it’s the lickable red
blowing through a yellow light
the tripped out tinkle dwindles
and
i’m on the phone
in the middle of listening
so i can’t tell anyone.
the following makes my day:
watching the clock flip from 11:59 to midnight
the dot jump from daylight to dark
a high school student named Bear
the Mothra of ‘92
the sun in my face all day
all of the shit i do on my own
laughing hard enough to spit my coffee
talking about sexuality in class
reading good poetry
recognizing myself in the mirror
and seeing the ice cream truck in february.
I know that it isn’t spring yet, but the birds singing this morning…they sounded a little more certain about it’s inevitable arrival. While taking out the trash a few minutes ago, I witnessed an incredible migrating mass of black birds, all hollering. Moveable stubble against a sky still darkened by night. I stood there watching until all was empty and quiet again.
Paper-shaped ghost, perused at desk. Read, rinse, repeat. I’m hateful about the way the earth hurts my ears sometimes. I can’t figure out what to fill this space with anymore.
Talked about hearts in the car tonight. I could not get my hands warm and my pockets were boring, just a couple nickels and my house keys.
on the forehead of splinters we placed magnets and jammed the entire mess into mouths. how you can junk up a kiss, twist roses from the brief and accidental. a pullback grin reveals a petal slipping out, a dribble slick caught and pulled to the right by a palm, teeth bared(cranberry-corroded cumulous polygons, too quick to catch the light).
a tiny big thing. a dream. i spent the morning watching orca pods migrate, and a lone one snack on a sea lion too close to shore. the big mass caught and flailed, having to wait for the waves. you can spell out the moon phase by the way my saline hits the brim, knocks it aside completely. over orcas. i am feeling inspired but stunned. i’d rather not think about the new snow on the ground.
fast to my tributaries, paper boats and penny captains. holes in the sail! patchwork to our necks! one leg in the lake, drop anchor in sand that gives way like a punch. somewhere near a free way, the swooshswish-galump-galump of compacts and trucks. rolled letters into themselves, stuffed the fence diamonds with them, the overpass. the bad graffiti, the weeds, the way you’d have to climb up and backwards if you wanted to jump. you’d have to be hellbent. the letters go here because we are out of stamps, and afraid to ask.
on the saucer, a sprig. crumbs and baker’s string. i hoard baker’s string, use it for hair bits and book stacks, letters and photographs. i slip the found into my pocket. it’s hard not to wish you could see me now–i look kind of wild. i know i did then but now it’s pretty serious, very certain. it’s a good kind; the unbrushed, the slight wrinkle, a splinter, a force. like i’ve been tearing down walls with my bare hands.
Drifts of morning light, the exclamation point arms now folded and tangled among my own sharp bends. I wake up and fall to sleep a few times, the warm stillness convincing me back into dreams until I can’t make up plot twists any longer. I wake up and think a couple quick things:
I wish I had a camera.
I wish this morning lasted days.
I wish the blue in this room right now covered everything for good, and stayed, and stuck. The perfect color of a low triplet of violin, that part of such lowness that the sound trembles(like extracted nerve endings lined up on string, held up in the wind). It is this kind of blue.
I’m head over feet for this kind of light, this kind of minute where you are lucky enough to witness, in the instant itself: I will never forget this. Knowing I will float through the rest of my day with hands that smell like you and a mind on stilts out of reasonable reach. Minutes of not saying a word–you let the heart do all the quiet talking. Mine was pressed up against the wall, dragging mug along the ribs for a rhythm to speak it–a mumbling sort of thing, language not for ears(language not meant to be ever completely learned).
It’s 2:36am, fingers still wobbly from coffee. Of course I have more to say, but my cat is curled up to the left and eyeballing me, as in Can we please do that get warm and cuddle thing? Kind of hard to resist. Despite her current gas-maximus nature. G’night.
