everything would be just fine

--found in a drawer from last summer--

2006-04-15T22:34:52Z

we're only waiting for this to be the real world. no airplanes, no highways and stop signs. just the freckles on hemlocks, silence is solace. there's no better way. we'll never understand the droplets on spiderwebs if douglas firs are outshadowed by skyscrapers. this blue/white patchwork loses its magic without the contrast of birdsong and maple leaves. in the city its false reflections echo from rooftops and windowpanes but the way the sun lands on the mountainside and cascades to the river is pure, like moss clinging to a background of perfect greens, collecting sunbeams in pounds. among the trees we'll dream through space and time, wondering why you never saw this coming. it was here all along. the spider clamors over patterns in light. here, all that matters is how you lie down at night.

one

2006-04-05T05:44:12Z

nothing will ever top the ecstasy of your eyes meeting mine in the middle of the air between. all i know is that the more i love you, the more i want to love you and the more i love you still and then all the more i can't help loving you at all, and the less i want to stop, if that were even possible. you bring this alive. pick me up from hello to sorry sad goodbye and beyond to quiet nights, more alone than lonely because as they say love knows no bounds. WE ARE ONE well the world is one but i don't get the sense it's figured that out yet. you're seeing my thoughts and i'm reading your mind and we get it, don't you feel enlightened now? sometimes i feel like we're the only ones, but i don't feel so lonely.

REALITY check

2006-03-06T05:43:52Z

It was clear in the way he carried their baby’s carriage
up the steps while she held their children by the hands
and paid their fees. He touched her worn yet sturdy shoulder
as the bus lurched forward; they took their familiar seats
in the back like a band of unconventional gypsies.
Used clothes, used limbs, used life, but she turned
and grinned at me as she let soda drip from a straw
to the infant’s mouth – urban breastfeeding –
and offered me a French fry.

For a moment, everything outside of this was surreal:
volatile car horns blaring,
neon lights flashing,
friends and foes rushing past;
nothing is alive beyond this bubble between metal and tall Plexiglas windows
where the two children eat cheeseburgers while their mother debates lightheartedly
with her husband, but “he always wins,” she laughs, just before
the air between them gleams with breath as their entire being slips the fullest sigh and they smile,
four full dark eyes beaming truth, revealing overwhelming secrets to this perfect stranger.

“I know,” I say;
and suddenly remember places
where roofs bend until paint chips, where tired flags
obscure windows, where porches decompose, fences bow
to wind and rain and snow. There is antiquated wood,
moldy bales of hay, useless fields,
and a man
creased by myriad years of wonder, who remembered
the eggs she asked him to stop for on his way home, slipped
in the door to find her resting in their modest bed.
He sat down slowly, admiring her figure on the sheets:
not stunning as she once was, but womanly, elegant,
their passionate history filling the various folds of her sides,
enveloping him as he lays down, breathing
the leathery scent of her body
as she breathes in his.
I breathe in purity, grace
from the armchair in the corner,
then I am back on the bus,

I say, “I know;”
and minutes later I am walking up the quiet road between our houses
where I once found you singing my name as you danced
under the streetlight at three in the morning
after talking for hours about everything known or unknown
and then falling asleep on my dirty clothes on the floor
where names and dates don’t matter,
because we’ve taught each other what all of this means.

don't feel flattered.

2005-11-23T00:12:45Z

i guess i'm not the only one who speaks in code. your eyes tell a story i'm afraid to hear, [it'll make] it'll break me. this isn't back when i would have killed for the sweet taste of something real [oh anything but reality] because now it's in my hands and for once it isn't slipping through the cracks in [between] my fingers. so please don't [slip me up]. i make a point to regret nothing so i'm sorry if you never get the chance to not regret a thing. you're spilling [empty] noise on [empty] pages but i can tell it isn't filling anything. it's an excuse for the fire hanging on your windowsill [in the middle of the night]. the way i feel about that is pure psychology, twisted upside down to form the sick syllables of "hello, beautiful."

check check

2005-11-07T07:13:48Z

i sprint through the downpour as lines turn to liquid on wet pavement. raindrops whiplash my face and check my flow of oxygen, she checks her lungs. oh and calls for her son [better run home]. i hope it's just the cold that's bursting my ear drums and puncturing air pipes [pipe dreams] because this is all very nice but i'm looking forward now to you, a mug of tea and wrapped in a blanket. [oh no] oh he can't hear her here, hear mother calling him home. the lights are on but silence splits the noise. but what did he expect, neglect breeds dire denouement. i guess when you plant a seed [you can't expect]---

you = me

2005-10-29T02:55:49Z

don't be so scared. because i think under all of this you're just like me. it's fear that shrinks us in our own skin, pulls you away from your outsides. ever feel like you don't fill your body up? you're a void. it's that. we're losing ourselves inside of ourselves. it's just like that. we'll find out where tonight ends up and play a part that matters, because we could stand outside and wait for doors to unlock, but hey, let's break them down.

words fall through

2005-10-29T02:55:27Z

he'll leave the room without a sound; he'll leave a mark on the floor. this is the place rain falls inside with black reflections. i'm covering holes with words because there's no more dirt to fill them. we'll pretend they're whole; just watch your step because words fall through. there's nothing between you and grey, there's nothing to be done with skies speaking storms. this is the place rain falls, inside black reflections. holes that deserve to be hidden; we'll pretend they were never there. promises are lies. no exceptions. when's the last time you kept one? words will fall through, don't waste too many. but be sure to speak when quiet's deafening.

one-liners

2005-10-29T02:54:54Z

syllables trickle through the air on cherry petals, a springtime snowstorm that smells like summer. we're wandering through this like love means less than anything we understand.

we'll bleed out of context and speak because no one said anything to us.

it's the way february means frosted roofs and buildings wrapped in silken fog.

it's the way the smell of sweat and blood spells out silently, "music is love, music is life."

empty pages filled with noise

false reflections stationed so delicately at the most convenient squares of time.

she only cries when it's raining on skyline drive.

there's fire hanging from window sills where you're sound asleep

we spend our lives running away from life towards lines where we waste away with waiting.

hostile

2005-10-29T02:36:18Z

we're all so hostile. i could trust you if society let me, but we're caught up in this cycle of hate. can we start to replace the pain? can we decide it doesn't matter that we're not the same, set aside what sets us apart. is it too much to say hello, or will we speak only when spoken to? who can start? we're inhuman. it's unfair to ourselves.

hi, i'm a human being.

2005-10-27T23:26:21Z

Don't be a human doing. What's wrong with just a human being? Better to know what it means to be than to do what you don't understand. [Well AMEN AMEN because not a word you said has registered in here. What other obscurities can I agree to? Have I unwittingly signed my soul to the devil yet? All the better. At least I have a certain end.] Don't measure your life with dollar bills laid end to end across the barren landscape; you've raped it with your fucking careless living.

anthropologist

2005-10-26T07:14:44Z

what an anthropologist - brown hiking boots, green knit sweater. scarf licking the wind, she gazes through lenses at this odd assortment we find. the woman with the look of somebody who never knew anybody, or at least never trusted them. the boy with a head full of fire, eyes ready to douse it. i'm sure her notes mirror mine, but we're far too shy to compare.

smoker

2005-10-26T06:29:19Z

she looks like a fish out of water, sea-green scarf suffocating cloudy blue eyes. in a few minutes she'll be standing/shaking on a cold sidewalk strewn with yellow leaves, across a busy road from that brick building - as if no one can see her there - taking a drag from that filter, filtering out the world. if only she could find that what she really needs is to dive back in.

happy new year

2005-08-01T07:00:36Z

we have fourteen minutes left of july. there's something about that man's voice, maybe we've found our bob dylan. thirteen, twelve. don't have second thoughts because bright blue spotlights and magazines are all they ever wanted. she could be a rainbow but she'd rather choose a man and a house and two or three kids. eleven. they bleed bleed bleed all the way home to the station where she just filled the tank of the car born from his sweat and murder. ten. nine. she has noplace to be, but she doesn't really know what that means. eight. she lost touch with cloudy days and seven, six the minutes keep going. you're going, gone. just like five four three. she forgot her sunburst through tiny droplets hanging carefully in the air. two. it left her to suburbia and white tennis shoes. one. look at all the roman candles. well, by gosh, happy new year.

living on the point system

2005-07-28T02:14:08Z

can you hear the sound?
that’s the drone, the settle-down.
can you see the waves of light?
let’s hope again, hope we will.

they’ll sell out short to little boxes.
you can rip their lives right out of magazines,
pin them all up on your wall
pretty reminders of what not to be.

living on the point system.

you contend you’re “not like them”
but guess what, love,
it’s been said before.
now you’re “alone” in
a mess of nonconformity
that all looks just the same
and secretly they’d die
to play the right game....

living on the point system.

can you hear the sound?
that’s the drone, the settle-down.
can you see the waves of light?
you know we have to hope. you know we will.

can you hear the sound?
don’t settle down.

beach #2

2005-07-28T02:12:15Z

i was sorry i didn't bring the camera because i wanted to capture that feeling of wind hugging the skirt to my legs while i buried my toes in the sand. it dawned on me that i can't remember the first time i watched the earth spin the sun to the other side of the pacific, but i wish i could show you the way the ocean and that fireball's reflection can hum together without blending to green, and that rainbow that creeps silently from the red horizon to stretch past the first star in this violet sky.

beach #1

2005-07-28T02:11:40Z

there's something about the beach that makes me feel just a little bit older. i walk the line of where the ocean meets the land and wrap myself in peaceful understanding, like those smooth beach stones under my feet. all the imperfections worn out. calm & complete. i know now that my place is right where i am, wherever i am. toss the rocks to the waves where they crash against the sand to be worn down just like every other minute of their lives. beat, but refined.

oh, we have so much to learn from beach stones.

anything but this.

2005-07-28T02:09:10Z

We're worth so much less than pictures. A thousand words that aim straight out after something into space, but it's nothing at all. We spend our lives paying for these broken syllables, the same ones over and over again. We never wanted any way but "anything but this."

rain

2005-07-28T02:05:44Z

It feels like it's been pouring for weeks. I like it. Something about the sound water makes when it hits the roof and gushes down the drains makes me feel less naïve. Like pins falling to the floor, only bigger. You all move too fast, your crafty black umbrellas dodging raindrops. But I swear someday the storm will catch up and there's nowhere to hide when the wind rushes opposite your oh-so-steadiness.

jail!

2005-07-28T02:04:39Z

Work is nothing short of impossible with the wind swimming between hot trees outside the prison window. Songbirds write about lovers and liars, but when they sing you just hear summer. This species is unearthly, god knows days like this weren't built for roofs and walls and closed doors.

boy

2005-07-28T02:02:19Z

my fingertips trace the mountains of your spine one by one. my ear to your heart. it breathes notes to songs nobody will ever write. too precise to capture in a word or a chord or a snap of the drums, pick up the tempo and dance me around the world chasing after this delicate beat. i wonder whether or not you know that i can tell each time it jumps and twists and turns. it's the only inconsistent constant that echoes in my head so i catch your waist when you turn for the door.

singles

2005-07-28T01:59:41Z

and i don't regret anything but he, he never got the chance to not regret a thing.

last night was the park with root beer floats and two more kids dying to dream up reasons to breathe.

it's funny how feelings change when everything stays the same.

you're the wrinkles on her face.

your words make the sound of opening an empty drawer.

another night up way too late. still light years behind myself.

I like my pictures blurry.

Did you know that nothing really ever touches? And that most of everything is empty space. We're empty in more than one sense.

it's one of those days when Death Cab won't stop blasting through my ears and I can't hold my head up high. My eyes are too tired to remind me that they have to work together.

I guess it just depresses me to sit in a classroom "learning" when the gorgeous green globe outside is being shielded from obsoletism by a bright blue sky.