skeletal

love letters, missed connections, and uneasy vehicles smoking in the plains somewhere distant. you gnawed my ear black n blue and my frightened doctor tried to diagnose it melanoma, but there's no use counting yr eggs before they're hatched. counting yr books before you've read them.

pretty is kind of a mystery, but for its oh-so-handy appeal. sometimes i want a second shot at every conversation, at every encounter. i want to collect checks from all sides, past and present, so i can spin like a whirligig spewing out payments of my own. i can't believe how old you are, and how young. i can't believe what a tease i am. (cousins agree.)

the skeleton, the sky. the perversion of an ideal that is already, admittedly, by virtue of being an ideal, subject to incompletion.

to flaws.

a toast!

spread yr legs like pages of a book and i'll read you bedtime stories. crawl on softly-bruised knees to the edges of yr own allegorical devices; show me you can pick dandelions with yr toes and i'll subscribe to yr infrequencies once and for all.

i don't know. i'm tired of all these stupid games, but i can't seem to shake free of their intoxicating grip.

maybe the secret is to never step back.

misanthropy

i am the most antisocial person you know. (i'm trying not to know you.) i'm ready for my close-up. i'm drawing in sharpie on my limbs. the more invitations i get, the more likely i am to stay home and bury my head in the sand. can this world be a little smaller please? i get dizzy thinking about the sheer scope of things sometimes, at work when i lean my cheek against a window above a swarming street, above taxis bikes crosswalks carhorns miniature paintings of lives and i get out of breath cuz i can hardly remember my own name anymore.

and after weeks and years of not sleeping we start seeing ghosts out of the corners of our stumbling eyes but still we can't refuse these revelries that appear out of nowhere and sneak their way into our ears - parties where we hide in the basement pulling fuses till the art kids disappear; storefront libations and dancefloor hijacks; glazed sugar desires. she gave me shots of whiskey in line for the bathroom, and someone threw bottles to shatter in the street by uniformed feet. they switched jackets and asked me to climb up to their rooftop, but tonight i favor the smell of saturation.

finals week, finality, finally.

these last few days i've overdone it on stimulation and syntax and lack of sleep; every muscle in my body is jumping and twitching, and i'm losing my trains of thought as fast as i pound them out. but soon i'll be done with this didactic regurgitation, and i'll wish you were here so i could grab into yr hair and smell yr neck and slow everything down just a little, just a bit.

right now i can't remember life without speed and caffeine and insufficiency - everything smells like extremities, and this trip down south to empty ourselves out over yr memory will be a different sort of draining, a different sort of refilling, after all. i'd like to stand on a street corner with a sighing fiddle in my hands and all the sadness and sweetness of the world in my face as i coax a song from squeaky strings, so that maybe that would mean something about the way we'll choose to miss you, could mean as much as dark clothing and tears, as much as a bottle of wine in a bag between my knees. remission, reclusion, reform(ation). re-re-re-vival.

(which one of us is falling into disarray?)

the inexplicability of popcorn.

we're pretending it's spring - these 40 degree days, roaring breezes, melty snow, chirping birds, and the smell of warmth in the air - but it's still too cold for true indecency, and we still have to layer up a bit more than we'd like to.

i'm wearing leggings under my jeans, and something was itching on the back of my thigh, just above my knee. i pull off my pants to change into my pajamas, and a burnt popcorn kernel falls out.

i don't eat popcorn. do we even have popcorn in the house? i've been wearing these clothes all day, but suddenly somehow i've started emitting popcorn.

it reminds me of one time when i was making out with someone who found a quarter stuck to the skin on my back.

strange things are afoot.

much depends on the weather.

laborious spines

i'm craving summertime so badly i can taste it in the back of my throat, stronger even than this retching self-doubt, or these lies i swallow to keep us pretending. these past few weeks i've licked up so much road-salt, my kisses must be like sea urchins, spiny and saline and self-defensive. the sodium deposits on my shoes glitter in reminders of reflective avoidance, and those tiny aching rips in the seat of my jeans are threatening to expand with a vengeance. such perilous incantations. write me a song about these afternoons when i fall into dozing dreams on my feet, swimming in yr tender skin and inhaling the scent of yr neck, opening my eyes to dim stairwells of flickering lights and sudden immediacy. don't bother with lyrics cuz the rhetoric is what binds us every time, shoving unwanted certainties into our dialogues of disposal. you've no reason to believe me.

frostbite

i'm out riding feverish in search of frostbite to chill my flushed cheeks & slow my racing pulse, blowing through red lights & falling forward one foot at a time spinning through these circles of uncertainty. insomniac headrushes & dizzy discomposure. the creeping of icy pinpricks into my bones, & the throbbing of battered earlobes. these meds that clear my sinuses & clog my brain, these insinuations of altercation and revenge -

just fill my lungs with shards of inertia, and maybe i'll find it in me to come home.


january critical mass:

inelasticity

this is what i have in my head when i close my eyes: the world spinning faster and faster, us lying stiller and stiller, the inevitability of losing yr gaze. catastrophic bodies in the back of our minds. the mythos of the vegetation deity, assaulting language itself with hardened candle wax sculptures and jack-in-the-box resolutions. i want white noise over everything so we can only speak with our tongues intertwined. i want granite affirmations, sanguine recompense.

...

because my tremorous appetite is my undoing everytime, but maybe last night i downed enough whiskey to keep the cold from cutting through to my fingers, to my heart. hypocritical blue skies and wind that bites my teeth; we open jaws on shoulder blades and wink down the fronts of dresses till the moment has passed. pull her out by the heels, fling her to the initiations of the howling skies. i could drown in these enfolding arms but i think i'll shuffle my feet and start to dance instead.



fuck your face party:

this is how i take notes.

tragically vague understatement -
radical realignments,
well-worn products of extended borrowing
from one demarcated zone to another,
shifting boundaries,
infinite borrowings.
when all i can remember is skin:
delicious sex theory &
scratches on marble;
memory is of the muscles.
that she is ruddy, fleet, and strong;
that sometimes there is nothing left but
these mossy incantations.
to hunt the waterfalls you must
imprison yourself around
the whole fantastic world!
household motions, &
telling tales about the sun.

back to school

back to school, and it's been a week of going to class and working at the library and conversations with so many forgotten friends...this weekend was a potluck at the circus house to celebrate larken's visit to chicago, and all the lovely lively magical souls brought together for it. yesterday a big box of squishy tomatoes at food not bombs brought me flashbacks of canadian sunsets, and lindsay and i put on cat stevens and aprons and chopped and spiced it all into spaghetti sauce to share with margey and jeff and circled around the kitchen table till we biked off to that basement show - crooked teeth, young nervous eyes, colorful xylophones and toppling microphones; fiddles and banjos and using my bike seat as a bottle opener. the two minneapolis bands finally came up to tell me they'd been staring at me all night cuz i look just like their friend laura. i stayed till i got too cold and too sleepy to sit on that concrete floor anymore, refusing cigarettes and riding shivering home.

as for today, well, it's been a day of good deeds.


December Critical Mass:





New Year's Eve:

all these songs are sung on roadtrips.

i'm daydreaming about banjos, typewriters, and vegan ice cream while i sweat over a mixtape and try to rub this dryness from my eyes. last night was an adventure involving bicycles, thai food, giant rats, backdoors, anarchists and jokers, red wine, grass, tired tramping feet, phone calls, spilt champagne, and pancakes. photographic evidence to follow shortly.

so by the way, over winter break i clocked in 6183 miles on greyhound buses, traveling from chicago to portland; then eastward roads got snowed out so instead of returning i went to LA, Vegas, and finally to North Carolina where my little sister smuggled me indoors so i could surprise the family, sitting on the couch christmas morning with a bow on my front. best christmas ever, no gifts, no melodrama - meals and booze and boardgames, real conversations with everyone. now my brother's off hiking in israel, my sister's been accepted to college, and i'm back where i belong in my apartment.

(portland involved all sorts of nice re-encounters with all sorts of beautiful souls; birthday parties, bar shows, rekindling not-so-old flames. north carolina involved a lovely night of drinking and singing and spooning with my ladies. both towns tug on my heart so hard, so hard, pulling me into whirlwind wistful imaginings. i could have such an interesting life in so many different places and it kind of pains me to think that i can't have them all at once. i fall in love, so in love, with the taste of the air and the shape of the streets and the people, oh the people, everywhere i go.)

back in chicago. school starts this week. i need to find another job.

carolina christmas.

i'm a fleet-footed jack-in-the-box wearing a skirt for a dress and catching beads in my hair, taking pictures with a fake cardboard camera and writing love letters to everyone i know.

and these ones who irk me, who charm me, they're all voices that echo from faraway cities like firewood promises and flat-screen memories to taunt me with taut impossibilities - either that, or beautiful tangle-headed fools who only show up late at night to fill the gaps, teeth and nails and tumbling winks till morning. (except you, you like molasses pulling me into saccharine immobility against my will, creeping into my head at inopportune times.)

but you know for once it's nice to avoid all these cursive spiderweb temptations, to come back to a drafty southern house with creaky floorboards and murky faucets and all the food i can eat. these accents are knocking into my brain and i think they've got it right.

i want to be like 5 years old again, climbing trees and skinning knees, immersed in the fairytales in my head. (i was always the hero, dancing in with my magic wand to break heads & break hearts; there was none of this aortic confusion.)

portland, los angeles, las vegas, texas.

in the middle of a week straight on greyhound busses.

back in portland,

mixed feelings.

yellow walls.

some days almost everything feels like deja vu. shivers up my spine for no reason; glances over my shoulder.

i'm headed for the west coast tonight, for slightly warmer temperatures and smaller cities and kindred souls, but this weekend i've been remembering the reasons i stay here too.

i'm trying to choose which songs i'll be putting on repeat over the next three days on the bus, and my knees are beginning to ache in anticipation.

my rainy sleeves and his cheekbones. squeaky guitar strings. half-burned wicks. gravely headphones and giant wooden forks. the reason no one ever really needs a reason.

bruised ears.

soda water cyanide - the sweet taste of
yr carbonated fate. the bubbly anticipation
of fingernails chewed down to the flesh, &
the sound of gentle popping, like
those powder-filled papers we hurl
at each other's feet in the summer.