work in progress

Clogged up with ash and soot
no room for smoke to blow
all fires burning
rage and ash
that spews onto the hearth
and what stokes this fire?
What starts it at its core?
Below the simple kindling sparked
now is blazing outward


The floor beneath the brick facade
once a pale ecru
tarred and blackened from neglect
of this chimney's flue
and creeping farther and further now
along these empty halls
a heavy sense in heart and chest
lingering to smolder

Two New Poems

I very reluctantly had to write a Villanelle and a Sonnet. Both are not at my usual level of writing ability but it is the first time I have ever written anything in a structured form. Here you are First is the Villanelle and then the sonnet. pardon my humor in the sonnet.


The Tracks

I once did have a secret dream
to live where no one else might go
to travel down the tracks unseen

To walk a steady line on the beam
and to button up my woes
I once did have a secret dream

How should I tip toe through the steam
shall I tread down low?
to travel down the tracks unseen

therein lies the trouble with my scheme
now it is you who know
I once did have a secret dream

How do you hold me in your esteem?
shall you come with me friend or foe?
to travel down the tracks unseen

how does the idea now seem?
shall anyone tell us no?
I once did have a secret dream
to travel down the tracks unseen





and

The Salty Dog

For years I craved for just a taste
Of the seaman's salty mouth
that on a blustery day of haste
I ferried to the south
I sent word for us to meet
At the river tavern
I asked for him to take a seat
he requested I not to speak his taborn
He slipped a finger my way
And gave his signature smile
And on the floor of the tavern we lay
Not for a very long while
A seaman makes a better life while the waves are rocking
Please sir forgive me I shall never again come knocking

Here (New Song)

how long does it take to wash away
the memory of your face
your hands in mine
as we slipped through the night

how long does it take
to wash away age
the minds little way of reminding
the thoughts of you that run me through
and for no reason I am still buying
time

and I see you here
fine except the beer
that lingers in your beard
and its good to know
time hasn't changed you
though
and that is what I fear

how long does it take to wash away
the memory of your face
when I still
see you here
here here

fine except the fear
that traps your very legs
wrapped up in past mistakes
your fatherless face
that in the night seems so at rest
except inside your chest
you wonder

How long it takes
to wash away
the memory of her face
as she laid on your pillow
your hands together tight
as you lay side by side
as you slipped through the night

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

Don't think it will be ready by October 3rd but It's the first slow one in awhile...Fingerpicking style.

Vivir con la incertidumbre

"To live with uncertainty"
.................................................


Thats the theme I am going with for this writing exercise I am about to participate in.

It says :

read the Haiku "Touch" by Jim Moore...

easily done.

Do not feel Lonely.
The Disappearing world longs
for you to touch it.

Now I am suppose to take a few minutes and use "all of my five senses" and write a poem called "the Disappearing world" using at least one concrete image in every line. I am suppose to make it vivid even as it disappears.

Here goes.

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

"The Disappearing World" (more aptly named... "The Disappearing Man")

once a stout and sturdy man
with thick nubby whiskers said to me,
"the world is disappearing"
My cloudy mind did not believe him.
I watched this man walk on egg shells,
white and fine beneath his feet;
the slightest crack
and he was toppling.
To try to see his view more clearly,
I pressed hard the cloth into my glasses
hoping to make crisp the edges of our sing song distant melody,
the drone of a chords sweet passing.
All I saw was a bright young man, weak in the knees and wobbling,
with the intent
of the very first steps
of a colt.
The gray blonde strands in his beard, however, made it clear
he has many times attempted this walk.
To try and see his view more clearly
I joined in the muddy brown haze of sweet toasted lager
and hopped up we went skipping down the coal black lane.
I rubbed my eyes and unfastened them from the rim of the milky moon.
I was beginning to believe we would both dissolve
caught between two black lagoons.
His voice began again, sharp and withdrawn.
"The disappearing world is just a song on the breeze
and I'm trying to keep up, with tortured objectives
and a mind to collect it,
the end result is a mouth full of bitter apples
and a sour ripe cut. "
The closer I became dear the clearer it got,
the man was fading from the world; the world disappear? It did not.
his red stamped tail lights in the pitch
grew smaller and smaller
with the span of earth beneath the trucks hitch
In the faint splash of sweet sweet dawn
I laid flat on the pavement
a head full and heavy with new reservations.



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

well then. I can't seem to get out of one fudging writing pattern... but at least stuff is coming out.

Not my favorite poem but ah... I'm not good with all the "concrete images."

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

Second Part of the assignment.... Describe something... an object... a person, something in your dresser a stranger standing still... in as much detail as possible. Where is that damn poem I wrote about the guitar when I was "hanging out" with joe dejesu. Damn It I am not looking for it that was years ago. I am so tempted to pretend I have a vibrator in my dresser... and describe that. Nope can't do it.



ukulele uku uku

four little strings
a smooth mahogony smell
17 frets
five opalescent white dots
six blacks dots along the neck
cold silver tuners
two little yellow circles around the sound hole
sing: "my dog has fleas" to tune it
a few less fingers to hold down the strings
about two feet long
no strap necessary
strum it with your thumb
pick it with your fingers
sounds slightly out of tune almost always
dark brown bridge



.......
Ok I admit I can do better.

So tired I cant think. Soft bed needed now.

New Song

2 people...same history... repeated.

this one came out.


new song.
.............................

The Locket


look in your mirror
don't like what i see
its a faded
memory
and I don't like the static
in your voice
i've known you to long now
to make the choice

to keep you
in my pocket
just like a little locket
no I can;t really stop it
you burn a hole in my pocket

take a few more steps
further away
don't you worry
they'll be no more rainy days
cause I don't like the static
I hear in your voice
I've known you too long now
I've made the choice

to take you off the docket
made sure to lock it
no i can't really stop it
you burnt a hole in my little pocket
I'll find someone for my locket
for my lovin locket

A song for the ladies.

It's about time we get rid of all the extra baggage in our lives.
I wrote this one for my two dearest friends and myself because we deserve a hell of a lot more than we have been getting. It's a pretty sweet song If I do say so myself... can't wait till you folks hear it.
.........................................................

(still workin on a title)

got a friend whose mind has slipped to half gone
but thats how we all seem lately
with these men who toss us around
like broken little toys they have found

keep it together ladies
these men are just the pennies in the pond
hand em there things tell em to get packin
we are all movin on


so lift us up
over the washline
were coming up on the skyline
lord you have to keep the faith
were coming to a brand new day
and not even the sky is in our way

well they say love is blind
and ladies its true
just look at the list of lovers
we've all gone through

keep it together ladies
we all know the truth
we've been drowning in the bottom of the barrel
it's time we push on through

don't let em give ya the wink and the smile
don't fall for the sheepish grin
do not for a moment hesitate
to pick up your shit and leave him

so lift us up over the washline
we're coming up on the skyline
lord you have to keep the faith
were coming to a brand new day
and not even the sky is in our way

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

I apologize in advance to the good men I do know in my life. This year has been CRAZY, all my good girl friends... and some guy friends too have either gone through a terrible breakup/ assholery girl/guy OR gotten married. There really has been no middle ground. So I wrote this for my ladies... my good friends, we have all had our fair share this year... which can only mean good things for the next year :-)

Possibility

I tend to have a hard time with perspective. The other's perspective. I tend to rewind and live in the past when I think about the perspective and I tend to look through old eyes and old sores. It's hard for me to get outside of my own head and outside of my own mind. I have never let the past dictate my heart despite all of the self sabotaging motives of my head. I have always been self aware enough to constantly revise, edit and print out the better version of myself just in time for the deadline. It is that perspective that I take with me constantly that keeps my head on straight even when I get blinded by life, if only for a little while... or blinded by the beauty that is in every person. I have slipped and been caught by this beauty before regardless of if the person with whom I am caught has been self aware enough to practice the same way of thinking, to practice the same way of perceiving them self and life. I'm not saying it is an easy way to be but it is something we all must practice daily to make sure that how we perceive life isn't through the lens of the past but through the lens of possibility.

It's taken me many a thump of my head against the wall to be rejuvenated. I often wonder how I even let someone in so close to me only 10 months after my mother died. A time when the past meant nothing but heartache and disappointment in love. Not in romantic love but in the kind of love a child is suppose to receive and the ideals I had seen around me... from classmates, and friends. It could be possible that my numb feeling I am trying to account for now is because heartache seems so natural to me. It's something I have lived and relived since the day I was born. Loss happened repeatedly. The idea that at any moment life could change in just a second and everything that I knew could be gone was ingrained from a young age. Life gave no guarantees, it didn't even seem certain that I was who they said I was. As the years unfolded small lost artifacts and information came tumbling out at my feet. It wasn't surprising most of the hard truth was kept from me, so they thought... when really it was already a pot that had been simmering on the stove for years.

A poem struck me not too long ago...
a few years ago while in class or reading a book it may have been the preface
I'm not sure but it still sits with me.

The Poem is by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.


--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

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

I love the almost playful tone. It is true though the art of losing, it is an art really. I don't mean losing like I lost the race... no losing... losing something. We lose time every day. Our life is always slipping away. Yet it truly is hard for some to live for the present and hope for tomorrow... knowing still that their are no guarantees. I have finally come to terms with the fact that I can only create my life so much... the rest is left for living and the excitement and wonder in how the story will unfold. It could be that my eye for beauty can see the charm in any destination, be it lonely or full of love and vigor. If I had to write a letter to myself though I before the past was even created I am not sure what I would say. I rather like who I have become and it has taken me these strained and stressful years to put the past where it belongs, in the past. It's only now that I can accept what happened to me, what I did or did not do, who I was and who I know myself to be. So for that I can understand the hesitation in the journey... the need to reflect in ones own mind, but do we busy ourselves with past times and torrid love affairs to avoid the emotional healing process? I am not sure. I can say I have been personally guilty of that at times, but I am a hands in and hands on type of healer. I work out the kinks as I go along. If I did have to write a letter to myself, the self before my mother became ill and I had so many unresolved issues of how it should have been of how it could have been, of what I should have done differently... I would say this.


Dear Larrin,

Next year you will be Ten, you will have reached the double digits and you will put both hands up to moms and say ..."mom I have finally reached the double digits" Your front tooth will be missing but it wont hurt. In June you will sit down at the kitchen table with your journal, the one with the googely eye stickers on it and mom and dad will tell you something that you have to be really strong for. You can cry its ok. Know that now is the best time you have to spend with mom before things get more grown up. She still will make you peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that have a heart carved into the peanut butter and she will still cut the sandwich into butterfly shapes. Remember when things get hard how she use to hug you from behind when you would get too silly and kiss you on the cheeks. Remember how to laugh with her and remember all the nights she let you stay up late to watch Leno and Letterman. Don't stop singing even though you don't want to wake her, hum softly. Remember how she sang, soft and low and remember how you love to watch dolly parton together. Remember the mornings sitting on the porch with a piece of straw grass in your mouth how you would blow so hard on it with her to try and make a whistle. Remember watching the cows graze. Most importantly remember that she loved you. When things get more grown up remember how she loved you.
Remember that she use to tell you "anything is possible." Believe it so.

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

memories are still coming back to me. The good ones are over taking the bad again. I just remembered things in that short piece that I had blocked out and had almost forgot about.

I feel better today than ever before, like more things are possible than I ever thought and that somewhere out there waiting on the next breeze or the gust of wind after that is the next shift and change... the next up or down and regardless of what it is, the possibility for something else
still sits in my mind and makes me smile, every day.

stream....

contemplation : perspective
insight into me is the only thing I am reading.
I threw away half a dozen
and its becoming clear
when I say
lover of all things
I mean
all things good
not lover
what is that phrase
out of the wood work?
they file
like morbid memories on parade.
to remind me I suppose

there has to be someone
who wants to be where I am
in body, mind and spirit
not just body or belief

write it off
like a tax credit
file it for yet another year
or never review the paperwork that all looks dismal
i'm growing a collection of bad paperwork
the latest to fall out of the briefcase
seems harmless
but I know from late years experience
it's a trap
they want collection



theres honey on the trap
and I love the sickeningly sweet taste of honey
but I refuse to dunk my head into the disarming abyss.

amazing


It's beginning to make me ill.

someone who seemingly has more experience than me in these matters tells me, "well you have an exotic face"

exotic...

Take me at face value then i guess is what my face says to them.

He said to me... what if all our relationship was based on... was sex.

apparently not so strange. Though there I was mending future plans in the back of my seemingly unknowing mind.

when really... chalk it up to all the bad paperwork. Every sheet thats been filed.

I turn to the guy who seemingly knows more about these things then me. I find even words that we cling to that a man has said about whom he loves to be paper thin. Hearing a simple few phrases

I realize
I am not the one who should be negotiating for my own emotions.

I think back to when my grandmother lived and how she wove me tales about gentlemen. As progressive as she was I think she instilled in me an idea a concept that has never been valid.

I have got one friend on his way to becoming a doctor and I think about all the time spent with heavy handed words from him that I resented. Looking back I can say I know one person who had my best intentions in mind.

maybe its just the memory of the original piece of paperwork
of bad filing
of poor investment
who is tapping me on the shoulder
now

like a funeral reminding you
be thankful for your life
be thankful for your health
be thankful for your friends
be thankful for everything you have
and everything you don't

still from my perspective....

I keep writing poems and deleting them. for fear.

Possibility and Perspective

Todays overall theme was possibility and perspective. Two things I'm not exactly itching to think about in relation to my life but know I must. I called up a girlfriend today frantic... I get myself in an emotional tizzy some days worried about, well gosh just about everything. She told me ... Larrin a word of advice, just live in the now, you are too smart of a girl to be worried or concerned about any aspect of what lies ahead. She was right and I calmed down instantly. Really we only have so much control over what unfolds in our lives. Why waste energy worrying about the what if's and the what should be's and whatever else. Just accept, be happy, live the life you love. In whatever facet that means to you at the moment. So I went on my merry way. I went to school and plopped down in my first class...poetry. Something I do on an every day basis but when faced with a classroom of tightly sat snug as a bug students faced with words and phrases like.. "his hot breath stung the fleshy interior of my thigh as he...." ( you get it)... I get a bit squeamish. I chose the least steamy poem I could find in the book that was given to me that apparently was completely sex related. It was short sweet and the dirtiest thing I had to say out loud was... "she liked licking the salty sweat off of rough necked men." OK got that out of the way right... well then we discussed the theme of the class for the semester.

Possibility.

the professor goes on to tell a story about two shoe salesmen who go to a foreign country to weigh out the prospects of potential shoe buyers.

No one in the country wears shoes.

one man writes back... "absolutely dismal. No prospects, no one wears shoes. "
the other writes back
"wonderful business opportunity, desperately in need of shoes."

moral of the story... having perspective on the possibilities that lie before us.
It's all in the attitude of the viewer. How prospective a situation is or an investment... a period of time. The possibilities are what you deem them.

So shes telling us by next week we have to write a letter in the past tense to her... explaining all of the things we have accomplished and achieved in our personal and professional lives by December.

DUDE! I was just getting good with the idea of NOW ... now you want me to think that far ahead.

I'm at a loss. I honestly have had so much shift in my life... where I live, who I have become, what I do for a living... etc has all just happened to me. I let life happen to me I haven't tried to go against the flow in any way and maybe thats my downfall just following my emotions at any moment but then again its put me in quite a state of independence and freedom.

I am awfully bad at pulling the brakes on life and I'm terribly awful at accelerating it in any way. So to write about the state of my life come December is mind blowing.

she wants us to use the idea of possibility in our writing. Don't just explore a perspective from your eyes look through someone else's kind of deal. So in the coming days i will attempt to see the world from a different angle.

I will attempt to write a poem from someone else's perspective.
ideas will be appreciated.

Much Love to you all:-)

I still step over the cracks.

Just to be sure I don't break my mothers back.

I walked today all the way to my farthest client which is quiet a distance and I found myself falling into an old habit which I still do on occasion. I step over the cracks in the sidewalk.

even the breaks where each cement block has been poured... I step over them too.

When my mom was ill when I was growing up I figured she had enough wrong with her and I really was more of a burden it felt like then something she wanted so I tried in the very beginning to be very careful even with the superstitious sayings. Mom was superstitious too.

I think now its more of a game to entertain myself while walking in the city... I don't always do it. I think I do it usually when I am focusing on my desires, my outlook on my life...

I found myself doing it today... I was listening to my ipod a soundtrack for the walk and obstacles presented themselves... baby carriages, delivery boys on bikes, etc... and each time I would twist around them while listening to the music and avoid the cracks

just funny thinking about it... I often do it and don't realize it until blocks later.

step on a crack
you'll break your mothers back
step on a line
you'll break your mothers spine

Mom's not around but inevitably I am still trying to do my best in all areas of life. Even walking apparently.

New song... accapella for now.

i was talking to your father
he said like son like father

when your driven wild with passion
you get many miles of distraction

and the devil done told me
he took your soul
long ago
but every now and then
a little winged friend
brings a smile
to the darkness

so claim your spotlight
and drink your whiskey
put a crease in your eyes
and don't you miss me

cause the devil done told me
he took your soul
long ago
and every now and then
a little winged friend
brings a smile
to the darkness

so lift your glass for the last round
I drink my friend
to an early end
you have found
I dont know
if ever the light
will shine through
on you
but I pray somehow
you break unbound
out of the darkness

cause the devil done told me
he took your soul long ago
and every now and then
a little winged friend
brings a smile
to the darkness

In dreams

who knew you could actually will yourself to dream about something you wanted.
I wonder if dreaming about it then ruins your chances of it unfolding.

I once dreamed something into exactness. Well almost ... reality had less of the fuzzy edge halo.

but that was only once and it was such a small occurrence. There are lots of way's I am sure you could explain it away.

I feel sometimes that fate drags me by my nose just to point my eyes at something I have seen so many times before and it says ..."look."

god that was such a good dream... I wish I could have kept sleeping only I don't quite know how it might have went from there. The only part that seemed real or possible was the one moment in which everything fell into place. The appearance of celebrity characters and the odd way I arrived at my destination... via my dad's old Mack Truck... was highly unlikely and to boot I am not a willowy platinum blond with long perfect hair.

It could be that living day to day on an idea is enough... weather or not it comes to fruition or not.
I have been doing it so long anyway without really realizing it.
It's been the soft place in the back of my mind.
Where I would rest my head and enfold myself if feeling troubled.

I wish
I wish

the weight of words. lord.

and what would happen

if nothing else. It's a nice place to dream.

pssst.

I always hope on the night.

its a long way to travel for hope.

but my feet always take me there

and the car shifts itself into gear.

dreamin a lil dream.

maybe it's a little dream I had.

oh what a sleepy head.

Walking the Dog

this image comes to mind
staring at the begonias
and a slow smile creeps its way across my face.
we are sitting at a table in a restaurant
we have our serious
date face on
honestly I can't be sure if we are asking the typical questions
the picture is just so unbelievable to imagine
as if we would have serious faces

trying to imagine
how anything other than fumbling around you
and dropping in unexpectedly
would be
I trip over the curb
and am sprayed by the sprinkler I had barely noticed.

I shake it off continue back into the daydream
sloshing through sidewalk puddles
just to get back to you

there was a moment
when I was startled, I remember.
waking nervous...
that my head was really laying on a revolving track
with the moment you woke
being the shot gun sound
and you were off out of the gate.

surprised to find
I woke
and you asked me
what was wrong
holding me
so I could fall back into
my daydream
of reality

that moment lingers daily.

I am buying a vitamin water
near the train tracks
and a long low whistle
is rumbling past...
freight

i can not see what is in the containers
and yet
all of me wants to jump aboard.
I'm not fairing so well with heights
so I stay off to the side.
I think a little breeze will do me well

and besides
your still making faces
from across the table at the restaurant
and I am giddy with the embarrassment
of trying to be taken seriously.

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


I love Brooklyn storms... they are so much more intense than out on the Island. They are so loud and forboding but afterwards it always feels like something new is occurring. Like we were all sitting here waiting for that. To remind us something better is headed for us. The lightning is literally flashing outside the window. The Thunder feels like a strong hand trying to tell me what I have already known. The rain just keeps me still. Calm in all of the fuss. A perfect moment to do a little more daydreaming.


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

even with sleepy lids
serious words of relevance
and I take them in
put them in my pocket
revisit them
every moment I get.

what they will do for me I am not sure
there are never too many unexpected smiles in my day
so I keep them there
to remind me.

The Future Perfect

This is a dream collage. You stick all you're dreams on it... no matter how outlandish. I would say the craziest one I have got is the Pulitzer. This is a sketch of how I would like it to be. Doesn't mean I won't take or want other variables... I just have the general ideas on there... as a reminder.


The things I wrote in are....

~ I want to travel everywhere!
~Dad~fuel to keep kickin
~A family of my own
~Communication is... Love is... ( a two way street).
~Lovin my curves
~Puss!
~Tranquility


::sigh that was fun::


yay jen for pushing my butt to do this lil project. It was fun!!!

Summertime by E.B White Plusbished in the New Yorker in 1944

Summertime this year is a ripe girl who finds herself forsaken by the boys, the ordinarily attentive and desirous boys. They are no where to be found; they have disappeared, the way males do seized by some sudden mechanical flirtation, some new interest of a passing sort.
Summertime is a girl who knows they will be back and is conscious that she herself is irresistible over the long term, that her beauty and her accommodating ways have lost no fraction of their power. We had summertime practically to ourself the other afternoon, and in our guilt we lay with her in the name of all who were temporarily denied that privilege, admiring her incredible poise. The scent of her clothes was unmistakable; her sea, her sand, her sky wore the same look as ever; the insects which are her private minstrels sang the same seductive measure. We have never seen a discarded female more sure of where she stood than summertime.


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

I love this little piece. It makes me envious of summertime. As if it were a real entity. It's hard to even want to type a word after having retyped that. No one can compare to White. You are all thinking is that... E.B. White... who wrote Charlotte's Web? It sure is. The story is a bit more than a children's tale about a spider and a pig.

::sigh::

makes me want to go out and lounge about with summertime. While shes still here.

maybe I will be back later with something of my own. I'm a little dumb founded after reading his work though...

answering letters

My mother wrote letters to me that she never sent. I found them when she died. I'm guessing I was never suppose to read them and the other daughters have the satisfaction in knowing (or really not knowing) they don't even exist for them.

You can't will things to happen. They just happen or they don't. So i suppose if you live your life in the gray always afraid to step out into the sun, you can never feel how warm it is on your face.

So what kind of appeal can be heard in that sense?

and how do you answer it.

It's funny
I have kept my self at arms length from people who I knew would only hide even if they cared.
Funny I never thought they cared.

I keep myself away from my aunt Janice for that reason. She becomes cowardly. Her emotions shut down
and if she has anything to say its only things that push me away. Its worked. I don't know how I can remind her of Linda (her sister, my mother)... but I suppose somehow I do. It could be it is not a coincidence I ended up in Brooklyn, Linda lived in Manhattan for quite some time... "figuring it out."

I pushed dad to talk to me yesterday. I asked him, are you ever worried I won't find someone ... or I won't be hapy. He said a flat ..." no ya know la, whatever?"

I think dad missed the boat on what ...."whatever" means as "a saying"

he told me it was part of the emotional wheeling and dealing you go through.
Which I knew already...
I just hope hes still wheeling and dealing when and if I find the right person. It would really suck to be totally orphaned on what is suppose to be ... "the happiest day of your life."
........................................

the white sheet crinkles as it wears
tacked to the refridgerator
never reading it
always passing it
a reminder
of unanswered thoughts

the ink is dripping off the page
who wants to be a sage?
knowing all profound and complicated answers
speaking with the sharpest tounge
tap the rib cage
with the pitch fork
do you hear a hum?
are you out of tune
would you find room
in that hallowed cell

the floorboards creak
but secrets they do not keep
only the echoed sound
of where feet pressed
I tap them with a calloused finger
to hear the hollow sound

how do you answer an appeal
if judgment calls you
ripping pages from your thoughtbook
you collect the puzzle
and arrange it
and the words are sounding stranger
as you say them
outloud

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

when I write these days I feel like such a tool. haha but it gets things put in a different perspective in my head. So it helps me... and it either makes you go...wtf? Isn't she a weirdo....
or in some rare cases... people like it.


either way its OK. I haven't done it in so long... and actually its good practice because I am going to be forced to take a poetry workshop this semester...
why not get a head start?


~<3

Safe Harbor

A song written about that person... whomever... not that much unlike "searchlight" but a whole lot less cooler.

Mines just got boats. Makes me think of when I was riding the Fire Island ferries every day in the summer... and one day we got caught in a storm. We had to make sure we didn't run a ground. The waves were so high. I don't know how Captain pat... haha... got us out of that one but we made it.

I always make it.

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


will yourself near
and call my name
come by my side
and watch the light dance across the bay

I've got a safe harbor
for your rockin ship
come by
drop anchor
you'll be glad you did

cause theres a stormm
headed up the shore
and you'll need a safe harbor
to make sure
you don't run a ground again

come ashore slowly
the tides don't know me
they may think your out to sink
my boat
but I know
you just need a safe harbor

for your own

trying not to stew in this warm
pot
I've been placed in
and I'm cut up like the carrots and onions
and trying not to tear

the pot rattles
with the passing train
and the whistle sounds
to signify a time and place

but I'm not quite done
staring at this speckled pot
through the holes
and your a little out of reach
on the counter
by the peas
to know if you're
seasoning sweet

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

I want to be tipped over
just ladle me out
the temperature on the stove has gotten colder
they've abandoned the house


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

The Story

So these are my parents. Mom's looking rather close eyed but in all of the pictures from when they were younger in general... dad always looked like he adored her. I'm pretty sure dad's life dream when he was younger was not to be a truck driver. According to him though he would probably tell you a life of running with the mafia didn't really sit all too well with him either... only because he loved my mother and her three daughters a bit too much. With my father you kind of have to fill in the blanks... theres all these crazy stories but you're not quite sure how it all came together but there is one story that I love the most. How mom and dad got together. I wish I could upload the picture my dad gave my mom in the beginning, when technically they were both married to other people and extremely religious. (Looking at my dad today this kind of makes me laugh... as if any religion would calm his inhibitions). The picture is just of my dad and he looks super Italian... hes got the nose, much pointer then than it looks today and hes wearing sunglasses and his stance ...its so classic. On the back written in pen it says...in faded ink...."love johnny"

its such a classic story too. He was bet a pack of lucky strikes that he couldn't get my mother into bed. She was a waitress at a diner and he was a regular. I'm pretty sure if my mother is anything like me... she was a sucker for him and the rest is history. The thing is... about them.. and I could easily see this going another way ... they were both pretty intense people. If the relationship dragged on and one of them caught a glimpse from someone else I'm not sure what they would have done. I am also not sure because even in my dad's worst moments when he was arguing with my mother he never took the light out of his eyes. Only once did I see it happen and we ended up parked in front of mather hospital all night me and my mom in his old green monte carlo... so he could "cool off."

mostly though he did absolutely anything for her. Save one thing... he drank a lot. Still does. oy....

anyway I have been thinking a lot about them. Wishing I could get my head on straight. Have something just wake me up and shake me down and be like... this is it.

this is where you need to go... what you need to do.

Has anything ever looked so good you thought...well its a trap.
You get into it it looks divine.. flowery almost...
like a freaking story book ending
and then you later realize
the coating was only so sweet
the people aren't real
the love is just the batter once baked it may taste bitter

and there are some things... only small things that seem non-negotiable. However you say to yourself... well I kind of would like to just feel pretty pure for a change anyway.

theres so much more to the scenery than the trees and the sound and the crash of it almost all flying right by.

so...

but I have this problem
I want to bottle it
and save it
until I get this feeling out of my system

that I am string and unwanted
somehow tampering with kindness
somehow
bold and unsturdy
and really oddly
just an object


an idea

and I am always
just an idea

I want to feel

real

......
you all know I am speaking metaphorically just for me?
well I know some of you derive your own meaning from it and its great....
but I may just continue on this way....
....................

sometimes I feel like a vending machine
like in that ani difranco song
origami
..................................

I have restarted twice
twice
I have rebooted myself
thought from the beginning
mapped it out
but obviously I should have thought more clearly way back when

and now I am so careful
so careful
that it may hurt
more than it did before

so careful because
I can not take this any more.


underneath all my smiles and jokes I am a serious person
with serious goals
they may be outdated
like from 1952
but
for such a serious person
I should have thought all of this through

I need to eat something.

I have no butter for my bread
and no one to butter it.

I'll have to put jam on myself
but its not as sweet

The Lyrics to Two New Songs...::yay::

Sweet Sunday Love
..................................

I want a sweet sunday love
sitting sweetly in my drive
a little pickup truck
lets go for a sunday drive

wishin on sweet bread in the oven
wishin on stars up in my sky
swinging on the front porch hammock
a little love to light my fire
my fire


And a Blue Morning
and a
True
Love

someone to whisper sweetly
in my ear
discreetly
you are the one
you are the one
you are the one

you are the one
you are the one
you are the one

you are the one

I want a sweet sunday love
the kind that will never make me cry
we're too busy making love
too busy kissing the first rays light
goodnight

Wishin on Love forever
wishin on sweet potato pie
swinging holding hands
a little love for all time
all time

and a blue
morning
and a true
love

someone to whisper sweetly
in my ear discreetly
you are the one
you are the one
you are the one

you are the one
you are the one
you are the one
...........................................


Carry The Weight
................................

I've been talking to the tide
the Red moon says close your eyes
and throw your wish into the bay
but don't let yourself get swept away

cause whose gonna carry
yes whose gonna carry

carry the weight
carry the weight
carry
carry the weight

Well it's easy to love from afar
look at Galileo and his stars
but darlin I can't risk this heart of mine
on the ebb and the flow
of your mind

Tell me
would you?
Tell me
would you?
Tell me would you?

carry the weight
carry the weight
carry
carry the weight

(bridge)
I never stop believin
I never stop believin
I never stop believin
in you

I never stop believing in you

we both keep to ourselves
pretend like theres no one else
and if the bar and the beer
don't suffice
we turn it over to the night

To carry the weight
carry the weight
carry carry the weight

(outro)
It doesnt matter what I do
I always, always miss you
silent surrender
pulls us through
a little more time and I'll be ready to
a little more time and I'll be ready too.

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

shhhhh

well its late and I have a feeling... that if I write too much I will be writing until the sun comes up.

I was anxiety ridden tonight. A million different reasons really. I needed to unwind and instead was smacked into reality... not a place I like to often visit.

I drank a beer fast and not even a few miles down the road was doing the dance. Rorie pulled over the boat and a picked a shady place in bluepoint to "release" and ironically reminisce...to the sound of a train whistle toot tooting ... past my ...
well...
you get the point.


not very romantic...
but a moment of inspiration none the less....


and the chorus goes:


Should we
should we
should we

( sort of sounds like a (woo woo)...
only less of the annoying sound repeated in the song everyone needs to cover.

not sure what to do with it yet. It will be a slow one.

then again
isn't that just me
in a nutshell

spider spider

caught with this feeling
I'm not where I am suppose to be
oh spider
weave a little web for me

jump little spider at my feet
weave me the story or let me be
the rains pouring in
and its wet outside
in my doorway
you will hide
oh out of sight
out of sight

oh but your web is much too white
and its too dark in the night
spider spider
I'll be caught
in your net
wrapped in the gauze



...............
those lines came into my head on the way home
I'm guessing If and when I write a song about a spider (which I have been meaning to do) It wont be quite like that.

For over a few weeks now we have been coming home to a web in the doorway.
We kept getting caught and tangled and kept brushing it aside.
We even had a conversation that if the spider was smart
he would make his little web off to the side
out of the way
and then you know...
we could live in harmony.

(right).

turns out the spider was smarter than we thought.
we came home last night and he had built this beautiful HUGE web right in the lattice work of the gate on the stoop.

He wasn't so small either. He was quite large. All this time we had been pushin this fella out of the way, not knowing of his presence.

well there he was right as rain... but I couldn't let him live there. Its not like a spider can ask permission. Even if it could would it guarantee it wouldn't bite me... or jump on me... probably not, its a wild lil thing.

......
long story short
we killed spidey with
"scrubbing bubbles bath cleaner"

I came downstairs with an arm full of options...tequila... nail polish remover... Resolve. ....

it was the scrubbing bubbles that did him in though.

::sigh::
c'est la vie.
He was a cute lil fella...
built a beautiful web

but he was also scary
he looked like he could bite
and I wasn't about to have that living right outside my front door... oh no.

I would like to write a creeping song... about a spider.

we shall see.

:-P

I actually changed a song I was working on ... tentatively called "the moutain" and used some of the verse or idea from the last poem I wrote in the song. The Song originally was about two people who both wanted all they could hope for... their dreams to be fulfilled but each was a bit jaded and kept themselves busy until an incident created them to notice each other. (The story did not end happily ever after.) Unfortunately neither one of them wanted to "carry the weight" or the burdens of history into their new partnership. One tested the other... the other failed... and in the end no one was happy. It was kind of a downer. lol. Besides which it was a super cheesy song because it had this very mapped out story line. The only thing that survived is the chorus. "Carry the weight"....


played it for the first time yesterday @ Jay Scott's gig... and since I only just rewrote it yesterday I couldn't remember al of it... and they were closing the place aorund me so that didnt help.


however it is ten times better but sort of lacking a title. I said I was going to call it "the weight" ... that got booed cause of the famous song. I was gonna say carry the weight .... but that is too close to ... "carry that weight"


so...
I think I am gonna go with ...."talking to the tide"

and as I sit here now... super sicky poo and unable to practice seeing as how my nose is running like a faucet and yet oh so stuffy that I sound like someone is holding a pillow over my face... i will write instead.


(also need to save voice for Friday. Double header with the band). !!!


.......................
thoughts are collecting like droplets in the back of my mind
and I speculate at semi colons
and parenthesis
and wonder what they mean
put together

its not a grammar lesson
but a lesson of
tender loving care
the kind that with even careful attention
and constant watering
can cause a whole plant to die

doting too much is a problem
and dotting too much causes speculation
I say to her
in the smoke filled kitchen
"what does it mean?"
but she doesn't answer
shes looking back at me from 1987
and all I can read in her eyes is affection

closing my eyes at night
I search my eyelids for an answer
I pray to every mother
and say their names
like they will hear me and
answer
one rocks in her chair
the other scratches her hard polished nail along my forearm
and the last is puffing smoke in the corner
not knowing her heart well enough
she answers mine by saying
"what does your heart tell you?"

this is how it always is
conversations with inanimate objects
are easiest
I know them better
and they know me

the refridgerator purrs
sputters and stops
my head is cemented to its cool exterior as tears
drop to the floor

this is all the conversation I will have today.

Strictly Poetry, where I was before the music. (only really rusty now).

talking with the tide
the ebb and flow is my only memory
as the south shore pulls me in
sinking deeper into consciousness
I stare at the red moon

I can not extricate you from this feeling
and I crunch a shell with my feet to alleviate
and ring out the water from my dress

sedate the feeling to pitch my self in
over my head
and under the waves
by letting my fingers touch my wet skin

The water is already on me
the sand already beneath me
the moon looks all too knowingly at me
tonight with its red face

twisting my feet and knotting my dress
toasted lager running down my chest as I laugh
and hum a song to forget
why standing here made me feel this way
when I have never stood here before
but I was
lead astray
to the shore