this feels good this feels right

 

i like the shape
of your salty mouth
talking like this
your tangled
summer
hair
between my fingers

pirate ships sailed the
waters where
i live
i drink the same
purple wine
toss
my bottle over the side
with secret messages
inside

i found you
amongst the sharks teeth
and broken shells 
i found you
and drank your words
i poured you into me
until my
blood was
drunk
on your
love 

glitterball

its a night of small revelations, night of odd comfort
im starting to love this distance
starting to feel how present you are in
it.

longest kiss of the year

there were storms today.
after the storms,
bliss.
a slight change in temperature.
tingly skin.
the longest kiss of the year.

the devils hand reaches-
to remind me of you.
please, i said.
"whisper me
the words of your god."

are we ever really sure of anything?

I'll do this.
no use for words
to big
or feelings to small.
for you
I'll do this.
lie
when you ask.
fall
when you speak my name
or
think it

(there.)

fly
like a sparrow
off a thin line
I'll do this.
scatter
as if you've
clapped your hands
or
kissed my mouth
and
told me
good-bye

i wrote this song for snow white

Frost

i was talking. she was smiling
always taking notes
and i was liking
how she liked me
even choking on
my words

what do you do now?
now, that i can't teach you anything
and i can't tell if you're
still out there
but i know that you still dream

see all my love
it's
gathered
two feet beneath
the snow

and these lies
like the sun
melting all the
frost away

i can't teach you anything
and even if i did-

you wouldn't listen anyway
pretend to listen
anyway

i never got the fighting
honey
or all the silly games
and some of those
decisions
how they
fucked up everything

ruined everything
im sorry that it's over
baby, im sorry that you stayed
you with your faces and me with my sins

but was it me-
didn't i give you
everything?

didn't i teach you
anything

i can't explain how i spend my days - I'll show you.

i said this: i miss you.

i did this: woke up and started again, read some of a new book, made her dinner, rubbed her head, a song left me speechless, a puppy stole my heart, forgave myself, said fuck, had ideas, looked at her picture, found pictures, stole pictures, stole music, stole art, made art, made love, fell in love, imagined, fell asleep, woke up, thought about you, used blue ink, spilled wine, cleaned my glasses, cleaned her glasses, kissed her goodnight, kissed her goodbye, watched her sleeping.

I wrote things down in various places and they looked like this:

- i used to write things here. now i don't get it. now it's like why? but then again why not? even when she used to read this. it's just ill communication. (i can't believe i just used a beastie boys term)

-my birthday is the 14Th, I'm getting married on Halloween. Ive always liked October. the leaves don't change down here in florida. they don't fall. only me

- i feel pretty good after all, at least i know Ive inspired someone. a little her, a little him, a little you. that means a lot to me. why is once never enough ?


- when someone likes you the littlest things you say and do mean something. mean everything. I remember when the buzz of her phone made her jump with excitement because she knew it was me. I wonder if someone calling her now means as much. is the shiver still there? a quick fix is all it takes sometimes. just hi !. that's it. then we are good for awhile. just words through space. just words through space placed on page. i can feel when she thinks about me. it's not jedi magic. or some disturbance in the force. It's okay to miss the good things once in awhile. just thoughts for a moment. lay still, lay stolen. it's normal. just something to blink before your eyes, until it's gone. I think it's fair that i let you use what you need. this life is far to short, the people here are large in numbers, but few enter the vein. fewer still enter the blood stream. however far you'd let me reach, it's the least we can do for each other.

- my mother always told me my biological father was a preacher. my grandma told me he was an artist. are you anything at 18 years old? isn't everyone an artist and preacher? I'd like to think i am.

-I saw my birth certificate the other day and it's bizarre to read my mother being only 16 and him only 18. in 1969. It's strange to read his name, of someone you've never met, but is genetically linked to you. It's just that everything always appeared to be clouded in some kind of mystery. As a kid i could imagine him being all kinds of things. And me being a part of him having all kinds of wonderful powers handed down to me. i have been a mutant, a super-hero, son of a rock-star, preacher, artist, in the mafia, and even a prince. I've never thought of anything less than that. Even after all these years, my expectations remained high. i am living proof that " somethings are better left unknown."

- i looked him up the other day, with everything i do know and the internet being what it is. (god and the devil). I did it on the premise of finding out about my family medical history. Anything i should be looking out for?, Had he already suffered a heart attack at a young age?, balding? I mean, when can i expect to fall apart? That kind of thing. I only looked though, i didn't make contact , didn't interfere with his life that he wanted no part of me in. Though i might have half sisters\brothers somewhere out there. more to imagine i guess. Christina Ricci my half-sister? That would be strange. His parents are pushing 90 and both still alive so that kind of answers my question about the the medical thing. He lives in an upscale part of California. Owns a marketing agency based out of Santa Monica. So i guess he is an artist\preacher after all. Long way from rock-star, super-hero though.

i finished with this:

there are pieces of me scattered all over

dirty smudged
pages that
you wouldn't read

there was a story
i wrote
about us
about you
about me

a summers end a good winter

night driving
burning drowning
leaving

you ended up writing horrible things about me
and i returned
the favor
in less clever lines

i said i fucked you
i said i loved you
i whispered
every rude word i could think of
in your ear

there

are pieces of me strewn all about

and they don't
fit

without
you

be it me, or be it none

and us both never being big on communication or just an inability to completely understand what the other was saying. whether it the heat between us, the pretty, or dirty, it was deafening .
So, as not to hurt each other by mistake
she tells me silence is golden. but, it's green in your eyes.
not like money but like emerald seas, which alone spoke volumes to me.

All those poisoned arrows were never pointed directly at you, dear.
something you should know.
for everyone else who thinks they know me and never will.
(this doesn't include you)
it is my distance that fairly often leaves me
missing my mark. i wonder with you, if i had ever gotten close.


I find this sort of thing: the writing of letters .. frustrating and futile.
it only reinforces the fact you miss something you can never have. confirms that you loved her more than she did you. you think okay, maybe she.....and that's only wishful thinking and only so you can make it through the fucking year.

sure, she has memories and fondness and thank fullness but that will never make her yours. all the inspiration then and now. yours once, yours for a moment, but never yours now. never close. never beside you.

and don't you think about that? isn't it slightly possible to sink back in? because the one true fact of it all: is that we will always be more than exceptional together in small doses. how we are fine with the big things but the little things we can't possibly sustain. It's not fair that its the little things that count sometimes in life. short bursts. attention spans directed only to our fire and chemical burn all the way down to the fingertips. in a room, without words, I picture nothing has really changed. I mean how does one fight away feelings when you haven't a clue as to where they come from nor why they never seem to have left.

but i can only measure us in hours at a time, maybe a night or two or three. bodies and hearts on fire. this is why there are no pictures of us. lets kiss before it gets bad again. let me leave before i say something stupid again. we shouldn't, but why can't we stop this? we do what we always do. I am your ice-cream on the cake. nicotine candy. we do what we always do. make the stars shine. I lean you back as you kiss my face. where forever and never again take up the same space in our minds. exceptional with hello and goodbyes and heat until we are burned all the way through. leaving us only with addiction and smoldering ash.

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?

broken highways mended fences

I drive my fist into the face
of another beautiful day

when it changes
let it

it's supposed to be
like this

kind of happy
kind of lost
kind of broken
kind of sweet

my love is
a permanent,
bruise

admire it in
the mirror
think of me after
i've gone

a bee- sting
a car- crash

i charge at each day
each love
each word
each you

as if it were my
last

beneath the fireworks

I'll spare you the details of being off- the- grid for a bit. cause you'd hardly noticed. It's just that hard drives crash especially in laptops. all the pictures, and things you've written, the stolen songs, i-tunes, emails- all of it. you kinda wish you made a back- up of some sort- but who has time? and in the grand scheme of it all, is any of it really worth anything. I mean. really?

but i do know how to get up and running fairly easy, I know from experience. I know a lot of things from experience and when you are charging very hard at 39 years old you are fucking old enough to know a few things. you kind of earned the right to have the scars and lines and fine, I won't live forever and I don't look as good as I used to but somehow better in other ways.

So, what I'm saying is I know about getting a 2.5" usb enclosure and sticking your bad laptop drive in it - plug it in to another computer and save all the data you want from it.
10 U.S. dollars and a spare laptop hard-drive i had lying around and wow I'm back. A few re-installs like the OS, (operating system), drivers and all my music and porn are waiting like stalkers. Isn't that what computers are for?. That and looking up suspected illness i might have or get in the future. That and saying hi, saying i miss her, saying come pick me up. I'll pick you up.
That and fantasy football, and looking up hacks to take spaceball.gif off of flickr photos i want to save. that and the letters and how she looks in plaid dresses in the summer sun. looking at cute dog pictures, and movie schedules, getting music months in advance to their release date. I'm not saying i could live without it. without you. without.
I'm saying i try. The things it's good for..... you finding me.
that and telling stories.
some as good or as bad
as this.

credits:
supercult

what if.......

At summers end:
The wedding i attended, the dinner, the dance, summer, fucking september. the cake was fine. the cake it's smashed all over her face. but fine. happy. i kept hearing that word.
Happy.
all smiles and glasses tipped back. I drank wine.
There was a girl who wanted to dance with me. She had tattoos and a red ruby ring.
the bride she held out a silk bag for money gifts. i slipped in my money, my complaints, a cigarette butt and advice.
I could see the moon from the window. traces of lip-gloss glitter on my shirt.
the glimmer and shine like stars.
I try holding these moments and not letting them slip away. Not letting her slip away.
but things change, they end, they begin
and back again
my glass is empty
open bar
full again. this is life and love
and you have to have been in love
to write poetry.
so I write words down on a paper napkin and
hand it to ruby ring girl. a smile. her hand on the back of my arm.
the bride is months away from having the baby
this time me
the one who
slips away


Fall: We come here to visit each other and tell each other lies. or maybe it's them we tell the lies to. maybe things we write seem more believable than what we speak. Maybe I can write that I let you visit and you did. Or maybe you can say you've seen my bed or pet my dog.
You told me that i was your one true love.
I'll make you feel good if you do me. it's not much different than before. telling you that you're pretty, adding bear to the end of your first name.

When she'd come over and stay up late. Curled up on the couch writing in her notebook in black ink. We had this kind of sad-love soundtrack always playing in the background. This sort of waiting around for our big crash and burn. She'd bite the cap of the pen, taking off her glasses and rubbing her eyes. The soundtrack. It was so obvious. so obvious. She'd come over and she'd say that she'd stay forever. fall asleep holding me, after we fucked. once she woke me up sucking my dick. She never wrote that down. I didn't either. since when are secrets stories? that's what she'd tell me.

she signs her name with my last name.
that makes her more mine than yours.
If you find me I'm yours in a heart beat.
the illusion of our lonely is
now,
an us and a we.
my heart, god willing
it will stop beating before hers.
she is much younger than I.
and days passing
we visit each other
my world
Alive.
because of you.

photo credits:
Aytnena
the selby
m0thyyku
heliumglow

the fear you won't fall

Fireflies

Tonight my yard is full of fireflies--a glitterfest of green, blinking by hundreds,

exactly like last year, when she and I

drove out into the Missouri countryside

to talk about our marriage. It was thick

with greenery. The air was hot and thick,

and we had decided to try and stay together,

though by first light she'd changed her mind again,

and, to be honest, our eleventh hour hope and promise lacked the weight of truth.

We wandered off the rocky dirt roadover weeds and brambles, through branches

and spiderwebs, and pressed into a clearing,

and it was like a pocket in the darkness that surrounded us--the misty night back

lit with thousands of glittering fireflies

bettering the stars. It was a mating dance,

and we gazed into a sputtering green sea of desire--such irresistible beckoning.

Ours was, too--a death-dance of mating,

a slower, indecisive tarantella,

and she asked me never to write about this,

but I knew then that I had nothing to lose,

that at that moment there was nothing I wanted

more than to write about the fireflies.

by Richard Newman

you punch like a girl:

my old live journal heliumglow deleted. without much fanfare. without tears. just on a whim really. no sparklers or fourth of July. i lie that I am sometimes not missing her. and she was the reason. for it. I clicked to read my "friends" journals. clicked and its all just cold and empty. maybe they will find me. maybe they won't and it doesn't matter all that much any way. do or don't. that's what I am always trying to tell her. so with an urgency i get to trying to put it all down. and I started to write her name. but it wasn't funny anymore. it wasn't sad either. It wasn't relate able to my life now. it wasn't a lesson learned or time served. It was fake and desolate, it was lying and redundant. it was saying it- to say it. and you deservedly missing me. me, I am somewhere out there too.

a life time ago. so it seems. and i tell myself- the dirty is gone from there.............

to here.

Ive fallen in love, over merely her beauty. have you? I think everyone has. who's to say if its right or wrong. what is love? someone who treats you good. do i not? have i not? this has always been my way of saying it. and it's funny, how it's never quite enough. I guess there is always that question. is it even real.

beauty

it is nothing but something to look at. it is a trick to make you love me. to make me love you. but what of the skin and bones and blood? what if she bled for you. what if she made you feel something, something that you would never never feel again. would you want it back. Is that love? just be happy you had it. just be happy.

you

you
never looked back

I'm not so great:

i stayed over. the first time. and i knew. I knew it right off. I looked over at her sleeping and I knew i was so utterly fucked with smitten. so fucked with a crush, with a sickness. I'd reach out and touch her skin. my warm hand on her cold shoulder and Id warm it. pull the blanket up over her. I would be seriously destroyed. i wasn't acting like myself. but maybe i didn't know me. I wanted to weep. I went to the bathroom just across the hall. trying to be quiet. trying to let the angel sleep. across the tile floor bare-foot. cold. in the bathroom i looked at myself. I wondered how she could let someone like me even fuck her. but i did. we did. in the mirror my eyes watery. hair tussled. I knew i had to do something. She wasn't so great. i had to tell myself that, so i wouldn't get hurt. I saw her tooth-brush in a pink cup on the sink. I saw her tongue scrapper beside it. This was it. my only hope. I took it out and put it under my nose. id have to remember this.

and When she finally told me goodbye. that it was done. over. that I wasn't the one. I wasn't even close to it. i put myself back there in the bathroom. just after the night of sweat and words and kisses. after the sleeping next to her skin that smelled of vanilla. there in the bathroom with that foul fucked up smell of her dirty mouth under my nose.

So when you think it could be heart break

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh . . . . And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you so quite new

-ee cummings

Sugar and Cyanide

Are you ready to be sweet to me? Ever give a Valentine to the most important person in your life? If not, why not? Who was the first to give you one? Who was the first you gave one to? Who was the last?

I got sweaty trying to pick out the right Valentine card for her. Her was the first girl I fell for. She couldn't have cared less. She was pretty. She was popular. I think she got a card from every single boy in class. Everytime I saw this girl my heart went flying over the moon as only a 2nd grade heart in love can do.

I don't know if I imagined this but her hair seemed to always smell of strawberries and sunshine. She had little freckles on her nose. Cassandra. I liked saying her name. It sounded like puppies playing. Like candied hearts and striped socks, ruby slippers, and kitty cat whiskers.

Time to make our exchanges and I watched as she walked over to the most popular boy's desk first. All the other girls followed suit. A line in front of his desk, a line in front of hers.
We had taped brown paper bags on to the edge of our desks and this is where you were to place the envelopes containing the Valentine.
I got to her desk.Bag already bursting with other kids love. I put a candy Valentine heart on top of her desk that said " Be Mine" then quickly shoved my card inside her bag along with the others. It cut the edges. My poem inside ready to win her heart.

Back at my desk. My bag with 1,2,3,4, 5 cards. One was decorated with pretty drawings. My heart skipped. I thought it might be from Cassandra. I ripped into it. I couldn't wait. love BECKY. LOVE Becky? I looked around the room and found Becky huddled with a bunch of girls in the back of the class. She had glasses with tape on them and a school uniform two sizes to big for her. She glanced my way and I half waved with her card in my hand. She smiled.

But my heart was sinking. I hated Valentines day. I decided that I would always hate it from now on until forever.

I went out of class to the water fountain. Cassandra was there. As she bent over to drink, she silently stuck her arm out towards me. In her hand was a small envelope. My soul sang, anticipating what was inside that white square of paper *from her*. Still without a word, she walked away without looking back after I took it.
Trembling, I opened the envelope. Inside was a card with a big color illustration of Scooby Doo on it and a caption below that said something dumb and noncommital like "Hope ya have a grrrrrreat Valentine's Day" Only that. She didn't even sign her name or, dream of dream, write lots of "O's" and "X's" to signify hundreds of hugs and kisses. Nothing.