In Which I Like Journaling, Whether It's About Anything Special or Not.

the drip and
slide
of black
wet ink
onto dry paper
across those sharp lines
(blue or black or any colour,
but straight from margin
to outer edge)
can give more peace,
more clarity
than prayer or
voices or
creation.

In Which It's To Fucking Hot Everywhere I Go.

one time i saw
this old, half-burned cigarette
on the sidewalk that was so hot
if you dripped water on it
it would most certainly
hiss and steam like the skillet
after you fry eggs,
when you stick it under the running faucet
just for that sensory experience
of cold on heat,
and that cigarette was still smoldering
a little, like the coals do
on the grill
after a big family barbecue,
where your dad got a little too drunk on cooler beers
and your mom ate a little too much potato salad
and you played a little too much in the sun,
but some of the tobacco
had fallen out of the paper
and was strewn
in a line out from the filter
as if the wind had blown it like leaves,
like every late August when
everything living isn't,
but is brown and parched
and covers the ground in scentless,
temporary piles,
and i thought how maybe
i read too much into things
sometimes.

In Which "Bad Moon Rising" is Stuck In My Head.

i see a
not-so-great sun
rising
but i gotta meet it, baby,
yeah
gotta meet it despite
or maybe that was
in spite
and I can't tell you,
sweetie,
if trouble's on the way
but monsoon season's
certainly
around the next corner
or the one
after that,
soon enough to merit caution
or at least
a glance ahead,
and, honey,
you might be prepared
but more likely
you'll just be in time
for those clouds to burst or
break.

In Which I Am Feeling Lazy.

everything looks so
washed out, so sun-drenched pastel
in this summer heat.

In Which I Am Watching Labyrinth Again and Don't Judge Me, Okay?

does he remind you of the babe?
that babe with that
alien power,
that chameleon who fell to
earth
in a tin can man of chords and
syth-pop beats and
a permanently dilated
sense of self-importance,
with his cruel owl eyes,
and a name that cuts
us all like a knife, and
though your will is as strong as mine,
his kingdom is greater --
we have no power over
him,
or his tight, tight pants.

In Which Arizona is Gorgeous, but Fantasy Worlds are Better Sometimes.

keep your head full
of living forest shadows and
moonlit wings dappled
with evenstar-wishes and
golden leaves falling in cool breezes
from oaken-strong trees,
for who wouldn't choose that
bliss,
those misty mountains,
over this never-quenched
and still and stinging desert,
its jagged cliffs rising from
thorns and rocks that have never
met moss or even morning dew?

In Which I Took A Mental Health Day.

isn't lying supposed to
make you feel bad
or something,
tear at you like claws
or guilt?
you know, when it's not
to dry a loved one's tears
or keeps those special
gift-wrapped secrets?
or is that just what grownups
tell you so
you'll stay in line and
they won't have to figure out themselves
if it was you who ate that last bag of
Cheetos
before dinner?

In Which I Think Maybe I'll Give Myself Weekends Off Of This.

it's only sort of
in spiders crawling under
sunrise-golden door frames
or in breeze-ruffled
oleander-petal afternoons or
in evening sips of cold red wine
through previously parched lips
or even in the burning
incense that takes me back to
starlit-jasmine summer nights
when everything was
not better but less hard
not softer but less responsible
not lonely but less full of you.

In Which Having a Brother With AS Can Be Ridiculous At Times.

"Your mom's made of pants,"
he sings,
repeatedly and
repeatedly and
he's never gonna stop, like
the momentum of his voice
is a juggernaut.
bitch.

In Which I'm Colouring My Hair, Again.

so much depends on
that red liquid-high
sliding into
droplets on your skin,
all the while
morphing who-you-are
into someone, maybe
new but
you hope it's old like jeans,
the kind you wear every day,
without washing,
and they fit like
they're part of you.

In Which Maybe I'll Start Again Tomorrow, or Next Week, or Never.

Fuck today's poem. I'm tired of trying to come up with something beautiful every fucking day and never finding anything in my mind except meaningless shit. I'm tired of this being just another obligation to worry about. So fucking fuck. it. I'm not a writer.

In Which I Think The Ol' 9-5 (7:30-4?) is Draining My Creativity Away.

gimme that old-time
vice, baby, that
good-time
need-escape
colour
because how can you live
so grey so icebox grey
and sharp-edged
without something
to keep you
awake,
let alone alive --
what's alive, anyway,
sweetheart?
unless you're talking
blood-pumping brain-waving
takemeouttahere
altered states or
human contact,
and any of those
more than once a week
will only leave you
steel-greyer,
straight-colder than before.

In Which I Describe My Weekend/Monday In Stupid and Disjointed Haiku.

Saturday:

Even after so
few hours, your scent lingers on
these blue-moon bedsheets.

Chattering and smiles
should be given more credit
for the lives they save.


Sunday:

Every day should be
so lullingly spent in dreams,
so full of heartbeats.

I wonder if Jane
shows off her pubes in heaven
and laughs at her fans.

Monday:

The day flies right by
when instead of headset scripts
you've got vampire sex.

Even words on screens
are better than solitude
on scorching Mondays.

In Which I Love Summer Storms.

these clouds don't hang
so much as swoop in
on rising winds and
fading light,
calling the girls
in their summer apathies
to dance
just as surely
as would the sanguine roll
of a doumbek
or the lighting-chimes of
a good set of zills.

In Which I Drank The Rest of My Rum When I Got Home And Now I'm Lonely.

burn, baby, flow
down my throat
to my
lungs, into my
solar plexus where you'll
sit for awhile, liquid glow,
amber and
intense,
before you'll fall
drop
by
drop,
lower, down, lower,
and
longing .

In Which I'm Sort Of Tired Of Putting "In Which" At The Beginning Of Every Post, But Now I've Done It Enough To Where I Feel Committed to the Style.

This evening, I'm not feeling
particularly productive or
inspired or
talented or any
of those things that make a person
special
so I think I'm just going to
break up my lines
in strange places
and hope you don't read this so much
as
glance over its shape,
so you'll perceive if not a masterpiece,
at least a poem
that was never really here.

In Which I Just Took Melatonin So This Might Make No Sense.

lovers dance in words
amongst the stars,
over living hills
and
into the dreams of the
crumpled and the dry,
lost, or old,
the lonely or
just alone in a bed,
fifty miles
or a tank of gas
and two or so hours
away from
the one whose sleepy sighs
are peace enough on
most nights.

In Which I Beat You Over The Head With A Metaphor.

dracula probably had it right
about mirrors.
they should come with warning signs, like:
THIS IS NOT A WINDOW
or
OBJECTS APPEAR MORE IMPORTANT THAN THEY ARE
or something.

In Which Everything Is Different.

maybe it's a dry heat,
but anyone can see it makes for
sticky situations,
especially when mixed with
equal parts
hidden tensions and
changing priorities.
you can only do so much
before you crack or worse --
fold in on yourself
like an old letter
(or more like last summer,
when the nights that
used to bring you to life
turned against you and were cold,
sharp).
she's been trying for too long
too hard
too much
to let that happen this time,
and
it's her turn now.
it's her turn now.

In Which I'm Pretty Sure No One Is Reading These...

...which is probably a good thing.

No, this isn't a poem post. I'll do that later.

In Which I Make Saturday's Real Post

Mornings seem more like
timeless
when eyes open, not harshly,
but flutter slow
to warm breath
on shoulderblades.

Skin
on
skin
on
skin
on
lips
is better than caffeine
or even taurine and guarana,
and, baby, I'll be wired
long after you've gone
this afternoon.

But I'll be here when you get back,
of course,
still nursing my
burger-and-fry brunch,
cuz you know they had it right
back in '55 when a malted milkshake
or cherry-syrup Coke
was an unspoken metaphor
and the food was almost as good
as Lover's Lane.

In Which I Forgot This Blog The Very Next Day

So this counts as yesterday's poem, since I totally forgot I made this within the first 24 hours. Because I'm an airhead like that.

Follow me,
out to the summerdusk.
We'll jump ship when the parents leave,
walk the plank and
drown together in catfish grease and
Captain Morgan's last diet cola --

and then we'll sit in the dark
while you talk and smoke and talk
and I'll think about how little it's always taken
for my lips to start to go numb.

In Which My New Call-Center Job Melts My Brain Cells

hello, thank you for calling;
for security purposes,
can I please advise
that you hang up now,
hang up and step away from your phone
or other communication device
before you get put on hold for longer
than the time you set aside for this call,
or transferred one or sixteen more times
to anything but help.

and I would just like to inform you that,
during this call,
I would like to use records of
your every thought and action
to suggest products and services
in a fake-smile monotone high pitch,
and that protecting this information
is your right
and my duty
under federal law or maybe just a moral code,
and your answer will probably affect your service
today. how may i assist you?
yes, sir. no, sir.
I completely understand, sir.

sir, do you mind if I just place you on a brief hold
while I go over your account
and finish colouring this picture
and ask my supervisor
who quit? and
who's fired? and
who's taking whom to the club tomorrow night?
thank you, sir.
hello, sir? thank you for holding, and
I do apologize for the delay.
It looks like this problem is not on our end
but on yours, or maybe your local service
fucked it up, cuz it sure wasn't us,
so what you'll have to do is call them
and tell them to change your routing
to none.

and before you go, is there anything else I
can do to ensure
you're very satisfied with my service today?
all right, sir, thank you,
and can I interest you in anything,
anything at all? no?
all right, sir, thank you for calling, sir,
and you
have a
wonderful day.

In Which I State My Objectives

Let me be honest, here: I started this Blogger because I was coerced. Miss Mustache Pie held a metaphorical blunderbuss to my head and threatened my life if I didn't make one.

Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating. But that's a perfectly acceptable literary technique, Dear Readers, which brings me to my next point -- a point which also happens to be the point of this blog.

I'm going to try my damnedest to write a poem a day for...well, who knows how long? Longer than a day, I hope. Longer than a week.

I hardly ever write any more, and it's sort of making me feel dead inside, or like a dried-up leaf just waiting for someone to step on me for that satisfying crunch. Something like that.

So here I am, with this goal. I'm going to write and post at least one poem every day, even if it's three lines long or makes no sense or is just plain terrible. I imagine I will probably write most of these poems right in the text box here on the site, minutes before posting them. I also imagine most of them will not really even count as poetry.

However, I am 85% sure this will be good for me, even as just a writing exercise or an emotional outlet. So I'll try it out.

Part of me hopes no one reads this, but part of me also knows I will be sad if no one does. Ah, the paradox of human emotions.

Here goes nothing special.