Whatever doesn't fit.

It only takes a fraction of a second, a glimpse of your face in...

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 03:47:50 -0400

It only takes a fraction

of a second, a glimpse

of your face in pixels to make me

make your face in light and shadow and soft clay

It only takes the briefest stab of memory

to make you again and again,

whole and alive and laughing

at just how much

I will never be enough.

The only sound I needed to hear, for days (that bled into...

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 19:17:00 -0500

The only sound I needed to hear, for days (that bled into months), was your voice.

I cared very little which tone it would take, and so I prodded you,

stole your trinkets,

screamed from street corners,

called from strange phones.

A slave will take the lash and consider it affection, wanting only to be touched. Acknowledged.

Eventually forgiven.

To be noticed at all.

Months became years and I lost weight. I grew gaunt and pale in your absence. I wondered, more often than anyone would imagine, if you would recognize me if I came calling.

Perhaps I could wither away enough

to get close to you unrecognized.

Maybe I could grow a beard, and sleep in these clothes so many nights

that you would press a quarter in my palm on those busy corners that have become your backyard,

and walk to work in needle-thin heels, wondering why my thank you sounded so sincere.

I appear to be at a loss for words. Fingertip tap, a couple...

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 01:47:00 -0500

I appear to be at a loss for words.

Fingertip tap, a couple keys here and there, delete. I should have written a novel, or nothing, to tell you. I have never been adept at splitting differences.

These fitful paragraphs, dribblings of ink between more pressing matters, these are what I have. And of course they’re for me, not you. Something to pass the time, a way of organizing the unimportant. The irretrievable.

I keep forgetting to forget you.

I am shallow and narcissistic and terribly unmotivated and...

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 01:45:21 -0500

I am shallow and narcissistic and terribly unmotivated and lonely. I am unoriginal and hackneyed and afraid and bleeding.

I am always casting my gaze in wide, sweeping arcs, looking for meaning, missing the details.

Except when I am trenchant and determined, fiercely loyal and charming. Save for when I’m unreserved and insightful and full of praise and fair.

I’m always throwing my arms open in wide, sweeping arcs, grasping at love.

These idle hands can be turned to any purpose.

She looked like you. Not in any particular way. Her carriage,...

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 01:44:01 -0500

She looked like you. Not in any particular way. Her carriage, the tilt of her head, style without flash, hair in need of washing. I watched her mouth as she talked stocks into some freakishly small cellular telephone. It wasn’t yours.

I had to hold my chest, my fingers pressing this way and that, reaching for the part that hurt.

There is physical discomfort in missing you, which I needn’t point out rhymes with kissing you.

Then the rains came.

You stub your toe, think I deserve this. You step lightly for...

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 15:41:06 -0400

You stub your toe, think I deserve this.
You step lightly for two days, doing ledger work behind those wide, round eyes.
A leaf caught in the fence. Rain against the windowpanes.
You see the sunlight, think it’s a gift.
You deserve it, after all.
You see your mistakes, think they’re reversible. Think you can do better next time.
You gain some ground, think it’s an accomplishment and not a reprieve.
You’re a pattern maker.
Double stitching disparate elements into something pretty to wear to the funeral.
The event is just the event.
The moment only counts when you’re still living in it.
Don’t connect the dots.

Just eat the berries.

You deserve it.

I keep thinking I hear rain but it never comes.Pulse points to...

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 14:41:05 -0400

I keep thinking I hear rain but it never comes.
Pulse points to the panes thinking maybe tonight. Maybe right now.
There are vegetables in the refrigerator that I’m too lazy to cook
Changing color like the bills in the mailbox.
I’m waiting for a sign, maybe. A crack in the cloud cover.
Maybe I’m just waiting for you.

Come tap on the glass.

Let me out.

It’s not even the fantasy, nor the anticipation. It’s the...

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 13:36:06 -0400

It’s not even the fantasy, nor the anticipation. It’s the anticipation of the fantasy.
I can see around corners. I can see you walking left and thinking south, cigarette like a chew toy stained with the faintest shade of lipstick money can buy. I can see you in the morning, sunlight snaking through the branches, pouring in the window, tattooing you in luminous patterns, sheets and hair in tangles, eyes like oceans. All of this is hours away and I’m just slouching under the bus lights, one boot spilling onto the seat like a hit and run victim, heel twitching. You’re still smooshing your hair around looking for just the right amount of nonchalant disarray, something repetitive and electronic on the stereo. I’m just falling in love with falling in love while the city streaks by. I like to think it’s illusory, a joke I tend to play on myself when everybody’s looking.

Oh, but in that shining moment when you arrive, when something as mundane as drinking water from a dirty pint glass takes on the haze of a Guiding Light flashback sequence, I realize there’s no punchline forthcoming.

I put your key under the mat before I even knew you were coming.

I’m in deep without moving my feet.

Prescient, that’s me.

What do you say? Want to make an intelligent mistake?

At some point one reaches an impasse. Too far into the forest...

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 12:36:06 -0400

At some point one reaches an impasse. Too far into the forest to return safely, not enough provisions to finish the journey. Does it not make sense, then, to learn to live in the forest itself?

You’re that kid who shakes the hourglass trying to speed up...

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 11:31:06 -0400

You’re that kid who shakes the hourglass trying to speed up time.
You need it empty so you feel some pressure, some urgency.
It’s okay. I’m just like you.
I do all my best work when it’s far too late.

An interesting study, were he not performing it on himself,...

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 10:31:06 -0400

An interesting study, were he not performing it on himself, would be the ways in which a trapped animal justifies the sacrifice of a limb to escape the approaching hunter. The rationale, if you will, before the unfortunate meal.

“Infintite possibilities” is a bit of an exaggeration if you’re...

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 09:27:06 -0400

“Infintite possibilities” is a bit of an exaggeration if you’re talking about genuinely different outcomes. A million permutations on the same theme with minor variations in color, scale or what-have-you shouldn’t rightly be counted. After all, if I beat you to death with a tree limb or a tire iron, or if I do it wearing a red sweater or a blue, the basics are identical. The outcome the same. I guess it sounds better than saying “probably thousands of possibilities” but we’re not here to make things sound pretty. We’re here to live. That’s hard enough, don’t you think, without muddying the waters any further?

I heard a terrible song in the diner today about how the singer would jump on a grenade for his girl. I wished I had his number so I could ask him if he’d be so eager if the two were the same thing.

I’m so tired of this shit, he said to the empty apartment,...

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 08:24:06 -0400

I’m so tired of this shit, he said to the empty apartment, jumping slightly at the sound of his own voice. The phone, however, sat mute. It was this that had prompted him to speak in the first place.

I am though, he said, quieter this time.

He wanted Cheerios and a sense of purpose in equal measure.

Paralysis, he found, was directly related to lack of stimulus....

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 07:20:59 -0400

Paralysis, he found, was directly related to lack of stimulus. The less the subject interacted with his peers, the less communication offered, the more rigid his movements became until finally, bereft of any real discourse, he ceased to move at all.

Four hundred minutes with molars tight enough to splinter,...

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 01:56:42 -0400

Four hundred minutes with molars tight enough to splinter, fingers aching and wrists aflame, typing you out of the picture.

You’re in the walls. The paint. Whatever the carpet is made of. You’re the dead cells under my fingernails, blackening as the clock lurches forward.

All these words are just words, not even tangible. They are pixels, and pointless. If I opened my wrists you would pour forth in small rivers, glimmering under the bathroom lights. Taunting. Beautiful.

I am not in you as you are in me.

I am rarely in myself.

There are minutes when you are not on my mind. Sometimes hours,...

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 03:28:47 -0400

There are minutes when you are not on my mind. Sometimes hours, if God is feeling kind. There are stretches of time when I sleep where your voice does not drift from dusty corners and taunt me with your absence.

There are songs that no longer conjure you, ethereal and cruel, from memory’s dark hallways.

I have tried to write you out of me. I have tried to bury you beneath books and whiskey and piles of summer dresses on the bedroom floor.

You linger, in the periphery.

At night, when I curl myself around nothing, I imagine that empty space to be you. I hold your...

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 02:06:05 -0400

At night, when I curl myself around nothing, I imagine that empty space to be you.

I hold your shape, gently, because it is only a shape.

And no matter how many memories I pour into it, or tears, or promises,

I always crush it in my sleep.

Not much has changed, since you’ve been gone.

“The pinched cigarette filters of our youth, before we learned the value of a gentle touch,...

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 01:03:06 -0400

“The pinched cigarette filters of our youth, before we learned the value of a gentle touch, when we still hit every ball on the pool table like we were trying to get it airborne, it was that impetuous fire I was trying to rekindle to light my way back through the labyrinth of my adulthood, up through those winding passages to the cerulean sky of creativity.”

You’re on the scent, right? All those rapid little inhalations...

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 22:58:05 -0400

You’re on the scent, right? All those rapid little inhalations with no time to let it out, nipping at the future’s heels like it won’t turn around and grind you to powder with them.

It’s okay. We’ve all been there. Waist deep in something we hit with both feet, thinking about anything except the undertow, staring down on the glimmering surface to see our own faces staring back in ripples. We’ve all done something stupid with very noble intentions.

It will be interesting seeing which pieces of you get sold first, on that long climb to the middle.

It will be bittersweet, which is better in its way than the taste of ash I’ve had in my mouth all this time.

Au revoir, Annabelle.

It’s not the alphabet, I hope, under your breath and behind...

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 21:55:05 -0400

It’s not the alphabet, I hope, under your breath and behind those eyes, counted out in measured bursts. It’s not England though you’ve been there. Lie back. Lie back to me. Think of the desert, not as dunes, not a wasteland. Think about getting lost for a minute. For a year. For as long as you’d let me. Think about this when you’re out doing that. Outside the windows it’s rolling by, sunlight through the cloud cover like flashes of teeth, Summer smiling goodbye as it slips out the door and into something less comfortable. All I’m talking about, if you want to know, is possibility. Scribble it down. One word you can arrange into things like ‘yo is it blips?’ or ‘boy it is slip’ or a hundred kisses in the Autumn grass somewhere nobody goes or lazy nights in front of that fake fireplace I keep around for kitsch. Don’t take your time. Got your ID? Got your switchblade? Let’s go.

Nothing holds the capacity for happiness like a well-timed mistake.