old notebooks

lockless and curfewed
i am crammed
back into my
twelve year-old self.

struggling, alive,
they exorcise my
adult, exhume my
childhood for
resurrection

or rebirth.

attempt again
to upbring me
properly
before the world.

even lab techs
know you can't
reuse
guinea pigs.

you don't
go back and make
them right,
just because

now

you know.

seeds you've
cooked won't ever

grow.






it's talk of numbers
again
all athmatic and how smart you are.
so good at lying,
now that you know yourself.

it's obvious, but only
momentarily.

absence of thought
is letting whatwhomhaveyou
take you wherewhatever.

you will find yourself

perpetually making
things more
difficult.

you'll smile a little
smile a
while, but

won't feel as though
you deserve it.

ten thousand angels
you will never know
are crying for you now.

ten thousand church bells
ring to save
your soul.

somewhere,
in the earth,
the clock is ticking
indifferently

and someone sighs.

persons pushing it against
people weighing on it
to slow down.

what's next isn't to
ask anymore.

time needs space.

i cue you to
move on to the next
in a

series of questions.

she writes
red

she's on

fire

she carves words
out of

veins

catch her this

dragon

come put
out these

flames

warm-ups, & i have been you

a myopic lens
so fair you see
sad you see

marvel the
mystery
whispery
wistfully

some things
are for what happens
when you just type
for the sake of typing

stringing words
along the lines of a page
just to see something
left behind
when you leave

just to leave these little
lines of me
a history

her story







& the shot
glitters in the ruby
concave
of an open chest
the filigree sparkle
like a flash
of life or little
tiny pieces of a life
tiny drops of days
that spread
out a long red
pool beneath
all the holes
in leftover heart
or what once was
heart but is heart
no longer







i have been you.

i have sat
with the loose ends
of my expectations
dangled in my hands

while all they were
tied to
drifted away,
the smoke
of nothing

& my very soul echoed
by the purple sobs
of twilight
down the wall behind

me & the moonface
as blank
as white
as my own.

i have been you.

i have buried
loose ends
in busy little
businesses.

i have tried
to tie them
footnoted in
music notes

superimposed the ghosts
of their open knots
on every rushing image
i would flash before my mind
or eye
or mind's eye
hunting just one to help
me remember how to forget

i have pulled
reflections
from my black book
like poems

& kissed them
as memories.
each a different feature.

so many he's as
brown eyes, warm voice,

strong hands,
deep laugh,
an inquisitive eyebrow,
those lovely shoulders,
that dark hair

that could never be
strung together well,
or long, enough to
fill the longing.

each one dropped
like pebbles
into darkwell depth
to bring the
reflection of my loss
up to me
until it overflowed
& was lost

i have been you.

i have had
cups of days emptied
& their contents replaced
with the deafening
white noise
of strawsucking
nothing
nothing
nothing,

i have been you.

i have been the cage
for a starving animal
that eats itself
behind the bars.

i have been you,

& i am not you,
anymore.

rivers and rivets

nile wide & sky
embracing
your parallel

banks of me brook
all ebbs & flows

fullness of running away
& a destiny
of downstreaming

at ends
open ocean
waits eager
for floods & filling

fuller, nowhere room
for me
but embrace so empty

i hurl headheels
in cartwheels of
meant-for-me

& steady rhythm.
moonflux tides.

it comes & goes

like a late night love
musters genuine
intentions &
flees before
sun can hit sheets

& gravity forgets me
so hard i
levitate,

shake those walls
at max capac.
until my bolts
are unscrewed &

nothing can hold
rods, chains
nuts & braces

together. surpassed
(finally) fixing &

all unpuzzled.

she's alright with me

A gasp for breath rips through his dry throat like a sharp tear of thick cotton  fabric. Heels drive deeper into the sides of a steed already frothing in a panicked sprint. Perhaps breakneck speed is called breakneck speed because there's no time to see the branches that can take your head off, let alone dodge them. Face pressing against the mane of his horse, eyes squint to keep out hair and sweat. Not the good, clean sweat of hard work he is so used to smelling, no. This is the acrid stink of fear leaching from every pore of the terrified animal that would throw him from its back in a moment if he weren't holding on for life itself, his grip on the reins nothing more than the paralysis of instinct, eking fear from every pore of his own. A plague of terror to infect whatever landing place they find, the putrescent infection of horror that so easily spreads from a lone rider bearing only bad news and worse at his heels...

i tried so hard to write tonight. to make myself buckle down and birth something from a different corner of my head, some proof that a story not my own is in there somewhere. it's hard to watch epic stories and then feel like writing anything other than an epic when you sit down to make something yourself. 

i want to look out my window and see something different down on the street. nights like this i want to slip out my window and go wander in the dark and the quiet. have the moonlight and the shadows all to myself, even in all of these lined streets of peopleful houses. nights like this i want to walk down to the lake and circle it aimlessly (without drowning in swamp muck, or coming back smelling like dead carp and old algae.) that's a beautiful image right there. instead of quiet moonlight, i've made you draw a nice picture in your head of old fishy smelling lake muck. i must be so talented. 

sometimes i worry so much about being a disappointment that i don't even want to try things. i like hiding in the dark and the moonlight and solitude. i'm such a nocturnal creature. i prefer the cold to the heat, in most cases. at least where the weather is concerned. i prefer a shadow to a bright light. it's easier to be elusive and immaterial in the smoke of uncertainty. 

ah well. not any more, see. i'm back to being alright with myself, and not caring what anyone else thinks. i spent a month resigning myself to no future, and now i've got a huge one wide open before me, so i'm running for it with both arms open. i might trip, faceplant, but at least i'll be doing something instead of nothing. at the very least i can get out, be a friend, make a friend. everyone can use more friends. 

had a nightmare about my ex last night. one of those terrible things because while the premise of it was nightmarish, parts of it were good, and that made it even worse. the feel of his hand heavy and real as i pulled him away from the people he was trying to talk to. the sound of his laugh as we talked, even if he was laughing at my frustration. his chest as i beat my fists against it begging him to leave. 

she is trapped inside a month of grey

and they take a little every day

she is a victim of her own responses

shackled to a heart that wants to settle

and then runs away

it's a sin to be fading endlessly

yeah, but she's alright with me

she is leaving on a walkaway

she is leaving me in disarray

in the absence of a place to be

she stands there looking back at me

hesitates, and then turns away

she'll change so suddenly, 

she's just like mercury

yeah, but she's alright with me

keep some sorrow in your hearts and minds

for the things that die before their time

for the restlessly abandoned homes

the tired and weary ramblers bones

and stay beside me where i lie

she's entwined in me

crazy as can be

yeah, but she's alright with me.

she's alright

she's alright with me...

mercury - counting crows