Out of character.

I'm not sure if I'm playing the part right --
Not giving the role justice.
Too wishy washy.
Too brash.
I just wanted to kiss you.

Orlando

We dropped Jeff off.
Then went to the apartment.
Concrete and key pads.

Spoons.

I want to say, "Don't go."

I want to say, "Stay with me."

But I don't know where I'm going or how I'm getting there.

And I don't matter.

My opinions hold no sway.

I have no pull on this.

I only have memories of beds and couches and warmth.

I only have past lives.

I need to find someone else to push all of this love on since it's not working for you.

We lay like spoons,

in a rented room,

nappily ever after,

every afternoon.

A litany of prettiness and pettiness, too.

To me, you are the most amazing and interesting person I've ever met. Or you were? My marveling for and my pining of you have faded somewhat. I can still get that feeling when I reach back into my brain files and remember your eyes in lantern light and the way your hands feel. How our excitement was all the more exciting because we wouldn't let it touch.

Is it love that I can see and know your obvious flaws but still find you incredibly irresistible? Or is that stupidity? I mean, not a day has passed since our eyes first locked that I have not thought of you at least once. I try but trying not to think of something only brings it up faster.

What about this? I wanted to write a few lines about myself. I wanted to somehow define myself in the context of my day off spent consuming caffeine and reading with a little search and rescue but as soon as I start to write, I just think of you.

Oh, you, you, you.

With your big, beautiful eyes and unabashed enthusiasm. Your body that's too long for my bed. The grace with which you walk into rooms. The way you enjoy drugs and alcohol so much but I've never known you to be fucked up even as I'm stumbling into streets to vomit and then return to party some more. I feel lucky to have met you. You are the love of my life so far.

That's both exciting and horrible. If I never find someone better, well, I had an awesome time. If I do, HOLY SHIT, THERE IS SOMEONE BETTER. I'm no longer waiting for you and I feel like that's a step in the right direction. But even as I'm 'talking' to other people, here I am writing about you on my blog.

I guess I miss every single thing about you but I miss it more when you're right in front of me.

Maybe your write.

Strung out and stoned with some Stevens and writer's block.

I still shiver like I did when you flashed your wolf-smile at me (an expression I'd never expected on your face which made me both excited and scared). I blush to think of your teeth, now just sitting in your mouth innocently when not too long ago they pressed into my flesh as you rutted against me in the t.v.-blue light of a rented room.

But that no longer happens. It was strange even as it was happening. I don't know what to think now nor do I know what to expect.

So, I sit in a room filling myself with drugs and listening to music which has lost power with time and try to write about how being around you made me feel infinite one moment and like I was wasting time the next. I love you and there is no doubt about that but with the full moon coming I'm trying my damnedest to forget that long enough to swallow another love pill and make more room in my heart. Wish me luck.

My love.

My love is ten feet tall.

My love is static electricity.

My love is swimming in circles.

My love is comfortably worn.

My love is dewy and brightly clothed.

My love is dancing.

My love is closer than your skin.

My love is further than the moon.

My love is swayed by the tides.

My love is a familiar melody.

My love is stained with paints.

My love is waiting at a crosswalk.

My love is sitting at the edge of a lake.

My love is hopeful.

My love is a wildflower.

My love is the breakfast of champions.

My love is leaves.

My love is smiling at strangers.

My love is changing colors.

My love is molten.

My love is happy.

My love is free.

My love is open.

My love is here.

Memory

I have a memory of standing in a crowd, pressed up against a metal fence next to a girl who gave me cigarettes and whom I never saw again, chanting, "Hail Satan!" over and over.

I have a memory of sitting on a wooden boardwalk in the forest with a friend, seeing everything for the first time.

I have a memory of sitting in the exit row of a transatlantic flight when I was sick and crying as I looked alternately out my window and at photographs.

I have a memory of sneaking down into the basement of a church-turned-venue and ordering a beer and not getting carded and feeling like the cat who got the cream.

I have a memory of driving on unknown roads in a new state with my mother as the rain came down so hard and thick I couldn't see 5 feet in front of me.

I have a memory of standing in an old kitchen, watching a friend cook dinner for shabbos and feeling so much love for her as she sang to herself.

I have a memory of waking up three different friends just to tell them a boy I liked kissed me.

I have a memory of walking around the streets of Holland with a near-stranger and feeling at home.

I have a memory of listening in the hot, cramped back of an art gallery as Phil Elvrum sang to me everything I have ever felt.

I have a memory of taking a new friend to my roof where we exchanged ideas and wondered wonderful things.

Right now, I have no regrets. Everything happened for the best.

Passing time.

I keep telling myself that things will be better once it's fall again.

As if the weather cooling and the trees losing their leaves is a solution for angst and stupidity and feeling like I'm 15 and a boy has just broken up with me via AOL instant messenger. As if scarves and knitted stockings will suddenly make me have magic.

It's a nice thought.

I'll be better in September. Settled. Collected. I just have to wait it out. Wait out the heat of July and the mania of August. Windows and eyes and doors and hearts will open.

But isn't that the problem? My heart is so open that it hurts. I spend my days wasting time and my nights faking everything. Every song has new meaning in this light. And I'm not allowed to sing at school; how fucked up is that?

I alternately feel like my bed is too big and too small. I want you close but not that close. And all of this because I wished on the biggest dandelion I'd ever found. Where did those airy seeds land? What an awful wish. A wasted wish. I need to get wasted.

Pretty soon the sun will rise again and I'll get up, take a pill, start to clean the kitchen but get distracted. You'll be here but not here and I'll reach out and there will be nothing. Only for 15 more days.

I wish I were a cartographer.

Foil

Everything that makes me ridiculously happy lately has come wrapped in shiny foil which hides the potential danger of it.

And maybe I'm being too weak but I'm gonna give it two weeks because I'm too young to deal with anything and the thought of working at anything, anywhere terrifies me.

I just want to be happy so keep the foil coming.

Already gone.

I think I now know what Micah meant when he said what he said about people seeing each other at their most vulnerable.

All in all out all around all. Letters and paints and the ideas that haunt me until I finally drag a pen, far too heavy, to the page and get it out. Cough it out. Write like nobody's business.

Great hacking coughs of words. Acidic words as though they came straight from my stomach brought up by a bottle of wine too quickly swallowed. News and roads and traffic and jobs and sun and summer. Birds and maps. Laughing and staring into eyes, into water, into the future. Blowing smoke.

All the while, the curtains are closed. I'm not letting show anything that might hurt me later but that makes me hurt now. Reckless, reckless, reckless.

I'm just one girl in this city.

The only living boy in New York.

And the two words that come unsolicited, unwanted, unwelcomed but always there:

Apple Lung.

Moonshadow.

Traveling on lonely highway road with a

fresh pack of smokes

and

a heart full of hopes.

I am novelty and I am young.

Kissin' my girl and stompin' my boots.

Smilin' at nothing in particular.

Flowers in my hair,

music everywhere.

This is my last summer of underage drinking.

Moonshine

Under the viper-black sky I am long, love, longing, lost.

Moon shadows and smoke.

Thinking, breathing, hoping, dreaming.

Patient but needing needlessly.

I am thinking of you.

Swell of blood and warm, wet, salty.

Mmmmm.

Imagine, feel, pressing closer.

Memories expanded and made to make making love.

Buzzed.

Shiver and convulse and still thinking of you.

Nothing Set in Stone

All my worldly possessions are stacked up

and packed up

and utterly inaccessible.

I'm sore and I'm bleeding.

I'm tired of all of the needing.

Will I sleep in a bed tomorrow night?

Where?

With whom?

Where will I be the night after that?

I'm reflective / introspective / and not at all selective.

Animal collective.

Court and spark,

I feel like we've never been in the dark.

Caves and graves and basements.

I do incredibly foolish things under the influence.

Am I trying to prove to myself that I'm fun and out-going?

Or am I trying to prove it to you?

Either way, the next morning I look and feel like an asshole.

How anyone can stand to spend more than 5 minutes at a time with me will always amaze me.

I'm too honest and the only time I said, "no." I didn't mean it.

Or did I?

How will I ever know?

Will I ever get the chance to say, "I was just kidding. Yes. Fuck it. Let's do this."

Or will I move on and find new things to ignore?

New songs which will remind me of how silly I was?

Every year I think, "This is the best year of my life!"

And then I get older and can't believe just how much better it is.

I hope that never ends.

I already accept that this isn't it but...

some small part,

whether it's my brain or my heart,

says I'll fall in love when the leaves change their color and the trees shed their skin.

I'll be happy and learning and wear coats and scarves.

I'll finally be able to drink in bars.

In a house with a fireplace,

my cat,

my photos,

and stuff to put around my neck.

And you'll see.

It won't be like the drunk's wisdom.

I won't be that girl for so many people which leaves them wishing down the line that they

could've

should've

would've

loved me.

I can't possibly be more assertive. It's not my way.

I'm gentle and gullible and a whole gang of other words beginning with g's.

But in the autumn I'll be warm and content.

Settled--

like the dirt in my shoes,

the wine in my glass,

a cowgirl's blues,

alas.

Or at last?

I don't know where I want this to go.

I just know that I don't want it to end.

Peace

I feel calm.

I can feel my blood, my heart.

I can see music floating to my ears and I can see nothing bad happening for a little while.

We can stay here.

We can be still and just be.

There are no worries, no obligation, no pain.

Summer kisses me with sun each day and I play hide and seek with the moon at night.

I can stand on shores and hear the ocean.

I can touch trees and feel their history.

I am young.

I am infinite.

I am fancy-free.

I'm going to live the best life ever and it starts over each second.

I'm glad I never killed myself all of those times I wanted to.

I'm thankful for all of the luck I've found.

I'm excited.

Mother

Blood of my blood and flesh of my flesh.

Everything that I am,

everything that I have is from you.

Little woman but so full of love and strength.

Wild one, I wish I could reflect your

brilliance,

&beauty,

&love, love, love.

There could never exist enough time or words to thank you

for your

support,

guidance,

&excitement.

I have to settle for shared laughs, cries, and hugs.

I hope you know that you're the best woman I have ever known.

I love you.

Summer Lovin'

I'm a warm summer mess

in a cool summer dress

crossin' state lines and

statin' lines 'cross

telephones.

I want to talk for hours.

I want to swim in lakes.

I want to find the source for whatever it is that's making me

crazy&

excited&

alive.

Discover why just holding hands makes me wet.

Find the well from which it flows and dance on stars

in bars

in cars

and sing with birds.

Find some words written on walls where I'd never thought to look.

Shake hands and sleep intertwined.

There's no reason not to.

Why not?

Vanity Calamity

I still think about you.

Your lips mostly and occasionally that part of you which differs from me most strikingly.

It happens when I listen to Carly Simon which happens so often by accident when I mean to play some Paul Simon or Simon and Garfunkel who, incidentally, brought us together as friends.

You're such a Mick Jagger.

It's not even just that fact that you both have those obscenely sexual large lips.

You think you're a rock star.

You party like you're a rock star.

But you're not.

Your band is awful.

I wonder what I ever saw in you.

Those lips.

Lips I have only kissed a handful of times.

So seldom do those lips release anything worth hearing:

"Beer pong!" "Listen to my band!" "Don't be that girl, Sue."

I hate that you call me Sue.

I hate that name.

You make no sense.

And yet, I miss you.

I think we could be great friends if you'd let the blow job go but

alas

and

alack

you just don't call me back

and I wonder, wonder, wonder

but mostly I don't care.

But those lips.

Goddamn.

You're so vain, you probably think this post is about you, don't you?

An overcoat is a second skin.

The best thing of anything today is hearing the city come to life:

the sun rises through my balcony windows

the post office sings

dogs bark and birds buzz.

I sneak to make coffee without waking Emily.

Always bold French roast.

Puck, the indoor, domesticated sprite, mewls.

Television's off tonight,
I heard somebody cry outside,
and the smells of spring are everywhere
getting mixed up with my own.

I feel like so many analogies
but what I am is a cat in sunshine.
A cat in sunshine, a canary in a coal mine.

When the autumn leaves and the winter settles in,

sometimes it seems as though an overcoats a second skin.

Bad Poetry -- Oh Noetry

Just when I finally think it's over, it's not.
Feigning sleep on a couch to instead deposit myself in your bed hoping...

For what?

A reenactment of nearly a year ago?

Gently moving your things and getting undressed.

I'm high on weed and anticipation.

The same catchy pop song about a bad love is on repeat between my ears.

Where are you?

The wait makes me sleep.

I wake up just before the alarm clock,

in this case you saying,

"goddamn!"

loudly and then calling me presumably to let you in.

My heart races and I fake my sleep.

I pray to every god I know that you'll come to bed and not

notice my heart beating so hard that it shakes my entire body.

You slip into your bathroom and then you're gone again.

The television turns on and I smell coffee or bagels

or perhaps a combination of the two.

I cave and you say you're going to work.

I pretend not to care, to sleep, to anything.

Three infomercials later, you come in your room.

The early dawn light barely shows me your lips as you say

goodbye and enjoy the bed.

My voice crackles a nonresponse.

At any rate, it wasn't what I wanted to say.

How does one phrase it?

"Skip work and we'll finish what we started 11 months ago."

"Call in sick and I'll blow your brains out."

"Say you had car trouble and I promise I'll make it worth your while."

Instead I thank you and mumble.

My heart calms down.

It's only on my drive home that I realize it's not over yet.

Not nearly so.

Goddamn.

Paints & Poetry.

First time using water colors since I was a child.
Angry poetry and high doodling.
Lonely, happy memories and thoughts.
Paint your orgasm. Left side: orgasm from a partner right side: orgasm from myself.
Sad memory poetry.
Faryn-leaving poetry.
(also posted in text form at my other jrnl: http://seafeatures.livejournal.com/ )
Anti-poetry, drunk poetry.
Drunk painting.
One of my favorite poems, not mine.
High thoughts.

Creation as a form of distraction.