Dear _______________,

Welcome back to the empty side of things,

It has been three hands too long,

Did you have fun in Europe? Your mother told me she saw a picture of you in the newspaper holding a baby, a flower and a gun. She said from the looks of it your mustache ate your face, and fever came too quickly. I’ve been thinking about you, you know, remembering the times between day and night that we would hammer song into wood, teeter-tottering Evan Williams between us, what a freedom it was to melt into notes and the dead air inside of them. That seems long gone now even though it’s only been 127 days, yes I’ve been counting, that’s the hand behind my back, spinning, fingers and wool. Perhaps I’ve stepped outside of the context, it’s lovely to do that sometimes, isn’t it? Little hints inside of the body.

My purpose in writing you today, and not yesterday or tomorrow is because today Landslide came on the box and I couldn’t take it seriously, the ring on my toe started to burn and I flailed to the next tavern. I am not sure how much longer Chinatown can hold me in, old hotel, old sympathy, symphony, and men drudging against the pavement, the sound hounds at me, free fall downward, I cannot hear my art! I cannot hear my heart!

Where is your standing in this? My lovely escape! An untamed horse? Braided hair (but not for long, not after this August, or the months have passed) I’m not sure how many I need, but the days almost seem long enough.

 No, but seriously about the Evan Williams.


[LETTER WRITTEN TO A STRANGER FOUND ON COMPUTER: DATED JULY 26, 2012]

This white is devastating
it has eyelids that have never shut
a careless slam of the door
-- a documented smudge
like a husband's red collar

It wasn't even two days ago
you stood
and I sat
milking the words from each other
none of them
quite human
enough

It was with my arms belted
around you
holding my own hand
behind your back
--double security
double checked

[POST IT NOTE FOUND IN PURSE: DATED SEPTEMBER 9, 2012]

once again

i could never torch it

but i could stand next to it,

and bare it

i like to wear my dolly's dresses because they are tighter
and stiffer than mine are
they hug my legs in a way that doesn't hurt

i wish daddy hadn't lit my playhouse on fire
it ate up the sky like a big melting clock
three year old spring - the only place with no hands,
gone

 

i fear that i never really had a chance

mental illness like a break in the page to spread legs that were never apart to begin with

curves of the women who have passed before me, i yearn for like bleach

but i'm nothing like them, i'm nothing, really

I will remember the little wooden blades that snuck out of her fur the most, and how in nature, they would’ve held purpose, to protect her, fury swords, but here, in the mansion, they inhibited her, shocked her with every step toward the window, toward the days. I FELT that. I will try and forget the frantic dash from entrance to exit, screaming for assistance, for mercy, as her head spun, North East South West, Never Eat Soggy Wheaties, and the final lull that dripped as we unwrapped her to find her legs pointed straws. I will try and forget that she snapped her own spine, refused to replenish, and left, without a nudge. I wouldn’t ask Teresa to understand, but, there was three pounds of me in that four, a safe reminder to stay present, keep my instruments well oiled, and look out for the helpless things.

I’ve been rich in disaster,

the kind that breathes but doesn’t move

when you bend the knee, to sit,
and lower your bottom half,

the switch is hit, and

violent musk fills the room

and then there is nothing, but you, and it

your sympathy, and eye lids

wincing and waking open, 
to watch the trees grow

the sun toss coins,

and the bulb wane,
and wax

but, still, time does not exist here

I’ve been rich in disaster,

and have saved many men

pumping silver into a juke-box to play 

the same three songs

"i'll tell you everything about being free"

but only when IT comes to Susanne, him and you

you can only hold so many pebbles, when it comes to me

Thoughts on Noah

I really didn’t think that it would be like this. I thought I could somehow fit you into my  perfectly planned night of banter, whisky and art. I’ll get off work, run and go see you, play a show at Hollow Earth, and then go to DEAD BABY down hill, and get wasted off my ass, just to feel like shit tomorrow morning when I go and sell my “art” at the Summit Block Party. When I found out you were coming, I laughed, and didn’t believe it. Not only that I had to be told several times, because the second that it went in my ear, I had forgotten it already. That seems to be how the big things go, I do not hold on to, or reflect on them, I just meet them, shake their hands, and move on. I couldn’t shake your hand, you were face down in a tiny crate, tiny arms folded in like snakes sucking the air out of you. All I could do is touch your back very softly as you gasped for air, and whimpered the most heinous whimper, like a bunny snapping its own spine. I don’t think I’ve loved anyone in my family this much, and you’ve only been here for less than two days. I haven’t cried during a traumatic event in, well, almost ever. I am the big strong one who handles it and moves on, I’ll cry about it some other time, sometime inappropriate and around the people who matter the least in the situation. But tonight, after hearing the nurses tell me that you will PROBABLY be alright, that there is just fluid in your lungs, that you cannot breathe on your own, that parts of your tiny lungs have collapsed, and that your worse than yesterday, but not “getting worse”, all I could do, was sit quietly on the other side of the room, alone, just you, and I, and listen to you. And I hope you listened to me when I sang to you. Monument is the name of the song, it’s about remembering to be alive, and to fight. I am so scared to love someone so much, I found myself swearing I would never have kids, and thinking about the people who, not too long ago, were in a waiting room, or holding my hand, hoping that I make it through. And that, Noah, it was by choice, I tried to take my own life, and there you lie, simply helpless, fighting for yours. In, and out, in, and out, in. You came into this world loving every person you ever met, and to the fullest extent, no need for fear or hesitation because as far as you’re concerned, everyone here is good. Everything here is good, no longer surrounded by the warm tissues of your mother, but objected to harsh sunlight, tubes, and more tubes. Sobbing, questions and cellphone beeps. And more tubes, yellow ones, blue ones and clear ones you can see the green from your stomach running through. They took it off while I was there, and put it back in, and took it out again a couple times, flicked it and pushed down the orange part until the bubbles that were once inside of you popped up, and out into the air. I found this to be almost as sad as the fact that my plans tonight were entitled DEAD BABY, because you see, the bubble is a translucent bulb, usually made by soap, with a rainbowy smile on it, and it really symbolizes being a child, and the free carelessness that gets to come along with it. And you don’t have that right now Noah, and I’m really scared for you, and your tiny feet. I’ve spent my whole life wanting to hear I love you, but never letting myself really be loved, or to love. And for some reason tonight, I felt that, for you. I hope that you make it through this, I hope that this is one of the hardest things you’ll ever have to go through, I hope that my brother, and erin take good care of you, teach how to be strong, and that strength means more than physical force, or the ability to walk away, but it also means the ability to feel, as much and as whole-ly as you possibly can. I love you.

I'm a fancy bulldozer. (A rambling)

Perhaps I've just known too many princes, and not enough Bobs.

I guess it being the day after would explain why I'm wrapped in cotton, with one numb hand, listening to the crackheads chant jungle book sonnets while I think about my next move. In the past, it has been within my mold to abandon, repent, regret, regress all the way up I-5, and all the way back down again. Back down where the flecks of sand whirl, and bite like a stampede of fleas, reminding you to stay alive, and keep moving, perhaps toward the modern, mild north. In the present, I am hog-tied, breaking fibers and stretching to lick a spot on the floor that I haven't already. In the present, I am no longer running incestuous mazes from nipple to navel of the west-coast but standing still, cloaked in rock and roll, whiskey and a fiery fearlessness faced - ice melting.

I am accounting for every fake, belligerent act of bravery, I've got two toes left and I'd rather keep them. I'd rather learn patience and pace. I'd rather eat cherries like flies do, talk of music and twirl your dna from knuckle to tip, of my fingers. I'd rather shed the dog bites, the rapes, and sombrero nights and crawl inside of the world as if it were a safe place to be, with you there, with someone there, of course. But these things are easily said, and rarely done. Fear is a paralyzing thing, it comes up behind you, like a murky, water god, and hushes you. It takes flight inside of you. It eats what pulsates first. And, eventually, when the pain has it's own address, you will find yourself here, at this two pronged, green sign wondering, 'what the fuck just happened'. It's The First Blossom on a Spring Tree Avenue and Everything's Totally Fine, Wait, Why Are Your Legs Bleeding Street. We are all given chances, rather we make our chances, and this morning, I saw one, a chance, a sliver of faith molested it's way into my logic and now I am here, dry-cleaned of every self indulgent, depreciating, and loathing excuse to get back on my knees and crawl south, so I can finally take step - and open. 

Open back up to the wind and the peace within it, how it can transform a towel into a magic carpet, ghost or white flag. Open up to the stage again, to the mic, to my font, to my mother. Open up to sea-salt beds of dead fish, and tennis shoes vs. heels. Turn the tv off. Turn the social network on it's back and fuck it hard until it looks just as washed up, as it really is. Open up my calendar to friends I may have overlooked. Open legs to the men and women who make me nervous. Open up, turn on.

Sorry, We're Closed.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

If you die before your thirteenth birthday, it's a tragedy, if you die on you're 21st, you're an idiot, inside of your 27th year, you're a legend and if you make it past that - you're invincible, the funds for your stone figure in pioneer square are  collecting, and getting soggy in their abundance. Well I am 22, 23 relatively soon, that gives me five years and some odd months, five years to break the red ribbon to 28, five years that I need to stay away from knives, people with guns, cancer and a loss that sends me to the dark box where I push myself off the edge, and somehow during these years while I'm busy avoiding all of the catastrophic mess, I need to create, to burn upwards instead of downward, fuck, to burn at all. In my egotistical Leo case, surprisingly, the idea is not to make it past 27 to become legend, but to have the freedom to explore, to shed the too hot wool of imbecile that I pretend to breathe in now. I will lay low for now, hibernate in-between the grey-scales of my own dreams, watch my boyfriend read books on the bed, and on that humid august day, when the second number turns from a 7, to an 8, I will have out ran the intruder, and a new sense of validity to my "work", my "mental illness", my LIFE will rain.

I want to hear what is between each note on that CCR album.

I guess I watch Netflix because it is easier, just as I keep flipping back to facebook as I try and sit here to make myself write, what are my FRIENDS doing, what is the WORLD doing, I do believe that this sepration between myself and my writing is largly in part to the speration between myself, and I. These damn keys are too far apart. Too god damn far apart. The air was thick out today, the ground was thick today, barely lifting right, foot, left, foot, out of the blood of the weekend. Gun shots

gun shots
vulnerablity
somewhere someday
drinking
themental hospital
my friends or lack there of
craft night

It’s like reading over the shoulder of the flannel in front of you on the only bus left in town that you can ride 20 blocks for free, the three sentences, page number and title that allow you to put together that this book is about Miles Davis, and this book, MAN, is important. It’s seeing the simmering patter of old rain and counting down the seconds until a drop hits you, as if for some reason it’s going to change everything, and it doesn’t, it’s not raining anymore, that was just old dirty water you saw, from this afternoon, from earlier before it all happened, catching the small lights in the tunnel. It’s like seeing the floral print of the grandma skirt you got for a dollar on the side of the escalator turn into Monte and then slowly enveloped by the sharp steps, like a crocodile and limbs. It’s rushing, still waiting for the sky to spit, head turned backward wondering if the Pilipino guy behind you has baggy clothes to hide the 9mil and drugs in his pockets. But I’m not racist, man, my dad is black! And then finally, approaching the building built over and over again, too old to speak, atheistic architecture amnesia, seeing Dan, the dad playing door guy in the barred window, mind fucking and playing over and over again my “hey how is your night going”, I realize I do not ask him this enough but answer when he asks me, but his head is down, his head is down and his hands are scribbling like a jack off, like I wish that my hands would scribble. First floor, breath, second floor, this isn’t so bad, third floor, why am I scared of elevators? Turn the key and the bed is made. I have to write. I just came up with the best thing. I’ll be in the bathroom. Are you okay? Of course I am okay, I just need to write. Can I barrow a cigarette, and the old door, too old to screech, shuts for the first time. Slam. I need a lighter. Open. Light. Toss. Shut, nope. Shut again, nope. SHUT. Light. Write. I am ash-ing on an old soap bar, jasmine, my ass.