You are the bullet in my brain (if extracted) I could no longer hear sunsets


I've been handed the dice in the board game life and I am quite happy were I'm at, I mean, I have the good salary card, married with no kids, I'm a rock star, I'm the most self-assured peg in a plastic card you might ever find, thank you very much. And now here I am, landed on the auspicious VUNERABILITY square and my stomach has sunk through the plastic car mat to the cardboard street.

Me=Emotional Clam. Really, though. What's the deal? Is there some horrific childhood event that I haven't dealt with? I think the world evens out into two sets of people: those desperate to connect and those scared to death of it. I am in the latter. Which are you? I have the terrifying idea that this struggle might be universal... We, the generations of TV and internet think it's enough to project the idea on the back of our eyelids. But no, people need people, interlocking wrists, synergy, gum-in-your-hair, misunderstandings, backrubs, brainstorms, hand holding, hair-in-your-sandwich.

I have no witty conclusion. Goodnight.

So they don't pay you as much as the next guy. You're at the point now that if they paid you in zebras that would be enough.


Two cups of Starbucks chai later....

Run your finger along the map of Africa and see if you feel anything. You don't, because you're human, and if you are successful in that particular juncture enough not to have committed suicide, you're quite numb by now. There, you've dipped your thumb into the Sahara, whisked skin across the Ecuador, and felt a million people with the fragment of a finger. And they're much worse off than you, by the way. I remember hearing a comedian (Dane Cook?) talking about trying to explain an American restaurant to a starving nation. Appetizer? Oh, food we eat before our food. No, you're thinking of dessert, food we eat after out food. Yah, and sometimes, we have so much we have to put it in a bag for later, for the pets or a midnight snack. Yah, that's the food we eat after the food that's after all the food between REM cycles. Yah.

It takes a lot of energy to be compassionate. Whenever I see the man with the white beard on TV, with an African child draped on his shoulder like a woody, living scarf, asking for my donation to the blinking yellow number at the bottom of the screen, I flip the channel. Then, I'm watching an MTV dating game that's draining my brains into an intestinal, syrupy pile on the carpet, and I'm thinking, can people be THAT stupid? And I spend my time thinking about how stupid they are. Plato would have a field day with the insipid irreverence of that, I mean, he didn't even like poets in the first place, much less one wondering about the form of the form of stupidity.

True to the name (I throw in the occasional "my name's charity, I'm an adorable poor college student, give me free stuff please" to everyday conversation, and the real kicker is that it works all the time) I have an adorable little Indian girl magnetized to the refrigerator so that whenever the collection plate at church goes by I can raise a haughty brow "MY tithe is ALREADY taken care of" and glare the people next to me into such self-righteous guilt that my pew neighbor is throwing in her jewelry from shame of her prom night twenty years ago. Okay, so I'm not melodramatic in condescension, but I wouldn't put it past myself. I am regularly stunned by my own insensitivity.

What else could I really ask for in life? But what does it mean to be happy? I used to tell my philosophy teacher in high school that I WAS THE HUMAN ABERRATION because I was truly happy, but I think that was a cry of attention ignited by the release of the Matrix movie, and a sudden conviction in my entire generation that yes, in fact, we are THE ONE. Perhaps I've been satisfied, but I've never had the self control to let fate out of my hands, well, ever. And I have a feeling surrender and peace go hand in hand.

But it's just a feeling. So I'm running my hand on the map of Africa trying to feel, trying to feel my past and my future and to simply feel, reviving the pinpricks in my joints that I had anesthetized, the twists in my heart I had convinced myself didn't matter. Sometimes it's hard, because the things that make you cruel make you a victim in the same instant. It's wrong, to be cold in the finger tips. But it's sad too... Things happen, you get hurt, and you move on... I can't help but wonder, what is the recipe for recovery? Is it surrender? Or is that just a bit to dangerous in this world?

into the strenuous briefness
Life:
handorgans and April
darkness, friends

i charge laughing


Self discovery is an exaltant crash. Ribboning you into ecstatic portions you push around mullingly on your plate, trying to find some appeasing combination. And there you are, some people love you, some don't, and meaning is mingled with music and monotone...

Life IS roses and hello, solongs and ashes.
It smells of lilacs and concentration camps.
Barbaric yalps and rosebud gatherings
Seance and waste and (redemption)

Blow, blow, thou winter wind, thou art not so unkind as man's ingratitude


No one can ever say that Dorian Gray was never offered absolution, because he was, in Sibyl Vane. But she died, didn't she? And his hand murdered Basil, the hand that drove a dagger through the hideous portrait that was his soul. This blog is the documented Dorian's Vane, the last brilliant stop before the edge, the Could-Be life. A soul is not worth eternal youth, though. I will hold onto mine yet.

I stared at the fake Christmas trees on the church stage all morning, glimmering rows of cream light near hypnotic. It's different than it used to be, sitting there. No near-tears today. But truth, still. Still truth.

The world is white, white, white. I have never seen snow in such a smooth, jumbled crystal, nettles of ice pinned to each other in minute spidering mountains. Clean, new, finished. Holding vane-innocence a little while yet (in a world that still turns white when it grows colder)

I shall know why, when time is over, and I have ceased to wonder why


Shifting like shingles, down a rain-glossed roof despite any recementing, control over my own life is the rubix cube propped on the shelf, unsolvable, and pending. There is always that moment when everything falls apart; I have seen it in so many lives and fear it’s near to my own, as pieces slip away like finger-oiled marbles, rolling rolling
rolling
I’m eating the cookie I swore I wouldn’t touch, I’m skirting disaster I knew I was too knowledgeable to approach, I’m stitching idleness up with derision and a long, scarlet, steel string.

I’m sitting back now, because everything is fine, and I’m human, therefore erratic, and female, therefore sensationally erratic. Pooling the Moulin Rouge of neon light and cancan dancers into a darker corner of my sanity the “I’ll deal with that later” sector has begun its spread, and at some point when my back was turned it began reupholstering my brain with a whole new color scheme. And I liked those curtains.

Today, the world is a bit big for me, a fair reach up, a shoe size too large, and I occupy a thumbprint (not even three dimensional) of this infinite forward. It leaves me typing some pitter-patter print on a page that will pass down the electronic line and fold itself infinitesimally into an archive that even I won’t look at. Thank God for the vanity that saves me from meaninglessness. Thank God.

No, the heart that has truly loved never forgets,
But as truly loves on to the close….


God forbid! The same preview showed twice in the overcrowded, anxious, American theatre waiting for the midnight showing of Narnia. Grumbling, groaning, griping over tubs o’ butter popcorn and foot long packages of Mike and Ikes, demanding the digital Aslan. Ironic? Perhaps I was just irritable.

And then there it was, the cool white skin of innocence in pale English fashion, Lucy with eyes like upturned pools, rapturous, believing, and the First to know Something More. Her feet hooking backward, awkward, into the closet, the coats, and then pine nettles. She just believed, Lucy did, instantly, perfectly, and I wanted to be her and knew instead I was Edmund, sulking and pretending I hadn’t seen anything, betraying all forms of trust and affection I am given.

I have seen it, I have known it, and it’s different every time. And I do know his name in this world, I think, I think, (I think too much). Why, when I am given a glimpse of this Narnia, of this Wonderland, do I shut my senses down? If I am seeking truth, I must take the courage of that tiny girl and keep creeping into the wardrobe, finding only the hard oak pane one day, and another world the next.

Truth is not tame. There is something of Lucy here yet, because I know, I know, (I know just enough) it is good.

And there the lion's ruddy eyes shall flow with tears of gold


I wish I could write something important, something that had value to you. I wish I could tell you what you need to hear. I wish I could tell you how much I want to meet you, if I haven't, or hold you, if I have. It is exhausting, everyone pretending they have everything lined up in rows of tens, folded crisply, filed, smoothed, counted, paid, dishes washed, and envelopes licked. I hope that someday, one of us, either of us, both of us, will have that nervous break down, for once in front of another human being (or for once in genuine surrender). This artificial strength is so self-defeating, it's a needle jerked rudely into our elbow veins pumping numbness, illusion, and a five minute self-pardon that has never really meant more than the after-dinner mint that loses its flavor right after it hits your tongue.

Realisim is the most seductive, recessive gene... And chances are, you are probably stuck with family hair loss and color-blindness rather than the capacity to be who you are. Really, what is the worst that could happen, if I saw you, and you saw me? I truly doubt the exchange of expletives and cement projectiles, but that's what my brain plays out everytime I consider the option. I'm under the strange impression that if my faults shine through you will see me as weak, and therefore, unlovable. Thank God for hopeless romanticism, because I simply can't believe that of you.

One more vision of the ideal world, which ironically, isn't perfect. Because (*gasp*, here it comes...) I am not perfect, I am impatient, self-absorbed, too philisophical, a little vain, insecure, alright--very vain, and, oddly enough, desperately afraid of sea creatures. But there is such good in me, such good that I pity the mess I make myself, with all this fear. And there is such good in you, I know it, I see it, and I wanted to tell you. There it is, what I have been trying to say. I hope it means enough to remember.

When I have fears that I might cease to be before this pen has gleaned my teeming brain....

You must admire the skill of an actor (Nicholas Cage, Adaptation) as he turns to a twin who will be the later digital insertion of himself and utters the most poignant, moving lines... These words said with a gentle smile, breaking open something in me like an egg rapped on a counter.

You are what you love, not what loves you.

I have thought about that line every day for weeks . . . because I want it, and I want it to be true in my life. That is, being at a point where the love I have for something cannot even be lessened by the rejection or spite or expiration of even the object itself, let alone the arbitrary opinions of those around me. I want that with urgency, and wholeness, and a collapsing pressure.
That same actor is unfazed when he is told the girl he loved only ridiculed him in return. "I loved her," he explains serenely, exquisitely, "and she had no right to take that away from me." It is a new concept, happiness not being contingent on reciprocation or a requition, only this intricate resolve. Love is not lace, he's telling me, love is steel.

Lately my heart has been one long series of bated contractions, with all those desires streaked through a fit of dread just barely tranquilized in the pit of my stomach and I am afraid, so afraid, of its awakening. I still have one person left in my life to forgive, and I am digging and unfolding to find the will to do it. However, the fortunate production of an unwound, vaguely frantic/idle mind is this thing we call poetry, even though I cannot figure out how to format it...


In a blink
(smooth sharp sun youth)

you are here,
you are you.

Veins, some intangible function
Tissue and torment
Tumbling

Laced with a rude and glinting tinsel (time)
You are here
What does it mean,
To breathe? Piling
things and thoughts
In a vault in a brain in a soul
Linking magnetic cotton
You
Know the tingle of after-idle limbs
Crescents on your fingernails

A little smoke in your lungs
A little warmth down your throat

Oh! Hoping you’ve loved.