I am angry today.
I want to strike out, my eyes are narrowed and I am looking for a fight.
My body is bruised from tripping and falling, and it is perfect. I am standing tall, back straight and legs for miles.

I am dangerous and smooth.
I want to dance, a serious tango. None of this half-hearted stuff.
My mind is writing everything off, and I am confused in the maze of all of these pieces of thoughts.

I am willing to talk back.
I want to say the exact right thing that will make everyone stare and gasp.
My words are spitting and spilling and they are so quick that each moment contains a thousand.

But only today.

I am surprised at the way eyes slide away when we know too much
there are a few things I wish I could list in an endless way…
maybe I am missing the pictures that go along with the captions
charcoal drawings are the only thing that I can see clearly sometimes
the smudges of gray on white paper catch my eye.

I never learned how to draw.
I never learned how to say anything in a straight line.

I say it all in words that accelerate and spill into open air
a never-ending fall.

My eyes are clouded over in six layers of the past, the one year of the future, the unknown, and every time I said something too soon.

When I prayed for the edges to be taken off the isolation
I became submerged, walking below the snowed-over pieces of the glass I fell through.
There is clarity in the forced silence, but my speech takes over in a avalanche of tumbling words.

I am still learning how to speak.

My feet had lost the feeling of ground underneath them, the constant digging in of sharp rocks and hidden stones
I forget what people are like, their little frailties and habits, the beautiful and ugly things they do.

I am hidden here, there is a plate glass window and my breath is fogging it beyond repair.

Final steps have no place here, and I find myself wondering why final moments keep coming in front of my eyes…the unwished-for images that are some kind of violation to admit.

I wonder when my capacity for chocolate chip cookies turned into sunlit afternoons, fire-warmed snowed-in evenings, and serving Persian tea on a Persian carpet in a home in any continent in the world (you pick). When did home become such a lost word?

Today I finally remembered a piece of home (did you know that I’d forgotten?). It is freshly cut grass with trees overhead and the faint hum of suburban life.

Or the sounds of ambulances for 4 hospitals mingled with music from everywhere, and the possibility of eating food from 15 different countries any time I want.

Or limestone buildings with grandmothers on balconies, young men in jeans and American t-shirts and the sea behind it all.

I can’t decide anymore.

Hovering
There was a moment’s pause
an eternity packaged neatly
movement outside comprehension
surrounded by dark and the evening lights
falling down through the darkness in eyes…
we waited in pristine silence
and it became new to me again…
sanctified.

They are standing in glass houses
With squares and tree-shaped reflections shadowing their faces
And they are throwing glass rocks
At the glass hearts suspended in human bodies
And the shattering silence is suspended in formless sound
Hope that every moment will add color, life
To this cold shining moment

It is easier to write with teardrops/raindrops on the window
and running in rivers down the street.
It is easier to speak in the dark when no one can see my eyes.
I am running out of words and desperately digging through paragraphs
to see what I used before.
(papers are falling to the floor all around me)
It is hopeless to use words and pictures and sounds separately.
It is impossible for me to put everything together coherently.

I am racing against myself, against my thoughts to catch up to the dreams I’ve been having for so many years. Three to four dreams a night and it is certainly starting to add up…I guess my soul is taking trips around the world and keeping busy.

Put it down on paper quick!
Write!

Find new words for every image because although I wish so hard I could paint these things…someone else has taken that picture already, has used the canvas to show it and I can only throw it down on screens and paper.

(This morning, from an office window)

I think I’m writing again but not speaking in every sense of the term. Speaking in the words that make sense to me and you if you could hear what I was saying to you. Every time I stare at the ceiling I see spiderwebs in the corners of my eyes and the movement in still air is mesmerizing.

Why are spiderwebs so good for evocative imagery of stickiness? Is it because they are a common experience to us, we can all relate to webs and spiders and strands and the cliche of “connectedness”?

Now I’m tired of spiderwebs and I’m looking for something else to take on.

There were words in my dreams, and I could read them so clearly that I felt them burned into my eyes…but now they fade and I am left with tattered scratches. Unmarking the places where the pieces and halves were dropped, I feel my spirit sinking and floating.

I drank in the sun and the sound of the rocks under my boots and the faint laughter drifting between cyprus trees, and let the smile on my face loose for the first time in a while. The walls are starting to crumble in this space.

This is joy.

I wrote this poem at the last open mic I attended in Chicago. I wanted to perform but I had nothing with me, so I wrote it at the last minute.

11/17/06

There are things surrounding me
Pizza boxes and old records
movie ticket stubs and museum passes.
There are so many things,
so many past lives, or maybe
just my past life,
the people I tried to leave behind.
My feet are buried in the trash can contents
and I’m trying desperately hard to be content.

I’ve got dusty books and candy bars in wrappers,
scratched cds and sorry-looking teddy bears.
I never thought to wade into the past,
into my soul.
My sole purpose was shocking myself into action,
to push myself into submission.

This path used to be silent,
these ways used to be mine alone and I struggled
to get home.
I am up to my knees in my past life,
of our lives built together,
each and every one fills a trash can.

I told the universe I could,
that I would and was willing.
I told the world my soul was strong
but that my heart was not ready.
I told this city I was ready to leave and
thank God that I finally listened to me.
I told you everything, I told her the stories in my life,
and he listened with everything in his being.

What will always be you to me, you:
this street, this place on the corner,
the convenience store that sells Indian food
in Little Italy.
The pieces of places and the peace I found
when I finally moved home.

i am drowning in the past
all because i am leaving
i am holding on
dusty boxes and photos
i leave fingerprints
on these white walls.

write down everything
write every word and thought
i don’t want to have to guess
or overthink my analysis
i used to sing to them
in the soft sounds of me
my little voice against waves
of unease.

i can’t let go
i have these dusty fingertips
and haunting poems
and prayers that won’t come out
these flashes of inspiration
these depths of desertion
i have it all
i am holding it all in my heart
this safe little box with a key
i broke it.

i’m sorry.

you drove the sleep from my eyes
tireless I’ll roam now
with the squeaking hinges of discomfort
rattling in my brain.

I am watching waiting
in the way only a very late night
or early morning can bring on,
that,
delirious half-dream that
takes on a life of its own.

I was looking at the distance between places
and realized that the spaces
are only here because we chose them
I wish I could choose otherwise sometimes.

Keep thinking these are thorns
or pins set to trip you up
set in place to pierce your voodoo doll
the one you gave me
the one that has pieces of your heart
tangled up in mine.

stutter and gasp as I speak
these words
these words will not come out
shine shine on
and my heart rests on fragile strings
negate my devotion

lines running back through time
there are parts of me that never left
hold on
did you think I never wanted forever.

The words said
the accusation
have broken me into pieces.

I never left. I promise you.

I never left.

But these are my words now
and this is judgement.

I ran through the thick droplets
the thunder in my bones
the lightning in my eyes and my hair
I would scream out at the sky
but under city lights it is futile
a waste of breath in the clattering crowds
this is joy!
life breathed in the storm
coalesced in flashes
moving against each individual form
we’ll listen to music
in the silence between.

Write madly in the flickering candle nights
there are secrets here
whispered against our obscure smiles
sweet in the way you say it
tragic in the way I know life will be
from now.

We’re keeping the darkness at bay
with lights lit in the secret corners
of our hearts
with sighs and prayer
and maybe even the smallest amount
of song.

let the past haunt in its way
pale eyes shining
we’ll run and I’ll taste the reasons we died
little pieces of plastic and glass
I let them wedge into my heart
pry out the molecules left
dispensing in the soup kitchen lines of fervor
these streets are mine!
these shadowed trees and dreams
tiptoe across bare asphalt, melting in the heat
so we fade with time
promises of secrets kept, whispered through tears
so maybe my trust was misplaced.

I guess there is a lot that is new, a lot of things changing in my life, but this blog has never really been a place for that. The lists I make to help “organize” my life always get longer, but now I’m excited about these lists. I’m working toward something, toward my goals in life, and I feel like I’m finally making the drastic changes I knew I needed (and some completely unexpected ones).

So summer ends and I smell leaves and everyone is shifting. I’m waiting, but the wait is not long anymore.