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.