Alley-way wisdom

Sunday

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 21:25:01 -0400

I am all “poetry” and Chenin Blanc for the usual reasons. I need to write a story, but my grade depends on these textbook short answer questions. It’s the end of Sunday, and it breaks my heart (for the first time musically) that classical is dead, that Beethoven is dead.

Where have I gone? So far from you, into this night of beer and streetsand now this dayof scarves...

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 00:53:00 -0400

Where have I gone?

So far from you, into this night of beer and streets
and now this day
of scarves pulled tightly around throats.
And now this day—

How?

The horses feet never touch the ground.
Round we go…

Where have I gone?

Breaching these academic fairy circles,
Hand-fasting in the library,
I look for you.
This exhaustion has a German root.

If I pull my face taught,
turning beneath the colored lights,
smiling for the windows—
joyful.

And now this day—
Another like all the rest,
So uniquely its own tangled set of limbs.

And now sunlight, raw,
Dance!
The Tempo, she has no regard for feet.
Round we go…

Where have I gone?

Do you still see the empty space?
I have forgotten the time and the day
(whichever day),
I think maybe, turning under the colored lights,

You might be here,
You might be here too. Only never.

Oh never, no never!
And sunlight raw! And sunlight bleeding
Through the blinds.

And now this day—
this day
this day
this day
No,

just so far from you. So far,
I have gone.
I pull my face taught—
No need, no need, oh never

End?

TumblrFiction: 390. Chekhovian, Ohio

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 21:09:22 -0400

TumblrFiction: 390. Chekhovian, Ohio :

shortnasties:

The name of this story is “Chekhovian, Ohio.” The face of Sherwood Anderson told me to write it. Also never to get married. Odd fella.

The town is gray constantly. I am glad to be away for so long. There is a building that resembles a large soda can where they…

A Letter to the Actress in My Gender and Sexuality: Italian Style Class

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 23:02:35 -0400

I’ll be honest. In the beginning, I stared. When you gave a relevant comment in class, when you waited for the elevator, when you first sat down and your perfect hair bounced in just that perfect feminine way that I will never master. I wondered, just as those two slacker dicks did:

“Hey, do you know if she…?”

“I don’t know man. I tried to look for the Adam’s Apple. But…I don’t know. And her figure, too, is kinda…but I dunno know.”

“Yeah.”

I flinched then. I stopped peeping out of the corners of my eyes, and brought my mind to the forefront; I began to really listen to you. Listened with everything that I had. Your presentation was everything that mine was not. You had a way about you that was effortless, confidant, crystalline and dark. I never said a thing. Not even when I realized how much I had come to esteem you, a perfect stranger.

What I should have said all that time ago, whether classmates were around or not, was:

You are beautiful. Please, I’m not trying to be weird. I just had to say it; you’re absolutely beautiful. You might be the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. And it’s not just because I can see it in your skin, your hair, the way your lips move—there’s something else. This unnameable thing that radiates from you that I wish I had, that I’ve always looked for and never known it. And I know I’ll probably never see it again, because it is so unique to who you are. That’s okay though, because I’ve seen it now. I know that I will never really know, and I am awed—I am struck. I do not call it love, because I imagine to love you is a completely different phenomenon that would most likely destroy me in the most wonderful way; I will not do you the disservice of assuming that loving you would be easy. You are both wave and particle, sea and sand, and it’s enough to have glimpsed you once. It’s enough.

False Spring Queen: FALSE-SPRING-QUEEN'S V.F.D. GIVEAWAY!

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 21:05:00 -0400

False Spring Queen: FALSE-SPRING-QUEEN'S V.F.D. GIVEAWAY!:

false-spring-queen:

Volunteers and villains alike, gather round the Springpole, for the False Spring Queen is giving away this beautiful V.F.D. pin or ring to one lucky winner!

Here are the rules:

Enter by reblogging ONCE. Multiple reblogs will not give you a better chance. Likes do not count.

Must be…

Unsure as to the Title and Pretty Much Everything

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 15:22:00 -0400

There’s the sound of grocery bags in the kitchen; shopping done, a benevolent soul opens the fridge.

I haven’t showered, and the blankets are all tossed around my feet. I write, because I’m trying to figure out what it is that I’m attempting to say.

Thomas Wolfe is sitting next to me with his fire and his ‘O Lost.’ Fuck, how could he say so much, and how can I say so little? Am I just not tragic…am I just missing out on some inextricable beauty…have I just not lived enough…

I laugh over Whitman because he seems to have managed to be exuberant without every being happy, if that makes sense. I need to read ‘Leaves of Grass’ now that the spring is coming.

A big dog barks next door, with a hoarse, chained-up kind of tone. I can feel him in my voice sometimes. I wonder if I open these curtains, light spilling in, I will finally loose him. I’ll just stare through the cool pane, and see a dog like any other dog on a hollow porch.

I have developed an incredible fondness of tomatoes in their absence. I want the acid, the slight sweet, the seed, the rind. I want the red in my mouth to be full and bursting forth in summerness. I want there to be basil and salt to chime in when necessary.

I love this water that I have pooled in my green cracked mug. It tastes clearer than twice-boiled ice to me. Maybe if I drink enough I can make that clarity join with me, so that my body might become these refracting crystals that separates out all the color-some troubles and words of me. I will refract them onto the page and let them burn to life. Burning Burning Burning. Here.

Pyromania

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 23:08:00 -0500

I would have said it was her plan if Mia had ever made any. To live as she did, without intention but always affect, was the most dangerous, innocent thing. I will never meet another like her, which makes sleep come easier, but the days so much longer. I saw her as Thoreau saw nature, until of course…

She slammed the door of the rusted, gray, Jeep and let her arm hang out the window—all tan and no sunburn. She smiled at me as though I’d come to see her off to a place where all her cares would be swept away with the sun at dusk. I was merely watching in that masochistic way that you do when something awful and inevitable is happening from the inside, out. I wasn’t thinking anything of the kind at the time; I was just incredibly, aware—as if my goal in life was to be a lens, solely made to perceive. Marcel swore at the radio as the sound of static spilled into the air. I knew I had seen that particular smile before.

“Don’t mope,” she said, “You know you’ll hear from me on the road.”

“That’s okay,” I said, “I don’t think I love you anymore.” Such are the ridiculous things we say when the light hurts.

“You wish,” she laughed and winked at me. I wanted to say that, in truth, I’d never wished for anything so badly.

The Jeep lurched forward and slid out of sight. I watched until they became a black pinhole on the horizon and disappeared. All at once, I felt cleaved open as dust, wind, and ruddy light poured into me. I took a breath so deep it stung my eyes. The world was salty, the cracked sidewalk seemed to tell me so. I could taste this highway town through my feet, and the girl with a hundred names was gone. So, I used my last five to buy a chocolate milkshake from the derelict diner that she had tried to hustle before Marcel swaggered in with his wife-beater and Northern accent. I left all my change in the tip jar; the blue eye-shadow the waitress wore was the saddest I’d ever seen.

I hitched a ride home on a produce truck—I don’t recommend it. I got back to my apartment around 3 am, since I had chosen to get out and walk the last four miles. I was relieved that my landlord hadn’t changed the locks while I had been away. Though he had left me eight angry voice messages. The last voice message, number nine, started just as I had thrown myself onto the couch and was beginning to fall asleep:

“Holy Shit! Jess, you won’t believe it! Well, I don’t know, you might, but seriously! I did it! I finally did it! Shit! It’s fucking beautiful. You are an asshole for not being here..”

After some muffled laughter the message cut off. The next morning, the county was a-buzz with news of the most destructive case of arson ever witnessed. Fire departments and response teams were struggling to keep up with the speed and fierceness of the fires. It was currently being blamed on gangs, or was it satanists? They hadn’t found the responsible party and wouldn’t.

It wasn’t until four weeks later that I heard from Mia—a postcard from Texas, saying she had shacked up with some guy named Miguel, (no word on Marcel or his Jeep—she had a way of forgetting people) who thought her hair was worth all the gold of the Aztecs, and that I should come with them to Mexico next week to visit Miguel’s family. I responded, but I can’t remember what I said. I do know that I drank a lot afterwards. Sometimes, as much as I wish I didn’t, I miss her. Like she told me once, there’s something about the flame that makes you wish you were the moth.

Do Not Upset the Balance

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 00:46:37 -0500

Sudden red blooms

Like crushed cherry stains

How I fall apart

I Don't Know What I Expected

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 00:21:01 -0500

I found my window and I pulled me through. I can write now. It’s strange because it makes me happy in a way most people would not describe as “happy.” Digging around inside brings out my voice and a lot of other uglier things.

I drank some cider that stung so sweet I feel as though someone threw a honey crisp apple and hit me between the eyes—a kiss.

And I have a fern now. This little living thing on my windowsill that grows. I’m afraid to touch him, because I know my foolish hands will feel a pulse. I hope he is warm.

On my way home, The cracked narrow path Rushes with rivulets of rain, The grass is gray as the...

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 17:55:00 -0500

On my way home,

The cracked narrow path

Rushes with rivulets of rain,

The grass is gray as the

Golden dusk is hastily brushed over with black,

My steps take care among the bruised, brown leaves—

Like floating crusts of bread, and

I, their companion,

The amber duck scuttling through the green pond.

Then—

The sudden small song of

My lone window’s yellow light,

Standing naked before the howling wind,

Shyly, amidst the cold poplars,

Its soloist tune calling,

Like the Song of the Lute,

Plucking from me the ardent memories

Kept tucked within—

Like the snap of a dinner tablecloth unfurled,

Hovering, then sinking, in soft waves onto polished red wood,

And so, I too, sink beneath

Those wistful threads,

The weft and warp of my longing,

Of warmer nights, made softer by sweeter company than

These slated poplars and weeping grass—

Like the growing flicker of a candle

Exhausted too soon

I shiver—

A gilded silk tears in two—

I quietly borrow Po Chui’s

Wetted blue coat.

Murmur

Sat, 22 Dec 2012 23:46:00 -0500

I stood so still in expectancy that I hardly breathed.

Your two small hands pressed against the hair that hung short on either side of my face.

Your soft, urging breath tickled; I bit my lip to keep from giggling.

Then again, you were laughing a little too.

The words came slowly; every vowel and consonant reaching for each other as if from a long distance. Your earnestness carefully stretched each bit out so I wouldn’t misunderstand.

It was so long ago, two bright heads bent towards each other, drawing a part only to look for eavesdroppers and laugh.

Curling affectionately into corners and places we thought we were alone; speaking in confidence,and sharing what we would never dream of mentioning to any other soul.

Like I said, it’s been awhile and neither of us really have anything to whisper about anymore, but I have never forgotten those soul-bearing moments and knowing looks; in my heart, with each surging beat of my pulse, a few of your words murmur quickly of all that once was. They echo through my blood and veins, reveling in my nervous system until my fingertips prickle with the joy of it.

I stand still when this happens, unconsciously smiling in that certain way that hints to the world you have a secret. In my mind’s eye I see us again, looking very much like little monkeys with our sparkling eyes and mischievous looks, grins peaking through the curtain of our fingers due to some wonderful private joke. These are the moments that I may never truly share with anyone else; they are me and you. This is my last secret and my best one yet.

"Sometimes I’m naked, and, thank god, sometimes you’re naked."

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 21:42:00 -0500

“Sometimes I’m naked, and, thank god, sometimes you’re naked.”

- R

In a Dry Winter

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 18:04:41 -0500

You could have called me Homer, because all I could do was sing out my rage into the cold front that pushed past my front stoop. At him. I am always at him, and sometimes I think it’s because I just once want to be ‘to him’, but I don’t know how. And this is what he said,

“I’m going to tell you something, and it’s personal so listen. My world, my day to day, has great big walls. Big red bricks, 100 foot thick—so old, but they look new. They can look like anything. Men like me can go so easily; these walls can swallow us whole in an instant, so that our already ghost-like existence disappears. Up until now, I’ve steered clear. Played it smart. But there you are, scaring me to death. I see your pride shining out of you like a stoplight. You’re tough and new, but I can tell you know things—like you looked into a long tunnel and got lost. I know this because when I look in your eyes I see myself, terrified, staring back.”

Solace as Shadow Puppet

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 14:21:20 -0500

In the tension of the night—

when I am pretending that I can’t see Sleep

creeping up to my bed

laying gentle on my head

and closing me into the deep

—I smell red pine needles

stuck to wet pavement.

And What Would Diogenes Think of All This?

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 19:26:00 -0500

I am staring at my assignment like it’s the end of a dinner party. The leftover food has grown cold, congealed to the serving dishes. Sincere thought retrieved their coat awhile ago. Inquiry drank too much and is asleep on the couch. I am left here in this hypothetical conundrum, looking at what’s left of my partially devoured western literature. What should I scrape onto a plate and cover with plastic wrap for this paper? What isn’t worth hanging onto?

The accessible crusts of Homer have been scraped away and eaten, leaving the cumbersome, heavy filling of vague questions—Unusable. There’s plenty of meat left on the Tao Te Ching, but is it a question of knowledge or desire that I am savoring? Could that be a hint of virtue ethics as well? Ah, Socrates is sharing the same plate. There’s no separating them, but no combining them easily either. Inquiry snores loudly from the couch.

Epicurus is souring quickly—the choice needs to happen now, but there is so much to be done. The only conclusion I can draw is that Thought is an asshole for leaving early, knowing there would be all this work around, and Inquiry is a gluttonous whore who is going to end up choking on her own vomit someday. And I, I will come up with something. It might be bad, but it will be made with the sincerity of the lover who burns you some toast in the morning.

Long Distance

Sat, 27 Oct 2012 12:50:00 -0400

The phone calls were a single lit match in the darkness

that sputtered and grew into a yellow bloom

that burned, burned, burned so sweetly

and snuffed out in a nirvanic plume of smoke.

It Is an Expanse

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 23:11:46 -0400

I like the shoreline, to let go and be moved in the push and pull.

You are my rock one moment, my storm then next.

The salt on my tongue, the ageless sand of mountains, eons come and gone, under my feet.

The trees will always be my home. I am not humble on the shore, and I am alone in the sea.

The newborn wind touching my face.

And the sodden earth and moss.

Inevitably, your hand in my hand.

I long to guide you inland someday.

You may lead, as long as we dance.

How He Got In Nobody Knows

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 12:06:00 -0400

A good story is when you have just settled down for a nice evening, there is a nice chair and plate of cookies waiting for you next to your favorite brand of quiet entertainment, and you walk across the carpet and sit down. As you sigh in contentment, you look over to the cat basket, and there is a grey fox sleeping in it. This startles you, and you find yourself forgetting about cookies, sighing, and the chair you’re sitting in. You then realize you never even had a cat.

The fox, without moving an inch, looks at you. Its ears twitch. You stare at one another in silence. It goes back to sleep, and you eat a cookie. It’s not the same cookie, nor is your chair the same chair, but you find them agreeable.

Cerberus is Wounded (Cont.)

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 17:06:17 -0400

As my shaking hands struggled with the simple textile contraptions of a t-shirt and jeans, my phone buzzed on my bedside table. The text was invariably from Emily, not to mention irritated: “Impatient and hungry.” In my hysteria, I had forgotten about her geis (one of many) that required her to wait to eat, as those less punctual—me— straggled along.

My feet lead me out the door, in a wobbling sort of half-run. I managed to scrape seven dollars and change off my nightstand as I went—an old habit from meaner times—and hit my shin on the door frame. It would be nice to get out of the apartment for awhile. I was out of breath at Panera before I realized I had run the whole way. I immediately spotted Emily in a far booth against the wall.

“Well, look who decided to put on pants today.” Emily arched an eyebrow at me above her coffee. That unmistakable, amused wrinkle in her brow still made my heart flutter in it’s stupid little bone-cage. “Still rocking the X-Men shirt I see. How long ago was high school?”

“Don’t hate me because I have amazing mutant powers.” I sat down across from her with a half sandwich and a bold roast that was still too hot to drink. Her impeccable manners allowed me to settle into my seat before proffering her news. I took the time to survey the crowded dining area instead of experiencing, yet again, Emily’s direct, earnest gaze. A bespectacled man glared at his Apple laptop in an easy chair; two middle-aged women in track suits talked too loudly about some hussy named Patricia; a couple ogled each other in a strawberry cream cheese kind of way. I took a silent breath and turned to Emily and her plain cream cheese. I wished for a moment, that I was having brunch with anyone else.

“I’ve been worried about you,” she said.

“That’s valid.” I sipped my coffee.

“How’s the therapy?” She said. I chewed a bite of my Cuban sandwich twenty-seven times before I responded.

“Loving it. I’m a new woman—should have done this years ago.”

“That’s good. So, do you think you’ll be going back to Penmore soon?”

There was the rub; my skin prickled, and I casually eased my arm off the table, out of sight.

“If I’m ready, the Head said I could return in the fall. We’ll see.”

“Sarah,” she said. The look was potent, an invitation to pour myself all over the table, but I resisted.

“What?” I said, through a mouthful of ham and cheese for spite.

“You are planning on going back?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I leaned back in my chair, “maybe it’s time for me to move on. There’s a lot of schools out there, good schools—a whole world of students. I’m thinking of learning Mandarin, maybe teach English in China or something.”

“Sarah.” This time she leaned forward and squeezed my hand. My mouth went dry; I hadn’t been expecting that. “You don’t need to punish yourself anymore.” I simultaneously wanted to slap her and weep inconsolably into her perfect pink hand.

“Don’t,” I said. My hand tore itself from hers. “Don’t pretend to understand.”

“You know I’m right.” She withdrew herself with poise; I had hoped to hurt her, but her defenses were too good. I felt my face crawl with shame. “How does that poem go? ‘You don’t have to walk on your knees through the desert repenting?’”

“I have to do something.” I had lost my appetite, but at least I could look her in the eye.

The Critical Forces

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 19:53:00 -0400

R: I need critical forces in my life.

A: That sounds like an odd super hero league.

R:"The Critical Forces" Hrm.

A:I feel like it would be made up of ancient sages--like Confucius, Diogenes, Socrates, etc.

R:I don't have the wherewithall to imagine Confucius' super hero costume. Do they combat major religious figures and financial mogals?

A: No, they sit around in footie pajamas and/or snuggies with tea concocting plans and discussing the universe at length. Then they invite the moguls/religious figures to their headquarters and logic-shame them with kindness and intellect. Then everyone becomes better and Plato breaks out the cookies.

R:I love that Plato is a baker in this scenario

A: It just feels right.