I can pull a switch, just like I can pull a knife across my own veins.

I'm better at swallowing self-interest like swords for your pleasure,

so I'll do it,

because you can't.

I've never been so selfless, so crazy, so comically in denial.

For that fantastic illusion of a chance at being with you, being loved by you.

I'm not afraid to draw blood. I'm not afraid of pain.

If only you'd jump with me.

I want to give everything to you, but I don't want to end up with nothing.

At least, for once, there are no uncertainties. I already know

I'm wrong. Your actions are frank and unmotivated to lie.

Even as they flare up to burn me, growing hotter and hotter,

I sit upon the tracks,

a smile upon my face because you'll like that

and a tissue at hand in case you need it.

Because I know you won't slow down. You won't swerve.

This isn't a game of chicken.

Suicide--I can't help it,

I'm hopeless.

Hopelessly in love with you.

Unpolished, unedited random thoughts sitting in a meeting...

 

Color of raspberries drools from the wall

when teachers inflicts silence upon hungry ears.

The shadows and blocks of light soften, melt into curious crawlers

sniffing a corner here,

pawing a crack there.

Suddenly, suspicion that the mindless have intent, motivation, and secrets

inspire mental mobilization to defend against the trees' conspiracies.

The past and future starts invading the present.

Consciousness turns to mush, like dogs chasing the horizonless snow.

 

 

A collaborative Renga-style piece written with two other people:

Nutrition-less leaves
Frosting the bones of winter
Poets counting fingers

Violets, saffron, and white,
Leaves dye our souls in rich color

Color waits for us
Sun-drenched, are these new leaves
Or is this moon new?

Blinding reflection of ice
Into the eyes that trust beauty

They shine like the eve
Twin stars twinkling upon the deep
Lovely jewels of night

Lovely jewels at day break
Your eyes, the bright morning star

Cooled horizon warms
In the lighting soft embers
Outshining those stars

Upon the gold beams of dawn
The south wind bears swallows north

And they fly, these ongoing
Good fortunes. I don't mind the
Brief sting in my finger

Pain, like sweetness, sharpens senses
In preparation for spring

The west wind paints gold
The valley of forsythia
I wish they'd linger

Brush all my cares away, there's not
A hair's breadth between one breath and the next.

Always a breath left
Before a bite, a plunge, a
Flight of fantasy

I soar upon wine-red wings,
Its fragrance yearning for the moon

And if I can find
A moment, too late or too soon--
I don't mind the wine-red moon

Words fighting the cold taste ready
For inebriation

Sake fires my blood
Rising beads of sweat frozen
In the autumn wind

Wasting, wasting, wasted away--
But we're ok, we're okay--wu wei.

Last night, his head rested on my aching breast and

we cried our pain into each other.

His presence, a magnet, surfaced all my denials,

those emotions I kicked dirt and distractions over.

His hair smooth under my unyielding confessions,

belonged to me right then as it used to in the undeniable,

unforgettable past we shared, and last night,

we shared each other once again in love's bitter embrace.

I wake and he's climbing the mountains of ranges far away

without me

and becoming another mother's beloved son in law.

I wake and I'm naked--the dirt I've smeared over exposed flesh

and the threadless clothes I saw upon myself in the mirror

are nowhere to be found.

I cannot bear the sight, the bareness.

I wake, and I'm lost.

 

---

 

How I love the lecture:

the impassioned stream of knowledge,

the nods and subtle smiles of self-satisfaction,

the hand gestures that wave and pause,

wave

and pause,

wave

and pause,

the eyebrows that rise and drop,

rise

and drop,

rise

and drop,

the hair that increasingly distances itself from his smooth scalp, loosening the density of that unaffected fuzz,

and the dark sweater that grows more and more white chalky spots.

How I love being taught with words, with experience, with perspective.

How I love the lecture.

 

---

Doubt

paralysis of the mind

shackled before the threshold to paradise

obscuring the view from the present with

everyone else's conscience

everyone else's fear

a depository for disappointment

stifling, suffocating with no room to breathe the fresh hopes of tomorrow,

borne only from faith

keep adding keep adding to this depository and the

debilitating debt grows

denser and denser

a growing mass of malicious gravity

grinding the spine upon itself

caving, imploding from the pressure

of what life might not be

Like raindrops joining on a speeding windshield,

we, together, can become a shooting jewel.

Consume this entity that

more than shares—contains

only your hopes.

Give the breath before my face a voice.

Give the sight behind my skull a strength.

Take this incapacity to make my own,

what you believe this to be,

and create.

For once, to escape falling,

take me and we will streak

across the cool glass and

just for a flash of a moment,

be more

than the inevitable intermediary between sky and sea.

Like an instinct,

my lips open to drink in your love,

a waxy warmth flowing down my throat,

permeating the tracts of my body into silky fibers.

Its satisfying touch rises to the skin

and my breath follows, surging like mercury

inside soft glass.

Second to second,

memory to memory,

my roots search for the earth,

the lushness once enjoyed

entwined in your flesh.

How desperately now do these tips

yearn to grasp the soil,

pulsating

and brimming with essence.

Essential.

I think of the warmth of sleep

and the comedies of life,

the comfort in curves

and the allure of mystery.

The senses dominate as I suffer

for the desire that connects two bodies.

You leave me thirsty,

deprived of lips from which I drink

your sweetness.

If you come back for me,

look up.

I'm aired dry and straining ever higher

in search of that moment of completion,

when I'll first catch your arrival

sprouting on the horizon.

Depression has no mass. It cannot be lifted up, put down, or shifted in space. It just hemorrhages away your ability to perceive, to sense. It hemorrhages away your vitality to the place where gone is.

Flow, flowing gone, taking with it the definition of advanced beings: desire, emotions, color. I've lost my senses and regressed into a clover with standard three leaves or maybe even less. It matters not. There is no care in a clover, not even need. Just follow nature's rules. A clover greens and grows whether it wants to or not, but it cannot want, be happy, sad, or jealous anyway.

I can be a clover. Follow nature's rules and drink water and be. I can do that. Drink and be.

Clovers are not individuals; they're faultless.

Today, I'm faultless.

Seed, swallow your probing tendrils,

For your sun has set for night's rest.

You yearn for warmth, for the height of the sky, but as always,

night leaves you alone.

Shirk back into the cold earth, that which you were born into,

or seize the dark to thicken your roots, your heart

that needs no sun.

1/5/12: 2 mi 18:30, 1 XT

1/8/12: 1 mi, 3 XT

1/10/12: 2 mi 20

1/12/12: 1 mi, 2 XT

1/14/12: 2 mi 20:00

1/17/12: 2 mi, 20:00

1/25/12: 3 mi, 28:30

1/29/12: 1 mi, 1 XT

1/30/12: 2 mi 18:30 + 1 mi