i play rhymes like the Volga
in the heart
of musical winter -
sweet little sunshine,
can you show me the way
to Elboa?
26 November 2007
19 November 2007
when the rain had laughter
selected excerpts from a recent story i wrote:
--
My first thought earlier was what if the rain had laughter? What if every drop of water that fell from the sky was giggling or guffawing, chuckling or chortling, hee-hawing or howling, snickering or snorting, tittering or tee-heeing, cachinnating or cackling? Then the clouds would be more like mouths and the sky would be more like a face and the sun and moon would be funny-looking moles than appear at different times on your face depending on what you ate for breakfast or lunch or dinner and fog or smoke or smog would be what happens when you don't shave for varying lengths of time - only if you're a guy, of course. Or a woman of ethnic origins which I won't say in case it makes me seems racy. I mean racist. Though being racist is racy nowadays, isn't it?...
...[W]hat if we held our friends over our heads like umbrellas when it rained laughter? When we needed them, of course. And they could do the same thing with us when they needed us. Laughter rains from everywhere and I hold my friend Anna above my head and she absorbs all the laughter and it makes her clothes all wet and hilarious and drips everywhere. But then, you see, the whole idea of an umbrella would be reversed, which is exactly my point. Let's say my friend James is sad because he's an attractive gay man but doesn't think he's an attractive gay man, much like a bush baby is happy because it thinks it's a cute little tree-climber when in fact it is quite hideous, or an author who is confused because he keeps having these thoughts that make sense but he thinks they don't and he just rambles on and on about his ideas and friends, like his friend James, who is sad because he doesn't think he's an attractive gay man, which he in fact is. So it starts to rain laughter outside and I say "James get your attractive gay person over here!" and he says "I'm not attractive. Though I am gay." which then proves my point that he needs to have buckets of laughter fall upon him from the heavens, so I lift him up and swing him over my head and it rains and rains and rains and I hear laughter everywhere - this time the laughter of two ridiculously flamboyant gay men sitting at a bar overusing the word "fabulous" - and James becomes soaked in it and he is then effectively wearing laughter, he showered in laughter, laughter going everywhere, and since laughter in inherently equal to happiness and happiness is inherently equal to thinking better of yourself than you do when you're unhappy, I can put James down when the brief storm is over (for laughter always comes in brief storms), confident that he now knows - or at least temporarily believes, rightly - that he is an attractive gay man. Gay in both senses, too! How punny. And let's say my friend Anna, who has large breasts and curly brown hair that she had straightened when she went off to college and pierced her belly button and lost her virginity is feeling rather gloomy because she hates everyone around her except her friends (which doesn't make much sense, because if she liked everyone else, wouldn't she call them friends, too?). So it begins to thunder chuckles and rain canals of cacchination and I whip her up over my head, which is rather easy, because she's rather thin, and, as proven earlier, she'll feel buckets better once the storm is gone.
--
My first thought earlier was what if the rain had laughter? What if every drop of water that fell from the sky was giggling or guffawing, chuckling or chortling, hee-hawing or howling, snickering or snorting, tittering or tee-heeing, cachinnating or cackling? Then the clouds would be more like mouths and the sky would be more like a face and the sun and moon would be funny-looking moles than appear at different times on your face depending on what you ate for breakfast or lunch or dinner and fog or smoke or smog would be what happens when you don't shave for varying lengths of time - only if you're a guy, of course. Or a woman of ethnic origins which I won't say in case it makes me seems racy. I mean racist. Though being racist is racy nowadays, isn't it?...
...[W]hat if we held our friends over our heads like umbrellas when it rained laughter? When we needed them, of course. And they could do the same thing with us when they needed us. Laughter rains from everywhere and I hold my friend Anna above my head and she absorbs all the laughter and it makes her clothes all wet and hilarious and drips everywhere. But then, you see, the whole idea of an umbrella would be reversed, which is exactly my point. Let's say my friend James is sad because he's an attractive gay man but doesn't think he's an attractive gay man, much like a bush baby is happy because it thinks it's a cute little tree-climber when in fact it is quite hideous, or an author who is confused because he keeps having these thoughts that make sense but he thinks they don't and he just rambles on and on about his ideas and friends, like his friend James, who is sad because he doesn't think he's an attractive gay man, which he in fact is. So it starts to rain laughter outside and I say "James get your attractive gay person over here!" and he says "I'm not attractive. Though I am gay." which then proves my point that he needs to have buckets of laughter fall upon him from the heavens, so I lift him up and swing him over my head and it rains and rains and rains and I hear laughter everywhere - this time the laughter of two ridiculously flamboyant gay men sitting at a bar overusing the word "fabulous" - and James becomes soaked in it and he is then effectively wearing laughter, he showered in laughter, laughter going everywhere, and since laughter in inherently equal to happiness and happiness is inherently equal to thinking better of yourself than you do when you're unhappy, I can put James down when the brief storm is over (for laughter always comes in brief storms), confident that he now knows - or at least temporarily believes, rightly - that he is an attractive gay man. Gay in both senses, too! How punny. And let's say my friend Anna, who has large breasts and curly brown hair that she had straightened when she went off to college and pierced her belly button and lost her virginity is feeling rather gloomy because she hates everyone around her except her friends (which doesn't make much sense, because if she liked everyone else, wouldn't she call them friends, too?). So it begins to thunder chuckles and rain canals of cacchination and I whip her up over my head, which is rather easy, because she's rather thin, and, as proven earlier, she'll feel buckets better once the storm is gone.
12 November 2007
when i was so much more than something
my darling here,
i ask you:
can we explode
(bedridden - not
and rose drenched)
into nothingness?
pretty your eyes parting
and your cool lips
aflutter
you do but say
naught and
in great stead,
unbreakable like a diamond,
you prefer
to kiss me
as an answer that
sings Yes and
screams No
and electrifies
all in between
(why nothingness
perhaps you ponder?
why because new
when i hold you
there is nothing else
but the hum of your body,
so beautiful and new a thing
every time).
i ask you:
can we explode
(bedridden - not
and rose drenched)
into nothingness?
pretty your eyes parting
and your cool lips
aflutter
you do but say
naught and
in great stead,
unbreakable like a diamond,
you prefer
to kiss me
as an answer that
sings Yes and
screams No
and electrifies
all in between
(why nothingness
perhaps you ponder?
why because new
when i hold you
there is nothing else
but the hum of your body,
so beautiful and new a thing
every time).
04 November 2007
when i was timeless
how is that i seem to have hours upon end to fill with nothingness, yet in the end of the day i feel like i have no time at all, like the list of things i want to read and need to write just slowly add their weight to my eyes and hands? i've been barely making it through reading Amerika, a fairly easy read; it's been 2 weeks and i'm only about half way done. i'm neglecting my thucydides reading more than i should, i have to write my humanities paper (contrasting homer and herodotus' respective views on how the gods play a role in war in ancient greece and thus how herodotus ultimately sees the truth and reality in human agency), i have tons of books i want to read for fun, i have to come up with an extended bibliography for my spanish research paper (mercifully, i am allowed to write it in english) comparing the trichotomy of heaven/earth/hell to that of the three levels of existence of Comala in Pedro Paramo, i (feel like i) have to constantly be writing and working on some story i've got going or other...
but when it comes down to having time to do these things, i throw a blanket over my head and pretend like almost nothing exists. i just look at the clock and wonder what would really happen if it just stopped.
but when it comes down to having time to do these things, i throw a blanket over my head and pretend like almost nothing exists. i just look at the clock and wonder what would really happen if it just stopped.
30 October 2007
when i had an idea
Directions
1: Start out going EAST on ******* ST toward ******** AVE. <0.1 miles
2: Turn LEFT onto ******** AVE. <0.1 miles
3: Turn RIGHT onto CHATSWORTH ST. 0.7 miles
4: Turn LEFT onto RESEDA BLVD. 0.6 miles
5: Merge onto CA-118 E. 3.4 miles
6: Merge onto I-405 N toward SACRAMENTO. 3.0 miles
7: Merge onto I-5 N (Crossing into OREGON). 938.7 miles
8: Take the OR-43 / MACADAM AVE. exit- EXIT 299A- toward US-26 E / ROSS IS. BR.. 0.1 miles
9: Stay STRAIGHT to go onto SW MACADAM AVE / OR-43 N. Continue to follow OR-43 N. 0.4 miles
10: Turn SLIGHT LEFT onto SW HOOD AVE. 0.2 miles
11: Turn RIGHT onto SW WHITAKER ST. <0.1 miles
12: Turn RIGHT onto SW KELLY AVE. <0.1 miles
13: Turn SLIGHT LEFT to take the ramp toward US-26 E / ROSS IS. BR. / MT. HOOD. <0.1 miles
14: Turn SLIGHT RIGHT onto US-26. 0.6 miles
15: Merge onto SE MCLOUGHLIN BLVD / OR-99E S / PACIFIC HWY E. 2.2 miles
16: Turn RIGHT onto SE 23RD AVE. <0.1 miles
17: Turn RIGHT onto SE BYBEE BLVD. 0.2 miles
18: Stay STRAIGHT to go onto SE TOLMAN ST. <0.1 miles
19: SE TOLMAN ST becomes SE 28TH AVE. 0.3 miles
20: Stay STRAIGHT to go onto SE WOODSTOCK BLVD. 0.2 miles
21: End at 3203 Se Woodstock Blvd, Portland, OR 97202-8138, US
Total Est. Time: 14 hours, 37 minutes
Total Est. Distance: 951.71 miles
i'll see you here. :)
1: Start out going EAST on ******* ST toward ******** AVE. <0.1 miles
2: Turn LEFT onto ******** AVE. <0.1 miles
3: Turn RIGHT onto CHATSWORTH ST. 0.7 miles
4: Turn LEFT onto RESEDA BLVD. 0.6 miles
5: Merge onto CA-118 E. 3.4 miles
6: Merge onto I-405 N toward SACRAMENTO. 3.0 miles
7: Merge onto I-5 N (Crossing into OREGON). 938.7 miles
8: Take the OR-43 / MACADAM AVE. exit- EXIT 299A- toward US-26 E / ROSS IS. BR.. 0.1 miles
9: Stay STRAIGHT to go onto SW MACADAM AVE / OR-43 N. Continue to follow OR-43 N. 0.4 miles
10: Turn SLIGHT LEFT onto SW HOOD AVE. 0.2 miles
11: Turn RIGHT onto SW WHITAKER ST. <0.1 miles
12: Turn RIGHT onto SW KELLY AVE. <0.1 miles
13: Turn SLIGHT LEFT to take the ramp toward US-26 E / ROSS IS. BR. / MT. HOOD. <0.1 miles
14: Turn SLIGHT RIGHT onto US-26. 0.6 miles
15: Merge onto SE MCLOUGHLIN BLVD / OR-99E S / PACIFIC HWY E. 2.2 miles
16: Turn RIGHT onto SE 23RD AVE. <0.1 miles
17: Turn RIGHT onto SE BYBEE BLVD. 0.2 miles
18: Stay STRAIGHT to go onto SE TOLMAN ST. <0.1 miles
19: SE TOLMAN ST becomes SE 28TH AVE. 0.3 miles
20: Stay STRAIGHT to go onto SE WOODSTOCK BLVD. 0.2 miles
21: End at 3203 Se Woodstock Blvd, Portland, OR 97202-8138, US
Total Est. Time: 14 hours, 37 minutes
Total Est. Distance: 951.71 miles
i'll see you here. :)
24 October 2007
when i was hopelessly poor
lord.
i miss you/her so much.
to me, every day and every minute and every hour and every span of time is merely marked by how long it is until i see you again. two weeks from friday i will see you. yes, if i had a choice i would never leave your arms (i speak grandly; practically, of course, we'd have to be separate for some things. showers, working, to cool down because of the intense intense heat). but i do not care that it is only for two days, effectively, that i will see you. that fact that your reality will be reaffirmed again and again for me until we will be together for good keeps me going.
my body is restless inside because you are not sitting here next to me, because i cannot smell you in the air, because i cannot stretch my arm out and touch you, because i cannot hold your face and kiss you.
you are so truly in everything i see and touch, whether i mentally associate you with something or not. you are just there, almost as if part of you is constantly harboring inside my fingers and just behind my eyes.
but thinking about the ephemeral state of time makes things better because, honestly, life is so very long and now goes running fast into the past like wild horses over the hills at sunset until i am holding your hand and looking into your eyes and never having to let you go.
i miss you/her so much.
to me, every day and every minute and every hour and every span of time is merely marked by how long it is until i see you again. two weeks from friday i will see you. yes, if i had a choice i would never leave your arms (i speak grandly; practically, of course, we'd have to be separate for some things. showers, working, to cool down because of the intense intense heat). but i do not care that it is only for two days, effectively, that i will see you. that fact that your reality will be reaffirmed again and again for me until we will be together for good keeps me going.
my body is restless inside because you are not sitting here next to me, because i cannot smell you in the air, because i cannot stretch my arm out and touch you, because i cannot hold your face and kiss you.
you are so truly in everything i see and touch, whether i mentally associate you with something or not. you are just there, almost as if part of you is constantly harboring inside my fingers and just behind my eyes.
but thinking about the ephemeral state of time makes things better because, honestly, life is so very long and now goes running fast into the past like wild horses over the hills at sunset until i am holding your hand and looking into your eyes and never having to let you go.
22 October 2007
when you were a star falling down somewhere next to me
so here i am, returned or dropped back to where i was, but not really, no, not so much.
i find myself sitting here, no longer really existing within each day but merely doing what temporarily distracts me and makes me happy, merely whiling away the days until i see you again, until i am home again. currently, it is reading. i am just reading to read and reading to pass the time. in everything i read, you are there. i read amerika by kafka and picture you reading the same words; i read cortazar and imagine you smiling at the same, strange, enigmatic stories; i read hemingway and think of how much you love him and his books and stories. and hence, somehow unsurprisingly, you are not really as far away as i would think; you feel close, nearby, within arm's and ear's reach. i touch last week and there you are, still lying languidly on my bed, giving me those eyes i cannot say no to. and i realize we have reinvented anatomy and proven the credibility of metaphysics in that my heart can survive outside of my body because it is with you, and yours with me.
and when i look at someone or something or nowhere, even, i'm really looking for and into your eyes, you know.
and every time i write something down i think 'now how i can i put her into this'. not for the sake of the story, but just as a way of showing you my love as much as i can and assuring you that you are still everywhere with me.
and when there is nothing else or i am tired of reading or writing i look at my poster of the eiffel tower above my desk and see you and i standing there by the merry-go-round in its shadow, holding hands and looking up, blinking snow out of our eyes. and i turn to kiss you and you turn to me at the exact same time and then everything is wonderful and bright and, most important, okay. everything is okay.
i find myself sitting here, no longer really existing within each day but merely doing what temporarily distracts me and makes me happy, merely whiling away the days until i see you again, until i am home again. currently, it is reading. i am just reading to read and reading to pass the time. in everything i read, you are there. i read amerika by kafka and picture you reading the same words; i read cortazar and imagine you smiling at the same, strange, enigmatic stories; i read hemingway and think of how much you love him and his books and stories. and hence, somehow unsurprisingly, you are not really as far away as i would think; you feel close, nearby, within arm's and ear's reach. i touch last week and there you are, still lying languidly on my bed, giving me those eyes i cannot say no to. and i realize we have reinvented anatomy and proven the credibility of metaphysics in that my heart can survive outside of my body because it is with you, and yours with me.
and when i look at someone or something or nowhere, even, i'm really looking for and into your eyes, you know.
and every time i write something down i think 'now how i can i put her into this'. not for the sake of the story, but just as a way of showing you my love as much as i can and assuring you that you are still everywhere with me.
and when there is nothing else or i am tired of reading or writing i look at my poster of the eiffel tower above my desk and see you and i standing there by the merry-go-round in its shadow, holding hands and looking up, blinking snow out of our eyes. and i turn to kiss you and you turn to me at the exact same time and then everything is wonderful and bright and, most important, okay. everything is okay.
17 October 2007
when i found a reason
what comes is better than what came before.
i will always come to you.
i will always run to you.
poor and happy.
i will always come to you.
i will always run to you.
poor and happy.
08 October 2007
when life was elsewhere
a poem i wrote last night
--
"life is elsewhere?"
elsewhere
is life? - but:
how can that be
when all that is
is here
and all that isn't
is nowhere
(tangently, then is all
that isn't, if nowhere,
somewhere?
thus, is it? - stale);
yet, scorn the here and praise there
if you must - yet
then, where are you
at the utter moment
of your poetic waxing?
how can you be here
(as clear a fact as
day and night) with
life, dancing,
not?
are you then
poetically lifeless
(a soldier unstirring
by a river?)
and then one subsequent question
we have yet to trip
on our tongues
(aside from such what then
is life nonsense -
save that
for the end of the
universe, i say! -
where we say "was"
ponderously instead of "is",
every semblance of
being gone - thus, is is was
at that point -):
if life is truly elsewhere,
what is here among us,
breathing and moving
dust creatures
that we propose
to be?
i answer you,
voodoo poetic,
two roses in my fist
and white blood running down
my arms - (so Apolline):
here is elsewhere
- and all distant oceans
in between.
--
"life is elsewhere?"
elsewhere
is life? - but:
how can that be
when all that is
is here
and all that isn't
is nowhere
(tangently, then is all
that isn't, if nowhere,
somewhere?
thus, is it? - stale);
yet, scorn the here and praise there
if you must - yet
then, where are you
at the utter moment
of your poetic waxing?
how can you be here
(as clear a fact as
day and night) with
life, dancing,
not?
are you then
poetically lifeless
(a soldier unstirring
by a river?)
and then one subsequent question
we have yet to trip
on our tongues
(aside from such what then
is life nonsense -
save that
for the end of the
universe, i say! -
where we say "was"
ponderously instead of "is",
every semblance of
being gone - thus, is is was
at that point -):
if life is truly elsewhere,
what is here among us,
breathing and moving
dust creatures
that we propose
to be?
i answer you,
voodoo poetic,
two roses in my fist
and white blood running down
my arms - (so Apolline):
here is elsewhere
- and all distant oceans
in between.
25 September 2007
13 September 2007
when things were clear
a story i wrote that is less fiction than it is simple breath:
"Can you just leave, Salem?"
(Like it mattered)
Those words hit me like paper bullets, honestly, barely making it through the air and bouncing right off my shirt, landing on the floor in a pathetic crumpled heap that reminded me vaguely of crushed lilies in the springtime. I know those words were supposed to be heavy and violent (there were accompanied by such a ferocious slamming down of books, lord, your aura was flying everywhere) but in reality, they were nothing and I frankly wasn't surprised. Not like I knew the brunt of your rage (I've only heard) but I just expected those words, I knew they carried so many different meanings. And I probably should have left your echoing house, your cold room, a while before, anyway. But I just couldn't bring myself to extract my presence from yours. Sitting on your floor, reading Cortazar (another one of "your" authors, as I still think of them - Klima, Marquez, and Eggers, too), I wasn't content but I knew I couldn't move. I was leaving in less than two days (something new, for I used to be forever in a perpetual state of latency) and I wanted to, in simple, lay language, spend as much of the remaining hours I had left with you. I forwent a going-away party of a friend I'd known since kindergarten and skirted spending time with my family to come to your house (on the behest of your father, but still) after you got off work (those long shifts just killed me: so many of our temporarily final hours lost) fuck well anyway this is no time to be mad to teach lessons i can't sacrifice another minute quite late for a school night, and what's more is that I knew full well that it wouldn't evolve into anything and that I'd just sit on your floor reading, wondering in the back of my skull if my silent and statue-like presence annoyed you at all, wondering if it would have annoyed me had it been the other way around, but what made me content to do just that (nothing I couldn't have done anywhere else) was that I was content in doing it. Time with you was richer, more golden, full of light and cool air and pulsing chests and a strange heaviness that began at my heart and spread exclusively to the tips of my fingers, allowing the rest of my body to be lighter than all summer air.
I knew what you were asking me and all the reasons why. That is what you had become to me: a solved puzzle. Let me:
a) "Can you just leave, Salem?" was Look I'm in a really shitty mood right now and you're the person I feel most comfortable with which is why in times of stress I let down my polities and you receive the south end of all my current negative emotions, which are usually in no way related to you at all. Which I accepted, because I understood her so thoroughly she might as well have been a nursery rhyme (but god she was so much more beautiful).
b) "Can you just leave, Salem?" was also How I have grown to feel about you in the last few years has been tumultuous. You have seen the everything of me and have been there for all and you are my best friend and grew to be far more than that, and I ended up - knowingly but almost begrudgingly - loving you more than anything in this entire world: your hands in mine, your fingers in my hair, your lips on my neck, your weight on my chest, your whisper in my ear and the fact that in a countable number of hours you will no longer be mine at the end of my hand but a thousand miles away (returning? will it be the same?) and I cannot bear that fact it is tearing me up inside and shattering the ocean inside of me and part of me thinks that there can be no pain greater than this, the pre-longing, the knowledge that though you are here now, you will not be soon, oh so soon, so very soon and I know the eyes of your heart were dripping with tears which is why I accepted and how I understood and why your words to me were like paper bullets because oh, my love, how I had never loved anyone in the subtle, all-engrossing way that I loved (and continue still to love) you; I am incapable of loving anyone else; your breath, your words, your eyes, your embrace is paralyzing.
"What are you doing?"
Your fingers were tracing my cheeks, my eyes, my ears. Your touch was illumination in my dark bedroom. The sheepskin rug tickled my naked back.
You closed your eyes and exhaled jaggedly through your nose (you had been crying) and I felt your warm breath and wished it was mine.
"If I try hard enough," you whispered through sparse tears in a rare moment of tenderness, "I can memorize your face."
"Oh my dear," I kissed you. "All I have to do is think of the one thing that I love the most and your face just appears."
"You're not supposed to say that!" And I could feel you crying just a little bit more and do you know what, my one and only true love thus far? Your tears fell into the soil of time and where our hands met grew this beautiful rose that I call the us and yes I know for now we cannot both hold it and admire it's pretty face but whatever wind and sea exists between will keep it as lovely as the day we pulled it from the earth and held it between us, carefully avoiding the thorns, knowing we'd soon share it again (but for now my dear you keep it, and I will return soon, soon, oh so soon).
So can I at last say that I love you, that I have fallen in love so deep and heavily that I fear death from this drop?
Yes.
Yes, yes, yes, yes. Goddamnit, yes.
--
"Can you just leave, Salem?"
(Like it mattered)
Those words hit me like paper bullets, honestly, barely making it through the air and bouncing right off my shirt, landing on the floor in a pathetic crumpled heap that reminded me vaguely of crushed lilies in the springtime. I know those words were supposed to be heavy and violent (there were accompanied by such a ferocious slamming down of books, lord, your aura was flying everywhere) but in reality, they were nothing and I frankly wasn't surprised. Not like I knew the brunt of your rage (I've only heard) but I just expected those words, I knew they carried so many different meanings. And I probably should have left your echoing house, your cold room, a while before, anyway. But I just couldn't bring myself to extract my presence from yours. Sitting on your floor, reading Cortazar (another one of "your" authors, as I still think of them - Klima, Marquez, and Eggers, too), I wasn't content but I knew I couldn't move. I was leaving in less than two days (something new, for I used to be forever in a perpetual state of latency) and I wanted to, in simple, lay language, spend as much of the remaining hours I had left with you. I forwent a going-away party of a friend I'd known since kindergarten and skirted spending time with my family to come to your house (on the behest of your father, but still) after you got off work (those long shifts just killed me: so many of our temporarily final hours lost) fuck well anyway this is no time to be mad to teach lessons i can't sacrifice another minute quite late for a school night, and what's more is that I knew full well that it wouldn't evolve into anything and that I'd just sit on your floor reading, wondering in the back of my skull if my silent and statue-like presence annoyed you at all, wondering if it would have annoyed me had it been the other way around, but what made me content to do just that (nothing I couldn't have done anywhere else) was that I was content in doing it. Time with you was richer, more golden, full of light and cool air and pulsing chests and a strange heaviness that began at my heart and spread exclusively to the tips of my fingers, allowing the rest of my body to be lighter than all summer air.
I knew what you were asking me and all the reasons why. That is what you had become to me: a solved puzzle. Let me:
a) "Can you just leave, Salem?" was Look I'm in a really shitty mood right now and you're the person I feel most comfortable with which is why in times of stress I let down my polities and you receive the south end of all my current negative emotions, which are usually in no way related to you at all. Which I accepted, because I understood her so thoroughly she might as well have been a nursery rhyme (but god she was so much more beautiful).
b) "Can you just leave, Salem?" was also How I have grown to feel about you in the last few years has been tumultuous. You have seen the everything of me and have been there for all and you are my best friend and grew to be far more than that, and I ended up - knowingly but almost begrudgingly - loving you more than anything in this entire world: your hands in mine, your fingers in my hair, your lips on my neck, your weight on my chest, your whisper in my ear and the fact that in a countable number of hours you will no longer be mine at the end of my hand but a thousand miles away (returning? will it be the same?) and I cannot bear that fact it is tearing me up inside and shattering the ocean inside of me and part of me thinks that there can be no pain greater than this, the pre-longing, the knowledge that though you are here now, you will not be soon, oh so soon, so very soon and I know the eyes of your heart were dripping with tears which is why I accepted and how I understood and why your words to me were like paper bullets because oh, my love, how I had never loved anyone in the subtle, all-engrossing way that I loved (and continue still to love) you; I am incapable of loving anyone else; your breath, your words, your eyes, your embrace is paralyzing.
"What are you doing?"
Your fingers were tracing my cheeks, my eyes, my ears. Your touch was illumination in my dark bedroom. The sheepskin rug tickled my naked back.
You closed your eyes and exhaled jaggedly through your nose (you had been crying) and I felt your warm breath and wished it was mine.
"If I try hard enough," you whispered through sparse tears in a rare moment of tenderness, "I can memorize your face."
"Oh my dear," I kissed you. "All I have to do is think of the one thing that I love the most and your face just appears."
"You're not supposed to say that!" And I could feel you crying just a little bit more and do you know what, my one and only true love thus far? Your tears fell into the soil of time and where our hands met grew this beautiful rose that I call the us and yes I know for now we cannot both hold it and admire it's pretty face but whatever wind and sea exists between will keep it as lovely as the day we pulled it from the earth and held it between us, carefully avoiding the thorns, knowing we'd soon share it again (but for now my dear you keep it, and I will return soon, soon, oh so soon).
So can I at last say that I love you, that I have fallen in love so deep and heavily that I fear death from this drop?
Yes.
Yes, yes, yes, yes. Goddamnit, yes.
--
19 August 2007
18 August 2007
when i was a writer (a follow-up)
for anyone interested in reading my latest story:
"don't say goodnight, a story in three parts"
dedicated to ******** and she knows why.
my sigh and heart are so heavy that i am surprised it does not shake the very ground we stand on, my dear.
can i say i love you?
most certainly, yes.
yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, goddamnit yes.
"don't say goodnight, a story in three parts"
dedicated to ******** and she knows why.
my sigh and heart are so heavy that i am surprised it does not shake the very ground we stand on, my dear.
can i say i love you?
most certainly, yes.
yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, goddamnit yes.
10 August 2007
when i was a writer and reader of fictions
i finished my new story called "don't say goodnight" and i ended up inserting a lot of other little rants and monologues i had previously written, which fits with the main character, because he's a writer, like me, so the story is split into metaphorical stream of consciousness narration and sections where it's what the main character "wrote". i'm kind of happy with it. it's way more poetic than "salem and palomino" (my other most recent story), which i like. i still have to edit it and make sure it actually all makes sense (it's highly probable that it doesn't).
anyway, i counted and realized i've read a whopping 13 books this summer. holy bejesus. recently added to the read list:
- mysteries of pittsburgh, by michael chabon (AWESOME AWESOME book. really really good. i liked it a lot)
- apathy, by ...i can't remember. really funny. read it in less than a day.
- galapagos, by vonnegut. very good. definitely one of my favorite vonneguts.
and now i'm reading evening, by susan minot, which i really like. it's really good.
and i was reading the beginning of everything is illuminated earlier and it made me remember how much i love that book.
just wanted to talk about that to the eternal darkness of no one.
anyway, i counted and realized i've read a whopping 13 books this summer. holy bejesus. recently added to the read list:
- mysteries of pittsburgh, by michael chabon (AWESOME AWESOME book. really really good. i liked it a lot)
- apathy, by ...i can't remember. really funny. read it in less than a day.
- galapagos, by vonnegut. very good. definitely one of my favorite vonneguts.
and now i'm reading evening, by susan minot, which i really like. it's really good.
and i was reading the beginning of everything is illuminated earlier and it made me remember how much i love that book.
just wanted to talk about that to the eternal darkness of no one.
24 July 2007
when i was the pinnacle of everything i have ever experienced AND when i was a bookophile
[part one]
things have never been more poignantly beautiful for me. i don't know how else to say it, really. never before have i felt so simply reassured just by the mere existence of someone like i do now. it runs so much deeper than love or lust; it's a river that we both drowned in, long ago; and now we lie on the bottom of the clay-like riverbed, embracing and sharing our visions of the afterlife, whispering "ask me to stay" and "i'll see you on the other side" because what we have today soon will be yesterday but could so easily be tomorrow, mountain of my beating heart, my dear. [i take a bow] and yes we are just scraping the bottom of the bowl of time (going by so slowly, and time can do so much: are you still mine?) but it feels like an eternal ocean in front of us. maybe i am just blind to land? but i know that though i may surface from this sea before you, your appearance beside me will be quick like an echo but as real as the ground i will be standing on. though i may run aground before you, i'll turn my face towards the sea and wait on those sandy beaches for your figure to emerge, venus-like and glowing so that only i may see you, from the watery depths of time and distance.
[part two]
i can't help but buying more and more books. i'm supposed to reading a section of the iliad a day. i did really well for about 9 days, but i haven't read since thursday. the harry potter excitement really got to me. the seventh books was phenomenal, no questions. i read it in under 24 hours (which makes me happy because it meant that i didn't have to stay off the internet that long) and had serious depression/withdrawal problems after that. but now that's over, i'm waiting for my copy of the british edition to come by post before i bother rereading it (though i read the ending a few times, and a few crucial scenes in the last chapter), so i've dived right back into reading Black Swan Green, reading nearly 100 pages yesterday! i have only about 140 left and would like to finish it tonight so that i can plow prodigiously through the growing stack that i now have. and like an intoxicated addict, i bought even more books:
- ham on rye - bukowski
- kafka on the shore - murakami
- the old man and the sea - hemmingway
- evening - minot
christ. that brings my total of books to read before reed up to, what...a bajillion? fuck.
got the new tegan and sara album. so far it's incredible. really good. really catchy. definitely living up to the awesomeoness of So Jealous. i already made one of their songs my ringtone. :) other new cds? interpol...eh. it's okay. heinrich manuever is an awesome song, but the album feels pretty weak so far, for the most part. it'll grow on me i'm sure. but the new editors album is really really good. they shed a little bit of their interpol/joy division-like sound (a good thing) and grew a lot as a band. comparisons are being made to coldplay, but i'd hardly take that as a compliment (as good as coldplay is, mind, but still, coldplay's a bit repetitive after a while). anyway, yeah.
things have never been more poignantly beautiful for me. i don't know how else to say it, really. never before have i felt so simply reassured just by the mere existence of someone like i do now. it runs so much deeper than love or lust; it's a river that we both drowned in, long ago; and now we lie on the bottom of the clay-like riverbed, embracing and sharing our visions of the afterlife, whispering "ask me to stay" and "i'll see you on the other side" because what we have today soon will be yesterday but could so easily be tomorrow, mountain of my beating heart, my dear. [i take a bow] and yes we are just scraping the bottom of the bowl of time (going by so slowly, and time can do so much: are you still mine?) but it feels like an eternal ocean in front of us. maybe i am just blind to land? but i know that though i may surface from this sea before you, your appearance beside me will be quick like an echo but as real as the ground i will be standing on. though i may run aground before you, i'll turn my face towards the sea and wait on those sandy beaches for your figure to emerge, venus-like and glowing so that only i may see you, from the watery depths of time and distance.
[part two]
i can't help but buying more and more books. i'm supposed to reading a section of the iliad a day. i did really well for about 9 days, but i haven't read since thursday. the harry potter excitement really got to me. the seventh books was phenomenal, no questions. i read it in under 24 hours (which makes me happy because it meant that i didn't have to stay off the internet that long) and had serious depression/withdrawal problems after that. but now that's over, i'm waiting for my copy of the british edition to come by post before i bother rereading it (though i read the ending a few times, and a few crucial scenes in the last chapter), so i've dived right back into reading Black Swan Green, reading nearly 100 pages yesterday! i have only about 140 left and would like to finish it tonight so that i can plow prodigiously through the growing stack that i now have. and like an intoxicated addict, i bought even more books:
- ham on rye - bukowski
- kafka on the shore - murakami
- the old man and the sea - hemmingway
- evening - minot
christ. that brings my total of books to read before reed up to, what...a bajillion? fuck.
got the new tegan and sara album. so far it's incredible. really good. really catchy. definitely living up to the awesomeoness of So Jealous. i already made one of their songs my ringtone. :) other new cds? interpol...eh. it's okay. heinrich manuever is an awesome song, but the album feels pretty weak so far, for the most part. it'll grow on me i'm sure. but the new editors album is really really good. they shed a little bit of their interpol/joy division-like sound (a good thing) and grew a lot as a band. comparisons are being made to coldplay, but i'd hardly take that as a compliment (as good as coldplay is, mind, but still, coldplay's a bit repetitive after a while). anyway, yeah.
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