5% troof/95% bullshit

"troof"

picking up quarters from my bedroom floor
only to keep my mind occupied, and away from it's stray
i need to keep away from the fact that i'm falling in love with you
i'm at the entrance to a minefield
if i don't keep my tinfoil up, i'm bound to explode

i'd never say these words to your face
i know the cost and it's fucking high
but, you're beautiful, and i want to touch you
almost as much as i want to breathe
sideways, i'm sideways, i'm retreating back inside

i watch the rain wash
your car prints from my driveway
i take another sip of coffee at 2 am
i've been doing this so long, i don't know how i'd come out
even if i knew it were safe

so, i wait for the sky to open, for a heavenly chorus of angels wielding bells
i've been waiting an eternity, i can wait another
please remember to dress warm, and to drive slowly
i'll whisper these words as i send my love
off into the night and i'll pray that it reaches your heart


Post title says all I'm going to tell you. I'm sorry about the lack of updates. I haven't been writing much and blogging seems so self indulgent. I swear to god I'll write a life update by the end of this weekend.

"Today I send you love. I wonder if you will receive it./I would have gone crooked but for you"

I sat on this for a week before I did the second draft. Laziness is my excuse. I like it. I wrote this in a meeting, for whatever reason I was thinking about porn. It seems a bit vicious in places but I think it's pretty decent.

"lovers don't learn"

when all the pornography that will
ever be made has been made
i will gaze upon your memory anew
my lusts will reassert themselves
and i will go stumbling after your flesh

i fixate on impossible things
i elected to be damaged
to reject you with false starts and liquor bottles
but i have my nights when i would remember nothing else
the t.v. gets into my head and i'm groping again at love

the house we built with soft words and nervous caresses
was made of straw but we didn't know
we thought we were as eternal as any eighteen year old boy
we flung ourselves at the world and
were dumbstruck and numbed when we went uncelebrated

finally and firmly we fell apart
went back into our corners
to lick our wounds and repair
off to do it again, eventually
lovers don't learn, not a single lesson

I'm listening to Diane Cluck's "Oh Vanille", again. Jesus, I don't think I've listened to this record on a regular basis since 2005. The strange thing is that it still sounds as beautiful and vital now as it did then. Strange badly recorded folk music with vocals that would annoy the hell out of anyone not accustomed to whiny, slightly off vocals. The songs get through, though. This is an album for the ages.

maybe you should've let me drown

I lied. No update from SF as I'm home now. SF was fun. A lot of walking. An insane amount of walking, actually. Thinking about a lot of stuff. Talking with my uncle made me realize how much I've changed and how much I continue to change. Interesting. Jeffy is trying to grow up and apparently is succeeding somewhat.
Can't figure out how to turn the underline off, goddamnit.
Song of the moment: Kristin Hersh - Speedbath can't stop listening to it.. again. 

Flying to Oakland. They're calling my plane soon which kind of  bums because I wanted to ramble incoherently for a while. Update from San Francisco, probably.

"all the pretty ones will leave you low and blow your mind"/"hope that we die holding hands"

"between the rhymes"

i showed up to your house, and i was drunk, and sorry
i was hiding between the rhymes, and i wanted to be a line in your face
some lasting impression that would never change as long as you fade
a lost alibi tracing your wisdom
from the day you were born through your descent into destruction

i am a decaying thing, sticky with shit
pouring words onto paper as if they could save a soul
my ransom has been paid but i don't feel well
i'm only a thing resonating into the fears of strangers
i'm a rest stop, a respite from poison, something you can carry, and then discard

encoded in your open wounds are the answers to life's riddles
pick at your scabs and report back to me
tell me how they bleed, tell me how they scream
every inch of life we fight to lie but our bodies fill with cancer and horror
we lisp, and accelerate, forced free, and we're in the open

you can find me hiding between the rhymes
in words that dance dangerously but don't sound like others
you'll find me anywhere, in my headphones with a pen, and a cigarette
i'm going blank, and ambulatory for the sake of someone else
anyone really, who'll sit and stare as i throw, and watch what adheres

Really? How much stuff am I going to wring from the memory of that girl? I had an idea for a "last poem to julia" a couple months ago but for whatever reason couldn't get it down. Now I wish I had. More stuff about dying and decay and writing. This is a fun one. Nothing interesting to talk about with life. Maybe I'll write a non-poetry blog post in a couple days just because.

Ten days since my last post, whoops. I haven't had anything new and haven't felt like rambling into space. So.

"thinking of a woman i met on a train"

you said: "maybe i'll try new mexico"
i said: " baby, i think you're wrong
you should be somwhere safe
rasing children, your life
should be contaminated by small things
not always on the run

or maybe i'm giving the advice i should give myself
when i'm out walking and chaining and obsessing
over sad folk songs that never do any good
my life feels like it's shriveling
i have no duties to fulfill
i'm sad and absent and full of unattainable desires

i'll watch your face as you fluster and ponder and decide
i'll give you poems and c.d.s that will only gather dust
knowing my only entry into your room will be through them
and i'll wait for the bad news because there's always bad news
my eyes will remain forever swollen from the sight of you
you're too beautiful to be beside me, but that's alrite, that's the story of my life


Some notes: Looking at this now, this poem seems fucked. There is some good stuff here but the third stanza seems violently diffrent from the first two. Plus, there is too much real shit here. The title is bullshit, I was thinking of a woman I met somewhere other than a train, and only during the third stanza. I scrawled the linew "you said maybe you'd try new mexico" on a poster on my wall many months ago and only here found a place for it.

Life is life, ya know? School is about over until 9/27 and I haven't murdered my roomate yet so I must be receiving the patience I've been praying for.

mundane

I was maybe too successful with "no art poem". The lack of art is way too evident to me.
Anyhow,  here are the two I mentioned last time. I'm intrigued by the fact that even with a piece this wordy, I still chose to work with four line stanzas. Comfort?

"dream song"

the blood that is your body gets colder as i struggle into sleep
i forget about the slowing of your breathing as i search for a place that you can't follow
a cough, a last wink, and the shadows fade from my eyes
your black hair is the last thing i remember, but i don't feel safe

i've withstood everything to get to the place where i'm standing
it's the world but it's not the world
in this phantom place, my fears lapse into reason
i lean against a wall, things are building inside my head

is there anything worth watching here?
this is why i don't like wandering away from my stories
my fingers suffer from a lack of upheaval
feral religions can get at my meat if i'm not careful

it's always the night that drags me out of hiding
whether it's in dreaming, or the wider world, where i kick stones at captured vehicles
i ingest the residue of the seasons
beautiful is a thing easily discovered, triumphing in it's success at not being undone

my artistic muscles stretch as the wind saunters in through my window
it's obvious where i'll return to upon awakening
away from obscure punches by foreign law
free again in domestic oblivion, and it's attendant horrors



"mundane poem"

when you find someone who amuses you
for longer than it takes to fuck them
or for the chemicals to wear off
you might want to keep them around

it's inevitable that things will get less entertaining
this is why i like to light things on fire
and why i spend my time with violent or insane women
i like people whose actions i can never predict

i conduct my life like a therapy session
looking for reason and answers in the most mundane
even when i ignore the obvious and dip into tragic
there is something worth digging out in every spirit

don't let me discover what makes you tick
i might discard you like so much used tissue
i catch a glint of sunlight off your yawn
i'm there, recording and deliberating, but for how long?