reality bites

"and when he found out that he had cancer he decided to bring me here and he gave me this big pink seashell and he says to me 'son, the answers are all inside of this.' and i'm all like 'what?' but then i realize, i realize that the shell is empty, there's no point to any of this, its all just a random lottery of meaningless tragedy and a series of near escapes. so i take pleasure in the details, you know? a quarter pounder with cheese, those are good. the sky about ten minutes before it starts to rain. the moment where your laughter becomes a cackle. and i sit back and i, i smoke my camel straights, and i ride my own mountain." - troy, reality bites

the kind of things

i need for myself. and you probably do too.

beaujolais. beauty & the beast on mute. big bands on vinyl.

"our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. it is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. we ask ourselves, who am i to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? actually, who are you not to be? you are a child of god. your playing small does not serve the world. there is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. we are all meant to shine, as children do. we were born to make manifest the glory of god that is within us. it's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. as we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." - marianne williamson

"i wish i could show you when you are lonely or in darkness, the astonishing light of your own being." - hafiz of persia

"live in the world you wish existed." - monica ganas

stockins

life has been really hard for three years.
wtf.

untitled

among some talk of you and me

with mint tea at my lips and

strong hands at my back like we were

humming in the dark, together; deeply.

the color of a nighttime ocean.

always telling myself

to stop thinking so much, while rifling through

the one dollar book bin with chipped fingernails

and broken sunglasses, heaved sighs for standing

up and holding a long blink to let the violet

settle in and i saw that moonbeam again and

"and." yes, "and." i think my favorite words is and.

and ain't no worry, it won't be long, she sang,

yes won't be long til

we're drowned at the bottom of the soft blue sea

with heads on seaweed pillows, there for eternity

where your golden mouth will sing forever to me

and amen.

walking up the street again,

and i can smell you on my sleeve like you were

here with me, again the long blink

and amen.

she asked me if my painting was of jacaranda trees

"yes, they are" she said. putting her hair behind her

ear and walked into the kitchen.

warm mint tea.

cascade.

open fist.

nadyne.

sweeping.

running in place like the dirt ground in a faulkner

novel. muddy alleyways and death.

muddy waters.

faces of deep south and wringing out aprons

on porches.

heaven.

oh, purple jacaranda tree,

bending softly to me.

black bark and feeling moss on

the northfacing trunk of

oh guide me home.

repeating my name to

stop thinking so much.

hunched over a one dollar book bin,

chipped nailpolish and broken sunglasses.

standing up. feeling novels between my ears

and clinking bracelets of the cashier.

darkness come early,

the sincerity of whispers,

cooling hot meals, oven mitts.

the color orange.

among this talk of you and me.

among my failed attempts at villanelle's

and sweeping sonnets to the street.

no.

i won't have fake candles or skip chapters;

no, you won't go to paris without me.

no, now i know you'll miss it here.

you'll miss me.

like how i smell you on my sleeve

while standing in the street.

like photocopied pages and tiny

notes in the mail.

verses.

chanel no. 5.

fabric.

fingertips.

cassette tapes.

cardboard cutouts of flowers and

hanging wreaths.

just talk of you and me. mysteries.

skulls and poison, the last lesson.

and my sleeve.

wngs

on loss

i am listening to tchaikovsky quartet no. 1 in D by the borodin string quartet on vinyl in my living room. jane austen sits next to me as well as the letter and poems typed out on one of those vintage type writers written by a friend probably on his floor late in the night. he is talking to me about my "writer's block" problem and at the end of the letter he tells me to do what i want in the moment all the time no matter what, and not just with writing either. i think i know what he means but then again i think i don't. (he probably imagines me having the urge to write and then resisting it due to self-consciousness or something like that but really the urge is never there anymore). but there are these poems and some of them say the word "she" and whenever anybody says the word she in a poem i always imagine the she is me. i imagine that i affected their life so profoundly, even for a flickering instant, that they wrote about me. subtley. i think i like to have that affect on people, floating in the background like a ghost. not important enough to remember always, or to be invited to the party but, looking back at me with retrospect, worthy of a small mention in a simple poem.

i just got off the phone with him actually. we talked about the recent death of my friend, nadyne. we talked about my writing. i told him i've taken the pressure off of me. that to experience loss is allow all the words to drain out of me. and without judgement on myself, without any pressure or expectation, i wait for this so called "writer's block", perhaps just a myth, to be gone from me. if even just for a moment, for one poem, for one sentence, for one word. for the right word at the right moment could mean everything. like cash's chapters in as i lay dying. short and perhaps the most meaningful. and so i am letting myself empty. i am letting grief play its part in my living life and my written life. what do you say when your friend falls 30 feet to their death? nothing. you don't say anything. because i can't even begin.

i forgot

what are these?