The beginning

“I’ve taken on a lover.”

She whispered this to herself sometimes while she showered, sometimes in the mirror.

It was as archaic and useless sounding as though she said, “A gentlemen has deigned to call upon me.”

The truth of the matter was she was fucking someone who wasn’t her husband. And though there were words to ease that truth, as there have always been kinder, softer words to ease all truths, they were unsatisfying and left her throat clumsily. So, she practiced in the relative privacy of her bathroom some mornings. Then, she would step out of the shower, or step back from the mirror, wrinkle her nose and make the preparations to leave for work.

She dressed with the gravity of someone readying a funeral. Her husband, on his way out to his own job, would pause as he adjusted buttons, buttoning and unbuttoning the top, scanning her body for lint he could brush off. He would outstretch his hands to the back of her skirt, wavering yet never touching. Sometimes he found lint. Sometimes he brushed it from her.

They kissed lightly, they kept their eyes busy while saying good bye. They would see each other that night. Dinner, TV, formalities. There were no children. It made the situation less serious to her, she believed. She wasn’t ruining a family. Not hers, at least.

My body, my heart

bruised.

SUPERNOVA

“Shy away, shy away phantom.

Run away, you terrified child.

Won’t you move away you fucking tornado?

I’m better off without you, tearing my will down.”

“The Stranger”- A Perfect Circle

“We are stars colliding though we crash like lightening

into love.”

“Inside a Boy”- My Brightest Diamond

I like it when my blog has zero views

It is freeing.

I have done very little this summer. Lots of reading, movies, and seeing some friends (sometimes, not often). I have walked my sisters to the park at least once a week. I went to San Francisco. That’s it.

However, I have been running, and I recently started Pilates. I am back down to my normal, pre-Cal Poly weight, but I like to think it is a healthier version of me. It doesn’t seem like much, but I feel like I am doing something with my time.

books of april

Cat’s Cradle- Kurt Vonnegut

cat’s cradle

if love was cow blood, i would be a slaughterhouse.
that is all.

tiny babies

and who are these phantom children that creep
along the foot of my bed at night?

whispers, baby, whispers

lemon meringue sunrise
pale kids standing in line for the next big thing in love
new developments all the time,
a sleeker model, higher price

speculations, thought experiments, atheist agnostic.
i feel hungover from our late night, alcohol free heavy conversations.

the individualism inherent in thought. it is a continual barrier. can’t you see that? my consciousness will never fully reach yours because of that uniqueness.
tangents, my dear, all tangents. i have a few new things.

each of these ideas could have a post of its own, but i can’t be bothered to flesh it all out. maybe later, when i can string it along properly. in any case, i’m feeling pretty happy right now.

Coming In

(This is going in Ghost Town)

on palms and bruised knees
to crawl across white bathroom tile:
the slow progress,
unfamiliar,
all the same.
fingers press against the skin of my shoulders,
her nails leave four identical,
perfect crescents.
and, her face,
mother moon,
“baby girl,
what are you doing
with your life?”

the grey.
I wake against the strain
of my ribs transmutated
into steel fingers
that grip my lungs.
each breath is a practice in discretion.
and, the mirror, oh the mirror,
where my fey face shines black streaks
and my skinny hips project horror stories.

how the night loves me tempestuously,
and I, forever bashed against the bed sheets of tomorrow,
know no home
where I do not meet the patronizing smile that cracked hearts
nor the sympathetic eye that wandered across my hair haloed
around my sleep-face.

to make mention of nature,
the inheritance of ruin,
is to look over the shoulder and on her silver spoon–
blackened on the underside–
and a preternatural mixture
that seeps out of a needle
and through the home
incorrigible from the first sharp intake.
dearest, we are one.
all the same.

these are the digressions that buzz in my head
on the walk down a quiet, empty street
in that pale morning light.
my party mask slipped off somewhere between 2AM
and losing shoes.
the street lines churches and bars on either side.
I am illuminated by neon atonement,
I hate what I am
while ushered silently towards a wall of mountains
and a new place, hidden in the fog of new day,
to call home.

A sentence is a collection of words, which in turn..

All I have currently are words and phrases. Fairy party. Obscure. Translucent. I have yet to string anything together. To be continued, perhaps.

the wanting comes in waves

I am getting a poem published in Ghost Town, CSUSB’s annual literary review. There is a short story section, and a poetry section. The poem is called “Coming In”, and I actually haven’t posted it here yet. I did a lot of tweaking to it over the past six months or so, the finished copy being the one published. Pick up a copy, maybe, or I’ll let you borrow my copy when I get it so you can check it out.

Fingers crossed that my submission to Byzantium is as lucky. I submitted five poems to the Cal Poly version of Ghost Town, haven’t heard back yet. I probably won’t for a month at least. The submission was only about a week ago. I still haven’t written much new work. I try and try and try. So, I have about twenty half started, incomplete poems that I’ll probably amalgamate at some point. We’ll see. The weather here pushes for writing every weekend. My current music fix digs into me, pleading for response via prose. Again, we’ll see.

In the meantime, check out The Decemberists album from last year, The Hazards of Love. It’s almost exactly one year old, and stunningly epic. Listening to individual songs doesn’t quite do it justice, because the whole album tells a story together. If you want a sample though, Won’t Want for Love (Margaret in the Taiga) is pretty, while The Queen’s Rebuke/Crossing is fucking amazing. The lead singer from My Brightest Diamond, Shara, plays the Queen in the album. You may know how much I love My Brightest Diamond, but if not, please please go forth and google.