Reclaiming Imogen

i heart you Raymond Blanc

2012-03-11T00:24:00.000-06:00

some days, everything resolves itself to trolling the archives
for proof that i have [x]
x = changed; done something different; not fucked it all up; and so it goes
;whenever i might or might not have stopped using mostly only the gag-inducing-second person;
these days, i'm not waxing nostalgic for all that something else.
but only some. days.

and when

2012-03-08T23:22:00.000-06:00

there have been times like these, when.
i didn't know what to do and when.
i realized that i had lost the rhythm of the way the words fall
and the nightmares about every single thing.
the thing. the thing of the thing.

why should i stay

2012-03-03T01:21:00.000-06:00

why should i, locked and stayed in a stone and sink in the safe space that holds. in a hull. stock and silent. still. has this, as always, been important to me. as ever, between sheets that stifle cries of anything and nothing. make the silence resolve itself into nonsense and sounds that only fall on deaf ears. to hear. voice or not. these sounds that fall out of this mouth and these tongues and these finger tips flailing. they don't. even. know. either, why should i. write a book about. or send messages into years and no one else. if i ever thought i should know. then, if ever. to know.

always up, waiting

2012-01-29T00:07:00.000-06:00

i don't really know when you
started
only just that i am here
when you need me
that's enough
recognition
really, for what we are

sometimes i used to

2012-01-27T23:10:00.000-06:00

when i gulped air and thought that all my days and days were long limbs and numbness
the crispness of sheets just pressed and firm on the mattress
or the floor
anywhere
i don't know the way that words drop and fall into rooms stark and stupid
like i used to
my name, not gormless and shrinking
lurking behind the scenes
waiting
i am not the sun or the moon or the metaphor between you and anything else
i don't skin fish
read maps
drive a car
pass for any version of a responsible adult
still, there are moments i don't mind
and i don't

sometimes i think,

2012-01-05T23:22:00.002-06:00

sometimes i think, the stuff i write doesn't have the same kind of intensity that it used to. and thank fucking god.

guarded

2011-12-27T23:00:00.001-06:00

the plastic figures on the kitchen windowsill sometimes fall. i found one, yesterday morning, upside down in a used wine glass. cowboys and indians. one or two stray second world war soldiers. with grenades. caught in their colorful struggle. to fight endlessly. stuck in such strange poses.

in deep

2011-12-26T15:47:00.000-06:00

everyone in the house is sleeping
this winter late afternoon
and i am afraid to move
as if my one contraction
might bring the whole peaceful picture
crumbling down

letter writing, or some such thing

2011-12-23T08:51:00.002-06:00

i spent a lot of time being a bad girlfriend
a bad friend
i loved people i shouldn't have
at times i shouldn't have
even when i always
knew better
i feel bad for these lapses of conscience
and imagine myself writing The Steps-style apology letters
to my former selves
to you
i want to say things like
It wasn't your fault that I was miserable with myself and the world.
and
There wasn't anything about you that made things go wrong.
but then, i'd never really send them
apologies are only usually for the sender
and i've already been selfish enough

what happens now

2011-12-22T08:58:00.002-06:00

The thing that irritates the most, he says, are my pants. He can't get over them. The way secret things reveal our selves to the people we most want to hide out from. The first year we are together, he buys me all new pairs. They are all the same. And always get upgraded, from time to time. It's enough to call love. If you were looking to label these kinds of things.

shining dragons.

2011-12-20T23:33:00.003-06:00

I'd like to write something like
I'm having trouble sleeping, and sure could some rest. I'm having trouble thinking. Maybe.
But I didn't write that.
Anyway.
These days I'm doing all kinds of things sacrileg.
Trying to drown my not-sorrows in late nights and wine glasses.
Trying to write, only nothing comes out. Not for the clear skies. The wide open expanses. The everything I ever wanted to happen that has happened that leaves me always feeling breathless and wide awake.
Ready.
I dream a lot. And live most of my life in glorious.
It's enough for me to not miss the pace.
The life that once was and always will be locked up in these twitchy fingers.
I love you through sparks and shining dragons. I do.
I didn't write that. Either.

unrelated

2011-12-16T23:53:00.005-06:00

the other day. he lost the dog. just turned around and all of a sudden, she was gone. zoom. the other day, i watched someone i sort of know hold the tiniest baby i've ever seen in real life. a month old. someone said. i sat and stared. gee gawed. sometimes, i sit with the cat at the end of the couch. sleeping. and i wonder how he can be such a bastard. and such the love of my life, at the same time. like life. i guess. or something.

the stories we like to tell not to tell

2011-11-26T16:45:00.002-06:00

for alice

on the marriage certificate
his name reads

Andrew

but no one really knows
for sure
not all the women on my mother's side
who have mourned
these generations
loving men
so hard
into vanishing

waiting for you before the storm

2011-11-18T14:53:00.003-06:00

listening to women read poems about
motherhood
infanticide
sex
father's suicides
and
salvia
at 8.30 in the morning
is uncomfortable
more now than it ever
was when i thought of
myself
as a poet
when i was a younger woman
in my twenties

my name is not your name in the name of the sound of your face when it's sunk

2011-11-10T22:45:00.004-06:00

i used to find fancy in ideas
words
like the fact that there's a graphy
in the word
geography
(that's a real word nerd joke, if you can
find enough
to find it)
and in things like
the fact that i used
word as an identical rhyme
i used to think my writing
found some kind of newsbreak
sound and sense
i said
all whispers and cold fingers and html coding
horrorshowpoetrynightmaregirlfriend
now
there is only this
the consciousness
of the consciousness
that there's a sound and a sense in it all

anatomy of your face

2011-11-08T13:52:00.001-06:00

your searches
are really
starting
to weird me out

things that don't surprise

2011-10-22T20:25:00.003-05:00

when i write about love i write about the ocean

it shouldn't come as any shock. to me.
since i feel it in my bones.

interfacing

2011-10-01T23:52:00.003-05:00

i am not in the habit of. and either or. i'd still love you. history would tell you that much. if you'd been listening. and yes, of course, i get sick of writing the same things. the same old thing. over and over again. but this is what we do. right? the rigamaroll that ends up making us. who we are.

exodus

2011-09-30T23:04:00.002-05:00

i'm trying to write and nothing comes out. nothing but the sound of the sirens in the town where i sometimes live. and this. the memory of a stuck key and being. unstuck. i'm not always right. or wrong. i'm not at the top notch or perched to take out some competition. but i am well. i do well. laugh well. enough. and i love. in incredible amounts. i've spent my whole life being afraid of these moments. these intricate webs of time when i am

the same old and again old

2011-09-30T13:44:00.001-05:00

I realized yesterday that I start an awful lot of pieces of writing with the words, "I'm trying to write, but nothing comes out . . .."

things for which we've got no excuse (that's love, sometimes)

2011-09-25T00:32:00.001-05:00

and when it all comes down to this

2011-09-24T01:20:00.001-05:00

during flash advertising

2011-09-17T00:09:00.002-05:00

when i took my time. thought about what it might be like to punch your face out. or kiss. whichever. it always comes back to noon. on the wet streets of london. waiting for you. that dull cup of coffee and the hours my back got used to hurting against the rail of the tourists. the time. the way you never turned up. at the end of my lines. only just ever. when i needed.

i couldn't take it much further than this

2011-07-04T08:58:00.002-05:00

this morning, i saw paul newman's head laying in the grass.

things that count

2011-06-30T13:17:00.002-05:00

among the various reasons men have broken up with me which remain various and unexplained as most everything in recent years has tended to do and of which i could create many lists with witty or bitter or stupidly thoughtless (or even unthinkable) titles. there are these facts that remain: habitual smoker (especially when pissed, which is often); doesn't know how to ski. i am glad to have been quit. for them. and, most especially, for me.

ritual de lo habitual: all of my mistakes

2011-06-27T12:05:00.004-05:00

these days
these morning hours
i create a list of things
often it begins
i am one:
inarticulate woman
but sometimes
it doesn't
sometimes the lists
contain secrets about
honey and heavy cream
about getting lost once
just outside
of London
looking for you

hot pot

2011-06-12T11:10:00.003-05:00

these lonely practical days. when all i want to do is eat fresh berries from a small white bowl in the back yard. watch the kittens chase flies. memorize recipes. for cake.

before when you were here

2011-06-01T12:20:00.003-05:00

Sometimes, I can hear you. Walking around the upstairs of our flat. The pacing sounds so familiar. As if the memory could place you there. Still near enough to be just out of my reach.

the nature of drama

2011-04-28T09:35:00.001-05:00

i used to think the most interesting thing about me
was that i never learned how to ride a bike

stories from the other side

2011-04-19T09:17:00.004-05:00

there used to be this story that goes. i never made sense. and this me, exported and dragged into life and love and food shopping always broke down. got fucked up. spent rejected. and spun. the same pattern again. and always. over. again. the looking-glass-glowering, me. until i stopped expecting to realize that this me. isn't me. at all.

ford mustangs

2011-04-16T14:13:00.003-05:00

there's this old story that goes: my mother, who was then no-one's wife or mother, tried to learn how to drive my father's brand-new standard-transmission car on a beach and crashed it.

last night i wrote a letter

2011-04-14T08:31:00.002-05:00

last night i wrote a letter that began

you are the most important person i've met in my life

this morning, though, i couldn't remember who to send it

materials

2011-03-25T08:39:00.002-05:00

i have a normal life now. and i'm not keening.

not crazy.

anymore.

either that, or which ever world this one was.

and the other

got all mixed up.

advice on being an average human being

2011-03-23T12:27:00.001-05:00

look. writing isn’t some process like digital upgrades. or fusing the swampable switch. you can’t just take a paper and pen or some g.d. word processor and purr the whirr. you can’t ka-bang-yourself into poem. nice and neat like some city-slicker clicking himself down the downtown concrete streets to home. no, it isn’t like that. at all. poems aren’t some things we let out late at night after we’ve had too much to drink and the world has gone all blurred and we think we might have turned ourselves into bukowski’s underground-coyote brother. you can’t draw yourself into some dramatic competition with shakespeare or those brutal romantic poets. (or their dramatic goddamned daffodils.) if you see a poem, pick it up. and all day long you’ll have good luck. but do me this one favor. don’t do it quickly. oh, my poets, oh! like Walt Whitman and lucille clifton and all the great Americans before you, let your words be your spies and never be afraid! be meticulous and strange. be eccentric and extraordinary. and always, let your poem be you.

i am trying to write

2011-03-04T10:55:00.002-06:00

i am trying to write
14 words into a poem
not just any words
but some that someone else gave me
it isn't easy
this
and when i try to fit them into some form
when i try to find the rhythm of this wrong way me
nothing comes out
nothing about coyotes
or being meticulous
comes

so i wait

this got retrospective

2011-02-28T18:23:00.002-06:00

all these words that i write. these things that won't sit down long enough to name. are about so much sex and violence. html coding. and squirrels.

maybe,

sometimes love isn't so much hands and butterscotch pudding.

after all.

where mad women go

2011-02-27T14:06:00.003-06:00

dear isabelle,

there's an antenna

in the attic

locked up

and pointed

straight

in your direction

i keep switching on the telly

nights

to see

mostly

there is just

faint static

and loneliness

but i keep waiting

always,

imogen.

what time is now

2011-02-24T10:04:00.000-06:00

in the front room
it is always
seven fifty-one
am

then i married a british one

2011-01-29T13:59:00.000-06:00

i taught

so many boys

how to not wear

white socks

any assh*le with a computer can do the same

2011-01-28T14:20:00.003-06:00

i;ve been working on you. working on the fine lines. the details. that make something like the me of you. human. it isn't a lot to say. i am no machine. that my heart is a human one. and a brain. and all the pink and fleshy parts on the insides of skin that purr the whirr and turn everything up to eleven are some incidental gene mutation that makes me slightly different than algae. the neighbour's cat. there isn't any way other than this to go. now. because i wear clothes. and put my hands in my pockets. because i perform respiration. unconscious.

or maybe it's to do with the way fine eyelashes make like hearts and bat's wings beating.

ars apology

2010-12-26T15:45:00.002-06:00

the holidays always make me want to write apology letters to all of my old lovers

for being so deeply troubled
deranged
~~most~~some-times psychotic

serials killer

2010-11-08T19:58:00.002-06:00

these plans
i've got
for this
victor
ia's
secret
cata
log gloss
scissors
and tape
all the
heads cut
clean off

things to own up to

2010-10-28T12:32:00.002-05:00

lately, i've been carrying a level around
in my purse

so far, between me and you
and the universe

it hasn't been working

on sleeping with a young male kitten

2010-10-16T09:10:00.002-05:00

young male kittens
promise to please
curl their purr whirr
bodies around necks
until night shifts
blankets move
and they become hunters
in a once light room
nobodies safe

test

2010-09-30T08:39:00.001-05:00

test

if you knew me now

2010-09-28T11:48:00.000-05:00

i just said in my scared-little girl voice
i hate everyone
and i meant it

botulism

2010-09-18T09:02:00.004-05:00

i've been doing something different with the starts and stops. the rhythms of the way things fall out of my head. it's new and not that pleasing. which makes me happy and warm. these full glugs of cheap wine late after a bottle of scotch on a sunday morning. thick and almost sick. i'm not doing it here. that's just some kind of weak imagery that, like most things in my life, i should totally be ashamed of.

then there are meetings to go to

2010-09-17T08:34:00.001-05:00

i can't believe you're gone. and i'm still here. the empty contents of a broken room. and all the dark spinning vapid moments of a once drunk poem spoken into answerphones. that you can't quite just get back.

hush. everything is nonsense. and there's no way. none. that i understand it all.

i used to be so goddamned ugly. and sad.

alien invasion

2010-08-06T08:40:00.002-05:00

i've found a way to dvr old episodes of come dine with me
and i watch them late at night
alone
with or without wine
it feels like a lazy cheap way
to escape

of feeling like i might get back there some day

then i just feel pathetic about the empty lies i still let myself believe in
and go to bed

meristems

2010-08-03T13:30:00.003-05:00

we are mowing the lawn and looking for houses
there's a permanency and a semi-permanency to everything
it seems. these days.
going through iced cold glasses of lemon water
and sketch pads of ideas
we are signing our names to important documents we probably should have read more carefully
over and over
and over
again.

love life

2010-07-14T09:19:00.001-05:00

am starting a new life with a beautiful man

be back. soon.

when i was a girl

2010-06-22T08:24:00.002-05:00

when i was a girl, i dreamed about drowning. not the choke to sputter darkness or the slow drift into light. but the kind of swim sparkle sun floating madness one gets from lulling in a hand-me-down seventies unheated water-bed. when i was a girl, i lived in a place that always rained. and the grey skies were all my sunshine days. and now, under big comic blue skies and neverending grass fields and foreign tongues like spies. i long for landscape. and drizzle. i long for the slow rocking madness of those moments in flight where i drifted and sucked water to breathe like oxygen.

i'm the kind of woman

2010-06-21T09:12:00.003-05:00

i'm the kind of woman who might punch you so hard in the face you'd forget the space of yesterday. instead of just saying i loved you. and there are things, about me. that never come to even sum. i am afraid of motor vehicles. trapped winged things. and sometimes, of my own damned self. these days, my neighborhoods are filled with heavy rains. my halls with cardboard boxes. and i am spilling my guts. over everything. these days there's a kind of man that keeps all my edges clean. keeps all these desperate parts of me seamed in and safely, gently, moving. i'm the kind of woman who could do it without him. and am grateful i don't have to.

when i first started this

2010-06-04T08:37:00.002-05:00

when i first started this everything looked different. the whole world covered in some kind of gloam. this candy coated shell of a fragileness. and me. and only words could make the whole things stop. like love letters to the lilacs in the back garden of my childhood home. or garbage. i remember walking around the streets of this city so filled with so much i thought i might burst into a million pieces. that if i weren't lucky, i might light right off the ground. float myself. into no where. and this was the anchor of it all. the buts. ands. ifs. every full stop that i jambed into you, even when you didn't want it. when you came home late from a party to check your stats. cruise the bloglines to see who else was feeling just as happy.sad.lunatic.lonely. as you. and there i was. always. just sitting here. never knowing i was saying everything you were saying. our two mouths so much distant and moving.

if you've ever had a psychotic-ex girlfriend

2010-05-25T09:04:00.002-05:00

[if you've ever had a psychotic-ex girlfriend]
it may or may not have looked a lot like me.

i have been wavering. these days. like heat lines on asphalt on long stretches of roads to not very interesting places. and then something comes. a phone call. a stiff drink. a new creamy jumper. and all that time hovering on edges resolves itself. there's so much less to worry about walking edges with you within reach. and there are so many days, now. where i don't fall down.

at all.

diacritical remarks for your dead dead head

2010-05-06T12:24:00.005-05:00

i've been writing you a letter. about skin and bones. the internet. sometimes it begins, yesterday i saw a black bird in the park eating worms. and sometimes, it doesn't. these days it takes everything i've got not to burn down your house. rise up from these bed sheets in the morning to screaming. instead i fold paper hearts into paper birds. and other things with wings. sail them out our old-bedroom window. until collections of them. like memories of me and you. drop there on the almost-summer concrete below. false falling snow.

more letters
how-to
untitled
the train my hat this morning calls

reclaiming imogen has a piece featured today on indieink.org

i just heard someone say fandango

2010-05-05T08:28:00.002-05:00

some days, i don't know what kind of life i'm living. this sunshine. the path to work, mornings. strewn with shadows to chase. and me. moving steady forward. this isn't the way i might have thought things would turn out. the slow stretch toward the end of things. the lack of chaos replaced with water bills and ordered lists. laundry. and me. totally out of words.

and now, there are more archives.

2010-04-29T09:00:00.001-05:00

which serves to remind me

i haven't written anything worth a toss in over a year
or longer

this ballon flight madness, goes

2010-04-26T12:16:00.003-05:00

the other night i had dreams about alien invasions. and getting lost in the dark. some nights i don't know if it's the street lamp glow, from the corner through the window, that all night long buzzes me into these . where i can run for hours away from The Empty without tiring. and where things make sense. or don't. or, anyways, i don't seem to care. some mornings, i'm afraid to confront the mirror's wake. test the creak of the floorboards under my weight. if only, just in time. and in case.

claims

2010-04-21T08:25:00.002-05:00

in my dreams we name our baby after Waterloo station. its hydra-head and slant smile some sign that we were all meant to be. in this way. vaguely fictional and smeared. all our proof-sheet moments fading and marginalized. these hybrid days we send lallygagging ourselves into each other. like a car wreck on the other side of town that we heard about at the bar from someone who only read about it in the paper. or knew someone. who knew someone. who knew someone. and still the slick smell. the oil and blood heavy on our tongues. makes us feel like we were there. that it all suddenly happened to us. as if all we ever wanted was to go out gloriously. all gossip. and fire.

insurance

2010-04-08T15:15:00.000-05:00

i want to take pictures of you. gap-toothed. and naked.

status updates

2010-03-31T12:10:00.000-05:00

imogen would like to have your baby now, please.

so much of my life

2010-03-15T08:50:00.002-05:00

so much of my life, these days, is a mystery. and when i read your words. smell the ink of your pen, as if it holds the secret to the universe, like the damp dark scent of your hairline. i sometimes feel like i might be able to slow down. a little. stop for a second. open all the windows and doors. and not scream and scream this madness. out. with so much of you filling me in.

and if it all falls down, this is how you'll find me

2010-03-10T10:19:00.003-06:00

i can't apply for another job. get let down by another lead. fucked by another dream. going by this or any name. on any continent. or this one. in any weather. i can't look at another piece of paper and write my name or your name or digits that in some national database somewhere pull up the details that somehow point to the beautiful ordinary intricacies of this life. that is now. in this little town. in a little house. where i am. in these days. and these nights. in your arms. or next to your arms. or in the space of breath where you once were and i can still smell you. if. and then i close my eyes and lips so tight. press my face just firm against the mattress. and stay. very very silent. and still.

in the beginning

2010-03-03T08:13:00.002-06:00

in the beginning, i was like this. or. i wasn't.

jesus christ? i can't even remember. anymore.

remember

2010-02-22T09:10:00.001-06:00

remember this?

how miserable. and funny.

2010-02-09T15:00:00.001-06:00

boo.

2009-04-29T11:34:00.003-05:00

a list.

you are
stumbling like an idiot
foul mouthed
liquorish
lover of B-rate
and bad Korean gangster films
not tall
or unforgettable
afraid of small children
bats
and going to bed without the light
a C minus participant
in most things like normal life

2009-04-28T09:51:00.002-05:00

i wanted to write something gently soft about the way life feels these days. but everything comes out always hard a's and concrete retaining walls. if ever i was lonely or alone things might be different. but this is a different kind of new. and everything that ever was like the way to spell the word color or the shape of my own face feels foreign. daunting. irresolvable. like public school maths. and the weight and consequence of my own tongue.

2009-04-22T13:13:00.005-05:00

evidence of invisibility number 43 thousand

a man in the elevator at work this morning asks me if i am new
i have worked in the office right next to his for 8 years
and i tell him so
he says, really?

really
i spend most of the rest of the day in a daze
checking permanent markers like beauty spots
and the existence of household bills

grab my cell phone and run
to the nearest camera i can find
in the public courtyard outside the building
ring my mother and breathless desperate shout:

can you see me?

can you see me?

i wave and wave and wave.
and no one looks
and i can't see her

yes, she says, calm as if the whole world hadn't almost negated itself beyond repair.

i convince myself she's waving back.

2009-04-22T09:30:00.002-05:00

i follow the line with my eyes to the part of the floor where the door jambs. i don't know where you're going. on the other side of the boards. where i hear the bare soles of your feet. scraping. and when i wait for the bus, later, with your hand next to mine on the morning concrete sidewalk. i want to howl and howl this slow driving loneliness gone. if we had time until. you'd wrap us up in bedsheets and palms.

2009-04-21T08:45:00.004-05:00

this morning i caught
window shop reflections
of the shape of myself
caught between strange light
and concrete feet moving
i was not my own
on my own
on my own

2009-04-20T12:50:00.004-05:00

imogen is often times difficult.
she doesn't like mushrooms
or the sound of metal against metal
and she cries at all the wrong moments.

imogen doesn't like you much
and she guesses you probably
don't like her much
either.

2009-04-17T12:36:00.000-05:00

phrases that don't make sense to me:

spare bottle of wine

2009-04-17T09:33:00.002-05:00

sometimes the only thing of the old apartment that i miss is the radiators ping

the lonely empty feeling nights i spent there spinning myself into oblivion at the end of bottles and endless films and bags of crisps and inconsolable and sickness and the way the blue grey peeling paint on the front porch became to me a best friend of sorts on lonely empty feeling nights i spent there staring into the dimly lit spaces between me and it

2009-04-16T09:09:00.002-05:00

today and everything feels wrong. like there's too many words for tea cup. and my arms are made of cinder blocks. and every time i try not to sneeze. the world collapses into a pile of polished marbles. and my glasses break. and fiction starts to forget itself in the world of what makes all people real and not at the same time today.

2009-04-15T08:55:00.003-05:00

sometimes, i don't know what to do with you.
and you don't know what to do with me either.
so, we fight mirrors and mornings and sizes.
until i wonder how many miles there is to not sometimes.
where all my clothes don't smell like damp
and cardboard boxes.

2009-04-14T08:55:00.000-05:00

sometimes i live my life like it's a protest
for something i've forgotten

sometimes i don't

2009-04-13T11:01:00.003-05:00

asia dreams of lost kids named arnold. the perfect lip gloss. rain coats. she doesn't know a lot about finding things. mostly she sends boxes filled with other people's stuff, sealed and wrapped with sticky tape, back before the sting of remembering them gone sends her headlong into a sickening spin. asia dreams of stick and seal tape and the way desire can feel like a firm pull at any end of the lip to lip cardboard opening. the sound so strange. and stinging. asia dreams of moments. packed and sealed. to save. like picture postcards. and invisible things. like arnold. and her.

2009-04-09T12:33:00.003-05:00

on any rain soaked week day on a day like this one i would. and in those moments when sight and sound make that wood and everything in between goes so violent and echoing. and the world filled warm like spearmint schnapps. and i cave and cave again against the scarlet tone of the back of your neck. the curves of the bones beneath your feet. and we sink into tepid water. of baths and memories and things that go cold so fast. like spite. and when you say my name it sounds like the same name that i call myself. and everything around me feels like falling. damp right this rain. would fall me down.

2009-04-08T08:15:00.003-05:00

so taken was i with these words spun images in my head, that i found my scissors to snip

again

In the absence of humans, one comes to rely on the company of grass and cherry blossoms and ladybugs; all are in excess here. We four will likely be best of friends by summertime.

[ . . . ]

This morning, stuck to my face: reminders in three colors.

e, "Oh! My heart! It breaks!", i need a life, 07 April 2009

2009-04-05T12:58:00.003-05:00

when i was about to leave you. the whole world felt dissolved. then there was only me, contemptible and resolute. and everything i felt and ate and feared kept getting stuck somewhere between movement and the lack of movement. and i wanted to swim in a glue of sin. and cigarettes. to stick for awhile. and not feel so goddamned ashamed. or alone. or lonely. and then the wind was rattling the edges of my windowpanes. just like this.

2009-04-02T08:42:00.002-05:00

and now the dogwoods start to bloom at the back of the building where i work. each morning the buds swell and promise to break. every morning. and when i walk the sidewalk streets and stalk the memory of your lips on my lips the distant taste of your skin. i think about the soft acrid taste of grapefruit. pulp.

2009-04-01T11:51:00.001-05:00

imogen
isn't quite right
at the moment

news flash

2009-03-31T08:12:00.000-05:00

2009-03-30T08:25:00.005-05:00

Here out of my pocket [. . .]

Here, some pinks and laurel leaves, and a handful of sage

--"These I Singing in Spring", Leaves of Grass (1891-1892), Walt Whitman

2009-03-26T20:50:00.003-05:00

the scissors won

2009-03-25T12:27:00.002-05:00

meet me at jones st coffee
five pm
i'll be the one wearing a pink trench
and fighting off the urge
to settle all my debts
in hair and safety scissors

2009-03-22T00:52:00.002-05:00

pink
2 /pɪŋk/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [pingk]
–verb (used with object)

to pink means to stab or to adorn with ornament. to stab or to imprint the pattern of one thing onto something else.

right?

2009-03-18T13:34:00.003-05:00

pinking shears n. scissors with a serrated blade, used to cut a zigzag edge, esp. to prevent

fraying

images c/o http://jwissandsons.com/

2009-03-04T14:44:00.001-06:00

i've been thinking of drawing you out on my skin with pinking shears. again.

2009-03-03T10:40:00.003-06:00

whatever this is, i think to myself, cold and stupid standing at the bus stop mornings, you better get over it. grow a thicker skin and smile. else you'll find yourself left and alone again. no body needs to remind you. again. how deafening and unlovable whatever this is. is.

2009-02-27T12:19:00.001-06:00

he picks a winner

it wasn't me.
was it you?

2009-02-26T15:25:00.002-06:00

i've always been attracted to aquarians. and scorpios. always aquarians and scorpios. bad military big-guy types. with control issues. shy ones with no self confidence and gaping wounds. always. there was that one virgo who was more like them than me. and me and them. and then. then there was you. one more goddamned scorpio.

2009-02-25T13:51:00.003-06:00

i honestly couldn't say like old onion skin and you've folded and i just couldn't say

what's happened to you

2009-02-24T12:02:00.003-06:00

remember that thing i meant to write. that thing. about how you always keep me running. and how my mind, lately, drives my insides far too far too sane. and i can't even sleep nights. with all this thing that refuses to get cut out with blunt objects or razor blades. or threats of long-standing infection. and when i was done. boy. with that sharp pen. the scissors cut. the burnt ends dangling. of all the ways you make me feel. this is what was left.

hot tempra paint

pheromones

2009-02-17T08:57:00.000-06:00

2009-02-15T19:58:00.002-06:00

once i was in love with a girl
who sent me a picture-postcard from Paris
it hangs still on my fridge

2009-02-11T08:37:00.000-06:00

i wish i could shrink you down and carry you around in my pocket all day long.

it's that or quit my job.

either way.

2009-02-10T08:19:00.003-06:00

there's something i wanted to put here. about how one day you wake up and realize that the past doesn't define you the way it used to. you don't walk around in your own world afraid to crack the egg shells or sure someone is going to discover that you're a fraud, even, at your very own expense. you're in control of your paycheck and your rent bills. your wardrobe and the sound and content of your own voice. and that no matter what and for the rest of your very own life. you can do with your time whatever you want. and maybe that took years of uncertainty. restraint. uncanny relentless pain. and maybe even in those dark moments it's hard to recognize myself. imagine myself now. here. in me. so staggering and staid in you.