i woke up, had dreamt of little boys in plastic wrap, spilt my coffee, bit my lip, listened to a pony tailed professor, cried to a stranger, was confused by the uncountable, rushed to eat, played a rondo, unbalanced, less thumb, fell asleep in the post-modernist era, ran a race, 41:40 minutes of fall, erg 20 minutes, arms only, back only, legs only, full body, power 10, dinner late, filled my plate, had a date, was late, lost my spoon, laughed for real, back here, alone...learning how to be alone. tomorrow its about bringing that 10 down to a 9.5 and blaming him less and loving me more.

flight

I am leaving tomorrow. I am leaving to go to a place I left recently – a place of familiarity, fondness and freedom. Here awaits friendships of substance, minds of masterful motion, and tasks undone and unimagined and mostly certainly undesired. Here awaits what I do not know, but I am grateful to not know. To survive an existence of stagnancy, to slumber in a summer of sadness and uncertainty, now makes this place shine sweetly. This place, in all its stress and structure, in all its selfish, motivated desire, now appears to me a sanctuary of the world’s insane turned sane by mere association. I long to return to this wild place I vowed to never return. I long to leave the place I yearned – the place called home, which sadly proved a cramped, unyielding cage for so flighty an indecisive and adventure-driven bird. I clipped my busy wings for a season and remained uncomfortably restless and wrought with thoughts of flight to some seducing piece of far away land inhabited with movement and forwardness. This mind game of engendering better than reality lasted not long, for depression and self-pity were more infectious and caught me in a torment of disgust and sorrow. I cried for a summer. I cried tearless cries. Pressure was released on my soul and I sank deep into haunted holes filled with unbeatable pasts, insuperable presents, and dim futures. I submitted to these underground nestings for I could not think of a way to leave them. I could not devise an escape plan, so I derived pleasure in pain. The feeling of being a little girl in a big world held no charm. Potentials became improbabilities. Hopes became hazards. The desire to conquer was crushed. My inner fight, the diligent networkings of my body and mind and their struggle to sustain, died. I cannot explain this alteration of soul and this sinking sensation nor can I explain the day I regained composure and realized with some regret that myself stripped me of my own meaning. I felt released and renewed by an inner mode of reassurance that I had lost amidst the abyss I entered; I am leaving that abyss now. I am leaving a place where questions, ambiguities and uneasiness cause me to lunge forward rather than jump back, hiding in fear of the real answers. I am leaving a place where I feast on addiction, becoming more ravenous and incontrollable with each binge. I am leaving a place of drugs and self-destruction. I am leaving a place of self-loathing and insecurity and discontinuing validation through promiscuity and callous complementation. I am leaving this place, with no intent to fall back on the comforts of being no one and caring for no one. To live, to return to the place I left, warms and revives my spirit and fills my soul with total satisfaction. I am leaving tomorrow to a place where my mind moves toward truth, where my body desires strength, where my heart seeks love, and my soul finds rejuvenation. To this place I will arrive thus leaving a place where I was but a crippled and angry bird so blindly attached to a dead place of no more flight. Home is no longer home, but when I leave tomorrow I go not home, for I have no home, but I return to place at least of flight.

stairway

a stairway -
concrete caked into a chipped channel -
carries the last light lent of day.
through faded gray contours -
cast with cracked, soiled hands of men
forgot with time's tick, tock, tick, tock -
travels the music of movement.
unsettled by stillness now -
present path of cradled memories
mixed and muddled, but missed -
it rests beneath the cool ground
merely mourning the melodies of men.
a stairway -
quiet and numb, lost but in place -
hums the history of human passing.

to the one

to the one who offered fields of loopins,
lush beds of wild flowers,
kissing my cheeks,
tickling my skin,
touching my inner thighs,
inducing smiles in internal places,
you loved not the girl,
but the game of the girl,
you loved not the girl,
but the prospect of the girl,
you loved not the girl,
but the defeat of the girl,
and the girl you loved not,
loved you.

how could
cold hands
harbor warmth
lend love
to a weighted
woman who
waits
for an image of
herself as
herself
without the
judgement of the
world

my beloved who wills not to love me:
my life which cannot love me:
i seduce both.

you wake up one day,
you open your lids to deception,
you rise to a harsh reality,
you lower your tired body back to rest,
you slumber in manipulation,
and you get shaken by the realization that no -
no, it doesn't have to be like that.
you proceed to self-loathing,
a familiar technique,
and you wallow in depression, humiliation, and desperation,
you question and analyze flaws,
you consider and concoct explanation,
you blame yourself,
you demean yourself,
you let them run wild with the control device,
you let them pull that control trigger,
and you get shaken by the realization that no -
no, it doesnt have to be like that.
you think how stupid,
im a disgrace,
to let this happen to me,
to allow myself to turn weak,
to be preyed upon,
to allow the carnivorous savage to feed its empty belly
and you are shaken by the realization that no -
no, it doesnt have to be like that.
you have corrected the error,
you have emitted the pest from inducing a brain tick,
you have freed your mind from failure,
you have negated the negativity,
the asperity has been smoothed,
and you get shaken by the realization that no -
no, i wont let it be like that.

lonely lives ‘long side lulling trees
and sleeps in scratchy fabrics of discontent
she smokes a camel light
sips a glass of wine from a bean
sits on some sorry sidewalk and wishes for a swing
justifying her clichés through swigs and drags

lonely feeds on appealing addictions
and blames the binge on the constant battle
she picks at the keys of an antique piano
hears fuming, minor chords
and dissonant drawls begging for meaning

lonely flirts with pictures of the past –
pretty little pieces painted and hung crooked in the brain –
and fights future failures with her culprit named control
she finds her surrounding world sanitary
and herself the selfish, whore center with no desire to be on display

lonely wakes to a blazed head
and works to fulfill the flighty, clouded cranium
he stalks up to suppress the damned, bored existence with no journey
he swears a passion, but
finds happiness in a bottle of dissolved drug –
180% proof of failure –
his hopes are so soluble in his damaging intensity

lonely seeks no standards
he can’t stand middle ground and won’t stand to
he sacrifices sanity for standing alone
and stands alone for no reason, but for that of having no purpose

lonely raises a handful of hell and
and loses her grip
woman can’t find no joy
and disguises jealousy by stabbing smiling criticism in the raised
woman can’t do anything right anymore
and forges fault on a close, controllable victim
woman clings too securely to stability
and loses all language of self

lonely shrinks openings prematurely
and sticks close by to past closures
lonely lingers ‘long side lulling trees
and sleeps in scratchy fabrics of discontent
yet dreams of fluid fabrics of substance.