Out of my mind.

This is mostly intentionally punctuation-light. I think I'll call it poetry. Feel free to put in line breaks and punctuation how you imagine one would. We could call it creative essay, perhaps. This is what listening to Tegan and Sara does to you. I'd listen to this song while reading in order to get the full effect. Boy, do those girls have a way with things.


I want you close to me like the music like when you turn up the volume louder and louder until it almost hurts and you’re cringing but that’s not enough so you press the headphones deeper into your ears until it almost hurts but this time not because it’s too loud but because it’s still not enough because you just want it inside you, inside your head, inside your heart in your belly in your hands in your feet Oh God, I can’t get close enough I can’t I can’t I can’t

But you go and I know you must, so I put my music on repeat and turn up my headphones.

I want to see you like when you read a book all about someone’s life and how they seemed to know just what to do at every turn or they didn’t but it doesn’t matter because isn’t it wonderful that somebody had a life and that they lived it, and if it’s gone now it doesn’t matter it’s just that they lived they loved and I want that I want to know that it all turns out okay that we hold hands peacefully when the sun explodes and I try to remember the future but can’t.

But you go and I know you must, so I plot out the rest of our days with a little room for secret plans.

I want to feel you like a painting when you look at the lines and the woman’s face and the colors how they mix and blur and you can’t touch it because the sign says and because you can’t; it was another time another place and maybe the artist made love with the model every afternoon, but he was bothered because he couldn’t paint the little lines in her eyes just right I’ve tried to draw you, your eyes your eyes, but I just couldn’t get it right and nobody would understand and I don’t think I do either

But you’re tired and want to sleep so I stare at your eyelids.

Time traveller.

can he even know
the time travelling he does
while his eyes are shut?
the clock shines 1:30
where he sleeps
but the dark, silent star
of my 12:30 dream
sighs and turns his cheek
an hour away

Love is a sad song.

She tossed something in the trashcan and stepped out of the bathroom just as he walked in the front door – late. She smoothed her shirt and fixed a quavering smile on him. He darted a glance at her, then swung open the door to the hall closet between them.

“What’s for dinner?” he asked, his voice muffled by the closet full of coats.

She smiled and leaned against the wall, thrusting out her hip and staring at the closet door. “Nothing special,” she chirped. He impatiently exhaled the closet’s mothball-scented air and shut the door.

“Sounds exciting,” he dryly drawled.

She frowned and pressed herself flat against the wall. “We can make it exciting. Candles, a tablecloth, real napkins – I promise I’ll make it exciting. I’ll even open that bottle of…” She stopped as if rethinking her next words. Ignoring this, he mumbled, “Did you clean up your puke mess from this morning?” She pushed herself off the wall and into his arms, startling him.

“I love you,” she breathed. He looked down at her awkwardly.

“I can’t do this, Louise,” he said, shoving her away. “I have some papers you need to read and sign.”

Recorded for your viewing pleasure.

There was a puppet show at the gas station the other night.
Bundled figures waiting for their fill of molten motion
jerked awkwardly up and down like solitary, clumsy marionettes
on the blue-cold stage, puffing fog in involuntary rhythm
with some 80s one-hit wonder as they tried just to feel again
the sensation lost from their pink hands. Under the hypothermic
fluorescent spotlights, I think the puppets almost saw in each other
a hint of the intimate absurdity of the situation

we all are in. You should have seen it, because I know you
would have laughed with your eyes
squeezed shut like twin, snapping apertures,
and I would have wordlessly watched you
as your shutter-like reflex, your need
to capture existence, took you away from me
for that split second while you processed what you saw.

And later you would have developed the image
of the cold, tragic forms in the dark-
room, locking yourself away from the light
until the sketchy shapes of white and black solidifed,
finally, just the way your pictures always turn out:
a little dark, a little hazy, never glossy.

And in the shadows of some drizzly dawn,
you would have dredged the memory
from a musty album in your mind,
perhaps the thick volume marked “Loneliness,”
and projected it briefly from your grainy grey eyes
as you laughed yourself away in the rain.


(From the series of Creative Writing class assignments.)

Eternal Ethernet.

I am finding myself unable, through some fluke of Carroll's internet system, to access certain websites that essentially rule my life- Hotmail, Wikipedia, various webcomics and blogs. I think that maybe it is a sign from God that I should go study for my Social Psychology test that transpires in one hour (less, actually) or maybe read the Talmud for Honors. Yeah, I should go do that. Hmm.

Ironically, I am (obviously) able to load Blogger, so my homework avoidance is prolonged. God is such a funny, funny tempter. Okay, okay, I'm going now. Damn guilt.


UPDATE: Internet is working fully again and I can once again go on ignoring the fact that I have too much to do.

Hurricane, watch over me.

A vision tonight of us together in the most literal sense, our flesh exposed, juxtaposed, curves to muscle, softly rich sheets fold and rustle, ignored, the perfect mix of rhythm and rhyme, no attention to clocks and miserly time, shadows our solitude together, a beautiful irony that no one can find a reason to hate, skin, heavily lidded eyes and heavy indian summer feelings; now is the only moment, though a million more may come.

The world around me shuddered for a moment as my mind and body remembered this vision of what is to come. I miss you, not only you as you are now, but as a you that I won't have for years to come. Both are so far, in miles and months, in tears and kisses and coffees and caresses and fears and hits and misses.