4 of 10 [a little late in coming]

5:00am
My alarm awakes before me
--as is its habit.
It has no tact
Just that constant war cry,
Like an ambulance or squad car
All lit up with lungs yelling for a race
Or chase.

But the blankets...
They wrap around my limbs
Like stolen goods;
And sleep comes like a thief.
I am just a bystander
yet the alarm holds me
Always in the searchlight.

Hands in the air!
Reaching for the sky
--and my towel.
Apparently, I have aided and abetted
A criminal.
That...and I assaulted an officer of the law
As I hit snooze and, eventually,
OFF.

Now I am to be escorted
Downtown.
I stumble down the stairs as though drunk.
Breath tested for alcohol.
None found.
(But I should brush my teeth anyway.)
That will wait. No time.

I am hurried into a small room
With a bright light
And a loud fan
And told to strip.
A splash of warm water in my face
And a set of clean clothes later...

And I am a responsible citizen again:
Ready to contribute to society.

3 of 10

Tell me the secrets
That led to your falling.
Whisper the words
That first captured your heart .

Did they make you feel weightless?
Important?
Or Free?

Oh, Love, please tell me
What spell was spoken,
Which promise pronounced,
That ever could have made you leave?

Words are deceivers
--No, worse!
Words are mercenaries.

Love, have you not seen,
Words march for truth and guile alike
Without one helpful glance
To give you a clue?

Tell me the secrets.
Whisper the words.
Speak them aloud.

Hold them firmly besides truth.
See if they shrink and fold
Or grow bolder.
See if the fall was worth it.

2 of 10 (yet unedited. forgive the haste.)

I have always loved the stars.
When I was not yet 3 times
around our star, the sun,
my parents packed up the car
and the kid.
We drove from south to north,
sleeping under the stars in sleeping bags,
tarps and, occasionally, the Honda.
And I, not yet 3,
could not imagine a more beautiful ceiling
or a more comfortable bedroom.
I was already in love,
already lovesick,
already hopelessly in over my head.
I have never really recovered from that.
Perhaps, I gave too much too fast
to my first love.
Years bring growth and tears
or else growth brings tears and years.
I have never really figured it out.
I still love roads, and traveling,
And always the stars.
Some years since,
many more travels around our star,
I have lost much love,
Loved and lost,
and found yet more love.
But I have never lost the stars.

1 of 10

If I had a super power,
I think it would be something obscure
Like metaphor.

That is how I conquer my days anyway
--if you can call it conquering.

The secret is to never
EVER
look life in the eyes
but never look away.

Always call it by name
as if you know it
and all of its tricks.

I have made up so many names
for the faces life has made at me
but they keep working.

Names,
they soften the edges.

Metaphors,
they sound like names.

The tricks I play
as I spin the only language I know
are the only defense I have,
the only barrier between me and powerlessness.

Brain: In Pictures. [Translation Accompanied]

I have exploded.

This morning, this afternoon, my brain has finally erupted, unclenched, and given me hell.

I, I am trying to pack. 

I am more than a little excited to go home for a spell, even if it will be a cold one.

But my brain, my poor brain. It wants to leave nothing unfinished. I had to give the old man a face lift...

He's not done yet . I need to teach him to smile with old man mischief.
Oh, and eyelashes would be a kindness.

And I had to go through my class notes and keep what I liked...

oh, composites class

Then I had to take pictures of the remaining art that I have been ignoring...

edge of the world

and projects that have [temporarily] failed:

And food art...can't leave that out.

So there you go. Eventually, I plan to assemble poetry and stories which have hitherto been under wraps and stuffed into whatever void is willing to hold them and hide them from my restless mind. As it is, I am due to be on a train in 3 hours and have a bit of progress to make between now and then.

Transitions. Life. Moving. Change.

I think I will leave those words on the virtual page for at least a day. Treat them as if they have ink that needs to soak in and dry on the page. There's been so much of all of that happening all around. It is a whole season in and of itself.

I want to write a poem with a central metaphor of plate-tectonics, another about painter's tape making my worlds make sense, one about my alarm sounding like a siren (which is actually just about done), one about limitations, and a few other's about nothing in particular. It is quite possible that a few of these may bleed over into each other. For that, I am excited. Until then: letting the words above dry. And yet, by the time you, invisible reader, find them... these words may be well past dry and much more towards stale.

This is what I am listening to today between one responsibility and another. It's all very interesting and only vaguely pertains to my ever continuing pursuit of trying to figure out what it means to be wholly human and live the life that a healthy functioning human being should. She has a tattoo which I have thought about getting ...or something similar to it; go figure. I like her talk though, especially the last few minutes.

Meanwhile, I have been hiding in coffee shops trying to study enough, leaving my computer at home. It is not my norm. I like to work from home when I am stressed. I like to come home to that safe place, shut out the world, and dig in my heels until I can push past and through whatever challenge is looming. Lately, however, my focus has waned. I am not trustworthy. I cannot stay home because I will cook, clean, talk to people, make art and all manner of other good rebellions will find me. Even now, as I type when I should be reviewing, I realize I am quite possibly misusing my time. My normal default of bookstores will not do either. I am sure I will be found in the arms of a book which has not the slightest thing to do with mechanics or airplanes.

And so the coffee shops find me awkwardly trying to recall what it is to order drinks that are always only three sizes but which are never called the same name. (I don't know if it's a tall, just give me 16 oz. of something hot...please.) Then there's the awkward turn around as I fumble to find a seat that is culturally acceptable (Portland is a city of misanthropic, space conscious people attempting to look intellectual... at a distance). I am incredibly out of practice.

I found myself, on one occasion, in a coffee shop that I had only been in one other time and that time belonging to a different life. It was sometime in my first few weeks of moving to Portland, to college, to this new life that I have made and grown so used to. I was sobbing. My RA was asking me about myself, trying to get to know me and finding herself ...in over her head. Even then, I could discern that she was in no way prepared for my tears or for the wounds which I then carried with me everywhere.

It was strange, is strange, to me to stumble upon such an isolated memory and to know that who I was then... is gone. And yet, I am still her. If anything, I am more her than I was then. I am who I was then only yet becoming. In the months and years that have filled the space (only 2 years...and yet a whole 2 years!), very little of my externals have changed. I am doing what I said I would be doing. The things that made me ache, bleed, and ... sob are still very much a part of my life, without much change in shape. When I am honest, they can still bring tears; but they are not the same tears I poured out in that coffee shop. I do not know if I am capable of explaining the difference.

Most simply, I am not who I was. I am more myself and less my weakness. Perhaps it is in the gradual separation of pain and identity. It is easy to take a wound and make it your name because it is all that you can see and feel. It is much more difficult to hold pain in an open hand...to let it hurt and make you cry until it heals and dissipates. The latter takes a good deal more practice, band aids, and time.

creativity lapse and misanthropy.

Today, I've fallen between the cracks.
Today, I don't exist.
Today, I...


All I want is to believe that. I want to pack a bag of things I need to do and head to a book store, any book store with seating actually. But I doubt I would get anything done. So many unread voices sit on the shelves and I want to open each one and sit awhile. Mostly, I feel empty and want to fill myself up with the thoughts and ideas and longings of people I will never meet. I want to wade through their minds and keep what treasures I may find until I have enough materials to build.

Mostly, I do not want to do my homework or chores or, well, life as usual. I want to crawl between those cracks until time and deadlines and responsibility are words without meaning, dictators without power.

I promised myself that I would do some kind of art today, but I do not think I am able. The weight of work undone is yet too heavy, too distracting, too much. Even writing, I seem to write the same thing I have written before. Well, here it is, for better or worse:

-
Approach her gently.
Don’t make too many plans.
Don’t rely on your words for persuasion.
Make it a series of lovely actions.
Lovely to her, at least.
If you need help knowing,
If you cannot quite see
What her mind’s eye
And, indeed, her heart
Would call lovely...
Just ask.
That would be a lovely place to start.