anti-climax

so right. yes. hello. right. uhm, hi. been a while. yes. long while. long while. sure i've missed you, sure i have (lie). i haven't. i really haven't. even now i have nothing to say. firstly, i had nothing to say because i was studying. for exams. that was intense. wow. yeah, lots of study. also some play. which meant i didn't sleep. no need for sleep. put those amphetamines to good use. but it's not enough, better washed down with energy drinks and a couple of caffeine pills. oh i must be kidding, i can't possibly be serious. (except i am). and then, 50 hours later, i finally get home (worried the whole time i'm going to crash the car and die because my leg won't stop shaking my knee keeps hitting the steering wheel. i stumble into the house and i eat a banana, thinking i ought eat something that doesn't have a stimulant as its main chemical constituent) and sit on my couch a moment and drink tea with 14 cookies each dipped in the tea first and then soft and soggy and warm and wonderful next thing i know it's morning. like i said. fun.

so clearly, i didn't have it in mind to writering about anything.

and then, now, where am i, oh yeah, free-refills and unlimited downloads it's great to be in LA but too warm i hate summer hate it hate it hate it, and all i want to do is for no one to talk to me so i can sleep and read. sleep and read sleep and read maybe a pinkberry with Ashley and a coffee with Monz and then sleep and read and sleep and read and instead: no. drama drama drama all other people's who love it love it love it and then whinge and whine about how terrible it all is bullshit you love it soo much you can't go twelve days with concocting some for yourself i say and they all give me dirty looks and whinge and whine some more about how unfair it all is bullshit i say then try and turn to walk away to read my book in my bed wearing my dark-red calvin klein boxers which are wonderful to sleep in and look great because i am finally junkie-thin and after a 3-day comedown eating food like a recently-no-longer-homeless person would and i think i might fatten up a little for three weeks so when i get back to school and amphetamine land i will just lose it again anyway.

oh god, it is too warm here i have less than nothing to say but now that i'm writing i can remember a story or two i suppose i should come back and writer them up next chance i have get want make create concoct.

bye.

unslept rambling.

__17
__It came on time.

___The Scripture of the Golden Eternity, Jack Kerouac













friday night, Hollis Brown Thornton


there are will be other ways. if not this one, then maybe the next bus. the late bus, last one- huffing and puffing mechanical beast, all metal and hazy windows, and the bright lights on the inside. and life is a fantasy made of itself. on the bus, these two women, one not-quite-30, the other a decade older. they're all just skanks nowadays, f*cking whores ya know? keep it ta ya'selves ladies. you should see my sista, littlest one, worst of 'em all. a toddler, cute little munchkin, tries to launch herself off her mother's lap. sit still will ya - already can't keep ya where ya s'pose tobe. i smile into the book i'm reading, lifting it higher to cover my face.

and life is a fantasy made of itself. i clean my bathroom, with a cloth around my sink, dust and hair and little nail-clipping around. love the smell of glass-cleaner. funny how you never notice how dirty things get. i sit in the sun and drink my tea. besides me J's on the computer typing away. Behind me someone else toying with photoshop. on a reclining chair, on the grass, reading the Obama autobiography. everyone soo quiet. talking to spring in their own ways. i don't tinker with anything i'm just sitting there. leaning on my coffee mug i can barely sit up and i have my chin in the mug, covering the opening entirely it's warming up my chin quite warm now very pleasant.

tiredtiredtired. haven't slept in days. we get in the car i have a bundle of papers with me and an energy drink. i drive with the windows down and take 10mg and open the can, wash it down. Dude, are you having amphetamines and an energy drink for breakfast? i smile. i don't mean to, but i do. i'm actually sad. yeah. guess i am. Dave shakes his head at me from the passenger seat, hey you got ATLiens on your ipod? nod. they ain't make no pills for what i've got i wanna say. nothing to clear up the lines that are never straight. the car sounds unhealthy. labours on. i finish the can in three gulps and throw the can behind me.

i make my bed. slowly. for no reason at all. it's almost 7pm. if i sleep here tonight i'll sleep soon. but i'll probably fall asleep in her bed again, but it doesn't matter. could be the same bed, the same night, the same everything, but when i get into a made-bed, night just seems a little special. a bow. or well wrapped gift- makes it seem soo much nicer. all my stars just where i want them. i'm terrified when i do try and sleep, last time it was... 4:56am when i got into bed, when it all stops, the music and the tea and sound of pens scribbling or pages turning or tapping on computers or televisions on and cars out by the highway when it all stops it's just me in a really dark room with a heartrate that's... __it can't be, soo fast it worries me.

she smokes. he doesn't have much to say so he doesn't. she tries to read him and fails. hey, what's on your mind? he doesn't look at her. just keeps staring off, with his eyes unfocused, you know when it's just a blur your see but it's soo... captivating you don't want to focus them back up, his Tiresias-eyes, you know, being alive is an art. she doesn't understand what he means, but only that it must have been something important. she remembers she's holding a cigarette and she takes another drag.

and life is a fantasy made of itself. growing itself out of itself. news arms out of thursdays and saturday's blue-eye winks a new sunday morning out of nothing and hands it to you on a platter of such vast darkness, i am in a new place you can't understand- entire night, the whole of it, all 7pm till 6am is nothing for me now. eyeblink. i kiss her eyelid and lie facing the wall a little while, she hoggs all the blanket, she turns me towards her a few moments later and smiles and says it's 8. i nod. a new day out of itself. constantly breaking faces and mirrors and dropping things and new things fall out of and slide past and stand next to and

hey q, yeah, you seem soo out of it, you ok? i nod. yeah, i'm actually really good. really?, you've just been sitting there staring away. i shrug. you've just been reading. what are you thinking? dear god today is a miracle i think to myself. i shuffle my shoes.

so what's next then?

i'm done making the bed. i look around. it's fine. it's dark now. i've had the windows open, so the smell of stale air has dissipated. i collapse on my couch, stare at the ceiling.

today's gone.

nothing to be done about that.

in a minute i'll shower. shave. and go kiss every freckle on her face.

experiments in the destruction of language [i hate exams pt1]

truth i am still upset very much so after dinner we kiss and she says you really need to study don't you looking at me like obviously who cares about study when there is a world where night is made of skin and tea and pillows and

__[this music is the insanity of all insanity- minimal bleepy darkdark slides slick as washing-machine detergent water, sort of passing through life a million miles a minute giving a cursory glance at everything you ought to know better to leave behind to ignore forget if there is a sound like this in the universe then super duper yay hurrah let's just throw our clothes off and dance just you and i and whoever and also whoever else like epileptics in the street and on cars howling and raging and i myself am soo damn lost can't tell coconut from remote control__]

i'm still looking at her thinking i shouldn't be looking because looking is the thing that got me into this in the first place. i kiss her once on each cheek and then her lips. i go to pull away and she grabs my head, one hand on each cheek and pushes her tongue in my mouth and i respond ofcourse ofcourse who doesn't/wouldn't/you'd be crazy, and i'm lost again (there's no wind where i'm lost to) and i open my eyes, and she smiles and she says

__[no one seems to understand it's not music it'snot it'snot it's my little way out of this smalltime no-name never-heard-of ME (who da hell is that anyway?. it's sonically engineered for me to lose my sh*t so nothing is the same - in the library i lean back in my chair and exhale and put both hands up in the air with fingers slightly separated oh god Q's trippin again Ashley says to Dave and Dave laughs go boi!! i smile my headphones still on slowly leaning from one side to the other about eight times slower than the music's going because it's like insect noises when you can listen you can hear__]

outside it's all spring evening and springlike - she doesn't say anything, she just looks at me. go study, it's ok. i kiss her eyelid. i think i like that more than she does but i like it a ton if not more so i do it all the time anyway. i hate you by the way she says as i step out her garage and she presses the button and the door starts to close on me good thing we're just friends she says with a cheeky smile she knows cause i told her the day she decides we're friends is the day i delete her number i have too many friends.

__[otherwise there must be a redeeming feature to this room it's not the coffee table full of books and empty tea-mug and half-filled water bottle and pens and paper with scribbles and a little bottle of dexamphetamine and the music makes it all seem useless and limp in the shower i danced a little to it i had it up loud and it reminded me of plutonium or a ritual fire-dance or the death and toil of too much youth without a place to go__]

i stare at the phone. or my car keys. the other morning i get home at 10, you just getting home now he says with a smile on his face, and i, exhausted and exhausted nod still in pyjamas and suddenly feeling very alone you just get up? i rub my eyes no, been up since 8 i say, but morning's a great time for kissing greater if not est - why are you hugging the wall, turn around she says and takes my hand and i turn soo sleepy-eyed i can't tell Post-Colonialism from pepsi-cola, eventually it occurs to me outside somewhere there's an exam with my name on it.

he's too intense.
_really?
yeah.
_how so?
i don't know. just is.
_i'm surprised you don't think i'm too intense.
you?
_yeah.
but you're always joking around with me.
[it's true, all we do is tease each other]
_guess so.
[nods]

_don't hate me.
why not?
_i'm going to kiss you more later.
i'll stop hating you for a little while then so you can kiss me later.
_i can live with that.
that's all you get.

c'mon q. gotta study. gotta gotta.
there's no pill in the world that can make me focus.

ideas for novel(s) i may(not) oneday write

still, i keep having halfideas. they annoy me because i can't quite delineate what they are. i don't see them clearly as shapes or characters or titles or anything that neat. instead it's a mush of words and phrases in the distance.


(1)
time is a joke. a lost set of keys, so that when they actually are in your pocket- its sharp and scratches your thigh and despite its jutting out of your pant pockets- brings some comfort. and then gone. just when you need them.

people waking up and the names of the week make no sense anymore so yesterday was called Theordore and today is Suwensday. and waking up in parks, and it being last year sometime and watching the sunset waiting for my sister (which only happened a few minutes ago) and then being back in the room with the flourescent lights and then the beach with the girl and freezing cold with my pants half undone (which only happened a few minutes ago).

and then stops.
and you wait for it. and every hour is 14 episodes of southpark long, and you listen to a CD nineteen times in full and it's still only 9am. so you shower. and the sun is stuck at midmorning and everytime you look out your window the white car is still parked there and it's not that you have no friends in this city, it must be that your cellphone reception has been redirected to Mars so some ratlike amphibian is talking to all the totally cool people who are (not)calling for me right now.

i swear a year ago...
i just don't get it.


(2)
__- it's a great thing you're not a rockstar or something.
__- what?, why?
__- you're the kinda guy who'd leave behind a string of dead hookers and black eyes.
[Q, remember to use that line later]


(3)
and my sister one flew too close to the cuckoo's nest or stopped by edge and peeked in and screamed and screamed like some bad-dream that afterwards you can laugh about maybe because your brother can't think of anything else to say but dear lord tell me you've learnt your lesson! and she laughs in sharp stabs Ha!. Ha!. Ha!. Ha!. and her voice i hate and can't stand and yet there's no sound i look forward to more and despite the heaviness of everything i'd die to have lost her. __(it's a story i refuse to stop telling)


(4)
ravers, swaying and stumbling, their thighs barely able to support them into the 4am McDonalds; and me with my unslept unshaven clarity staring and the two gorgeous girls with the barefeet, blackdress and bluedress, walk in and stare at me and make blow-job gestures and laugh to themselves and i smile. and they smile and wave hello and i smile and wave hello and i knew it, life always was just an erotic noir pantomime and i've been imagining everyone's voices.


(5)
i have no idea where she came from or who manufactured her face so that everytime i see it i must kiss a part of it, if not a lip an eyelid, if not that an ear or a hair-covered temple or just stare you stare a lot she says what are you thinking about she asks and i think: freckles will be the death of me , and i think: many dictionary will pay for the price of your blueblue eyes , and i think: i prefer everyone else i don't give a damn either way if they call back or not but you you are different i actually likelike you. and i say i've never known it to be soo quiet. she doesn't know what to say, so i try and kiss her again.


(6)
this never-to-be-written(but maybe once twice attempted to be) novel should be about loudness and silence in heads. whirling noises. not schizophrenia or anything quite so dramatic. i'm thinking more just... overcrowded, undigested thoughts. and all the places we try and stuff them away, like all the clothes hanging over the chair on the floor and couch and coffee table and i pick them up and just stuff them into plastic milk-crates i have in my closet and hope to forget they ever existed. like that. or, that there, that bottle of rum is too full. if it were empty we could hide a few in there. he scratches the back of his ear. what do we do?, seems a waste to spill it all out.


(7)
maybe i'll call it the redemption machine.

she bends over the sink and bleeds. says she never had much patience for grammar or punctuation, but her blood clotting wouldn't be too much to ask for. we text back and forth, and finally i work out it has nothing to do with the purported mountain of blow she claims to have procured, which i still doubt. i imagine little bloody marks on the keypad of her phone. i doubt a lot about her. but then, she said she lived in Moscow and one day i pick her up and she's speaking Russian on the phone, and when i go over to her room the other night there's a yearbook from her school. for now, i imagine the sound of water running, and the blood of her nose staining her lips and rose coloured stains around her sink. but the sound of the water running.

and always, our whole lives, never ceasing, never stopping, the beeps of our cellphones. (and the long silent semicolons in between each one)

short-story

__- i have to go.
__- yes.
__- i really do.
__- i know. go; _you need to study.
__-_ study. _,_yes.
__-___yes.

[eye meets eye. they kiss some more. he's holding the sides of her head with both hands, fingers like the roots of a tree in her hair. with a sigh it ends.]

__- but i do.
__- you should.
__- yes. __right. veryright.

[he stares off at nothing in particular across the street somewhere]
__- you ok?

______hello?

__- hiya babyface. [he smiles]
[she smiles]

_____here we go again.


*___*___*

i can say this because i am me. because i am broke because i am addicted to books and lonely because i am addicted to skin and hungry because i live off amphetamines and coffee and cough-drops. because every time i put my hands in my pockets my fingertips are sandy and because my eyes are darkish-blue puff balls that look like large flies and because my dad refuses to give up his dream of me and my sister's the first one to get locked up. because my car makes odd noises and all the lights on the dash are possessed so they light-up for no reason and the moon is in a different spot every night and last time i looked up it was yesterday dinner. i say this because time is fragmented and every now and then i notice something and then i am gone again and one moment i am in a car kissing and the next i am in a library studying and the one after i am sitting on the grass and have no idea who dressed me and where my shoes are. i can say :

it'll be fine.
__we'll work it out.
___(eventually.


*___*___*

__- maybe if you don't look at me.
__- what?
__- if i look at you i have to kiss you.
__- how's that my fault?
__- it's not.

[she looks away. pretending to be annoyed. some hair falls across her cheek. he leans in close, and rests his forehead against her ear. she turns a little. they open their mouths and breathe each others air]


*___*___*

it's morning.

____someone with blonde hair is smiling at me, have you had lunch yet wanna gr

the coffee in my hand is trembling. it is making my hand shake too. i should return it.


___i'm sitting in a car. __i gotta go. _study.

it's morning ______________it's saturday i'm dusting my piano

have you eaten?
no.
when'd you last eat?

____________i'm late.

the library is warm. __when i leave it's cold and i don't know where my car is.

____stop being silly Q, that was yesterday!
_really?)

__it's dark.
it's light.
_in the car. _i remember setting my bag down. __(coffee. _late. _cold. _silly yesterday Q!

it's morning.
_when'd you last eat?

___blonde hair. _still looking at me. _what?, sorry sosorry, i missed that-

___________i'm late. _______the library is cold.


in the car. ___gotta go sweetie. yesyes..

___________it's a purple coloured book. __shelf. ___library.

it's morning?
_stop being silly Q, that was yesterday!


*___*___*

__- i'm not going to open my eyes.
__- uuhm. ok.
__- this is the only way. i just have to get out with my eyes closed.
__- yes. i don't want to keep you from your study.
__- yes. __what i'll do, i'll just get out.
__- right.
__- right. __yes. __ok. __uhm; bye.
__- _...bye.
[they kiss. _they stop. _he turns his head, _opens cardoor. _it's cold.

his eyes are closed.

__here we go again.

_

thoughts (fragments)

these fragments i have shored against my ruins

____the Wasteland, Eliot












break-up, Federico Erra


my sister flew one flew too close over the cuckoo's nest. and my mom lies exhausted and mumbles as she tells me the story and i say, well with all your hollerin i was half worried they'd throw you in right with her. she doesn't laugh. smiles briefly. my sister laughs. she thinks it's hilarious. my sister laughs in pizzicatto. ha!. ha!. ha!. __(poor mom.
- have you learnt your lesson?, what have we told you about opening your big mouth?. there are consequences.
- i know i know. i know. iknowiknow. ok? i have LEARNT my lesson.
____- nonesense, you never learn. (that's mom interjecting).


*___*___*

"Burke, always genial and shrewd, taught me to ask: What is the poet (or critic) trying to do for herself, as a person, by writing her poem or essay? What Crane, in his seven-year agon (1923-1930) to compose The Bridge, sought to do for himself as a poet was not less than everything, and so survival as a person was intimately involved. ... I read this as Crane's gamble upon The Bridge (and finally upon "The Broken Tower")- if they demonstrated that he still had the shaping spirit in him, he would stay alive. If not, not."
__from: Centenary Introduction to The Complete Poems of Hart Crane, Harold Bloom

and so now i ask myself a bunch of things. here is Crane. Whitman. Stevens. Dickinson. Eliot. Ginsberg. these people who breathed life into artless pieces of paper. made black markings on pages resemble souls and insane-asylums and certain slants of light. i write a little-known blog. some articles for a website. sometimes i repeat words over and over for myself in my notebook because i like the look of them (or the sound of them (or the shape of them). maybe being a writer is not about writering. in any case i have no idea what it's about- though not for want of trying.

and what is this(me) psuedo-maybe-halfbreed-writerer trying to do for himself by writering these 'stuffs'?

hide. find. remember. forget. absorb. recreate. resolve. dissolve. explore. fathom. exclaim.

maybe nothing. maybe he just likes the sound of the tapping (of pens scribbling). maybe he's just real lazy and has nothing much better to do than this.


*___*___*

i was scared about getting scared. so i took my meds. i tried to write about it last night. but couldn't. four attempts. epic-fail.

how we're always late. always. don't know why. always try to be on-time. always always. set my clock and get up and everything always like a machine. but then there's roadwork. or telephone calls that drag on. or the only clean shirt isn't ironed and the only ironed shirt isn't clean. life has long tentacles. i smirk, this could only happen to ahSar. i imagine dad nodding over the phone. thankgod it's all over anyway. now i nod. yeah._ poor mom.

but then i don't feel scared. and that worries me. probably it's the meds. or that i'm a selfish bastard.


*___*___*

i've long been planning, in my head this is, a novel titled things i said at my sister's funeral. i thought it would be a fitting occasion to exorcise some demons. stitch some things together and glue some tinsel wings on it, and send it off. alternative titles are:

___- the memory-machine
___- the speed-freak's guide to midnight time-management
___- gravity

i struggle with stories though. i think stories are boring. i don't really care about people walking around and dialogue and character developments and subplots and that kind of stuff.

my writing should be like my vision. which is skewed. memory is not linear. certain colours are always too bright, others faded or erased, so things appear elongated and certain people appear too often, and others not enough. just like looking at old photographs. can't remember that person being there at all. who is that guy? or... no, you were wearing a dress that night. i know it. i know it. and she shakes her head. no. i know it, it was purple. and boots. brown. i know it. everything mixed and jumbled. in your head it is a choose-your-own-adventure, so last night, we sit on a pistachio coloured 2-seater couch, and i tell her two-thirds of a story about Los Angeles, and it turns into one-fourth of a story about sashimi and nine-tenths of a memory about a girl named Kristen Feyer and then back to Los Angeles again. that is memory. discursive vectors. not what was said, or left unsaid, but what happened in between.

and characters? stumblers and dreamers. obscenity users and amphetamine pushers. my characters have faded shoes and pockets full of sand from kissing girls by the beach, and drive cars that make funny noises and speak to young girls with bright eyes who drive brand new BMWs and tremble a little when you stare at them.

- you can't win at this.
[we're standing face-to-face, noses touching, we've swapped eyes so i can only see blue and in the dark light on the street she can probably see nothing]
- you don't know who you're messing with. [she smirks. i don't move. i sense her mouth opening. i feel a handful of warmth on my face. i smile. lips stumble around looking for a light switch, i move away a little. kiss her cheek softly]
- you can't do this to me.
- i thought i can't win.
- you can't. [lips are blind and needy. open mouth to open mouth, just a moment away from one another. the cusp of a new moment. a universe begins everytime someone enjoys kissing. i run my tongue along her lower lip. she goes to bite down but i'm gone already. what a dance.
- you can't do this. [of course the leash has to break sooner or later. love is a device that stutters. stutters and starts. stutters and fails. bodies are the same. conversations. even spring can't open it's big sleepy eye without a few false starts god dammit i'm freezing on the sidewalk i grab the back of her head and push her so far into me for a few moments- while our tongues arm-wrestle- i presume i'm thinking her thoughts.

i step back. she exhales. i kiss an eyebrow. i shaved tonight, i'm proud of this. like the when you first learn to tie your own shoe-laces you feel like a little man when you shave. so i don't mind rubbing my cheeks against her and kiss her temple.
- you can't do this to me.
- i win. [she sighs. i win. and step away and walk towards the car].


*___*___*

did i just tell that story to remember it? consecrate it? is that even how it happened? am i wrong in my conviction that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle applies to everything in life? what am i trying to do for myself? am i doing it? am i failing?


*___*___*

i hadn't taken my meds for a few days and i was frazzled and frayed. hyperemotional and talking too fast and couldn't sit still and heart-beat like insect wings. mom sits with me, on my leather chair and i talk a mile-a-minute about who we are and where we are. what we are, but that's too hard that one. finally, it occurs to me and my eyes are very wet. we have to pray right now. i'm serious. it's like needing to pee really badly, there's no questioning this, this has to happen right_now. okay, okay she says.

less than a year ago i was stumbling down Santa Monica Blvd. and my ankle hurt and i couldn't walk straight. i slept on Martha's couch. i cried in O'Hara airport when Eman picked me up. someone asked what's next? and i just stared back at them until it got awkward. hello?. finally, i gulped and said, i really don't think there are words... i... . and it was all very French-film-weird.

a year ago i had no home. no real basic concept of the future. i misunderstood air. watched movies and hoped they would just leave me alone and i could sit in cinema 4 and live off left-behind popcorn and half-melted icecubes until some new(er)(est) life came to claim me and we could start again. less than a year ago.

i can't understand how soo much can be different. and i struggle to determine which was the dream. which of these lives is actually... life.
(and my therapist looks at me uncomfortably, and says sometimes i feel like you dissociate. like... not that you do, in a technical sense, but you have, to a small extent, ...personalities
- they're ghosts [i interject to make it easier for her]
- ghosts?
- yeah. people i've been.
- and they're still with us?
- with me. yes. always. of course.
- you can't lay them to rest?
[i smile:
- god no, they are too beautiful. but i am starting to forgive what had to happen for me to have them.


*___*___*

i will let a genius have the last word. at least someone who knew for what reason (for themself) they were wasting ink, pen, time and eyesight. i read this, i add a century to it, and i feel it. (dear world, how do these guys do it?)



____So the 20th Century- so
whizzed the Limited- roared by and left
three men, still hungry on the tracks, ploddingly
watching the tail lights wizen and converge, slip-
ping gimleted and neatly out of sight.

___from The River, Hart Crane

3am diffracted at 1pm

newa, by mademuaselle



she passes by me, just now, just now this is, and we lock eyes and i keep looking, more ? than anything and her looking back i suppose just searching, or maybe i misread the whole thing and she was seeing something in the air. a little rainbow or something i couldn't see from my angle.

it hasn't rained.

there, the smell of coffee.

__(at midnight she agreed to have coffee with me, which makes me like her, because anyone who is willing to have coffee with me at that hour is bound to be wonderfulness. and we do that. she's getting out the car, by now it's 3, and i think, well. she's easy to fall into. her eyes are always the best thing to look at around. but my gaze drops to her lips. not sure why. curiosity? just cause? so i do. we do. lots of tongue. i'm annoyed a little, i had wanted to acquaint myself with her lips)

the heater is the only thing that makes a sound. maybe my fingers tapping on the keyboard. but it is quiet. 3:30am this is. it's a machine, hidden in the dark-parts of the night. like a garbage truck. comes around. collects all the reverb floating around. squawks and horns. cars. whisperings. this machine comes along and annuls them. even the colours are silent.

__(so tongue-tied and my glasses splattered against her i-don't-know-what, i take my hand and rub the side of her cheek and my finger is still a little white with snow)

i look at photographs. naked people in showers. trees. a girl's feet. something distorted and abstract so it's just coloured shapes. a woman's breasts. a kettle on a table. bedsheets. two children asleep on a couch. a man in bed with a hairy chest. naked bodies. hazy buildings in the distance.

but is it poetry?
is a question i've been asking myself. i think the poetic aesthetic of our age is unique. it is more austere. not so flowery. things that are poetic are often labored. genuine poetry is made of unconscious atoms. things you cannot control. the collision point of light and motion and voices. just... moments. (and after i fail to smile at her, she keeps walking away. an invisible couplet falls on the floor). (a book somewhere grows heavier, a newly added line). so i am trying to adjust my writing to suit this. to be more coherent with how i 'experience' poetry in life. 'see' it. (because it can be seen. and heard. and all sorts of hybrids). life is a wonderful poet. expert at merging elements. embedding catastrophe in a hairband. for example. it is cold, i notice the sharp line of where the shadow ends. i take two steps over. pass the frontier into the sunlight. here, yes. this, this is how heaven feels. embedding heaven in a moment by a coffee cart.

i just want to sit here.
listen to this thing. or that thing.
hi Ashley, i like your voice.

what? 6am. oh no. again. i turn my head, yes. there it is. white lines bordering my windows. how'd that happen?, feels like i just walked in a minute ago with tongue still in my mouth and my vision has two blue iris marks burnt into it. everything i see has two blue eyes. i sit a few minutes more. let the song finish. whatever it is.

bed is a strange feeling. something quite novel. it used to be the most mundane experience. half-way house type of thing. no longer. now it is a strange position i don't often find myself in. and wrapped in fabric and under my head it is soft. and there is a strange weight to the sheets and blankets and


blank.


when i open my eyes

small hands.
ampersand.

i smile. my mom says my face is broken.
i smile anyway. she hugs me and says she's happy i feel better.

drive

the memory machine.
hums through the night.
archivalist.

de.post.con.re.structing.

here is the shape of a small hand.
here the shape of small lips.

here is the silence of.
here the of of silence.

silent books grow heavy.

we gaze a moment. fascination or gravity.
i don't smile. her face doesn't change.

there is a little wind. in the sun it is warm.

those are angels that were his lies.

these are not the words of a man.
these are not the man.

these

not.