Can it be true that stories only birth from grime?
I don't see any dirt on bodies here except the residue of mountains.
The homeless huddled under the
curve of open sky
anyone can look into it and see generations.
There's one man, he looks over me glazing
blurry streets to my body,
and his blue eyes ask me for booze money.
I wonder if he could get me some too?
The next time, and the next after that he doesn't remember me.
But I tell him each time hoping he'll get it.
That's the difference there between bums here and bums
in baltimore.
Those at home aren't stuck on booze. They were either broken or
moved onto harder drugs.
I'm drawing images of a drunk in my
mind,
seeing a foster mother in a dirty kitchen,
slipping on liquid ice
made for soothing ear drums.

She can tell the way I move,
how I close the door to interaction.
Used to seeing swirls of gray matter,
turning into smoke,
before anything concrete can find form.
I want to find form with you,
in the way of daily routine
and being around each other.
I like you and the way you think
but my mind is muddled with precautions,
because I'm out of practice,
because I'm afraid of sexuality,
because I'm afraid of bodies learning together
things they've learned before.
But she knows how I am,
maybe better than I do.
And I tell myself not to fuck this up,
like I sometimes do.

This week I've been so highhhhhh on weed from a medicine bottle.

Love.

It's the vibrations I feel
sitting up in space,
looking at your atoms apple.
It seems like my own
swallowing my mirrored face whole.

Growing up moves sexuality beyond the wetness
of my lips
or recognizing my sister's poetry in my handwriting.

You will understand these things:
Wonder from afar
Question loudly
Fear people
Smoke less,
Want me more.

Fall into friendship of some mystery and
break me open.
If your ready you'll crash
and won't tell me I'm willing.
I'll whisper, "See how it all happened so organically?"

I just needed to be looked at today.
I realized that when I'm around you,
I feel looked through.
You lied,
again
and walked right past me.
Tall heels and no ass to grab,
I shield my face with a head of curls.
You took my body over and over again
and I want to go so far as to say
you raped me.
I've been a nothing person for four days
watching people look through me,
until today when I stood in front of
a crowd.
I tried not to smile, but it felt so good
to have those eyes on me
seeing me
with out you being there.

It's been a really long time.
Of seeing things in complete distortion,
wondering why this feeling reminds me more of a situation that doesn't exist anymore.
Why is that always happening?
Me,
somewhere else and where I am.



It was good to touch you,
a familiar pull
that comes and goes
till I have to start all over again,
working my way up to being bodies, together.
I felt like I really knew your name
and I like the way you think

fucking old ways
melting into my pours! but aren't the old ways just new ways beat into submission?
or do we subdue anything at all? I just let it all happen. Making decisions based on the pattern of my scarf that day
or the way someone said, "hello". Words ARE worthless. Even when they're worth something.
Because how can I convey anything without masking something else?
Who is it that said all poets are liars? Wouldn't that just make all people liars, too?
I'm sick of having myself in skin,
not sensing what happens below my head except for vaginal
miscommunications.
And I wrote lots of people today,
to try and remember what kissing feels like!
Do you remember?
How awkward, how touches made the grass feel like intercourse in summer?
Smoking a cigarette in the cold?
My throats sore now,
because i'm not taking care of below the neck,
except reading old ginsberg letters
and smoking weed through a hole in my neck.
I'm telling you to get the fuck off me,
so I can start getting off myself.
I'm gunna smoke another one,
and hope my brain figures out where
it ends.

What is buddhism?
-A crazy little
bird blub.
-Kerouac haiku

the blossom

Merry Merry Sparrow
Under leaves so green
A happy Blossom
Sees you swift as arrow
Seek your cradle narrow
Near my Bosom.

Pretty Pretty Robin
Under leaves so green
A happy Blossom
Hears you sobbing sobbing
Pretty Robin Robin
Near my Bosom.

-Blake

Spoon ginger slices into the circle,
my taste buds capture individual specks of flavor,
following the patterns of old habits.
You're not who you are ALL THE TIME just because you do those things you do.
And I judged myself too quickly,
picking up scattered bits of full tummies
overindulged in dairy,
wondering why my stomach wont stop talking to me,
Practicing sign language so I can learn to communicate
with the mirror.
I took a break from everyone's opinions today,
and came back for me.

feeling like i'm missing something i cant place into black lines, and frozen liquids. skirting around being here, around you too, when i feel the weight of your stance but cant feel anything,
and i've never experienced feeling nothing and everything for you at the same time.
Feeling strange,
feeling old,
feeling identity.
I'm not sure if it's necessary to say that I used to be in love,
with someone who loved me back. but now i cant imagine what that would be like again or how that all even starts. the funny thing is i think i get how it ends. because it does and then you're left with yourself, and no fucking net!
and it's good but then what do you do?

I have that missing piece,
the slice of nausious stomachs,
it vibrates between my head and heart with stunning clarity.
My mother says it's like addictions,
(I've had those too)
but this one has no weekly meetings.
My father was a playful man,
he balanced her practicality.
And now I'm thinking, maybe I'm not really missing anything at all,
but the myth we're fed of special women captivating narcisstic men,
trying to keep the faithful.
But my mother and I retreat from the game,
disbelieving the veil of competition.

Why do the poor bless me when I can't give no change?
And what's this toothless woman doing keeping a broken down car?
She hasn't got the parts to salvage.
You broke my heart, old man, shuffling an inch at a time,
feeling in your pockets for soggy green.
Money sweats like skin in this humidity and only the poor thank the lord
it don't disintegrate.
Old and poor.
You left me that message, saying it wouldn't be you.
And I can't place blame,
Because who wants to be stuck blessing those that don't help you?

It's so funny when you realize that the first time you came and the first time you left home are shaking hands. I've married elation with the flee of new beginnings and they get me off. I'm not sure which starts I've finished or which endings I've avoided all together, which people I've pissed off, who I've learned from. 2 years of playing adult has made me feel the part and I'm nervous about losing my sanity once I'm back to being coddled. Nervous to lose what I've worked so hard for. But I know I'll bring it all to the table, every lesson learned and I'm sure I'll have to re-learn a few of them too.

A job well done.

So I read last night. And I feel gooood. All gooood. Nerves caught my breath below my throat, thought I would suffocate once I got up to the mic. But, I didn't. And I think, I'll read again soon.

:)

Women, women, women!

She's a force to be reckoned with. Crazy in film and crazy in life.

I miss my friends. I'm not sure why I look at old photos...they always just make me sort of nostalgic...even though I shouldn't really be so nostalgiac for a time when I was definately not in a good place health wise. But, even so, I miss it sometimes. Or maybe I just miss the fact that I can never have it back. That now, when I try to be like I used to, I get too tired and I just want to go home and get into bed with my lover and talk and sleep. I thought that we'd all be the same for ever and most of us have gone different ways. Which is normal and good and most of the time I don't even think about this stuff but...right now I am. Maybe cuz it's summer and I'm upset because I'm 20 and I'm working 2 jobs and doing school and I feel like I don't have any time to just hang out but the point is that I'm trying to GET somewhere...and I am definately making progress on the whole getting somewhere part but not much on the whole being here now part.

You’re brown like mush
At the end of the seasons
Which change temperature like you change colors.
Shaped by soil into an accessory of a
Sultans cap, you fall down on our
Heads and when you’re all gone
The openness makes the concrete clear, giving way a path for the rain.
Lovers walk over you instead of walking
On each other and children
Jump into you, whole pies scattering.
Someone sweet tells me you stole life
From the sun, measured in smiles. And I try and watch
Your movement for a while, to catch you
In the act. But you don’t move,
Only curve slightly to absorb the sun and bring life back down to us.

The sun peaks over a woman’s hips,
Fat sitting around like pockets of pre-birth
Preparing for the opening.
Held at the waist,
As a powerful grip on ownership or claims,
my practiced pouches of cancer sift in pink tissue
Fearing the grip.
We are dangerously animalistic in the act of
Thought out innocence with
The height of thickness, like the hair on arms
Or puberty.
They say man creates the body now, and God the mind
but who knew minds don’t have to think alike to set records
With limbs
And
False contact?
See, you caused no stir in me, still grasping the spaces in between
Wandering to and from obsessive touch.
Those collisions are rare,
Sparking the effortless breath between
Metal on metal.
There’s the scientific equation for everything.

I used to write poems about the things I saw,
Finding inspiration in the smallest observances
Like the way my mother said my name
Or the taste of my very first Barbie lip gloss.
I used to write poems with the concreteness of family living,
About the anxiety of their separation or the angst
Of a father’s brothel.
I used to write things other than love poems,
Like a focus on my best friends laugh or the meaning of shock in
The phrase ‘culture shock’.
When I met you, I stopped writing poems,
And I turned them into anger instead.

Forced pains of unfamiliar lusting after lost lover number two because the first was unrealistic, but the second too. I’ve lost what everyone’s lost but mine is one that sits in the pit of peaches in the stomach of a celiac watching the casual flames of eating. Cover my eyes; force my head down because that’s the way your body teaches you. I am forced, because chemistry is rare and you are
not,
Another.
limp dick just dead weight. a woman is to tease and mind fucks are decent maybe fantasy better. Touch touch, a call is coming more for someone like you, prepubescent abdomens in a hand of 5 fingers one pinky,
with the nail cut off.

Caderas.

A woman's hips in the end of day
When the sun peaks tip over stretches of Egyptian construction.

Man creates the body, or would you say it’s God?

Man creates the destruido, a people of humble breath.
This time of day, seeing
Clothe and dirt,
Energy in its first infection.

Grasping the space in between,
Infectious laugh,
(no wait, I’ve said that)
Pouches of cancer sift in pink tissue
But a man seems clean.

Dangerously animalistic,
It causes no stir in the sterility of an innocent.

Fat sits around pockets of pre-birth,
Preparing for the opening.
Is it true touch breeds obsession?
Held at the waist,
It’s a powerful grip on ownership or claims.

Tall with thickness, of the hair on arms or
Puberty.
Minds don’t have to think alike to set records
With limbs
And
False contact.

Collisions are rare,
Metal on metal,
There’s the scientific equation for everything.

so I have no muse.

Pockets filled with the residue of buildings, fallen into an ex-lovers arms. Dreaming of rotten bone and the first time we were removed without boundaries of communication. The idea of growing used to something and then tiring of it is circular and confusing. Again, it ends in pocket ash, staining the jeans with over flow. Put your nose between his shoulder blades, keep his back opposite direction with fabric to intervene with smell. Is there really any difference of half knowing and then feeling, into nothing. Pass by each other, do eyes lift or stay straight like awkward strangers? Do you put your hand on her back, or did you ever? Anger is too common. A battle of wits and overexertion turned to pretension.

I am tired of being an angry woman. A woman who looks and likes conflict. A woman who likes to twist words only to string together a weakened attack. This is the birth of my surroundings and the natural self that was given to me isn't quite as clear. To be dramatic and angry, these are bad people's traits. Even if you see in yourself a good person...

"Krishna stresses to Arjuna that performing his duties for the greater good, but without attachment to results is the appropriate course of action. "

I remember when I was a little girl in that big house. I'd look out my window and watch the still pond through empty trees and watch for movement when there was none. I remember when I was a little girl, and I'd run through the back forest to pick out dandelions which my mother always reminded me were weeds. I'd pick a nice handful and wouldn't feel badly since I knew they weren't real flowers anyway and I thought they were pretty even so. This went on for a week or so, picking them up from the dirt and putting them each day in a small vase, by my mirror. Then, the next week came and the flowers had shriveled up to a brown mush. I haven't picked flowers since.

Ah! So I got in. And the best part is I am going :) I feel like a dick though to be honest. I feel like a real penis for going to a 35000 dollar school when the economy is in the shitter and people are getting fired from their jobs on the regular. So to sum it up, I feel like dick but I'm still going to go. It's unreal that I'll be living somewhere besides Bmore and that I won't have all the same experiences that I've grown so used to here. Like, the bus. The bus here is an adventure where everyone knows one another and someone is always high as fuck singing some innapropriate song out loud or flitting their eyes to try and keep them open. I think in Boulder, people will be white and wear snow boots and flannel. I'm upset about that and mostly I'm scared it will effect my writing. The thing I hope to do is find a different kind of inspiration and it's not as if I will not come back to Baltimore or will forget where home is. So I'll go there and live in a pretend world 9 months out of the year (9 months right?) and then for the rest I can come back to reality, where people are cracked out and throw their dirty condoms on the street.

I got in. And, I'm going.

The top of the building is blanketed in peach flurries; the sky gives birth to soft pieces of ice. I am seeing life for the first time here and in the bounce of the rubber roof to my shoes sole, heavy with protection from snow. The lights of windows and the bricks, built high up on each other, this city is breathing! And I can see it exhale better, from all the way up here. What does it mean to live so close to the living and the dead, and in complete disarray without the benefit of a well cushioned fall? I thought it would be colder but this doorway shields me from the harshness of our weather. What if I lived there? I light a match just to see the wind knock it out and suddenly I’m conscious of who can see me and who I can see. Bodies are moving, appearing and reappearing into hidden spaces my eyes angle can’t see. They flash in and out of lighted spaces and I think some can see me but just aren’t looking out. I mostly wonder how smell travels from up here. If I lit a spliff and sat comfortably, would the mother down there catch a whiff? And would she say something? It’s still not cold and wind hasn’t even begun to chap my cheeks but it’s getting lonely up here now and I’m ready to go down again. It’s up there though and I can go there anytime to wonder how far smells travel and if details can be seen in chaos. This is snow season, when the sky gets ready to explode with powder and peach flurries fall purposefully, on course, by secured direction next to the homes and the faces and the open mouths and wet tongues of this cities faces.

I think I may not be a fiction writer.
I'm too selfish and literal perhaps. I want things to be directly put onto my page in almost exact words and thoughts and I seem to have trouble creating things from nothing. This is why I need to go back to school.

And I cannot wait!

"The walls were painted bright blue and were of wood and the lamps threw their shadows against them."
-Hemingway

And after that scary dream the toilet started to overflow! I heard a blub blub sound and I went to check it out only to see water spilling out of the bowl without any sign of it stopping soon.

We fixed it and then, went to bed.

What the fuck??? I just had the most ridiculous dream. It was terrifying and not only because of how realistic it seemed but also because I could not seem to get out of it. At one point, I woke up and looked around me and had a small moment of relaxation and comfort with the fact that I was in fact in the right bed with the right person who was sleeping soundly next to me. That small moment was the only relief I had though. I was pulled back into the nightmare within seconds. I was in Drew's house but it was huge and had many floors and beds to sleep in as well as a large backyard where people were strewn about. I "woke up" there, on his satin sheets with A. sleeping next to me but he never woke throughout the entire dream. I was completely fucked up on something but I don't know what it was. I guess I may have just been really drunk or something but everything was blurry and distorted. Everything was out of place including my own body. I couldn't find any of my things and I was searching frantically trying to retrieve at least something that belonged to me. I found a few bags of weed in the bed along with other miscellaneous items and I grabbed the whole stash of things and put them in my pocket. I didn't have real mobility though so that's why I couldn't just get the weed. My hand only worked in fist fulls and couldn't distinguish between the one object I needed and the ones I didn't. There were at least 3 distinct, reoccurring images throughout the dream. One was when I was outside of Drew's, crouched behind a stone wall when a man at the top of the hill let his dogs loose to get me. They were 3 Beethoven dogs and they came charging at me but once they got near me I was immediately transported to another scene. The other image was of 3 terrorists who were in the basement of Drew's building. They were plotting a scheme and were practicing on some sort of metal object. Somehow, I would go on and off of having the ability to see others but to not be seen myself. At one point, I sneaked down to where the terrorists were and saw the main terrorist shoot the other 2 and I tried to intervene but couldn't. The last strong image I have is of Calla and I in Drew's kitchen. We were talking, or at least she was and I was just standing there playing zombie, when I walked right into a long glass cabinet. At first things seemed fine until seconds later when the glass shattered loudly. Calla screamed in fright and picked up a bloody piece of glass saying, "Oh my god! Jilly! There is head blood on the glass!". I went to feel the left side of my face and felt the pieces of glass stuck deep within my skin. I begin to walk outside, away from the people in the party, all people I did not know and I pulled the glass out piece by piece.

It was terrifying. When I really did wake up, I tried to wake A. up but he has another personality all together while sleeping and he began speaking in this other character. It terrified me even more. I was looking for some reality to bring me back but he was too, in his own mind.

Oh shit! I forgot. The cops came to the office today while I was at the jail. Of course the only interesting thing that has ever happened here happens while I am away. They came and arrested the man who fixes our phones. At first I was sort of laughing cuz it's so ridiculous. He was stealing wires from us or something of no importance to us. Then, T. explained how the cop came up here and he questioned the guy in front of everyone. That is just rude. Even if he did steal a couple of wires....

Maybe I heard that wrong. Stealing wires sounds strange but the only other thing I heard was that he stole copper. Stealing copper seems pretty weird too.

Oh man. Walking today I noticed an old man across the street. He had on a tweed jacket and big, thick, brown glasses. The next time I looked over at him he was lying flat on the floor. He'd fallen and I ran towards him and grabbed his hand to help him up. I thought, "He is my grandfather. He is someones grandfather. He is an old man who has been embarrassed. He is an old man who has gotten back up.".


I can do nice things for strangers but nothing nice for my family, huh? I don't know. I don't think I was so wrong and I think my mother overreacted incredibly. The hard thing about interacting with people is that everything is a reaction to something said or something done. It makes it hard to know who started what first. It makes it hard to know if I've always been a bitch or if my mother's neurosis made me hate being around her and thus, hate speaking with her.

Shit words out.

Sweet, crispy history. We rub heads together, yours bristles against the heat of my cheeks.

We've been buzzing round searching for complete defeat.
I've been writing poems for no one for entire months now.

In bed, together again, I'm concious of how my body looks to you. Sitting behind me, does my back look strange? Do the shadows fall where they should? Do you remember how my hair knots before the day ends?

Tongue to tongue, intertwined like best friends, your taste still slips off and sticks to mine, distinct.

The TV's on, I play wife.
But this time I wont talk about things like that. I'll focus on the rough patches of skin and the hardness your voice can have while practiced.

We hold hand and touch feet,
our lips a second thought.

Play.

They crushed old beer cans with their shoes and walked over sweatshirts instead of what could've been earth. She thinks how she's never seen so much crap before. The hidden places carry the most and this place is full of graffiti and squaters beds. They just use it as inspiration. EAch step feels heavy and their eyes strain to stay open, one in copetition with the other. She sits on a fallen tree, her friend crouches low to the ground, looking up at the open tunnel around him. The colors run into the dirt and rocks placed in between the crap on the ground. When he looks down, the colors have bled to the tips of his tennis shoes, which are white. A third amigo, slender as the path taken on the way here, stretches quickly, the moon light escapes through the space of her upper abdomen and her breasts. The others are captivated, in not for more than a few seconds. Breasts arn't unusual to them but these are particulary large.

Look up, look up!

Ah! Things are looking up, I said! It's true though and I am basking in that shit for as long as it feels good. Road trip '09 is looking like it will be prime and an adventure and full of nature and camping and weed! My mother was almost supportive even which is really what made me happy. She actually said, "I think you are thinking about all this in the right way.". That is such a my mother comment and it doesn't really make sense but to her it does and to me it just means, "I generally approve and will not threaten to never give you another 50 cents again.". I also found a place to sublet for the next 4 months until the trip happens. It's gonna be me and like 5 Indian kids who go to hopkins. Right in the village and I have my own room and share the bathroom and kitchen. They had this weird shit about me possibly cooking meat in the kitchen and since I offered to not cook meat in the house (since it seemed like a ridiculously huge issue for some reason??) he gave me a discount on the rent. 400 bucks a month! Incredible, no?

Brillliance. Today was a lookin' on up day.

Old Love Notes Found in a Corner

"He had Bukowski on his beside table, along with an ivory dragon and a small Buddhist book, locked with beads. He shows me his work, comics first, shaded skulls and shapely older women after. I think of running my hand through those curls. I think of telling him how nervous I had been to grab his hand and how I wonder if we have done it since. I could watch him do nothing forever. In sleep, I hate him, dream up his demise but when I wake I can't remember what I might have really said. The few small moments still, rub off in light, not words. I cannot pronounce them anyways. And when he said that he doesn't know what love is, I should have moved! I lay there, paralyzed with his words, were they really making any sense or just stagnant phrases linked by misunderstandings? I should have kissed him then and shut us both up. Oh well, no regrets, I guess I'll see him soon. That priceless face, when he first saw me! I can focus on those moments and let his demons live separately beneath."

I'm about to re-evaluate shit. After I tripped, it sort of threw my head for a real spin. I gotta get my priorities straight. I think all I've been doing for the past month has been eating and smoking pot and reading or watching movies. And that's fine but Ima bout to make some changes. I cut up my credit card cuz that shit is pissing me off and it's like fake money but its not so that's not cool at all. Next, I am going to severely cut back on my bud intake. I mean, lets not be ridiculous...I'm not going to stop! I just need to make sure that I have done all the other shit I want to get done before I start with the ganja. I am moving out of my mother's home too. I need to get out of there. I'm just gonna sublet a place until May. And besides rent, I need to be more frugal man! If I want to travel this summer I better stop spending crazy amounts of money on shit that I had no reason to buy. And I want to go to Naropa. I will go to UB and be happy about it if I have to...but I think I should go to Naropa. I have been here for so long. It's been a 2 year process and I'm starting to feel like shit needs to begin to work a bit differently in my life.

Last life change: no more 9-5 jobs until absolutely necessary. FUCK THAT. FUCK IT! My next job will be one with shifts.

3 more months to work and chill in Bmore and then I want to be gone for at least a month before the fall starts.

Exciting shit, huh?