All I can think are selfish thoughts.

I feel like my brain is exploding with all the things I'm forgetting to say.

I can't sleep cuz my bed's on fire

i just love this picturrrre

Neon Pink Tights & Working Title Radio

I will always like the same kind of music. New bands, new sounds, but at the end of the day I'm sitting here wearing neon tights and listening to The Working Title radio... anyway, I'm reminded of all these good ole tunes I loved in high school and hearing some I've never heard but that sound like everything I love. It's a good life. Now, if only I could get this paper done... or all of them.

Now you're better than you think you are,

show these people what you were born to do.

'Cause I believe in you

I'd bet my life on you.

Forget the awful words they said,

lost your dream,

they lost their heads.

It's funny what fear does to you.

:)

Boys speak in rhythm, and girls in code do-do-do-do!

"I suffer depression only in the sense that I am a writer. We don't have proper jobs to go to. We are on our own all day. Show me a writer who doesn't get depressed: who has a completely stable mood. They'd be a garage mechanic or something. Anyway, I don't think you become a writer unless you are aware of the workings of your mind."

-Mark Haddon

HA!

I didn't know I needed to see you and talk to you until I did... until there was a face and a hug and desperation. But I did. I needed to say those things out loud to you and I needed to be able to ask you those questions and I needed to know I could talk to you about him. I needed to know there was still a friendship there, that we aren't like everyone else, that we were different, and that we can still remember how to talk without words. I am forever grateful to you for teaching me how to notice the details in the fabric and the value of the second. I remember everything, I see everything, I thank God for unconditional love and the art of acceptance. Friday night was one of the most intense and important nights I've had in a while just because I was reassured of the beauty in every inch and the promise in every moment.

And then Saturday, an adult woman asked me if I really believe that everything happens for a reason and I shook my head and told her that it is ever so much deeper than that.

I have tried to be sensitive to this for a long time but I realize now I've done something so wrong. I can't change it. It had to happen this way. I had to be this way. But I need to step up. I just wish I knew how to help you.

"Well, I'll take these pages and move on. Things are happening elsewhere. Things are always happening. It seems wherever I go there is drama. People are like lice - they get under your skin and bury themselves there. You scratch and scratch until the blood comes, but you can't get permanently deloused. Everywhere I go people are making a mess of their lives. Everyone has his private tragedy. It's in the blood now - misfortune, ennui, grief, suicide. The atmosphere is saturated with disaster, frustration, futility. Scratch and scratch, until there's no skin left. However, the effect upon me is exhilarating. Instead of being discouraged or depressed, I enjoy it. I am crying for more and more disasters, for bigger calamities, grander failures. I want the whole world to be out of whack, I want every one to scratch himself to death."

-Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

Code Name?

Pure

Noble

Honor

If I've done anything at all, please, let me get there.

I'm trying to get better at saying "I need help" before things get too bad, trying to let the people close to me know that I am feeling overwhelmed or frightened by things before I push them away, and trying not to fall apart. I'm not sure if I've done a good job with these things or not but I'm trying and it does matter. Bryan is teaching me a lot about this because I think we both often have the natural inclination to push people away before reaching out--him with anger, usually, and me with sadness--- but I don't want to push him away, ever, so in a lot of ways he helps me push myself to work through the bad feelings and natural distance to growth and progress. He is helping me discover more about myself with each visit, each conversation, each kiss. I am really thankful for him. It reminds me of what Sterling was saying to me the other night at Alley Cat--- it's important to have people in your life to tell you when there is spinach in your teeth and even when it's hard, Bryan and I are always able to metaphorically talk about the spinach in our teeth.

Today I feel sad and overwhelmed. I feel sad because Bryan left today and sad because I feel like I am doing poorly in school. I feel when I do poorly in school that I am letting the people in my life down because I can't inspire anybody when I'm busy screwing up. I feel overwhelmed about everything. I miss my home-friends. I wish Chester lived in Carrollton so Charlotte would have somebody to play with when I'm not around. Sometimes thinking like a child helps me clear my mind best.

I'm scared to move to California. I'm also not scared. I will miss living with Matt and I will miss having Cara around. I will miss my family. But I will grow my gorgeous wings and be the most Kate I've ever been. I believe in this.

I feel better when I write.
I feel selfish when I write.

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Day Two: Nine things about yourself.
1. The entire time I was growing up I really hated socks. I hate wearing most forms of footwear in general. This was true up until about four weeks ago. I have recently begun buying lots of socks.
2. I’m a middle child. I love my middle child syndrome. I love to talk about being a middle child and I will automatically analyze you if I know you are a middle child.
3. I don’t enjoy alcohol consumption.
4. I drink a LOT of sugar-free Red Bull. I consume a LOT of caffeine.
5. I want to know everything about you, whoever you are.
6. I want to write a book before I die but sharing poetry or fiction I write is really challenging to me. I love sharing blog-style writing though, and I’ve kept two livejournals and one blurty since 8th grade. I would love to publish a book in that style but there is no courage in that. I like doing things that scare me more than things that comfort me.
7. When I read 1984 by George Orwell my senior year of high school, I threw the book against the wall when I got to the end. I’m still mad about it. I’m also still mad at that Tilda lady who won the Oscar for best female actress when Cate Blanchett should have won for her role in “I’m Not There.”
8. I love feeling close to great literature.
9. My top five favorite famous people ever are Pablo Picasso, Joni Mitchell, Tupac Shakur, Anais Nin, and Bob Dylan. I consume these people. Everything they've made, written, sung, painted, loved--I'm interested.

SELFISHHHH

Annoying Blogging Daily Thingy...

that I secretly love...

Day One: Ten Things You Want to Say to Ten Different People Right Now.
1. I am thankful for you every single day of my life and I think I did something wrong growing up not letting you know that. I am glad you are my sister but more glad that you are also my friend now. Thank you for being a Cancer female so now I know how to deal with ANYBODY, ever. Heh
2. You pop up on my facebook in every possible way all the time and I wonder if there is a reason for this or just really random since we don’t talk at all and the last time we did it was so pointless. I’m not mad at you or feel negatively toward you in any way but because of our level of communication, I wonder what’s up with you being everywhere without being around at all. I miss my friend in you all the time.
3. I don’t understand. If something more serious is going on, just tell me. I can’t be a friend if you don’t let me in. I love you but you’re making me crazy.
4. When did you get so vulgar? It makes me uncomfortable.
5. I miss you so much sometimes, I feel crazy. I think about you all the time and it feels so new. Every thought feels different and important. Knowing you has helped me deal with so much and heal so much and even though there is so much struggle in this and conflict between us all the time, I could not be happier or feel more at peace with my choice to be in a relationship. It feels fresh to wake up every day and feel in love with you, even though you are so very far away. I love you, but you know this. So much beauty it could make you cry, so much beauty it could make you cry…
6. I worry about you all the time.
7. Is your dad in your life at all?
8. We should get coffee, or some excuse to spend time together talking. I feel a really strong friendship with you even though we don’t know each other very well. You are a really important person to me.
9. Don’t call me, ever again. I don’t know why you still bother. I feel like you owe me an apology, and you’re a dingus for not figuring that out yet. Peace out, breh.
10. Your mother is a really strong, amazing woman. You and I don’t hang out quite as much (or ever!) as I wish we could, but I know she and your daddy are doing something beautiful raising you. You are a perfect child and I am so glad you are healthy and happy and handsome! I have seen that lady at her darkest, lowest point and I have to say you are the manifestation of a miracle. I hope you know this but, more importantly, I love that you are this. I love you!

My fortune cookie today said that I would have good fortune in my personal affairs.

But I'm not interested in luck.

C'mon, cookie.

Step it Up.

A Blast of Past

It was so dramatic, don't you know? I remember sometimes, but only in old emails and journal entries and stuff do I realize how ridiculously much I feel in the midst of argument, conflict, euphoria... I feel crazy all the time. I feel craziest when I go back and read this stuff and think what was I even saying? and who even talks like this? Sometimes I wish I could show you the things they've said, maybe you will see who I was before all of this, when I was cooler, or more interesting... This is my biggest lie. I'm not important or special or different. I'm not magic or manic or marvelous at all. I'm just chatty. And insane, maybe. Maybe when I stopped believing that I could be those things I stopped being those things. And maybe that's when you found me.

I wish that you would think I were extraordinary. I thought that was sort of the deal. I thought we were supposed to be enchanted... otherwise where is the magic in any of this for you? I feel like I'm just really disappointing everyone. I feel like I'm really happy with who I am, but honestly, it would be nice to feel like a big deal again... like I was something else, like I was worth hating because I was misunderstood, like I was something special. I feel an immense sadness knowing I am just like everyone else. Remembering that makes me feel like melting.

I don't know what I'm doing anymore.

"Every great relationship begins and ends with them. They are the foundational Lincoln Logs of communication. They keep us sane, and yet we hate them. They are the curse and the blessing, and the most apt manifestation of human character. The first lie was everything about her. The last was that she was sorry."

Dear Anais, I'm obsessed with you.

"I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman."

http://www.lidmagazine.net/issues/layouts/issue7/gowland2.jpg

For the eternal closet-romantic sixteen year old within me (and maybe you?)...

http://dont-forget-graphics.xanga.com/

Bobby D and the Love Shack

"the cats across the roofmad in love

scream into the drain pipes

bringing' in the sounds of music

the only musican' it is I who is ready

ready t' listen

restin' restin'

a silver peace

reigns an'

becomes the nerves of mornin'

an' I stand up an' yawn

hot with jumpin' pulse

never tired

never sad

never guilty

for I am runnin' in a fair race

with no racetrack but the night

an' no competition but the dawn"

So much beauty it could make you cry.

Cross Your Heart.

I hope I never get too old to recognize an opportunity for adventure... and never too cruel to keep those opportunities to myself. Somebody posted this clip on Britta's facebook. It just reminded me in the midst of homework time that this is all just an adventure. If we don't see it that way, what's the point, you know?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nviA72Lfio8&feature=player_embedded

Living the freakin' dream, man.

dubyateeeff

I feel like I am constantly saving them up, for later maybe, like pennies in a fat piggy bank, minus the reward when he breaks. I feel like the pennies just disappear or something, like there is more often than not nothing for me to do, nothing for me to say, and endless things for me to doubt. There is too much fear in this, fear we should be better and bigger than... but it is nothing in you or in me, but is it something between us? All of us? An unwillingness to speak it in a way where we don't feel desperate first, a last resort. We are all so much better than we behave. I haven't been completely honest with a single person in my entire life. It's not my fault. That's just the reality. That's just human communication. But why do we care at all what other people say, how people say them. What is the value of language any way? The people I know the best I've known since before we met, before they knew we would matter, when I was alone. That's how I learned, you know? Is that the only way? Why do I feel like they always see it in everyone but me?

I don't mean that in like a pitying sense but more like a question of self. Room for improvement?

I went to the fair a few weekends ago. These are my favorite pictures from it.

Dreamzzz

"I just woke up from a dream where we knew the Tanner family and you shared underwear with DJ and when I asked you why, you looked at me like I was stupid and then started trying to feed a pair of underwear applesauce because there was a smiley face on it. Also, they told me that most of the scenes were filmed underwater."

-Robin Gervais, my sister, to me via text. 10:21am, October 5, 2010

May we always have the details to be thankful for.

Balance

I feel like I don't know how to get it to stay in the middle.

I feel like I don't know how to make myself stay in the middle.

I don't think I understand what you want from me.

I understand that we're all in some way the same, but I'm not like them.

I wish I knew how to bring things up without sounding crazy.

Meow

Today, I feel like a bird.

"There is no past - and the future clearly isn’t written yet. The bright lights add an element of blindness as if I’m singing into an abyss, talking to the Gods, in trust, and as the audience is sometimes removed from view – it’s as if I’m operating out of the purpose of pure joy."

http://freshnessfactorfivethousand.blogspot.com/2010/09/on-tour-we-trust.html

I am an obese person stuck in a little girl's body.

I have a significant conflict happening within me right now. I have this strong desire to make the time go a little faster, do the things I need to do to get out of here, do well, etc. And this thing constantly rubbing against it saying "you don't really feel like doing anything, do you?" -- just this big heavy weight of no-motivation and this lightness of "but it's all so grand really, isn't it?" You know? Maybe not. It's not such a big deal anyway.

I don't want to do homework. I do want to get out of here. I want to want to do everything. I also want to eat a cheeseburger. But I have made it almost ten months without one. I'm not giving up now. It's also been one year and almost ten months since I drank Mountain Dew, in any form or flavor. It's the little things, eh?

Ole Len...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk7DOe5EGgM&feature=related

"I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel
you were famous, your heart was a legend.
You told me again you preferred handsome men
but for me you would make an exception.
And clenching your fist for the ones like us
who are oppressed by the figures of beauty,
you fixed yourself, you said, "Well never mind,
we are ugly, but we have the music."

Such an Autumn song to me. Loves.

Shadow of a Doubt

"You think you know something, don't you? You think you're the clever little girl who knows something. There's so much you don't know, so much. What do you know, really? You're just an ordinary little girl, living in an ordinary little town. You wake up every morning of your life and you know perfectly well that there's nothing in the world to trouble you. You go through your ordinary little day, and at night you sleep your untroubled ordinary little sleep, filled with peaceful stupid dreams. And I brought you nightmares. Or did I? Or was it a silly, inexpert little lie? You live in a dream. You're a sleepwalker, blind. How do you know what the world is like? Do you know the world is a foul sty? Do you know, if you rip off the fronts of houses, you'd find swine? The world's a hell. What does it matter what happens in it? Wake up, Charlie. Use your wits. Learn something."

Sometimes I wake up Uncle Charlie. Sometimes I'm Charlotte.

I think most of the time though, it's about being a little bit of both.

Otherwise, one of you is going to end up dead.

The Wonder

"Love has, at its best, made the inherent sadness of life bearable, and its beauty manifest."
from An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness by Kay Redfield Jamison

I Know How You've Been Feeling Today

"Nobody'd ever done anything bad to me, every problem I ever had I'd been the cause of. I was a fraud, and the fact that I was lonely was my own fault (of course his ears pricked up at fault, which is a loaded term) because I seemed to be so totally self-centered and fraudulent that I experienced everything in terms of how it affected people's view of me and what I needed to do to create the impression of me I wanted them to have. I said I knew what my problem was, what I couldn't do was stop it."

from "Good Old Neon" - David Foster Wallace

My face only looks like who I want you to think I am.

It could get graphic here.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/11278829/vintage-style-fantasy-flapper-mannequin

The Small Beauties in Everything.

Click, listen to this song...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFAA1bM4RY0

and then scroll through these photos...
http://sloanphotographers.info/?p=989

I like that humans have the ability to recognize beauty.
I like that the internet allows me to stalk unrealistically beautiful people doing completely ridiculous gorgeous things. I don't feel jealousy or like I am missing out on anything, but more like complete. I feel complete when I can see these pictures and hear this music and just recognize how truly lovely these things are. I am really happy to be alive.

Be well.

Do you realize?

"It was one of those days when it's a minute away from snowing and there's this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. And this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that's the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and... this incredible benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video's a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember... and I need to remember... Sometime's there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in."

-American Beauty, 1999

I am really happy and the world is full of so much wonder.

Did you wake up today?

Pet Peevin'

Things annoy me.

Obviously, I'm a human (maybe not so obvious, considering you - if anyone is reading this, this means you- are reading this on a screen and have no way of knowing if I actually am a human. Could be a robot or computer generated blogging device, but I'm not.) and thus, things annoy me. I think it's a pretty basic principle. This is one of those things.

Sometimes, yeah, as in multiple times in my life, I go to a tanning bed. I pay some girl (I am sexist against tanning salons where men run the counter. Don't know exactly what's up with that.) at the front counter my hard earned cash (or card) and pay for a fake-sun to real-burn my skin for 10-15 minutes. Within a day, there is slightly more color added to both sets of cheeks and for those 10-15 minutes of the tanning experience, I sit there butt naked hanging out doing absolutely nothing but breathing and absorbing fake sunlight. It's awesome.

The problem is that I guess I feel some kind of guilt every time I do this. I feel guilty that I didn't do something more helpful to my fellow humans with that money or more productive with that 10-15 minute time span. I also feel like, because of an undeniable stigma, this awful feeling that I am somehow really self-absorbed or fake for going along with the whole thing. But to be honest, what bothers me the most is that I feel like I am always experiencing this guilt internally over completely useless external opinions. Mostly, I feel mad because I think about the people who have said something negative in conversation with my appreciation of the indoor tanning experience - and how basically every one of the people who have said something about this to me smoke cigarettes. I mean, honestly. I just really dislike that dynamic and I realized today how unfair to myself it is that I allow the opinion of other faulted, self-abusing, selfish aspects of other people's perspectives to make me feel guilty for participating in an activity that makes me feel good. Personally, it's not a wholly appearance thing as it is an overall pleasurable physical experience. I don't go everyday of my life. I'm not afraid of wrinkles (duh, if you're in regular sunlight you'll get them all the same. do you really want to be out in the GEORGIA sun for five hours though? Bad news bears.) and I'm well aware that I could be buying... you know, pencils or something with that money but how would that be any more productive? I'm not orange-glowing and my hair is naturally blonde and I didn't become more stupid after going to a tanning bed or anything... I am the same person with fifteen more minutes of selfish enjoyment on occasion. I'm just sayin'. That's my stance.

"In addition to psychological benefits, exposure to UV light helps the body produce the activated form of vitamin D, which plays an important role in overall good health."

What the world needs now is love, sweet love. And I'm going to give a lot more of it as a happy person. If I find the fifteen minutes of warmth and nudity and complete undisturbed burning as a means to my feelings of happiness, I think that's all right. Everyone has their demons, and everyone also has guilty pleasures. I'm done with the guilty part. Let's just embrace the pleasure.

In other news, Boyfriend Bramlett is in GA in EIGHT days. Woooo!

Coulrophobia!!!

"Coulrophobia is an abnormal or exaggerated fear of clowns. The term is common, but is not commonly used in psychology. The prefix "coulro-" comes from the Ancient Greek κωλοβαθριστής (kōlobathristēs), “one who goes on stilts”. Coulrophobia can also be said to extend to a fear of covering up one's face with paint—the idea of hiding recognisable features under a layer of face paint can also unsettle coulrophobia sufferers."

-WIKIPEDIA

What would we call the opposite? Why is there a word for every fear but not of everything in the world we can like? Is fear that simple? We can just name all the fears so we feel diagnosed? Is that what it's even about? For the record, I really love clowns. I'm thinking about this because google can't give me an answer. It just directs me to clown-forums where I can find out how to become a clown. In all truth, this is a consuming google search as I've always wanted to be in the circus. However, I couldn't dedicate my life to something that I know scares basically half of the population. It would make me feel depressed. Same reason I decided not to chase after my dentist-dreams... that and I'll never care enough about science (just about teeth).

The point is, I love clowns. I hope someday we can find words for conquered fears.

Meowz.

9. Mine

"I sit with the bush for a long time but it says nothing to me. It continues to burn, still mainly near the bottom. I listen harder and harder, feeling a certain despair build, wondering if it will ever reach out and talk, if ever I will understand the message meant for me, but then, just as I'm listening as hard as I possibly can, it hits me, pow, like that: It wants me to talk. My burning bush would be different, my burning bush would be like me.

So I clear my throat and I tell it things, I talk to that bush. I don't think I've ever said so many sentences in a row before, but I talk for at least an hour about myself-- about me and my husband and my mother and my allergies, and sometimes I don't know what to say and then I just describe what I see. The streets gray and paved. The ground is dry here. The sky is cloudless.

It's wonderful. It's wonderful to talk like that. After a while, I'm exhaused and I think I've said enough. I feel great but my throat is dry and I need some water, so, thanking it over and over, I leave the burning bush by the side of the road for somebody else. And I start to walk."

-from Aimee Bender's "Fugue"

Robs you of the chance...

My room is hot, just like the hot Kristyn said it would be. I'm not complaining though really because I like this room, and my roommates, and Carrollton, and Charlotte. I feel very at home here, but the same at home I felt freshman year, when I knew I belonged but I couldn't figure out how. The only thing is I have to keep my door mostly shut, which keeps out the part that IS air conditioned, just so I can not wear pants, so I can keep my sanity. So much depends on everything else. But, like I said, I like it here.

More than having somebody to fall asleep next to, I miss having him around to wake up with. That's the real beauty, I feel. One day has gone by. We've made it through the darkness! Now, here's another day which we've never seen before. Let's cause some trouble, have a few fights, and love me all the while. You know? I love waking up next to him, smelling him before I can even see his face with clear eyes, knowing I am starting the day with this person, knowing we can do whatever we want because this has never happened before.

"I tried to dream up to the stars, but I didn't know how to do that. I tried to find a star no one in all of history had ever wished on before, and wondered what would happen if I did."

-"The Rememberer" by Aimee Bender

NO BREAK.

M y h eeeead fe eelz likke ROXx.

"Every age can be enchanting, provided you live within it."

Obsessed with A&H

Yesterday was Bryan Wilson Bramlett's 24th birthday! This is my favorite picture of us.

(Great things are happening.)

Accidentally spent two hours reading letters between Henry Miller and Anais Nin today... again. Oops. I want to be her. This one is not especially frisky, but it is from an earlier letter and I found it insatiably romantic.

Can I just BE you already?

This photo, of course, I didn't take.

Let's Go Back, Just With Words.

There are words at the bottom of a well, covered in old water, rain water, recycled water, cold water, dark water, nothing water, nothing wetter, wet words, words wet with nothing that matters, matter of fact I couldn't pronounce water right as a child my grandma always said, said so, so what she said never really mattered because we spoke different languages. She spoke air and I spoke water.

I'm not interested in depth, only nonsense.

Tell me that God keeps His miracles...

Recent Bedrooms.

Be my last friend: http://www.last.fm/user/kugglag1

please. make me look cool.

Today I saw a dead ladybug on the sidewalk. I look at it for about 5-7 minutes.

I kept walking and saw a lady sleeping on her back porch with her mouth open. I looked for about 30 seconds, but thought about it the whole way home.

I want to go to the winchester house in California within the next few months.

I miss my cats and my family a lot.

I break my own rules and don't feel bad about it.

I haven't had to do laundry since I've been in Germany. I brought enough underwear to last me six solid weeks. Who does that? I am going to wash everything tomorrow though because I just foundationally feel like I need to.

When I am sad, I miss Kristyn the most. She is my favorite person to be around when I feel sad.

I'm not sad today, at all.

I love the way it sounds when German people speak English.

I hate writing poetry.

Hannover. Amsterdam. Berlin. Sweden? Stay in Oldenburg. Go Home. Five weekends left. Wild.

My Nathaniel Hawthorne class Friday is cancelled! My week just improved, tenfold.

Tom Waits & German Rain. Solid Combo.

maybe this is creepy that it's in a cemetary...

http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDaJpl8jrW8&feature=related

Here is the deepest secret nobody knows...

Decemberists.

This is the story of the boys who loved you.

The Morning Benders

"And I made an excuse; You found another way to tell the truth.
I put no one else above us. We'll still be best friends when it all turns to dust."

This was when the year was winding back to the beginning, when all the colors starting looking purple and gold, when I started reading your mind. This was after everything, but before things mattered. I just want sometimes to be on my own because it is hard to share. Do you know what I mean?

That's not the point.
The point is... I am elated. Out of my mind in love with everything. And especially you. Today is something else completely! Can you believe it? If you think that it's all already been created, you're wrong. You woke up today. Isn't that enough?

It is most difficult to be positive on one's own.
Some people just don't listen the same.

Nicole Krauss

"I want to say somewhere: I've tried to be forgiving. And yet. There were times in my life, whole years, when anger got the better of me. Ugliness turned me inside out. There was a certain satisfaction in bitterness. I courted it. It was standing outside, and I invited it in."
— The History of Love

Right.

How do you react to that which you should forgive?

I never saw anything wrong with sunshine until you reminded me that some people are allergic.

Anais Nin

"Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in exstacy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls."

Joanna Newsom

"There's a man who only will speak in code
Backing slowly, slowly down the road
May he master everything
That such men may know
About loving, and then letting go."

Joni.

"We'd all go looking for a party
Looking to raise Jesus up from the dead
And I'd be kissing in the back seat
Thrilling to the Brando-like things that he said
And we'd be rollin'
Rollin'
Rock 'n' rolling..."

Poetry

You can’t be beautiful in poetry anymore, not serene or
magical, no more song and (or) dance. Nobody’s been lovely
since Neruda, nobody can fall in love or fall in anything
but garbage cans or down rabbit holes or from airplane
emergency exits on your birthday or fiftieth anniversary
of your dead cat’s adoption. You can get hit or shot and now,
even fucked, but we are not electric anymore. Babies can’t die
unless it’s funny, Jesus can only show up if he’s going
on a date with your step-mom’s sister in a Bon Jovi t-shirt
that he bought at Goodwill and your parents’ divorce will never
matter, unless you can tell me about it in one-syllable
words that including letters Q or X. The men who taught me
to write have died, all failed for saying too much. There are no more
bright stars or fair faces (unless they are on clocks), no more
delight because poets know the best things in life are
cliché. I want to tell whoever decided I could not be beautiful
anymore in pure poetic monosyllabic imagery to
shove it up their ass. How’s this for poetry?

Signing Love Notes in My Mother’s Name

“Part of me is made of glass, and also, I love you.”
-from the History of Love by Nicole Krauss

Mornings aren’t the same without your square jaw lit by
a window and California mornings. The B12 has been doing
things to my dreams, dreams where we talk Freud, where I
remind you of your mother and how we share a birthday
with nothing but silence and the sound of your cigarettes.

In these dreams and the houses inside them, the smoke
of this drug or your cigarettes, I let you build a home
against my breast and that fat part of my upper arm.
And even though my bed turned into mud, it is too much
like a heartbeat, like gaining weight, like how nobody

has sex like we can. Tell me about our drive to Birmingham,
how we couldn’t close the window or my mouth, how we always
arrived the wrong day, how we order cake even though I never
eat it. Tell me how you are still a country away, a lifetime
ago, the only person who knows the words I carved inside

the library, that one time you were here and everybody knew
it was us. Tell me about the dream-you, how he is not the boy
I fell in love with, but is always saying that poems are about
death, and sex. And how no matter how much you love me
or tell your therapist I matter, I can depend on you not being

here when I wake up. Because boredom is like bus windows,
the kind you push out during emergencies, the kind that,
like the body, can still move and change, and melt, or shatter
on impact.

Daddy’s Girl --- Draft 3

Thanks to Alix & Jen for some very helpful criticism on this one. Holla!

Keep quiet and watch the same Hitler special on History channel, get up
only to pee, open mouth only to remind me Hitler had syphilis or drink

root beer. Move your hand only to pet the cat, who is starting to look like
you, growing old, more than just gray sideburns now, or to pat my shoulder,

and ask okay, okay? about nothing I’ve said out loud. Keep quiet, don’t say
I love you to anyone I know- just that one girl who is not my mother, the one

locked away with all the things you’ll never tell us, like why you stopped
drinking or if you graduated high school. She is locked away with you under

Picasso postcards, Elvis collectibles. You never said I love you to anyone
I know, but you did give me that Janis Joplin CD when I was eight, taught me

all the words to the White Album and bought frilly socks for me, and my sisters,
when we were too small to shop for ourselves, the same socks I would shove

into my backpack after getting on the bus, the way I threw out the cat food
cans you put in my lunchbox every day because I was Katie Kitten my whole

life. You started to keep quiet when your dad forgot English, can’t speak
anymore since words stopped making sense, since Grandma kept praying

and you never learned how, since nothing could possibly matter anymore
but the way you taught me how to lose my brain. When I keep quiet, only you

know. Shake your head and say okay, okay.

Baby Bitch, formally Garbage Man. Final Draft.

Baby Bitch – formally Garbage Man --- Draft 4
The man I miss- here, not 10 states or 2439.19 miles away
like usual, is fighting with me over directions: maps always fails us
when we're finally ten inches apart. When he gets mad, we both get
quiet and I stare at the swinging Jesus from the driver’s seat but forget
to pray. Clenched fists keep bad things in finger tips, like they have
since I was six. You can't yell at me, I tell him in a voice same
volume as the Ween song humming through half-busted speakers
in an all-busted Olds. The quiet is too loud to speak till he touches
my hand, or head, or whatever I let him touch, and sings along with words
in context: insulting, but from his mouth a hymn of forgiveness, please
don’t cry. Only his voice matters, crawls like steam under bathroom
doors, fogs up my car windows so I can't stay in this slow-burn
and when we finally get there, wherever that place was, he never says
sorry, only sings like broken Dylan to me in the voice that keeps me calling
over time zones, over weeks. It's hard to drive like that, he notes.
I am back in a kitchen I knew from being small, country blue curtains over a window
that never existed, once-white walls, stained and rented, and nod to the song
that slips from his lips, open palms around steering wheel, regrip and release,
when I remember it's not his fault. I can't blame this man
for clenched fists. He’s never even seen my kitchen.

free write entries - 11,12,13,14

Week 11
Entry 1:
My dad keeps quiet and watches the same Hitler special on the History Channel
for the fifth or sixth time this week, gets up only to pee, opens mouth only to remind me
Hitler had syphilis or to drink root beer since he was a problem on the real stuff,
moves his hands only to pet the cat who is starting to look like him growing old
and white or to pat my shoulder and ask okay, okay? about nothing I’ve said out loud.
He keeps quiet, never said I love you to anyone I know, just the girl who is not my mother
in the pictures locked away behind Picasso postcards and Elvis collectibles. Never said
I love you to anyone I know, but he did give me a Janis Joplin cd when I was eight,
bought frilly socks for me and my sisters when we were too small to shop for ourselves,
the same socks I would shove into my backpack after getting on the bus, which he walked us to
every morning until I could drive. He started to keep quiet when his dad forgot English,
can’t speak anymore since words stopped making sense, since my grandma kept praying
and my dad never learned how, since nothing could possibly matter anymore. When I keep
quiet only my dad knows, shakes his head and says okay, okay.

Entry 2:
Jokes between punch marks on time sheets and dirty
dishes in the backroom did nothing but make me
curious, wanted to know if your skin would still look
the same against me or if it would smell better, like you
did something right, the way we all look better
when we’re not in work clothes or angry at people
for asking dumb questions or giving us quarters
where dollars belong. We would melt into seahorse
sheets under mauve wall-paper, by soft-white sixty watt glow
in a $20 room off exit 101, if things had gone right.
I wanted to be your dirty laundry, the eyebrow raise
after four missed calls, your morning after, your night
before, the everything behind your she meant
nothing. But I don’t even know what you look like
naked. I wore panty hose that night.


Week 12
Entry 1:
You cannot be beautiful in poetry
anymore, cannot be serene or
majestic, watch out for song
and dance, let the poem do that-
nobody has been allowed loveliness
since Neruda was trying to get back
an ex-lover, nobody can fall in love but
you can fall into other things like garbage
cans or down rabbit holes, can be hit
but no babies can die, just remember,
unless it’s funny, Jesus can only show up
if he’s in a t-shirt and your parents’
divorce will never matter. Unless
you can tell us in single syllables
and consistent s sounds or unless
you can have them decide over
sandwiches, who gets the house
and who gets the pet ferret. The men
who have taught me to write have
all failed for not teaching me to think,
Keats, there are no more bright stars,
no more fair faces unless they grace
clock covers, no delight nor wonder
because your opinion is free anyway,
you can’t sell a book if your work
isn’t worth pennies. I want to tell
whoever decided I could not be
beautiful in poetry anymore to
shove it up their ass, in pure
monosyllabic clear as rules imagery.
How’s that for poetry?

Entry 2: Woke up early for my hangover, had enough
time to vomit in my sister’s toilet, take some vitamin C
and still be late to work but only by ten minutes or maybe
a few hours but that was earlier so I can’t remember
anymore but I remember an empty bottle I could never
have dranken if that’s the past tense of any action
but I was never one for grammatics, never one for just
about anything, never anyone I could talk to you know,
really talk to. That was the night you were conceived,
they told me. I still don’t know if that was a joke or
not but it very well could’ve been either way since
I don’t know how my parents met or if they ever were
in anything other than trouble.

Week 13
Entry 1:
I think I’m bored without you. And the mornings aren’t as
fun. No clown in my bed to wake up to, except maybe my
self, the b12 has been doing something funny to the way
I dream- did I tell you about the one where you didn’t want
to have sex anymore? I called it intercourse in my mother’s
tongue, my mother like how we always talk about Freud,
like before you left, and I think I was mad in the dream.
But I let you build a home against my breast and that fat
part of my upper arm, you know? My bed turned into mud
or rain or more vitamin b12 maybe, but it felt like too much
like heartbeat, like speed, like gaining weight all together
at one time, like remembering how you got fat, like how
you weren’t before, like how you blame donuts or cheese,
or each other, like how nobody has sex like we can you tell
everyone and I never care. But we didn’t when you didn’t
feel like it, like a girl, but in the dream. You’re still you
but it’s that dream you with the lighter hair color that hates
when I wear make-up, the dream you that is fluent in
talking backward, the dream you that only has one head
and less birthday and more cake and less you. Dream you
is not the boy I fell in love with, but like you, I always believe
in your dream self, like he is telling me something, like how
all poems are about death, like how all poems are about sex,
like how your dream self is always nervous, like how I can’t
cough when I need to, like how I always hit my alarm clock
before it ever goes off, like how my cat likes the smell of my
computer’s heat, like how my roommate always leaves the
bathroom light on, the things I can depend on, like I can depend
that you won’t be here when I wake up, like you are still
a country away, like you are still a lifetime ago, like you are still
the only person I’ve ever met that knows all the words
to every cartoon theme song, like you are still the only person
who knows the words I carved inside bookshelves in the library
that one time you were here and everyone knew it was us.

Entry 2:
I wasn’t going to talk about it, but I got lonely. I’m sorry. I got tired of seeing
her, not that you know her, arms around you, know nothing could ever stand,
in the way of what we never completed, test of numbers and answers, the questions
numbered in alphabetics, is not a word they told me I was too small to know about
a difference when I lost the spelling bee and when my mom reminded me I was not
good enough, of this bullshit and ballroom dancing the only ones for me are the
sad ones like Shirley Manson or that kid who shops at Hot Topic with his friends
every Friday night of the eighth grade and wears a lot of black even though he loves
his grandma and has a pet cat named Ralph he would die without, any water we
would float we would not be full of wasted hydrogen, bombs going off going nowhere
no way to tell if that’s the way things were supposed to or not supposed to or
scholastically to go, black no sugar no milk don’t you understand anything, is possible
like that movie Mary Poppins with the nanny who I heard was a bitch in the book,
shelves don’t hold enough for me I read slow and not that much but I write a lot
between the pages like to keep a lot of bookmarks like to take a lot of pictures and
put them where they don’t go, away me, myself and I are a lonely trio can’t ever
keep company enough to love a washed out two bit chump like that guy who i
can’t learn from, can’t anything from, can’t can’t from, can’t stand anyone
who tells me what to do when I am always, always right.

Week 14
Entry 1:
My dad called my ex-boyfriend
Caligula, my ex-boyfriend shared
Caligula’s birthday, at least that’s
what my dad said, but in history
I learned Caligula thought he was
in contact with the divine, would
dress in public like Hercules and
appointed horses as his counsel-
men. My ex-boyfriend forgot how
to cry when he was four and his
tyrant parents made him ride
a pony at one of his too-many
brothers’ birthday parties, even
though he was scared, but this is
why I cannot love him anymore.
The boy who sounds like the way
it smells when anyone around me
smokes hydroponic pot, he is too
sculpted, too kind to love, too square
a jaw, too much goodness can
kill you. When my dad likes a
person, he gives them a nickname
but he called my sister’s exboyfriend
clyde, a name that in my dad’s time
meant, not a partner in crime, but
a square, like the checked floors at
Steak and Shake at 3 am because
you already had Waffle House twice
last night. A man lights a cigarette
in the wood, alone. Can anyone
hear him scream?

Entry 2:
I have never been a threat, boy who’s always known
me asked if I was still a virgin, never a threat because
my blonde hair never paired with large body parts
except eyeballs which on their own are like swollen
grapes, because blonde hair is natural, because nobody
can be jealous of me no matter how hard I try. Did you
know they make a new kind of Skittles that fizzes on
your tongue, different flavors too, like green is melon.
If I were any other girl, what I did would’ve been wrong
but nobody’s ever been jealous of me, so when I took
that boy from that girl who was having that thing that
they never figured out, nobody was actually mad. Girls
that are well-behaved would never get away with
a vitamin deficiency. I tried to stop them in their tracks
with white teeth and good shampoo but the thing is
men always know if you are good or if you are better.
One time, I did a bad thing and we got rocks thrown
at our knees, but I was only four or five and I think
I told them to stop anyway but nobody ever listened
to me because my voice was little like me, like I
would always be, like how people have always seen
me, like how I see me reflected in a mirror, bouncing
body like a seizing heart or animal, when I was little
before, it was called jumping on the bed, like monkeys
like the monkeys jumping on the bed, the kind where
they called doctors, called moms, called cops, called
corpses, called upon dead relatives in black and white
photographs that hang next to the picture of my dad
in a gallery because he could’ve made it big if we didn’t
ruin everything. you are good in this space. you are
good no matter how hard you try to be bad because
sometimes we cannot do anything but write our names
in the top right corner of sheets of notebook paper
hard in number 2 lead until our hands fall off.

Improvs, Weeks 11, 13, 14 & 15

Week 11: Entry 1:Entry 1: from Jillian Weise's “The Body in Pain”
“Dear Lucy, You do not know me. It feels wrong/ for me to know about the heroin, the bags/ of mail you kept, the bolt in your face./ For what it is worth, I have a bolt in my hip,/ a hook along my spine. I don’t want to talk/ about any of this. Tell me: what was your last/ good thing.? Can we stay there?”
Dear June 6,
You do not remember me, I bet, but I know about your Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles towel you’ve had since the first time your mom bought you ice cream sandwiches, maybe you were six but since then you figured out they always taste better from the truck. For what it’s worth, I remember everything you never knew how to say out loud, how you tasted after our first dinner and a frozen slushy we started to share in the backseat of that blue beast I’ve had to tell all my secrets to since I lost your number. I remember every hook along your spine, all the bumps of bone I could feel through skin no matter how much you eat. I know we have forgotten how to talk about any of this but tell me, can we stay there? Not boyfriend or lover, not a friend with benefits even, even though there were the benefits and we were friends, you were my first step, the only one between me and my new good thing. Before there were words, there were our fingerprints on fogged windows, paint stains on trampolines, and always that smell of old donut glaze in your hair, the smell from the hallway that morning before that german test I didn’t fail, the smell that brought me back to you in the woods holding hands talking about a marriage neither of us wanted, how we were too small to feel this big, how the trees were green like the flecks in your blue eyes, the ones nobody gets close enough to see, how they would have been green somehow, we’d say, we’d say nothing and know everything nobody else could talk about. Do you remember the good thing? Tell me, can we just stay there?

Entry 2: from Jillian Weise’s “The Gift”
“We fly home/ with new parts. We tell everyone it was/ an accident in the Ford Escape and should/ be normal in a few days. Now we can be happy./ I always wanted to strip at the Kitty Cave/ on South Elm. Holman always wanted/ to drop pants in front of several women,/ lights on. We have affairs. We are in love.”

We tell everyone it was an accident, one that needed to be
put into a pocket like rocks, like any other raised-in-Tennessee
boy, just hidden away unseen and untouched we just needed
to think about it for a while, think about erasing names from notebooks
that would have ever made it seem like something we wanted,
like we wanted anything , but I swear we didn’t. I only wanted
you, your face against my face or thighs or anywhere that wasn’t
elsewhere, as long as you were somewhere near me – I didn’t
cry when we found out because I don’t care. I just didn’t want you
to fly home without leaving something behind for me to remember
your smoke where I would’ve forgotten any other affair. We left
the lights on, can you believe it? I guess you would have to, since you
were there, were not interested in taking time off or closing windows.
There is no time when you are in love to do anything but complain
about how you wish certain parts were different, not bigger or
better, but maybe less functioning, less determined to follow
their anatomical properties, because when you are in love,
you will not have time to think about how your body will do
whatever it wants, no matter how many sixth grade health
pamphlets taught you that you will get pregnant, and die.

Week 13: Entry 1:from Melanie Jordan’s "Parenthetical"
“I’m watching/ a woman’s shadow overwhelm the red/ interior of her second story while/ the white curtain like a minidress/ obscures her waist, ruffles her thigh./ She changes…”

Overwhelmed by the red that frames the window
when the sun is setting on the third floor, all I see
is a woman’s shadow. This is the first time I’ve noticed
but I wonder if she’s noticed, seen me not-staring,
not-noticing, not clothed or conscious sometimes,
towel damp and in underpants, ironing pants or white
hair that happened on accident (Bonnie told me I should
try.), and I wonder what would happen if I invited her,
this shadow, for tea, not that I drink tea, but I would
for her, for you, I’d tell her, tell her I have seen her
on my wall, ten feet tall or more, less overwhelmed
by the real thing but more in love than I am with
the shadow. I wonder if she would dance slow like
with me by the light of the setting lampshade,
wonder if she would kiss me slow or kiss me at all,
if I am even her type, if she is even that type,
to kiss without asking where these lips have been
which is nowhere lately, I’d tell her that. Tell her
anything she did or did not want to hear, not here
to lie but here to fall in trouble with the girl with the most
beautiful shadow I’ve ever danced with. The music
would slow and I would ask her back to the room,
which she looks into every night, I’m sure of that now.

Entry 2: from Jordan’s “Charlie Brown in the Dead of Night”
“I’ve danced with girls before, swaying lightly back/ and forth, just on the edge of what it means/ to fill my body, of being poured in like wet cement.”
I’ve danced with you before, girl, swayed
with you light like cloud head, like light black,
like the edge of meaning or the edge of a fresh
haircut, soft body to fill you with, soft lips to kiss
your mindcult, man can’t touch what you own
or need, nothing can do anything better than we
can’t do them. I am swaying with you again
in smoke rings and blush puffs, this night mean
knowing it will end us because there is no end
of us or end of anything but we are not allowed
to think or learn because we are only allowed
each other, allowed to say real words when drunk
is on our breaths, between our breaths, between
our breasts, between any and all things where beauty
is born, the words you came from, the words
you were born from, words like brunette and ovary,
words that you blow in my ear, scented pink like
how it feels to wake up next to you sober.

Week 14: entry 1:From Bridgette Byrd’s “After Gazing at the Rain”
“About the scar he said It’s right here and the story was written on his side like a flower. She watched their slippage like an inward astronomer on the evidence of pain. She woke up to feel their fingers locked…”
I woke to find your fingers broken by picking flowers on repeat she loves me loves me not she loves me loves me loves me but nothing belongs to the lost cigarette behind green plumes. I was or you might have been drinking cherry coke in faux French and your accent was music a sexy metaphor to ears that did not know better or did not know anything. music is not talkative though not gracious or hard. Do you have the power to light a diamond? to flash like a disposable camera? to be a cigarette without a filter like the last one? Where did the hunger go? Behind couches next to Jesus hiding because he never did want to be found only remembered like baseball players like Paris Hilton like everyone I never wanted to get to know any better. You need never turn to the lollipop guild, the lollipop guild, the lollipop guild. They never answer the phone. They only attend frat parties.

Entry 2: From those last one-line poems of Byrd’s – “On hanging onto a denounement she said If there is no end to this story I shall tie another flower to the narrative.”
There is no end to this story so I shall tie another razor blade to the window. I know you are attracted. A quarter of weed will buy you a tall cup of skim milk in this one-trick-pony town but you cannot buy it here and if you do it will not fit into the shopping cart because there are no wheels. Her shorts in the cereal aisle rode up her shorts rode up her shorts to show the sweat stain in her butt crack. The boy said I will dry clean your heart but I told him to stop to not say so much to the man behind the curtain. I told him not to brush so hard after flossing that way that his teeth would never be white anyway that he was stained with the love of exhaustion. I was comfortable rolling the shopping cart filled with your cement clogs into the piles of boxes overpriced what they call snacks but what she calls disgusting. Why is it so dark and the floor is made of clay? I melted with Artax. He was a white horse. And now I have killed him.


Week 15:
Since we didn't have a specific poet this week I am riffing off Kim Addonizio since she's my favorite. Evah.
Entry 1: from Kim Addonizio’s “Forms of Love” - "I love everything about you except your hair./ If it weren't for that I know I could really, really love you."
I broke up with my first boyfriend ever because
he got a haircut. All I remember is coming to school
and seeing this boy look wrong, look like he a problem,
like a mistake, like the haircut gave him away, no more
mystery or charm, no more wit or good handwriting-
which was, of course, my favorite thing. His hair
probably did not even look good long but I don’t think
that was the point. When he cut his hair, I passed him
a note, made him cry during lunch and that was the first
real heartbreak I caused, first boy I hated when I saw him
cry, first time I never wanted to see somebody ever again,
and for good reason: tears make people turn to trolls,
warped faces and he already hated all the music I liked,
his eyebrows in a frenzy of furrow, wrinkled forehead
and puppy dog eyes- I am not going to feed you, Fido,
not going to entertain you with flushing the toilet fifty
times a day just so you can watch, I will flush it once,
when necessary, and I will gladly watch you squirm.


from “Happiness After Grief” “feels like such a betrayal: the hurt not denied, not pushed away, but gone entirely for that moment you can’t help feeling good in, a moment of sudden, irrational joy over nothing of consequence, really, which makes it all somehow seem even worse. Shouldn’t happiness be the result of some grand event, something adequate to counter that aching, gaping chasm that opened when… But, no: it’s merely this: there goes our little neighbor, running barefoot, no pants, fox stole wrapped around her shoulders.”
Around my mother’s neck is her dead mother’s string of
leftovers, the things that weighed her down. My grandmother,
the thoughtful woman she was, left my mother these things,
bills and molding cheese in her fridge, and a cat, Tiger, who
was too old to learn to love anybody but my mean old grandma
who is dead now, because she died alone. Her funeral played
traditional Swedish music that I nearly choked not to laugh at,
but my dad cried even though I think he used to hate her
because she locked my sister up in a dark bathroom but of course
there are monsters and toilet paper is not nice but she was
not a nice lady, and I mean that. She liked me but she
forgot how to love my mom, never loved her maybe, at least
not as much as my dumb uncle or rich aunt, good people
with bad intentions, but when my grandma died only my mother
cared, only my mother listened to her dead wishes, only one
with a gaping chasm where she should’ve been given a heart
but I think the wizard forgot, forgot like my mom never will
like my grandma never forgave, like people can only do one
or the other, never both, the good feelings like pants that
are too tight or too loose or missing a button, like the ones
my grandma knew how to push on my poor mother, like to tell
my mom she was going to be okay one day, like my mom was
still not enough, like she was still in middle school, the first kid
with braces in her whole city almost, crooked teeth to ruin
an otherwise perfect smile.

Junkyards - Weeks 11, 12, 13, 14

Week 11
“Wednesday happens seven times a week.” –Charles Bauch
Sunshine in the park (talking about kisses on the stomach, not actual sunshine in the park)
I had a dream you called me and said you were moving to Colorado to live alone and grow a read beard. –a text message from me to my friend Ryan…
“Well, now time passed and now it seems everybody's having them dreams. Everybody sees themselves walkin' around with no one else. Half of the people can be part right all of the time, some of the people can be all right part of the time. But all the people can't be all right all the time… I think Abraham Lincoln said that. 'I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours,' I said that." –Bob Dylan, Talkin’ World War III Blues
“I’m in my room without pants on.” –Bbram.
12
“Let the silkworm die, let it die, as in fact it does when it has completed the work which it was created to do. …And now let us see what becomes of this silkworm, When it is in this state of prayer, and quite dead to the world, it comes out a little white butterfly.” -St. Teresa of Avila in The Interior Castle
"Feelings of ease, intensity, power, well-being, financial omnipotence, and euphoria pervade one's marrow. But, somewhere, this changes. The fast ideas are far too fast, and there are far too many; overwhelming confusion replaces clarity. Memory goes. Humor and absorption on friends' faces are replaced by fear and concern. Everything previously moving with the grain is now against-- you are irritable, angry, frightened, uncontrollable, and enmeshed totally in the blackest caves of the mind. You never knew those caves were there. It will never end, for madness carves its own reality." — Kay Redfield Jamison (An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness)
“I mean, how many cats can wear boots? Honestly?” –Shrek… in Shrek 2
“I’m think I’m bored without you.”
"But nothing is so strange when one is in love (and what was this except being in love?) as the complete indifference of other people." -Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
13
“I’m never as good as when you’re there.” Almost Famous
“All the wax was melting on the trees... He would crawl on balconies, climb everywhere. Do anything for her... My Danny boy. Thousands of birds. The tiniest birds adorned her hair... Everything was golden... One night the bed caught fire... He was handsome, and a very good criminal... We lived on sunlight and chocolate bars... It was the afternoon of extravagant delight... Danny, the Daredevil... Candy the blessing... The day's last rays of sunshine cruise like sharks..." –from the movie Candy
“I think this red bull is broken.” –Bbram.
“I almost wish we were butterflies…”
The sound of you is the smell of hydroponic pot

week 14
“…constantly assaulted by outside voices.” –Brigitte Byrd
“I understand each word but I don’t understand them together.” –Brigitte Byrd
“Some people are just… necessary.” –Matthew Sherling
“And all I found was this bottle…” –Mackenzie Garrot
“What was left to betray?” –Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Free Write Entries Week 10

Entry 1: This is a riff off a poem from Miracle Fruit by Aimee Nezhukumatathil which is the book Davidson let me borrow... from the poem "Origin of the Milky Way"
"I can't stop staring at the right-hand corner/ of the painting,and I am reminded of the man/ I miss, five hundred miles away."

The man I miss, 10 states or 2439.19 miles away, according to
Google Maps which only ever fails us when we're 10 inches apart,
if that, or if at all, when he gets mad we both get quiet, me
drivers seat with clenched fists, all the bad things pent up
in finger tips like they have been since i was six, you can't yell
at me, i tell him in a voice same volume as dean ween
humming through sound waves, but i can't stop staring at him out of the corner
of my eye like a painting, too loud to speak until he remembers
it's not my fault, touches my hand or head or whatever i let him
touch and sings along with words in context insulting but from his mouth
a hymn of forgiveness, the words don't matter, only his voice
like steam coming from bathroom doors, fogs up my car windows
so i can't stay sorry and when we finally get there,
wherever that place was, he never says sorry, only sings
his broken dylan to me in the voice that keeps me calling
over timezones. it's hard to drive like that, he notes, and i, back in the corner
of my kitchen when i'm small, stained and rented, nod my head to the song
hot on his breath open palms around steering wheel, regrip and release,
when i remember it's not his fault. i can't blame him
for clenched fists. he's never even seen my kitchen.

Entry 2: from "Cheese Curds: The First Time" by Aimee Nezhukumatathil ... I'm putting these as free-writes??? I hope that's okay.
"How I love/ the grab and pull for something you can't name, only/ knowing you want more. The thinness in your voice/ as you try to describe all the breads and heaps/ of fresh beans just waiting to be snapped./ I have not yet mentioned the squeak in your teeth."

All Wisconsin really gave me was hangovers
from cheese curds and company, guilt on my pant
leg the whole drive home, that's thirteen hours
when Beth drives eating Reese's puffs and my tiny
dancer of ten years makes bad raps from Shotgun
from the worst trip of our lives, orphaned by people
who aren't our parents, given up like babies
on church steps, unwanted property we left after bagels
and an offer we couldn't refuse but decided not to take,
a hotel room for a night just to get us out of here.
Our friend drives a truck, for a cheese factory
but for "a place for friends," we have only met
locked doors and bad luck.
The whole state is my favorite joke
and my worst nightmare, false sense
of belonging, temporary as cheap nail polish:
we needed a change in color, you see.
Swatting gnats by a frozen lake, he told me
he was sorry and i told him i didn't care,
i'd rather flip through his Playboys
than listen to his accent like carpet cleaning
sput fat complaints,
like that ingredient you regret in what
would have been perfect general tso's chicken,
the one that made us vomit after too much
whatever was in that thermos the night before.
People never know exactly what they want,
except every time we come back we know
we want cheese curds, desperate for the squeak
in your teeth you just can't get down south.

*note to sheshy if you read this, obviously inspired by read events and people but also it is just a freewrite aka reality on crack so keep that in mind... heh <33

Improv Entries Week 10

Entry 1: from Kathy Fagan's "Womb to Tomb Pantoum"
"She was born, like so many of us,/ With a monkey on her back./ Her family said, As long as she's healthy.../ And took them home in the car."

Have you heard about the World's Smallest Woman? Her title,
in all-caps, lucky to survive the womb and then she has
a baby! Jaw-dropped me and roomie watch the three-footer or less
while shoving oatmeal and Zaxby's into our mouths, respectively,
as she climbs into the front seat of a town & country, crawls
around the seat for a minute until she fits just right and the only thing
i can think clear is how tall that husband is. six plus, maybe seven
feet tall. You see, I got no qualms with the woman. I think I love
her, even. I can see how it would happen. But this guy is three times
her size, too tall to drive the car, too stupid to write full sentences,
has some mommy issues which I think are bigger than he says, does
not see how his hand writing, his long fingers, look like
what i scribbled in composition books in first grade, when all my Is
were dotted with, not hearts, too much, big and elaborate circles
over every statement of self, desperate for ms. wilbanks to see my eyes
in the pile of six year old attention deficits, some kind of other
mother i guess i thought was how it worked when you got to school,
thought she would adopt me if my marks were bigger than everyone
else's even though I was always too small. Well, i used to be.
And then this woman on my Discovery Health, attitude heavy and pantene
hair, was the world's smallest mom. She gives life to another like her,
although it wasn't genetic and i wonder how she felt when the baby
was her size.

Entry 1: again, from Kathy Fagan's "'69"
"Sex has turned us rich/ or dead or funny, but it turns nobody/ bad, as Sister Carol said I'd be/ if I kept mum. Love does that, Mr. C./ Inside. Love made a potty-mouth of me."

Love made a potty-mouth of me, didn't even say a curse
word till my seventeenth birthday, which by the way, you
forgot, too stoned to remember my birthday you walked
into my house with friends of both genders and no gift,
not even a hug or nice word just a why are so many people here? but that doesn't matter anymore.
What does matter is when all the people scattered
like cockroaches after picking up a cardboard box
they call home, i told you it's my fucking birthday
cried like a baby, not because you forgot but because
i said the bad word that would turn me into my mother,
i'm sure. Love taught me that. Love taught me how to cry.
Love taught me how to lie, how to cheat, how to speak
badly of the ones I said I loved, like love was a thing
not just a word. Love didn't love me back and love is just
four words people put together when they need to know
whatever kind of bad feeling's they've got are real.
Love is an invisible man. But sex is the girl next door.
Sex taught me how to walk in heels, get dinner for free,
how to put on lipstick and how to wash my face before bed.
Sex taught me everything school teachers forgot, the best
word I know, the only word in the world that make sense
other than toothpaste or gum, words that matter and mean
exactly what they say, something love never quite figured out.

Junkyard Week 10

Leave It to Beaver Syndrome
shell-shock
"Sometime during my life, toilet paper became bathroom tissue." -George Carlin
"To forget would be to let them be born again in another form." -Sig-Weavie's character in The Village, which I had to watch fo' classe
Fear doesn't deserve us.
"Or dreams about my talking cat telling me where she is. Behind my mom's toilet or writing letters to me from Mexico." -KAITLIN MARIE BARNES.

Free Write Entires Week 9

Entry 1:
I was driving into the sunset and decided to keep going, broke
through some wall of light or another to ride waves, solar flares
we like to call Mama, Ma not familiar with these sorts of things,
don't have time to bother with this scientific shit she'd tell us
by the cookie co's oven, baking obesity into the mouths of babes,
reality is when the sun burns out like the oven light
mama will still be there, shoving sugar in our mouths
and mantras in our brains - and if they ever try to hurt ya,
she says, why you just get em with a lock in a sock. it's considered
a deadly weapon but we don't give a damn. we like she's already
there, beside us, slanging tube socks into faces of people
too rude to just ask nicely. seek and ye shall find, He said
and she told us. Mama told us that she met Jesus there right in a jail cell,
locked up for twenty for selling the drug that carved the wrinkles
in her hands, her hands older than she could ever look, she's no
good for much of anything but this: advice we'll pretend we forget
but write down to keep as jokes but when she told me not to burn down
bridges cus you'll be leaving the trolls homeless, i remembered.
All of us glued together by her smoke breaks
and deep breaths, our family built from her back wood
accent and carved by her reminders that there ain't nobody
that will love you more than the people who already do.
Mama got fired and we all came back anyway, some karmic
betrayl of the only person who ever knew
what she was talking about, the one who saved us,
the Jesus we met behind cookie caked counters
and in duck decored kitchens during our own
last supper: green beans and fried chicken, baby. you can count on that.

Entry 2:
Fun was the first word I could spell. Three letters
neat consonant, vowel, consonant like the kind we were having
big plans to go nowhere but exactly where we were, in wonderland,
birthday parties and lego sets (even though we were just three
girls), dreams or maybe not because all of it was the same
thing, being awake or being inside was all colors tied
around my wrist like limp balloons. And I was ten out
of nowhere, begged my mom to let me skip that birthday
and just be eleven now, forget those days - who needs
an extra year, mommy? Mommy got shorter and Fun gets louder
when you get turned up in years or days or seconds even
minute by minute until you are done listening to music
and just want to be alone. F-U-N, three letters for one
word, also necessary in funk where the fun leads
when you just forget to have it.

side note: the first word i could actually spell was green, just fyi.

Improv Entries Week 9

Entry 1: "To remember/ is to murmur, mourn, be/ mindful of things worthy/ of remembrance: it could/ put the fear of God/ into you, but what could God/ be afraid of..." from First Life of St. Francis III by Angie Estes

What is God afraid of? Clowns, like everyone else.
Snuggles the Bear on television commercials, talking
into drive-thru windows or going to front doors, committment
to girls who are prettier than him, failing an exam or a class or
Himself. Dreams where you fall for miles and miles until you hit
rock bottom or bottoming out of a bottomless pit or falling on your bottom
in front of everyone when I was in preschool dressed in gingham
holding a fake dog and wondering why they were all laughing,
glowing hands singing songs about Jesus, His reflection-
now a vampire, obligatory conversation on car rides home,
getting His period the day of His first beach date, the dentist,
the mall, the people, nothing but fear itself.
We know what scares God most because we all look
just like him. The chorus sings: I do not Exist, I do not Exist, I do not Exist.

Entry 2: You Can Tell "if fish are fresh by the way/ their bodies arch," by Angie Estes
if fish are fresh, which these aren't
by the way the smell you can tell, no fresh
fish or food period - we're all going
hungry tonight and every night, our bodies
aching for others and fresh flesh to hold
onto before floating off to dreamland
or elsewhere, no where but here baby, nowhere
at all - their bodies and mine lined up
like sushi or shoes she lines in her closet
in order, ROY G BIV, knows silver is always
at the end of the row because it's the lining
of her life like that on her jacket she borrowed
or stole from her sister she used to hate.
The arch of her foot was always higher than mine
my body no match for hers, delicate as sugar castles
they have to move from table to another on food network,
that part I'll never understand, who makes this shit
up anyway? my dad bellows from the kitchen, furrowed
scooping banana flavored ice cream into a ninja turtle
bowl i swear my uncle gave me because he used to borrow
us like we were shoes, fresh little fish he could
catch and release when he was done teasing.

Junkyard Entries Week 9

"It was the frogs that taught me." -Christopher Anastoos (professor at UWG).. from this essay he wrote (obviously...) that Cara had to read for his class.
"I have been nothing but myself since the day I was born." Big Fish
"Even intimacy comes from the magazines." -R. Hendricks
Sexting is a crime in space
"For the glitter was gone from the eyes of the judge and jury, and, for the moment, they were men again, and knew they were men." -from "The Devil and Daniel Webster" by Stephen Vincent Benét

Improv Entries Week 8

Entry 1: From Miscegnation by Natasha Trethewey
"I know more than Joe Christmas did. Natasha is a Russian name-/ though I'm not; it means Christmas child, even in Mississippi."

M-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i, letter by letter shamed and slurred into a microphone
knowing he had one too many one-twos, and it's too bad he didn't have some paper
or a pen or one of those memories that can see stuff, not just know it, but I'm not
to blame. I look down at my shoes R on one L on the other, in case you forget
my dad huffed a stretch back upward, my embarrassment like a beached whale in our
living room this morning but i remember every word he tells me, told me what he wanted
before he dies, already been alive too long, old enough to remember everything
i never got to see, see, that kid, he doesn't have this dad with the songs, the jokes
that help you remember how to spell state names or place mats with president faces,
this guy with a blessing they call bipolar he taught us girls
everything about all the things we'll never need to know. as that kid sinks
into himself i want to let him know what i know: my dad said when i was six
that if you can't spell elvis presley,
you'll never need to know anything about mississippi.

Entry 2: from Natasha Trethewey's Photograph: Ice Storm, 1971
"Why the rough edge of beauty? Why/ the tired face of a woman, suffering/ made luminous by the camera's eye?"

The edge of beauty is located at the corner of 16
and a panic attack, most beautiful after shed tears
over a boy, green lit ocean surrounding a black
island on her face as the older woman brushes back
loose strands, says other fish in the sea, but she knows
you don't fall in love with fish. you fall in love
with photographs, phone calls, that birth mark
on the back of his neck, the smell of coffee
because he's older, the suffering that comes
with giving it up or the fight that continues
when you won't, mom's warnings within you
illuminated when you say no to drugs and sex
and never the camera and his face when you don't,
tired eyes sunk back into a cherub face, raspberries
line the nape of your neck because he taught you
that you had that body part in the first place.
at the edge of beauty, all the lights are red
because the only thing there when you turn 17
is rabbit hole in the middle of the street
filled with knowledge of good and nothing ever is.

Freewrite Entries Week 8

Entry 1:
I'm starting to have a brain fart- a bad start? i wonder if my mind is empty, have we said all there is to say? same worry of every worry wart who writes a word or six million a year, letters only twenty six to choose from, i write all my letters from them, i don't care how many words you say we've got because we've only got twenty six shapes that matter, twenty six responsible for everything we do, say, see, a bird or war, dad or mother, does it matter what we write if we can only write so much, nothing matters without math, 1+1 is Two, three letters later, what kind of math are we talking? i remember when i loved that boy (same as two) and our teacher with the cankles let her fat (same as two) dangle over sock ends and we all laughed all day because she was gross. but gross is five letters, one more than love, love one more than boy but same as girl, so who matters more? more is better if conditions are right, we like more goodness but i like more salt on everything. they tell me not to count the lines, that will just fuck you up but the thing is the only way i understand what i do is through the one thing i can't more than anything. when i add letter to letter to form a word like miss i make millions of one plus one, language from letter, and you are all missing my point. on skin, my fake paper, i write the two letters that make up all of you and in purple ink, i forge my own alphabet.

Entry 2: Actually... Rich wrote something in his junkyard this week regarding a urinal and unborn children... "Wouldn't it technically be the life of your unborn child that is in your hands? Thinking of it this way, what does your life being in your hands mean? Think about it." So this is kind of riffed off that idea. Can you riff an idea? Does that make sense?

Life is in your hands, she says,
first grade teachers' seminar and i think
how this same lady slept in my hotel room
two nights in a row now, this woman like Ceberus,
delicate when sleeping, dangerous when awake
calling upon life from the bellows of her groin,
tempted and taken to me like no woman
ever has before. I'm not charming but she came
back with me, followed me like a baby
after music, to lay me in thirty dollar
per night sea horse sheets stained
with dead babies or would have beens
if you're an optimist, steal the covers,
drink my three dollar gas station wine,
and put her life in my hands instead
of how it usually goes, me alone with Alex
Trebec and his temporary desciples, 7:30
every night for years now, eating a cardboard
diet and watching something like life
fail over and over again in my small hands.
The words hang from her mouth like drool
as she catches my glare, unimpressed
and bored at the thought of whatever
we've done or what i haven't done
right because i am ascribed inferior
not by the Bible but a bigger Truth:
women cry because they have already won.
Ceberus had three heads, and I only have two.