barista deja vu

my touch rattles the cup
in its saucer, spills
coffee & tea
caffeine's restless habits,
a mug resting against my teeth
preventing the warmth
a way to still my hands,
slow everything down.
today is a day built
for bad news, the skies
cloud-hung and sullen
the color of coffee-stained
dishwater, and your eyes,
murky and solemn.
i don't even know what you're asking,
but want no part of it.
i have enough,
in my life, building
to a head.
i strain the tea and sip.
steam obscures my glasses
and i have to ask:
how many times will i stand here,
hands shaking,
waiting for you?

far away

he says,
sometimes i get so jealous of
that pillow you hold so tightly
while you're sleeping -
the way you grip it, and i
have no way of knowing what
you think -
when i'm thinking too heavily,
too late into the night,
and i clutch my pillow so as
not to wake you with my
tossing in bed, or when i finally
lay down, and you're curled too awkwardly
to get an arm around - the times
when i wonder what you dream about,
when you hold your pillow tightly
to your chest and sigh

tourniquet, the painting

find text version here:

transfigurations

i've crossed this country enough times
to forget what it's like
to have a home
to return to.
people ask where
i'm from, and i say
everywhere
which is just as good as "Kentucky," and
more truthful.
i crossed the continent, this time
into a 63% unemployment rate [in my age bracket]
holding onto the sad-sack job
that is my only opportunity,
while they tell me: wear
shorts shorter, shirts tighter,
more makeup, bigger hair, more.
more, more.

or, maybe less -
less like myself, less
like a female who knows enough
to say,
this is wrong
when i'm only hired for my tits
or maybe ass, take your pick.
my early morning stalling car,
stopping in the midst
of three lanes of traffic,
means, among other things,
that i will walk an hour tonight
to dance through
my six hour shift, and sweat
until i don't remember what it means
to be dry
this
these small things are
the meaning of privilege, which
is what separates us
from poor to rich, from struggling
to asphyxiation.
we snatch at jobs
we're obscenely over-qualified for -
please, let me work - please, let me
not drown in the bile
in the back of my throat.

i learned yesterday
that Aaron died.
he drank himself to death,
adding to the top
the heroin overdose
to ensure he'd never be held responsible
for all his debt -
and sometimes, in
the darker moments
that seems like the only way
to ever be free - wasting your life
instead of pointless guilt over losing
a job, and the inability
to pay lawyers' fees.
i ran, from Oregon,
from my struggling friends for this -
63%.
my head swims -
it's heat exhaustion.

she tells me not to, the painting

you can read the text version here

resist

you can find the text version, here.

S [elf] I [sh] the painting

you can find the text version, here.

starting to paint

so, i told you that i had been doing some poetry with art...
like the poem S [elf] I [sh]
it has a painting to go along with it, also.

so, i will post them all, i think... since i finally took some pictures.
even if they aren't good pictures.
i have a shitty digital camera, and for that i apologize. both my poetry and my photography deserve better. but it will have to wait until someday, when i have money to get a decent DSLR digital camera.

i think i will also find the entries with the poems, and place the pictures alongside the poems, as well...

and hopefully someday soon, i will be inspired to write more poems. and you will hopefully read them.

bleeding

so distinctive
taste, texture, look or smell
and so different in its stages
red to brown, the brightness fades
reverses, from a thick
smell of copper, to salt, and decay -
even a decade later, on the paper,
the smell remains
preserved, a way
to completely transcend time.
i'm back again: young
scared, a whole lot crazy,
equipped with razors
and an inability to cope -
it all projects sadness,
i should feel that -
but instead:
half of me
turns out the remaining lights,
slips her hand
into her wallet
pulls out a razor,
rests it against wrist,
says
do it.
do it again.
more blood.
more.
more.

make it neat

anxiety is eating a hole out from
under my ribs.
i take my pulse,
lose count. take pulse; fuckit
it's racing, i don't care.
or do.
i'm not walking straight, i veer
off the walls, towards
the kitchen
fetching tea to wash down xanax
and sit on the couch,
twitching.
i swallow my panic,
beat it back
open the door and shoo at it
like a recalcitrant pet,
shrieking.
panic will not leave, but
remains
curled on my kitchen floor, smirking,
waiting for me to let it through
the cracks between
madness and medication,
the drinks i'll suck down
to dull it all,
the scotch in my glass
settling
into my stomach.

jazz fest

music
rolling through my city -
lone trumpet,
4 am,
no ordinary street musician,
this
but something effortless
the kinds of notes
that rain forth like musical bliss
mingling with
the muted shouting of the neighbors
and people walking home
from bars -
the night is never quiet, here,
the cars fly by
incessantly, highway
always humming

repeat...

i do this sometimes, repeat a poem...
forgive me if i don't catch all of them.

it's not purposeful...what happens is that i'm pulling from at least three separate sources, and i occasionally forget if i've done a particular poem.

considering how many i've written over the years, it's a bit hard to keep track of which i have and haven't archived online.

spill

in the gulf
right now, the
ocean is burning
engineers staving off
the inevitable ending
of oil against delta,
oil in our mud and our fish
and all of the marshland
they set the water on fire,
hoping it'll burn quick -
before the rain i can feel
hanging in the air, before
it spreads steadily,
to land.
we are quiet.
we wait.

twitch

jumping at house shadows
in this familiar space,
i'm internalizing all the voices
that have told me i should fear:
fear the walks i take
in the early hours,
the darkness, the men
who lurk in it, the crime,
the highway traffic, myself
my feminine fact
and i always laugh, say
"whomsoever fucketh
with me
shall receive
his everlasting life
a little early,
assuming
he's earned it"

and i mean every word of it
i ignore what
should spook me,
yell rudely
back
at anyone who assails
me with obscenity,
i am not afraid at all
until later,
when i am alone
solid in my certainty that
i am solitary in this space
which is the most eerie
thing in my life -
rooms
full of silence, a long house
stretching its limbs -
that groan and creak

brief explanation...

all of this poetry originally started out on another blog, one i've had for ten years. (yes, i am back-dating my entries, so as to avoid confusion.)

i am liberating myself from this other blog, as it is highly personal, and i wanted a place to put my work (poetry), and only that, instead of the last ten years of the history of my life.

i should also say at this point, that about half of my poetry's formatting is getting lost in this transition between copy&paste, and the way i actually lay it out on a page.

it's highly annoying. however, i don't know enough about computers/text editors/html to really do anything about it, ergo, oh well.

dissonance

like a boss saying
"hiatus",
meaning not working
and i say,
"i need rent"
but what that really means is
no fucking way i'll
manage that, but
i have to eat, goddamnit

i don't think people like that
understand poor
like this, and
i'm not even really poor -
desperate enough
to strip my body for money,
but i've never sold plasma, though
i wanted to -
when i know people who don't
pay any rent, and live
where they find shelter
and don't think much further,
because you can't plan for that -

i, with my college degree
have hurt a bit, but
i've never starved unless
i wanted to

our differences are bills
collected in my name,
a years' salary
in loans alone
begging repayment, leases,
until
i'm so sick over
stressing on
how to pay it
i want to run
and forfeit all of it,
not as if
it would do much good,
a fucking headache i swear
i'd trade
to be a punk in the gutter,
choosing my way

railcars follow the water

there's something hidden in the silence
what we say when we're not speaking
the train whistles echo
off the curves of the river
and i huddle under the covers
beside your still form.
the nights are never quiet here,
filled with freeway noise
and occasional weekend gunshots
the cats running padfoot
from the porch to scatter
to wherever they sleep
and you also, are silent now:
i mouth unintelligible syllables
into the looking glass
there is more to this.
or maybe nothing at all.
this house itself
is permeable, malleable, waiting
for someone to exploit its cracks.
and as much as possible,
i run out for the night,
but when dawn threatens,
i call you.
always you.

all weekend long

i'm collecting pieces of slate
from all over this city,
like unwanted
refugees. like all of the people
who come to new orleans to live
on her sidewalks and be
marginalized.
i'm waiting for
some kind of sign
that any of us belong here,
swamp-cum-city,
city-cum-sewer, -cum-wreckage as
the neighbors tear walls out
five years after the storm.
here, we all know what
"after the storm"
is referring to.
referring to a city still
in bloom,
its business bustle,
not neglect, five years out,
or houses that sort-of
stand, but are mostly
see-through.
what's it like?
ask my far away friends, and
i have no words for them,
only pictures

skew

she is beautiful, and
ignoring me
speaking of men she's dating
until i want to scream
i'm right in front of you,
look at me,
fucking look at me.
running around this concrete city
and all i want is
everything
from you,
i am tired of play
i want something real, this time.
something mine.
she wants a pretty gypsy boy,
and my new dyke friend says
she doesn't know anyone
who'd date someone like me

poisonously insinuating my flaws
into unlovable, unwantable
woman,
no woman will want you

and thing is, they rarely do
i remain here,
beckoning.
not queer enough, not
single enough, not
butch or femme enough,
not normative enough
to be labeled into a box
you can check.
i am an outlier.
i skew
your data.

follow your own instincts

i dream of letting
so many things
just go
of waking up in places
i've never seen before in daylight
and all this stuff i drag
with me hangs
on my ankles like manacles.
i'll never be able
to get lost, to find myself
in foreign places,
with all i cling to,
and i resent it, yes
hate being so attached
to the physical
because my memories live there,
instead of my head,
hate that i have to feel
to remember, to look and smell
and hold in my hands.
writing
is a cerebral act, yes
but only born
from what we know, life
rattling around our heads
into a pattern, of sorts
until we can
distill it into words.
one day, i would
leave my ties
tie up the straps
and go for a while,
run until i'm left
with nothing else to see,
no more road
to follow.
i want to roam
until i find my home, and then
leave it behind.