I am the debris of a poet.

I am the debris of a poet. I once had moments to plunder through consonants, fighting to understand why resonance always seemed so distant. The fight to ring from the belfries of my fingertips, to echo into mouths and across tongues seemed to me, to be the only reason to live. I wanted to live to hear myself soar across blank pages and I wanted to fill the spaces in between lines with my reckless foresight.

There's a goblin in my belly. Or a gremlin, or a ghoul, something grotesque that irrefutably starts with a g, because g is for gigantic and gelatinous, and grandiose. It's gone deaf in it's left ear from trying to shoot it's own head so many times and missing, the shrapnel just landing amongst sinewy tendons and rushing platelets- and dandruff.

No matter how hard I want to ring, to unfreeze my knuckles and kneecaps and cords, there's no such thing as subtlety.

I am the debris of a poet. Imploding from what I'm assuming is the reverberation of epic narcissism.

Every window in Alcatraz has a view of San Francisco.

Sunday.

What I've written in lines of ether and cellulose, across thighs and paper and creased glass, isn't formidable or condescending. In fact it more often than not resembles something more like peering out of a window through smog trying to see fi the stoplight has changed yet, squinting eyes, an offering. I didn't write letters or sonnets saying how this was flawlessly composed because I knew as soon as I did, I'd feel equally compelled to chew them up, grinding the india ink with my incisors, and then spitting them back out so that they resembled something that looked more like me; poignant and covered in slime. I've lost track of whether I've been disposing the relic of joy or trying to pull it out of antiquity, if it was ever there to start with, or if it, like most of me, was vintage. We're antebellum honestly, made out of starch and proper conversations that I chiseled out of soap, wearing us into the grain until we're pulp you and I, practically indistinguishable from each other.

What you write across your knuckles, "hold fast", I've tattooed to the underside of my eyelid so that every time I imagine the sweetness of solitude I'm reminded of what you begged with hardy glances and adolescent fingers twitching over geography you'll never try to understand. Landscapes are an ambitious attempt even when they're uniform, but when you reach valleys and panes of sienna and chartreuse, I guess it's usual to crumple. I'm assuming that the realistic response is to give it up as a bad job and say you were too busy reading Hawthorne that day and couldn't spare a moment to map it out.

I have inundated myself so that all the valleys run level with fibers and sand and plaster. A concrete expansion of ratified indignation to the ceasing condition of your loveliness. There is no hole left to fill because I have sloughed them all out in the hopes that you will tread with purpose, but it's not quite good enough yet. So let it pour.

Rules for Asphyxiation

1. When sometimes

centuries don’t correct

themselves in perfect

gold kept time, making

tick marks so striking

they’re printed on your retina,

so everything looks like

you’re trapped by luminosity—

get very frustrated with it.

2. Whatever inclination

you may have to the

opposition, don’t let

your disposition become

so rebellious and sticky,

clinging like the insides

of a grape, and leaving slime

everywhere so that it is

just a big rambling mess.

You don’t even remember

how you got

from screaming about

the Taliban and mercenaries

and now you’re all about

the grape slime.

you see?

3. I don’t really mind

when you forget

you’re not Newton.

4. Make it so that when you chase

equinox, and I’m stuck in woolen

apparel, fit for the hiking

I won’t do,

make it go down like peroxide,

bleaching my insides

white as last night’s heaven.

parametric

I’m not sure when this started

exactly.

Ash growing into cinder,

meal dripping into grain,

the drops of kerosene

slithering through dryer vents

and the pipes that connect

the bathtub to the earth.

I’ve lost track of why

a disposition automatically

is premonition

to common sores.

Stark linens rubbing against

daybreak,

secreting the stripes

of musty morning.

I don’t like rubber

and things that only take two,

standardizations of what is

my only panoramic view

of faces

mustard on rye.

I learned to say “Thank you

very very much”

in Fanti, so that when the sound

collided against the mortar,

the kind in between bricks

or like plaque,

it might sink in better

the different syllables

and ways of saying

going backwards..

July Playlist (I've officially been doing these for a year!)

1) Crosses- Jose Gonzalez

2) Window- Good Old War

3) Come in Closer- Blue October

4) Diamond in the Sun- Sean Hayes

5) Told You So- The Guggenheim Grotto

6) Baby- Devendra Banhart

7) The Killing Moon- Grant Lee Phillips

8) Evaporated- Ben Folds Five

9) Pilgrims- Robert Francis

10) Jump In- Lightning Dust

11) Oviedo- Blind Pilot

12) Deep Sea Diver- Grizzly Bear

13) The Professor- Damien Rice

14) Wings- Josh Ritter

15) Masterfade- Andrew Bird

16) Hot Love Drama- The Management

17) One of Those Days- Josh Radin

18) Creature Fear- Bon Iver

19) Come Pick Me Up- Ryan Adams

20) I Wish I Could Change Your Mind- Ray LaMontagne

21) Leave Me Be- Joe Purdy

22) Something in the Water- The Jealous Girlfriends

23) The Ice Storm, the Big Gust, and You- Tilly and the Wall

24) It's Not Happening- The Be Good Tanyas

Revelation

I don't expect you to have a revelation (definition: a surprising and previously unknown fact, esp. one that is mad known in a dramatic way, Synonym: beyond biblical in my mind). I started out hoping that maybe in the dusty corners of your mind there was potential for discovery, for the newfound understanding that you're a better man than you make yourself out to be. I am desperate and flailing, a contradiction to my face. I turn around and feel whispers wrap their fingers around my throat, cold and foreign; your mouth. Everything you try to heal just ends up leaving a bruise and drenched in purple and blue I'm standing here screaming "for the love of God find something to love." I always have and I always will find you to be something extraordinary. Even if when you rip at your own skin and pull at the arteries and dig in your bones to find something in your marrow and you're furious that all you found were cells and matter, and a pulse. If I could make myself seep in between your toes and into your bloodstream and weave myself up into your head and sit on your eardrum, I'd beat the hell out of it until you understand that there are things worth hearing in this world.

I'm perched inside your eyelids so even when you're trying to sleep I'm still laid out in front of you, naked, begging for you to see something that I guess you've always been blind to. It's retinitis pigmentosa of your human functions, the little things that you're just supposed to get. Like when someone lays down in the middle of the road, the yellow lines a suture line, just to get you to look at them and say something that takes more than five seconds to put together inside your head, you're supposed to notice things like that.

This is no ordinary love, it's carnivorous, it's vultures. But we forgot somewhere along the lines that I'm a vegetarian, that I'd prefer to leave your carcass intact, that I'd rather just let you pick at me.

I didn't expect you to have a revelation.

But I guess I expected something more than this.

Slam Poems ("momma" and "pound")

“Momma”

Are you proud?

Did I do right by the dreams

you had for me? Your conehead opportunity,

rolling around in your belly.

Is this what you envisioned,

me singing crap songs on street corners,

slits on my wrists and echoes in my ears.

You’re echoing,

rattling all my cartilage

and the righteousness

you poured down my throat.

How am I supposed to think I’m beautiful

like you told me

when you’re stuffing yourself

with silicone, and gasoline,

and money.

They might as well dip you in formaldehyde

so I can look at you

pickled in a jar on my nightstand and say

“Look, look she’s a fucking diamond.”

How can I listen to you

telling me to keep my panties dry,

when you’re on number 3

your chest all blown up,

thighs all glitter.

How much is your monthly allowance?

Maybe I’ll write a novel,

except according to you

I can’t write a novel because that’s reserved

for people who’s brains

are fully developed.

So I guess, it’d be pretty immature

to write a book about a woman who screams

down the stairs to “Get the Fuck out

you pathetic little bitch.”

People would cry and say it’s poignant

and then they’d put it back up on their bookshelves

because my cerebral cortex isn’t fully developed

so it doesn’t count,

and anyway,

they have that luxury.

But me, I ain’t got no bookshelves

when you left you asked if we cared if we wanted anything

and we said “fuck no” and gave you our wallets.

All I got is a corner

and a box cutter

and some gauze

and I feel sterile as hell

and don’t feel it go in

as it begins again,

cutting out the mother

that thought she told me

I was beautiful.

“Pound”

Here I go again singing cradle songs

“tell me that You’ll open your eyes”

So I can distract myself

because you don’t

love me tonight and your

sweating and grunting

means I’m nothing more than a notch

on your belt

and something to brag about.

We were at this party earlier

and you laughed with everybody else

when they started in on

my fat ass and huge legs

and how my breasts have swollen

under my skin since I had

to take my pointe shoes off.

But you weren’t laughing later

when you smacked me so hard

it left a bruise,

or when you grunted with disapproval

when I wouldn’t turn over

on all fours

like a damn dog: your bitch.

It’s an appropriate metaphor

because you hold my hand sometimes

leading me around.

and my hand is a leash

and my clavicle a collar

and that’s how you got me

on this picnic table

in the first place.

I thought maybe if I

acted like it didn’t feel

like being sacrificed

if I didn’t feel like a piece

of meat

like I liked it.

Then maybe you would

decide to love me.

But you don’t and I know it

and I could see that girl

with longer hair and leaner legs

and an even fatter ass

grinning back at me from your retinas.

I flip over so it’ll be over faster

and so she can see the red marks

on my back.

So maybe, she won’t be so stupid.

Cover Letter

I have a big family

with older siblings

who are loud and pretty and talk

a lot.

They all like each other, and people.

I do not like people very much

but I’m not shy.

I say plenty of things sometimes

but not in situations like group dinners

or parties or funerals.

When I talk in these situation

my voice just makes things more crowded.

I have verbal communication issues.

But I write things down really well.

Because of the older siblings,

and because I was fat,

I read lots of books.

Because the books were more interesting

and football looked really fucking awful.

I don’t like people or noise

but sometimes I can handle people or noise.

I went to a concert and sat in the handicapped section.

I really liked that concert.

But then I went to a different one and had to stand up.

The people were a lot closer and therefore it was very rude.

I am very sensitive to rudeness.

If you say you will meet me at four o’clock

and then don’t meet me until 4 o’nine

because your train was late,

I will think you are rude and not meet you places

anymore.

That’s why I’d be good for this job because if I was running late, which I wouldn’t

because I hate rude people,

I would call you until you answered

to let you know where I am and why I’m late

and will have a stranger talk to you on the phone

so you know I’m not rude and I’m trying to get there.

I am the woman for the job

because it involves writing things down,

which I’m good at,

and not coming in direct contact with people,

which I’m also good at.

As long as nobody is rude to me

I’ll make a super great waitress.

If they’re rude to me, I can’t guarantee

that I will not drop their pie on the floor on purpose.

But I would also clean it up on purpose,

because that’s what good waitress’s do.

Confrontation

What you have only guessed

is thrown across my cells

in shades of wilderness

and networks of electricity.

Rosacia marquees to declare

unpaved roads, a scraped knee,

a daughter.

Have a confrontation

with my cells.

Find where some are flushed rosy

and others the color of dark beans

roasted with decades of sun.

This one is a little sickled,

puckered around the edges.

Note it,

so that they have even more

justification for why “I shouldn’t

feel nothin’ down there”.

Color by number me a sinner.

4’s are for when I ate grapefruits

that left welts in my cheeks,

2’s for when it wasn’t making love

it was just making me remember

the 6’s,

the day God didn’t come

because I was young

and had the possibility

of becoming a woman.

Have a confrontation with my cells.

Layer me lovely for now.

Shove me into the corner of your cortex

the place reserved for the mutilated.

I don’t feel

like talking about it anymore.

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/2313097.html

Art Credit: Emily Kngwarreye. Awelye, Autumn

He Builds Glass Houses

He builds glass houses

that fracture when the light creeps

from room to room.

The walls are painted

with his name,

searing and familiar.

And my eyes unlike

my mothers,

change with each glinting hallway.

He moves in silence,

save the sound of his moods

(he loves me sometimes)

jingling with loose change

in his pockets.

In the quiet,

barefeet padding across lacquered floors,

the confrontation of callused cheeks.

Then,

tornadoes above my midsection.

He swallows my refractions.

The most terrifyingly sweet

thing to touch this mouth

since stillness.

Once we’re in the light,

shards of glass cling to my sweater

for days. He builds our house again.

New messages on the machine

echoing off transparent walls.

"Separation"

I taste you in

sun on my shoulders,

fingertips on kneecaps.

I apologize for

dripping sweat

on the tablecloth,

grit under fingernails

falling on hot laundry.

I can't feel you

through the calluses on my hands

pushing splinters

behind your ears,

the sweetest thing to ever

touch this mouth.

Settling into sunburn.

(photo: Ansel Adams)

Old Lungs

You hang wafer thin crinkled,

flexing and stretching

with turbulence.

A post it note on my carotid

fluorescent yellow

reminding me to settle down

not forget my spare

key, spare life,

spare tire.

Reminding me of the dozens of things I am

bound to forget

while in the company

of breath.

Like reading the road map

on the bottom of my shoe--

old, white, oxfords.

Or changing the lightbulb

flickering in the ceiling,

a parchment paper man

nearing old age.

Geometry

I am from geometry.

From a stained hankie

a hole in the wall, FakeTown

where every slummer dips his beard in fourteen karat gold.

I am from my sister’s contradictions,

I am the note asking to return supplies,

thumb thack spelled wrong.

I am from the drunken crucifix

throwing beer cans at the steeple until my eyes go cross

singing glory.

I am from the spaces in between each vertebrae

trickling down to pool at the top of your tailbone.

I’m a collection of what I told you on my roof

one lonely Wednesday, with

popcorns kernels in between my teeth.

I am from the eyes my uncle lost amongst the black kohl

smudges, torn road maps

and gas station Icees,

melting in cup holders.

I’m from the ones he found up underneath his cuticles

two days later atop ivory keys.

House of Wits

Words taken from House of Wits by Paul Fisher

He mentioned

that he recollected vividly

visiting dusky churches

bursting with Rome,

scented with the danger

of the most accomplished women.

Thoroughly enjoying the grand

language of steep roofs

the timeless cultivation of

loving.

Alice, In late spring

partly out of favoritism and partly

out of the infancy of incompetence.

He would have stung if

she had worried

if she hadn’t already blamed

the younger Mary James’s

in Paris

where “one must dine somewhere

and I sometimes

dine in company.”

(or otherwise took her life,

an early version of a woman)

Have a toast to London

luxuries. A festering

sore on Justice,

the bride.

Harry’s and Alice’s absences

from the wedding though

speak volumes.

Streetwalkers

Mix me in your marrow

stuff me in your bones

chemistry lessons.

What happens when cobalt air

mixes with perspiration,

liquor on my tongue

the stupor of nerve.

Chemiluminescence

it stings but it does not blind

a floodlight secreting

from your retina.

Percussion,

the vibration from rubber

on street

synonym: I quiver.

Taught veins between

fingertips. Alert hair

on the backs of knees.

In the incoming implosion,

the smell of fresh cells

mixing with formaldehyde

and exhaust is going to

possess us.

Knuckles braided in

steel cable and spinal cord

tucking in tucking in,

before one turn out.

Fingers coming up

through your throat,

your tongue wet exigency

neon lit locution.

Reaction

What you told me without a shadow
of doubt, paranoia, dark lidded eyes,
bitten nails.
My rumored
beauty.
Glowing sentiments, recollections
of phosphorous.
Throwing back beer cans
while I suck on a peach chased with
vodka, fingers
knotted in my spine
all captured in tacky fisheye.
Talks of vacation to New Dehli,
Paris, San Antonio
forgiveness for your favorite
broken shot glass, the one
with the Spanish flag on it
that you stole from the liquor cabinet.
A comb for my hair-
wisdom teeth on ice.

I forgot to get you a reaction
and now we're just
familiar.

Redrock

Donkey, painted on the rockface
near the Watertown exit, by I-24 East
retreating
into erosion.
My brother always told me
that you were painted right before the tide came
or that you were a caveman's first revelation
or the result of a partifularly ambidestrous
dinosaur.
Whichever fit the remaining length.

I never asked you,
no when we took the highway instead
or when the "Save the Ass!" signs
(that I didn't make)
went up.
I never kissed away
your dust and placed
my ear against your redrock chest
listening for what you've heard about me
and the fatigue that must come
with being mysterious.

Arithmetic

I took the time to count the wrinkles

[the furrowed and steaming]

weaving from freckle to hooked nose

the blood under the skin

rivers of silk and childhood rhyme schemes,

the nucleus reflected in silver bifocals [heavenly contradictions].

Tell me of your wise heart

[never cease speaking] because I

have confronted the possibility

that ninety percent of what you say

is brilliant.

And if I absorb half of your brilliant

and add it to my simple one

that makes me fifty and one percent your brilliance.

They said if something is more than half

it rounds to the whole

and if I am fifty and one

that makes me round to

wholly you. [arithmetic fails me]

So tell me more

of you wise heart.

Let me count the lines

your speckled paper in my hands.

Gamine

Though externally I was cut with precision

evenly, hanging razors

perplexity fogged my conscience.

When I should have been concentrating

on pulling into the intersection to turn left

or stirring the pot constantly to boil,

I was distracted.

And now

I extend my condolences for the loss of your

sweet lady.

Dearest grandmamma,

I am sorry that my missing ponytail detracts

from my image of godliness

and hinders my ability to appreciate

appropriate table settings.

Cosmopolitan,

I apologize that I must tear out pages 32-35

and 41-47

and 108

that describe so accurately how to get the best

“post booty waves”.

CVS,

to you I really am sincerely woeful.

Your success was dependent on my monthly venture

into the haircare aisle.

A frenzy!

I will see you semi annually now.

I’ll be sure to buy some cigarettes to make up the difference.

Spectacled lady on the subway,

waiter at Chili’s,

stiffed adolescent,

I’m sorry that you can’t see something

sexier..

Sir,

I’m sorry that your woman doesn’t look like a woman,

that you are so frightened

here, hold my hand instead.

I understand the trials you must be under,

quite some trial indeed

not having something to hold onto

when you want to fuck me like a dog.

God knows you need reigns to reel in

your bitch.

june playlist.

1) Snow White- Jaymay

2) Funeral Dress- William Fitzsimmons

3) Keep it There- The Weepies

4) Shadow on the Wall- Brandi Carlile

5) Simple Song- David Saw

6) Living in Twilight- The Weepies

7) Where the Road Meets the Sun- Katie Herzig

8) Cosmic Love- Florence and the Machine

9) Noticed- MuteMath

10) Eyes on the Horizon- Brendan Benson

11) This Time- Jonathan Rhys Meyers

12) Sparks- Coldplay

13) Veins of Your History- Matthew and the Artist

14) Do What I Can- Greg Laswell

15) Sleepwell Chicago- Trent Dabbs

16) The Girl You Lost to Cocaine- Sia

17) For My Generation- Tyler James

i apologize for the minimal (or really absent) posts, but I head off to Virginia in fortyeight hours and i assure many posts practically daily.

-a

Dry Spell

It is with motion unintended

that their eyes blaze

the furrows of brows creasing even deeper

in celestial oil.

Their venom, unreported,

stings.

What tines still protrude from the marrow

what eloquence has saved for last-

a million star beam children.

Little Lottie dances in circles

running the crisp grass through her incisors

before shooting back to her mother.

to wait for the next dry spell.

May Playlist

1) When You Were Young- William Fitzsimmons
2) Tell Me a Lie- Griffin House
3) Isn't Love- Joe Purdy
4) Past Poisons- Patrick Park
5) Simple Life- The Weepies
6) I Come Home- Catherine Feeny
7) Dangerous- Joshua James
8) You Must Have Fallen- Ben Taylor and David Saw
9) Mosquito- Ingrid Michaelson
10) It Looks Like Love- Josh Rouse
11) The Golden Age- The Asteroids Galaxy
12) Wink- Little Dragon
13) White Daisy Passing- Rocky Votolato
14) Woman Put Your Weapon Down- Justin Nozuka
15) Lady Jesus- The Asteroids Galaxy

I spilled some iced tea on my five dollar culottes

I spilled some iced tea on my five dollar culottes
because i forgot how to swallow
and it dribbled down my chin like
some kind of mental patient.

It was sterile.
So compact and untouchable
permeating metal and iron into the air.
Recollections of phosphorous.

I wish the walls would come down and make a big spill
so that I would be coated in calamity again.
Fresh original trifle.
My pen would come out of the rafters and find something to talk about
and the stain on my culottes
would look like a sheep trying to eat a flower
or a little boy
or your face.

And when a love tolled from the rafters
it would resonate.
It will bounce off of the concrete and hurtle itself
through cigarettes.
It will taste sweet and new
and I'll roll it around with my tongue.
Tasting the newness.

I'll run to the muddy creek to spit
my hips afraid
of the glucose.
And you'll stand there.
Waiting.

April Playlist

1) Leave- Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova
2)Into Dust- Mazzy Star
3) Happy- The Frames
4)Help Me, Suzanne- Rhett Miller
5)Hallelujah- Justin Timberlake and Charlie Sexton
6) The Blower's Daughter- Damien Rice
7) Angel at My Table- The Frames
8)Lay Me Down- Damien Rice feat. Glen Hansard
9) Your Face- The Frames
10)You Can Always Come Home- Jason Castro
11) I Wish I Could Change Your Mind- Ray LaMontagne
12) Faketown- Joe Purdy

March Playlist

1) All love- Ingrid Michaelson
2) The Wolves- Bon Iver
3) Your Face- The Frames
4) The Stupid Things- Robin Thicke
5) Bitter- Me'Shell Ndegeocello
6)At Last- Etta James
7) With the Notes in my Ears- Peter Broderick
8) Moody Mooday- Damien Rice
9) Try a Little Tenderness- Otis Redding

I write Rivers.

I said a while back that I hoped I would never write of you- and now I write rivers. It's unfortunate for you that I have the mind of an author because I will never see things quite clearly. What you access as merely a situation I observe. I am obsessed with seeing. What you cast in broad daylight, I extract from dirty cobwebs. What you write in size 12 times new roman, I scribble in the margins. In the end, we have the same knick knack resting warmly in our palms, but it's the process that is different.

If there is anything I love more than you, my sweet, it is ambition. If there is anything that I lap at like a babe to it's mother, it is drive. There are marks on the backs of my knees from hitting myself with a cane so I am urged to advance. I wear knee high socks to cover bruises. I am addicted to success and even more so the journey to acquiring it. This isn't to say that you hinder me from success, nobody can do that. But what might have been lost for you would never have been an issue for me. In my frenzy of rapid narcissism I have come to realize I will not accept stagnancy. It's why my fingers are rubbed raw and my feet cracked and bloody, I am in a hurry to constantly create.

It's even more narcissistic to be attracted to elements of your own personality but I can't help but be infatuated with human drive. The little sparks that bounce around in someone's belly, that spout out from between their lips when they speak- they ignite my bones. If there is anything that attracts me more than just pure love, it's someones desire to be something, to defy what they are for their own emotional perpetual survival.

You are happy to stand in one place and your immobility breeds reptiles of the mind. They slither out of all your pores and the waxy canals in your ears and they hiss at me and spit venom, tempting me to tell you "no." There's something we have irrefutably in common and it is addiction. You are addicted to doing everything you can to not love me like I should be loved and I do everything I can to be ignorant in your favor. I adore you and damn me that I do, my morals are tainted.

I don't know what I believe anymore. I don't believe in God, or myself, or certainly you. I depend on ink and box cutters and dissonance to get myself through what distantly resembles a normal day- step after step in the effort of seeing a glimmer of determination in your face. I want you to push for something; a career, a goal, or even me. I want you to so bad.

You've realized that I'm a woman of words and that is a blessing and a curse because just as no one reads the words inside the book if the jacket isn't lovely- your words do no good unless you embody them.

I'm forced now to write rivers, currents that I never wanted to write.

When you slip into a haze, it disgusts me.
When you're a bigot, I want to slap you.
When you speak of your future as though it doesn't matter,
it makes me want to give up on you.

You constantly say I have to believe in you but it's difficult to believe in you when you are the one rittling away little bits of what used to be my confidence. Your lack of ambition is pulling me apart into bloody fragments.

I'm tired of talking and being talked at. I'm tired of you selling me on your newfound resolutions that never come to pass.

My good nature and I are tired of being taken advantage of.

I'm tired of your God Damned excuses.

Do with me what you will, but if you leave me you will taste me in your bourbon and in the smoke on your tongue and with each exhaltation of your supposed rebellion and anarchy, realize that you are most dejected of conformists because you have never fought for anything in your life. And with each second of sedation, you succumb even further to being completely and totally

average.

The Wolves

Someday my pain, someday my pain
Will mark you
Harness your blame, harness your blame
And walk through
With the wild wolves around you
In the morning, I'll call you
Send it farther on

Solace my game, solace my game
It stars you
Swing wide your crane, swing wide your crane
And run me through

And the story's all over you
In the morning i'll call you
Can't you find a clue when your eyes are all painted Sinatra blue

What might have been lost -
Don't bother me - Bon Iver



I write this catastrophically pointless letter to myself fragmented. I have no desire to talk to my own mind, but it lets me say the things you won't. It's certainly not for my lack of trying, in fact, all I've ever done is try. I'm a woman of words. Most people find that to be a good thing but maybe in your case it's not. The fact is, I am romanticized by language. By that I don't just mean words and phrases. I mean the language of music and movement of silly putty sunrises and cyan colored walls. I fall in love with the eloquence of a hand on my skin, the meter of a kiss. But it does come down to words. In the end, that is the essential language and it's the one you lack. To communicate is an integral skill which you are blissfully unaware of. What might have been me didn't care for a while, but the falsifications I embodied for a while were just a hoax, you said you knew that all along. To say I love you more than once in a day is like ripping a chalice from your hands. You are addicted to numbness.

I write this catastrophically pointless letter to myself fragmented, because what I have tried to tell you has been pushed aside with iron thumb and key stroke. Like the night I tried to explain why I love you in the most peculiar of senses, you didn't care to hear. I wanted to say that the reason I am so desperately extending myself to you is that there are minutes when I must close my eyes and pull up my nails to make sure your skin is still under them, to make sure you were ever really there. You are the only person on the face of the planet I believe that responds to a general outpouring of human emotion with a smiley face. But maybe you didn't care to hear it because you already knew it was what was going to be said and you were afraid your own heart wouldn't be able to reciprocate it. You're afraid in general. Fear is a common successor of love I've come to realize, but you're better than that.

I write this catastrophically pointless letter to myself so there is written record of how I have contorted myself into various shapes, and moods, and shades for the sake of your contentment. What I melt with butter and touch with my lips is to make you love me. It's a desperate foolhardy attempt but the pathetic nature of love is this: you will do whatever it is you need to do to feel wanted.

In that regard, this is my final attempt. I love you in the most catastrophically fragmented of ways. If only you were a luckier man at a luckier time. What I have come to learn of apparent love is that the lapse into "routine" is more that often the lapse into a cycle of abuse. It's subtle. There are no exterior bruises, no arrests to be made, but it qualifies. This system of ambivalence and disregard and method of ignoring me while be so magnetically present has come to be my demon. You are addicted to the numbness that comes with not feeling anything and I am addicted to the numbness that comes with feeling to much. Just like he hit me with scarlet words and tongue, lashed at me with his beauty, you beat me with your coolness, laying in an emerald green fog over my eyes. Your story is all over you and you don't want me to be a part of it. For a moment you made me feel like a real author, but the things you can concoct in your own hallucinations seem to be far more entertaining than my desperate pleas for contact. Because of that, you are worse than him. He treated me the way he did because he felt everything so deeply. You treat me the way you do because I don't think you feel anything at all.

I call out to you like I call out to the wolves, "someday my hand pain will mark you", someday you will realize what you have done to my heart and your own soul. You are my aphrodisiac and it pains me to see I am no longer yours. Or was I ever? Was I ever the thing you wanted to put to your lips, or merely the smoke circles you wanted to blow; enchanting and amorphous, distorting light and rocking you. But only momentarily, because in an instant I am gone. In an instant you will have puffed me at your lips until I am nothing but ember that burns you, leaving scabs and rough patches that sting with the moisture of your tongue. You will taste me on my tongue, you will see me in the smoke rings, you will feel me in between your sheets, but you will never, you have never, known me. You have only looked through smoke to see what you think is now a right, a given. But you have reduced me to ash. In all my efforts to burn as brightly as I can for you you turned your back to me for warmth, but never saw my glow and my sparks as they tumbled their way into the heavens like the briefest of stars.

I have thrown stars into the sky for you and supplied you with your poison. I have drawn you constellations. I have wiped your tears at my own expense and hidden in the cavernous places of my mind the memories that haunt me and define me and have created me because I didn't think you were fit to see them. Not that you ever made an attempt to remove your rose colored shades. Not that you ever really cared to see.

Begin to see love, or I'll evaporate.
I love you more than you deserve.
-A

February Playlist

1) Something about your love- mason jennings
2) merge, a vessel, a harbor- great lake swimmers
3) broken afternoon- the helio sequence
4) dreamworld- rilo kiley
5) recommendation- little dragon
6) dancing with myself- nouvelle vague
7) sometimes- si*se
8) snow- emiliana torrini
9) walking down- joe purdy
10) that home- cinematic orchaestra
11) i've got to see you again- norah jones
12) so in love- ted lennon and jack johnson
13) not out*- greg laswell

*current musical obsession

Pirate, Ninja, Vagabond (UVA YWW Autobiographical sketch)

Every night I pray for senility because maybe if I was old and encrusted with wisdom I wouldn’t be so schizophrenic. Maybe then the pirate, the ninja, the vagabond would have exhausted their attempts to invade my brain. Within the confines of biological adolescence there is a margin that remains for multiple identities. I find myself personifying several types of wanderers. They are obscure and odd and beautifully disturbed and all vie for dominance of my identity.

The Pirate
My pirate ransacks riches. Crossing from sea to sea, she is a heart collector. She makes necklaces strung with rubies and sapphires to hand from my undeserving scruff. She’s a traveling saleswoman selling only to herself. She is dangerous and rocks an eye patch. My pirate has no manners. She drinks beer with the boys and sits with her legs too far apart, daring anyone to ask her if she’d mind being a lady for once. My pirate doesn’t really give a damn about anything except her pursuit for treasure and she stops at nothing to get it. My pirate’s got a drive.

The Ninja
Then the pirate comes to meet the ninja and the hysterical comedy of it all is enamoring, drawing me away from more menial things like being politically correct or doing the dishes. What my pirate has in style, my ninja has in cunning and with a swift kick to the spine she is God. She is mysterious and intelligent. My ninja operates precisely. She speaks in well-constructed metaphors and manages to be composed at the finest of dinner parties immediately after kicking ass in the back alley, using her stiletto as a weapon. My ninja is a piece of work. She operates alone. She is violently serene.

The Vagabond
My vagabond is the trashy one of the group. It depends on what part of town she’s in that night but she can be quite the whore. The ninja lets her have her hour upon the boards because she cant stand to even fight something so vagrant. My vagabond is guarded. She doesn’t wander for profit or to spread her creed but for the sake of defending and maintaining her silence. With geographical mobility comes a complete lack of connection to anything around you and then, my precious vagabond can’t be hurt. No one wants to know a tramp and therefore, she is allotted the space to be enclosed.
My wanderers stumble into each other sometimes in their journeys across my cortex’s and neurons and they set up battle in my frontal lobe, or over the synapse’s that initiate motor function. They fight and bicker and it gives me a headache, that bickering does. As I reach for the Motrin, I start wondering why the wanderer’s wander and what they’re wondering about. Why does one wear an eye patch instead of sensible heels? Or why can one do long division in her head while she throws nun chucks at people? Or why is one so defensive of her own silence that she screams at the top of her lungs so that everybody will listen to her hush.
By this point I am immobile, rooted to my dirty carpet, cursing these arbitrary fictional representations of my own conflicted identity. Then I find a pen and write for my pirate, my ninja, my vagabond. In the concluding silence, I’m reverent- my mind at peace. I have come to terms with the facts (if only momentarily) that the seemingly cockeyed wanderers spark essays like this one that just might get me into Young Writers. Then maybe, when I get there, there will be a nice dairy farmer or something to make friends with my pirate or my ninja or my vagabond.

Then, I get it.

Pot Brownies

I told her once from the depths
of the wingback chair,
that I have my priorities straight.
I made seventy different promises
laced with merchants and contacts,
and prior priorities and prior promises.

My brother doesn't like the brownies
that she brings. He says,
he can tell that she microwaved the butter
instead of letting it soften like it says to,
on the box. I think he's right,
when you microwave it like that-
it's all oily.
You can taste the incompetence.

I told her one more time that I have
those priorities straight,
as I slid my hands under the cover of jeans,
because my fingertips were cold.
She looked and didn't like it but a fight
would make her cry.
She'd worked too hard to look like a geisha
that night. I laughed-
when she didn't know how to hold the joint right,
and said it was kind of like how
she didn't know how to make brownies.



Response Poem:

I prefer to ramble about the menial:
chipped siding, slippery doorbells, dillapidated
patio furniture.
I hear them whisper "coward"
when I bring in the new Adirondack chairs,
the ivy drapes.

Caring is easier corporal
so I stay upstairs
and the boys stay downstairs.
I cook roast beef.
What's her face leaves before dinner-
her eyes red.
I ask her if she wants some Visine-
no, she has some in her car.

Maybe they had a fight.
Or probably, the dust under the sofa,
irritated her eyes.
I added "new broom" to the grocery list.
Right under,
"munchies" spelled in all caps.
I don't know what those are,
but I bet they're near the chex mix.

January Playlist (verrrrrry late)

1) Poison and Wine- The Civil Wars
*they were phenomenal live
2) Have a little Faith- Michael Franti and Spearhead
*also very good live, but not quite phenomenal
3) Educated Guess- Ani DiFranco
4) Night on the Sun- Modest Mouse
5) The One I Love- Greg Laswell
6) Perfect Opening Line- The Frames
7) Spinning for Spoonie- Neil Halstead
8)Red and Purple- The Dodos
9) One Moment in Time- Whitney Houston
10) Runaway Children- Joe Purdy
11) Periodically Triple or Double- Yo La Tengo
12) She Is Love- Parachute
*cliche I'm aware, but it's great
13) Sleepless- Kate Havnevik
14) One of Those Days- Josh Radin
15) Red Lantern Girls- Vetiver
16) Ready or Not- The Fugees

Fixed on Sun

I would like to see you in full bloom
with the petal falling just short of your cheek.
I would like to see you fill this room
stand there and grow and not speak.

I like the way you feel in the middle of June.
I wanna be who you are just south of July.
I love you better in warmer weather and I've
lost track of the time.

There are times I think that sleeping could get me by
when all the shapes feel more colorful.
See the knot in your hair and I yank it tight
it makes the lock on your jaw more beautiful.

I like the way you feel in the middle of June.
I wanna be who you are just south of July.
I love you better in warmer weather and I've
lost track of the time.

You got me tripping on the sun and I can't help but follow.
You've got me tripping on the sun and I can't help but follow.
You got me fixed on sun and I can't help but follow,
you got me fixed on the sun, on the sun.

I like the way you feel in the middle of June.
I wanna be who you are just south of July.
I love you better in warmer weather and I've
lost track of the time.
I loved you better in warmer weather,
I loved you better in warmer weather,
I've loved you I've
loved you better.

Here are my lovely bones

Here are my lovely bones to do with what you will.
Suppose you want to build a home.
You will find fine insulation in my marrow,
take that.
If you should need gleaming cufflinks for a tasteful evening,
I'm sure the polished knobs,
the part where the bone fits in the socket,
will look wonderful cast in sterling.
If you wish to understand the human form
feel free to remove and rearrange me as you please,
i wish to be part of your education.

Fashion me in your image.
Maybe if I let you have my bones,
if i let you have the blood and the marrow,
the tissue and the membrane,
the cell.
Then maybe you would love the scientific me.
I would leave out my brain though.
That we can preserve in a jar labeled "abnormal".
I hope you acknowledge the Frankenstein reference.
Not the cartoon one though,
we only live in black and white you and I.

The monster and I,
we're close you could say.
We have both been electrified by your potency.
Of language
of love
of ridicule.
You define us similarly.
Arrogant,
stupid,
entitled to nothing at all.

I am the monster of your design.
Is it wonderful to see your sketch come to life?
If I am not the terror you originally interpreted
do not fret.
You put the staples in my skull and can take them out in due time.
You can retrieve my skeleton and start over.
Here are my lovely bones, do with them what you will.

Whimsy!

I am the viscous sap.
My mouth is not beautiful.
It is profane and insane and completely absurd-
I know no other technique.

In the harsh light of twinkling fluorescent bulbs
I live monstrous,
a walking contradiction.
Au contraire as you are fair,
let me run watercolor through your feline eyes.
I ramble…

I am in arms with the hippos that were boiled in their tanks
on Saturday night when your mother sat at home
drinking pinot,
and you.
sat on the hood of my car
drinking moonshine.
I identify with the hissing wires of the broken toaster oven
singing an old nineties tune.
Because I am:
stupid crazy,
imprudently fanatical,
whimsy!

I do not have the time to let my tongue
saunter around fancy syllables.
I would much rather you grab your most exquisite butcher knife
and expose the marrow.
If we were tied by words,
words only visually received,
if we were deaf:
I would take better care of you.

Maybe if you would see with your eyes
instead of hear with your little fleshy trumpets
That I am;
stupid crazy
imprudently fanatical,
Whimsy!
You would find me dashing?

Or maybe the shit would hit the fan.

i don't know

You never think about what you've done to my heart
you only think about what you've won.
You only think in the tiniest moments
and don't understand when they don't string together.

I don't know if i can love you.
and i don't know
if I'm strong enough not to.

You never think about the fingerprints that you leave on my face
you only think about getting up all the dust.
You don't think you leave any evidence
but all goes to trial in the end, don't you see.

I don't know if i can love you.
and i don't know
if I'm strong enough not to.

Do you really love to hate me as much as you say,
then my can't you call me out by my name.
I've been listening up,
I've been listening up for the longest of times.
And I think you just hate to want me.
Don't be self righteous you wont get any further than me
in this whole damn world.

I don't know if i can love you.
and i don't know
if i'm strong enough not to.

oh i don't, i don't know.
i don't know.

That song that has lines from that poem

Closed my eyes poked a pin in the map
and my headed land square in your lap.
In this pretty little how town
I've been drunk since the moment your lips touched my mouth.

I laughed your joy and I cried your grief,
in this little be where we used to fall asleep.
I observed the stubble on the ceiling tiles
and told you they're not as cracked as you an me.

All by all and deep by deep
dancing on the hood of your car I was something to see.
We watched the balloon man's muses fall
said it was sad that nobody loved him at all.

I laughed your joy and I cried your grief,
in this little be where we used to fall asleep.
I observed the stubble on the ceiling tiles
and told you they're not as cracked as you an me.

Children forget to remember
so I guess I'm as old as forever
becuase there's never any growing up with us two.
And you're,
my most beautiful adieu.

I'm still laughing your joy and crying your grief,
while your in someone else's bed falling asleep.
I observe the stubble on the ceiling tiles and say
they're not as cracked as you an me.

Lemon Zest

You were warm and golden in those years before the aught,
when all we knew of each other fit inside our lunchboxes.
You were blurry
but I may have seen you clearly once or twice when I tore myself away from paper dolls and willow branches for wings.

After my hair had been stripped of it’s gold,
I caught you in your cell with ether at your lips.
For once and for then we found each other quite stunning-
with your scars glowing pearly white.
We knew a thing called misery you and I,
You are my sister in the matter of veins.
There was never suspicion only bright lemon zest,
and despite the acidic residue on our tongues we never minded the flavor.

But I won’t forget the taste you get from licking metal off of bathroom tile.
It muddled my head when I should have been more concerned
with your stitches and staples.
Up down up down up down.
That’s the beat the needle made as I put you back together.
It mingled with the ba- boom of your heart
to make a kind of marching drum,
a death march.

I’d like to think I sewed on a few pretty buttons that night,
keeping guard over you.
Watching your magnetic fingers.

A little before this time last year I was rubber.
You craved architecture of a more gothic nature,
a building with many nooks for you to hide away the old newspaper clippings and record players.
None of my records were the melody you wanted but maybe this last verse will be sufficiently communicative.
You are poison, you are wine, you are my most beautiful adieu.
My scars are freshly healed in your honor and the glow-
brighter than ever,
a shrine to your great work on my heart.

Sister, if some day you return to the corporeal,
I’ll be sleeping on the cracked green tennis court.
Wrapped in the old pink afghan I’ll dream of songs about getting higher.
Come find me.
Pass me your pipe.
I’d love to take a swig of the air you’ve been breathing for the past several centuries.

When Push Met Mortar

I’ll tell you a tale in fragrant time of my illustrious decree,
how when push met mortar the beams beneath responded with cackling cracks.
When the anthem fell just short of tune with melancholy unforeseen,
it glimmered with emerald flecks ingrained at my feet where it convened.

I will not hold you at fault sir for I’m sure it was in best interest,
that you called upon your fellow dons to lay my love to rest.
Aye! You and those fellows cry, so brilliant in your resolve,
To tear down the gothic columns of lime that were built to meet the call.

I’ll write your bidding in permanent ink with my tattooed left hand,
but yet be warned I’ve never been one of true ambidexterity.
In stillness I’ll reiterate the lines pronouncing each holy phrase,
while worshipping the saint in my mind- the Lord of calamity.

Leviticus also said no haircuts and I guess you're skipping that one.

Stay humble to your repetition, your lines they are fragrantly brief. I won't deny my selfishness in the matter but frankly I see it as a necessity. You are always on the tip of my tongue. Salty and bitter your taste is a riddle. Ill defined is common place but ill received is a commodity. That little revelation itself is a commodity. It defies what we found so resolute does it not? In some ways the best thing to ever happen to you is your most pious regret, but Leviticus also said no haircuts and I guess you're skipping that one. Your measure is lewd and calloused, sunburnt from your treads upon the clay. You're meticulous in covering every crack, letting your foot rest on each on just long enough that the rubber from the bottom of your sneakers melts to cover the crevice. You leave a mess behind but the way you see it, you've changed it and your touch is gold so it's better than it was. But what about your touch to me? We both know it was with much more than a shoe, but I doubt you'll confess that to God. I know what you want me to. Every word you write has a projection, don't deny it. We're both guilty. Despite what you may believe you have sinned with furrowed brow and clenched eyes, in hopes that if you do it fast and dirty you will leave no one with a choice. All your recklessness does is leave you with the choice. I know you will choose yourself and so does God, so what's the point of even telling him? You don't love me but you always will and he sure as hell knows that too.

December playlist

Not One, But Two- Now, Now Every Children
Delicate- Damien Rice
Motivation- Sheryl Crow
Never Think- Rob Pattinson (i know i know. but he's a gifted musician)
Cosmos and Damien- Devendra Banhart
Imitosis- Andrew Bird
Falling Awake- Gary Jules
To Build a Home- The Cinematic Orchaestra
The Happy Birthday Song- Andrew Bird
Lover- Devendra Banhart
Save It for Later- Five Times August
Recommendation- Little Dragon
He Doesn't Know Why- Fleet Foxes
Obsolete- MuteMath