So Sweet, So Tender

I have a slight obsession with the concept of poets (usually male,) reading poems about their girlfriends, significant others, or wives to audiences in which their girlfriends, significant others, or wives are a part of. So many times we imagine a female poet being the one who writes about her personal life and the romantic, personal persons in it (guilty as charged), but there's something so sweet and incredibly tender and endearing about how when a man reads a poem about his girlfriend/S.O/wife, he never looks at her, never acknowledges her, never puts her on the spot, and yet, you can see the understanding pass silently between the two.

These two poems come from two different poetry readings I sat in on. The first one comes from a reading given by Galway Kinnell at the Burlington Book Festival, and the second was a reading by one of my professors at Champlain College, Warren Baker. Both were poems about their wives when they were younger, and I'll admit to watching their wives like hawks after I realized who the poems being read were about. Like seasoned poker players, neither woman had any sort of tell that they felt any sort of way about it.

I think I would dance on my seat.

The Pulitzer and His Prize

She sits like any other member of the audience,

Periodically fidgeting to get more comfortable in the folding theater seat,

As his voice slides over her,

Touching everyone else as well,

And she shares him equally.

Unlike other audience members,

She never looks at her watch.

Later,

As they walk through the dark,

Arm-in-arm,

She leans into him and sighs.

"I've always loved

When you read the one

About me."

Literary Couples

She sits,

Front row,

As he reads

Aloud

About watching her sleep.

So intimate,

So sweet;

What it's like

For all these strangers

To hear how he feels about her,

I always wonder about.

She sits,

Front row,

Silently,

Not moving,

And I can't help but wonder,

With longing

If I will ever sit,

Front row,

Silently,

Maybe moving,

But just a little bit,

And listen to a man

Speak about what it's like

To watch me sleep.

XOXO

Fall Slides In

Our floors creak in the weather changes,

Like the bones of an old, protesting woman

Who has seen too much

And lived enough

To have filled up every page of her diaries,

And sigh at the first sign of fall.

XOXO

Firenze Sempre

Those were
(Quelli erano)
The golden days.
(I giorni d'oro.)
The mornings where sunlight
(Il mattino dove la luce solare)
Looked like dust filtering through stagnant air
(Considerata come la polvere che filtra attraverso l'aria stagnante)
And
(E)
The heavy weight of jewels.
(Il peso pesante di gioielli.)
The evenings on the coast when warm breezes
(Le serate sulla costa quando brezze termiche)
Carried
(Eseguita)
The clean smell of
(L'odore di pulito)
Cacti
(Cacti)
And
(E)
Sea salt
(Sale marino)
On them.
(Su di essi.)
Monuments
(Monumenti)
Rose like memories in the piazzas,
(Crescere come ricordi nelle piazze,)
And
(E)
Buildings
(Edifici)
Loomed as tangible as the passing of time around them.
(Profilò tangibili come il passare del tempo intorno a loro.)
A back alley in Firenze
(Un vicolo in Firenze)
--Only the Italian names for places—
(-- Solo i nomi italiani per i posti--)
Via dello Studio.
(Via dello Studio.)
I am late on my way to a friend’s apartment,
(Sono in ritardo sul mio modo di appartamento di una amica,)
But walk
(Ma a piedi)
Slowly,
(Lentamente,)
Rewarded for my patience when,
(Premiato per la mia pazienza quando,)
Above me,
(Sopra di me,)
Piano
(Pianoforte)
And
(E)
A woman singing opera
(Una donna di canto lirico)
Erupt from open windows.
(Scoppiare dalle finestre aperte.)
I stop
(Mi fermo)
On the cobblestones
(Sul selciato)
And listen,
(E ascolta,)
Knowing this is a moment I will remember fondly
(Sapere questo è un momento mi ricorderò con affetto)
For the rest of my life.
(Per il resto della mia vita.)
Nothing has changed here
(Nulla è cambiato qui)
Since 1482.
(Dal 1482.)
I hope nothing changes
(Spero che non cambia nulla)
Upon my return—
(Al mio ritorno--)
A 20 year old shadow of me,
(A venti anni ombra vecchio di me,)
Left wandering the streets here,
(Sinistra per le strade qui,)

Forever,

(Sempre,)

With
(Con)
Part of my heart
(Parte del mio cuore.)

XOXO

Tiny Wakes

Dock. Cattails. Dog. House on the hill. Barn. Field. Dock. Cattails. Dog. House on the hill. Barn. Field. Dock.

As my feet make tiny wakes in the still pond water, algae floating in random spots like the ubiquitous Snickers-bars-in-public-pools of urban city kid's youth, I find myself thinking, very hazily, that this is pretty much the life. That right now, right here, this moment in time, spinning in tight circles like a buoyant top with my wet thighs sticking to the black inner-tube, digesting a peppermint stick sundae like the same ones I've been getting since 7th grade, and the gentle splashing sounds of Nora, 10 feet away from me in the pond, rollicking like a young otter in, over, and around her tube, both of us higher than a pair of kites-- that this, this is it. I've stood in the Colosseum; I've been in Carnivale; I've watched freighters and cruise ships sail across the infinite blackness of the night's horizon from the beach as stars fell from the sky overhead. But none of this still compares to being home in Vermont. I would not pass up this feeling of bubbly joy and dizziness as I watch dock, cattails, dog, house on the hill, barn, and field flash before me for another pair of heels; not now, and not ever.

These were the moments I missed the most; the small, the mundane, and the entirely trivial. I missed morning jogs underneath trees with leaves so green and bark so dark from the rain. I missed the noisy buzz and crush of Church Street, and the humidity of packed house parties. I missed the tricky shift from first to second gear; the heavy weight of Saph's head on my chest and damp hemlines from where she breathed onto me. I missed the mountains, and the water, and the storms. My entire 4 months in Florence, we only had one thunderstorm. I missed them just as much as I missed blood-red sunsets over the lake, small psychotic cats, familiar hugs and faces, and buttermilk ranch dressing on Wings Over's honey barbecue boneless wings. Like I said, it was the little things that I wished for. In Italy, I got out of the habit of great big, grand wishes, because I knew upon returning, they would probably remain just that-- wishes, and not reality.

But here, this lounge in a pond-- this was more delicious than any wish I could have come up with, not in my most wild and romantic moment. It beat being spirited away to Bobcat. It beat being met at Logan. It even nearly beat that first American kiss back.

Those 6 things-- dock, cattails, dog, house on the hill, barn, field-- and the feeling of the water lapping at my heels in a way that seemed far too velvet and far to solid to really be water, ushered me back in to my life more surely than anything since the 18th, and I knew it then, that this was not a dream. This was the life that I had left, and the one I had returned to. The simplicity was beautiful, and staggering.

A storm rolled in at around 4:30 in the morning. I woke up to watch it, and went back to sleep with the sound of thunder still crashing in my ears. Some wishes are perfectly harmless and easily answered, after all.

XOXO

"Andata In Gatta"-- The Cats Of Roma

"Andata in gatta" translates to "gone to the cats," an Italian euphemism for "three sheets to the wind," or "dead-drunk." Interesting.

Cats in Florence behave the way Victorian parents wished their children would: they are seen, but only from afar, and not heard. They appear, sleek, mild-mannered, aloof, on rooftops, and only turn to look at you when you call to them.

Roma cats capture my heart. The cats of Roma are straight natural-born hustlers. All missing tips of ears, some teeth, or some hair, nonetheless, they entertain tourists to literally eat from their palms. Scruffy, shameless, grubby-- they act the way cats are not supposed to behave. Mr. Mephistopheles would be appalled. I, however, am enthralled. They talk back. They demand more from you. They looks straight at you and demand more. These are not cats who pussy-foot around the subject. I admire them for this, for their sass and their ease at making demands; for their single-minded affection and independence. These are cats who love you and leave you. Maybe that's what attracts me to them-- the fact that I like to love and leave at will as well. But just like the cats, I also deeply need and crave the affection I get from my interactions. Just like the cats, I want a place to come home to, a hand to reach out and touch me, praise for surviving and thriving.

Maybe I emanate this need more than I'll ever know. But for whatever reason, the cats here seem to know it, and love me for it. They cock their heads and listen to me when I talk to them in the language that Julio Cortazar described as "somewhere between silly and mysterious, making dates with them, giving advice and admonitions (as she tickled their bellies)"-- the odd clicks of tongue on roof of mouth and soft whispers of hisses and kissing sounds. They let me hold them, climb willingly into my lap on their own accord to be closer, swarming in groups of 3s and 5s and 7s around me, milling under legs and between boots and rubbing against my knees. They blink slowly. They mew back. One-- my favorite-- a long-haired black male with a jaw off-set from once being broken, looking like a dashingly disfigured boxer, with blue eyes that startle when he turns and looks at you, nods at me. I don't even like cats, much. If you asked me, I would tell you definitively that I'm much more of a dog person. But these cats don't ask.

These Roma ruin cats just like me. Maybe it's because I'm more of a cat than a dog, myself, no matter how much I appreciate a good canine. Pleasing people just isn't in my repertoire-- I'd rather hide and sleep.

So it bothers me when one is aloof and scales a tree. He can't seem to make up his mind about me. Conversely, a squat brown and black tiger "guardian of the spirits" in the Protestant cemetery playfully engages me in a game of hide-and-seek in the flower beds, jumping out to startle me and touch my boot with a tagging paw. A playful spirit, obviously. A cuddly tiger female winds around me, and I watch a group of Irish tourists repeatedly try their luck at making friends and fail. Feeling bad, I coax her like the Pied Piper with whispers and beckoning fingers down to the group, where all the other cats have scattered from. "They're nice," I tell her, and then turn to the anxiously expectant Irish.

"She's nice," I tell them. "She'll let you pet her." And she does stay for them to scoot over and scritch at her, waiting patiently until the last hand has touched her to then duck under the rail and disappear.

As I stand to leave, my favorite, the black male with the blue eyes, reappears, melting out from the shadows of the ruins to say goodbye, rubbing that distinctive jawline over me, a face only a mother, or a complete sucker, like me, could love. I thank him, gently run a finger under that deformity, certain most people won't touch him there, remembering how much my cats at home love being scratched under the chin. He tilts his face up to me, blinks his big blue eyes slowly (so that's the power big blue eyes have?) and grins.

Cats know more than you would ever guess. Here, in the ruins, I let these strays, mangy and rag-tag, yet still elegant and commanding, wrap themselves around me, and into me. I find I need them, possibly more than they could ever need me, because they are cats, after all. Cats don't need like people need. And I am finding that I need.

---The best part is, you can

adopt a little scoundrel of your own. Going in my first Big Girl Apartment? A Roman gatto.---

XOXO

This Could Be Any Moment, Anywhere, But It's Here.

The bed has an old green velvet headboard, and one button missing, dimple showing cheekily.

The bed has an old green velvet headboard, and the wineglass on the nightstand table is half-drunk, tiny little effervescent bubbles still not popped-- a pinot grigio, lively, and bright in the soft yellow light of the nightstand's lamp.

The bed has an old green velvet headboard, the wineglass on the nightstand table is half-drunk, and the music in the background is a strain of plucking chords, melding male and female voice, tenor and alto, one octave up, one octave down, reverberations and melody, and is soothing and sleepy.

The bed has an old green velvet headboard, the wineglass on the nightstand is half-drunk, the music in the background is a strain of plucking chords, and the book is surreal and contemporary and just a little bit pretentious for the sake of being surreal and contemporary and pretentious, even though it was written by an Argentinian author in 1966, during what could probably be called the Age Of Writer's Pretension.

The bed has an old green velvet headboard, the wineglass on the nightstand table is half-drunk, the music in the background is a strain of plucking chords, the book is surreal and contemporary and just a little bit pretentious, and the ashes in the elegant blue and brown cut-glass ashtray (also a bit pretentious,) still smell like smoke, still just a little bit alive, still potent and pungent and arresting at the corner of the senses, trying to grab attention for another go, another full-frontal assault on health and good, clean habits and mind over matter.

The bed has an old green velvet headboard, the wineglass on the nightstand table is half-drunk, the music in the background is a strain of plucking chords, the book is surreal and contemporary and just a little bit pretentious, the ashes in the elegant ashtray still smell like smoke, and I am struck with the sudden crashing revelation that outside of these few mundane details in this scene, I am in a totally foreign country, and knowing this, listen to the rumble of trucks and small cars and the high whine of mopeds and the tic-tic-tic of high heels on the uneven sidewalk and shouting in Italian and the screech of bus brakes and that nothing (save maybe the cigarette smoke and the music,) is familiar and I am quite possibly living precariously outside of my own life, in this strange and beautiful new and oh-so-very-old city, just buying time here, (another 81 days, 1944 hours, and a fuck-ton of minutes, breaths, sighs, strange words, and laughs,) until I can re-enter Life As I Know It, Take Two, and then, that will seem strange and foreign, and I will find myself longing for the missing half-glass of wine already drunk from the half-drunk wineglass on this nightstand table, and for the high whine of mopeds, and the tic-tic-tic of wooden heels on worn-down sidewalks, missing my alien outlook on life, a spectator instead of a member in this sport.

The bed has an old green velvet headboard, and one button missing, dimple showing cheekily.

XOXO

The All-American Nomad's College Life, Excerpt 6:

"Dick"

Addicted. A-d-d-i-c-t-e-d. Note the sound that when said aloud clearly states “dick.” Because that’s what’s happening. You’re getting fucked. Hard.

I’ve pulled my jeans on, cuffed the bottoms, slid into my Uggs, fished my gloves and lighter out of my purse, and just barely wrapped my insistently questing fingers around the small cardboard box before my mind can catch up and put two-and-two together and register what’s happening. One moment, lying in bed, reading a mindlessly good escapist novel, snug and warm. The next, slammed by a want—no, a need—that has me moving faster and more surely than love, or money, or fear or any combination cocktail of the three has ever made me move before.

I sit down on the edge of the bed, hard. Two months from now, April 1st, will mark my two-year anniversary as a smoker. A year and half smoking Djarum Black cloves exclusively, and no overwhelming wants or needs. A casual smoker, as casual as a casual lover. A few times a week. I liked the process more than the end result, the inhaling and exhaling. Two months smoking these fucking, godforsaken, piece-of-shit, nasty-ass Camel Lights, and I’m reaching for the box like an expiring narc-fiend. I’m on the balcony with them every night like an illicit tryst, rain, cold, or clear skies. I’m spending 20 of them like I spend 20 dollars—quickly and with ruthless efficiency. On the way to classes. In the morning with my espresso, one bitter complimenting and cancelling the other. With a glass of wine before, after, or even during dinner. If I got for a walk, they’re in my pocket alongside my cell phone, which I would rather bear losing.

Mingling with the incessant and growing need is another emotion—disgust. Self-loathing. I, unlike some, am not too proud to admit my shortcomings as I momentarily contemplate quitting, and meet self-resistance to the thought and the realization that I can’t.

Chimney. Ashtray. Butt-stubber. Ash-flicker. Grinding filter between shoe sole and sidewalk. Leaving a trail of discarded stubs like a perverse Gretel. Filling the same lungs that fought with me for the first nine years of my life, already inherently weak. Go ahead. Hurt them more.

Like I said a mere month ago, and not in any sort of self-servingly pretentious or morbid deliciously snarky way, smoking is slowly committing suicide, one cigarette at a time.

Addict. I am a victim of myself. Dicked. Deep.

I resign myself, right now, right at this very second, that the day I hold my graduate school diploma and master’s degree in hand will be the day I enroll myself in a quitting program, flush the remainder of the pack, and invest in some Nicotine patches.

For now, though, I reach back over for the hastily discarded pack and count. Three left. Thank god I bought a new pack this afternoon.

XOXO

The All-American Nomad's College Life, Excerpt 5:

“Constant Constellations”

I walk out onto the balcony of my brand-new Florentine apartment, glass of chardonnay in hand from buying my first bottle of wine today (€2.89, .75 liter bottle, so don’t get too excited), sit down, and look up, toward where I know the almost full moon will be. The first thing I see, instead, is the constellation Orion.

I.) I was worried I wouldn’t be able to see the stars in the city.

V.) The wine, cheap and sweet or not, is good. I, a solid beer and liquor drinker at home, have not met a glass of wine I don’t like in Italy yet.

C.) I thought, as I flew through the starless night on the plane over here, that the nearly 7,000 mile difference between the U.S and Italy would render the night skies totally different, and I would find I wasn’t even looking at the same stars as you anymore.

N.) Cassiopeia will always be my favorite constellation. But Orion has become my touchstone.

I place a wish on the three jewels on Orion’s belt. When the sun sets, I hope the night sky is clear enough that you can look up and find them.

XOXO

The All-American Nomad's College Life, Excerpt 4:

“The Things I Left Behind”

I found you; you found me. A stumble, a class, a drink, a show, and we were “we,” like pick-up sticks or a puzzle. Autonomous, but together; some nights, some days.

Thinking hard, racking my brain for dropped clues and scattered memories, I can’t remember how I got here, speeding away at precisely 535 miles per hour, 37,000 feet above the sea. I am confused and petulant and scared. I want to still be feeling new with you, waking up in your bed, looking at Orion triumphing over the night sky through your bedroom window, breathing in the smell of you sleeping, very different than how you smell when you’re awake, more powdery with sleep-dust and dreams yet still pungent of man; a smell so specific and so arresting that once a hint of just a note of it could stop me dead in my tracks on the cobblestones of Church Street. A smell I could pick up like a bloodhound, even in a crowd, even when you’re not around. Your pheromones speak to me in an ancient tongue of attraction, and I understand it fluently.

Thank you for letting me go. I need to find a "me" before I find a "we."

XOXO

The All-American Nomad's College Life, Excerpt 3:

“Lessons In Italian Living, Day Two: Eat Before You Drink.”

After walking around town all day, having digested nothing but the Florentine dust blown by the high winter winds around the Duomo since my small, very European breakfast of a croissant and half a peach saturated in its own liquid, I find I have drunk my glass of chardonnay at dinner before eating a little too quickly. I am a little too warm. A little too blurry. A little too quick to divulge. A little too excited with life, and a little too charmed with the hole-in-the-wall Robin and I managed to locate after walking a few half-circles in lower Florence, my Rick Steves’ guidebook held out in front of me like the Holy Grail. Written in Hebrew, of course. Because that little hand-drawn map is just as readable to me as Cyrillic symbols.

I am, in other words, “tipsy,” or, because it describes how I feel much better without the connotations of the giggling girls tipping over in hallways and I am not quite there yet, “light-headed.” (And so you know, I do not get “drunk”—plastering myself on other people, with an uncontrollably modulating voice, easily convinced to do stupid shit; I get “tipsy”—giggling and swaying in hallways and on sofas. Modulating voice and stupid shit I am convinced into perfectly sober.)

Anyway. The waiter asks for our orders. I’m pretty sure I butcher every word after “penne.” I ingest roughly a pound of pasta in chipped meat and cream sauce. Not feeling the pressure of tipping like we do in America, I leave a Euro for our abrupt yet serviceable waiter. I am happier about this Italian custom of non-tipping more than I’d care to admit. With my mathematical skills and hypersensitive apathy, leaving a tip is always the point in a meal that I hem and haw and feel guilty—not when I’m ordering. I imagine the waiter or waitresses’ children. The car that needs to be repaired. The college loans that have just started to come monthly calling. The electricity bill. What it would be like if it were me; how much I’d want someone to pay for my work. What my friends who wait have to deal with—the rude customers, orders in the middle of nowhere, and 17-cent tips. In other words, if you wait tables, you want me as your patron. I am a helplessly conscious push-over.

After, we back-track toward the Uffizi to find a proper gelato shop—one that puts real fruit in their window displays of the creamy, decadent treat—and I smoke my second cigarettes and eat my first gelato in Italy. Tiramisu-flavored. The cone is better than in America. I decide to say, fuck my state of affairs— chardonnay, smoke, and gelato go perfectly together.

XOXO

A (Brief) Goodbye Tale

Not Good: Pushing not one, but two cars in the snow.

As in, "My Jetta doesn't have winter tires. Could you guys give me a push, including you, girl in the small cute skirt?"

Good: Smoking and driving at the same time.

As in, "Hey, do you have a lighter?"

Better: Smoking a bowl and driving at the same time.

As in, "Hey, do you have a lighter? And don't bogart the piece, man. This is an all-inclusive burn ride."

Best: Ending up at the shooting range.

As in, "Here are you ear plugs. Here's the .38. Load your bullets. Aim at the clays. Fire when you're ready."

Possibly the best goodbye afternoon I have ever had the pleasure of either having, or even hearing of. More to come later. Right now, I am too wound up and hungry to expand in any sort of sensical fashion.

XOXO

"Abandon Truth; Settle For Good Fantasy."

It is not often I demand things from people.

But, I am demanding you to go here, explore, and form an opinion. As one author writes, "I came. I saw. I conceded."

These are the Sixers. I think they're revolutionary and liberating.

Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure

Six-Word Memoirs on Love & Heartbreak

Shocked at what people can accomplish with limited space, time, and word count? Do you love or hate the concise format? Are you a minimalist who revels in the diminutive? If so, you'd love me.

XOXO

The Secret Lies Inbetween The Lines

I would not call myself a poet. Instead, I am she of the glib social commentary on men and women and the wry personal remarks on societal views. More "Cosmo" than "The New Yorker." Carrie Bradshaw to, say, Anais Nin. A gossip columnist; a shoe mongerer; an advice-giver. No great shakes to change the literary world. The level just ain't there yet, but I have time.

I am not discounting what I do well. Far from the case. I am living a dream that many never get the chance to even encounter: at a (relatively) young age, I have first found my niche, then found my voice, then found some way to get it out there. I am read, which is the most powerful thing that can happen for a writer, even more so then getting paid. There is validation in reader's comments; not in dollars and cents. As I am finding out, "what I do" pays far better, with more regularity, and has a much larger target audience who is actually interested in reading than what it is I do here on "Jux". However, this doesn't mean I should give up on "Jux," just days old. This doesn't mean I should quit my moonlighting job. This doesn't mean that what I do here has any less value than what I do on SATCG. If anything, if SATCG is my fun and my bread and butter, "Jux" is my release. "Jux" is where I get to showcase the human me: the me that struggles. The me sans bravado. The me who is still cautious of reading in public. The me who won't bare all. The me I am behind closed doors when I can shut my SATCG persona off. It's a me you may never see. Or maybe you do. One side isn't "better" than the other-- you must have two halves to make a whole, after all. Mine just happen to be deeply disparate.

But as is the case with anything you don't know much about or can't claim to be yourself, poetry fascinates me.

I love poetry because you'll never know what it's really about, even if you think you do. It's like looking at shadows and trying to guess form-- just a suggestion, buried and hidden under simile, metaphor, line breaks, and verse.

By all accounts, a secret, that only the writer knows.

Whitman and Yeats and Shakespeare and William Blake and Frost and Maya Angelou and Ntozake Shange and Ginsberg and Basho and Rumi. Rumi!

Rumi!
"The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
How blind that was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.

Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absentminded.
Someone sober will worry about things go badly.

Rule-keepers run on foot along the surface.
Lovers move like lightning and wind.
No contest."

Rumi who wrote,
"When the ocean comes to you as a lover,
Marry, at once, quickly,
For God's sake!

Don't postpone it!
Existence has no better gift.

No amount of searching
Will find this.

A perfect falcon, for no reason,
Has landed on your shoulder,
And become yours."

Rumi who said, "All the learning in books stays put, on the shelf. Poetry, the dear-- words and images of song, comes down over me like mountain water."

Now, there was a man who understood.

Who do you think understands it that way?

XOXO

The Poetry Chronicles, Part I

We interrupt this previous prose programming to bring you some poetry, because due to the multiple readings I've been attending for classes and other events, that's what's been coming out of me lately. It only happens about three times a year, and only for a few days, like the guest appearance of a cosmic spirit, so I'm beseeching you to indulge me, briefly, for these are only brief snippets of full, raging, triumphant, un-humble, unfinished works. Ellipses mark where content is missing, for one reason, or the other. Or none. The first two are part of set poems. For all purposes, what I consider "done." The third is a complete and utter mish-mash of sayings and thoughts and advice and songs and lots and lots and lots of random things. It has something for everyone-- childhood memories, sage wisdom, simile and metaphor, decorating advice. It is my Chaos at the moment. Everyone needs a little. I'm entering Finals Week of school. I have a lot.

"...Because night is when I get
--------Real soft,
And in the dark,
If you look at me
--------Real close
----------------Like you do
And don’t blink,
You can see the cosmos in my eyes when I’m talking to you,
Not just one or two
--------Tiny
----------------Insignificant
------------------------Guttering
--------------------------------Stars,
But the whole damn thing,
& I have no words for this feeling,
The death-knell of my trade,
But it’s like
--------Holding your palm
----------------Up to the flame of a lighter
------------------------On the coldest winter day
--------------------------------Right before you light that cigarette..."

"...I want to see when you close your eyes,
Because I know, sometimes it’s just
--------Too much
To look at,
All of it at once, spread out before your eyes,
Like a feast, and you
--------Just ate.
I want to see when your lips open,
And your tongue
--------Darts out,
To lick the same dry lips that you use,
Faithful sinner,
To worship.
I want to see you completely open in front of me,
--------A book to read,
----------------A story over skin,
------------------------A tale that won’t lie.
Give me your mind!
At these moments, when there is literally nothing between us,
But these un-naked thought-things,
These
--------Looks
----------------&
----------------Sounds
------------------------&
------------------------Feels.
I want a light, like a blinding ray of truth,
Because,
I want to see you, as you are,
Not, as you want to be,
With
--------Layers
----------------&
----------------Secrets
------------------------&
------------------------Questions.
I want to see you, in that moment when you give in,
To know what I have,
And what you are,
And what that
--------Makes me."

"...You’ve got to call me to you,
Because sometimes, like a cat, I won’t
--------Listen,

To the meaning behind the command,

Instead, focusing on tone and context,

And not really
--------Getting it.
But still, sweetie,
You’ve got to keep tryin’,
Because what’s worth it in this life,
--------It isn’t free,
And it sure as hell
--------Ain’t easy.
Because I,
I don’t play with the things I say,
--------Like some do.
Getting me to admit
--------Is like moving a mountain.
Are you strong enough for that?
Make me
--------Shock
----------------&
------------------------Awe
At your conviction.
Make me want to burst into song,
You have never heard
--------From this mouth.
So you know, I like to kiss to both sweet songs of
--------“Hello”
----------------&
------------------------“Goodbye.”

So you know, I like to stay up late, and sleep until sometime,
And I am always,
--------Always
Down for some lovin’.
So you know, your room,
--------Windows,
----------------Walls,
------------------------Door,
--------------------------------Desk,
----------------------------------------Bed,
Are in the same exact places mine are at home,
And it knocked me into silence,

Like coming home, only to find someone else living there.
So you know, I only ever ask to come over,
Every third time I want to,

Because there's this thing called

--------Space,

And there's a difference between "want" and "want,"

& I am always trying to find the fine line between the three.
But I will wake up early,
Just to be there and know it
Like I knew it when I was five,
And was the child
Who was never told that she wouldn’t find
--------What she was looking for.
Responsible people never learned how to fly.
I never learned
--------How to jump.
But here I am,
Toeing the edge of this cliff,
--------Anyway.
Hello, my name is Mediocre,
And I am striving for
--------Majestic
For you."

That's more or less it for now. I'm pretty much straight bleeding poetry at the moment like a love-junkie suicidal poet, so I'm skipping class in the morning to stay home and write. Because it's the writerly thing to do, and I really have no choice. Sometimes, when these things are outside of your hands, it's the most beautiful thing in the world. Scary, yet gorgeous.

You writers out there. Agree? What gets it flowing for you? Is it the first snowfall of the year? Fear? Love? Loathing? Inspiration from others? Sheer need and necessity? I'm curious. As always.

XOXO