She came to me
At the height of a Friday night boom
Neon drinks and flash beats
Dark raucousness and
Jim Beam
Pounding away and
Glassy eyes
And I just keep pouring
Whole damn rows across
Beds of ice
For five straight years
Shots and shots and wasted nights.
All for cash to float me 'til
The next weekend round
And last month's bills.
Red to black again erase
Lines of chalky dreamless space.
Draining life, for nothing more
Than bottle sleep and the next long pour.
But her, a wretched jaunty scowl
Flinty eyes and wrinkled jowls.
She flicked her drink order
Like I'd know by sign
And somehow I did
Bled triple sec and vodka
With cranberry juice and lime
And another splash of vodka
Her wince demanded.
Jesus Christ, pay up now. I couldn't stand it.
A dozen circus drunks
Circling in
They waited for me
Their server of life and
Tonic and gin.
But I waited for her.
And waited, and waited.
She showed me instead
An empty glass and a
Finger
Stringing me into
A spit of a whisper:
"I'm not who you think I am
So don't give me your chaser.
I've crouched in this place
Every night since the beginning
Watching you drown out
All of my meaning.
For whatever damn reason
You tell me why
Tonight you stumbled into my eyes.
Couldn't unpuzzle
What a fool of a card
Would be doing here waiting
To be served at your bar.
Listen, honey, I've got here the longest running
Open tab -
Check the Book.
Flip through the pages
And have a look.
Just don't even expect
That I'm tipping your pocket a single worthless cent.
What I will give you is a helluva' lot more:
Here's back your drink since you've really thought
All along it's worth every drowning drop."
She shoved it at me
And got up to leave
Then turned around, waiting for me to see
A full glass of clear liquid
I never poured
Then a smashing second
Of true wonder that tore
Me open like heaven.
And I drank it dry
That cool clean water
Drops of all my missing life.
She grabbed my hands, trembling, before she left
Stared into me deep then slowly said:
"Drink life in and drink enough
But next time when you grab your cup
Hold it out and I'll fill it up."
She inched closer, "Just trust me, okay?"
Clever wrinkles spread across her grinning face;
She could see it all click -
I now knew her Name.
She made one last smirky comment on her way out
Over the noise of my life I heard her shout:
"And gimme a break, honey; I promise someday
To show your amateur ass how real Cosmos are made."
Monday, January 31, 2011
Rising the Invisible
I found a poem today
Face up wincing in pain.
A windless bird.
So I shredded her up
To leaves
Confetti sky and tumbleweed dreams.
Marching pieces one by one
Beneath galactic worm holes,
To inner earth drums.
Million legs and starry eyes,
His exoskeletal universe -
A granular science underground
And inexplicable
Rib dust cries.
Anthropods and fiber pulp
Rising the invisible
Life to trees
Prayerful limbs,
and,
A branching poem,
Knelt in song and
Perched in breeze.
Face up wincing in pain.
A windless bird.
So I shredded her up
To leaves
Confetti sky and tumbleweed dreams.
Marching pieces one by one
Beneath galactic worm holes,
To inner earth drums.
Million legs and starry eyes,
His exoskeletal universe -
A granular science underground
And inexplicable
Rib dust cries.
Anthropods and fiber pulp
Rising the invisible
Life to trees
Prayerful limbs,
and,
A branching poem,
Knelt in song and
Perched in breeze.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Bedroom Furniture
I can’t get the breath to pull the curtains back, let in the January 10am sunlight, glistening snow tracks and shivering trees, bare and waiting for fruit and flower days, play days and rain days. Instead, I sit, back against a stiff bed, ass on the carpet, wedged between furniture I don’t much like. It’s alright, but man, thinking about what we paid for it and what else I’d get if I had another go.
My bedroom furniture is really the last of my regrettable lapses, I’ve got whole fields of woes to trample, squawking backward with a gigantic dumbbell balancing on my head, fishing line tied in front, dangling a blinking neon sign with no words, just weirdish animated faces and stuck out tongues that tell my whole story:
“What the hell is she trying to do?”
Exactly. My point.
Symbolism in odd, slow, cumbersome motion. No one’s around to stop and stare, but for the rare passer-by, gluestick eyes and quizzical pane, they watch for a highway second, a grown girl in a field of regret trying to accomplish a spectacular nothing with no words, a dumbbell [I don’t even have the shapely thighs to prove it], and a sign pointing nowhere. Wonder why she's going backwards? Then reaffix themselves properly forward, moving fast in fast moving car through a still shot world.
“Eureka! I’ve got it!"
Epiphany bubbles, a pot of boiling tea in my brain, and I realize that proper use of my upper extremities and clenching my gut, like waiting for a big ‘ole sock in the padded doozer, keeps me upright, steady as a pistol, dumbbell in place like an unshakeable pendulum.
“Life can’t get much better than this, to be doing what I do and doing it very well.”
I smile at the sign, faces mocking me like a sock puppet with a hand shoved up its ass, waiting for its next line.
My bedroom furniture is really the last of my regrettable lapses, I’ve got whole fields of woes to trample, squawking backward with a gigantic dumbbell balancing on my head, fishing line tied in front, dangling a blinking neon sign with no words, just weirdish animated faces and stuck out tongues that tell my whole story:
“What the hell is she trying to do?”
Exactly. My point.
Symbolism in odd, slow, cumbersome motion. No one’s around to stop and stare, but for the rare passer-by, gluestick eyes and quizzical pane, they watch for a highway second, a grown girl in a field of regret trying to accomplish a spectacular nothing with no words, a dumbbell [I don’t even have the shapely thighs to prove it], and a sign pointing nowhere. Wonder why she's going backwards? Then reaffix themselves properly forward, moving fast in fast moving car through a still shot world.
“Eureka! I’ve got it!"
Epiphany bubbles, a pot of boiling tea in my brain, and I realize that proper use of my upper extremities and clenching my gut, like waiting for a big ‘ole sock in the padded doozer, keeps me upright, steady as a pistol, dumbbell in place like an unshakeable pendulum.
“Life can’t get much better than this, to be doing what I do and doing it very well.”
I smile at the sign, faces mocking me like a sock puppet with a hand shoved up its ass, waiting for its next line.
Friday, January 28, 2011
I am no Moleskine
I am no Moleskine. A ten dollar story inside a $30 journal? Try a two penny thought in a buck-and-a-quarter notebook, spiral bound and wide ruled, all shined up and spit out of a Walgreens plastic bag. Sorry clothies, I'll have'em next time [c'mon pull my finger and relax].
Moleskines: "The wrapping is art." Ok, I'll hear you out. Oh...got it. Bands of Hemingway and Chatwin and Wilde like violin strings, Glass's minimalist chimes hem the contours - simplicity at its most Italian, China's finest magic paper all but writes for you. Check, check, and check.
Recoiling for a second, thinking of lovely laughing words, rich texture and real sorrow, all sapping the pages of Moleskines everywhere. There's truth inside, I believe some of you.
But the art is not the journal; it's not what you hold but what is being held. Journals are not umbrellas - flip the cheap things inside out for god's sake, and - LOOK UP. They're not protecting you from the rain, they are welcoming the flood. Besides, it's all pouring out, not in.
Now, I do know a Moleskine. She indicated, mattering very much, that in addition to owning several Moleskines, she also fondles her writing by following over 100 blogs. Spectacularific! I had to bite my brain, cock it toward the doorknob, and think about a circle. Who the fuck cares if you've read 100 gabillion blogs, every typed beautiful word in courier new font, that simple white background shaded with gray letters and amusing hyperlinks - long, long trails to nowhere. And always spotted with graphic art, ooh, that kind that when you see it, you know it's pretty. Picked from a nifty template box - abstract owls, a crispy white hand holding a vintage book, a wing falling from a brass horn, fading and fading away into tiffany blues and somber golds.
God, I see them, these blog pages, and jealousy stings like an ever-lovin' bitch. That confidence. That courage. Much more, or, much less, has brought these writing creatures to create their own spheric space, inviting - no! Beckoning - no! Begging all the world inside their purview - "Welcome to my inner struggle." "Hear the voice I own." "Believe the lies I wish to discover."
Bleezy blah, blah, and blah. Oh, I'm sure there's great shit, some really brilliant shit, things I wish I could write if I could have access to their dreams, wear their Socratic skin like a costume - "Can I feel real pain?" "Can I stare down your gun barrel?" Please give me your disease, your depression, your divine comedy. I'd really love them like accessories, dress up my ordinary pigment all dry and yellow."
Instead, you wear them, wave them around brightly like flashlights in a dark cold world, smiling at people to follow your digitized paths and Mac book keyboards: "I'm ordinary but extraordinary, want to listen?" "I'm living to be good enough, share a comment!"
God, it's crap I yack too but it tastes putrid coming out. Really? Is the key to life a breath mint and a blog? Let's pray not. I'd rather taste the rancid and spew than dress it up in Moleskine and swallow. Ooh - the hypocrisy [blogspot] the jealousy [HP] the circularity [what?] - it's all mine! Heehee! [darting eyes, hands rubbing together].
Ah, what the hell. Here I go again, happy trails and heaving bullshit all tiptoeing smashed like a drunk ballerina toward the Listerine bottle and a laptop.
Shutting the door now...
Moleskines: "The wrapping is art." Ok, I'll hear you out. Oh...got it. Bands of Hemingway and Chatwin and Wilde like violin strings, Glass's minimalist chimes hem the contours - simplicity at its most Italian, China's finest magic paper all but writes for you. Check, check, and check.
Recoiling for a second, thinking of lovely laughing words, rich texture and real sorrow, all sapping the pages of Moleskines everywhere. There's truth inside, I believe some of you.
But the art is not the journal; it's not what you hold but what is being held. Journals are not umbrellas - flip the cheap things inside out for god's sake, and - LOOK UP. They're not protecting you from the rain, they are welcoming the flood. Besides, it's all pouring out, not in.
Now, I do know a Moleskine. She indicated, mattering very much, that in addition to owning several Moleskines, she also fondles her writing by following over 100 blogs. Spectacularific! I had to bite my brain, cock it toward the doorknob, and think about a circle. Who the fuck cares if you've read 100 gabillion blogs, every typed beautiful word in courier new font, that simple white background shaded with gray letters and amusing hyperlinks - long, long trails to nowhere. And always spotted with graphic art, ooh, that kind that when you see it, you know it's pretty. Picked from a nifty template box - abstract owls, a crispy white hand holding a vintage book, a wing falling from a brass horn, fading and fading away into tiffany blues and somber golds.
God, I see them, these blog pages, and jealousy stings like an ever-lovin' bitch. That confidence. That courage. Much more, or, much less, has brought these writing creatures to create their own spheric space, inviting - no! Beckoning - no! Begging all the world inside their purview - "Welcome to my inner struggle." "Hear the voice I own." "Believe the lies I wish to discover."
Bleezy blah, blah, and blah. Oh, I'm sure there's great shit, some really brilliant shit, things I wish I could write if I could have access to their dreams, wear their Socratic skin like a costume - "Can I feel real pain?" "Can I stare down your gun barrel?" Please give me your disease, your depression, your divine comedy. I'd really love them like accessories, dress up my ordinary pigment all dry and yellow."
Instead, you wear them, wave them around brightly like flashlights in a dark cold world, smiling at people to follow your digitized paths and Mac book keyboards: "I'm ordinary but extraordinary, want to listen?" "I'm living to be good enough, share a comment!"
God, it's crap I yack too but it tastes putrid coming out. Really? Is the key to life a breath mint and a blog? Let's pray not. I'd rather taste the rancid and spew than dress it up in Moleskine and swallow. Ooh - the hypocrisy [blogspot] the jealousy [HP] the circularity [what?] - it's all mine! Heehee! [darting eyes, hands rubbing together].
Ah, what the hell. Here I go again, happy trails and heaving bullshit all tiptoeing smashed like a drunk ballerina toward the Listerine bottle and a laptop.
Shutting the door now...
The Closet and the Pretentious Reader
I'm a closet writer. Not I am a closet writer, shit wind to four walls of validation. Buried in my head, a dark fine space, sitting fear and a thin paper line at the bottom of an endless door, nothing extraordinarily poetic, nothing extraordinarily anything. Just shadows ticking and a cave of dishonesty, costumes and a jagging hot mess. Hissing zippers and rip off beauty with delete buttons flying apart at the seams. Plain truth, I can't sew worth shit but I can destruct quite well, melancholy claustrophobia and my fingers searching for something like a sober pen and a thin white light.
Let's be honest and stop trying so hard to please the Pretentious Reader sipping dirty martinis in her uber-trim black turtleneck and Chanel box glasses, pursed lips smacking: "Try harder bitch, you make no sense."
Whatever, Pretentious Reader, you're a bitch too.
I'm afraid of writing, because, if I write, I am a writer. Not I'm a writer. Blow flagrant apostrophes and walls of water to hide behind. I'm satisfactorily comfortable being dissatisfied being nothing too much of anything at all.
"Oooh!" she wails, "sounds spidery!" as she squints smaller, rolls her shoulder and taps twice for a double.
At least I suspect. She's loud as a wine drunk and exotically descriptive, the outer edge of sound shadows on the right side of my only door.
Fine for now. It's the most honest dishonesty I can muster, save whatever comes next.
Let's be honest and stop trying so hard to please the Pretentious Reader sipping dirty martinis in her uber-trim black turtleneck and Chanel box glasses, pursed lips smacking: "Try harder bitch, you make no sense."
Whatever, Pretentious Reader, you're a bitch too.
I'm afraid of writing, because, if I write, I am a writer. Not I'm a writer. Blow flagrant apostrophes and walls of water to hide behind. I'm satisfactorily comfortable being dissatisfied being nothing too much of anything at all.
"Oooh!" she wails, "sounds spidery!" as she squints smaller, rolls her shoulder and taps twice for a double.
At least I suspect. She's loud as a wine drunk and exotically descriptive, the outer edge of sound shadows on the right side of my only door.
Fine for now. It's the most honest dishonesty I can muster, save whatever comes next.
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