spiced cake and pumpkin guts

Dinner and a movie:

the wine will be like blood tonight.
For dinner: pasta and a homemade spicy Sicilian sauce, vegetarian meatballs.
she'd tell you I'm a decent cook, with my best being food on the grill. I can do pastas too, and not just because of an Italian last name. or maybe.

and I've tasted some of the best wines in the valley. I've kissed lips, touched skin, shared laughs with the finest of women. that's not bragging it's just to show you how very lucky I am. brown eyes, green eyes, blue.
I want you to know this because i know this. she went and shared parts of herself with me and i probably can't forget it, i probably will never escape it. You become one of the ghosts i talk too, that i write about, and I'm going to miss you as much as you do me.

Ive watched blood flowing from her vein as if some kind of test.
i am constantly passing and failing her. my
resistance so often being futile. i pull my car over to the side of a highway and think about you on top of me. there is a pumpkin patch just over the hill. there are no tears , only leaves, bright orange and falling. October. month of my birth. month of witches.

she is better cooking breakfast than dinner. That's why i asked her to stay the night so often.
she sleeps to my right, soundly with soft shallow breaths. she'll let you touch her in the night. your chest to her back. her shoulders get cold. she likes the blankets pulled up. but, who doesn't and isn't this exactly you too?

it's not all magic. the movies, music, books and our little inside jokes. not even the scents or saying "baby" or adding "bear" to the end of your name. it's not so you remember me. time is both beautiful and cruel that way. you won't. I know that too.

this isn't a trick
this is what people do to win your heart. to steal your soul. to keep you. ruin you.
letters in the middle of October become secrets and wishes and candy. Tell me. What is sweeter than that?

promise i don't have to worry

it took some time to get over each other, which really meant they were playing bows and arrows in different parts of the woods. the sharp edges filed down, the distance and silence.
so they wouldn't get hurt.
which meant: Yes, time, but also forgiveness.
which meant: learning closure has nothing to do with moving on, but more with going beyond.

the underlying love and
hate towards each other faded into a strange friendship that developed years later.
despite their age difference they still shared what can only be explained as chemical connection.
a twisted attraction both dangerous and troubling. A devils trick or a little joke played by god. but, something either could do much about. by the end it never really mattered.
now, he is good advice and warm skin.
she is
his sunshine in the distance.


someone hurts you that bad. that good.
in a strange way you can do nothing more than admire them.
how many times in this short life will you get to feel
the moon light
kiss-
like electric
over your skin?
to him, that was her.

A beginning with
no end.
and to her he's
become
the inescapable truth
the eventual
choice of silence
and
living
with the ghosts of his
words

I'm better than apple jacks

First and now :
the air is broke or maybe it isn't. it could be but maybe it's just so hot outside that it doesn't cool down enough. it's no hotel room we are staying in. maybe things don't work that way when it's 100 degree's in the shade. who used to say that? 100 in the shade. who'd say something like that let alone write it?. Things aren't working right.

My house and in it: has my girl and pets and t.v. sets, radios, a refrigerator and other things that break.

we all break.

2nd and then:

I remember I waited all summer for school to start. Fucking high-school and all the shit that goes with it. Girls with tits, for one. Girls with tits for another. But mostly I'd been thinking of this girl that i saw last year. I didn't have the stomach to even say hi to her in the hallway. She had cool new wave hair and I thought that made her somehow off limits to me. She was like Molly Ringwald and I was like farmer Ted. Except not as funny. I never fell into hilarious hi-jinx or built an obscenely beautiful woman in my basement either. No weird science projects, no writing about detentions after school. The coolest thing about me was that I had pair of checkered Vans like Spicoli in Fast Times. Speaking of which, Phoebe Cates......OMG.

The first day of school I am looking all over for her. By 5th hour the news had spread of a girl
who was killed over summer break in a car accident. Yes, you guessed it. Her. My new-wave girl. Even though i never knew her, the news it hit me hard. I mean I had fantasized about this pretend meeting and falling in love for over two months. I was devastated.

At home, I locked my bedroom door , put on a Cure record and laid on top of my bed staring at the ceiling fan spinning for what seemed like hours. I took out my note book and wrote about how shitty my life was. What girl would fall for someone as fucked up and ugly as me? and why was it that every time i have something good does it always get taken from me ??. never mind that I never had her to begin with. just.... you know what i mean.
Then I went and cut her picture out of my 8Th grade year book and taped it to my notebook. next to it I wrote down: Never Was. Should have Been. Will Be Again. Rest in Peace. On the 2nd day of school I wore black and every day after.

lastly: (back to present)
i cut the lawn and after I try to cool down by going inside the house. i don't think the air is working. maybe it is but it's so hot it takes all day to cool off. I'm afraid of the heat to hot and the cool to cold.
i like it somewhere in between here and there.
i sit by the pool and watch the automatic cleaner climb the steps and walls and back. over again.
It's strange that i know this.

That in between here and there is you.

-

Your ghost fits my skin

Rearranging the house takes my mind off of it. I watch football in between the lifting and carrying and taking down and placing back up. Football reminds me of winter. So does this room i'm in.

I've moved the BIG screen t.v. into a different room. You know that room where nobody ever goes into? A living room that you never see anyone actually living in. Although she has been on that couch.

I changed it all up an now I'll be using the supple leather sofa and I am surrounded by great artwork and books, and this is where I put the Christmas tree come December. so now i am in there and it smells like Halloween candy corn and ghosts of past Holidays. It feels different.

cleaning, moving, shaking. the addiction still lingers. always there, underneath it all. always hidden. always waiting. I go through fits of rearrangement. my home, my job, my music, my life.

and I have a wife that my girlfriend would know about. and I have you that i can't resist. Everyone else tends to know me for the wrong reasons. words and repetition. recall and tattoos.
striped socks and panties pulled to the side. glasses, no glasses. an over active imagination. dirty. A girl coming to visit. disaster. A girl leaving. heart break.

I've mixed things around in the bedroom too.
moved the bed to near the window, the dresser, the vintage cedar love chest. lying on the bed they start to feel like they belong. Would she ever have felt that too?
Now, my head faces north when I sleep, in the direction you are now. in the direction of snow and winters. the furniture has moved. There has been change but nothing has changed only became more certain, more real. I've shamelessly borrowed her memories and stories, rearranged things and I've made them mine. her body, her shape, she finally feels familiar.

marked you like a scar

every blank page becomes some kind of story. Even if they're all lies or just moments pulled from imaginary times or even real people mixed up together. Every blank page, i do this. Not that i like words or poetry. I don't. Although, I'll probably pour over these very words over and over admiring my own voice. Wondering, Have i not said this all before?


It's just soothing. It feels right. I feel right with you.
Like mowing the lawn in perfect rows underneath the summer sun. Something about it makes me calm. you calm me.

I'm sorry but I can't stand to read her blogs any longer or his or yours or mine. And when i see stanza lines of poetry they make me shutter instantly.
I mean
What is this?
writing a few words and then.....
down to the next!
stupid
stutter

the next pretty word
pretty boy
pretty girl
pretty lies
maybe if it's written this way
you'll read it this way
and then understand
how I see it in my head

one breath at a time
one kiss
one orgasm
one hold her in my arms under a
dirty moon glow

it doesn't matter how bad we are together
it's still calming
the words feel like touch
and i will
if you let
me

photo credits: 1.heliumglow 2.pearlandopal 3.mladyieva 4.TrishMoreira