A Magnolia Named Aurelia

Of Potted Plants

2011-05-09T01:20:00.002-04:00

There is a thought

from my gullible youth

of unsound plans

and unfathomable

jabs and jests

thoroughly calculated

like permanent consequences.

In one possible conclusion,

I am incapable of love.

The truth, the honest truth

is: there is no truth.

I am head on a pillow

a natural pair.

I take no comfort in

movement on said pillow

yet I lay and

continuously, stubbornly,

ardently,

often audaciously

commit to such

pairing.

I play on puns

and explorations

a series of power abuse

and some maniacal satisfaction

brought about by

being raving mad.

And I am raving mad.

Solely preserved for the

strong-willed;

the often continuously stubborn,

ardent,

audacious one.

It's a clever ruse.

Liberty As One Do Not Know It

2011-03-08T23:38:00.002-05:00

I stepped out

Pouted

Let my formidable cavities awaken from its

Useless slumber state

To file into the neverending

Elevators

Corridors

Hallways

Sitting rusty on my spinning polyester chair

Too static-y, dust feels unsafe

Crowding upon it.

Air crossed the threshold

(teeth, tongue)

scraping by broken glassware

my mother threw against the ivy-covered

walls.

Do not bemoan this fate,

I should warn myself.

As of late,

My mind lists

Lists, lists

So that my type A lifestyle

Chronicles its way to

Delineation

2010-10-07T08:02:00.003-04:00

We observe our acts,

as though we are running out of time

when in fact:

WE ARE.

Time doesn't practice

a method of confiscation

--no mild-mannered musings

or impractical selflessness.

It doesn't obstruct

completion,

but it always savours strongly

of emptiness.

I have one crate of

contractual obligation

(or so to speak)

with the Raven,

and the bell, the bar maid,

and the old red swing set

that licks rain off the air

and contemplates

in shrill notes.

I was a little spiffy bell,

raven-haired,

a bar maid for a lover

she wore silk stockings

men doused carelessly with

half-shots of Jack.

I got up once, from

my seat in the corner

howled at the moon

and protested

--sternly! Here, listen to my

ravishing voice,

saying, "Arretez-vous,

Messieur Singes!"

They re-armoured

and I, equipped with TIME

not only confiscates

but invented

LIES.

For that was what I

was good at.

The Lucky Girls are Mostly Soundproof

2010-08-21T23:08:00.001-04:00

Lyre Hill, July 1969

She put down her suitcases, this girl, on the warm pavement beneath her. She looked up the hill, as far as her eyes allowed her, at least, and deemed it necessary that she never gets to climb that hill. The hill was steep, but the green almost fooled her into thinking it was doable. She cast a glance to the building before her, a brownstone Romanesque revival building that was to receive her and what papers she had with her. The clock tower glistened, and showed how noon drew near.

What a near-fall day it was. The cool breeze straightened her champagne georgette dress, and played hide-and-seek with her dark brown hair. Her low ponytail was carelessly rested on her left shoulder. She played with it, pacified the loose strands and picked up her suitcases. This time she made it into the building.

Her red mary-janes clicked lightly on the limestone floor. A glassy-eyed woman sat behind the reception desk, and barely glanced at her. Good thing she glanced again and recognized the girl.

"Anna? Anna Carling?"

Anna's heels clicked some more, and she put her suitcases side by side by the desk. The woman had her hair up, and for the life of her, Anna couldn't figure out who she was. Behind the black-rimmed glasses were a pair of green eyes she thought she recognized. She gave it a shot.

"Mary?"

"I'm so glad you remember! It's been, what, five years? Where have you been? What have you been doing?"

Anna shot a subtle look of surprise and restrained herself from listing yet another impressively substantive resume. It would not have been true anyway.

"London."

"London? How very exciting! What did you do there?"

"Writing. Or at least I've been trying to write. I've got a few things published here and there, but it wasn't quite the publishing experience I had hoped it would be."

"Oh, that's really too bad." This Mary Moore pushed her glasses up and touched up what little untucked hair she had behind her ear. "So what brings you back here?"

"They asked me to man the Lyre Hill Poetry Journal. For Denison. He's here I presume?"

"Yes, in his office. It's not in this building anymore, they switched things up since you've been gone. They switched a lot of things up, you know. We have a new football field courtesy of Daniel Corr. You remember him. He's working for his father now, some hot shot lawyer down in Cleveland. Something to do with intellectual property of some sort--

"Yes. I heard." Anna was getting impatient, but she remembered Mary Moore very well now. She'd aspired to be a librarian, but have worked her way up to the receptionist desk very slowly instead. Mary Moore was dating the glorious Daniel Corr, but had her heart broken junior year when Sophie Gardner came into the picture, all as glorious as he, and blonde and approved by the selective parental unit. They married soon after, and Mary Moore was left to entertain guests in a dull brownstone building with old, unpolished granite floor.

Anna glanced at her suitcases. "If you don't mind telling me, then--"

"How is your sister? Claire was it?"

Anna sighed, almost in contempt. Cleared her throat. "She's dead."

Mary Moore blinked, her long lashes like cows batting against the clear lenses of her glasses. She breathed in nervously, and for a little bit there, Anna wasn't sure she ever breathed out. "I'm so sorry, Anna."

"It's alright. Mary, I'm a bit tired after a long train ride, you would kindly point to me the direction of Professor Denison's office, won't you?"

"Of--of course. I'd imagine you would be tired." She stood up, patted her white blouse and black full skirt down to straighten it and looked at Anna hesitantly. She went around the desk. Her black platform heels were quite as a mouse as she made her way across the lobby. Anna picked up her suitcases after the apparent hint to follow her old acquaintance back to the door.

Mary Moore stopped by the door frame and pointed at a distant building. "It's that building with the red roof. It's new, you can't miss it."

Anna nodded. "Thanks, Mary. It's good seeing you again." She jetted down the steps without waiting for a reply. Five years, and she still pitied the girl, the Mary Moore, the one many wishes to not ever be: heartbroken and undignified.

Hence Anna, the new girl, was back on the warm pavement again, with her two tan suitcases. She was on her way across the green, sunlit campus toward the new English building. Her hair fell behind her shoulders and danced along with her gait. In her head, Frank Sinatra hummed "Where Are You?". Her clutching hands tightened as several people passed her, noticing her novel presence.

She seemed displeased with herself. Perhaps this was the last place she wanted to be in. What, with her writing career quickly terminated by an inexplicable incident, she probably imagined herself being at home, wherever that home is. But now she is back in Ohio. Five years ago, the farewell was meant to be permanent. But what does permanence mean when life is merely a series of circles and loops with an appeal too pedantic to be taken too seriously.

The red roof reflected the sun and hit her eyes. She blinked. The summer was melting away from the state. Fall, on the other hand, was sneaking in between the green leaves. Faintly, she heard a record playing in the background. Anna almost stopped in her tracks. She had thought her brain was playing tricks on her and had brought the Frank Sinatra to life.

It was Denison. Of course. The girl with the champagne-colored dress entered the well-lit building, its white double-doors thrown open to let the sun in. A set of steps were hidden in the back of the square hall. She looked around. The white marble bust of the college's first president stood still, exactly in the middle of the room. It was silent and benign, almost as if its presence was meant to be a whisper and not a grandiose statement of pride. She's never seen it before. She studied it, and suddenly an urge in her stomach formed a knot.

She broke into a mild anxiety attack. Her large brown eyes searched the hall; she could almost feel the strain behind her retina, the muscles twitching and pulling. She closed her eyes. This is not London, she thought. This is Lyre Hill.

How regression brought her back from a shiny city to a rusty old town. Her two suitcases felt heavy. Her mary-janes were too loud, and she blushed. She thought she could reduce the volume by lightly tapping on the floor, lifting her feet like air and letting them touch the red granite tiles ever so softly.

Her anxiety left. She was amused, and stopped by the steps she'd been searching for. A long hallway and a spiral staircase. A perfect set up for an adventure. She felt the steps beneath quiver as she did. The starry-eyed girl whose lips told tales of the grand plans in her future was afraid of a spiral staircase. Anna wasn't even aware that the music had stopped.

The deer inside her froze in the headlights. She closed her eyes and opened them as quickly as she had decided to close them. Gentle clicking echoed in the hollow hallway, bland and grey. White and minty green striped wallpaper, and the flimsy hopes of artful paintings lined both the opposing walls. Anna carefully lowered one of her suitcases and pushed it against the wall to her right.

As the clicking grew louder, Anna found herself putting up an unstudied an air as possible, as though preparing for a formal interview with the hallway. What would have stopped her from trespassing its new carpet smell, or the fresh paint smell that has smelled like fresh paint for the last six months? Nothing. She didn't decide this, some refreshing external power did.

The light above her flickered. A distinct sound of footsteps floated above her, but her anticipating mind never grew unnerved. The unpleasantness about her dissolved, revealing a hesitant crease on her forehead as she was still caught in between the first and second step at the end of the relatively narrow hallway. She was not Anna Carling, the corporate aristocrat from Albemarle, Virginia, with a modest East Hampton summer house and an alcoholic father. She was not Anna, the English major with a passion unobstructable, ungovernable and impossible to extinguish. And she returned after her zeal smoldered and put out by the vicious minds of literary intellectuals, crowding around the streets of Brooklyn, New York. She was never nowhere, and yet never went further.

What London meant was incomparable to her writer's block and blockade. She had followed a man, instead of a book, and found her reasons for loving him soured as soon as she set foot in his studio flat in the remarkably well-lit hipster district of London. He had lived above a one Boulevard Strip. It was SoHo, he'd said, and these lacquais were essential to his inspiration. He was an Oxford graduate, with a law degree he didn't even want.

The metal spiral staircase shook and the footsteps reverberated down the hallway, aiming straight at her. The second floor seemed so far away. Slowly, under a gallant yellow light on the ceiling cutting the staircase in half, there appeared a pair of brown leather loafers. Then a tan pair of pants, and a sienna tweed jacket. A hand tracing down the white metal railings; a left hand, lacking a wedding ring. The same hand she'd recognise anywhere.

Her hesitation was gone. The girl was simply uncomfortable in the heat of summer, feeling steals of breeze narrowly escaped the double doors and brushed past her calves. There stood, at exactly the other end of the hallway, Joshua Denison, sandy blonde hair and almond-shaped blue eyes. He stood non-chalantly, as if expecting to see her, but seemed somewhat surprised that she, out of all places, would be standing on the opposite end of the hallway. He was Holly Golightly's Paul Varjak with a George Benson personality; reserved but well-versed enough to afford to maintain a condescending air. He has Vonnegut's satires in his smile-lines, and you don't usually attempt to mess with that.

She has changed, he quickly decided, and to his own surprise wishes she really hadn't. Then he saw her left hand still clutching onto her suitcase (for God knows how long, now) and knew her short-lived London facade was no longer in style. She lost her interest in being majestic, and it disappointed him. Her mary-janes were still red, and her dress still reminded him of her favourite carbonated watery drink, but her large brown eyes lost a friend; and that friend may very well be herself.

"Professor Denison."

He wished she wouldn't call him that. He reached into his coat and felt around the satin lining for the pocket opening. He pulled out a yellow telegram and his square brown-rimmed reading glasses. The tip of his fingers slowly tapped the corner of the telegram. What was the use of increasing the suspense, he thought. Slowly but surely he adjusted his eyes to the small abrupt lettering of the telegram. A rustle came from the end of the hallway. Anna had stepped onto the final step and let herself be engulfed in the hallway, the dusty paintings, and the white and minty-green striped wallpaper.

Professor Denison drew a deep breath. "Mrs. Swanson left London at approximately 0600 hours today," he proceeded to mumble yesterday's date, "Will arrive around 1300 at Lyre Hill." In a business-like manner, he lowered his glasses, attempted to silence a sigh and finally removed his glasses. His eyes observed her quietly, almost in an constant motion.

Anna's eyes never left him. Her eyes followed his hands, his glasses, the telegram and finally his eyes. They moved in a coordinated fashion; almost scripted, well-scripted in fact, like an Oscar-winning movie.

"I asked my landlord to let you know when I'll arrive."

"Mrs.?"

"He left rather quickly."

"And you still kept it?"

"My landlord believed something could've been done about it."

"Hm." Denison quietly folded his glasses and the telegram, and shoved them back rather carelessly into his coat pocket. He began walking towards her, half-expecting her to stand in his way when he reached her. But she let him pass, and simply watched him as he picked up her suitcase by the steps. His rubber sole landed quietly on the granite floor.

"Joshua," she called louder.

He turned on his heels to face her, casually inserting his hand into the pocket of his tan trousers. "Yes, Miss?"

"I'm sorry."

He pulled his hand back out and rubbed his chin, contemplating her words. "Here," he motioned to the suitcase Anna clutched onto tightly. She shot him a surprised look, which was quickly replaced by the terribly missed summer look: the look where her eyes slowly and ever so slightly narrowed and a half a smile emerged unnoticeably and expanded to a full smile; and then ended with a quick stop.

It was the look she gave him all summer long four years ago, until she left for the great cement city of Manhattan, New York.

The girl handed him the suitcase. It felt rather light for a five years worth of journey, but he is in no place to judge. If anything, he would have done the same, provided he actually have the desire to travel. To leave is one thing, but to carry on leaving is another. The old soul was becoming too heavy for his legs, Denison decided, and wished there was something else he could think of.

He could talk of the weather, he's sure of it. He's an eloquent English professor with a world renowned wit encapsulated in a 5 x 9 paperback novel, unwittingly called "Brain Check". And yes, he is still getting cheques in the mail for the book, it was best-seller for two months, and was readily replaced by a self-help book to living dangerously within one's mind. Denison still exhaled quietly and secretly every time, thinking how it was not at all worth it to become a literary expert without more than one novel.

Anna walked in long strides; her long legs were always fascinating, and they gleamed pale yellow, almost an exact match to her champagne-coloured dress.

"Do you not have a purse?"

"I lost it."

"Good God, where?"

"The train from Saint-Vaury to Normandy."

"You were in France?"

"I had to pick up a divorce paper."

"In France?"

"That was where we were married."

"Couldn't they send it to you? The postal service is not exactly a new invention."

Anna stared back at the man. She didn't answer because she couldn't tell what prompted her to hop onto the deck of a ship to Paris and then onto a train to Saint-Vaury and then back to Normandy for a ferry back to London. Money was a concern at the time, and time certainly was an issue. However, the answer reserved an analysis of her judgment, of which she would pass and pay even more money to forget.

"Is that where Professor Swanson is?"

"Yes."

"With his new wife?"

"Alone. He travels. And writes. He was me, only I stayed."

Denison stopped in his tracks. He chewed his tongue in an effort to ignore a snide comment hanging on his teeth. The reserved 25-year-old woman standing before him was not the sensible girl he knew. She was bitter and agonizing. Not to him, but to her own existence. He knew she was bright enough to understand this, and it must've bothered her to know that her being was validated only by the very thing that led her astray.

He slowly turned and continued walking. She walked beside him, without further comments or any other attempts to make satirical, nonsensical jokes about her years away from Lyre Hill. Anna bit her lips. Not only didn't she regret what she said, it gave her a new perspective on Charles. Charles Swanson, several years older than her and excessively charming. He was perfume to her, slowly suffocating her the longer her head is buried in his arms.

The gilding sun snickered at her from across the universe. She was, as she had acknowledged to herself before, bewitched by a Svengali in the most wicked manner. Perhaps a sign of devotion and her true faith in commitments, but until now, nothing had lasted beyond a year and two months. Her glances fell twice on Denison.

Another familiar brownstone stood at the foot of the hill she passed earlier. The emptiness left it comatose; she admired the level of silence she never could quite accomplish in London, but despised her prospects. What excitement could she have whistling some windy songs inside a bland-looking, awkwardly shaped building? Is this modern architecture? Is this some sort of a social experiment to see whose head will deflate faster?

The front porch of the building creaked slightly. The two wooden supports were chewed away by age. The door was open, and it led to a long decently-lit hallway and a set of stairs leading up to the second floor. Denison's loafers made muffled sounds on the green carpet. He quietly led her upstairs to the third floor.

The heat in the building was offensive. There was something wistfully odd about it, some sort of a confinement for the ones who end up back where they start. This was the staff apartment, she remembered. She frequented the building often five years ago, and now she found that like the rest of them, she was back where she started. She wouldn't go into further philosophical pondering about whether or not she ever truly left. She truly did. But her heart was never in the right place.

Denison kept going up the stairs. He glanced up to the corridor every now and then briefly at her. She almost caught his eyes, but he was particularly wary with his glances. Apparently he knew himself well. He'd brought her here with the wish for stories and meandering travelogue and new philosophies, and intellectual comments about the less intellectuals; but he finds her reserved and nostalgic.

Perhaps she was tired, he consoled himself. She had traveled far.

He stopped by a brown door at the end of the hallway. He placed the suitcase carefully against his leg and reached into his right pocket for a key. The solitary key felt sharp in his palm. He studied it for a brief moment, and then pushed it through the keyhole. Fitted. Turned, and it clicked. Again, he dissuaded himself from glancing at his old friend.

Anna stepped into the one bedroom apartment. Beige carpet and small white shelves, and kitchen cupboards and window sills. Everything was white, and she peered through the blinds to see the view of the hill, standing majestically over the horizon. The living room was warm and sunny. It was small. And the kitchen was two cubicles wide, with an outdated white fridge left unplugged and miserable at the corner.

The suitcases were stacked against the wall by the door. Denison placed the key on the white shelf near the white coat hanger, by the white light switch. He seemed pleased with himself: he had brought her here.

"I'm to read an excerpt from my book tomorrow night, at the library at 7. I'd love it if you can come. You may be too busy unpacking."

"This is all I have."

"You're kidding."

"The rest will be delivered sometime this week. Maybe tomorrow." Anna observed her counterpart. "I'd love to come."

Denison nodded. He looked at her--he meant, truly looked at her. Her coral-coloured lips, and longed to kiss her. But yes, she was married and from his understanding, she was yet to be un-married.

"Perhaps you can hold a cocktail party then. Call up your friends; some are still around here."

She smiled. "Will you come?"

"If you invite me."

"You should come."

"I'll see what I can do."

Denison nodded again. What was he trying to say? He forgot, and it didn't matter. If he couldn't remember, it might not be as important as he thought it was.

"It was good seeing you again, Joshua."

Now he wished she wouldn't call him that. "You too, Anna."

The Lucky Girls Are Mostly Soundproof

2010-06-02T14:12:00.001-04:00

Prelude

Anna Carling is a living, breathing, walking bit of a lie. And if she may add herself, an unpalatable scumbag. She and her father are alike, but she is mostly, without doubt, her mother's daughter, kept within and borne out of her womb.

The day was Thursday in that hot month of July, and she sat in her dilapidated rotating chair. The seat was polyester and the rest was cheap black plastic mold--the industrial kind, the kind that scratches easily but won't gather dust despite the static. It was in this chair that she sat and wondered like any character would in the beginning of a book or a movie, only this was real life.

She sat and wondered of many things: the recent loss of a lover, the recent gain of another lover, the recent spiraling downfall into a dark abyss of dysthymia. If the episode was permanent, she wouldn't have noticed. Before her was a pile of plain paper; smooth, white and inviting, like milky thighs or a wall longing for a splash of paint. Next to the pile was a typewriter. With a ribbon, yes. She intended to write, she hoped, and write she would, through the night, the way Jo did in Little Women.

The year was 1964. JFK and Marilyn Monroe both had died tragic deaths, and yet somehow she was spared. A person of no importance. A student of literature and the English language. She had survived a difficult third year of college, and now wishes to chronicle this journey of her first true self-awareness in a book she lovingly will entitle:

Oh gosh, she knows not. And if this be a parody of her life, so be it, so long as she writes, and writes endlessly as though words are leaking out of her like waterfall and she does not have to stop for bathroom breaks for the bathroom is where words escape. Down the toilet into the glorious world of dead goldfish, namely one goldfish ingenuously named Goldfish, her favourite object when she was nine years old. Of course, to her, Goldie was an object and not a living being. Without words, nothing was a living being to her.

After a long arduous dive into her inspiration node at the base of her brain stem, she found herself unwilling to share her life at all. Anna looked around her. The rest of the floor was asleep, and if she wanted to, she could sneak a cigarette or two to help her think.

She rose from her chair, in her champagne coloured nightgown and hardly anything else underneath, and fitted herself through the door. The noise during the trip down the creaky stairs had been reduced to a minimum thanks to her clever discovery: walking against the wall, on the very edge, gave her the advantage of not waking up her easily alarmed resident mother. Madame Eva would have demanded to know why she was awake at such an ungodly hour (2 am), without so much as a jacket to cover herself. Never mind that it would be around 75 degrees outside.

She reached the back door, and pushed on the metal bar. As the door opened out quite easily, she scanned around in the dark for the waist-high plastic trash bin in the corner by the door. After feeling around in the dark, her hand fell on a plastic surface, and then grasped the edge of it. She pulled as quietly as she can, placed it strategically to prop the door open so she could get back in once she was done doing her secret, dirty deed.

Her thin slippers hit the pavement, and for a little bit, the paper-thin sole felt strange on the brick texture. She shot her glance up to the sky, and immediately she was showered by stars, by constellations she could no longer name. Anna could not even remember the big dipper, if it was up there and right in front of her, which was the standard knowledge of anyone who lives in the northern hemisphere, or simply someone who wishes to impress their company with their romantic knowledge of reading the stars. She could not find Cassiopeia, which was shown to her one night by a former lover on a dark pier in Chicago.

She smirked to herself. The notion of romance had left her long ago, and she had found, among other things she had found within the last year, that no man is worth 68 bottles of good ole Jack Daniels. Shared, of course, but she may or may not be the primary consumer of said bottles.

She had allowed the few living things she permitted to be near her to help her underwent serious therapeutic experiments. The main goal was to help her overcome her shame, feelings of worthlessness, anger, and fear of abandonment brought about by the aforementioned recently lost lover. Did he die? More often than not, she thought it would have eased her grief. But no, he did not. Quite unfortunately. He disappeared, and with that came the end of her interest in the idea of permanence.

Anna had refused many things, but never had she so violently refuse to forgive anyone. She felt guilty, and sometimes remorse for this unladylike decision, but she was stubborn as a mule, like her mother. And just like her mother, she had refused to forgive.

Anna, as the heroine, would have to find another story. She killed her cigarette, and ran back upstairs (still on the edge, and very carefully). She burst into her single room and rushed to land on the chair. She impatiently grabbed a paper. Inserted it through the typewriter. Her fingers jabbed at the keys like a hammer in the dead silence of the night.

The Lucky Girls Are Mostly Soundproof

She had found a bit of a debilitating satisfaction within the title. Something philosophical beneath the impassionate superficiality. Hell, she could only imagine what she would write about; only that these lucky girls may be more soundproof than others. She could have delved into a scientific discussion of the spirituality of the title, but she could not wait to type more. What is soundproof, she had to ask herself.

This time she didn't care. This time, she lit up a cigarette, pulled out an orange ceramic ashtray from her bottom drawer and took one large hit from it. The buzz effectively flew into her head and enclosed around her nerve cells. She was deoxygenated, and ready to elaborate on these so-called lucky girls of hers.

The Lucky Girls are Mostly Soundproof

2010-06-01T18:44:00.005-04:00

Hello everyone. It's been a while, and while I can say that I've been busy, this is not an excuse. I seemed to have forgotten that writing is my passion. I am back, and still dwelling on book ideas, as always.

The book is still not finished. In fact, it's been reduced from its original state, because like everything else, it fell into the trap of cliche-ness. We've all been there. It's just difficult to comprehend sometimes, why our treasure can become trash in one shit sentence. Therefore, I will recap the changes and the progress of the book. From now on, I will post every chapter on this blog. If I go for a long time without a chapter posted, please come down and hunt me. This means that I've been lagging, or dead, in which case, you should probably call the police.

The title "The Lucky Girls are Mostly Soundproof" came to me in a place where all magical things happen: the bathroom. It was a tiring day, and I had taken a long shower. "Soundproof" in this context refers to the ability of a person to respond to the white noise we are so often surrounded with. Life constantly transmits this white noise, expecting us to react to it or ignore it. Those who are subjected to it, but did not realize that this noise is out there, have been soundproofed, either by their actions or their capacity. These are the lucky ones.

Others are not so lucky. While one can desensitize oneself, he or she is more likely struggling to understand the meaning of life, which, when you really think about it, revolves mainly around procreation.

Then there are those who know the sound is out there, but received no transmission from life. Only a cold silence that entrapped them in their place, without the provision of maps, directions or hint on what one must do with their life.

Meet Anna Carling. Meet Joshua Denison, Caroline Carling, Charles Swanson and Jacob Nolan.

[unfinished]

2010-03-09T13:20:00.001-05:00

Let it be that memory fades

pale as the moon

in its darkest orbit

Know that the

divine cost of conquer shall be paid

if only for slight remembrance.

Two Nights

2010-02-07T01:45:00.004-05:00

Snubbed! And for two nights

the ants crawled

right into bed with me

the soaring headless

horsemen told me tales

of your escapades

and two nights were left

wondering

entailed a suspicious mind

to be evoked

from casual curiosity.

I supposed

chivalry

is attached to loneliness

those seeking help

were tremendously helpful

in my journey towards

lovesickness

but no matter

what strung me like a puppet

is now cut loose

goodbye mercy

you were no help

the voices hurdled a spear

and I am down

my right side bleeding

the truncated conversations

and rash decisions we made

the night of the last

civility

because without it

foggy nights

meant a downfall

into some unfamiliar oasis

called hunger

love

desire

famine of the kind that will

corrode your arteries

and make them swallow

the bitter pill

that

me.

I do apologize for

resting all my hopes up

on two nights

the nights you busily

spend

contemplating the curse

of this model citizen.

Well I hope you're happy,

two nights,

the muted sound of mes

chansons

taught me better.

I shall fall into the deepest darkest chamber

never to be found again

after the two nights

of absolute blatant disfiguring

lovesickness.

I, I, and You

2010-02-05T11:09:00.003-05:00

What is this glare

the unawareness

the cynical acknowledgment

of everything past

and the disappointing present

hidden in the curls of smoke

evaporating

snake-like and enchanting

like an addictive collaboration

of shame and spite.

On the walk home

the insidiously malicious gravel

held me up

like hands, stronger than Atlas'

directing this child

to keep aside the fear of losing

while bees commute from her liver to lungs

to the darker corners of

her ears

deafening the temptation to break

up, apart, and away.

If this was a cry for help

you'll no longer answer.

Young Heart

2010-01-14T23:38:00.002-05:00

A song

I tested the night with infatuation

Four seas and leaning towards one,

a continent

Forgetting a promise,

not it was almost a promise.

Disavowing any loyalties.

I learned to replace words

with the word choice.

I learned to see you and I

through the gleam in his eyes

and the belt in the sky.

Forgetting a promise,

no, it was almost a promise.

You are but a wrecked young heart.

Nights and the Hollow Point of a Sword

2010-01-13T20:19:00.003-05:00

I am a courageous son of a bitch

I burrow like

leaves under snow

when fog descends

I fall in love,

the haunting eruptions.

I am wave

chased infinitely by the bending knees

you fall on when I

ran for the stairs

and you insist on burying your face in your hands

like a guilty guilty child.

I've always feared ceased persistence

being wooed for so long

I cannot unlearn the schemes

games are for the glorious

And yes, I am most certainly one.

The clever coldness

who could imitate art but

the artist herself?

You are most excitingly hidden,

and should remain that way.

Dear friend,

2009-11-24T11:30:00.000-05:00

Happy birthday, sweet Elias.

I and I

2009-11-14T04:38:00.003-05:00

I digressed

from blue to blue

you eat eat eat

away

my storm

my source of everything light

the frigid sense of the greater good

what wandering eyes

what what what

the grip of trite remarks

on the casual embarking towards

nothing

yes it was

indeed it was nothing nothing

repetition of an old wound

fingers entwined for a promise

you will not talk of it

the grandeur of possibilities

the trifecta of truth

him, her, the capacity of our judgements

without it the few stumbling blocks

fall into place

retrieving a harness

on our sensibilities.

We are the

status quo of past mirror images.

L'oubli

2009-08-17T14:58:00.004-04:00

In the ditch you found me

the lantern glowed dimly

it spoke to me in my

father's cryptic tongue

and told me to wait.

But I am not love;

I am not patient nor kind

I was in the ditch because I marched

in the rain

mud

snow

and sweltering heat

against Moerae

and my golden thread

they took hostage.

Daddy's real,

but my father wasn't

And in every man I've loved

I saw him peeked through

their translucent skin

like a parasitic testimony

of everything I feared.

But you are not him,

in your adamant promise to stay,

although I may be

and could be part of the

triumvirate hoax, or

the pendulum gravitating around

my father's hands

who I recently discovered

to not have been real

after all.

The Tempest

2009-06-19T18:38:00.002-04:00

I am home, and not.

I'm merged in its timeline

an unforgiving host

and I, merely a guest

subdued for a fortnight,

and saint and sinner's daughter.

But sometimes I'm only the sinner's daughter

who had to tap her heels

to be allowed home

and there, I lost my grace

trapped in a perfume box

while the shortness of breath

was from the anxious stalling

as I wait for things to sail on

and wake up just in time to

give my saint back to her love,

just as she had asked me to do

once a year.

She had asked me to

show her my gum,

my teeth, my tongue,

my insides

to check if any of them

have hurt me.

But mother, really,

I am just home.

Rebel Child

2009-06-09T21:10:00.002-04:00

I drown

and the inertia

unravels

and toys

with novelty

of the mind. with poise

more so than my

grandfather's fingers

while he grappled

with keys

he forgot I was there

I was five and quiet, then.

Lebanon

2009-05-25T03:59:00.003-04:00

For Elias Khalil

I sleep with

paper cranes

both eyes open

the crickets smiled

they know it's not them this time

that kept me awake.

And when you sleep

you hear your mother

in short breaths

when you're awake you hear

yourself

in short breaths

pounding on the door

letting summer in

as it sneaks away

gliding across the floor

towards the door.

I'll be the little girl

in my green sundress

with my butterfly net

capturing glimpses of the sun

bring it back in a jar

trade it for her life

and her smile again.

The Spinning Distance

2009-05-25T03:33:00.004-04:00

For Elias Khalil

The ringing in the night

was all I heard

A flock of hearts flew

for you

towards you, I was

beaten down

but could I have dared compare

a troubling fear

to your paralysed courage?

Letting you swallow the grey,

your heart might just implode

and I should have

been God.

To save you

help remove the lump from your throat

so you could breathe

give you a gun to

kill Father Time.

I should have been God,

but He protested

and here I am

the incarnation of futility.

Sheer

2009-05-01T16:29:00.003-04:00

For Andrew Horvath

Come forth

with the insistence

that I am yours.

Those parading secondary characters

aren't worth a mention

you know the shots

and the blue flames

and all too familiar with

the spiraling staircase

you may want to choose to descend.

You thought it's such a

feat

to be alone

but whatever Charlie Parker tune

is crocheting in your head

it can't keep you company

like this girl can.

The King

2009-04-24T00:27:00.008-04:00

How goodbyes should never be like

Two bottle caps on my desk

and the stain from

about three months ago

when I eagerly

wished I could fix you.

Been too long, but tough beans,

I bagged the sunlit spectre

and shipped it out already

to Ukraine or some far away place.

I'm feverish and hostile

listing 1, 2, 3

the reasons to still eagerly wish I could fix you

But my heart beat, beat

in a far away place

beat beating

too long and too slow

your arms never stretch far enough

and you dress yourself

in years of shades,

and you live in a conundrum of hums

killing time

with your greedy senses

and memories

of the white castle

of the wooden room

of the disheartened girl

with a knack for small conversations

regarding dead English playwrights.

Adoration

2009-04-11T20:48:00.004-04:00

For the poet and Paris

Look at me:
Twenty years of sun
ingrained in my skin

thought she's owned
the world and
beyond;

and then in a trance of nostalgia,
violins serenade me,
quietly falling in love

with the greatest of all men.

New Book

2009-04-07T15:04:00.003-04:00

Hi everyone,

I'm in the process of writing a book, which I started last summer, but never got around to finishing it. So I decided to tell all of you that I'm going to write a book, so you can hold me responsible for actually finishing it. Because, as many of you may (or may not) know, it's too hard to finish something that you start. Especially if it's in the form of a book, that will make or break your writing career. Not that I'm trying to write a best seller. Just one of those life-changing lesson-giving literary breakthrough whose fame will outlast me and future generations of my family. So it will be grand. It should be.

Running Up the Liar's Hill

It begins with a girl, Georgiana, returning to her old alma-mater to be a writing assistant for her former professor, Mr. Denison, whom she used to have a love affair with. But she comes back to find that there are no longer sparks between them. He is now a tired intellectual, who finds his life less adventurous than how he wished it to be back when he was young. So Georgiana and Mr. Denison continue to be an intellectual company for each other, both trying to get out of the routines set by the small town life. She finds him adequate but not exciting, and he finds her exciting but not adequate. She is trying to find a reason to stay, and he is trying to find a reason to leave.

After several months of living in a stagnant philosophical existence, a young boy named Jacob transfers into the college. He is superficial and ambitious; the exact antithesis of the passivity of Georgiana and Mr. Denison. Jacob provides excitement in the lives of both characters. He represents what is beyond the Lyre Hill, which stands between them and the outside world. When Jacob fell in love with Mary Moore, the town's plain Jane, both Georgiana and Mr. Denison see this as the destruction of their hope for excitement, and hence they try to persuade Jacob to leave the small town instead.

... and that's all I got. I'm trying to steer clear from love and any subjects related to love. The main idea is to portray selfish desires and disappointment in a most graceful and rational way. I feel like this is an ambitious project. But I'm excited. It contains everything, from personal thoughts to philosophy. I think if nothing comes out of it, it'll just give me a very satisfied feeling that there is a book I finished, bearing my name and my practical wisdom, reflected through the eyes of extraordinarily (to my standard) thoughtful characters.

It's set in a town called Lyre Hill (imaginary) in an unspecified state in an unspecified country. Georgiana is in her mid-20s, while Mr. Denison is in his mid-40s, and both are loyal followers of the romantic literary movement. Jacob is a 20-yr-old that comes like an ever-changing wind, because he doesn't have a direction he's going to, and he represents the past, present and future for Georgiana and Mr. Denison.

The end is still a mystery-- the best part of writing a book is to finally write the ending. Wish me luck.

Azure

2009-03-10T03:07:00.006-04:00

For Craig Zeltner, still; the last one I shall ever write for him

After you're done with time
Know when to stop believing
Know when to stop trespassing

the boundaries of human greatness
because he'll find only
what you'll lose by rising.

We are a tribe
a species of genuine kindness
fooled by self-preservation

into thinking love is mastery
of the art
to let his empty hands

and reacting eyes
ravage on something he can never feel.
And perhaps I was wrong.

Perhaps I wish I was wrong.
But time finished me
in a most gentlemanly demeanor

as I was buried slowly in six feet
of where words would have been
if he would only remember me.

Hands and the Raconteur

2009-03-09T13:58:00.003-04:00

Tonight you can be the end of my line
The great gust of saving grace
will not be my pacifier

You are the odd one out
I'd take a chance with
to change the surface

mold of the last hands
seizing my bones
like a carnival of sins

and sinners, who
laughed their way out to
destroy the Golden Mean.

The immodesty, the vanity
the princess dolls stripped
tarred and feathered

Never forget she was
once yours,
and only in imagined permanence.

The Sentiments and Recollections of the Wrong Man

2009-03-05T01:34:00.007-05:00

For Craig Zeltner

What shade of blue is the
tiny shell you gave me?
Who knows.

North Carolinian blue, the place
you adore most, where your
sun sets quietly

perfectly
the way a sun should set.
What does is matter (I decided.

Or you might have decided
that for me) ?
Ohioan blue?

More gray than any blue
should ever be
but your eyes adjust

after 26 years you
move on and quit all attempts
to wish it otherwise.

I am three,
in this state's years,
and what an unhappy toddler I am.

Look what you have
made me--some sort
of higher Maslow being.

My hands smell like Hemingway,
New Year's Eve kiss
and breakfast in bed

--they smell like everything
when senses mix and
all you wish is to

remember. They smell like
my pen, writing this poem
on the card I sent you,

and when I wrote
on the white envelope
your address I couldn't

simply
forget.

My Favourite Colour is and/or Should be Red

2009-02-23T09:14:00.002-05:00

I am chlorine
You are dust
dirtying up my wet skin

clogging up my tear duct
so my eyes swell swell
like the balloon

in your canvas backpack.
No, I will not receive it
with a smile

no matter how red that
damn balloon is.

Colder Than The Older Water

2009-02-22T20:45:00.004-05:00

For Craig Zeltner

You and me and Damien Rice
with a chest full of
ideas

to build a temple for our
sacred bodies but not
our minds.

I gave up the night but
you clutched onto your days
like it was nine years ago;

and when you speak
you hear you mother
and when I let go

I hear my father.
There won't be that long drive
the trees waving goodbye

because my verses are lost
in your deliberate avoidance,
and the long vagueness

like a predestined arrangement
for the worst.
I'm so angry at you.

Pray for me as I have prayed for you.
Pray for me so I stop loving you.

The Better Drug

2009-02-22T20:38:00.004-05:00

Smitten was the word
after three bottles of champagne
One finds lust on the

staircase,
the hallways, the
nooks and crannies of the white

cement walls.
I exuded smittenness
--I was catlike and shy

but vicious and androgynous
the overtly sexual being
was jealous of its

counterpart, the more
honest self, consuming
only authentic fire.

Yes, I presumed I was
smittened like a pair
of warm gloves

inside a lover's coat
pocket on a dry
wintry Ohio day.

Remember the hullabaloo summoned
by the city-styled
slow romance?

As if not trusting, but really,
a second date was just
a matter of

blurting it out. I don't
find it offensive
that loyalty can be traded

with an infallible sense
of being claimed.
A few Tylenols later,

the feelings still stayed
doubt was suppressed by
the anti-inflammatory device.

Smittened, smittened, smittened.
Not real love,
but quite a better kind.

The Christmas Candy Wrapper

2009-01-07T21:42:00.005-05:00

For Giselle de Laurentine

And oh self I missed the heart I used to have
I'm a flight away from
what rain used to feel

or how my joints and bones
and fingers stripped
bared on linen

the white walls calling
forks aimed at 'lectric contacts
drooping eyes, I -

not you nor him nor her -
long for skylines.
The changer changed nothing

I'm long overdue for a
sabotage/
crying in the basement?

I ruled the world.
I did.

Oh Thine Own Dreary World

2008-12-19T19:01:00.004-05:00

You fooled around with caste
and the superficials
and wondered how they ever

lived by your terms.
They drank their eye drops
and drew the butter knife

up towards their chins
then poked around the heart area
like curious non-creatures

non-humans
superhuman in their most
materialistic sense

(even almost organically-challenged).
Oh it's true they typed in basic LOL
and read the abridged

version of the kamasutra
then smoked the french cigarettes
that weren't really cigarettes

because they were so light and minty
they might as well be
candy canes.

But I was one of them, you see.
I was in and out of love with a fop and
mastered the great

queen-bee pose (hand on one hip/
bitch stare/ heavy strap heels).
I ate that

"chocolate-covered cherry
and seedless watermelon".
Nothing from this small town was good enough.

To my dear friend,

2008-11-24T00:09:00.000-05:00

Happy birthday.

The Former

2008-11-19T01:15:00.004-05:00

This corner is heavier
with its riveting character (still that same ex)
quietly broken (damn that word)

I have a question! Alright, a
form of protestation, I'll
admit

he clicked his tongue (oh, he does)
in admiration
oh yes, he loved me

grinned fireflies flesh
I was worthy again (blah, blah)
To me. He.

The picket-fencing of my city dreams
is a lose-lose antagonism.
"If you don't love me, pretend."

How 'bout I give you a pack of cigarettes and you can go amuse yourself?

On the Question of the Propriety of Certain Yearnings

2008-11-19T00:35:00.004-05:00

For Elias Khalil

The man with the typewriter stole my words:
Interesting, Remembered
-- the flurry of those lines

How I fear mediocrity
but he won't allow it, until
he turned away

I lost guard and convinced
I'm a B-rated being
quenching the thirst of a practical God

I was His greatest satire,
no doubt,
but if he stayed, he wouldn't have allow it.

Snow sang in my ear
drumming drums, windy winds
the words: I knew I've learned this.

He was lover to my heresy
--I'd purr and he'd feed me
bits of Sophia

and seasonal languages
he'd find in Vonnegut, until
he turned away

and this B-rated being
had to spell out her name repeatedly
just to make sure she stays

sane for his return.

The Memory Owners

2008-10-14T19:45:00.003-04:00

The wheels on the farmer's hands
he grew up in a stable
the horses were his mother's

his father sold them--
the memory owners-- when she was buried.
The wheels in his hands

and the seeds in his pockets
and the big city girl in his mind
drove with him to work

past the gas station 'round the corner
and acres of red trees
all waving goodbye.

She kissed his sleeping eyes,
said, "Your mother is now mine,
your horses are now mine,

and you handed the wheels over."
They turned in her hands
traveling softly on her long, slender

fingers. They slept on his green worn
out pillows.
He dreamt of horses.

Oude Gevoelens (and The Golden Child)

2008-09-21T21:26:00.007-04:00

A silent dedication

My mother birthed a songstress
with delicate cheeks
and lightly tousled hair

who grew up to be
an adamantine soul
in the wake

of her first true autumn.
She knew, come spring
golden- colored nails

prefect footsteps, slender standing
conversing outside the quiet side doors
there will be their irrelevance.

Her knees grew a
tear, when she
promised them she'll never run again.

She falls
into a laugh
The scientist studies

her dental remains
This morning's last kiss
still intact

as she flees from his quiet leave;
she is not diamond
(in the best figurative sense).

Her fingers, tree branches,
picking the strings or the
lines from the letter

singing (as she should be,
the songstress herself)
singing she was re-birthed in her

idyllic thoughts
but the words he quotes
the frailty of knowing

left her deaf
and fascinated by her deafness.
But the newness

owns her heart now.
The waves bathe
her rested feet

Beyond the shoreline
she is reminded of an
old smoke talk

(she quit smoking)
how words are a poet's peace offering
and a philosopher king's best mistress

a promise of eternal interest
for the sake of our
very human memory capacity.

Blue and Purple Color Scheme

2008-08-26T15:30:00.003-04:00

The low-hanging clouds
flirted with the wing tips
-- I am home bound!

My assigned window seat was a
tactfully dreaded choice
but the pacified

cottons under the thin
mist of green made little
white footsteps,

a highway of soullessness
with a drug-like effect
(well, paracetamol).

I miss you, and
I swear by Sir Ellington,
I must have you.

Quand

2008-08-26T15:21:00.003-04:00

Your to-do list.
And then your diaphragm dropped
musing and browsing through

the cleats and depression
in your skull,
that benign tumor called memory.

(What to do?)
The flights, the 70.5 pounds of a
block of canvas bullshit.

The unpacking, the
eventual displeasingly quiet break-up,
the search for a

diplomatic solution (/date)
for the mid-month ancient banquet
and the guessing game

for the profession of love.
Ah, shit.

Oh, drunkenness.

2008-08-26T15:16:00.002-04:00

Tooth and pen.
Chomp, chomp.
Ya bite and chew, child

but the words would smell like
spit and uncared for gum.
I see you stole that pen but

at least you own the tooth.
Should be teeth, but it's 5 AM
and you're only 19

so deck 'em in the face
if they dare ask.

Taipei's Hollow (Chocolat)

2008-08-26T15:11:00.002-04:00

Taxi!
Take me to the bright lights!
(which one?)

Well, you see that green wall
that awful, awful
dark turquoise colour? (Yes, yes)

There is a man,
sitting on a fake leather chair
of the same hue

and he's got my ticket home.
He insists that I pay in kind,
the kind that would

raise that dead, straight
through a coffin.
He said my hair is beautiful

he examined my follicle
my cuticle
my chronicled

post break-up/ post-defeat
(but) pre-Hollywood's first 15 minutes crisis.
Nodded.

Shook his head.
No-go.
"Wait for the credit title to finish,

you impatient clown."
So, Taxi.
$20 if you can run down the double doors.

Convenience

2008-08-26T15:05:00.004-04:00

Without the slightest intention to reveal a friend's secret, here is your infidelity recorded in words.

I admit there is a slight
void. Of course,
there's the undeniable

superficiality -- my sin,
my crime scene.
Come September I will peel off

a skin without pigment
and a layer of ugly lesson
scars.

Will the Sir accept it?
The Martian in the moon
garden will answer that

They write books for this,
the coyless anticipation
which conveniently defined the

boundaries between his
edgeless fingers and my brand
new lips.

Of course (yet again)
I'm equipped with an ill-intentioned
lover (What's the

prognosis?) and he has
a lioness pride:
maneless and feminine

but viciously destructive
none the less.
The Sir was carefree.

For all he knows, I was
the precariously audacious
female with

"the hots for him."

Cringeless (and Unfastened)

2008-08-26T14:53:00.004-04:00

(Thank You.) Being flattened,
Father Time deflated me further
so did the

slide show of horoscopes
in the monthly magazine,
my untamed future

against the backdrop of
neatly categorized music. Is it
possible that I

should be the only one
with faith and gleaming glassy eyes?
This big city girl

translucent in the metro lights
(brandless, thus certainly
naked!)

has the wavery of a corn stalk
and a lover (a contended
fact, still)

Did she win?
The Bhagavadgita of a classically
trained New Yorker

(it's only technicality)
-- the damned but still coveted
fictitious illumination?

I am green tea breathmints.
I am a pair of hot 12-inch.
I am the problematic beginning, content

and ending of Mahler's first.
Watch me, the bigot,
watch me, my chaste caste

Recyclable coffee collar or not
I was never green.
And never will I be.

Red Windmill

2008-08-26T14:52:00.001-04:00

Like a rush of spirited arms
the turn, turned
the sleek tongue, moist lips

by and by, it seemed truer
hearts pounding
pounding.

One is a dent
a secret pool game, the
8-ball aimless on the green felt;

You watched if the
corner left pocket will devour it
oh, it will

oh stranger proved to me
I lost a statistically
chauvinistic game.

Cheers! (raise your absinthe)
Here's your pound of liverish flesh
Fresh lips and claws

For one Montmartre night
I was your Toulouse-Lautrec.
It's a matter of

strategy --
how do you keep an escape artist
in an old peanut butter jar?

Won't she go mad?
Oh yes she will
oh stranger proved to me

by and by, it seemed truer
she is not the staying kind.

The Father and the Childish Muse

2008-08-26T14:51:00.003-04:00

For Father

The mask, I must say
the religious symbolism behind
it all

the karma, the lust
the dependency on warmth and
featured puppet fangs

Oh strings, oh Java
the routine musical thoughts
prevents you from discovering logic

I assume you don't pursue at all
That's fine; it's all
chronicled in a fashionable

leather-bound bible of
heroines. You looked through it
and were disappointed

that my mother's name was there.

The Story of the Mute Kitchen Silver Wares

2008-08-26T14:51:00.001-04:00

I stayed stubbornly mute
The night flickered
like the light in

my kitchen over the sink.
I could never see
my plates again.

They must still be there
covered in cold hard cheese
leftover from the

lasagna. Oh and
don't forget the sauce from
your late night snacks.

They silently observe
the empty rooms
I was never home; you left

humming Bittersweet Symphony
because you thought it was
appropriate.

I stared at you, laughing
planning to leave the sink light
flickering and unfixed.

The 8th Big Thing

2008-07-28T13:43:00.003-04:00

Only the lonely learn
to die alone
staring at glow-in-the-dark

stickers on your ceiling
(stars and a moon)
you thought of how

14 was half a century ago
Your father's a decadent ass
your mother

half a widow
and your brother's wisdom
is obsolete.

You had to commute
between reason and
dehydration

(which one lost?)
to buy time to vacillate
between lovers.

Cordiality is a new dress
some deep fathoming action
killed a dog

your neighbor's (right at midnight
last night).
I always cry when

dogs die in movies
or when the "oohh"s in songs
never seem to end.

I miscarried misplaced
missing my pen
to write to you, doctor

said my
permanent head trauma
(the official diagnosis)

will devour me
when I'm 35.

Star Sailors

2008-07-28T13:43:00.001-04:00

The incredible likeness to the sick
and the lonely
spitting waterproof mascara

shitting skins and lies.
The beat faded
the teeth brushed

Oh but
I'm still wet from
the womb

murder by electrocution
would kill you too.
I should stay dead.

Even better
I should stay in the
womb For another

decade of
unsettling reprisals.

Three deaths to mourn
the mouse walked steadily
sniffing you me and an unknown

the harmonica breathes
chante pour toi.
Quiet, love, quiet

I'm trying to hear.

The Velvet Morning Glory

2008-07-28T13:42:00.000-04:00

The semi-intelligent intellectuals
sat on a thought
A flowering scheme;

I've been bought and sold
on the idea
that although I miss you

she is more willing
and less of a death-like discomfort.
You see in the Day-Glo Hallmark card

for $ 3.49 apiece
the smell of rut in the rain and old adoration
registered into our

simple demands for
a quiet morning.
Everything seems to be alright

if measured by our anal retention.
Something is dead on the wall
the unidentified gnawing object

reminding you
I'm not open all night
like our favorite McDonalds

where the old man
sitting alone every sunday night
told a story about

his transatlantic fondness
(or perhaps a little bit more that that)
and wooed us deaf.

I didn't know people can
fade; the unsophistication of a
push for glory

Waving from the terminal
of the last permanence
(the fancy words for ending).

Brand New Pictures (Are You One of Them?)

2008-07-28T13:41:00.000-04:00

During the commercial flight
from reason to
insanity, a crab

(the red kind) arrested me
with one claw.
My operatics, he said

--the kind that tarnish
the rep of
other lovers-- is not

condonable.
I killed time
with the quiet riot

of spring.
Burgundy nails and
several insecure messages later

I realized---
C'est tout.
And love is replaced by shiny lucid lust.

Vintage Years

2008-07-28T13:40:00.000-04:00

The lips parted
a tidal wave of red
crashed onto the ancient sand

into a whisper
foretelling a love
for a scene of madness.

The door is locked
it creaks too loud at night
wakes up the entire

neighbourhood
when she returns home with
a pocketful of ashes

and a
second lip ring.
In the coffee, a

neat brew of Hypatia
and other people's Listerine spit.
Zappa's scatology

and a collection of
"Very old movies"
(as if Marlene Dietrich

is a trend)
added to the zeitgeist
of her early twenties.

Biting the edge of
her pillow case as the stubborn Man
force fed her parts

of Hypnos.
Her bible is a wine-stained letter
from her mother.

The Singing Sea

2008-06-29T14:06:00.003-04:00

I lied to you.
Didn't surf at all last summer
Last summer was far
The deadbeat recollection
The unclean, unshaven
memory of a
younger mind.

I woke up at 5
each morning
ready to fight
(belligerent and invincible)
and then paralyzed.
I sat on the sand
The sand chewing me

Its spit digesting me
Watching the wave
curled its sleeves
and hammered, slammed
dove in head first
into the sand
shaping the long-forgotten coast

Nothing but sand for me
Well-buffed tourists
and sand sand sand
challenging my
custodial lying cheating mind.
Too fucking late, kiddo
your laughing best friend

is dead dead dead.

Pose

2008-05-29T01:15:00.015-04:00

The art of making
plastic lips from a little glance
spelling things correctly
prints on the glass
your revival procedure is counting down
you sneezed on your shoulder
spilling tea on your flowers.

Remarkably well-preserved
for such a hysterical mind
grating your deformed thoughts
(his and theirs too)
to put on their pizza
and cook for 15 minutes in 300 degrees.
They'll let you take the blame when it burns.

Bowling Night (Running for the Door)

2008-05-29T01:15:00.014-04:00

for Craig Zeltner

The tangerine (or was it lime?)
and the pink elephant
Tom Petty saving my last dance
cornering my last ditch effort.

The dialogue involving some gin
and a flying dinosaur
we can't quite name.
Flame over an army of small men

in the cold, winter-like spring
defending the pitcher
our hands
and many other seemingly

memorable logic.
Hmm.
We kissed
I quite enjoyed it.

7 Months and the Death of the Changeling

2008-05-29T01:15:00.011-04:00

Smart mouth
Smarter flattery
dining with your impressiveness on

a silver platter.
I'm the young
doe-eyed heroine under a fashionable trance

sipping the Cabernet Sauvignon
expecting it to be
bloodier

like a plotless Tarantino.
I'm the historian
with photographic memory but

no mental notes
of you
--Ladies and Gents,

here is the stranger with the
adventurous tongue
with the perseverance of an organic carrot.

Sleeping with my
Marie Celeste, padded
with well-practiced eccentricity

and analgesia.
Oh, and don't forget how you
adored my

trophy-like quality
my savoir-faire and
indispensable wit.

"I don't understand you,"
you said.
I don't either.

There.
We have something in common.

110 m/h

2008-05-29T01:15:00.005-04:00

for mother

Turn around in the highway
you're barely listening

To the intricately
crafted humming
staring down at your
green portmanteau

and polaroids of where you've traveled
not far, not too many

no classic road trip scars
suitable for nothing.
The desert laments the
lack of laughter

swirls of shiny asphalt
you wrapped your

head around
utter another brilliant advice
you can't remember
cause the heat comforts and patronizes.

The great state
of fanciful assumptions

swallowed the rhyming fear
seven haikus and
no prose
Ponderous and ready to retaliate.

Drive, and drive.
Tired of desert cats

inching its way
towards your bare bear legs.
The farther down your
heart is on your sleeve, the further you go.

Out of sight.
To the yet unnamed.

Caramel-scented stretch
of sand
I believe it's called
The Great Sleep.

Folk Poem for the Midwestern Lovers

2008-05-29T01:15:00.002-04:00

for Craig Zeltner

He promised me he'd come for
breakfast at 9 am
in Oberlin

in that corner coffee shop (that corner
of W. College Street and something)
that smells like burnt fair trade coffee and English Blueberry Muffins

waiting at the half-rotten wooden
table
looking over

the carrefour
headlights blinking
dressing sharply (forget the rules)

for the piquant meeting
not un-chanced
so much as deliberated.

Quick hug, frightened glances
un-provocative touching of the knees
and we're set

to go to the park, right
across the street (that corner of
W. College Street and yet something else)

take care to avoid the
college girls draped in intellect
so as not to distract you

as we discuss
school fights and our fearsome mutts
siblings, favorite colors

and other accompanying thoughts;
like how to hold hands correctly
and how to subconsciously count our breaths.

Phantom Smile

2008-04-26T18:09:00.004-04:00

Insatiable sun
I frolicked with you on the grass
Reflected you on

the steps before the white castle
sad eyes, brief smile
holding the trump card.

Fear you not,
I have sensibility,
though

my heart is edible
and he thought so too.

The Stagnant Days

2008-04-26T18:05:00.002-04:00

Time, plastic-like,
stretched over the fields
fatted up

celebrified
quarreled over papier-mache
"Thank You For Coming" signs.

The flower tucked
behind my ear
(large, heavy, et rouge)

changed my beauty
-- improve, disapprove?
I shall be stung

by bees
clenched fists
and your favorite eye.

What's o'clock?
The cinematic grandeur stops
back in that beach town

this Dionysian palmist
persuaded with great ease
for a holy palmer's kiss

but he will not return.

And Exit, Joshua

2008-04-11T19:59:00.003-04:00

The man in the picture
tilted his hat, smiled
at me.

People are buzzes
fighting pride, dwelling in
somber hearts.

I shall never find Tristan,
that I know. I've read
the book the palm of my

hands, nought for thought
the ethereal the
realism punctured my

lungs. Hovered above
my last breath. Six, Twenty,
Fifty Three years from now

the jilted lover will have
revenge, by passively submitting
to death.

The heart, a mere organ
muscle and blood, not affliction
for affection

not symbolism but an
ashtray
The vase for wilted roses

on the cutting board.

The Last End Near the Low Sight

2008-04-11T19:52:00.003-04:00

I sharpened my teeth
and flashed them
my cheery is charity
my stretchy skin complements
my glass eyes
glass eyes protruding out of my
eye sockets.

I hate you
Mr. Morph, you
messed with my head
kicking cans in the dark street.
I sat with a Jack a John a Nick a Jesse an Eddie
a Josh a Phil a Dan a Dave -- or David--
and I am always more.

You lost, you lust.
I give you, now, the independent
entity, my charm.
Press the space key hold it down
until the next page
that's how far our box homes should be.
Mind you

I still fear contamination
The crisis over my blind spot
depriving me of my
epiphany. Danger with driving
with an open mouth
you might catch a tongue.
I am gum

you chew spit it out
I am no food nor foot nor fool.
You lost, you lust
not conquered, headlines plastered
flashing your neon disinterest
business as usual
but I'll not be blond for you.

The Fallacy of Impressions

2008-04-02T23:18:00.003-04:00

For Elias Khalil

It's a pattern of time
Windmills
Cows grazing
Aproned mothers and
carefully-dressed children.
This big city boy

expands his lungs
to breathe in the
corn stalks and leftover
snow banks.
He blew crescent-shaped
smokes, through his

grin.
His pale eyes
and green pupils flagrantly stared at me
mouthing:
What.
Are you. Going.

To do?
As if fragmented sentence
would help me.
The Ballad of Venus and Mars
in detailed folklore
written in stone;

I still would frown.
The chilly night frothing
vacant mind swallowed me.
I will kiss you, I promise
long, too long
well into the night

and mean it.

Near-Kiss

2008-03-31T18:20:00.005-04:00

I couldn't follow you
There was a mud-filled strait
a jungle of humans

broken glass trails
and the mentality of a failing
confidence

between our two sound minds.
Oh, Dear Gem!
the frailty of our magnetism

enchanting as it
seems, may not bring about
the distinct feeling of

Love.
Our lips touched, yes,
quite right and justified that you

should make an argument for a mistake
in the comfort of several
centuries of highs

we don't seem to make the
correct sound
the white silk curtain

draped over our
dormant future feats.
Don't use the potentiality

of the concept
"us"
as a conversation starter.

No talks, no talks
let our filtered words
be laundered clean because

I own a hopeless dove
trapped in servitude.
And there,

deep in the youthful memories
of chalks and
impersonation of infatuation

I should untangle
the knots
the interlaced fingers

the souffrage of an honest boy
first.
These teeth are made

for tearing hearts.
Let me do my job and then
you can do yours.

Blackbird's Daughter

2008-03-31T17:57:00.005-04:00

For Father

I am my father
I am the daughter
in the Halloween fountain box
the recipient of the sighing smile

once a week if mama
doesn't say anything
twice a week if mama doesn't
start an argument.

As I grew older and can
no longer fit into my green Benneton sweater,
his mind wander out to
the world outside

the tip of his fingers smoothened
no more Blackbird to put
this fetus to sleep.
I am so small, too small, almost

cradled in his giant palm
charred by his clove sticks
How can he stay?, he inquired; and I
greened and purpled

sweating unscripted monologues.
When he pressed play, I was
a 12-year-old adult
with an abbreviated memory

my sweater, buried in my backyard
Daddy sat on the front yard
next to the driveway
black, white, red cars swept him

but he grabbed onto the dull
summer grass, and stayed behind
cursed at the satellites
privately respiring hints to deceive

paint past the dust on the table.
You, Daddy, are also
a poet. You, Daddy, are insatiable
and I'm sorry.

Trailing Behind the Flashlight Around the Corner

2008-03-20T12:38:00.003-04:00

For Keenan Hallas

I xeroxed your thoughts
mainly from the right brain
writing verses on the map of your head

about that night we
hid under the stairs; frosty night,
swaying flashlight

dissolving into hesitant children
knees to chin
elbows separated by the Atlantic

sunken sailing ships, far from
your shore. Ah, I conversed with a phantom, am
consumed with thoroughly

veiled hands. Shoes glued
to the floor, but
was that a spring smile?

The demolition army is here, but
we were cradled by a gentle
voice singing "Chicago"

and mourning the idleness
of our lips in free verse
and delicate muscle tone.

A 7 PM Love Song

2008-03-13T18:56:00.003-04:00

You have the starving soul
of a gentilian
a brook a palace
a mahogany lifeline.

The temper of
musk
suffice
you will survive this.

Watchtower

2008-03-13T18:51:00.002-04:00

On the bridge
over the reservoir
you will be waiting, won't you?

To strike a match
the signal fire to reach me
drawing cold breaths

slowly and steadily
as if to regain a lost composure
to mask our yearning.

We dove and rose in
fixed beats and rhyming soliloquy
to stealthily take our

leave from this lucid dream.
The water beneath us
sighing, compromising with Mother

to not break our fists
when we fight against the sleet
the watchtower yawning

warning lights in the
failing night. We remained free and
shy, like all the other

youths camping out to smell
the greens after the rain.
A kiss to vent the long wait;

a kiss to marinade a lonely line
spoken, floated, and lost.
Maybe some other time

on the bridge across the reservoir
watching our long shadows
from the hill beyond the world.

Loving Orion

2008-03-13T18:50:00.001-04:00

I cannot see that man in the sky
loving a hunter
with such a familiar name

slowly moving towards
the sun
and soon fading out:

to love with such unbridled
loyalty.
Some phasing confidence

and repeated scene
from a merely-glanced-at
memory crammed in the brain stem

cradling a longing
I fear.
I should congratulate you,

there is nothing as this
written in golden flames
on a fresh flesh

unknown to you, hunter.
Or maybe you do recognize the
idolatry suffered

in the darkest silence
and prefer to leave it at death's door.
During the day

I am that same person
flaunting the typical ignorance;
it's a daunting task

for a former lover to inhale the disappointment.
The wind and the
branches, dancing the old waltz

humming the old motives
as if to remind me that
the hunter had returned home,

and laid down his weapon
on his desk near
his warm stove,

ready for dinner.
The dinner I did not serve.
He touched her

blonde roots as if to make sure
she wasn't me.
You see, hunter

in the infinite cold
this winter seems impertinent
to our simple stares

to our simple words and
gestures, and the difficulty to
swallow our own

scent.
It prolonged the gentle wait
wavering in the plea

for, um,
whichever part of our
clashing colors to be laid out and compared.

Hunter, dear Adonis,
playing a harp for a sound
any sound

coveting the exchange of
trivial insights
on the weather.

But no matter,
shall your body rest warm,
it'll be her hands on

your shivers and
back,
on your knee and troubled mind.

Though, she lacks my advance
feelings; but how
should I know, hunter?

The Lives and Times of a Thousand Eyes

2008-03-13T18:49:00.000-04:00

The ember glowed under
the vermilion sky
there is a slight chance
Orion's Belt
will appear tonight.

My indifference towards you
fluctuates like Ohio weather
cold, cold
mostly cold
mortifyingly gruesome.

Your formulated methods
insulted my dormant graces
oh, ferocious expectations
a cavity in the smile
flexing a new resplendence

but dampened at the emergence of it.
Oh, it's quite alright
trespassing my open sea, you are
quite the genleman suitor
Well-mannered

fawn-like
a warm compass of excellent nature.
This is a progress!
1 2 3 4
Is this what you're waiting for?

But I am a dead want
going nowhere, sir,
don't glue yourself to me
before reading the proper
manual.

I will not be able to divide and
conquer as I wish to?
Oh my.
That truly is my favorite past time
What a shame.

I will pass.
Though this second chance is
manifested in the form of a Collins,
I look for a Darcy
a creative pose for a frameless bid.

This is a tame proposal
a timely yes contradictory to a
necessary no, but all
is intuitive. Lacking exuberant, yes,
and would bring about the

downfall of your own heart.
I'm in no condition to deny a swift
orderly kiss, but I should,
given my state,
refuse you.

I'm a lonely girl, good sir.
Unworthy of celestial treasure many
other mourned for. You are too
hasty, fighting commentaries
true of me.

By the bay

2008-03-03T21:11:00.005-05:00

The murderer's rapture
you see it in the grass
the concerning cycle of Jack and Jill
down the hill
fulfilled and thrilled
for nothing
shoot up, it's an accepted consequence, and march back into the wombless town
which birthed you, the wind, and some appropriate dreams.

You are never to leave this town, Jill
Jack may venture out to the grassland in the neighboring circus tent
make love to the fortune teller in a rusty caravan
but you, Jill, the child needs to be fed
the corpses of your past limbless hearts should be grind up
make into a pie
serve it to your translucent parents
their idyllic marriage, a pleasant caucus
that is all.

But down the hill
by the bay
the enticing stranger
glances past you
glances at you
glances
less briefly now
fishing out a lustful dialogue without physical contact
gasping in sensibility
moaning in overthrown pride
she is!

oh my
in acquiescence
she finds herself a nomad friend
derived from a strictly condensed history
for your viewing pleasure only
Jack and Jill
fall down the hill
but Jill returned to the pleasance
behind the white house
with blue shutters
and slept alone.

Yellow

2008-03-03T14:52:00.002-05:00

Cut off the harness
after a solitary deliberation
the comical relief
baffled the audience
quietude ran amok
Oh, mademoiselle
dare to smile
stretch that flat skin over your styrofoam nose
paint it with rainbows so those men can't see your tiny crack
enlarging
stifle your mouth with the aluminum foil
chew it
chew it
Good Girl.

Wildfire

2008-03-02T20:30:00.003-05:00

The courageous captain loveless
came up with a
contingency plan
to conquer the careless
crowned with coveted sensuality

I was petrified when I
found I was an affordable option
I think mystery wears out
and red dwarfs will
soon fade out, undiscovered.

My deliberate mentality
has always been a vicious infantry
---I am a pacifist---but I
am drugged with the conscious
conviction that I am a mobile

ready to attack a newborn's
open mouth. Sinner!
Your sinister manner fashioned
an offense that I
cannot approve of.

The cold pain behind my eyes
is a reminder of my
imagined victimization, therefore
you cannot hold me
responsible.

I am merely a red dwarf you cannot possibly think I meant anything to you at all.

Thank you, though,
for the ego boost.

The Peacock

2008-03-02T20:23:00.003-05:00

The heart of coal
Pleasant temperament and folly
are icing on your present
shade. Protracting sentences of common verbs.

To defend yourself. You
forgot I am an ally, a valuable
gymnaste. Here is what should
be done:

Immodest flatterer, the removal
of you tongue off of my tongue have
mimicked Assia's pain. The artificial
protagonist in your laments should be held captive

in a quarantine in the
subterranean hotel, under your
King Lear dreams.
Tu avais ma jeunesse. And how

could I possibly despise you?
In 20 years, in 20 years
nails on the wall from an episode of
the unmentionable THINK OF ME

While you claw out of
C V
A I
T S
A I
R O
A N
C
T

The deranged code is in effect
Pills of viola sounds, and
it. You know?
The outbreak of jealousy, I mean.

Day 4

2008-03-02T20:19:00.003-05:00

I thought I should be
healthier than this
gnawing on a spoonful of
cough syrup
cough cough cough syrup

listening to my boisterous
neighbor (who should be
anorexic).
We are valiant We are trippy
All the teenagers drink the gypsy's

wine, when they can't afford
your heart. Excuse the misdemeanor
I am a stray, often
confounded with
a graceless b-rated actress.

Riot in the Chinese tea house!
Call back your whores
hide in the adjacent building
a musée of
foreign guts. He is, oh my,

a dashing scavenger
a grenade chewing on tulips heads
smoke talks
reiterating previously kempt
motives --- fall fall fall!

Peek

2008-02-27T18:52:00.004-05:00

The windows lack the murmurs of day
I'll be civil and
accept the designated sorrow
words dissolved in mid sentence
mid air
wrongfully thought to have come from the
cigarette smokes
now building up
now an overcast
the tension in our transparent
wants:

You and I.

Are the.

Same.

But the rules are
opposites attract and
biologically
we comply and compliment
the concept.

The Curl of Smokes through the Backdoor

2008-02-26T19:06:00.004-05:00

Your biblical name, good sir,
failed to mention
how you are an excellent archer
and a skilled muse.
You sleep in a bell jar
of perfect concentration
studying the Politics

of Romance
spewing lines perfumed
with lust and some spiteful arrogance.
Adoration, you claimed
to be flawed technicality
an invasion of a fit mind

Soaked sunken I asked
how you are
molding generality into
a desired physical compartment
so you should wonder
maybe in your striped shirt

and precise congeniality
you could offer to assure me
in your self-checked
gentle manners
A hope? To engender plain
bitterness or flaky

curiosity. I see.
The lines on the blueprint
crawled into your fingertips
defiant of your mental orders
Good sir, you can't
curtain your fierce stance

in regards to passivity
you are not humble at all
steadily watching me
with corrosive eyes and such
telling antagonism.
You are not the best, the meagre

or the prosaic beat. Say,
are you ready?
Your phantom heart is a
gamble; fondness is not relative,
good sir, and a good kiss
is never unwanted.

Caradie

2008-02-25T22:29:00.003-05:00

You bloated suburban girl
soulless ugly blob
Your viking journal copied
the rules of
insecurity and insincerity
Pragmatic approach to
conquer, you are
a dramatic character
pas sympathetique
Your agenda is to
brush against my passive grudge
I am a molotov
You are virtually
spineless.

Hiram

2008-02-25T22:23:00.002-05:00

Take a load of this, moon.
The scent of balsamic creatures
prowling in the night
dead eyes, vinegar tears

Oh, we are all fools in love
traversing the grounds for unholiness
hoarding beggars
These are the facts:

Bulimic lovers settled on a chair
awed by a hello, an
address of passing fancy
Boo hoo boo hoo chafing the

chastised silence. Moon can only
relate to frailty and wild endings
such as these:
I am no human, political-wise

Alright, local god and personal priest
choose your wise jokes
and wars. The minty hooks from
our panglossian hero

will fish out an extraordinary
stalagmitic threat. Throw out
the thriller, trailer, cradle ---
and moon, don't forget to love me.

Do you hear an echo in the woods?

2008-02-18T18:49:00.004-05:00

Beauty is agonizing
While in search of it
beauty is in the eye of
the beholder
yet it requires
an understanding
that this beauty
is in the eyes of
no other beholders.
Tuck me into sense.
I am a child to those old trees
a murmur
a sigh when my
thoughts
violated my belief
that the extreme end is
the exact center of
my achievements.

Could it be true
that you,
old trees,
hold the sky and its
gradient of stars?
Are they not mere perforations
in our sphere?
My judgments are
euphemisms
lacking substance,
irony
contradictory to all truths
A well thought-out pleasant smile
A carefully constructed sentence.
These old trees, they seem,
rediscover our flaws
and sustain
the A minor key we've

been dreading to hear. We carefree humans
social humans
lying humans
the precious gems of the
free world
are carrying balls-and-chains
fighting with
sticks and stones
while others plea for a
second heart
because we
badger ourselves with inane questions
thinking we could all be
philosopher kings.
Prudent, old trees
we described you with our
dictionary words, and you

magnetized our senses:
WE CAN FEEL!
Touch the moon, old trees,
for we can only
mend a wound,
preventing nothing.

In Un-ness

2008-02-18T18:40:00.006-05:00

Sleeping through dispassionate love
You are courteous
and she is found wanting
alright,
be polite,
at night,
you dream of the sadistic heartbreak
you can ultimately trace
back to your
past lover.

The post-anger tempest
is punctual but remains
irrelevant
--what is this, revenge?
Clean your tie dye
wash you tarred lungs with
detergent
(it lifts the dirt and
makes your colors brighter!)

Illuminate her
with your knowledge
of complacency
and see what it feels like
to be corrupted by
wants
in a time of want.

You have your breakthrough
she is you
simple vaunt
taking effect as
of... never
Oh,
child of summer,
the whispers are real
the contemptuous presumptions are spread
They are malicious?
I'll have none of that!

Perfect your composition
embrace your smile lines
she will not know
your manners are
rehearsed.
Starving child
she will let you in
twice a day
twice a day

for lunch and for dinner
a curious amalgam
of intentions
on the menu
but few are blind
I certainly am not.

Inspired by the movie "Becoming Jane". The character Tom Lefroy is in love with Jane Austen but were never united. She never married and he committed himself to an unhappy marriage.

Aspirin

2008-02-05T18:00:00.000-05:00

My throat bled
after the life long battle
with the double-edged sword
oh how we
commonly called
cancer sticks
my brain leaks gas
from where
oh, I don't know
i lie in bed all day
paying off
my oxygen debt
there is something superficial
about my adoration
for
anatomical poems
oh yes
i just hover above
my disorganized stack of memories
like magazines on the floor
half ruined
there is a hole in the roof
where melting snow
curved into the layers
of our sanctuary
oh they date back
to 1989
and then i turn 4
and then i turn 9
and then i turn 13
and then i turn progressively acidic
corroding the car I drove in
going 35 miles an hour
on these country roads
where sheep go to sleep
to die flatten and
abused
oh but i still hover
by the way
on the memories
the pretty fellow
and Saturday night drunkards
my calendar
is one day slower
the black dancers from the black lake
stole my spirit
why
oh i don't know

Seductress Anonymous

2008-01-04T20:32:00.000-05:00

engage me in the ideals of your ethereal romance!
then finish them abruptly;
let's not be dreamers
for dreams are the poison of a fer-de-lance
oh my beautiful lover,
i am sick of you
you slipped me something last night
and now i think straight
i still want to gorge down my own vanity
and this lovely love has turned out to be a psywar
im through
in my sober state
i preached about immortality
words so unkindly rational were spoken
and though tongues were tied on new year's eve
i do not wish to be addicted to you
i want to stop thinking
and be stupid for once

oh my beautiful lover
i trust you will comprehend my complexity
i cant help to think i'll regret knowing you,
but i will
this lovely love is no more than
mere romanticism
you slipped me something that night
and then i loved you
let's not be dreamers
let's not be in love

Aureligenia

2007-12-28T14:17:00.001-05:00

A giddy girl
with burnt wings
having loved and lost,
she sat on the bridge
waiting for the robed mist to push her.
She touched her knees
her cold, cold knees
and severed all ties
with the broken-hearted heroes of yester-year.
It meant nothing,
no.
No more contact.
If she was ever required to be jealous
she would now.
She saved her tears in a porcelain cup
and poured it over
the remnants of her heart
for a penny more
she could've gotten it framed
She wore the earrings he gave her
so he can find her again
as she grew cold
amidst the frosted dew
of the cherry forest.
Grass will devour her
mosses sewn her lips shut
beetles egged in her hollow chest
and cockroaches gnawed on her limbs;
Death cannot be beautiful this way.

She was only a pawn, you see,
because she loved him so.

Dent

2007-12-28T14:13:00.000-05:00

I remember it was September
our love crashed
into a flatline
care took flight
from the marble floor
severed fingers with touches numbed
we sat in silence
succumbed to the isolation
of trustlessness
It was a crime committed
I took all alleged charges
You banged on my door
You banged for hours without end
Crying, as I pictured you
My lips bleed
my,
destructive nervous habit
I would've let you in
It's 12 AM, four months later,
and I am alone
melting in the sea of black slime
and I want to let you in.

Captain+

2007-12-28T00:09:00.000-05:00

I don't understand how you feel
The waves are gentler down here
You fool!
What a fool!
You stayed with the ship 'till it sinks
Like a captain should
I suppose you could
The violets didn't end there, my dear
It crawls under your fingers and ears
Contract this disease
Don't lie in the sun!
Don't water this hole down!
Captain, run!
The filth you dispose
in your last episode
came back to haunt you
shouldn't have to tell you
to run.
You bleed like a sinful rose
tarred and feathered by ghosts
Oh, St. Valentine
The hearts that you bind
will go to waste
Go to waste!
go to waste!
The corners of this paper-thin faith
are marked to show where I left
I'm not one of the fools
who stayed with the ship 'till it sinks
Like a captain should
I don't know if I could.

[unfinished]

2007-12-26T18:55:00.000-05:00

I am in anguish
split in the toil of deciding
pride swallowed like
dry rocks, its
sharpened jagged edge tore the
membranes down
my throat.
I still love you,
lover,
it's difficult to establish
a further argument
of how and
why
Reason is dispassionate
fallen dispositions
and failure to disclose
to you
earlier.
But no!
I had to intentionally
--so seemingly so,
but what slander is as such--
destroy what is left.

{Cavity

2007-12-17T15:27:00.000-05:00

Oh, the tension
the rural socialites
whispering rumors and
chains of musicals
the suburban kids and their
effort to
comfort
themselves,
and themselves only.
I'm shackled
The Big City Urbanite
biting from organic apples
and ripe agony.
Comforted by
NOTHING!
Lengthy talks on
the mesmerizing topic of
well,
NOTHING!
I am awkward
and hardened
like faces
of passer-bys
Times Square, NY.
Duke Ellington flies
high
starry-eyed
I dance ferociously
eyeing the poet Plath
outran by appetite
for constant lush and
endless pleasure.
I concur!
It's the pretty 40s again
late in the decade
a symphony written
the level of godliness
and unholiness
equaled the grace
of this Big City Urbanite.
Oh, gasoline!
Chug, chug.
Set my bed ablaze
Don't merely entertain me
pass that bottle of Gin
You don't know--
What knowledge could you
possibly gain in
such short amount of
time?--
This is failing miserably
no adjustment for showmanship.
Blah.
Lalalalalalalala.
Life in staccato.
Ah.

Late Night Revelations

2007-12-17T12:18:00.000-05:00

My thoughts survived in my igloo
Heavy and tresspassing
Swimming. Swimming.
Like sperm in sea water
Like frogs in boiling water
WHY WON'T THEY DIE?????
Goddamn it.
How do you go about this?
(We're all giant farts.)
Circle, circle, circle.
In no particular order
here are my thoughts:
Bills to pay
Cigarettes
Phony bitches
Lithium
Sexual acts.
Oh no!
Nowhere does it say
in my bleak near-future
that I could
redeem
myself.

Shelter

2007-12-10T20:38:00.001-05:00

Sometimes I wonder
if he's just a project
to boost my ego
and I am there
to ameliorate his condition.
I guess we're lucky
it's mutual appreciation
God's craftwork
of idealism.

Destroyer

2007-12-10T20:32:00.001-05:00

I must say
your greatest
magic trick
has been your
disappearing act.
You convinced
me that
faith
is as much of a
mundane task
as loving.

Match Point*

2007-12-10T14:55:00.000-05:00

Winter, winter, winter.
WINTER.
Bequeathed with the power to
console and annihilate
I need arms and legs
to pull me
walk me
train me to run
without draining my adrenaline.
I need lips to bite
to chew
to keep
exclusively to myself.
Fumbling in the wilderness
--the brick walkways
and icy stages--
Hey
our cigarette smokes
two tango dancers, now
the savor of spying on
Orion's Belt.
You know, the classic move:
waist delightfully
embraced
eyes clouded by wants.
Oh, us,
the desired
choose me over those one-time fucks
and I'll choose you over
the countless tantrum-throwing
inamoratos.
I know your name and
you know mine
that's emboldening enough
My hand grazed your face
your lips slipped through my hair
that's positively
marvelous!
I must say,
what an improvement!
Choreograph our attacks and tackles
and initiate an
intimate battle
good vs. evil
I'm a modern whore
and you're the classic bastard.
What a pair!
I clung to your eternally glorified skepticism
as a way to reexamine myself
as you strapped yourself
in my constant disbelief
that purity is possible.
We're Machiavellians
Dog-like cynics
Wedded to ourselves and our charms
but, oh
how flattering!
I, too, then,
will make a place for you
They fallaciously thought we would start a war together
We couldn't be bothered.
Perhaps some other time
but tonight
we'll revel
and marvel
in each others'
angles
hollow
and proportions.
Heart. Rate. Flies.
Not even a kiss yet.
My sight, smell
Your taste, sound
are really all that matters.
We rejoiced in our specialty
I'm enticing,
and your contempt fooled you and finished first.
You're alluring,
as my permanence was reduced to nothingness.
Oh.
You're good.

11:00 AM in Frohring 109

2007-12-10T14:46:00.000-05:00

Boredom
your chalk burst into meaningless words
or dust
the fragment of your breath
froze
coffee circles
on lamenting tables
your dry teeth
usurped your whistling tongue.
Bite it!
Bite it hard to silence it!
Have mercy on
our ignoring minds
the careless stride of our pens
on the paper
is a decoy
to please you.
Your Majesty
Your Highness
You're a classic example
of an obsessed man
middle-aged
perhaps with a heart problem
seeing from how you gasp
your sentences
seething at the slight of your authority
express your oppressed frustration
with nails on the chalkboard
Have mercy!
Drop the records
drop the dumbness
I'd fight the temptation for a deep slumber.
Ah, fucking' eh!
You tire me, boredom.
Marches and strings
The Gods that they bring
Hatching a spirit of
discontentment
the egg from Mother Nature's unholy womb.
Give me sugar.
Up Up Up
You are the destined guru.
Screamers and trombones!
I flee the scene
the violent dreams
I flee the scene
in half an hour.

Models and Celebrities

2007-12-10T11:37:00.000-05:00

The road:
frozen like rivers
frozen like winter
frozen like hearts
inhale the oxygen
traveling down your lungs
like pieces of diamonds
into a haven of ash
into your broken livers
filled with half-truths and fake eyelashes
and fake IDs and hatred for the holy.

The Mobilist

2007-12-10T00:58:00.000-05:00

It is sparked.
The rope fell on the barren ground
even lowly life forms
refuse to inhabit.
It is finally untied.
So no ending?
Perfect.
We've reached a new stage of grief:
Bargaining
in exchange of a solution
alternative energy
instead of
brain power or
restless muscles.
Perhaps faith?
Destroying their equilibrium
in order to form ours.
Let us not be complacent.
Let us unnaturally expire
because death
by boredon is less
exciting than
death by
paranoia and
suffocation.
We are repressed
because we think.

Timothy

2007-12-04T11:47:00.000-05:00

If granted
I wish to fall into deep sleep
and reconnect with an old dream
dusty and faded
from being thought of too many times.
It's a well-crafted dream
directed to mimic a reality
my rage-inspired heart
refused to let go.
I speak from my barren room
my aorta burst 3 months ago
and to wash it off
means I have to erase you.
"I am lonely without you,"
you wrote once,
of an experience wasted on your heart
because you didn't deserve it
and I never succeeded
in curing you.
Ah,
but what of the dream?
As I tried to distract you from the main problem,
you must've wondered
where I have gone to and
where I will go.
Thus my colorful narrative
my somewhat long introductory remarks
will not satisfy your curiosity,
angst nor impatience.

I dream often of you
of snow
of jaune and rose-colored champagnes
of silent monuments
the hollows for observing eyes.
I dream of naked branches
entertaining the sullen moon
of cold limbs
of interlaced fingers and mumbled words
of January stars and empty streets
of stumbles and laughs
and warmth of strange familiarity.
I am but an assortment of feelings
a shop of a thousand thoughts
longing for a
speedy illumination
so like in my favorite movie
the dream will be erased
while you exist, still,
youthful and charming
because I am quite forgotten.

Tell Them That

2007-11-14T17:08:00.000-05:00

If we can share this deceit
I'm a hunter in the dark
You're an angel with a soul
Low and behold,
it's my halo
As I confide I am knowledge-less
and a child who dreams aloud
I will fight like the Spartans
and I'll lose like the Trojans
and I'll die young like your father's love
I broke
little pieces in the current
I'll run, hide, be forgotten
like daily envies of the eyes
We're antagonists in this soap
but fucking heroes in our minds
Yes, we're fucking heroes in our minds
Yes, I'm convinced.

Virgin Homicide

2007-11-03T20:15:00.000-04:00

Our faith plumetted.
Dear Oracle,
save us from human's
patterned foolishness
The girl writhed in
unrivaled pain
dove into herself and then
bloomed like a
deflowered aphrodite
her beauty is cursed
by the animosity of the envious
so she lied, gliding
on the cold bronze altar
not missed
not at all.

The Feat

2007-11-03T20:12:00.001-04:00

I only listen to Blackbird
when I miss my childhood
the entirety of its awesomeness
the gentle rocking of the cradle
my mother's soft-spoken sorrows
my father's strong fingers on the back of my neck
leading me to dinner
the smell of warm stars
outside
near the cage of swans
with their black beaks
they approached me, asking what will I be in ten years
I simply stared at them
I'm still staring at them
It's almost ten
and I've still no answer
I'm beginning to think
that they're tired already
they would leave before the answer
because they knew already
I won't ask for another ten.

Suicide Bomber

2007-11-03T20:07:00.001-04:00

I was crouching on the couch
in the shape of a lowly life form
I asked for a favor from Dan
I asked if he had a knife
Then I asked if he would be willing to kill me
Stab me twice in the heart
like Elliott Smith
it'll be romantic.
He seemed to be contemplating it
Tick tock
Tick tock
Bubbling minds
and uncontrollable digust
of course
it wasn't his responsibility
he was a stranger for a year and a half
he was no more of a friend now.

Living is an arduous try
I drink barrels and barrels and barrels of vomit
mixing rum with wine
mixing life with death
romanticizing a future I disowned
walking around with borrowed shoes
stolen scarf
stolen painkillers
rented heart.
Here's the prescription for a great life,
I heard God in my head,
take one kill, water
take one kill, water
take one kill--
I don't need water for the rest
Keep it up to high double digits
Dan just watched me
amused by a creature,
a swarm of blunt stingers,
and better,
knowing I am pathetic.

La Fete Part Deux

2007-10-19T18:58:00.001-04:00

-SUCCUMB-
Paradiso.
Close you eyes!
And feel.
Just feel.
The soft explosions
in your mouth
under your ribcage
the orgasmic sensation
of kissing a complete stranger
you will never see
ever again
in your life.
Paradiso.

-LISA'S DANCE PARTY-
The light was stale
Poison water stagnant.
This is Hiram
Locked in snowbelt
Locking up
People without goals
or will
or understanding
of real human contact.
The social highlights
were misty
and shapeless
An escape of an even
More blunt
Edgeless day life.

He, who is not yours

2007-10-19T18:33:00.001-04:00

Persuade me.
It should be easy.
You have a million qualities I covet;
you are a better lover.
Your sincerity travels in
tiny vesicles
migrating through your synapses
it comes so naturally.
You are the few that deserved to be loved.
You are the epitome
of compassion.
No matter how long the
description of your near-
perfectness is or the enormity of
the sophisticated language
I chained to your ankle
I do believe
they're not enough.
I am content to be complacent.
I have dried myself and
come down burning
incapable of speech production.
You are philosopher king--
the deity among men.
And I am loved.

View from 214

2007-10-19T18:31:00.001-04:00

Look at me:
I'm shaking!
The bastard child of idleness.
It's getting dark.
Nothing ever happens.
My ears are overwhelmed
with Bloc Party
and Mozart
and a scream somewhere
in the shadow of the buildings.
A maze.
Amazing.