I can't go to far away - from my heart

It rained. it's raining. right now. god said rain. she said rain. so. rain.
raining now, that's what I mean. Sometimes I don't see or write things in the moment and sometimes that's all i do. because it's all you can do. It's all you can hold on to. you can fall. you can say all the right things, or wrong things. right or wrong. she isn't going to be sleeping next to you
forever.
gone. see it's gone. the moment.
I forgot to blink the picture into my mind.
what was it that she looked like, tasted like, and who does she remind me of.
just like that,

water cascades down my window. glass blurry, water-stains, and dark sky.
I am ready to leave. bag packed. all i need :
the keys, blanket, tooth-brush, glasses, the note-book. the thing is, it's not what you take, it's what you leave behind.

I told you it would. I'm talking about the rain part. It had been to long and things were dry, fires were starting up. pyro, i suspect. a flame doesn't start itself. everyone seems to have a grudge these days. it could be the high prices of oil, or disney- world tickets. it could be nothing. or it could be what i told you was true.
smoke-
I could see her signals. I could see that sometimes they were for me. don't think I don't see them. the shallow breathing, the staring at the ceiling in the dark. It could smell like me. but it doesn't. feel like me, and it will never.
did she miss me? did she miss me
a lot today.
don't think this is what it isn't.
or is.
or I'm not really sure at the moment. because you know how i am with moments.

the trouble i have sleeping, the tornado dream. I know what it means. I know what it means to
go there. I know.
if you get lost-
do I ask the scarecrow for directions? the witch?
are you the witch?

she tells me..." there is no place like it". I say "where?" then i understand.

friday's are all about driving. driving home, driving to bars, driving at night, driving to see her, driving away.
we all have somewhere to go.
extraordinary together- ordinary apart. i think I heard that on t.v.
something that keeps repeating. like that song. like the tornado. chasing me. chasing you. chasing words, chasing rain. the pavement, the night, the head-lights, the windshield wipers. your moment in this silent storm.

summer pills

Every morning the maple leaves.
Every morning another chapter where the hero shifts
from one foot to the other. Every morning the same big
and little words all spelling out desire, all spelling out
You will be alone always and then you will die.
So maybe I wanted to give you something more than a catalog
of non-definitive acts,
something other than the desperation.
Dear So-and-So, I’m sorry I couldn’t come to your party.
Dear So-and-So, I’m sorry I came to your party
and seduced you
and left you bruised and ruined, you poor sad thing.
You want a better story. Who wouldn’t?
A forest, then. Beautiful trees. And a lady singing.
Love on the water, love underwater, love, love and so on.
What a sweet lady. Sing lady, sing! Of course, she wakes the dragon.
Love always wakes the dragon and suddenly
flames everywhere.
I can tell already you think I’m the dragon,
that would be so like me, but I’m not. I’m not the dragon.
I’m not the princess either.
Who am I? I’m just a writer. I write things down.
I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure,
I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow
glass, but that comes later.
And the part where I push you
flush against the wall and every part of your body rubs against the bricks,
shut up
I’m getting to it.

For a while I thought I was the dragon.
I guess I can tell you that now. And, for a while, I thought I was
the princess,
cotton candy pink, sitting there in my room, in the tower of the castle,
young and beautiful and in love and waiting for you with
confidence
but the princess looks into her mirror and only sees the princess,
while I’m out here, slogging through the mud, breathing fire,
and getting stabbed to death.
Okay, so I’m the dragon. Big deal.
You still get to be the hero.
You get the magic gloves! A fish that talks! You get eyes like flashlights!
What more do you want?
I make you pancakes, I take you hunting, I talk to you as if you’re
really there.
Are you there, sweetheart? Do you know me? Is this microphone live?

Let me do it right for once,

for the record, let me make a thing of cream and stars that becomes,

you know the story, simply heaven.

Inside your head you hear a phone ringing

and when you open your eyes

only a clearing with deer in it. Hello deer.

Inside your head the sound of glass,

a car crash sound as the trucks roll over and explode in slow motion.

Hello darling, sorry about that.

Sorry about the bony elbows, sorry we

lived here, sorry about the scene at the bottom of the stairwell

and how I ruined everything by saying it out loud.

Especially that, but I should have known.

You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together

to make a creature that will do what I say

or love me back.

I’m not really sure why I do it, but in this version you are not

feeding yourself to a bad man

against a black sky prickled with small lights.

I take it back.

The wooden halls likes caskets. These terms from the lower depths.

I take them back.

Here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed.

Crossed out.

Clumsy hands in a dark room. Crossed out. There is something

underneath the floorboards.

Crossed out. And here is the tabernacle

reconstructed.

Here is the part where everyone was happy all the time and we were all

forgiven,

even though we didn’t deserve it.

Inside your head you hear

a phone ringing, and when you open your eyes you’re washing up

in a stranger’s bathroom,

standing by the window in a yellow towel, only twenty minutes away

from the dirtiest thing you know.

All the rooms of the castle except this one, says someone, and suddenly

darkness,

suddenly only darkness.

In the living room, in the broken yard,

in the back of the car as the lights go by. In the airport

bathroom’s gurgle and flush, bathed in a pharmacy of

unnatural light,

my hands looking weird, my face weird, my feet too far away.

And the the airplane, the window seat over the wing with a view

of the wing and a little foil bag of peanuts.

I arrived in the city and you met me at the station,

smiling in a way

that made me frightened. Down the alley, around the arcade,

up the stairs of the building

to the little room with the broken faucets, your drawings, all your things,

I looked out the window and said

This doesn’t look that much different from home,

because it didn’t,

but then I noticed the black sky and all those lights.

We walked through the house to the elevated train.
All these buildings, all that glass and the shiny beautiful
mechanical wind.
We were inside the train car when I started to cry. You were crying too,
smiling and crying in a way that made me
even more hysterical. You said I could have anything I wanted, but I
just couldn’t say it out loud.
Actually, you said Love, for you,
is larger than the usual romantic love.
It’s like a religion. It’s terrifying. No one
will ever want to sleep with you.
Okay, if you’re so great, you do it—here’s the pencil, make it work . . .
If the window is on your right, you are in your own bed. If the window
is over your heart, and it is painted shut, then we are breathing
river water.

Build me a city and call it Jerusalem. Build me another and call it
Jerusalem.
We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not
what we sought, so do it over, give me another version,
a different room, another hallway, the kitchen painted over
and over,
another bowl of soup.
The entire history of human desire takes about seventy minutes to tell.
Unfortunately, we don’t have that kind of time.
Forget the dragon,
leave the gun on the table, this has nothing to do with happiness.
Let’s jump ahead to the moment of epiphany,
in gold light, as the camera pans to where
the action is,
lakeside and backlit, and it all falls into frame, close enough to see
the blue rings of my eyes as I say
something ugly.
I never liked that ending either.
More love streaming out the wrong way,
and I don’t want to be the kind that says the wrong way.
But it doesn’t work, these erasures, this constant refolding of the pleats.
There were some nice parts, sure,
all lemondrop and mellonball, laughing in silk pajamas
and the grains of sugar
on the toast, love love or whatever, take a number. I’m sorry
it’s such a lousy story.

Dear Forgiveness, you know that recently
we have had our difficulties and there are many things
I want to ask you.
I tried that one time, high school, second lunch, and then again,
years later, in the chlorinated pool.
I am still talking to you about help. I still do not have
these luxuries.
I have told you where I’m coming from, so put it together.
We clutch our bellies and roll on the floor . . .When I say this, it should mean laughter,
not poison.
I want more applesauce.
I want more seats reserved for heroes.
Dear Forgiveness, I saved a plate for you.
Quit milling around the yard and come inside.

by- Richard Siken.

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.

all your pretty things

promises:

'fall back and I'll catch you' that's what was on the post-card she sent me. It's a German phrase about trust in romance. but once she finally let go. I told her that she could no longer have me. It's kind of a joke between us now. because once i didn't have her, I wanted her back. It was a shock to me just how much i missed her. just how far I'd go.
there is no game in letting go, which is why people rarely do. or one does and not the other. or both do and then you're really fucked. just how far will go? why do I always have to know that. we kissed. yeah. we lied some. we won. I think. or lost. and this is whats left. I'm glad the scary part is over. Oh, and what i said before about it being a joke between us. it's not. I just said that.


snow fight:

I am the opposite of bear. I want to hibernate in the summer.
Driving up the coast past the orange groves. less people on the road. the tourists have all gone home. bugs splatter against my wind-shield. when i finally get to the ocean, its flat. So I just paddle out and lay on my surf-board. I ride the wind-chop in to the shore. I'm sleepy from the drive. If I want to rest, there is a motel room close by. the inside looks like right out of the 70's. bright flowery bed covers. in the bathroom the sink and bat-tub are pink. The floors are linoleum and cool on bare-feet.
She lives closes by and if I call her, there is a good chance she might come. We'd listen to music and fuck and then Id be hungry and more tired. the sun.
What i do is, I ask her to tell me about snow. I ask her what its like to sled or make a snowman. then I'm cold. the noisy Ac unit in the room is pumping and grinding out ice cold air.
I pull the covers over us. Hibernate with me.

cake fight:

The heat is unbearable. when i was a kid i never noticed the heat. Maybe because I spent most my time hiding in the woods. the trees covered me with shade and there was a breeze that would blow branches and leaves, making a constant creaking and shhhhh- shhhhhh shhhhh..sound.
I searched for dirty magazines that the older kids would hide. somewhere in those woods I bet it's still there. the magazine with the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. naked!. i swear. i found it under rotting ply-wood and leaves. usually I'd just look - put it back where i found it. but i wanted this one. so, I took it away and buried it.
I buried so many things in there. my little army guys, micronauts, bottles, cans, a lighter that i stole from my father, a knife from home, dead things I found. I peed on a girl in the woods. I touched her and she touched me back. once I brought a plastic thermometer from a doctors kit i had when i was little. I put it in her butt. It's there too. dirty. buried. I buried the truth there...... I buried our secrets and lies. I wish it was as easy now. the heat is unbearable.

photos by: in order of appearance
whywhat

dementee

moss-koete
m0thyyku

love is a scar that never heals

It won't rain here. I mean, it will (someday) but it hasn't for weeks. When it doesn't rain in Florida everything starts looking brown. trees and grass dry out. Fires start up easily in the Everglades. The swamps, canals and river beds dry up. I drive to work daily in a light haze and the smell of smoke. There is fire. and it's close by. they suspect arson.

My front yard has turned all brown. We are all on water-restrictions so I can only water it two days a week. It's not enough to sustain it's thirst. I have my doubts global abuse of the ozone layer is the cause. That's what everyone is saying though. Everyone is turning "green". It's the new big thing to distract us from the troops abroad and spending billions of our dollars. Blood for Oil? I think fucking NOT. Blood for money. Did you enjoy your 600 dollars?

"They" predicted more hurricanes for us this season. I personally find them rather exciting. It's nice to be forewarned of an upcoming possible disaster. Compared to earth quake or tornadoes. no warning. They scare me. but I like the chaos and fear a hurricane brings in the days leading up to it. I like the local media's sky is falling reaction.the panic it stirs up. You can feel it in the air.

back to the no rain thing: All i can say is that my life is pretty strange...

It's been the same since I was a kid. Doesn't rain for weeks and then all it does is rain. Somehow the universe knows. It takes care of itself. I remember the floods. Getting to stay home from school. Taking surfboards and inflatable rafts to the park to float around in the river that once was a soccer field. My friend. She got ring-worm from tromping through dirty water puddles. After about a week. The mosquitoes are fierce because of all that standing water. the city would send out trucks to spray down the neighborhood. all the kids from my block , including me would get behind the truck and run through the smokey spray (poison). the damage is done.

I dreamed about tornadoes again last week. Before that major storm system came through the Southern U.S. and killed several people. I'm not saying I am a seer or anything. not a prediction. Just I dreamed of being in a car traveling down a highway and 5 or 6 funnels formed and chanced us. Odd thing is there have never been very many tornadoes touching down in South Florida. In fact I've never been in nor have I ever seen one up close in my entire life. I

fun fact: I've never seen or been in snow either.