Brute Truth

On Walking

2011-01-04T15:48:00.000-08:00

We look at letters less often
because now they're buried in our brains.
Reviewing them is a formality
done privately.
My letter was for you
and your's was almost mine,
I think.
It was almost mine in the way
that the sidewalk is your's
while you walk on it.
You could say,
this is my turf,
and point to some grass.

different postures

2010-04-23T13:18:00.000-07:00

i sat up with a jolt when my alarm went off.
the sky was grey but warm and
it seemed more dynamic than regular sunshine.
i thought i liked it better.
it suited me more. i looked for emails. in the shower i had anxiety
about washing my hair too much.
all the air was in there.
all the words in the emails from that person were useless.
he used 'posture' wrong and he positioned it towards me.
i'm not ok with this compromise.
when i read from my phone, i watch my hands shiver
and my nails curl.
i press the tip of my finger into the black device until
there's no more blood in it
and these words fall into my lap.
he was a liar and he admitted it in these messages.
it was his fault, he said, and he was proud of me
for being so strong but he still needed to talk to me.
sometimes, i get a cramp in the arch of my foot
and i'll scream about it.
sometimes, i feel sick and i'll make long groaning noises
to relieve the pressure.
if you come home and seek me out,
i'll scramble.

Folded Chairs

2010-04-06T11:57:00.000-07:00

It used to snowed. We were snowed in around a tiny formica table.
We drank beers and bloody marys and I sweat in my seat
under my shirts and on the plastic and I tried to touch you.
I tucked my finger into your palm while you took pictures.
I tried to talk about my new apartment and the plants I'd buy.
I'll put my bed in the corner and get a long, narrow table.
There will be so many green things on the floor it'll become forest.
I'll scatter soil in the bathroom and leave bowls of water out
as reminders. On a chair by the tub will be a stack of magazines
with an ashtray on top and perhaps a vine climbing the sink.
It'll be a fucking forest, I thought
when the wind was white with snow.

Champagne Wall

2010-04-06T11:52:00.001-07:00

I have no headboard,
it's just the wall there.
My white wall goes up and back,
it's high and wide
and yesterday,
when we in bed in the afternoon,
there were shadows from the blinds
all over it. I waited with the white wall.
I looked over my shoulder at it.
Poor white wall caught my hand,
catches my movies in bed,
steams up in the night with dreamy breath
and slows down with the fan.
The white wall is clear and pretty
and alone most of the time.

Boy Toy

2010-04-06T11:36:00.000-07:00

I am a soft toy
and my limbs splay easily.
I miss the way you held me,
fed me fake food,
casted me off when a friend called.
I trusted you to ruin my fur,
yank at my torso,
whisper hot, wet secrets down my throat,
catch me with you fist,
drag me by the ear.
I relished the times when you were sick,
then we were both sick,
and you were clammy and cold
and you clung to me.
Maybe one day you won't want me like this
but, I am a toy, I say.
I am your toy.

right in my face

2008-12-28T14:01:00.000-08:00

i sat in a mug,
i spied your mug
and cupped my hand around it.
there were many days to hang
on some silly ideas exchanged
in the remote way
we interfaced.
maybe i imagined them.
there were big, luscious drinks
to buy and cherries to eat
and you said eagerly that it was time to
switch to alcohol.
it was the first time to see you
seeing me and it pinched a bit
because it went back and forth so fast.
i can't imagine us brewing in water
but we did,
i can't imagine us climbing around
in towels
but we did.
i came home and sat with my eye brows up,
my hands on my chin,
just like this,
and couldn't explain it to my own face.

hold the ham

2008-09-29T05:07:00.001-07:00

when i woke up
i noticed again
the spot where you used to
charge your phone,
that you were the last person
to do all the laundry,
how you propped up
all the pictures
and it seems completely unbearable.
inside this apartment cooks
a terrible red stew.
just below the floor boards
it simmers. at first it was fired
with anticipation and now
it's the saddest energies of absence,
the slow desperation of a
rolling boil.
i have to drink it with everything
i do. a cup for walking the
hallway, a bowl as i lay
alone in bed. soup pools at my feet
in the shower. it's no
good that you're out there
drinking too. i bet you find it in
your pockets, in your hands,
in your mouth between bites
and all this rich meatiness
is killing me.

you're glowing

2008-09-28T21:15:00.000-07:00

there was a girl coming up the alley
and i could see her in my rear-view mirror.
her shoes had neon tongues
and she was drinking mountain dew
from the bottle
but somewhere on top of her big, blond
head was a beige beanie.
she ate a meal of
ice cream cake with radishes for dessert.
she walks the alley flicking bad
song lyrics into peoples' cars.
she'll stay like that,
i think.
her clunky, badly lit lot in life
is to glow dumbly
into parked cars.

this is a rock

2008-09-18T14:17:00.000-07:00

what if i laid on my gritty floor all morning?
what if i lay here and pretend to have died
mysteriously? i could look good dead.
i could place a pot of flowers by my feet
and crumple some candy in my mouth. it could
have been a choke or another accident.
maybe they'll assume i'm really something,
a spectacle of sorts. maybe they'll keep me
fresh, leave me to sun that spills through the
kitchen window.
i ask only that you water my plants,
eat all the food from my fridge,
cancel my credit card and
take my nephew to the theater
because i spent so much money
on those tickets.

table and chairs

2008-09-16T15:22:00.000-07:00

here are the plaid chairs we share
when we drink coffee and eat food
with cheese and deposit wrappers and mail
into our pockets when we stand up.
i saw you the other day
with a letter jammed in your pants.
i thought about what
a little note in a pink envelope could
say but i didn't muster up the concern to ask.
whatever that letter meant would
stay creased inside anyhow,
showing it's true glowing glue
to it's one reader
who'd shoot the words from a distance
with long, stringy sex lines
and nails. then those pink pages are plaid.
i think there are hunter plaid stories to tell
in bars, with dark plaid feelings
hemming them in, making full plaid pictures.
there are fall plaids
coming strong and they mismatch me,
always make me look fat and sad.
i bellow, i blow my nose into old
flannel sheets, crammed
with such similar colors and patterns.

sink your pits in

2008-08-20T08:01:00.000-07:00

you're new
and the sun is shining.

i have lots of stinky wonder
and wishing to contend with.

i am not a paul or pat person,
i am a home-heating device
and a lot like coffee in the morning.

could i force you to have
a conversation with me
about something i'm not familiar with
so i can pin myself down
and you can punch me?

that's how it normally plays out.

maybe we shouldn't talk much
anymore but these perky cups of coffee
make sitting still tough.

how can a person make a proper decision
hopped up on coffee and slugs?

taxis

2008-07-21T07:58:00.000-07:00

it's amazing to think of things like
colorful salmon skin
and fresh toads and how children
can kill them without noticing too much.
somehow they just turn into stuffed animals
with their insides jangling.
somehow i don't appreciate
any amount of money until it's gone
and the weekday collapses around an empty hole
where i kept my accounts.
let's go to the free beach where they sell
free apples and mud dumplings!
it's very important to eat.
when i'm completely sun-tired
and sand-rid of
another obnoxious day
i'll let you know.
i'll let you have me at a flat rate.
i'll let you come find me
and drag my soggy body around.
please wave my arm politely at the outer parts of town.

so long insides

2008-06-12T14:15:00.000-07:00

i was once a caramel caterpillar.
i lived in a small space between
some white bricks
and i licked the mold with
all my fingery feelies.
i felt the grooves of old cement,
laid down in the cold, wet dreams
inside them. there was
anxiety in the lifestyle.

i don't know what i am now. i
could be a dumb dog or one of those
flat-faced cats. maybe all the other
stuff is gone and i'm a bowl of
thick, white milk,
a hunk of stringy meat still
sitting on the table.

maybe a cloud of dust will drop by
and you'll feel me dig out
some change. i am two scratchy eyes
and an old backyard.
my stomach is a long, pink walk
to sunny bench.

i love to take a photograph

2008-05-13T12:56:00.000-07:00

Marcus Evans felt unconcerned yet a serious look was planted on his face as he stared at the brown door. "I am a regular human being. I'm just a guy," he said, with lines still showing in the skin on his forehead and around his eyes. He thought about when he broke a wine glass, the noise it made, how his ears felt when the heard the shatter, how his body reacted to the sound. "I'm a regular guy."

He gingerly picked up his coat and touched the door.

Being outside didn't satisfying Marcus Evans in the way he needed to feel fulfilled. He trapped some ants under his thumb and crushed them. "I love bodies. I respect all kinds of people." He looked into the sun and tried to imagine someone helping him by shielding his eyes.

Penny, with bright red cheeks, sat down beside Marcus Evans and thought, "Today is different somehow." She hardly noticed Marcus Evans except for the warmth radiating from his black clothes. "The sun is strong and good, like God," Penny thought.

Both parties continued dealing with their own realm. Penny fondled a few tubes of chapstick in her bag and Marcus Evans pretended to fuse his hands to his thighs, tried to imagine being stuck like that.

After several minutes a woman appeared in front of the bench and asked either of them to snap of photo of her beside traffic. "I love the commotion," she said with a giddy grin.

Both Penny and Marcus Evans looked down, hoping the other would hop to. When the normal waiting period passed, they reached out simultaneously to grab the camera and bumped forearms. "I enjoy photography. It helps people remember what's important about life," thought Penny.

"1-2-3!" screamed the woman as a truck made a wave of wind.

"No, I'm supposed to count."

"What?" the woman replied.

"I'm supposed to do the countdown. The 1-2-3. Stand where you want and wait for me to get ready," said Marcus Evans. He'd grabbed the camera quickly once he realized Penny was willing to take the photo and now he felt bad about it. "Ok, 1-2-3."

"Click!" screamed the woman.

The woman left quickly after her photo without thanking Marcus Evans. She simply continued laughing then ripped the camera from his hands and back away from the bench, facing them for over half a block.

"She must have escaped from some home," thought Marcus Evans.

COOL FRIENDS

2008-04-24T04:32:00.000-07:00

my friends, dustin and dave, do indigestmag.com. they put me in it. go look at it!

fancy flat

2008-03-26T11:47:00.000-07:00

this is my new floor.
soon i'll know all the sounds here
but for now i cover them
with loud music
so they can also get used to me.
i want to do something
to feel more comfortable
like slip into a coma,
or be really hung over here
and watch bad movies
and bake brownies and leave
dishes and crumbs around my bed
but i don't have an oven
and i'm totally over chocolate
and one day i'll be sick of
this place, as in throw up sick,
and i'll leave
and become a sentimental jerk
around toaster ovens
and exposed light bulbs.

Dolphin Course

2008-03-08T02:08:00.000-08:00

Through the cards and candle wax
we watched TV and you said you were drunk,
so drunk you couldn't stop drinking
and I agreed and I poured foamy beer
on my legs.
Should we move? It must be a sign?
I clutched an old guy, an old, old guy
who looked at me with salt in the corners of
his eyes and mouth and begged me to take him home
again. I didn't because of my wet legs.
Whenever you or anyone else brings up next week
I have to laugh. I have to hate the sounds of
laughing and then tell you how much you suck
and scream and run out the door to get more drunk.
We're surrounded by old dolphins,
shiny rubber creatures we get excited to bump up
against. Hold out your hands. They have photos
of themselves in desperate waters, in hotter times,
how they're now here by sheer idea, just swimming along.
I love them and I have to laugh. We're all such different
circumstances, math problems. Maybe men are big math
problems and women are meant to handle the numbers.
So for now, the long drawing I gave you will work.

house-sitting

2007-12-21T18:39:00.000-08:00

for all this red wine
i'm quite sure i don't have the energy.
these two orange cats follow me everywhere.
i've wanted certain nice things before.
i wondered how out of touch,
how impaired my lines of judgment truly are.
24 little dogs lined up along our sidewalk.
it's chalk these days,
chalky medicine and hair weaves.
when you left, i whimpered,
wondered again when the mail would come.
it's like when you find me later i'm
hopelessly hammered and stammering on
about the climax, the way i hit you
and you cried and cried
from misappropriated pain. it's like
when i call out, you answer
just to see if i'm really
addressing someone here.

melinda, melinda

2007-12-17T18:00:00.000-08:00

melinda was a pink-peach version of her older sister who was light, light yellow.

melinda thought often about scabs, light fixtures, being late. she was late most of the time and when she wasn't late, she was unprepared.

melinda ate unscrupulous amounts of yogurt and practiced the shimmy for three minutes every day in front of a full-length mirror.

melinda does very little for a living.

melinda sometimes purposely cuts her hands on sharp objects in the presence of her friends, pretending it was an accident. she's used nail files and open pop cans in the past.

melinda enjoys physical activity, is quite good at it, but she refrains from formally involving herself in anything. she accidentally has sex, she accidentally starts doing gymnastics.

at age ten melinda contracted a virus called purple-pink fever. purple-pink fever has several symptoms, most of which are latent. at age nineteen melinda started having seizures, in public, on purpose. melinda takes fake medication for her seizures; she puts smarties in old medicine containers with worn down labels. she pops the top of an orange cylinder whenever it seems most inappropriate.

last thursday melinda told her mother she was going to work through a break-up by taking acid in the park which was silly because acid causes brain bleeding and melinda isn't interested in men.

melinda thinks the sound of water is intoxicating.

melinda "holds it" when she doesn't have to.

melinda gets nauseated in shopping malls but really enjoys shopping. she once bought a dress she hoped would get her fired.

melinda hates the way the skin on her back feels when she wakes up in the morning.

nothing, honey

2007-12-17T02:51:00.000-08:00

i have two big cameras,
they clunk against my back.
the pictures are grainy
and sometimes they turn out backwards.
i've wanted to rip photos in half before
which is often difficult
because of the paper.
then i remember, i'm not from here.
in the courtyard, outside my window,
there are bricks, there are other buildings,
people move to and from them and around
in them. there is a broken water supply.
it's cold.

Inspired by Smut

2007-11-28T18:15:00.000-08:00

There are green animals.
Black fur can look
blue and gray or purple.
I am mainly pink
with red in places.
I am mostly drawn up
in halves.
There are dreams,
full paintings to go by.
There are tools,
loose skin, compasses
for inspiration
but I take none of these
with me. I talk to men
and smooth my hands
over my ass. I suggest
things. When people
express their hopes
for photos, the stopped
frame hiding inside a pose,
there are giggles in my nose,
in my light cream toes.
There are brown trumpets
holding notes somewhere.
In many ways, there are colors.

farming

2007-11-16T06:18:00.000-08:00

i searched for fur
while i waited for my clothes
to dry.
thin gray fabric
and stretchy chords.
there are some positions
i sleep in
that make the room too hot.
after five significant shifts
he'll lay his hand on my back
then push me away.
isn't it funny to stumble around
in your parts of your apartment,
wearing pieces of fashion.
outdoors,
it looks like lamps are
on and teenagers are drunk
and i have no motivation
to watch them as they watch me
and figure how they'll
feel at dusk on friday
in a room full of personal frenzy,
personal skinning and canning.
i wait and wait for a ramp
to open up somewhere
and corral me.

sing

2007-11-13T01:36:00.000-08:00

there is a cemetery across the street.
i want to visit it but i'm not sure
if i should. i wonder what people do
in the black all day. it would be a
stupid mistake to take a coffee over,
to puruse gravestones and rub up,
raking my thoughts along the soft ground.
a few people think they can change the
tone of death. in this world
only a few people change tone.
you're probably a tune after you die.
someone comes up with a melody in the shower
and forgets it by dinner.
but anyhow, everyone needs a song.

roof

2007-11-06T02:18:00.000-08:00

i feel very sad

2007-11-05T05:51:00.000-08:00

when i woke up
i made coffee
and put more laundry into the machine.
i talked to you
but i was already mad
and you didn't notice
even though i was being very open
while not saying much.
the apartment puckered.
the floor must love water.
all these waves in the parkay
feel like soft spots
in babies' brains
or the time i squished three tomatoes
with my hands as a joke.
i'm so tired of how dark our street gets
or how protective you are of
interesting things. i like watching
fights on the platform.
i'm really nervous
about how sad you are for me.

Sweedish Hippies in Granada

2007-11-04T07:19:00.000-08:00

all day

2007-11-02T19:09:00.000-07:00

i thought friends and family
were particular parts
of the love-hate center
in the brain. i hate you at the train station
but i must love you on the train
because the yellow light
makes my rinds soft,
my eye-rolls come undone.
you were for me and oh so sorry
as you rub the little tip of your nose
to my wilty, peckish check.
i am not so sorry, so foreign from
any feelings i've had today
and i engage them as i kiss you.
we are far away from the things we say
but somehow underneath them.
wouldn't it be easy to love-hate
all over?

a whole kitchenette of cigarettes

2007-10-25T17:04:00.000-07:00

this is a division,
the soap said to the sink
in white foam
and soft, swirling sentences.
i'm in love with an idea,
but i never loved it more than you,
the soap cooed
like a baby summer lamb sunshine warm blankets.
one day, we'll return to this place
and we'll think about how changed we are,
what it took to get here.
the poor sink,
as cold as he could be he
couldn't ignore the song.
it was a sweet drip-drip,
the fleeting cling and no one ever spread over
his huge humps like that.
it rings in the mouth like metal,
hits the really wrong taste buds
but never, never
did they use their own strength to
clean it.

did you ever ask yourself?

2007-10-13T08:53:00.000-07:00

i love sandwiches, water glasses.
i thought about coming home all night
and got mad when you asked the question right out.
i want to be free to do what i choose,
but i want it all to happen naturally.
i'd like to lick the inside of a soup bowl,
cover my hands in quarters,
eat a magnet that looks like bananas
and never tell anyone my funny story.
i, like you, know exactly what happened.

The Gig is Up

2007-10-08T03:18:00.000-07:00

I miss home right now but I'm not feeling too sad today. We're still looking for apartments. It's easy to get homesick when everything takes so fucking long.
Ryan is watching a table tennis tournament and is really intrigued by the way one competitor spits on the end of her table. Maybe she's marking her territory or giving the corners more grip or something. Then Deb asked why the Chinese always dominate this sport and that made me mad because I'm generally mad at her right now. She woke me up this morning just to be mean.
Ryan used to tell me about playing table tennis with his grandpa and the memories sounded really funny and feeling-filled. I was too awkward to play table tennis when I was little. My arms were too long for my body and I had trouble controlling them.
I miss my friends. I miss my town. But I like Cologne. I just don't like being here right now.

Vitamins and Minerals

2007-09-09T05:13:00.000-07:00

In Germany people have good faces. It seems that women know how to do their hair and make-up nicely. They appear very serene and have severe clothes to protect them, which makes me uncomfortable and them much more superior. The TV is very, very bad here. And the food is meaty and sometimes so tasty it's tasteless. I like the tasteless food. I wish I had some boots and a black leather jacket and could speak enough German to think insults inside my head and never say them out loud. I think this would change my facial expressions for the better. I wish that when I met a German person I didn't focus on the lilt of their "hallo" more than what they said after. I wish I didn't worry so much about how the older women dyed their hair or how they sell the most incredibly ridiculous jeans to people at seemingly normal stores. I wish that when we were walking in the nice shopping area by the Dom it didn't make me feel really shitty that some guy was playing Damien Rice songs in the street and lots of people lined up to listen. This guy had a red guitar AND a velvet blazer. AND he was singing Damien Rice songs. Even Deb stopped to listen and danced a little. "Man, this is a good song, I don't care what you say," she said to me. "No, nono," I said back but couldn't think of anything more. I meant, no, you can like the song if you want, I don't care, but it sounded like I meant, no, I like these songs too.
Anyhow, she goes to the bakery in the morning and buys us rolls and doughnuts and makes coffee with whipped milk and cinnamon on top. She makes a lot of noise in the kitchen when she wants us to wake up and tries to fake surprise when I walk past her to go brush my teeth. I don't think she would feel badly that I'm saying these things. Deb also normally makes a lot of sense.
We went to a party the other night and I made friends with a woman named Jennifer. She was very fun. She was from New Zealand and we liked talking about ex-lovers and people my age. She would say, "You know, for women like us..." or, "As we both know..." or some such variation which was funny because she was acting like because we were both blond and tall we'd had lots of the same experiences or, I don't know, we'd come to the same conclusions about men and money and stuff. She said she had a nursing license but she'd been enjoying being a housewife for the last three years. She said she loved her garden and her dogs and her husband. "He's very cute," she said. I didn't mind how she generalized us, put us together but it was funny for me as well. Jennifer used to be a man. I had a suspicion early on but after talking for awhile, I was quite sure. She was beautiful and I liked her tight, silky top. I liked her thin, sculpted nose. I liked her oddly huge black heels, her manicured nails and the enormous wedding rings she wore. Somehow I felt like she deserved whatever wealth she found herself gorgeously flopping around in. When the night ended she went home with a cop. He was so much more into her then he'd been into his tenth Murphy's. He looked at her and looked at her and he must have decided it lust and followed her to a bar called Roxy. I hope they had passionate sex on the subway as Jennifer is the exactly what men want a women to be, a big sea of mystery with some very fashionable ideas.

We leave, we come back, we talk about leaving again

2007-07-30T07:18:00.000-07:00

She was sleeping with an older man when her father had his first heart attack. She felt much differently about sickness those days. She asked her lover for fruit, he returned with cherries. The shape and pit were too much for her. She left the blue bowl quiet at the end of the bed and starting pushing the pillows around on the other side. When she got up her tee-shirt had twisted, two long legs, a fragile insect, something flexible, was tucked in the tight wind of fabric on her hip. After ten minutes of consulting the ceiling she knew she had to pee and she would have to call her mother again, as wrong as it felt to do so.
She peed and inadvertently pulled the cherry stem from her shirt, let it fall into the pool of piss and clean water below her legs. While flushing she noticed it and found it funny that the fruit would leave her this way.
The cherry legs floated along, along the dark intestines of the city, catching on mold conglomerations, pulling free with a hunk of pampers. They moved well in the stream, up and down, delicately stepping. They looked like tweezers. The shit build up and wax of the stems gave them a metallic sheen. Perhaps they were prepared for such a journey, drank their pesticides with a more empty belly.
At a certain point in their travels the stems were filtered and trashed. In large barrels of waste so soft it was happy to denigrate into the ground the stems were moved outside of the city to a dump. The trash was evenly spread, the stems were thankfully able to sun themselves on the ground, hardening their outsides.
For six weeks the legs stared at the sun and tried to be grateful for everything that had gone on. Everyone's life must take a path, make a course. They knew it would end here and it would have to be ok.
Missy had worked at the dump for almost an entire decade and didn't enjoy it, for many obvious reasons. The amount of waste made her feel terrible, she hated being faced with so much destruction every day. She was eating so much. She was only thirty four and was twice the size she was at 28. Missy walked the brown terrain each day, drove a little truck in and out of the piles. She spread air-conditioning chemicals, she read romance novels, she looked at the bizarre combinations of trash, the most ironic comparisons of worthy and worthless. Some of what she did didn't matter but Missy found certain points important, like noting the decay process of 700 rolls of unused toilet paper or old bed sheets.
Missy wore coveralls, boots. Sometimes she crouched on the mounds, examined the face of a watch, the curl of a molding veggie. Her new shape fit the coveralls, fit someone's idea of a huge toddler when she crouched. She was stomach and knees and totally unaware of herself.
At once two cherry legs found themselves attached to soft denim that was beginning to fray. It was the spot next to her knee, the bit that protruded when folded. Tucked carefully into the skin of her uniform the legs moved on, beyond the dump.
Missy takes her coveralls off in the locker as is protocol. She says she does, anyway. She hates the soap they provide in the locker room and the lights bother her, the mirrors. She just has one for her face at home and she still enjoys her face.
Missy takes a shower while sitting in the tub once home, some more childish crouch, some adorable masturbating behind a thick green shower curtain. She mostly imagines the sun, being nude in a restaurant, eating all the trash, taking everything in for real now.
When finished she emerges into her room, slips on a robe, heats up more food, watches something on television. Her trailer rocks softly in the wind. She listens to the movements of her neighbors, their naughty children, their tight drug habits. She wants the trailer in the back to blow to prove to everyone that it can and will happen.
Soon she cleans, she hangs the towels, washes the dishes, eats more cold meat from the fridge, wipes down the counter and sink, hangs her work attire on a hook because she doesn't wash them every night. Who would?
The stems loose all their grip and at once fall to a brown carpet floor. Dark as the fibers are the stems are safe, now a lightish brown themselves from the bleaching sun. Missy steps down hard in the direction of the stems. She stubs her toe and runs the pointed tips where the cherries once were deep into her arch. It's amazing how heavily the stems were able to insert themselves in Missy. All those chemicals, all that time drying and being covered in chemicals again. These stems were full of something completely unoriginal to themselves.
Missy cursed and laughed, being tough for no one. She sat down and looked at the little spots of blood, long brown tails. She had to pull them and did and it hurt more then stepping on them had.
Missy went to bed, after a Dove bar from the freezer. She laid down. She let the blood dry and felt something coming up through her neck. Sometimes she was anxious. Someone at work gave her some literature on the anxieties of working where she did, but it wasn't anxiousness. She lifted her throat to cool but it was moving back, over the hump of bone on her chin, her square forehead, pooling under each follicle of hair. Her stomach was separate, could have been on the floor. Her hips hovered below her. She didn't think about anything but feeling the different feelings coming from her body, stemming from her foot.
Missy died that night from the puncture wounds from contaminated trash. She was pronounced dead with a cute little smirk on her face in a big florescent room where people could see her entire naked body. She was fat, they thought.
The stems finally fell apart. They weren't able to agree with one another, they didn't make sense. The little bits broke further and further apart, spreading around into water, air, still as mixed up as ever.

2007-07-18T07:08:00.000-07:00

split moon months

we made one moon on our back,
different pieces, slices of half-moon months.
then full bridal moons for parties,
different shades for cops.
the street people hang on them
and water their eyes,
milky-moon iris.
oh please, the older man said,
smoke the moon like dope,
hold the darling candle closer,
and he light his whole head in soft flame.
no moon of mine, the other heap responded,
comes close to my mouth,
way low to my toes and opens like a table,
a smart coffin for bats and evil practices.
it's mostly a game, the heap admitted,
something i play to feel closer to
my old man moon,
my push-apart dad.
a tall girl who deserves it, some say,
put moon in a drink,
in her dark clothes, her smooth skin.
i get them this way, she coddles her macho moon,
and they forget why they came, she says,
stay on to look for it again.
she knows they actually don't,
says it just to hear it with her own full moon mouth.

all the unsolid ways

2007-06-29T10:38:00.000-07:00

fork up, curl two noodles into a streamlined mess.
i'll esteem you for protocol in just one, two ways.
one day and you're somewhere new. and you spent
all your money on gold. money, money, same rate.
some people have sex these days, clothes on, and
silly how the bubbles come, you clubber, you bone picker.
i saw her swallow the mdma and said she rubbed the skin off her nose
as a joke. it didn't hurt just then.
it took all ten fingers to follow. i caught them touching
the road, the wicker baskets for shoes.
these digits are always ten steps ahead,
holding up a sign, just to the left up here.
one day and you could leave everyone behind.
one day and a smaller story was told.
for weeks i waited like plain old mysteries,
knowing no spare climate, no spare stories for sale.

we leave, we come back, we talk about leaving again

2007-06-21T09:05:00.000-07:00

find your towel now, holding down some young eyelid.
like any other day as a sink setter,
as a hand washer, as someone who holds doors,
can't learn a goddamn thing about flesh,
can't capture a little word to hold you.
i am yet a fragile mix of memories,
fresh fruits and black tar tongue.
i speculate about the man next door,
the feelings of inconsistency,
the brush touch of lovely life, lovely rage.

flack attack

2007-05-16T08:19:00.000-07:00

i saw this thing crawling across marshall ave last sunday at dusk. i was on the porch, having a cigarette in the lovely evening weather and this creature moving with such an eerie air crawled across the street. at first i thought it was a paper bag, as the back half looked flat, then i thought it was a mole or some such variation, with flexible flesh for tunneling, but then i saw that it was a common squirrel that had been run over, his hind legs dragging, his torso paper thin.
he moved across the street in a determined fashion, but not quickly. he was almost hit by two other cars on the journey, disappearing under their carriages only to emerge again still moving, still carrying his dead body. and once he made it to the other side he wasn't able to hoist himself over the curb. he couldn't even rest his little squirrel elbows on the ledge, as i'm certain that his other bones would fold, crumple beneath him.
he finally found a way to slide sideways, over the pretty, cream cement incline. families and couples and dogs (oh god, the tiny nightmares that passed through me when i realized the long-leashed dogs might sniff him out) passed him by, just a few feet of sod and this thing was starting it's own terrible death rot. the yard he was able to perch himself on was vast, quite scenic. a woman in khaki shorts, a hat, was gardening just next to the porch and squirrel continued to press forward, almost like he wanted to reach her.
how terrible it would have been. she'd be in a serene state of mind, probably using one of those beautiful gardening tools to smooth the soil around a hydrangea bush, maybe humming or revising a conversation she wanted to have with her son about the slut he was dating. in a pause or in between breaths she'd turn, before she even know why or how for, and there he'd be, this wild, wicked pet of death. his mangled body, his little teeth.
i wasn't able to watch him finally die. i couldn't take my eyes away for several minutes and then, i just wanted to leave it all alone.

a drip (adrift)

2007-05-09T08:20:00.000-07:00

i keep writing posts that get ate up by the dark pit of this lame-brain computer. i could kill it dead most days.
the preparations for year abroad (year o' broads) continue in the small, slippery steps they offer. i feel very ready to leave most days and then something will happen and i'll feel completely unprepared, naked to the concept of getting up and going. mostly i'm excited and the standard jitters add to the overall experience.
for instance, this morning i was walking to my car from my love's apartment. i was feeling dingy as there were no clean clothes, i didn't have time to shower and i generally felt sickening. i walked down the flannel carpeted hallway and into the cheesey 70's entryway and once out on the street it was so gloriously springy. the last few days of rain have made the plantlife lush and sumptuous with color and body. it's like a woman coming out a depression and eating again, laughing again. the warm, yellow sun, the shiny blacktop still a bit saturated.
yesterday when i was walking out to may car i found a bouquet of lillies positioned in front of my driver's side door. honestly! it was like someone had come to place them there but i think someone dropped them there on accident, or threw them from a window. i put them in my car, brought them to work and cleaned them up and put them in a little gold vase that i found in one of the break room cupboards. it has an embelm on it that reads "thanks", which i find appropriate. now my desk smells like the outside world i wish i could lounge in all day.
the bad things about getting ready to leave are the helplessness, the necessity. money, days ticking by, these things don't help. friends who call and say, "you're leaving and i'll never get to see you. you have to come hang out tonight." this is dumb, well intended, i'm sure, but dumb. so say i do go meet said friend for a drink or something, under the pretense that we'll be apart for a long time and it's in order to drink this drink together, the entire event is revolving around something sad and disappointing. it isn't a natural, relaxed good-bye. besides the fact that i was pressured into it. oh well. it's still nice to see friends and feel the sad good-bye.
there is still so much i'd like to do. i have to fix my computer and my camera. i have to buy a fucking expensive as shit backpack from rei and maybe a little roll up sleeping bag. all these things are tied up in how ready i am. so i have to go. bye.

for nick

2007-04-20T08:24:00.000-07:00

we said, phone conversations are hard.
we said, we don't mind how loud you guys are,
we thought we'd talk over any amount
of hot topics. for all the drinks we set
on our laps, our horrible spit,
the time i reminded you that i had never,
never, never been happy and sat back,
i saw how smart you were, how smart you'd always been.
how you'd never asked yourself,
it just came up when you remembered.
i've never, never, never been intelligent, i said.
we ate that sticky soup, the diet flavor,
and socked our tummies when they grumbled.
we danced and kissed in front of pals
and held our arms, heads in each other's laps
on lawns and at work and you said, too bad i don't like girls.
you're like my last girlfriend in high school,
your blue bra lights up the room. too bad i don't like sex,
i said, and you smiled, smelled my shoulder.
it was spoon fed love that spoiled us, then distance
kept spilling and pills.
oh, to be shaky on a porch with you again,
waiting for the rain to come down heavier.
to braid the back part of your head,
touching all the hairs the way a new love would never feel to,
combing out the tightness in jerky little sighs.
i want, i want, i want, we said, too sorry
for the time.

should you leave, leave yourself a little, leave all these sleeves behind?

2007-04-20T08:00:00.000-07:00

ryan and i are getting ready to go away, away, away. and i'm sad that everything else will stay in it's place. like when we leave, a whir should tousle our old world up. like our little toes plug up some wind pipes and when they're removed, the ozone bubbles should suck in and out in readjustment.
i don't like thinking about paul moving into my apartment, even though i love paul. i don't like thinking about how much i'll miss my street. my bar. my bed. my pots and pans.
but in leaving we'll be seeing so much more! ryan has never been to europe and i get to be wrapped up in him when he sees it. i know what it is like to wonder around, saddened by how annonymous you are, even to yourself, in some downtown. then how all the sweet little details catch on your eyelids and you know you're somewhere new, and how important that is.
i have this feeling that ryan is going to be a fantastic travellor. he's experimental, he's exceptionally comfortable.
we leave in one month and ten days and will open our eyes in spain.

on another note, i'm a bad drunk. i hate thinking about how bad of a drunk i actually am.

collapsed, cleansed

2007-04-15T17:31:00.000-07:00

to the temporary clean of rooms in homes
comes dry heat, dry lips in hot pursiut, dry fans.
to the elaborate clean in desk and re-shaped heads
comes heavy pallets, assorted sweats, sweet humor
and insistance. to clean the crumbs,
flake away a full afternoon for some the serene surface,
an unclotted mirror, a well-shaken rug,
is to a deeply folded drawer of panties
and all the things that panties may mean to a bedroom,
a body, a pair of pants.
to enjoy a fixed-up living room,
to post your own notices on in the clutch of
a bedstand is the perfect part of ownership,
the last vision before a sleep sets in.

vomitice

2007-04-12T09:37:00.000-07:00

it's too cold to have a hot trot in the sweet, softening sun,
though all the imaginary forward marchs are still in effect.
a tempetured motion to wrack each firm decision
with approval,
indefinite steps to tomorrowdom.
just as one pancake comes down flat in a drizzle
of sad gluey circles,
one circle comes tilted and bound by syrup.
i could live off breakfast foods,
and non-dairy creamers
although i know they're bad for my bones.
i could eat every sun flake from god
if it didn't ruin my whole torso,
my smelly organ heart.
i could put every waxy decision in my hat
and mold my head
if the sun were stronger than most shaded
evening dinners.
when the one day comes
i'll be carrying my commitments anyway,
and all i've ate, all i've stood
will come bleating back up.

un-holidayed poems, unfrazzled by contemporary smells.

2007-04-09T18:01:00.000-07:00

i'm just back from omaha as ryan and i went there for the weekend/easter/saying "hello" post engagement. it was fun but i'm glad to be home and done with ryan's parents. they're nice enough, truly fine folks but it's tough being in someone else's house. i feel like i'm stealing their son. they adore him so.
thankfully the weekend is gone, and in a fairly non-eventful state i sit with some cheese and crackers while ryan is at a meeting for movies. meeting for movies for life. i really like lifetime movies. i love that they're bad and evoke the oddest emotional trains. they're missing so much that they're painfully bare and silly and interesting. i don't care if lifetime movies are for college jerks who have nothing better to do and homebound depressants. i like them. i don't particularly care for them high but any open afternoon and a tv with cable is pretty much all it takes to sucker me in.
i bought some great poetry anthologies at this fantastic bookstore in omerhaws. both are from the eighties with rocking color themes on the cover. i read poem after poem in the car and then ryan read the first act of "cat on a hot tin roof" for class. reading aloud could be one of my favorite activities and "coahtr" it's shaping up to be a catchy play. little to no action but the characters are magestic in scope and formation through dialogue.
i hate going to mass. ryan's family demanded our attendence in a nice way. i had a dream last night that i was a young boy being molested by priests and i couldn't get a hold of my parents in between rape sessions. it was terrible.
I've been trying to write poems with no avail. maybe no availability in my brain. i have to be in the on/off state. i'm not overthinking but i have my vocabulary about me.
but anyway, here are four poems i wrote today after i found the on/off state.

dedication to a stiff stalker

sure the surge of sad guys come,
at night or after baths,
their tiny eyes, bullying irises
of waiting on watching
on somebody to look for.
always some guy you dated just to see
and found him seated in his jeep all night long,
using questions from jepordy and a false addiction to cigarettes
in a loose person to person formula.
he was apart from his television in class
and after his night or bath while sucking on himself,
rubbing his balls through his gym shorts.
it was like being scared of someone's sickness,
someone's inability to wrap it up and you felt bad for
being so curt.
it would have been nice to fuck him just to see
but his cables were tight together,
his neck was pounded out of sweatshirt's grip.
for the first three days you had to skip class,
on principle and for safety.
then you're phone became a tiger hut,
always pronouncing and purring with angery hunger.
then you left the little kit of distraction alone in a room,
stapled the roses and practical lessons to the door.
it's hard to be the boss of a long and bleeping on-air pause,
it's hard to come across open and flat.

the novelty sweatshirt lady

all the family men in the world touched her,
she asked again how she could sweetly come next to one.
all the while she enjoyed being ponied up,
her favorite position was when her cards showed,
when her hard work graced her face,
her folded skin.
for heaven's sake, she found most folks expasperating
with the entagled way they handled one another.
quick, like a kitchen cabinet
she opened and shut conversations
and eyed the men in hunting jackets,
hung deeply back at the showroom bar.
when she still wasn't that young,
when she still wasn't that old,
she noticed a mustache,
put it softly in her underpants.
she touched her light jeans and flannel shirts in a suitcase.
for all the years she fought her weight for firemen,
for all the times she lost her head over the bunny-type girls
she became a quiet rider.
in the woods we need foxes,
on our plates we need bread,
in our tummies we need butter, honey,
and in our dreams
we plant our legs.

for all the women on campus who knew what to do

two crackers on a tea plate
shackled up in a sunshine room.
three girls, all parted and demented with domed hope,
hairy heat in their seats.
for a slit in the drink they'd pay twenty-nine,
for a slop, a heavy tin of meat they'd come back with more.
for nintey-three times in dormatories
they wanted the hockey players,
the ones who barked into the wooden rink pannels,
the ones whose parents back their cars into a new polaris garage.
being impossible with requests
and inconsolable in badly lit tees,
they were lost like a wave of wheat,
one quick grace of hand behind the head,
door behind the hamper.
once they wanted it they couldn't go back.
just a baby in angora push-up pants.
once they heard their un-names mentioned,
moaned without tone in rock bottom blow-up totes
it was hopeless to pursuade them otherwise.
from moment to moment they rushed,
circular party pants, motionless mattresses,
money under their worthless tongues.

a father not far from here

two men to stand at a golf tournament,
proud of their plucked wives,
the only buzz word open,
the camper they'd never crap on, ha ha!
just a couple clubs and healthy grandkids,
fourth jack in gradschool,
meghan had another panic attack
and all the nature sounds of empathy,
a crack of ball-bat explosion,
stick-wiffel like we did as kids.
tom capsised his canoe at camp,
just close enough to the army hanger that straightened him out.
we called patricia longfellow to carry the extra weight.
two men who shoot a foot behind them
to collapse the fascinating noise,
to chance the steel-toe guarantee.
he wanted a slick black drink,
he like her tits in silver.
they come from all over and here isn't gonna last forever.
for all the low brows in the world these high balls
will fix them, ha ha!
and on the green we see sweet,
a foreign catchphrase to unashame the exact truth,
and always rosey.
we're the nicest guys when the queers aren't so gay
for fuck's sake. who claimed he came in heavier
silk? these requests for simple alignment,
order in an open range.
they'll be gone long before they're dead if they don't
let the old foundations get stoned.

when we leave the house to talk outside

2007-03-28T08:27:00.000-07:00

the slickest rows i ever saw
were your two full eye-brows
and your behind,
the way you pressed your head into the cold
cement steps. the words you used to
talk about yourself, the fat that fell with them.
us pair who took a subway into
each other, another part of town
and weighted on our stories of sentiment and flavor.
for all that ferocity it was worth
another dumping ground,
new damp spots for affection. devotion and the
gardening of our socially amended beliefs came later,
hoeing them, fingering their leaves,
cleaning the weeds for effect.
it was supposed to be a summer for free,
a longtime choice of personally and personality
in the Association of Being Outdoors.
you wanted to be watered, saturated in a stalk and stillness,
in the main ways women like to change shape.
when i walked up on my own porch
and placed some spotted thoughts in pots
you saw how sad, the leaves were already crumpling,
how all our pretty flowers fell brown.

perfect strangers for me, perfect strangers at last

2007-03-13T08:32:00.000-07:00

Shit Sits Still

I slant-walked from easy town to easy town
submerged in what could be called shade.
I toddled, as one toddles in park,
from slide to sand-box
and these environments weren't kept, keyed
like children expect.
While moving an invitation is always open,
open like air, open like my mouth when I watch t.v.
I wait patiently while tuning in
and leave promptly on embarrassment, harassment, assessment.
Who knew the beauty and perfection
in coming around and packing up?
A trailing sense of personality
following my steamy spots for roaming.

lots of old birthdays and new ways to get involved

2007-03-12T07:56:00.000-07:00

birthdays are fantastic, as are parties, sleeping, eating, dancing, etc. some friends threw me a birthday party and it was gorgeous. lights, a buffet, d.j.s, pretty chocolate cake, cards, candles, cigarettes, sangria. i loved every minute and have been glum ever since. it's like christmas and once it's over, you're left a little hollow, a little pale.
i was wondering around, circling the kitchen, the dance floor, the kitchen again and my boyfriend was following me, begging me to finally come upstairs to bed. "no! ryan, it's my party," i kept saying, indignantly. we were both beyond drunk. i'm amazed he was able to pull himself together enough to reason with me in the tender, patient way i need to be reasoned with. he let me walk for awhile longer and see for myself that i could no longer maintain a conversation, let alone find one to join.
"meggie, you aren't supposed to stay until the very end. the guest of honor is supposed to party hard enough to have to leave. just say good-bye, let it go," ryan said.
i'd probably still be walking aimlessly around their apartment if it weren't for ryan.

framed in light and filled with noise

2007-02-27T08:49:00.000-08:00

tomorrow i leave and i hate planes. i hate sitting in the moldy seats and breathing the dry air and forcing my mind into place for hours and hours so as not to get upset. no more addovan for me so i must learn to control my anxiety.
but i'm excited to walk a new city, take the train somewhere else. i make up new lives at every turn, some much better, some much worse.

for instance, i've imagined i have a husband and two children and live in boston. my husband is a cop so of course be beats me occasionally and i bear it, looking gorgeously oppressed and humbled, a toddler on my hip. i learn how to talk to him, as degrading as it is, in hushed tones, framing everything as a question.
one night i leave him, quietly, sadly, and rush off to a brother, or a father, who is also a cop and isn't sure how to help me. i wait tables for awhile, watch as the ends fall further and further apart and decide that this is no way to live. so, i start stripping on weekends. no drugs or anything, i just take my clothes off on stage and make triple what i could have made in three over-night shifts at a diner. i realize that humility and opression translate well on this stage and i'm loved because i don't wear the same sort of expression that the other strippers do. i've learned how to appear raw and indifferent, which drives the patrons wild.
eventually i begin sleeping with the female bartender, just to get off with someone else. she moves in to help with the kids, who're doing alright, excluding that they're becoming savvy to their mother's occupation. maybe not the youngest but she's too in tune with her my body not feel all that oggling, the film of greasey eyes and hair pointed in my direction. she's taken to repetitively wiping my shoulders while i hold her to help in any way she can. i barely notice.

different scenerios pop up, sometimes i'm weak and sometimes i'm the most powerful. sometimes i'm famous and hate it, sometimes i'm famous and i eat it up. sometimes i'm fancy and sometimes i'm plain. sometimes i die an unaccounted death and sometimes i kill fourteen people in a dirty drug war. an imagination is a terrible thing to waste.

i remember being ten and on a vacation with my parents in key west and having this journal that was covered in denim from the limited too (ltd ii), and writing a story about three girls who made a fourtune while opening up a rehabilitation center on the ocean. i think a cousin had just been sent back to re-hab so it was a subject that held a lot of weight at the time. at my rehabilitation center the clients were allowed to drink, as it were, if they proved they could do it responsibly. for some reason i found the idea of not being allowed to drink very depressing and mean, like being grounded forever. i had very grand ideas about what it was like to be drunk, considering everyone seemed to like it so much.
the clients were all sad and disillusioned until they met me and i showed them ways to be healthy. i had three dogs named peace, hope, and serenity, which i think was pretty damn clever for a ten year old. the dogs were apparently white and our main security system. the two other women and myself ended up being rebuked for our open-minded treatments and driven off the island. i think i ended up somewhere in the east, reading a bit of poetry off one of those long scrolls with trees and birds and the stanza i read directly spoke to my way of helping others through addiction. i thought that really brought the piece full circle.

my brothers found my journal and read it one night. sam is twelve years older than i am and casey is seven. when i heard them laughing, i knew they'd found it and i was embarassed to the point where it physically hurt. i was so upset i didn't want to leave the bathroom or something the next day so i got in trouble for being annoying and weird. i was always scaring my mother and making my siblings mad. but i always stuck to my imagination, stuck in it. i've loved nothing more than evaporating away into someone else and it's always clear to me that what i write might be silly or ridiculous to some. it might not be worth reading, if someone else were to read it, but it's still feelings that catch up on other people's faces and clothes and movements that i think i've understood and then get to explain again and again and if nothing else, it helps me figure out how things work.

sick day for sick ghosts but putting my plant in the windowsill

2007-02-22T12:53:00.000-08:00

1.
two blades of my fan snapped off
and the lopped, open shape
spins with a hump,
hacks itself into a grunting rim of spirals.
i watched it all from my back,
sucking in my stomach
and pressing my breasts towards the ceiling.
i imagined offering them to the saint
who lobbed off her left melon in honor
of jesus christ and all that mystery.
maybe she just wanted to see inside herself,
figure it out for final's sake.
but, obviously enough,
nobody will ever know for sure,
even with the evidence,
written testimonies and damsels dying in opportunity
and all that.
instead we wonder with an exciting passion
and transfer the energy to our hot spots,
like the way cats sit in the sun or how
my fantasies are in everything.
i'll send off my secrets on that same mix-up someday.
just how i personally understand,
the biggest delay of all.

2.
two for touching is also sex
and one for fingers in
soaking mysteries.
i'd like my legs to look
like they did when i was nine
and bruises were but a charm
in the overcoat, bracing me for
a larger wan and waxing use of
what waited between them.

3.
why must attraction yank
at every inopportunity and,
supposedly, opportunities in the same?
almost all people grab me
and grapple with my funny tummy.
i especially enjoy necks
and other sinuous parts.
vests and shoes and terrible teeth.
i like the fat on backs
and the rise in pants
and the rub of children's' faces
on inner arms.
i like conversations that lack
dimension and car rides were no one speaks.
i suppose i fan myself for attraction,
spitting out odd facts for an adverse affect
of unappeal,
always lying to cover my embarrassing likes
and hopeful errands.

three sexy poems from the corner coffee shop. what's with me today?