Torch (now confess)

Niki

of my heart.

in less than five minutes...you are a word that i don't know the meaning of, but i have fallen in love with way you drip off my tongue.

May 9, 2009
the day before the DAY

"each second frames the taste of hours on the tongue..."

i don't know what to do with myself.
i am sitting down to write, ID bleeding its steady, comforting, stream of human atrocity into the background(a murder case in Napa, CA-Danny-boy may have mentioned this to me), and i am missing you.

i would rather be chatting with you, about nothing, on Facebook. i really would. but i don't want to make you feel bad, i don't want to feel like i am making unreasonable demands on your time, so i'm just letting it be. it doesn't matter what i am doing...everything is better with it's shared with you. you don't bore me.

i am looking at my old scribbling, i miss writing(even if none of it was very good), and maybe i will revive my interest in it while i am incarcerated.

"i walk the circle-the steps and chants-
the proper spaces-the proper rants.
The appropiate rages and little hates,
the appropiate openings of doors and gates."

every minute that i am not speaking with you i ask myself, why?
it confuses me. are we speaking to each other too much? is it a drain? is it unhealthy? i don't know. i don't think so. i don't want to mope, i don't want to be the epitome of self-pity, i want to respect your need for space(even if i don't understand it in these circumstances), but i miss you today. i still feel bruised. i really just want some time to hold each other(even if it can be only in an intellectual fashion), for us to feel like we understand each other again, like we are agreed once more. but, i tell myself, there is still time today, still time tonight...

"i love the words i read, and
i learn to like the words i write, i think,
it's your eyes i lust
to see them both.

still, i never want to feel cheated-
or have to wonder if you'd read them-
and i know that if i sent them
that they come to you unbidden."
--------------------------------------------------------------
i carry
the sum weight of all my mistakes, even
as my honey tongue bakes...
--------------------------------------------------------------

All that lives finds a ruler in
the speed of things.
23 seconds, top to bottom
and in between
a closed circuit.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Possessive

I would still mix
Those songs for you
Like a stew
Of fevered kisses.

If only for kicks
And even if
You'll always go
Outside the reach
Of my stereo.

Its good to break the
Locks off
This habit I
Have of
Sealing into stone
Boxes

Instead of letting go.
-------------------------------------------------------------
3:08pm-4:08pm in Canada
smoke break. you just left to go to the mall. i want you to want to spend this whole day with me, but i don't want to have to ask for you to...

ah, well...

had to jury rig my lighter, it was immensely frustrating, just to light my cigarette. little things are really hard today.

are you going to think this letter is stupid?

ah, well...

i'm lonely today. i'm sad to be leaving here...-but you already know these things, and the repition is pretty boring, i guess-i don't know what to do with myself.

jail is depressing. the thought of jail, the smell, the colors, the food, nothing is vibrant there. the thought that i am voluntarily handing myself over to the enemy confounds me.

i will miss you so much...
--------------------------------------------------------------
Useless Elegy

There should never be
any more poetry
because your shadow shines
on other loves, and
on mists and stones
and foreign
dusts.

But no longer for me
in sunlight on
bus-stops, or on
eyes that hunger
for heroin
and all your other
trouble lusts.
--------------------------------------------------------------
ok, so maybe i've said enough for this moment, but can i say enough for the moments until your skin touches mine? -Line 99-
--------------------------------------------------------------
Mirth in Nine Lines

Max line-Sunshine-Ice Cold Mickey's
But holding hands in bed
is where it got real tricky.

Black Velvet-Girl Groups-Baby It's You
Your kiss in the shower
Thrilled me through and through.

Mohawks-Let's Talk-Honey, Listen Please...
I'd barely known you long enough
But lost my heart with ease.
--------------------------------------------------------------
3:48pm-4:48pm in Canada

Aarrgh.
Hitler's Bodyguard on the Military channel...
--------------------------------------------------------------
Shall a man go barefoot
Blinking and blank?

Wallace Stevens
-From Anglais Mort A Florence

Shall I?...

The curve of your hips slipping
from the line of your back into the blackness,
from past euphoria to this freezing lack.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Our minutes pass.
They describe us as a circle,
Sometimes as a series of
polite little cuts.

Then, when you had left,
Before a breath
These moments pass.
Into Twelve Great Chunks
Hacked fresh.

.............

Without you whats past
Must be standing bone
And some flesh -and frozen-
Unable to rot.
--------------------------------------------------------------
THE ONLY REASON TO BE READ IN THE FUTURE

For the first time
In my life
I try to think of the long term.

Like how,
Ten, fifteen,
Twenty years from now,

You might see,
See your name,
And cry.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Who am I to remember you?
you, who are this real thing.
And to make of you on paper
a creature of water and stone
And the thickness of your hair.
You living thing
whose absence,
Like an exclamation,
shocks the cold clean air.
--------------------------------------------------------------
it occurs to me that most of, maybe all of, the hurt feelings in our dealings with each other stem from misunderstanding. am i wrong?
i know i never hurt you on purpose. i've never wanted to, ever, and i have to believe that you have never wanted to hurt my feelings.

maybe you just don't understand that i really want you to see me as a priority today. that i really need you to. every minute that is passing is hurting me, 4:53pm now, nearly two hours since you left.

am i just being stupid? do i have any right to expect you to want to spend this day with me? i'm gonna start crying, znd then i will really feel stupid...
--------------------------------------------------------------
I found this poem close to my last day in prison, and it spoke to me. If i've sent it to you before, forgive me?

Prospective Immigrants Please Note

Either you will
go through this door
or you will not go through.

if you go through
there is aways the risk
of remembering your name.

Things look at you doubly
and you must look back
and let them happen.

If you do not go through
it is possible
to live worthily,

to maintain your attitudes
to hold your position
to die bravely

but much will blind you
much will evade you
at what cost who knows?

The door itself
makes no promises.
It is only a door.

-Adrienne Rich
--------------------------------------------------------------
this poem has always reminded me of you, and i have sent it to you before...

why did you go
little fourpaws?
you forgot to shut
your big eyes.

where did you go?
like little kittens
are all the leaves
which open in the rain.

little kittens who
are called spring
is what we stroke
maybe asleep?

do you know? or maybe did
something go away
ever so quietly
while wew weren't looking?
-e.e. cummings
---------------------------------------------------------------
day is nearly gone.
missed you every second.
so lonely today.

Christian

in indigo light, momentary friction,
an equation that dictates the movement of stars,
spin blindly, locked in stumbling, locked in clumsy,
in fumbling the moment before fire was born...

Nik is finally back in Edmonton, AB.

i miss her like hell...

"I don't feel the sickness yet, but it's in the post, that's for sure. I'm in the junky limbo at the moment, too ill to sleep, too tired to stay awake, but the sickness is on its way. Sweat, chills, nausea, pain and craving. Need like nothing else I have ever known will soon take hold of me. It's on the way."
Trainspotting

today feels hollow...i have no plans, just a half warm cup of coffee and Rickie Lee Jones saying that "We Belong Together" in the background, and missing Nik, always that.

Niki came to the Rose City about the time i stopped writing.

she has been here for six beautiful months, and tomorrow she leaves for Canada. but, she will be back.

The Westwind, The Midtown Apt, Sam & Chiqui's...the gray horror of those months...

Summerfall

do you have a tendency
to repeat?
repeat
to tendency?
unravel
into spiral?
repeat
Summerfall

so you want to be a writer?

by Charles Bukowski

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.


if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.




From sifting through the madness for the Word, the line, the way by Charles Bukowski. Copyright © 2003 by the Estate of Charles Bukowski. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins. All rights reserved.

1. my "problem"...

2. fear about my "problem", fear of pain, fear of want, fear of cold, fear of abandonment, fear of dissapointinhg those who...what?...love me? who think that i can do stuff...think that i know stuff? people i love.

3. is it indicative of being an american that i don't fear actual hunger? having been imprisoned, that i don't fear losing what i've never actually had? that most of my fears are intellectual musings? not really fears at all...

but important to me...
clung to...
out of loose leaf pages...
paper insulation stuffed between
layers of clothing,
layers of skin,
skin itself
like/unlike paper
still slate, unchalked,
my pictures are trite,
and boring,
still, please listen!,
everything i say is still
forming.

i have concerns about how this site posts entry's. it doesn't seem to be sequential, in fact, you have to disable any sequential aspect to post...you can't scribble, and lets face it, thats mainly what i do.

Nikole is having more difficulty with her birth certificate. she is having such a hard time getting here, and that makes me worry that she will think it worth it all when she arrives. i hate that.