free write after being asked for feedback

...i’m struggling with what reaches me and what doesn’t and how one set of images paired with a certain set of line breaks sends a chill through my fingers and with another set I’m struggling, fighting my left brain to just receive, to let it happen.

i suppose I’m out of practice.

and yet.
poems in my pockets and up my sleeves and how very silly it seems to still be writing about you and us
about how once, we took two ferries just to see where we’d end up
after spending the morning scrambling eggs and pushing the French press into the sand and sunburning our backs but being totally unaware because we cooled off in the atlantic and about how this never, ever, seems to be just a memory to me.

catching myself off guard and out of breath, my favorite things
it’s midnight and here I am, remembering how this works,
this is not just a voiceover....

swoon

still want to get one of those tattooed behind my ear. sorry mom.

i met this headache at work last night, right around six. i told it i didn't mind that it hung around for a little while, but i was busy, and had other things to attend to. it stayed, and asked to come home with me. i told it, only for a while, i had things to read. it lingered on into the night; it didn't ask if it could stay. i told it, you can stay the night, if only you let me sleep, and promise to leave before i wake in the morning.
it was still there in the morning. and it didn't even make me coffee.

Earle Birney, "There Are Delicacies (For Alison)"

there are delicacies in you
     like the hearts of watches
there are wheels that turn
     on the tips of rubies
& tiny intricate locks

i need your help
     to contrive keys
there is so little time
     even for the finest
          watches

there's a gap in my teeth
and only kale
gets stuck in it.

26.08.2012[29]

afternoon walk//read//pre-sunbathe self-timed shot.

my present to me.

quiet time.

friends arrived. i built a fire. we cooked.

morning warm walk.

swim all afternoon/check.

 

me! from steph.

swim team, minus one.

i hit the can, too!

gifts.

all of it
what's not being said
everything in me.

so what you're telling me, is that we just spent three, maybe four, billion dollars on the opening ceremonies of the Olympics and landing a robot on Mars?
and we still don't have money to spend on healthcare.
ok, just checking.

povertyhomelessnesspresidentialcampaignsandillness, oh my.

neruda, always.

Pablo Neruda, "I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You"

I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it’s you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.

kitchen days

bits of a morning

i'm sitting, cross-legged and dirty, salty from the day,
my fingers stained with summer cherries,

wishing i had a joint to smoke, and your legs to tangle mine in.

sweetly spent.

and no pictures to prove it.

Your absence has gone through me

Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.


W. S. Merwin, "Separation"