atonement (sans James and Keira)

i wake up each morning and remind myself that i will not make the same mistake twice. while caution may not be much of a verb in my life, it has succeeded as a slow-leaking dam, waiting. waiting. waiting. until eventually, i may be permitted to flood without consequence. but i knew, no more blitzkreig kisses, no more spitfire sharing or too soon questions, and no more deciding to let myself like until i can do so with confidence and security.

but, in my self-protective efforts, in my steadfastness with which i avoided attachment, i have made new mistakes. worse ones, in my opinion, as they haven't hurt me, but others. too much laying and lying. too much embellishment of words and bodies. the things people thought i gave them i truly had never let go of, and the consequences are... well, they're shitty. and for that, those i've stepped on, i'm deeply sorry. please know that i'm not malicious; i'm just a fool at times.

as of last night, i have put an end to my new mistakes. nothing is healed, mind you, but at least we have accurately labeled wounds as wounds. they will scab and assimilate in time.

which, frighteningly enough, leaves me open to that old mistake- willingly untethering myself and walking into the vortex. opting to plunge. in less colorful language, putting myself in a position of maximum vulnerability before i'm sure it's worth it and when i doubt it's safe. but the truth is, this is how i live my life (and my like), and I will just have to get better at super-gluing broken vases and applying makeup to scars. because kiddos, i never looked good in yellow; green is my signature hue, and I'm heading forward til we run out of road, run out of gas, or i drift into the other lane.

i'm up for the gamble; i'm ready for the liberation that comes from potential pain. well, i'm not ready, but i'm doing it. and it'll either build me or break me, but either way, i'll handle it.

therein lies the problem

i have yet to meet a person who can keep up with me

i just thought you should know

this morning, my radio conspired to keep us together. i just brushed the edge of my neck as broken jazz filled the car, and I made that same incredulous-but-pleased face you see every time you stare at me.

soon and very soon (i hope), you will see that my mind's made up. the words escape, and eyes like verbs, and hands that know and must keep knowing. all it takes is a few almost impossibilities. but we breathe each morning against all odds. why should attraction not know the same rules?

maybe it's not impossible. maybe it's inevitable. maybe the only force between us is gravity, but it's certain, and it seems to get the job done.

a dream to build a kiss on

you make me want to say the right thing

sometimes they come back (for more)

it took brian mcknight christmas covers blasting out my car windows through a crowded downtown day for me to realize that i am in love with the land of my childhood. i miss the farm. i want to be back in Saints Peter and Paul. I shed a flattering light on the layout of things, the maps of them.

the terrain is me (here and in boonville) and it's very reassuring.

vortexes, barrel rolls, and you (x 2.75): potentially destructive forces that spin me right round

While emo never became me, I have always been ample evidence that white boys sing the blues; in fact, we can even channel the foreign howl that comes with brokenness if lungs and throats and stinging eyes are pushed out of bed harshly enough. However, the past month has been the victim of such constant forward motion that these lips only had time for toe-tappers and show-stoppers.

But a boy falling through time eventually hits the bottom (or at least a branch), and my slap-of-arbor to the face happened last night. My first instance of sincere sadness/hollowness since my pride was shaken and my value tested 2 months ago. I understand the act of blogging in itself is detestably self-important, but there's something particularly selfless and shallow about this post as several of you have no doubt been "depressed" several times in the past month, and here I am, bitching about a rare instance. Ay, indulge me, lovelies.

I have been proactive about my life lately to the extent of dehumanizing it, removing the subjectivity of these baby blues, and leaving myself vulnerable to exhaustion and to the inability to appreciate all this green that burns around me. I have consciously framed my day-to-day in metaphor of "running the race"/ "playing the game." I have seen things as having rules neither divine nor scientific, and I have made competitions of kisses and words and the curves of backs. I thought this was a surefire plan to avoiding stagnancy, to avoid attachment (and thus pain), and to guarantee progress. But it is possible to do nothing but move and still do everything but get anywhere. This is the place in which I find myself- nauseatingly twirling in a swivel chair amidst a self-made tempest of vapid phonetics. I'm still just as insatiable as ever, only now I'm hopelessly confused, and I've thrown other sets of eyes into the mix. Need the path of a pioneer be so destructive? Isn't there a coast in which we stop and settle and make the world inhabitable again?

And will anyone else ever be enough or will I always resort to multiplying fractions of people?
And will I ever be enough, or will always I need to travel beyond the shores of my own body to find a place worth settling?

For now, I'm a wandering heathen, a hopeless Israelite in search of a Canaan that may just be story. But must I stop and rest for a spell in the sand while I deliberate north and south? Should I halt the caravan until I'm certain? Or do I follow an indecisive compass in hopes that one direction will outshine the rest, that West will be warm and forgiving?

Perhaps I should return to the yellow light, but the evening looks so green, and my fingertips feel so go.

Ack! Why must there be so many good people and right decisions?

Sluts of the 17th and 18th Century

Inconstancy in Love by Robert Burns

Let not Women e’er complain

Of inconstancy in love;

Let not Women e’er complain

Fickle man is apt to rove:

Look abroad thro’ Nature’s range,

Nature’s mighty Law is change,

Ladies, would it not seem stranger

Man should then a monster prove!

Mark the winds, and mark the skies,

Ocean’s ebb, and ocean’s flow,

Sun and moon but set to rise,

Round and round the seasons go.

Why then ask of silly Man

To oppose great Nature’s plan?

We’ll be constant while we can-

You can be no more, you know.

“O Blush Not So” by John Keats

O blush not so! O blush not so!

Or I shall think you knowing;

And if you smile the blushing while,

Then maidenheads are going.

There’s blush for want, and a blush for shan’t,

And a blush for having done it;

There’s a blush for thought, and a blush for nought,

And a blush for just begun it.

O sight not so! O sigh not so!

For it sounds of Eve’s sweet pippin;

By those loosened lips that you have tasted the pips

And fought in an amorous nipping.

Will you play once more at nice-cut-core,

For it will last our youth out,

And we have the prime of the kissing time,

We have not one sweet tooth out.

There’s a sigh for aye, and a sigh for nay,

And sigh for “I can’t bear it!”

O what can be done, shall we stay or run?

O cut the sweet apple and share it!

A Sense of Constellations

the evening began on a shelf
(a bookend cage, really)
a hardback from last garage sale
to never consider again
with its dust-laden title,
with its coffee stain script.

but chapters of breaths (in time) accumulate,
form Nimbus ideas
that will green the grass and puddle the streets
for yellow boots and almost sleep
until synapses crack the sky
and we can read (finally) by splintered dusk.

one translator, one cartographer
observing the transient pride of fireflies,
inhaling the nuances of peering stardust
to make lunar lexis into something tangible,
to capture celestial directions
for the day (far from now) we may need them.

“teach me to speak”
words fall soft and forgiving
making skeleton keys of taste buds.
the not-so-darkness has a voice
(the churning sea of Neptune/ the craving eyes of Venus)
to be found in brink-of-night lips

“teach me to find”
Apollo fingers depart the edge of here-on-earth eyes
tracing the scenic course from now to someday, maybe-
a zodiac path bent on telling old stories,
on making poems of our bodies,
on embellishing the truth about night.

You Can('t) Count on Me

I've always abhorred the static tendency of things, but I wasn't counting on retribution 100 times over. Life has been little more than an ongoing revolution these past few weeks, and it's left fingers green with naivety and my mind scattered across countless possible pavements. I have before, I believe, alluded to Plath's idea that when we think we want everything, it is perhaps because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing. That doesn't seem to align with my current situation; rather, I find myself thinking I want everything because I don't believe what I really want exists (in life, in a relationship, in my fucking salad dressing). No one and nothing can walk the fine line if you narrow it to the point it doesn't exist. So perhaps, I shall take the evening to reconsider what I value, in hopes that the day will bring the 3rd act epiphany that probably never comes to those who live on earth. Or perhaps, I'll wander from one town to the next (metaphorically speaking, of course) until I find the clearing (correction: a clearing) that satisfies.