german poundcake

an old poem I found




I cooked German poundcake last night
instead of studying for the two tests
I'm going to fail today,
with honor.
Her favorite comfort food
to help soak up the vodka in my mother's
gastric juices.
More like spongecake
I guess.
I'll put some candles on it tonight
I considered a morbid black,
but settled on
White.

A Happy Death for the
Birthday Ghost.
Maybe it's too much like
living in the past or being in denial
But she asked me to,
Something to accent the two balloons
for the turtle pond I think.

Today will be one of those days-
constant indigestion
with a mouth sore from getting too impatient and
burning myself,
I keep tonguing it and
pretending there is no irony attached.
She's already flitting around, busy tasks,
expending nervous energy
and then there is this sinking
Like the childhood dismay of watching the last of the warm bathwater
swirl down the drain or
Waiting until the last minute until suddenly
there are none left.

Last night I dreamed of spontaneous disco dance contests
after being rained on,
being hunted on the playground,
trying to hide from the afro-man with closed eyes
while the audience watches knowingly.
It's an epic playscape, and I'm quick like a pixie
but even with shut lids he finds me every time,
typical.
Needless to say
I was disappointed,
in myself and in my subconscious
for giving me such shitty lingering sensations upon waking;
trying so hard to live up to expectations
and leave some sort of impression,
Like every pursuit is a contest.
So pale in comparison to
past nocturnal themes
that I wish I had stayed up all night studying
like I used to do when I gave a damn about school. Sort of.


Maybe then I could have aced this German test
and given her a reason to smile at me from oblivion.

december legs


Lace-edged panties
Fit just right
And we string gaudy lights along the Douglas fir
Artificially glowing
And aged,
Your legs tight for miles and your laugh like bells while
Through wine-stained teeth we exchange ghosts.
Our stockings rub soft beneath the covers
And against one another
We lay the past down
Like men beneath the bounce of breasts,
You, gasping mouth hot against
And I, always searching
Beyond the dawn
The birds cease chirping,
Some unspeakable heat that rises in winter
Claims each quick breath as its own
You convulse beneath
Skin slick and blood of rose oil
Shaking so thickly through
Doll hands and dark eyes like glass,
Your chaste highlands curve wild
Rounded nipples and such limbs,
Unshaven still smooth
And soaking
Upon the stretch of coarse quilt and
Under torn Japanese lanterns.
The tamales grow cold in the fridge and
The dogs lie uneasily at our feet,
Tuned and unblinking
Toward the muffled cries.

blue of my blood.



Rojo
Flows more freely,
Whipping through its neon tunnels like the
Burgundy sugar
of expensive Mexican cokes
in disguise.
The women here, such protruding bellies and
Red eyes from ancient dust,
The crimson of allegorical whims
and a culture refined by
Despair, at best
Matching her side-swept hat
French, maybe with cigarettes or
a vest.
Too young for this.
Spoken moments that dissipate
into the skirts swirling high, bunching
into wind-knees
Perhaps there is still baby fat to lose.
And I may claim
The sway of skeleton earrings and
Bloody noses,
yet they are stains of an
Impoverishment
that is not quite my own.
The lights burn hard here,
rugged and powerfully enticing
So I will lose myself again and again,
the oldest city in Texas
a lot like him
Sweet to the touch and
Soft—
to the tongue.
A relic to savor
Lingering before the swallow.
In this same abyss such beloved memories
Devour and cherish me
Whole
Our feet will trample the recognizance
of our own
Such aches and flashes, they reside
in rows on command
And these years we've grown
Urban city sprawl
Like the McDonald's done in columns
and red brick walls
Next to the 5 and Dime near Market Street
where Daddy took me and Sister for
a quick round of treats
We stood on the hotel balcony
and threw jellybeans down
upon passerby,
Littering the gutters with our laughter.

garden man


I stopped smoking
Your gun
and I am pressed tonight alone
Against the blade of
Tight sheets
With the stench of old sweat
Your masterpiece
Those keys, tap tap tap
near your legal pad
Touch me
with such burning care
fierce and
Stumbling passion
As the evening churns
to misty emptiness


And oh,
to be a fly on the wall

the weight

the pills slide down the ledges of throat
and spill into the acidity like too much coffee
vitamins like small rocks
the distance skipped measured by
notes the band plays out of tune-
they go unnoticed
and you wonder if there are
enough quarters
for a few loads.

and your strange habits...
only seen by gnats that flutter, mock
the mindless movements
the lack of interest taken by your hands,
who would rather press themselves
against pen or brush
sugar or water or dirt and sun

what appears mysterious
is really only cyclical
just another thing you don't quite know the purpose for
but embrace anyway
and you sigh as the day pulls tight
and seems to halt
if only momentarily
you feel the exhaustion set in
before picking your feet up
and turning up the southern rock.

warmth of true sleep is most evading
right before spring breaks through the earth.
respectable people eat their free bread
warm butter and cracked skin
smile at passerby
as the wind creeps in faster
and they may lie to their loved ones at night
but their waste is still swept away
time, always the time

sometimes things are so true
that it's easy to forget

your circulation stumbles
such small breasts
will round themselves
into an assigned meaning
that fades with the onset of evening
and the pounding of drums in the distance
thickening, thickening,
and thickening.

tonight

My mind is like an orchard
Clustered in frozen portraits
Of blossoms that bloomed so fine
Just to drop from the vine
I've seen them all tonight
Could keep it silent and tortured,
Or shove it unto the floorboards
A rusty heart starts to whine
In its tell tale time
So free it up tonight
Life deals a measly portion
Light on good friends and fortune
It's chipped you away inside
And drawn all your blinds
Concealed it all from sight
Could cut that final corner
Charge the void no quarter
Or skip to the final line of some
Suicide note well publicized
Or give it up tonight
Kindly reverse the order
Of the options you've laid before you
The needle, the dirty spoon
The flames and the fumes
Just throw them out
Tonight
The time that you've been afforded
May go unsung, unrewarded
Some nameless you cannot know
May be coming to show you
Unbridled love and light
Should you grow in an orchard
Covered in dusty portraits
Of blossoms that bloomed so fine
Just to drop from the vine
Oh, listen up tonight
Don't keep it silent and tortured
Or shove it unto the floorboards
Your busted heart will be fine
In its tell tale time
So give it up tonight

just a glimmer, they say.
the glimmer of a sledgehammer,
the sharpened and shiny edge of reason
in the meaty middle, the warmth of the season
one and one and one and the same.
on into the heart of it all.
the beginning.
the pulp and core and
fusion of strength and terror.
there with the shaking, the flowers, the aching

once in a blue, full moon
and a mere three moons into the newness.

the day comes
and what was meant and done and right
are all so separated and perfectly interconnected
that you could almost laugh,
but those bells
they toll differently now.
there was never a plan or design that flowed quite right
and now?
it is all strikingly beautiful
yet nothing that fits seems fitting,
beauty that makes you cry out in the night, fists clenched



not alone but far away. but. but.
suddenly is sooner than you think.







inside.
and suddenly, i know nothing else

it's when you open your mouth, and nothing but dishwater comes swirling out.

everything washed in but nothing came out quite clean enough. water spots and smudgings of unknown substances.

you'll call bluff but the dish washer, he's not to blame. he's just doing his job. the water, it likes to wander, it has a mind of its own. and right now, its mind isn't on doing the dirty work.

i am the unspoken body language you could not understand. i am the white quiltings of morning snow, empty and silent but lasting. i am the memorial balloons that endure the sting of rain. i am all of nothing and nothing of all. i am everything you rage for and everything you turn your back to. i am the nondescript red stain upon your clean clothing. i am the sweaty sheets. i am the burn of tea against the roof of your mouth. i am branding. i am the strange loneliness written off as mere emotional excess. i am the unbound hair that irritates yet frames your vision. i am the hidden dirt road. i am the exhausted dinner dialogue over rapidly downed wine. i am the pitcher of your favorite holiday punch. i am the constant trickling of fish tank mysteries. i am split custody. i am Christmas morning pre-breakfast cookies. i am post script ramblings. i am sodden shower breakdowns. i am steady ache, and i am the absence of ache overall. i am nervous stomach twists. i am war paint. i am your hatred of conflict. i am your addiction to antiguity. i am your wanderlust. i am the hidden pangs. i am your self-cut, jagged bangs. i am the rumble in your thunder. i am the best friend you lost, and the one you thought you had. i am between the lines. i am electrical warmth, gently hypnotized. i am blank. i am full to bursting. i am strength and i am loss of structure. i am echoed and i am straight lined. i am all the stereotypes. i am the golden branches that stretch far and wide. i am the loss of grip. i am the river between two parts of a whole. i am the separation, i am the completion. i am the creeping morning. i am the too-big bed. i am the screaming kettle, too full of steam and hot for release. i am the congregation. i am your childhood haunts. i am your sleepover stories. i am your gleeful laugh and your perfect cry. i am the glue between earth and sky. i am your sigh, i am your settling skin. i am every hole you buried old memories in.

i am rebuilding. i am reaching. see me, feel me, hold close and let go of pride for pride.

Marsh/mellow Mornings

She stayed up late to spite herself.
Obligations and necessities were unnecessary,
and so she stayed up
and instead made cup after cup of tea,
eating chocolate until she felt she might vomit.
She stayed up late,
because she loved the feel of writing just because she could.
She stayed up late,
imagining him fishing in the cold,
maybe with a huge thermos of hot cider,
or the very least a beer and a head clear and writhing
with the cold blue light of moon.


She laid on her stomach to feel grounded to the earth.
She laid down in that stolen favorite fleece coat,
belly to carpet,
to feel solid again.
She laid flat to feel the pressure,
to surface the drifting chasm of uncertainty.
She laid on her stomach, occasionally rising to turn on and off the heat,
absorbing and holding and remembering everything.


She built silence.
She built it all around her in pretty little rows,
built it in his honor and with his name on her chapped lips,
unspoken.
She built silence,
and beneath the sheets of it, found only herself,
listening to the hushed murmurs,
the crafty drafts of energy melding in the next room.
She built silence,
and in the heart she became nothing more.
Simply there and simple quiet.


She was less melancholy and more marshmallow by early morning,
late night,
And the sound of his breathing somewhere
softened.
Around and
somewhere the sound,
then everywhere the curl of purple sparks,
and so she brought him harmonies
in the dead of
livened sleep.
The hush-hush of filmy-shaded dreams.

The center of winter came and she was always wasted. These days, always faded. When the first snowstorm came this year, the flakes were a soggy gray, not the brilliant pearls she remembered dreaming of as a child. They didn't flutter softly, they sputtered and crumbled upon the windowsills and evaporated into the cold emptiness of December. Nothing solid, nothing lasting. Not even some measly ephemeral beauty, light and soft or surreal. Just static. Her mind was blank. She couldn't rely on misery any more than she could joy. Her hair was limp. Spun gold, they liked to call it, back when she was the woman every man craved and chased. She would brush it until it shone blinding in the sun, and hung thick and silky like royalty tapestry. If only she hadn't always been so desirable, maybe then her youth wouldn't have dried up so fast. Tall and curvy timebomb with perky tits and a wit as sharp as a bed of sewing pins. Nearly overnight she woke up and was dead. Blonde bombshell, finally exploded. She blamed her mother.

With the cold living in my extremities,
today home is a strange & familiar distance away
soothing but aching and. Anxious.
Home in the smell of burning cedar
and the whiskey barrel plant in the front,
that threat of death in the first frost
that leaves the taste of youth behind for once.

Shoes on the stone fireplace shone just right, and


We speak of those beloved road trips in the maroon wagon-Chevy
with
So much cactus carsickness,
and the small garden patch of forest remembers me-
Waving as rocks for my melancholy goodbye.
Yet it has moved into a new era
of unlined stillness,
less shrieks and a different breed of peace
beyond
the sizzling blue hour
the wooden tree swing
(stolen for a dream-future)
the advent calendars
the mini Christmas trees
and the scent of Nana's sweater
just like the bed of plush,
head on chest
rocking
rocking.


Today home is long and colder.
Home in the bottle of vodka hidden in the closet,
in an old man's clumsy stumbling grace
and slip of the hand,
that old blood leaking antiquity of love
and the slight sigh of content loneliness.
Loneliness of
Complacency,
of loss and of duty
and of slow,
steady,
restless simplicity.
Repeated tasks and the comfort of nothing.
Fill the need like history's steady thump-beat,
rusting carpenter fingers
that crinkle and bend over the folds of sawdust oceans.
His bones creak while the old house speaks.


The age and streaks of silvered time struck her down overnight
Cigarette after cigarette
so her pores can stretch more and more
...tight.
And in the pair of undecipherable
glass tumblers of bourbon and cognac
there are shared laughs and a yielding awareness,
but sleeping always brings that same loneliness,
all parties alongside the soft isolation.




Papa and his dahlings and some jambalaya stew
The night rolled in and all were sockless in their shoes
Freezer crackers, five, four, two
Solidity smeared and so did you.

merely thoughts in blurbs


Although I am coming ever-closer to graduating with a degree in journalism, sometimes I am utterly torn on my own beliefs about the integrity and values of the media today. Of course, people become journalists for a variety of different reasons, and you will never hear me deny the necessity and power of good journalism. "Giving voice to the voiceless," we call it. However, as I observe so many of the trends in our society today, including mindless television, the growing obsession with technology, and the declining quality of expectations that people hold on what is being reported and what is "news-worthy," I can't help but feel my father come out in me. I can't help questioning my own choice of career and exactly where I hope it may take me. Not that I am opposed to technology, mind you-after all, here I am, typing this on my delightfully sleek Macbook laptop. In fact, I also just joined Twitter, to help me keep up to speed with our so rapidly moving world. However, it really saddens me sometimes to step outside of myself and beyond the comfort zones and crutches that we all so often rely on, and see the sad truth of what society is becoming in this atmosphere of "growth", la sociedad actual.
Sometimes when I open my eyes wide, I don't recognize the skin I'm in, or the ashpalt I walk.



...The dictatorship of the single word and the single image, even more devasting that a single party, is imposing a life whose model citizen is a feeble consumer and a passive spectator, built on the production belt according to the US model of commercial television.


Maybe, baby, I'm just not built for speed.

oh yeah, totally turning that into a song

Kansas City Shuffle

The Fence
Part 1

Once upon a time there was a woman-child, and
at the bottom of the dirty water
of a claw-foot bathtub
she found herself
staring back,
alone,
one man deep
in a makeshift mansion in the soft-edged suburbs of Kansas City.
The epitome of alone,
with soft pink florals in the comforter
and the wallpaper
and her soul shaken and broken
stumped and trumped up,
the rose soap and the heavy linen curtains
and the whisper of foxes behind the fences
of black wrought iron
in the backyard at night.



And in the depth of night the wolf-dog would escape
to hunt downy hides,
somehow leaping those privacy fences,
terrific heights of borderlines
and over 50 feet of seemingly impassable wood,
but wood rots and cracks
(the monsters fall silent in the forest)
and even as it stands at its tallest
among the hunch in its splintered back
a secret builds itself

around
and around the mere strength of one sound.
One light,
the light breaks over the hill country clouds
and the wolf-dog is on his side,
bleeding from gun shot wounds.
And in times when his voice is unrecognizable
and the closet seems much more wide-open
than these spaces,
I remember.
All it takes is one angry farmer.
Sometimes freedom is disguised,
make of it what you may
paint it
and take it
take pride in it,
like that fence she slaved over
to keep the wolves at bay.








So maybe his words hold truth,
our only real ancestors are fireflies,
our only connection to the light
the light that both blinds
and drives us forward,
keeps us moving towards the
greener pastures
on the other end of the fence. That fence.
One and the same,
the fear that breaks
and the faith that binds,
sticks and wraps them tightly together
like gorilla glue
and then rips jagged across the sides
like guerilla warfare,
your own and personal-sized.
What is most your own in these moments,
the moments
that own you unexpectedly,
swinging you with strict joy from end to end as if there isn't one,
when only moments before it was
strapped against your neck,
around and around and pulling, choking. black vision.
Stripping your
flesh like bark that's crackling,
now peeling to reveal what lies beneath
such rainbows and colors of ecstasy
(honesty)
that you believed to only be worthy
of those wildest of dreams,
now real, Real.
But-careful, so fragile. Strong and yet so fragile.
Delicate and headstrong and exquisitely unbreakable.
Hold on.
Hold on.



You say you want to walk on the other side
but how can you tell what lies there is what's right?
I do not know much about the mysterious ways of the world
but i know you are beautiful

with every inch of me;

you breathe.
As you breathe,

breathe in
The ways of the world, I don't understand them
but I know that merely by the paper thin folds of
the fawn hands that swirl henna along my palm lines,
trembling lightly,
exist lifelines;
Simply the floating voice like bell jingles
of the Indian girl close at my left
adorning my skin,
those foreign syllables,
alone are enough to draw me to the desire
for the distant lands
of a country I know virtually nothing about.


Please don't ask me
which grass is a more vibrant shade of green
because I will tell you that
my breath catches
when your feet turn slightly in
as you sing near me,
to me and through me
and as your toes curl
and stack upon themselves you just can't see.
You
string me up like your beloved fishing pole.
You roll right through me
and pull yourself through soil
like white rain-flowers
in the damp dream hills alongside
the gravel.
Every stroke of paint is for you.



And sometimes I humor the idea;
it almost slips from my tongue towards
your ears as I graze that winter beard-
admitting out loud that we ended up in Guatemala by default,
when suddenly left was right
and wrong was newly defined,
our right of passage through the other
and the other made all the sense in the world
make sense.


And in the womb of the world he crawls to his feet

the world, the world is all the timing we need.
To get by, is each other and the idea of an anchor
that was really here
all along.









diamonds growing in the mountain
beneath the pressure of all time
they grow in hope and expectation
waiting for your hands to find
cause only you could reach inside me
and figure out the worth





And, oh
the Reverberation
(oh, for the love of you).

Once the realization is accepted
that even between the closest human beings
infinite distances continue,
a wonderful living side by side can grow,
if they succeed in loving the distance
between them which makes it possible
for each to see the other whole against the sky.