i was never prepared for this.

I have a conflicting relationship with “goodbye.” We’ve never meant it, really, to each other. It was always a test. Always temporary. Always fleeting. A sinuous whisper of both regret and hope – I never mean it. Meant it. Behind every goodbye I’ve ever wished has been that crouched, aching morsel of what… whatever it is that makes the other turn, and maybe look at me. Maybe wish for some other outcome. Maybe pray for another chance, or perhaps another wistful glance at the frustrating “coulda shoulda woulda” that dances me from this to that in my upsetting experience so far. My heart has been broken. It resonates, and I try to just let it drop off the walls once it hits, but sometimes it just sticks… and I can’t scrape it off. I just watch whatever it was I gave over and over and over smear down the wall like paint. THAT is what it was. Reduced to this. Reduced to these words, which means I’m just grabbing at straws to justify this pain that results from loss. We all lose. We all try. And risk. And hope. And sometimes, we lose. Sometimes our hopes are far greater than the reality grasped in our fists. Sometimes, we squeeze so tightly; all that is left is just a powder on our palms.

Somewhere in this ether I can find your answers. Your approval. Your advice. Your fears. Your regrets and mistakes. Your passion. Your love. More and more of it can’t be grabbed in these hands – it’s disappearing… the tangibility of you. Your voice is in here somewhere, calling me…


In what language should I answer?

an ornament for the heart.

i write myself more than i write anyone else...






it's these lines who curl around your face like smoke. your form is no longer crisp, no longer clear... where you end and where the space around you begins just floats in the ether around your shoulders; embraced like the ghosts that tug on our footsteps, begging our memories to haunt us as they do. my friend, i'm saving my breaths to tease the smile from your floating visage. this is the memory i save of you: while i step on the earth, you are lost at sea, living a hundred years like a hawksbill beneath a jeweled shell.

i hope you return to the shore from where you crawled out to the sea.

it's worth something, usually.

may deserves a shout out. it was complicated. fun. incredibly exciting. and somehow the opposite as well.

i am going to miss my friend d.p.m.
already do.

normal circumstances, indeed.

never underestimate the power of your own neuroses. not that even writing it down makes it more excusable. excusable, really? not that dismissal is what i mean - perhaps, exercisable. executable. excitable. exemplary. exempt. sure, exempt. why the fuck not. why do i even care? i am always returning to "this" and not "that." all pronouns aside, i know i have a teensy little collection of hang-ups that i'd rather not have. and of course it's not as dramatic and insurmountable as, say, a phobic disorder that causes me to reject anything that might be good for me. no, of course not. tragically, i'm just not that interesting. strike that; reverse it. interestingly, i'm just not that tragic. i'm about as neurotic as my cats - as dismissing and insatiable in equal amounts. love, touch, food, etc. yes, i think i may have just compared myself to my cats. shrug. eh, worse has happened.

taking my mother's advice and recording my interpretation of whatever this is. is it this because i never created a "that" for myself? because i became complacent with the "idea" that what i have passion for and where it is i am skilled will never align quite right? i know i keep asking the question... at this point, i'm not sure that i care as much i thought i should. with passion at full fruition - an unshakable state regardless of production - i'm still not completely convinced that the fight is over. i think i'll be in a never ending state of budding and bloom... the frost will never take as much as maybe i once believed. it's there in the roots...

sometimes i really hate to be that person chasing what it is i feel i need to experience in life or in love. i feel like some "sex and the city" episode and i'm carrie bradshaw (okay, so maybe that wouldn't be so bad with her apartment and her closet...). but it's kind of ironic (talk about neurotic): i'm either a pussycat or a fictional character. either way, i'm hopeful about where this is headed. tangibility, optimism, and chemistry are present in this new relationship with myself.

i can't shake the feeling that something good is about to happen.

stand up straight at the foot of your love.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tNs2ZuOVOQ&NR=1

posting this as a way to keep myself... myself. i feel more whole these days, but it doesn't mean i don't make mistakes. i keep pieces of people in my heart, and remember them before they master the art of forgetting. eventually, we all become ghosts.

whoever knows me, knows i chase the possibility of falling in love. i'm still running as fast as i can.

i'm kicking up the fucking dirt beneath these heels. i've never felt this lucky.


to whom it may concern: i've been there. i don't want to go back. i don't (only) want to miss the possibility losing of myself - never anything else. i'm as smart as you think i am; however, i'm limited to my 27 years. i think that's longer than one thinks it is. i'm regretful. no, no i'm not.

i don't think i ever would be. could be. ought to be. i'm a living, breathing contradiction of myself. and i have so much to share; "love sought is good but given unsought is better." shakespeare knew what he was writing down.

it's because i am more hopeful than most are, usually. glass is mostly full kind of stuff. even that the glass is here in my hands.

in any event, these last few months were experimentally interesting. february, admittedly, was a mistake. to the man in stripes: sorry if i hurt you. it just wasn't a good fit. what goes around comes around; it's a dizzy spin, isn't it? march started to emerge beautifully, and ended crisp and clean. it's too beautiful out to stay indoors. april is going to charm the hell outta me.

being young means getting into trouble. cheers to that. going to go run with the horses.




(i'm always going to smile.)

if nothing else.

I'm praying


and praying
and


praying.

-mjbsw - upon the discovery that our father has lung cancer. 02.17.10

lying by the rags.

venus.

let them take my heart
wrap it in a white linen
stains of crimson
show little remorse

give them my ribs
crack each bone to isolate
the creamy sternum
in the center

and with my sacrum
let them make a basket of it
a bassinet to cradle my ten fingers
and ten toes

my eyes and ovaries of course
will not receive proper burial
they will be traded
like black marbles in a velvet pouch

four small clay jars
each a cerulean blue
will house my pink kidneys
and significant glands

they can lift my leather cloth
sketch and marvel my gorgeous vulva
carve meat off my inspiring buttocks
they can let the oily fat drop at my feet

i do not own my humiliation
i am tired of savage coverture
the waters of the seine have left a bitter taste

i am beyond the boundaries of myself

baroque.

i am sand

grains on the mantle
of the oyster
an irritant inside

two halves of shell

lapping me
like a lover once male
now it female mouth

upon me

how did i allow a thing
such as this to occur
the breadth of skin

exposed to tongue

lips teeth
would i question
valves sneaking me

inside the watery jaws

would i question the
silty bed would i question
my shape

as i rolled out a pearl

you held onto me like i was a crucifix.

i forgot to pray for the angels
and so the angels forget to pray for us.

making something of something.

okay, so it's a new year. resolution time, baby.

what does it even mean - resolution? yeah, sure of course it means answering a problem, blah blah blah. what does the oed say? mirriam-webster? urban dictionary? likely, it's all the same. something about analyzing, or answering, or consonance, maybe dissonance, or something. so, am i resolving the attitudes and actions of 2009? as in correcting them? or am i merely (ah, merely) adjusting the sails for 2010? admittedly, both. i'm suspecting this won't be as difficult as i imagine, provided i give a little bit of a shit about bliss. didn't blake say that? you've gotta give a shit about your bliss? i think that's exactly how it went. i think that's right.

okay, so what do i resolve to do about this stagnant ick i'm in? siiiigh. ah, there's the rub. getting out of the muck is usually the hardest part, but i've been here so long that... fuck it. done with the excuses. can i just move to pandora? please???

i am really looking forward to my sculpture class that starts in a week. am i sad that i've failed round two of grad school? yes, but part of me knew that my heart just wasn't present. passion's always the key, and though somehow i always talk myself in the door... it never manages to work out. i love linguistics. i love the historic and idiosyncratic "stuff" about it... middle english, vowel shifts, dialects, idiolects, shibboleths, metaphors. that stuff is fun. the "why" of grammar and why everyone fucks it up (especially english). and i love literature. the faery queene. beowulf. e.e. cummings. sharon olds. oh, sharon olds. i like learning. structuralism. deconstrucuralism. queer theory. dadaism. postmodernism. black lit. sex lit. black sex lit. anything racy. but NOT john milton. i think a grad program structured in 17th century studies is horrible. but that's just me.

okay, so i've moved on. i'll always be an academic even if i think i may have lost momentum. it's the optimist in me. i should have attended ccs when i received the scholarship. coulda shoulda woulda. moving on.

i want passion, though. am i a slave because i have a job that pays my bills, but that i feel no passion for whatsoever? perhaps. as long as i don't let it define me. and also as long as i pretend that what i do and who i am makes no difference in how i get that check out. i know i like to write. i've written an amazing ten, maybe, poems in the past five years. i mean amazing. i know i can write. i have to have that much confidence to do it, right? hah, who am i even asking? eh, it's just a matter of doing it. perseverance? maybe plain ol' stupidity.

so, let's get back to it. resolutions. there exists a litany of what i am and who i want to be and the mistakes i've made and the regrets i have.... so on and so fucking forth we go. i fabulously ignore that little voice in my heart that squeezes it more and more every day, screaming for me to be more productive, use my head, my hands, let go of stupid fears, and just be who i am. (note: control b is bold and option b is ∫ which is /∫/, a post-alveolar fricative that produces the "sh" sound in "she" or "shit." or "she shit." yes, this is my life.)

i am not so sure what it is i should do, anyway. i just know that i should resolve to be happy. like fucking unbelievably happy. i know it's what i want to be, and i get closer all the time. i think all of us negotiate our happiness in different ways. jobs, kids, lovers, husbands, blah and whatever. relativity aside, i know it's part of what i want. okay, so maybe all of what i want. it's not so bad admitting that.

for "twenty-ten" i resolve to be better at the following things:
- patience
- self love (no and yes to what you may think)
- write, write, write...
- not eating so much cheese
- maintaining
- living
- creating
- loving
- adventure
(and lose 10 - 15 lbs. i'm not fat. just squishy.)

i think this is pretty doable. it's a word.

"Deep in my body my green heart
turns, and thinks of you. Deep in the
pond, under the think trap
door of ice, the water moves,
the carp hangs like a sun, its scarlet
heart visible in its side."

-Sharon Olds, "The Winter After Your Death"


oh please, please, let the river melt. i'll show you i can swim.