and filled my tired ears with the outside world. they spoke so quickly in a language so foreign to me.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

wed. feb. thir.

hair flooded over her temples as a curtain.

Monday, March 1, 2010

self-portrait.

cobwebbed sociopath drinking sour ink.
broke all her fingers and made a life for herself
in a foul, anxious room.
her brain became a square that clunked in its rotation.