Thursday, February 24, 2011
Fuck.
Fuck you. I want to know how it feels that I'm the best you could ever have, so tell me when you lose your nerve. So what'd you go looking for and why? How long did it take before you stopped? Don't worry. It suits you just fine. You would think after all this time your taste would have lifted from my lips and I would forget your eyes were out for gold and all the rest. And I won't forgive- because I can't forget the weight I carry in my chest. I'm far too far from giving up- I swear. I swear. My wishes remain the same: for steady hands to be held. Hands to hold, and to be held. But what's left to heal? What's left of me? You'll get what you deserve- and when the time is right, you'll see it's funny how little it takes for you to become everything you say you hate. But don't worry. It suits you just fine. When you're out of sight- you'll be out of mind. Just like you showed me. I'll never admit how hard I fell. (so close, but not this time.) So after all this time, what can you say for yourself? You fell so far, and for what? You took more than time. (i'll never be this sick again. you have to know this is tearing me apart.) You took more than time. You know damn well I wasn't ready for this.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
fuck everything, yeah
i’ve never been loved like that.
i’ve never been looked at like somebody cares about me the way i care about them.
ain’t that fucking miserable?
my veins look like you sometimes, i swear.
and when i look in the mirror i can still pretend that you’re there
but you won’t be.
someone told me that being so close to someone that you can feel their heartbeat is warm like fire
i’ve spent the last weekend of my life in the snow, and i still haven’t felt cold.
mind you, i’ve never felt very warm either.
mind you, the sanguine of your stupid fucking lips still haunts me like an hourglass,
sand trickling down the moments until our inevitable moment,
until we can look up at one another, and raise our glass,
and at the top of our lungs scream:
“cheers”
because the ocean is a giant, and he’s sleeping, waiting,
the universal clockmaker, still winding his own gears and waiting,
and waiting
and listening, still.
we are between the bolts in his face,
we are the glint of light reflected in his eyes,
we are what holds him together, even if he holds us above the fire.
and oh my god, what does it mean to be in love?
i hear that love lasts forever.
that’s bullshit. it lasts until it dies.
because everything dies sometime.
only not us.
i’ve never been looked at like somebody cares about me the way i care about them.
ain’t that fucking miserable?
my veins look like you sometimes, i swear.
and when i look in the mirror i can still pretend that you’re there
but you won’t be.
someone told me that being so close to someone that you can feel their heartbeat is warm like fire
i’ve spent the last weekend of my life in the snow, and i still haven’t felt cold.
mind you, i’ve never felt very warm either.
mind you, the sanguine of your stupid fucking lips still haunts me like an hourglass,
sand trickling down the moments until our inevitable moment,
until we can look up at one another, and raise our glass,
and at the top of our lungs scream:
“cheers”
because the ocean is a giant, and he’s sleeping, waiting,
the universal clockmaker, still winding his own gears and waiting,
and waiting
and listening, still.
we are between the bolts in his face,
we are the glint of light reflected in his eyes,
we are what holds him together, even if he holds us above the fire.
and oh my god, what does it mean to be in love?
i hear that love lasts forever.
that’s bullshit. it lasts until it dies.
because everything dies sometime.
only not us.
Friday, January 7, 2011
who knows how to make love stay?
In the last quarter of the twentieth century much of the world sat on the edge of an increasingly expensive theater seat waiting for something momentous to occur.
Christian aficionados of the Second Coming scenario were convinced that, after two thousand years, the other shoe was about to drop. And five of the era's best-known psychics predicted that Atlantis would soon reemerge from the depths.
To this last, Princess Leigh-Cheri responded, "There are three lost continents…we are one: the lovers."
In whatever esteem on might hold Princess Leigh-Cheri's thoughts, one must agree that the last quarter of the twentieth century was a severe period for lovers. It was a time when romantic relationships took on the character of ice in spring, stranding many little children on jagged and inhospitable floes.
Nobody quite knew what to make of the moon anymore.
Consider a certain night in August. The moon was so bloated it was about to tip over. For more than an hour, Leigh-Cheri stared into the sky. "Does the moon have a purpose?" She inquired. The same query put to the Remington SL3 elicited this response:
Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not. Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning and an end. Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm.
There is only one serious question. And that is: Who knows how to make love stay? Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself. Answer me that and I will ease your mind about the beginning and end of time, Answer me that and I will reveal to you the purpose of the moon.
Christian aficionados of the Second Coming scenario were convinced that, after two thousand years, the other shoe was about to drop. And five of the era's best-known psychics predicted that Atlantis would soon reemerge from the depths.
To this last, Princess Leigh-Cheri responded, "There are three lost continents…we are one: the lovers."
In whatever esteem on might hold Princess Leigh-Cheri's thoughts, one must agree that the last quarter of the twentieth century was a severe period for lovers. It was a time when romantic relationships took on the character of ice in spring, stranding many little children on jagged and inhospitable floes.
Nobody quite knew what to make of the moon anymore.
Consider a certain night in August. The moon was so bloated it was about to tip over. For more than an hour, Leigh-Cheri stared into the sky. "Does the moon have a purpose?" She inquired. The same query put to the Remington SL3 elicited this response:
Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not. Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning and an end. Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm.
There is only one serious question. And that is: Who knows how to make love stay? Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself. Answer me that and I will ease your mind about the beginning and end of time, Answer me that and I will reveal to you the purpose of the moon.
Friday, December 31, 2010
experimenting with the present tense
Ghosts appear and fade away in yellow tinted rooms where dry winter sunlight filters through papery yellow curtains. Picture such a room, now, in a small home in southern Italy.
The walls are lined with cases of butterflies, printed flat with great effort and care. In the left side of the room there sits a red couch with rural, idiosyncratic patters in yellows and soft greens spotting the surface. Dust coats everything here, excepting a small writing desk, on which sat an inkwell and a lamp with a stained-glass shade and an ebony stand.
There is a man in the room, with half-closed eyes and skin of a dark tan, reminiscent of a native of southern Spain, or perhaps Morocco. In his left hand he holds a paper cup of coffee, probably from the small coffeehouse in the neighboring alleyway. In his right, he clutches a stack of letters just acquired from a post-officer whose relationship with the coffee-drinking man went back no less than sixteen years. The man sits in a small armchair immediately to the right of the door to the room, which looks out the window, to the left of which sits the desk.
As he sifts through the mail, he looks down upon a name he did not expect (and yet fully expected) to see. Immediately, he stands up and walks to the desk, dropping the rest of the letters onto the armchair.
His gaze tightens into a grimace as he reads what she had written him; an inconclusive cry for help that had less substance than the quad con panna he sipped slowly, steam wafting up and around his nose. As the sun passes behind a cloud and the space is darkened, he picks up his pen and begins to respond.
He begins with:“dearest _____,”. And at that, as light again flutters into the room, in a silence so acute that the wings of hummingbirds would harmonize with the drop of a pin, he discovers, for the first time in a long time, that he is at a loss for words.
The walls are lined with cases of butterflies, printed flat with great effort and care. In the left side of the room there sits a red couch with rural, idiosyncratic patters in yellows and soft greens spotting the surface. Dust coats everything here, excepting a small writing desk, on which sat an inkwell and a lamp with a stained-glass shade and an ebony stand.
There is a man in the room, with half-closed eyes and skin of a dark tan, reminiscent of a native of southern Spain, or perhaps Morocco. In his left hand he holds a paper cup of coffee, probably from the small coffeehouse in the neighboring alleyway. In his right, he clutches a stack of letters just acquired from a post-officer whose relationship with the coffee-drinking man went back no less than sixteen years. The man sits in a small armchair immediately to the right of the door to the room, which looks out the window, to the left of which sits the desk.
As he sifts through the mail, he looks down upon a name he did not expect (and yet fully expected) to see. Immediately, he stands up and walks to the desk, dropping the rest of the letters onto the armchair.
His gaze tightens into a grimace as he reads what she had written him; an inconclusive cry for help that had less substance than the quad con panna he sipped slowly, steam wafting up and around his nose. As the sun passes behind a cloud and the space is darkened, he picks up his pen and begins to respond.
He begins with:“dearest _____,”. And at that, as light again flutters into the room, in a silence so acute that the wings of hummingbirds would harmonize with the drop of a pin, he discovers, for the first time in a long time, that he is at a loss for words.
Monday, December 6, 2010
there is an elegance to streetlights;
like someone took stars and hung them from the earth,
carried the mystique like a bayonet and lit the giant’s pathway north.
i can still hear the ringing of the cars,
a sweet symphony responding to forgotten conversation and mythical stares,
like shiny young hipsters lost in the glory of the mainstream or two stupid kids who (i hope) could feel more than just the moonlight,
but somehow i doubt it.
somehow i doubt it,
because anthem way and metal bars and terms of service and cars and streetlights give way too fast to one sided feelings and never seeing anyone ever and talking once an month and listening less
there’s an elegance to streetlights;
they paint the way for giant’s footpaths and traffic-jams and radio music and rhapsody
such is the road to chicago
such is the road to hearts
such is the road to feeling and forgetting and not wanting and living and dying and screaming and crying and laughing and listening and never talking and never seeing and never really feeling like they care, even if they do
but, i think there’s some hope left for our tumbling little world;
i think there’s an epigram that reads all your names alongside mine
i think i can dig it
i think i can bring my friends more than a streetlight ever could
or maybe not.
like someone took stars and hung them from the earth,
carried the mystique like a bayonet and lit the giant’s pathway north.
i can still hear the ringing of the cars,
a sweet symphony responding to forgotten conversation and mythical stares,
like shiny young hipsters lost in the glory of the mainstream or two stupid kids who (i hope) could feel more than just the moonlight,
but somehow i doubt it.
somehow i doubt it,
because anthem way and metal bars and terms of service and cars and streetlights give way too fast to one sided feelings and never seeing anyone ever and talking once an month and listening less
there’s an elegance to streetlights;
they paint the way for giant’s footpaths and traffic-jams and radio music and rhapsody
such is the road to chicago
such is the road to hearts
such is the road to feeling and forgetting and not wanting and living and dying and screaming and crying and laughing and listening and never talking and never seeing and never really feeling like they care, even if they do
but, i think there’s some hope left for our tumbling little world;
i think there’s an epigram that reads all your names alongside mine
i think i can dig it
i think i can bring my friends more than a streetlight ever could
or maybe not.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Four
There was once a great kingdom, and its great king had a beautiful daughter who passed her days in solitude, weaving garments for the pleasure of her father. One day, while she was sitting beside the great river, peering across, she saw a handsome young shepherd boy leading his flock through the pasture. Immediately, she fell in love.
Thereafter, she became terribly disheartened, knowing that, due to her duties at the loom, she would be unable to pursue that love. The king, aware that by his bidding such despair had befallen her, felt great remorse, and arranged for her to marry the shepherd. There marriage was one of happiness from the start, and everyday thereafter they grew happier and happier. However, in immersing herself in her marriage, the princess had neglected her weaving and the great king became angry. Unable to reconcile with that anger, the great king banished each of the lovers to opposite sides of the great river, allowing them only to meet once each year: on the seventh day of the seventh month. On that day, a ferryman would carry the shepherd boy across the river to the princess, and return him home at day's end. However, if the princess has not fulfilled her obligations at the loom the king floods the river, and the two can not meet.
Thereafter, she became terribly disheartened, knowing that, due to her duties at the loom, she would be unable to pursue that love. The king, aware that by his bidding such despair had befallen her, felt great remorse, and arranged for her to marry the shepherd. There marriage was one of happiness from the start, and everyday thereafter they grew happier and happier. However, in immersing herself in her marriage, the princess had neglected her weaving and the great king became angry. Unable to reconcile with that anger, the great king banished each of the lovers to opposite sides of the great river, allowing them only to meet once each year: on the seventh day of the seventh month. On that day, a ferryman would carry the shepherd boy across the river to the princess, and return him home at day's end. However, if the princess has not fulfilled her obligations at the loom the king floods the river, and the two can not meet.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
untitled
foreward:
there are certain conventions of writing which i choose to disregard. they concern capital letters, punctuation, and all the stupid things that dont really matter anyway, because the only people that care about that either dont care about reading what ive written here, or their dead. most, i would assume, would fit into the first category.
im also convinced that those things make writing dead and meaningless, by trying to provide beauty through appearance. sentences are beautiful because they are sentences, not because i followed some arbitrary rules.
what im writing is the culmination of poetrycarridesinsidejokesbademomusicbloggingandstayingupallnightwithacopyofdoriangreytotalkabouttomorrow
what im writing here is prose; its a coming-of-age novel, i guess, and its one of those stupid novels that old conservatives will criticize and call promiscuous or inappropriate because they think that because its about young adults, its also for them. this is both unfair, and untrue.
this, to me, is a creative outlet, to express what i feel or dont feel or otherwise am concerned with. it is fiction. it takes place somewhere, with characters that exist only in the songs i hear and the things i read and places i go, but most of all, only exist inside my head, however similar they may seem to reallifepeopleplacesevents
it might seem to lose any sense of coherency or order in parts. thats intentional.
what im writing here is for my friends. theyll get it.
fuck you guys.
<3
-me
untitled
simsun fonts and bad music are a good starting-place, i think. i dont know you, nor do i expect to. you are a human-being, and that is enough to commend you to me. you came across this, in adumpsteroratrashcanoraplacewheremagicalthingsgo, or maybe your friend gave it to you, with asmileorfrownorlaughortear, or if im lucky, maybe they gave it to you and said ‘i cried when i read this’. i hope i can get that out of you, because i really dont need anything else, at this point, but to have somebody to share my life with. i dont know you, nor do i expect to, and i dont care. im writing this to you because i know youll read it (and if you dont, thats cool too) and youll feel something, and maybejustmaybe thatll be something to you.
i hope you never know or have to know what it feels like to give up entirely, and i hope you never have to know what it feels like to miss out on everything because your moms gone and your dad still wont lock the doors, and i hope you arent one of those people who has no genuine-ness left inside you anymore, and that you wont fuck people just because you get the chance, or that you dont truly care about your friends or your girlfriend or everyone around you. i hope you get the chance to feel genuinely happy, and i hope that you get to feel love and i hope you try drugs and i hope you dont become a slave to money or stop living because living is too hard, and i hope you love life and live it for you (and your friends too).
i wish i loved myself.
i wish she loved me.
i wish they were still around to drive up and down the roads listening to music nobodys heard of and telling jokes and feeling like (or maybe wishing that) this would last forever.
theres a black-and-white smile for each distant twink-a-lee that brightens the horizon for each tiny moment the stars reflect on windshields or waterways or buddy holly glasses or hookah pieces or glass shards from second-story windows or guitar bodies or the eyes of someone sitting alone and crying because their mom wont come home.
i wish i loved myself like they used to love me.
someone, somewhere, a long long time ago, two people fucked and made my mom.
quite honestly, she has no clue who they were, and quite honestly, nobody ever really cared that much anyway. all anyone knows is that she was born in detroit, then came south and into our little town outside chicago, all homely and midwestern with rows of houses side-to-side (but with some character, not those stupid suburb development things). i wont tell you the name, or hers, because i feel like that doesnt matter. for the sake of coherency ill call her lizbeth (no last name, she never had one anyway. ours for a while) and the place where we lived wheaton (yeah, i know, thats not near chicago, but its not where we lived, either, so does it matter what i call it?). she showed up here in the early 80s after tramping around the midwest, then started working as a journalist for a local newspaper that isnt around anymore.
my father was (is) a lawyer from ohio. he came out to illinois for law-school and ended up living in ‘wheaton’ after he got laid off by his firm in chicago. he bought a house on arlington street, four west from central, with two stories painted greenish blue with a white trim. this was in the mid-80s so he got the place dirt-cheap from forclosure, and found a bag of weed in the toilet upstairs his first day in the place. point is, he moved in for shit, which was lucky with him being out of a job. he met my mom at a townhall meeting concerning, of all things, repaving the street next to ours, norfolk drive.
long story short, he asked her to go get some beers, they went home and ‘passionately’fucked each-other’s brains out on the stupid green couch he bought at goodwill. i cant walk past it, after gleaning this information from my dad 16 years later, without tearing up and wondering what wouldve happened if he wasnt so damn alcoholic and she wasnt so damned easy. but what was, was, and thats just about the extent of the metaphor.
i was born nine months later, into a world of rapestarvationmurdersubstanceabusesexliesdivorcecustodypaperselopingwiththedentistandalsolove
there are certain conventions of writing which i choose to disregard. they concern capital letters, punctuation, and all the stupid things that dont really matter anyway, because the only people that care about that either dont care about reading what ive written here, or their dead. most, i would assume, would fit into the first category.
im also convinced that those things make writing dead and meaningless, by trying to provide beauty through appearance. sentences are beautiful because they are sentences, not because i followed some arbitrary rules.
what im writing is the culmination of poetrycarridesinsidejokesbademomusicbloggingandstayingupallnightwithacopyofdoriangreytotalkabouttomorrow
what im writing here is prose; its a coming-of-age novel, i guess, and its one of those stupid novels that old conservatives will criticize and call promiscuous or inappropriate because they think that because its about young adults, its also for them. this is both unfair, and untrue.
this, to me, is a creative outlet, to express what i feel or dont feel or otherwise am concerned with. it is fiction. it takes place somewhere, with characters that exist only in the songs i hear and the things i read and places i go, but most of all, only exist inside my head, however similar they may seem to reallifepeopleplacesevents
it might seem to lose any sense of coherency or order in parts. thats intentional.
what im writing here is for my friends. theyll get it.
fuck you guys.
<3
-me
untitled
simsun fonts and bad music are a good starting-place, i think. i dont know you, nor do i expect to. you are a human-being, and that is enough to commend you to me. you came across this, in adumpsteroratrashcanoraplacewheremagicalthingsgo, or maybe your friend gave it to you, with asmileorfrownorlaughortear, or if im lucky, maybe they gave it to you and said ‘i cried when i read this’. i hope i can get that out of you, because i really dont need anything else, at this point, but to have somebody to share my life with. i dont know you, nor do i expect to, and i dont care. im writing this to you because i know youll read it (and if you dont, thats cool too) and youll feel something, and maybejustmaybe thatll be something to you.
i hope you never know or have to know what it feels like to give up entirely, and i hope you never have to know what it feels like to miss out on everything because your moms gone and your dad still wont lock the doors, and i hope you arent one of those people who has no genuine-ness left inside you anymore, and that you wont fuck people just because you get the chance, or that you dont truly care about your friends or your girlfriend or everyone around you. i hope you get the chance to feel genuinely happy, and i hope that you get to feel love and i hope you try drugs and i hope you dont become a slave to money or stop living because living is too hard, and i hope you love life and live it for you (and your friends too).
i wish i loved myself.
i wish she loved me.
i wish they were still around to drive up and down the roads listening to music nobodys heard of and telling jokes and feeling like (or maybe wishing that) this would last forever.
theres a black-and-white smile for each distant twink-a-lee that brightens the horizon for each tiny moment the stars reflect on windshields or waterways or buddy holly glasses or hookah pieces or glass shards from second-story windows or guitar bodies or the eyes of someone sitting alone and crying because their mom wont come home.
i wish i loved myself like they used to love me.
someone, somewhere, a long long time ago, two people fucked and made my mom.
quite honestly, she has no clue who they were, and quite honestly, nobody ever really cared that much anyway. all anyone knows is that she was born in detroit, then came south and into our little town outside chicago, all homely and midwestern with rows of houses side-to-side (but with some character, not those stupid suburb development things). i wont tell you the name, or hers, because i feel like that doesnt matter. for the sake of coherency ill call her lizbeth (no last name, she never had one anyway. ours for a while) and the place where we lived wheaton (yeah, i know, thats not near chicago, but its not where we lived, either, so does it matter what i call it?). she showed up here in the early 80s after tramping around the midwest, then started working as a journalist for a local newspaper that isnt around anymore.
my father was (is) a lawyer from ohio. he came out to illinois for law-school and ended up living in ‘wheaton’ after he got laid off by his firm in chicago. he bought a house on arlington street, four west from central, with two stories painted greenish blue with a white trim. this was in the mid-80s so he got the place dirt-cheap from forclosure, and found a bag of weed in the toilet upstairs his first day in the place. point is, he moved in for shit, which was lucky with him being out of a job. he met my mom at a townhall meeting concerning, of all things, repaving the street next to ours, norfolk drive.
long story short, he asked her to go get some beers, they went home and ‘passionately’fucked each-other’s brains out on the stupid green couch he bought at goodwill. i cant walk past it, after gleaning this information from my dad 16 years later, without tearing up and wondering what wouldve happened if he wasnt so damn alcoholic and she wasnt so damned easy. but what was, was, and thats just about the extent of the metaphor.
i was born nine months later, into a world of rapestarvationmurdersubstanceabusesexliesdivorcecustodypaperselopingwiththedentistandalsolove
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