e.e. cummings

disavowals

neu•ro•tic |n(y)oŏˈrätik| adjective Medicine suffering from, caused by, or relating to neurosis. • abnormally sensitive, obsessive, or tense and anxious

flossing between the lines

what I mean is hope makes torture possible right.
this is no fucking lifting of the veil,
but rather my seraphim.
I can not create my own fate
but I can decide what is fatal.

a misconstrued masculine drive to prove something uncontrived is gnawing at it's real potential.

it's like that painting in the dentist office where that woman with the blue dress
is holding a painting of a woman in a blue dress and as the paintings are getting
smaller it's harder and harder to see the dead crow she is holding in the other hand.

did the person who hung the painting in a family dentist office not notice the bird at all?


I've for years fought with the idea of the forgotten crow and holding my tongue down.

Witch-Wife

She is neither pink nor pale,
And she never will be all mine;
She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,
And her mouth on a valentine.

She has more hair than she needs;
In the sun 'tis a woe to me!
And her voice is a string of colored beads,
Or steps leading into the sea.

She loves me all that she can,
And her ways to my ways resign;
But she was not made for any man,
And she never will be all mine.

- Edna St. Vincent Millay

If I Stand in My Window

If I stand in my window
naked in my own house
and press my breasts
against my windowpane
like black birds pushing against glass
because I am somebody

And if the man come to stop me
in my own house
naked in my own window
saying I have offended him
I have offended his

Gods

Let him watch my black body
push against my own glass
let him discover self
let him run naked through the streets
crying
praying in tongues.

-Lucille Clifton

Air Conditioners and Satellites

Heat triggered the initial events
and also the resistance
it spread from
region to region causing
the turning on and off
of air conditioners and fans.

We were driving down 494
I turned the lights off to see the stars.
He made me pull over.
He was a friend or at least on his way.
When I leaned over to see where he was pointing,
claiming it was Orion’s belt,
I felt his hips press forward
thats when I turned away.
A real riddle of the Sphinx.
No avoiding this disoriented detaching,
I felt something sad and awful
straining around the edges of my mouth
surface in my eyes.
Thats when I turned the brights back on.

The little power that remained
even after the night fell
caused only the artificial
satellites to become visible.

Claude Cahun

for future fussing, join them, pacing helps but ruins the wax on the hardwood floors

from cover to cover somethings remain under

i spent 2.67 on gas today
baby prayers , stoned alone
ive got the chilly willys
what kind of something would you want?
i just had no room
drink a lil bit and sing about whatever

there was no tangible evidence which only increased his desire to remain faithful

emma marie rose krademan lived kitty corner to aunt kathy summers '93-'96 she stole her mom's wine coolers and brought them to the playground she had stringy blonde hair and her ears poked out the sides her shorts were too big and when she went upside down on the monkey bars that's how we found out she didn't wear underwear she is what my cousin called a secret friend she would make her younger brother chew on rocks, lick the garbage cans, and say things he didn't want to he peed on ryan drew's brand new bike and ryan beat the living shit out of him tommy didn't scream like i would have he just cried and i never really wanted to go to the park anymore after that

Hour of the Star

But let us return to today. As is known, today is today. No one understands my meaning and I can obscurely hear mocking laughter with that rapid, edgy cackling of old men. I also hear measured footsteps in the road. I tremble with fear. I must reproduce myself with the delicacy of a white butterfly. This idea of the white butterfly stems from the feeling that, should the girl marry, she will marry looking as slender and ethereal as any virgin dressed in white. Perhaps she will not marry? To be frank, I am holding her destiny in my hands and yet I am powerless to invent with any freedom: I follow a secret, fatal line. I am forced to seek a truth that transcends me. In order to become greater than I am, for I am so little. I write because I have nothing better to do in this world: I am superfluous and last in the world of men. I write because I am desperate and weary. I can no longer bear the routine of my existence and were it not for the constant novelty of writing, I should die symbolically each day. Yet I am prepared to leave quietly by the back door. I have experienced almost everything, even passion and despair. Now I only wish to possess what might have been but never was.

Narcissistic and Paranoid

I hate holding my hands behind my back

for god's sake don't let the deadweights drag you down mcgowan

sometimes i think that instead of walking thru the cold to go to club nights i could just convince you to stay in bed with me and watch movies

which could be heaven or hell... depending who you are. me, i'm in paradise

these are not mistakes.

Orange Cream Savers

It must have been in the high 90’s everyone was laying around in front of fans drinking things slow so they wouldn’t have to get up for more.It was the first time I had hung out with a boy alone. He was a year older, but held back a year for bad behavior, so still in my grade. We both got dropped off early to school and have to spend an hour inbetween doors. He was chains and baggy black sweatshirts. We would split headphones. He would tell me he thought I was cute. I hated the way he said it, like an exception to some rule.

His house had sheets hung as curtains, the kitchen was filled with dirty dishes and pots on the floor where the roof leaked. His room was in the basement. I had heard rumors on how his ex-girlfriend gave him bjs down here. The floor was wet and the stereo glowed green. From across the room I saw painted in white, a heart with her initials.

He hands me an orange cream savor. We sat there not touching, listening to Incubus' Drive, sucking on our candy, waiting for our mouths to be free. We moved in and it tastes like orange creamsicles, its wet and sloppy. His tongue runs against mine and I can feel his hands move from my knee up my shirt, then across my bra hook. He without a flinch, pinches it off. He has done this before. I can’t stop thinking about the white heart on his wall.

Plan B

Grandma had an affair. It was always assumed and never spoken of, but now here at his funeral, instead of typical tears and sharing stories of the "good times" the women are gathered in the corner of the VFW with plastic punch cups and pinned back curls, whispering ...Helen Marie.... It just couldn’t be.... Helen Marie. The men stay out back by the keg, arms folded stern brows. I knew before my mother. When I was five grandma said she needed to tell me a secret, because she has been waiting for the right ears to tell. Grandma is magic. Her hair in perfect set curls, red lipstick at 6 am. Won’t leave the house without her pearls and a splash of channel. She loves murder mysteries, feeding the birds in the morning, and honey on her toast. She gives caramels to the dog, plays cards with the paperboy, tends her raspberry bushes. I would go into rooms I shouldn’t, snoop through drawers and boxes. Grandma said I was a curious kitten. Today she caught me in her vanity. On the side she had a picture of man with a mustache. I had on as much jewelry as I could fit on my fingers and around my neck. Red lipstick smeared on the side of my lips. Grandma came in... “oh kitten. Here I know what you need.” She pulls out her channel No. 5 and gently turns my wrists over to put on just a drop. She shows me how to rub it in behind my ears. I ask her about the man and she grins and taps on the bed for me to sit. “I hear he was a B movie star” “Well I am sure it was when she took that trip to Germany when Bill was stationed in Wales.” “ Like I said a German, B movie star, why else would she have learned the language” “Well its obvious Helen Marie is German, I don’t know how Bill could stand it” I am standing with Grandma in the kitchen. I am 14 now. I open up the bottle of wine and our us both a glass. She kisses my head. We just stand there and listen to the women talk. I grab her hand. I love the red stain left as she pulls the glass from her lips. My mother comes in the room and cries.I have only seen this once before when she stubbed her toe on the coffee table while vacuuming around my sister and I watching tv. Grandma tells me to go collect the bulletins in the pews. I walk toward the hall and hide behind the door peeking in. On the car ride home my dad had fallen asleep on the passenger’s side and my sister was listening to her book on tape. Mom hasn’t said a word, just keeps the radio real low and a cigarette lit. “I guess you make a lot more sense now” she says to me.

written with black magic marker on the 35w bridge

you wonder what you'll do when you reach the edge of the map, out there on the horizon, all that neon beckoning you in from the dark.

"He was clearly overprotected while growing up"
"Feels neglected by the world"
"Fears social disapproval"
"Lacks positive personal relationships"
"Is afraid of his father"
"Sees his father as inadequate"
"He may have had an excessive number of premature sexual affairs"
"He has had homosexual relationships out of desperation rather than desire"
"His Oedipal problems are not yet resolved"
"I see no significant damage"
"There is little hope for recovery"
"Seems fatalistically resigned to the rejection of the world"
"Has an ingrained hopeless pessimism"
"Seems hopeful for the future"
"...a dominant drive for security"
"... and enormous amount of hostility"
"... a great deal of love to share"
"... a decreasing ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality"
"... an exceptional imagination at work"
"... a pathological loosening of an orderly thought process"
"... seems to be in the early stages of paranoid schizophrenia"
"... the depression is so powerful that suicide could be likely"
"... I think he is very creative"

A pulse felt for through garments.
If I lean into the desire it starts from
If I lean unbuttoned into the blow




Of loss after loss,
love tossed
Into the ecstatic void
It carries me with it farther.

I mean, things decay

the life span of black ink in disposable plastic pens is estimated to be about four and a half years.
the blue fade away in two.
newsprint is only intended to last a day.
a color photograph thirty years.
videotape fourteen.
magnetic tape, seven.

I know

I cannot quite clear the jump And I can’t wash my hair clean Or get rid of this tattoo Or sedate an angry spleen 
I shouted to a marble wall And my screams bounced back and knocked me out

Learned Imitations

Joe Wenderoth thinks poems written in school are just learned imitations of poems gone by. We need to be unsheltered. That's why I didn't know I preferred poached eggs to scrambled, till I had to make them on my own. My roommate reads a lot of fashion blogs and once I heard her say: For what is inside of you is what is outside of you,and the one who fashions you on the outside is the one who shaped the inside of you.And what you see outside of you, you see inside of you;it is visible and it is your garment. Which made me think yeah, everything you choose is a part of who you were, a part of who you are right now, and who you want to be.

The ungrammatology

let me lay
quiet,
awhile

lost at least
in thought

give me the time
to give me
away

you've tongue without mouth

a lace of late of crazy

don't

eat popcorn in bed. date boys who can't. not. care.

Under No Management

The woman knitting at the bus stop. The boy she kissed in rehab. The grey haired psychologist. The gum behind my ear. Incontinent men in the pharmacy aisle. Rooms rented by the hour. Sex. The needle found in his pajama pocket. Neon lights and empty hospital halls.

eyes close

luring almost mindless/ routine a regular strategic something about it though identified in me and I knew, despite my better self, that I had always had a place  should I need it or want it, among the mismatch of forgettable faces passion must have kidnapped reason/ abandoned

-

You were wrong
You still are
I know you called her back,
in the bathroom,
I heard it through the wall as
I pretended to fall asleep with the
all the lights still on.

wahh wahh

I knew just what you wanted me to say
and I knew
I was one step ahead
and my funny haha
got yours thinking
and it was never
going to happen
except that one time
when we both were
drinking
or you caught me
feeling as if I'm
hung to dry

and then u ask me
what i want
what
i
want
want
want
want
waah waaah

and i know,
well kinda
i've had it...
just not sure where to find it
or if it's like one of those
things you get to have more
than once
or like if it was I don't know
real


but i know
whatever it was
we weren't listening to
mgmt
in the back of your
suv

my mother
would be happier
if I did more things
that I was suppose
to
and maybe
i would be
too

sometimes

for me, starving, that coreless, useful feeling
is not making myself smaller
but making myself bigger, inside,
it's starving artist
fullness is dullness. dreaming's too easy.
but sometimes I don't care.

2.

Inside us, apologies inch
their way around. Most of what we say will hardly matter

1.

he walked away and didn't come back. that's how it was. if i'm going to be completely honest, i have no better story to tell. it was twilight. it was december and bitterly cold. my stomach ached with it, that kind of loss for which i have no other than pain. for days after, i looked out the picture window. I made up all kinds of scenarios to address what i didn't know. i knew nothing. i knew he had been here and now was gone. i knew i'd done nothing to help him, nothing to stop his going. and now i was afraid.

Listening to my own advice

" I always put myself out there, I don't think there is any avoiding it. Well, if you want it to mean something"

Dabbles and Dots

But you were saying, I was saying
together we stutter toward a stab at the everafter
and still this treaty between us shatters

the swallow's leaf-rot nesting sours the breeze
Aphids lace the startled iceplants with spit

Even those cool midday shadows wouldn't correct our dreams
were we to sleep, and so the thinking, at this moment
is of stalling whatever's next


what's going to need to happen here, people, is either we let that noise at last lull every ambition to ruin, or we rise up and reach for the keys and get out

A ribbon on my finger

normal is bad.

no
no
no

or


mal
mal
mal

” It’s the clichés that cause the trouble. To lose
someone you love is to alter your life for ever. You don’t get over it
because “it” is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new
people, but the gap never loses. How could it? The particularness of
someone who mattered enough to grieve over is not made anodyne by
death. This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no-one else can
fit it. Why would I want them to?”

— Jeanette Winterson

It's so easy to project yourself onto water.
It's violence, calmness, changeableness are mine, or yours.
I can't seperate its moods from my own.
But then I don't really beleve they're seperate anyway.

NY

William Kentridge

sound clips

I am a terrible person.

There was a time when the back seats of cars, closed doors in bathrooms, parents going out of town, where everyone around me was spinning out of control. I’m gay I’m straight, what we want is what we want, is what is. No time. No space. Forced fun. Fast pace. Bad taste. I remember endless nights, and even longer days. I loved the mornings. I would shake from all the pills and caffeine alone in my room but at least everything would be quiet.

I lived in a small white walled two bedroom apartment with my ex-boyfriend from high school who after graduation flew off to california started wearing white belts, posing in mirrors with his hip bone poking out from his low cut jeans. He went out to gay clubs, stopped eating, discovered blow, found a live in boyfriend. His down to earth, laid back nature was replaced with anxiousness and all he wanted was more. He ran out of second chances and came back home. When he asked to live with me, I think I was still in love with him. I was a different person then.

He always had the air conditioner on high with the side window open, and the music turned up to volume level 23 or 26. I never had the music above 12 when I lived with my parents, not even when I played NIN as a fuck you mom, fuck you dad, you just don’t fucking get it sort of thing. Have you ever heard New Order’s Temptation at 23 or 26? It’s void filling. But it never was really like that when he played it. There would be 30 people in this small room, like I mean small, it was like, I don’t know, but the smell of stale cigarettes is vivid.

When we first moved in everything looked so clean, white paint covered everything. We didn’t have any furniture so we made a fort in the living room. We would take late night walks and I would gather flowers from gardens to bring back home. “You are so hot, oh my god. Do you think he likes me? Whatever, I mean I don’t care. Do you have a smoke? Why wouldn’t he like me, look at me.” I never really listened, thats why I can’t even put together a real thought of his, I was too busy looking for alley cats.

My head hurt, my hands shook, I couldn’t keep any food down. My sense of reality was blurred, I couldn’t figure out the time or day I just knew I was tired and angry. I wanted to sleep. After three days of being on the run, I walk through the door and there is giant pot sitting in the middle of the living room, full of cigarette butts and bottle caps. All the lights are on, there are dirty dishes and bottles and cans all over the floor. The air conditioner and music are making my brain melt. I can feel a knot inside myself tightening. I can’t figure out if I am going to yell or cry. I turn all the goddamn overhead florescent lights off, pull open the shades and windows.

I hear the shower running and realize he is home. I would usually avoid the confrontation and just let it be, but not anymore. I don’t care what he does. I go in my room and lay there. I can feel my heart beating against my chest, my hands get cold and my face grows warmer. I hear the water stop and hold my breath.

my dad hid
plastic liter bottles of vodka and gin in the rafters
I didn’t understand why they were hidden,
but I knew not to ask.
If you did anything that drew his attention you knew you were in for it.
 I still find myself when I get really scared, clenching my checks.




_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________





Ever since I’ve known him he has this magnetic field that draws you in. He is a spiral of intense sadness and complete euphoria; he is just trying to make something stick and he can’t. He wants things to be better but doesn’t even know what is wrong. I get him to unlock the door and he crawls back into the bathtub, and begins shaking back and forth. His face is buried in his knees and the sink is over flowing. I climb in and hold him. I honestly don’t know how long we sat in the tub I just watched the water fall from the sink to the floor and eventually cover the tiles. It would stop when it reached the dark brown ones cause the floor was higher there. There was no moving him, and when I asked him what he wanted he just held me tighter. I could have stayed there all night, but it all became too much. I turned the water off and asked him if he wanted to go home. He didn’t lift his head, he didn’t say anything. So I left him.


___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I am a terrible person.

Potholes

Careful to avoid the canyons
where the the walls have washed away
causing broken bits to get
stuck in the grooves of shoes
and hide under doormats

the vehicle

I have a knot in my stomach like
two long cotton sheets dipped in elmers glue
rolled around in tacks and broken sea shells
placed inside a lit hot air balloon
lemon juice sriracha a dash of lime
wrapped around your fists twist round and round
tea kettle steaming boiler toaster pop
hands like oysters, yet stiff as walrus tusks
eyes remain on the concrete floor, as your passing
breeze turns to waves growing higher in the synchronized
rotation of the moon
too many people in a two door car
get hit from both sides now turned upside down
rinse cycle, two stones, one crumbling brick