back up

   walking down the sidewalk today felt like it was couples everywhere & i thought to myself
                  i never asked for a happy ending or a saccharine love story; i craved the tragic and the transitory, the fleeting and intense.

my way home from the GSB was strange today somehow - everything triggered way too vivid memories...if this was a movie it would have been misty fadeaways to a montage accompanied by cheesy music and glamorous reenactments. But this is life, so it was me walking a little slower and more thoughtfully, wistful and thinking of a one-night stand with a blurry face and a name that's slipped away, the rest of the scenario remembered - his roommate, her dog, the dinner he cooked me, the sweetest of goodbye kisses. And then moments i do still have, boys i do recall, just tucked away where i'd forgotten they existed...the abandoned church, the walk after class, throwing grass at each other and lying in the park. Winter break semi-romances with us both too cynical, losing the magic with the walk of shame.

it was strange, that's all. A chance overheard word, a street i haven't walked down in a while...sparking sudden startling forays into my head, into the past...getting Clem Snide stuck in my head, singing again and again I don't wanna know me better...

            and then i check my messages and his voice is enough to make me smile and i feel silly in my smitten state.

Shakori Hills Grassroots Fest in NC:

checkerboards

holes in my shoes growing bigger by the day yawning and gaping with every step every flex every adventure i'll dance my way down twisty sidewalks pull off my shoes and stroll languidly barefoot in the grass push my toes into these blue skies this sunny day the cool dirt - slip my feet back in and feel the tears inching wider, creeping to reveal multicolored socks, drawing a raggedly fluid map of my travels - if the whites turn to browns turn to grays are they any less beautiful? picking up pigment from perilous puddles, if you take the road less traveled believe me you will get holes in yr shoes!

vanish

let's run away into a turquoise dream let's vanish in a puff
of patchouli-scented smoke we'll float up and jump from
cloud to cloud we won't fall i promise. let's linger in
archaic daydreams and blow smoke rings through tangled
thoughts and nonsensical conversations that mean the world
when our implausible playground collapses into a pile of
originality then where will we go? let's sail on avocado
seas till we reach a center and bounce between transient
peach-colored tropic isles that imprison our senses. we'll
flit and float and fly and find the unimaginable
unattainable undefined we'll be picturesque and silly we'll
give them the slip and in this blissful somnabulance we'll
never wake up.



last month, for spring break - cleveland, boston, chapel hill, athens:

Calc 132

numbers
symbols
skritch scratch on the
misty blackboard
lines &
dashes
fingers flying
arms flailing
chalk falls to the tray with a monumental
thunk
dust swirls
glazed eyes
calculations filling space
skritch scratch
dit dash
makes a tune, a
song, a
beat to
put me to sleep

transitions

rearranging my expressions
stealing cognizance
undoing my buttons;
it was perfect until i dissolved into stardust
blew through an open pane
in the spun sugar window of obsolescence –
i sang myself dizzy &
kissed life confused full on the lips
sparkles of prisms a mite too blinding
who will i be
when the sequins fade from my dress
falling to slivers of lost glory
in the cracks between the floorboards?
it’s the end of the world as we know it and
i see a light at the end of the tunnel –
let’s chase it down and stuff it in the back pocket
of my water-logged jeans.
i’m losing my insanity
finding a neverland between worlds –
transitions are never easy

osculation

reduce the space between us
draw me impishly into your proximity
if i’m malleable will you mold me into a murmur of myself?

mesmerized, fantasized, cauterized
our open faces, open mouths
open eyes

your lips are unbearably
               there
too far, too close

melt into me & i’ll
stick like cornbread
to an ungreased pan, i'll

move like twilight; your
violet enticement is
                           exhilarating

circus party

           the party last night was outside under the stars, circling around the fire, candles in the grass, music and dancing everywhere

                                 kids breathing fire, spinning fire, juggling fire, eating fire, hammocks and colored lights and cheap wine, hand-rolled cigarettes, pot smoke drifting, and familiar faces i hadn't yet met

                      a singing smiling cop come to disperse us, hugs goodbye and long walks home


& last month, there was a Mardi Gras party: