My ramblings....

park

2010-06-23T13:50:00.003-06:00

The sun speaks in blue and yellow, stripes and fades
And still I'm failing to hear you or see you
Feeling doesn't come naturally and it's draining out of me like colour from a wet page
Draining out of me like an old bucket and I have no hands to hold it all in
The sun speaks in bright and harsh words but still it's all muffled, like I'm on a train driving away. I heard you from the corner of my ear. And I'm holding my chest from the momentary fear.
But it's passing and passing.

2010-06-10T10:22:00.003-06:00

Look me in the eye and tell me you don't find me attractive
Look me in the heart and tell me you won't go
Look me in the eye and promise no love's like our love

I'm not mine
You're not
These aren't
This is not
Mine

Nothing when purpose and dreams bead off my hands like rain
Dripping from fingertips and strands of hair
I'm carrying around a little rock in my hand, soul,
Even though you keep whispering you've got the stick to break it
You can make the water flow
I'm watching passively
Trying to invent my own passion
Newspaper-paper mache-it all goes in the garbage
Pretty quickly

Where does the good go

I'm A

2010-04-11T02:35:00.002-06:00

lost star a soft heart a dusty mic
but
i won't give in to
falling apart or dropping guard there's lifting up there's counting fail
there are heart
stop
moments
there are take
it or
leave it
there's my breath
in the air
you can share you can share it
i'm a
coffee break room an upstairs closet
i'm a
"hold onto your hats boys" and the one who never lost it
but i
hold the handrail
just to
set an example
my fingerprints are staying here until the whole room disappears
so lets get cryptic
go to the attic
look up magic
in a patchwork blanket
but
don't get comfy
you could get a bed of nails
for the next twenty years
unless you beg for mercy

I Keep Waiting

2010-04-01T21:31:00.003-06:00

"Oh half of my heart's got a grip on the situation
Half of my heart takes time
Half of my heart's got a right mind to tell you
That I can't keep loving you
Oh, with half of my heart"

Dreams keep seizing me, maybe it's the heat or the length of the bed

They stick around and leave deep impressions

I'm left wondering if they're signs or just shadows of the figures that walked around already

But no voices speak after waking and all that remains is a cord around my heart or a hand brushed across my own

--------------------------------

People want change, light, love

I see it amidst the gluttony and sex, I see it through loopholes

People want revolution

My seat is forward

I'm trying to light my lamp

Dreams Are Weird

2010-03-31T20:29:00.001-06:00

I had a dream that a boy who was supposed to be a golden one
(or the unicorn, as some have said)
He left everything he held dear for me. His family, home, previous love.
He stood before me and professed all this, that we could run away and I would be in his open arms
My initial reaction was "this must be good, what he's doing for me..."
And then I remembered everything that was mine
And everything I had before
And I knew with my whole heart it was wrong

Bah Humbug

2010-03-22T10:58:00.002-06:00

Stay the way I wrote you

Be just how I need you

Grow inside me daily

Fill the spaces until I don't notice

Hold to what I told you

You can't be a back up

Don't find me just to break it

I don't want to mess up

I don't want to be hopeless

This can't be listless

I hate dealing with the "oh well"s

If Only We Could See

2010-03-17T04:56:00.005-06:00

Cuba stared out the door between her room and veranda, the twilight haze played along her iris's and danced through the threaded colour. Cuba saw monsters outside. Long silver lake monsters, large loping tunnel monsters. The the kind that come out from under bridges and from mountain caves. They were running down the street, past the houses, in white and purple bursts, their shadows pressing against the walls like great passenger trains.

She watched them calmly as they continued their parade, so many of them. Her dark curls fell down her pillow, undisturbed as she, as she watched the monsters go their ways. Every time another one galloped down the road her face was lit by its passing, each of her freckles standing out, one by one. In the flashes of light they began to form constellations, stretching across her mouth, reaching through her eyelids, falling down her nose.

If the monsters hadn't been moving so quickly, sending up sparks and fireworks from the backs of their feet, the would have seen a galaxy quietly revealed in a small doorway on the face of a girl.

If Cuba hadn't been watching the monsters run, she never would have been able to show off her stars.

March 16th

2010-03-16T06:40:00.003-06:00

The power is out again and I feel like I'm moving in slow motion. I've put a candle in front of the mirror and the light pours out of the glass, creating soft shapes of yellow and shadow. Mason Jennings is singing "there's something about your love..." and I forgot that he starts by saying "I'm coming home to be with you". I'm in a loose t-shirt and my hair is still tangled and wet, and this whole sound-tracked atmosphere makes me feel like I should be walking into the arms of a man who carries me carefully upstairs.

It doesn't feel like there's a lot I can write these days without being completely frank. Masking feels overdone and story-bookish, which also makes it hard for me to publish anything at all. I'm overusing words like "dark", "Inside-out" and the ambiguous "heart", which aren't original words to overuse in the first place so I've given up on story telling. On the other hand, the nonfiction contains far too much "love" and phrases like "I'm sorry", "I need you and I'm broken" and "where the hell am I?". The themes haven't changed for a while.

The power just came back on, I noticed the kitchen light come on through a hazy window and almost simultaneously the candle by the mirror burst like a dam, hot liquid pouring through the luminous wax walls and onto the tile counter top. This isn't a dry spell, though, I'm convinced, or convincing myself, of that. So I keep the lights off and just plug in the music so I can keep Mason going further into the night, and maybe Mayer and Foreman too. My pen is still moving and a couple wicks are still lit, so I'm sure I can stay here a bit longer.

This Isn't Poetic, Nor Is It Just

2010-03-15T06:57:00.003-06:00

When I first moved to Owen Sound, Ontario, we lived in a duplex in town, in the transition between arrival and finding out beautiful country house which we lived in for the next 6 years.

Across the street was an empty stretch of land where no duplex's had been built, and there I played in the mud and built forts out of leftover pieces of wood and cardboard.

Occasionally, the girl who lived behind me (named Jenn) and a boy from a block away (whose name, to this day, I do not know) would play with me, imagining we were builders or bandits or strangers lost in a barren wasteland. I think occasionally this boy was mean to us, but it was two to one, so we were generally safe.

One tragic day, I seemed to be caught off guard or unprotected, and this boy managed to grab my shoulders and kiss me forcefully on the cheek. The only feeling I get when I think about this moment is that I felt I had dirt all over my cheek as a result.

I ran home in tears, and cried and yelled in fury that this boy would do such a thing. I demanded my father go to his house and tell his parents, so that he could get the punishment he deserved. But justice was never served on that day.

Dear Haruki, I like you, like a lot. But I shouldn't try to be you. Sigh.

2010-03-13T08:26:00.003-07:00

Cause and effect, memories, I am in love with Haruki Murakami but I need my own style. It's only flattery. I'm only inspired.

I firmly believe everyone deserves one of these, so maybe I'll start working my way through. For every person ever known. Ever. Good or bad. They may not like the things I write, but at least it's something written for them. Something that I recall. Something I will always remember. It will last the ages. Until I die, or until the inter-web internally combusts, they will not be forgotten. Generally those who mean the most to be get the most words, and the least of which I ever really admit, but they're repetitive, and shy. These few gathered words are for long lost strangers. We all have little to fear.

2010-03-11T06:35:00.002-07:00

He stood at the door, facing inwards, waiting expectantly for her goodbye.

Lately, her goodbyes had involved his arms around her hips and her lips upon his.

That is, until he had gone away for a short while, and she realized she knew how to fall in love.

Previously, she had deemed love to be a lucky break, a dreamer's reality, anything but a necessity, and not highly likely for her. She tired of all those words everyone else spoke. She felt embarrassed over all those times she had spoken it into existence, and then watched it fade as quickly and painlessly as any other word.

So she gave up and gave in. One evening she met a boy who she quite nearly forgot, but one day he told her he couldn't resist her eyes and he wanted to take her out for expensive meals and treat her to his high taste. What else is a girl to do?

She accepted his fawning and his midnight kissing. She told her friends about him and they all got jealous. She went along for days of sweet tasting niceties.
(Though there was one moment when he asked if she was afraid, and she despised him for it)

Until he went away. It was only for a short while. A couple weeks at the most. But the moment he left she stopped thinking about him. He left no absence. No hole to fill.

And then it happened. It all was very quiet. Very fast. A few minutes, if that. She learned that love did, in fact, exsist. And, even more interesting, that she herself was capable of posessing it, experiencing it even. And she knew this because without it, there was a sudden absence. If she did not have it, it would create a hole. She wasn't quite sure she wanted to try and fill it with anything but what created it in the first place.

The boy came home. His hopes were high. He lavished her with gifts and with great expectations. She tried to examine him, holding his shape over the absence, seeing if with some sort of force or turn he could actually fit.
(Though we all know from childhood woodblock puzzles, this never does work)
The more she tried, the more she smiled at things that weren't pleasing, the less she wanted him. And she truly did try.

So she walked him to the door, he faces her with a smile. She smiles at things that aren't pleasing. She gathers up her courage and lets him kiss her one last time. Her brain inputs the sad, unfortunate action of "mouth in close proximity to mouth" instead of a kiss, and she says goodbye.
She's convinced that love would never calculate the difference, even in goodbye.

2010-03-09T07:50:00.009-07:00

My heart and brain are devouring and regurgitating these days in a voracious way. I need more and more and then I need to give it all up, like a water measure that pours all its contents at the filling point and then begins again.

"It's rolling around, it's pushing me down
It's keeping the good part of me closed
Can't you see that when I find you, I'll find me
Oh I need you to know today I'll wait for you always"

There must be something here I'm missing, yet I welcome you in. I'm passive, I've met you before. You should have come through the window, you should have crept up the stairs and given me nightmares. Instead we're sitting here sipping tea and talking about last year. You're my 'glass half empty' and people understand you the least. When you live with me I keep everything, but it's tasteless, useless, in my hands.

"Now I'm tired and I'm scared and wide open
to the rest of my life
And I almost had it all
I'm fooling myself by thinking
That a cure will be found"

Cause I can't stop thinking about you

And my dreams are dreaming dreams that only for them can come true. Magnets that keep searching for another who wont push away. When it happens I'm a sucker. I'm long gone. All for it. There's no room for indifference when they find themselves 100 percent stuck.

( His friends
Would just wrap him in plastic
And carry him with them)

After all this, there's a God who deserves more than "I love you but I..."
and "After all this..."

A Fanfare For The Mundane

2010-03-06T07:50:00.006-07:00

There are a few times a year when I face the immediately serious problem of an eyelash stuck on some unreachable surface of my eye.

Generally, my initial response is to first try to remove it by force, but often it's hidden under the lid, thus making the removal nearly impossible "blind". I then begin to panic, desperately wiping and clasping my eye and hoping the retina does not get scratched and wondering when the painful irritation will ever ease. I then recall my body's natural defenses, I calm, blinking rapidly as my eyes soon wet and pool and the lash is brought slowly and softly to the front of the eye, which is no longer in distress at the foreign presence, but protected by silky shallows.
Only then, I proceed to the nearest mirror and easily remove the lash, the entire ordeal quickly dissipates with the clearing of my red eyes.

There is one extraneous thought, though, that I have discovered makes an appearance every time I carry out this minute upset of everyday life. It doesn't take any prompting or recalling, it just appears now, as naturally as though it holds the hand of whatever lash should have caused such trouble in the first place.

It is a memory from at least ten years ago, I'm sitting in the backseat of the car belonging to my friend E (or more correctly, her family). She's in the backseat too, and her mom is driving, we're maybe eight or nine.
I can remember exactly where we were at the moment that the bulk of the memory happens. We must have been coming from E's house, because we were going along the main road from the direction I now know was east, instead of from the entrance at the west which my family most normally would have travelled. The road is bordered by trees and quaint military houses.

Her mother comments that she has something in her eye, she is rubbing it and quickly enters the panic stage, saying, "I need to pull over" I laugh a little because of the drastic reaction to one small eyelash, and E turns to me and says angrily, "Don't laugh! She might not have been able to see and could have gotten into a car crash!"
And that's where the memory stops. I don't know how long it took for her mother to finally remove the lash or what else E said or where we ended up...

The only thing that immediately follows this memory is the image of a fact, like a broadcast news flash, that a few years later E's mother has died.

She had been scrubbing a floor
(dark marble in a large empty room, she, right in the middle)
With high grade cleaning products
(white spray bottles, yellow and black labels, a red pail to her front, not blocking her figure which is leaning forwards on hands and knees)
Some of which enters an open cut
(on her knee, as her hands are covered with long yellow gloves)
Leading to a blood clot
(the poison shoots up through her veins, entering straight into the heart with the force and precision of arrows)
Which is the ultimate cause of her unusual death
(she falls to the side, clearly missing the wet surface she has just scrubbed, and in the emptiness of the room she, her face serene, quietly disappears)

And these, the memory and thought, which without fanfare slip in and out of my mind three times a year for the past ten, when a lash makes an unwelcome visit to the white. Perhaps it was a moment that marked an 'ending of childhood' or something of the sort. A distinction, disruption, a sudden misfiring or connection. Maybe it's just the repetition that comes from Pavlovian programming. It could be that my adolescent self suddenly noticed something of the fragility of state, or non-sensical selection, or the futility in panic.
Because, people will always disappear.

Oh I

2010-02-28T09:39:00.002-07:00

The turning tide rocks me in and out of a hazy sleep
One where you're there, one where you're not
Clams and seaweed streamers clammer to grab hold of my fingers and wrap themselves around my legs, holding me, softly captive, to the shattered coral sands
While an ancient cetus cries out from afar, slowly turning it's wise, sea-crusted head
It beckons deep and wide

And you, you stand silently, always
Shoulders strong, upright in the waves, in the shallows
Or watching from the shore
You stand with bare feet and weary eyes
You watch me and I try to sit up amidst the tidal pull
Holding my knees close to myself, my hair licked with salt and wrapped around my neck
I wish you held me here
My lungs and arms are getting tired of the battery
And you've always been much stronger than me
If you could only just cover me from the drying sun, and keep me steady for a while
Then I could finally find rest on sand or sea

N

2010-02-20T08:34:00.003-07:00

You don't have to say a thing
No, please don't
I just like the way we search each other's eyes
Telling you everything I feel, telling me everything you mean
Whisper goodnight
Waving goodbye
In my sleep I say as much nothing, and mean it all

Dream/Real

2010-02-04T07:42:00.004-07:00

I'm starting to have this reoccurring fear, like my reoccurring dream, that I'm going to see you... on my way down an escalator on a floor above me, but you'll be in some in between space that's impossible to get to.

I could try to run back up or down but then I'd lose sight of you, and I wouldn't be able to find the way to where you were.

I could stay on the floor below and just talk to you from there, but then, that's all I could do...and how long could that last?

Insistant

2010-01-28T08:15:00.003-07:00

Oh my oh my oh my oh my
I dream of real real live eyes
Torso inside arms
Wrapped round and round and round
There's a forever invisible kiss
Resting lightly on my lips
Don't you leave it don't you leave
No don't you leave it there

Jenny got a brand new bow just for junior year. She spun it around and lit it up and matched it with her eyes. Her hair was red, the dark brown kind, her eyes were ocean blue. You could sail, yes you could dive, into that kind of blue.
She walked across the sidewalk with her chin lifted with her smile, the boys they hung on hours just to find a gaze to the side. Her feet were shaped her hips were shaped her nose was perfectly shaped. Her bow it shaped around her face, her face it shaped the bow.

Tobin and Gingerbread

2010-01-27T10:00:00.002-07:00

Tobin was a painted boy, painted with freckles and cowlicked brown
He had a button nose and buttoned jeans and his smile was a line and was paper dressed head to toe

Gingerbread was a sketched girl, coloured in the edges and scribbled in the eyes
Her hands always outstretched and legs that stretched forever, her hair covered her body like a million little slides

Gingerbread loved Tobin and Tobin loved Ginger'
They linked their hands with a white paper flap
They smiled forever and ever until the pages were crumpled

He Met the Mirror With a Sword

2010-01-27T09:53:00.003-07:00

She's that kind of little girl
Who hangs out with teenagers
And teaches them about life

That kind
Who despises other little girls
Because they love to act, love to hear themselves cry

And when she finally befriends
With belly-button length pigtails and overalls
She does so in trees and with muddy knees
Where a female Davey Crocket is unusual but acceptable

She's not the kind I would like
She's too much like me

Every Cataclysm Is a Let-Down Somewhere

2010-01-27T09:19:00.003-07:00

He took a step, footprint sticking to the puffed wheat ground and bursting upwards in explosions of lesser gravity
Greeting all the locals with a nod of his plastic wrapped head
They looked up from their gardens, from their lemonaide stands
As he passed, one slow-motion stride at a time
Some waved politely, some just briefly glanced, then ritually across the lawn and down at their watch
As he humbly posted his small windless flag beside their proud metal flag pole (alongside a few others, slightly askew), there were those who cooked their dinners and others who began a game of cricket
He hopped back to his vehicle, slightly confused with a tinge of embarrassment
The children shielded their eyes as he took off, while their mothers hurried them to their chores

The Lunar Moth and The Teenage Forevers

2010-01-25T08:34:00.002-07:00

New languages are spilling over pipe sides and twisting down stems and fingers
Intertwined around wine glasses and other delicate hands
Like shy children who just need to be near
Hovering, tracing the lines across the knuckle and the soft skin just above
Musty blankets hold memories forever so we keep wrapping ourselves up in them
Up and up and over and over, knotted into the folds of time and space
Until faces are unforgettable and the feeling in the stomach becomes immortal
That eternal nervousness, the everlasting lunar moth which beats its great yellow wings from the depths of your torso into the walls of your throat
She rises and falls and dashes joyfully through your body until you can barely breath, caught up in the thought of once was, what could be
And when she, for just a moment, reaches the utmost of her heights
Seizing light with the fine tips of her wings, and calling out through the material limits
Sending out one silken strand, the one binding the expanse between me and you when we finally settle for the other's eyes. When we finally raise our courage to hold for a moment the power of one single gaze,
She nearly flaints, fluttering asunder, dearly searching for a resting place

How Deep Is That River

2010-01-23T09:49:00.003-07:00

I'm not afraid of what I'll find
When I start searching in you
My heart has been held a way up high
Gazing down with frightened eyes

And now the light shines
Perfect love always drives
Through height and breadth and space and time

"I just want to know how deep"
-Mason Jennings

Walking Home, Friday, Rain

2010-01-15T09:20:00.003-07:00

Wet pavement with silver lead poured into symmetrical cracks
Filled in spots with patted dirt, mud, and dead leaves
That lay alone and plastered
And a lone weed which shoots alight and outwards
With lamplit green enthusiasm
It holds the mirrors for the sky obstructed by light
My feet are not joking in their intentional walk across this road
The way I turn my head and wrap my self close is meant for the picture
Meant for the film
If you were watching you would feel my soul
The way it drips from the tips of my hair and careens to the black puddles below
Like passion does, like fury
If you were beside me you'd feel helpless
But in your heart you'd know, the only way to keep me
With my emotion still in tact within my body
Was to hold me very dearly
Like it was all my life and yours
Your breaths and shivering exhales would cover my cheek and neck
And you would pour your eyes into mine
Like my life depended on it
Like your life depended on mine
I can't convey enough, with my hips or my coughs, how in demand I am
In more ways than one, if only you could watch me now
Fearless of traffic, refusing to look into those blinding lights
As they capture water pelts before the disappear into their final descent
Where concrete envelopes them darkly into his warm bleakness

If you could hear me now
You'd hear me crying for your embrace
The fit, darling
In this weather, I can hardly bare it

Deep Dark Woods (thank you for your music)

2010-01-12T07:11:00.003-07:00

red heart beating there is a spectacular pulse, the way you turn your head, the way you lift your eyes, you are like a hurricane but i am reaching out from the inside

breakers on the west coast, voices in the woods, like three melodic ghosts who sweetly lull through the night, yes you have caught me in silvery webs spun by the fingers of your mother who lives in the birch and sleeps in the earth

painted totems are raised in my soul, speaking to your spirits, speaking to your arrested breaths, you wont look wont sit wont listen, you are afraid of what? of it all, please be near my totems are calling, whispering if you will hear them, they whisper silently, their mouths are made of warm trees, come closer they all want you to know

creaking and breaking and snapping with the force, i am lonely with force, helpless with force, confused with force
i bend to the will of mother nature and her sons, i fly with the wind and careen with current, i cannot keep the soil beneath my feet, i am burried with the landslide
hopeless! i cannot take you, i do not want you in my spirit, it leaves me so fragile and pail and thin, i am wasting away every moment you invade, hopeless please leave me, it is not you that i want, it is the smiling hearts who drift near me, letting their voices softly sing

To This Rhythm

2010-01-07T09:10:00.002-07:00

I don't want to be cold
I don't want to be a broken
dark hearted soul
I can feel you but your distant
You've taken my home
You've taken what it's worth to me
I'm wringing my hands, I'm smashing my mirrors
Wrapping pillow round my ears and wearing the cases

The beat is broken and the record is stuck
We're grooving to the grooves in between
The damage that was never done

Limits

2010-01-04T06:00:00.002-07:00

There are no more questions of when to walk away
Stand still
...Can we just?
Sitting on the city limits
Rhyming words with edge, fray, and "oh please just wait"
Picking up pegs from the track, staking some sort of claim
In the pebbles, broken glass fragments, before you decide to walk
Walk it or stay

Run Around

2010-01-03T19:34:00.004-07:00

It doesn't take too long to get dark in this town
Children still creak the swings and parents still laugh loudly
Like the sun never went down

But it disappeared a long time ago to spend a day in the West
Where they stretch their arms and start their cars
We wave from our Christmas-lighted hallways
And our glowing see-through rooms

-------

I feel mathematical
Where is my poetic algebraic equation?
Find it.
Whether it's there or not

m-u-s-e

2010-01-01T06:24:00.004-07:00

Oh hello
Seems I'm falling one hundred miles from you
Would you be alright with being my new muse?

Don't worry, I wont think about you when you're not around
I wont chase or pry or pine
I'd just enjoy walking around a bit in your eyes
And some mild devestation by your smile

I Am Elements

2009-12-29T09:43:00.003-07:00

Need some mountains
Need some grey clouds
Need some Seattle
Need some Northern Pacific
Need some Matthew Good
Need some starfish
Need some driftwood
I need to start working my way West again

You Remind Me Of Everything I Love

2009-12-29T08:15:00.003-07:00

Let's go

Imagine sunshine turning golden hair
And lakes which are bluer than blue, just over that grassy dune
Imagine a house that's made of panels and wood, ancient patterned carpet and grandmother's couches, sand trails follow your feet along the floor
The light wavers in to a tiled kitchen which has soda and bread and crossword puzzles
And we could lay here forever
We could jump off the dock
We could stay up all night and just talk
We could dream about constellations
We could dance along the beach

We could, let's go

He Sings Me

2009-12-29T07:21:00.003-07:00

New testaments wrap their lettery fingers up your arms and around your neck
Down your spine and surround your navel like a burnt Aztec sun
Filling pours and collapsing veins til they are all that reign, and rain,
And rain, drenching calloused coverings until the skin glistens like silk
Until eyes are arranged like diamonds
All upon the sky and sun and earth and air
All upon the might and tide and courage and salt
And twisted hopes and wistful cares...

You begin by writing a love letter to Neil Young. To a voice that seems to break with every pluck of a string, an organ's chord.
I'm Pocahontas, Cinnamon, The Golden Hearted Baby, I'm not done. This is for every boy who ever heard this song played, when he gave it away. And now you're left regretfully reminded I am the one.
This letter ends open ended, you dropped the ink on the page in a million different ways, but nothing seems to spell exactly what you mean. This isn't for Neil. This isn't for men. This might be for the world. This might be for all of them. Stars and alien skies.

"You are like a hurricane, there's a calm in your eye...
...I want to love you but I'm getting blown away"

...Testaments that tell of all the mysteries beneath
Things that you picked up, like precious stones, glass washed up along the beach
It's so precious, and you remember
Every time you touch that warm opaque green
That there was a time when you knew some sort of meaning. It never was explained to you, it never was delivered. It wasn't proclaimed to you, you never committed. It was known like the air filled with sandy grains that stung against your skin. Known like the foamy waves that licked around your legs. When birds call, they tell meaning. They sing about growing grass and empty skeleton shells. They sing about forgetting. They sing about finding.
Sometimes this trickles down from above, and brushes begin to paint themselves all along your body.
Your body is a canvas, body mind and soul. And you understand. And you know.

Ugh

2009-12-28T09:47:00.002-07:00

I am stretching for you across this room
Bathed in cool sunlight and white linen
I am warm, and warming
And needing you for breathing

Still, I can't find you. I'm digging through the sheets and tossing up clothing and paper bags, I can't find you, I can't find you

My head in my hands, my hair is a disaster, wet against my face
Heart beats til breaking, my brain hates the drama
But I can't find the one I'm looking for, and I lay lost in distress

Things aren't coming out the way I want them to. Sigh

Scared (Thanks Gatsby)

2009-12-21T06:45:00.004-07:00

He waited for four years, newspaper clippings in hand
Only ones that mentioned her name, even only as the Mrs...
Left with sound of her voice keeping him awake at night
His house across the lake
Her candle lit on the dock
He waited and waited, four years and then some
Until the moment he could see her face
Hold her waste
Listen to her mouth shaping words

She was the sun and the moon to him
His reason, his map
Is it any wonder she let him down?
He'd had the best of her already
In the heart of his dreams
The height of his thoughts

Ha!

2009-12-21T06:06:00.002-07:00

"You're nesting", you told me
"You're looking for the one"
Keeping your eyes open, wondering if you could fall in love
Your clock is ticking
Your biology is hot
The frequently asked question: 'does he have it, or not'

Now I'm watching you, (I'm laughing)
You've got your arms outstretched
All too eager to get started
She's not it, on to the next
"You're nesting", I see
Looking for the one

sigh

2009-12-20T21:28:00.001-07:00

My soul is largely composed of lakes and mountains
I can feel it when I think of them
A yearning to be rooted deep within them

NO

2009-12-19T07:58:00.002-07:00

There seems to be a certain misguided point of view
Which disregards such simple mathematical equations,
Such as "No means No"
And substitutes its own circumstances, such as,
"No means Maybe" or, "No means Someday"

While I do believe that in some cases
The equation can add or subtract a few pieces
In order to re-route the original "No means No" to mean something else
Such as, "No means No, unless you find a job and become less dependant on your mother"
Or, "No means No, but if you gain a sudden sense of self-respect, and perhaps a beard, I'll re-consider"
Though quite often, even these additives don't pan out

Thus, I fear this ignorance of the true way of things has caused some people a little bit of confusion
I'm all for hope, but I believe that when the "No means No" phrase is most plainly delivered, one should quietly gather up their hope and put it in their pocket for another day
I'm sorry to those certain individuals who have been decieved by this folly in thinking
But really, No means No.

Stance

2009-12-19T04:20:00.003-07:00

"This is where I have always been coming to. Since my time began. And when I go away from here, this will be the mid-point, to which everything ran, before, and from which everything will run. But now, my love, we are here, we are now, and those other times are running elsewhere"

-The best thing I've read in "The Time Traveller's Wife" yet is in fact a quote from A.S. Byatt.

Because I stand on the stone, above the landslide
I watch it fall and tumble and wash like water
The embittered, jagged flow
And I am not afraid
I am staring at the sun
I can sense the entirety, around me
The great lonesomeness which I dwell upon
Sandstone cliffs
The Great Burnt Solitary Lift

And I can truly feel here
Everything is taken
In through my left palm,
The finished, unravelled end held in my right
I hold it calmly
Though the wind pulls the sand under my feet into the universe
I can't be moved
Only holding the things that capture my heart
Or labour my breathing
Whether to keep or set free

One Word

2009-12-19T03:54:00.003-07:00

Driving and driving
You're making me crazy
I'm stopping the clock
Taking a breather

There's a automatic setting
Its wiring is off
Where's the manual when I need it?
When by brain is mixed and shot?

Huffing and puffing
I've barely been running
One word and you stop me
You had me at hello

I'm vulnerable maybe?
Could it be that I'm weak?
Taking every minute as a sign
I'm in love with naivety

I only wish I could write like this

2009-12-18T04:21:00.003-07:00

"A great and wondrous sign appeared in heavan: a woman clothed with the sun, with the mood under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.
She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth
Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth.
The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born.
She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. The woman fled into the desert to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days"

Cool? Yes.

M&M

2009-12-17T03:07:00.003-07:00

Mary and Merrin get together every Tuesday afternoon to write seasonal cards, including Tim Horton's coupons, for the poor college kids around the provence who used to attend their church.
Most are gone now, far away from those 15 year old sports they used to be. They're out of sorts with the church, actually they don't even think about it, except for this occasional Christmas card and coffee they recieve in the mail. Then they feel a little ashamed, but hey, they're the ones still sending, probably because their mother still attends. And what college kid says no to five dollars worth Tim Hortons?
Merrin doesn't remember the last time she's seen these kids, and she knows it's with reason, but she's trucks along with a mind of steal and a heart of gold. Her own son has nearly disappeared off the face of the earth to the jaws of philosophy and science. He's smart enough to come around, she's sure, maybe like his father he keeps it deep. The girls are still loving, right? They are who I'll keep close to me.
Mary adores her children with all her might and soul, why some of these kids whome she neatly addresses used to be their best friends. Though her twins are throwing themselves off the deep end with relationships that devour their every emotion...she can't help but seeing their every perfection. Like she would always tell the choir director, "they have the voices of angels!"
So these woman get together in their high wasted slacks and stylish (for their age) leather jackets and write in cursive and lick the stamps. The coupons are nothing on their budget, and the kind-hearted gossip is a treat, and maybe someday through their festive efforts a disgruntled youth will be reached.

Wonderful

2009-12-16T20:07:00.005-07:00

It's harder to speak up here
The air is paper thin, and it's softly cutting up my spine and lungs
Everything is crystalized; oxygen, land, sky.
My hair is whipped around my face, but I seem to feel nothing but freedom

I could fall if I wanted, I'd feel nothing
I could stand forever
I could fly

Sharp resolution
Like a freshly cut diamond
Dangerous precepices with an infinite view

NOT Melodramatic

2009-12-16T09:20:00.003-07:00

Tonight, I watched my whole universe go through a complete cycle
Creation and hope, light, complete brilliance
Rest and swirling infinite particles, settling into purple and green waves and winds a billion miles across
And a final, sudden, cataclysmic death...as the old ones expand angrily and explode, suctioning themselves into a fallen hole, dissipating and fading until the black has suffocated everything

I watched and watched and watched, and wondered if it was true
I know I am a great story-teller, an inventor, having difficulty determining dreams from real memory
So I'm having difficulty determining this one

If all the stars are gone from my sky, I do believe I would like to cry

Dear...

2009-12-16T08:27:00.006-07:00

What a spectacular ability you have, you can find it all
Maybe it's imagination, maybe it's fact, but you've captured it all, reinventing it still
I wish I could turn you inside out sometimes, like an old sweater
Hold you upside down and shake you out
What is it you're keeping inside that makes you so bitter and tense
Were you born this way? Is it inherent to your gender or race?
Someday I'll find a mirror that suits you best, the kind that shows you who you are without all your preconceived notions
I think you'd be shocked by what you saw
And I wouldn't stop at your skin and that level

I think if you could really see, maybe you never will, but if you really could,
You might see someone composed, confident, who's laughter lights up the room whether you notice or not
You'd probably appreciate your softness a lot more, your lines wouldn't seem so harsh and abrupt. You'd probably realize how wanted you are. Maybe it's best you don't know some things...
You might understand the full effect of your eyes, which I know you grasp to some degree, but maybe you'd stop trying to make boys fall off their bikes.

And maybe you'd let your heart rest more often, instead of sending it to the edge with your up and down palpitations. Instead of looking for the worst intentions and the hidden meanings and the complete shut downs.
Maybe it would be good for you to know that people don't think about you as much as you think, but when they do, it's more often than not lovely thoughts. Not these imagined daggers and criticisms that you seem to hold so tightly to as truth.
Perhaps, if you really saw yourself in relation to the world, you wouldn't rest so heavily on the worst case scenarios.

I'll keep searching for that mirror, just for you

Too Much Noise

2009-12-15T08:55:00.003-07:00

Since when has this been an excuse to let things get out of hand?
Since you got a haircut and wrapped your dress up high?
I hope there's still honor left for those who keep themselves inconspicuous
Hiding their glory, shelving their gold, and calling you into quiet times

Imogen

2009-12-14T11:10:00.002-07:00

Radiance
She has turned her head to the sun again
To burn, to dream,
As if I have to explain myself
Though I'd shout it from rooftops
Like velvet, like ripples
Calm me now, rationality
As if I could be more vague
I'd still promise to close my eyes forever
With my hands out, waiting
In a dark room
In a bright light
It's not the same
It's all the same
Peace
As if I could be anymore off of my feet
Change
Because I feel it tingling through my body

Another Memory

2009-12-14T08:27:00.005-07:00

Once upon a time we all sat atop a playground, the kind made with the heavy wood beams and we stared up at the sky. We talked about who was beautiful and tried to hear the sounds of the stars. I wished so badly that someone would choose me, but I've forgotten all their names. I still remember the whispers of space, though.

I'm listening for it now, through waves and chipped blue paint, through foreign television and yellow lights, I'm really trying to hear it, really trying.

Check!

2009-12-14T04:58:00.004-07:00

You've got them all wrapped around your slender fingers
And are left with no hands to hold

Well it's been a long long time without bows made of limbs
And blushing self-concious movements

But don't be forgetful, what the minutes mean to me
I log them all here on my blue-lined mind
Checking off the boxes til they all add up

There are those who tell me
To find the truth, you need to dig for the bones
But I was born with the sky in my head
I don't need to hunt for days for the right kind of meat
Some people were made for berries and seeds
Stars and clouds, far upon far, mean everything to me

Talking About The Ocean Some More

2009-12-07T19:01:00.004-07:00

I just looked out a window (the plaster cracked, filled with dust mites and beetle shaped mould) and saw the ocean, but it didn't have a beginning or an end. The sky was falling on it in a misty veil that sunk listlessly into the sullen grey shallows.

Earlier, I was sitting in a gas station spending a hundred bucks a minute calling across the world. My heart tends to weaken in the most inopportune places, so I sat at an unbalanced aluminum table wiping my eyes with cheap napkins. The guard kept looking at me with his shot gun slung across his shoulder, and amidst the scars I couldn't help but think "I hope my silvery eyes and broken disposition at least add a bit of helpless beauty." Not like those unfortunate ones who get sloppy and red faced and have to worry about their nose and old make up. All I have are the precious little tears that God collects in ivory bowls.

This morning I began watching a movie that wants to believe in Love.
A few minutes ago a marching band just passed on the street, playing a kicked up drum version of jingle bells.
Sunday I waved at a man I wasn't sure how I knew.
At this moment I'm holding a yoke on my back and a burden in my heart, and I'm looking out windows for some quiet waters to lay down beside.

Invented

2009-12-07T08:39:00.004-07:00

Take me with you, ocean; drift me out to sea...

I think they've lost their use for me here on the bank. I'm sitting with my elbows on my knees, on a sun-bleached piece of driftwood. My hair, I've been told, is like straw in the dust. It's splitting and wrapping around my fingers and face, getting caught up like only hair can in its own private wind storm. My eyes tend to shine best in bathroom mirrors and gazing across lonely horizons, places nobody gets to see them. Here they're reflecting a million colours, they share common roots with the Pacific.

Sometimes my fingers rake the sand, picking up some oddly shaped rock, shiny black or flecked with red. This is special, I tell myself. I intend to keep it forever; give it some sort of significance. Like if I press it tightly to my palm, to the very centre, the world will see it's meaning. The world will see that this rock, among the infinite others, is a precious one. It's warm and strong, intricate and brilliant. I feel it through my skin, in my heart.

Shaped and painted by the sea.

Oh, Under Sea Love

2009-12-07T07:29:00.004-07:00

You can't pretend you don't know me
With your deep, carnivorous heart

You search veins, combing those blue ridges with your gentle teeth
Before anyone can even tell you're there

I beg you, don't cut me loose
My cells are flowing into you, they'd fall all over this land

Your life reaches in cool tentacles around me
Taking icy breaths and delivering a frozen pulse

The air is white, my skin is transparent
Light rains like dust from the sky, and you are full of phosphorescence

The Bad Side of Beautiful

2009-12-07T04:38:00.002-07:00

My chest is burning
Yelling, "How dare you...how DARE you!?"
I'm only a child

Not long ago there was a visitor, he wasn't vagrant, wasn't alone. He had a house and a car and a wife and a god. Yet he knocked on the neighbour's doors. Asking to visit. Asking if they'd like to share brunch. Harmless, they've told me. Simply exchanging pleasantries, as friends. But I wonder if they ever looked into his eyes, looked into his heart. He could have wanted more. He could have been looking for a way out...house, car, wife, god. A bed for the night. A woman in another life.

I never want to meet this man, he frightens my soul. Not understanding his travels, I turn into a ignorant child. If he stands on my front yard, I've promised not to talk to strangers. Last time I may have trusted the niceties. This time I've developed some sortof paranoia. I'm ready to scream for help.

Ho (Hum) Ho Ho

2009-12-01T08:24:00.003-07:00

I can just imagine what it would be like
My boots wet with powder, threatening to crawl in beside my ankle
And it crunches like crackers and squeaks like window shields
I can imagine not seeing or feeling a thing
And warming up with blankets and safe bodies
Hands wrapped around fingers
Fingers wrapped around faces
I can see the magical land of white frosted branches
The clumsy balance of our ice dances
I could watch this all with three quilts and three pairs of socks and a fireplace
With gingerbread and cinnamon and apples and pecans
With steamy drinks three times a day
Oh my

Stuck in the Middle

2009-11-30T08:16:00.004-07:00

There may not be a thing to fear, but could she have wrapped your heart around her? I know that's a silly thing to think, I'm still afraid of going under. If we understood the fragility of our lives maybe there wouldn't be so much hope. It's not about the standings, I get all that. It's about wherever I'm not. That exists somewhere else, one where I wonder how exactly I survive, considering all that I'm lacking. One filled with perfect conversational skills, very blonde women, and empty of clumsiness of any sort. One where I don't run into everything that has a corner. Those may seem mundane but they can flood enough to cause panic. Pretty soon it'll cover the lights! I suppose there will come a day when it's all this and that. Concrete and matter of fact. Soloman's girlfriend told the people to calm down and not mix up the heart before it's ready for mixing. So I'm trying to take the cue, beloved one. Trying to think like you, miss vain and no complaints, miss "I am a rose", miss 'eyes like doves'. Like her, I could have wrapped your heart around me.

Some Filipinos I've Met

2009-11-28T05:38:00.002-07:00

Romie

You have porcelain teeth
And I can't help smiling when I think about you smiling at me
With your porcelain teeth
And I can't help laughing when you walk by me
And all you can do is sing
Maybe you were born deaf, or taught to verbally ignore me
But it's okay with me that you just sing in strained English
Or whatever language that happened to be
It all seems baffled by your large white teeth
And I can't help biting my lip when you finally talk out loud
Laughter could be taken as offensive, but I can't stop it, even now
Passing from the corners of their eyes, I see the others do the same
You brighten their day in a strange sort of way

Charie

I love you
Written on your hand
Tied up in a hankerchief
You hid it behind blue paisley
You can sit for hours
You can watch much longer
Mad, madder, best
Trying to prove that you're the strongest
I watched your brother leave
You pretended to be distracted
He had a look in his eye
I tried to avoid him
You hide that look well
Instead you have longing
Was that your mother waiting?
Or just another broken woman?
You can sit for hours
You can watch much longer
One moment in the photo
One moment behind the lens
It's a mystery, you say to me
You try and try and try
Sitting by you, I'm listening
To your story telling
One moment I can make you smile
One moment you are fuming
When we climbed into the truck
You came out but wouldn't wave
You can watch for hours
But you cannot wait much longer

Girl at House

"She knows me, she can see my eyes", she said to her mother. She stood on one side of me, very close. I shifted my weight, away, near. She moved to the other side, between Jane and I. She looked at me for a long time. In focus, out, back and forth it was like she was trying to adjust. In her eyes, and out. I wasn't sure where she kept going to. "Three children", Jane told me later. I smiled when she shook my hand. It was limp and wanting. Earlier we met them walking along the path, she had stopped to wash her slippers in the creek and then came, that is when she looked and looked. Maybe, I think now, she was trying to reach me somehow. She wore a large tank and baggy shorts, like most of the girls in the bukid wear. In the city the only wear this for sleeping. Her hair was short, her body soft and hanging. "Pila imong edad?", I blush. "18", she graciously replies. "Not much younger than you", she smiles. We could be friends, she implies, help me, I'm sure that's what she meant. "She's becoming depressed, three fathers come and gone". Oh that's what her eyes told me, when she looked and looked, when she stood close, her stomach aching. Another broken arm reaching.

Bright Eyes!

2009-11-27T20:48:00.003-07:00

So I thought I'd let you know
That these things take forever
I especially am slow...

I'd rather be working for a paycheck
Than waiting to win the lottery

This is the first day of my life
I'm glad I didn't die before I met you

Listening, breathing, waiting, thinking, not obsessing or overreacting, hoping, dreaming, re-calibrating, resting, adjusting, focussing, not sinking, not depressing, floating, imagining, loving, liking, not under-mining, holding, depending, not forgetting, sleeping.

On Hold

2009-11-24T22:51:00.003-07:00

How do people do this?

It's like breaking those tiny bones, the ones you never knew existed, but they hurt just the same
Like when you're minutes too late, and those minutes could have rocket propelled the rest of your day
Or choosing the second best option when you had a pretty clear chance for first
That dull ache, the 'just missed it'
I'll tell you, it's knowing exactly what you want
But I mean this like, exactly, none of that flip flopping or settling down
But it's across the table, on somebody elses plate

I just don't know.

News Update

2009-11-24T22:24:00.002-07:00

It has continued to rain for the past few days
In waves, like a mourning woman. Letting the tears slide down her raw and pink face, she shudders and gasps, weeps and pounds her fists, then collapses for a moment of exhausted empty silence before the temporary amnesia of her loss passes like a haze.

The tiny streams which burrow their way through rock paths have reached their fingers out into the dirt, and mud welcomingly embraces feet and wheels and paws
White mists have been passing in and out of palm trees
Which makes it look like everything is softening and bleeding at the edges, like it was all made of water colour

At the southern edge of Bugo, on the hill, there's been a rock slide
To the east, on the river, the water has risen, to the knees, to the neck
The Barrangay hall has opened its doors to the damp, displaced people
Near the bridge, the brother of Pastor Pancho slept deeply all night, and thus was cost his television set
Up the road a bit, Teacher Desiree was woken at 3 am to move their belongings to higher ground, she's spent the afternoon drying floors and scrubbing walls

This has a strange ring of a Canadian snow day, but with loftier implications. Classes have been cancelled, children will stay inside. That is, if their inside hasn't been filled with brown hapless water sailed by Mango juice packs and plastic Sumo wrappers. The drainage is clogged and so people wait with their elbows on their knees and their eyes on the tide, hoping this demanding visitor wont stay long and wont leave too much behind. They sleep on bamboo slats with fifty other people and listen to the rain surge in and out, like rice in a can, like white noise on the radio, an electric fan, the sound in your ears before losing consciousness.

I wonder at that kind of power. It reminds me of God sometimes, or it's the closest thing I can imagine as a resemblance to him. Unexpected, uncontrolled, unstoppable, unmovable. Fierce. It's true, sometimes he frightens me, though I don't believe him to be sadistic or dully unfazed, like this passing typhoon. But I like to feel that hopelessness sometimes, that there are things we humans can't control (all that power wearies me), like water, the fall of the rain, the direction of the waves.

Hi Middle of Night

2009-11-23T10:22:00.002-07:00

I've woken up
It's not long after I've fallen asleep
Though it feels like hours, a complete set
Again, I did this last night

My arm is asleep, my feet are freezing in the air but my neck is hot beneath the blanket
Somehow my body has lost it's ability to self-adjust
My brain too
It feels guilty, like I went to bed foolish
I think back
I was reading a novel, so anything foolish that happened was done by the characters
My imagination forgets to make that jump

I think it must be waking time
Time to talk to you
I rethink this (a feat), remembering my daily exhaustion
Just turn yourself back off
Not so, I let the computer screen do it's work, tiring my eyes and hurting my head
And if I remember, I ask if there's a reason I'm here?

Pag Sure

2009-11-22T06:41:00.002-07:00

Fitting together
Like the puzzle at Christmas
The eclipse and moon

People always say
That the memory of things
Shines brighter than truth

But that can not change
Like four walls, interlocking
I can still hide there

They Heard!......?

2009-11-19T22:04:00.003-07:00

In a far away land
Amidst jungles and green rain
Rocks heated by the sun and woven cloths dried
There was a man, golden brown
Met in the valley by a woman, so white
She wore the clothes of the convent, grey and heavy, armor from earthly delight
She looked on with determination and pride
This woman had not travelled by boat or by foot
But appeared one day in a grassy plain
Meeting the man on his morning hunt

She spoke of a man, hung from a tree
Blood from his side, for their depravity he had died
And from a cavernous rock he would arise
Come to wrap them in silk, come to bless their tongue
Teach them to eat and how to shoot a gun

She befriended this man, with her babbling word
He took her to the people, they sighed at the sight
A woman translucent, keep her from melting in the sun!
They put her inside, pillows strewn across her bed
Oh the sight oh the sight, (the Lord's glory, she said)
Either that or this covered woman's face, piercing eyes, her milky head
So they bowed to her, the picture she held
And sang as she sang
And shouted out loud

They've all turned to heaven, the mighty news was proclaimed
Oh Spain, make them clothing to cover their skin
And the woman and man who once met in that field
Their friendship so dear, so truly comprehended
She became a saint, a patron of the land
In Europe they painted her image (of course holding the crucified lamb)
And in her iris was seen the imprint of that golden skinned man
Across the ocean, the man who heard her, who deeply understood
On his earlobe was inscribed the Song of Solomon

Yes!

2009-11-19T19:00:00.003-07:00

This morning was dripping again
I bundled up in layers and wrappings of fabric
And my feet sunk and squelched in the rocky gravel
I was hiding my face behind a silver scarf
And trying to keep my eyes dull

Shortly after I sat down on the jeep
A boy, maybe thirteen or fourteen
Looked out the open back entry and proclaimed a sure, affirmative
"Yes!"
He then smiled around and the other passengers scattered on the benches
With a secret smile on his mouth, whether he knew them or not
And leapt off the back, quickly boarding another jeep heading the opposite direction

My heart, in that moment, held on to the triumph
Raised with the certainty in his voice
The assurance of his simple declaration
The clouds are not a fortress
The sunshine is there, it's still beaming

Today

2009-11-19T02:27:00.003-07:00

The rain hangs in humidity
I think it's a perfect day for it to be grey, you know, one that adds to the melancholy of all or anything I may be thinking
But it bears a heavy hand

I look out from under the tricicad covering, where I sit with legs slanted and hand loosely wrapped around the stabilizing bar
There is a flat panel of palms in front of me, a mountain in fact, but all the same colour green. They layer and layer and lighten up the air a bit before turning into the muted and wet sky

I've been trying to think of a few different things
The first was what I could see. How can I explain the bountiful nature of this wanting environment, availing to the same exaggerated numbers seems a bit redundant
There are at least one hundred tricicads in Bugo alone, nearly one hundred water containers in the back of that truck, one hundred children running with one hundred old tires, and one hundred boys who've asked for my number.

The cicad hits a larger bump than normal and I fear for a moment I'm going to fall out. The bump jolts my chest and I forget my exaggerations.
How do I get thinking about these things? I was like this in Calgary, I almost started a 'Transit journal'. Aren't there more important things to consider or am I just trying to ignore?
It's because I'm dreamy...all up in the clouds. If I can imagine the description I'll never come down
Plus, the more romantic things are sending me to the edge, I mean I'm not even rational
So why not consider the most rational things

The man with the sharp hip bone
The girls in their matching beige uniforms
The boy who sells roast nuts in his bicycle cart no longer has the roaster, but a woman by his side
There is another boy who is missing a leg, but has gained a crutch
A grey haired woman, whose face droops down in folds, is walking in her garden: rows and rows of small bonsai.
Repeat, repeat, repeat
The bakery is warm
The sarisari store is empty
The man on the phone
The woman with the umbrella
The boy with the headband
The girl with missing teeth
Repeat.

I think I'm calmer now. I've got it all out. Like why weren't we disconnected? We're free obviously. Why weren't we forgotten? We really meant it. How can he still love me? He's more than time and space, He's infinity. All my exaggerations hold nothing to that flame.

I Keep My Promises

2009-11-19T00:10:00.002-07:00

She wont breathe like I do
Taking it all in
The whole world and universe
Letting it full her lungs and raise her chest
She wont ever do that

And she wont break like I do
Falling apart like a wreckless fool
Everybody wants a little wreckless right?
I've got galaxies in my breath and I'll bring them with me
My skies will crackle and pop until I've created my own black hole
She'd never create the damage that I could

But she certainly wouldn't love like I could
My universe holds a million secrets
Dark and endless and blinding
You could get lost in it
I promise, you'd never get lost in her

My House

2009-11-18T20:43:00.002-07:00

I've lost the feeling that sits in the top of my stomach
Either I lost it or it is burried
And I like to think it's burried

It's a skill of mine,
Locating my feelings and noticing where they live in my body
Sometimes they swap doors, and I have to learn who shares with who
But usually I can trust that they're either sitting or pacing their normal halls
Or they are out

Happiness sits in the top of my stomach
But it sometimes shares with The-Knowledge-of-Not-Right
I love it when Happiness is in, instead of the other
Because the other often has tea with Disappointment

In my chest, tangled in my rib cage, is Fear
And Panic
Sometimes Surprise makes a pleasent appearance, but only on monumental occasions
Behind them, in the lungs, is Anxiety
Who often chats over the fence with those in the ribs
And even further in, there is vast cavern of the heart
Where Joy and Brokenness take turns decorating the rooms

Usually I can look around, welcome them in, or ask them politely to leave
Right now, Happiness could be suffocated by Brokenness
Or gone

I Keep Looking But Can't See It

2009-11-18T07:47:00.005-07:00

There is glass like puddles scattered across the dusty floor
You tiptoe around it but can't help but catch yourself in it

A dry, slender elbow
A round hip, pulled out with the jagged curve
A silvery wisp of hair, defiantly attentive to
A perfectly shaped cheek bone
You look at each one, multiplied by a hundred, with
Anger, disapproval, blushing pride
They scatter and shift and shade as the light hides behind the clouds
As though with your judgements, your eyesight dims and rises

The ground beneath your feet, beneath the glass, is grim and faltering
Created of bones and tree trunks and hollow insects and blood
Every year the howling wind picks it all up in his reckless grasp
And irately tosses it about in the atmosphere
Some is lost from gravity's hold and loses itself forever in the dark emptiness
Some falls back across the earth, resettling across further forgotten plains and into carcasses that are deader and darker

The glass is all that is present to reflect whatever heavenly bodies should move along its surface
It has settled into small grooves in the newly settled, old dirt
Where it has been for thousands of years
All the edges of the hundreds of pieces are smoothed by the blowing wind, and have greyed
But still show vague lines from where they once parted
From where they once held another piece
From where they were bonded to the original of their being
From the piece that was once not another, but the same, of one soul and self and likeness
When they did not reflect a million different images
Or hold a dark emptiness as they sit singular
Once their heart beat was the same

Now it is all just broken glass on an earth made of others' remains
And you can't help but catch yourself in it

Silly

2009-11-16T18:56:00.002-07:00

Sometimes, I suppose, dreams are all I have
For closeness, proximity
For melting right inside out of how I really feel

Neither Here Nor There

2009-11-13T21:10:00.004-07:00

I always forget how deeply books effect me, probably more than most other things on this earth.
If it's written creatively, I think like it for the rest of the week, my imaginings following the patterns of its prose.
If it is written creatively and sparks thoughtfulness, its ideas can stay with me for months (years, if they were truly new) and I base a lot of my thoughts and writings off of it.
If it is tempestuous, it sinks into my dreams, and becomes means for whole interpretation.
If it's too physical, too drastic, it sinks deeper into fear and nightmares, and I often have to stop reading altogether.

Today, while dreaming, I got a call "ending this", and though I denied its impact (both waking and sleeping) in my brain, I couldn't breathe. It felt as though a leather belt had been wrapped around my lungs and tightened, so try as I might I could not get enough air.
Frightened in my dream, it woke me, and spent long moments trying to find the right position to loosen the belt, taking long purposeful inhales. Even after I could breathe clearly, the memory of the pain and fear left by the belt still clung in red welts snaking around my lungs.

So earlier, my book asked, "if it happens to you in dreams, has it really happened?" And I wonder if this is the reality of how I would feel, should I ever get that call...

...or maybe it was just the heat.

Wow! Friends!

2009-11-10T20:09:00.004-07:00

I think, for perhaps the first time ever, my heart and brain are in perfect agreement.
In fact, they're even dialoguing,
Keeping a list of checks and balances.
They let each other know when the other is going out and always keep curfew

My brain has always been the elder
Snobby and self-righteous
Doubtful and over-ruling
Always trusting in her own powers, but coming up discontent and unsatisfied

The heart was the little sister
Whimsical and grand
Desperately trying to convey she had something more to offer
But when stifled by her sister's rules she rebelled
And foolishly trapsed around the country side, slamming doors and climbing through windows
Ending up lonely and embarrassed

So you can imagine my surprise
To see them sitting side by side
Talking about the things often pondered their heart and mind

Feet, purely

2009-11-10T08:04:00.003-07:00

This comes from living in a country where flip-flops are worn 97% of the time
I've become fascinated with feet
Not in the creepy way that the Colin Farrell look-alike did from high school
But just indulging in constant observation and classification, and finally placing into a catagory of preference
There are the petite
The slender
The grand
The broad ones, like baseball gloves
The long toed, like fingers, like a strange illusion
The spread apart ones, like someone left the post-manicure spacer in for too long
The slanted, like steep mountains
The straight, like rectangles
The confused, with different toes reaching as if to cross some sort of finish line
Some curl in, with bumpy knuckles
Others lie flat, one with the earth
Some lift their arches against the sole like a social woman lifts her nose, impeccable posture and grace
Some rest in the soles as if they are their only home, nestled and content

And these are my observations of feet thus far

This Goes Both Ways

2009-11-10T07:43:00.002-07:00

Yes, you may
I wont be dismayed
If you don't mind passivity,
Looking into my eyes,
Quiet nights

If you don't mind laughing
It's the best I can do
If you don't mind dreaming
Night and day
Yes, you may

God of the Small Things

2009-11-10T01:33:00.003-07:00

The heart beams in and out
And thanks it's maker for faithfulness

I realize I should be here in humility
Who am I that you would gift such things to me?
They seem too big, and too small
I seem too small, you seem too big
Who am I that I ever doubted
Who am I that you would listen to my doubt and answer such silly requests

But you did, and I'm thankful
My heart will try to grasp all this for me
I'm too quick to forget
I hope you'll remind me
That you use even the little things

I hope I'll stop thinking in words of silliness and skepticism
And take this from you in awe
What grace, what faith
Thank you for your gifts

Just sneezed out the last of my energy

2009-11-09T07:09:00.003-07:00

It feels like I'm walking with an extra set of limbs
I hope some day it all melds into one
It's getting much harder to see, like tunnel vision, in the snow
You know? Like the road is there, you can feel it deep
But you just want everything to clear up so you can feel safe again
I keep telling everyone I'm endlessly afraid
They keep telling me, "Hunny, you're so brave!"
And I keep reminding myself it's all about patience and peace and trust
But sometimes I think there must be easier things

Digging and Flying

2009-11-08T07:59:00.002-07:00

Almost ready to go over the moon for you
This whole time she's been digging holes to China
Making friends with the earthbugs before she sets up shop

But how do you tell someone they've got it all right?
You've got it all right?
Seems like a stretch to make it just okay
It's definitely more, more like reversing gravity

But she's been planting seeds in Belfast, Utah, and Calcutta
Just waiting for the words, she knows, waiting for those things to grow
And ready to send some stars to you

Here and There

2009-11-05T20:07:00.002-07:00

The air feels like BC, with the heat the breeze
The roads look like Palm Beach, quiet and residential
There's a man with a calamansi fruit headdress, calling to the neighbours
And down the street there are doberman babies for sale

Sometimes I can't remember how I got here
I can't figure out how to keep my feet on the ground
I can't stop thinking about the distance
I can't let everything catch up into one

Huhlah

2009-11-02T19:32:00.002-07:00

I would like anyone who occasionally suffers from dismay to put their hands up!

–noun
1. sudden or complete loss of courage; utter disheartenment.
2. sudden disillusionment.
3. agitation of mind; perturbation; alarm.

How about some antonyms!

1. certainty, serenity, tranquillity.

"I'm tired", said the Earth

2009-11-02T06:02:00.004-07:00

I wonder what would happen if the world stopped turning for one day
If the West got an extra day of darkness
And the East basked in the sunlight for 48 straight hours
Would we all crumble and fall apart and panic and be destroyed?
Leaving only those in the polar regions to laugh at our naivety and go on with their week?

Numba 1!

2009-11-02T05:30:00.003-07:00

I don't really think I need to compare
I just don't want to ever look back
The best choice, the reason for dreaming
To be bold, being on par with the holy grail

But boldness is a lovely exterior
And I feel rather fragile and frightened inside
I know time passes and things lets go
But how much is lost, I couldn't possibly know

So this is where trust comes in
Letting confidence seep down to the roots
So quakes could rustle and blow but the core would remain undamaged
And I'd know I'm worthy of being searched for

Yes, I must admit this is a shield building poem. Everybody tells me I have nothing to fear but nobody seems to know how terrified I get when I really let my brain go. About absolutely everything, and things requiring risk even more so. Maybe I'll try to think about it like I do physical frights...that the very fact they frighten me means I must do it all the more. But I should not assume this is a cliff to conquer. Maybe it's the ocean I'm trying to woo. In moments like this I get all self-adoring as if to remind myself that "of course it shouldn't be another way!". But then I feel raw, like I'm scraping the bottom, reaching for money that's quickly floating away. I hate building shields. It makes me unwelcoming, inside and out.

RS

2009-10-31T08:12:00.004-06:00

I just found something I've been searching for
For three years
I was disappointed

Red

2009-10-31T07:19:00.002-06:00

There is a red light
Dim and hovering through black night
In this loud vehicle
And I wish I had someone's eyes to find through all this noise

Things I like: Birds, Love, and Rambling

2009-10-31T06:51:00.003-06:00

Once there was a swallow
Who watched a robin from her tree
He worked and hopped and flew along the ground
Minded his own business, and occasionally sang her a robin's song
The swallow thought the robin's song was strange
But it was something she understood
So she watched and watched
And he worked and sang
And finally she twittered down from her perch
And they picked some worms from the grass
And fell in loved

...and lived happily ever after

Oh dear

2009-10-31T06:35:00.003-06:00

I am going through withdrawl
It leaves me shaky and in need
I know I figured quitting for a while would be healthy
But goodness, it's harder than I thought

So I thank all you small statured people
For making it easier on me

I miss my home

2009-10-26T16:54:00.004-06:00

Motels are turning their vacancy signs again
In the dawn still
Chilly from the rolling mists that cover the night
Lamps hang their light but it flickers like hospital hallways
Cars are just thinking about where they're not
No wonder it's hard to come alive in the morning

In All Honesty

2009-10-26T11:52:00.004-06:00

A serious response to difficult subject matter:

Tingly bugs dance there way right up from my toes to my spine
And then leap and bound across the walls of my ribcage
Finally they explode into one million other happy insects
Which sing carols and jingles at the top of their little lungs
My brain tries to catch the beat, and does a tap-dance
And my heart, well she is long gone. She's visiting with some robins up in the clouds

And that is the rough draft.

Arctic

2009-10-26T09:21:00.003-06:00

I am walking across a frozen lake
It creaks and mourns
And there are whales below who wake
And call to their babes

My feet and torso are covered in fur
Cheeks red, eyes blurred
My hair is rising up in the torrents
Shooting up, it almost reaches the sky

I've been walking for miles in this direction
The sun is my guide
The sky is blue, the sharp and cold kind
And minute shards of snow fill the air like exploding glass

I am as empty as this landscape
As barren as the sea

Silly Me

2009-10-23T09:53:00.003-06:00

Oh my the world sees
I do think the world sees
You're giving me the creeps
I'm glad I didn't let you have me

It would have been a pitty
I mean that would have been the reason
My pitty for your upset
I just don't like the letdown

But goodness, I'm glad to see you
Scooping up that other girl
Taking her down the aisle
It freaks me out to think that could have been...
Never ever me!

The Other Half

2009-10-16T03:11:00.002-06:00

She has welcomed a mighty ocean into our midst
And we wonder from where it came
But it is not of our consciousness, nor that of the day
It is her sense, her passion
It builds in waves, sounded from her voice
And crashes in gales from her hair

She is the dark of the night
The shadow of the universe
But in her is not terror nor fright

She is the kiss of the moon
The ageless companion of its crescent
She rests in his embrace
And pulls him through the night sky
The stars crown her head and are the jewels of her veil

Though she is hidden by reflections of light
She is the canvas from which all else shines
Without her midnight womb
No beacon is begotten
And the sun is her child, going forth from his mother's arms

I Am Moby, Waiting for a Train

2009-10-14T19:54:00.006-06:00

The train comes to a shuddering stop and I stumble back and forth, too eager to get out the door. I enter the land of white. White tile, white lamps, white posters. White people passing look yellow though, in the fluorescent light. I remember in Moby Dick, there's this entire chapter dedicated to the meaning of the whale's 'whiteness', like how frightening and deep it is. (chapter 42, if you have an inclination to study further) At the final summing up of his evidence Melville concludes,
"Is it, that as an essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color, and at the same time the concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows- a colorless, all-color of atheism from which we shrink?"
And aside from the confirmation that Melville writes the longest sentences of any author I've ever read, the meaning and unsettling feeling I get from these words really sticks with me.

I'm at the end of the platform. I got off near the middle and then walked to my right to see if anything ingenious would catch my eye but there's nothing, just the platform and posters for Boston Pizza and voting. So now I'm at a wall. I always feel dumb when I don't actually achieve something when I walk one direction because then people realize I never really had a plan in the first place, I am just hoping something will come along.
Oh well, I turn around and walk back and find a bench and pull out a pen and an old envelope so it will at least look like I am preoccupied. See I don't really have the whole whale issue like Ahab did, just the whiteness issue. I'm not going on a crazy hell descent just to find that one thing that I can base my whole life off of, front and back. I don't think I've found it but I don't think I'm looking for it either. I'm more of a 'take what you get and do what you can with it' kind of person. So that's where the problem lies. I'm not really sure what I've got so knowing what to do with it is slightly more perplexing. Thus, my whiteness issue.

My envelope is blank. But my pen cap is off. That'll show the curious onlookers. I can't remember what card this is. I don't even know why I keep so many cards in my bag anyways. Oh right, because I always have serious intentions of writing the person back, at least to say thanks for whatever nice sentiment they tried to bestow upon me via hallmark. I don't recall having responded once to date. I shuffle the card out and flip it over. It's purple with yellow and black pansies waving around the stretchy cursive writing: "Granddaughter..." Dammit. This is from March. I haven't even talked to my gram on the phone since then. Another train screams up, slows down, opens wide, shuts tight, speeds off. The platform room returns to its dull hum.

See, the reason whiteness is so frustrating is because you know in your heart there's something there but it's practically impossible for your brain to find it. You know if you go deep enough or mix the right things in or shine the light at just the right angle, it'll emerge and BAM, you've got this super great, vibrant creation. The thing is, you can shine the light a million times and still not get the angle right, and if you mix the wrong things in you just get something that closely resembles a piece of shit. Though no one would say it in quite those words, you'd know that's what they mean, and even more, you'd be sure of it with your whole self.
So it's a little more than frustrating. It's closer to terrifying when I really let myself think about it. But it's the kind of terror like in those stupid horror movies where you can't look away. Ever. Because the whiteness isn't the whale, it's you. So how do you look away, right?

I'm staring blankly at the tiles now. I can't even pretend to convince people I'm doing something because I can't help but doing nothing. At least I'm still assuming people are looking at me. I look down to the other side of the platform, towards the wall I didn't end up at. There are three Korean students waiting for the next train, two talking back and forth in a gossipy sort of way and the other listening to huge headphones. I watch them until the train scoops them off to never land and I decide that my favorite thing about Koreans, in a purely shallow respect, is their posture. Their chins are always slightly higher than everyone elses, and some people hate them just for that but I think it's more out of defiance than pride. I mean eventually it turns into pride but first they're defying everyone else to think any different. Maybe even their own insecurities and self-hate that humans seem to be born with or at least be trained to accept by our parents by the time we're four. So they defy that genetic voice that reminds us we were made from dirt and to dirt we'll return, and for a while they convince it that it's wrong and that they've got some diamond in them. They lift their chin and they have everybody believing that they've got a bit of god in them and then voila, they are pretty much accepted and expected to act like god for the rest of their life.

Speaking of which, and back to my friend Herman; Ahab is ranting and raving and convincing his crew to go on this deadly search for the white whale which has become is life obsession. But even then, Ahab isn't convinced it's the whale alone that is to blame or if the whale is just a means to someone else's end. He says,
"But in each event- in the living act, the undoubted deed- there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask!"
So the thing that gets me here is that since I don't have a whale, just the whiteness, it actually makes me the whale. All poorly delivered jokes aside, that carrys a billion troublesome implications and maybe you can guess why I'm so torn up about the whole issue.
So what does this have to do with the Korean gods? Well it's more about the defiance. If I'm the whale then there is that 'thing' behind the whale telling me what to and what not to do and who I am and who I am not. The only way to fight back is to cut the whale wide open (metaphorically, stay with me) and shake my fist at the driving force that sent me swimming in the first place. Then in my defiance I have a little even ground with that force and I can throw out the whiteness and find something else. Purple or green or something cheesy like that.

And now you're probably confused because earlier I said there was something in the whiteness, something deep and powerful and worth something. But, I've learned it's actually more than a hell of a job to find, it's pretty much impossible for reasons I've already mentioned. Let me explain:

1) If the white whale is just a means to someone or something else's end, then that's all the whiteness is too. To try and explore and 'discover' (yea, like a safari) the depths of meaning the whiteness may or may not hold, you have to let the creature keep on swimming and living like it always did. So the mighty whale director can keep on directing the whale like it always did and nothing ever really changes. I can try to find the god in me, but it's still just a part of the whiteness, and the whiteness still belongs to the god out there. You have to kill the whale to even have a chance of getting away from it all and finding something new. Killing the whale is the only way to rebel. It's the only way to find whatever was wrong in the first place, before the whale was white.
2) That's the main point. This just adds to it, and that is that whiteness is always so damn detestable and horrifying. It's stark and empty while being infinitely loaded with the questions of the universe so no one even wants to get near it for fear of it spreading like a disease. That's why I hate it so much. I am the whiteness and it covers me like leprosy. Blank, restless, futile, always searching, ever unsatisfied.

I look down at my hand and notice a ton of paper strips. My envelope is no longer a functioning envelope. My eyes have counted almost every tile in this stop and I've been tearing my envelope to shreds but my brain hasn't registered any of this. The paper in my hand looks like extra long confetti. My butt hurts so I stand up. I figure I might as well leave now, and the fluorescent light is sending dull signals from the sides of my skull.
I'm standing near the edge of the platform and I can hear the distant squealing of the train and it makes me think, "damn, I was really hoping to find something at this station" But I guess it was too white to be conducive. Still, as the train pulls up I can't quite pull away so I figure maybe I still have something to write or something to do. It rushes away and I open my hand and a billion envelope shreds get tossed out from my hand by the wind and fill the wake of the train. I watch them collide and jump back up in the air and then finally fall to the metal tracks to be torn up by a billion more wheels.

In my other hand I'm still holding the purple pansy granddaughter card and I look at it for a long time, waiting for some sort of epiphany maybe. That's what I tell myself when I get staring and thinking for too long a time. But this time I'm just staring, tired of thinking. I figure I could stop by my gram's tonight, since that's the direction this train heads anyways. She'll probably make me freezer fresh fish and chips, which I'm okay with because I'm hungry enough and the batter they use at restaurants usually makes me sick. She always thinks that eating her homemade kind is a favorite childhood memory of mine so I might as well keep the dream alive. I can see the headlights of the next train getting larger in the tunnel. I put the purple card back in my bag, wait for the train to slow to a stop and slide its doors open, and get on.

The Man in Antarctica

2009-10-13T21:24:00.004-06:00

I have now been here for three months and one week.
The sun does not shine, I promise you. The sun does not shine and still the world continues to turn and I wonder how this deep longing was programmed within my body and soul. The longing for even one ray of the vivid star to stray across my vision.

It is passionate within me, like a fury, like a hunger. There are times when I feel wild like a starved wolf, eyes sharp and irrational. yet the thing I desire lays beyond the eternal skyline, and my futile grasps leave me gasping for some sort of rationality to bind my arms and head.
My mind often strays on nearly unstoppable rants into the bottomless depth of my need. For brief lucid moments I can gather this disorderly shrapnel back into myself, compartmentalize, and separate from it. There is one thing I can really compare my plight of sunlight severence to, and this is only a supposition of my imagination, as I've never personally experienced it. That is, the lack of gravity. The solidarity and dependancy we have upon it suddenly gone, our belongings then rise into space and though we reach and strain we are unable to gahther it all back to ourself. This is how I feel, though it is the belongings of my mind that are drifting away. I swim as if in a hopeless dream, barely going anywhere ut pushing to find the destination.

Perhaps you can imagine, my panic and strain sometimes seems insurmountable. I did not imagine this natural time clock of the earth to be so precious and intimately bound to my soul. And yet my days are not so much passed in study and observation as they are simply reminiscing of the days I once sat in broad daylight, and imagining what joy I will again experience when I am reunited with this ancient solar being.
It has become obsessive, I realize, but there is nothing else when it has taken half of my body and soul with the day.

Theos

2009-10-09T03:18:00.002-06:00

There are a lot of people
Who can't hold me tight enough
Can't keep me strong enough
They can't tell me I'm beautiful enough
Or make me feel safe enough

And that's when I'm reminded, I can't get enough of you

The Message

2009-10-05T05:42:00.002-06:00

Tonight, I attempt to call you

You across the city, country, world, universe

I dial your heart
I hope I have the right number
The line isn't direct, never seems to be
So I leave a message

I hope you'll get it, or at least see the flashing red light, and maybe know it's from me.....

Mother

2009-10-05T05:34:00.005-06:00

In the straits
We paddle
Our eyes only turned
Towards the womb of our natural mother

She calls with words of wind and scattering boulders
We hear her in the night, echoing off distant canyons
And when we wake, she sends her revelations with the wolves and the jays
When she shouts, it is never paniced or fearful
But alerting, protective
Or, like the mothers she has fostered over the ages
She calls her children to gather at her breast
And to care for their matriarch in her old age

So we press on
Returning to the place of birth
Setting forth our arms and spirits
To uphold the body who once upheld ours

Simply

2009-10-05T05:31:00.002-06:00

Who is this love?
He beckons at the window, knocking at the door
He writes notes and leaves them by my porch
He sits on the doorstep and waits for hours until I come out
He enjoys the sunlight and the birds and the breeze
Until I finally join him at his side, enjoying it with him
He always whispers how much he loves me
I can't help but say it back
Sometimes I wonder if we should say more, if this will get old?
But those are the only words that suffice
The only words that bring me such joy
The best words I can say to explain myself

Oh My!

2009-10-05T05:18:00.004-06:00

I've been perusing my past spouts, making myself sick with the thought of myself. Whatever do you think of me? It's all seeped in double meaning and blatant directions. Some of the relics are pleasant, I've put them to rest deep in my soul. It's the recent explosions and contrivances which make me hide my face behind my hands.

Take a moment, turn myself to God. We talked about this last night, right? You're all crazy about authenticity that you can't even figure yourself out.
Right
Sit back in my chair. I am so embarrassed right now, regretful, irrational, helpless, hopeless.

And....
over it.
Almost.

This is it right? My heart and soul. Welcome, I suppose. It's a bit early. Others have been here much longer but they're on the same playing field. All about baring it all. Vulnerability! Oh mother Mary and assorted other saints, that's what it is! I wasn't prepared to lurch so quickly into THAT part of things, though I suppose it was always in the back of my mind.

"I need you so much closer" being repeated by Death Cab is playing in my headphones. There is a compass on the window beside me. Read me read me read me read me.

Fear is my ultimate sometimes. The ultimate worst, the ultimate master, the ultimate control, the ultimate lame station manager. I hate it and I'm ready to give it up. I mean at least I'm over the "denial" stage, but I forget what the one after that is. Here it is, a big mess of fear, all out on the floor.

Take a moment, turn myself to God. I brought a mop and bucket. I'm straining it in and dumping it out....like WAY out.
Of course you are
Sit back in my chair. I can hear the mop swishing, the fear is draining out the back door.

Here is what I've decided: I'm standing up to you. Not in aversion or rebellion, but in a ferocious nakedness. I'm a bit cold, a bit raw, helplessly vulnerable. There goes my pride.
"you need directions, I'll be your guide", he sings. It perfectly rhymed with pride.
This is me! Hey! This is me!

Letter to the Constellations

2009-10-05T05:10:00.002-06:00

Sitting in a break room
Writing to the stars:

"Dear (Andromeda, Capricornus, Pegasus, Ursa...)
I've been watching you for a while
Studying the way you move
Sometimes it lulls me to sleep
Sometimes it keeps my spirit riveted
I've chosen to follow you to the ends of the earth
In days past I've realized I can't live without you
I keep looking up
The daylight is painful
Your absence etches itself across my heart,
I see it written there, silver scars
Everybody reminds me that you're always there
But I can't stand not being able to see you for hours on end
Laying in some grassy plain, or craning my neck to find you in the city
I'm coming to find you soon,
Dear,
I'm coming to find you soon"

The Crow, Piece 1

2009-10-01T18:56:00.003-06:00

The crow quietly follows the man
He is tall and dark and green eyed
He walks purposefully, as though conveying he has somewhere to go
But with a slight hunch
The shoulders not straight and long
Like one who is confident beyond their own consciousness
As though the strength of their shoulders was only assigned them,
Instead, his curve forward, if only slightly
As if being drawn forward by a calling finger
Protecting the sternum, and that within

The crow watches him walk in his way
She flies overhead to gather his path
And where it might lead
The path is concrete, cold and prescripted
He's laid all these slabs himself
And is walking each step
Yet they seem to be slipping below him
Like these strange grey foundations have suddenly become as slippery as ice
Lost hold on the earth below them
They start to slip out and up from his footfalls
Still he struggles to move forward
Driven,
His eyes look forward unwavering

And yet, behind them, the look of fear begins to rise
The crow had not noticed it before
It must have been hidden deep below
Behind the ribs, low into the soul
He had gathered it up in bundles
And stuffed it into doorways
But now as he walks on this increasingly chaotic roadway
Slipping and stuttering forward as his concrete flies
The fear rises,
Like ocean waves eclipsing lower portholes

In the midst of the rocky uproar
The crow observes one moment,
On the face of the man,
Of indecision
She watches a barely discernible weakening
His face slackens
Knees sag
She can even see his fingers twitch
As if raised by an electric current
Desiring to reach sideways,
To grab for some hold

And then it passes
The man begins to viciously grab at his concrete slabs
All floating raucously in the air above his head
He snatches them furiously and slams them together
Five, seven, twenty slabs high
In one tall tower behind him
He forces it to stay

No longer will he be able to walk in the direction he came
Less he dismantles this cold cemented high rise
So he only continues to look forward, as before
Refusing to look to the side
Heated in his momentary lapse of steeled control
In which he almost leaned against the stability of outward forces

The crow flies lower, curious at the man's state
After such upheaval
He seems to have tethered the fears, tied them in tighter straps
And thrown them deep into crevice of his soul
He takes only a minute to gather himself in the silence
Straighten his back, mouth, gaze
Like a properly aligned tie
Shoulders still bent slightly
By that beckoning finger
Which seems to call him
Though he is not aware of the weight
Which it inflicts upon his body

We walks forward with his dedicated strides

The crow decides not to fly any closer
She would not be heard
And if seen, considered only petty distraction
She glances with pity at the strange man
And leaves his calculated chaos for the day

Later, that evening

the crow sits quietly in the grey light of her nest
A dove enters softly
Nudging the crow from her contemplation
The dove has a white paper in her grasp
With ancient words written upon it
The grow has her misgivings, all out of self-protection
This crow always seems to uncover the crow's discrepancies
And gently bring to light her flawed judgements
Upon the people she hovers around

On the paper is written this:
"Let your eyes look straight ahead,
Fix your gaze directly before you.
Make level paths for your feet
And take only ways that are firm.
Do not swerve to the right or the left;
Keep your foot from evil"

The crow ruffles her wings
Staring cautiously at the dove
As though asking for an verification of this truth
The dove does not shift, only gazes in return
Then departs from the nest in a shimmer of light

The Crow, Intro

2009-10-01T18:39:00.002-06:00

I am on a mysterious and dangerous journey once again
One that requires displacing myself
Setting it up upon a shelf
Neatly tucked in body and mind
And quietly entering those of another
Stealing myself inside,
Slipping on your limbs and thoughts
Like a snug jacket
Which I try for size and move for a bit
And then discard for another
I will crawl myself into your eyes, hands, lips, chest
And try to pick up what you've left there
Everybody forgets things
I like to find those thoughts, wants, desires, pains
And take them for my own
Arranging them on the story board
Like paper machet,
See through, painted glass mosaic
Until they appear as my own creation
I am a crow of sorts,
Collecting the glamorous things which people seem to drop
And making with them my own woven nest

night

2009-09-26T00:32:00.003-06:00

Darkness is swept in with the wind
Like mama sweeping her broom along the cobblestone
As the leaves and dust go rushing and tumbling away
The clouds stumble over themselves to welcome the night

Annointed

2009-09-24T04:44:00.002-06:00

"Hey little princess"
(dabs some oil on my head)
"I picked you out from the beginnning!"

"Can I have some more?"
(splashes the oil til it drips down my hair, I giggle)

"You are set apart, for me, for me, for me..."

"I am yours..yours...yours..."

Learning Love

2009-09-24T04:07:00.003-06:00

We met on the rock
In the room
By the river, in the grass
You often wear plaid when you talk to me
Something of warmth and adventure, I think that means

Usually you call me to sit
For a while
Just sit and hush, listen to the wind
I listen to the wind
Sit and hush, feel the sun
I feel the sun

Listening to the wind, feeling the sun
Wherever this is I'm happy.
Whoever you are, I think I love you already.
You know me? You know me.
I know because of the places you take me
They're always lit by the sun...sometimes only dappled
And they always include the sounds of the earth,
But muted, whispering, as if they're all listening to what we'll say
Most times, they are places of long lost imaginations, places where I've gotten lost before
And now we're getting lost again...

First I sit and look around.
You ask me what I see, hear, feel.
Rock, wood, dust, flip-flopping feet, the grass poking through the blanket, a breeze...
I identify each thing and my spirit rests
You must know my councillor, I joke
You smile
I smile. I think I'm the happiest girl in the world, I tell you
I'm very happy too, you say.

I feel safe enough, actually safer, to sit close to you.
Sometimes I lean my head on your shoulder and you brush my hair back from my face
Or you hold my hands in yours.
Once we just laid side by side with our hands beneath our heads and stared up at the sky. That was by the river.
Daughter, is what you usually call me. It reminds me of when my grandpa would call me 'girlbaby'

You always have something to say, something loving and affirming
Something I've heard before, but it means a lot more coming directly from you.
Usually you wait for me to talk first,
My spirit is so scattered and my heart sometimes heavy
It's hard for me to focus until I let all my distress fall out of my mouth
You've told me to write it down, you've told me to put it on the rock wall, you've told me to hold it to the light
And then you send it off, kick it down, and burn it up.
It's nice that my messes are as flimsy as papers

My favorite is when you turn them into doves, and send them flying into the breeze
Once you gave one to me
And reminded me of freedom

Fact, Again

2009-09-05T21:45:00.003-06:00

feelsthesame

Andfindingithardtoexpresstheheartcriesintangeablereadiblelanguage

I don't think it's all that outrageous
To believe in love