Thursday, November 26, 2020

The ginkgo tree beside my bedroom window
is one of the last ones hanging on on the block. 
In summer it fills the room with green reflected light. 
Like an extension of the forest. 
Got a green duvet and green sheets 
to really pull up that blanket of leaves.

It’s a vibrant yellow now, 
bordering on a sort of bile color.
But when everything else is a wash of browns,
I’ll take any pop

I love the sound of rain pattering on it
But the absolute best sound 
is the crunching under car tires 
as people slowly maneuver out of tight city parking.

Every day is a new day for tiny observation.
For grounding by counting and breathing.
But when asked to be conscious of the practice 
I find myself annoyed at the hokey suggestion. 
Are my jade colored glasses
Preventing betterment? 

All of the work I don’t make 
and all the writing I don’t transcribe
Feels to me like a shiny wet rock, 
brought home from the river.
And discarded once dry,
no longer apparent that it’s beautiful.

Monday, October 3, 2016

Hydration only comes
in the form of the nervous water
that is coffee.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Plunge the clear plastic dish tray into the soapy water
and the whole thing becomes a glass bottom boat.
Cup, saucer and spoon reef down below.

Press the button and wait for the smoke.
A tiny tendril like a chimney in the distance.

Lately I've been feeling a lot like a lost piece of clothing,
stuck between the bed and the wall
Collecting dust.

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

My stomach is that well.
A sunken pit as deep as the Mariana Trench.
Maybe deeper? Who the hell knows.

I keep pitching my responsibilities down it.

They haven't hit the water at the bottom yet.
But when they do, oh what a splash it will be.

Saturday, September 19, 2015

Each time I fall down the well,
I have trouble comparing,
to previous falls. 
I feel as if I am the saddest 
I've even been
It's not that I don't have 
that frame of reference,
its that I don't have it anymore. 

My nest is next to nothing now. 
My nest has caused sore hands
But yielded nothing. 
My nest has no more twigs. 

My friends have no more time,
while having a time.
And I just have no more time for my friends.

Thursday, August 20, 2015

Every space without people is a still life.
Every corner is sharp.
Even the ones that don't seem so.

What do you do when you don't know what to do?
When it gets harder and harder to just "do"?

No nest. No twigs.

Sunday, May 10, 2015

Desire to be valued should never be shamed.

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Can't always figure out what matters
and I can't figure out if that matters?
And for that matter not always sure
the difference between:
being a bad person and
being bad at being a person??

 Feelin' shitty about feelings of ill will
associated with my jealousy.
Dreamt that I ground down my teeth.
With my saliva,
the teeth dust mixed to form a paste.
Like mortar in between bricks,
 gluing my jaw shut.

 Thoughts about documentation
 and rejection of documentation
 of my own form?
Am I my own house guest?

 The other night on my way to the bar,
I stared into the brightness as a
police helicopter caught me in it's spotlight.
 Maybe it helps to remember that light bends
when it touches you,
how could you ever feel insignificant?

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

And is it wrong to feel demeaned by the requests?
Simply, and not even taken out of context, no.
Yet I feel like I've been knocked down???
Gripping on to the last rung before the bottom.
Staring at the soles of a pair of dirty shoes above me.

(And then so many other actions,
demeaning in their context,
I am able to rationalize as desire??)


I've been sick.
I wake up sweating at intervals in the night.
Feverish images slide slick in my brain.

It's troubling how much my own
trains of thought can churn my stomach.
But that kind of sick has nothing to do with a fever.


Have I bit off more than I can chew by simply living?
If it feels like a hassle sometimes to just breathe?

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

I want to think I can hold on to small prides.
But even then, these I feel as if I have recanted.

That nagging pebble in my shoe type of feeling,

That I've seen worse,
but that sure don't mean
this is any good.

Thoughts of a pale "others".
Then thoughts of alterity.
And then: vessels, nests, twig by twig.

Just twig by fucking stupid worthless twig.

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

I stayed up too late with my brain.
Let it get the best of me.

Think about the way the
hot water heater in the next room
clicked and hummed,
mixed with the sound of
Brooklyn traffic from the window
and Ringo in the backyard, barking.

I used to lay there in the morning,
when the house was quiet,
and think that it sounded like
a video game soundtrack.

Now I listen to the sound of wind,
rushing through the speaker of my phone,
as you bike home from work.
"Hey, listen" you say over the traffic hum,
"I'm turning on Myrtle now, I gotta go."

But I hang up first, because I already left.

I'm digging a hole with my sadness.
Not ready to climb in yet.

Friday, November 7, 2014

A bright orange billboard-
electronic, an unaffected beacon.
All of the sky and the flat shit land
between Newark and Jersey City is a
perpetually varying shade
of grey blue to grey

No contacts in all day,
I stare out the window of the bus,
listen to an album I can easily ignore.

Everything is made of twinkling 
overlapping circles of light on top of no light.

When I finally put them in the clarity of the
world is near shocking.
I stream a new album through my iPhone and
understand those panning travel shots in the
transitions of indie movies.

And somewhere in Jersey,
I watch massive white clouds from a smoke stack
sit heavy in the air, like cartoon steam from a children's train.

Homesick and almost home.
Homesick and far from "home". 
Home sick and in between a house
and the stupid useless concept of
"home" in quotation marks.

My body, down to my bones, feels pitted.
I don't understand how I can feel
like shit without allowing myself to?

Regret, like a single drop of dye in a two gallon bath.
I am making something else?
There is no better time than now to make something else? 
Or at least try?


But it doesn't mean that my other doesn't feel
as if it pales in comparison to other's other.

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Listening to a mechanical voice say
the word archetype three times over
like an archetype itself.

From the cool interior of a yellow cab,
I see, on the top of a tall stone church,
a banner that reads 
God is Love on one side 
and Jesus Saves on the other.
Big black, san serif text on white Tyvek.I am drunk and I wonder how it must feelto believe in something more?

Looking down into my bathroom sink,
I watch three long blue hairs on the off
white plastic, circling the drain.

Watching people walk on the bridge
to the Air Train from a lower platform, 
like shadowed paper cut outs on a mirror.
Through the layers of crossbeams
that hold the platforms up,the sun slices my vision.

You are what made me realize I am more.
I thank you for that, but I have greed.
How hard that is to reconcile.
I am often so tired of being alive.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

A stranger on the street today told 
me "the enemy of great is better".

I'm not sure what I'm doing, 
but it doesn't feel great?
I'm wondering when the enemy comes. 

Monday, July 14, 2014

I remember standing in front of a great big
brown box air conditioner in the living room.
Letting the chilled slightly musty, damp,
air under the oversized shirt I was wearing,
so it would balloon up around me.

And looking at the sky blue, pentagon
shape of the neighbors garage wall.
Once filled with a plant like ivy now only gave
way to its brittle grey-brown, dry, dead stems.
Their little roots stuck firmly to the wall in an
attempt to leech out any water that it had.
Looking like the strange little suckers of a sea creature.
Or water skimmers on the surface of a lake, a cloudless
bright sky reflected in still water.

Saturday, July 12, 2014

Sometimes it feels like the
surface of my skin is buzzing.
Restless leg syndrome, in every cell.
A reminder of the discomfort of being alive.

I have both found and lost my footing.
Bits of gray shale crumbling underfoot.
Skittering down the face of a cliff.

Strange to step daily on pavement that
I do not feel an ownership of.
Or do not feel owned by?
Do not have a long haul relationship with.
And don't know if I want to start
building that nest.

Everything is twig by twig but
I'm having a hard time
finding small enough branches.

But maybe we are all looking at that same full moon
and that is something to ruminate on.

Monday, April 7, 2014

New York can truly be so lonely.
I wonder, with knowledge of the answer,
if other places hold the same capacity for lonely.

There is maybe never anything better than words.
Except of course when they escape you.
But to describe, to visualize, to contextualize.

Some things seem to come standard.
Just a thing you know to do.
But reassuring myself is impossible.
Like trying to explain to someone how to swallow.

When you are the C to my c, you feel more like an O. 
You are so tall that even with your fingers hooked,
you can still hold me down at the tippy top.

In the quiet of your kitchen, I get to hear the way
your voice catches on familiar syllables made
unfamiliar through the filter of you.
Every morning, I blind myself by looking out the curtain
while you stay in the dark.

When curled your cloudy bed, the sound of traffic filters
through a cracked window and the lights arch up on the ceiling.
I get to giggle and press my face into a downy comforter.
You are so beautiful, delicate in a way that is strong.

I hear you, tinny, through the speakers.
I listen to you clear your throat.
I listen to your hoarse laugh.
I think about the last time I heard your laugh-
not through this, and how it's not all that different,
and not about the next time that I might.

I am drawn. And quartered. 

I don't want to think about when
I hear your words before your mouth moves.
I don't want to think about spilled dirt on a green rug.
A pot of succulents accidentally kicked over by clumsy feet.
I don't want to think about the yellow light hitting smoke
curling out of your nose, the night you give me that news.
Or sitting shoulder to shoulder, sniffling, but otherwise silent.
The sound of the wind off the ocean, smoking cigarettes and
feeling the empty space where he once was.
Like reaching around for a light switch on the wrong wall in the dark.

For it is not the place. A location is not that vessel-
I am filled with lonely, like a haunting.
I am that vessel.

Sunday, April 6, 2014

Today my skin smelled like chlorine,
even though I haven't been in a pool since October.

Last night I went to bed early.
I didn't call you like I said I would.

I had a dream where I tumbled down a dirt ravine,
things spilling out of my pockets along the way.
And in this same dream, I stood inside the gold vault
at the Federal Reserve and calmly watched as the 90
ton steel cylinder, that is set into a 140 ton steel and
concrete frame, shifted closed.
Watched the sliver of light, as the cylinder spun,
get smaller and smaller, until nothing.

And in this same dream, I sat in the pinkish bathtub
of my grandmother's Pennsylvania house's bathroom.
Fully clothed as an adult, but the size of a child.
The child I was the last time I sat inside of that bathtub.
I could hear sounds all around the house, but it was as
if my head had been plunged under the bathwater.
Muffled, with echoes.

This morning I went to the doctor, the same doctor as always.
He is getting old. He told me "Everything looks shipshape!".
I think I feel okay. I don't know about shipshape,
but okay seems like a reasonable assessment.

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Replace the quickness of the action of taking a photo with the awkward feeling of shame. For, what will I do with this photograph anyway?

Here, some photos I could have taken:

At night in a part of Brooklyn that felt so empty, blocks from my subway stop, I stopped at the entrance of a rock climbing place. There was only one light on, in the other room. A bright light coming in from a standard sized doorway, not nearly enough light to illuminate the high ceilinged main room. And in front of the door, a mop bucket, its elongated shadow pointing away. The light let each grip on the rock wall cast its own levels of darkness. The wall contours in sharp relief, I stood staring at the climbing wall like it was some kind of hulking monolith until someone walking on the other side of the street coughed and prompted me to move along.

Through the fogged storefront window of a bakery, with a faded white and red sign, I watched the fuzzy backlight silhouettes of people, as they melded into one another.

On a gray day while the sun's about to go down, through a dirty bus window, right after the flash of a passing yellow school bus, I caught sight of the green wood of a new telephone pole. Adorned with "forget me not" blue, fake, floral garland and photographs of the dead.

Outside of Wing Wan Kosher Chinese Restaurant, along the back, a wooden slatted fence divides the parking lot from some suburban backyard. With occasional wooden slats missing, and lightly faded, someone has painted two segments from one of those scalloped American flag banners, not quite centered along the line of the fence.

Through someone's tinted passenger seat window, decorative colored feathers hang, like a child's art project, from the rear view mirror. It is winter and the heat from the vents lightly blow them upwards.

Down the block from my house, in a strip of stores that never quite make it, but have yet to all go out of business, there's a tiny Asian tailor shop. During the day, sometimes, when I pass by, I see the husband and wife who own the tiny shop sitting in the only two chairs, eating soup out of blue bowls and watching soap operas on TV. But at night, the shop is closed and they leave the one light on the left on. It acts as a spotlight for a display of strange knick knack objects and weird toys, on the one table in the tiny shop. The kind of "still life" that reads more like an altarpiece, a shrine to the junk gods. And the way its lit from above always leaves me with some sort of feeling of religious reverence.

Thursday, March 6, 2014

Every domestic moment from every window that's got the light on,
in the space of time that sits heavy before dusk.
During what is hopefully the last dregs of winter.
Everything is bleak and blue.

And I can peek in to that indoor yellow glow.
I can glimpse at a moment of them
and the objects they choose to display.

And at the same bored man through the clean plate glass
of an auto shop window, as he scratches an itch on his neck
and watches a tiny television on a desk
with a million stacked things on wall shelving behind him.

That same yellow glow tugs at me like something is actually inspiring.
Every shape the world makes is a little bittersweet-
and there is a reason why bittersweet holds it's suffix.

Sunday, March 2, 2014

Looking on Google street view,
down the driveway of a house
an old friend of mine used to live in,
at the giant tree in her backyard.

Remembering climbing up
as high as I could
into its leaves.

Monday, February 17, 2014

The J train rounds a turn
and it sings on the rails
like the sound of wet fingertips
on a wine glass rim.

Friday, January 31, 2014

I feel tired of chameleons, crap, and forced
social interactions that leave me feeling empty.
Watch for the funneled pinpoint of an eyeball,
once spotted the illusion is gone.

So, I find company in strangers, for I don't know
as much about them, so I am still fooled.
Treat them as friends and maybe they are.

I am bored of men, of children, of wine.
But not of art and accidents and material goods. 
I fill the void with everything but what I wish
I was strong enough to fill it with.

Feeling small. Feeling a surge of platonic emotion.
Counting the rhythm of the shuffle of my heels on concrete.

Tomorrow, I revisit the idea of bored and alone.
At least until 10 PM.  

Saturday, January 4, 2014

I would like to crawl into a hole and die.

But it is winter, we just had our first big snowfall,
and it is very likely that the ground is too frozen to dig.

Happy New Year.

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Memories of deep yellow, a mustard shade of light.
Some worn, bowed in the middle from repeated walking, steps.
Banister smooth from years of conditioning,
with oil from the hands of strangers.
I grip it when drunk and I feel those stranger's hands holding mine.

The entrance is a mass of hexagonal black and white floor tiling.
The patterns swim in the corners of my eyes.
That night I stood in a garden. I don't remember what I said.
That apartment was one floor with many different levels of landings.
Making it more than one floor.
But, mostly just confusing.

I sat on a couch, between two people that I didn't know.
My skirt tucked neatly underneath me.

And later, we spilled out onto the pavement.
Through a fountain in a center island?
Stumbled back home.

I could pick out nights like these anywhere.
I have no memory for your birthday, for doctors appointments,
for how long it has been since I've cut my too long hair.
I have no memory for bills to pay, for the kettle boiling away on the stove,
for taking pills at this time and then again at that time- I have no memory.

But, you ask me to recreate for you the pattern of the Oriental rug that
that couch sat on and I can close my eyes with a pencil in hand and recreate.

Why is it always the most inconsequential of details that catch me up?
Like a web of mediocre compositions in my brain.

I am hyper bored of digital image collages.
But, at the same time see their relevance and immediacy
as an art form in an ever changing art platform.
And, occasionally, in the uglier ones, see a beauty that I feel a deeper connection to than the connection I feel with other "ugly art".

And I'm always trying to sort out my feelings about ugly art.
In the same way that I'm always trying to sort out my positive feelings for a scene that is a little off.
For a boy who is by all accounts handsome, but has a bird's beak for a nose.

And for all accounts I have felt lately like a bird.
Like the one I saw in the arduously long corridor in the airport in Germany.
Flying this way and that, towards the light of big wide windows only to find out that they are just that.
And then back to my perch on the arrivals board.
Staring with my beady little eyes at all of the people, purposefully walking in their directions to their flights or luggage and then taxi/car and then home
and wondering when I can do the same.
When can I go home.
Why do all of these people have their shit together and I am just a bird with beady little eyes watching and trying to escape but the only route I can see out is a giant fucking pane of reinforced glass.
I am blinded.
When will my bird brain put the pieces together?
When will I find the door?

Where have I been building my nest? Twig by twig?


Well. This certainly got away from me, didn't it.

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

I will always cast my net.
Sow my secrets like seeds.

Pick and pick and pick. But with
nothing else left- picking becomes
digging.

I wonder what it might
be that I am digging for?


Secrets are only kept secret up
until the point that they are told.

Monday, December 2, 2013

I am mostly sad. And when I am not,
it is a worse, unpin-able emotion.

I look up a lot as if something on the ceiling
has an answer for me. If I just listen close
enough, the buzzing of the fluorescent lights
will become clear and tell me how to fight it all.

I have this bone deep exhaustion from how my life is going.
And a marrow deep exhaustion from how I seem to
be doing nothing to change its course.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

I remembered that.

I remembered those coral shorts, made soft
and pale from repeated washings.
With your knees up where you sat on the
ground, chin resting on those twin peaks.

I remembered that. For a minute, I closed my
eyes and saw and remembered that.
I barely remembered who you are because I don't need to.
I barely remember plenty of yous because I don't need to.

I can make up the spaces in between, fingering the
creased corner of a yellowed poster on a wall while
I watch you smoke on a fire escape.
The city breathes so loud behind you.

And maybe if I close my eyes again I might remember
three panels of deep red stained glass, gleaming with
summer sun. Or your face and your arm stretched out
towards a painting in a gallery.

Maybe I don't remember enough,
but that's your opinion.

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Purple bottomed clouds in the straightest
of lines that nature can make.
The Chrysler Building shines in the sun,
flanked by the largest cemetery I've seen,
ever.

All of my life I marveled over the fact that
New York allowed that space to be taken up
by people can't even breathe and,
more importantly, can't pay rent.

Today I am thinking about the sound of my downstairs
neighbor's door slamming, amplified by the enclosed
space that was my apartment's stairwell.

Always wondering how I can alternate between
desperately wanting to inhabit spaces previously
occupied. Spaces I used to call my nest.
Twig, by twig. Always twig by twig.
And then desperately wanting to occupy no space at all.
 
Always wondering how I can desire the responsibilities
of being alone but when confronted with them, I shy away.

It's so trite and tired, this overwhelming sadness.
This empty hole that a sense of community had filled.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

The scratchy fabric. Where it folds up, behind
your knees, like a study in practiced wrinkles.

There's only so much time you can spend with
yourself before that feeling of ill-ease sets in.
You stare at the people wearing seasonally
inappropriate clothing as they pass.
Pretend you aren't looking when they look back.
Half of the time I think people are in costume.
But isn't it all? Everything a costume of sorts?

I miss the feeling of clenched up fabric.
At night I bunch the sheets up in my fist as hard
as I can wishing that I could trade the pressure on
my jaw, my back teeth, my molars, for the half
moon shapes my nails dig into my palms.
But instead I get both.

I have known death for a long time.
But each time it drops by feels different.

I am again back to the question:
Where am I building my nest?
Twig by twig.

Thursday, October 3, 2013

On my lunch break, I sit on a lawn chair in
the parking lot and look at the sky.
Some days I read a little.

I have been reading the same book for over
a month. I can't get my mind to shut off.
It has more than one track, there are trains 
coming in all of the time. 
Many with similar arrival times.
Gotta make those transfers.
My brain is Jamaica station, for thoughts.

I position the chair so that I can comfortably
tilt my head up and my field of vision is entirely
blue sky (or sometimes gray) and a bit of tree top.
I am watching its leaves turn, it is slow but noticeable.

I would like to say I am more miserable now
than I have ever been. 
But, that is probably not true. I remember
freshman year of college (vaguely)
and middle school (even more vaguely).

Hollow, hollow, hallow.  
And scared, mostly fucking scared. 

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Today I left work late.

Fall sun is different than summer sun,
and spring sun. And certainly winter sun.

When I turned the corner, the music playing
on the car stereo swelled as the massive orange
orb that is fall sun filled my line of vision.

In the cut-off capsule that is a solo driver in a
car, with the windows up, and the music on,
it seemed movie score perfect.
Like I was the only one experiencing this
great golden coin in the sky.
The only one for which the perfect compilation
of sound dictated a moment.
The protagonist.

There was no one on the road in front of me so
I let myself stare distractedly into its glow.
And passing out of my windshield, still no one
in front of me, I watched in the rearview mirror.
The court house, both basking in and reflecting
its impossibly beautiful, colored, light.

Drove home thinking about macrocosm, then
microcosm, and slow dancing in the cosmos.

Saturday, September 14, 2013

"I hate you, Manhattan." I think, uncharitably,
as the train slides by a giant bank and a block
of apartments.
One window, skinny rectangular and high up
in the wall stands illuminated. A view of a rack
of black shoes in a white, bright as all bright
white room. And then for the next ten minutes,
it rocks me to sleep.
When I think of New York and all of it's sprawling
streets and all of its business and events and people,
both interesting and not, I get this crazy swelling joy
in my stomach. My chest cavity feels like it's
expanding with some kind of giant pride and love.

There is no other city in the world like New York.
You can feel so alone, but when you dip out from
under the scaffolding, step into the bus lane, and
meet someone's eyes who is doing just the same.
The sense of camaraderie when, late at night, on the
L train platform waiting for what seems like forever.

There is nothing like New York but I've been here
forever and I'm ready to get the fuck out,

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

I feel like the rust and squeal of an old
bike tire, left outside to be rained on,
peeking its spokes out of tall tall weeds.

I am sometimes sick of drinking, looking,
and also being me.
I let my nails grow long. I let my hair grow long.
I think it's time to cut them both.

I feel sad to say it every single time I do, but I
am hating New York today. I am hating New
York today, I hated New York last week and
I will probably hate it tomorrow.

It always feels like time to leave, but how does
one fly the coop scot-free?
And really the more I think, it never feels like time.

Working always leaves me no time to consider future mes.

Sunday, September 1, 2013

Have you ever been so deep into a dream that you think it's real?
There's always one thing that tips you off, the elongation of legs, a hat, and you're out of it. 
Awake to the little sound of thunder rumbling in the distance, waiting to slip back in but not able to, left with a funny sadness, a funny nervouseness in your stomach. Unsure of what happened.

I've never seen a dead body in real life. Except, I suppose, those made-up heavily, lying still in their caskets.
I think what I'm trying to say is I haven't seen too much yet. 
There is still, maybe, so much time left for me.

Friday, August 23, 2013

Feeling sad and weird about memories of recent things,
and art making, and recent memories of art making, and
how I feel about art, and conversations, and the distance
between me and those who I have conversations about
recent things and art and art making.

I only write now, when drunk.
Or when I can't sleep.

Lying awake for hours in the dark with my mind buzzing,
singing like the constant throb of cricket sounds in the summer.
Or the dregs of cicadas, their population dwindling but their
horrible shedding of skin still present. Their empty shells
litter the side walk in front of my house, under an old oak tree.
I see them caught up in the ditch that the windshield wipers live in,
in my three month borrowed car, when I park in the shade.
But, I digress.

Lying awake in bed, with the knowledge that work comes soon
and thinking of a man's voice, coming through the radio speakers.
Garbled and staticy with that AM radio fuzz charm. Stuck in traffic.
"That blue dot, by the way, is earth" he says, before Frank spins the
radio dial to the next fuzzy station, and then the next.
The noises from the speakers sound like the roar of an ascending, space
bound, craft. Headed toward where the world really is just a little blue dot.

Sunday, July 14, 2013

In my haste to shower,I missed the morning light that fanned out from the blinds and on to the ceiling. I missed the way that each reflected bar subtly curved over the glossy surface of the glass plate up there. By the time I was clean, the light had shifted and changed. Each bar a weak pale white, barely even visible to the naked eye. I sat on the corner of my bed, skin still damp and squinted upwards, trying to make them out.

And the night before, lights from the changing traffic lights fill the raindrops on the windshield with color. From the center seat in the back of a car, I catch them out of the corner of my eye and it's like my own private fire works show.

Saturday, July 6, 2013

Looking at high quality photos of the earth's geological
features from space and thinking about how insignificant
my experiences are. And in turn, myself.
And all of a sudden that sadness streams in like someone
removed the sandbags and the flood water is just rising
and rising.
It's that deep, crazy, hole of a feeling, centered around my stomach.
It makes me feel sad and sick and like I'll never be full, I'll never be
whole again. And like someone is clenching my throat. They started
out with a light encircling of my neck but slowly and incrementally
they are tightening their grip.
And it hurts to swallow until I just can't swallow. And that exacerbates
the hole in my stomach; that panic carves it out deeper and deeper, like
water eroding rock in the Grand Canyon.

And then I'm left to remind myself of just how lazy I am. Of just how
fucking stupid I am that I feel so sad. How my life isn't bad. Not at all.

How weak it is to feel sad.
This sadness that I'm not even deserving of feeling.

Which makes me feel sicker and sicker.
Sick that I can't fill the hole.
That I can't dig myself the fuck out.

It's incredible that someone can feel this way,
feel this way about their themselves.
Almost as incredible as the aerial view of the gradient created
by the meeting of sandy river delta and the river itself.

Monday, July 1, 2013

There's a tall tree in the backyard.
In the summer its branches are full with lush of rows
of fat tapered leaves. When it rains, sometimes I lay in
bed with the blinds pulled up and watch the branches
sway back and forth.
Little beads of water on the tip of each leaf.
When it pours, like today, I can imagine that I'm some place
tropical, like I'm laying on the rainforest floor. I can imagine
I hear the swish of the wet leaves in the wind, and the steady
pitter patter of rain hitting each sodden green teardrop.

Saturday, June 29, 2013

It's always a strange thing to think of,
to come across: the things you hold on to,
the things that get left behind.

A week or so ago you told me to think about it.
Sleep on it.

I eat a can of olives almost every day;
their saltiness is rivaled by no other food.

I root around in a box in the closet,
bits of glass clinking against one another.

I stare at the man in the seat in front of me as
the train rocks back in forth on its track.
He combs sparse stringy hair, compulsively,
with gnarled hands over his bald patch.
His skin, like an orange, each pore with on display.
I feel like I've zoomed in, each circular, shallow dip,
where a follicle may have been.
His skin shines with oil.

The last few nights or the last few months,
have been shoe string nights for me.
I'm not sure that's really an expression but I feel it.

There is so much turmoil in the world that it seems
almost silly, slight, and stupid that I put so much
weight into my own, tiny in comparison, problems.
It seems silly that I should have feelings for my own
experiences that are stronger than my empathy for
other's experiences.
But, at the same time, it feels silly that I should not
allow myself to feel for myself.
I am but human, yet.

Today : a conversation with Carlo about life.
The root of it, my point, was the idea that there are
two schools of thought when it comes to priorities:
Objects -or- Experience
I'm not sure we'll ever agree but it sometimes feels
good to hash things out. And at the same time it
sometimes feels bad. I think, this is the first time that
we've had discourse in which we left one another
feeling strangely unsettled.

I will leave you with the mental image of a messy
stack of crisp twenty dollar bills in a glove compartment,
slid between the smooth printed pages of a passport.

Sunday, June 9, 2013

It is my fear that keeps me down.
In a letter to Kris, I wrote "The fear, the fear, the fear
-doesn't everyone have it?" but I'm not sure he does. 

At night, mostly, I feel antsy. That is, when I am not
six-beers-in-drunk with my two unlikely best friends.
Their largest character flaw, collectively, is simply that
they want to spend time with me.

And the anxious way that I grind my teeth- I push
my tongue hard to the top row. The ridges of my molars
painfully bite into the muscle. It's the only thing that stops
my teeth from being grated into a fine powder. Bone dust.
But, it only serves to make me more nervous. I have to
keep attentive as to not slip back to the sliding of enamel
on enamel and that, in itself, is stressful.

I still want to make art; a drive I thought I wouldn't have
now, but it runs as hot and deep as ever. Or, rather, I should
say, as never. I've never felt the urge to create as hard as now
where the means to create has been stunted and I can't produce
the image of what I want to create, in my mind or otherwise.

But don't I always want what I can't have.

I suppose there is the binding of useless books. Busy work
to keep my hands from the dread of stillness.
And, writing but I write and write knowing no one will see it.
I know I won't post it, I don't even want to post this.
I don't want others to know that I've got the fear.

I can't cook in this foreign kitchen. It's too hot to turn on the oven
and there's always someone there when I want to be alone.
I want to feel comforted by the act of making and sharing food
but I can do neither. These are not my pots and pans, not my
cutlery or over abundance of kitchen appliances.

Too many questions when I just want silence.
Too many people when I just want to be alone.
Too much time awake when I just want to be knocked the fuck out.

Friday, June 7, 2013

When you poison yourself for days and days,
why does your body not figure out what you're
going for, and help you along?

Friday, January 4, 2013

I remind myself, once a month of the people I'll never see again.
It opens like fresh hurt and I wonder why I do it. Grief comes in
waves- I've read and been told.
I have no feelings on that statement, yet I do.
And I sometimes think if you don't allow yourself to freshen that
grief, powder it's nose, then those people will disappear too.

I guess that is my answer.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

A glimpse of rows of the washed out green blues
of old family photo skies with curled up corners
drying on a basement floor.

Friday, October 12, 2012

I watch briefly, from my vantage point, a group of
men play soccer in the parking lot behind a factory.
Two cans of paint as a goal.
The stocky goalie stands, back bent with his hands
on his upper thighs ready to guard that space between
those two paint cans.

Again, from my vantage point I see reeds in the bed of
a stream, all pointed in one direction, matted down on
the river bottom, but waving like hands with the flowing water.

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Sometimes I find myself so selfish that I truly can't bear it.
Does thinking that you are a human yet fix anything?
I think not.

Thursday, September 6, 2012

"Safely crossover" he says over the loud speaker,
like instead of disembarking by stair we may instead,
in a desperate haze to make our train,
run across the tracks themselves.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

I look at this situation through some strange muted grey-blue sheer curtain.
It's like biting into a piece of fruit only to eat the sticker.

The shit I'm afraid of has made me hateful.

Monday, December 26, 2011

I keep dreaming into the day time.
Parts of my nightmares jut out into my realities.
They leave my senses muddled.
I wake up with smells in my nose that can't
possibly be there, images burned on my eye lids.

I keep seeing her hands folded on top of one another,
waxy. There are things we'd all rather not remember.

I want to go home. But where is home now? Where
has it been? Where have I been building my nest, twig
by twig. Not here. Maybe there. And furthermore
where will it be when they're all gone?

I heave so much accidental burden on the shoulders
of friends and for that, I am sorry.

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Mike clutches a chunk of homemade bread in front of
a dirty American flag- Max on his left, in the kitchen,
washes dishes under a cabinet that says "CLEAN UP"

A rectangle of light falls perfect over your face.
I watch you sleep for -one, two, three seconds-
through the crack in the open door before I shut
it with a click. I want to take a photo, but I don't.

Back from then, you lean in the shade that buildings
provide and smoke a cigarette. I don't remember summers
being as hot as they are now. It's day time. We drink.

Somewhere in between here and there- we sit on folding
lawn chairs in the back of a van. It's winter and I root through
my pockets for chapstick. It's dark back there, no windows,
and my elbow bumps something as the chair slides when
we turn a corner- drum sticks clatter to the floor.

But further back now, cut feet from broken shells leave
bloody marks on uneven wooden floor boards. You dress
the wounds with shaky hands, I look away when it stings.

But further yet, a plain off-white coarse jump rope with
smooth wooden handles. It's cheap, I can feel it. I know,
from comparison, the other kids. The handles make dull
hollow sounds as I drag them across the pavement.

And even further- a yellow raincoat, borrowed in a courtyard.
A bed that takes up the whole room- a small space for sitting,
at the foot. A graveyard for pets and a pool. Coffee cans filled
with cement that anchor down our swing set.

These things, sometimes, I don't know.

Monday, August 22, 2011

And how is it that we feel the way
that we feel about insulting ourselves?

Not sure what I'm saying.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

My stomach still burns sometimes.
Burns with coulda, shoulda, woulda.

Burns with sea-lust and tree-lust.
And wanderlust.

And I could have sworn, holding on
to glimmering wispy bits of a dream
state, that I was standing on the top
of a mountain, looking down. That
I was swimming through a raging sea.
That I was in the grocery store, not a
single label could I read.

I could have sworn I was in your bed,
or your bed, or your bed. (Or really any
of your beds, in dreams it's hard to determine)

And it's hard to determine what I want
sometimes. Most times. All the times.


And I could have sworn, holding on
to glimmering wispy bits of a dream
state, that I was choking, spluttering, 
struggling for breath; wet on a beach
sand under my nails, in my hair. That 
I was being suffocated by blankets, 
pillows, sheets. Strong, strong hands 
but weak wrists- holding me down.

Holding me down but not bringing me down.
Ah, well. These heavy words are hard to speak.
Yet, you must know.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

Today, on the train home I wrote something
that is emotionally too much for this place.

So, I'll give you the first line and the last one.
But what's in the middle is mine. It's what I've
realized for myself and it bothered me a bit.


And we ran through that construction site in the
pouring rain, balancing clumsy feet on slick lumber,
like this whole quiet fucking campus was ours.

But coulda, shoulda, woulda steps right in the way.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

What would you know about vociferous
opponents with impetuous tendencies.
And what would you know about that place in
between sleep and awake where your mind feels
like spiraling tendrils of nothing, of nonsense.
And what would you know about getting so comfortable
with someone that you just can't love them any longer.
(or you're just not sure if you ever did)

And what, please do tell me, what would you know
about feeling like your brain is fucking rattling inside
of your head, like your cells are vibrating at such a
rapid, uncontrollable pace that you don't what's up is
and even if you were to figure that out, you'd never
know where down was.


But, when you used to lie beside me in bed and
prognosticate, (because believe me, every one of
you have done it), I used to think you were an idiot.

And I'd like to say I take that back, but I can't.
Which is why I made sure we didn't lie any longer
than necessary and then, that we didn't lie at all.

Now, I'll drink to that.
But, then again, I'll drink to just about anything

Monday, March 28, 2011

You know, maybe I haven't DONE enough?
But what is enough? Or rather what is doing?
And when will I know whether or not I've
done enough? And furthermore, how will
I know if my judgement of enough is true?

In conclusion, I should do more.
Even if I'm scared.

Because I am scared, that's what it is, isn't it?
Why I mistook feelings of fear for contentment is
beyond me and also something I've always done.

And I want to renounce it, say no more.
But I'm scared, not an idiot.
I know myself, and my ways, and I'm not going
to do shit. I will be in the same place forever.



Maybe, though, I can take this as a challenge.

Saturday, March 26, 2011

The silence is the scariest
thing about going home.

Monday, January 17, 2011

Well, I guess I lied.
Sorry dudes, my bad.

Doing just fine,
always doing just fine.

Saturday, December 18, 2010

I am stupid to miss what is not exactly mine.
I am stupid to miss what lies just along that
harried line of yes and no.

Yet I do. Because it's different now, different
now than it even was when it became different.

I knew that this was where it was going to end up.
I truly did and I wish I could say different, then maybe I'd feel less guilt. However, I'm not even sure that guilt is the right word for what I am feeling. I shouldn't have to feel guilty, I mostly just feel stupid.
So fucking stupid for doing this to myself, and I suppose to you.

We'll see what happens though, that's the only real way to do things. Besides, there's a fifty-fifty chance that I'll fuck everything up irreparably and the same that I won't.

I guess that's what gets me though now, got me through then, and will continue to get me through forever.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

And the seasonal winds do change.

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Today I came into temporary possession of a packet of old writings.

Writings that I was convinced were truly gone for good. They had
disappeared years ago from their original place. Although I diligently
searched for them at the beginning, years passed and not a trace of
them was to be found. So I gave up.
But, today, in some strange stroke of luck I was offered what is
probably the only remainder of what they once were.

These pages were written by an old friend (or something to that degree)
and I am keenly aware that I am not ready to read them yet.

They will leave me feeling the same way he always did.
And I'm sure as hell not ready for that.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Everywhere in the world at any given moment there is at least one person fiddling with a radio dial, making a phone call to their mom, cooking breakfast, flicking ash off a cigarette out the passenger seat window, sketching a face, throwing their laundry in the dryer, taking a photograph, blowing their nose, packing a lunch, grabbing someone else's hand in theirs...

And I guess that means something to me, since I thought it, but I don't plan on searching too hard for the answer.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

If everyone else has since decided that consideration is completely
null and void then why must I continue to adhere to these rules?
These simple fucking human rules.
These simple fucking human rules that no one fucking follows.

And you ask me why it's so difficult for me to get along as the
days go on. Well, I'll fucking tell you why. People are disgusting
and inconsiderate. No matter what guise they put on at the
beginning and even if that keep on that facade, deep down they
are still just as selfish and vile as the people you hate.

And I've realized that no matter how much you give,
you will never receive the equivalent back. Because
you will never be on the same plane as that person.
You will never see eye to eye, the meniscus will never
seem to reach the same little notch.

They will never know how much of you they have 
taken so they will never know what to give back.

That, however, seems like an excuse that falls far short of it's
mark. But, don't think that by me stating this that I think I am
not guilty of the same vile human nature. Because I am.

But at the same time, I employ a certain amount of tact when it
comes to executing things that pertain to my morals. Or what I
call my morals but are really just a reflection of my upbringing.

And we've all had different upbringings so it seems brash to say
this about myself, and especially about other people, but this is
what I think and I needed to say it somewhere.

I have more to say on this subject but I am feeling
a bit wrung out at this present moment in time.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

I have grown tired of this.
Yet somehow I have yet to outgrow it.
I do the same thing to myself each and every time.

Monday, November 15, 2010

My life is just a series of on and offs.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

I hate that some days I want another city, maybe another state over my head. I want to breathe new clouds that are probably just old clouds in a new place, since clouds work that way.

I want a lot of things though. I spend many hours day dreaming or writing fictional stories about people more interesting than me. But sometimes my want gets the best of me, convinces me it's need, need, need. Even though I know it's not. Or something in me knows it's not.

But with my hands around my own neck, it's my own fault. A human fault, or a fault from society, but a fault that falls on my hands all the same.
But, I'm hesitant to change, a little want can make this interesting.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

I'm done with this day and it seems to have just started.
This feeling has an oddly frequent reoccurrence rate lately.

Friday, October 22, 2010

I think I can safely say that I am annoyed.
I am sick of the psuedo-competition you've set up.

I don't know if I can deal with this civilly any
longer, but I'd rather not stoop to your level.

I am not the one ruining this. I may have, at
some point, accidentally been, but I am no
longer. I have paid my fucking dues, your turn.

But honestly, this shit falls on you at this point.
And it is fucking crashing down hard right now.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Wait, hold on one second. Back the fuck up.
Is that what you think that was? Is that really
what you think that was? Fuck you. Fuck you.

Seriously, fuck you and what you think is
all-knowing categorization of everyone.

More than half the time you're wrong.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

As much as I'm glad to have what had back,
I can still get awful selfish some days.

I guess, at least I recognize it, I'm not deluded
in ways that I can't imagine.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

I think we've all imagined ourselves somewhere that we aren't.
But I'm glad things panned out the way they did most days.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

The sinking feeling of intended separation.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Yet I still feel it some days and I fucking wish
I didn't because I have no fucking reason to.

I have no ownership and I rarely feel like I have
ownership but sometimes the feelings that I feel
without meaning to are just too fucking much.

Too much and it's all wrong.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

To me, there's no worse feeling than being left out.

Sunday, August 8, 2010

I AM NOT.
I AM NOT.
I AM NOT.

This is becoming considerably less of a reminder-to-self
and more of a neurotic mantra that I must repeat in sets
of three until the feeling goes away.

But, there's a problem.
That problem is that lately I've been having more trouble
squashing it down. I've been having trouble quelling that
horrible, terrible, angry, churning feeling in my stomach.
And I've come to resentment.
Yet, resentment is the all wrong word.

Because it's not that I doubt the prowess.
And it's not like the above sentence isn't a complete and utter lie.
Because it is.
It's just that the over confidence lacks grace so
I can only assume the rest will follow suit.

My choices always end up with the same outcomes.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

I have yet to figure out if that was a
bad idea, a good idea, or just... an idea.

Monday, July 26, 2010

You remind me of many people I won't lose interest in but I am no conquest nor do I need to be won over.

So it goes, I nearly always feel like a dick.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

I am easily frustrated lately.

I find myself simultaneously aching for Purchase in the winter
months and the shining bright memory of rope swings into lakes,
camping, barbecues, and sun that exist solely in my dreams.

I need to go, I just can't sit stagnant like this.

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Even though I'm only an hour away from home the drive out here had that elevated road trip feeling.

I'm at a family party, for a family that isn't mine, but there's beer, food, fireworks, and a pool, so I feel like I belong.
I love holidays, I really do.

Sunday, June 20, 2010

I promise you, one of these days we'll all understand
what possesses us to do what it is that we do.

That day is not today, for I am out of words and out of
willpower. I'm sorry that you have to hurt, but I needed to.

Friday, June 18, 2010

Even the things I love exhaust me now.
I'm getting sick of living certain parts of my life.

I want to live how I live inside my head but my much
more than marginal human error is making that difficult.
And my emotions, the meager
ones that I possess, prevent that.

It seems puerile to want only "happy times and half
assed rhymes" but really I only desire eunoia.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Because either you're there or you're not.
Be happy where you can and complain when you can.
Know when to be and when to drop out. Just be.
Always be.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

But I'm wondering if that big dark cloud is me.

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Somewhere expensive to live so there's something to complain about.
That's the title.

Friday, April 30, 2010

Today I chased the sunrise like people chase storms.
Couldn't take a picture because my phone was dying. But you can imagine.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Sometimes, when it thinks everyone's asleep, the refrigerator sings to the wall outlet.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Have I always been a fucking spineless piece of shit without the ability to stand up for myself? Or is this just a new thing?

I always thought that maybe I was strong, but I guess it goes to show that you never really know yourself.

I accept this defeat, the weak fucking piece of human waste that I am accepts this defeat.
I have failed myself, my upbringing, and my dignity.
If I ever even had any of that.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

The traffic ahead on the highway.
The cars look like shining beatle swarms.
There's a bug infestation that's heading towards New York City.
We haven't got the time or the means to stop them.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

The sun! Lying on the grass, stoned, warmed by the sun.
Oh my god, the sun. I had forgotten about the fucking sun.
The beautiful fucking sun! (Breathe in, breathe out. Okay.)

How do you forget something like that?
You don't.
But I fucking did.

God, I'm already thinking of summer, and warm window
sills, and fucking cherry tomatoes growing in the garden,
and driving with the windows rolled down, and beautiful
little bugs and worms in piles of dirt, and warm pools for
me to put my feet in and splash and fucking barbeques
with corn and beer and everyone that I love!
And oh god, the fucking sun.
And under-ripe (yet still delicious) grapes on Janetca's deck,
and wiggling my toes in warm green grass, and drinking a 40
and eating a bag of chips on the dinosaur blanket in the park,
and swinging on swings, and going outside for a cigarette and
not shivering, and just being outside in the sun!

THE FUCKING SUN.
If winter ends, no when winter ends, because it will, just
like it did last year, I'll pack up this baggage and be happy.
I am so excited for the sun.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

I'm not jealous, I'm not jealous,
I'm not jealous, I'm not jealous.
Because I don't get jealous.

Am I affirming myself, or stating a truth. I don't know and you
won't know. Maybe a little bit of both? But here I am, sinking
my teeth into my lip, I'm trying not to think.
I have silk screens and things that come in threes. I have a two
AM phone call and a couple of cigarettes left to smoke, or give
away if I choose (which I won't). I have music that makes me
happy and music that makes my fucking body ache with missed
opportunities and sicksicksickness. Oh god.
I'm squeezing my eyes shut as I write this. I am so... unsettled.

Today I read an article about.
Actually, I don't want to talk about it.


But, it felt like a turn of phrase, a vein of vocabulary. One that
mirrors the veins staining your eyes red. The veins that halt all
communication, an impasse.

I am solicitously amenable to everything in that state.
Let's get shitty together, at the dugout.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Lately I've been seeing words in the negative space between lines in a paragraph. And it's worse than "reading between the lines", because it truly is so. If I let myself slide out of focus it's like a whole new story beneath my fingers.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Fiction is a lie.
But sometimes it's one of the most beautiful lies in the world.
So, I guess that's okay.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

I don't have a word for this feeling quite yet.
This unsettled way that I always seem to get when I stay
up too late thinking of things I never did and never will do.

Mostly though, right now, I wish that everyone was awake.
I wish that it was like day time. I wish everyone was walking
around, and driving. I wish stores were open, and mainly, I
wish there was someone that I could talk to.

Someone that I could just sit and chat idly with, over a cigarette.
Or some food, or a glass of wine. Or a beer. Fuck, I don't know.

I'm restless as fuck. I can feel my stomach churning like fucking
butter. I can feel my skin compressing my muscles, my veins, my
organs. I can feel myself shrinking. It's nights like these that the
most I can fucking do is hope that somehow I'll just pass out.


I just fucking hope that when I shut the lights off, when I close my
eyes, I'll be out for the count. I won't wake up till the sun rises.

I just fucking hope I don't lay there and stew.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

"Because," she said, "I can dream for
you until you get one of your own."

And it's funny, in the way that time seems a little bit funny when
you dwell on it for too long. It becomes even less of a construct
than it even initially is. Time is theory and theory isn't something
you can hold in your hand. Not something you can grasp onto
with your skinny little fingers. Time is like inane, pointless chatter.
Does the world go from sunrise to sunset? Or sunset to sunrise?
Would it make any difference if we went from sunset to sunrise?

Sunset was the beginning of the day and sunrise the end.
If instead of having night when it's dark, we had it when it was light?
If AM was really PM and the other way around.

If you think to much about something, it makes it obsolete.
I've thought to much about time, so it doesn't exist.

That, however, does not mean that I don't have to make it to
work at exactly 6:00. At least not if I want to keep my job.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

"Take care of yourself, kid" he told me as I was leaving.
And at that time, I just laughed.

I laughed because I was young, but not much younger than him.
I laughed because I was drunk and high.
I laughed because I was happy.
I laughed because I was still running on that type of adrenaline that only live music and skin can give.

I laughed because I love laughing.
But he was right. It's important to take care of yourself...
I'm kind of the world's worst shunner of responsibility.
I'm disappointed in my inability to take care of myself.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Out the front door.
The front door.
On the street, feet pitter pattering across the same dry concrete stretch. The world looks like rain. Not the humid type, but the cold type of rain, the kind that reminds you that this season's almost over. It's time to move on. But we're not ready.
Going home.
Off the street and into the car. The car is cool. The windows are closed because of the impending rain, and the air is on. The street lights make shadows like paper cups. Nightime makes the car feels like an enclosed airtight capsle. Nothing can touch us now, but we're not reckless. It's late at night and as a being, we're understandably tired.
Going home. 
In the car, exiting the tunnel. It's pouring on the other side. Thunder and lightning are fighting but we're safe and dry and cool in our little wonder of modern technology, the car. We can't hear the thunder and lightening, we can't hear the usual cacophonic noise of the city. The neon lights make the sky pour colored droplets.
And we're home.

I sometimes wake up from strange vivid dreams like that. Where we're leaving her house and then slipping through the Midtown Tunnel on the way back home. Like, I remember all the details, but only when I'm dreaming does it seem like it was once a reality.

And, I'm tired now, so very tired.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Oh god, the snow.
I'd forgotten about the snow.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

It's tough to explain on days like these.

My skin feels too small and there's a lump in my
throat the size of a small country. That constant
feeling of needing to puke or cry can get to your
head fast. I'm nervous and upset and happy and
sad and angry and restless. All at once.

It's overwhelming and it's uncomfortable being me.

So I curl up in a strange position in the center of my
bed, I lay flat on my back, I curl up in fetal position
on the floor, I lay on my stomach and rest my head
on my arms, I lay on my left side, and then on my
right, but none of it's right. None.

And I don't know what to do. There's a burning in my
cells that can't be stopped and a myriad of questions in
my fucking head. It kills me to spend ten minutes thinking
about the dead baby bird on the back deck that's been
sitting there for the whole fucking day. It kills me to even
dwell on the fact that I'm angry that other animals don't
bury their fucking dead.

I don't want to be angry anymore. I want to be me again.
I want to be painfully awkward by choice like every other day.

Friday, May 22, 2009

I've watched the sunrise for the last four days.
It feels to me like last summer, when I had so much trouble sleeping at night that I'd just lay in my bed, waiting patiently for the first inkling of morning light to paint my blinds, and then I'd pass out. Only to wake up an hour later, body sore like the early morning sun had burnt the marrow in my bones. Scorched my joints, making me creak like the tin man. Cower in the shade like a lion.

Tonight it felt like early morning, the cool breeze blowin my cigarette ash about. And for a moment I forot where I was, what I was talkin about and with who, and... what season is it again?
I have trouble being tired, but being tired is my trouble. But, trouble seems trivial when sleep won't come.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

According to Dante, I'd be in the sixth circle of hell.
The heretics.
My punishment, to burn in god's catacombs, a flaming
tomb, for eternity. When judgment day comes and I do
not pass, the lid is closed and I'm stuck, smoldering
...in a tiny pine box.
I'd also be in circle four, the hoarders and the wasters.
I'm a hoarder and a waster of time. I collect bits of time
to squander into oblivion. Sleeping, eating, killing time.

And I wonder, as I search for the reasoning behind the
strange celestial guidance that the strong part of my mind
would never allow me to have, why in all the pictures of
hell that I come across everyone is naked...

Monday, April 13, 2009

Maybe, if I ignore it, it will go away.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Sometimes, I wake up from dreams not really knowing what happened
in them, but then later, I'll read someone's blog, and it'll all come rushing
back. It's as if, across all of these state lines, god, sometimes even fucking
oceans, everyone of us shares a slight bit of our subconscious.
My subconscious is so divided that I sometimes forget my hometown,
my name, my age. So divided that sometimes I'll answer a question with
something that is so far from the truth that I'm not even sure that I
made it up. I think, that maybe you did.
And because we operate in a strange pristine harmony, because we
have perfect form, like synchronized swimmers, the line between my
thoughts and your thoughts become fuzzy, indiscernible in my mind.
The warm type.

And every time my subconscious splits, it's like a small hiccup in our
routine. Almost like someone's nose descended too far below the water
for a quick moment, and they've breathed in water and it's caught
behind their tonsils and in their throat. Causing that tiny tickle, that
'almost cough', causing them to faltered slightly. And then like military
stepping, a double step the size of an SAT word, and you're back in line.
I can feel the cadence in my bones and since we share the same phalanges
that type and write, I know that you can feel it too.
A thrumming, humming, strumming on nylon strings, stretched taunt
across your ribs. A cage for the sound that you always wanted to make,
made for you by your loving mum and da. And when the car crashes into
the passenger side door, slams into your body, cracking your bones, I will
feel it too. I will feel when your music is set free, when the coroner hears
a tune from deep inside you, loud and clear to the ears. The image of your
face and that tune, stuck in their head for the rest of the week. I will feel
when your music escapes, seeking refuge in the curved, tired ears of the
mortician and his family. Not quite inaudible, but more muffled, murmuring,
muted... muttering.
I will feel where your music settles down, in the fingertips, the tiny
fingertips of the baby at the funeral. I will feel it settle there because
I will hear the child's fleeting elation of the meager music floating from
the casket as it's lowered into the ground, floating in swirling
fall with with leaves and freshly dry cleaned black coats.
Then snuffed out with the first shovel of dirt atop that hardwood finish.

Sometimes dirt is warm, if left out in the summer's sun.
So, please, shovel some dirt on top of my body, as a blanket.
I would like to sleep for a long time.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Why are my entries so fucking long as of late?

There's always going to be something that I wish I had done but never did. Maybe even never got the chance to. And that fleeting moment, that fleeting window of opportunity, will never be opened again like a lockbox with the key lost.
And, I'm warning you now. If you personally know me, in real life, I plan to use names in the next part of this entry. If we spend time together, you will recognize names and you may be able to put faces to them. And since I know that this isn't so hidden anymore, that people do read it, I'm going to warn you that you may even be included in this. Alright, so it's less of a warning, but more of a heads up. This is going to be the least cryptic entry I've ever written.
I think of photography daily. It's actually a constant thing, everything that I see is turned into individual photographs. I am going to type out a list of photos that I wish I had taken. That I wish I had gotten my camera out in time to capture it forever and immaculate on film.


James and Kevin, sitting on each end of a park bench next to their bikes. James with a cigarette in one hand and a black sweatshirt with Wingnut Dishwasher's Union spray painted on the front.

Danny lying on his stomach on my bed, back when it was just the mattress on the floor, with a comic in his hand. Only one light on, casting shadows under my desk.

Pat outside of Catch 22's Winnebago clutching a poster he got from Ed and a pack of Native American cigarettes, the kind you don't have to pay taxes on.

David and Drew in the kitchen with red dye staining their fingers and David's pants, ingredients for a cake visible behind them. Pedro standing on the foremost counter, in the right corner, out of focus.

Brittany sitting by the merch table smiling next to the display of earplugs, water, and tee shirts, with my favorite security guard sitting behind her, eating the peanut butter cups that I bought.

Mike standing right next to that pole on the corner, almost leaning against it, with a cigarette, his glasses slightly crooked, his mouth open in mid-sentence.

From the back seat, Jessie smoking a cigarette out the driver's window, looking straight ahead while Sam talks to him from the passenger's seat, her head turned, looking at him.

Joanna on Halloween, in her detective costume, standing on a stack of wood that's tall enough to let her see over the heads of a great circle of people crowded around a group of street performers.

James at the Hook in Red Hook Brooklyn. In the little enclosed courtyard out the side door, his back facing the gate that the instruments and equipment came through earlier. Slightly overcast day, slipping carefully into night, dusk. A door leaning on hit's side to his right with a perfect number five spray painted on it.

Cody sitting on the washing machine (or maybe it was a dishwasher?) in the corner of his kitchen.

David sitting on my bed, this time the mattress is on the frame, with one of my bras cupped so as to make a circle of sorts, up to his face, pretending that it's a gas mask.

Rob bent over, breaking up a dub on top of a borrowed dollar bill on the little counter next to the sink in the basement of that church on the corner. The one that they somehow found keys to and have a habit of trespassing. A purple pipe, a green bowl, a box of matches, and a half finished cigarette next to him.

Kevin and Mariano (who is wearing a hat with ear flaps) in some park in V.S., Mariano rubbing his hands together for warmth with a smile on his face, Kevin, brow wrinkled in concentration, sparking up.

From the backseat, the well lit sign in front of In & Out lighting up the front on the car. Scott in the driver's seat, head turned towards the window which is mostly open, only allowing you to see the back of his head. PJ's head and shoulders are leaned slightly into the car, the brim of his hat blocking out his eyes. It's clear that they're fighting by the way that PJ's mouth is poised.

Emily and Michelle standing next to the concrete pole in the parking lot near Dunkin, Michelle lighting a cigarette with a barbecue lighter, Emily in a fit of laughter.

Jay Tea leaning against the wood paneled wall of VP South with a half full pint of beer, which is certainly not his first. His mouth is open, he's yelling at the guy in the sound booth because the beginning of the Flaming Tsunami's set is just a phone ringing for five minutes straight.

David's fish tank light on, everything else turned off, casting a warm, orange tinted glow on everything. He's laying partially under the covers, on his side, facing towards the drawers and the heater. A smooth expanse of back is showing, highlighted on it's start near his hip, but faded into shadows.

Taylor sitting on the floor in her room, drunk, playing with her new cat and laughing. Her girlfriend, Shan, Steph, and Katherine are visible in the background, crowded around the computer taking photobooth pictures.

Terri laughing at Kelsey in Union Bagels. Really laughing, not just that little half smile, because what she said was really funny.

Emily in her Daria costume. The black knit ski hat with flaps and tassels, the skirt, the green jacket, and those shiny black lace-up boots.

Kelsey and Joanna in the basement of Five Pointz. It's dark, almost too dark to see, but you can just make out the piles of clothing scraps littering the floor and the creepy as shit cobwebbed sewing machines. It's not posed, their faces are slack in observation, their heads slightly turned away from the camera.

Shan standing outside of Union Bagels waiting for us to finish our cigarettes, disposable camera in hand, talking to Emily about something. The sun is high and bright in the sky.

Matt, in Scott's car, driving down Scranton, smoking a cigarette out the window while playing some skating game on his iPhone. Charlie in the foreground, out of focus, his mouth open, talking to someone in the front seat, the collar of his coat hiding his chin.

Katie in a leather jacket with her nose red from cold and crying, sitting on the floor in the box at the train station. The florescent lights giving her an eerie glow. Safety pin in hand, cleaning out her pipe, a mostly full forty of Olde English to her right. Ryan, from the knees down, wearing jeans, in the left corner.

Meggy sitting at Vince's kitchen table, her skinny arms, skinny wrist, skinny hand holding a cigarette. Denny out of focus on a stool behind her. Smoke clouded around her as she types on her phone. An ashtray as well as two beer cans, a pack of Marlboro Reds, and a cup of orange juice on the table in front of her.

Nick sitting in his computer chair, next to his TV. He's looking forward but he's laughing at the movie on TV.

JP pouring Bacardi into the fire pit at V.S. State Park and then lighting the leaves on fire. His body illuminated against the background of silhouetted trees and somewhere in the distance lights on the highway.

The boy at the Museum of the Moving Image with a too small, dark blue Sonic Youth shirt, skinny jeans, a backpack, and yellow shoe laces.

Dan coming down the stairs from the perspective of someone going up the stairs, at Webster Hall. His face open in a smile and a greeting. His cheeks ruddier than usual in the strange red glow from the light at the top of the staircase that's reflected off the mirror above.

Tom at the Knitting Factory, from outside on the line, with the curtain on one of the windows pulled up. His smile comically large, his hand waving.

Ryan standing outside of In & Out, talking to Kelsey who is sitting on the curb with her coat pulled close around her. Kelly looking uncomfortable in the background. Almost not associating herself with the

Someone's ex-girlfriend, sitting on top an amp outside of a venue in R.V.C., head down. The sun is bright and hot, but she's wearing a black sweatshirt. Connor is visible in the corner of the picture, from chest down. No shirt, no shoes. Green socks and loose jeans.

Emel smoking a cigarette in a blue coat, outside of the school, in the street as not to be smoking on school property, at 9:00AMin the pouring rain.

Evan sitting on a blue rolling chair in front of the door out of the computer lab. The room behind him is lit up but the lab is dark. He has headphones in and is scrolling through his ipod with disinterest.

Britt lying on the table in the printmaking room, her hair splayed out, next to a pile of coats and bags, almost blending in.

Kelsey in Search & Destroy on St. Marks, rifling through a rack of second hand shirts that are organized in color order, wearing a short black dress and tall black boots.

David sitting on a stool in the back of VP South, in the fenced in area, the band's vans and cars are visible through the fence. People that may of may not be Jay Tea and Doug are out of focus in the background, smoking cigarettes.

Johnny's little brother sitting in a chair in Vince's all-white basement, dead asleep, the lights hitting his freshly dyed green hair. People in the background playing a "riveting game" of beer pong.

Brendon in the kitchen of his apartment, arm outstretched toward the fridge door, mouth open in question.

Dave lying in my bed at three in the afternoon, orange sunlight in the winter, all the blankets pulled up around him, bunching in a circle around his face like the mane of a lion.

Joanna standing by the dresser upstairs, the sloping ceiling making her look taller, leaning over to blow out incense on a rainy Sunday.

Vinny in Vince's all-white basement, directly under one of the lights, sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table where a homemade gravbong is sitting. Shot from behind, the blurred figures of Sean, John, and Nicole sitting on the couch in front of him visible through the spikes on his head.

Beau standing in the front doorway, afternoon sun as backlighting. A rust colored scarf tied around his waist and grease from his bike smeared on his nose.

Matt sitting on my wooden chair back when the pile of laundry in the basket used to sit right next to it. Leaned over in jeans with a hole in one knee and a hooded black sweatshirt. Fiddling with a half empty soft, battered, pack of unfiltered Lucky Strikes.

Sam and Jenna sitting across from Sam, Jesse, and I at a strange wood panneled, lace curtained diner. Sam leaning forward, hand outstreched towards a plate of french fries that are out of focus in the foreground.

Tom leaning against the wall behind Tofu. Red sweatshirt, black coat, black hat, hood up, that fucking giant earring and a disaffected look on his face. Cigarette in hand.

Shane and Jon is Shane's basement sitting on one of the couches, trying to play some unidentified driving game with a guitar hero controller because the regular controller is broken.

JP under the streelight by the curch, leaning back against the hood of Sean's blue minivan at night. Four kids sitting on the sidewalk in the background. JP's head is titled towards the sky, watching the stars.

Griffin in the underground garage by the Starbucks. Held up by Jesse, in a headlock. Arms blurred with the motion of fighting back. Both boys wear identical broad smiles, betraying the idea that they are really fighting, but instead just rough housing.

Ashley lying on her back in Vinny's backyard on a warm September day. John with the Black Flag tattoo and some other kid that I can't really remember the name of, who my possible be one of Vinny's "cousins" on either side of her. Far enough to almost be out of the frame. The air above and around them is heavy with smoke. Ashley is laughing, sun filtering through the tree branches, casting shadows.

Jimmy leaning over into the crowd at VP South, basically held up by them, in short shorts and a pair of high top hounds tooth Circa's just like the ones I had in low tops. Sweaty strings of hair that have got to be in his face, microphone presses against his halfway open lips. Fucking drunk as hell, and probably singing the wrong words.

Two kids from Staten Island, outside of the Knitting Factory. One of them in a striped sweater, smoking a cigarette, Marlboro Reds, the pack sticking out of his pocket. Both of them staring straight ahead at the camera, the smoking one smiling as he exhales, the other one mid sentence.


I am beyond not done. I promise you that in future entries there will be more descriptions of pictures that I wish I had taken, but never did.

Monday, January 26, 2009

It's funny that I know exactly what to
say at certain times. I know what to say
to create the outcome that I want to see,
but I wonder if I really mean it.

I mean, if it occurred to me at all, then
there must be some truth in it. But, I can't
help but wonder if anything that I think or
say is really true. Is it just a reflection
of what I wish I was. Is there a giant reserve
of true and clean ideas in my head that I have
yet to tap into because society daily helps me
ignore? And if I were to move away. To cut off
contact. To become self-reliant, for everything.

Would my opinions change?
And if they did, (no, when they did, since they
would without a doubt), would it just be the
change in situation, in circumstance? Or, would
it really be that reserve?
That true, clear, pristine opinionated treasure.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

The light from the computer screen illuminates my
hands, my face, my arms, and my shoulders; tapering
off once past there. But, mostly it catches my hands.
They look naturally pale but that's not what I'm so
engrossed in. The light makes every single line in my
hand stand out in relief. This strange stark contrast
that looks like a mix of snake skin and age. Scars, the
scars from age, not just age as an abstract concept.
I've never thought about it, but in this very moment,
in this very light, they're almost beautiful. I guess
I'm thinking about what Dave and I were talking about
today. About life experience. I almost feel like each little
line represents something that I learned in my life that
I've actually used more than once.
I suppose that once I'm grown. Once I've stopped living.
Once I know everything, my hands will appear smooth
because the lines will have covered everything, taking a
full layer off of the top. It's strange that the most
experienced would be the cleanest, least calloused hands.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

God, Jesus, fuck.
Shit, fuck, Christ.

WHAT DO YOU WANT
ME TO FUCKING SAY?

Do you want me to tell you that I don't know
what to do? Is that what you want me to tell
you? Because I fucking will if that's what
you need to hear. I'm trying to be honest with
you, but you have to give me direction. I don't
have a fucking solution for this shit. I don't
have help that you're not too fucking proud to
take. I don't have anything to give you is
the bottom line.

Thursday, December 25, 2008

It's unsettling.
I've forgotten to miss you.

I'm pretty content with watching crappy
TV on Christmas. Crappy TV that I know
for a fact I watched last year.
I'm pretty content with sleeping on Christmas,
in a bed made solely of blankets in a room that
always smells like incense and weed. 
I'm pretty content with smoking a bowl on Christmas
and eating a dinner made of side dishes afterward.
I'm pretty content with spending time on Christmas with
friends in Sam's living room, complaining about music.

I've been pretty content lately.
It's grounding.

Monday, November 24, 2008

It makes me upset when I look at all of the people around me who aren't doing what they want to be doing. It makes me wonder exactly what went wrong, where did their plan fail? Which then leads me into the thoughts of "when will my plan fail"? And, for that matter "what the hell is my plan, anyway"?


And, it's terrifying, because I don't want to get stuck doing something that I do not want to be doing. I see that too often, daily in fact. I see people stuck in places in their lives that they just shouldn't be stuck it. That they just shouldn't have to be stuck in. That they just don't deserve to be stuck in.
And I'm not sure if it's real misfortune or just laziness, but either way, I'm having an existential crisis. It's pretty fucking lame.

Monday, November 17, 2008

I sometimes wonder if the lady that reads the lottery
numbers ever thinks about who's listening to her. I
wonder if she really ever thinks about lottery at all.
I wonder what her opinion about lottery in general is.

I wonder if she ever imagines all of those
people listening with rapt attention, only to her.


Lottery players make me sad.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

My legs shake like earthquakes and light looks like
bandages, wrapped around our skin at night. I'm not
scared of the dark, but this coat keeps me warm, sated,
and happy. I miss everything about New York weekends
and I just want to move out of this town. There's so many
other things I'd rather do. But, fuck I'm so lost. I feel like...
sometimes I might be going crazy. This whole routine isn't
working out and I don't have the time or energy to change it.

My elbows itch, this cardigan's too small, and my pants sit
low on my hips because my belt doesn't hold them up any longer.
My shoelaces are tucked in my shoes because sometimes I forget
they're there and I'm afraid I'll trip over them, forget to throw
my hands out to break my fall and smash my nose.

Monday, October 27, 2008

I wish the world was flat like the old days.
Then I could travel just by folding a map.

It might not be my idea, but it sure is a good one.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

That simple line about poisonous leaves and childish bravery opens
up this giant pocket of memories that I had no clue it was even possible
to miss so much. Just to be with them, for one more day, like it used to
be, would be all I needed to heave myself out of this stupid slump.

It puts me in pain to think of the way we laughed at the bottom of his
staircase. My stomach aches thinking of the way her feet pointed in as
she leaned on her knees to draw, his fucking fisherman hat, the couch,
the TV, the dirty pair of Vans by the front door.
Even his hellish dog, I miss it all.


In addition to missing that, I also miss Jon and Shane's attempt to play
a racing game with a guitar hero controller,  "prom night" in the rain, the
heat of the subway and getting lost on the way to Kew Gardens. I miss
Gries Park in the wintertime and advent calenders and smoking in Shane's
car, drinking red label and watching Logo, and all of those stupid stupid
ideas that we had and carried out.

What it all boils down to is the fact that I miss having free time
to do what I want to do with the people that I really love.

Monday, October 6, 2008

Kelsey says they're like cattle, the kids in our school.
They travel in droves, herded from class to class.
She says that sometimes, over the roar of their voices,
she hears animal noises, like the cafeteria is a barn.

I think that she's right, but not for the same reasons.

Monday, September 29, 2008

It's nights like these that are the problem. The nights where all I can think
about is this one totally unattainable dream of mine. and I watch all these
fucking videos and look at these photos, and look at how they live and I
want it so hard that it hurts, and all I can do is just smoke a fucking cigarette
and then like, procrastinate on the papers I have to write, and take some
fucking pills to finally go to sleep.
But I still fucking wake up in this horrible funk, like I was dreaming about
being one of them and then when my alarm went off, I realized that it was
just a fucking dream and I was so fucking devastated. I have no idea what
I should really think about this shit, but fuck, I don't know.

Because it's like, shit, I could be painting, or fucking writing or something
but I can't get everything into words fast enough for any of it make sense
at all, in the fucking least, and I just wanna grow up.
There's this thing that Jason Dill said about New York in an Epicly Later'd
show and he was like "New York, when I first came here was like if you
were nine years old and fucking hated school and you wanted to eat
whatever fucking shit you wanted to eat and you didn't want to do a
goddamn thing and your parents were just dope addicts and they didn't
give a fucking shit and you'd just go outside and it was as if your whole
neighborhood was like kids filled with that same deal, like their parents
didn't give a fuck, you'd go play and do whatever the fuck you want and
the streets were lined with candy and fucking like slides and like rope
swings into pools and that's what it felt like when I first got to New York.
Like, I don't have to do fucking shit, this is awesome, I can fucking smoke
weed and do all these fucking drugs just like whoo! You just like step
outside and you just like get conveyed into the fucking clubs and
bars and phyconess, and..."

And I don't know if it's because I've always lived here, or whatever, but
I don't feel that. I want to fucking feel that, but I'm so fucking attached
to this stupid-ass dirty place that I don't want to move but I think that
the only way that I'll ever feel that is if I move. It's like, when I go to
visit someone else for a few days and everything's so chill, and I can do
whatever the fuck I want and everything's so fucking novel and there
are all these new people to meet and make fun of and like totally fucking
fall in love with because they're so damn awesome, but I don't think I'll
be able to feel that for my whole time living somewhere, so I guess I'll
just have to keep traveling all over the place, and not have some grounded
place to go back to. But the problem is that I have to much fucking shit to
carry with me from place to place, and I would consolidate if I fucking could,
but like everything's so important and familiar that I can't. And, I don't know
where I'm going with this, because I really have to write that fucking paper,
and whatever, but I'm so fucking stuck in this ridiculous mindset where I'm
like a couple of years older and just like fucking having the time of my life
and the sad thing is that I just can't realistically see that ever happening.
Life feels like such a giant waste if I can't do exactly what I want to do and
get fucking paid for it, but there's nothing that I like to do that I'd ever
actually get paid for, and like.... I don't fucking know.

And, I'm really sorry if you read this and it makes no sense to you, because
I just kept typing up the shit that I was feeling and I didn't really go over it
to see what I fucked up on, or whatever, and I've been going crazy because
I've been working so damn much and I haven't been sleeping and I just had
my first proper meal in a few days, so do, please excuse me, but I sincerely
hope there's someone, anyone, out there who reads this and is like "fuck,
that's what I've been feel lately- like I'm crawling out of my skin because
my mind is growing through years, but my fucking body is the same age."
because then maybe we could split the cost of one of those fucking storage
spaces and throw all our extraneous shit in it and take all this fucking saved
money and just go. Just fucking go, and just fucking be.