2010 -Final Post

The years back up            into their corner
like the separation of a line where people
wait to order coffee, water. East Bay doesn't
foster so much love like the animals at
home do. They're much more satisfying to
touch on the tops of their heads, purring.

The sense and sensibility of; made nothing
to eat. Food is always a subject when we're
talking people. And who needs something?
Do the greats dine prior to their creations?
Or after? Not in photography, certainly.

Reasons the fork; a utensil prodding into
the remains of a density worth chewing.
No more food, no more water to drink.
The attic's lights have grown dark pink.

The end began with snow       little radiance.
The sun ends with a redness never duplicated,
as unattainable as the meaning of prudence
while sitting alongside a Latin speaking woman.

Adaequatio intellectus et rei. Adaequatio 
intellectus nostri cum rei. Adsum. Adsum.

Marsh

Do they need their friend to be a lover, or a lover to be their friend?

You're in free-fall
and you may not
know it yet, like the
all that haunts those
moments of uncontroll-
able bodied factions:
sweating for no reason
and tearing up at
the sound of an indifferent
piano key -a black,
boyish grin worth every
inserted penny.

Rain

deserves at least one blog post,
as it's tapping upon my
plastic windowsill.

I face away from its persistence,
yet it knows that I can still hear it
there, reminding me with each gentle
sputter that there is nothing more important
in life than to run against its wetness,
bare-chested with my head drawn back.

Beast

"He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man." I said it as if it were my own lines. I stole it as if it were cheap. Nothing's cheap. Especially a stereo headset. The thought of rummaging has me nervous. Where's the meaning? A search for the inner self: a collection of language and ideas disposed of by others who have influenced our lives. Why can't we come up with anything new to say? Mother's should teach their sons and daughters that line rather than the traditional "nice to say". It's nice to say a lot of things, and there are many nice things to say. Who will listen when we turn to dust? Who will polish their joints' metallic rust? There's a darker, heavier, deeper thrush. Only to comply with what's expected of us, and return to the discipline that has begotten our thoughts, a rake in the sand, its handle sunlit, a dog in the sun, lapping at the ocean ebb.

Impasse

This evening I considered nothingness and your absence. I dreamt of the end of your time and mine as if that was a perfectly suitable escape for the stress I'm under and overwhelmed with. I peered out from my car's front window, but I could not tap into the abyss of your cavity. And I decided then and there (approaching the intersection of Oleander and Baseline -East) that I could not live without you, and that it would serve a stronger mind to inter myself one limb at a time. Red, green -that won't do... not at all. There's only one other way: to outlive you and brace for the day that you fall from earthly grace. It's an evil deceit -a life and those lives tethered to its core. Who will hold you when the ropes have all burned and broken? The darkest matter was oil and water, and in my half-dream there were houses for everyone to float around in, but I walked the sidewalks searching for your face and the solace you provide when you smile.

GRE Vocabulary (Round Two) ..desperation ensues..

Zealot (n): someone passionately devoted to a cause. Precis (n): short summary of facts. Husband (v): to manage economically; to use sparingly. Dirge (n): a funeral hymn or mournful speech. Intrepid (adj): fearless; resolutely courageous. Erratic (adj): wandering and unpredictable. Gestation (n): growth process from conception to birth. Sinecure (n): a well-paying job or office that requires little or no work. Sagacious (adj): shrewd; wise. Pathogenic (adj): causing disease. Nominal (adj): existing in name only; negligible. Flag (v): to decline in vigor, strength, or interest. Repast (n): meal or mealtime. Listless (adj): lacking energy and enthusiasm. Ostentation (n): excessive showiness. Insurrection (n): rebellion. Wan (adj): sickly pale. Inure (v): to harden; accustom; become used to. Puerile (adj): childish, immature, or silly. Anachronism (n): something out of place in time. Ignoble (adj): having low moral standards; not noble in character; mean. Iniquity (n): sin; evil act. Umbrage (n): offense; resentment. Polemic (n): controversy; argument; verbal attack. Abscond (v): to leave secretly. Viscous (adj): thick and adhesive, like a slow-flowing fluid. Deleterious (adj): subtly or unexpectedly harmful. Fractious (adj): unruly; rebellious. Distend (v): to swell, or bloat. Collusion (n): collaboration; complicity; conspiracy. Coalesce (v): to grow together to for a single whole. Gambol (v): to dance or skip around playfully. Explicit (adj): clearly stated or shown; forthright in expression. Dogmatic (adj): dictatorial in one's opinions. Repose (n): relaxation; leisure. Probity (n): complete honesty and integrity. Opine (v): to express an opinion. Investiture (n): ceremony conferring authority. Ribald (adj): humorous in a vulgar way. ....desperation.

GRE Vocabulary (Round One)

Ardor (n): intense & passionate feeling. Erudite (adj): learned; scholarly; bookish. Dogma (n): a firmly held opinion, especially a religious belief. Enervate (V): to reduce in strength. Acme (n): highest point; summit; the highest level or degree attainable. Gradation (n): process occurring by regular degrees or stages; variation in color. Philanthropy (n): charity; a desire or effort to promote goodness. Leery (adj): suspicious. Legerdemain (n): trickery. Dither (v): to act confusedly or without clear purpose. Levity (n): an inappropriate lack of seriousness; overly casual. Attenuate (v): to reduce in force or degree; weaken. Sardonic (adj): cynical; scornfully mocking. Lachrymose (adj): tearful. Canard (n): a lie. Jocular (adj): playful; humorous. Corroborate (v): to support with evidence. Diatribe (n): an abusive, condemnatory speech. Bilk (v): to cheat; defraud. Crescendo (n): steadily increasing in volume or force. Yoke (v): to join together. Malinger (v): to evade responsibility by pretending to be ill. Apocryphal (adj): of questionable authority or authenticity. Exonerate (v): to clear of blame. Coffer (n): strongbox; large chest for money. Aggrandize (v): to increase in power, influence, and reputation. Pariah (n): an outcast. Pare (v): to trim off excess; reduce. Abjure (v): to reject; abandon formally. Stigma (n): a mark of shame or discredit. Vacillate (v): to physically sway or to be indecisive. Craven (adj): lacking courage. Peccadillo (n): minor sin or offense. Onerous (adj): troublesome and oppressive; burdensome. Mercurial (adj): quick, shrewd, and unpredictable.

Passion & Delirium

Language is the first an last structure of madness, its constituent form; on language are based all the cycles in which madness articulates its nature. That the essence of madness can be ultimately defined in the simple structure of a discourse does not reduce it to a purely psychological nature, but gives it a hold over the totality of the soul and body; such discourse is both the silent language by which the mind speaks to itself in the truth proper to it, and the visible articulation in the movements of the body. Parallelisms, complements, all the forms of immediate communication which we have seen manifested, in madness are suspended between soul and body in this single language and in its powers. The movement of passion which persists until it breaks and turns against itself, the sudden appearance of the image, and the agitations of the body which were its visible concomitants -all this, even as we were trying to gauge. If the determinism of passion is transcended and released in the hallucination of the image, if the image, in return, has swept away the whole world of beliefs and desires, it is because the delirious language was already present -a discourse which liberated passion from all its limits and adhered with all the constraining weight of its affirmation to the image which was liberating itself.

It is in this delirium, which is of both boy and soul, of both language and image, of both grammar and physiology, that all the cycles of madness conclude and begin. It is this delirium whore rigorous meaning organized them from the start. It is madness itself, and also, beyond each of its phenomena, its silent transcendence, which constitute the truth of madness.

-M. Foucault on the aspects of delirium.

Black & White

You were a friend to me, like the malignant swelling of your skin -just around the jaw.
And in the abscess of my memories: withered leaves dropping with swift-wind-swings.
(little wings)

Chasing the birds, your claws outstretched -i in the corner, pulling a string,
catching your attention with my woodsman alias. i set the rope aflame
just as you motioned towards it, knowing that i could never live with the
reality of you trapped inside, dangling and discouraged, those eyes, glimmering.

And under the leaves shifts the dry desert clay, blownback, lifting towards
an ever-changed constellated night. Choose wisely. Many have toured the sky.

You were a friend to me, a satellite of pillared future histories, and yet your life,
a microcosm in cost-benefit-analysis, a dried, mundane Thursday afternoon
swimming in the sunlight of my American-blinded room -those unhappy
rectangles of ultraviolet and your sprawling body under them, is worthwhile.

Annie & Susan

-Although none of the rules for becoming more alive is valid, it is healthy to keep on formulating them.

Madness

In the classical age, for the first time, madness was perceived through a condemnation of idleness and in a social immanence guaranteed by the community of labor. This community acquired an ethical power of segregation, which permitted it to eject, as into another world, all forms of social uselessness. It was in this other world, encircled by the sacred powers of labor, that madness would assume the status we now attribute to it. If there is, in classical madness, something which refers elsewhere, and to other things, it is no longer because the madman comes from the world of the irrational and bears its stigmata; rather, it is because he crosses the frontiers of bourgeois order of his own accord, and alienates himself outside the sacred limits of its ethics. -M. Foucault

The Shape of Autumn (thinking)

i've tried to write in a form similar to those before me, but i have not felt impressed. Or i have not been impressed upon to endure the particularity of a craft so neatly devised that i must address each word with careful precision -as if i were wrenching together a plane that will one day carry passengers. Lives are not at stake, nor are dreams. No matter what we read, we bear not the notes that were strung, but the melody we can sing to: rhythm and blues. Maybe a weakness of mine, but form does not represent itself well enough in my state of mind, and i cannot control it like i do the particularities of language. Sure, the overarching thought generated from inside of my head to my fingers, then unto my paper with pen fantastically describes those relationships that ricochet through and through my readers' imaginations, memories, and current surroundings, but what form is there to name of that situation? The scattering of light. A fracture of sight. We are blind, and in blindness we live out our lives, says he who created those words to be emulated. Then again, what sight are we discussing? i have long since begun to write in linear lines, stanzas of numerical meters, maybe eight or nine syllables acting like piano keys: the ebony. i don't agree with ivory, nor do i pronounce it correctly. You see, it's a rebellious act -placeholding in places where people don't roam. There are no forms to accommodate the "Starbucks" cafe or the actions the organization itself has done. No meter representing my favorite bookstore, nor the sound that plays overhead. No syllabic accents to match the conversation outside the Berkeley comic book shop (men making deals with cards, books, and child's toys, then imagining themselves mounting the womens' softball team that's in town). Where does the first accent in their language occur? -at the words that comprise the word "fuck," or the sound of their thumbs riding along the inside of their jeans, just at the line delineating their abdomen. And their plausible wet dreams? Do they deserve a virile scene, pictured with words like "unbuttoning," "lips," and "foreskin"? Frames are the rules of our visionary. Margins, the meandering sentries. And until we develop a "form" that imitates correspondence, no matter, writing will outlast creativity.

Mannerism

I used to drink my dinner milk like a college student chugging beer.
My Father always made me finish everything on my plate, including
my milk. And so, with the exponentially intensifying sensation
warning me that my time playing video games may be limited to
no more than a few more hours after dinner, and one hour prior to
bed time (nightmares), I cocked my head back, swallowed
the calcium of my youth in a mere three gulps, asked to be excused
from the table, where upon I received a stare; those eyes
that could kill cattle if they needed, and I darted into the living room,
to a spot two feet away from the television, picked up my controller,
and sunk into a world that was outside of my physical self, and inside
of those dream-like walls; thoughts, my vacationing location: space
outside time and materials, labor, oxygen, relativity and society.
I guess you could say that I indulged milk, or maybe its slickness.

For the Birds

I have come to a place that, though filled with the refuse from my predecessors, has born an asphaltic child; a pile of rubbish that looks in all directions and disgorges a sense of time and place. Not rebounded by result, nor thrown into the purgatorial, pleasurable guilt of its peers, this youth in revolt; a revolt of inactivity and a passing, has taken punctuationalism to a new high: devastationism. To cherish those things of which the child has created, and not those of which have been generated by what has preceded their life has no real significance (meaning is objectionable, and surprisingly, objectless). As if the garbage of one generation's procreation could not compete with the pacification of those following. There exists (if "one" or a "thing" may) an irony in appreciation: a natural subjugation, not subjection, or at least in a positive sense anyway, of an inner working: the mechanics that constitute our minds, or motives, and our maturation, if there be any of the three.

You see, we are punctual by way of patience. One must be patient with him or herself to preserve a state of mind akin to time. We sit, we walk, we stand, we lie. (Although there be no pun intended, there's no way around the ambiguity. We are liars, and we lie in the froth of our trails, whether they smolder or not.) We wait. But only because there exists (there's the word again) something or other to be waited on. Without exchange, we have nothing to live for. Even in religion, there is an exchange. Nothing is free for purchase, and yet nothing is free from intentional desire. We do things only because we desire to do them. Not to say that there are immoral implications in the doing, but one must recognize that incentive rules our lives, at least while they continue to be lived out.

Which brings us back to time. The child of our fear, the apocalyptic timetable that determines whether or not success has been achieved in the doing from our birth until death. In essence, what I'm saying is that time, like all things we, the human population, have devised, is subject to perception: not such a surprise, right?

We understand that time passes differently depending on activity, or companionship, or solitude, but ever do we understand time to be governed by those same people who are under it? It does not standstill, but only because nothing stands still. And like waiting, we recognize most clearly in those moments of exercised patience, time-lapse. And although I previously mentioned place as being harmoniously associated with time, place has no meaning, much like everything else. But again, this is no surprise. Postmodernists have "discovered" for years that life is only subject to those stipulations identified with. For instance, Gertrude Stein, E. E. Cummings, Michael Foucault, Frederic Jameson, and Rosalind Krauss. The depletion of the meaningful human: a human that owns location for a specific time. And this humanity, the neglected child born from those same worldly neglecting biologists, will only be mildly disappointed when the sun turns black.

Lesson Learned

Well the truth it fell so heavy,
like a hammer through the room,
that I could choose another over her.
You always said I was an actor, baby.
-Guess in truth you thought me just amateur.

That you never saw the signs,
that you never lost your grip,
oh, come on now,
that's such a childish claim.
Now I wear the brand of traitor.
Don't it seem a bit absurd.
When it's clear I was so obviously framed.
When it's clear I was so obviously framed.

Now you act so surprised
to hear what you already know.
And all you really had to do was ask.
I'd have told you straight away.
All those lies were truth,
and all that was false was fact.

Now you hold me close and hard,
but I was like a statue at most,
refusing to acknowledge you'd been hurt.
Now you're clawing at my throat
And you're crying all is lost,
But your tears they felt so hot upon my shirt.
But your tears they felt so hot upon my shirt.

Well the truth it fell so heavy,
like a hammer through the room,
that I could choose another over her.
You always said I was an actor, baby.
-Guess in truth you thought me just amateur.

Was it you who told me once,
now looking back it seems so real,
that all our mistakes are merely grist for the mill.
So why is it now after I had my fill,
that you steal from me the sorrow that I've earned?
Shall we call this a lesson learned?

-Ray LaMontagne

September

I haven't felt poetic lately. I'm unsure of whether this feeling pertains to the landscape, temperature, or even the amount of clouds loftily sitting in the sky. It's strange to think of what the mind is capable of accomplishing, creating, yet it needs just the correct amount of inspiration to proceed... progress... The life, short, beckons a man so peculiarly to be great, to be one so uniquely driven and successful in so many ways it becomes depressive and relentless... as the days build up, weeks build up, years build up. I try. I try not to think about it as often anymore. Whether one has acquired wealth, fame, knowledge -through experience, suffering, contemplation, fulfillment, well, I'm unsure of whether one genuinely wishes to fill themselves with a cup of their favorite drink. Imagine how that would taste near the very end. Our cups need always be unfilled, our minds and opinions, indefinitely open. It does not take long to form an opinion, an assumption, yet it takes years, decades even, to justify a choice, and even then, those are ultimately re-analyzed over again by our successors.

A Man (Swearing)

Fuck, the further I search for an escape from the hold, (your hold) the further I fall from my pleasant grace -away from those memories I have so secretly stored inside my anchored chest. Like an envelope of rain, unfolding creases of your writing on every interior page. Their color shone like speckles on every baked good you created, and all the ones I never ate. A feeling never embraced, a hate so full of hate, and though, not directly aimed at the person who is, dangled like draping beads upon the shoulders of your skin -touch, and taste, and everything in between. I have tired from ignoring the iron barred cage of our years. We were lions. And we're lions again. Shamelessly pacing our prey. Another lover, another soul to consume. I sicken from these inescapable thoughts of you. Housed a traitor, (the you) inside your room. I'm sure he asked every question, an inquiry for every feature, bland and unbreakable. (((You firefly, feathered boat without oars.)))

Those unresponsive messages carried the weight of an elasticity like blended eggs. And now you're leaving. And now I'm preventing myself from caring with the help of memory, and the help of maturation, although developing you like a photograph into ink onto a page with a pen in my hand signifies a far cry from what a gentleman is capable of accomplishing. I could have written a thousand different things right now, but instead I chose to search so desperately for a way to rid you of my thoughts. By turning you into only those electrocutions of synapse responses -reactionary timing: a ricochet-, and all history. We are no longer a society of social comfort, two tongues and legs twisted over blue carpet. Remember the fireplace you could never light? It will forever remain in the past next to all of the good and the bad, and the saddest remainder is that you'll only remember the worst of me. You always have.

If We Die Burn Down the Forest

The last of the last, lying in their sooty graves.
Their arms reaching for a final embrace,
prosthetic limbs, nimble and fat, for the taking.

I took the chance and burned my eyes and their
paths to my mind -my head split at the turn of
their necks :::all at once::: they wouldn't allow
me to kiss their departed flesh: cold cash &
colder hearts alongside tombs with every
good Christian woman's favorite artwork.

Their last 20 days were without speech and
instead of talking, they had to communicate in-
side of their minds, blindfolded, always fighting.

I shook up the foundation they were buried under,
and once the maggots drew breath of the earth's air,
we (showered once) said our goodbyes, but never
said a word. The end was like a dying elephant:

it's long, gray trunk, leapt from its face,
making noise :::squall::: that carried a tone
like dark chocolate into my heart, and I felt
the plates of its feet collapse onto the cement
tile. And I tried to ease the flame. And I tried
to ignite the fire inside, with hope that there
would be one, but the dust from her chest
was all that drew while my mouth was on her,
while my body and arms grasped the outer crust
of her heels, praying to the stars to spare
what I had once thought to be one of their very own.

Raging Lucan, Color Me In

An apocalypse
of the mind
and the taste
of wintermint
chewing gum;
each chew was
like a paint brush
stroke, deserting
a thickness for
a better world,
for a better page
with no revelation
and no consideration
of a solitary source
of water.

A theory needs
only three days,
like the body in heat,
the body in reality,
so to speak.

The literalists
were calling
to each other,
six feet away,
on the ground,
pointing up
to a cloud-dispersing
sky.

There are no clouds,
only sun and blue.
Everyone's happy
because it's their
favorite, happy hue.

A castle rides down
a hill like a roller
coaster without..
Wings were attached,
but sustainability
is a beauty
that takes an hour
in front of the mirror
each morning.
And that same mirror
smiles when you
smear an upending
arch across it.
Carve a sideways
"D" into every object,
innate or not. Carve
a "you" and a "me,"
an "epilator" and
an "ice cream."
It's a shore thing.
Like licking sand -only
now the trumpet creeper
curdles.

A hand cannot save
a dying flower,
no matter no matter.
Density to
a decent degree: what
the "you" actually needs.
If "you" were only
a vine decorated
in pink floral. (where are all the seedlings?)

An apocalypse
of the mind,
so to speak.

Thunderstorms

Clouds are chocolate in love and lovemaking, like raking autumn leaves, yellow and ruby.
We play the chords in augmentation inside our thoughts, the keys are only distraction, preventing
us from coming on. And thunderstorms are weakest at dawn, trembling to turn their lights down
low, keep the music running, it's our favorite song. There's ice cream at the bar, and a shot
of whiskey downtown. Get some while it's hot, while we're the only ones around. 
Our I's and we's withdrew from their shelter, and struck it rich under the soft corner of summer. 

((Salt our wounds, we are ready.))

_____________________________________

"As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives."

Trees Will Make Their Lives Under a Summer Sky

We were seedlings when you thought we were the brush.

As bruised as my ego was, I mistakenly took you to be
the truth for the moment, my day at a time formula
prescribed for those landscapes in my mind where you
had yet to exist. The plates have shifted, and so comes
the smiling mouth, churning like a hot gyre, grounding
the coffee bean, and the iron ore. Hilltops exploded
into a background of hate; the kind where dissipating
clouds overcast a sun soaked skin -not yours nor mine.
The leaves and berries were torn from their branches,
bark stripped from its perennial core. Those roots
we knew would take us days to excavate came up without
great effort -their sprawling veins dropped, lifeless
as hair upon a shoulder. A liquidification of soft
spots -spots that were lighted by lamps: tunnels of
dark-room door-ways, and naked men and women melting
into the developer, waiting for their portraits to appear.
Falling trees, barely falling, but lifting upwards
toward the gaping hole in my head pried with your arm
around any good Christian man, praying to God that he
gets you into your full size bed by the time two a.m.
comes around. He's late, we can't wait much longer.
He's late we can't wait much longer. We must hurry.
When we were made we were set apart. I, in the corner
of a hotel lobby. You, near the edge of a cliff with
burning bodies at the bottom of its cape. I let the
bad parts in, and they obliterated your joints,
your pristine landscape. You firefly, never again.

(Never Again)

There Are Things Which Must Cause You to Lose Your Reason or You Have None To Lose

Turn the lights up. I need to say this before I sleep tonight. And that is that I've lost my sufferings like a pack of cards. The box should be around or in a drawer. This keyboard shows a full-house and I have a similar suit, but lesser cards. It's the writing that kneads my thoughts into edibility. Time outlasts my memory, and so recording is the only way. We can create and ruin, and the "I" that has become only an extension of the mind will demolish and design anew. The boy pulling on his shirt collar, a woman worth every lap dance of entertainment, the man behind a viewfinder, photographing an infant and mother, and even that child that twisted all of my desires for hers will inevitably turn into literature. And what difference does it make when you have all become the text on vellum, a culmination of thought for the flipping hand. The body is a bridge for the mind to dynamite: slabs sink into the river, and a gap remains in the air between two stands. What does a bridge become when it does not provide crossing? How does the body exist without analytical, and critical thought -a chemical reaction for creation? Are we trees in the forest, waiting to be cut down, only making sound when someone wanders the landscape?

You must write, and you must change your life, literature. You must adhere to your destruction, an accumulation of the explosion of the craft. Music will flood your soul in rhyme and commonality. Like birds and bees, we flap our wings, flutter the air, not drowning, but waving. And we are all biologists, anthropologists, musicians, and lyricists. The We are beggars. The they have eaten their young. The I commercialized into wit. The us abandoned the we for the sake of sexual progress. And the you asks "How long will we continue to read the words from the hordes of saviors suspended from our crosses?"

Ray LaMontagne

Well the truth, it fell so heavy, like a hammer through the room; that I could choose another over her. You always said I was an actor, baby, 'guess in truth you thought me just amateur.

That you never saw the signs. That you never lost your grip. Oh, come on now, that's such a childish claim. Now I wear the brand of traitor. -Don't it seem a bit absurd, when it's clear I was so obviously framed.

Now you act so surprised to hear what you already know, and all you really had to do was ask. I'd have told you straight away. All those lies were truth and all that was false was fact.

Now you hold me close and hard, but I was like a statue at most, refusing to acknowledge you'd been hurt. Now you're clawing at my throat, and you're crying all is lost, but your tears they felt so hot upon my shirt.

Well the truth it fell so heavy, like a hammer through the room, that I could choose another over her. You always said I was an actor, baby, 'guess in truth you thought me just amateur.

Was it you who told me once, now looking back it seems so real, that all our mistakes are merely grist for the mill. So why is it now after I had my fill that you steal from me the sorrow that I've earned. Shall we call this a lesson learned?

-from "Lesson Learned"

An Ocean of Noise

The sea change blackens the soul like a sonnet, burning inside of a ring, a promise made between diamonds and titanium trust. And we all make the sacrifice for our savior: the zipper unzipped -spinach without the dip, and a hole in the wall where we left our fist. Marks, permanent and inconsistent with our tastes -we would never walk in these directions, nor at this pace. There aren't just steaks and fins swimming along our legs; there are cities, intersections within them, and people dashing to corner bakeries to feed their thoughts with pastries. Can't we feel them at our feet? Swirling about the earth's sand, gyrating streams between our fingers every time we scoop with our hands. Wander the waves we will tell our youth. Hide it all under the bottle-nose's stale, buoyant body like History, like the mammoth's fleece. Murky the main. Stomp our feet on the land underneath. And murky the main. We've got our reasons and they are fine.

But all our reasons were just lies.
-to buy ourselves some more time.

Righteous as a Rose (are the anecdotes)

"reminds me of my ex
the words describe
our relationship perfectfuly
baby i still miss you" was etched
on the outside edge of stone
that built the Rubidoux cliff.

Only one river runs through
Riverside, and your standing
in it, she told the balding man
in his thirties. He played his
cards right and won a jacket
to wrap around his shorts with.

Campfire at the top, burn the
mountain down. Campfire at the
top, burn the mountain down.
The devil is a disc jockey,
playing all the sickest jams
and illest beats. (showcase)

A lime tree grows in a woman's
yard. And there are no fruit,
only bitterness renewed in every
birth, growth, seed spurt, and
host -the softer the shell, the
more famished are the flavors.

That cat is a disappearing act.
That cat is a disappearing act.

Evasive Shadows (I want you to read this)

Evening shadows slain, the material changes
with the landscape, and you change with each
passing day. The nights are flooded with
my memories. I can't continue creating a world
where you don't exist, nor can I continue
to lock you up inside my past. You are not
the same. I swore that when you spoke, you
smiled like the glint of the moon reflecting
upon the cosmonaut's glass helmet. I swore
for several days, hoping I would drown my
aggression inside of a mess of language.
Until I imagined you lying next to me,
the fire from the television toning our faces,
I was afraid you were too perfect a formation.
And you faded instantly. Like leaves blowing
from a leaf blower, the mechanics swiftly
sent your image into obliteration: a color
unrecognized, false, and posterior of the room
I was in. There was no glow, no lips nor skin
exposed, no toenails scratching my achilleas,
and nothing that resembled a future home.
Everything you said, like my daily dreaming
of you, and me catching shadows, is all smoke.

#11

Can we just skip the bashfulness that comes with meeting new people,
and get right into photographing you in the nude? I'd like that more.

You see, I'm not afraid of disaster anymore. I've fallen off of a steep
edge and broke the smallest bones in my body, and once they were at their
weakest, my larger bones attacked in order to ensure their reign over my
skeletal shape. A perfect design, drawn out from my ambitious bone marrow.

So don't be afraid when I want to tie you to the bed and beat onto your
throat with my tongue. It won't be verbal, but you'll feel it when I'm
finished, and you just might thank me, or applaud me when I'm done.

Can we just skip the reservedness, and you unpack your secret desires,
like love during wildfires, and those animals lying in the burning brush.

The Resonance in Resistance

I would like to believe
I can build a song
without carrying your
tune, and singing
your words. The notes
are echoes and brass
will continue to blow
where the wind left off.
A voice will seize the
moment, allegro, like
a glass of wine,
drowsy and vermilion.

...I am immune to you,
and your tiny violin.

The Most Beautiful Things Are The Strangest

I don't think I know who you are, but I know you are climbing,
and rising into the sky, soaring on the canvas of a child's kite.

It's the Face that's the Culprit

I saw your toes aimed at each other,
thought that you would make a lover,
out of me, catch me in the breeze
of hot winds, branches, climbing trees
we climbed when you & I were fifteen,
but now we're honest, & twenty-three.

Remember when you came over,
wrote on my hand, "forever,"
and I squeezed the life out of you,
cherry, apple, lemon, blueberry blue.
Your heart was juiced, an organ drained.
All I wanted was for you to stay the same.

But you can't and so can't I,
Believe me, even though I lied.
About the months of August, September,
And July- I lost you, I lost my pride.
I'll never feel the same about what I did.
There's no use, we're no longer kids.

And you're not the same as me.
I wouldn't lie through my teeth,
Smiling so secretly about intention.
Forgetting to look at me & mention
Your hands over his body, his chest.
I broke every vein in my head, my best
Memories were destroyed,
Obliterated, spoiled,
Like milk and lemon in a cup,
I'll never again give a fuck
About what you need and what you want.

Waves

and Sand and
Waves and Sand
and Waves and
Sand and Waves
and Sand and
Waves and Sand
and Waves and
Sand and Waves
and Sand and
Waves and Sand
and Waves and
Sand and Waves.

House of Cards

There is an ember in the heart of the kiln.
There is smoke rising from a silver sun.

There, the garçon plays with his father's knife.
There, the hissing leaves build the landscape.

There are things in me that just aren't right.
There are hearts in mouths, and wings in the mind.

Beyond Me

I'll have settled for a way out,
unobtainable good. Were we not
the same as we once were? We
can be, but Ryan knew it best:
patience serves one well, and,
two even better. Don't you agree?

You smile through your teeth,
wondering where you'll go next.
Go, explore, and make recipes
for the sandman, the wolf, and
the liar. I am indebted to your
forgiveness: its two months
treated me, well, conditionally.

Untouchable like the clouds above
my hand. I'm reaching as high as
I can and there are no stretch
marks of the air, no spans of
prolonging to know how you became
soft. Who you became to me (lover),
and to yourself, nobody knows.

A butterfly hovers, but you are a moth.

Glint

The yellow Volkswagen Beetle whipped around the parking lot,
it's horn sounding like a call, a whistle. Ask them their names.
And their birth dates. Maybe they're into older men.

Knowing

We are afraid of what we don't know, he said.
"It's a kind of 'fear-of-the-unknown-phenomenon'."

I rustled through my lecture notes and found that
on my fifth page for the lecture of September, the 17th,
I had planned a visit to the Smithsonian Institute.
They were charging eleven dollars a student at that
time, and I had wanted my class to understand a
little bit about the art of collection: anthropology, so to speak.

Why would anyone want to relive the past, he said.
"Peoples' lives aren't at all interesting."

I cut him off there and told him that as long as
there weren't two billion Ben Steins in the world,
that the "individual" would be unique, and thus,
exciting. He retorted...

"Don't we know enough about people? Why not try, I
don't know, space? Or physics? Information, where does it go?"

By way of knowing about these unknowns, we must know "us,"
which is to attempt at learning the unknown, I said.

I gave my gun away while it was loaded.

I sat upright in my bed, wondering where I was.
The curtains changed while I slept, wandering
in and out of my neighbors' yards, making a mess
of their flower beds and nicely trimmed hedges.

I thought about the time I was struck with a fear
of the unknown: my fan had slowed, but not stopped.
I sweated out my dinner milk, and screamed until someone
came to wake me, but I was already awake. My brother
and mother saw the fan blades stop, and I silenced myself.

four

I woke up this morning, after last night's ride through the park where I tore apart your desires as if they were day old notes, and I decided that I crave that smile on your face. I wish to see those eyes shimmer above your cheek bones, those lips laugh and expose your perfected teeth. Your hair dropped from the top of your head, down below your eyes, covering the blue radiance: their shine. I realized that I loved destroying your soul, and that while resting their under the tree, eating our lunch that you prepared, I should have prepared for what was to come. I could not imagine. I could not imagine now, as bolts of fire leap hundreds of meters into the air, I would regret anything, but I have come to. Those moments where you threw yourself towards me, and I declined, I have not forgotten. Those moments where you were entranced, and I avoided your eyes, poison my thoughts like minerals in coal. I dug into the "us," and vanished at your weakest moment. But fire flies tonight, and days ago I dreamt you had spoken to me with a smile on your face that I had placed there.

"I can't lift you up cause my mind is tired.
It's family beaches that I desire.
That sacred night we watched the fireworks.
They frightened the babies and you know they've got two flashing eyes.
And if they are color blind, they make me feel, that you're only what I see sometimes."

Warmer than Warm, Yeah

"-Well, I've been here before;
sat on the floor in a grey grey room
where I stay in all day.
I don't eat, but I play with this grey grey food."

-D. Rice

A th b ttom.

She took the car keys I gave her and drove it right through the front of the yard, burning rubber over the sidewalk, the road, past the stop sign, and a quarter mile down until third gear spun into the torque converter, spilling transmission fluid over the top of the headers, causing a white vapor to rise amongst the disintegrating tire. There was a body a block down, under the blinking light post. It shivered in patterns similar to a dying heart. I remember sitting there, on my porch, watching the injured man, waiting for him to get up, but instead, wolves came.

I've got nothing to say. I know that you stole my lines from the first time. Your purse fell off your shoulders and you knew I knew they were frangible. All I cared about were those lines. You rolled your eyes like comets over Cucamonga peak. I drove off and left your frailty in the summer midnight heat. Your mother said you went missing.

He's an oyster with a grain of sand. The cup's a plastic fitted lid for my grandfather's tomb. I remember the day we severed the thumb from my hand. The gardeners discussed the possibility of eating their young. She ignited the town with her flaming brand. The imagination will continue to need more and more room.

Destructive

I am reactionless, full of naive gaze, like the candy bar vending machine glowing its yellow-green glow. Unflinching, I move around the girl's body, as though it were a statue of sanitary laws, bidding my removal. I will to remove. I will to place my palm upon. Engendered into believing our history would play it cool. Six years of struggle and enjoyment, disaster and achievement. The lark will carry me to my car, the ignition key dangles like its nape. Where has that concentration gone? Blank and beautiful, and uncontrollably controlled. You are hard-wired to mute, shove, evade, and destroy.

Her

"Nothing unusual, nothing strange,
close to nothing at all.
The same old scenario, the same old rain.
And there's no explosions here.
Then something unusual, something strange,
comes from nothing at all.
I saw a spaceship fly by your window..
Did you see it disappear?

____, come sit on my wall.
And read me the story of O.
And tell it like you still believe
that the end of the century
brings a change for you and me.

Nothing unusual, nothing's changed.
-Just a little older that's all
You know when you've found it.
There's something I've learned
'cause you feel it when they take it away.

Something unusual, something strange,
comes from nothing at all.
But I'm not a miracle
and you're not a saint.
Just another soldier
on the road to nowhere

____, come sit on my wall.
And read me the story of O.
And tell it like you still believe
that the end of the century
brings a change for you and me."

-D.Rice

Favorite Line

I sat in your window while you
drove home,
sprinkling the feathers
into your pillow case.
Your hands steered left and
I dropped down,
leaving a dream
of scattered dove song.

"Older chests reveal themselves
like a crack in a wall.
Starting small, and grow in time.
And we always seem to need the help
of someone else
to mend that shelf.
Too many books.
Read me your favorite line."

And we closed our box
one too many times.
The hinges, rusted in their fold.
The blankets on the bed,
unmade,
and instead,
creased with our last shapes.
Never thought we're getting old.

"Older chests reveal themselves
like a crack in a wall.
Starting small, and grow in time.
And we always seem to need the help
of someone else
To mend that shelf.
Too many books.
Read me your favorite line."

-your favorite line.

(Quotations: D. Rice)

Rings

The rings of a tree trunk are nature's markings.

The passage of time. A dendrochronology.

You were a bird to me, flapping through bristles of

leaves among my favorite trees, elms and maples.

You were winged and gentle, supportive and supported,

but now I have mulch from dead grass -from songs

you sang. Hummingbird, please don't fly away.

Plans

I would never ask you to sacrifice your dreams for the sake of my needs. In fact, I would never judge you by what you are uncomfortable with doing. As long as I am with you, that's all that would matter. Being apart of your endeavors, your dreams is more than one could ask for. Bring apart of what makes you the person you are is more than one could ask for. I would change for you, I would make for you, I would swim for you, I would take for you.

The materials were there, and so were the plans.
The materials were there, and so were the plans.

I had never felt so betrayed by myself when considering you. I had never felt so unable in my specialties. I had never rethought my beliefs, my spirit, my concentration until you. Your single interest, that one desire ran through my heart like a channel of flame, incinerating all of its function. And just like the respect and trust I rebuilt, you failed to acknowledge, and instead grew quiet, calm, complacent.

The materials were there, and so were the plans.
The materials were there, and so were the plans.

Somersault, sideways dive.
I'll wish you the best of luck, but I don't do goodbyes.

Be Careful Where You Stand

...the salt
rocks reveal
the dagger you have
hidden.

Evening Redness in the West

It's a mystery. A man's at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he don't want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there. It aint the heart of a creature that is bound in the way that God has set for it. You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man, the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. An a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it. You believe that?

-C. McCarthy

Locus

I am nowhere and we are now.
Like a parade in a New York storm,
her shadow marched to a stick
on a snare drum; rum is not
enough. We need what's best
for us.

Cover the flags, drape your
marks. Make sure to feed
all those demons dwelling
inside of your double
chambered heart. Pull with your might,
sting with the song, O
devilish lark! Compartments,
complaints, compartments,
complaints. Check in your bags
before you start.

I am nowhere and am now, colored
-a cadmium scarlet, russet, violet,
caviar blue, and tube top gray. Pray
for my sins, for they have mistaken:
of course not taken a thing, but
what's in store inside the timekeeper's
pockets, lavishly stitched so each prick
feels like veal, singing, beauty,
she's so soft and tender. Pretty little
thing. She'll sing, just you watch. She'll sing.

WoRd gAMe

Her period blood stained my sheets
-the smell crept in my nose like a spider to its nest.
The taste lingered in my furniture, past the
bed mattress. Her cherry rhubarb pie, crusted.
Was it worth the $50? -I didn't think so.

She left her razor on the sink, pubic hair
was caught between the worn blades.
I remember her saying "Fuck" the moment
she felt it. It was like an accident on the
meridian. It's a good thing I'm a sailor...

-Islas & Uller

Bixby Canyon Bridge

I descended a dusty gravel ridge
beneath the Bixby Canyon Bridge
until I eventually arrived
at the place where your soul had died.

Barefoot in the shallow creek,
I grabbed some stones from underneath,
and waited for you to speak to me.

And the silence -it became so very clear
that you had long ago disappeared.
I cursed myself for being surprised
that this didn't play like it did in my mind,
all the way from San Francisco,
as I chased the end of your road
'cause I've still got miles to go.

And I want to know my fate.
If I keep up this way
it's hard to want to stay
awake,

when everyone you meet
-they all seem to be asleep,
and you wonder if you're missing the dream.
You can't see a dream.
You can't see a dream.
You just can't see a dream.

Dream
Dream
Dream
Dream
Dream
Dream
Dream
Dream
Dream
Dream
Dream
Dream

-then it started getting dark.
I trudged back to where the car was parked.
No closer to any kind of truth,
as I must assume was the case with you.


-DCFC

You See Berkeley (Under a Willow)

Willow, -water rushing, the brush,
crinkled leaves, and windy thrush-
there are a thousand more sounds
to name, -there are winged bellows,
mossy slabs, flaky stumps like the
one I'm leaning on -and all together,
humanly, earthly, they, we, i, sway
a lazy, but indelible customary sway.

What's Necessary

Silence in the avoiding words: fine. you. okay. love you.
You don't know the meaning of garlic mashed potatoes,
nor do you figure to make them the way you used to. I'm
an ocean nothing floats on, and your the swimmer swimming
in the lake. We were a chord progression, designed in

melodious harmony, new, free from face, from saving. And

now we're sinking. Your drowning, I'm spoiling, selfish
in an "own way".

I've pushed and you've pulled. And you've strangled.

You are the ocean. I'm imperfect. But you are the ocean.

Godot

"Let us not waste our time in idle discourse!
(Pause. Vehemently.) Let us do something, while
we have the chance! It is not everyday that we are
needed. Not indeed that we personally are
needed. Others would meet the case equally well,
if not better. To all mankind they were addressed,
those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at
this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is
us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the
most of it, before it is too late! Let us represent
worthily for once the foul brood to which a cruel
fate consigned us! What do you say? (Estragon
says nothing.) It is true that when with folded
arms we weigh the pros and cons we are no less a
credit to our species. The tiger bounds to the help
of his congeners without the least reflexion, or
else he slinks away into the depths of the thickets.
But that is not the question. What are we doing
here, that is the question. And we are blessed in
this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in
this immense confusion one thing alone is clear.
We are waiting for Godot to come-"

Crossing San Francisco Bay

Blinking (yellow) bell, dinging. Open. Close. Deposit fee.
The fairer side of things, the slide of red jello lit streams
touches my chest; I feel it in my gulp. There's a woman
closing the window above her head, closing out the cold
bay air, "east bay" air.

O, metallic structure, O, false craft. Your beams over-linger,
trap, over-trap. My zenith, we turn. Together into a tunnel,
we turn. And your legs open, widening arms outstretch.
Steel chords soundfully center the shifting weight: the world's
bulging curve.

Lights in the city. A water of glimmer. Port of S__ F________,
ruby and glare. Greenish buildings stacked in a crowd out-
compete their predecessors, hundreds of years before. An
expanse of ocean shoaring at the coast, shaking hands in
greeting. Later there will be a toast.

Just In Case My Journal Perishes One Day

You're scared that we know all the crimes they'll
commit. Perpetrators on perennial train tracks:
the metallic rivets keep out the cold and the iron
rattles across the plane -you are so far we are.

I'd bathe you tonight; like the sea horse swimming
downstream looking for a place to open a garage
sale -a lawn, a driveway, some stones designating
a space. All is for sale, including my children he

says. They're only eggs at the moment. Give them
time. No doubt the perpetrating seahorse bathing
metaphor has shriveled to nothingness and nonsense,
and it's impossible to make conversation. I'm hell

bent, so scream hard when I stroke the split ends of
your hair. Pray the water runs down your shoulders
because they're where the elevator stops for some,
not you, as in North. The compass connotes your

direction: arrows dipped in murkiness, mixture of
molasses with intelligence, draining like dregs, con-
tained like the sands in all the deserts, no not desserts,
but the places where mules go to bury their bones,

salvage their remaining body fat for birds. Birds, she
says, save their wings for their mothers' bellies. Nothing
gets so bad. The vultures know. Their patient, the
perfect patient, the perfect patent. I think I'll design a

flowerbed in the shape of a hand. But what about the rings?
Not in images, not in words, not in thoughts, but in things,
breaking, pattering like the palm at the edge of a light-
house cliff. Fall in, drown, stir the waves with flailing arms.

(No More Sound)

Soco Amaretto Lime

You wish I was what I was six years before today.
I wish there was such a thing as you growing up.
But you'll stay eighteen forever and you'll never
miss a party. And I'll never have to listen to anyone.
We'll probably never agree on anything. Conversation
isn't a part of us, and neither is high-school love.
I don't call every ten minutes and you don't blush.

Don't Accept Rides From Strangers

With the slight of his hand, he too took off their clothes.
DANGER. CAUTION. WARNING. OH MY GOD.


((Sufjan))

Hysteria

is a more
or less
irreducible
state
character-
ized by
subversion
of the
relation-
ships set
up be-
tween the
subject and
the mental
world
from which
in practice
he thinks
he derives,
outside any
delirious
system.

This
mental state
is founded
on the need
for recip-
rocal charm,
which explains
the hastily
accepted
miracles of
medical sug-
gestion
(or counter suggestion).

[it] is not
a path-
ological
phenomen-
on and can,
in every re-
spect, be con-
sidered a su-
preme means
of ex-
pression.

Bay Bridge

Drove on the bay bridge for the first time today. Coming back from a stellar night with some friends,
drinks, seafood, and live music (not karaoke). San Francisco city lights luminescent in their gloss, barren twelve a.m. streets, a wharf stench rolling in. Kissing the bay bridge good bye in the rear view mirror,
then saying hello again minutes later, only to roll across her, all four spinning rubber weights. Her metal beams darting in diagonal up and downs, tunnels pushing the road under, the pacific ocean dabbling
sixty meters below.

Calories

Chug, chug, chug!
Jog, jog, jog!

Fortune, A Cookie: Told Me

YOU ARE
ADMIRED
FOR YOUR
ADVENTUR
-OUS WAYS
(In Bed)

Howl

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by

madness...

Cat's Out of the Bag

He said
"pussy,"
then de-
clawed
her in
the dark,
darkly
clawing.

Si Tu Me Olvidas

Quiero que sepas
una cosa.

Tú sabes cómo es esto:
si miro
la luna de cristal, la rama roja
del lento otoño en mi ventana,
si toco
junto al fuego
la impalpable ceniza
o el arrugado cuerpo de la leña,
todo me lleva a ti,
como si todo lo que existe:
aromas, luz, metales,
fueran pequeños barcos que navegan
hacia las islas tuyas que me aguardan.

Ahora bien,
si poco a poco dejas de quererme
dejaré de quererte poco a poco.

Si de pronto
me olvidas
no me busques,
que ya te habré olvidado.

Si consideras largo y loco
el viento de banderas
que pasa por mi vida
y te decides
a dejarme a la orilla
del corazón en que tengo raíces,
piensa
que en esa día,
a esa hora
levantaré los brazos
y saldrán mis raíces
a buscar otra tierra.

Pero
si cada día,
cada hora,
sientes que a mí estás destinada
con dulzura implacable,
si cada día sube
una flor a tus labios a buscarme,
ay amor mío, ay mía,
en mí todo ese fuego se repite,
en mí nada se apaga ni se olvida,
mi amor se nutre de tu amor, amada,
y mientras vivas estará en tus brazos
sin salir de los míos.

-P. Neruda

Landlocked Blues

And the whole world must watch the sad comic display,
If you're still free start running away.


(Cause we're comin' for ya)

Brokenness & Obliteration

There's a difference. And it has
everything to do with clothes.

Shakespeare

Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:

Sword Swallower

Your name was on the blade that dug itself a passage into my gullet, crisp
and oh, so smooth that it tasted like blood with every ingestion. Push ever
more so harder darling, 'cause I'm wider than you think, like a favorite
ocean of yours: the Atlantic? Murderous, frigid, kidnapping water and waves.

We spent all night touching blades of pages, coloring in blues and yellows,
grays and salmonella orange. I held the light over your hand and saw your
nail polish, faded, tan, and asked if it'd be better that we shared the same bed.
Mine was a body of salamanders, and yours, blankets of flames. We sank either way.

And don't send me lyrics anymore, 'cause there's nothing anyone playing guitar
could ever sing that would change the way I closed my eyes, such tightness, it
took great strength, adamantine eyelids. Don't expect them to corrode in rain
or spring. They're like the dagger drawn down deep, internal and eternal and

internal and eternal and internal and eternal and internal and eternal and internal.
Honey, you are the bees, bullying other bees, buzzing wherever bees buzz these
days. And I've spent much too long plucking off bits of your wing beat, the beast
I am. Be surprised I haven't devoured your hive, your history, although we argue.

I threw rocks at your window pane with my unstable paws. No I never rubbed
against it. The wood barely bared my hunkering weight. I never rubbed the paint
off the wooded window pane. It must have corroded with the pattering rain. -but
would you notice anymore. -do your fingers peer the blinds first, for someone else?

The sky falls down and we are a part of it. We are at the scene of it. We are in the
sleep of it. Close your eyes and consummate lies, wetly disposed. Close your eyes
and consummate lies, secretly composed. Close your eyes and consummate lies,
photographically posed, like the blond, the blue, and all of your high pageantry.

I Know That There's a Point I've Missed

Come all you weary with your heavy loads, lay down your burdens find rest for your souls, because my yoke is easy and my burden is kind. I'll take yours upon me and you can take mine.

Come all you weary move through the earth, surrounded by rest stones and kicked out of church. A couple of loaves sit down at my feet. Lend me your ears and break bread with me.

Come all you weary.
Come gather round near me.
Find rest for your souls.

Come all you weary, crippled you lay. I'll help you along you can lay down your canes, we've got a long way to go but we'll travel as friends. The lights growing bright further on towards the end.

-Thrice

Mrs. Dalloway 11:45-12:00 P.M.

For the truth is ... that human beings have neither kindness, nor faith, nor charity beyond what serves to increase the pleasure of the moment. they hunt in packs. Their packs scour the desert and vanish screaming into the wilderness. they desert the fallen. They are plastered with grimaces.

-V. Woolf

And You See How An Animal Dies

dug into the soil of gold and silt, broke the nails she could never have. work and coffee. no work,
no work. no coffee.

his map, inaccurate, his compass, misguided. pyrite and buffalo chips. buffalo shit. the bald
white men drive carts, the buffalo roam, and the women, the women, the women take their
hats off at the shore. ducks are on every menu. candles and napkins included, free of charge.

his map, scrunched, wet, buried somewhere in san diego. misguiding again. misguiding again.
she's just a friend, she's somebody's boyfriend. she's somebody's best friend, she's somebody's.
somebody's, somebody's. she's somebody's somebody's. her corset never fit, he never saw it on her.

honor your guise, guys move in on movies, like zombies to a flame: they'll never feel the blue,
the darkest hurt, blue like a lighter, blue like the crossed father's daughter at four in the morning.

honor your guise, wise or holy, he than thou, she said, she said, said she, she said, holier than thou
she said, shed, she did, she did shed, so many shedding. chameleons and rings, babies and things
that honor their hearts, like limousines and how the liars depart. same as the next, honor the guise, no, the heart. liar by earlobe listening, earlobe piercing, unwise, he said trusting, never lies lies. honorable guise.

half of one: dinner and a fiery lamp, no magic yet.
one: skee ball and a mouse, dinner and a movie, carnations carnations.
two: buried treasure, a death cab and sea foam riding her outfit, a guise.
three: colors, colors, colors in air. colors, colors, colors in air. touching -Japanese showing.
four: buffalo roaming. hiking rain, flowing shore of wealthy duckling. cold, cold outing.
five: missing mostly. crafting his history, her story, laughing, a movie. touching, touching.

-and when there are dreams collapsing like a lung
breathing on a single side of your body, struggling
to swim to the top. ghostly avenues. ghostly lovers
loving in curtain lighting, the house was small. her
breasts were round, his chest inhaled, his chest in-
hailed like clumps of ice. cold were his shoulders.
he found a way to warm them, but she had been
buried in the weather of it all. the weather of it all.

Music to My Ears

Grazia, severo, moderazione, fis,
ebollimento, l'istesso, subito, su,
rigoroso, riposo, nervoso, dis,
cadenza, caloroso, mestamente,
loure.

Clay

I am clay.
Hard clay.
I am
leaning
clay.
I am clay,
leaning
away.
You dug
a whole.
I am clay.
I am

unfilled,

hard, leaning

clay.

You're a Boomerang, You'll See

I woke up, looked out our roomwide windows and saw a white fog rolling down Berkeley Hills. I opened the door to my Arctic kitchen and poured a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oates. When I returned to the room it began to rain outside. Berton had canceled our jog. I figured. Rain muddies trails in the hills. I turned on my computer, grabbed my note pad and wrote down some ideas for an upcoming essay. I'm torn between Joyce and Eliot. I told myself that I'd probably write about how both discuss the concept of a separate "universe," one that doesn't belong to their characters in their poems and tales. Shan turned on the Cleveland v. Orlando basketball game and I watched some before making lunch. After eating I grabbed my bag and caught a bus to ZeeZee Copy. There's an upcoming Roll 'n Shoot tournament that I have to make copies for. I walked over to Tully's coffee and spoke with Mark, the manager and he promised that Tully's would donate free coffee coupons to the event. I'll visit Cafe Milano tomorrow. Free Speech Cafe let me post a flier for the event on their poster board. I called my Mother, read David Sedaris' "Man Walks into Bar Car," then left. It rained the entire time I was out, but it wasn't bad. Berkeley rain generally crashes down on people, collapsing on your shoulders like water balloons, but today the rain was more like a heavy mist.
Before I left Free Speech Cafe, I looked out over the glade next to the Valley Life Sciences Building on Berkeley's campus. The air was white and damp. I could have close my eyes and thought that it was snowing.
You won't leave my mind no matter how hard I try to push you out.
I returned home and began rereading my personal essay for my Creative Writing, Racism Course. I'm writing about the topic of race in the family. I'm reminded of Michigan, 2006. What now seems like ages ago.
Ramen and a chicken sandwich for dinner. Chai at this very moment. I think I'll begin my Sonnet that's due Thursday.

Make War

Our love is dead but without limit,
like the surface of the moon,
or the land between here and the mountains.
Well it is not these hiding places that have kept us innocent,
but the way you taught me to just let it all go by.

And so we've learned to be as faithless,
stand behind bulletproof glass,
exchanging our affections through a drawer.
And it was always horribly convenient,
and happening too fast.
You should count your change before you're even out the door.

Well yes, you should,
but please...

Return, return to the person that you were.
And I will do the same,
Cause it's too hard to belong to someone who is gone.
My compass spins,
The wilderness remains.

But once too often, I've retreated into the depths of my despair.
I built a barricade to block you on the road.
But standing there with all of my possessions
piled higher than a house,
I felt closer to you than you ever would have known.

So let each tiny acts of charity
be common ground on which to build
a monument to commemorate our times. And though you say you've found another
who will surely speed you on your way.
Don't let the forest grow over that path you came there by.
But you will, so...

So hurry up and run to the one that you love.
And blind him with your kindness.
And he'll make war, oh war,
On who you were before.
And he'll claim all that has spoiled in your heart.

Now I tell myself I've mended under these patches of blue sky.
There's still a few holes that let in a little rain.
And so it's crying on my shingles.
My floorboards moan under my feet.
The refrigerator's whining,
so I've got reason to complain.

But I am not gonna bless you with such compliments,
some degrading psalm of praise,
like the kind that converted you to me so long ago.
Because the truth is that gossip is as good as gospel in this town.
You can save face but you won't ever save your soul.
And that's a fact.

So hurry up and run,
to the one that you love.
And tie him up in your likeness,
and he'll become, become,
oh, the prisoner I was.
And know all that has spoiled your heart.

He'll know all that has spoiled in your heart.

So hurry up and run,
to the one that you love,
and blind him with your kindness,
and he'll make war, oh war,
on who you were before,
and claim all that has spoiled in your heart.
Yeah, he'll claim all that has spoiled in your heart.

-Conor Oberst

Overbaked Ovenbaker

Ode to pale tongues and the two sliding
across from one another accomplish. You're
a dish only warm by
now, and you're not
relished, nor do you comply,
nor do you aspire unknowingly. I can
only look at the cold plate for so long before I send it back and forget
about it's indistinct smell: soapy
bubble pear and shampoo. Food,
food, food is all
you are and do. The oven alarm's bound to whistle,
and when it does, maybe then the lemon
cake baked in forgiveness won't taste like bitter
lemon, but like the sourness of spoiled cherries.

Content with suspicion rather
than your childish vernacular poisons
the well of wishful thinking; only that rock
container never held enough
fluid to know
it was holding anything worth lost dimes
and nickels,
flipped from faithfully fattened
thumbs. Forgiveness overflows bountifully
out of other wells like water from a geyser, when
yours is dryer than dry,
wider than wide,
and dyed in prior thoughts
like friends letting friends
stumble into a car drunk.
A kiss is a kiss is a kiss is a kiss is a kiss is a kiss
and yes, oh yes, hiss like
the scent of rusty
lusting ruse. Meanwhile I'll look
under a matured yew to find
ingredients. I'm sure
there's a recipe in the bark
wood. The core,
surprisingly damp inside.
I look around anxiously
when I know better. And I know I know better
than this: "it needs more time."

Wild is the Wind

Wind. What do we know about it? Where is it from? Where is it going? Some love it, it's gentle with them- carries coolnes on hot days, fuels the cold night's fire. Others hate it, it ruins their hair, its howl causes terror. It's everywhere and in everything, with everyone and with no one... I want to be everywhere and with everyone, but at the same time love solitude. I don't understand myself, let alone anyone else; it's difficult to think of yourself as wind, it's a struggle with the irreparable and reveling in carelessness. It's a thousand "why's?" It's a million wishes and aspirations. A lover called me "Wind." From that moment I knew my name. When you understand your true name, it gets easier-

-Sasha Belyaeva
(excerpt from Brenda Hillman's "Piece's of Air in the Epic")

Five and Seven, Three and Thirty-One, and a Red Calculator in My Brain

In seven minutes, I am away
from the only thing that could
make me smile at the moment.
I decided to come and it was
poor. I decided to invite and
it was poor also. I'll have you
know that I'm going to burn
everything because it's a
lot better than staring at
false hope, hearing a joking
voice, playful and hollow,
talking from a mouth
I've never known. Grow
grow and grow a garden
plant tomatoes and secret
pollen. Bury your nose.
Bury your nose and I'll
cover my eyes and ears
and pretend that you're
not here.

We Fight to Stay Alive

...just say you'll entertain the possibility.

Hearst Mining

I've tried to place you aside, yet when I adventure onto something undiscovered, I want to show you. The walls rose with inlaid brown bricks and the arches in subtle gray-green hue. There were lanterns dangling from the retrofitted all- dove-white stain-glassed ceiling. And, as you know, I climbed the stairs to the second and third floor until I couldn't climb any higher. I walked to the wooden window frames, their latches tightened, and I lifted my body to the inner ledge to look around at the world of students walking to their classes. There was the pond, the clock tower, Evans, and bike-riders. I then sat down below the sill, pulled out "Say Uncle," and read to myself.

I could have fallen asleep their on that chilly hard floor.

Patience

"Patience is
wider than one
once envisioned,
with ribbons
of rivers
and distant
ranges and
tasks undertaken
and finished
with modest
relish by
natives in their
native dress.
Who would
have guessed
it possible
that waiting
is sustainable--
a place with
its own harvests.
Or that in
time's fullness
the diamonds
of patience
couldn't be
distinguished
from the genuine
in brilliance
or hardness."

-K. Ryan

Dubliners

As he sat there, living over his life and evoking alternately the two images in which he now conceived her, he realized that she was dead, that she had ceased to exist, that she had become a memory. He began to feel ill at ease. He asked himself what else could he have done. He could not have carried on a comedy of deception with her; he could not have lived with her openly. He had done what seemed to him best. How was he to blame? Now that she was gone he understood how lonely her life must have been, sitting night after night alone in that room. his life would be lonely too until he, too, died, ceased to exist, became a memory -if anyone remembered him.

-Joyce, "A Painful Case"

I Shouldn't Write at Night

Reminder:
Firstly. Sleep more and don't dream about the woman you wish you could have.
Secondly. Warm the blankets before slipping underneath them. I don't know, find a way.
Thirdly. Don't stare at a bright screen prior to falling asleep. Nightmares ensue.
Fourthly. Make sure to use the restroom before shutting your eyes.
Fifthly. Don't write because it won't make any damn bit of sense.
Sixthly. Don't watch anything scary right before you go to bed.
Seventh. No over-drinking. Of any fluid the more I think about it.
Eighth. Close closet door. Double check.
Ninth. Brush teeth. This should be higher on the list.

Godawful Green Beans

Virescent stench. Virescent wrench in the bottom of my favorite shirt. She screams at the top of her lungs; well she screams at the drinking fountain, but does so with the tops of her lungs. I wonder if they're gooey. Her lungs I mean. Saliva, unsmooth and tasteless always poses a challenge to a jogger on a cold morning in where there are clouds, like San Francisco Bay. Their cloudy-soft texture acts like a neighbor I used to adore. But that was in Southern California. Things are different back there. I deserted her sandy embraces like I deserted my soul at a bus stop with seven different numbers; two numbers sided together. This meant that there were six different lines (bus lines or bus routes). And I chose thirty-one.

Walking

Damn, Kingpin Donuts smells so good...
I think I'll walk by more than one time.

Equation

Two objects, nouns, coffee mugs, anything,
move in opposing direction. If the objects, whatever they
may be, travel in speeds with a relative difference of
two thirds in comparison, how long will it be before
they collide?

-or will they pass right on by..

Chapter Closing

This book is old and it's binding, unraveling. Its pages of dusty cliches cannot bear a resemblance to a hundred frames of film anymore. Keep rolling: this is picturesque and I've found that glimmer in their eyes. -It's fading, wait. Oh, I think we've lost it. Maybe the book will have that charm. Can someone else look for me? I've forgotten how to read.

Gumption

I saved my tickets like I saved my wine: the older they aged, the murkier the taste.
I'm twenty-three and that doesn't really count for anything except that I'm in my prime.
Tender slop of meat, drizzled with marinade, seasoned with spice, ready to heat.
At the rising tension, beginning to rise intensely, or drop mildly, or drop deadly.

O, burst of sultry in my body, won't you tighten the lid to the mayo jar in the fridge?
There was a sweep of frost that brushed against my socks and the second shelf's glow
has gotten ahold of me.

-christopher uller