Not an Onion rather a post-programm Mx^3

If ever I have been self-expressed it is in
motorcycle jeans,
boots with studs, and a sparkle pink tutu 

I am shifting on the pillows of my bed. I have a coffee near me, I am rested and also on edge. On edge is a catch-all phrase for the state of my life. I am juggling half-a-dozen eggs, dancing on a wet floor, mascara smeared, lips arched in a flash of red symmetry.

I count, as I inhale, to eight; hold for seven; exhale on a four-count; repeat until I feel my limbs, fall asleep, snap out of my response phase cycle.

I have been distant here. I've been distant most places. I use time as an excuse to keep people at the edge of my finger tips. It's a tactic I employ to keep my relationships standard, superficial, professional. I fuck based on need. I am beginning to see that my needs remain consistent if I am single. Physically, I freak out and need physical contact every few months. Typically, I find this in a willing man. This has nothing to do with attraction, rather convenience and normalcy. It's easy and far from criminal.

My heart and cunt remain distant. To be very clear, I am realizing slowly that I may not actually like men. I don't like their breath, their belly scratching while they sleep. I don't know where this puts me. It puts me off. I feel too damn old to be figuring this out. I am at a complete loss as I feel like I should know all of this already, that I shouldn't be so damn scared.

I put all of that on hold and stay over-scheduled so that I don't have time to be alone, much less with another person. I tell myself I will meet someone when I am in a city with more queers. I tell myself it's not that I am asexual it's only that I am non-identified and dually incorporated. I am pulling at my lips as I bind my tits.

Frosted Lashes

I'm It's seven and I am waiting for the bus. It's a soft breeze morning and though one hundred miles away as the crow flies I imagine the sea, salt and marsh, air.

The term wraps up this week. Five consecutive terms, 97% As, one C+. I've tried to dig to the depths of my soul, limitless I exhale all those naked truths.

More than toes in the water which laps soft and thick to the hem of my knee.

My mind races and I count my heart beats. I am beyond the edge of sleep so full am I with ambition, secrets, and sensation. 

The Sun and The Moon

Fall equally into my bedroom trough the small window. I keep the window open these nights and much of the day as well. I am comforted by the smells and sounds the roll in and over me.

I hit the edge of my rail. The end of what I can push through. There was just nothing left in any of my pots. Even though it is afternoon, I am in my bed, my eyes thick and head heavy. But it's all okay, the feelings of the bones shifting against themselves, the back of my pelvis grinding into itself.

***

I wake up and my eyes crack open, they are full of sand, my limbs hang like sacks from my limbs. I swallow my morning cocktail: 10 mg of adderall, 200 mg of ibuprofen, a once daily multivitamin, wash it down with black tea. Showering my body registers the needles of water individually. I am far from keyed up, but I am present.

I call off the whole day and make my bed, climb between the flat layers. I listen to the rain and hear my brain begin to roll. Asleep, again, dreaming of blood and rape and discarded bodies. I have become sensitive to stimulation and now avoid most films about anything but science and space.

Closing the loop. I dislike touch. The smell of people is overwhelming. They're leaking.

**

I push some piles of dirt across the floor and hand my laundry lights to darks, patterns to solids. The collars open to the left now, I have changed.

*

Patterns of rain lull me into the nest of my shell. I am pulled into the form of my bed, warm, full of gratitude that I have a oil filled heater, blankets, a fresh box of tea, an empty home.

This paradise is well earned.

Minutes Pull Eyelids

The last days, or weeks, however you chose to divide and categorize time, have been dedicated to the strength of my teeth to hold me firmly to this earth rather than succumb to a relinquished will.

I am exhausted and thin in ways that I have never known. It is work and school and not enough art. It is being the one who takes on responsibilities like most people kick back beers. I say no to beer these days; I am, it turns out, allergic to booze. Thank you genetics and trauma for both an addictive nature and no means with which to fill that gap.

It's been good. The cold off the sauce life. I am learning about myself through recovery. I won't get all higher-power or any such nonsense like that, or at least I don't think I will, not now at least. I am too tired, over scheduled for meetings no matter how helpful they may be.

I cried on friday when I spoke with my mom. I had seen her all too briefly that afternoon, she called to say something, and I overwhelmed by all of it, felt hot tears behind my eyes swell spill over silently freely. The combination of her voice, my exhaustion, my reality of choosing to be constantly scheduled overly booked and three minutes behind hit me all at once as I said, I have a break tuesday afternoon from 1530-1730, if you're available, maybe then? and I had to reexplain that I didn't have time for dinner that I have a class at 1730, that I only have a two hour break, and that is seriously the first moment I will have between now (friday 17:00) and then. It's crushing. And in the back of my mind all I can think is that I don't actually have a day off until god knows nine days away from then, or a week from today and all my mom wants to do is cook me dinner and all I know is that I want that but that I am also a little afraid to see her because she is magic and puts me to sleep, she is magic and makes my eyes fill with soft tears. You see, I love her very much and she is like a cloud.

I don't drink or smoke or sniff anything stronger than cigs and coffee and adderral these days. I've spent most of my life doing all of those to feel anything but me. Me was not my favorite kind of feeling. Or, more accurately, the feeling I had when I was high was transparent, illusive, temporal, universal; I felt like a more me version of me.

Now I am me me and it's okay. All of it. I am starting to feel feelings and it scares me. I limit emotion; I often don't know how (or what, (this is confusing multiple tenses overlap.)) I am feeling. I couldn't (cannot) tell you because I don't know. I don't feel, that's what I've been saying, not like normal people. It's true too. It's a gift that I've been saving to open. I am only now edging the tape off the paper. Or all at once eleven or thirteen feelings manifest in an instant and it is so noisy that I cannot hear.

little bird

I wish I would be able to say, now things are behind me, I am whole and well and the stars are my comfort. The stars are my comfort, that, at least is true.

In this land of sobriety I am looking at myself and addiction. I am looking at the past and how it tends to claw its way into now. 

I got a call from california justice system yesterday. They found me. If they can find my current number, why didn't they call or contact me before?

It was two years ago, in october. I was driving home from work and ran a red light. The ex was waiting for me to go to the store so I could prepare dinner, so he could eat. I was listing in my head: milk; meat; veggies; I ran a red light. It happened. I was pulled over, ticketed, and left to go to the store. The thing was that I couldn't tell him and as he controlled every minute of my time, I couldn't go to court. I did try, the day was filed incorrectly, it was a saturday. I made a second mistake and didn't take care of it before leaving the state. 

The past came forward. The lady on the phone, you owe a grand. Today. How, is this information only now getting to me? it doesn't matter. I will deal with it as I deal with everything.

I was distraught. I ate my feelings in cookies, milk, cereal. I was on the bus pushing back the flood of memories and emotion that threatened to spill out and onto the dirty rail, cover the raucous teenagers laughing. I remember laughing, I think, biting my lip until I taste iron. 

I am full of holes. I have been burning again. Branding my arm in a circle of hope, I tell myself it is decoration, it is a symbol of recovery. I believe the words and listen to the cars spin tires up the highway.

*** it is six am, I wait for the bus, coffee in hand, wonder if I look like a trick waiting in the lamplight***

Dust Bunnies and Recycling

It's done. Me. I am finished. Have you ever grown so tired of your life that you lash out at the very foundations on which it's built? I seem to be lost in a reliquary, no defense, no preambles.

I am armor pierced by the molten rays of the sun
tremulous shafts of bespoken motes beaming
light held aloft captured in a slanted angle
neither shadow
nor light

Unhinged from my Gibraltar
I act without thinking
When I become Andromeda chained
I think without acting
Bound, awaiting either Pegasus or Neptune's beast or Perseus

I slip out of form fall
sliver through the cold steal
churn into the frothing roil of sea

am captured and my hair spun into a net of stars
and I set upon the horizon the houses of my shared fates
equals

September the First

A crumpled MUNI transfer dated October 20 2013, Sunday lay folded on my desk. I saw it there. Me knowing the date, remembering the day. Totemic, it remains in the keepsake pile. 

I had finished my landmark seminar and hopped a MUNI, heading back to The Castro for gas station coffee and a smoke.  It was Sunday night, then Monday the next day. Aaron was going o come soon, at some point, pick me up. I may have ridden the bus Saturday night. The ticket may be from Sunday morning. Time has a way of transporting memories to more convenient historical settings, memory amends itself. 

Living with a sociopath narrsiscist nearly stole my breath and stopped my heart. 

The months following and all the confused pain of loving an unlovable in an unlivable situation was important. I remember the final weeks or months. they would stretch into hours, minutes that is. Time can be so relative in the moment it becomes progressively more challenging to accept its passing. 

Saying things like: if I am bad he will lock me in the basement. No windows, one door. More a bunker than a basement, cinderbock. 

Fifteen years could pass me gasping for three solid legs, the triangle of stability needs at least three consistent points of contact to remain balanced, firm, grounded.

After six months of breathing the same air, I came to know I needed more than oxygen to survive.  The air was the same always, stagnant recycled arguments, broken cars, dishes, dreams.

I faded into a shadow of myself, became my name's sake: shade-shifter. I am the shadow shaded savannah; I am the ghost's twin; Rapunzel's  locks. 

I came out an ember, smouldering and malnourished from the tepid air; on fire, not blazing: a coal nestled deep in the safety of a pocket, that's the fire bearer's responsibility. 

Cake for Breakfast

I read a quote recently, which I cannot attribute: if there's cake on the table it can't be that bad. 

I haven't been sleeping, not enough. I am pushing into something, evolving a new form. My body shows the signs; it's bruise season. I don't mind. My bike and I are in love, my legs are strong and I look like a cheetah in shorts. 

Oasis of Foam and Blankets

I am in my bed and it is as soft as one hundred bottles of bubbles. It's an island of mohair, sheets, mostly clean laundry, a few belts, my one attempt at a quilted duvet, and a spider that jumps sideways and is the size of a quarter that was smashed on the tracks. It's all splendid, true luxury.

I've been spending a fair amount of my sleep time in a hammock, at the studio, drinking micro-batch coffee, reading, painting, dreaming. It's domain; and it's mine, I want to say hungrily, only that would be fibbing as it is not mine. Nothing really is, not even these bones are really mine. I come from and return to a concept I cannot comprehend. This in the contemporary manifests in building something with someone. Together, we are an odd mix of perfection that I does not cease to amaze me. So I've been a bit absent and timid (here, of all places. ).

In the meantime, I am sleeping in a hammock, showering as infrequently as the public allows, living off hints, hunches, and hope. That's the real kicker that last one there. It's the one that lets me be gracious and fall in love with the simplicity of all of it. I have never been happier than this morning when the outside sink got a stand built for it. It utilizes a garden hose and two five-gallon buckets. This means capturing a small amount of grey water after I wash my hands, teeth, mug. This means civilized. It's a different sort of thing than I ever done before. Fall in love with someone, having known them well first. I find myself terrified to speak, at times, as I am.

I strap on my skates, I step my leg over the bar of my bicycle, I feel my body in motion, become more specifically aware of gravity's influence. I like the feeling of supported free fall. Like a bike down a steep hill, you've got powerful legs and years of experience; it is nothing; wind and whir and confidence combine into a moment of transparent awareness before back in here down here.

May Hope Keep

Without even a small window I can still see the stars when I shut my eyes

Radical Means Root

I did it again: heated a horseshoe nail on the electric stove, cozier between the base and the coils, the meat between the bread, and grasping the tiny dagger with a pair of wire-handled pliers held the brand in my left hand heating the air that sits all over my flesh like a second skin. 

And I felt my flesh stir. I can't say if it was toward or away from it; that's so simplistic and binary. I have often found myself outside the hegemony, observing and synthesizing simultaioniously. 

That, at least is what I tell myself. 

Current History

The boxes of history are being packed
Books, sorted and boxed by genre: art, to the studio; healing, horses, herbs; journals and sketchbooks, of which there are two

I am a loss for memories

I have been so many things in this lifetime, the thread of similarities run deep
looking, longing, expressing the hidden knowing

I am a being without beginning

***

I want these days, nothing more than to put all of it right, in order, logically and methodically buttress myself against the chaos of life

The refrigerator's hum is constant

Small Gods

I have had many sleepless nights

Pushed my brain to wrung

Held my breath against a deep inhale

Shallow, he said, just skim the surface of the pool

Naked pale against the sky, flesh pimpled with cold as water drips off my legs, puddling around my feet

I look to the stars: Draco, Cygnus, Hercules in their familiar orbits 

am homesick for my hardly remembered prebirth planet of light and shadow 

Birds, or, perhaps crows?

After the assimilation do not expect things to be better
or any special treatment

It is not that long here anyhow, one way or another. Unless they figure out a way of keeping my soul tied to this planet. Which the devil may do if they have their will. It's to me no bother. Not a big one.

I lie. It is the nightmare. Imagining being stuck on this fucking rock with troglodytes who don't know how pristine their utopia is as they are hell bent for destroying it.

I've read a few books and seen some pictures. I know what happens. I remember how this story ends and you do to.

I seem to have an allegiance with an entity that is non-national but rather human and planet centered. I believe in water, shelter, the right not to be raped, hunted, slaughtered for pleasure; I believe in a language beyond words that we are more than we have been taught that we are. I believe that in each and every one of us we are ourselves, good by nature and circumstance, without a doubt possessing enough wherewithal to survive another half century without causing too much harm.

I decided years ago not to have children. There are simply enough here. I believe that all human beings are intrinsically disgustingly close  relatives, being 99.99% genetically identical, I chose not to commit incest and adopt. It's simple. We're not precious.

You of course are precious to me my beloved.
I mean simply that all humans are so human, which is lovely but temporary.

Anticipatory hurrah

I am not trendy

The wave's crest curls

into itself 

Like a waffle cone on its side

#CHA¥A

#CSL

One identity is limiting

Singular rather than plural

I've been so many things 

words with more than one meaning

sometimes words have hidden meanings
"I want you to be honest with me' translates into 'tell me what you think I deserve to know."

That comes out bizarre and what I mean is that I am honest; I tell the truth and lots of it; I expect and anticipate the same from those around me.

When I don't get that, when people lie (I thought it was cocaine, I didn't know it was speed; I never said that, or if I did it's not what I meant; I didn't want to hurt you)

it always starts with the mouth not the ears.

I've been addressing my PTSD these days or more realistically it has been addressing me. In the world of tempered fragility the foundation of respect and trust is the bedrock of relation. When I became the other woman or the other woman stepped in between me and my lover something happened.

It was not that he fucked another woman, which is what it is.
It's that at first he didn't tell me.
It's that it was the woman who I had to have trespassed from my work for flipping me off, calling me a cunt on the street, and generally harassing me.
It's that the other woman triggers my PTSD
and that the guy who was supposed to be my partner didn't seem to think that my psychological well being would be impacted; that I would be shaken to the core; that I wouldn't withdraw back into the cocoon of safety that I've built.

Because respect is knowing the person that you're with and understanding their needs. It's not that people with high levels of anxiety need to be held with velvet gloves, it's that we all have specific needs and as we're adults know how to express them. If a partner is unwilling to meet those requests or steps over those boundaries it's hard to come back.

Because, TRUST. It happens until it's gone and then there's no going back. No amount of texts, phone calls, boxes of chocolate make up for the fact that someone whom I am supposed to trust to be on my side, on my team, just pushed me down hard and that their actions are an icy cold bath of feelings that I don't really have words for.

So I grow into all of that. I am simultaneously vulnerable and in retreat; I am gathering my stores.

Sometimes to teach, we leave. Sometimes in order for the general public to understand what it means when someone says "this is my boundary, if you cross it there will be a consequence" there has to be a consequence otherwise the passive aggressive molasses blooded neophobic think that they have a full deck of cards.

tonight in the bathroom

she has long hair and was wearing a short white dress
her vagina felt like a chrlysanthim under my finger  

Dream Money

I'll dance alone in blue cowboy boots
and denim fits right in all the best places

****

Picnics, ponies, long days, longer nights: summer and I can't seem to shake it.


****

I am mad about my tits and ass
in the basic ways of they tell lies about the way I think from the inside out

Feeling top forty country these days and wondering if it's time for me to dip out of life for the wilderness, BBQs, cold beer, snake bite kits.

***

I believe in that kind of love
sunsets
these dreams

I've cultivated
(let them grow, grow, grow; they take time to germinate, bear fruit)

**

wanting at times the quick release (hot metal, fresh angry scars)
but would settle for dream money
or a motorbike of the German variety

**

afternoon and evenings dripping with food cooked on a grill, eaten outside, cold beverages taste better when they're drank in the shade. I am thinking that next weekend or the weekend after is the father's day picnic down in Sonoma County. I'd like to go. It's father's day weekend and damn have I always had nothing but good times there.

I have been thinking about Aaron these days and the parts of me that have changed, that had to change. This is a during, just after, now reflection on myself. The strange way that I needed him to be here now. I mean I needed that experience, those hands wrapped around my throat, tight; I needed him to distrust my every word; to show me how fragile the foundation of my being was.

That fragment that catches the edge of your peripheral vision that's me now. I am all shook up and the water is deep.

*

Last Hold

It's the frontier and whirl-birds are hot tonight. We're strapped; no one's holding, not this late.

The ac rattles, I lean back into myself and think about bad lighting, what an affront it is to every sensibility. The noise of the day's doesn't seem to wash clean.

Dry lighting strikes southbound. I wonder about all of it. The entrapments, entanglements, enchantments coconspire and leave me flaberghatsed.

Write them out all of them and think about them daily: the manifestos the constitutions, the proclamations; dreams, glimpses, knowings.

What is this human thing? This having a body and being here, now of all times, all about?

I listen to effervescent bubbles against a glass of sparkling white wine and thunder.

Ask better questions; answers are less significant.

Right now I am wondering if the house of cards I've crafted is stable. And the thunder rolls.

It's dawn, past dawn, rain is falling, my heart is revived. 

Two Cups, Father Pentacles

I woke up art
all my pieces linked with ink and glue

I burn my heart in my sleeve and I forgot all the dreams where you hang your head
and set my heart to the sea and hold onto seventeen dreams of the sea

Build it all from the floor to the ceiling to the walls
a pit for fire and listen

I like how the fan feels on my cheek, I am against the wall;
Lost in the same spin cycle

Cognition and stickers

I got hit hard in the chest all of it starts spilling out over the edges and I am jittery as J
une bug. The telltale quivering in my limbs let me know that it may be possible that the nerve damage they swore had been remedied had not been. I look at it all the railways and tunnels and the fever foul water. There are fewer and fewer reasons to stop moving besides the simple exercise of will over tissue. I pour a dime out and rail. Voices saying nothing overlap lauding impossible braveries.

It's exhausting; I always hope that it will be exhilarating, it's not, it never is. I question myself, am I washed out? exhausted? I don't seem to be. My faculties are functioning lucidly and I am if anything gaining a more clear perspective of expression.

Three of Swords

Foreboding, heartbreak

Last night my doorbell rang. It was one, I was asleep.

Find pants, find the light, open the door. My lover, gasping words tears silence, his arms holding me don't leave me not now.

I did it because I don't trust you; because I want to love you; because I don't want to hurt you, be hurt.

My only advice in that moment: don't fuck people you don't want to fuck.

The other woman, is that me or her?

Sleeping, fitfully, awake, finally, morning: why is he in my bed?

She's my friend, he said, going through a rough time, needs me.

This I know: My friends don't try to fuck me; they respect my autonomy and my asexuality around our relationship. My friends respect my space, my body, my choices and relationships. That woman, the other woman, is no friend.

Lure of Luxury

Nights and days roll over one another
overlapping sunsets, sunrises
until I know not when or where I am

It is the counting final moments of escapism
Knowing how the lure of the flame
is a momentary lapse of judgement

Scars that lace my body mark the passing of years
lasting

The words I am searching for
feel like expression, understanding, justice's rage

Context as Substance

I am filled with myriad transparencies, symbolic meaning overlaps life's more subtle cues.

It is the time of morning and facing facts. I am full of ideas and relocated dreams; it's today and the coffee in my stomach is sour. I have been painting new works. They represent the desalination of my vision. They've been distilled to the fewest denominators, synthesized into the basic elements of color, rhythm, shape. The focus I require is fleeting as I long for the lease of summer's promise.

Working late nights leads to longer later nights. I pretend that my escapes are escapades into oblivion, really I seek connection in the loud voices. It is popcorn, I am snacking.

Riggs to the right

This is what I remember 

A few tears before I 

Fell down and picked up 

Hella shit and

Just flew through the pretends

Clinging into triple time

Skipping every third beat

Unable sky and it's true 

Available and done fine dining express

And so I build dreams

Out of roller skates

Aimless streets of Verona 

Write

Or die

Opportunistic and loose sight of heartbroken disguises 

Don't deserve

To sit here

Served, serving and unaccountably 

Missing in action

There are no stars

To account for

No remembers few ofnforgotten memories

I've left unforgotten

Not remembering 

Mire reansience and 

Will quite all the further audiences

Income Insecurity and Shame

I've been thinking about the roots of shame.

How the shame of poverty can be manifested in myriad fashions. On one hand we have the questioning activists and the other the willful stupidity of the culturally bankrupt. I use willful, stupidity, and bankrupt intentionally.

There is the grinding poverty of the sub-working class. These low-wage, no growth endeavors are exhausting physically and mentally under-stimulating. I am curious about generational under-stimulation. If one's parents ask no questions and their parent's also asked no questions, who are these contemporary 16 year-olds to look to for cultural enlightenment?

Our educational system is void of critical thought and speaks only in terms of standardized testing; the basis of which is the assessment of generalized conformity and adherence to a code of misinformation.

Arts, maths, science, and the ensuing ability to understand their interrelationship is the effect of exposure to many ideas and sources of information. The home life of the youth is based off of a stilted education system and youtube. The product of their experience a false sense of pride as exhibited in the exaltation of ignorance and the rise of the lowest common denominator.

To be certain I do not blame those experiencing this system. Rather, I look to the fractured system of democracy as the root cause. When did we stop valuing education in our society? when did we cease to encourage thought as a preeminent commodity?

Continuously undervalued and shamed for intelligence, bright young thoughtful people half-close their eyes in order to conform to the social norms.

This observation was spurred by a trip to RAYS supermarket and watching a small group of 17 year olds jaunt through the checkout line, snapping their EBT card on the counter as the absolute nicest checker rang them through. I could see every curve of the girl's tight ass as she wore boy-short overwear that spanned about seven inches. Her chatter and body language directed at her pimple faced male counterpoint who followed her with his eyes and semi-chub visible through his basketball shorts. They bought frozen pizza and liters of soda. Neither one spoke to the checker; her instance that his time was valueless to her only more exaggerated by the tap tap tap of her foodstamp benefit card on the counter... faster, hurry, I am not going to engage with you, but look out for me, watch me.

I am at a loss. I want the post-revolutionary awakening.

I don't lie

It's one of those things that I don't do

all of that aside I am absolutely in a fix

transposing anxiety

for relocation

I find myself

again

knowing nothing

Chills, Piles of Blankets

I caught a sickness and my head thumps a million thick bricks and my throat is a scratchy. I feel hot and itchy and I am all kinds of tired. I have a count down in school. Three, four, five weeks and then the long stretch of summer when I can live three weekly lives.

The studio is coming along thanks to long hard work, my willingness to be flexible, and the neighborhood's unwavering support in the form of surprise donations of interior paint.

I want a hot rub down with oil and the hands of a well-trained masseuse.

Test Old Knowing

I have been worshiping liminal deities

winter into spring into long days of warm wind on my bare skin

I open my my heart and arms embrace me and I am there in it

****

Last night a women at my work flipped me the bird. I wanted to punch her in the throat. Then I realized she's hurting. I am in love with her former lover; he and I are doing a thing quietly and boldly in doors, under blankets and stars, in the streets, hands slipped and fingers twined.

He takes a few moments to speak and this sharp contrast of lives (then, now; him, him; me, alive, awake, alert, adroit) causes my breath to catch, my heart to skip.

Arms pull me in and close and down and wrap all of me in a pause that is so necessary when I feel so much that I lose traction within my skin. Stillness, warmth of skin and cool fingers, and secrets shared under the bedsheets: I am comfortable.

This girl, the bird flipper, my ex, the throat grabber, from a safe distance I am aware of them, how the helped shape me, form me, allow me the opportunity for this incredible and perfect now.

I should've

I sit noemi the back of my sat, bemoaning the Luddite ebbing icebox if my spelling. I'm Eva little pea Segway and know Shen Hyde shady disease jeruejss shrieking hehdh jelly enjoined ken eueirie behehehwjftbrjdkfoiydnwbsbe. When durn the ribs end hshtybsicke disappointed is did dude is wbdiebaijs. Jen iiciccj sit her own locked in sand silent there is no question for the numbers of yesses that I perceive herbal sirneidodbejc

Silk Satin Pajamas and an Agenda

It's my birthday. I am in bed waiting for my coffee to percolate.

Perhaps I have a new lover, Parisian cologne and bowties, I am smitten. As usual, always, being me, find comfort being wrapped in the solitude of my blankets, remembering back.

I hear the coffee cresting. I'll return.

Sometimes at night, or even now, when I crawl into my bed I am so excited that my legs whip whap up and down, I shimmy shake and cozy in deep.

I could be in love. Or it may have been lust. I fall for the deeply attractive with a genetic code far removed from my own. It has to do with smell. I am getting older and am amazed that people say how good I look. Of course I look good, I am vain. My friends all look good. It's what we do.

I find the more I know someone the less I think of age as a modifier.

Yet, I woke up this morning thinking how grateful I am to be in my own bed, listening to the Canada Geese, silence ringing in my ears. My time is thoroughly my own, which is by design. I suppose, at  points, I give pieces of it away, hand it away like lucky charms.

My skin is more satisfying now to live in than when I was a girl. It feels like home this skin, that's the unshakable truth, that it took me forever to know the make of my being.

I am uncertain of my motives, my attraction to life, to expression, to the evolution of possibility is unquestionable. I hunger for experience, distilled panoramas, stargazing, and shotgun shells.

My love, always and all of it, to you.

I saw this coming, only in tetra chrome

Out of right field, I've fallen in love. 

And now it's time for bed. 

I've not forgotten

Nearly all that I should, I remember too many sounds and feel to many things all of one accord. I misstep and mistake that for falling, I recover and mistake that for success when really, all I've done is fall back into step.

The line is invisible, there is no glass ceiling, there is no gas lighting.

I dream more colors; I see the future.

Pull down the dawn

I rub oil and scent into my skin
My legs are long and soft after having sat in a steam room wrapped
in a fog of desire

--I sit, legs crossed, jacket folded across my knees--

Steam swirls thick and you disappear into the haze
I lay back on the bench breathing eucalyptus, drinking water flavor with lemons and limes

--In four hours I will enter the restaurant, dressed simply, smelling of oils and skin and desire, lips painted, eyes large, thinking of your mouth pressed over mine--

I remember May '12 and April '13

I skipped last year in a white hot heat of illusion

***

I'm taking about the Peruvian, the rockstar, the addict

and wondering how I find the same people in different places, faces

falling down the same rabbit holes.

It's like a goddamn nervous tick, this need to give up my heart to something that can never, ever be.

***

I tell myself, this morning when I wake up, that I will not, not, not answer the calls that (most likely) will never come

and put on my headphones and get deep into my books.

***

At least, this time, I know what to expect, I know what I feel and why. I dream in multiples and the layers of reality that just tip the edge of my forgotten self. I forge dreams out of silk.

***

Solitude, you worthy companion, ease my soul.

Bump in the Night

It's warm here. An early, false spring that causes the trees to bud in February. My focus is waning as I count down the weeks left in the term: three, then finals. I am chewing gum and drinking cold brew coffee as I study statistics. I am surprisingly good at stats, especially as I haven't done math in years.

I've been sober now for almost two months. Sober off of booze that is. My brain is still forcibly full of addictive thoughts. What I know is that I tend to fall for people who are borderline manic, full of vitality and dreams. I know this: I fall in love in a moment, with a smell, with the sliver of a dream. I wish: I understood how people work into my heart; I could turn the feels from the intransigent slip of the mind into a concrete structure of daily life.

The space around me impenetrable, I am such a bitch these days. Yet chinks in the chimera allow glimpses of me to be captured, briefly at the top of an inhale.

I see an elevator

I pull the boots
Up by their straps
Of tobacco colored leather

*

My feet fit neatly into the soles

*

All the gods I never knew
see me for who I am
a quiet solitary creature


*

I have moved into the realm of forgotten dreams and work by rote, routine, focus and the patchwork shreds of dignity that I scraped off the sole of your boot. I taste the bitter anguish on your tongue and spit the residue, dirty soap, onto the saturated ground. Watching it roll over and away, forgotten not useful, we're at flood stage and the last thing we need, here, is more moisture.

*

Why, suddenly, am I full of vitriol? Perhaps it is all of the times I've heard someone say, smile; or that I've bitten my tongue until I taste copper and blood; perhaps it is the pain of self-reflection and no longer making excuses for myself, which makes the excuses as a whole thin, paper thin, snowflake fragile, and not at all important.

*

I have no responsibilities to anyone; I have no one to answer to. With no god to answer to, how is morality even relevant?

Pressure Control System

I am about to explode
Time does not heal all wounds

I am not backing down
This goes way the fuck back

I don't give a fuck if you notice my nails and their condition
I don't give a fuck if you have an opinion about my socks

I notice everything twice

I bite my lip 'til I taste blood

The lecturing professor speaks quickly
her vocabulary and hands to punctuate her rapid fire debate

The old fuck man behind me couldn't stop sniggering
when she spoke

Not when the other three male panelists
spoke saying nothing

It takes effort to follow her
Because, you see, some people are capable of entertaining multiple and seemingly contradictory thoughts at the same time

Truly intelligent people are capable of explaining that contradiction

Stupid people, when faced with a challenge, belittle their minds by forcibly, unwillingly admitting that they're out of their depth.

I almost said something about the old fuck
but left him to his wife's sshing and whispers of, stop you're being rude

I wonder if it's okay for me to be rude back
instead, I bit my lip until the flesh gave way to the copper taste of blood tinged saliva

Light Comes In, We Waken

Stirring in the hours before dawn

The building creaks and groans

The arterial pipes pushing heat

I am curled into a ball on the couch

Resting on the edge of sleep

My skin becomes eyes and I feel the sun crest the horizon

Drive home

Sleep

Wake again

under the wire, across the goal

I woke up after having slept fitfully
I turned my bed 180* to sleep in the unslept edge and pulled the clean sheets tight over the corners and the blankets up over the pillows

I played football with some friends and the running around breathing fresh air,
it made me clear in the head

I threw two touchdowns and had four tackles
I may be a girl, but I can through and am quick on my toes

I may be light in my loafers as well

Fish in the Sea

I lost a phone number
I lost a lot of phone numbers

I threw it away, thinking it was garbage
the phone number on the scrap of paper

One scrap of paper amongst many scraps of paper

****

One, like a Million

I feel my dreams behind my eyes after I wake
a sensation, a lingering touch on my body

The fog, today it is very thick
and I am groggy

The bluejays are enraged or full of vigor, ready to mate
funny how similar those two things are

I choke on the memories of your cock in my throat
your hand on my arm, pulling

Perhaps, In Another Life: when we are both cats

I am going to be writing poems! for the next month: 28 days of slippery words and lost metaphors.

*1*

I've heard a lot about the desert.

I hear that the sun cracks over the horizon like an egg on a skillet, that the heat waves shimmer and can cause the eye to believe that there is motion where there is none.

That it's a balm for the wounded, a treacherous mistress, a madame blanc, who will turn any evil inside of you to stone.

You are leaving here to go there to the desert. To listen to crickets and burn small brush and watch the stars move across the horizon.

Packed up and have it all in 30 pounds of well balanced gear that straps down tight on the back of your motorbike. Going out there to the desert on your bike.

I am here listening to the refrigerator, reading the newspaper, drinking coffee.

Belfry, Mote, Well

I have an anxiety rush this morning before my exam. I sit, tears leaking, threatening to push the edge of my lids, waiting for the paper to hit the table. 

Pencil across the page, I regurgitate answers pulled fromy memory bank. I am grateful that I know how to learn as much as I am grateful for what I learn.

I've grown intolerant, allergic, to lies which are propagated by stupidity.

I've been sober for two weeks. I've learned that I sometimes even without music I still like to wear headphones. The illusion of separation and the added muffled stillness is enough to help calm my nerves. 

If wishes grew on trees

I need to paint my nails. I am frustrated with the uptick in my anxiety.

Being sober has its benefits. Not waking up hungover being the primary not having to talk myself into or out of awkward sex being the secondary and allowing myself the full range of my emotions being the tritary. 

I've become insanely irritated with this one person. We had a thing. We stopped having a thing. Simple, right? Wrong. 

I read this great thing the other day: one has to be happy alone to be happy with another person. This way when (not if) when the person leaves you're still happy. 

When someone places their emotional reaponsibiliy (happiness) on another person it is extremely fuxking unfair, unwarranted, and codependent.

Friendship develops over time and through stress. Friends are the people who hold up the mirror when I fuck up and let me know how I'm off track. Relationships are based on responsibility and part of that is owning the part of the dance where you stepped on someone's toes.

  

Gifts, tiny gifts

Waking up with the sun

And stepping outside

Making choices and listening pop-country on the radio

Marking the Days

I made a pretty big choice recently. No, not THAT choice, though I will be forever prochoice, a different big choice.

I suppose you could even say that it's a pro-life choice; I chose to stop drinking booze. and beer. and wine. I am clean and despite my best intentions, sober by intent and with focus.

After eighteen too many hangovers, I decided to simplify. I've done this before, given my liver a chance to get back to working order. This time it feels different. This time I am looking alcohol in the nose and wondering if maybe it's not my jam.

As a bartender and social maven I spend a fair amount of time around booze and don't really feel the need to drink. But, drink I do, or, at this point, did. I couldn't take the stress. I was freaking out because I have dominion over this here, my short life and I want to make it taste like sunshine and the fresh wind and the salt licked off a lover's sweaty neck.

When things go my way, which is most of the time because I am flexible and willing to see from multiple perspectives, I have endless amounts of stamina. Shifting back towards my center, I realize how I allowed my mind to poison my direction. I allowed myself to be overwrought by emotions that had nothing to do with me. So I stopped. I want a simple life. Booze and hangovers and the stupefying degeneration of social conduct are complicated.

I have more time now: Time to clean, time to read, time to sleep with dreams. I don't know exactly where I am heading, but I feel more in my bones than I have in years.

My bones that hold me up, that support my every step, the hold my back straight, and my my shoulders flat; my bones which have never once broken support my curiosity and fuel my spirit.

From mine to yours,
CSL <3ingly nbsp="" p="">

Heavy Fog

Each day I make a small list:

Statics

Sculpture

Or

Laundry

I do them methodically before going to bed.

Gypsy Woman Gonna Steal My Soul

My body aches in places no one sees

I had to do the dirty work this week: sit down and explain why, no, we're not going to work.

That's the thing about the free market: everybody's a day trader.

***time-lapse one year***

my ex Used to embarrass me, make jokes how he had ruined me for other men, and then make a tired joke about hotdogs and hallways.
k
**present**

I think about this this morning as I wake
(pulled back into my body and away from the dreams that fill my nights)
how strange that he didn't ruin my body but rather my heart that remains in a complex labyrinth, reflected across an infinity of shadows and dashes of light.

*ongoing*

The very things people are attracted (you're so free, beautiful, charismatic, I am unbelievably and it's unknowable why I crave the scent of your body) become things that they take ownership over. That attraction is limited to them, that their interest negates the interest of others. Or, at the very least, I should refrain from acknowledging anyone else.

Ownership.

And, if it is in my best interest to halt to stop to innervate the issue, I am at fault. Grow the fuck up people. It's just a thing. Don't make me be anyone who I am not. I am not here for your pleasure, I am not here to help you identify with some broken piece of your soul. I am ruthless, selfish, and predominately a dude about intimacy. Don't ask me to change and I won't call you on your bullshit. I won't tell you what I really think about people who use the word love while naked.

Dealership

A test drive is nice, but realistically everyone wants to drive a Buick.
I am not a Buick.

My Mouth is Full

Have you even had so much in your mouth you can't chew
and end up either choking to death
or spitting out the mouthful
or jabbing a narrow straw through the whole thing and subsisting on shallow breaths of air?

None of those are functional.

My apartment is tidy. I moved my table near the window to take advantage of the little available light. I went to the recycling center and dumped last term's paper into a giant bin.

I am taking more credits this term: Two upper division studio art classes, statistics, art history, a psyche class; I am functional.

That feeling of loss is still lingering about me. I hear voices, have dreams, keep working toward a sense of wholeness. More than anything right now I don't meet anyone's expectations of me. None. I cannot seem to manage it. Not for my mother, who always wants me to stay for one more cup of tea; not for men who hardly know me but think that they're special; not for my boss who wants me to work more, go to competitions, go out and party.

This growing selfishness is partly because I am unwilling to be vulnerable. More is that as a gender identifying woman lady a lot is put upon to be, and meet, the resource, the needs of those around me before meeting my own. I just stopped fucking around. It complicates my life. It makes things awkward and messy and I don't have time for feelings and long drawn out conversations. I have time to fuck. I have time to focus.

This makes me sound cold, callused, driven, unwilling to take the time necessary to foster a (single) relationship with one (man) person who will help solidify my place in the world. How could I possibly not want to pour energy into another person to help them develop or maintain their equilibrium?

I just can't, won't, will not

because deep down I am much more of a dude about most things. I don't want to and that's that.

If I were a beard sprouting hursuit lumberjack no one would think twice about me whoring and drinking whiskey while I managed an empire and killed the last dolphin.

Instead, I am a born lady who likes lipstick and despises lip service. I remember back years when I realized that I love my friends and like to fuck strangers. Living in a tiny town that's impossible, but, I can just be fucking ruthless and that's just as good.

I've seen a tome

I tip more than you, I promise that means more than your smile.

Ic'd dreams

More than I should

Give Me Satiety

Satiety

Mohawk

Three dimes

One quarter

Delicious. 

Yield Water Flow

Double standards are balls of sweat and nibs of glass. 

That being said today was the first day of school. Oddly, this felt more like a first day of school than September. I think my classes are more suited to my needs, somewhat more rigorous, engaging, discipline will remain my task master.

I feel the wheels start to shift back into place and I know I've got this. I know I learn material well. These days the distance between others and myself is expansive. I reach out, fire hot burn, retreat.

The ringing silence in my ears is a reminder of hollow voices. I fall into the pages of my books. Breaking, this heart, open against the cold of early day, dawn casts few shadows. 

The heart is a lonely hunter (Carson McCullers), 

CSL <3ingly

Things Take Time

Sometimes I long for things I no longer hold
and my fingers become heart achy

I am having a California attack. I miss the smell of the barn. I miss the solitude and the sound of the horses breathing their slow rhythmic breaths. The quality of the work, the diligence, the boring languorous days that stretched from dawn until late afternoon. I miss the sound of hooves on the floor. I miss the bitch who made my life hell with her hormones and how she was also my best friend. I miss the road and the grapes and the creek full of salmon; the sight of the milky way in the sky above my head, I will never not know what the stars feel like on my naked eye.

It's the new year blues. The accomplishments of 2014 are robust especially when compared to the tension of 2013.

***On My Mind Especially***

How addiction to people is damaging
The role of addiction as a behavioral device within and without of relationships
Why/how enabling is a short term solution

He might not be fixable; it started with his mother; he says it was preemptive because he thought I would do... 

I have one thing that I know: I am responsible for my life. I am tart over some of the past, but I sure as shit learned some hard fast lessons.

1. I can wear whatever I want whenever I want, this includes mismatched florescent socks and silk stockings. I can do it at the same time if I want. I can also wear a corset under overalls.

2. My brain and my words are perfect. Sometimes, I wish that my hands could speak because they seem to have a purity of expression that my lips muddle.

3. I have the right to my time, my friends, my hobbies, my happiness, again, is my own.

4. I am honest.

5. I have the right to my home, my safety, my security. I have the right to never be hit, belittled, berated, or ignored for days on end.

6. I have the right to manage my own money.

7. I have the right to fuck whomever I please as often or as infrequently as I please.

8. I have the right to be silent.

9. I have the right to dance.

10. I have the right to live my life as I see fit as it is my life.

11. I do not have the right to impose any of these rights on other people. That's their business.

*****

It's really hard not to tell people what to do. Especially as a friend, especially as a friend who has danced with the devil and still wears the burns. But, I remember back to this summer one day in the sunshine and grass, when I realized that my best friend never, not once, ever told me what to do. They just listened, asked what I needed, and gave me the space to be human.

All of my kicks and screams are into the wind,
CSL <3ingly p="">

I spent a load of cash

Today on all sorts of things I just said yes. I found some used all saints denim pants, a Pendleton button down, some crazy hot boots, a canvas tote, a mohair throw, an apple tea kettle, and an impulse lay away plan on a frye briefcase. I suddenly am okay spending hard earned cash.

More, I am putting down and trading in some habits that no longer service me. Oh!!!! And I got the word that I am one of the best bartenders at my job. One of the two best. I will happily accept that.

Making amendments with myself: gratitude, compassion, focus and drive.