The muse who put the “used” in amused-

Useless List* of “Muses”. Sort of.

• 01: Name resembles a shade of the water. Was a childhood friend from church. Twice my age, then (so what?) Owned a store selling soup. Grew apart (what these things are for).
• 03: Skeletal. One of the smartest people I knew. Thin fingers and a piano. Umbrellas, books, and framed glasses.
• 02 & 04: Forgettable – save for the fact how both were destructive (one more so than the other). One returned as a friend, following a long period of misfired revenge plots and attempts to engage vultures, etc. The other, out of sight, has his bones breaking from too much effort, or some other reason (last I heard from a friend of a friend).
• 05: Uninteresting, eventually. A failure (the person, and perhaps the relationship as well) by choice. Quite civil, no longer chummy.
• 05.5: Whom I know not to go to when the world turns bleak.
• 06: The Quietest Boy.
• 06.5: Weak. Also: What a waste those weeks were.
• 07: The Boy Most Likely (to: a.) burn a building, b.) kill himself, c.) kill someone else, d.) set everything on fire, e.) disappear)
• 08: Smiles bright as the sun, feels sad only if out of food. Assessment so far: Strange.

Currently: Keeping a safe distance for my own good.

*Save for 05.5, all have names made of two syllables. Hmm.

Life-related: I haven’t really been ~writing~ since a.) I’ve been working on some illustration deadlines (yay, art!) and, b.) I’ve mostly been busy attending to this little fiend named Scaramouche (I call her Mumu for short):

 

I love this Fattybutt monster to bits.

Also: the most interesting thing I’ve read all day. Be warned though, it’s got some heavy stuff. One secret grossed me out real bad (well, my fault for reading it while eating dinner). And I’m the type of girl who can eat a sandwich beside a cadaver. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

O.

said you didn’t care much
for words. Only pictures, and always
the color red. Said you needed someone
who could translate your pictures
into words, as if each stroke stood
for a syllable. Each spot of white
a pause. Said you weren’t enough
(were we ever enough
even?) Said you needed someone
who could do it better. So here I am, setting
out to do it better, best, with my knives
and compulsive need to sing about light, capturing
birds taking flight. Here, everything
you’ve ever asked for, minced and carved out, leaving
hollows and more spaces for us to fill -
just pretend I’d never want
to retrieve it all someday, making
what’s mine, what is
mine.

Smoke signals

She lets the words sneak away, leaving
nothing save for that scent of smoke
and the long drive home.

-
This week: 2 exams.
Next week: 7
Next, next: finals
After that: comprehensive exams.
 
I hope to live through this.

Play: List (or, Why I Never Let The Boys I Love Listen To The Music I Like)

After Marrian Pio Roda Ching

 

 

I poured my aching heart into a pop song. I couldn’t get the hang of poetry.

- Suck It And See (Arctic Monkeys)

SIDE A

[Track 01]
The start is the hardest part[1]: I coughed
your name, I smoked
all day[2] – I call your number
but I can’t get through[3].

[Track 02]
It’s the same fucking
habits[4]: watching you turn
from me towards your friends[5].

[Track 03]
You told me you wanted
to eat up my sadness[6]. In a soft-porn version
of the end of the world I quake at the knees
as my intentions unfurl[7]: we’ve got a minefield
of crippled affection[8].

[Track 04]
Here’s to all the pretty words
we will never speak[9]:
“How you gonna keep me
warm?[10]”, “I’m glad
you’re on my side[11].”, “What’s wrong with you
is good for what’s wrong with me.[12]”

SIDE B

[Track 01]
We find it hard to deal with
when our dreams come true[13].
But now we must pack up
every piece of the life we used
to love, just to keep
ourselves[14].

[Track 02]
Oh you can lose yourself
in art, or you can break somebody’s heart
in two[15] – I’ve written pages
upon pages, trying to rid you
from my bones[16]. Medicine clouds
my mind[17]. There’s mercy
when the lies kick in[18].

[Track 03]
You were a truth I would rather lose
than to have never lain beside
at all[19]. I chose to feel it
and you couldn’t choose[20]. I’m sorry
about the phone call and needing you[21].
You chose that moment to say to me
“Has all of your life been this lonely?[22]”

From the list of regrets I swore to forget:

• The curtain of skin that folds following a smile (see: “Endings, Misinterpretations, Things we do to each other, Despite everything”)
• How you stole my car and crashed it somewhere I couldn’t place (filed under “Dreams, Recent”)
• Gestures (i.e., stealing my photograph and stroking my hair without so much as asking; filed under “Truth, Undated, Recent”)
• A quote from a movie we did not watch together (see “Things we do to each other”)
• Hands – holding, pushing away, gathering dust, gathering pencil shavings, pulling; wounded, clean, muddied, sterile, warm (file: “Misinterpretations, To be continued”)
• Books: the ones you refuse/d to read, the ones I love, the ones you still have from me (file: “Missing pages”)
• Nicotine (filed under “Habits, Excuses, Disease, Things we do to each other, Despite everything”)

The Uses of Sorrow by Mary Oliver

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

You make me feel like a Jonathan Safran Foer paragraph

If there is no love in the world, we will make a new world, and we will give it walls, and we will furnish it with soft, red interiors, from the inside out, and give it a knocker that resonates like a diamond falling to a jeweller’s felt so that we should never hear it. Love me, because love doesn’t exist, and I have tried everything that does.

 

- Everything is Illuminated

Muted gestures

Say we lost our voices, our bodies deciding how skin would be the new scale for song, how touch becomes the message, the morse code, the only means- a grip, a tug, the soft swish of hair, that brush of hand becomes inscribed in a language no longer needing the sharp edges of letters, no longer being bound by a barrier of air- say how much would you want this, and here is my hand: see the frightened, hesitant palm with its fingers dancing despite the cold coating it, despite the night, reaching out, a hymn aching to begin from the quickening beat of your pulse-

After reading this

Miss

Due to my sudden shyness, we have this:

Song

You are the hand resting quietly
on my shoulder. You are the slight push
waking me from a dream
of waves and the absence
of sky. You are the words hiding
inside an old book. You are the smile
wedged within memory
and smoke, wafting
its weightless body
across a continent of things
lost. You are the time I spent making
my way from point A to B. You are surprise,
slowly making its exit, slinging
your backpack on your shoulders,
slouched and ready to rest. You are the door swinging
open. You are the taste of alcohol and a quiet night
I keep conjuring before sleep. You are the words I rearrange
into another poem about sadness. You are song
in place of a poem. You are fire
lit all alone in the wilderness. You are the sun,
condemned to consume its own brightness, bringing
with it everything that ever dared love
light. You are gravity, pulling
the weight of stars from your backpack, easing
out a mobile for the blind and wingless, bringing
tumbleweeds and angels alike into dancing.
You are the feet that will never touch
the ground. You are an old telephone gathering messages
of dust. You are giraffes and elephants, limbs leading
a slew of animals into new landscapes. You are the zygote dividing
with certainty in someone’s womb. You are the skeletons
of dinosaurs who died, turning
into a song no one sings. You are the question I threw
to the wind. You are a ship housing
the voices of mermaids, everything the sea refuses
to say. You are the rain, leaving
the softest of kisses on my cheeks as my body breaks
through a wave of people, making
my way home. You are the hand
resting quietly on my shoulder.