Sunday, February 28, 2010

HERE

People (person) is putting ideas in my poor little head(rt). This weekend was wonderful, I am finally, slowly, losing my inhibitions, making friends. It's taken me a long time to find my comfort, but lately I've been nothing but comfortable. I am so much becoming myself, (or becoming my mother). I have never felt so good about things really. I could go for a few more days of "vacation", a few more days here, a few more days of mussing things up. I am not sad, I am just hungry. I am mixing up my lust and love wires, though I suspect that for someone like myself they are pretty similar. I am confused, but not worried, these things, all things have a way of working themselves out. I am not worried, but I am getting impatient.
I love Madison, but I love it here too. This group of people amazes me, they are friends in a way I have rarely found, and I am working to "earn my spot". Really though, the nicest bunch of kidz you could ask for.

It is nice, all of this. I hope it continues just this way really.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

WET

she, delicate
licks the surface
of your crooked bones

cleaning them again
and again
until they are as white
as the pearls
around your mothers neck

your crooked heart
beats the sound of
your mother's fists
pounding on the door

just
a minute
please

ugly mouth
climbs up
the feminine form

she screams
the sound of violins
at the same time
your mother yells
"open the
god damn door"
and then,

you wake up.

going home
for the weekend
is such a bust.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

SLEEPING BACKWARDS

I have just went on a marathon writing mission, I wrote non-stop for the full duration of Have One On Me. I almost want to do it again. But I will at least wait until tomorrow. I got so tired halfway through that I started writing words twice or forgetting to write words altogether. 11 pages worth of babble, but more potential than I have ever come up with in such a short amount of time. My body will be angry tomorrow, this is not enough sleep and my hand will be a hurtin' but I don't mind I don't mind I don't mind.

My 4 favorite things love, beauty, loneliness, and grace, all intertwined always, in such an obvious way that I want to make one word for all four of them, because it is impossible for me to think of them separately. Always, when I see the moon, when I am sitting on the edge of a lake, or even greater when I am sitting, in the dark, along the shore of some ocean, I feel/see all of these things at once, not separately but as one cohesive feeling, and I can't think of any other way to describe the ocean to you but beautiful, lonely, graceful, and love. Maybe vast, but that is implied with them well, grace, the idea of being soft, gentle, and, in my head of being ongoing. The frustration, curiosity, wonder, that I can never explain this to you the right way, only trust that in your own way, you know what I mean, that something else does this to you, and that the feeling is mutual, even if it is lost in the words. I love it. I love that we can not explain this to each other, that in a way, no matter how hard we try to give it away, and give it away, it is ours, and we have to keep it, and hold it, cradle it, love it. Today, I feel like I am saying exactly what I mean. All these things, connected, to help me describe more than just the ocean, but the way I feel when listening to Joanna Newsom, it is the same way I feel when I look at the ocean, it if the same way I feel when I look at my mother from a distance, the same way I feel when I step outside of the love that surrounds me to gaze at it. It is so simple, so simple, so complex.

I can never tell, ever if this is for you or for me, though I suspect it is a little for both of us, and I hope, I hope you read this, because I read what you have to say, and I am learning, learning, and we are learning together. I have never felt so good, I have never felt so well sorted, fully understanding myself. We can try to blame it on my sleep-deprived, writing crazed self, but I don't think that is the culprit. For once, or maybe for twice, or thrice I am proud, proud without need of reinforcement not, I did good? but I did good, and I don't even need you to think so.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

HAVE ONE ON ME

It is perfect, it is sort of just what I need, something new to love, something new to study, and it is nice an long, so there are lots of secrets yet to discover. I love them all, but thus far Good Intentions Paving Company is my top pick, though I am sure one by one they will all be my favorite at different times.

"And I regret
how I said to you
'Honey, just open your heart
when I've got trouble
even opening a honey jar.
And that, right there, is where we are.

I've been 'fessing, double-fast,
addressing questions nobody asked.
I'll get this joy off my chest, at last,
and I will love you
till the noise is long since passed."

I just don't even know what to do right now. I hope someday that I can write something a fraction as magical. She somehow manages to talk about everything that is emotionally overwhelming without ruining or belittling it, and perhaps making it better.

OK, enough of this shmoozing, it was no mystery that I would/will/do love this album, and you need not hear about my infatuation any longer.

Friday, February 19, 2010

LOOSE LOVE

loose women
like me
say things like
"love you
forever?

probably
not
but

i could love you
for a little while

like maybe
a night?"

tight women
like me
say things like
"love you
forever?

sure

but not
right
now.





today i talked to my grandmother on the phone and she said "Eddie and I stayed up until midnight watching figure skating. I fell asleep skating, and I skated in my sleep. I didn't wake up until noon, I was so exhausted. I woke up wondering what score they would have given me." Now maybe this is something I love only because she is my grandma and I know her, or maybe this is just something that is to be loved by anyone and everyone. We are all sitting around talking, thinking, trying to decide how much of ourselves we are willing to give up for her, which is a lot, but also not enough. I want to bring the house and lake with me, wherever I go, I want to be able to be selfish in ways that I can not be, that none of us can be.

As much as I have been trying to escape the remnants of some other version of me, it is still around, around, around, it is still there, making me nauseous when i lack the proper energy to fight it off. it is not that i am at war with myself, it is so much the opposite, but sometimes she just sneaks in, mostly like a delusion. I am doing everything I promised myself I would not do, but I only promised because I could not do. It is still scaring me, though I mostly break all the promises i make to myself. I am forgetting. It feels like it is just happening, but I know that it is not. I know that it is a semi-conscious effort, to forget, and forgetting is making it feel like I am maybe losing years, and that makes me think that this is why no one can remember anything properly and I feel so much happier, but also like i am doing something wrong. I am keeping things to myself, even though I don't want to, but because I think it is in our best interest.

I am still planning in my head, but it is only half plans, I only allow flickers, not full movies, because the thing with planning is that things either go just that way, but you forget to plan the ending and end up stuck or things don't go that way and you are too busy thinking about how they are not going the right way to realize that they are going their own way, and that whatever way this is is good. Lately, I've been having confidence about everything until the time comes, and then my face gets lobster red, as though maybe I am actually physically choking, and then i choke, i craw back inside my awkward body.

I really don't make sense most of the time. I have been trying to be concise, like my friends, like Robert Creeley, but I am not that way. I mean, I can be, but i can also be this way. We are all so malleable really.


It is time for bed.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

WHEN I WAKE UP I WONDER

if i told you
i was in love
with you
and then

proceeded to
regurgitate
my breakfast

do you think
you'd still
be my friend?

i bet
if i were not
myself
i could convince
you
me
that it was charming






I don't know how to write a poem that doesn't talk about food in some form.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

PICTURE THIS

her fragile frame
fall-
ing onto yours

your crooked bones
[your crooked heart]
shuttering under
her weight
[the touch of a feather]

your ugly mouth
sucking her supple
lips
in the same way
it inhales the juice
of your morning
grapefruit
as it drips down your chin
[you start everyday out bitter
sweet]

in the same way you
wish it was her
i
wish it was
me

Monday, February 15, 2010

THE LANGUAGE



"Be for me, like rain,
the getting out

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness."
(from The Rain)

THE LANGUAGE
(Robert Creeley)

Locate I
love you
some-
where in

teeth and
eyes, bite
it but

take care not
to hurt, you
want so

much so
little. Words
say everything.

I
love you

again,

then what
is emptiness
for. To

fill, fill.
I heard words
and words full

of holes
aching. Speech
is a mouth.


I am sitting in my closet reading Robert Creeley poems aloud. I am not sure why I am in here, but it feels right. Perhaps it is something I do because it feels iconic. (Though now the idea of that whole big room frightens me, I am comfortable here, my bed is too big, too strange, but sitting on top of this pile of shoes with clothes dangling in front of my eyes, my elbows and wrists bent in ways that make them look alien to me, it is comfortable, it is allowing me to think, to concentrate.) So maybe it is an iconic sort of thing, but I am not convinced that that is a problem if it gives you what you need.

Today was strange, I spent the first half of the day feeling nothing, nothing, nothing and then some anger, and when I can not harness these emotions or more these lack of emotions I just feel sleepy, and my mind worries, but the rest of me doesn't. I am not really clever or concise enough to be a poet just yet, and I lack the proper forethought to write short stories, so I am swimming somewhere in the middle, but I am learning, and I think that if I push myself a little more, I will make some progress. Back to work now.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

THINGS

"But a person can't tell
His best friend he loves him
Till time has stopped breathing
You're alone on the hill"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX6PkRImnp0
(http://www.cmt.com/lyrics/john-prine/billy-the-bum/739694/lyrics.jhtml)

mostly, you should just get your grubby little hands on Jeff's cover album of John Prine songs. I can not endorse getting it illegally, but it is $15 well spent, because it is the brilliance of John Prine's lyrics with the country toned down.


The thing about folk music is that it is kind of perfect. Not always, but it is so lyric oriented, and my brother grew up listening to the melodies but I grew up listening to the words, which is why we are different even when we are the same. There is something so nice about the lyrics in folk songs. Mostly the proper amount of sadness that I want in a song, and nothing that is quite overwhelming. Calming, without being nothing at all. Though I don't know if these can stand on their own, without the music.






Keep these things to yourself, indulge in them one by one, I think you might be able to get them to last a while if you keep them to yourself. I don't believe this, it is an innate sense that nothing I have is mine, and why would I want it to be? And yet, I find ways to tip-toe around most of the things I mean to say, because I don't trust people to react in a way that will be O.K. Or I don't want to make them uncomfortable. I can neither swallow or spit out these things, so a just choke and stutter. Or worst, I talk about other things all together, the things I know best, which have nothing to do with the things that I want to say. Or I chew and chew and chew on what I want to say and when I finally spit it out, it looks nothing like what I remembered it. I want to apologize for all the things I will never tell you though I suspect you won't mind as much as I do. Or for all of the things I tell you that I don't quite mean, though I bet if you strung them together you might be able to decipher what I am really trying to say, but maybe not. If you picked the holes, the things I didn't say, around all the things I did, you might just find that the things that are missing are the only things that are really supposed to be there.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

EL CAFE

I only mention this because I had a nightmare, probably up there on one of the worst nightmares I've ever had, and it was about losing El Cafe. No one fought for it except me. No one. I woke up crying, and fell asleep again, still crying. I know it can't stay the same forever, but I will fight as hard as I can to try. I am not sure how much of my own life I am willing to give up for it, but probably a lot of it, because it is the most important place. I know that these things will fall apart if the Carpe is not around. I know that we will all be a whole lot lonelier. It isn't just MY home. I don't want to just see these people once a year when we have an annual reunion party. This place has more love than I have ever seen, anywhere. I hope that it's love can keep it alive.

The Carpe is something I talk a lot about, I know. But it is MY place. It is my home, in the strongest sense of the word. People always says that it is not so much the place, but rather the people that make a home. I am not sure I can stand behind that fully. And with the Carpe, it is different. Even if it is the people that make the place, if we lost the place, we would lose a lot of the people. Most of the people. Places have spirits. I don't know why I believe that, but at the Carpe, when I am downstairs listening to folk music, watching the lights dance off the guitar I look around the room and I know that it is alive. Perhaps it is the love that is made when a group of people hears something perfect. The room just holds this love, keeps it. I don't want this to be taken away. I don't want someone to come in to my house, OUR house, unless they know it, unless they LOVE it the same way I love it. I have never found a place that so many people have felt so instantly at home.

I know that I have a strong sense of family largely because of the Welches. But the Carpe has passed on this sense of family too. It is in the way the Dennis sounds happy to hear my voice when I call from school, and Scott gives me a hug every time I come home. It is the way I feel as comfortable around these people as I do around my family, because they were there when I was growing up, not just intermittently but everyday. It is why I never know what to call them when talking about them away from home, employees? no. Friends? no. Aunt's and Uncles? It's the closest I can ever really get to, though it is not quite right either. It is the way I want everyone I love to come home to meet them, want to tell them, but never do "this is my family."

I wish that I could tell you everything. I know I can't, but I will try.
The warmth of the back room when everyone is listening to an amazing show. The people that come here really know how to love music, and you can feel it.
The regulars we are always acquiring. Because El Cafe is filled with so many lovely people, it often ends up taking in strays and making them a part of the family. I had always known this, but noticed it more when I went to school and would come home only to find there was some new person that everyone was talking about as if they'd been around forever.

I can't do it. I can't tell you right now, not without ruining it. This is something that takes time. But maybe there will be a book someday.


THIS IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

FRIENDS

We're supposed to write everyday for creative writing, and I feel as though it should be done in a notebook, but by the time I am done writing in there, I am too tired to write here. Plus, I haven't anything to say these days.

My self-awareness has been on hiatus, though it seems to come back for periodic visits. Usually during discussion. So that I kind of freeze, look around the room emptily, and hope that the clock moves a little faster. It is no way to go through school. I spend most of my time in my bed, which I don't mind a bit, but I am building up the strangest social confidence inside the walls of my bedroom and I am not sure that it translates to the real world. But I am just trusting that it will. I am trusting that people like me or that if they are particularly opposed to me, they will drop a hint. I don't think that I have lost it all together.

When getting to know people, I don't talk much. I just observe. I suppose it's not fair, getting to know them and not letting them get to know me. I think that I am under the impression I can trick them into liking me if I show them that I am well versed in their inner workings. But it is less about tricking people, than learning to love them. Not that it is hard. Most people are easy to love. But I just want to make sure I do it properly. It seems so taboo to tell people you love them. As though you are not supposed to do it until you have known them forever. You are not supposed to tell them why you think they are great until you have been through some sort of miraculous bonding experience.

But sometimes, sometimes you just wanna tell people anyways. Maybe not straight-forward, but in simpler ways. I don't think there is anything wrong with this.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

OWN IT

THINGS THAT I AM:
not-so-secret singer
photo-taker/maker
writer
honest



JUST FUCKING OWN IT.
all of it.

too tired/wired/honest to elaborate.
i am different than i used to be, and i can tell, and i like it.
i think i did this on my own.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

BACK WHEN YOU LOVED ME FOREVER

My writing every night is not working. I am filling this notebook up not with anything creative, but with piles of episodic backwash. I don't even know what that means, I just liked the way it sounded. It is like a journal, but dirtier, but perhaps if I pick carefully through it later, I will find something worth-while. I am ready for something new. I am ready for someone new. I am thinking about becoming more aggressive.

Monday, February 1, 2010

PINEAPPLE WALL PAPER

All I've really wanted to lately is write. I've been locking myself in my room, playing music for hours, but not because I don't have anything else to do, not because I am sad and desperate for something to take care of all my free time for me, but because it is what I want to do, what I'm hungry for. I want to eat words, chew them carefully, swallow them, regurgitate them and my stomach acid onto paper to make something new. I am thinking that this may be dangerous, "I am learning to get along with myself" I told my mom, but now I might be learning how to get along with only myself, and no one else. I could write about my family forever, and I swear to god we are magic, not to say that we are special to anyone but each other, and to each other we are gold. We are so honest with each other, maybe not by choice but because we have to be because we are all too much the same and we can't lie to each other as well as we can lie to our friends. Maybe that isn't what i mean at all. I use the word maybe like it is the most important word in the english language. I am indecisive to the point of self-destruction. I am slowly working my way out, unfolding myself for the world, and for me. I can't stay in here forever, but I haven't quite found the full confidence to leave. I try to be impulsive, not calculated, I try not to worry about the consequences, and sometimes I can get there but never quite. Even when I am drunk my head is still there, just a little blurry. I don't see this inhibition as all bad, because everything has it's purpose, but sometimes I wish I could get rid of it.

I am learning to be less jealous, less worried about MY place, because my place is wherever i decide it is, i am taking more control, I am not a doormat, I am not an oriental rug, I am something stronger, like the grand-father clock or maybe the pineapple wall paper. [and this brings me to my other point] I have been thinking about my Grandma, most days, everyday, I have been writing about her, I have been getting closer to her without her even knowing it, I have been daydreaming about the rainbows that are always dancing around her house, from the sunlight reflecting off the crystal glasses and bottles. The way that house has never meant anything but happiness to me, and how I hope it never means anything but happiness for me. I used to think it was just the house, I don't know why, but I know I know I know it is HER. She has made it for us. I will tell my children about her, they will get tired of hearing about her, but I will tell them anyways, forever, because she is the queen of my heart.

should i tell her this?
maybe saying she is the queen of my heart is too much.
i always go to bed confident but wake up with doubts, and that seems backwards to me.