but i won't

I wish I were clear-eyed and capable, 

that I didn't feel the need to know where you are. 

I wish I could stop writing love songs, 

quit wasting the paper. 

But your force was like an indelible ink 

that I have to spread thinner and thinner 

until I can barely make out the lines 

that once told a story more complete than we could act out. 

If you ever change your mind, you said...

Germany

In every town, a steepled church
A cabbage farm
A factory
Walls that lean on neighbors
Due to the faulty eyes of bricklayers
Or the settling of time

And closer to the tracks
A dense consort of tiny homes
With tiny yards
And wiry dogs snuffling along the hedgerows

The illustrated stone facades
Of outbuildings long left to rot
Kept company by impatient teenagers
And impetuous girlfriends

Sometimes balconies
Sometimes warmth
But sometimes a large lit box
Where tinkering workers add tires
To another crop of cars
As a fog creeps perilously closer

couldn't be magic

you were someone i so desperately wanted to know
that i meant my keen eyes to fall on for more than one sleight of hand
but you can't know your consequence or cause
can't know that the man who preceded you
took every drop of patience i contained
and poured it out
until it seemed as if i were weeping it
and that was the only virtue i could express

i could only shake off your disappearance with a shrug
could not be crushed under another of Sisyphus' stones-
    patience turned to stone

you might have sawed it into quarters
pulled one from my ear to show
you understood that all i could hear
was my virtue rolling back to me

Aaron

into dreams you go, my sweet
and it's been a time-long death
of words as well as wisdom

my heart can't retract what it spoke
as the muscle of its tongue subsides
and catches in the throat
it's been tough to swallow, this demise

fragments

6)
after a long night's work
the light off the highway
     calling me to church
pardon if i keep on truckin'
roll right into my bed

8)
face it babe, you ache for change
wanna take your clothes off, rearrange
and i catch the shining moment of despair

but give yourself a quarter-turn
and walk right on until you're firm
and let me hang here drunk in disrepair

30)
inspiration strikes at any time
but you just won a lifetime of happiness
no devil involved
no heavy registration
catastrophe's like white after Labor Day
and i am the fashion police

37)
I've had thoughts vanish at a question
          May have led to some end
                Some sufficient answer
Led to fruition
I could be brilliant

I might know you
Like your clothes know you
          They know you better
          They've held on
I might feel every breeze that's hit you
          When I tug at your clothes

I might know you
I might put you on paper
          Pour you into words
And what you read comes out your mouth

If thoughts didn't vanish
          I might know you

42)
smiling because i'm a stranger on the train
invisible
and i'm watching a woman below me spill cheese in her blouse
     it goes between the buttons
she'll find it later
half-melted to her stomach
i should go shit in one of the bathrooms
     and come out looking sheepish
she's got sunburn too
a big, red, candy-cane stripe down her arm

ten hours on a train today
what are you listening to?
i wear my sunglasses at night, i really do
but only because i fancy myself intriguing
"if every moment of our lives were cradled softly
in the hands of a strange and gentle child,
i'd not roll my eyes so"

she may be a panther in the sack
but didn't his mother teach him not to sit that way?
i bet he wonders if i'm writing about him
     he keeps stealing glances
maybe it's the sunglasses

51)
i was a lone leaf struggling
heaving in my bed
because in the month of February
no-one wanted me

52)
when you're sick
when your senses fail
you have your dreams
only
mine are x-rated
you and i have sex
on a cold stove top
while a portly woman cleans the kitchen
we hop a train, then
the other living force
and we whisper to each other
why
we should have married in that bookstore
among so many ghosts

54)
there you were backpedaling
trying to save your life
and mine
from a current too strong
for even the symphony's
crashing cymbals

58)
i took care of them
i excised all the details
so you couldn't corrupt them with your irony
so the force of your will couldn't bend them to break

you're a liar
but you think i don't lie
i'm better at it, more willing
i can con myself into thinking it's all the same
same place, same time, same person
same charge

but you can't bring it back
even if you capitalize all the right letters
because those little pen marks on the page?
i scratched and bit them until they bled
and i'll unravel it all when i'm ready
when i can see straight

you will never be there
in an empty room
like i will be there
nauseous and writhing on the floor
as they pull your words like leeches from my mouth

59)
she stooped to recover a shoe
that had landed softly on the pavement
she was hit
with the force of whiskey-
painted as a car
and traveling at speeds
her ghost will never travel

61)
when the written word becomes impenetrable
and i am forced to repeat a single page
it will be a delicate death
that i am ill-prepared for

rush

to speak knowingly of sex feels a trifle like fraud
like pinching a pea from its binding
i connect with it in only incremental ways, in a slow rush
that sends a tremble flowing to the pen
like a wave cresting
crashing and subsiding
to leave this form quaking at the loss
always at a loss

because i cannot separate the love
from the act of making it
not as it pertains to you

i'll have you wrap my wrists in lace and
loop it 'round the bedposts
to create a puzzle of ways and means
you asked once if i liked a challenge, and i do
though not when that challenge is you
because when you clasp your wrists behind my back
to pin my arms
to shush me in our reverie
i trust and i trust and i trust
and it will not leave me though you do

all i crave now is your gentle push
your genial pressure
all i crave now is your truth

his name

The censor telling me that there is no such thing as being "vaguely" apologetic, but I think it's true, I think that exists. Not that I know what to be apologetic about or can recall what the initial thought corresponded to. Just that I reject that, that's what I choose to do. I reject the censor that tells me "that's not worth noting". Suck on this notable thing: I snorted up a wad of snot just as a drunk man leaned over to ask my name, and he wasn't in the least deterred. Good man, or just horny. His name was Jeffrey.

anchor

I feel like I could write a novel for you, or about you, and it would require only a few more days of your silence as a form of assent, to spin it wildly from me. That would be a merciful thing for you to allow, for these thoughts to crystallize- right now they feel like goldfish gently slapping on the floor, always just out of my grasp. How is that possible? My wit never escaped me as it does now, though my self-assuredness has always come and gone. You could be like an anchor, and I could drop you quietly to the depths to bury yourself with the knowledge that I could not (would not) stray far from you.

tell me this

the feeling of being set free

despite a decision to the contrary

and it's open-mindedness

that is a trap-

it forgives you to make the weightiest decisions

and leaves my ember glowing, only.

i'll know anything before you tell me

because i've courted all the factors

to count them

and their numbers tell me this:

that you've excused yourself

and politely washed your hands

and left me to founder falsely,

for the sake of consistency,

at the table we set together.

but this bright mind is an expanse

a vision of glowing futures

wild, open fires, even

and the truest escape

you ever gave me.

Pulp

My gravest mistake is in thinking

I am more beautiful when I am angry.

But my anger is a sharp shadow

That files a form both lean and monstrous.

Look at my face.

The storm you find there will give you faults

you will never own or adhere to.

The gray of it will cut your teeth,

will send a stark whisper

straight to your pulp.

But what ache do I have

for souls who roll skittering from me

like marbles from wind?

Dry

we were fish in a barrel

gape-mouthed with trust

that life would carry on

like this...

or like that...

and suddenly then

wide-eyed

because Independence Day came early

with neither a whimper nor a bang

but a soul freed

while the blood of his body

let onto crosshatched pavement

my feet had tread for years

a school scattered

too many swimming thoughts to weep

too many mechanisms

like waves pushing me

to pick up a shoe, a bag, a shattered sense of scale

that i would never quite

piece back together

to be thrown back

and now the dull crack of it

sends me twitching

dry

gasping for breath.

For once

What would happen, then, if I asked you to marry me tomorrow? If I said that I had lived long enough without you and had suffered enough without you and had grown tired of it? What if I told you I didn’t want to feel discouraged anymore? That I wanted something stable and offhandedly eager? Something that I never had to argue for? What would you do? I’d put my money on running, though I’d hope for something more favorable to me. I wish that you would favor me. For once.

Why is it that you can envision a world where no soul suffers but you can’t imagine a life with me? Aren’t I a soul that suffers? That feels pain and death repeated, over and over again, at words that go unspoken? You’ve slain me a thousand times.

Dismissal is so easy. That’s it! That’s why she does it, because it’s easier than holding on for dear life, for being the last one to keep pace, fingers tight and aching as she claws her way into the light. I can’t not fight for it if I believe it, that would be unfair. But the factors that contribute go beyond ergs and effort. They include pasts and futures, all plain and forgone conclusions. Easy, remember?

But I’ve never been the easy choice, though my name is a simple one. And you’ve never been able to trust that I’m not too good to be true. Shame on you for that- there is no other shoe. There is nothing but a woman with holes in her socks and a disdain for dishonesty, and she’d tell you all about it if you’d ask. She would tell you stories and she would tiptoe around the house so as not to wake you.

Tragedy, with company.

The dissolution

I watch with diseased pleasure

that burns and spreads and folds in on a promise

you made me 800 years ago-

the last words to come straining from the split lips

of a dignified man.

And the last promise you would ever make,

aware at last of what bound you-

that i would no longer be content to suffer fools,

that we've fallen together like angels fall- blind and burning,

with the locomotive power to rip the color white from snow.

I believe your soul's response knows mine

and courts it to tragedy, for company.

I want this to go places.

I want this to go places. I want the whole shebang. No missteps, no casualties, no red tape. Nothing but you and me and free sailing. I know where you are but I know what it’s like to sit across from someone and know they’re looking for anyone. I don’t feel that with you, that you’re looking for anyone, a body, a warmth, a comfort. I will never make you comfortable- that’s not how this real thing works. This real thing works because it keeps us in motion, not quite at a loss but never in rigid lockstep. You will never know me exactly but that’s why I’ll love you- because you’ll still be interested after all those years, and interesting. You’ll still make my face flush and glow. People see it already, the glow, and it feels like I’ve known you a million years. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed that when we’re still, sitting, the picket fence goes up around us, and the garden and the children run laughing by and then we’re at a dinner table surrounded by friends in a toast to our love, the one we’ve shared for years but never really returned to the universe- we’ve held it between ourselves as if it couldn’t be merely on loan for our lifetime. As if it couldn’t be greater than the two of us.

 

This is too much to tell you right now. I may lay it all out on the line sometimes but at heart I’m a realist, I realize. Your free will is as strong as mine, though I love when you use it to pin my arms up beside me. It’s a gesture no-one’s ever made, it’s a gesture that makes me feel as if I would never need to ask another question for the rest of my life. This is so stupid, this writing. Putting things on paper for you to see and judge, when you know them even if I haven’t said them out loud. *Sigh* And I’m drunk off of wine and you’ll see it sometime, the way I am when I’m drunk- restless and sometimes morbid in my assessments. I could convince myself right now that you’ll never love me but I don’t want to do this, I want to see what happens when we collide, maybe fireside into a burst of raw threads peeling each other apart and meeting again. Can you feel it twining together? I send that out sometimes, a curly tendril to brush your cheek as you sleep, to make you think of me. It’s not sorcery, it’s so much more plain, a no-frills way to tell you that I think about you at the very base of my matter. I’d think you could dig that, if there were anything to dig- but I’ve left it out in the open for you, a rare and randy assortment.

 

See what you’ve inspired? A grandiose self-punishment. You’ve inspired a scoff. No, that’s not fair- you’ve inspired so much more, but sobriety is a funny thing in that I spend most of my days in concert with it and most of my nights, even, in concert with it and so to read this sober will be a dull headache because it will feel true. And because I just never know when to stop.

 

Back, then, to what I want. I want to be your arm candy and your warm body and your crossword puzzle dictionary. I want to be your side-by-side and sometimes upside-down. I want to have you cornered. I want to come out unscathed, but I want someday to fight for you. Make things plain for me- give me something to cry about. It’s the only way I ever really live, and when the salt dries on paper it spells out the very least of my tragedies. I’m so compliant but that has never disturbed me, it’s only when I wish for something. 

dream date

unfettered, uncomplicated, but overcaffeinated

and vainly hoping that you won't bore me

i circle back to starting points

vague fixtures

go 'round and 'round

'til i end where?

the where doesn't matter

except i am alone

untangled

streamlined

and thinking what i really want, then

is not to be bored or boring

calcified, captive, corrupt

so i involve myself

these aren't dreams, these are stories!

and I am so self-involved

but in a buttery sense

frictionless

and sometimes so simple

as to be a dot- harmless, clean

clean and sleeping.

disembody

on being stone cold

and calibrated

as not to forgive

or concede

i foster dissent in your absence

and won't be touched unprepared-

caught at wrong angles

curled 'round any finger

and you felt it at the start-

my stony finger

now pulling the trigger

It's Easy

I want to yell out in the very best way, and I want it to rip you awake. Cosmically speaking, do you know what I mean?

Do you feel the tender pulse that craves its way across the states, and stares you down in a lovely crowded space?

Have you seen us on a city park bench and thought "It's you, it's you, it's you..."?

Road trip superlatives

Most unexpected place to see cute guys: Maiya's Restaurant in Marfa, TX

Hottest temperatures: Austin, TX

Biggest storms (and consequently, best sleep): Montana

Highest # of crosses on the side of the road: New Mexico

Most unexpected place to see tumbleweeds: Washington

Highest # of trucks per capita: Texas

Best thrift stores: Portland

Favorite shopping: Austin & Portland

Cheapest gas: Little Rock, AK

Easiest drive: West Texas

Best hiking: Yosemite

Freshest air: Redwoods Natl. Park & West Texas

Most scenic drive: Pacific Coast Highway

Worst wind: Washington

Slowest drivers: Wisconsin

Ugliest town: Eureka, CA.

Best place to see the night sky: Wyoming & Montana

Highest number of motorcycles congregated in one place: South Dakota

Highest number of tweakers: Eureka, CA and Butte, MT.

Worst state to drive through: South Dakota

Highest number of taxidermists: Wyoming

Most visible border control: New Mexico

Most unexpected place to see a high # of foreigners: Mesa Verde Natl. Park

Creepiest places to be alone at dusk: Redwoods & Badlands Natl. Park

truth

imagine for a second that she's laying

A Foundation

she's smoothing with her hands

like a sheet to cover a bare bed

or bare bones

On the move to Portland

At this point I've accepted my restlessness, my gypsy tendencies and the habit I have of remaining in movement- even if that movement is an eddy, slowly swirling and small. Have you ever come across something lovely and immediately known it would make you leave everything that you had grown comfortable with? Have you had the sinking feeling that you would have to leap for it, like leaping for a moving train? And that by leaping you would give the rest away?

I hate the between-ness of knowing one place and knowing another. I hate shouldering the stress of finding something temporary until I can replace it with something permanent, wondering whether I can make it to the first paycheck without falling back on someone that I never intended to burden. I hate that I'm still insecure enough that I feel I have to impress people, that I'm being put to the test and that failure is somehow a possibility.

But I live to explore and to learn and to conquer and I have never before felt so at home somewhere so quickly. I will thrive here, and if there's any evidence of that it's the fact that here is the bud of a blog that I have threatened for a long time to write. A tiny victory in a great adventure. Have you found yours?