even if I try. even if I wanted toooooo

I'm sitting on the yellow house's stoop, again. This for the last time, maybe. It's an immanent tomorrow. Tomorrow is a better day to leave. The neighbor, not at pukeneighbor's house but at squat brick house, is listening to something punk or something, he wears a black tshirt when he smokes and looks at his phone, there's a tv inside, the neighbors watch it with the door open. He isn't doing much on a late Tuesday. Is it Tuesday? What day is it, Kyle asked some guys who came in to his restaurant tonight. I think he had some lines lined up, he probably knew the day. Kyle's good at being a waiter. I like the words waiter and waitress better than I like server. I like to sex things. None of that is particularly true. I'm drinking a watermelon beer again, we got them for the road. The car is packed. Save for the soda maker. We don't even know for certain that it works, but. What if it does? I'm going to make us sodas when we get to Louisiana, and Thousand Island dressing. I think I could make delicious Thousand Island. I like the name. Sometimes kids only want Thousand Island dressing. None of this is actually on my mind. Today a vase fell a couple of feet from the bookcase and onto the carpet in Luke's room. He hollered for a second, and later, on the log at Brody Beach, he surprise-gripped my sun arm and warned me that there is broken glass, to be careful. I thought it was funny because the thing broke, and also because he didn't pick up the glass, and also because he was being careful at me. The vacuum has been in his room for a month at least, a bunch of ants came in and we got the vacuum and had a great time sucking the ants up. So I had a pretty great time sucking the glass up. So he won't cut his foot later, thinking of me. And the little pieces I'll try not to leave behind. I'm sitting on his stoop sort of listening for his skateboard wheels on the sidewalk. He might be surprised that the car is packed. That I said goodbye again to John Shinn, and to Bri, and to Kyle, and Kari and my dad and to Britta, the last. No one is crying, which is a good sign. But smell makes me cry. The picking up of a handsome plaid shirt with sweetsmelling collar makes me lurch a little. But I'm more more more than ever, and it's ready in me. I wish I could write sweet notes for all over the cute yellow house. Maybe butter yellow is a forever reminder of the Summer of 2013. It has been a good one, thanks to many, and to one. I am glad it's true. All of the hugging is out, I've got it in. I've got a shower, I've got a salad for the morning. I've got an ear to the sky & an ear to the heart. I've shaken off the butter sheets with the black ink constellation. I've sucked up the glass. I've got me wrapped up. I've got me winding away, I think I think I do, now.

hotcruster

a couple of women came into the coffeeshop
one wore a shirt reading,
  DUCT TAPE HAS 1,001 USES-
    toilet paper isn't one of them
she carried a tote bag
on it was printed menopausal wine puns
LIFE IS A CABERNET
LIFE, LIKE WINE, GETS BETTER WITH AGE
and
LIFE'S SHORT, LET'S WINE
her huskyvoiced buddy tried to order a rum & coke, but we don't serve that here
so she
asked for a glass of chardonnay, as she puffed on her electronic cigarette.
today a lady complimented me on the grubby bandana I have hanging from my neck
I laughed, thinking she's
probably never seen something so dirty
but she can't smell it, so
it's a nice statement (her words)
I went swimming last night at 9
topless, in the 109 degree sunset
the air cooled to a temperate 98.6 degrees
the same as a sweltering jungle
but for me, it was only perfect
I sat there, with friends
with a corona, of course
thinking about being 30 & loving coronas
& being 30 & loving the eagles concert I'll be attending
I said goodbye to ian
until we take our northwest tour
to olympia, to portland
to goodbye the rainforests
but right now I can't keep open big dryeyes
I like the heat in idaho
in july
it's 106 degrees
I like the sad you
but that makes me sad
it makes me sad that I want you to be
because I'm the jerk
want your asuffer
I want my friends to visit me at work
the sad one, with the sad life moment
and the tall one who makes me feel Good
the superficial kind of Good
because I've given up on That, for now
& I'm cool
with just swaying timelessly through the heat of the days
my claws withdrawn in cottonball paws
but I want to get scratched, a little
through the skin beneath the surface
in the ancient long nights
in the grass with you, on blankets beneath streetlights with you
because I like to be surprised
to be given a feeling of any sort
an alive kind of sorts
trying to keep my big eyes big
so no crust to calcify me shut
I won't shut
up
until I bleed
in some eventuals,
and I will
I will
I so will

kids of summer

we found by stench a tarp-covered maggot dog on the river
the corpse smell inducing the vomit of a nearby fisherperson
ian poking it with a stick to find out what it was
did someone attempt a haphazard burial riverside?
did someone throw their best friend off a bridge
I've never seen so many maggots
it's been hot like summer again, so
they're loving on scorch death
we had to ford the river
because our spot was taken
by a humansized shit
whose odor was pleasanter
than that of the poor friend
and the homeless family
it was like a birthday party, tons of kids
changing to naked in the bushes
but all of our party made it
HERE LIES BUTTHEAD
nickey didn't get the ref, there were more advanced computer games when she was a kid
like the sims
probably sims 2, at the very least
oh youth
I don't really get carded anymore
we put our chairs in the water, sinking in the sand
and watched the rivercops drive around us
officer undercurrent, paddleboard cop, on the case
ah, summer.
taking the easy way out

wailing

everytime

I go out back of the foothills mansionhouse

to the patio, which is a nice patio

I mean, one can smell the sagebrush, and there are many little birds flitting

and no trafficsounds

the uphill neighbor guy starts whacking his weeds

and edging his lawns

  I mean, this guy has a lawns 

where there was once desert

yeah there was once desert here

and no fancy rich foothills mansionhouses

  so complaining of lawn

  is already pretty moot

oh my god there is a fucking baby here! I hear it!

I'm such an asshole

I'm smoking a cigarette

and the guy stopped doing his lawn

and I can hear a newborn wailing inside

bros

boys sitting around drawing portraits of flowers
boys laying in platonic bed together
with candlelights
boys telling each other that this song reminds them of their exgirlfriends
and then telling the story why
boys weeping when they drive
or when that phosphorescent song plays
boys in sleepingbags that smell like sweaty girls
boys apologizing to one another for being dicks
boys explaining why they're being dicks
boys talking on the phone for hours
boys buying boyznberry pie
boys crying when they pass the bookstore
or a tall road
or a tunnel
boys understanding other crying boys

this, mostly

I was thinking, am thinking of color. I am always thinking of color, and was reminded even more of it at the reading of Bluets, and am reading it now, and it is about color, and it's about sex. An old boyfriend once told me that one of his favorite things to do with me is to talk about color. We had been on it for hours, watercolor. This winter I printed some kitsch scenes for presents, giant bats hanging above palmtreed vistas, pyramids sitting dumbly in the background. Maybe I did this was for the mixing of inks, for making a green grayer with red, and  photographed each tightening flush of color into itself. It gives me chills too. I keep ink as a pet. Sometimes it gets rancid if you don't tighten its container. It ends up the bottom of the barrel smell, not like anything in particular rotting. Mildewy, maybe. But I keep them... add a little iridescent gold, I think...

When I spoke last night at the bougie bar to the pbr salesman he asked, do you know what my favorite color is? and I said no, how could I. Black & White, he smiled. I see. Nothing in between. No uncertainty. But my favorite color is vermilion... and he asks if it's a blue. There are birds with vermilion breasts worth finding as examples. The color of 2012. 2012 is over. I overheard my friend last evening at the sunset on campus tell a woman that I have a checkout roster for my personal library. I do this so people can be held accountable for my books, for returning them. There are books signed away that I will never see again. It's  more likely I won't see them again when they go through these proper channels.

Jim the pbr salesman said there are two types, mechanics and creatives. But of course I have to argue. I need rules to dictate what I do creatively, how creative I get, all of it. I could never be a painter. Paint on a blank canvas to me is too hopeful & eternal. I am an extremist I want it all of it right now all of it, all of the time. I think, he loves me, or he hates me. I think I am beautiful or I am so terribly gross. I think I am a genius, or I am the stupidest. I have the most full heart or I've never learned a thing. Black & white have all of the colors in them a scientist says. It is sort of beautiful. But I got a yin yang calendar to color as a gift. & I've definitely been coloring everything. Vermilion, turquoise, chartreuse, gold, pale pink, magenta, ultramarine, my yin/yangs know no lacks/infinities of color. They everything me

before I went to this reading last night I dyed most of my clothes a deep bright blue like

didn't I

So I wore the same things all week long, and my smell was radiant and the polyester boiled on me and I got flirted with hard. Everything went away after I remember that I have thousands of sweaters

for me

I was drunk last night-

 this one’s for me. do you ever think about it?

do you ever think about it?

do you ever think about it?

Sometimes I think I know everything,

sometimes it’s later at night, during the time a moon normally shows,

especially when on nights before so strong a moon shone,

and sometimes, too, it’s distracting when everyone else can say it earlier than I, and

who cares? the smell is there, and I have the olfactory moments in me thick & true,

and by the by telling you that I am here in the woods, with a laptop

which somehow seems perfect

because I am no earth mother

I am a Typist

and the delete key, the letters lit up, are the tools that keep em going

when I could just sleepingbag out right now on a T on a lake, waves lapping

lapping lapping sloshing, all night long

Instead, I am here, soberest, knowing. You know, I know.

But sober enough to know that you don’t really know.

I see better with my eyes closed,

with my head sort of

with my heart an open hand. if that would near it, what I try to say

OH

and fail to say.

Sorry if you don’t, because I always will. & so glad you don’t, so I’ll never have to.

My dog has these

these

these

these words are so unimportant to her!

o nevermind, the world won’t end before I remember what I was going to say.

obvious tryings to get out of it

(songs of yesteryear)

wednesday 25 october 2006

Look here. It’s obvious, all the same. A journal entry is a story is a dialog is a poem. A poem is a garbage can for the brain. And yet, when I sit down here to the blank slate, I have nothing, nothing comes to mind. Gargling gerbils is all I can do. What about abstract expressionism? no, not the movement, but you sitting here, defending yourself, making excuses? Hey, what’s with the bitter attack?

I hate it but really I love to think about these things. When I ride my bike home from work sometimes I pretend I'm showing you around. "Quickly, turn here, yes, see that? That's the beautiful cement factory. Isn't it rugged? Isn't it romantic? I climbed to the top with someone I was in love with a few years ago. Watch out for the bridge; when it's wet your wheels will slip around. We should try not to go down that street. It's full of potholes and there's a trash dump there, too, and sometimes the smell is too much. That place is nice... I'll take you there for coffee later... I know it's a long way, but we're almost there..." And then the ride goes by really fast.

I recently began corresponding with a boy I met in my home town during the first winter when I returned from college. We were together only for six days, and we fell in love. We drove in my father's car up to the foothills. We parked in a scary suburb that's miles and miles up, it feels like a strange, perfect town in the middle of nowhere… a train set. An old-fashioned gas station with pumps that don’t work. A red fire station. Perfect lawns. Tiny, sporadic trees. We parked and drank beer and listened to Built to Spill and I kissed him- it was his first kiss- and then when I left a few days later, hours before I went to the airport to come back to Chicago, we had sex…  orgasms, though it was his first time… We talked on the telephone over the next couple of months… he thought he could get a scholarship to the university of chicago, because he shared the name of one of the main college founders... they said no... we stopped talking, and have only just begun communcations again… But now, since writing, I’m taking him on those bike rides with me, I’m remembering the details, the ways in which we fell... And I love these as I hate them; they’re ridiculous and ill-timed, but I know that I have to have these secrets, and that’s why I am thinking about it all again for the first time in three years. And I'm feeling thoroughly there.

I just got a job at a lingerie store. The bras cost $150. It’s called Trousseau. Ha ha ha. We’ll see…

I hope you’re well, and I thought about you on the 16th of October. You & I, blushing on wooden stools after you guessed my birthday…

I’m afraid, very afraid… but only in the surreal way. In ways where there’s no worry. Of the unreal, impossible.. but this music is no good, here, to describe it at all, and then I think, people actually made this art that is affecting me so, and people are still doing it. and it can be done. I’m thinking these things with a dry enough throat and alone in this dark house, but it isn’t very cold outside, so I’m not afraid for that, and I wish I was more beautiful, same as always, thinner face, better in red lipstick, hair bigger and fuller. And I think, do I really want to go and...? Do I really want to go outside? Aren’t I afraid a little of outside? Yes, a little. Unfortunately… it’s nagging at me, to do that, so I think I will.

Monday 8 October 2007: 10:03 am

My bedroom smells like camping and there’s nothing to do about it.