imagining fireflies (early)

angry yesterdays.
expectations so dreamy lofty blue cream perfect. last summer... oh last summer and the incredulous giddy highs. I can conjure echoes of them, just. but in my real skin, my real-now-here self-- it's fear

brokenness. I don't want it to be that way. I don't try to hold on to it do I?

those todays are swimming. draining. me, wallowing. yes.

draft all the emails.
out line and word smith and

morning smelled like a mix of coffee mulch and wet grass. it's supposed to rain. sometime.
I am zoned out
zoned inside out. insides froze, flaking, shaking and shaking while ragepanicfear chips and chisels away at the ice.
voices with nothing but pouts, or lies. muffled either way, too believable. or not believable at all.

(finals)

the clouds look like 

Scandinavia. 

that thought rings around my head again and again. or it did last night anyway, past twilight. carrying boxes. pizza tech from up there over not yet. up write to now now. now. write. 

stuck sick

do I wish I could erase them

do they need to be taken out of here
out of this me
out from my heart

to make room
so they'll stop catching my breath
blocking my moves

crispy loud, loud firework music. sick fake burnt papers and fuses all scraped strewn in the grass sipping chocolate window reflections not working not yet
crumbs too much sugar pressing hatred old too old too judgy too mournful
pretty flowers. summer lilies, purple weeds, sure whatever

the coffeeshop full of people who are outcast sunday studious why bother talking? let's just yes earphones wall-staring not quite a scowl but tilted unable why bother talking?

I reread that last poemthing backwards. it's not cool enough to really make sense backwards. but I liked it anyway.

stay back
take
onto, into leading into
read you, what thought you
what thought you
what mean didn't that don't
trust.

don't trust.

there's a throat-tightening. a wearying. a maybe-black maybe-blue maybe-dark maybe-grey maybe-nowhere

hope is a curse and I am not inside myself. I am not here.

the kitchen sink

trust.
don't.

that didn't mean what you thought
what you thought
what you read into
leading into
onto

take back
stay in front of this. feelings underfoot. trusting in locked boxes.

thought doesn't do what you meant
that doesn't seem what he meant

into what you read
into leading

lost lust longing.

don't.
lose.

i ride my bike through the cemetery pretty often

[preface: these are recycled, remixed snippets from years gone by.]

this morning on my way to class i saw two men digging. laid out on the grass was a wooden form made out of two by fours, just the right size...

i want some things. and then i want other things. which things do i want most?  full of quiet trees and silence

i want some things
not just casually either. i really do. should i? which things are worth wanting?
new jeans, not so much.
new life... i don't know. 

it is autumn, and everything is dying. pheonix like, all in flames...
it would be hard, after all, to dwell day after day on our inevitable mortality. 

and which things are worth waiting for? kisses. phone calls. chocolate. christmas.

gravedigging.

not seriously thinking about it, but you never can tell.
would it stifle my creativity? i don't know.
would it be a good use of an english major?
seems a lovely place.

would i like it? no idea.  

like the weeping woman, and the one in the shape of a giant sphere. the humongous catholic crosses, as ornate as anything and beautiful.

except for when the sprinklers come on... then it's rather full of puddles and shredded rainbows.

their shovels cut into the ground little by little, outlining the grave. i wondered what they were talking about, or if they were talking. maybe they're detached from the meaning.

detached enough?

[2005. 2006. 2015]