sunday's poem

cleaning

he found the nest
of annie's nylons in the back
of the top left hand drawer when he
was clearing out the bedroom.
he sat on a chair, the wad
in his hands. they stopped
his momentum more forcefully
than any of her other things. more than the books
papers sweaters lipsticks shampoos music.
the nylons recalled the intimate shape of her legs.
the way she would walk. sometimes
it had been hard to know where her body
left off and his had begun. it was even harder now
that she wasn't here to remind him
where his skin met the air.

more poetry

she is

you are a poet in the quiet
moments, a whittler of
words, slowly paring down
to the meaning of it. don't

silence your voice with the busy-ness,
errands and agendas of little
consequence that will
or won't get done. breathe
and it is of more importance
than anything else you've ever done.


falling

this is my dream; i'm walking
down a corridor and i'm alone.
truly alone. there's the sound of my
feet padding across the tiled floor
and then nothing. silence like
gravity. it becomes black.
and i think of you.

but i'm not falling in
love with you, you so far away and
perfect in that distance. with
your details blurred like memory or a good
monet. and i keep filling in your
features, or weak spots, as if
i'm dreaming you in to existence.


yesterday morning

i am not a perfect memory, not so tidy you can
squish me in a picture book with a caption
telling everyone that i was once owned
by you. not so easily forgotten that you could
pass me by on the street like a beggar holding
out his hand for whatever it is you won't give.
not so carelessly classified; a good kisser, the best
blow-job, the least demanding. i will refuse to be
tossed out with the morning paper, the coffee grinds, the inevitable
grapefruit rind. you, in your small routine, will want to.

onya

onya

she lives in a small apartment on the top
floor of a squarish ancient building. the paint
on the outside was once white but is crackling
now, as if there was something alive under there,
trying to break free. she does not look at it much.
prefers the flickering lights of rented movies
on her tv screen. there she slips into the stories,
imagines she too has a glossy, proofed life.
the boring parts edited out. she has a job at jake's
grill, serving the customers without seeing them.
jake likes to try to get her on her back but she
floats off, is cleopatra on the banks of the nile
and it's no fun to force himself on someone
who isn't even there. in her apartment she showers,
does not shave. does not cut any hair on her body.
doesn't want anyone to find those little bits of her
so she burns the cut toenails and fingernails, an acrid
horrid smell she suffers through to protect
herself. watches her movies and stays up till
four in the morning. gets up at eleven. to work
at one. drops off videos and rents more on the way
back to her apartment. imagines she
is conan's queen as she crosses a busy street.

christmas day

christmas was great. i got two phone calls from two of my favorite people in the whole world, which pleased me to no end. we ate french dip and opened presents and played pictionary. yay! what a great day, even with all of us sick.

merry christmas!

i have always been a night person; sometimes to the point of staying up 'till everyone else got up. but for the last month or so, i've been waking up around 10:30. very weird. this morning i woke up at 8:30, which i've done several times during this month. i'm not a morning person. really, i'm not. my brain doesn't function as well, i end up dragging half way through the day, wishing i could take a nap. it's a strange thing, this getting up in the morning. i actually get to see daylight, up here where the sun is only up for a few hours during the winter. and then i go to bed *early*, like ten or so. what's up with that? where are my happy nights spent wandering my empty house? and most important, *why* is this happening to me? rrrrrrrrrrr

untitled

this one is a failed experiment. i stretched

several layers of cheesecloth over a mirror in hopes you could see the mirror (and your reflection) as you looked at the painting. no such luck. the two things i like about this one is the way she seems to be floating in space, and the transperency of the image; i painted a poem on the reverse side of the cheesecloth. i also really like the frame of little painted pieces of paper.

false comfort

false comfort

soft cat curl warm against my leg,
a false comfort. moonlight shifting
across your taut body.
purpose whispers like cold memory
holding me just this close,
like a branch of the sky.
air like secret doom.

your love was something perfect forever,
but this distance leaves me behind,
so much wind. distant and hard,
tearing me away.


distance

tonight i bleed
a path to sorrow.
pain through consequence,
dust in my hands.
choice like a lie.
you bewilder me with
your heavy signifigance.
try to fail,
sliding past absolute solitude.
you glow like kindred fire.

presents and last minute shopping

last year i finished all my christmas shopping by the first week of december. i was so proud of myself; it was the first time i'd ever pulled it off and it felt *great*. this year, i planned to do the same, but what with money flow, i had to wait, and just got finished about a week ago. it seems to me that there's nothing more stressful than waiting 'till the last minute to shop for christmas. it totally wrecks the *spirit* of the season. ah, well. next year, maybe...

refusing to let go of it

refusing to let go of it

you are like a broken
rhythm, distant strained hesitant.
pervasive but forgettable. like
the scratch of a 48 stopping
stopping
stopping
right before it gets good, before
it gets interesting. you hide
behind your blonde hair and loud
voice, hoping no one will bother
to look deeper, into
the fear lighting the back
of your eyes, a bit of truth
in the midst of fabrication, hurting
no one but yourself.

you seem to think if you ignore
it, it
will go away, a dream of someone
else's life. i'm tired
of your lies, your anger.

look deeper. the anger
is for someone else, for you
and him, for then. move on.
don't let them take even more.

sister

sister

that is what i am. no
way to seperate
myself from that definition.
sister.
it is where i start
and end.
she is an extension
of the me
i feel when i look
up to the stars
and see the wheeling
blackness reaching out past
the limits
of my mind.
she holds my hand
and brings
me back to me.


opus 13, satie

when i hear it, that far
away sad music played on
a piano out of tune, i can again see
the notes in sunlight lying
across brown carpet. there is
a smell of clean sheets, fresh
flowers, potato soup on
simmer, tasting of innocence and
long sunday picnic afternoons.

my skin longs to hold
that warmth, languid arms
reaching up into dust motes,
shaping satie at a cellular
level, blood pulsing to memory.


waking

she dreamed
there was blood
in her hair. in her
dream she stood naked
under a cold fall
of water in a shower
that was not her own.
the water ran red
but her hair remained
matted and thick. she

woke, sitting tangled
in her bed. breathing
hard. hand over her
mouth to stop
whatever noise that tried
to escape her.
it was a long
wait for sleep again.

desert

the thing i like about 'desert' is the feeling of desolation.

christmas

it's almost christmas and we're all excited here. we were late starting this year, for some reason. we got the tree up two days ago. it's *so* wonderful to see the girls all excited. i've got two nieces, one three, and the other one. we all live together and i *love* it. it's especially good to be together right now. my dad died two years ago on december 8, at 5:30. my mom's been having a harder time with it, harder than last year. isn't grief funny? you think you're okay, and then *wham*. it hits you out of the blue.

so merry christmas, my dear friends.

icon

icon

drink her sweater, a sea thick
and languid. cold you lie
like a blown poppy
in the moonlight. bridges
you travel past the truth
in her eyes, bleeding memory. earth
is your home, reflection of dust
in her kiss sliding away,

silence holding you still
as a stone falling
down to the bottom of the ocean leaving
nothing behind but her slick
hands, her distant lips rooted
like maple, emissary of staying behind.

new christmas tree of lights!

follow up on 'christmas tree of death'; we went out and found a new tree that's *beautiful* (it's even pre-lit!) for only $50 at lowe's (it was 50% off, and then because it was the sample, we got an extra 10% off, as well). yay, lowe's! and less than a week to christmas, too. amazing! but i wouldn't try this at home, if i were you. start earlier! next year, maybe, we'll get the tree up the weekend after thanksgiving; that's our goal anyway...


untitled

your love flowers, a dark
rain like a distant dream, concealing
what you will not let me see.
your eyes are like that, evading, saying
what you can't seem to say. you curl

warmly against me now, but a thought
can make you fly, loose, skimming
the surface of truth. but

i am not a thief, here to kiss
away your life. keep your lies, the reflection
of yourself you let out to wander.
i will move like seaweed, anchored but
disconsolate, a heavy water for you

to brush aside. keep your inside in, your
perfect smile flickering. i should,
by now, know it means nothing.

painting

my favorite part of this painting is her green hair. makes me think of medusa.

christmas tree of death

so, okay. we're a little behind in some of our chores.
like, taking our garbage to the dump. it's kinda sitting in our garage, breeding fruit flies.
hey, somebody has got to take care of those poor little guys.
anyway. the garbage. say, perhaps, we loaned our christmas tree to vbs and then didn't put it back away. say, perhaps, a little teensy tiny bit of garbage got put on *top* of this ficticious christmas tree. and then the garbage were, to say, leak a bit? and leave the stench of death upon this hapless fake christmas tree?
oh, yeah.
it's now the christmas tree of death.
i tried spraying the silly thing with lysol, but now the thing smells like lysol and death. not a good combo.
okay. this calls for a poem about something else, entirely.

seed

with your forever promise broken
in my grasp like so much wind
blowing away my dream of what
we once were, i try to remember why. i see

a tangle of loss as a heavy rhythm, breaking
my small still trust. your cruel mouth carries
lies, shards of truth cutting so deep, drawing
a line of scars through my past like
a tank through enemy territory. if you'd kept
your sweet self from me, i wouldn't hate

this absolute solitude. your hair
drifts like seaweed, around
your face, along your false body.
silence holds me under thin consequence,
growing fuller every day, every hour.

sunset

this painting is 4' by4'. it's my biggest one. i love the drips in it. i was trying to get the idea of a *memory* of a event, and the drips seem like the shift from real event to memory, how our mind changes the reality to fiction.

leaving

my best friend just moved. eight hours away. i've been so depressed about it. the last best friend i had moved to africa, and then to papua new guinea, which, believe me, is farther than eight hours away. it sucks to get attatched to people and then lose them. my first best friend (my sister) left while i was in college to go to graduate school. seems all my friends want to do is to leave. i guess i'm just sulking.

liar

falsely compel her to love you, so
easy to lie
lip to lip, sun hanging on to
your hair like milk,
smooth promise on your tongue,
taut heart held
just out of reach. like a candy
to want. you
pretend it's attainable.

she has no protection, no
skills to fend off your sweet
blood, your still smile.

give as much as you
can, hot
thigh to thigh trembling
hidden deep, deeper.
you look down
at her liquid eyes, see
her give you everything.

new poem

today's poem;

texas

being in texas is like cutting throuth
the skin on my wrist. i wish i could
see the path far ahead of me but
my eyes are so full of now i can't
see past the red shimmer of texas.

waiting

it's called 'waiting'

yesterday

becca and jake were in a show last night. becca did awesome on her solo, "oh, holy night". she's so talented! i forget, living day to day with her. you know? familiarity breeds a sort of blind comfort. here's my poem for the day.

blaming you

i've got dreams lined up
on a shelf like a neat row of glass
dolls, clear and shiny in the light.
they dazzle me as i look
at them, measuring their worth.

it's easy to place the blame
on you, as if you'd sucked my will
dry like an alcoholic waiting
for the last drop of it to slip
from the bottle into his mouth.
it's too easy to say it's your
fault, that you've eaten

what i once was, what i could
have been, every part of me. but i gave
you my will, wrapped
in paper like a precious gift. i stopped
fighting. i started to believe you.
i gave it to you. and now i see my
dreams as fragile art,
brittle as tomorrow, unreachable as you.

to start with

i've decided to follow the crowd and start up another blog. crazy talk, right? oh, well. i'm gonna show some of my artwork and maybe write some stuff, considering that i'm a visual artist and writer. oooooh. another writer....