all there is to me now is bleached by the sun and wrung pale by the sea. i have become a simpler thing, i aspire to be a simpler thing

each day. open like a nautilus, strong as a square nail. not a relic you'd find in the sand but something surviving dawn to dawn; picking up its feet to drift with the tides and trusting that it won't be ground into the coral or tossed onto a ragged rock.

life in the sea, so precarious, whether you're a seal or a fish. always outswimming the encroaching jaws of something bigger. sometimes predator and sometimes prey, but always attuned to the nature of the moment. porous as a sponge, recieving the wisdom of the split second. it tends to suggest action.

time has told me you're a rare rare find. a troubled cure for a troubled mind.
and time has told me not to ask for more. someday our ocean will find its shore.
so I`ll leave the ways that are making me be what I really don't want to be.
leave the ways that are making me love what I really don't want to love.
time has told me you came with the dawn, a soul with no footprint, a rose with no thorn
your tears they tell me, there's really no way of ending your troubles with things you can say.
and time will tell you to stay by my side, to keep on trying 'til there's no more to hide.
so leave the ways that are making you be what you really don't want to be.
leave the ways that are making you love what you really don't want to love.
time has told me you're a rare rare find, a troubled cure for a troubled mind.

.nick drake

suzanne

suzanne valadon was a painter; henri toulouse-lautrec's lover, her beautiful face

so alive in its preoccupation isn't it? her wheels are turning.

i reach over through time to try to touch her because i understand. her wheels are turning.

no vapid smile. her jaw is clenched, can you tell? she is biting down on the most bitter truth she's been awarded lately i think

still resonant in her strength.

thank god it is not always necessary to paste on your brightest smile for photos.

thank god we always have a choice, between the truth, and a lie. some of us couldn't lie even if we tried. her eyes like glass. if she tried to make them smile she probably couldn't even swing it. even swilling absinthe in montmartre and watching petticoats fly can bring your face to this state of total granite disillusionment. lautrec himself said:

"i have tried to do what is true and not ideal."

and i think this is wise.
very wise.

she must have really loved him. i don't think i could ever ask more of someone, than to try to do what is true and not ideal.

the truth makes us all so beautiful when it illuminates us with that completely encompassing, totally impartial light

the curtains open in one slow creak of cable, dusty red velvet draws back to reveal all our folly. and all our promise, we're not hopeless, not hopeless at making some beauty & happiness, never

aid to veterans thrift is where i like best to be. beyond the cluttered main space to the tiny room in back, with the door that has nearly no room to swing. only flick the red switch or the whole place will go darker than one of hell's caverns. herein wait the records. stacked anonymously and covered in dust; rubbing up against my hands, i don't mind, wipe them on the same delapidated shorts with their embroidered dragonfly, slowly disintegrating mauve. i'm looking for someone i know. like paging through a yearbook, i scan the covers for a face beautifully familiar, or beautifully new, to me. from these friends i learn my lessons, so i seek them, pockets full of quarters, keen print-reading eyes.

the kingston trio, sometimes. peter, paul, and mary on their sunny yellow cover, who knew mary was such a babe? joan baez and her luminescent doe eyes. songs about the bombings in hanoi. and cat stevens,

(may all our voices lift in praise)

buddha and the chocolate box. he makes it so easy, to choose the greener path.

i will write myself through this and emerge slightly battered, exhausted, on the other side. or i will crawl through it on my belly like a soldier, smearing mud down my front, wishing i could
give up. just sleep in the mud. just sleep

inching like the living dead toward a blurry dawn with indistinct features; could be a grimace, could be a smile. could be another day at the park. ocean park, its water always the color of the reflected sky. silver sleeping with eyes closed beneath its dense blanket of fog.

perspective is a telescope and i have to jam myself into its center, bones and all, stay forever. make a moment of clarity expand to encompass all time. like a bird in the estuary, diving beneath the surface and then returning to the light. so, a moment of wet and cold.

it's just a moment of wet and cold. the sun'll dry you right off

when i was thirteen i began listening to billie holiday. and her dust. i was hypnotized by the dust, its sound, how it would never be blown off with a breath. it's been recorded, it is as it was, frozen in time:

stuck in amber; improbable, but true,

immovable, billie locked in her position of grief
then
now
forever

with no possibility of a new beginning. the needle swings its arc, drops on the first song. one more tired revolution around the sun

dont fall off the face of my earth;

i am not the strongest

what would be for some a gentle push

might just knock me over and concuss me

i am not

and i am grateful that i am not

a crow

but i might be something smaller

with little sugar spun bones

wounded wing

carry me in your mouth

but don't bite down

be gentle

my mind wont sit still, i'm as i ever was :


in a starchy scratchy floral confection, i never would've picked it myself
but there you are


lacey socks on but my legs wont cross
daintily at the ankles
i won't sit still

can't do what i'm told when i simply cant
sit still


and i never believed in being seen but not heard until i knew how it felt to love silence more than words, and knew how it felt to see truth being told without speaking

so my mouth it is closed but my mind never ceases
its reeling

and i dont believe in growing cold in your fear and waiting for disaster to appear so i let myself sink back into the feeling.

and furthur back into the feeling

time is two eyes across from me. when i let myself look it ceases to exist entirely and gets out of my way

to let me live

my pile of stones is growing and
so is this feeling

i'm enamored even with distortion
even distortion sounds sweet

how it pushes me sweetly toward the edge. i'm not afraid
of going over

anymore

it's all coming down

it's all coming down. pouring from the sky
relentless and wild
on top of me

it's all coming down. it's coming down hard
remember the old adage?

'it's coming down hard'; it truly is coming down hard
on top of me

i open my entreating mouth so that i might fill it up with rain
and never speak a word again but only trickle condensation

feel cloud matter slipping from behind teeth

i think it would be an honest thing to do, an honest thing to be said from me to you:
no words, free of sound

only rain

i might rain all over you and let you stand in the haze, let you ponder the aged old refrain

let you feel the weight that only i draw near to touch, that only i would take the time to introduce myself to

it could all come down on you

how provocative

i'm half sleeping, exhausted, a flower between teeth

how provocative

dried and dying carnation
i've been waking up to broken petals in my bed

dark and bloody red against my purple sheets
i dont know where they came from, floating round

snapped stem

in my dreams i speak another language, older than the languages that we together know, mine counting hardly for anything; your coin is worth more than my own to me

this habit will make me poor, i expect
very poor in the long run

but i know i'll wear it willingly
and make it mine

you've never minded my silk scraps anyway
never minded my frayed edges
tired beyond time

in my dreams i speak another language; silence, and eyes. it's easy to be fluent
to be eloquent, in dreams

it's all as mysterious as time
yet unrealized

a bloody flower forming that long line, across a pale mouth
what features
so defined

how provocative

I. summer feels strange, and it feels strange because it is strange. this summer has been touching me strangely. a summer movement caught me in its languid lover's grasp, overwhelmed me with its heat, closed my mouth with its hand

i might have said no had i been able to say no, but most likely not, i rarely say no

cant struggle stifled by my own weight, the weight that i feel especially in summer; a freeing and a dooming responsibility. To do, to say yes, to succumb

be disarmed

open entirely like a lens and receive








II. i am not being made a fool of if my soul is still free, if my heart is still free to me. but my heart isn't free to me, not really, so i am a fool indeed.

this has been my state perpetually. i'm sure it'll continue, i'm very rarely free, there is a weight i have long known and it seeks me

it continually seeks me; i have always known the feeling
of being its prey

but that's my life. i suppose it's okay. I bleed as do you, and as does he. i turn my face to hide my face and close my eyes so as to see

i wish i understood
something

i keep my turquoise in my poison ring, to make me strong, for
it's a wonderful woman that's strong,

but all i can own to is doing the best i can.

VII.

sometimes i prefer not to speak. i love not to speak. i love not speaking when you are speaking; i love when you are speaking. i like it

that my heart can feel free of that heavy weight that has been pressing down upon it for an inexorably long time, an unspeakably long time

sheets crackle like paper, isn't it lovely how
why begin now why begin now
edith piaf would not stop now, edith piaf singing. there is a morning feeling,
one that no one ever could wish to leave

climbing up the orange tree
and on it grows

my mind seems to love to return to these things.

i do not mind seeing things through a haze if that is what i do. to me i see clearly. i wish to see you clearly which is a novelty to me, to wish but not to know if my own sight is true

i could only dissolve
into the night with you

three steps backward into darkness that is where we're headed to and let's not return
any time soon

correction
correction

let's not return