Upon Re-reading Several Old Posts, A Disclaimer

It's almost funny to read some of those old posts. Mostly weird, occasionally distressing, sometimes funny. I guess what's throwing me off about all of it is that because I try to keep people's names and certain identifiable details out of my blog (because there are millions of 50 year old sex offenders on the internet and they're all going to find me if I'm not careful...) I ended up saying a lot of things as if they were hard and fast truths or my defining opinions on things, which is weird since none of them are. Like instead of saying, "My friends Suzy only eats chocolate ice cream and it creates awkward moments at dinner," I'd say something like "Some people get stuck in strange habits and you never know how to deal with it," and those two sentences mean totally different things. So I suppose my point is, take all these posts with a grain of salt, the more-so the older they are, because all of them are actually reflecting really specific times and emotions and situations, but because I left out a lot of particulars for the sake of my and my friends's anonymity, they all seem to come off (at least now and to me) as really proselytizing.

It's Only Been A Hundred Years Since I Updated This...

So it's probably time that I post something, I suppose.

This is a super-rough rough draft of a sestina writing exercise I put myself through yesterday. No edits or revisions have been made yet, but it feels good just to be producing again, so here's something:

[untitled]

At the beginning of September

there is nothing to rake,

the leaves still fat on the trees, the moon

a new nickel, a bright hole of rust

on the automobile of night. The dirt

is dry, and brown like the skin of children

in the sun, playing as children

are wont to play, before the schoolbells of September

call, replacing the dirt

on their fingers with pencils. Older siblings rake

the yard five dollars at a time, the rust

from tool handles leaving blisters like moons

on the knuckles of thumb and forefinger. The moon

washes the town, tucks the children

into bed, dances on the rust

of garden sheds like every September--

its gaze rakes

the streets and hills, eyes clouded with dirt.

The car exhaust is the color of dirt,

like smoke rising from older sisters beneath the moon,

sharing their nicotine with the rakes

in the shed. A sister is afraid of children,

the one inside her growing with September,

expanding like a spot of rust.

The town feels the rust

in its joints, watches its paint flake into dirt:

it is spectatoring another September,

criticizing the moon-

light on its own barns, the way the children

play at recess, how they rake

the sandboxes. Another teacher is raked

over the coal, called a blight, a "rust

spot on the school." She calls the children

inside, wiping dirt

from their faces, bright as moons.

She feels the weight of September,

its rake carving the garden dirt.

Weathered as rust, the midday moon

follows the children, not yet weary with September.

The 614th Mitzvot: You must never again allow yourself to be helpless.

"Take my love, take my land,

take me where I cannot stand--

I don't care, I'm still free;

you can't take the sky from me.

Take me out to the black,

tell them I ain't coming back.

Burn the land and boil the sea,

you can't take the sky from me.

There's no place I can be

since I found serenity,

but you can't take the sky from me."

--Firefly, Joss Whedon

I am so small, but so full of the things around me and in me.

If It Looks Suspicious, It's Best To Shoot It Just In Case

I have never felt so protective of another person before, nor have I ever felt so aggressively retributive. It has put me in a somewhat volatile state. So I think it's only fair to issue a warning of sorts:

This is a post to two people who will never read it, whom I have never met. This is just to say that you made a grave error on Monday night. This is to say that you have made dangerous and armed enemies. This is to say that the crimes you committed are between you and God. And this is to say--most importantly--that if you ever cross my path, I will arrange that meeting, and I hope He is more merciful than I'll be.

Only two things are limitless: timespace and stupidity, and I can't prove that about timespace.

It fascinates me, the ways in which we think we know people. How can we find ourselves surprised by anything, when the capacity for changing one's mind is boundless? People change their minds constantly, and in spite of knowing this, all we seem to want from people is consistency. We think, "How can I know you if you keep changing? What can I mean to you if your feelings are constantly in flux?" So, is this thinking selfish? Or is it just wishful? Wander on.

PS: the following poem deals with duende, not death or suicide or whatever. So don't take it the wrong way, ya fools.

[another untitled, in progress]

I am water and tonight I speak

the language of the black tip sharks,

the movement in my ears and skin

like a lover's hands down my body.

I could drown here, stop swimming

and gulp the sea into my lungs.

I want to be carried away, I want

the endless sleep and light of death

to pour from my eyeballs and toenails

and pull me, stretch my limbs and spine

to seaweed, raw and whole, until

I am full and broken like an egg

in the hand, shaken but not cracked.

My organs are melting and my skin

glows like a satellite in the sky,

like a nettle inviting you in. I could

end all the things you know in the raising

of my finger to your lips.

Do You Believe in Magic?

Sometimes it really hits me how surreal life is; it's so much beauty and pain smushed together. It's so much meaning without any answers.

There was a boy who every morning for three weeks of ninth grade would wrap his arms around me. He didn't say much or kiss me, but every morning I would come to school and he would hold me. He is gone, and I don't know what that means. And to learn of it this weekend, after days of thinking that life was finally reimbursing me for its prior wrongs. What does it mean?

I wonder: would I rather be content and detached from the bipolar swings of the world, or at the mercy of my passions and really feeling the breadth and depth of my capacity to feel anything? As much as it hurts sometimes, I still choose the latter.

Wander on.

[untitled, in progress]

Today in the rain, there is only

your face dripping with mist,

the stream by my apartment gushing

cafe au lait, the cricket in the holly

bush glistening brown. If this is not

love--your mouth's worship of

my nape, clavicle, scapula--

what is there to say? Your fingers

explore the bay of my navel, the

cresting cliff of my hipbone, and for you

I would be a spider web dotted with dew

perfecting my every arc and angle toward

the symmetry of your folded arms.

I want you to kiss my eyelids

every morning, pressing my sight

into the heavy winter drunk

of daybreak in my window.

What would our hands say?

Them for once the true entwiners,

the conquerors of flesh plateaus--

would their nicotined nailbeds care?

The drastic bow of your lips is soft

with heat and sleep, arrows safely

quivered in your rest. The rise of your

chest is creation, a world beginning

and ending in each cyclical sigh

and I watch your patterns, feel the chaotic

swells on your ribcage sea, its salt

sliding from edge to sternum.

I want to call you "Lover,"

gauge your response in tongue flicks

on an earlobe, then shout my fears

to you like love cries in the night.

I am Jack's Cold Sweat

It's been a while since I've posted anything, maybe because everything is humming along so smoothly. Isn't that how it always is? When we're even the least bit discontent, we want the whole world to know about it, but when we're happy we don't want to waste time dissecting it, we just want to soak up every second of those moments.

I wonder what would happen if we reversed that. What if we stayed with our discontent as long and as intently as we do with happiness, really swallowed it whole and processed it and stored away how it made us feel for future reference? And what if being happy was what we broadcasted to the world? Would it be better or worse?

You rarely hear people talking about how great everything is. Maybe they would mention it to their most intimate friends, but it seems most people think, "Well gee, I don't want to sound like a gloating idiot. And I'm sure something will go wrong soon anyway."

I'm starting to doubt that such a thing makes any sense at all. If things are great, why wouldn't want people to be happy for you? Why would you bring up negative things if you don't even care about them--if overall everything is grand, why mention breaking your pencil doing homework? If it doesn't matter to you, why should it matter to anyone else? But if it does matter to you, and greatly so as happiness does, who are you to keep that to yourself?

Wander on.