I drew a blank circle today, in the middle of a piece of paper. From the center, I drew a few differently sized arrows; some curved some straight. The straighter small ones conceived boxed in realities where they march in lines and wear pin stripes. The others weren’t so complete. Some burst into flames, some never existed…they all wove into each other in different patterns, forming obscure realities. The only way they ever learned, regardless of how many tribulations they performed, was when we saw it for real…for when we saw it for real, when you and i noticed the process for real, a new world appeared…
exposed in sequence
for your translation
the secrets hush, waiting
long enough for your
widened eyes.
Zipped up my eroded skin
as you saw the blatant transparency of the
pick-pocketed soul of desire
I aspired to belong
Here.
A place with segmented love woven into
puzzle pieces that will
never touch.
The dream I am God in-
will take its course is a ball rolling downhill, on
an uneven surface.
Enough to be a king and a servant
A host and a child
A way of feeling the formulaic decencies of
society- alive when batteries are charged.
A patriarchal bliss or Godhead of morality
It may be more important to emulate the friction than the comfort-for
lullabies only serve to put you to sleep.
..and turn on Yellowcard or Dashboard Confessional or Secondhand Serenade…and this was the way I dealt with all of my high school frustration-whether that be something melodramatic like my boyfriend not showing up to the donut shop on time or writing a terrible poem for my English class or pissed at some customer. I remember blasting “so long” with the windows down, rain pouring outside, and actually miming out the motion of waving goodbye-as I drove to my boyfriend’s house with a paper bag full of dvds that I dumped on his lawn. I think this breakdown was inspired by being ditched one night. I had a high capacity for holding and expressing emotion- and thus transformed into something out of an atrocious teen melodrama miniseries.
Once I got to college, my way of dealing with anger had calmed down, but became something so much more distressing..not speaking to people..writing people off. Feeling like the only victim in the world-completely innocent. I think I should’ve just kept singing, in my opinion. I feel like I had never truly loved myself, never truly loved anybody else because I really couldn’t love myself. And rage turned into frustration turned into questioning and letting go…my god, letting go is the best thing I have learned/am learning to do.
Wasting time trying to fight off whatever crap situation you have going on in your own head..you are wasting time not loving people. It always begins with yourself, even though it’s hard sometimes…then it becomes only about everybody else. And in this paradox rides the action of the adventure…maybe the way to discovering that we can ride on love until we realize we are part of it. I could not be happier that I was able to learn this lesson…maybe how what some would consider “the hard way” but I still feel incredibly lucky. I have wasted so much time in a place of disgust- but now that I have realized I can love people until it hurts and until it is so strong it breaks out of me in the only ways my body knows how-I’m left with the question of how.
What do you do when you realize the only thing left to do is figure out how to love the world in a way that you ride it like never before?
the breath filled the abyss of energy, currents of life, flowing into the rivers of me. And she knew what it meant to tiptoe on a smile, the corners of our lips folding a resolution, dancing on the fringes until the spot you decide to stay a while-to highlight.
feel the sidewalk, see the branches pointing towards the step, awake with attention. And move it another way, into a wooden heart, mellifluously paving the next movement, as he trips and takes her down with him.
Pulsating rhythm fills the abyss, and i dream about my fingers, the branches of creation, breathing into the room. Feel you feel my synergy. Empty the canvas of filtered dust, shedding the skin of your childhood and tears. Mourn the evaluation, and wake up.
She told you what you already know directly into the divine; the space between where you begin to feel and where she feels you. A wormhole of creation, the mother of hands and brains. Travel through it as an open heart grips the room; dust flying overheard, rapid anxiety fleeting.
Pick up your body and listen to the storybook that is your life and was your life and will be your life.
she exhaled the deepest she has ever exhaled in her life…
and an entirely new world appeared.
It’s a discovery of eternity when the unshakable fear leaves the face of your enemy. She’s waited for you forever to understand her, and let her tell you the secret she’s been trying to tell you through lifetimes of misfortune and misconduct. You never grew up with the fear. You grew up with the anger, the fear was given to her. She has cried in anguish at the apparent dislocation of her heart. She came to you in a dream when you were little, trying to scare you, trying to tell you that it’s not okay to go commando when you play on the monkey bars every day. You didn’t listen. She tried to tell you it was not okay to yell at the little kids, even though you were so little yourself. You were never scared, you were just so angry. And this is okay, she says. She says it’s okay because you were so scared before. Before you woke up in this new dream where nothing was to be feared, you stayed in empty rooms, rocking back and forth, and trying to fight all of the darkness. You gave it away in the last moments, you gave it away but you did not accept it. You gave it to her in the transition of your candlelight. In the transition of your soul, passing beautiful trees and countless streetlights, and people making love in the light, and you dancing so effortlessly through the clouds with your heart. Your body did not understand the dance or the framework from which you could see a dance. It only understood darkness. She’s here to help you remember where you came from. All of the anger that has manifested in screaming, in fighting, in “standing up for yourself,” in beating the mirror, in devouring cake and crying, in yelling at everybody that the world is not okay..that it is strange and manipulative, and worked over by drugs that make your fingertips unaware of the touch. She’s here to help you fight through the anger, let it come out. She wants you to fight her, for she’s so afraid. You have the anger to break her fear, and the exchange is yourself accepting yourself. And when you fight your own fire with love, nothing stands a chance. She will disappear in the fire that she created and turn into a yellow butterfly with wings spread over just another inch past what you think you know. And these wings are transparent, and these wings will help you see that you are no longer angry, but that you have more yellow butterflies to create..and this is exciting. This is so exciting, for nothing will ever be the same and she will thank you. And your feet thank you for delivering the dance of the soul and allowing your tiny vessel of light to turn on the darkness that has welled up inside your global world. And when the world is full of yellow butterflies, there is nowhere to go but up and around and Become. The theme here is not to hate your anger and not to hate your fear, but accept it, look it in the eyes, and just listen to it..because the answer is everywhere. The answer is everywhere because it is in your heart…and it’s in the words of your mother and your best friend and the angry man who shouts at you every day and the homeless man who tries to tell you a joke or doesn’t. There souls are painted with the vibrations of your goodness. The most beautiful part is that you are the paintbrush with the constant urge to paint the world..and you can. And you should! And this is what is truly beautiful.
him looking at her looking at you looking at me me looking at you laughing laughing while you look while he stirs while she waits to laugh looking waiting watching you waiting to initiate initiate the end of waiting waiting for the initial phases waiting looking looking blood running running to a symphonious synchronicity instinct waiting never never running your breath sighing sighing sighing eternity.
the finish line is god’s diner where you can check out the waitress or complain about the temperature of your medium rare cheeseburger and fondle his leg or sip your milkshake extra slow, waiting, slurping, licking, lathering , waiting, watching, eating, infinity. god, eating, god, watching, god, watching, god as a turkey sandwich, god as an orgasm, god burning down the diner to initiate the end of waiting, to initiate the starting line. again. waiting. watching. eternity.
god as a vagina, god in your ability to laugh, moan, swinging, swinging you, diner to diner, milkshakes, waiting, getting burgers, waiting, counting, counting down and sideways. what’s next? next? next?
god is your allergies and your sprained ankle. god is on the sidewalk when you see a shadow, and when you notice the unnoticeable.
I fell into
worn out shoes,
A candy dish out of cigarette butts (they’re actually called that),
And fingerprints from your typewriter,
delicious faces you made into shapes of pancakes and
Songs
teeth evolve into candy!
Corn.
Ode to the romantics! You taught me to look for my heart inside of the blazing.
Sun.
Figurines:
Loyalty morality!
Religion. Organism occupies
Love of those others, others, me. My. Invisibility. Entrapment?
Krishna, you trip. Hard. You’re the dude..
I found you in my coffee cup, directing traffic..
So this is where I sit.
Hardware glances,
Distinct memory.
My home, atop a pineapple tree.
Jesus.
The world, material, larietam (I’m a philosophy major, it’s latin!)
Life is a cruel playground for the intellectual.
Life
For the good.
You and I, we’ll paper mache the toilet seat, and use it to talk about the future
My cookie predicted that you will soon ask me if everything will be alright.
a.k.a. you have now been incepted!!!
Here is the introduction to my autobiography one day:
I like to sit around and ponder life for a while..but sometimes ya just gotta sit back, watch something extremely ordinary and realize how extraordinary it actually is…..
I was walking to class the other day, and this middle-aged guy was sitting near the sidewalk, smoking a cigarette rather peacefully. He didn’t have a book in front of him, or a frown on his face, he was enjoying this cigarette. I had found this strange looking plant on the sidewalk that i had never seen before…it appeared as if a walnut had mated with a rosebush, was heated by the sun, grew pomegranate seeds on the inside, and opened one day to feed whatever tiny beings eat said seeds. I picked up a few of them, and upon arriving at this peaceful man..knew that he’d appreciate one of these walnut lovechildren. I handed off my discovery with a, “look what i found” and ” happy morning” and he found it as fascinating as I (or he was just entertaining my wonderment..i don’t really care…that doesn’t really matter either way), then further along my walk, this woman had been pushing one of those luggage pieces that have a tiny box shaped bottom and an extremely long handle..the ones that are impossible to pull on uneven surfaces, and she was trying to pull it along but it kept flipping upside down, giggling the entire time. And later, as I opened envelopes at a possible internship meeting, admiring all of the possible ways one can close an envelope, lick it, tape it, enclose it with those silver flexy things, place a sticker on it, glue it…hell i dunno..i realize the thought process that goes behind the sending off of the envelope…especially those that use tape…they probably sat back and thought, “hell no..i will not put this nastiness in my mouth” while others probably don’t think about it much at all. These envelopes had works of art in it, making it a more soul-encompassing process as well, knowing these people were the ones that most likely think about these things. I mean it takes seconds to rip open an envelope..but I liked to imagine that artist sealing their work inside with hopefulness and appreciate that intensity..at least for a second. It made me want to write little notes on the backs of all my envelopes considering somebody somewhere will be opening it. Anyway, the point is, we’re very different in little ways, like the lady who just laughed at the ridiculous pulley bag and the man loving the strange lovechild of flower and walnut instead of getting pissed about luggage issues and ignoring the wonderment that nature can produce and a stranger handing you something without weariness or hostility. Sometimes those are the things to accept in amazement and not the abstract difficulty that goes along with trying to figure out why somebody does the things that they do.
This was further instilled in me as I sat outside of a cafe on University..a french lady singing french songs and playing guitar in a sweet voice. As she finished her set, she leaned back and said,
“Thank you. I’ll be here next week…if I’m alive and you’re alive to listen” and she giggled about it.
We’ve got to appreciate the fragility of human nature and stop trying to be so hard sometimes..while respecting the difficulties we do face sometimes…or at least trying. We can always escape by going on walk or, cook an egg..and think about how crazy that is…
Happy Saturday afternoon.