"That skirt's too short fer a funeral, honey"

No thanks, Salem

2010-02-25T23:51:00.001-08:00

In the middle of the night, you wake up.

2010-01-25T15:40:00.000-08:00

From a soft, half-life of dreaming you are delivered into a dark sort of consciousness.
Your eyelids stretch and press back against the black but your pupils find nothing to hold onto.
Soon the black opens into flowered, transient designs of light remembered.
You touch your face. It is there.
Somewhere, a Danger begins.
You hear its slow, padded beat...like footsteps approaching.
The lightswitch is a million miles away.

this drawing has digestive issues

2010-01-18T22:13:00.001-08:00

journal nightscene

2010-01-12T21:17:00.001-08:00

Two Men are Talking at the Mall

2010-01-12T21:15:00.000-08:00

Our biggest problem is that we have to chase after them.
The trick is to know: you’ll get her eventually.
Then you do and she’s just there-
wanting you to be honest
but honesty’s a prick with a big fat knife and trust is shredded lettuce.
So I tell her that I’m lonely
and I’m controlling my body.
my crooked crotch. my blunderbuss.
Then one day she makes her taco with shredded lettuce.
I tell her: “You little bitch, that smells so good.”
…her face looks old, then...a scrunched up paper bag…like she just smelled something foul
and it was you. I mean me.
So much for honesty.

You see those mannequins? I’ve got one at home
in the hall closet with all my vacuum attachments.
Of all the air-breathing ones, none is more adaptive than this one.
The mouth moves in and out.
You are free to choose your level of contentment.
After awhile,
the struggle stops.

no door for the doorknob

2009-08-30T17:06:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's all wrong. Maybe everything that everyone tells you is right, is sensible, is logical..is wrong. For you, at least. Maybe the reason you feel so de-valued and taken for granted is because you have allowed yourself to be led into environments where you are constantly set up for failure..despite the soul-crushing hard work you put into proving your competence and worth in these environments. No one sees your hard work, not really. No one sees you shine there, least of all those people you are trying so hard to impress..and how could they? How could they do anything less than take you for granted when you DON"T BELONG THERE. These places, these values, these tedious tasks you are trying so hard to complete are not yours, are not really valued by you at all so it's no wonder you feel so empty and confused and trapped. No one is accepting you for you because you are not being you. Maybe you should quit trying to be "good" for people who do not even share the same ideas as you as to what "good" even is. Their good is your bad. Maybe you've been so focused on what you think you want, that you have overlooked the fact that you don't have to get what you want THIS WAY. Maybe it is too hard this way, and instead of working harder you should simply stop working and take a look at what happens. Will it just tank without all your work? Does anyone else help out? Do you really want to live a life where in order to keep things from sinking, it is all up to you and your constant struggle to keep your head afloat? Sure, it is good to stand up for yourself and everyone has to do that from time to time. But do you really want a life where you must constantly stand up to the people who are closest to you time and time again to prevent them from pushing you out of your own life? Your own identity?
Maybe you should put it down and walk away.
Maybe if you do, everything will fall apart.
Maybe it needs to.

2009-03-27T14:43:00.000-07:00

I made the wrong decision. I should have jumped before I looked. I chose the wrong door. I should have picked the mystery prize. I'm sorry, Saren.

"Are we going to prom or to hell?"

2009-02-12T21:12:00.000-08:00

It's 20,000 leagues under "what now?"
The jury's out
Thumbs twiddle in the waiting of an empty page
throw a dart at the calendar to find Judgment Day
***

Ladies...Hard Work Really Does Pay Off!

I dyed my hair, dear
scooped my pits clean of hair
and scraped that rusty blade up and down my legs
Slathered my skin with baby oil and laid in the sun
to get that sexy bronzed cancer look you are so fond of
I even paid someone
to pour hot wax on my crotch and.....
I screamyouscreamweallscreamforBEAUTEEEEEE!!!
plucked the hairs from betwixt my brow..
do you think I'm pretty now?
I emptied my bookshelves of Jong and Foucault
and filled them back up with Vogue and Cosmo
The diet's going great...since I can't afford groceries
I ran up five credit cards
on make-up and eye creams and cellulite balms
I worked three jobs to pay for
these two silicone mountains men so adore
Had needles full of botulism paralyze the lines around my mouth
I can't smile now
but I assure you, on the inside..
I'm so proud!

Hospital Bed

2009-02-11T16:36:00.000-08:00

I told the doctor to:
"give me pain. I approve of it"
In the hospital bar I order
a shot of Lorazepam and a medical juice chaser
And everywhere there are diseases.
I rest when I can
beneath the dark wing of a half-open door
one ribbon of light spilling in
But there's no rest for the Sickness
The nurses are bitches
but it's the needles that bite.
Saline carries the thing
that wet pharmaceutical sleep
entering my palms like the holy spirit
a reverse stigmata
the walls are splattered with Hallmark
telling me to get better
to count my blessings
But I've looked this gift-horse in the mouth and only counted cavities
Somewhere the family is waiting
tapping the glass
like rude zoo patrons
bets are made on who will win
but I am not fighting
I am just waiting for the sheep of sleep to come in
It's too hard to count them
when the corners of this room are always moving
"Ma'am, could you open the window please. It's July."
Now my eyelids are falling
I'm counting the sheep
as they one
jump
two
jump
three
out of the sick room
out into
the un-marked green of the night.

"Nothing exists beyond this",

2009-01-31T13:09:00.000-08:00

sings the world, glaring at me from its yellow sockets.
"Nothing exists beyond now."
I challenge the stale yellow light to a duel.
-Jeanette Winterson

An empty page is like a broken day and we draw lines in the sand but sand blows away.

wait. what was I looking for again?

Mind full of memory, people tell me I'm slipping into time travel..as if it were as simple as a banana peel.
Stranger, I want to convey to you.. connect to you.. begin conversations that will begin revolutions (or at least a riot) but how the hell does such a thing start?
People collide here so rarely, always stepping too gently around each other their timid footsteps could barely crack a twig.
My hair irritates - blows strands that stick to the face - pulling strings away
Fuck. I am sick of waiting for you people.

Goose, Newt, Cecelia, Allyn, Jack, ...

2008-11-23T17:02:00.001-08:00

she asks for guns. maybe we should give them to her.

2008-11-21T14:41:00.000-08:00

Read this. now. click on the title above and go there.

Bar flys, fly home.

2008-11-21T14:23:00.000-08:00

We are broken livers and hand quivers
from too little food and too much brooding mood
Booze soothes the bruise and drops a shade on
the ever blaring glare of life's nicks and blights
the fist once tight white knuckles loosen to pink again
around a pint of beer or a glass of gin and ginger ale
makes these stale feelings linger a little longer
than it takes to order another.

My coffee is cold..

2008-11-09T17:57:00.000-08:00

My brain is getting old. My story's been told a hundred times under my breath-My ass has been sold a hundred times under duress..Sometimes we hide the Truth like a Jew in an Easter dress...the best has yet to leave you, but this mess is always see-through..like panty hose over the face of the man who rapes you..the Jury will only blame you for your fate because you were a woman who had to work late...
my coffee is cold.
This story is getting old. Our skin is sold to companies who use it to sell the illusion of dignity back to the women they stole it from originally...and we'll always work late as long as we keep shoving our money into the fat mouths of those who devour our right to say Ouch..
My coffee is..
Fuck it.
I'll take whiskey instead and wash it down with a gun to the head..I never made this bed but I am forced to lie in it but sometimes lying is the only way to keep the dreams of the big break safe from those who would rather you never caught it... so I'll never admit what I want ...
until I've got it.

Haiku, Haiku, I do that shit too..

2008-11-09T17:54:00.000-08:00

If I were laid down
at the bottom of the pond
fish would fill my sky

2008-10-18T17:59:00.001-07:00

Or have blogs.

"I've got a headache THIS big..

2008-10-16T17:17:00.000-07:00

...and it's got alcohol written all over it.."

Not yet. But since I plan on getting drunk this evening I predict this sentiment shall apply to me soon enough. Soooo...
Why this need for inebriation?
Fuck if I know. Something has invaded, started throwing stuff around in the attic of my head. A chimp in the chest...
Mind begins a slow hum
Heart clicks like a gun
eyelids flutter and the feet want to run
to the end of what-the-fuck-ever
just have to slip the grip of this Now-or-Never..

Here's a little something I found scribbled on a napkin which my drunk, sulking self had stuck into an old journal long ago:

Maharaja Lounge, West Seattle

Someone's slapping of asses,
makes a sound like molasses congealed around an old chicken bone.
Getting drunk alone
in a sweaty sock disguised as a bar...
Pick up my brain and hear a dial tone.
The little people in the jukebox
want to rock and roll all night.
Someone puts public access porno on the television,
But it's allright because
My eyes make revisions.
The leers of men.. too many pigs in one pen
Makes me hungry for Fight.
Instead I sigh
and light another one.
These empty nights..
Something always fills them.

You were born..

2008-10-13T16:56:00.000-07:00

...and now you're free...
..so happy birthday.

In a cafe in Olympia, WA... I drink a latte and use a laptop and wear a scarf and POOF!
I realize I have become another plugged in drone of the Pacific Northwest. Swaddled in coffee, electronic media and isolation. The rain swirls around outside and I watch the gray cover everything through the windows.
GrayparkinglotGraycarsGraypeopleGrayneonsignsGraygrassetc.
Inside the cafe, everything is not covered by Gray, it is covered by Ikea.
Oh, I am so homesick I would trade all these co-ops and Obama bumper stickers and ec0-awareness and low crime rates for just a few good laughs over shitty drip coffee at a Waffle House somewhere on I-75 between Orlando and Atlanta.
I can't help feeling.... lately...
that back home, issues were ISSUES! Things to be fought for, fought about, openly wept/sweated/yelled about.
Here, sometimes it all just feels like self-masturbatory, ego-assuaged, regurgitation of assimilated information absorbed from accepted liberal Experts.
"I've read this, I've read that, I know the acceptable things to say and so I never have to search very deep or show my ass about anything because I know all the approved arguments with which to cover it."
Ok. Obviously, I am making generalizations and showing the pissy side of Saren. I am just frustrated by all the wealth of information and evocative text being dangled before my face without an adequate environment in which to process or discuss it. The conversations ABOUT the rest of the iceberg beneath the tip never seem to LEAVE THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG.

Death is a Secret Sea..

2008-02-19T22:06:00.000-08:00

Grief
smokes too much
can't stand light
becomes a way of life.

If someone offered to trade me the life of one human being I love for the lives of one hundred strangers...
I think I may just let all those innocent people die.
good thing I have not been put in such a position. I realize I would not make the fairest of decisions.

"do you know what shit feels like?"

"no, Saren, what DOES it feel like?"

"Me."

I told the doctor to "give me pain. I approve of it"

2007-08-27T19:43:00.000-07:00

With a throat as smooth as a lamb
and a voice like a branch not breaking..
-Patti Smith

Everywhere there are diseases. In the dark there are shadows to eat our sleep. My dearest friend you have been invaded, and who could protect you? Not I, for it happened while I was surely asleep and you were somewhere else..tangled up in the bed of some careless man. Where is Trojan Man when you need him? In commercials he only stops the hetero couple, and then of course to merely intercept an untimely pregnancy.
HIV is no death sentence, you say.
I say, yeah...death is sentenced to us anyhow.
I think but don't say
I still don't like seeing the finish line.
not mine, not yours, not anyone's.

I can't share this with you. What can I do with this worry, this empathy, this feeling of uselessness? You don't need it, you don't want it, and I can only smile and talk about the great music we will make together if I can ever lug my guitar and amp up those treacherous stairs to your place. I know how this stuff goes. Our shit is always and forever that: Ours. Our loved ones can only look at us and wince as they watch us sink or swim. If i had it too we'd be in it together. But I don't, so I'm not, so I'm just pressing my nose against glass.
I love you. You are not my best friend, you are an extension of my spirit. You put your arm around me and I remember who I am.

For A.C.

2007-05-11T18:35:00.000-07:00

She says she is having this baby.
She's having it, so shut up.
Better to love something-
something to protect when the tide comes.
and it always does...
Someone to hold tight to the safest center of you-
your back bent into a usefull wall.
Better to have someone than nothing at all.
She says that she
has been there alone too much before.
Furled about nothing
arms too short to hold onto all of herself
her back not a wall against anything
just another fucking back
encasing the spine of one motherless girl
to be pulled in
and drowned.

Maybe it is time I had a whack at crack

2007-02-22T18:15:00.000-08:00

Bring me the beer. the pill. the sticky substance of eclipse.
That fat sulphurous egg of a moon stinking up the unmarked green of the night..
I'll swallow it.
I need to get FUCKED UP.
Junk is what they call the stuff that clutters the cellar
or gets shoved into veins
and maybe I should
ride that white horse..a slap-happy-school-special-cliche
As if Cobain sang
hello
hello
hello
just to me.
subtext here being: I'm sullen as a dishrag. maybe drugs are what I need.
It seems that my Muse broke up with me.
took the dog and left the wishes..and now this rain tries to wash me like dishes on the floor.
I am Art..constipated. eyes empty as cans.
I reach for the ipecac just to get it back out.
I hear songs in my head held hostage by my impotent hands and it makes me want to kill.
I have seen the mouth of infinity and it has teeth.
Plans. Dreams. Lists dropping from pockets. Bags of dirty laundry.
Worry is chewed like dead skin on a lip.
Knuckles whiten around the nameless vacance in this grip.
Something Sinister spills like ink into milk..
It is SPR E A D I N G

And I am trusted with the care of people with physical disabilities and mental illness...

2007-01-30T21:24:00.000-08:00

"suprise!.......
..SODOMIZE!!
smile...
cuz baby you're the one I'm gonna defile."

(these are probably my favorite lyrics of all time. It just busts me up like nothing else. How fucked is that?)

Paris Hilton wants your afterbirth!

2007-01-18T19:16:00.000-08:00

It's true!
wait, no it's not..
well, it could be...

Fuck. Alot has happened since I last wrote on this thing. Vacation in Fl where the weather dripped in at 80 degrees and Christmas made its presence known amongst family and old friends and bars and cafes and dancing and memories picked up like lovely stones that are too heavy to put in your pocket so skip them over water and light a cigarette even though you no longer smoke..
but this is for old times sake, right?
New Year shuffles in with Love and beer on cold steps and the space needle explodes and there are arms there to hold you.. arms that will never leave you and good friends there to make laugh. Plans and FUTURE cross arms and flash stern faces but just keep breathing for at least for now they are waiting with an indulgent patience.
And work and work and work...
Dispense medications and sooth the ever-blossoming madness of people you are not paid to love but people you love and yet are paid to be with. Will they make her leave? Will you see her after that? Just how many times have I said: "Yes, your face is still there" ? Meetings, workshops, paperwork. I want to give it up someday, but when I talk to people who are not social workers and are only artists I feel like I keep swimming in their lake but no matter how far I swim out my feet always touch the ground. However...
They seem to really get more done. This job makes it difficult to focus on yourself.
Anyway..
The collective is taking a break from "art" so to speak and now everyone wants to design a board game. Okay, I'm up for that I suppose. I am recording this weekend but on my solo attempt to get my computer recording-ready..well.. I haven't even hooked up my new Port. I have had it almost a month. The warranty is about to expire. I hadn't been to the slam for many many months and when I went a few weeks ago..I just wasn't inspired. Disappointed in the new venue. Just not feeling the point of competitive poetry anymore. Writing going fine, alot of lyrics, some script stuff, etc etc..
I think I need a new "thing". Maybe I'll make a series of gross monster dolls out of duct tape and ketchup packets.
I'm not down, I'm just well..kinda bored. Same old bars, same old places. I'm gonna shut up now. This is getting long.

Your mother is rubber, and I'm glue..

2006-12-04T19:35:00.000-08:00

...and whatever you say bounces off her...
and sticks to me.

So I had pneumonia, it's been a month now since I took a desperate cab ride to Urgent Care and although I no longer feel the fickle eye of Death upon me...my lungs refuse to give up the rattling of chains and general gasping rasp that has taken residence in the deepest bronchial spots of my lungs. I have quit smoking. And still it persists. This cough. I went out last night, had 3 pints of Fat Tire and smoked 2 cigarettes (this is like a Bible thumping neo-christ kid's college slip-up compared to my usual habits) and Fuck..I feel so rotten today, I worry I may have seriously set myself back on the healing I've done so far. I am coming to terms with the fact that my lifestyle is changing..slowly turning towards strange desires involving long life and grandchildren and giving a shit about my health in general. It is hard to reconcile this with the stubborn ideas of who I already think I am.
Will a regular eating habit make me a more boring lyricist?
Will pinker lungs cause me to be less innovative on the guitar?
Will getting adequate sleep make me stupid, mediocre, or conventional?
Will I change into some average tanning-bed woman who wants things like hideous diamonds and $200.00 turkey roasters?
Well, of course not. Of course when I type it out like that it sounds absolutely ridiculous. I know it is, but honestly I swear..
I think I'm actually afraid of this happening.
Why the hell would any of this happen? Because I want to NOT die of lung cancer or be able to drink people 3x my size under the table?
Fuck. Sometimes I think I am loony as a Manson Girl.

"Your name is a golden bell hung in my heart"

2006-11-20T20:28:00.000-08:00

I read that in a book today.
may someone turn to you one day and say that low..in your ear..while the world around you swirls at a roar...
that is my only wish for you, dear reader.

Do you see the trash piling up?

2006-11-09T19:04:00.000-08:00

A stutter in the mouth and a snake in the nest..this bitter baby flails its limbs against the walls of a labyrinthine chest. Spill it if you can't fulfill it..check the pulse but don't kill it. Questions hang in the air like ornaments without a christmas tree....What..Next?.. I've got my finger on the trigger and you've got nothing..check the cards if you think I'm bluffing. Voodoo vice and a knife in the ice. If you say it once, then you can say it twice. Underneath this sullen moon, well I talk too hard and I pause too soon..the waitress was great, but the food was rude..and the days spill out like Time's got a spout.
* * *
I don't know what I'm writing, sometimes I just like to start typing and see what shows up. I've got a hangover, I've got a pocket of anxiety over the creativity shit. Spent last night at the bar with a friend, we know the bartender so he gave me several free shots and we all hung out there after hours..thankfully he walked me home at 3am, I was so tired and stumbly. Not too shitty though..made myself drink alot of water, and that really seems to be the secret to keeping my buzz below an irrational roar. Alot of conversations about music, writing, etc etc... Feeling so bogged down by too any projects, too many strings pulling and the old wounds ache in the rain and I really need to get away, but I don't trust that impulse. The mess is always there, you look at it..be it childhood parent issues or a pile of dirty clothes on the floor..you want to get out for awhile, take a break, look at it with fresh eyes. But really..c'mon you lazy fuck the only way to to get past it is to head straight into it and GET RID OF IT. I think I'm just pouting around when really I need to pull up the sleeves...
Ugh. Where to start?

Excerpts from old tattered journal 4/03-7/04

2006-11-05T20:27:00.000-08:00

6/16/03
There is a bug in my wine
You laugh and say
"Don't waste the protein"
and so I don't.
Somewhere between your choked sobs
and my wandering glass eye
a life fell into my glass
to die.

8/?/03
Ode to Millie Dickinson:

The Sun sat her fat ass down
on hills of bones and wet grocery bags--
sent Light sulking across the room--
like a child arriving for detention
Then Evening tapped its nails on my sliding back door
with a half-eaten bag of heart-shaped stars-
and expectations old as sincere valentine's cards--
But I'm drunk
and on the phone with the Moon
telling her
he ain't never gonna get down my pants--
ain't never.

9/4/03
Coffee is warm. I am cold. I have sickle-shaped eyebrows. You want your hair to grow in ropes woven in sleep. In the classroom heads are counted like beads on a rosary. I do not want my grandmother to die. I would break my body to pieces to keep a tear from her eye. Wonderful, soft woman..may your hands and face never be empty.

11/19/03
I am stranded in a cafe. It is raining. The rain is a philanthropist. The rain dutifully does what it does..falls..needing to hydrate you..it only knows it must wet you..and you must want it you need it don't you?..It knows nothing of lakes and plumbing and temperature..it waits patiently outside every shelter for you to come out and receive its gift and it is a gift a gift a gift..
But I am an ungrateful asshole..cold and weak.
and so I hide in this cafe.

11/24/03
Alot of false starts and misfires going on. I'm suprised my shit hits the hole in the toilet and doesn't fly back up to smack me across the face. Well, at least there's that.
Look at me..parading about as if I were some kind of nice person. Scandalous. I swear I'd sew my nostrils shut and live in a yogurt hut if someone would then assasinate that Jack Ass. Impeachment might do. What to do with rage? Use or Difuse?

12/27/03
Well, saw the sun set very soft over Georgia, I think. Was on the wrong side of the plane again to see Atlanta. A pilot sat beside me. I know this because he said so, wore a leather flight jacket and chewed a toothpick and the woman who sat on the other side of him could barely contain her soaking panties as she went on and ON Oh! You're a Pilot?! How exiting!..etc etc..
She asked him all about his life and thus..I learned this stuff about him as he politely and lazily answered her questions as if he were some Playgirl pin-up:
The Pilot lives in Orlando but works out of the Chicago airport. The Pilot is married with a daughter. The Pilot lives so close to Disneyworld that when his daughter was (is?) 2 years old, he would drive her by to see the fireworks so that she'd fall asleep in the car. His wife is a "smarty-pants" as he affectionately calls her and has her own home business involving vitamins. The Pilot is very proud of her. The Pilot is very solid and kind and would probably look good on cover of a romance novel. You can depend on the Pilot. The Pilot is on his way to work. The Pilot wants you to have a nice trip home.

7/1/04

"How can I use my intestines as a gift?"

This is not my beautiful house...

2006-10-30T20:24:00.000-08:00

This is for Morgen..This is for Melissa..
remember this song? remember this song and the 4th of July
bombs bursting in air
Melissa and I..mean teens on the hood of my car all drunk in the Marietta Square and all the cars stopped there in the middle of the road..everyone spilling into the streets like a natural disaster..time stopping and life happening right there
right the fuck there in front of your face
Morgen and I
talking about this song
and of course, the X Files there in the Steak N Shake by our apartment in Winter Park
little kids in love..the first adventures in this strange and brutal kingdom of adulthood

Time isn't holding us
Time isn't after us
Time isn't holding us

letting the days go by...

sometimes the windshield, sometimes the bug..

2006-10-25T01:20:00.000-07:00

Today I am definitely the bug. I do not know why.
The world turns and everything burns. Is it the weather? The rumble in my chest as the virus hits and turns my sinuses into a disgruntled union?
I am recording a cd with Greg as Happy Puppet Children Syndrome, and it is turning out to be not so bad. Maybe even good. The art collective is churning with promise and ambitions for finding a performance/practice/etc space. Work is good. Money is scarce but nothing out of the ordinary. No one else has died this month. So far.
What's with the doom and gloom..fingers finding hollow solace in booze and ears demanding the Ipod to replay More Elliot Smith! More Swans! More Sad Shit!
I don't know. I am fucking worthless as far as the social interaction goes, though. Fuck. I need the South. I need collard greens. Waffle House. Kudzu.
I just want to leave.
I want to burn all my bridges and throw my dishes..because I'm always making wishes
on
two stars eclipsed by too much sky..
If I had an epitaph it would read: "eh...fuck it."

Mountain Moving Day

2006-10-19T19:21:00.000-07:00

The mountain moving day is coming
I say so yet others doubt it
Only a while the mountain sleeps
In the past all mountains moved in fire
Yet you may not believe it
O man this alone believe
All sleeping women now awake and move

by Yosano Akiko1913

There are days when I forget. There I am, walking along...thinking about a book or worrying about bills or wondering how the hell I'm going to get some pirated music software working...
then:
Someone refers to a girl as a slut, some car slows down and men hang out of windows, a man can barely contain his anger at me in a bar because I tell him to leave my friends and I alone and I realize that if we were not in a crowded place I would be forced to fight him for my life, I see a movie where yet again a woman character is raped/molested/beaten/etc where we the audience understand that here is a depiction of something that happens all the time..every few minutes and oh isn't it terrible but here just turn off the TV and poof it is gone, I find out some guy that used to harrass me at work at my old job apparently fabricated some story where he slept with me, men who turned into monsters still fucking call and leave creepy messages, feminist issues come up and of course..as if I popped out of the womb with a vagina and thus an encyclopedic knowledge of all things woman-related I have to make cases and debate shit when fuck man, I just really want to drink this beer and talk about punk rock of the 70's.
There are times when I feel like guns are the answer.
There are times when I don't give a fuck how you grew up, what your socio-economic backgound is or blah blah I mean HOLY FUCKING HELL this is 2006 FIGURE IT OUT. You should really read some books, asshole. I did. Scientists clone ears on the backs of lab mice but I still can't walk around at night by myself without apparently begging to end up dead in a dumpster? I don't want to deal with this shit anymore. I don't want to shoulder this ancient cause and I don't want this bloody scythe of anger I have to swing through the masses of ignorant fucks just to get to the god damn grocery store! This sexist shit should be over, that rascist shit should be over, fuck it..we should just be working on space travel and organic edible teddy bears at this point. In general, I know that social change takes its geological time and the steps I make today are for the shoes of tommorow. I know that difficult steps were made for my shoes of today. and yes, I want to return the favor. But I get impatient. so there are times when I forget to feel compassion for this bullshit and really I just want you to die. If you don't get this shit then just die, fucker, die.

put down the mirror and pick up the phone..

2006-10-12T19:06:00.000-07:00

( wrote this well over a year ago. )

I'm sorry.
I really wanted to be your girl.
and I tried..
to curl into your lap, let my head tilt back and rest
on your long, heavy arms.
Yes, heavy can mean strong but sometimes
heavy is just..heavy.
The weight would irritate and too soon I'd slip out of your well-intentioned grip,
We both knowing that a real girl
always wants to be held.

There were times when I thought
Yes
I can do this
Put me in Spring's yellow dress
I thought maybe my sharp-edged frame would flesh out and jiggle
there were times when I even managed to choke out a giggle
and tuck my fraudulent feelings into a glass slipper.

But the black
the Black
always came back
the hair dye and fishnets
band t-shirts and cigarettes ...my boots begging for a lacing
my black boots stretching for a stomp
I'd pull them back on and swagger around and
Poof
your Sweetheart was gone

gone to corridors that must be explored alone and guitars pregnant with the promise of a fuzzbox drone...for there are monsters to be made, Love.. and dirty deeds to be done (dirt cheap) I can't explain the sullen puddle of beer and jukebox metal I'm in when I turn off my phone.

Maybe it's the lack of dolls as a child
the chemistry set I got instead
the Freddy Krueger poster hung above my bed
where there should of been New Kids.

I'm sorry. I really wanted to be your Girl..
but these trappings of gender are a mystery to me.

But surely...
there is the seedling of a Mother in me
see the same gentle bend in the neck?
Pure Madonna.
My arms can hold a being like that..
you can see it in the way I pet a cat
and whenever I have the chance to make a child laugh
I feel like God.

But
the sound of keys jangling
quarters on the floor and whiskey on the desk
Eyes that stare off too often into a spattering of too many possible futures
The clench in my hand
The door slam..
Absolute Father.

* * *

We tear ourselves up sometimes when we look inside too much and there we are
in a hallway of mirrors..can't see anything but our own funhouse innards..
Where does it all come from? These archetypes looming over Mother Father Girl Boy Lover Independent Doormat etc..
The walls so tight its no wonder we turn away running screaming "that's not me! oh god, that's not me!" of course it isn't, dumbass..nobody fits in there at all
touch the statues and see they are wax. We get so obsessed trying to figure ourselves out that we forget to listen/see/breathe in the people we love and because we make them into strangers we paint them into enemies and then..suprise!
we are alone with our own repeating boring reflection.

"You, who never admitted a public grace
I, who timidly took and timidly gave
We of the half-dark who were unbrave"
-Sandra Cisneros

Open the door..

2006-09-25T20:52:00.000-07:00

Open the door I can't stay here anymore
Open the door...

Careful in the streets at night.
thinking you're wrong but you know you are right.
thinking you're wrong but you know,
you're allright.

Careful when you say goodbye.
careless lives or careless dies..
but careless isn't careful tries.

This is what I have
fragments of song lyrics.
I will write something tangible soon.

Why I so often refer to the metaphorical heart as a baby bird.

2006-09-21T15:20:00.000-07:00

I don't remember how my hands found the baby bird. Only that I followed its plaintive cries to the nest beneath the deck, and that such a desperate need could come out of such a new fragile being drove my 7-year old heart mad with mis-guided motherhood. The delicate pink of its terrified frame, the blind and bruised blue-berry eyes..made my child hands into two fat monstrosities destined for murder despite the sincere good intentions to turn against their own nature. I could not help but entertain the belief that I could be what it was crying out for, that I alone had heard and answered. A foolishness..born of awe, of a love and a madness too large and instant for my as-yet-developed common sense to quiet. I think that even then..somewhere I knew better.
Then the Adults stormed in.
What have you done?
This tiny life, this love..is not for you. You have stolen what you cannot possibly keep and now the Mother will not return.
Because of you.
I put it back into the nest with prayers..tears and promises to this Mother who could never understand me.
Wept all night..furled tight about my first dip into the fatality of selfish love.
At seven my destiny was determined:
Executioner.

She's gone.

2006-09-15T21:39:00.000-07:00

She's gone.
She is gone.
I spent two hours with her 6 days ago, hugged her good-bye and started crying because damn it..
I knew it would be the last time I saw her.
I am grateful for the chance I had to see her. I wish it had been longer.
All the things I never said
All the things I never did
all spilling into nothingness
I can't believe that this is it

Death is not like the piano. Practice does not make perfect.
It is always like this.
Grief happens like a paper grocery bag splitting in the rain
everything falling out
and there you are
actually crying over spilt milk
the cantaloupe on concrete
bleeding orange onto the street
looks like how your voice would sound
if you could open up your throat enough to say
Wait.
No.
I still have this Get Well card to send you.
Come back.

Seattle treats everyone like a drunk in bed...

2006-09-03T20:35:00.000-07:00

...washing dirty bums with rain like dishes on the floor.

Got off work, my spine started rejecting the world again, so I took a bunch of advil and went out anyway. Now I am at the office using the computer and trying to ignore the flashing bar signs across the street. Beer? NO! must resist! What the holy FUCK is wrong with me? I need to go home, eat, watch a movie and go to bed. Very difficult to resist the urge to go procrastinate at a bar. Feel shifty, irritable, want beer and cigarettes and loud old school punk rock and for some reason today of all days I am really bitter about being an adult. I mean, I just don't want to have to THINK about this shit anymore. Bills, job, creative endeavors, future plans.. I feel like all the shit I usually care about, am even proud of, is well..just a big drag. Fuck the world, what the hell do I care if President Bushy Bunny-Pants wants to shit all over everyone, what the fuck does it really matter how much socialist/anarchist/activist bullshit I or anyone else churns out? I just don't want to care anymore. I just want to get drunk, smoke like I'm having new lungs put in next week, listen to music that sounds like two undead cats fucking/killing each other, break stuff, limit my usually expansive vocabulary to Fuck/Shit/Hell/Macaroni, but above all... I want to go to a bar so that when some drunk drooly asshole wants to tell me my boots are "Soo, like, HOT", I will not say a word. I will simply reach wordlessly into my crotch..yank out my tampon and then throw it across the room and see if it sticks to the wall.
You know what I mean?
I just want to bleed all over the place..
because damn it...I just don't want to give a fuck
at all.

but, um..I think I''ll just go home and hang out with my cat...and maybe I'll take out the garbage.

Ma-Maw

2006-08-23T22:12:00.000-07:00

The way you said my name in the stretched out compound word way of the south. The way you mixed cereals together and talked with your mouth full. The way you hauled me off to sunday school and never saw the dark sullen clouds above me..the festering sin...no, I was always your sweet grand-daughter. The way I will always have a soft spot for ladies who have to take 100 pictures of the buffet or can't stop talking during a movie. The way you'd refer to your hammer-toe as "oohh..look at my poor little toe!" and the way you never threw any food out until it was dripping with mold. The way I've missed so many opportunities to see you these last few years.. the letters not written, calls not made.
and more.
this is killing me.
Dearest woman, please be okay.
Please keep your legs.
Please don't go.
not yet
not yet

"put on your spurs and swagger around..

2006-08-20T15:25:00.000-07:00

..in the
desperate
kingdom
of love."

So I fainted the other night and found myself on the floor of my bathroom with a purple bump on my face and thought :
shit. This is the sort of thing that drives people to churches.

This was all back pain, this was all mental strain and we dig demons out of old wounds winding ourselves too tight about worries too thin the days can get away from you when you start chasing.. put your own oxygen mask on first so that you can better assist others..
I so easily forget how the health slips when I am too busy worrying about the words on my lips hanging like a needle over a turntable
it is really just not all so dramatic.

It comes down to this...

2006-08-17T18:45:00.000-07:00

If the show is sold out. If I put my money on the wrong horse. If when I finally ask for help it isn't there. If I show up after everyone left. If she dies before she knows I'm sorry. If my music sucks. If I never quit smoking. If I quit smoking and find out that was the only cool thing about me. If my back never stops hurting. If I let myself cry and am not able to stop. If I'm not able to protect myself. If next time I am not so lucky. If I forget all my CPR training amidst the chaos of crushed cars and strange blood. If I forget to set my alarm. If I pick the mystery prize and end up winning absolutely nothing. If he was really the one but I was too afraid of the vulnerability that forgiveness exposes. If the Christians are actually right. If he never leaves the oval office. If she finds out I was never her real grand-daughter. If this poem is self-serving and steams of bullshit. If I give too much to the wrong person. If they were right all along. If there is something I could of done and didn't. If I never finish school. If I never finish school because I am too stupid to finish school. If I never finish the book, the painting, the movie, the cd. If I never see Greece. If the test results are positive. If I never get to be a mother. If I end up being a rotten mother. If the next time I see him I will be visiting him in prison. If the Atheists are actually right. If I die too soon and am buried beneath 6 feet of "potential." If I die.
The world will still spin
The sun will still shine
and someone, somewhere..
will be doing just fine.

Deigeh nisht

2006-08-14T20:46:00.000-07:00

oh madame, I do not know you but let me shlep your heavy parcels for you... for in hopes you will see my heart believes itself to be a klipeh ..
Dear old woman with babushka look upon me at your door with rachmones in your eyes..
lady pat my head and gently say
"deigeh nisht, child... deigeh nisht.."

2006-08-13T14:53:00.000-07:00

Don't Fuck With Love

yeah, this one is for you. This one is for all of us.

2006-08-13T14:47:00.000-07:00

TITLER

The tragedy of Julius Ceasar

2006-08-06T15:43:00.000-07:00

Ceasar has been under-dressed!
Oh, what a tragedy!
Arm yourselves with oil and lemons!
He's making obscene suggestions with fat hands full of angst
and anchovy!
The war is on with the King of Crouton..
and you, brutal Brutus...
pass the parmesan?

(guess what I had for lunch today)

The world was made from nothing..

2006-08-06T10:18:00.000-07:00

..sometimes the nothing shows through.

Spent a lovely weekend in Olympia. Friday hung out at a bar with two people I have not seen in years. Jen with her lovely artful eyes and tender, expressive face that scrunches up like a paper bag one second and then relaxes to such a stoic grace the next you can only smile at what a miracle she is, how in awe you are that she even exists. Eppy beat my ass at pinball but whatever, I'd give him a run for his money if I'd ever played Dirty Harry before, I mean he's logged like 8,000 hours on that one machine so I didn't have much of a chance in hell. So that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. Was a beautiful night of beer and meandering about a playground and talking to Eppy beneath the quiet sphere of Olympia's tiny sky and then of course..Shari's at 2am and the goddamned quiche...get quiche! get it to go!
Next day went on an incredible hike with the folks over at Mt Rainer. Fairy land trail with alien flowers straight out of Dr. Suess and patches of snow to slide about on and deliver well-deserved snowballs at my father as he and my mother debate who should be wearing the best hat. My silly, sweet, funny folks. I crack my father up with profane jokes about Jack in the Box and my mother feigns disgust but can't help laughing because she has the sort of sense of humor that could make a sailor blush.
Got off the bus in Seattle last night.. exhausted from my days with no sleep and so much sun and sore feet from hiking. Walking home get bugged by guys twice in a row...Fuck off, asshole I do not give a fuck if you think I'm pretty..I'm walking here guy, go to hell. Why is it that when I feel the most tired, the most heavy with thoughts that are as far from fucking as the east is from the west, when I really look the shittiest..eyes bleary, swollen and tired..face sunburnt and dry and broken out, back a helix of pain, feet blistered and begging for an epsom salt soak, pits swampy and pungent having sweated off the Tom's of Maine 8 hours ago...THAT is when the universe decides to send a flood of horny assholes my way who want to sidle up next to me and yap about stupid shit.. Grumpy and sullen I stumbled into the bar by my house intent on a double gin n' tonic and some journal time.. get into an almost fight with another guy who just didn't understand why I wouldn't want to quit what I was doing and listen to his vocal diarrhea. I guess he asked the bartender about me, bartender said I was a social worker (thanks bar guy) so Fuck-Head is all "hey, aren't you supposed to be nice..isn't that your job?" Yeah. that's it. I say "Look, I paid my 6 bucks for this drink and I'm going to sit here and do what I intended to do and what I intend to do does not include you at all. If you bother me again you will see that not only am I "not nice" but I am a murderer..or I will be once I stab you repeatedly in the face and stomache. Got it?" Fuck, I would have too. They would have hauled my ass off to jail I was so ready to decapitate this man. I will have eaten cereal out of his cracked and empty skull. All in all, he left quietly and I finished my drink with no further upsets.
What kind of person am I? What does it really mean that I am a social worker?
I am a good person, but not a nice person. For example, if you are choking I would be the first person to jump up and be willing to do whatever it takes to free your airway..puke on me if you must, so what? There will be other clothes. I would never go out of my way to hurt anyone, when I step on a bug I cringe with guilt. However, should you push expectations of politeness on me, shove yourself into my line of sight and tell me to smile..well, I will tell you to go get stabbed and then turn back to my book with a free and breezy conscience.
So have some respect, and take your fucking Fuck Glasses off when you look at me.
now stick that in your skull and shut your mouth.

In the dark there shadows everywhere..

2006-08-03T19:46:00.000-07:00

...eating our sleep.

Everywhere there are people. Stretching limbs, yawning, sulking into bowls of soup or cereal, ruminating over wine and the stink of a good cigarette, holding cold pistols in one hand as they stare off a roof and pledge themselves to some whisper of theology..every bullet says "now now now" and they are always bumping in and out of love, these people...people everywhere dragging novels behind them searching for the slip of comfort found in a blanket or cup of coffee and every little peiece is a bit of a larger thing, every little fish is a tyrant of the sea...they want to fill the void they want to fill the empty spaces..
I just want to be alone. Clean, pristine.. wash the sweat of humanity off of me good fucking god.
Atlanta swims in me, Wyoming pulls my teeth, old lovers howl from their cages, past sins pucker the skin, family shakes my tiny shoulders with their sorrows I can only voicelessly gape at the gore that suffering exacts, life pulls and breathes and grabs by the neck to stick in the back, the death the rotting death of loved ones always coming again to dig coffin nails into the heart of the living the sobbing living..they all come to me with their demands...

Love's Inquisition

2006-07-31T17:49:00.000-07:00

You are not pushing me, I do not see you as a Gestapo making demands and threatening me with medical instruments. I do, however, see myself that way.. and it cracks me up really, to see myself in an eyepatch badgering my own heart because really..that's just the way I operate these days. It is sad, I suppose..for gone are the days of open windows and spilling myself out all dizzy and young over the chest of some beloved. I don't know, maybe those days will come again. I hope so. When I speak of Love, I mean just that..Love in and of itself..and what it asks of me. The way I see it, when we fall in love it is no longer just two people but something new they have created together, some new entity that tugs and guides us and its ways are sometimes as mysterious as any acts of Providence. It stomps its foot, demands faith and vulnerability and all manner of frightening things to a still tender-hearted sullen girl such as myself. It is this entity that I speak to, not you. Look, I'm just a person and I have doubts that hang off my shoulders in crooked angles. I don't know if I can step up, I don't know how brave I can be in the face of it, certainly I am not as strong in the chest as I once was. I know I can't do it alone. Yes, it is true that I sometimes wonder if I can do it at all. Surely you can relate.

The optimist says the glass is half full.
The pessimist says the glass is half-full, but I have bowel cancer.

Love is an act of the will, according to Augustine.
Things count because we say so.

Heavy heads soaked in sorrow's eye brine...

2006-07-30T13:51:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know. I've been silent these last few days but I just have alot on my mind right now..most of it having to do with work, namely the community I have come to know and love through my work and there is a surge of panic and horror edging my heart...among other things like the fires burning through my family and then this pushing..shoving of Love's inquisition, holding me in a dank basement somewhere and questioning...questioning.... slapping me around, wearing an eyepatch... I am too full of this recent immediate tragedy to make much sense of the whole of it all. If you haven't seen this on the news, here's what happened:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003162640_investigation30m.html

Really, I am okay. I am just quiet. I did, however..see the Dresden Dolls play at an unexpectedly intimate venue on Friday and it was an extraordinary show and really the best show I've seen in a long long time. So, that was pretty fucking great.
See? Not all doom and gloom...no, sir..not me..

How fabulous! How extraordinary! I am just tickled fucking pink!

2006-07-13T20:39:00.000-07:00

Looks like I'm sick. Hooray! How the hell did this happen? Came out of nowhere..I haven't been sick much at all this year...now here it is..July..and I'm at work and feeling like falling onto the floor to sleep and every inch of me has that dry hot fever ache feeling and the trek home seems like miles barefoot through Antarctica. It is really that daunting, I feel so shitty. Maybe I should call a cab. I wish this wasn't happening the day before I'm off for two days...if it were earlier in the week then at least I could of just missed some work..and that I certainly would not mind. Damn. All my weekend plans pretty much in the toilet.
Oh, pop my head open like a pez dispenser..suck on my brain tablet and get my disease..
because
well..fuck,
you deserve it too.
I hate all you healthy people right now. seething with envy..
go get stabbed.

My niece exacts her revenge with a Foxy Brown pistol-whip

2006-07-09T15:27:00.000-07:00

My nephew decides to re-enact a traumatic event in the life of WIlliam S. Burroughs

2006-07-09T15:25:00.000-07:00

My father, the super hero...or is it diabolical villian?

2006-07-09T14:36:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I pull out a really old journal, and carry it around and read it like a book. I wrote this over a decade ago..it's about Ma Grover.

2006-07-06T19:26:00.000-07:00

It's 1986.
the music is cued...
It's Micheal Jackson's Thriller.
Keisha's in the corner..waiting..trying to hide her teeth as she giggles but I can't see her anyway because I'm laying on the floor- arms crossed over my chest-eyelids pulled down in my best rest-in-peace expression and we are both waiting for Vincent Price to start in.
When he does I rise up from my shag carpet grave with arms out rigor mortis..eyes wide and searching for munchable mortals and as the voice of Vincent and I become one I am getting louder "...The funk of forty thousand years!..and grisly ghouls from every tomb.."
Oh shit.
Here comes Ma from the living room...and the real terror begins.
It's Ma Grover, Keisha's grandmother..my default sitter
Sh's got a grey puff of hair stuck atop her head like a Brillo pad
Two thin Avon-scribbled lips pulled down to a permanent frown like a caught catfish with two hooks in both corners of the gasping mouth
She's got a
Big
Fat
Ass
usually planted in front of some televised evangelist as she slurps eternal tomato soup out of geriatric tupperware
If she's not chasing Keisha around with that same ancient bottle of baby oil trying to rub out some sort of imaginary ashy spot or tugging at Keisha's head with that boar-bristle brush as I look on in empathy-
thankfully exempt from this salon by Ma's fear of the lice that can hide in a slip of white-girl hair.
Ma's always making a big fuss over hiding Keisha's Ugly
but it is a lie
the child gleams
and you can't kick dirt over that kind of lovely
In my 8-year old head still stuffed with fairy tales I see a Cinderella story
and I am the Beast who knows Beauty when I see it.
We had little in common
save the same sad hole of a neighborhood and the same brand of parents who needed us out of their way...but
hoped we were okay
My parents young punks in a band
Keisha's Oh Father Who Art in Prison and an overworked mother whose soft sweet voice opened out of her throat like a yawn..like she had always just woken up.
I didn't have to be there.
I could of hung out at the Schaffer's- smoked stolen Kools on the steps of the burned-out church across the street...run rampant all the soggy summer day..barefoot and deliciously delinquent.
But Keisha was good..and hadn't learned yet that defiance was a poor kid's best line of defense..and I thought she needed me...and I so needed to be needed. So under a dogwood tree I held her hand, named her Best Friend and swore that I'd never ever leave her.
We did allright most of the time, staying outside till the folks arrived..we'd pee in the bushes to avoid Ma.
Occasionally she'd storm out at us, screen door banging..to shake a stick at us, make us cut a switch, teach us a lesson, make us behave..
One day Ma Grover heard me say the "F" word. When she was done with me I winced the whole way home, couldn't ask Mom where the band-aids were so I patched the backs of my legs up with tolet paper and scotch tape. The worst cuts were made by that slip of metal that had edged the ruler she'd broken over my bent bony frame.
I went back the next week, and I never let her see me cry.

It's 2 am, Ma.
and for 120 minutes, I've been seventeen.
And I am Everything...
every shitty thing you ever said I'd be.
You are probably dead by now, but I wouldn't know.
I left Keisha behind a long long time ago.
Of course I did.
Of course I did.
Oh Ma...I need you.
I need you to beat me so hard
that I'll never smoke, cut, snort, fuck, steal or run away again.
Old Lady, right now I am beggin to break
beneath your brand new ruler.

and on the topic of "girl getting bitter"...

2006-07-03T19:25:00.000-07:00

So, Miss Lady of the Pains and Aches...you said you'd be looking this blog up and so..as promised, here's something for you out of my very own journal, written not 2 months ago. Remind you of any conversations you've had lately? Maybe now that we are not at the bar and gripping PBR bottles with our teeth and then glugging them above our heads like water coolers you can hear this: Take heart, dear sardonic one..it comes and goes..mind the puddles.

Dear John-
It's not you, it's me.
It is Somebody who is not you
It is some body I have yet to know the breathe/curve/voice of and
there are NO NEW MESSAGES
though I do keep leaving messes
but if you'd quit tossing your heart at my feet like a banana peel then maybe I wouldn't step on it and then skid on it across the linoleum.
I don't have the why of this
you are a sight for
psoriasis
every time you darken my door.
Did my kisses taste like metal when you propped me on this plaster pedestal?
Witches always melt in the rain.
Pull my waxed chest apple out of its ribcage prison..have a bite and find a maggot at its core.
It's not you, it's me.
I just need to find myself.
I just need to find myself with somebody else.
But my tedious pet,
don't
fret.
For your munchkinland can sing
"Ding Dong, the Witch will wait long..."
For there are no new messages
there are no new messages for her either.

The Impotence of Coexistence

2006-06-26T20:01:00.000-07:00

So I wrote this little poem many many years ago, with MD in mind...which means, damn, 8 years ago? It resurfaced awhile ago as a possible song then ended up on the back burner again...songs seem to have a way of floating around my head..sometimes for an hour, sometimes for years before being ready to be born.
The words just so happen to fit right into a song, and now I think I've about got it down. I kept trying too hard with it and finally I had to let it ride into the simple structure of barre chords and just a few bending string tricks over the fuzz-boxed betweens. It turned out rather old Cure-ish but fuck it. I like it, it fits, and I'm sticking to it.

Love is an open shirt
Love is the sour moon
Love are the cigarettes that leave you..
gasping in a sterile room
(wretched love)

Oh I'm in Love
In love with you...this
nail in the foot
this fleshy sex glue
this wrinkling sun
this rat in the stew..

This fading dandelion you gave me in June
a dead clump of petals I still cling to

and it's sad and it's sad and it's sad
oh it's sad

that our love is a wound
that our love is a wound

that I salt again and again
just to feel you

(instrumental dribble here)

This is the impotence of coexistence
the impotence of coexistence
the impotence of coexistence
I'm done.

Tell me what song runs between my ears...and I'll give you a baby bird

2006-06-25T12:42:00.000-07:00

It is not the fact
that you remembered my birthday...
or that you remembered every curve of me.
This dress fits me perfectly
never have my eyesmouthskinhairtoescollarbonehands
looked more lovely
than when I put on this dress
this smile
this laugh
and stepped lightly into the swallowing yellow of an angel's sun
swinging a bag of books at my side like a twelve-year old version of myself
and whistling
forgetting that I can't whistle.
It is the fact
that nothing can tug a frown out of a girl
in a dress such as this
because she is loved
and she is missed.

thank you.

If another fucking ignorant human hole

2006-06-14T23:06:00.000-07:00

comes up to me, IN FRONT OF ONE OF MY CLIENTS and begins to humiliate both the client and I by loudly going on and on about what a GOOD person I must be to be doing such GOOD work and "OH! What PATIENCE you must have! I could NEVER do that!" And looks gooey-eyed down at my client as if he/she is some kind of fucking Jerry's Kid and I am some angel of charity...
I swear you yuppie christian assholes I will stab you in the eye, I will kick you in the spleen, I will steal your SUV and have a crack/meth/hooker/priest/necro party in it, I will piss on your toothbrush ....
My client may have a disability, maybe mental retardation but He/She is NOT some drooling "Retard"... they can hear you, they can uderstand you, they can feel rotten and embarassed to be singled out as someone who only a SAINT could possibly work with.
FUCK! Have some god-damned respect, shithead.

2006-06-12T19:59:00.000-07:00

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - (Are You) The One

as usual...Nick says it best.

Click here. Look at this. Right now. Yes, I'm talking to you.

2006-06-08T19:51:00.000-07:00

this site is so addictive. It's a beautiful idea, and often I see one of these that actually stop my heart for a moment.

2006-06-08T14:40:00.000-07:00

spread the word

A lovely synopsis of the current seattle slam scene, filmed by Melissa T. I only just found out about this yesterday, which is weird because I'm in it. I think it's really well done, especially the new-poem construction out of the bits of spits.

2006-06-05T20:29:00.000-07:00

I'm onto you.

Powered by Castpost

2006-06-05T19:15:00.000-07:00

george washington

if this doesn't make you laugh than we are not friends.

a spatter of blood on the snowy sugared bank of a wedding cake

2006-05-31T21:53:00.000-07:00

I would like to take a photo of that. The wedding party in the background with blurred, horrified faces. heh. that would be cool.

Well..

My best friend used to be a unicorn
but I took away her golden horn
because all I used to say was:
"Move, I think you're in my way".

I am tired of being an asshole. What the fuck happened to me? These days my eyes just can't stop rolling in the rudest way. People are like cardboard cut-outs. The other night I ran into a friend at a bar and was so happy to see her there, to be able to escape the company I was currently keeping and talk to her instead, I felt like I was STARVING for authentic interesting coversation.
Maybe it's the birthday coming up. Maybe it's the fact that I've been walking the highwire of my mind coated in vaseline... and sleep hardly hands me a veiled wink these days. Eyes are pickled in a brine of bitch and whine... it would seem I am in a "Funk" but without all the fun of george clinton and brightly colored dreadlocks.

Art may imitate life, but life imitates T.V.
I need a smidgeon of religion in my laugh track.
This is SITcom
we are always ON
and look life-like as long
as you have earplugs and cataracts

Oh well. I'm about to take my hissing cynic self out into the dishwater night to get so drunk I will piss under streetlight.
(that sentence looks fun to say, eh?)

Varekai

2006-05-25T19:56:00.000-07:00

Here's another reason why my job is pretty fucking great...
I just got back from seeing Cirque de Soleil tonight, with one of my favorite clients, J. We had such a great time! There were points where it was so beautiful, so amazing, and where I was so happy I felt like crying. It was really special to see J have such a wonderful time, and with all the mental torment of her illness she goes through she really deserves it. Alot of my co-workers thought that J wouldn't be able to handle it, but she was perfectly lovely and there were hardly any delusions or outbursts at all. We just had so much fun, that even though I luckily got to go for free I promised myself that I would go the next time I get a chance and even shell out the dough for it because it really is worth it. Our seats were great, close enough to drool over the most perfect male bodies you have ever seen... Emily, remember when we went in Orlando? I swear, this one was even better. You need to go.
Allright, I know I'm gushing and I sound like a soccer-mom who just got back from seeing Lord of the Dance but hey: Fuck You. My face is sore from smiling so much and if that means I'm a dork than well, it wouldn't be the first time...and I'm sure it won't be the last.

2006-05-22T23:47:00.000-07:00

2006-05-22T21:00:00.000-07:00

My Aunt, the Spinster

2006-05-20T13:48:00.000-07:00

She says all the good ones
are either married, paralyzed, or gay.
So she turns off the red lantern, uses her high heels as garden tools
and fits the negligee to the neighbor's lawn gnomes.
The KY she keeps
for the occasional rusty bolt.

She walks out of the battle with Gravity
Lets it claim the prize of her body
She drops the bloodied weapons of spandex and underwire
and stretches for comfort, not calistenics

The days once filled to the gills with a pushing lonely Empty
now open their arms and say:
"We've been waiting for you!
Have books, have tea, have an account with Netflix..
This ragamuffin cat?
Name him Prince.
No more frog-kissing days for you, lady."

The grocery stores and the art stores
no longer assume a Mrs. prefix
Her position is obvious
Maybe it's the earth-tone cotton clothes that swaddle her curves
in a soft breath of lavender,
or the bits of pulled weeds still clinging to her heavy graying braids.
Or perhaps clerks just learn from experience
that no married woman makes dinner
of artichokes, irish butter and a bottle of Ravenswood zinfindel.
Nor would she have the time to wait
for oil paints to dry.
Maybe they imagine a rainbow sticker on the bumber of her Suburu.

When she takes me to the cafe where they've hung her paintings
and I spill out my dreadfully dire love woes
She merely shrugs her shoulders,
grins wider than a catholic womb,
and with a chuckling mouth full of buttered muffin says:
"Honey, even with all the mayonaise in the world you can't make chicken salad
out of chicken shit."

My Aunt- My big round beautiful moon-
You float into family functions
face loaded with laughter
arms loaded with chocolate and home-grown flowers
And all the nieces and nephews crowd about you like presents
around a christmas tree.

And the kitchen-weary Mother and Sisters
who huddle in worry
wringing their potato-peeled hands
every year
whisper:
"Poor dear. I just can't BEAR to think of her
out there
all alone."

Chalk it all up to a bad bout of PMS again..

2006-05-09T17:36:00.000-07:00

Well, yesterday I was all moody melancholy and bursting with poems. Today I feel fine, feel like playing in sprinklers and throwing water balloons at neighbors. It never ceases to amaze me, how much the body has to do with the mind. I'm sure that stuff is there but it is really not taking up much space. Could it really of been just hormones? I think about my mood yesterday and feel sheepish, like um well..
what can I say? Nevermind, better now, thanks?
Lovely man, thanks for the beer, the food, the cheering me up last night. You really are obnoxiously persistent, maybe sometimes that's good for me.

Love is..

2006-05-08T19:48:00.000-07:00

...plunging yourself into darkness toward a place that may exist.

You are here, somewhere. I heard your ghost strangling its howl into an anxious tension knot at the base of your dead throat. The sound of breaking fingertips, as you ran your empty hands along the walls of this city. You are gone. This city is mine now.

Oh, heart..baby bird in an iron box...let me go
let me be weak..let me sleep..and dream of sheep.

A strong woman is a woman who is straining
A strong woman is a woman at work, cleaning out the cesspool of the ages, and while she shovels, she talks about how she doesn't mind crying, it opens up the ducts of the eyes, and throwing up gives her killer abs, and she goes on shoveling with tears in her throat.

These days spent luxuriating in the palace of my studio, having discussions about booksemptinesslovedeathartdreamspoliticsetc.. with people at cafesbarsparks.. Summer coming. Silent sunlight spills over shoulders and legs. I watch the limbs of strangers peep out of tank tops..blind and pink as baby rats. I am happy, I am touched by my own sorrow. I wish I didn't forget so easily the way you smile. I wish I had that. Your letters are soaking in a dump somewhere, filled with words that always seemed like a fist reaching out to make me pay.

A strong woman is a woman determined to do something others are determined not to be done. She is pushing up on the bottom of a lead coffin. She is trying to to raise a manhole cover with her head, she is trying to butt her way through a steel wall. Her head hurts. People waiting for the hole to be made say: hurry, you're so strong.

My heart is locked within my head now. Everything the life of the mind. I am selfish with my time. So much work to be done, so much work to be done , I feel I could run forever and collapse on another planet. I miss who I was when I loved you, I miss how much I wanted to share, to show you.. but how did I starve myself for so long? Sometimes I feel like I've escaped the thrall of a vampire.

A strong woman is a woman making herself strong every morning while her teeth loosen and her back throbs. A strong woman is a mass of scar tissue that aches when it rains and wounds that bleed again when you bump them and memories that get up in the night and pace in boots to and fro. A strong woman is a woman who craves love like oxygen or she turns blue choking. A strong woman is strong in words, in action, in connection, in feeling. She is not strong as a stone but as a wolf killing for her young. Stregnth is not in her, but she enacts it as how wind fills a sail.
What comforts her is others loving her equally for the stregnth and for the weakness from which it issues..like lightning from a cloud.

It is good to be beautiful, to be funny, to be charming, to look good on paper here's someone who I can take home to mother (given that the mother is reasonably fashionably modern and liberal maybe she wears earth tones and a small quartz crystal around her neck those women love me). But like any lost continent, I revel in my mystery yet still long to be discovered. No one pulls the covers off, asks the questions that are dipped in compassion, draped in a hope of understanding, no oceans just the same shallow tin of rainwater. All but one. but that was a long time ago and maybe youth had too much a hand in that. I used to be a giver, but I think this scab is sticking around longer than I thought was necessary.

If I saw a unicorn today, I wouldn't be suprised..

2006-04-21T13:41:00.000-07:00

To all my lovely friends and family that have watched me writhe in a pit of stroke-inducing stress these last few weeks...I got the apartment!
I got the damn apartment!
Hooray! I feel about 800 lbs lighter.
Thanks for listening to me bitch about it, folks. Hopefully you won't have to hear about anything else for quite some time. Maybe I'll finally be able to listen to your problems for awhile.

This is what I don't want to have to say..

2006-04-13T18:35:00.000-07:00

No No No. This is not what I meant. It was a weak moment, and I was feeling guilty. It was the red wine, the music, the photobooth strip of us that I happened upon while cleaning my room. I meant only what I said: That I am sorry. That I never wanted to hurt you. That I know how it sucks, that I'm not some asshole blowing you off, I've been hurt like everyone else and it kills me to be the one to do that to you. I thought enough time had passed for me to say this. I only called because I knew I wouldn't have to talk to you, that I could just leave a message. I really did/do think you are wonderful. But you never did really listen to me, because I never told you I shared your feelings, I was always honest and when you kept running off with it and ignoring my protests I had to do what I thought was right. Because you weren't going to protect yourself. Why do you do this? You are a great artist, you have alot going for you, where is your dignity? I gave it a shot, we tried, but it just wasn't right for me. I wasn't ready for it, I had just gotten out of a relationship. But even now that all that is long gone and healed over I still do not want to be with you romantically. I am seeing someone else. I don't know why it can't be you but it just can't. I would have liked to have you in my life, I do miss you very much but I don't think you are able to be my friend. Good god, do not start stalking me, do not make me have some confrontation with you, quit calling me all the time, please pick up your pieces and move on. I am in the middle of trying to move, I am working all the time, I have a million stresses pouring over my head please I beg you let me alone I do not need this I do not want this I do not have this coming. I don't want to be this asshole, I do not want to threaten you and push back but I will if I have to and if you continue this shit you will see how very unkind I can be.

Julie's Poem

2006-04-06T16:27:00.000-07:00

If you had given me a chance
I'd like to think I could of said all the right things.
Things like:

Honey
Let me hold your heart awhile
because I know that it's heavy.
I know...
How time swings like an axe
Brain breaks like an egg
When love leaves a smear of sorrow in the bed
But dreams of vows interrupt the Here and Now
Say never to forever and ask yourself how
you're gonna put YOUR story back together...a house of cards to withstand the stormy weather
of a future inevitable..thus, forgettable...so throw out the regrettable, take a picture of what's
livable
and hang it on the wall.
Now look at it.
Are you in it?
Damn, Julie, that's the most important ingredient
wish you could take a Magic Marker and draw yourself in but..
Magic never worked for me either.
So
Maybe you fucked up.
So what?
Mistakes are tough but chalk it up to a lesson and drop the lowest grade
What's your average?
There are monsters in this world, sure-
Lost causes wearing their souls inside out
Hearts so sick they can only whimper in the dark..begging for a mercy shot
But you...
I know you.
You were the first infant I ever held
A shiny pink thing too heavy for my 7 year old arms
Your girl-wicked laugh
whenever you beat my ass at badminton
You shy sweet delinquent sucking down stolen beers behind Granmother's house
Oh Julie.
There's not a goddamned thing you could ever do to make me quit believing that
YOU belong HERE.
Don't go.
Don't you go...and drive that car to a Lowe's hardware parking lot
where the fuck did you get that gun, anyway?
Don't you leave that note
a text so empty of explanation just-
Take care of my dogs.
Take care of my kid.

Don't go
Because at 19 you haven't given life a chance to give back
For Providence to reach down and snap you back up by your bra-strap
and believe me, it can.

Wait.
Wait.
It's almost Christmas.

Maybe sometimes the stregnth to live isn't something that can be earned-
it's something that is given.
Maybe it's wrapped up and waiting for you
under that tree.
And tomorrow you can open it.

so stick around tonight.

It just might be worth it.

There are works of art beneath my nails...

2006-04-01T15:31:00.000-08:00

Everywhere, everywhere, art ART!
The show went well, hand-rolled sushi, I played the fuck out of strange instruments... and everything was well in the world.
Read that poem for Julie at the slam, very difficult, emotional...but felt right to share it.
Starting pre-production for the film this summer, (again) have some definite help with the budget, the lead actor I originally wrote the script for will actually be here to do it, hooray!
Recording the songs with Greg, getting free pirated music software that I could normally never afford...
Ta-Da! Here lies the big SECRET...how do I keep forgetting? All that it takes to make me happy waits in the creating. Actions done for the simple sake of breathing, seeing, feeling, laughing...
All the money demons with their wet claws, the tired body, the burning lungs, the boys with their pushing and pulling, every worry slips off me like a dress when I am living inside my hands my words my music my pictures my art your art that guy's art her lovely dripping art.

I will find a new place..today I am looking..done with the fretting...I'll do all I can and it's all I can do. Today the sun is out and I am meandering..I had coffee and brunch with the sweet miss Bradien and now I am out hunting for my new place. Very exited about it, thinking about how it will look, what I will cook, where will the little Uba cat sleep?
It's all in the direction, the horizon, where to turn your feet and say go.
(so jump the fuck outta my way, bitches)

Yeah, I'm broke..but I'm trying not to add an "n" to the end of that financial description..

2006-03-23T18:21:00.000-08:00

Be careful what you ask for...
So I asked for more hours at work and boy, I sure got them..in abundance (in the buttocks) and though I need to work alot for this big move from current hellhole to a new little hellhole all my own...fuck. I am tired. Hard to keep all my bitches in a box these days. Things spilling out, I'm forgetting plans I make, people I'm supposed to call, I was late to work today because I got the time wrong, etc. I agreed to play music for a performance art thing at my friend's art gallery opening on Saturday, and though I feel like I should be exited about it, all I really feel like is:
"Ugh. Another obligation"
How the hell am I going to find time for all this? I am playing a show and I haven't even picked up my concertina in months, guess I'll just show up and wing it.
Met someone new, he's really great but I'm so tired these days I just want to cancel plans and go home to sleep and bathe and eat and do laundry and read and lots of other good wholesome boring fun. How did I ever have time for relationships before?
Waited forever for Greg to be ready to start recording our cd, and now that he's finally ready I'M the one who can't get her shit together to do it.
Yes, I'm bitching...yes, I know there are starving people in China...fuck off.

To be Southern is to be Masochist..

2006-03-15T20:30:00.000-08:00

We chase maggots through the wet tunnels of every heart wound.
We wear our sins strung across the chest...
blood on the pearls.
Hang pills from the earlobes.
Circle the wrists with ribbons of tears.
Crunch feet into broken glass slippers.
Every sucking sweet pain...
a public jewelry.

Oh, why am I here putting poems on this fucking thing? Still at the office..all my work is done. There is a party waiting...friends, drinks, jokes.....
Time to put on a pretty face and float out the door on a magic carpet of cool.

Roe vs. Wade/South Dakota

2006-03-06T19:42:00.000-08:00

...that mantra, that prayer, that security blanket of all free women...is being unraveled and I am tired of pretending that the disintegration of the rights of others is not a valid threat to my own rights...I am tired of ignoring the fact that I am terrified.

"where does the bank president drink his martini? Where do those who squeeze the juice from the land till it blows red dust in your eye hang out on a Saturday night?
It is easy to kick my dog, my child, my lover, the woman across the desk. People burning their lives away for pennies pile up in neighborhoods like rusting car bodies.
Why not stroll to the corner yacht club and invite the chairman of the board to settle it with his fists?"
-Marge Piercy

Silent Sunlight...welcome in..

2006-03-04T14:16:00.000-08:00

Beautiful Day expands its lungs
breathes you back into sunlight
tucks you beneath one matronly paw
licks you clean as a kitten.

Where Dark Day nudged your nose to a corner
made you write 100 times on a blackboard
then sent you to bed with no dessert

This Day dabs your tear-crusted eyes
with a spit-soaked Kleenex
lets a kiss touch your furrowed brow

and says:

"Hush, now.
Go outside and play."

(it is too nice a day for me to not make poems about it)

Lucy, If you really want to send these off to Grandma..

2006-03-04T14:04:00.000-08:00

..I suppose that's fine. I don't know. It seems dumb to me..."Happy Birthday! Here's some pictures of ME!! Hooray!" I'm glad you like them, and you are very sweet but I really don't look like that in real life..I have a very pronounced hunchback that is being cleverly disguised...oh, and my festering boils have been edited out due to the computer-saavy Dara. It would give her a false image of me...I really want her to love me the way I am..boils, hunchback, foot-rot and all. Speaking of PICTURES...I still want some of that show that Jess's band was in. Sooo...you give a little, get a little....got it?

Oh, and I like these too...especially with Uba

2006-03-02T19:57:00.000-08:00

For the Fam...more of the stuff I did for Dara

2006-03-02T19:35:00.000-08:00

"a sock burns in the toilet...

2006-02-22T18:51:00.000-08:00

...to honor the infant amputee"

I am back in town fuckers. Evil beware! I am kicking ass and taking names. AH, vacations. Sweet rejuvenation. The sunlight in Santa Barbara was everywhere..comes up out of the ground. Like a sunny day in Angel-Land. I came back, found a fat dead rat in my room that my heroic cat killed. My cat really amazes me. How can such a little, scruffy ruffian with her demure little yowls and yelps who just lays about all day licking her crotch and dreaming of all the breakable objects she could knock over if she weren't too lazy to get up...How did my little aging cat tackle a monstrous rat over half her size? I feel like all the foggy turbulence was embodied in that putrid dead thing and now Uba has freed me, inspired me...Time to do some slaying of my own. I spent two days cleaning the holy FUCK out of my house...it is like a new place. Regardless of me leaving for a new place I still want my current home to be clean as possible. All kinds of shit up in the air...my motivation is scattered for all the possibilities. Music coming together, mind throwing alot of unnecessary stuff out, new jobs new goals new new new... Ever had a nasty wound that grew an ugly scab? You left it there, wondering when the hell in would go away. One day you scratch at it, it falls off...you expect a red raw weepy spot but realize..Hey! It healed a long time ago! I should of pulled that thing off sooner!
Heh. I like it when that happens.

A little poem about insomnia that I wrote on the lawn of the Santa Barbara Mission:

I want to listen to the nuns sleep.
I want to curl up at the foot of their modest cots and
be lulled by each easy breath that seeps out at a steady sigh
I know it will sound heavy-
like a tree
or world peace.
I am sure the nuns
never wrestle with covers
or flip the pillow over and over in a futile search for
the cool side.
Behind the closed lids of each nun slides dreams of
soups that could feed everyone
or the perfect bend in the brow of some favorite saint.
I want that holy pool of moon in the middle of the nun's room.
I want to unfurl myself there
and sleep
and sleep
and sleep.

At the end of the day...what can you say?

2006-02-06T20:40:00.000-08:00

I am leaving town soon. Hip hip fucking hooray. I don't think I've ever needed a vacation so bad. My heart wounds are itching beneath torn, careless bandages strapped on in the hurry of battle. I think there's an infection.

Ghost Boy, it was nice to see you..but I need you to fade back into the mist for awhile...I need to reshelve these soul-aches, I think I cracked the spine of this book too soon. Fuck, I don't know. Maybe I just need some sun and family and great food. Oh, and my friend to call me up and say: "Hey Saren! It was a big joke! I'm not dead, dummy!" Yeah, that would be nice too.

I used to be a Superhero
nothing could hurt me
not even myself
But you were like a phone booth
that I somehow stumbled into
Now look at me
I am just like everybody else.
I am
just like everybody
else.

LIE and CHEAT.

2006-02-05T14:59:00.000-08:00

Some words from Crimethinc. :

The will to a system is the will to a lie.
Today it is impossible to avoid hypocrisy in any struggle against the status quo.
The political and economic structures are constructed so that it is practically impossible to avoid being implicated in their workings. Today, whatever a man thinks of the employment opportunities available to him or of our economic system itself, he has almost no choice except to work if he does not want to starve to death or die of an illness for which he could not afford health care. If he does not believe in material property, he still has no choice but to buy all the food and clothing he needs and to buy or rent living space (that is, if he is not ready to live at odds with our very effective legal system)—for there is no free land left that has not been claimed by someone, almost no food or other resources anywhere that are not someone's "property." If a woman wants to distribute material criticizing the capitalist system of production and consumption, she still has no way to produce and distribute this material without paying to produce it, and selling it to consumers—or at least selling advertising, which encourages people to be consumers—to finance production. If a woman does not want to finance the brutal torture and slaughter of animals in the name of capitalism, she can stop eating meat and dairy products, purchasing health products which are tested on animals, and wearing leather and fur; but there are still animal products in the films in her camera and the movies she watches, in the vinyl records she listens to, and in countless other products which she will be hard-pressed to do without in modern society. Besides, the companies she buys her vegetables from are most likely connected to the companies who make meat and dairy products, so her money goes to the same ends; and these vegetables themselves were probably picked by migrant workers or other oppressed labor.
And at the same time, modern Western culture is so deeply ingrained in our minds, indoctrinated with it as we are from an early age, that it is practically impossible to avoid being influenced in our actions by the very assumptions and values which we are struggling against. After a lifetime of being taught to place a financial value on the hours of our lives, it is hard to stop feeling like one must be rewarded materially for an activity for it to be worthwhile. After a lifetime of being taught to respect hierarchies of authority, it is very difficult to suddenly interact with all human beings as equals. After a lifetime of being taught to associate happiness with passive spectatorship, it is hard to enjoy building furniture more than watching television. And of course there are ten thousand more subtle ways in which these values and assumptions manifest themselves in our thoughts and our actions.
It might well be true that the whole self can only be expressed in hypocrisy. Certainly a person needs to formulate a general set of guidelines regarding the decisions he will make, but to break occasionally from these guidelines will prevent stagnation and offer an opportunity to consider whether any of the guidelines need reevaluation. A person who is not afraid to be hypocritical from time to time is in a great deal less danger of selling out permanently one day, because he or she is able to taste the "forbidden fruit" without feeling forced to make a permanent choice. This person will be immune to the shame and eventual despair that will afflict the person who strives for perfect "innocence."
So be proud of yourself as you are, don't try to get the inconsistencies in your soul to match up in a false and forced manner or it will only come back to haunt you. Rather than holding inflexibly to a set system, let us dare to reject the idea that we must be faithful to any particular doctrine in our efforts to create a better life for ourselves. Let us not claim to be innocent, let us not claim to be pure or right! But let us proclaim proudly that we are hypocrites, that we will stop at nothing, not even hypocrisy, in our struggle to take control of our lives. In this age when it is impossible to avoid being a part of the system we strive against, only blatant hypocrisy is truly subversive—for it alone speaks the truth about our hearts, and it alone can show just how difficult it is to avoid living the modern life which has been prepared for us. And that alone is good reason to fight.

"Sometimes it's hard to tell the wishing from the well...

2006-02-01T20:00:00.000-08:00

...where you threw the penny and where it fell"

Pissy today. Even though work was good. If I were 11 and back on the playground I'd call this "Opposite Day", because such a contradictive existence begs for some sort of explanation declaration. The dead are too real..chattering into my ears incessantly..while I am in turn being haunted by those ghosts that are still apparently living. Leaving me voicemails. Confused spirits that sift through my memory for answers I do not have.
Today I thought I saw a glossy black raven perched in a twisty tree..turned out to just be a torn garbage bag. Why am I always seeing things wrong?

"I used to be the tight one..
a perfect fit.
Funny how those compliments
can make you feel so full of it.."

Last night I went to the slam..felt so apathetic..didn't feel like reading SHIT. Spent most of it talking to my friend in the bar. Deflated about words. Oh my precious fucking words...look at me..I have big important crap to say...
Like Lazarus, come from the dead
come back to tell you all
I shall tell you ALL..

"I used to be the bright one
..sharp as a tack.
Funny how skipping years ahead
has held me back."

Well..
2 boys make a party
3 boys make a war
4 boys make an opera
and 5 just make you sore
Each one is so different, yet you remain the same.
A lonely girl with memories, who's not too good with names.

I am so full of goddamn song lyrics I could explode..like a pulsing sci-fi egg sack..all my little witty spiders..my tiny minions..

" I can take a vow
and I can wear a ring
and I can make you promises..
but they
won't
mean
a
thing"

I want something tangible, a real conversation not laced with a testosterone agenda, I want to have someone that I can look straight in the eye and spill my secret plans.

Ah. let me alone you breathing, phone-dialing ghosts.
I'm laying with my comrades in the cemetary tonight.

Everything is good these days but...all of my friends are dying..

2006-01-22T13:57:00.000-08:00

Daisy may, and Lisa may but...nobody else really wants to stay.
nobody else really wants to stay.

So grief brings gifts of a bitter numbing...a way of pushing everything else out...Well I've looked this gifthorse in the mouth and only counted cavities. I've tried to find my tears hiding around the edges of things. Why can't I cry? This pressure is a blister..someone pop it, let it fester.. I've lost a phantom sister, I swear I used to know her but I look at these old snippets of celluloid and wonder.. I'm digging into pockets pulling change out to throw at the sky, saying "Fuck! How many quarters do you need to make enough change to change time..I will find it, just give her back, you know me, you know I can do it..." All the things I never said, all the things we never did... all spilling into nothingness I can't believe that this is it. My hands are full of crushed petals...fuck funerals! there ought to be a bomb let off, there ought to be murals..

Peanut, do you remember that tombstone we used to look at in the graveyard by the Marietta Square?

"A little one from us is gone, a voice we loved is stilled.
There is an Absence in our hearts which never can be filled"

-that goddamned thing keeps popping into my head over and over.

and this:

I choose not to remember
that I miss your arrogance
and I need your intelligence
and your hate for authority...

Goddamn the Sun.
Goddamn the Sun.
and Goddamn anyone
who says a kind word.

Oh little one...we hadn't seen each other for years. But at least I always knew you were out there..existing.

HA!

2006-01-09T20:12:00.000-08:00

Looks like Greg and I are finally going to start recording the cd!!! Hooray!

Woman, walk that plank as if it were your destiny...

2006-01-08T16:05:00.000-08:00

What an emotional weekend. Ran into an old friend who I had at one time banished from my life. We talked of that time, he apoligized for his hefty contributions to my hellish nightmare of a couple of months, he told me about his own hellish nightmares from then that may have influenced his actions. Made me think about how turbulent things were back then, what a slippery spiral staircase I was on... I felt like weeping, I felt so thankful that time was over. So much has happened these last few days.... An old co-worker of mine called me up, she needed me to help her get drunk, her heart had just been crushed beneath the boot of some brute. What the hell is going on with people lately? Several of my friends are having their little vulnerable chests cracked open by someone deciding to give them impromtu open-heart-surgery. She was so sad, so desperately sad, I was overwhelmed by it...touched by it...just wanted to transport her to three months from now where she'll be happy again. Again, I was filled with a blessed feeling that I have had time and space and healing from the last time I had my own heart-butchering. I looked at her face and felt a coldness in my eyes, I heard these words in my head:
"Hell no. I know that place. I will never go there again."
I will never go alot of dark places again. Fuck all that misery. Just because I CAN take it, doesn't mean I HAVE to.

The sidewalks are full of Love's lonely children...

This bird hates me...

2006-01-08T13:53:00.000-08:00

These are from the last shoot for Dara, but yesterday she had me do some new ones. Fun day, full of whipping cold wind, heavy beer-soaked conversations about creativity/love/family/dreams/destinations.

It is true...

2006-01-06T19:12:00.000-08:00

Yes, I miss you. Sometimes it sticks under the ribcage...a pain like a stitch in the side from running...I guess I have been running... so far now that I don't know how much longer I'll be visible to you. Sometimes I wish you'd catch up to me. Windows are closing. I miss you but when I look back you are getting smaller.
"You look like a photograph of yourself
taken from far, far away...."

Radioactive Lady Eyeball

2006-01-05T19:31:00.000-08:00

So one of my dearest old friends is having one of those abysmal times...where everything is falling apart and you feel like a pile of dirty dishes on the floor. So after our conversation today Mr. Borax, I still have a few things I forgot to say:

1. Think of how low you feel, then think about winning an assload of cash. If your spirits are instantly lifted, you'll be fine. "Eh, there's nothing wrong with her a hundred dollars won't fix"-tom waits

2. Get drunk all you want, but remember to eat. And get up in the morning. Do it!

3. Quit trying to be so fucking fair and nice. You no longer have to. That's one of the perks.

4. When someone says you are too good for them, they are usually right.

And finally...a little poem for you...

When you're spending too much time
spending money on people who are
spending you

When you are letting your sins hang around your neck
public as a trashy jewel

When those people have stopped coming around
because you've stopped being something fun to do

When you're drunk and dreaming of ex-lovers
putting guns to their heads in an empty room

Put down the mirror
pick up the keys
shake your wicked head and mutter this on your way out the door:

"shit, motherfuckers! I don't give a damn.
I don't give
a good
god
damn"

Take care there, friend. I'll catch you on the Bright Side when you find it.

pictures from that catalog-a-gog thing

2006-01-01T15:44:00.000-08:00

Yes, I know..what's up with the flower? Hey, shut up, I just took the drugs and did as I was told.

heart offers a small sigh and wears a tired half-smile tonight

2005-12-29T20:38:00.000-08:00

end of the day...what can I say but that I have this song in my head:

I do it for the joy it brings.
because I am a joyful girl.
because the world owes me
nothing
But we owe each other
the world.
I do it because it's the least I can do.
I do it because I learned it
from you.
I do it just because I
want to.
'cause I want to.

fun with booze and writing

2005-12-28T19:38:00.000-08:00

stream of conciousness shit.... can't make much sense of it. At the time though, I thought it was brilliant. oy gevalt.

Here come the pretty people watch them clip clop along concrete pathways speckled with spit and broken feathers. Watch wounds split open again over timid fires slipping out of hopefull mouths- Mouths too dry to float an idea in, but here try this martini olive. I'm watching a woman drink a tall glass of anxiety- she orders off the middle shelf, likes to look at herself, she's drinking Maker's Mark, she'd like to make her mark someday, maybe after a few drinks she'll do it. He's outside waiting for me, but I'm looking for the poem that runs so hard it just can't even breathe. I've never won a game of softball but you should see me in a Spelling Bee. Our eyes follow the same line but do you see what I see? Well, Boo Hoo Kermit, you think it's easy being mean? Tell that asshole he can muster all his hate, pile it on my plate and I'll only smile and say: "No thanks. I already ate" He's still out there waiting why doesn't he go away. Sure I seem all silk from underthings to eyebrows, but sometimes... it's like my heart ain't red and my pupils ain't black, it's more like the other way around. You've been pushing my buttons, but guess what? I drained it. You think you've got my number but I called Quest up and changed it. You wanted a Meg Ryan for this role but I have Jessica Lange-ed it. Listen, when I'm dead and gone you can come along and
piss on the coffin
they carry me off in
but honey, I won't be listening.

brain a whorl of swirling fish

2005-12-26T19:53:00.000-08:00

A new year coming up...crawling bloody up out of a ditch...it finally beat the big brute of 2005. Hooray! I say..."2005, hurry up and die". What a wretched year. What with the Tsunami and Katrina, it's a wonder we don't all fall out of our beds dream-fighting the pull of water that threatens to drown us and fill our mouths with disease. Many deaths among my friends and family this year. A few beatings. heartbreaks. illness..bodies that refuse to heal. I'm remembering what joy can be, a shine in the fog that only I can see, I'm sweating off this melted snow and looking for the future instead of the past in my tea leaves. I hope my beautiful family finds footing again. Maybe Rome wasn't built in a day, but Rome wasn't New Orleans. I'm smiling again, pulling up my sleeves, looking in the mirror and asking that well-meaning girl: "allright, you tired asshole, where the hell shall we start?"

Your emotional analysis gives me vocal paralysis

2005-12-19T19:37:00.000-08:00

Single again, yee haw. Now they come up out of every shadow, with the god damned movies and drinks and dinners, clamoring to set themselves on fire...walk the plank for me...celebrate my prettiness.... I don't mean to complain but c'mon, I need a breather in the lobby.
Men. Half of them want to be diapered, and the other half really ought to be.
Another one! What the hell am I to do with this? Too soon to be saying all this dripping beautiful stuff. I'm not going to run away, but this just isn't what I want right now. I'm still sporting the iodine-doused scratches from my last escape.
Fuck! I sound like such an asshole!
Things are just so good right now: music, volunteer job, fencing class, rediscovering what a splendid pack of friends I have, etc etc...
afraid of it getting fucked up.

I don't want to fade in you- I make my own scene
Lovers will just steal your clothes but I'm not one of them
Forgive me I just didn't want to run away with you
I don't want to take you home or shack you up with me
or make you Mrs Anyone or make you Mr Me
I'm just
into you like a train

Beautiful Boy, forgive me.
forgive me
forgive me

One for the Virgins

2005-12-15T20:37:00.000-08:00

( a little poem I wrote for the lovely Ms. T, who...well...is growing up)

So soon you'll find out that the rumours aren't true
The sky won't open up and bathe your newly awakened body in curves of satin or leather
But..at least... neither will you now have to swagger as if you just slid off the Eiffel Tower
And though there may be a small rusty smudge, there will be no spilling of intestines or riding out the door on a crimson river
And no stone-throwing, red-letter-wearing party will ensue-
Honey, no one can tell just by looking at you.

Some sex sticks
meaningless as a toaster, dense as peanut butter
though you may not mind it on the roof of your mouth
Sometimes see it swell out of hurt- like a blister
you'll want to pop the pressure
but beware of infections that may later fester
And once you are open for business, you're not open 24 hours
Sometimes you'll want to toss your contraceptive contraptions out the window
lock yourself tight at the knees
You may dream of nunneries

Sometimes you'll stumble into it
spin flip dizzy and not worry where you fall
Your back will bend into templed architecture
You will want to be consumed
For to be a lover in love you must be a phoenix
and you must burn to emerge
After times like this when you are still and spent
It will feel as natural as an ocean...
and as humbling...
and...as salty.

But there may
be Next Days
when you have the feeling of an abandoned sock- the sort that seems to have never really come from anywhere
Yes-there may be the sort of sex
that pulls a wince from your eye and makes you want to look away
But remember:
Keep your eyes on the road
You don't have to look back
Sometimes you're gonna need to leave the past where it's at.

I dyed my easter egg black, my saviour ain't coming back...

2005-12-12T19:46:00.000-08:00

...He ain't coming back at all.

Christ-Mas. Huh. Why do I hate Christians so much? I don't hate the religions of other folks, religions I also do not believe in. The reality of it, is that to be quite honest with myself, it is the white suburban ones I hate. I loved going to church growing up in Atlanta, but those church-goers were fun and didn't look like Old Navy commercials.
Is this me?
Am I a Hater?

"I'm not going to pay alot for this muffler"

2005-11-30T19:28:00.000-08:00

some fragment from a commercial long ago. Funny how the really important things stick with you. Must be some reason why this sentence has been running on a loop in my head all day. New philosophy. A way of saying You must change your life, you are never ready.
I will rally together the citizens of charred cities in some droopy convention center and force them to shout it with me:
I am
NOT
going to pay alot
for this
MUFFLER!

Thankyou. That will be 50 bucks and a handshake, please. Now go home.

Goodboy

2005-11-28T19:41:00.000-08:00

Goodboy turned out to not be so good. Now he is Freddy Krueger, and in dreams I face him like Nancy and say things like:
No.
You are not real.
I don't believe in you.

" well they come and they go-
or is it just the little things that I miss?
Like this one wiggled it that way...
that one wiggled it this..."

going out for beer, made a promise, have a headache, would rather be in bed-
no matter.
7:45 and all's well.

Winter tears the dresses off her trees...

2005-11-27T11:26:00.000-08:00

...and lets them burn bare, with a white fire.

Empty days fill my empty eyes with more and more empty. If I had a gas tank you could watch the needle sink. Rain and gray pull the corners of my eyes and mouth down, and everywhere I leave scarlet puddles of sorrow on the floor. These days are sucking at me, too long........ so tired, I need a year of sundays to help me cope with monday. Boo hoo. Just give me a few nights of rest and guitar and paint-splattered pants- days not leaving my house- days I don't have to even bother to put on underwear. Too much to do now, slipping up.
This week:
-a series of false fumblings
-lists dropping from pockets
-A frantic escape to Olympia to hide in an armpit of turkey and cozy family love
-met a puppy
-tried to offer my heart to someone who asked for it, but only pulled shards of porcelain out of the box. I always forget about the breaking...