4B 110

I wanna hear the way the air sounds, when a set of words are said. Wanna look up at the stars and feel their knowledge for all the days ahead. 

The memories still gloriously looping - going back to - still looking up into - the silver walls, late in the night....as the room burns with the sizzle that equipment lights make after the film shoot is over. 

Zapping the frenzied fragments you remember between the leaps up&down stairs --- making sure everything is just right, yeah it's all right -- clad all in black and letting the night just roll over... 

Best part of this mad young life of ours. Let me lean back out of frame and just smile at creating a world inside a room.

And then it's slow-dancing in the room to say goodbye. Then it's the smell of champagne and sitting with your team one last team. We're wrapped and life is good.
Driving home barely before this brown city awakes.


When we think of it - in that style of messages - there's not enough I could ever say to you! All this great world in our artist minds.

We're just letters and 'ports. I'll meet you there every time. Let's go where the bricks contain red-infused bar vibrations of weekend regulars and wood floors from decades past. The fellow puppeteers of this generation can be found there sometimes, talking so close of cinema - that their lips, they almost touch. The words, the stories, are just so savory. Sometimes more than the waiting kiss. 

Never running out of the passion for life. And the pints, they help sometimes.
Smiling so wide, like the miles.

It's all there, waiting to be grasped.  I can build for them the most marvelous sets for lust. Or I can whisper to you a lullaby about what life's all about. 

Just looking up into it all, and hey, I don't have a name for the way something new+old feels like better breathing. Think the seasons of the mind, they're falling in love. Shouldn't we all? 

What's the choice you'd make between the two? All our dreams, they're astounding. Electrifiying the movements. The waves, they churn. Take a swim in the midnight cotton sheets.

Won't it snow already? Craving the magic. We all need a taste of the season.

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Lessons

So much of the time I get lost down tangled trails. Lose myself in the pattern of random failures & successes in the branches. 

Those tiny thoughts, that just settle in the quiet un-resolve, into your day - that vague annoyance preventing you from sleeping - but you can't remember exactly where it started. 

Where you missed a step. It seemed so steady falling asleep into someone. 

Wonder if I rewrote someone else's words they'd mean something new. Wonder why, if that's --- hey, why you're repeating old lovers thinking the same? 

Aren't we all a little aimless when no ones home at night?

There are such moments of love that come -
when all the faraway friends send letters and trinkets and we yearn for one another's success.
We care and we embrace, and we support.
I cherish it so. 

When the morning tea is sipped slowly in a comforting place, it's a new concept. When the new puppy comes barreling into your lap, and the breeze runs through honeybee curtains and it's easy living!

When we come together for nights with faces too long unseen, eager with words.

When you stayed up laughing till dawn.

We're all plans and fervent longings…. grasping for an ancestry of our own creations. 

And so they flutter - our plans. 

And who knows where it's supposed to go when it doesn't fit for the other person. 

You shove your hands into your pockets and hit the city streets to feel the pulsations of tracks, and other lonely souls. 

It was so easy, so I thought. It was effortless, unlike the others, old friend. It was friends telling us to stop looking so happy. And then it went silent. 

Static. cssshwwwlksfdfsd. Can you hear me? 

Oh well, I'll watch the way it departs. The feverish, aching, duel of pacing farther away from the ones we love. 

Wrong again. We wake up tomorrow and cast another spell. 

The Knowledge of the Bay

They call me by that old phrase - my brother he calls me a rolling stone….when it is I guess that its noticeable how I grow restless ---  when it was, that I was soaring back and forth the same half the country on airplanes and….. and, well - so many unfinished sentences. 

And now I've purged all the dirty past from myself (again) to the point of existing clean. My lungs, my liver, my conscious,  my weary raveling magical stars twinkling inside…..breathing so quietly, walking slowly to the low water's edge in order to soak up the pure knowledge of the green Bay waters. 
To swim, and stare at the sparkling waves, 
and have nothing but that for a summer. 
My illness squeezing the screaming head off the temptation for any wandering path of former vices.  

Coming back home to the very origin of where first every feeling of peace became. 

A few nights ago I found myself as one sixth of a round dinner table - on a square wooden porch - with a single glass of cold white wine easing my throat -- as the summer bugs called out and the steam rose about us from the grass below. And I sat back and smiled, peering over the steaming pot of chocolate fondue….and felt so good. Oh, how funny - this 5th? existence of a place, and a time. 

The secret desirous pleasure of moving states. 

What's my point tonight? Oh hell there's just open waters in my mind these days without direction. As the body rebirths into a new phase of healthy --- and I feel the first tickles of unsettling, wonderful magnitude of possibility -- of a great adventure lying just ahead. 

But calm the beating thunder for just a little longer. Keep it at peace.  

Rest now before you accelerate. {}

Ohh…. because it can accelerate in a way that no momentary make believers could ever imagine. When it heats, and curls and rolls (like the incense)….the rolling rushes of it…. the majesty of an ocean in the depth of nights by the full moon. 

And somewhere far off -- the celestials, they're sparkling so fine - they'll align - and no once notices. 

But I'll look up to the stars visible suddenly, and fill my face with mischief. 

Hearty and goodness kind of mischief.
It's entirely different, I knew just a glimpse of it once. 

{ love } 

Coming back to life soon

Aren't you always chasin' what you just left behind, and isn't the tide just coming in and out too far away…and all the moons they're sparkling' so fine as they align and no one notices...







.

Home Again.

And just like that we're hollering into the nighttime again, feeling the early summer bead down our skin. Feeling the movement of lips, spill with words and rhythms of earnest desire. Everywhere laughter and antique wood patterns.




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Like the railroad car

Even the rain is lookin for passion tonight - hitting the window ledge by the bed so absent-mindedly - tsic… tsic…….taack…tsick………tsh… -- as I let every muscle ease into a tired numbness with one arm over the edge lying on my stomach in the cool dark. Or at least I was till these damn words came strumming the back itches of my nostalgic gut-thoughts. 

I keep hearing that I'm telling eerie things in my sleep again -- waking the ears down the hall when I visit other places. And it feels like a mythic Thing (to be kept secret) hiding underneath that I can't seem to converse back with to find out the warnings, or maybe - the beautiful spins of incohorent words…

The mysteries it could open.

And all the while I'm reminding myself over and over again of the stimulating, passing images of the past few weeks - the smells, the waves at turn-of-dusk, the heat from the grass --- 

….an abandoned, hidden railroad car spotted at a turn I'd turned by 10 times before, in the tall tall grass by the water's edge…

….a full-grown-man bunny rabbitt sadly handing me a piece of paper in the smoke-hazed outside of a tiny amber bar with a group of filmmakers. 

All these tellings of ourselves-past, that don't really tell anything too far. 

Don't ever - cross too far into what actually could be more terrifying. What could shake the windows. What could rattle a heart, and body, into places that leave marks forever later. Rattle yourself into the consuming passion again of another soul. 

Those are the longings, the rememberings, your body feels when it feels so hot out. It goes through all its own shadows before the mind ever allows to do the same. It feels the things it wants anew. 

It calls on what it whispers. 

And all the while its lost into the safe current-ed nights and isn't heard. 

A Suitcase

I had the words just a second ago - I'm always doing that, when a feeling storms itself in my insides, feeling so sweet and filling every vein like its whiskey and sweat and every warm memory that reminds you time is nothing….before it flees away finding me unfitting for the Truth just yet. 

But it was all ending and it just felt so strange - the great expansiveness about to hit. Sitting in the comfortable routine that no longer belonged to me. It'd be gone tomorrow but my mind was resting too much to remember. 

The worried, great rumbling El track- line the last two years had made kept stretching itself like a rubber-band waiting to snap back - waiting for that time when it all feels tangible one last time. When maybe - I've got just the right words to feel the finality. 

Feel the meaning of the boxes - holding every fragile possession, of every delicate hope from longs' ago's…
While I've got two strange burns on my neck. 

The frenzy already creeping back of my old lamentations - because the same old words now mean poetry again -- and the smoky evening under the stars talking with hands and souls and brokenness have become an urgent craving once again. 

The cobblestones, I'd like to trace them after the rain, with fingertips, as bended knees dirties the fabrics of my dress but that won't matter.

No matter any of it. Those old worries. It's beautiful the spontaneity - the full embrace of just one thought - that you hope treacherously people to feel like that. That creates the goings… of all the art I know is still waiting to purge itself and create a devastating smear of beauty. 

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Parting/Hello Words

That big window frame is speckled with thick raindrops - that instead of dripping, have just forced themselves to stay in one place. 

They've taken to the view maybe, and I'm taken with seeing the same view now all spotted and smeared, reflecting itself back to me countless times over in eccentric patterns.

And every time I forget it's raining - the lightening silently cracks - followed later by the sound. 

And I feel in that moment all the strength of missing every grand emotion there's been in my life. 

Just the emotion of it. 

The power of the lightening, --

I once kept it like a play pal, and danced with it in coquettish eloquence... 

Feeling every single cooling glob, as it dropped - as it hit my tingling and so-red cheeks - barefoot in the middle of a street that I once thought had every answer there was to find. 

Oh, all the thoughts we (my friends & I) once had. I feel them as one abstract shadow, one strange memory that may have never been -- an outline of something on the wall just so, as it slips back into….

As it all slips back into a later place. 

Fitting now into a closed drawer of softened heavy wood - that sound it makes as you push it closed - it makes more sense to hide it these days. 

Away, away…let's start anew this time.... (especially) now that the place - by the shelf, by the sink - where everyone fell in love for fleeting seconds, is a stranger's. 

Now that it's right before eveything's about to change.

And instead you're shaking your head smiling thinking of a new memory - when the heat rushed back so urgently - and the kiss was so surprising - that you laughed at the force reviving within. 

That force it takes to create for the ones who you love and know, the most illustrious circumstances that the real world can stand to allow. In due time, with the proper magic.

This life you know, is pretty great.



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Mississippi

.


Think I'm feelin' for the road again - and maybe why, maybe why - yeah that's why my body won't sleep again, my stomach's all fillin' and every sweet word I can find follows for a couple days before it fades...Maybe the bayou'd Mississippi can cure it or sweat it






.

Blinds drawn tightly closed against the sunlight -
Reading the most beautiful words.

Oh, the warmth.

The dreams coming true.



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Change.

Do you feel that? That hungry peace that settles - when there's tea brewing on the stove, and the heavy windows are cracked to let the city in, and suddenly the neighborhood below is inhabited again, …and all the dust was just wiped away clean...

Wearing just a long white cotton shirt and weary feet. 

That season out there is starting to change already. 

That season…. ohhh, yeah yeah yeah - guess you're remembering over there that I'll be gone by the end of it. 

By summertime I'll be a memory. 

I'll be the girl that built the striped Tent for hiding in, and where will it go? 

Cause sometimes, just sometimes - you're still the man hopping up and down on the bed to wake me up before the first alarm. You're still racing across North Ave beach at night, while the sand is gasping out the last of August - to me. 

And we're still five paces away from anything lasting.

This whole cold city is far from anything I could name - with all the times it's broken 
my heart, 
my shoes,
my thoughts.
All the times just the mere sight of the skyline
at night from a taxi, or the office window, or the El tracks - has made
all the possibilities soar and soothe… 

It's gonna be, gonna be, - it's gotta be, - the time to close it all up now.
The time for all the finales (and beginnings) -
when the expiration date makes everything grow anew some strange version of itself...

Some strange version, I've always liked the idea of it, fermenting the joy -- it ain't so scary anymore darlin' when you're giving it up...

So let's have one more drink - that last one - 
hell, let's have as many as we can drink up. To drink us all in again. 

Then I'll put my feet on the dashboard above all the boxes, take one last look around - and smile into the horizon of highways and disappearing lakes...

<3. 

:)

I can feel the renaissance that's coming entirely. 
And I'm so thankful, 
I so understand - the hibernation now.




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The Step Before

As soon as those glass doors swooiish-chd close behind me, and the whole glassy airport unfolds -- like a map I never put back together right, -- I stutter in my step. 

There's a beat -- where I pretend to fiddle with the fold on my boarding pass, where my heart tightens at such a lyrical strength that I think all the passengers can see. 

That brilliant rise follows - where I bite a smile, and walk into the faceless tangle of lines - where I bury my mind into the tangle -- of making a "shhh" motion to an old friend in the darkness…as the sun starts to climb…and we both realize we've been smiling. 

The necessary calm locked slightly upon it.

The deep and slow rhythm. 

The way he puts the covers to his nose and always blinks awake, falsely startled.

Ohhh, 
and where do those trains and planes and buses 
really take me anyhow? 

Sometimes, all the time, it feels like they just circle me around
the same place that my head is so stuck in...

The time before the summertime jump off the bridge, 
into the familiar greenish water. 

The locking up of the diagonally-paned shutters - the protectiveness 
of a decision made. 

A good and right and red-brick decision. 

Cause I can see myself choosing There. 

In the farmhouse-like 

townhouse under the bridge…I'd make the narrow garden 

round back all covered in foggy lights and ivy and fairy tales of friends. 

With the cellar that's covered in scraps of paper and remnants of paint. 

The blue upstairs where everyone's beloved vanity-dresser lives. 

And the big green couch - 

when you walk in the door and throw your rain boots in the basket by the fireplace.




It's all just waiting. And it's just being carried 'round with me. 

And I can't stop the excitement. 

And I can't stop yelling at time. 

Headphones: Florence & the Machine's "I've got the Love", Swell Season's "Low Rising"

Chasing Planes

just found this hidden today, from May 2010:


You know I was sitting on the porch swing with my bare legs placed high on the chains, and across the summer-paleblue sky ripped an airplane. And I chuckled to myself, feeling nostalgic. And I reached my right hand out and held on to either wing for a couple kilometers....

And I flickered open my far long-tired eyes and there were trees blurring past in such a rhythm that it felt like accelerating and sighing all at once





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Poem - "It's Cosmic"

This is quite an oldie of mine, but an old wintery memory with an old friend


Have you heard the sounds made - 
When a thrown log hits the iced coating on a lake?
It bounces frozen wood fibers- into molecules of coming snow - 
It bounces against the seasonal death of our other-selves, 
And all that "yes" can make. 


When it was that our limbs faced opposite lanes;
In the centerfold of a midnight street - 
In the forested pit of what it is, I'll still use - still have - 
After we've sat for seconds so much longer.
'Cause seconds move far away...


From kissing the taste of merlot on eager lips; 
The molded words that form broken bodies.
Phasing one December night into tropical palms - 
Clasped upon the distance;
Lie back on the cracked dark concrete.


"It's cosmic" he said as he looked to the stars - 
And I traced the line that he made,
Across the ravenous terrain of a full-moon heart;
A folklore farewell with crochet goal posts - 
On the blunt head - BLONK - And there we were - 
Rolling delicacies of nothing serious








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Mute with thoughts

I feel the distance now that there is between the graves of my ancestors and myself. The bones of my lates.
The place where my namesake lies.
And it wears with guilt.
When I feel them long for me.
When I feel it's time to go home.

So I've grown mute lately with thoughts.
Such thoughts, and all the others...
Far too many to converse much.
It lingers on my search for replies and repertoire.
The short years, they've really changed me.
The old letters to myself taped up; I hardly notice them...

Crack. The lightening shudders with - a thunderstorm in January.
The strangeness of it.
The plains must be thinking of the same past.
And of the coming spring too soon.
And I must be long dis-acquainted with my mind.



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Shifting the time again

Sometimes this city just gets me - in that great way - walking the quarter block over the icy bridge West,
as the cold wind
whips by with the people;
and the snow is falling…..

And sometimes this city just gets at me - and aches all hollow -
when everyone is packing up
again
and shifting about in ways I just don't quite understand.

And it's time to go.

Cause I twitch
the same way. 

And seek to throw it all in a truck
again
and just drive.
Drive
across the heavy weight of this country, teaching
my new eyes what they learned once.
And then forgot.

So if you wake with me tomorrow I might just whisper
"I'm leaving" .

Guess we're figuring it's just killing time.