afternoon hours

Sitting on the couch is okay with a view out the window, even if it’s the middle of the day and I’m already tired with it all. I like to scrunch on the couch in a certain way so I can balance my computer on one knee and on the arm of the couch, that way it’s sort of like a little table. And then I don’t know. I have lots of things I am supposed to be doing. I actually enjoy these days but if you asked me I wouldn’t be able to relate to you anything I did at all. I wait for my boyfriend to come home and then when he comes home it’s not the same, not really. We fight a lot now, and lying in bed next to him I don’t really want to touch him as much. But I love him so much and watching him sleep brings me the most pleasure out of anything I’ve done in so many years. He is so precious. But I guess all human beings are when they sleep, aren’t?
There isn’t so much light in here during the day, though I guess I can control it by how I fix the blinds. It’s hot outside and everything feels flat in the middle of the day. I can’t believe I’m alive in a heat like this, it doesn’t seem like it’d allow something to coexists along side of it. And that is why I am hiding inside, with my legs scrunched up and a t-shirt with my dress and heels in the middle of his room. He is going to tell me to clean that later, so I better do it now.
I don’t really know what I am doing today. I like to write, but I am tired of that for now. I ran today and then I taught and I guess I could do some stuff but I don’t really feel like it. I guess if I had a choice of doing the one thing I really feel like doing, that would be…I don’t know, winning an award of some sort. Someone telling me I am great. Having a friend call or something. But even then I know I won’t answer it. Isn’t it said when you’re unhappy or just bored and you can’t even think of what you’d like to be doing instead? Actually I’d like to be sleeping but I am not tired, not right now.
If I were at my apartment what would I be doing? I would be sleeping. But here it is much more quiet, and there are no trees, not that I can really see out the window. I can’t sleep here. The things around me start to wake up when I sleep. At least at my apartment they have the respect to stay somewhat silent.
I called him a few times but he’s not answering, which is normal for him. I just worry all day that he forgot something. If he forgot something he will be in a very bad mood, and that will make me feel even worse. I wish for once he could just have a great day. You know it’s kinda funny, I think I think that I could give it to him, but I can’t, or haven’t really been able to recently. People think they have all this power over the way other people live and feel but really we have only a little; the rest is up to them, or God. Well that sucks. He’s going to be angry I know. I want to eat but I think I told him I’d cook dinner. I always say that early in the day, thinking I will have fun with it, but deep down I know I don’t really like to cook. It feels like work; and it is work! People get paid to do it.
I wish I had more to do with myself; and then, I don’t. I don’t have many friends anymore because I don’t like a lot of people around here; also because I am so miserable or moody that I don’t really wanna subject them to that. It wouldn’t be fair to invite someone out while you’re not really capable of having a good time anyway.
I guess I could write another story. Lately all of my stories seem to be able to reach a certain point and then not go further; there is always some piece that seems to be missing, and no matter how long or hard I search I always get this close but then I realize I’m not close at all, no. The more I guess at it actually the farther I am from it. Then the solution to finding it is to not write at all. So that is what I am caught between right now.
But things are good; things are looking up. I look forward to food, and I look forward to exercise, sort of, and getting dressed in the morning, and showering after a good workout. I look forward to being outside sometimes, seeing a flower when I didn’t expect one; I look forward to the occasional distraction of reality TV or a tabloid magazine. I look forward to eating something delicious I’ve never tried before; and I look forward to what will come, how different than today it will be. I also look forward to a life that is not really mine but that seems truer to me than any other life is; this is the life that lives inside of me unlived. I look forward to that, though I’m not sure why. Mostly I just enjoy walking outside and seeing things, lifting myself from my brain and letting myself just live in the colors and the shapes of things, because when you do that it’s hard to really be mad at anything. If everything were just what it was, which is a collection of colors and a collection of shapes, there wouldn’t be any point in feeling much but gratitude. And that is how I want to feel.

poem by rilke

Entrance

Whoever you are: in the evening step out
of your room, where you know everything;
yours is the last house before the far off:
whoever you are.
With your eyes, which in their weariness
barely free themselves from the worn-out threshold,
you lift very slowly one black tree
and place it against the sky: slender, alone.
And you have made the world. And it is huge
and like a word which grows ripe in silence.
And as your will seizes on its meaning,
tenderly your eyes let it go...

endless

it is time to know
time to time to time to time to
the time has come to
be beneath everything
sit beneath it all
and wait and wait and wait the time has
come
to wait and sit beneath
it all
and to know
it all and sit and wait and be
beneath
time
beneath
waiting
time is to know
the time is time to wait beneath
waiting
time is to come and sit
to sit and to wait and to be
come sit
time

Awesomeness

This is a poem by my good friend John Gentile, a writer of all shapes, sizes, and colors. Here is his awesome blog on which he interviews Kanye West among other musicians: www.MusicInInk.com


Man, what is going down at the Mickey D's?
I'll go there about once a week
they have a delicious grilled chicken salad
five bucks and a quarter
and it is hella tasty
another buck for a sweet tea (not bad)
and when I go
I go on random days
not like always on monday or thursday or something
but every time i go
sitting in the back
there is morbidly obese woman
so obese that she can hardly walk with a cane
she's early 50s with rings around her stomach like tires
thats not weird
here's what is:
she has two kids who are either indian or pakistani
but she's clearly white
and they are like six and eight
and sometimes she's really nasty to them
and sometimes she's very nurturing
and there's always a persian man in an accountant-style suit sitting across from her
and he's clearly not their dad
you can tell by how he addresses the kids
Every time I see the pillow woman and the persian man,
they are exchanging information in their spiral-bound notebooks
And always asking about when so-and-so is going to meet them at the Mickey D's
but I never see so-and-so, but they keep talking about him (them)
Are they running an illegal business?
Marriage on demand?
Immigration fraud?
Child sex slaves!?
or maybe they just run a part time accounting firm...?
Or maybe a closet-arranging business for fun...?
But that's not the feeling that I get.
Man, what the hell is going down at the Mickey D's?

What is black in the heart
is ice in the mind
and covers the front of the mind
like a hand over the heart.
What is true in the stomach
is crooked in the eye
and loosens a string from the eye
into the great bilge of the stomach.
What is gray in art
is dead in the day
like a fixture rooted to day
during a grand stampede of art.
What is broken in the light
is trusted in silence
and ruins the answers of silence
like a gun fired into light.

little angry poem

I'm tired of carrying around heavy shit
all the time.

I'm so tired of my arms hurting and
knowing that I am doing this to myself.

I'm tired of packing all my shit and bringing it
in various bags to my boyfriend's;
everything I've ever owned in grocery
bags and cotton bags whose straps frequently
break, my laptop and clothes and shoes
my healthy food my workout
shorts and sneakers and
all of my notebooks, everything
I've ever read and liked and thought I might
think about later.
Dump you in my car.

And my arms are rings of red and purple,
these pain bracelets I wear.

I'm tired of promising myself
that the more I bear the more I will
keep.

And I'm so sick and fucking tired
of having to prove my worth by
barreling through this massive world,
because the only way to make
progress is by breaking what
I myself have built.

I want to lay back and
be caught by the sun.

I'm so sick of trying
to be good.

So sick of trying to be
all that there is.

And I'm even more bitter about
knowing my limits and reaching them
and then saying
I want more
I want to keep going until
all of it recedes
and I can no longer keep track
of the distance between us.
I am so bitter about
always being this close to the button
that gives up the world
and collides me with its pain
as if I alone were capable of
understanding.

Lines on a Tuesday

Some people like to
create an inner struggle

says my dad
you children did that

in order to be able to
handle the world.

B is trying to
quit smoking

smoking creates
something bad

in order to
take it away.

I remember sitting alone
on a bus

rising with the jagged
bumps of the road

wishing for something to
go wrong

just to feel how far
from normal

I could be.
I remember leaning

over guardrails
sticking my head out

windows
feeling delivered

into wind, frightened
of falling, loving

the idea
of falling, of failing,

thrilled with
the love that held me

and that it could be
taken away.

"you're still not a special snowflake"


This morning I went for a
run

tried to stay in the
shade

the heat exhausted me
quickly

felt like quitting the entire
time.

Afterwards, the pool was
cold

I leaned back, to cool my
head.

Inside Casey lay on the
couch

face swollen, etched with dried
blood.

I showered and Brian and I got
food

fries and sandwiches and
Mountain Dews

then came home, out of the
sun.

On TV Casey watches a violent
movie

on his laptop Brian plays obscure
music

I go upstairs to check out my
hair.

All day we mingle mindlessly in the
house

and Casey sleeps and Brian
smokes

and I watch promises break into
poems.

3 poems

So much

I watch the plate of chicken legs
being brought inside and think
of all the fat i will have to rip off
to get through to any meat.
while i eat my fingers burn
and i barely get anything.
i am annoyed i tell my boyfriend.
i am still
hungry. so afterwards everyone
goes outside to smoke and i
stay inside and watch
the plate with everyone's discarded
bones on it and wonder
why they left so much meat
on there.



too wide

i painted my boyfriends face but it was not
perfect. it was too wide.
i painted both my feet, too.
i painted abstractly
i watch the face on the floor
and it does fill me
with some pleasure
despite the fact that it's
too wide.



it's nice to have your own room.
it's nice to not be able to hear
it's nice to be alone all the time
except for when you are not
alone. it's nice also to get to turn
on the TV and cook food when
you want to and workout and shower
and listen to voices tell you
different things and then
sitting with them all and giving
them equal weight. it's nice
to not have to hear.

war on style

Uh hello says the wake up
crew i don't know anyone
who doesn't know how to wake up
anymore the blinds they stay
behind the sides of my eyes
shelving rituals i know how to
shop in a cart in an ocean that
greets me i sweep music like a
piece of fabric touching
glass it rises into the heat of
lemon day i have nothing
more to understand the hatred
it unravels me and stands
too close for me to give it
anything of myself.


war on style

hello it begins
each day with the blandness
the blandness opens up like a star
and i don't care if anyone doesn't know me
i don't care if i never make it faster than
you, i don't want to open up the war just to see
faces shelved in repeat
i have known where they come from
growing like grass i sit outside
listening to the humming of death
come to wing and sit next to me
it understands how to try
color and shape so you understand it
like the day
rips its shield off and you walk through it and you
don't know anything about the other side
anymore but you can imagine that the walking
leans out into a green field and that the words
and voices tell me to stop
she wilts
away to

hello

Starting Over

what returns to me
is a map. i follow backwards
its pathetic little lines
that draw faces reaching out to me
faces i cannot place
oh it used to be simple
there were no lines to follow
there was infinite space
ever reaching
and i had movement inside of it
down, like i had illness down
but now you have to choose:
and with choice comes
death. yes, the ultimate
choice is to die. now
wait a minute before you
mistake this for a death poem;
it is not.
what hurt little happenings
tender their offerings to me
on minor streets
have garnered only a few more games
from my existence.
games are only here to
harness my willpower
and so they do.
the life that blankets stolen
moments that offer you
a glimpse of how and when and why
the music carries you, it carries
pictures and faces of yourself
jumbled up with those of friends
or those you used to be able to call
and now the living has gotten
the better of you. you put
both feet in and drive
these days, like anyone.


*


hatred permeates
my skin dripping
in a boil beneath
loved bones.
i cannot help the
pain i feel, yeah right:
just like i don't control
what music enters
my ears. some days
i do: some days i live to touch
rubbery sounds and force
starving syllables into
existence the way you
train a cow to produce milk.
i train myself to produce,
every day something new
like this piece of everlasting
coiling infinity, mute enough
with its advantages
no one can see, but me.


*


loverly beginnings imagine penetrate
and well that is no way to begin a poem:
you have to begin by name calling
and pegging with balls and all types
of other hurt that can be translated
under infinity's gentle guidance, to dance.