There is poetry running chaotic in my head.
Not the poetry of falling in love,
But the poetry of grief
Hanging in the closet like the slips of
The girl he left me for
(And there are the slips my grandmother used to wear
When she was on her deathbed
The closet,
All full of satin and polyester
And my mouth full of cotton)

He told me lies,
Like, “the actresses change here,
And one forgot her clothes in my closet.”
I wish he had just told me her name
And that she was less trouble than I
I wish I could gain back all that time I spent
Listening to his music and his prose
And his breath in the dark

I told him lies too,
left out the parts about
runny-nose-kisses under stop signs
on snowy nights.

Tonight is the first rain
(no snow here)
New apartment parking lot is clean from it
The place where I dropped my glass of orange juice
And it ran down the white line next to my car
May be less evident by morning
I wished for something more dramatic than clumsiness
But had nothing but my tired grasp to blame.

Hold tighter

It can be a lesson, if I let it.
Hold tighter, because they always go.

“Not if I leave you first.”

Who cares who walks out the door first?
the leaving is not really in the exit,
the creaky walk down the porch steps,
the last petting of the neighborhood cat

when i left she was already gone.
curled up in her childhood bed, maybe without sheets,
maybe without sleep
definitely without love.
definitely without love.

i wish i could be inside a jazz song
maybe curled up inside the upright bass
feel the pluck of strings
the tap of the foot
slight shift of the body to the beat

i wanna be surrounded by sound
i wanna be held tight by rhthym
i wanna be smaller than i am
and less expansive
less surface area for the target to reach me

can i hide in your life?

if i could only swim inside this song
and let it hold me like a bed would
i'd sing along
duet:
this song, and my pain
repetition and improvisation
it would be always and never the same.

i told my friends to call me from pride when they'd counted at least 54 boobies. one friend said, i've only seen two so far, and both had "certified organic" stickers on them. does that count?"
i can't believe it's been a year.
this weekend was pride in SF, and also a big party that some of my family's friends throw...anniversary times. things jaymes and i went to last year that i vividly remember and now have to contend with the memories of, one year later, sitting in my house, playing air hockey with random boys in cowboy hats at a local bar, making tuna fish sandwiches for my ailing grandmother.
so i do the next logical thing:
look at old pictures, of course.
i could swear that she got shorter and chubbier and i got taller and thinner, so that by the end we looked comical--like caricatures of our real selves standing next to our scraggly hand picked christmas tree.
we never decorated the tree. that's how we were. we got halfway through everything, and then messed it up somehow. and then one of us would fix it, all hopefully, and the other would say, "it's not good enough. it's not real." and that's how the story went.
and that's how the story ended.
and just cuz i miss it, doesn't mean i'm going back.
but god do i miss it.
and just so you know: i'd decorate the tree with you this time, if i had it to do over again. i'd totally decorate the tree; i'd accept your apology in the form of ornaments and wrapped presents and lights plugged in as soon as the sun pushed itself behind the small mountainous line of horizon.

how come it’s suddenly so easy to remember?
stepping in and out of that deep tub, the curve of it mimicking her hip to thigh progression,
she was more squat, less grace than the tub
she was afraid to be pretty, except when she was
underneath me
Letting me
Letting me

Her eyes at me so earnest
trying so hard
to be my girl, my sweet, sweet girl

Then,
her eyes at me so forgetful
Forgetting the pretty, wet, smooth parts of us
only remembering how I cut her once too deep
and how I raced to leave her,
thinking I had to escape her like a burning hallway

I crawled on my hands and knees
and the floor fell in
(Do you remember that? When the floor fell in?)

I thought she fell then, but really she jumped
in after me
I think she thought she could save me

Always earnest
Always forgetful

oh, the obligatory first entry. well...wait a minute. without the first entry there would be no other entries.
and so, since i've typed entry so many times i can only think of one thing, now...
the first entry.
it's nice--when i've been waiting for it. cuz i like to wait.
yup. that's enough for now.
i really did this for you, lady. now i can comment less anonymously.
external validation is a very good thing.
;)