Monday, February 27, 2012

late


We are so infinite

Yet trapped behind barricades

Self imposed

And constructed by the hands of - 

Yours: so full of possibilities

That could create beauty

Yet we deserted that talent show

On the side of a dusty road when

I left our friendly opportunities

In search of something

Dangerous

Now that danger is sonorous

and

Synonymous to solitude

A life like

That.

A life the That.

Too basal

Or

Secure.



Tuesday, February 21, 2012

"Man In Pieces"

                                                                       Chapter 1


            Today, a deflated man lay in pieces on the sidewalk. An old flaking leather bomber with an upturned collar and the zipper on its belly pressed down against the path next him. Two neat brown shoes drooling disorderly tongues trailed close by. His forgotten soles were positioned as if the man-that-used-to-be was a ballet dancer and his last pose an extraordinary second position.
            I approached the scene in quiet questioning as to where the ghost who once warmed these clothes had gone; where his stories had taken place and what type of thing it took to remove him from this shell?

            It’s a disheartening thing, this flatness…I didn’t anticipate crying this morning, especially from the sight of discarded clothing. But it shook like me our West coast quakes, and tossed my heart with the bitter tang of fresh arugula.  And at that moment, while I was lost in that blue despair dancing on little tiptoes through the rusted doors of my mind, a man passed me on the right.  I had stopped walking and was resting in the middle of the path, not really in anyone’s way, just there.  I heard him as he observed the scene, directing his words to the skeleton below us:
             “So, this is where you’re going be sleeping tonight, eh? On the ground? In the wet?  Yeah, well you would. You know, you’re the kind who would because you don’t really give a shit about nobody and you got a dog.”

            The ghost didn’t look up, just steady in front where his two glossy eyes met their own gaze at the tip of his ruddy nose. I was embarrassed to be of the same breed as that man walking by, that man who belonged to the mobile class, like me.  But even more so, I was terrified to be related to one the owning the lower quadrant of the sidewalk. No, no…it was impossible for me to be like him. I was different.  I was wearing shoes, and they cost a hundred dollars.
            Yet, all I could think of was “Really, that is exactly the kind of shit people like me fumble out with; we make distinctions between ourselves and this guy evaporating on the ground.  People like me; people who have hundred dollar shoes on say this type of crap:  “I’m different”.
            Yeah, right. Us hundred dollar shoe-wearers say it to ease the guilt about going home to a bed.  “This is the kind of shit we think ‘cause really we don’t give a shit”, I heard myself say out loud.  This time the ghost looked up, but only at my shins. I got the sense that looking any farther up would have required him removing the layers of crusted insults that sealed his soul off from people like me.
            “We’d rather it be some anonymous dude with a dog and a shopping cart then our own cold backs and slippery feet”, I heard myself mumble again.  This brought the ghost’s eyes down to the ground, where they rested for the remainder of our shared moments, because that’s all they were – moments, fragments, pitiful little shreds of an hour that I would ordinarily use on deciding between raw California honey or sustainably farmed, organic honey shipped from Oregon.  I had to walk because I could no longer glower at my own reflection in the coffee shop window and frighten the ironic blonde-bobbed Goth girl mistaking my painful mental unwrapping for something more personal about her sarcastic style. 

            I turned around, almost completely, in a ridiculous 360 before I could feel my legs enough to actually do that whole thing of walking.  Pulsing through me was only color.  Emotion had little to do with language in that moment, but a full spectrum of Valentine’s Day pervaded my field.  I was irritated by this irritation, and annoyed that I had somehow ended up on this terrible street with these obstinate reflections.  Before I left though, I looked down again at the man-in-pieces.  With equal amounts of surprise and curiosity at my previously narrowed concentration on only the man before and below me, I saw a young woman on his right.  She had the harrowing look of being broken by something powerful.  Hazel eyes against the palest, most translucent skin, I could almost see the blood of her heart pounding through those young, untapped veins.  I didn’t see blood that day, but I did she her struggle.
            She appeared as if she had been left many times.  As if she’d just been fighting for something…tightrope walking while balancing the world of her lover’s on the right shoulder and her own universe on the left.  She appeared to fighting for someone to fill an enduringly dark cave in between her ribs and even deeper between her thighs. 
            She had been left on the corner at night when there were only clouds in the sky to sponge up her heart’s drippings -scooped up and rung out over the Pacific Ocean the next day when it was sunny and she couldn’t make sense of the whole ordeal.
            Oh, she’d been left a thousand times. That girl, so young.  
            She’d been left on a carousel ride that promised glitter bombs at the end but never delivered and ditched on a plane that never took off.  Her friend said he’d be right back; he just had to go get the guts he forgot at home in the nightstand drawer.  He left her in the center of a volcano that has just shot it’s last explosion, only mirages of heat lingering in the long distance, promising to come closer and touch her and feel her and let her know she was warm too. 
            Dumped on the top of a rollercoaster, her friend parachuted down with her seatbelt in hand.  Before he bailed, he snatched away all her gold fillings and pawned them to a pirate.
            I wondered, “How much compensation did he get for those? Was it grander than the knowledge he had probably forever jeopardized her integrity and promoted her mouth to ruins?”
            I walked.
            And walked.
            And walked. But, I couldn’t shake the idea that the last time she’d been left it was probably in a pit of jungle snakes with no anti-venom. Not only did he abandon her there, he first bound her hands with rope and pulled out her vocal chords.  Just incase she tried to scream.






Friday, February 17, 2012

In fate(you) ate


Infatuation is a monstrous thing.
            Going against all senses
                                    of normal thought
                                                 rational decision-making
                                                            or steady comforts,
                                                it creates
                                    drama.
                        It feeds
the hunger for a
                        racing heartbeat.
                                                It
                                                perpetuates craziness.
                                                                        It births
                                                                                    f L u T t e R i N g fancies

and…and…and
            wickedly
                        temperamental dispositions. 

Infatuation   f   l   o   o   d   s.
            Never be it gentle or
            temperate.
            Simply
            hot
            or cold.
            On or off.

It either
   drowns
     or
      parches.

Infatuation never gives a call
before
showing up on your doorstep. 

Hell, it hardly rings
the bell
once arrived. 

No, no.
It prefers
instead to
            break windows
                        explore your rooms
                                     finger your trinkets
                                                and make lunch from (your) refrigerator’s
                                                             (innards). 


Know it well.
Serve it on knees
and pray
to its power.

Like a fool
sub
mit to it
‘s authority. 


8/24/2011

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Stubborn is the Ox


In the Chinese zodiac I'm an ox.  There are a lot of pretty cool things about oxen; they're strong and calm, they can pull a wagon and have cool horns that could be useful in spearing things.  But there's also this other side to them. A review of my Chinese zodiac reads something like this: they are tireless, detail-oriented workers who believe in doing things right the first time. They tend to be stubborn, dogmatic, my-way-or-the-highway kind of people who have no concept of when to back down.

Who, muuuah???
Yeah. That's pretty much me. I’ve been battling these less-than desirable tendencies for well, my whole life I suppose, but they’ve taken on a gorgeously vivacious new force since commencing with this RV Experiment. I have had this annoying nag of a voice in my head for the past couple weeks. It keeps reminding me of obnoxious things. It weighs heavy with the notion that perhaps…just maybe…there’s a small chance that…umm, engaging in this project at the moment is just way too much for me to handle!!

Damn, this lifestyle is hard!!! For example, there is never much consistency, it’s cold, there are interminable projects that need immediate attention, and there’s the constant threat of being ticketed a thick chunk of change if I don’t move her parking spot on the appropriate days.


Let me back up a bit.

The reason for the month long blogging absence is my full-time commitment to school. I'm in college at fancy-pants Mills where I have taken on a rigorous and ridiculously jam-packed schedule. Take two English classes, one radically bizarre Poetry workshop, one way-too-advanced level Spanish class, two jobs, some time to exercise, some time to talk to people and make friends, some more time to eat here and there, toss in some extraneous crap like commuting, shopping for necessities like candles and toothpaste and bathing, don’t forget catching up with family and reading essays and writing papers ad nauseum and conjugating verbs in past tense imperfecto or past tense preterito depending on the context…yeah, I don’t have much in the way of extra energy.

Not only has this effected the frequency with which I’m writing for the hell of it, but this energy is exactly what one would need to be able to continue thriving in the type of experiment I’ve intended to live in for one whole year, 365 damn days of uncertainty, challenge and newness…

In the past weeks I’ve have had to come to the sobering decision to change the way this experiment looks. It’s heartbreaking really. But, I’m not giving up totally. I mean, I’m an ox after all.




Miniature victories

(this was written almost one month ago and never published, but I wanted to publish it now anyway because it records some of my time with Sweet Pea)

Today was a success! I vowed to get the water running, and get the water running I did! I awoke with a start at 10:30 am (went to bed at 3 am due to staying up watching YouTube videos on water pumps so that's a fair amount of sleep) chewed a raw clove of garlic, slammed an Emergency and went straight to work on Sweet Pea. I had spent the evening researching the possible problems, and felt fairly confident that I knew where to look. Underneath one of my bench seats in the "dining room" rests the water tank. One small part of it is not covered with wood so I could see the plastic tank half full. The top of the seat had been screwed in by someone, so I started to unscrew it, then came to realize that it had also been nailed in with old, rusty, but beefy nails.  I was able to remove all of the screws, but couldn't get the nails out, so I just bent the wood back on itself until I could get a clear view as to what exactly lay underneath.
From the previous night's research I learned that the water pumps usually live next to the tank, but in this case there was no pump to be found.  So I replaced the wooden bench seat, this time without the screws, and put the silver sequined seat cushion I've fashioned back on top too.  I was absolutely not going to give up today until I got the stinkin' water on, so I took a breath and just looked around.
That's when I noticed emerging from the wall next to the main door a long, scraggly collection of wires connected to a small black knob. I had seen it before, many times, as it's strange looking.  In fact, I'd considered ripping it out because it was so ugly, but never got around to doing it. Real glad I didn't do that.
Turns out the solution to my water problem was squiggling out of the wall right in front of me this whole time.  For some reason this morning, I went over to the wires and ugly black knob and fiddled with it. I turned the knob one way then another and lo and behold...lights came on! More than this, a noise from below the refrigerator also started up, sounding like a fan.  I was curious so I went over to the compartment and opened the door. I saw what I recgonized as a water heater and felt a flush of excitement that I was getting closer to solving this problem.  I didn't see anything resembling a water pump though, and no swithces that I could fiddle with in that compartment.
Miraculously (and hilariously) it dawned on me to stand up, turn around and try messing with the "Water Pump" switch on a small panel located near the door.
Once I did that the heavens opened up, small children started laughing, banks opened their tills and threw free money into the streets, and lovers who had been fighting forgot their woes and smooched under sparkling waterfalls. Well, it felt like that at least. The water pump came on, and had running water.
"Yes, I rule", streamed through my mind. Deservingly so I'd say.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Pink Lady Cheeks


She couldn’t get in the doorway because when the keys dropped they melted on the sidewalk
And when she looked up at me,
Head cocked
To the side, like there were weights dangling from her right ear…
Then,
It that moment the once golden and sturdy hinges from that foam-board door came loose
And suddenly slippery
With an excess of grease that was just moments before unseen,
Unknown.

She looked up at me like a dog does brisket and I knew then that I loved her.

The door inevitably fell face first
Despite it’s honorable struggle against gravity,
Against those forces too quick for it to manipulate…

It fell.

Without abandon and without too much shame and with a candor I didn’t know she had Apple
licked her lips while revealing that
she had come unbuttoned,
for she wore those type of fancy boots popular amongst classy old-timey girls.

She
Knew
It

The animal feelings racing
inside of me;
those I wore like a violet scarf blazing around my neck
were to be used
against me. 

Her Pink Lady cheeks were inflamed with a passion
To hurt me,
But the chances of it feeling really good-
Like
Chocolate melting over a taut strawberry-
Were high.

The metallic copper curls of her crown
Fell across the constellation of freckles illuminating her face-
Like
Dotted stars in a vast sky
Pale and glowing against a smooth midnight chill-

I saw her softness
And the durable fortitude buried under
Those layers of stripes
And patches…
Her crooked-mouth crooning
And polyester manners
Came unstitched in those moments and invited me to live amongst their threads.


It was going to hurt
But the door fell anyway.