Monday, August 30, 2010

I pride myself on my foresight.


It’s Too Soon to Write a Poem Like This

You’re sleeping.
I’m naked.
In so many more ways
than my bare skin touching yours.
Our decorated bodies
tangled

You might be a fucking hypocrite,
but the sound of you breathing
is ringing in my ears.

Monday, August 23, 2010

Artificial Tears

I've been thinking about that phrase a lot lately. 
Artificial tears. 
I think those have sprung from my tear ducts before. Because of artificial feelings, artificial memories. Everything looks better through salt crusted eyes; feels like the real thing.
We'll break the same either way. 
This is quite possibly the shittiest thing I'll write all night. I don't have the energy to top myself. It's fine. This is real. This is it. 
I need a phone call. 
A pep talk. 
I'm fishing for compliments and all of my fish are in far away ponds. 
It's better this way. They never bite the right way. 


A dear friend told me that when a good thing is about to happen the world seems to throw all the bad at you first. 


Something fucking great must be coming a few tomorrows from now.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Perspective

Same night
Same seat
Oliver and I
Different cigarettes
Longer hair
More stars
Less sleep
Bat wings across the moon
Steady hands
Foggy memory
Deteriorating vision
High school sing-alongs
Certain heart
Flailing feelings
Scars
Bare feet on cement

Someone remind me of tonight.
The night I said things have been getting better, long before I knew what better was.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Commute

It was Thursday. I was driving home from work. Almost home. Definitely in the desert. Definitely feeling like I do every time I approach that lake. I had a cigarette in one hand, my phone in the other. I was trying to change the song on the stereo with my mind. I was probably speeding. I looked to my right. Some boy, I guess a man really, my age or older. Are boys my age considered men? In some cases, I guess. In most cases, I'm doubtful. He was wearing some uniform. Or at least that's what I gathered from the patch on his shirt sleeve. I imagined the patch had something to do with the medical field. I imagine a lot of things when I'm on the 14. We looked at each other. I'm going to say he looked at me. I think I was just trying to merge. He waved. I waved back. I didn't recognize him. He might have been attractive. He had an arm full of tattoos. I should know him right? We should all know each other. 

I keep thinking about it. 
I feel like I missed something. 
Why did I wave back?

Monday, August 16, 2010

The Difference Between Medicine and Poison

     Do you remember the night we sat on your roof? It was summer I think, or getting close at least. It might have been the day we walked around a city you lived in when your life fell apart, where I now spend all of my week days. I sometimes I drive past your old street thinking about the night it all started. One of my destinationless drives that led me to your front porch, and eventually that shitty couch where we crashed into each other.

     The air was cool. my skin was burning. We sat too far apart. We didn't touch. I didn't know if I was allowed to touch you anymore. Or if I ever touched you at all. Your eyes were clear, tired. The lids a translucent pink. I think I loved that about you. That you always looked like you'd been crying. In retrospect you always were. In retrospect I always thought I loved you.
     It felt like the place we should have sat years ago. On top of that blue house. Sharing a pack of Camels, letting the nicotine swirl through us. We were the slowest burning fire. You looked out across the rooftops of neighbors we never got to know. You talked about the ocean. About the problem with all of our friends. Or maybe you talked about the future that you're still working toward. The ideas that rolled off your tongue like dice. You'd be fine no matter what, just never alone. I watched you from where I sat. My fingers dying to lock within yours. My lips dying to taste the smoke on your tongue. You still blow so much smoke.


     We headed back in through the window. You first, I followed, so common those days. The lights were on. We were alone. You kissed me. I panicked. You asked if I wanted it and I said "yes", breathless. A lie I didn't know I was telling.
     We laid close in your bed. Our skin in familiar company. Your arms loosely wrapped around my waist. It felt crowded. The bed was always too small. We just didn't fit anymore. Or didn't want to. Your breath on my neck felt like history. I closed my eyes and prayed to the empty sky I'd forget your smell, your crooked smile, and all the things I ever knew too well. I turned over and kissed you hard on the mouth.

     It felt like the worst night of my life, and in comparison to the rest of the nights that compete, it still wins.

Friday, August 13, 2010

Mirrors

     Today I met a man I’ve met at least ten times in the past.
     Different seasons. Different circumstances. I remember his wet eyes. He is always polite. His words seem genuinely courteous and grateful.
     He is not old, but the lines in his face tell me he feels each and every one of his years. He dresses his age. His pack is full, heavy with a responsibility I rarely see from where I sit each day. He radiates a melancholy I recognize like my own finger tips dragging across the bones of my hips. His gaze is like a familiar smell. I can see years, months, hours, and minutes of memory simultaneously. We have spoken few words to each other.  
     He overwhelms me. He knocks me over. I strain to hear him like whispers. He closes the door behind him. I don’t know when I will see him again. I don't know that I want to. 

Menthol

     These days it seems like anything less than a full pack of cigarettes isn't enough. I liken myself to this feeling too often. For years. Even in the years I felt full, sustained.
     I sat alone, or in the best company, on the pavement at two in the morning staring at the stars, remembering when things felt worse. How they should feel now, but they can't. It was a night like that one I listened to a now distance voice tell me, "She's just not you."  But as the summer months came, planes were caught, plans were made and I still stared at the stars alone, at two in the morning, killing my lungs and I thought of you. All of you. And hoped that you were doing alright.
     I said the other day to a good friend "I am too much initially or eventually." it occurs to me now as I try to find a glimpse of myself in other people’s words that I am perhaps always too much but never enough.
     I am notorious for breaking myself for you. For answering every call for help. For holding fast to hope I lost almost as quickly as I etched it into my skin. I am your rock. Your safe place. Your shoulder. Your conscience. Your savior. Your dictionary. Your rage. Your logic. I am all these things as honest and severe as you need. I am all of these things but I am never enough of whatever else you want. I am too much and hard to break.I fall apart on my own time. In parked cars or speeding on freeways. Or in your bed. Or that bench in your front yard. On the other end of phone lines. 

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

I am the best person to talk to when you're stoned.

I like opposites. 
Mostly the kind we are. 
The complimentary kind, 
or maybe the perfectly contradictory kind. 
Split brains and tugs on bracelets in other states, in dirty cafes, in sticky bars that make me claustrophobic.  
I like how you appreciate songs about oak trees and everything that would scare anyone else away from me. 
I like that you never condone my bad habits or redundant mistakes. 
I like that we've conquered time zones. 
I will remember everything. 
And you will remind me time and time again. 
We should say "I love you" more. 
But not this time. 
It's ok, this time. 

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Assigned Seating

     Twenty minutes ago I was trying to choose a table to sit at, today this seemed like an important choice. A man in a fishing hat was gathering his things near the table I set my bag on. As Alyssa and I situated our over sized purses and laptops and sunglasses the fisherman stopped and turned to us like he had something to say. I thought for a second that he was offering us his table, which made no sense since we already had one and this cafe is dead aside from the old couple simultaneously thumbing through pages of separate Diabetes magazines.  
     I looked at the fisherman and smiled, nervously. 
     "Are you a writer?" he asked
     "What?" Alyssa said even though we both heard him clearly. She said no, then looked at me. I didn't saying anything. I'd been talking about my apparent writer's block all day. Am I writer? I am, in most senses of the word, right? I didn't admit to it. I just stared at him. 
     He stared back from underneath his ridiculous hat and motioned at the table he had just vacated, "this table is good for writing." I smiled. He left. Did he know I was having trouble today? Did he know I've been struggling for the past few months to put a cohesive idea on paper? That I'm afraid to get everything out on paper because it makes it all real?
     In my mind this was one of those moments other people have, but not me. The moments I hear about through long distance phone calls where someone has an experience that totally sets their life or, at least, their day in perspective. A powerful run in, an intense conversation with a stranger, the perfect song on the jukebox, whatever, today was my day. 
     I walked over to the fisherman's table. I could see some writing on it's surface. I assumed he was talking about some inspiring phrase he found printed on the table top. I looked down and realized that the only thing written on the table was an add for the cafe's premium coffee blends. This wasn't one of those moments. 

     So, twenty minutes later I'm sitting at a table, not THE table, but one that's proving to suffice. I don't know what the fisherman was inspired to write sitting at the table across from me or what it means that he told me about his experience and that I've spent half a page reliving a brief conversation. I am, in this particular moment sure of one thing...
     I can't make it mean anything.
     I attach meaning to words and actions like I inhale and exhale. It's involuntary. It's like I'm trying to solve a chronic mystery coming out of everyone's mouth. Today, in this freezing cafe, in the most uncomfortable chair I have decided to change that habit. During conversations, that usually happen  through phone lines or in parked cars after midnight, I've been reminded of the importance of the present and all the challenges I'm missing trying to find the logic or meaning in what might not mean a god damn thing.
     Tonight I am accepting, being, and breathing in the simplest sense. I am shivering. I am aching. I am longing. I am hoping. I am forgiving. I am creating. 
     I will be everything tonight. I will mean only what I mean. And I will take you the same way if you'll let me.
     

     
     
     
  
     

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Mermaids/Faking it/Exaggeration

Blogging is like swimming lessons...follow me, I swear it'll make sense. 

When I was seven or eight years old the biggest fear in my life, aside from natural disasters, Christ, and my next door neighbor, were the weekly swim lessons my mom mandated me with. Every week I'd pretend to fall asleep in the passenger seat while Mom drove to the east side of town singing along to Amy Grant completely unconvinced of my unconsciousness. It never worked. She never looked at my peaceful darting eyeballs under their lids and drove past the pool. We'd walk through the back gate, past the poorly painted mural of The Little Mermaid (which makes my current fear of mermaids so much more involved) and toward the pool where some girl, probably not as old as I am now waited in a blue one piece swim suit with a highlighter yellow whistle around her neck. The chlorine fumes made my eyes burn, but I was usually crying about something else long before I was waist deep in water. 

"Kick, kick, kick, breathe..." or something like that. That's how you learn to swim. That was the whole lesson. For weeks that felt like months. For an hour that felt like a lifetime. I cried, panicked, faked sleep, and faked illness to get out of it. Why? Because I didn't like to do things alone. I didn't like not knowing anyone. I didn't like putting my trust in a teenager with a whistle and sharp fingernails. I didn't like being told to jump off that fucking diving bored that cannot have been as high as it seems in my memory, looming over what was most likely eight feet of water. I don't like doing a lot of things, but the fact remains, I have to and I learned how to swim. 

So, I start this today because it's Wednesday and it seems as good of a time as any. I have reservations and insecurities and a mess of other emotions that will soon become all too apparent as I fill the page (does that make sense when we're talking about the internet?) with words. I have been reluctant to create a space for all of the nonsense in my head to be shared, beyond my control, but it's now or...well... it's happening isn't it? 

Lately, I have been floating quite well on my own, but it should go without saying that I wouldn't have learned without being thrown into it all by other people, situations, etc. I will hopefully be as consistent sharing as I am at rationalizing why I should keep it all to myself.

So this is for anyone past or present who has reminded me to kick, kick, kick, breathe...