Antithesis --

I want to obliterate my face.
it doesn't own me, although I own it
and the domesticated mirrors are mocking

the rib under my left scapula has come loose
it's rubbing bone on bone
like flint to start a fire
it's twisting into and out of place
splitting it from it's cage
like a wish bone

I feel taught
like a clothesline heavy with wet white linens
leaden at the joints, every muscle pulling

There were ghost birds
I could swear
a whole flock, hollows in the air
just flying south for the winter

I was thinking about places we forget
neutral places
like sunlight hallways
or plant-filled waiting rooms
and how I can't forget them

But the truth is I've forgotten something --
not that we are all iterations of stories,
played out to each possibility,
not that there are a finite number of people
far less than you would think,
and not that delicate ghosts weave in and out
of the highest cupboards of our apartment at night

It's all too easy
the small sliver of flesh that falls off the backside of the knife
as you carve the wolf's head
three thousand fetal bees
half dead, half dying
or just one curled around itself under a lamp
my knuckles swelling unable to unfurl,
like crooked trees that I've seen before

I want to listen to your voice for hours
in the old car on the way to a sunset
I want to enter the world of colors
like the halo negatives during a migraine
every person but me an icon bathed in light

can't sleep

the smell of post-operative patients
(15 was it? every day)
almost sweet and dark like marrow
bad soap operas through a mirror

green tingle maybe in the fingertips,
cold as ice box peaches

things coming back?
like the smell and shadow and sound of my grandmother's lost house
(although I've never forgot)

Or somehow old smoke,
I don't know where from.

Fuzzy around the edges
pre-faint tingles
all dark

Video: hands to eyes
behind eyes -- the distant
purple center of your beating heart

wafer of night on my tongue
I don't sleep
like a walnut shell or otherwise

grin and (bear/bare)
there are galaxies between us --
but only from my fingertips

How are we hungry?
I was thinking.
I was thinking. . .

and even with leaves of black ink I can't remember
The less sense since
l-e-s-s-o-n-s
we think

mortar pestle bone
becomes snow
topographical fingerprints of god
read yes?

What was it again?

If there was a way to feel floral dress
if there was a way to feel like less

or the postcards of a shut-in
delicate albino crab skeleton
codes (not mor[s]e)

Somewhere there is the round hope I can picture red
Somewhere scrolls I can read the yellow

I bet you're warm
or missing me
as I miss you
when cold mists
don't miss me

It's not sea spray
or precious glass rain
rather moor's child,
the place of famil(y)iar
curse
Yes, I remember

(what curses were wielded
that wombs have yielded
to darken the crests of my name?)

* * * * * * *

I'd like to bioluminess lavender
jellyfish
(as the purple center of your beating heart)
and float weightless
so much salt in the sea
(/lake of our longings or loss)

I didn't hear you arrive
on the pink petals up to my beating pearl
but if you leave now you'll no doubt crush them/it

What did we say those first days?
Or was it nothing
lips-joined eyes-wide?

Gracious!
gracious,
I will walk white wind-clothed mono filament blur
-- I can almost picture
but mostly the fire reflected from the
purple center of your beating heart.

Has it really been since?

salt in the corner of the lips of every person passing
green crunchy sea-weed hair
piles balanced in shallow bowls on the skull's apex

the idea of a deserted tourist town by the ocean,
overcast
pale taffy, pale awning, pale beachcomber
three circling apathetic gulls
you know what I mean?

reliquary, reliquary, reliquary
(with ever smaller reliquaries inside,
ad infinum)

the sacred mystery of creating the sacred mystery
you know what I mean?

two mummies, remembering their canopic jars
carrying them perhaps
teetering towers of vigor
(about to shatter, yes? with gravitas)

Somewhere between the here here and the then now
was a color I couldn't quite grasp
trying to reach mist with someone else's hands
you know what I mean?

and all you yous, just waiting for your message
somewhere south, west, below
dictated to and typed by Miss McCartle
on the boat, Liberte

or smears of candle wax, goldenleaf eyes
camelstairs, sleeping on a camels back
lungs in tatters
feeling the bounds without feeling them
you know what I mean?

I've forgotten half of all I have ever forgot

we eat pearls for our completion --
for our countenance
tiny nickel-talc moons
apothecary ground, mortar pestle
Or the tattooed phases from shoulder to shoulder.
ties that are also pill bottles
you know what I mean?

Do you?
Can you?

And it didn't even feel like the mountains were really there
I could have been underground, in the catacombs of Paris.

We found it still, yes?

"Hotel Louisiana,
a seasick green room
and oysters all over the place."

Has a lion's eyes, a lion's mane.
Tawny.
Torrid love affair with yellow.
(in the season of green's splendor, nonetheless)


Nerves about the day of white.


What are the binds of my tradition?
like the pictures of a lost text.


But she can't remember what it's like to sleep in the cold sea alone.
A year of tandem back floats.

He wants to sleep in the red splash, by a floating pseudo-peach (twice removed)in billows of white.
And I know exactly how he feels.

There are a million guppies in my dreams and he is a king.

Right now I'm interested in the distortion of being
Like how if I'm a particularly noxious shade,say, oily greenish-black
you must take me to the edge of town in the blurry night.

I thought I'd measure time by the length of my hair
but I can't remember past the roots
and the swans are only sleeping together for warmth.

I'm tired of beautiful women
I'm not feeling very well today
I keep having dreams about spiders,
well, one spider really.

And although it's not a new idea
I'm having difficulty with pronouns

I've used both my names until they were blue in the face
Sometimes I can't recognize my hands

Of not being
or un-being

And underneath me what is there?
(a club for film noir?)

Did Corvus fall, beheaded, from the heavens one day before lent?
-- Yes
Have you been sleeping well?
-- No
Does it smell like something's coming?
-- Maybe
What will you wear when you're dancing?
-- The Floodwaters
What do you know about thread?
-- bound and bare
Does History just keep repeating itself?
-- Kaleidoscope
Who asked you to take off your skin?
-- The Three
Have you found all the breadcrumbs?
-- I've eaten all I've found.
What have you done?
-- What have I done.
How are you not yourself?
-- . . . . .
Are there portents?
-- Signs point to yes.

Today is the first day of lent,
as I was walking the quiet way I nearly stepped on the decapitated head of a crow.

I keep feeling like I'm leaving things behind.

It's as if I can't ever capture. . .

If I went out in my underwear into the snow just to feel the cold burn,
I'm having that thing again where I look in the mirror and don't see me
sometimes in the nighttime reality buckles

I want to feel raw again --
how do I get there?

I'm watching Stealing Beauty, which is never good for my sanity
especially not in the virginal whites of winter

There's something lacking but I don't know where to get it
it's not even the deepest sads that get me,
but rather the general blah
I can't fathom this for another 50 years

It's like they left something out when I was made
either that or everyone else is just pretending and I won't

This is too honest again,
honest but not raw

Some shade of blue or grey
very cold for the 4 months of winter

I feel like he lost something somewhere
like he's holding back now
"quiet as a cup"

I can't accept the losing
I can't accept what's already been lost.

huff puff
huff puff
I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll. . .
you, so content, so content

I can feel my bones

I'm sure there'll be days like this
unmarkable for anything
unrecognizable as my own, as any part of the mythos
the action between the scenes perhaps.
(the scenes less frequent. . .)

I'm being too frank,
loosing levels
losing levels

I think I need a mental narrator from an offbeat movie to coax me out.

I don't know what's holding me back but me,
and I'm the hardest demon I'll ever face.

I'm some shade of aubergine
eggshell skin

the windows leak
the biggest full moon of the year
rooks in all the trees for two blocks-
blotting out the sky when I leave home

the only thing keeping me half-sane is the image of candles in windows, in upturned palms, on pathways, other people's lives
or maybe the halos
(in the right movies, one childish book, and old memories)

I don't know what I'm doing.
I don't know what I'm doing.
Can you tell me what I'm doing?

I keep thinking of sand and red rocks
and I can't make sense of the monotony of . . .

Well.

sometimes I think there are thousands of universes on my fingertips
and when I touch you we are just that far apart

I would wear the flood waters too,
pick them up at one end and wind them round my hips.

What's escaping me is the fragility of the knife's blade,
what's lacking is the danger (like a cold water shock)

the windows are leaking
at two pm the room is dark as dusk

I've tried all forms of redemption
run again
the snow and the hill, (all the alone things I want to share but can't explain and no one lets me show them)

I am the color of cold lips
wrapped in pine branches (that rub my flesh raw)
I am three super nova's dancing Swan Lake
to "be still for a second while I try and try to pin your flowers on"
I am walking sideways on the walls
with no hope of righting myself while everyone else moves around me in droves

the wind is changing, always, always.

I have itches all over my body.
anything but facing the black of my eyelids for sleep.

It's not all so desperate.
(too beautiful)

Now or never, young man. (learn what the phrase means the hard way)

The spaces in dreams are still the same but the subject is so bizarre.
You are there. something with running from my wedding after I've been married because you kiss me and I see a red grasshopper which is a bad omen and I throw on blue shoes and try to run, I'm so slow. You get ahead and light a trashcan on fire knowing I will stop to put it out so you can catch me.

Where are you in dreams?

I want bags of sand from all the beaches of the west coast.
I want jars of air from the sweetest smelling oldest groves.
I want journals full of ticket stubs and what I consider unreal.
I want to send you cryptic postcards like --
i'm getting so acrid green again
or
three weeks past nightfall at the blanched tree
or
where my metaphorical heart has paved the way

My oh my, my hair is getting long.
Will you braid it when it reaches the small of my back?
Will you braid it before sleep?

I've always been better with any life but mine.

Sometimes I dream of being rail thin frail bandaged arms in a hospital bed, wearing pale yellow pajamas.

I've been so jittery. I took the little white pill in the morning.
I'm not my own advocate.
(l'avocat, l'avocat. ha-ha)

What is the road at night?
What do my words taste like secondhand?
What is waking?
What is my life in sleeping?

If I could I'd always be more bold.
Forget fear.
Properly obliterate popular opinion.

I itch all over.
with a thirst that never fades
most days I'm acrid green
and I don't know where you are
even in my dreams.

sometimes the dimensions in the room around me shift for just a second, like they are about to peel away at the corners, or to break free by bubbling.

I feel like things are cracking, quite literally. Maybe more like ripping at the seems? I'm seeing through them. Things are coming out of focus -- coming in to focus. Everything feels like a game.

A girl can be a either a woman in a red dress or a woman in a white dress.
(I suppose she could don a black dress as well)

I see a college age boy in a white sweatshirt out of the corner of my eye down by Lake Laverne. Adam Avery, I'd say.

the tips of my finger feel like smooth stones in this cold.

I'm losing metaphors.

The morning magic tree is losing it's highest leaves.

Leaves, leaves, louvres

I've swallowed a bird's nest
bitter on the tongue
and now a coiled fetal egg is caught
at the back of my throat
within an arch of needle branches.

I need the mystery of this time of year.

the strings of my viola back are strung much too tight
and the notes that play to my wrists are shrill

The skies here are black and sometimes I miss the yellow, acrid

I really miss thinking in poems. I miss you only because you made me speak in them.
(tortured them out of me while you exposed my back)

I've even stopped naming the clouds. (though it may have been my duty)

You still go West for the future. You still go West for the outlaws and the outcasts.
Or maybe it was the blood. Or some combination of place only. Or just because I was in the first stages of going mad.

It's late. I'm half-way through the blackest parts.

Why is this side so much paler?

I want constellations of light on my wall. I want to curl up into blue sheets and not wake up until I'm old and frail. I want my fingernails to be like slices of ivory. I want to be a glow worm tied with silk threads to the underside of a fuzzy pungent leaf.

all the wants in the world won't pay for sleep debt and you are miles away.

30 days until All Hallow's Eve

I want to live in that spider web.

I'm distracted by my reflected face on the back glass wall of the elevator as it reaches the basement.

The little things people do to please themselves.

Coming up the road to see her tossing bread violently at the sky,
long rays from 5 o'clock sun in her white hair,
geese at her ankles, an after thought

the Dionysian good

a woman in a white dress

The forest at the base of Mt. Fuji where people go to kill themselves and where it's said spirits roam.
(how ugly the word spirit has become)
familiar face, vaguely, maybe it's just the pale-ing

watching ghost shows until I think I can feel them in every corner
my own ghosts in closets and bathtubs

in step with the webs
your own path

that house at the water wheel, I want to say house at the wayside
before those fields, I want to say to their left
teetering on a high base, where it is dry
old christmas lights broken bulbs, everything on the brink of dust
the moths under glass
she's dead now and I'm showing you the downstairs room
she's dead now and I'm glad

"A specific length of thread or yarn according to the type of fiber is called a hank. For linen, a hank is 274 metres (300 yards); for cotton, it is 768 metres (840 yards)."
why do you leave petals of this nature?
why do streams never seem to lead to our bed?
why do you hide in the forests where I can't travel? (the blood and moon keep me at bay)

I want to have the intimacy to make love by sticking fingers in each others ears
the telephone dance it was?

I dream a lot about my grandmother's house, but it's always other ghosts that live there.

. . .something about an organ grinder?

That night we got off track between the corn fields near Prophets Town and I talked about the black-pupiled children and could feel her breathing down my neck. How black it was! and the mist that kept crawling over the hood of your car.

I feel like I should be pouring wax onto pages and making a book of my life. bits of leaves, small white ants, a hundred thousand stretching beams of yellow light, blue afternoons, the almost grasping.

Grapefruit has become a sort of mystical grail, so much so that I will surely be disappointed.

CODEX

I want to hand out little flowers to every person on the bus.
I want to wear a crown of glass beads.
I want to be subversive.

I feel as though I'm about to puke.

When I'm up against something really hard in my head I find myself running, literally.
(Despite the fact that this week I had an emergency appointment at the doctor to have a treatment for asthma I didn't know I had.)
I don't know if it helps, but at least the outside starts to match the in.

My body is literally killing itself striving for perfection.
(the antibodies say "we must keep everything out!!!")
I wonder if my brain does the same.

I haven't slept all night.
I couldn't sleep again, but it wasn't my breathing like it had been for weeks.
It was the subtle pounding in my head like the ocean.

Apparently in a past life (around 1575 in Western Australia) I was a female sailor or a shoemaker
and in this life I'm some sort of a witch.

I haven't the heart.

Your gods are my gods. I just want to sit down with everyone I know.
YOUR GODS ARE MY GODS ARE THE GODS OF ALL.
Your demons are my demons.

And we are all shards of the infinite being.

I make little sense on little sleep.
I'm hoping for a vision.
I'm hoping for a homestead.
I'm hoping for self-sufficiency

Longing for manna and nectar.

There is talk of fissures
of new islands in the middle of vast seas
And there is more talk of The Tower.
My eyes are cloudy, neither here nor there.
This morning there was a shadow outside my window.
This morning there was mist on the field.

I'm thinking about carrying Claude on the bus across town.

my tongue is cotton
"his meat was locust and honey"

I'm feeling nearly Whitminian. and not in the old way.
(as I read it behind the old side of the library on a porch never used surrounded by bushes mid-century modern metal and light)

The moment in the arc of a swing just before it starts back downward.
light rain at 6:30 am.

Not knowing who reads
The things and un-things that make me.
my matter and anti-matter
that shiver of thrill
the longing for connection
in a cold age
a cold age

I'll sit up straighter
and be proud of the curve of my hip
lucky to have missed my lesson in commodification.
considering myself a new mary.
I have loved these walls of flesh.

You marked me.
I'm marked already.
waxing gibbous.

I can hear the quiet over the music.
"the most tender place in my heart is for strangers."

the maple leaf is a symbol of love.

I want. . . to be . . . someone. . . I can love. . .easier.

I'm going back to my old magic.
my old faiths.
my old gods.

I want to open a shop where people just come in to talk. . .I'll sit and listen and brew exotic teas and read their fortunes and give advice when asked. . . . .or just have a home that is like that. . .

at the moment I think you are very very lost and you do not want my help and I don't know where you are headed and it scares me.

I want to be rooftop free again.

my eye is the size of a strawberry, and just as red
you've been asleep for several hours
I just want someone to talk to.

I'm realizing how bad I am at being 22.
(and how much I long to dress skimpily and go out just one night in my life.)
but I won't be that forever, and I'll be better at some other age
like 37
or 58

I need to see an ophthalmologist.
I probably have some condition --
something more to add to my symphony of diagnoses
If I had my way my body would give me as much respect as I give it.
(maybe it does)

All I know is that I want to talk to anyone
(and you are the only one that is there)
So I am silent.

you've been talking in your sleep lately,
like you know I need to talk more even long after your eyes have shut
as if maybe your brain loves me so much it'll sacrifice bits of your dreams for my well being.

you were wondering what a psychic would see if they looked at me.
probably the same things you see.

Sometimes I think the only heart I have is the one on my sleeve.

If I could be what I want to be
(what would I be?)
like the discussion with Karla freshman year
at the end of the hallway, under the window
(what was the name of that dorm again? wycoff?)
are we what we want to be or only what we are
or some bastard child of the two?

I've taken pills twice to try and calm my nerves,
I just end up sleeping.
I don't sleep otherwise. . .until I collapse
and the stories I tell myself are such faint little things

Whatever mythology I thought I had it's mostly gone now
a pearl is just a pearl
a rook is just a rook
a bone is just a bone

My biggest problem is patience
I don't have the patience with myself
I don't have the patience with him

when I'm thinking about teeth. . .

I've torn down every thread
save the one between us,
pulsing thick and braided
umbilical, almost
I succor
you succor
all the life is somewhere in between
and the womb-like nature of our home
impenetrable warm, safe
a trap as well as a comfort
a place to grow but only for a time.
(and then it's bigger traps, no freedom for the free)

moon over me.

stretchy stretchy time
the hopes I had for the eras in years I've already lived
you pass by goals don't you?
(even impassive you)

If I had a faith there may be solace
but you can't pray to electric inspiration
and you can't pray to fucking
(but do I try)

and I try to be positive
but all that gets me is could-bes
not one step farther
the life I want to lead (with joy and conviction)
seems just like the water in my dusty dreams
the pearl at the center of that web
from oh so long ago
longings
like usual I could find someone that is holding me back
some meaningless goal
the other path, I do take,I should take, I was born to take

Whatever my central conflict is,
it'll probably come out to others before me
like the sacred skirt-like nature of all the things I create.

I want things to feel surreal
and through that remember what real feels like

right now it's day after day of chasing shadows

It's my beautiful eye that is maimed now,
with one large speck of brown in all the greens
the only freckle I lay claim to

He said one other day I was the real kind of beautiful
so damaged and thusly fragile
(I've always been afraid he loved me because of that,
because I was like her,
and if I got better it would be a different ending)

I'm afraid to pick a side
crazy or sane
sad or happy
child or adult
responsible or free

as if the choice is really up to me anyhow.

I touch type.
I'm looking for violence of anything.

I miss my sight.
the third eye, cataracts
the onset of prophecy.
(but my beautiful eye)

I want to walk out into the night and not return until the sun rises.

blue.
I don't know where July went.

cold.
and the grey light of a rainy day.

there is no magic except in quiet
except in futures
except in what I'm not doing
except in the moment just before satisfaction

I'm pulling on tails of dragons.
(the dervish in disguise)

Bitten at night by dream lizards.

The fall is creeping in, slowly.

I'm a million directions all at once
a cloud of pollen, butterflies or krill

I have lost so much inner color
widdershins
sundials
aspect ratios of time and space

I can't keep my heart from breaking for much longer.
I'm hoping. . . . just waiting for the season.

Nothing ties up neatly with string anymore,
like when I was a child, always packing bags, obsessed with the self-contained entity, not prepared for the constant losses, the ever expanding epics of confetti.

I like candles even if they lie.

You should be home now, any minute and the whole structure of the air will change. I will feel the molecules shifting in their day-in day-out reaction.

When I'm alone it's all so quiet.
the deafening kind, yes
the pregnant kind, yes
the calm kind, yes sometimes

I'm waiting for someday.
Putting all my eggs in a basket, hoping for yellow ribbons back from the fair.

I can't reason a reason.
so I think about sun catchers on cloudy days
and the half-sphere of dandelions before they become mist
and the light on fabric
how fire is like water
then I pray that there is more
more color
more chances
more strength

I'd like to be back at 13
with a head full of mythology
gods virtually battling in my brain
nettles in a mason jar

"adult" is the most terrifying concept of them all
even "fear" is natural

I guess my head is vomiting again
I guess the spirals on my brain matter are realizing they can't contain me even if they are labyrinths.

I want to reach out but I seem to only be capable of reaching in.
(am repulsed either way most days)

There is a coffee house across the street,
glowing yellow today.

I can't stand to be in the yellow but to watch it. . .
it's like life, liveliness, being

You should have been home by now
I'm watching the clock crawl.

I wake up breathless

On the off chance. . .

There are letters that need writing. I want to feel like I have some people.
("I'm talking to people besides you.")

Things sting.
I can't contain.
beside myself.
The quiet is the best and worst medicine.

I have been having the urge late at night to call up voices I haven't heard in a long time.
To call you and have my voice against some stretching bit of highway.
To call you and hear what bits of your dreams I've fluttered through.
To call you and seem to feel the summer like it was when I was alive.
To call you and ask again to hear about the grains of sand in Mexico.

I feel like too much of me is under my thumb.
I want to paint myself again and dance.
I want to be 5'8 100 pounds, no hips no breasts, to be bones.
I want to live all the stories I see flickering in the fire.
I want to bleed with slits along the soft white of my forearms.
I want to feel things quickening in me, one way or the other.
I want to think I'm the bad girl instead of the fool.

things feel cold too often, not cool, not the fleeting trails of a fan or a breeze
there are fireworks outside
houdini's raged breath

Why are summers so hard?
(by the fall I'm always ready. . .)

I want to be riding again. The two of you in the front seats on the way to something I'm scared and nervous about. Windows down and the music way to loud.

Today the used book store smelled like my grandmothers house and when I closed my eyes I realized it sounded like her house too. She doesn't live there anymore and I miss the green carpet and the way the light slanted in through those curtains.

I miss the poems. We are both so lacking in our own magic.

. . .the biggest fight in my life.

I find myself relishing in the times alone,
and then I cry

everything is so elusive and fleeting
(so many more eloquent works are written on that, so who wants to read the shitty ramblings of someone who can't even face the world on most days and doesn't have a passion for anything she should have passion for and can't stand to be with people because she knows they say something inadvertently that will hurt her and then she will try to hurt them in return and she is a nothing and a no one except to the few people she lets even close enough and that is just the nature of relationships not anything special about her specifically.)

I need some way to focus.

I'm longing and I ache and I flashback and think ahead. Today will be the fleeting thing if I ever get there, it is the thing that flashes when I get there.

Sometimes I start a poem, I get a first line and then it just kin.d. . .o. .f . . . . . .d

the many chambered organ
the iron wings that won't molt

when are you exactly where you want to be?

the lights that go on in other people's houses as you walk by at dusk
the husk-like nature of that yellow light from out of date lampshades
the who and the what of their lives
and the fact that they seem like dolls,
like doll's houses
like I could reach in and their actions, their feelings,
the direction of all the systems they are a part of would be under my hands like clay.

my hands are like clay
my window lights up at dusk in the haze of some archaic lamp
sometimes I feel like I'm being inexpertly set in some scene
with tiny plastic food and precisely reproduced details

I don't think I feel things right.

colors I can't express colors
and light I can't express light

I think I feel them much more than the active things, than actions.

What are you doing in the rain?
Why are you crying in the rain?

I want to flick someone off. I don't think I've ever done that.
I want to be seventeen again and flick someone off.

"Sea sick green, oysters all over the place"

This was a very up night.

Coffee is a confidence thing.
I would have liked a cigarette.

All night she looked like we were showing her slides of our trip to Death Valley.
All night she looked like we were showing her pictures of our costumed cat.
Even when you kissed her, she looked like we had sat her down in a hair covered-chair and were showing her slides of that festooned cat in Death Valley.
How can you love someone whose nose is curled up to her forehead?
How can you love someone who looks like she has sand in her underpants?
How can you love someone who does not love who and what you love?

I'm a hot-pink comet! Shining and Crashing.

Of all the reasons to say hello, of course you picked my hair.

a naked hand

There is no poetry in my thoughts, but I'm realizing that I'm worthwhile.

I make people uncomfortable at my best.

Eight months ago I was supposed to commit myself.
Now I just want to be valid, not a show piece but a force to be reckoned with.

See no poetry?
Hear no poetry?
Speak no poetry?

Fuck.
curse words are easier.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
I think I've fallen in love with you all over again. I'll be there tomorrow.

the world is spinning, my head is spinning
and it feels like change.

I'm marking downfalls
and updrafts.

(like a cusp)

there is a break
there will be a fall

I don't want to go back to the nightmare land.

twins and dichotomies

something about candles.
"those liars, candles and the moon"

there is power in names.

I can't shake the sand from in between my toes.

I keep thinking about the presents I'll never be able to give people.

I have been living in a fog. I am still living in a fog. If this is living I give up.

Days I dream of bones and blood. I swear I could hear my ribs breathing.

He is sick. He sleeps. I am tested.

I can't shake the sand from in between my toes. (It's ground in better than I thought it was.)

I'm two steps from putting myself in two different bad places.

Nights are dark and strange. Dreams are dark and stranger.

It seems without an obscene schedule my brain runs a muck and I want to cease. It seems without every waking hour grinding against some millstone or another I cannot find footing at all. It seems when there is nothing to be done I pull my hair and gnash my teeth.

Sometimes I think I'm growing out of my flesh.

With nightmare demons being what they are I still see her seldom. It's as if the whole game for her is the moment of reveal. Revelation (and the unfinished book of Proverbs.)

I should have graduated today.

I can't shake the sand from between my toes. My feet go where my . . .goes.

I want to ride my bike so far I don't know where I've gone. I want to feel disoriented and free.

I'm making up pasts better than I'm making up futures and you are stuck even worse somewhere between worry and want.

If I had someone to talk to perhaps this nervous energy could become the story of the little Chinese Boy who fell in love with the moon life-sized. Or the dripping faces of people I don't know. Or bones of ree-bar and hearts of glass.

you are so ill. I am so depressed. (which is a word I loathe -- depression is more like the act of having your liver ripped out every day to have it grow back each night because you gave the world fire.)

Someone else needs to take my blood for me. I've grown too tired to do that for myself. Ritual was made to grow.

I'm being drawn south in the right season for the wrong reason.

I think I need the hospital but I don't want a rain/reign of pills.

Things are more real two years ago then they are now.

I can't shake the white sand from in between my toes. (and there is starting to be a blue blue cloudless sky spinning overhead)

I try to deafen it but it's not working. I have to let it sing and amplify with the horn of an old Victrola.

I've been thinking about Mexico. (It hurts) Where are you?
And that is scrawled like the message on the back of the manuscript in Happiness
". . . .is dead and I don't feel to well myself."

I can't remember the dogs' names. I remember your cat's name was Bob.

There are bits of web strung across. . . .
I deleted all your letters but there are books of words under my bed.

I've never learned to grieve. To lose. To be wrong.

and there are pesky grains of crystal sand between my toes that won't shake loose -- that won't let go.

This morning I got up, took a shower and put on a particularly novel combination of clothes. I had to go buy a portfolio. But I couldn't leave the house, I sat there for two and a half hours and couldn't. I cried with my hands pressed into my eye sockets. I cried and and let the tears meet beneath my jaw like a giant heart.

I'm fading -- like all the white on white in my head. (the fan on the ceiling, the drops of water on the plastic shower wall, seashells on the sand.)

I'm beating myself up. Good things happen and I'm not sad really, but there are these days. And you'll come home and be mad at me, maybe. . . or I'll think you'll be mad.

I won a competition in my class.

I'm letting things drift. I'm trying not to press. How far until I can look back? How long until we are completely out of the underworld?