i am moving to brazil to meet a man that i can marry...

unless things get themselves into shape over here,
i'm not looking back.
the way the cosmos play these little jokes on me
(freedom draped in suffering)
i will never understand.

i understand the way it feels to want to be understood,
i understand the way it feels to want to be cared for,
i understand that you are not the one to give these things to me,
so i shouldn't even ask.

but sometimes in the middle of the night,
sometimes even in the middle of the day,
i want things to be better than the way they were.
i want them to be what they could,
not what you won't let them be.

i'm not sure how to digest the denial of trivial comfort,
of familiarity against the backdrop of your "other life."
and i will always assume the worst because
i have no idea.
and so i can't help myself
but paint imaginary monsters with the scary stories that you told
and who knows what lives under your bed?
i dont even know what your bed looks like,
or where it's positioned in the room.
i don't know what you look like propped up against the headboard
(or do you even have a headboard?)
reading a book about revoluciones,
what faces you make when you brush your teeth.

i don't know you, not in general or intimately or anything;
i'd say we are a pair of unfortunate acquaintances who happen to have a lot of
history
between them.

so i guess i'm going to pack up my things and move to brazil
so i can meet a man i can marry.
a man who will dance salsa
and sing to me in portuguese beneath simple sheets.
we will go to carnival,
and there will be no more saddness.

feeling

tired. where to put these foolish feelings? these foolish things that i am trying to reign in, i am trying to make sense of all this shit that won't be right.

you're still young, that's your fault, there's so much you have to go through.

in an hour. i will know.
this is my new life, and as i walked down the street, i congratulated myself on the fact that this is the one i had chosen.
it was not easy,
and in fact this whole time, i have been trying to maintain integrity. it has not gone very well. i feel as if there is no place for me wherever i've been.
i stopped in to his job today, he was hunched over the computer in a deli apron, wearing my simon and garfunkel hat. he looked foolish, but i let myself be happy to see him. i haven't seen him in a long time, each time further and further apart through no fault of my own. and they are always only a few minutes at a time. it's sad, i am sad for that.
my mother is on the way now, i think she's nervous about this. i have gone to doctor's appointments and things alone since i was 17. i am afraid, but for different reasons i'm sure, than she is.
i have stopped trying to hide the fact now, just saying yes when people ask, letting them see my stomache. for the first time in my life, i looked into a mirror and saw myself. i didn't see fat, i didn't see abnormal; this time i saw different, i saw me there naked, turned sideways carrying a moderate bulge. and so i can accept it now.
walking through all of this, i have been alone. it has been hard, people say things with good intentions, but they are just that. margaret bought 2 baby blankets for me, they are lovely. anabell wants me to move in with her. she is so strangely nice, so innocent and good intending, but i don't want to make her uncomfortable. i need to leave keya's house soon though. i am not doing well there, feel much calmer when i am not there. i wish i could say that i am happy and unburdened and greatful that she is doing this... which i guess i am in a way, but it isn't working out. i can't live like that. so close to people who are all so distant from each other in dark oppression. my eyes and heart are suffering.
i also don't like being in such close proximity of mario. i feel vulnerable there. i feel like i could wait, andy maybe he would come and make amends, evn though i know that isn't true. i saw him today, i've been wanting to be near him. all he said was, come back later. i'm busy.


i'm headed down to the hospital, getting ready. mentally. i'm so scared right now, and it suprises me that i'll even admit that. i feel this helplessness on me, and i can't get it off, no matter what i do. she is late, but coming. we are on the road to find out.

live to disappoint
lie to love

cold feet &
miss trust

dirty dream

she was buried under the dirt, trusting a voice that was not mine, or anyone's i knew. dhe was told to do this daily, this burial, and the world would be greatly improved. i did not believe. i tried to talk her out of it, but she was so glad to help. into the ground, in a filthy basement.
i watched once, and as she came up i was afraid. her skin was cold and she was pale. "i feel old," she said. i told her, see, you couldn't breathe and it's wet. what if you get pnuemonia? she wanted to try again, with a different set-up.
the voice belonged to a young girl with long hair. she said she was our sister, but i did not believe. how could a sister bury her own without another thought, and even encourage it?
i watched the girl, let her bury my sister (i couldn't stop them), and pretended to get in a shower. the other girl did the same. but i got out and went to her shower. it was empty and the doors to the basement were all open. the girl was on top of where my sister was buried, and she was stealing her life. i wanted to kill her, but i needed to get my sister first.
i uncovered her and told her what had been happening. she looked so old, the girl so young.

guru-deva

waiting to be hit hard on the head
with some incredible universal truth,
to escape the continuous mercilessness of this existence.
i have not quite crossed through the door to god,
but i am definitely standing at the threshold.

pushing open a cosmic eye because the other two really are blind
(can you not see that i am sightless in all this?)
awnting to see with that vision, that spiritual purple vision
to see goodness in the faces of all, people,
despite my prior feelings about the whole thing


crazy madtalker boddhisattva

i can't get the image out of my head; the image ou failed to mention but knew i'd eventually disconver. stabbed not once, but many times over last night in the midst of something i thought was a spiritual goodness. maybe god wants to test me, and if so, i definitely failed that test.
you lay with her nightly now, and nothing is going on, you sleep in the bed of the woman you have loved for more than a decade, and loved even when you were telling me how much you loved me. i guess that doesn't matter now, because i can't have your sensitivity, it's never something i was given willingly
[extracting teeth]
i want to extract these teeth, want them gone from my mouth the emotions i cannot control because you have bound me with your physical cord now, i can't get myself far enough from you now even though you dissappeared months ago without any explanation.
where have you been?
always, you say, "going to a place, doing something, visiting someone." why can't you just say it so it doesn't drag a long the bottom of my mind? it's always going to hurt me, whether you say it or not because i'll always know. your tenderness failed me when i needed it most, it slipped into a convenient escape from youre forever, and we had a collision.. things are never the same again.
you can never go home again
and i haven't been home in years the closest i've been was tucked safe into a bed that required nothing of me but honesty and that bed's been gone a long time now, every time i find myself in another i wonder could this be my sanctuary? nothing has sufficed.
i am trying to find a karmic balance, but there are so many hardships to face, and i am doing it alone. first i pray, then i weep. i pray that god will fill my soul with peace, and give me the strength to be what i have to. i rest in that peace, the hollow of mighty hands, but i cannot seem to stay there very long. real life is never very far away.

all of life is suffering
the cause of suffering is desire
to end suffering, one must end desire
to end desire, follow the eight-fold path.

and too scared to write the way i want
to scared to force the words out into open air
they hover like rain
at the crest of open lips.

wanting to find that african name that makes me tremble
just to think of it.
give you strength
give you strength
or as they say
strengf

african.
strenght.
roar like mighty lions of judah.

wanting to fill in the cracks with easy caulk
life will cometogether at some time,
it can't be helped.

where has my poetry gone?
back into the trees with the maddness.

the holy rosary of what is.

he is not, i am not, i think she is.
what is it?

looking backwards into the past at dan

last night i dreamed he took me in that old rusty pickup truck
to a park on a hill in midwinter
and everything was alright,
plain alright.

a couple days ago, i told myself i couldn't cope if i heard he was getting married.
in the dream,
he confided to me that he'd proposed to her,
and she was alright,
mighty alright.

we walked side by side through snow and beautiful darkness
and were happily innocent
and so i confided in him that i had growing in me
a little thing
and that felt alright,
just alright.

our conversations weren't choked, and i'd always wanted him to be happy
and so now he was in the dream,
that was enough for me
it was alright,
quite alright.

when i awoke i wanted to telephone him,
but remembered that we haven't spoken in nearly a year.
i'll let that contentment settle in peacefully
and hope that he's alright,
plenty alright.

sleeping with the enemy
and the enemy sleeps with my friends
then who is the enemy?
who is the enemy?

the night wears on like flannel underthings
things that have not stirred in sometime

who is the enemy?

waiting for the thing i know will never come
he will never surrender to me peacefully,
they always prefer to be mistreated
so later,
they can look back and say,
i was as good a man as i could have been.

but is it still being as good as can be
when the efforts are wasted away on trivialities?

heart jumps at the thought,
exhale at the reality, it is still nothing.
it is full of tincan wishes
kickiing down an empty street,
rattling like bones.

therapy

my therapy my therapy
this is my new therapy the way it started long ago expressing hopes and dreams for the future. scribbled down a few minutes before i run out the door. therapy therapy, i feel everything is read into i feel everything is not said as clearly as possible, that things aren't as cut and dry as they seem.
he spoke to my mother yesterday, and my aunt was his first sale at the store. we are connected divinely to through the universe, but still stopped. hope. dead. i can't push it away, but they can push me away. "she's an old soul, don't you think?" and "take care of my daughter" when she can't take care of me at all.
who will take care of me? i feel myself slowly slipping away back into the ether, but i am not afraid so much anymore... a promise is a promise and december is coming slow, some reason, i can't wait for december. a world away, to be kept company by icicles and the sound of crashing waves. why did i ever leave there, there where it was always december and i was always safe?
i want that feeling back, the full emptiness that surged in the cold beneath layers of soft cloth. i want to be held tightly like a precious thing, a delicate thing. i want it all to quiet down.

emotionalhunger

we laughed away the sunburn
as we laughed away the day.
what we lost means nothing,
for the memories will stay.


everything is a mess. my mind, heart and body can't agree on anything, and it's all coming so fast. detatchment from the world. beating bodies under hot lights. beautiful dresses swaying lightly in the breeze, car doors, happy dogs, lecherous friends, and no friends at all.
living in a storage area above a flight of crooked stairs where the baby moans all night for its momma and all she wants to do is just rest. these are the things i dread, as well as the broken connections of creation and the lonliness of it all.
the feelings are so familair, only this time, i can't seem to shake any of it.
a silk tie slithered down the dashboard and onto the floor as i looked into his eyes. were there tears there? (i won't, not anymore.) wanting to reach out a hand and grasp all the pain and swallow it away. the baby can take care of it, the baby is a magical being. we are far too lost to regenerate on our own.
but it's different for the woman. she serves her sentence dutifully, with shame and honor somehow coupled in that fierce gaze, hoping still that someone would just open the window and let in a little light.
i lied.
i do cry, and regularly,
probably more than i eat and it breaks my heart to see it all coming together like this, to be so far removed from regularity and still only wanting that moment of rest in someone's arms between clean blue sheets.
i saw his picture today and the memories flooded in faster than i could dismiss them, the memories that i held onto for a year, sustaining my emotionalhunger with phantoms of the past but now i am
s
t
a
r
v
i
n
g
for everything that has gone away. it has not been the same in years, i have not been the same in years and everyday when i wake up there is a stranger in my clothes and skin and that stranger makes me say things i never would. the stranger vibrates all the wrong energy and i sit somewhere in the recesses of memory and try to undo all the bad. i want someone who can hear me when i can't talk,
i'm not strong enough to be alive out here. i crumble under the slightest pressure.
"it's like you have no skin," he said to me sadly, not worried for my sake but because i can no longer stand up to his attacks. where will the relationship go then from here? it's slowly drifted away in the conversational gaps, in the drinks shared with other women, in the obligations fulfilled before basic need.

and i'm so hungry

but it's too hard to describe when there are holes inside of you for things you don't normally need to eat,to feed thesoul with another strong soul, needing fortification, supplementation, elevation onto a higher level. i need to feed my soulbaby with goodness and so many other things i lack, because my chemical makeup has changed. my body belongs to another, my heart belongs to another, my life belongs to another.
but i belong to noone. i have come to rest weary wings in a concealed mind, there it is sometimes quiet enough to have a moment of absurd happiness. there lies the only unconquered wilderness in which i had once thrived.

swaying in a gentle breeze

looking into my life, looking into my soul without the slightest permission.
on the other hand, you have always been a trickster. i have always been a fool.

travelling light, leaving so much of my soul behind, losing so much ground
in the name of modesty, in the name of innocence.
when last was i innocent? when last was it worn by me
like a cloak against the summer rains?
this is the rain that washes al the falsities away,
this rain signifies the mud that will come,
the mud that wil capture and enslave our hearts, unjustly,
this rain will drown us in coincidence.

can we read much further into this,
into the places where others read into us and hold it against us?

tears have been welling there for a long time now,
waiting momentarily to fall
tiny ripples that spread across the surface,
clear surface that drips into the nothingness.
you are making me tremblelike a frightened leaf,
you are the things i dream about.

becoming comfortable. seeing sad faces made long by hard times. sometimes people encrouch upon private spaces.

that is all there is.

revolutionary

he moves within me silently,
penetrating the places the others couldn't
with promises and caresses,

i can't write about him without writing
revolutionary.
he makes my stomach ache,
the seeds of discontent grow and blossom into
more waiting, so many unspoken words.

viva siempre, y libre mi corazon.

the man named chester

sucking in my daily coffee fix, my new friend chester sitting nest to me telling me all about life,
a jazz and history photographer, someone who matters.
what am i doing with my life?
(working in a bakery, writing poetry, trying to marry and become a revolutionary)

where are all my people?
(viva la revolution)

some folks give you a hard-on with their intellectualism,
some folks don't.

it's been a while, things aren't worth writing about. i suppose they are being that my life is a complete mystery to everyone. i guess that's me, a mess. what the hell am i doing?

bakery, but deciding to become some form of boyscout camp person. yes

long nights, longer days, memory that fades, words that cease to remove themselves from my mouth. there are words there, but i can't get a hold of them. what to do? what to do:



run for your motherfucking life.

why don't we spell it sleap?

bur didly bur

wish i could jump on the curbside mattress, and not think about getting sick
wish i could take a vacation, and not regret having missed work
wish i had something great to say, but didn't because the moment was too perfect
wish it was a lot easier, and that it still built character and all that shit.