brave little toaster.

at what point can we put our pride aside, lay it on the line, and just accept that if our egos get a little bruised along the way it was worth it to buy the ticket and take the ride? and at what point can we just let go of the emotional baggage of our 50 year old hearts, and just admit that we don’t want to live our lives bitter, and jaded, and cynical, and alone?

because I saw the way you looked at me that night I told you that you didn’t care, and I see it behind your eyes when you’re running scared. you’re there. you’re on that threshold at the edge of the precipice, thinking about taking the plunge, but wondering if I mean to make good on all my promises. wondering how much it will hurt when I disappoint you, as I inevitably will. well I’ll tell you now that it doesn’t matter at all.

I would love the chance to disappoint you. because if I did in fact disappoint you, like you already have me, that would mean that you would have to give enough of yourself to me that you would feel any hurt at all. that would mean mustering enough bravado that you let go and place your heart in my hands. and of course it will hurt at some point. that’s just what happens when you really care about something, someone, anything.  because nothing is perfect, particularly not people and particularly not me.  but I would at least try for you. for your attention, and your respect, and your admiration. I would try to make it easy, and spontaneous, and sexy.  fuck, I would even be faithful.

baby, I could be good to you. I could be good for you. I could be all those things that are lyrics in a song that paint a scene. I want to. but I want you to figure it the fuck out. because I’m not going to sell myself to you like a used appliance, or a car loan, even if I am an amazingly brave little toaster, or maybe even a little red corvette.  I know what I could do for you. but if you can’t realize it and take a risk, then you don’t deserve it

today I am dreaming…

of a perfect morning. 
a morning of overcast, a pretty shade of pale and gentle breeze blowing through an open window and across our faces and into our morning breath mouths.
buried under many blankets  trapping our warmth.
a morning with no alarm clocks, and no punch clocks,
no wake up calls, and no calls in.
no calls at all.
just many perfect lazy moments strung together
like pearls on string.
slipping in and out of  consciousness and dreamworld, and finally resting in that elysian place where the two melt.

until the music is over

somewhere on the cosmic map
of space and time
there are planets orbiting
and star signs aligning
around a simple truth

a. simple. truth.

somehow I am time traveling
back to a place, wondering what
this world is like
and what I need to do
to be a part of it
before it passes me by
or before the sickness overtakes
and I’m laying there in bed

and it’s all flying so fast
past the windows of the houses
and the passengers on the train
and the lenses of the man on his way,
to wherever he is going.
spinning like a giant carousel
in time
to that music
and I can’t get off, but I want
to. but it won’t let me
until the music is over.

so here I am, with air
filled lungs, and blood
shot eyes, and ink
stained hands, just searching
searching.

and you look at me like maybe
I’m the answer
like it is all together in me
and there is some focus behind
these roving, restless eyes
instead of this racing and vulnerability.

as if I am supposed to know the way,
the way to the end,
the way all of this works
for you and me.
and I just don’t. I want
to. but, it won’t let me
until the music is over.

trust fate (?)

fate

/feɪft/ [feyt] noun

–noun

1.	something that unavoidably befalls a person; fortune; lot: It is always his fate to be left behind.

2.	the universal principle or ultimate agency by which the order of things is presumably prescribed; the decreed cause of events; time: Fate decreed that they would never meet again.

3.	that which is inevitably predetermined; destiny: Death is our ineluctable fate.

4.	a prophetic declaration of what must be: The oracle pronounced their fate.

5.	death, destruction, or ruin.

6.	the Fates, Classical Mythology. the three goddesses of destiny, known to the Greeks as the Moerae and to the Romans as the Parcae.

I was raised to believe in free will. I was raised to believe that hard work, and determination, and goals, and lists, and planning is what makes things happen. I was raised to believe that the idea of fate is a cop out. That the life you want to live, is the life you have to create. No one, person, or entity is going to make it happen for you. That’s what I was raised to believe.

I got onto a tangent about this with a friend last weekend. He tattooed Trust Fate on the inside of his upper arms. My only reply was that I don’t think I really believe in fate. Why? The only thing that I could come up with, really, was that there is just as much physical proof to support the belief that everything happens because it is destined to, as there is to believe that everything happens purely out of coincidence, or as a result of what you make of it. And I was raised to believe the latter.

but, I really started thinking about it.
thinking about where all of this had gotten me.
thinking about how nothing ever turns out the way I plan. ever.
thinking about how just when I think I’ve figured anything out, everything manages to find a way to unravel on me.
thinking about how some of the things that I’ve worked the hardest on, tasks, goals, relationships- have failed anyway.
thinking about a million mistakes I’ve made that could’ve turned out so much worse than they actually did.

and it just makes me wonder…if I really had anything to do with it.

part of me feels like, deep down, if I was actually solely responsible for all of it, it would’ve turned out way, way worse.

like all of the time I’ve spent anguishing over decisions, and stressing about what to do, and analyzing all the angles should’ve been spent elsewhere, because maybe none of it matters anyway…because that’s what I’ve done for the last 23 years, and I don’t know that it’s helped at all. I think maybe the only thing that it’s given me is a chronic and severe pain between my shoulder blades, and frequent headaches right behind my eyes.

So I’m toying with the idea of going with his approach. Just to see how it works, just for awhile.

witching hour

upstairs
the lights are dimmed
to chaste but insinuating
silhouettes adjacent

pink hues of silk
transform honesty
and make the conscience linger
for an instant

too late
for children’s bedtimes
or painted finalities
elicited stroke by stroke

so lie
bare beneath the curtains
exhaling exposed and
concave

skeleton

To look to touch
not with fingers, but eyes only.
Pure and polished
peering into the prism.

While the cicadas,
in seventh-month aubergine twilight
hum quietly, in furtive transformations
below.

Between the complications of
sultry air and sand, and contradictions
of the restive blood and resistant vein,
mingle sighs of relief at the first sight
of skin.

Slowly, gently
the diaphanous shell
tears and spreads, and emerges.
Exposed after seventeen years.

The depths of dormancy broken,
shattering the silence
with the dull roar of remorse,
and absence of resolution.

The fragile carcasses
sit like sullen shadows
in the shade of their disquietude,
a haze of uncertain longing.

Yet, still, I search for a place
where our bones could be buried together.

depression in relief

Deep breath
of wet weight limp upon my limbs,
intruding
a sorrowful goodbye, a sacred place.

wait, Wait.
I have grown old.
Fermented, with weathered palm lines
and wisdom beneath my fingernails,
rotting and splitting,
infested.

Too late to steal away in darkness,
take flight out my window
and meet my counterparts.
No,  they’ve streaked their
renunciation across the sky-
a banner for all eyes.

My cancer grows
in tandem with
shuddering regrets.
I can not carry this load.
I bow to the ground,
polishing that black worry
stone smooth.

it’s funny how…

hurt makes memories disappear.

it’s funny how the heart, for the sake of self-preservation, has these cathartic moments where it purges itself of the little things that at one point meant so much, just so that it can move on and survive.

it’s funny how they can resurface in the most unexpected ways, at the most unexpected times, and for the most unexpected reasons. a day, like any other day, a mood, like any other mood, occupied with normal routine mundaneness, and you look up from nothing, startled by a simple request.

suddenly, your mind is back there, in that vault, that vault of all those things you tried to forget…and you’re vaulted…backwards, to a day in late summer, right when the air started to cool, you can feel the breeze blowing through your hair, and you’re standing by the lake, and there are chills up your spine at his touch on the small of your back, and at some point, your hands just naturally, comfortably, slipped into one anothers. and it is quickly followed by lightheadedness, and that feeling in the pit of your stomach that is somewhere between butterflies and nausea.  then it was more butterflies, now it is more nausea.

and then suddenly, you’re vaulted back to reality, back to now, fastforward three hours, and you’re sitting there face to face…the last three hours are gone, you don’t even know how you got there. I mean, you know you drove there. you know you took Street X to Street Y to get from Point A to Point B, but you don’t know how you got there. all you know, is that you’re avoiding eye contact, because it is too much, because you might just tell the truth. all of it. you might just expose all of your vulnerability, and all of your insecurity, and you might just let yourself go. and that is too much.

it’s funny how people tell me that I’m intimidating…because I think most days, I’m really just the same insecure, unsure, palms-sweating, head-shaking mess I was when I was 16. somewhere my body grew up. somehow, that helps me hide it better than most.

yeah, it’s funny how that works.

miss u.

two little words.
is there a reason? or is there a reason you say you do?
does it matter…

is it possible to miss something you don’t even know? something you don’t understand? the way a blind person misses the color blue?
or are they just words? the kind that just roll off the tip of your tongue because they are supposed to? habitual. how are you? i’m fine.

is it possible that 24 hours is enough to know you want someone? because I haven’t seen you since the winter, but I saw you last night. you came to me in a vision, in a half-asleep, half-awake daze, and told me that I could let myself go. you lied.