snap

It's something like inhaling a little bit of glass along with cold air that's scooped up from the top of the waves, with the water as it is this time of year, so refreshing this time of year, so cold that it almost snaps you in half this time of the year.  This might not be the story that goes anywhere near a platform on the edges of the sea, where young lovers wonder if they might not be so young after all.  Let's say they are, or were, young, last year, already a year before last year, last year by now is something else altogether.  And last year doesn't quote the shadow dances of two young lovers by the edges of the sea, and this year might be willing to not do the same, and all of it is a little like inhaling a little bit of glass. 

With a little age, a cigar blooms, and it looks like mold to anyone who hasn't lived through it long enough to smoke their way through these things to know things that only the wise ones know.  With a little age, these hands are covered with a little bit of bloom, maybe not so tired, maybe not so withered, but showing signs that those kinds of gravity might show in another decade or so.  With a little age comes the knowledge that there are some people you meet again and again, and there are some people you only know for a little while.  Some of us, with a little experience, but no age really necessary, know that it's not up to decide who gets to be in which category, but we have our ideas, and we have our hopes about who gets to stay, and who has to go. 

With a little age, one might begin to learn that the worst thing in the world to say to anyone you want to cast in the role of someone who stays is that we might be running out of time.  No one likes to be rushed.  No one likes to think this might be urgent.  No one likes to be watched that closely, because everyone who walks on wires in front of thousands of people eventually falls in front of thousands of people.  And when we fall, we break like glass, and the ground swallows us like we were shards of  broken glass. 

With a little age, one might decide to write the most emo thing ever written, and decide halfway through to completely fail, in front of at least 8 people a day.  But this year, this might be the last year, and maybe, just maybe, if we pretend that the calendar ends, then we might decide that we should bring only those who are the most important, to bring them closer, and let them know that to lose them might feel very much like December in the last year of the world, and it might be more interesting to split and break into a thousand shards and fly apart in every conceivable direction, and to let the pieces scatter, so that anyone anywhere anytime for any reason might find one of the pieces and ask for a reflection of the world, what does the world look like, what does it look like in this reflection, and anyone anywhere anytime for any reason might see the same thing at the same time, so they might know, this was important, this is what was marked, this is what mattered here, and this is what mattered when it shattered on the edges of a platform by the sea, and this is what matters when it shatters on a porch in a backyard where hearts are unburied, and this is what matters when it shatters on a morning when it only seems like the dogs of the desert are watching and caring, and the rest of the world is still so very asleep, or exhausted already for having been awake to long, the dog snaps at the hand, the neck snaps at the cold too unbraced for this kind of morning, and an eye snaps open and shatters in a thousand directions, making urgent sounds on the sidewalks of the world, even though it won't do anyone any good to know that time is getting to be as shallow as a breath or a wave and as cold as it has to be for this time of the year. 

again with the faeries

I'm carrying three backpacks, and they're all getting overfull with dust and charms and old coins, and I tell myself I can carry them for a lot longer.  But the faeries, they come, or they never leave (I thought they'd never leave), and they keep finding more threads to put into the things I'm carrying, and they don't seem overly concerned with keeping them sorted, so everything gets tangled and heavy, and I complain.  This is me complaining, this is how I complain, this is what it looks like when I'm complaining.

They send wild black birds to stand in front of the moon, so I stop looking at the moon, and start praying to the birds instead, and it all feels like a gorgeous mistake.  I understand in a moment, and it flashes, and I understand, I'm supposed to pray to the bird and not the moon, because the bird can hear me better?  Or the bird can take messages up and down?  And the mad faeries shake their heads, and tell me, no.  It doesn't matter what you pray to as long as you pray, because this is a clear season of more light, and the things that got blurry are unblurred, and everything you see as blurry is only a mistake of the light, or something still in your eyes, you need to get your eyes cleaned again.  Call the shaman, the one who unravels these things, and get that looked at so you can see.

Because if you see, then you'll see that all of this is really very perfectly clear.  Put down the things that are too heavy and pay attention to seeing, and pay attention to the breath, and the rest of this will all become perfectly reasonable.  Because all of this is right outside the door.

 I don't understand in at least seven languages.

The maddest of the faeries, my new one true god(dess), stops the calliope every once in awhile, just long enough to point this out:

You are missing something very obvious, and it's so obvious because you are paying attention to it, and if you stopped paying attention to it, then you would know what it is, and then you could maybe learn how to give it the right attention. 

I don't know why my god/dess/es/401 or so, are not very kind, but I haven't been very kind, because deep despair is my drug of choice, and that feeling I had when my heart hurt when I was seventeen is the music I play when I want things to go dark again.

It is very dark under the lap of the sea, a dark and vicious hole that is old enough that it doesn't have to justify itself, but I have to explain why I'm here, every time, and state my intentions.  And I get the strong suspicion that the same intention, repeated over and over, sounds stupid to the things of the sea, and they are letting me repeat until I can hear in my own head how stupid these intentions sound, and try to forget what I know, and leave behind what I want, and pay more attention to the sounds of the waves in my head, until I can hear that they are the same sounds that play outside my head.  Because this is balance.  And it's not as mysterious as I thought it would feel, so I don't trust it, and that mistrust puts me into turmoil that I can't blame on anyone but myself. 

This is what I hear in the waves:

This is the mystery, it's right outside your door, the mystery happens right outside your door, the mystery happened right outside your door, it is happening right outside your door.

Because I am in some kind of mood, I take this idea of the door, and take this idea of bags, and the things that I carry, and the things that I have to leave before I can cross the threshold, but because they are in a mood, the faeries jump on the unraveling threads from my head and they explain, no, it's not a metaphor, it's a door.

I think I see what's going on.  And I would love to explain that this is all so tangled and complex and impossible, but it's not.  Because full moons have always been good to me.  And they make magic when I am looking away, and paying attention to the thing that I should be focusing on, it has something to do with the breath, it has something to do with the moon, it has something to do with these bags that I carry, and how the things I've been collected have all turned to salt from looking back for too long, and salt is the best thing there is to seal a doorway, sealed with a kiss.

art and life

please forgive me, i know i get these things confused, and maybe there is no real line between them, and i know that already, and this is already resolved because it's already set in motion, but (to make excuses) these repetitions are madness, an unbearable madness, but when they turn into a metaphor they become so beautiful.  and at those moments, all of our failings and fragility become powerful in that other light.  and if i could live in that light all the time, whatever is unbearable becomes the thing that opens up to something more utterly beautiful than we could create with our mad designs.  in this, however, i think this is something i need to leave outside the realm of art and life so i can get to the next thing that's calling, those things that are desperately calling at my doorstep at three in the morning when everything is becoming heavy, sucking in the last part of night before it gives over to the day again.  this, i think this is something that can live or die without my desires anywhere on the table, and maybe then it will have a chance to grow.  but i don't know who i'm supposed to be in this next part, who i am supposed to take with me, because all the personas feel wrong, and none of them are lovable unless they are myths.  and i can't regenerate ears the way they do in cartoons, and all my spirits carry scars and lost parts with them, and some carry holes in their hearts into eternity.  art is myth is a key to unlock a destiny, is an accusation against reality.  when my feathers are sticking out, i am not safe.  and when the woman with brooms comes sweeping again, this time angrier than the last time, it's time to leave the room until all the ghosts have argued themselves to sleep.  it can take years before a construction of a persona reveals itself to be useless, but just a moment outside the room to connect to the heartbeat.  the path is the breath.  the breath is the road to the heart.  the mad fairies there, those are the ones to pay close attention to, they find the gifts left on the table, and when i'm lucky, and when my heart is beating, they wrap them up and send them back before i have the chance to open them.  a tragedy averted.  this is a fantastic love story.  there's not enough time to sort the truth from the lies, and there's not enough room to write the same stupid love song over and over again, not with the music that's just on the other side of that thin veil.

epic love; it's about time

It's already almost always February already, and everything that's fresh about a year happens in February, or January, it better happen soon because I am running out of places to fall when I pass out from holding my breath, and I'm not allowed back into the old places.

Epic: the love of the sun for the moon and the moon for the sun.
You would think they wouldn't be so different, but they are because they never match.
He's on a 20 day cycle, and she's all 28 or 30, and it's so hard to get this in sync.
Except this time around there are solar showers and it's making everyone flare up occasionally, and the sun and the moon see the best in everyone, and they see the worst in everyone, and these might be the same exact things.
This is the epic of the sun and the moon.
Next month is reincarnated lovers, and the weight of history (should not equal karma, but hey there you go, what the hell were you thinking would happen when you decided to ride again, right after you got done with the last ride)???
Silly silly moon.
This is me.
The moon.  Tricky situations here that are confusing, and that's just goddam perfect.
This is how it starts to play at the end of January, when we should have known from the beginning:

The scene opens and she is mad mad mad.

The sun says: You're mad aren't you?

The moon doesn't talk for a very long time, for her it's an eternity, but she's so goddam old that what used to be an eternity for her is only a day and a half.

She takes a breath and says: A little mad.  You shine on everyone and everything, and I told you, I told you, I don't mind, but you woke me up, you woke me up when I was in the middle of the nicest dream, and you told me you couldn't get me out of your mind, and I avoided it and I denied it, and then and then I decided that and then  I wasn't sleeping anymore anyway, so I gave in, and when I rolled over to look at you so you could tell me why I was in your mind, and what I looked like in your mind, all you could tell me was that you were so busy with so many other things, I gave you a chance to tell me something important and all you could talk about was how your life was so hard because you have to shine on all the planet and it's so hard to keep them straight, and I'm just apparently I'm just I'm just another call for you at 3 am when you are cold, and and and I'm mad.

Sun: You're not just another call.

Moon: I know, I know.  I'm emotional.  Moony.

Sun: You're still mad?

Moon: YES.

Sun: Because I made you roll over.

Moon: Because you made me roll over.  Now it sounds petty, when you put it like that, you make me petty, and you you you are too far away to pet and how does that make me feel, huh? 

Moon chest butts Sun it's the last time this month, and this causes solar flares to fly off and make young lovers everywhere go stupid, and even old lovers go stupid, because this is the chance they had to touch and that was all they got to do.  Goddam Sun and Goddam Moon.  This is a world made for the Dwarves, and the tall people keep pretending they can see so fucking far but they are wrong wrong so very very wrong.  Fucking tall people are not so very tall.  Let the Dwarves take over, they can work with this and we have fucked it up.

It's really embarrassing for the Moon, because she has a new lip ring (it's old now but that's not that important) and feels like she has to speak for the rest of us, and she does, but oh, when she does.

She is not as old as the Sun, and smaller, but she has taken time to get to know her landscapes, and understands early on that the bottom of the ocean is larger than the universe, even when it's eating too much bacon and butter and expanding like one might imagine Norway would expand, and it's not easy to talk to her when she's like this, so it's better to just leave her alone and hope she does the same with you.  Except.  There's always so much more to this story.  The Moon is suddenly aware that this year has started with a long and cold wind on her face, and it's frozen her lips, and it's made her eyes tear in the dark of the night and the light of the day, and she's just woken up.  This is the best time to start a year.  Right now.  This very minute.  Exactly like this.  Not even thinking about the Sun, not at all.  Fuck.

alchemies of water and air

I lay still at the edges of my covers.  There were rough mountains beneath my head while I was dreaming about the last time the world ended.  There were floods receding from under my sink.  My houses always flood when there is too much to feel and too many details that get lost.  Finding the place where the broken fingernail is letting in too much light and covering it just enough so that it might heal by the morning.  Taking the last screen shot before the world turned to iron and iron technologies and keeping it frozen so that I could refer back to it when I needed it the most.  Lifting the lipstick stains off the edges of the same sheet I slept in when I was getting crowned with African spirits, and holding them suspended in the air, and telling myself that the world seemed to be sleeping, but this is how wizards calm themselves when the lovers are gone far away.  And the flood washes through anything anyway, and I'm left with my broken fingernail, the one that looks like hers, and the stains are on my neck, and the frozen face from a sad night is burned into the sides of my belly.

These are the icons and fetishes I sleep with, no leather with zippers and no silk straps with secret words, just the thousand and one descriptions for sleep that I have when everything is so far away from this hungry belly, the one that only knows how to eat after midnight, when all the neighbors are up and coughing in their beds. 

And in another blink, there's a sound in the dark, and I'm chasing after potions to keep the blue light of the moon centered just above my chest, and I'm distracted long enough that it sinks down, the moon fading into the water of my flesh, and the room is lit up with lines that go in every direction, and it's strange I never knew, I think it's strange, and this next world is already writing itself on the walls of my longing, that will not fall asleep.  I put these things under my pillow, and forgot about them, and didn't know that the ocean would rock me harder until they came dislodged, always already always there. 

When I was in another place, I spent hours memorizing the parts, so that I could reconstruct them for myself on a cold night, but the parts never stayed still long enough to separate, they always held the mettle and the ore of the whole, and all I knew was the whole, the forest was the trees and this was something that I never thought belonged rightfully to me.

So I followed the drum for another 270 nights, listening to the pattens and getting distracted by the way these stories unfolded the other forgotten identities of a life of already alternate identities, and on the worst nights I could only fall asleep by telling myself that no one knows and no one cares. 

First silence is a welcome lover.  Then it becomes unbearable.  Then it becomes a constant pounding at the back of the neck, and then it burns more quietly, a soft blue that turns white and is impossible to hold, and that's the point when fire and water start to speak, as if for the very first time.

This was a burden that I wouldn't give up, because it was the only way to keep dark in a time where there was too much light.  This was a pain that had to burn its way out from the inside, so its inscription would write on me from the inside out.  You can follow your heart, they say, but first you have to let it speak to you, and you're too sure of yourself for that to happen. 

To love this ocean you have to be more than man, more than woman, and trained in how to follow the beat of the drum until you become the mountain that speaks, the mountain that shakes, the mountain that erupts on the lap of the sea.  Panic turns to love, and love turns back into panic, and you don't need any particular friend to read your marks in the dark, anyone with eyes can read them for you, and it says what you should have expected, it's that thing that you didn't want to say but had to say anyway, it's that lesson you thought you learned but had to walk through in your flesh anyway, it's that lover that goes away but you decided you would love anyway, because any wizard can tell you that the feeling that time has stopped is that same moment that the horses under the sea are working their way to the surface, and they start riding you until you can't remember the promises you made to yourself before you saw her marks on your ribs, a story that isn't complete, it's never complete, because it's true, those marks you made on each other with your tongues reached all the way to the bones, and there won't be another day that passes when you are not hungry, and there isn't a mask in the world that can disguise you from your real twin.

this is why it's all so very different and not about you or anyone

this is disguised, it's a writing disguised as this story about a pigeon, a chance to check the brakes, there were two in the road, and the one flew at the very last moment, and a 2 and then a 1, and that's such an interesting number.
this is more interesting and not at all what this is about, just something to remember, first this:
please dont judge me
this will show up in something later.
this is what this is about, and not about anything or anyone at all.
this dream, i'm stoned and walking thru gavin's apartment, or hotel suite, somewhere in the pacific northwest maybe, we're traveling and i'm stoned, and i'm looking in the mirror and this is all so cinematic, and i'm suddenly worried because i want to be more high and i am leading myself back to get more high even though i know i should not be high at all because of what happens and wanting to die eventually and i'm wondering if this is going to be a problem but maybe it's about my back,  my back hurts and i could say it was for that and i know that won't read true to anyone who knows me, this is complicated because on one hand i have to consider what i'm going to tell people and on the other i have to be more high, on the first hand there are options and on the second hand there are not options, i have to be high and there are no more hands, and suddenly i am waking up and i wonder why i'm waking up and realizing that ok this helps to sort things out, because it was a dream, so i don't have to worry about how to talk about this, but i do have to be higher because it feels so cinematic and i am worrying about that, but then i remember that this should not be a problem because i don't like being high and i am relieved.  at this moment my phone beeps, someone someone something something on facebook something, i open my computer because it's something to see for sure, with a dream like that waking me up and someone something commented on something i something and it's a minute before midnight so i was only asleep for an hour, and got so high in that hour, and now it's a minute before the day i'm writing this and it all seems very significant.
because pigeons are allergic to pot, they don't bloat or explode like seagulls with alka seltzer, but they get very paranoid, and throw themselves at motorcycles to get the voices in their heads to stop, poor poor things, the day won't get stranger it can't just try to get stranger i fucking dare you
and i am 14.
x
c

been there done that (x5x5x5x5x5)

"That's what it is," he was thinking, in the middle of a thought, like it were the middle of a conversation that they had just left off.  And honestly, every life is picked up in the middle of a conversation, one left off from last time around, and the ones that are cut short are not beautiful because they're short.  That needs more, he was sure, but first, continue the first thought, in the middle, in the middle of a life, picking up on where they left off, a thought she gave him that he wanted to give back to her in a new form, because that's the nature of the gift.  Too Derrida.  Not really what this is about.  Life generates itself on its decomposition which is regenerative because it decomposes, it lives and dies, comes and goes, comes and goes, and we said nothing all the day, and did not come, and did not go..."some are born over and over and are very old souls.  And some are born into one life, one time only.  And some, that's you, or her, that's her, there she is again, comes and goes sometimes to water and sometimes to land, and I think I do that, too, and the others have an advantage to this place, because with so many times around, it's like home to them, but not like that for us, because we're only home under the cave where you can still here the sounds of the waves, even though it is too far above our heads to make out any of the sounds, not natural to be here, nothing natural about this place at all, not to her, at least, not to me at least, there must be others, but now that we is the only one I know, the only one I know."

This would be longer, he realized, he would rewrite it all and it would be longer, perhaps Wednesday, because everything is longer on Wednesday, it is longer and lasts longer and everything worth waiting for is reminded why we wait when it is Wednesday, but wait on that. 

Lives do not become beautiful because they are short, and loves do not get made beautiful because they are short, they are beautiful for reasons that no one can say, it's a certain mix of a certain spice, a secret.  Things that are short are tragic.  And worse when they revealed themselves as so very beautiful right before they die, because that certain mix does not come around very often, and it makes things grow.

Step Two, we turned and turned and turned again.

And this time it's a parking lot of an Indian restaurant, and he was talking to him about her, but not so much, not so many details, just that there were thoughts, and sweet thoughts, and it was somehow sweet but he didn't expect anything, just wondering about patterns, because remembering this time around or that time around, and especially that one time around when she could not emerge and he could not submerge, because they had their meeting places crossed, he was dry and she was wet and it was like that for a very long life, that was the worst, but this one, not the worst, not at all, but remembering this has happened before makes him feel part of something much larger and older and waves of something coming through him, something hard to put into words, something like the weight of tears and longing on the flesh that makes the blood flow, makes the blood flow in sweetness, the kind of sorrow and longing that makes things emerge, makes things submerge, over lifetimes, and despite time, here you are...and he's talking to him, and the bees, here come the bees, one bee, here comes one bee buzzing around his head, a funny thing, be careful of the bee, and the bee comes around his head, again and again, circling and landing and circling and landing, and he knows what this means.  They come around again, after lifetimes, in new bodies, and he's become so attached to this particular body, though, and doesn't want to have to wait for the next one, because he sees her with his hands in the air, in the air she is lying on the air in an afternoon that will not turn to light, and her body is covered in honey, and her body is filled with honey, making jokes about nuns, what made sor juana so sore, and this is a sting and that is not a sting and everything is a little like a sting, in varying degrees of tension and release, and this is being stung, except he is not stung, only courted.  The bee is buzzing his head, and he is lost in his thumbnail, it still has the moon in it, it still reflects the sun, how much sun and how much moon, everyone has a little or a lot of both sun and moon, held under the tongue after communion to remember which lover you were to know which you were supposed to be next, nature loves repetition, the first time is not always the best time, but the third and forth, yes, and every time after, and sometimes sometimes always it always takes at least 256 times to get it right the first time.