in a bottle

if that exists, i want it to.
if it doesn't, i want it to.

when dragons need a warm fire

in an unfamiliar state that makes all too much sense this morning.
i think these are related to stress and timelines, but i am never quite certain.
looking at tables a bit too long, as if they would tell me where to sit and WHY.
there is a sense inside that the fate i continually refute has a relevance, if only for today...or this second.
i will go to the next floor, despite the open seats here. this seat is the only one i can sit in, so says my gut.
unknowns fashioned sharply by the wit of a strict date.
it trembles the mind of a handy left leaner.
what is off kilter loosens the folds of all these books, and what we mean by their pictures.
THEIR pictures.

t.b.d.

dear dear friend,

thoseareleavesblowingoutsidethewindowinthesunandihopetheymakeyouashappyastheymakeme!

um, yes please. i will commission Oliver and his ilk to read bedtime stories to my friends and i. people should be employed for such things. they truly should.

this is the most beautiful morning i have seen to date. it is nearly hot in temperature, the wind is so strong that it appears as if the world is moving in front and before of my feet. & it's one of those days when you need to remember something or someone who did or did not do something. like starting or stopping life, becoming something new within it, or relating it to someone else in some way that they/i/you really liked. i call them 'traditionally bad days', not because they are bad but because the first time i recognized one of these little internal-holidays it was a bad one.

it gives me the uneasy joy i find in trying to define things like wind. & this morning. defining things that are highly conceptual, and hardly containable by a single definition.

wind/vent/el viento/ве́тер

energy moving through gases. moving how? any kind of gases? should the way wind affects things like leaves, birds' feathers and torn antique tractor-seat-leather be part of the definition? i dunno.

not sure why i need to share these thoughts with you, but i am pretty sure that i do. cause you have ever so much time to read such things.

~g

peripheral, or right here

you know you live in that well nested space below me
why are you coming from down the street to go away today?
and it's a recurrence, as i now see your partner in the same way.
you both gaze my way, with the face a marathon runner gives to afternoon joggers the day after a 42.195 kilometer gallop.
and 'moving again' has less a nice ring to it today. away from you two.
you don't know what it meant to me that i was invited. that i attended. that you cared.
we maintain our perspective with a certain space, and i am letting go of it.
not with such intention, more acknowledgement of what happens and has taken place.
i can say i will remember all the folk music we shared, and the times i was still-single and you two on the morning-couch reminded me that that wasn't okay/so bad.
these narratives we share, you both edify eloquently
call me a function, but i like how these songs have shaped our lives.
even to not believe, they light days as we negate them.
as we attempt to stay us.
& how much for how long can we/i endure.
i think a lot, i feel we've got it, & holding.
& what's that say for all those folks we don't know so swell?
well, i'm not so sure, but isn't that why we keep trying to know them?
why we work diligently to find the ones that fit?
isn't it?

who built this place anyway?

objective facts about left-hand-dominant people:

*we wear watches on our right wrists so that they do not drag the page as we write
*we do not necessarily feel that our advanced sense of aesthetic awareness is due to being left handed
*if you are right handed, we try to sit on your left at a dining table, so you don't accuse us of bumping your elbow throughout the meal
*we are not all anarchists, although some of us are and certainly once were
*we don't find left-handed scissors any more convenient, as we have applied our cutting skills in reverse throughout our entire cutting careers
*we devour life whole, as we have no other choice
*we truly do dislike the mathematics or quantification of most things, although numbers are not so scary
*we make better lovers (for both right and left handed partners, or both)
*we have perfectly good reasons to write only on the backs of pages in spiral-ring-notebooks

look at the lens, and smile! (candidly)

some things i have been doing/feeling/not-doing/not-feeling/etcetera in my life longer than the part of my life that they were not true for. these are the ones i am sorta proud of (these lists are the sort of things we do as we approach thirty years of age.):

*falling more in love with people more than they, or i, are ready for (or may ever be for that matter)
*playing music
*appreciating the way things wear over time
*loving words and the ways things can be put
*making a conscious-effort to be less selfish & more genuinely thankful for how other folks effect my life & visa versa
*reading
*thinking critically
*not eating meat (yes, this has always included fish-flesh)
*cuddling
*feeling romantic about nearly everything (no, not necessarily by the relationship definition)
*accepting that i am pretty rad, and that i can become radder
*riding a bike
*not cuddling with capitalism any more than i fee necessary to get bye
*loving my parents for the different people they are, and not for the people who are just different from me. yay, differences are more fun to learn from!
*embracing & oft enjoying loneliness
*thinking of my lovely sis daily
*traveling as much as possible to learn from other places and peoples
*wanting to spend time helping other people have a better time (and occasionally doing so)
*loving abandoned things,and book smells, and vinyl smells, & a few other objects
*feeling it anti-romantic to quantify nearly anything i actually care about
*being thankful for my stellar friends
*writing
*not editing much of anything, for fear that it could lose its love

these things, along with many others, i have taken on for more years of my life than not (in some instances this may create a double negative. Yeah!). i will be turning thirty years of age some time in the next year, and i kind of want to look back at all this (and that) and think of where i have been & where i might be. not likely to get too far into where i am going, as that is always such a patchwork in progress.

p.s. i believe that 'sun in an empty room', by the Weakerthans, is my favorite song today. i have already listened to it several times this morning. i also enjoy the painting by the same name, by Edward Hopper.

portland summer

good bye until next time old friend. i greatly appreciated every minute of both days we spent together; your glow, the flood of reminiscence you bring to me, the way you lit every room, gave reason to awaken, left early a set of darker pictures on floors in rooms long left vacancies. over and over i have pined for you, and our tryst will be missed.
until your perennial bloom...

train tracks skit-scat

the rhythm is dissimilar, yet invokes similarly staunch breaths.
expectation of perfections all on strong fear foundation.
we begin these things in weeks, then months, then we hope to remember.
effortless balance at first, we think of jumping at the totter.
same perception that it all should stay the same.
& there's spray-paint all over this thing.
thorax to toes and back again.
literally covering the hull and bow are tags older than us both.
and we wish to sail it until they fade or are scathed from our understanding.
the materials that makeup our movement arrived on different vessels, from disparate lands, with varying degrees of hardness in the scratch-test.
a patchwork of everything our short lives have moved through and beyond today.
we cover and comfort ourselves with the flesh of what we hope to be real.
and hopeful-hearts, however difficult to admit, are that gentle rhythm.

quandary

i once was writing a song, and called the local librarian to settle a dispute between two dictionaries over how to properly spell the word ellipses.
as luck would have it, there are several ways to spell ellipsis.
some may be plural, and other singular, but i was not one to judge such a matter.

Weakerthans v. Astronautalis

"Aside", by the Weakerthans and "My Dinner With Andy" by Astronautalis have some strikingly similar melodic bits. Particularly in their choruses. Check it out! I often wonder how intentional these things are, and on the part of whom? Truthfully, I hope they are always beautiful accidents.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A927zcSSw2s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjbRf7g4FGI&feature=related

they both host quite eloquent lyrics to boot!

?
who is being interviewed here?
if it is i, could we trade places of seating?
if it is you, could you please speak into my other side?
& as for this room, did they paint and & then knock holes in the walls?
is it all to remind this place what it was and what we want it to be simultaneously?
is it all too soon to run screaming and wonder what would have been, had I not?
were there once decorations where there now are notations of accomplishment?
& if walls truly do recall, will you please ask them again to name a favorite song?
these hands, head shaking, uncontrollable smile, where do I put them?
do we know , though no one else knows, that this is in fact happening?
& when the water rushes in from salty ocean topographic shift, do we continue to pretend?
is our own facade strong enough to kill us?
it certainly feels like it might be.

tentatively forever after (la playa)

-these dynamics/refrain/shift-of-pitch are far too certain, that's to be certain
-it's not just these days, this week or this well begun year
-my old-souled-goat can climb through lifetimes, cared for and otherwise, and all the while hold notes no others utter
-audible only in certain sequences, with particular attendance
-clip clop wagon wheel, like a blazing fire
-& every time we wonder, well it only makes us wander (and for this we are grateful)

she said they used to love they used to love they used to love-
now they know what they mean-
each and every bird atop the library's clock holds your gaze for second & third scenes-
& numbers depict a sales pitch of what might be the end of even longer days-
breathing in each others exhausted breath the symbol said something of embrace-

-it's a hope in the hands of shaky lovers and their left leaned households' hem-
-and the desire of said lovers is what makes change of their adjacent riches-
-only for a beach-side garden, the laurels wait in patient queues erect-
-and when our eyes open to remind us both that it is not yesterday, we breath ever deanesthetized and fresh-
-feeding fields of mint leaves mending, the sounds become audible to company as present as ever-
-admittedly admitting, the tenets served their tender, and now for some snow-

pathology 176

i overheard a person talking aloud about a book that was about a band today. from his tone it seemed he knew people in this band, and had fond memories. he spoke as if there was someone there listening, but he appeared to be alone and without a phone.
i then caught myself talking aloud about how odd it was that he was talking aloud to himself.
that person was crazy.

break: a reason for these spaces

too fast? oh, okay. sorry.
not sure how to do these things i have done since i can remember.
you move here and i am off again. not that your movement was for me. nor my absence for you.
but i'll bother to feel bad if it's what you need to feel better about it all.
it's an iterative process, this process of knowing we think we know.
handbooks, ballots to bail out our other last chance: and you taste the same taste.
surely a ghost could do better, but who had time to understand that business anyhow?
so bother to grab me by the shoulders please, because that's what i need to feel better.
persons. places. smells. reasons. things i can not see, and am not sure i should want to. but i want to, and would you please show me?

resoled slippers

once you lived in Lisbon
so much more than just a summer
built pyramids of pleasures past, and those that did say never
faster, faster, faster cried the waning wake and tether
indicative of folks who study lives and loves of others

& it's not that I keep doing this
over and over
it's that i'm not doing that
over and over
never subverted
over and over
simply not mentioned

i used to be Algerian, from far external texts
stood in the arms of an ocean deeper than what we see here
worked hard for these marks, and never surrender
scathed from bow to stern, & recalling we both were

& the background sounds bleed bigger, awaiting recognition
all our backs bleed thicker, stood on by some past conviction
interlocking fingers, as if conscience was cohesive
not building fortress around, rather lush gardens within them

not a hagiography for my heroine

said it's thought they are under the covers escaping a winter--for a moment i'll believe that, if only to occupy my story book obsessions--the direction their feet mingle, as if a parent/caregiver/oppressor had never dissuade--peering gently through cotton fiber blends to watch the shape sunlight makes today--a stumble, a late family pet, ascended and brings endless loose ends to be tended--a narrative, from the untied tether, concerning retired relatives revolutionary folly--structures spread splinter to tooth, casualty free, lest we forget capitalism...or be forgotten--bed sheets spread in mid-west fashion, pock marked by insurrection--making sense in a bed's context, the narrative shifts willingly beneath sunlit shape--and how free was the choice/will/interpretation of where to hang hats/bomb shelters/a cosmic umbrella--bedsheets narrative is not for question, nor messenger to an inquisition--born in the unlit to die in the light, bright, glow of what might make change--the beauty of dark initial incubation holds far too much nutrient for aged bed sheet shifters--through the window/bedsheet/umbrella, the living/breathing sweat of stronger children we hope to have darker holds--grow