( a long wavelength of blue silk stretched thin
across the entrance)

shock
splice
ping

don't you know, the ball is always in your court
my heart the green, my love the fence, the trees
the sky

The Hand (Part 2)

Sometimes this heart, through it's changes, still has a ghost stretched thinly, delicate, through the muscles, contracting. In the stillness of the night, when my breathing slows, the ghost can be heard, holding his mouth over the valve to swallow my blood.

the unexamined spaces of being

the unexamined spaces of being is going to be the title of my next body of work after The Blue Shorts. I just created a new blog for it. I think that my poetry will go into this new blog-the untitled things.
The Blue Shorts are little pieces of prose.
the unexamined spaces of being is poetry and little things, little tiny things.

SOME NEWS

1. The Mosquito and The Windows are being published in Ampersand, a literary publication in St. Petersburg, Florida.
2. Erin Smith and I are starting a literary journal in NYC called WKWS.
3. Website for all my writing/works is almost finished.

as I grow older
I start to understand the easy jokes
the ones that seemed too simple
the ones that seemed too silly
like slipping between warm sheets
I'm noticing my wrinkles are forming
right around the edge of my eyes

I always said that if I were to have wrinkles, they would be
be the crinkly kind of arrows that point at the eye
little mona lisas lasting longer than the performance

in paris there were so many gathered around
her and she was just a tiny fragment fading in a huge room
while the others were crammed to the ceiling, she had her
queens quarters, surrounded by all the admirers, fleeting heart flutters
circles of glee

in the night, the draft easily catches
mona lisa alone
mona lisa on the pillow

Bat Call No.2

I've been thinking about you little bat
and your tiny voice

and I realize it's not only you I miss
but me and my bat call

nothing feels better than calling
nothing feels better than loving
knowing an echo will bounce back

the flame licks at the darkness
dancing across the moist cavern

I was mistaken, the squealing wasn't you at
all little bat

it was the wood in the fire
squeezing


nothing comes from nothing
nothing comes from everything

I'm learning how to become personal again:
normal

We wanted to become normal. Transform from
rare jungle orchids (wilting and blackening at touch)
to fields of golden wheat in abundance
so our love could be harvested

So I bruised my altar, burnt my wings and
I filled my belly with toast
and my face with flesh
lips and wine and the local market and
pillows shaped like you

This second life
is much like the first
except the glasses are clean
and I can hear the sound of
leaves breaking in the wind, rice
popping, insects knees

Back and forth
we are always traveling from one
beat to the next, pressing two fingers
against the neck for the red:
there is no place Dorthy

These are lyrics to my new song. It SOUNDS much different than it reads: very etheral, slightly folky, and haunting. I'll post a recording of this soon. I might just post a very rough version because I like the idea of capturing it in it's rawness.


This poem is about moonlight and morning sunlight, my real lovers that lay
in my bed with me, that see me to sleep and watch me rise. We "break" when I fall asleep or when I get out of bed and start my day.
The part about paying isn't necessarily about paying with money, it's more about paying with time.
I'd rather sleep alone with the moon and the sun, even it gets a little lonely, and wait for my universe to collide with another universe and our stars become one.



I have a lover
he brings me wine
covered in silver
silken thread so fine

we break
in the midnight hours
we break
in the midnight hours

I have a lover
he brings sunshine
though eastern window
golden leaves of time
we break
in the afternoon
we break in the afternoon
we break in the afternoon
we break in the afternoon

you can pay for a lover
but you can't pay for love


I have a lover
he brings love light

The Crystal Glasses

I started drinking again: coffee in the morning; white wine at night.
I started eating too: toast and marmalade, 3 times a day.
I started sleeping as well: a cat curling up into a ball of and on strobe eyes.
I started to dream: of kissing.

1.
First milk, then rice milk, then goat milk, then almond milk: in my coffee, sil vous plait.
No wine, no thank you, yes, now yes, of course, the glass is crystal
I mopped the floors and licked my fingers
and played them like electric cherries
magenta

2.
One slice, oh yes, another, with butter?

3.
At first the rain was an excuse
but after the sun changed clothes
My eyelids were still drenched
the laundry was slowly drying
in the humidity, the garden was


I cleaned the glasses and arranged them neatly in front of the mirror. In the morning I found them drying in the sink again.
I had forgotten they belonged in the glass cabinet built into the wall. The display of small white cups and metal objects went victorian, like a dollhouse parlor. Each one was a lady china standing with full skirt open ready to be flipped and tickled by thick mustaches.

This home sounds of mother in the kitchen, father sucking at his tooth. I remember the days of waiting and feeding history. I thought
for all the love
for all the love
I'm still speechless at the train station
holding an umbrella above my head
like hand over mouth
the clear blue sky searching
for my scalp

the weather man said there would be rain, eventually
gripping white knuckle to black handle
gold to palm
(the preacher kisses his wife and children
and puts his shoes on upside down)

4.
If I knew how
I would like to
walk in the mud, with fresh pink lips

it is in the brambles of love
do I find my heart caught
on certain small thorns from those
blossoming rosebuds
that scent so sweetly
and center kiss
at dusk
before closing up tight I am
(only)
tugging at thorns in the dark:
my blood is the same hue

I couldn't pluck the rose
no matter how much I would love
to watch it drink at my table
to smell its wide open
but if the rose were to pluck me
I'd happily sing till my last petal
fell velvet sweet death

The Mosquito

I killed the mosquito. We decided it was okay to do it.

Elephants beat at flies, volcanoes burn and bubble, trees fall and a spine is snapped,
monkeys spear bushbabies in their sleep.
First no, then yes! YES! It bit me earlier and I was itching,
hearing it's tiny wings whine: diseases sleep us you the future blood on my pillow
an open window welts mothers tiny arms needles in black fur
the open chest cavity the liquid
(it was shimmering, quivering the exposed heart afraid and alive)
and your ovens: rosemary and butter, my hands under skin
rubbing cool autumn in with surgical gloves salt eyes
brushing my face against the collar like making love to flowers
the secret corridor in the castle pushing up against the chair
I kept thinking there was more of you, even though you had left
kept crawling back into the bed with the light guillotine

Could we sit at the table, get to know one another first?

I felt mosquito wings on my cheek,
a very soft and gentle wind, like cat paw.
You were just tiny and delicate, hungry for something you needed,
hungry for me because I happened to be there
under the lamp, in the light.

There are more on the ceiling.
There will always be more, in the warm and the wet.
You forgot, didn't you?
Lemongrass and screens, honey.
Protect yourself.
We do the most damage.

just
love/white lilly
it seems simple, the morning coffee stain
a drop of rain
a crumb absentmindedly brushed off the table

take that moment and multiply it
frequencies, circles in a pool/lavender

it is the love of a single second
intended/peony (holding your face
in my hands, I place my lips gently)
entirely
a world you created
just for
me

how a thousand flowers bloom/pink harmonics
and bee's hum heavy time turns
inside out
the scent of a million shimmering wetness
pollenatemyheartwould
sing/goldenrod
as it always had
just for
you

The Paint

The music video from MGMT's "Time To Pretend" makes me feel weird. Something about it makes strange colors inside of me and I can't pinpoint what it is. Some kind of old feeling, high school, the prospect of the world, the Korg, the skatepark, the bend in time. I suppose whatever it is is the reason why they are so popular right now: paint being poured of a bucket, one straight solid seeming line, but when you grab at it, you pull away with an empty hand a different color.

The Love Show

All day I've been laying in bed listening to all the shows on This American Life that are about love. I've been doing it a lot lately. Every time I go to the website, I scan through the archives looking for the ones about relationships, specifically and hungrily. I have no interest in anything else. I've even listened to the same shows twice, even three times that I had heard over the past year, picking out small parts that I remember, anticipating the ending again and again. Especially the ones that suddenly make me tighten up and tears burst out of my eyes uncontrollably. There is a knot in my chest, not a pain, just a sudden connection between the mind and the heart, that pulls till the fibers slowly uncoil. Each time I react differently, each time I feel a slight change.

Usually it's the memory; the sentiment, that does me in.
Trends: parents and children, death, lost love, and moments of true love: JOY.
Trends: monologues, short sentences whispering a pained name, reasoning without reason or emotion.

"Hey! I wanted to introduce you to my wife and my son!"
I looked over, forcing a giant smile on my face, turning down the volume of the show about a mother and her son.
It looked like a small cloud rained all over my face.
For a second she had a worried look until I mentioned that I had been listening to This American Life and gave a textured laugh. Hearty soup.

I was laying on my bed tonight listening to a 70 year old man read poems about his dead wife. The part that made me tense up suddenly was the gentle memory of her pulling up to the house with groceries in the trunk of their Saab. I imagined it was fall and the car was red.
Just like that. Simple. True. Gone.

This morning the story was about a beautiful man who loved an ugly woman, and, as you could guess, the roles switched:

..."Go on and leave, you ugly bitch," he says to her, and as he says the words, as one by one they leave his mouth, she's transformed into the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. He says the words again, almost tenderly. "Leave, you ugly bitch." Her hair is golden, her brown eyes deep and sad, her mouth full and affectionate, her tears the tears of love and loss, and her pleading, outstretched arms, her entire body, the arms and body of a devoted woman's cruelly rejected love. A third time he says the words. "Leave me, you disgusting, ugly bitch." She is wrapped in an envelope of golden light, a warm, dense haze that she seems to have stepped into, as into a carriage. And then she is gone, and he is alone again"...


Laying there, going in and out of the story, I imagined you. Finally.
I remembered what it was like to be in love. I've been trying for a while, searching desperately for years to find that innocent happiness, only stuck at lonely dead ends and painful defeats.
Not today.
Today, we were on a bus, we were walking down a cobblestone street, we were in a forest climbing branches, we were laughing at a dinner party, we were standing in the middle of a beautiful city and I looked up at you, into your face, the world a blur, and told you I loved you.

Yes! You! Future you! You whom I've never met or one I have, you who exists now as something tangible, fresh, sweet, true. You from the past or from the future, from this life or from the next, whenever it may be, it is you. The one that feels like a warm blanket, the one pulled right up to my nose. The one who loves me most ( the one I love truly).


Tonight imagined you walking through my door. You climb right into bed with me without taking off your shoes or your jacket. Your clothes are cold, your are fingers freezing, yet you wrap them around my warm stomach and I take my hot hands and press them over yours.
With my eyes closed, I turned my head toward the ceiling, out of the blanket, my lips slightly parted. I imagined the cool air on my lips were yours and the space between our mouths pink and soft, like a petal. You hold my damp face, stick your hand into my chest, holding my heart genlty like an antique tea-cup, and through my eyes, pour in warm, warm love.

Show excerpt from "Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story"
by Russell Banks

The Cookies

There was a knock at my door. He was standing there with a silver rose made out of screen mesh. The kind of mesh that you put in windows.
"Wow! You just made this for me?!"
"Well...I made it, " he stumbled over his words, "I made it. It's for you, for the cookies." That meant he must have made it a while ago when he had nothing to do but sit around his friend's apartment all day long. At least he was productive with his time. I wonder why he was making mesh roses, this Jersey boy with a soprano voice and a gangster exterior.

The manager of my building, a big eyed black and white mix with a Jersey accent, always had a sad look on his face. Once he came up to my apartment, very stoned,a giant smile, and told me about an idea he had for a movie that involved everyone in the building. Once he talked about his brother and how he never got a hold of him even though they lived in the same city. Once he told me about wanting to go to a baseball game.
"Aww, you need a best friend, don't you?!"
"Yeah."

Last night I made cookies and then gave them away to the people in my building. I was feeling sick and cold, and I wanted my apartment to smell like a home with a mother. To be more specific, I wanted it to smell like burnt cookies, like Mandy' house-my best friend from elementary school. Her mother was always making cookies. The brown tupperware, the kind with a silver star on it from the 70's, was always full of cookies or her mother would just be pulling a hot batch from the oven. She was always on a "diet", quiet, unhappy looking,and always, always making cookies.

"Christine! Christine!" I heard two singsongy voices echoing down the street. My hands were full of groceries and a large mixing bowl. I looked out from the steps of my stairs and saw the twins; my manager and his best friend, the rose maker, who had come to visit and ended up moving in with him. In his hand there was a very small ziplock bag with a tiny amount of cubed chicken, the amount some people would leave on their plate or give to a dog.
" I don't like wasting food, you know?"

The Poppers

Pop, pop, popopopop, pop.

I woke up to the sound of stars falling and crashing against the pavement.
Then, I realized, it was the sound of poppers. Poppers popping on the street below Cat's balcony. It was 4am.

The Wish

"Look at those kids! They're so cute!"
Two little boys were standing in the cold water screaming and hopping up and down in the waves. I looked around for Cat. She was walking ahead of me, too far away to hear. Next to me was a woman with long oak brown hair, lightly wavy, and tossed by the sea breeze. I turned to her.
"Well, my friend is up there, so I'll just say it to you: Aren't those boys cute!"
She smiled and caught up to my pace, there was an open bond.
"Yes! I've been watching them, they've been screaming like little girls! It's so funny!"
I looked back at the boys and thought about how it reminded me of being a child and screaming at the top of my lungs in joy. Then I realized I still do it when I'm playing. Little high pitched yelps of joy that I would sometimes stop and ask out loud why I was so girly and why did I scream so much? The guilt of being too much of a pussy. Where did that come from?
I laughed and pointed at two other children in front of us.
"Little kids are so beautiful!"
"I know," she replied, thoughtfully, "it makes me want one so bad."
I gave a little chuckle and thought about wanting children. Not right now, but someday.
We walked a little more in silence. Cat was in her own world ahead of me to even notice us. The woman seemed a little melancholy, lost in thought, and I looked at her to say goodbye.
"It makes me wonder...I'm 8 days late..." she said, her tone a little sad, but with a hesitant laugh.
I looked at her,smiled, and said, softly, as I sped up my pace,
"You're happy?
You ARE happy.
Everything will be alright."

The wind blew her loose dress around her stomach, and, for a minute, it looked like her belly was swollen and full of an unsure wish, a wish growing into something much larger than her or I.

The Will

Something clicked
inside, the knife twisted all the way and pulled out,
let it spill,
let in the air
lying there in the open
with nothing above except everything like when
I was a child and
the ground felt familiar
and the stars were winking

a breath, one huge breath that could fill a room,
which it did
until someone opened a window
and it was over.

I didn't even realize until later.
And when the aftershocks beat at the walls,
when there was more to come,
I barely glanced up, just like the preachers wife
who looked through my tears when the plane was going down
and calmly said

"Everything is just as God has willed it."

The Here and There

In between the kisses, there were pockets of space, where I was floating. Huge white boulders with holes slowly floated past. Then sometimes I was underwater;transparent seaweed slowly swayed, my hand gently pressing through murky aquamarine. There was the giant golden pyramid that slowly exploded into green, orange and yellow cubes---slowly twisting away into the darkness. This was the in-between state. The in-between the kisses, the minor notes on the piano, the moments too huge to be caught, but small enough to hold in the palm of your hand. The place you just know is both here and there.

The Americana

Tonight I went bowling. I haven't done that in ages, and of all the places, it had to be Lucky Strike, right in the dead center of the Hollywood murk. ( I call it the murk because it is a travesty of the once romantic American dream; sourly soiled, foiled, folded and unfolded: beautiful, stark, and bemuddled.)

It is 2:33AM and someone in my building is going through a Bjork phase. I've heard her soulful crooning resonating through these thin walls all week long. This summer, someone was really into The Doors. It made for a great summer soundtrack (mixed in with the drunken songs of the homeless hippies roaming these Venice alleys).

I'm going to burn some Nag Champa and go to sleep. I'm not a pot smoker, it just smells like unprofessional lazy freedom to me. The desire to smell it comes and goes. The distant Doors? Probably. Americana? Hippiably.

I'll most likely wake up choking on the soapy smoke.

( I love italics, they hit the seriously sardonic note just right, with a miniature smirk.)

The Wind

All night the the lonely tiger has been rubbing his fur against my window. At moments he pauses, quietly, to stare in with his large fountain eye. He presses his sharp claw against the floorboards, gently scraping my ankles like wildfire brush. His lips pull up against the pink stucco revealing the midnight grin to the shadows. Then, he pounces toward the sky, whipping his tail violently, leaving the air stunned.

We breathe...until his muscular legs slowly pass again, each paw print strategically placed, each movement painstakingly planned.

The night is restless; he is searching for an open door. We are turning inward.

The Aloe Plant

I moved into this apartment almost a year ago. It was just the beginning of summer and the rains had just stopped. Kelli suggested the paint and we brushed in the corners in the dying light of the day. The next day Erin and I bought more paint, the coolers, the beer, and snacks and locked ourselves in for a day. The entire studio was an adobe brown, we covered it all in an eggshell white. After, in the heat, we ran to the beach which was less than a block away, and cool ourselves in the pacific blue. She wore multi-colored thrift store sunglasses, I, the big Jackie-O. We found sand in our sandwiches, between teeth. We bought our first summer dresses. She twirled in a baby yellow, and I in a tight blue gingham. Later that evening I would kiss the handsome boy that didn't wear socks with his shoes. He bit my lip so hard, it bled.

At first I thought there might be too much white: asylum white. But, after filing the rest of the place with soft pines, bamboo shades, and the warmth of reason, it was perfectly fitting. Only one painting was necessary on the walls, the one just above my bed. I had painted it and used it for the flier of a show earlier that year. It was one pig, in sumi ink, with a huge soft yellow bubble over his head. In the bubble were two pigs with distorted faces flying with tiny wings through stylized clouds. I gave the real, full explanation to a room of guests moments after I broke my hand, tears streaming down my face, the blood quickly filling under the ice in the sink:

"Soulmates! It is my soulmate painting! The pig is dreaming about flying through the clouds with his soulmate!" I was screaming, laughing, crying, drunk and delirious!
"Their faces are distorted because...it is only a dream! Just a daydream! That is ME! It is all a daydream..."

Everyone laughed. I offered them wine. I didn't know most of them, they had all appeared in my apartment like a flood. They had cooed in my ear, patted my back, gave me water, laughed at my jokes. My hand was swelling, the muscles were tightening.

Later, when I was all alone in my apartment, the pain swelled to the point of disintegration. I finally called my parents. My father told me to go to the hospital. I was surprised, we never went to the doctor, we always took care of it on our own: Home Remedies, used crutches in the attic, my mother wincing as my father cleaned the gash and, after 4 hours of surgery, wrapped her up. She healed beautifully; his scar faded; my sickness went away. He told me that he realized we can't take care of everything and if he had gone to the hospital in the past, he might not be suffering now.

I stopped crying, replaced fear with relief-finally, permission to do what people normally do, and got in my car, drove myself to the hospital with one eye open, one hand on the wheel, through the fog.

I was missing a window box. I found my first plant by my door. It was a huge green pot with a fat aloe plant. There was a note from the girl above. It nested between the bars and the window pane just right. We sliced at it with sharp knifes to heal our wounds. Later, after my broken hand, my mother built a ledge and we added more plants. The prize plant was the gardenia she bought me. It was a glossy green and the prospect of spring, of pungent white flowers, made it the gem of my small garden. A month later, during the fires, it shriveled down to a crisp brown death. So did the basil, the wildflowers, and the peppermint.

I wanted birds, I wanted hummingbirds and little chirping birds, but, birds wouldn't come to a flowerless window.


I had to get away for a month. Anywhere: the hot tropics, the cold American center, the bustling island. It had been rainy and cold and I was sharing my place with a girl that was missing moments of time. I hopped from one disappointment to the next, dreading the thought of returning home, bundling up, changing skins, rearranging my guts.


When I finally returned, the place was calm, quiet, and so very white: asylum white. The sheets were fresh, fluffed, crisp white. The floors were clean, the mirrors were clean. A reprieve. A retreat. I slept for days, longer and later each day. I kept the shades down, I turned up the heat. I moved around like a mouse, stopping every now and then to reflect on sentiment. A burst, one cry.

Last night I rolled up the bamboo so the sun would shine in in the morning. It was the latest I had slept. I looked at my small garden, the one I had neglected for months. The aloe plant had bloomed while I was away-a tiny stalk with bright orange tubular flowers, straight from the heart. I saw a small hummingbird stop, in the frame of my window, to taste the insides of the blooms.

My eyes opened wide, my heart began to split open: a little bloom.

The Movie

Last night I went to see a movie alone.

"This is my first time going to the movies by myself!" I told the boy at the box office. "Is it a good movie?"
"It's a little depressing."
"Oh, thats great, going to see a movie alone and getting depressed!"
"If it makes you feel any better: I hope you have a good day."

It was night. He must have been working all day long. His slender fingers shook a little, with nervousness, when he passed me the ticket underneath the glass pane. I had to tilt my head to the right to see his face.

Earlier that evening I went to a lecture about the mind from the world's "top expert" on the brain. He spoke softly, billowy, with a rich accent, hints of cocoa and pepper. He was small man with heavy glasses, tiny gestures. Easy to crush-very easy to stomp. I knew everything he spoke about, I knew what he was saying. I understood his demeanor, and, while the neuro-scientists picked at him with scientific terms, he recoiled, asked his heart, went back to the day he fell in love, and answered them kindly.

The movie was a black and white animation, all french. I tuned my ears to the language, picking out the words I knew. My legs were up in the air, reflecting the screen. My dress was wide open, but I didn't care. No one could see. The couples in front of me cried heavily and laughed heartily. They knew the inside joke. They were familiar. We all walked out like a funeral procession.

Quickly,
though the puddles,
through the piss in the parking garage,
through the light rain and heavy wind,
I found my way to my car and drove home in silent regard.I was the girl in the movie, the lost one, the lonely one. Movie scripts were made from my words, from my life. It was all so easy.

"You are so dumb!" I hit her chest.
"You say you are looking for love, for someone to love, for truth, but you don't even pay attention to it when it is standing right in front of you!"
Tears streamed down. The little gay men held me and carried me away. Earlier, my stomach tingled, my lips pressed together, my heart fluttered.

I had to park down by the electrical station. The rain poured down in sheets, but, lightly, misting my face. It smelled like sea, like sardines and burning wood. I could hear the waves churning, the small droplets pricking the skin of the roofs, the palms of the trees. I stood in the middle of the street for a moment, letting the rain brush my face, the streetlight and I were the only ones awake then.

I didn't cry, even though I thought I was going to.
I changed.