wow.

things kind of just explode into being.

view from a window, allison ave.

as they extend their decaying hands down to the Earth they are suspended there forever until the birds grow on their fingertips and their lives float away like rescue boats.
as their starved limbs bend down in submission to this dull Earth their eyes seem to rot so as to blind themselves from their own majesty.
and the snow grows up their skeleton arms like prickling hairs that keep all the mammals warm.
but they bend their breaking backs and snapping arms down to an icy ground for us to take their fingers in ours and melt away what we've done to them. for us to climb up top and see our world as it would look to one who created it.
and we sit in our kitchens and laugh.

what would Freud say?

The stone heads of horses follow me
wherever I go.
They were born of the dust that rises in empty ships
halfway out into the ocean,
halfway out into a sea that has no home for them.
I've regarded their strong human bodies,
full of restless bones that suck in the skin,
as if trying to secede from the body.

I walked away from something indistinct you said
when we boarded this vessel
and found myself pulled
into its labyrinthine veins
like the flow of something deadly
to the body's system.

And the faces of the people,
they become heavy and gray.
All the faces of the naked people,
with their fashioned heads
lead me into a spacious dream.
No rooms here, no place to thrive,
no sheltered island outside.

What matters is here.

They pull me forward into a dream
that becomes more absurd the farther I go.
The aging smoke investigates my body;
it is suspended in this gray cement hollow.
And the windows, six aching palms
carved into the tops of these infinite walls
barred back, left to pray, fingers pointed to the sky,
not to some indiscernable sea below.

And the faces of these sullen people,
these lace-mouthed damsels with holes in their eyes;
these broken horses seem to dance--

the scenery always evolves to the possessed.

current inspiration (i should do this more often).

(sorry for the appalling spacing issues)

"Ulysses" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an agèd wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

 This my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

 There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought
 with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

inspiration from jane.

"Night was come, and her planets were risen: a safe, still night; too serene for the companionship of fear. We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us: and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence."

"I know poetry is not dead, nor genius lost... they will both assert their existence, their presence, their liberty, and strength again one day. Powerful angels, safe in heaven! they smile when sordid souls triumph, and feeble ones weep over their destruction. Poetry destroyed? Genius banished? No! Mediocrity, no: do not let envy prompt you to the thought. No; they not only live, but reign, and redeem: and without their divine influence spread everywhere, you would be in hell -- the hell of your own meanness."

--Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

oy, astronomy.

i actually hate seeing you because it always means i have to leave.

***

there weren't enough stars in the sky that night so i had to resort to wishing on worlds.

***

[last night's dream] - i went up to the attic for the surprise and my brothers were there, in hiding. i was overjoyed to see the first and he held me in his arms in the pale brown room. the second i knew was there, i knew they had brought him. but i knew he was not the brother i once knew; he had died forever ago. seeing that new man's face in my head i knew he was a monster, a rapist. i had seen his face on a television screen, knew his face from the last novel i had read. i had no idea it would come true.

***

the sky is always so quiet.

***

i could fill many pages with one philosophy.

***

florida was a bowl of oranges and their seeds.

***

the doctor has a beautiful sense of humor.

***

her face was pointed downward. he had the soft, clean smell of powder.

an hypothesis to prove that God lives.

i'd like to say that belief is my hypothesis to prove the existence of God. He may have given up and made us to force out nonsense in our speech, though. define God as the little hairs on the back of your hand and death as your power over them. can you break them or understand them? and they will continue to appear on the backs of the hands of your people for lives to come. think of God as the ability to know the exact number of hairs on your head at all times. and death is to cut off all those hairs and deny that they ever have been.

yesterday.

she became a demon because no one said "God bless you."

lifesaver.

this taste is dreadful in my mouth. i was in the tropics when the dust melted into my mouth and gnawed at my teeth. i'm a child again and i taste it in the sour dew. the warmest taste blooms and i am shipwrecked. floating in the ocean of this mouth i am rescued. now i float in circles running on a string held by you. by you, i hear you crunch down. my mouth trembles and i wake up and know i am alive. now i know what blindness is for i couldn't tell you what flavor this was if i tried.

movement meets confinement.

sometimes i think i wouldn't mind getting stuck in an elevator by myself. with a notepad and a black pen.