Secondhand

I felt what I felt for myself, second
and it felt minute in comparison
What you felt for me felt (most importantly)
firsthand and struck itself faster than mine
as if importance were a matter of time and not
what seems more wise

I wished for myself, second
and for you I wished first against wind,
down it went into nothingness because a wish
spent perpetuating itself
means little more than its success

I bettered myself for you
but what is better when what you're comparing it to
is a year or more's worth of ignoring me gently
so why is better to you, more than better for me?



I'll know what it feels like to wear clean sheets
and no longer will I be secondhand to myself.

and thus

love unjustified by any action or thought, indescribable excruciating anticipation for nothing, a train meant to arrive late at no specific hour on a cold overcast day, walk across the street sit at an empty booth and stare at the condensation dripping down the sides of a glass cup, run left index finger down its side, watch it shiver and continue in a slow crawl over the trenches of your digits.
love in pain, in dusty closets sitting down cross-legged with clothes like hovering clouds over burst of inconceivable passion after burst of unnecessary vulgarities, loops in the carpet strung up by stepping and stepping hard. Pushing forward over and over strong enough to move furniture slight enough for no one to notice when they arrive from work.
love in long hours, stretched out balloon skin tight over the lampshades, desktops, couches, opening the bulbs of flowers, the white arms of 15 petals escaping sleep in yawns of hundreds at noon.
because frankly
love is insensitively rich, decadent in ignorance, deliciously blind and vapid
sitting on a cold hard plate next to fingers and silverware, virgin white cloth napkins stained with maroon and age, chocolate cake
and love is
gone
love is always gone before you ever feel its landing on your silver cheek, hardened by the "what it could have beens" and more
and love is played
long notes on a cello, marred by agitating silence, echoed only louder in a small empty room, you and I and love being played solemnly sworn together by loneliness
settles
in the dust, I am
what love is and what isn't, couldn't be, and never will.

and love

love the days the waves the short escapes into small apartment caves. Love the multicolored socks and multicolored skin, the changes in between, within. Love the short small steps he takes, the skipping, prancing, jumps, the chocking during jazzy songs, the lumps. And love and love and love, the books, the surprises into short stories, reprises, the original versions of songs in the shower. The customers with jokes that they seem to have practiced all day just to tell you. The overcast, the sunny, the rain. The whisps of mist in between the trees on weathered trails. Love the 3hr long phone conversations, the 30 min walks, the 22 second burts of chatter. The sleeping, the awakening, the curls, the yawns, the pleasant smiles. The hammock, the swinging, the holding of moments. The honest to goodness truth, the vacuums when the store closes, the father and his quirky daughter. The free, the costly, the worth it. The tele in the breakroom, the song that appears on shuffle. The being too poor for an apple, the being rich but only in savings. The unfinished work piece, the piano, the practice, the finish, the forgotten notes. The trying, the failing, the trying a second time and rocking it. The being asked questions, the what could be flirting and may possibly not be. The memorization of facts and repetitioned and conditionned. The cleanliness of one side, but dirty on the other. The thank yous and I'm sorries, and feeling the same way about both of them. The rants and laughs. The dreaming and retelling and recalling it all later. The bread with raisins, pizza with pineapple, chips with salsa, water with vitamins. The only knowing Scorpio, lyra, and polaris. The baggy pants that used to belong to my grandpa and fit me. The hum of a box fan. The light of the bathroom, the soft murmur of neighbors, the scent of baby lotion. That just brushed clean feeling, that just ate something deliciously awesome feeling, that I'm poor but happier than ever feeling. Knowing your parents are healthy, that your roommates are sleeping, that you're healthy and about to be sleeping. The not needing anything. The room being cold and the outside being hot but also being warm under the covers. The kitchen being clean, the carpet being soft, the couch being splendid for writing a blog. The being interrupted by a phone call that changes everything. The being friends again, the knowing that this is where things really do get better and everyone was right to say so. The being simply happier. The love and love and love for all of this and mostly loving how much you love.

My Reaction to Christian's Post:

Oh hello.
So this is the game we're playing, yes? If it is then fantastic because I've been playing it for ages and I know exactly how it goes and how it stretches out.
Words are words are words. I don't mean to trounce your literary integrity but I say you have some ballsy audacity to articulate yourself over the internet. Also, thank you very much for reinforcing the fact that we're over. Oh really? I wasn't aware. But thank you very much to communicating that I am in fact in the past, that you don't look back at me, that we're done, etc, etc, etc. I needed that. Really I did. Thank you because I was still hoping that next week we could catch a movie, make out in the theater, go to Pascucci. I was still under the impression that your next love letter was about to arrive in 2 days and that I'd hear you play Norwegian Wood over Skype tonight. But thank you for letting me know! Now I'll make other plans. You must come to terms with the fact that you chose my best friend, that my best friend is not interested in you, that she's going to move in with me within a week, that we've been friends for almost 6 years, that she will always choose to respect my feelings over choosing to respect yours, and that if given the choice to hurt me or hurt you, she'd hurt you a thousand times over. Oh, and also! She's not interested in you. Oh hey, also just letting you know. She's not interested in you. If you weren't aware of that. If you think she's being a tease then just grow up. She's even a tease towards me and I haven't had any whack at the goods. Are you ready to try for the next 6 years? But honestly, the reason this may sound harsh is because all in all you hurt my feelings by writing what you wrote. You should never hurt a writer's feelings with words. That's practically shooting at someone who has a machine gun with a handgun. Eh, I'm not very good at gun references but anyway! I care about you, but you're starting to make me feel really bad. Be careful with your actions because they always have consequences. You've already broken my heart in one way, now don't go off and break it as my friend.

Jerk.

Freewrite - Untimed

Blind since five, unecessarily wise since 9 and the downturns began then- under falling autumn leaves stuck between the lines of wide ruled paper. Scribbled and massacred with clicks and ticks of what could have been literature but was not. I made the mistake of taking a path that diverges into the same path over and over again- I made the bigger mistake of attempting to convince myself that I was getting somewhere and that the stones and trees were different every time I passed them and of course they weren't. They were the same. She rounded up the stray ropes and placed them against one another, pencils in the grass writing meadows in the distance. Rope. Entangled with itself to made a larger entanglement. Heavy and hot in the palms of both hands. Derailing a train takes a quarter but that's only rumor, he says, they've done it before plenty of times. If you close your eyes you can't tell the difference between pennies and dimes, they're as smooth as lies crawling in between your pointer and index fingers. I look down. Watching the ground pass underneath me as I stand still with my legs walking and I head nowhere but it seems as though the world is passing, slowly, advancing towards something behind me. I play an invisible violin with my wrists at the dinner table, unable to talk and look up out of bashfulness, blushing at his saying that I look cute tonight. I'm nervous, I can tell because my hair cannot stay behind my ear, or so that's at least what my gestures suggest. The tables around us are celebrating anniversaries and we're only celebrating the beauty of just being with one another currently. I know better than to promise myself more than what I'm aware of knowing. I know I don't know anything- metacognition in 178 degrees, the other 2 is only faith. 180 is what I gave up a few weeks ago when I stoppped giving a damn about what I did and didn't know and how to fix it towards one end of the spectrum to the other. I like to think I'm sleeping on Tim Burton backdrops, a curling darkness, curtling grayness, writhing blankness in the foreground of chances and the rest is up to what I end up dreaming. Protagonists of tragedies and possibly lost extremities. Today was empty and I'm tired.

I've

never regretted something this much. Or wanted something back this badly. I never really believed in what Clementine did in Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless mind until now. I have the option of either feeling this intense unrealistic amount of hope for us and for what we've done and could still do or just forget everything. So far you lead me to believe that doing both is bad, but I have no other choice than do those two things because remembering you and who you are and what we had is to basically continue to love all of it over again. I don't know what else to do, because I love you too much to do anything but try. I'm so sad.

My parents make me happy

and then they break my heart. Their love is so conditional. I can't do a thing on my own, can I?

WOMAHN

Great, I'm a woman, a great big woman, a great big curvy brown woman. No, not really. I don't really have the breasts for that, nor the hips for that. SO OKAY LET ME START OVER! I'm a woman, tall, skinny, beautiful. Long legs peeking under every dress and high heels making me .....wait....I'm not that either. So I'm not the standard big beautiful curvaceous brown woman, nor am I the standard walk-down-street-faces-turning sort of woman. Alright well here it is. I'm a woman. I'm a "size 3, sometimes a water bloated size 5" type of woman. I'm a "sometimes I breakout due to stress and make a personal choice not to cover every blemish with makeup because honestly, my flaws are a part of me" sort of woman. I'm a "sometimes my feet smell, I get dandruff, I sneeze loudly, laugh loudly, and breathe loudly due to nasal congestion" woman. And no, I'm not the "feminist fuck you chauvenistic bastards" category of woman, I'm the "I fall in love, I cry when I'm sad, I try to get my homework done, I get upset when hungry, I cuss, I make do with what I have" woman. I'm just a woman. I really don't fall under any category of woman. I'm not this nor that, or too much of here nor there. I just am. I was born with two breasts, a vagina, eggs, the ability to have babies. Biologically, that makes me a woman- but what makes me a woman? You may ask, I might know. But I'd rather show you. (:

Finally Finals Fandango Frafflebums

Different in the sense of ceiling propellers, whose only motivation lies in the force of a circular and constant motion, or rather different in the sense of running water against young skin, bouncing like beads against stretched rubber, or maybe different the way televisions are, being stared into by food-holding people with gaping open mouths and nothing else to do all day. I don't think it matters, though. That some movements grasp tightly and others hold hardly anything at all. It's movement and if I'm movement then really I'm no different than the previously mentioned banalities. Hurrah, I'm a banality, a mundane activity, a process of elimination, a processed food, a 75% processed, a debit/credit process. a profession that says: "Excuse me as I profess and confess, or digress to trangress my distress." Endearing really, piercing thoroughly enough to be painfully searing, steering the unconscious dead rat into another direction with pixie sticks and 1983 pennies. Currency currently curing me of all my obscenities. Maybe.

Today it smells like Soap, Lime, and Pomegranate

I'm not so much concerned about what's going to happen to me tomorrow as I am with who I am going to be when tomorrow arrives. It's become undoubtebly clear to me that certain emotions and feelings aren't only disabilities, but also possibilities. Possibilities to be lead to believe the unbelievable and so forth. Anyway, the point is something I am currently making increasingly difficult to push across. So let me try to push it harder. Lately, I've cared less; however, I could care even less. This truth is unsettling. I want to care more, not less. Sacrifices of the heart and mind are making me nostalgically ill and decision making has become as easy as eeny meeny. See? I don't even make it to the miney moe anymore, I'm that decisive comparatively. What I mean by sacrifices leads me to something I've been quoting more often- "Sacrifices for the Greater Good." What is this "Greater Good" I am constantly referring to? It isn't God- lawdy Lord even knows my sacrifices are less than religiously inclined. It isn't for the well-being of the world- I've stoppped recycling (sad face). Is it for me?- Nah, nah, nah, I've yet to reach the breaking point with my self-induced narcissism. It's moreso (for lack of a better term) for the future. No, not the "hovering cars-multidimensional-timetravel-chipsinbrains" future; the "fuckimincollege-fuckihavekids-fuckimgettingold-fuckimafatass" future. I'd very much like to reduce my chances of saying, "I wish I could've, wish I had've, wish I didn't." Therefore the choices I am making now are more conscious. Those fast quick "what the hell, fuck it, why not" choices I've been making have been extremely risky, but very effective in making me "carpe diem."

I can't dare to be handled/ to be fucked with/

With increasing levels of simplicity comes decreasing levels of others' understanding of you. As if somehow your indifference is miscommunicated in the sound waves and then later on appears as an underlying sarcasm sprinkled with a pseud-philosophical perspective. I am nothing of that. Calm down with the critical analyzations! There's no mystery wrapped inside my bra, there's no romantic background music, there's no such thing as "forever" in my book at this point in time. As a matter of fact there is no book. I'm a short-handed poem written in Spanish now being processed underground. Some people ask with the intention of wanting to hear certain responses. Some people flip it around towards themselves; like narcs that stare at themselves in the mirror until their eyelashes fall off. Some people want you to find out their deepest darkest secrets. "Some people" isn't me. If I have secrets, you won't know, I won't tell. If I ask a question, give it to me straight. If you want to talk, I'll pretend my past, presents, and futures are put on hold for you. I want it to be easy and I want it to be simple. No more, no less, no games, I'm done with games.

My Response:

I don't know. I just don't know, can't YOU see that? Didn't YOU notice? I was starting to become unhappy, the rotting fruit on a tree that no one wants to look at or poke at or eat because they're so miserable all the time. You talk about abandonment, you talk about confusion. That was my life every day. I said "how dare he leave, go back home and leave me here." It happened all the time. It's not your fault, you have a right to be angry, every right in the world. I just can't do this. Not right now. I'm angry too; not at you, just at the circumstance.

I have no home.

I have no place. Santa Barbara is nothing to me and this fucking desert is becoming so distant. People I don't know and places I can't travel to. They're everywhere. It's all shit, you know that? When you disappear from yourself because you hate it all. In the end, it's just anger and no one gets it. That's the worst- when no one understands what it's like because they're either detached or too attached. There's no in between- I'm either there or here and I can't be both. So I must be neither. I feel awful. The biggest identity loss of my life and I'm misunderstood. I want to go home. Oh wait, where the fuck is that?

I overthink it.

I overthink it and overthink it.
Do I feel the need of someone with me? Do I need constant reassurance? I know I always go too far, and say what I do not mean because no one has ever made me so upset. I've never felt so anxious and I've never felt that I didn't have enough time. But let me explain it to you. Every moment I spend with him is timed, there is always a deadline, there is always a moment again where I won't get to be with him and hold him and be held by him. These short spurts of time ultimately end up being wonderful but only to end up as extreme discouragement and a missing him intensely. Why is this my relationship? Who would choose this life? I know that this is a sacrifice I am choosing to make for love but a love this disconnected and this painful - a love timed; an unfair love. I can count the days I've seen him, count the times he held me as I cried, count the times I stared at him as he drove. I hate that I haven't missed count. I'm sorry, Christian, for being so upset. I don't mean to be, I just need more time with you. I apologize that this is probably all unreasonable; I'll come up with a better argument not at 3 in the morning.

I was and If I was

I was passing by the world. I only saw a glimpse of what I should have. I stared and stared at golden suns pouring spoonfuls of their violet milk into pools of broken eyes. Oh my Lord, whose arms are those around me currently, keeping me safe from the shards of winter winds? Are they yours or are they my own? Am I so weak that I have succumbed to your will without my knowledge, unable to consciously make that decision for myself? Or am I so strong that I created my own God, one with large hands like my father's. A God bearing the scent of my mother, a scent that clings to my memories and drags them back as silhouettes on tear-filtered nights. My palms are placed on cement blocks, my head hung low enough to drip the black off my hair. The four minutes and two seconds of sanity some song provides me will only endure the sorrow for as long as the five struck piano keys in the distance remain ringing in my ears. I used to be lonely, but not like this.
Whose voice is this that squeaks from my parched lips? The puckered wrinkles on these hands are not my own, the pictures hanging on the wall are those of yesterday. That is a picture of my grandfather, that is one of my daddy before he knew the picture of my grandfather would be too precious too soon. Why am I not strong? If I had a boat, I'd crawl the ocean to October 31st, when Viktorria brushed my hair back and Elisa's hugs held me together. Then I would go back to a Sunday afternoon, when my parents and I watched television together, anything together. Anything with someone other than myself.

Am I strong enough?

To write?

theeeend

I have been thinking, or not been thinking.
Whichever it is, I have decided.
I don't want to be a writer, I no longer have the desire to write, so here I put my metaphorical pencil and pen down to rest and now will only write academically for whatever is necessary of me. I have reached a point of helplessness. I have reached a point of blocked creativity.
My insides cry.

Wall and Paint

Wall and paint, painted walls screening over aching fall. Oh goodness, isn't emotional bombardment fantastic streaking lightening scented melted plastic. I fuck of smelling paint it licks the sticks pink fingers open split. My scissors crafting old and new, reversing strangers, aren't you you? Or are you babies trinkling shit, I know no dangers but the truth. I'm broken like. I'm broken like, all broken like that orange bike you had and lost and found again, the men all pumping fucking lead, fly into your own magnetized rectum, oh baby that colorful spectrum, delectable respectable but oh so so detectable. The feeling of burnt rubber lacing lacy laces. The feeling of tires scraping past your bloody braces. The feeling of poison powder in between your
open
vulnerable
spaces reenactment go ahead boy, show your daddy proud and fucking pump your fucking lead. Retrieval in the broken head.

I'm a ghost

I can't even write, I'm so upset. I'm so damn angry. I'm angry. I want to hit and scream and kick. I don't want to hear a "dearest, be happy" or a "calm down, baby" whatever. I don't want to be told to shutup and be comfortable because I'm in a state of unrest and discontent. I'm at a point in my life that I hate, I spit at the fucking world and lick at the open wounds of my own fury. A fucking fire that you can't dissolve with words of empty comfort.

Noah and the ark

I was told from God to make an ark. I made one because I was told to and then
at some point in time water began to pour endlessly and I followed through. Two by two animals were placed upon the ark and mostly everything was saved from harm except a few sinful people left behind by the Lord.

He was told from "God" to make an ark. I saw him building it and asked if he needed help with this endeavor and he denied my suggestions and stated that this needed to be done with the hands of two. His and Gods. I watched him build and watched it rain. When the rain did not stop, the lands flooded our homes and family and I watched in vain. If I had had an ark, I would not have placed animals upon it. I would have placed my family, my children, the village; the elderly and youths go first- hand in hand. I would have stopped everyone including myself from dying.

I told him to make an ark.
He did.
I made it rain.
He used it.
I gave him specific instructions.
He followed through.
I care not of what else happened because my word should not be questioned and I need to justify my actions to no one.

What is the bible?