Untitled

Thought bubbled to my brain again

Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle, Pop!

It showed its little face, then ran,

A child unrestrained.

I followed, watched it spin and laugh

And after moment’s revelry,

Plop well-worn on the ground.

I poked the Thought and up it sprang,

Spraying pale reflections

That lay twinkling in its wake.

One by one they flared and poof!

Their glow passed on to memory,

Earth-nestling shooting stars.

More! I cried, And faster!

And I took Thought’s slender fingers

And I slipped them through my own,

And I begged my Thought to dance a while

To spin and laugh and dance.

Laugh indeed Thought did at me

And winked its little face

And chasséd across the dance floor

Til Thought dissolved to bubbles

Floating off, mere memory

I’ll do it by myself! I cried out

To my fairest friend

So I spun—one, two—

And I laughed—Ha, Ha—

And I coughed up stark reflections

That thumped solid on the ground.

I nudged them with my toe

Lackadaisically they turned

Uninspired teens rolling eyeballs at the man

Paint by Letters

So, human canvasses are white, but the original canvass wasn’t, at least according to this folksy book called the Bible. The original canvass was black, darkness, nothingness. Then this God dude comes around and creates space—heavens and earth—but there was nothing except darkness around it, until he was all, “Light, please,” and bam! Light. At which point we have matter, which needs space to sit in, and light. Then finally, he (because clearly God must be male—females wouldn’t have fucked so much shit up) put stuff in that light, like water, earth, plants, animals, humans…

You’d think that in the tradition of creation, canvasses would be black—nothing—and we would paint light on top of them. But that’s not how we humans roll. It’s too difficult to create on top of nothingness, I assume. So I’ll begin my story with light, white light, in white space. I’m an ID in white space. Hello. I just said hello to you. I guess that means you’re an ID in this space, too.

It’s not very interesting here, bobble heads in an empty white universe. We need a world. So let’s paint the earth underneath us. Let’s go with a field in Southern California. We’re facing north. There’s an ocean three miles to our left, and we’re standing in a field speckled with white flowers and cactai and bumpy hillsides in front and bugs buzzing in our ears and hawks flying overhead and maybe a deer to the right. I like creating this world. Perhaps it’s a God complex. Maybe I’m transgendered. But no not really. So we’re in a field.

But wait—we’re modern day people. This scene doesn’t make sense. There aren’t many fields left in Southern California. I’ll flatten this natural scene and paint a concrete road beneath us. There are some buildings to my left and right, blinking lights from LED billboards above my head advertising the most recent HBO series, and a freeway entrance just behind.

But these things exist in highly commercial areas, so I don’t want to be standing on the road. Let’s move to the sidewalk, cars zooming by on the right. The sound of cars replaces the sound of bugs as the ebbing and flowing white noise—whish, whish, whish. In fact, there are no bugs, save the occasional cockroach scuttling into the drain nearby. There are no hawks flying above, either. I guess this is our world.

Friend, this is how I live, picking at my canvass. I can’t help it, when it all seems so artificial in its temporality. Sometimes I think stories would be more interesting if they didn’t have a central character but instead just observed the same piece of space for a century or two. An adobe room one decade, ruins in a field the next, a grave site the next, a new building the next, and all the faces and encounters—plant, animal, human—that occupied the same morphing GPS coordinate. Where I’m sitting right now, on the concrete step in front of the Bank of America next to the road by the freeway entrance… are there bodies buried under here? Did lovers make love here, where a field used to be? Did cowboys and Indians stab each other in the face on this very soil—or rather, where soil used to be?

Some call me an overthinker. Some call me crazy. But don’t worry—I don’t wear that moniker like a fucking badge of pride like so many artists. “Oh, you don’t understand me. Oh, I’m so complicated.” No, you can understand me. I’m just an observer. The only difference is the obsession, maybe, an obsession that some might call crazy. I guess I have an idea of what it would be like to go crazy, since my mind loops in ways that I can’t control. You see, I don’t pick my observations. They pick me.

I suppose it might be Chinese water torture, drip, drip, dripping on my forehead, never stopping, never ceasing, always rhythmic, always the same, day by day, night by night, pattern by pattern, and hours pass and I’m strong, and days pass I’m irked, and weeks pass and I’m furious, and months pass and I Scream! Cry for it to Stop! But it won’t stop. It won’t stop. It won’t stop. Scream! It won’t stop. It won’t stop. It won’t stop. Scream! It won’t stop. It won’t stop. It won’t stop. And it breaks me, til there’s no me, no more fighting, no more pain. I am the drip, drip, drip, I love the drip, drip, drip, and drips fall endlessly into stillness, into themselves, and some call it crazy.

Maybe it won’t stop until there’s no it to stop. Maybe it won’t stop until it’s still. The observant mind isn’t crazy. The observant mind is.

But I think you can understand this—you seem to get me—right friend?

Expert in You

This blog is unofficially named "Silly Little Love Song"

Reading, writing, rithmatic

Pick one, quick! One, make it stick

Study, muddy, clarify

Reason, publish, work through nights

Grab the title, snag the raise

Count the money, count the days

All the time spent at the desk

You’re the expert, you’re the best

Hold the trophy made of glass

Smile for the camera—Snap!

We all need must specialize

Success drives devoted lives

But there’s a subject I miss

Studying—and that’s your kiss

Small inflections of your voice

Faces you don’t make by choice

Shades of color in your eyes

In my eyes you are the prize

Is it so bad I want to be an expert in you?

I want to write for magazines

Fly to London, meet the Queen

Interview the President

Joe Six Packs hustling for rent

Sew tales of humanity

Rich and poor and in between

Give the world a laugh and thought

Paint in shades of gray, inkblot

Pen a treatise on world peace

Hear my Father say he's pleased

Yet a piece will seem amiss

If I can't write of your kiss

Learning love by learning you

Strengthens me at what I do

Ticks and tells and laughs and looks

Known so well I'll scribe the book

Such that nay the Iliad

Holds a candle in your stead

Is it so bad I want to be an expert in you?

Feeling Forever

Somebody once told me that a feeling feels like it will last forever. How silly it is. I soar to the heights of joy, I stretch my limbs and my rays of power and love extend infinitely in front of me, infinitely behind, infinitely now. And though I know that this will pass, that hard days lie ahead, nothing can touch me. I am in love, in love with living until, well, until I’m not.

Then the dark days come. They were just around the bend. I knew that they were there. I knew, but the knowledge sat apart. It had no place in the serotonin and dopamine coursing through my mind. Yet now I sink, low and ever more low, the world passing by as in a fog. I know that if I could just get my head up, up above the fog, I could see clearly again. I could feel clearly again. I could love clearly again. But the fog stretches on, dulling and saddening life until, well, until it doesn’t.

And then there's the middle, the calm, the everyday humdrum that exists when all of the pieces besides the dirty dishes sit snuggly in their place. No care but dishes, yet I still feel the weight of the dishes. It is nice to live here, the only here I have. The only here I have ever had, until, well, until there's more.

To feel transience instead of knowing transience! What would that be like? A dull ache accompanied by an endless optimism? Or an optimism accompanied by an endless dull? An indifference? How could one be indifferent to love? How could one be indifferent to sorrow?

A feeling feels like it will last forever. How silly it is.

White Noise

Your name is white noise sounding in my brain,

Your face, your movements giving noise texture

Hours pass and you dissolve, I see the world

Until the phone rings. Whether you or no,

You are back again, your name sounding clear

Throughout the air, taking time to drop, drop

Drop to a low hum, but always a hum

Never to silence, never to stillness

I look back to the world and now you’re there

Leaning on the tree, laughing by the brook

Reading on my couch, naked in my tub

And where your form ends your name still remains

Coating the lens through which I breathe in life

Must you touch, my sweet, must you touch it all?

Bile

Your life could be worse. You could have inspired someone to write this:

I’d forgotten the taste of bile

When you walk through my door

I’d forgotten that noxious smell

Greed, spite, and pride infused

I’d forgotten deep self-loathing

Watching myself loathe you

My heat rises, my throat constricts

My eyes glazing, I gasp

To cool! To breathe! To sit in peace!

Were it not for that smell

I’d forgotten the taste of bile

For Love

Are you watching, Love? I’m writing to you, for you, as I should have done every moment until now. Are you hearing, Love? I’ve fallen for you, and you for me, and it is the love of storybooks and poetry. Can you believe it’s real, Love?

In the quiet, I sit and I love you, the way you move about the room. At the table, I laugh and I love you, the way you care for our guests. At the store, frustrated, I love you, the way your selection’s just so. With new friends, I’m proud and I love you, the way you radiate warmth.

Sometimes you look at me, Love, and I see it in your eyes—watching, yearning, wanting—and I slap at your hand and dance away. If you laugh, we dance together. But look at me like that again, and I open to you, for you are me, Love, and everything I have is yours, Love, and you know this, too, Love.

When you touch me, I ache with happiness, Love, with relief I fall into your bed. When I touch you, you feel at home, Love, and we swim endlessly together. My friend, my companion, my other soul, Love, you’re all of this to me.

I didn’t know I could still feel like this, after streams of lovers gone by, lovers who stole the name. I lost the meaning of love, Love, in affection, desire, in thirst and greed. But you give love to my childhood, my youth, my job, my motherhood, my grandmotherhood, things you never saw and things still to be seen. And I love you for all of this, too, Love.

The world is so fast, I forgot to be, Love. But you brought me back, back to home, back to you, Love. Though it spins ever faster, though the races are longer, though the hours are harder, though the noises are louder, though the pressures are greater, though the frenzy screams go, we will sit, holding hands, Love, we will breathe, in and out, Love, we will be, you and me, Love. I love you, I do, Love.