COMING SOON!

I am going to take some after pictures tonight, if I can remember. Otherwise I will do it tomorrow. All the things are done. ALL THE THINGS. As of this morning. Well, except I am going to refinish the coffee table I found. It was only $7, I figured for that price it was worth a little work. And Tuesday I will have TV.

Also, my dad and his girlfriend were in town this weekend. His girlfriend is my mom's former best friend, and my mom does not know they are dating.

Also also, my mom was supposed to come out here tomorrow with a friend of hers to go skiing, then she emailed me to "let me know" that she wasn't bringing her friend, and was instead going to stay at our house Tuesday through Saturday. Shockingly, I was able to tell her that wasn't OK, and we are now scheduled to meet in Boise on Friday for a couple of days. Don't worry, I will be back in time for the Packers game. So this means I get a couple-day reprieve between parental visits, which is...awesome. And I kind of stood up for myself with my mom. It almost made me vomit to tell her that it was not OK for her to invite herself to stay at my house for a week, but I DID IT GODDAMN IT.

I think I was only able to do it because I am so frazzled and on edge that I honestly could not handle the thought of her being in my home right now. Plus I am nursing a hangover on two hours' sleep. It added a sense of urgency.

Anyway, sorry for the boring post, but I PROMISE YOU WILL HAVE PICTURES SOON! AND MAYBE GRAPHS! LOOK, I WILL SPICE THIS UP RIGHT NOW WITH AN IMPROMPTU POEM!

The days are colliding and smearing
And so far the things that we're fearing
Have all come to pass,
Like ice in a glass,
Cold, smoking, and burned.

Hm. That was kind of depressing. Sorry.

Confusion

For whatever reason,
The words just won't come tonight.
And it's not even tonight,
It's this morning.
Do you see my difficulty?

Like a loop of clear glass
Ever moving
With nothing behind it
Or in front of it
Or above or beneath

And I cannot tell what color it is
Because it is clear
But that is not a color.
I am not even sure that exists, on its own.

Does it bother me
Or am I the bother?
Which way must I look at this
To see?

All of the ways seem
Intangible and entangled.

Nothing makes sense,
Anymore.

This is How He Describes "Emo", Bitches

Why do you do it, I say.

Sometimes, he says,
I am opening vents in my skin
Skin too swollen
With the pressure of agony
With the inner points of nails and knives
Skin that needs release
Exposure and purgation
Digging out the offending intangibles
Scraping them off,
Away

Sometimes, he says,
I cannot do
Cannot be
Cannot
Cannot
But feeling that pain, I can handle.
Cleaning with alcohol, I can do.
It is easier
To transfer the pain to my body
Where I am strong,
Where I can deal with pain,
No problem.

Sometimes, he says,
I need to validate my heart
Visible signs of an invisible hurt
That I know is truth
That I cannot say with words
Because words are insufficient
And impermanent
And I need to draw it
In red lines
That say a thousand words
Eloquently malingering
I need to say my hurt.

Sometimes, he says,
I deserve it.

He stops, and I let it fall like snow.

But all of these reasons only exist
In that single moment, he says.
All of the other moments are spent
Trying to cover up the shame
Feeling stupid and weak
Hiding under turtlenecks and jeans
Terrified that someone will see
Will question
Will suspect

That I am not strong enough to cope
That there is something wrong
That they will want to help
That they will feel I need help
That they will pass judgment
That I will be lacking
That I will see pity in their eyes
When they look at me.

And I know it is wrong, he says.
I know I shouldn't do it
I know it is the wrong choice,
The wrong way,
The wrong thing to do.
I know it better after I do it.

But in that moment
In every one of the that moments:
It is the only thing.
I do not know anything else.
It is what I do.
It is how I survive.

Haiku for You

Tangled, mutely snagged
Running in tight figure eights
Worsening the mess

Wading through deep shit
Bargeloads of roiling, hot filth
Looking for a rope

There's no easy way
To take the sting out of it
To pretend it's fine

Instead, let's just breath
Through our mouths, not our noses
Heads over water

The alternative
Is not attractive. So we
Will swim. We won't sink.

Christmas Eve

I'm caroming off walls
In my very best jammies
The ones with the peace signs
And hearts on the bottoms
And tonight's the night
That it happens for real--
I bet that I see him,
See Santa this year.

I've waited for aeons
Wrote letters and songs
Just hoping that one day
He would come along

And tonight's the night
I feel it, I swear
The night when I finally had
Something to wear

And I have the plate
Of the cookies I made
And I have some milk
And I have to wait
'Cause I know he's coming
And I am just glad

That tonight my jammies
Aren't half bad.

Cinderella Story

There are a million rooms in Cinderella's Castle.
And each one fits its occupant
Like a glass slipper:
Perfectly.

And Cinderella moves
Through dark mirrorless hallways,
Her smile brightening
Just before opening the door

And here she fluffs a pillow
And here she draws a bath
Here she stokes the fire
And here she shares a laugh

And when they ask where
Her Prince Charming is,
Her smile doesn't falter
(For she practices)

"He is off helping someone
Who needs him tonight.
He'll be back soon,
Once they are alright."

"Snow White, I believe, in
The forest below. Last night?
Sleeping Beauty. But
They need him, you know!"

And she closes the door,
Walks the hallways once more
Takes a breath, lights her smile,
Tinkles "Goodnight, my friend!"

And this room is the Princess
Who can't stand the pea
"I assure you, it's perfect,
as clean as can be."

And she slips back to the kitchen,
Sits tall on a chair
Her crow's feet just show here,
And the grey in her hair.

Prince Charming returns
from Snow White this time,
His apple cheeks glowing,
His eyes bright and fine

Up she stands once again,
takes a kiss, holds his hand.
"I'm back home!" he sings,
"With my world, my wife!"

And she hands him the cocoa,
the dried pea grey and hard.
"You'll need these, tonight, dear.
 Her room's not too far."

His eyes brighten as her sparkle fades,
And he dances away before her face betrays
The snap in her heart or the cloud in her eye
As she watches him twinkle and sashay and sway.

As she cannot begrudge them
She cannot begrudge him
The Happily-Ever-After
That someone else penned.

But if it were her story,
To tell and to live,
She'd write Prince Charming out
And Mr. Right in.

The Perch

Perch on their water perch hung in the clear Bann River
Near the clay bank in alder dapple and waver,

Perch they called ‘grunts’, little flood-slubs, runty and ready,
I saw and I see in the river’s glorified body

That is passable through, but they’re bluntly holding the pass,
Under the water-roof, over the bottom, adoze

On the current, against it, all muscle and slur
In the finland of perch, the fenland of alder, on air

That is water, on carpets of Bann stream, on hold
In the everything flows and steady go of the world. 

--Seamus Heaney

Happy

Smearing the greasepaint
Over his malingering sneer
He slathers on a veneer
Of forced gaiety
So his depravity only shows
In cracked shards
When his eyes glint
Like blood-drenched steel
And he twists the balloons
His gloved hands wrenching
Necks, limbs, and swollen abdomens
Rubber screaming in agony
As the children laugh,
And clap,
And scream
For more.

Thank You

Thank you for making my day, today.
Your talent for poetry blows me away.
I could be mired in the deepest of shit,
Moping and drowning and wanting to quit,
And here you have written it out in your mind,
Crafting with poesy your friendship and mine.
And suddenly, sunshine and rainbows appear
As you make the gloom and the glum disappear.
Yours is the smile that's all over my face--
You are the one who put it in its place.

Sometime After Midnight

Crowding my head
Like drunks at a ball game
Possibilities
Probabilities
And all of the things in between.

It's usually after midnight
That my fancy takes flight
Refusing to sit tight
Preferring not to act right

And that's when I wonder
Lay awake to ponder
The path that I'm on
And the one I could be on

This or that
Here or there
Now or never

But we all know that
It's not a path
It's a moving walkway
And there's no way to get off.

The Few, The Proud

Overeager and underprepared
Too excited to experience
All the things!
Even though all includes some
Like distaste, disaffection, and disgust.
And I am the object, never the actor.
It must be that
eagerness and zeal
that bright-eyed optimism
Is reserved for those
Who can defend their rights to it.

It's not for everyone.

What She Said

"What She Said" by Billy Collins, from Horoscopes for the Dead. © Random House, 2011. (buy now) 
(via The Writer's Almanac)

When he told me he expected me to pay for dinner,
I was like give me a break.

I was not the exact equivalent of give me a break.
I was just similar to give me a break.

As I said, I was like give me a break.

I would love to tell you
how I was able to resemble give me a break
without actually being identical to give me a break,

but all I can say is that I sensed
a similarity between me and give me a break.

And that was close enough
at that point in the evening

even if it meant I would fall short
of standing up from the table and screaming
give me a break,

for God's sake will you please give me a break?!

No, for that moment
with the rain streaking the restaurant windows
and the waiter approaching,

I felt the most I could be was like

to a certain degree

give me a break.

Answer to Prayer

It can't work that way, dear.
You can't make the call.
If you did, we'd be angels,
with a penchant for fall--
The time of the year
That ages with grace
The bright golden trees
and the lines on your face.

But winter will come
and it's just too cold, dear.
The lambs will out-spring us.
In summer, we'll wilt.
There's no fun in dragging
yourself through all that.

Besides,

If good things never came to an end,
we would never meet again.

Wild Thyme Unseen

For the Kindle Whisperer
 
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.

---

But to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint—
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime's death in love,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.

excerpted from "East Coker" and "The Dry Salvages," the second and third of Eliot's Four Quartets

The Empress of Ice Cream

Call the seller of big cigars,
The corpulent one, and bid him sip
From crystal cups concupiscent pearls.
Let the Frenchmen loiter in such form
As they are used to bear, and let the girls
Bring farthings in small grimed fistfuls.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only Empress is the Empress of Ice Cream.

Take from the drawer of gold
Ensconced in red velvet, that crown
With which she incited envy once
And place it so as to cover her hair.
If her sharpened wits protrude, they come
To show us how quick she is, and smart.
Let the tailor fix the seam.
The only Empress is the Empress of Ice Cream.


(Not to be confused with the Emperor.)

Nighttime Melody

A fan in the corner
Thrumming lowly, slowly
Muffles the silence

They call it white noise
Because it cancels everything

But I think it just tucks it in
Under warm blankets
Sings it a lullaby
Then tip-toes
Out of the room,

Taking the waking light
Leaving the comforting
Liquid of night

Softening the harsh edges of nothing
With the mellow curves of something

Humming my mind into
The lapping wavelets
Of sleep.

Preface

Reader, beware
The cupboards are bare
The mind left to look for transcendence
And while it was gone
The pen wrote a song
Revealing for all the mind's absence.

Irritable

How can I convey to you
The way you make me feel
Without being condescending
or caustically rude?

You are a cut on the corner of my mouth
That doesn't heal until I'm silent
For days on end

You're rough sandpaper,
Rubbing repeatedly
On my dry knuckles

A tiny rock
In my shoe

A mosquito
In my bedroom

A noise
At night

You are all of these things
And so much more
So much, much more

An unfinished line

Buried Treasure

It's not so much pirate's booty
As it is a baby bootie,
Accidentally discovered,
Uncovered while searching
For a blanket for the houseguest
Who is waiting in the guest room
Getting colder. And you sit,
Holding a baby bootie, the
Blanket forgotten on the floor,
Fingers burnishing this gem,
Working as they did years ago,
Tucking soft pink feet and tiny toes
Into the most precious booty on earth.

And That's All We Have Time for Today

Flop onto the couch
And tell me your problems.

Don't be shy, I've heard it all.
Grotesque fantasies,
Horrifying memories,
The heavy weight of guilt,
Crushing pain of hatred,
Blank numbness of ennui.

I've heard it all.

And you may think you're special
With your abnormalities
But I am here to tell you

You're as normal
As everyone I see
In one-hour increments
Five days a week.