after being told my writing was probably not good enough to be read at the readings we have amongst the writers in our department (of which i am not)

i came home and ate a whole bunch of crisps*

*and felt sorry for myself

last night

i wanted to write something about the lost black glove sitting twisted and strange in the middle of the downstairs hallway. something about a dead bird. flightless and trapped. the dullness of the summer night air. but i didn't.

thing i said to myself out loud just now (without qualification):

what?
when did i take my shirt off in the kitchen
[pause]
[general confusion]
no.
no, that's the dish towel.
[more confusion]
where da hell is my shirt?

things that are hard to say (sometimes) . . .

mexican lesbian

the dorkiest thing i've said out loud to myself in awhile

well, it's friday night
[shrug]
i guess there's no harm in getting drunk and reading faulkner

scream get up

one time when we were driving together in your car i said to you
quite seriously
someday, i'm going to be that mistake all of your friends tried to warn you about
then my life all suddenly forgot to keep defining me as the mistake
and the weight of coffee mugs and
crying into your forehead because everything hurts
everywhere
started to come clear
that i am never and shouldn't be something to feel bad about

all sheers and slips and papers folding

this untitled paper out the midst of others unrelated

it's raining
sheep, nature
rainbow
a sky cut from both versions
what's with this party?
liz taylor looking ominously from the crack in a window
a prisoner
shut up
all charicatures of the real man
slobby and drunkard
contradictory
liz is straight psychotic
without sympathy
i want to see her get her ass beat
obtaining love is an act
it isn't:
i'm the man who loves you

!!

4 john lee hooker cds

my mailbox
today

just for me
devour

[that's bliss
in a bubble wrap envelope]

perhaps it always ever comes down to this

i am not myself
but i am myself
turning over and over again
clear is only
what we think we know
when we don't know anything at all
about first kisses
and other things that make the head fade and touch onto memory
and the way history rewrites itself into a place we think we might want to live
but can't
or won't
given time
desperation and exasperation
sometimes leaves me failing in a string of words that feel
unforgivable and often the only ones i have to offer

best quiz answer, evah

"depending on my mood, jaffa cakes or masturbation"

i don't feel words

this fever like the whole world has been covered over in vaseline. blurred. too slick to grip. these days i feel like i'm forever falling. like i'd rather have back those days where i'd lay for long hours curled up on the bathroom floor weak and spilling out the remains of the days upon days before that when i'd been too sick to eat anything anyway. my bathroom. windowless. a space where the passing of time doesn't exist. with or without the lights on. right now i'm facing the world doped up on pain killers and instinct.

i'm tired of blood tests. the inconclusive nature of disease. i'm tired of medications and not being able to function like a normal person. i don't want to go like this. i don't want to burn up in this fire.

What am i?

This morning I'm struggling with the best possible way to tie back my hair. The perfect outfit. Anything to reduce this driving residual pain shooting out from my left ear and down my neck and throat. I'd write a poem about the way the pain represents all the delicate and sad ways I'm losing you. If I didn't think that sounded so god damned idiotic and tired. I think pain makes me angry. Right now I'm listening to Damien. The disc I bought when I went to see him in some small bar in Chicago and no one knew his name. Or mine for that matter. Drinking hot tea and milk. Honey. If I wrote poetry. I'd write the right words like a secret all over my body and make you read it with the tips of your fingers.

seriously, man

ow.

the train. my hat. this morning calls.

I've been writing you a letter. About skin and bones. The Ethernet. Sometimes it begins I've been to London three times since you held my hand--buried your face in my hair--and said you loved me in line before the international terminal . Sometimes it doesn't. Usually, probably, I'm writing to the wrong person. Today. Here. The sky is waiting storms. I breathe it in. Full of August flowers and destruction. The monochrome of the day makes life seem more navigable. It's been ages since I've fallen in the shower. And I no longer require you for picking up my pieces. Sometimes I wonder if all my transgressions have coalesced. Crawled into my left ear and taken residence. This dull residual ache. Like the slow crushing sound of my bed frame under the weight and pressure of bodies. Moving.

After that day at the art museum,

She stands in the shower, lately. Thinks too hard about those times in the rain smoking spotted cigarettes in the late cold grey afternoons with him. Talking against the air like the overflowing ashtray of a used car. She misses the way his right eye used to close involuntarily when the sun sparked them both momentarily through the clouds. The secret ways we move impressions on one another without words. Her nose drips red against the tub floor. Involuntary bleeding. Slides away in splatters. She regrets that they never kissed. Presses her forehead into the cold wall. The back of her hand like a bandage against the openings of the nose and mouth. Wonders if the memories will stop with the blood. The shower is the only safe place to stand. These blood years. He waved from across the street. And she felt the weight of his love in her mouth. Like a rock on the tongue.

she never saw him again.

during quiet reading moments, between the sick,

j and i discover
down through the second story window
three odd boys
boxing loudly in the parking lot

to become zero

tonight it feels like someone--at the end of the pages in pictures that would have made up my life--has started plucking out the still silent screaming images of memories. one by one.

i miss them all. like stolen children. already.

i'm fairly certain

that today i'm going to quit my degree program.

things that make a good film

a scene in the first 5 minutes of
fulltime killer
made me go:
ooh, shit! with a bit of laugh and a bit of horror
outloud even though i'm the only one home
fucking hell, yeah.

dramatic irony? [what? all good university level instructors read web based summaries of the texts they're supposed to already know.]

in the middle of the paragraph describing Lily's gambling problem that ruins her financially (House of Mirth, Wharton) there is an ad for a special high limit master card for students~

rio. . .right.

before she had a stroke in early 1984

when i was a little girl my grandmother,
the woman for whom i have the most admiration and respect
for the difficult harsh life she led
and the still enormous amounts of love she gave to everyone around her,
used to bake for me her maple bars
because they were my most favorite thing in the whole world ever.

right now my office smells exactly like them.
it's something i've not thought about for years.



right now i want someone to hold onto me tightly so i can sob into their shoulder.

today i

ate 4 25 cent tacos at a dive-bar with 3 of my most favorite handsome and charming men

paid my tuition in cash from the atm

ran into one of my old students from my first year here, and we talked in the courtyard for a long time. he introduced me as his friend to some other boy who came up and said hello. he used my first name. it made me feel good.

went to the architecture library and checked out a book about queer spaces

reread the final few chapters of enders game

got my sandal back. finally.

the ridiculousness of castanets, shaking

17 hours ago I walked into my boss's office and asked for my job back. I started immediately. I'm doing that thing again where I can't stop the desire to run, everywhere. And sleep is something I think I might have had last week when the world felt like brand new snowflakes and the safe angle between the arm and the body. Maybe I'm like that character in the short story I can't finish who increases her speed in order to avoid imagination. Ruckfall, registriert sie bei sich. But to what end? There's always an irrational purpose, only don't ask how, don't ask what pretexts one gives oneself. The plan is likely dubious. If you can find one at all.

being awake

Fear strikes me down. Sometimes. Makes my insides turn and fade like the edges of paper in fire. To sit in corners. Back firmly against the seam. For as long until it's gone. I forget what it feels like to kiss. My tongue caught between my teeth behind closed dry lips. Eyes wide. Open. Ready to run. Sometimes, I'm confused by the simplest of tasks. Whether or not to open a bottle of wine. For one glass. For myself. Even though it was purchased for this purpose. To be enjoyed. Drunk. It wasn't expensive. Special. I'll save it for another time. When anyone else but me wants a glass. This is the way I wait. Worry over things that don't deserve the time out of bed after a nightmare in the early morning when night is still outside the window. It's the one about the tornado. In this same darkness he said as if he were stating the obvious, you're just as important as everyone else.

things i think about when

is the name Gair cool, or does it just sound like what you might call a really close friend named Gary?

dear simba,

when every last hair on my head stands up like a fire and fights and tells me that everything i've ever done in my life has gone wrong and the world feels like walking on rocks and my teeth ache and i think that standing in the shower naked under the cold streaming water might be the only reality that feels palitable and less lonely, i hold you tightly in my head. wrap your small burning figure running away from the horror and danger of the world and the power you found in your fingers through words to get you through. and i think, this life for me should be easy. not filled with fire bombs and flight. there is love around me. and there is light and wonder and words, always, waiting, to fill up the dust remains.

i don't call distant figures, anymore. hang up before the line might connect us throught the darkness and make me spill out the angry lost voices in my head. i know there is this, and that makes all the difference. the dog that i saw running down the street today, tongue hanging out, in danger of being struck by any passing car, my call from inside the closed windows, the tears i shed when i tried to believe you'd run back into the park to safety. it was you. i saw. and we are not. now. alone. anymore.