Landlocked Blues

"I've been sleeping so strange at night

with a head full of pesticides"

My Dream Girl Don't Exist

That song is really 

upsetting actually.

I mean, it's all about

the girl he is convinced his

only real love killing herself.

She's apparently five when she 

simply cuts herself open and dies.

I'm sorry Jeff Mangum,

I'm sure you have another 

dream girl out there someone.

But he gets so into the song

emotionally. His voice is really raw.

It makes me want to cry sometimes.

And his voice will even crack,

it's so strangely perfect.

I am glad Jeff Mangum exists.

It's snowing.

I feel cold and

very weird.

Like cocooning.

I feel like cocooning.

Stephanie Says

It also doesn't help
this fate of mine 
when you, lovely
wonderful boy
recount your explorations and
your interests and you
laugh so and grin.


It is not ok for you
to love the Velvet Underground
(and Nico),
for you to have wonderful
small quirks in your language,
to have traveled and
spent time in places
and decided in some sort
of soul-searching wisdom
I know you possess in great quantities
that everything
is the same everywhere.


You went and you came back.
You are such a curiosity to me.
I want to break you
open sometimes, and ponder you from
another angle. 
To glean something else from you
other than this affection
I harbor so far deep in my limbs and
my strange-shifting soul for you.


I do not know
what to do about you.
When so often
you confound me.


It is a wretched truth
when I say that
 I love you.


There is no other way to
accurately describe this.
You.
Your soul and heart and
hands and fingers
and lovely blue eyes.
Your brain and your ribcage
and your quick fleeting pulse.


Something within you
is much too wonderful 
for me.

We Are Nowhere and It's Now

"I love sleep. My life has a tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?"
-Ernest Hemingway

You know.

The more I think of taking a 

gap year, the more appealing the

entire idea becomes? 

The idea of being a little free

for a little while.

Of having the independence

to go.

And do.

Things.

And meet people.

And have a little fun

and see some new sights.

Before I go off to learn more

bookish things.

To be able to travel

while I am young and 

very much alive.

Before I am crushed up

and swooshed around

this country full of mess

in the workforce

and taxpaying majority.

A chance to see

Italy.

And Turkey.

And India.

And South America.

A chance to travel America.

And to write.

And to see.

With my own eyes,

what there is to be seen.

To acquire new perspectives

and gather new ideas.

Not to slack off.

Not to sit at home.

Not to get a job.

I want to get out of this godforsaken place.

I want to be somewhere new.

There is not enough money.

There is not enough time.

And I know I am heading towards an

imminent and terrifying doom.

I have to stop this before it

goes too far.

But I see a lot of

nothing in my future.

I see a lack of fulfillment.

I'm scared the world will not live up

to its expectations, nor will I.

I am deathly afraid of 

personal failure.

What happens when I get stuck 

here?

What happens when I am poor?

What to do 

when I can see my life 

bottoming out before me?

I want to crawl into bed 

and sleep until I can retire.

Oh wait.

That's never going to happen.

These Days

There are times when I am painfully aware

of life.

As in,

what I am doing with it now,

where it is going,

where I want it to go,

and how I will push to get my life

there.

How will I 

judge my

living 

versus my existing.

Am I currently existing

or living?

Will I be who I want to be someday?

Can I get it together enough

to be happy with my life?

How much debt will I accrue

in college and how will I deal with it?

Where am I going to travel to,

how will I get there?

Who will matter the most

and what will I do to 

show them their importance?

I refuse to settle.

"Lack of passion is fatal".

There will be failures.

Mistakes.

But there will be triumphs.

And victories.

Someday I want to wake up

and be exactly where I want to be.

To have no regrets, no second thoughts,

no desires- if only for a moment,

is my single greatest desire in life.

To be contented fully for any amount of time.

We are all striving toward something.

There are fears and aspirations nesting

in each soul, they are trying to bloom and

become realized. 

If we could only go out,

all of us,

and grab at our goals

and make them real,

hold them above our heads

in sheer, magnificent wonder,

and triumph.

If our goals were all accomplished,

if we could all work towards something

with such fervor and passion as to make

it a reality.

I cannot imagine what would come of the world.

We could stand in awe of the wonders of human nature.

The content would be palpable in the air.

If nobody had to settle

and we could all accomplish our

dreams. 

There are small longings 

sleeping in the foxholes of

our hearts, which strain to pump

the blood of being, of living

into our limbs.

To stir an exuberance 

into our spirited souls,

stoking the fires of our passions

to push our sails to straining,

so we may cross our seas.

So we may all live.

We are all striving for validation.

For lives we dream of.

I will not settle.

We should not have to settle.

The Fairest of the Seasons

I had a horrible dream
where you cut open
your wrist and bled onto 
the floor and all across the
linoleum and fell unconscious
and bled and bled.


You needed 37 stitches 
to fix your arm,
which would have a big long
scar on it now. 


I had been the one to find you,
and I screamed and screamed
and had to hope you wouldn't die.
I rode with you in an ambulance
and held your other hand the 
entire way to the hospital
and cried.


You were going to be ok
physically. They put you on 
drugs and you were not yourself
you were a silent small thing
I had never known. The most depressed
I had ever seen.I stayed the whole
time you were in the hospital,
I held your hand
and sometimes you would wake from
the drug-induced sleep and you would
talk so quietly. And cry.
You cried. And my heart broke to pieces.


It was the worst sort of nightmarish dream.
The clearest and most terrifying ones.
It was horrible.

We Looked Like Giants

a cool breeze

blinking stop lights

in the middle of the slick black

street with the specter haunting

America. And with the kindly voice of

old reason by our sides

there was the swift swishing

of adventuresome walks in the

perfect, lovely, splendid night.

The sea-rustling of the

wind above and through

the trees- oh, the sweet salty sound

of the muse far off.

Stained sidewalks

and naked shrubs

as our feet fall in lovely silence

through puddles and asphalt

of sidestreets.

There are moments when

kissing the entire earth

is the most appealing idea

I have ever had.

Sailing Through

Hello.
I suppose it would be beneficial
to be festive, in the spirit
of turkey-eating, parades with
big floats, dog shows full of ugly mop-dogs,
and football. And family and eating.


It's a horrible holiday, in theory:
people cook. People eat.
People watch sports.


Oh, but it is so much more,
I think.
It is one of my favorites.


For I guess we must all grapple
with what we are thankful for
at this time.


Plus, I really love to cook,
so it's an added bonus.


And I guess I really enjoy seeing
my family. And eating lots of food with them.
And making fun of ugly dogs with them.
We have a good time.


So I guess you ought to decide
what you're thankful for,
it is a good thing to 
evaluate the good in our lives.
It makes us appreciate what we have
and who we are.


So I am thankful for my friends.
For my health
and for a wonderful year
I think. 
I am thankful for the good people
and the good times, and for wonderful
relationships with fantastic people.


So yes.
Eat. Drink. And be very merry.
For we can only eat so much a few times
a year. ;D

I Have Been Floated

This week was weird.
Is weird.
Will continue being weird.
And as I have nothing
to say, neither insightful 
nor in any way interesting,
take these beautiful lyrics
instead. 


"And one day we will die
And our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea
But for now we are young
Let us lay in the sun
And count every beautiful thing we can see
Love to be
In the arms of all I'm keeping here with me, me"


"Now how I remember you
How I would push my fingers through
Your mouth to make those muscles move
That made your voice so smooth and sweet
Now we keep where we don't know
All secrets sleep in winter clothes
With one you loved so long ago
Now he don't even know his name"


---


"Two-headed boy
Put on Sunday shoes
And dance round the room to accordion keys
With the needle that sings in your heart
Catching signals that sound in the dark
Catching signals that sound in the dark
We will take off our clothes
And they'll be placing fingers through the notches in your spine
And when all is breaking everything that you could keep inside
Now your eyes ain't moving now
They just lay there in their climb"




All these are by Jeff Magnum.
He's pretty swell.

Electronic Renaissance

The weather.
This season.
A transition into winter,
oh it is so grey outside.
It is sad outside
and I am sad inside because.
This is wintertime for me.
It is blue and I cannot help
but feel useless and miserable
on the worst days.


It is ugly and makes people
feel bad, and I know there 
are many of these types,
whom cannot fathom the weather's
temperament. I feel you, I understand
how this works. 


This sort of day
instills the feelings
of nothingness,
a plasmatic form drifting
in a heavy air,
without a real body
and losing a mind.


All I want is to lie in bed
and do nothing with my life.
I fear if I lie down
I will not be able to bring myself
to get up and attempt life.
But my life feels useless too.
What have I done?


What have any of us done
to make anything?
To create something
even slightly new?
Some of us
have done things.


Some of us have not.
And it kills to me to know,
I've done nothing.


And in reading "On the Road"
I feel even more stationary.
A stick in the mud...
I want to be with those who


burn burn burn
with madness.


Where are these falling stars?
Screeching as they drop to earth
on fire? To light the long winding highways
of America?


Oh, the mad ones.
Filled with passion,
the power to go.
The power to create and live
a life, while naive,
that is wonderful. 


Instead I drive in the six o'clock dark
and stare at church steeples and 
crumbling buildings in a town
I don't want to sink into.


I need a Neil Cassady.
A passionate catalyst to 
spark something in me to
create something worthwhile and new.


I don't want to fall into a winter funk.


I can't think.
I cannot operate.

Oh Comely

Because it's so wonderful

to feel terrified and helpless

there in front of him.

To come to realizations

that break you so quickly

and jaggedly

as you listen through

that one album.

The Gate

Goodness me, I've forgotten so many!


I exist as I am, that is enough
-Walt Whitman


So I love you because I know no other way
-Pablo Neruda


Our best yesterdays are now foul crumpled piles of names
-Vladimir Nabokov


So much of adolescence is an ill-defined dying, an intolerable waiting, a longing for another place and time, another condition
-Theodore Roethke


By daily dying I have come to be
-Theodore Roethke


I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow
-Theodore Roethke


I love sleep. My life has a tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?
-Ernest Hemingway


Perhaps this will be all for now.
I'd add a Ginsberg quote if I could,
but they are all to damn good and too damn long
to put here. 


Also, check out "Words Made Flesh",
it's a site full of literary tattoos,
they are all very lovely.

Take Your Carriage Clock and Shove It

I'm feeling very quote-y right now,

and would like to vent this.

So, quotes:

I imagine that yes is the only living thing.

e. e. cummings

I sort of want this tattooed upon me,

it is one of my favorites. 

A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea. 

Honore de Balzac

We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch - we are going back from whence we came. 

-JFK

To destroy is always the first step in any creation.

e. e. cummings

I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart: I am, I am, I am

-Sylvia Plath

You might as well live

-Dorothy Parker

It goes on

-an excerpted Robrt Frost quote

I enjoy this bit especially, it is so powerful. Saw it as a tattoo.

I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)

-ee cummings

and my very favorite,

for whatever we lose (like a you or a me) it's always ourselves we find in the sea

-ee cummings

(The beginning picture is a quote from Albert Camus)