Friday, July 1, 2011

what up, what up

the words in my head are like a swirly tornado. tempestuous and dangerous, but mostly air, but every once in a while, a cow or a VW van, and those hurt, or at least smack you pretty hard, and in the case of the van, they might kill you.

I want a crown of gardenias

and a king-size bed with four posts that I'll drape Christmas lights around with a big down comforter, one that's white, one that's covered in my clothing on the left two thirds because I only need a third of a king bed to sleep on. but I can clear off the other two thirds for a guest if I REALLY like them, and I REALLY like not that many people, actually.

I want my own trolley to ride around America on a track crafted with the signed-in-writing promises of a people welded together by the pitfalls of life, the crests of the good seasons, the days when the leaves look like fall but they don't, cause it's spring, and the fireflies are out.

I just held a turtle and he crawled back into his shell, but it's probably just cause I was smiling so big cause I was holding a turtle! There are a lot of things I don't know how to explain, like how living near a good coffee shop makes my soul feel like it's resting in sunshine, or how heartbreak is thrilling, or how New York is impossible to parallel and just like everywhere else at the same time, or how I think I know how to love a turtle more than I know how to love a dog.

I'm too young to be a hippie, too young to be a yuppie, too young to be a beatnik, too young to be a hipster, even, but every label I'm too young for is just one more I don't need to sport, just one more I can learn from. and whichever bandwagon I hop on, it will have its certain smell, you know, its certain decor. and I don't know where it's going, but I know I like it, because I'm on it, and I don't hop on things I don't like. if I can help it.

and don't you know, I always do my best to help it.

and the part of my best that isn't good enough is being subjected to the wrong judge. as in, no bed-clearing for you! but I'll lend you my spare pillow.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Monday, Monday

why so screwy, font? sigh..

***
Your depths made a pressure that punctured my works
and all your fluids couldn't tolerate the force of my thirst
I love the place, where we shared our tiny grace
But just because it's real don't mean it's going to work
--"True Affections" by The Blow

She closed with this song tonight at The Drunken Unicorn, and I danced like I dance, and sang all the words I knew, and reflected on the life I've lived while loving this song, which feels like a lot.

I talked to her after the show and told her that her music fills a void in my music taste that I didn't really know I had, but that I'm glad that she fills it. She thanked me for standing in the front row :) and then she signed the poster I stole from the wall.

I just love nights like these. Pondering events of life with Mol and looking forward to new adventures and contemplating choices we've made and choices we're about to make.

And as I drove home and sang along with Ingrid to the song I think I'll get married to once I find someone who can take me on, I remembered the mixes I've made and the paper hearts I've cut out and the letters I've written and thought, I'm good at loving.

And you know, that's better than being good at being loved. And musing on that put me at an ease that counteracted my typical drive to think less. I let me think all my thoughts, and I smiled.

Friday, June 17, 2011

[this isn't the lost notebook poem. I just sat down to write and this sprung out. in fact....] Sprung

(this reads best when read in silence)

no you don't HEAR me because I'm not screaming, I'm typing typing typing and it's how I SPEAK but you don't HEAR me because it's commonplace, it's all commonplace. here's the thing, my dear, this is the thing, says Fink, this is the thing, that you are all yous and I am a me but pronouns they sway and skew and you all think you're you and you all think I'm me, but what I want in a you is for you to be me. what I want in a you is for you to make free see be flee FLEE from how many times I've looked at you, not the you YOU'RE thinking and thought: if you KNEW how I care, you'd put its S back on front, tack it on like a memo to a tree, tack it on like it's got no place to be, I said if you KNEW how I care, maybe you'd reciproCARE, sit on a brick wall after using her in a stall, sit near a fountain of youth, a fountain of knowhow, a fountain of know how to fix what we have. know how to fix what I do and do again, know how to fix what I need from a friend. you'd tack the S back on front and bottle the Scare, bottle the wares, bottle the growing you think you know how to share. you think you know how to fare, pride yourself on pride, forgetting the times you've tried to glue what you thought fit together, but you don't KNOW cause you can't HEAR me. and if you could you wouldn't care, you see, the way you muse on others forces me to muse on THIS and when you ask me the matter, when you ask me what matters, I stumble because you're not what I'm used to, I said I'm used to sending the friend in after me, waiting the months to think I'm fine, underestimating the amount I've learned and now call mine, I'm used to the games and break and swine, but you, you had the pearls, you had the girls, but I didn't care, you see, I could look past and passed the past and pass the past and trade him in like you said to do, trade in those years for a fresh set of cheers, trade in that future for a new set of fears, and the fear it would swim like my heart did to him. swim like my heart, swim like my, swim like, swim swam swum, swim like my heart did to him before its feet felt the scum of the pond bottom it sank to, the pond bottom it pushed from, now doing the backstroke on a surface that gleams with the moon in the day and the sun in the night, doing the macarena on a surface that I thought I'd broken through. the surface of you I thought I'd sprung anew but I must not know what I'm TALKING about, cause the caps lock's on lock and I don't know what you're talking ABOUT. the stings of notgoodenough reflect on your handling more than my bantering, more on your stammering than on my flattery, the stings they POISON and you're too hurt to hurt but you HURT me. I'd already healed and you HURT me. and I don't care what you say, I don't envy the play, I don't seize Seize the Day and you don't care that you .hurt. me. so I transfer cities, transfer headlights, transfer moonshine, transfer what's mine and he's scared shared dared to think it's him but it's not, it was me, it was me chasing, it was me chasing the sting with the sweet, the lost with the heat, it was me chasing anything but what I'd been chasing. anything but the green-eyed prize that cared not when I cried, and when I say cried I mean tried, cause I thought it'd hurt more than it did! I thought it'd hurt more than I did when I stood on the street and thought **a heart breaking** and thought **a life changing** and thought of new horizons, watched his tears and thought **time taking** but thought (new horizons) and the tears I shed cast crowns. the tears I shed lay down on a bed of __seldom__ lay down on a bed of (boredom) cause pain it is monotonous but you've gone and learned a double twist, you did keep in touch, you tied the ties too taut til my freedom was strung up in the You up above! strung up in the You full of love while the haters they love not the love but the dove, chasing peace to the streets, chasing calls from the fleets, they hate the love I'd Love with, hate the dove I'd Shove with, cause you don't HEAR me. you don't hear me. don't hear how to sit there and be happy how to sit there and stay sappy how to sit there and grow strapping, you see, my obsession with dreams are obsessions with things I know not of, things I know caught the dove, things I bless with word of mouth. qwerty of mouth, drrty of mouth, sleight of hand, contraband, foreign land, you see, you don't hear how to sit there, in a car that drives countries, like a scar that knows plenty. if you knew the scars, knew the tar and the char, you'd tack its E back on like the ink into skin, tack its E back on like I forgot to say "when." so the scarE keeps on scarring and the stare keeps on marring all I'd worked to keep barring. and the fountains keep flowing and the sins they keep showing all you thought you were knowing but the passive aggression and neediness mentioned are lowing. lowing like the tide of what's true. lowing like red hair burned blue. lowing like my need has for you.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

GTFO, Insecurity

that's all.

[oh, and as soon as I find the notebook that has my second spoken word poem in it....you'll have it!]

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Aforementioned Goals for the Future

- get a degree or two
- travel tons. to the accessible places first
- buy my first car
- remember to forgive people as often as they forgive me. (I mean because that's a lot, not that I'll forgive them conditionally)
- memorize more poems to slam with
- write more poems to memorize
- babysit more babies. babies at all, really
- get back to reading books at a productive pace
- fall in like a few times
- let someone love me if the opportunity arises
- establish mix CD making as an official love language
- do crosswords
- learn how to play bass guitar
- find an excuse to play trombone regularly
- remember that worry is futile
- underoveranalyze. so.. plain analyze
- exercise often enough for it to be a habit
- row crew pleeeeeease
- line up future tattoos with future ventures
- figure out what I have to do to cash in on this God-given memo that He brought me home to be on firmer ground when he wrecks me somehow, whatever that means. I keep telling Him I'm not ready.... but I think I am. and if I am, He knows so. here goes nothing? here goes everything?

Thursday, June 2, 2011

ROGO (Read One Get One)

a post twofer! as in PM thoughts followed by AM thoughts. as in perplexity followed by coherency.

I haven't seriously sat down to write in...long enough to recognize it in my heart rate. And I realize that sounds dramatic to those who don't process thoughts through words, but whenever I separate myself from writing down what I think about, I grow soundlessly closer to a panic attack. I don't speak much, and I don't make much eye contact. And you want to know what's wrong, and it's not what I'm feeling--it's that I don't know how to convey what I'm feeling.

Partly, I'm this weird fusion of the same person and a new person, and that fusion feels as though it's at a starting line. The same person, because my sense of humor is still hit and miss, and because I still deliberate over eeeverything, and because I still do little things... facial expressions, useless humming, make playful quips, talk too much. The same things show up in my current relationships. Noticing this helped define me, because I worried that I'd lost myself in trying to maintain what I had, but I don't think I ever did. I was never going to be the one to lose myself. In some weird paradoxical fashion, however, I became reacquainted with the person I was beforehand. The person I was this time four years ago. It was completely liberating, and it set a new foundation for all the growth I've been doing. Somehow I took everything--what was good about it, what was bad about it, what I expected, what I learned not to expect--and boiled it down into some sort of crash course for the future. And this is just how life chapters work, not some sort of breakthrough, but I'm thankful that this life chapter followed the life chapter pattern. I can build on what I've done.

Two things I'm thankful for: that heartbreak happened so early in my life. It's like I got my future back. So many goals arose (future post), and so much freedom blossomed. If I had stayed anchored for years longer... well, I just don't see why knowledge should be delayed at all. I may have been forced to gain it, but I did it before polishing off my second decade, and that makes me feel young and wild. In a respectable fashion, of course.

The second thing is the opportunity to go to New York this past year. I've wondered a little bit about how dynamic a freshman year in college is without first heartbreak. I'm pretty sure it's a poignant experience regardless. Additionally, living in New York in a poignant experience regardless. But to layer these things with a healing process is unreal. I spent the majority of the time reveling in realizations about other people as well as me. And I know we all know how wholeheartedly I thrive on realizations. If you could set me back in August of 2010 and tell me that I could only spend one year in New York out of my entire life, looking back, I wouldn't have placed it anywhere else.

I feel a little bit repetitive. This isn't new information to any of you, really. Especially if you've been reading. But as summer begins, back in Georgia, I feel like we can move on to the second installment of my life's film saga. You'll laugh, you'll cry, and hopefully you'll join me in anticipation of what's to come. I'll overpedal occasionally, maybe spin out of control... but that's more interesting than watching someone with training wheels.

Trav'lin On

and this is where the nights go
the nights go
the nights go
the chocolate cake and fights show
we think we know what sprites know
while laying in the grass

the sun goes down so stars shine
so stars shine
so stars shine
your careful heart, it mars mine
our fingers wrapped in weak twine
all circulation lost

when summer sets, the crows flee
the crows flee
the crows flee
they fly among the moons, free
beckoning my soul, "be
the spring that leaves the ground."

but over time, my words fray
my words fray
my words fray
love and war turn peace and play
fallen soldiers seize the day
their compass pointing north