straight hits from the only bottle in the house
this rum
steels the taste of you
late night weekend kisses
like a slick second tongue
stuck straight
to the roof of my mouth
this rum
steels the taste of you
late night weekend kisses
like a slick second tongue
stuck straight
to the roof of my mouth
to get all meta on the blog tip
thinking about how many incarnations there really are
floating around of you
what?
vaughan's been doing it too.
in other related news
about identity and representations
an image of imogen
didn't do so very well
after judging completed
just don't have the magic
the thing the camera needs
to make eyes spark with wows
this morning when we got up
the house smelled like gas
i begged and begged for him to light a match
he just smiled
drove me to work, instead
1. Tomorrow my divorce will be final.
2. I have a horrible singing voice.
3. The day after tomorrow is my birthday.
4. I've been married for 12 years.
5. No one ever calls me Imogen.
I know I love you. Because of that time you fucked me on the counter of your best friend's bathroom while everyone else wanted to play board games, instead.
Enjoy the egg salad!
i scrawl the words
Crucial Taunt
in indelible marker
on the tag side of all of my underwear
like this were summer camp
and i was afraid of being lost, strayed, or stolen
in french he says what i can only translate enough to sound like your hair smells like silk sometimes and while we have sloppy sex on the kitchen counter i'm more interested in trying to decipher the ingredients sideways and through only one open left eye under the unflattering bright lights of the sugar free vanilla syrup bottle that appears rarely if ever used. and i know he's not greedy. so i try to concentrate. i purr. coo. press my forehead into his adam's apple. dead valves of pressure filled lost in the viscous syrup words. i can't fake my way through this one. i fill my head with clothes. knee high black heeled boots. the new skirt i bought and still haven't worn. fish net stockings. sex with you. sex with you. sex with you. until in another world i scream the contents of the counter onto the floor and we break the sugar bowl. it's enough. then. for him to go.
i wrote for a long time about being the wrong everything. the way trying to love made me feel wrong. the opposite side of love i seemed to know too well how to occupy. and now i cast the net. i'm the one to malign and violate. unjust, improper, out of order, not suitable.
i try to write my dissertation about societal outcasts. about a form of marginalization at the hands of violence that renders fictional characters commenting on real world scenarios into a violent invisible.
and yet i go on. pounding metaphorical fists into the chest of physical love. rendering retributions of my own not measuring up into a reality that tattoos other people with the words of abuse. knowing full well that i'm the liar wearing the wrong side of the fabric. i'm the one who doesn't have what it takes to make someone else feel like what they are isn't the wrong skin, the wrong name, the wrong everything in a hateful stupid unforgiving world.
In the middle of the sidewalk on top of broken melting pieces of ice folds of turquoise aqua bathing suit top puddled blue and caught a smile on my lips. I told myself a story about the man walking half a block ahead. His long hair and the white worn rectangle on his right back packet--the clunk of his heavy boots--told me he was a bounty hunter for jesus. I wondered where he was hiding the bible and if it had any gold lettering on the front cover. Early for work, I walked down the long path through campus that empties out into the direction of downtown. If you're walking in the right direction. I watched a muddy cat run in and out of shrubs. Franticly searching for something. Like me. I found it while sitting on a bench in the just breaking dark into light. This sunshine. Is mine. Me. You. Our. You me mine. This. Shine. Sun. Shine.
but nothing stops me
from booking those tickets to philadelphia
and smoking whole cigarettes
i've got to stand in that fire
wash myself in the ashes
the smell of burning flesh
wrap myself in the words of the time
the crime of escape
bombs falling from the sky
the obliteration of the self
from these cold streets
in the city of all those days of history between
this brotherly love
we scrape our teeth against
like sucking the soft hearing ears
of the ones we in desperation
try so hard
like spinning discs of songs from our heart drives
we burn
for one another
it's not cold enough
on the front steps
just yet
to stop
and so i spin
and spin
waiting ears always expect his voice to skip just before and over the gap into the word SPAIN the way he does on the other version saved and spun through the wires into the air of my apartment. ears that itch from the negative results of the glitch. when what we're most used to skips right over us and falls into someone else.
I used to shout at the ocean with words on paper. Lines of boxy letters trying to map out the distance between then and then. In the spaces of time that exist only between the variant forms of salt. I'd sit for hours perched on top of a stone retaining wall watching the tide. Contemplate everything. I wanted to rip down all the walls. Wrench every door from the hinges. Figure out what was behind it all. Like the pink and red fleshy works under this fine delicate layer of skin. Instead, I threw polished stones into the water. Practiced writing in squared off capital letters like comics. And dreamed about fire. I smoked cigarettes and drank coffee. Sure that if I cried I might throw off the balance of the universe. Mostly I tried never to make sound. Only the faint scratch tap rubbing ink onto the wide expanses of notebooks. The more I wrote the more I knew I didn't know anything. Except that I couldn't stop the pressure behind my eyes or the burning ache in my shoulders. So I kept spilling guts. Looking for something. Some day I would burn all those words into oblivion. Knowing that I'd lost my sights. The ocean was the edge that stopped me from running.
should be
as in
i 'should be' there right now
and there's something you can do about it
but you don't
well, then,
that just makes you a
fuckstick
totally
it was that thing about seeing you in a dream all holy and winged and thinking that meant something significant. but i never saw you. i made the whole thing up.
there is only bright eyes playing too loudly for my neighbors. and R.E.M. with purpose. and the slow cold pulling of sheets over a body, alone, that will not leave me in the morning light filled with the punishing stains--the grape juice of this love.
In the mornings, my body is a map of contusions. The green-grey imprints of fingertips on thighs. Mulled wine tracks of tiny broken blood vessels covering the right shoulder. The length of each rise of the spine shadowed in pencil grey. Trailing to the lower back explosion. A fist sized puddle of indigo-yellow-black shine. Knees and elbows stained of printer's ink. Lips maroon glow pout. Sip hot coffee carefully.
climbing into bed at 3 am, i wonder why people use the phrase dog tired, cycling ways to describe to the vapid space of this room and everything in it, the particular brand of worn-out that i've caught like a sneaked summer cold. does it involve barking? i hardly care enough to wonder if i should. dead dog dogged doggerel dog day afternoon my life as a dog take this dog and shove -- wait a dog gone minute. if you spin the word enough times off the tongue in a cold room it begins to twist itself into a thick round rubber tube filled with air. bastard verbial form. in the radicle space that exists between the FIVE flying paper birds and me, the cold winds of canada, and the entry and exit of unconsciousness, i hang myself with the faded superman sheets you had on your bed when you were a kid. the pillow case with the bold S draped over my shoulders like a cape.
the contents of my bathroom floor:
1 bath mat towel rolled up and stuffed into the corner near the shower / toilet
1 winter jacket posing as a pillow
1 blanket drug from office chair two steps away (still half in the hall)
1 empty water glass dropped at some point and laying on its side
1 pile of a dozen or more tissues
1 cellular phone
1 me, periodically
there's blood seeping through two thin layers of fabric
spreading in a nice spider web display
just above the left breast
of this white cotton long sleeve t-shirt
i bought at Old Navy two seasons ago
2 for 10 dollars
because i kept applying pressure
digging with my fingernails
even when it hurt
and i started tearing away skin and flesh
deep purple flush
i only pressed harder
trying to rip out this stain
don't get much sleep
wake up to the glow of soft wonderful flakes of snow
already 2 inches thick
covering your world
watch it from under the covers of blankets and sheets
warmth
for an hour
coffee brewing in the kitchen only steps away
take a walk through the snow and ice
laugh
grin
eat hot soup
barely leave the bed enough to merit outside clothes
even though there's tons of work to do
even when the sun peeks out in the late afternoon
now
and starts the slow steady drip illumination
of the ice hanging just on the sills
drink lots of coffee
most nights, after i walk through the frozen streets and biting winds to my apartment in the slow glow of the late afternoon, i climb under the blankets on my couch. and wait there until night takes over every room. and the only thing living. inside. is the flashing muted television. and my cold eyes blinking. when the darkness comes i fish through the air. perch in front of the glowering screen and try to write. i think the charged winter air blowing through the frame of the window in front of me swims in and steals my thoughts. because i sit here in the requisite nothingness. until my fingers ache with the damage of the draft. and i write nothing. not even a jag of zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz of continued pattering patterns of h8h8h8h8h8h8h8h8h8h8h8h8hh. to warm my hands back out of this numb coma. sitting here, cold and alone and without the motivation to vomit inane thoughts that act like they could be more than that through revision, i only just dream about the pocket of the couch in my living room. and the hush of the television. because there's nothing there to care about. there's nothing there to do, but wait. and wait for nothing.
On the lower right side of my bathroom mirror. A large blur exists. Just now, I stood in front of it. Eyes narrowed. Lips pressed together like praying palms.
I get the feeling you're bored with me, she thinks. Instead of making the words audible. Cold and drifting into his hair. His ears. Like the incessant snow storm that just doesn't seem to want to quit the space they both currently inhabit. Tonight, she vows, there will only be the silence of winter. The slow sounds of the frozen pricks that would have been a rain storm during summer, when things were different. When midnight was a tired sleepy rephrase of skin and angles. The pressing hands and flesh fighting eyes and the breath of sleep until the buzz of the glowing morning call. She realizes, instead, that they are both well enough asleep, already. Outside, the air soaks her in stillness. The sparkling disparate night. Looming now, always, just outside the window. Standing still to crush bits of snow under the toe tips of her boots. To create a violence in the dark. To disturb. Disrupt. Make any sound. Of consequence. Instead of going inside, she reaches down with her bare hands. Instead of screaming at the nothingness. Fills her mouth in a fistful of ice and snow. Inside, her naked body pink with the handprints of absolute cold, she waits for the bath to fill. She wonders if life could ever change. Or if she'll always be, just here, tired and useless. Doubtful and longing
and i worry sometimes to myself and sometimes to the people i most trust--the people who've somehow suffered seeing me naked--about the shape of my body. i constantly rave about working out. about needing to lose 10 pounds. i never feel attractive or proportional. i want my tiny girl frame back from 10 years ago. when my waist was so thin i could almost encircle it between the tips of my own fingers.
just a few moments ago i ran across this bit of information in an article about women's bodies and body images:
"The average measurements of a contemporary fashion model are 33-23-33. Even given the benefit of the doubt by saying these models did not resort to plastic surgery to attain that figure, it is essential to acknowledge that these women comprise only one percent of the population. For the other ninety-nine percent, a figure like that is unattainable by any natural method."
so, i took a deep breath. grabbed a measuring tape and started jotting down the code to my own body safe. 35-27-35. Not quite the same, but then again, not that far off from what this article claims to be an unattainable one percent. even if i'm not six feet tall. and even if i'm still going to chase after a better shape.
in quaternary numeral system code six is 12
via a fascinating entry about the number 6 at Webster's Online Dictionary
six is a cool number
i want to be the number six
then i would be perfect
and highly composite
after the alarm clock ring in the lull of the glow of winter morning sky under the chilled canvas of sheets soaked full up on the smell of the memory of the backs of your knees and that flat point between the shoulder blades where my hand during lonely useless sleepless moments fit like a glove protecting against the coldest winds, i am; sick from the tired of never-sleep-ever-wake; these ice storms covering the entirety of the city in which we live under the glassy suffocating surface of slippery dangerous ground; the long moments under the fabric of the memory of your smile and the rest of the hours of the day that followed grey and useless filled only with the haunting lonely constant sounds of scraping ice from window screens in the parking lot somewhere far below the spaces i currently inhabit; ghosts walking the day away breaking the ice in steady endless crushes below their heavy footfalls
