ink.stains.and.paper.cuts

Dear Lola Ten Years Ago

2010-01-13T08:16:00.000-08:00

It’s been a while Lola

since you were twenty five

and I was me

Lola but I’m still aching

Like I did the day I stepped

on your ten dollar bill

and stole it at the butcher shop

It was your fault, you should

have hit me should have cursed,

instead you rolled your eyes

as if even before you knew me

you knew what you should expect

I never stopped did I

Lola, I stepped on every bill you dropped

The barman says it’s sad

he says I’m sad, he says

I’ve lost a leg and Lola

Legs are useless anyway, I say

it’s not like noones going nowhere

but my Lola, oh I miss my Lola

2009-03-18T18:03:00.000-07:00

Freezing Point

Picture the coldest
Monday morning
you have ever lived to see

then make it colder

brutal sunshine un
mistakably too cold
for irony or wit
your skin that splits and cracks
tectonic plates
shifting with no intention
burns in restless hope
of arrival

working men
cups of steaming
liquid warming
hands and mouths
that sip
smiling at passers-by
Hey gorgeous!
What’s your name?
Good morning beauty!

your lips can feel it
slight approaching threat
of cracking one
a smile
but oh
it’s cold this morning.

[untitled]

2008-11-25T12:42:00.000-08:00

on the outermost edges of

tolerance

patiently

men work: shovels in hands

digging, chiseling, hammering

in unison,

battling time...

pealing words off slowly

and carefully, I try

not to leave a mark

configuring myself

move after move after

meticulously measured move

your steps punctuate

the cold stone floor

as you tap your toes:

one and two and

three and four and

three and four and-

with a slight and effortless bow

you offer me the right

of way

I keep pealing

and notice my hands

stained by an involuntary patience

with properties of rust

Tired (by?) your pose

you graduate

into another

and you notice my hands

"a fresh wound?"

I nod, and peal, and smile,

and say

"this one will also heal"

you twirl

and three and four and-

" what will the scar look like i wonder"

I hold the last one up

examining it for marks

"a triangle i think"

les intérieurs divins [un segment]

2008-11-22T09:57:00.000-08:00

With you gone and everything else still here, I sit rocking back and forth only slightly. There are things I know that you don’t, things I’m dying, have been dying to say. You have given me at least three ways to reach you, you’re not that far I know, but to reach you with this while you are there and I am here would somehow defeat the purpose. But what purpose?

I am only a bit braver now than I was then, distance does wonders, and like the coward that I am I will write you something that I will have hundreds of chances to take back. In the next few weeks this will sit on the cherry wood table in the reading room as each day I will come and I will go and I will look at it on the table waiting to be found, to be read, or to be taken back. I will have to decide.

By the time you get this I will have asked myself a hundred times if it even matters anymore, and each time struggle with the definition of these words and redefine things into total banality. I will have remembered countless memories of us laughing out loud at a silly definition or a pun we would catch the other try to get away with. I might even have remembered the love letters we used to write to each other without ever really literally saying anything, but only defining words, conjugating verbs, excavating quotes. As if the only authorial voice we knew, was that of another.

By the time you get this I will have imagined countless times, what you would look like when you come it, what you would grab out of the fridge, how you would look at this before you begin reading. I will have imagined how you would smell, and the frown that would form on your forehead first as a crease, move down through the sturdy axis of your nose, and eventually down to your lips. They would tense and tighten, forming one of many possible shapes: I will have imagined them all too. I will have purchased suitcases, I won’t be taking yours, and gathered boxes one by one, and thought at lengths about what I should take and what I should not....

tight ropes and white sheets

2008-09-16T14:19:00.000-07:00

he leaves uttering a few slight words

she looks up only for a moment

the balloons follow him out the door

and the wisdom of a woman who is complete

with the sticky kind of love

that clings and sinks

he arrives quietly and does not say hello

she sits on the edge of a bed

the line that unravels downward from her neck

continues quietly, in complete accord

with his wishes, and so she carries on

thrilling him indifferently

terrible tender lies told in a foreign tongue

the temporary comfort of candle light

and whatever else it will take to escape

on the way back he will buy milk

and try not to think of empty rooms

or the breathing and sweating of daily life

the dysEducation of happy cows

2008-08-21T21:07:00.000-07:00

SCENE: fourth year professional writing class

it's 8:30 am and I'm bitter that I'm required to be here in a make-up session in the middle of February to hear this ass hole talk about nothing.

" Einstein tells us that theories just explain variables. The more they explain, the better we hold the argument to be..."

I think: does that comfort you, you damn fool

"and so you see, at the end of the day, the theory is what sells your idea to the potential client, or audience or what have you"

the end of what day? sells my idea? what have you [lost your mind?!] my brain feels numb

"keep in mind, if something is completely alien, no one is going to care about it... it does not pass the SO WHAT test"

zed, why, ex, double you, vee, you, tea, ess, are... [trying to keep the circulation in my brain]

"and it's fair then, that theoryless proposals always get rejected"

oh oh I know! is that because they're full of 'aliens'? I'm going to hang myself over a big sign that reads DID NOT PASS SO WHAT TEST.

"and, all the important things have to go in your introduction, because truthfully, no one reads past that point"

i think: why does everyone look so relieved?

ode to a friend i will never know

2008-08-07T23:36:00.000-07:00

one day she was here

six month later

she was no longer...

is language right?

the sentence ends:

"she was not."

full stop.

lines break, words end

but does pain?

is there ever a "full stop" in longing?

in desperation, in "not"?

language lies when it fixes

that which will never stop

being broken.

it did not break

that tense is wrong

it is breaking,

always breaking

since it...

a line will never work

it can only contain

it will never hold

or understand time:

"she was", "six month later"

and "now", when is now?

now is every six months that she will not be,

again and forever

and forever, was six months long...

Sometimes I think, Sometimes I Don’t

2008-04-24T10:38:00.000-07:00

- a slice of a story

When we got off the train, we were still not talking. Hours had passed since the last word was exchanged in our last argument and it was now too late to continue that argument -we had cooled down- but it was still too early to get over it. I was still angry. I took my luggage, refusing the help you half-offered, grinding my teeth. I was angry that you refused to understand, angry that I noticed, and angry that it had to be here. “Here?” I kept thinking to myself, “Was this really the place for this argument?” and as if that wasn’t enough to fuel my anger, moments later I noticed that it was not in fact even “here” that the argument took place, but instead it took place on the way, in-between here and there, in a way nowhere in particular. This thought settled my anger, but only for long enough to figure out how to replace it with something greater, far more distressing. It made me shutter to think that things could still happen even when you were nowhere. Things could till be true. What disturbed me also, was that in my mind, you were such a small part of the problem. You were sitting in front of me, completely consumed by an argument that in my mind had so little to do with you. The hardest questions are the ones we let ourselves not answer. The ones we don’t expect to be able to answer, leave on the shelves for so long to gather dust. Ah the metaphors. They make ugly things so much more presentable. What shelf? What dust? It’s just questions and answers. Questions and no answers.

All of this was occupying my mind so much that I forgot to notice what was happening in my actual surroundings. You were good at that. Taking care of the little things I loved to ignore, and it occurred to me how accustomed I had gotten to this. The comfort of being able to sink in my paradoxes, the labyrinths in my mind. I would sink further and deeper into them sometimes for hours, never once having to peek out to see where we were eating, what we were buying, how we got back home.

This time was no different. We left, we fought, we arrived, we stayed, returned; and I once again managed to get away with minimal involvement, only appearing when I was being introduced, for a few sentences, greetings, received some compliments, took them with my legendary ‘grace’ and then I was gone again. Their words fading as I lapsed deeper into my spaces of preference. “How beautiful… She is so elegant… Where in the world did you find her? A Goddess…” I would normally take one of the last words that were audible as I made my way to the bar and dwell on it, distorting it my mind, molding it, bending it, in ways the person who said it could never imagine. The first glass of wine would see the playful goddess, the goddess of love and joy: a lover of words and people and life. The second glass and the subsequent few would meet the goddess of intoxication and sensuality: patroness of beauty, lover of conversation of many types. Anything beyond that would awaken the wrathful goddess of vengeance, thirsty to avenge all the misgivings of the world...

gazes, glasses, people, and such (part of a story)

2008-03-31T12:28:00.001-07:00

So we went on. Each talking through the knots that we personally had nurtured in our heads all day or all week or... and each completely independent of one another despite the misleading appearance of our intercourse as a 'conversation'. You were talking about some debate I think, between constructed something and natural something rather I can't say I remember much more. What I did notice though, was that you would look away sometimes and focus on a random object and look at it so carefully, as if it was in the process of changing what you were talking about, that this one object at this moment was about to make you modify something, or abandon something all together. I can't explain it.

I never said anything about it then of course, I doubt that I even thought much about it at the time. I was too busy ranting about how love is not the fault of the lover, but of course that of the beloved for being, for causing, for accommodating; according to Renaissance notions of love that is. Where was I going with that? Was I criticizing this? Hopefully. But why can't I remember? Maybe I was unknowingly staring at some object too, maybe it was at this moment that my thoughts were being affected by my glance. What moment? I wasn't even referring to a particular moment. Are you paying attention to this?

Organs yes. Then I went on to organs, tracing a brief history of where in the body love has been said to exist, in different periods. The heart, the pelvis, the brain, the stomach... I wasn't looking at any objects, not the way you were anyway. I never do. Objects intimidate me in their stability, and their impenetrable finality, they always have. Of course their lack of autonomy isn't so fabulous but we could find a way around that. I'm diverging. I was talking about our "conversation" and look where I am now. Fixating. At this point you had moved on to some other topic, something about irreversible endings, how you found them tragic. Or exciting? Once again, I managed not to notice the most important part. You were staring at the bottle on the table, and that was making me uncomfortable, so I picked it up and filled all three of our glasses...

2008-03-18T12:49:00.000-07:00

ولي مگر زنگ ساعت ميگذارد؟

چقدر زود دير شد

چقدر زودتر از آنكه فكر مي كرديم

تو هم يكي ديگربودي

يك نفر ديگر كه پير مي شد

و صد سال قبل از تولدش مرده بود

صداي فرياد تو

هرگز مرا ز كابوس خود بيدار نكرد

اين دار, بار زمانه بود

كه كار خود را كرد و رفت

SHE [we never thought of ourselves] IS LEAVING [never a thought for ourselves]

2008-02-28T12:25:00.000-08:00

i'm tired of
staplers
outlines
proposals
introductions
routines
numbers
elevators
plastic utensils
commas
alarm clocks
schedules

and rent.

in my defense

2008-02-27T14:37:00.000-08:00

the audience exhales
as i try
to catch my breath
amid the damp darkness of this stage
where i am left
alone
to defend my case
once again

the set was built
by the slow hands
that slipped
and the fingers’ gifted aid
gripping the bricks
one
by one
together they made

the stage was set
by the voices
that sang
and the bulging eyes that saw
but chose to close
swaying
this way and that
like sorry silhouettes

so shifting just a third
of an inch
in my sweltering skin
i look them in the eyes
and fiddle
with a string
and when the curtain falls
i begin

2008-02-26T20:06:00.000-08:00

there's no one left to torture...

notes on a parting

2008-02-26T15:03:00.000-08:00

a collection of sorts-
actual journal entries straight from my moleskin. written between April 2006 and June 2007

You've been rocking me back and forth so gently like a baby that i've become completely numb to all that goes on around me. The sound of a calculated pause, mixed in with the smell of garlic, and lavender. It's always during the end that it starts. Someone tell this kid to stop spinning please. Denial hurts my eyes.

---
Using all my power i rise out of bed and make my way to the bathroom. Without turning the lights on I turn on the water: first cold, then hot, and eventually warm. just warm. my guilt appears in the doorway in the form of a hologram. of you. "Excuse me" I say every time i go through.

---

you have me and i have nothing. breaking branches was easy at first but as soon as we noticed the implications it wasn't the same anymore. I remember trying to grab a branch and breaking. In the paleness of the morning interpretation is hard; was it me or the tree? To think how long i've been standing and and breaking, and dissolving... into an idea of me, into an ideal of us. and the ghosts just laugh at me. Empty spaces can hurt people, especially other people.

---

what if tonight i want someone who is not you? marks in pencil are entirely permissible i think. no? this seems to me very important, in a minor kind of way. do i like sunsets on the beach? no, but i like waking up from a nightmare, sitting up in bed and staring out of my window at the rising sun, and being scared.

---

stand facing me. hands down. chin up, not that high up. now take a step back, one more. stretch your arms out, up, up and out, no it's no good, you can still touch me. one more step backward. ok now hold your hands out again. palms facing down. arms at a ninety degree angle to your chest. ok good. you can drop your arms now that we both know you can't touch me.

---

draw me a picture of a bird, and a map of an imaginary place. and tell me how we're gonna get lost there.

---

i sit and i count. i add and subtract and multiply. my fingers my toes i use, and the very little else i can call my own. but i only reach one answer over and over again. nothing. i have nothing more to offer to this, to you, to us. what's more, some of what i gave i will have to take back.

sorry-

---
pain was here yes, but also here was pleasure

2008-02-19T12:52:00.000-08:00

گل يا پوچ

چقدر زياد

وزن سننگين و خالي ديرين

هميشه امروز است انگار

چقدر خسته

چقدر خستگي خاموش

خاموشي سنگين امروز و امروزي سبك هميشه

همچنان خسته همچنان خاموش همچنان ساكن

writing in blue

2008-02-19T12:13:00.000-08:00

hurting so much writing abandoning so much wanting to scream so often and never quite able. to scream to do change say move stay warm without falling asleep in the arms of the enemy. say something you could but you never do wake me want to be there to see to help or to at least enjoy that i am hurting so i may hate fear love do feel something you. please.

displaced in strange dimensions

2008-02-19T07:57:00.000-08:00

fell asleep on another map last night
the ink from the paper ran
a sad dream perhaps, some tears
a new river somewhere between the north of
some country and the sea
that sea
this river is now
but for how long she will run
no one quite knows
of suffocating
and non renewal
in ever
in after
in another dream

some strange in between

2008-02-14T08:41:00.000-08:00

a quiet kind of love

with solitary stairs

stairs that love upward

and disappear

in dangling

a language

that fails to hear

time

a lonely single time

that feels, and can be afraid

of the kind of cloud

that stays

and stains

desperate to produce

one image

of two

anything borrowed

is condemned

to be forever confused.

fun in futility

2008-02-14T08:34:00.001-08:00

i just spent at least 20 minutes filling in blanks to make a blogger profile.

never again

i dreamt i was a rusty bicycle with three arms

2008-02-09T22:15:00.000-08:00

determined to dream i put myself to sleep once more
counting down slowly from thirty-two
one
thirty women chanting in a mellow tongue
twenty nine tired revolving doors
twenty eight failed attempts to say something without
seven years ago today
where was i

i am here and this is now- an imaginary interview with the face behind the blog

2008-02-06T16:22:00.002-08:00

act one-

-who are you?

pass

-what do you do?

pass

-who do you love?

mostly people who have hurt or devastated me. with the exception of a few

-where do you live

does it matter?

-well, i mean, some would argue that context is important. you know, the urge to locate, define, classify...

and you? do you feel that way?

-wait a minute, who's asking the questions here?