Sometimes I think the world is spinning out of control...and that at any given moment I might find my feet unglued from this earth beneath them, my body flung from the planet--like a child from a merry-go-round--to go free-floating through the universe...

I find it hard to imagine sometimes that the grass could ever be greener on the other side...that better catches await me in more fecund seas, but I look around me and I realize that we are all growing. Life has so many more surprises and joys and sorrows to offer me and my generation in the years to come, provided we take responsibility for this world we live in.

I won't pretend that day to day events and long-term pains and frustrations don't get me down now and again, but I will say that I look around me in the faces of those growing up right next to me and I realize now that I am not alone. We are all learning, trying to get our bearings...spreading our feeble wings and diving down to meet our fates, or soar with our ancestors.

I wouldn't miss it for the world.

I hate

how everything painful is magnified by like...a million now. What is going on with me?!

Reading back on old poems brings surges of emotions that I'm not accustomed to having just over reading something I've written...

Uhg. Even writing is a painful experience as of late...

Such shit.

L.

Black,
your face is hidden
in the shadow of a promise,
too strong to keep,
too feeble to survive the fall
from your whispering lips,
too eager to be free.
I feel your breath coming in gasps
and heaves
as I lay my head
against your chest.
It permeates my very being,
swallows me whole,
consumes...devours:
I will lay here forever,
if that is what you require
to be well again.

...

the original version of this was much longer, but i can't bring myself to post the rest. maybe one day, after some editing and revising, i'll put it up. also, for some reason i did not date this when I wrote it, but I'm guessing it was some time near the end of 2008.

Learning Curve

I'm sitting here, and I'm watching you slip slowly through my fingers as though every little piece of you were a tiny grain of sand, and I've been holding on too tightly. That old '80s song has been playing in my head:

"Just Hold On Loosely, but don't let go
If you cling to tightly,
you're gonna lose control"

Over and over. I think I'm learning something.

by the way,

i feel like i'm ready to dive now.

7/17/08

I have a feeling that this cliff is over a thousand feet high, and that impact with the water below would peel my flesh from my skeleton. So while those around me are diving down at leisure, I am here...hugging this rock of ambition and purposes greater than thrills and risks on a whim--hugging me. I'm not ready to dive and risk the possibility that, upon impact, my spirit would be stripped from my core and my core would be split in two and there would be no me to defend myself against the impending pleasures of the world...hovering just above the murky waters smelling of red clay and a good time.

Anathema 10/18/07

She stands there, dark hair glistening in the stark moonlight...and she's beautiful. She is always beautiful. She is real and honest in a world that grates against her like sandpaper and labels her an outcast. She is real and honest in the face of hypocrisy and powdered noses. She is Ana, with bobbed hair and a quirky smile that plays across her gentle face and tells me that in the face of everything that is false and ephemeral she will always be my everlasting Halley's Comet...my never-ending sunshine, northern star, ever-bold Anabelle, Ana, in the face of the world, my Anathema.

okay, so the following posts aren't "new"

per se, but they are some old entries i found in some journals i kept.

hope you enjoy,

l.

From here on

I'll be putting newer stuff up.

All the things posted prior to this were moved here from my old blog, in no particular order.

:) Cheers.

sun-kissed shadows

dance
in the fading
haze
of a moon-lit night.
she
is only so bold as the
sandals
on her feet.

however,
when she
calls
my name i am
compelled
to gravitate towards her.

she is my
blazing
oblivion, in an
endless
expanse of infinity
leading
to a land i'd rather
not
call familiar.

baked.

i seep back
down
into the crust of this
earth
and find myself thinking it was
better
left unsaid.

half-baked

sun-drenched,

you are
half
a world away from me.

what
is that sound?

(shrieking,
wailing,
tearing)

take
it away from me.

i
never said i
wanted
this pain.

sacred--

i guess i
could
dig deeper,

into the
soul
of things:
brave and without
fear
of what

i might find

d i s i l l u s i o n m e n t-
let us
not
delve into that
darkness
just yet.

a prayer:

false--
i wish you didn't
gather
'round me so.

what
is this
mask
i'm wearing?

why
is this
mask
i'm wearing?

i
want to remember,
she
wants to
bury
all that was.


please,
let her
lace
her fingers
into mine:

to find a
new
strength
that does not
lie
behind barriers;

they say these
journeys
are harder
on your own.

She

is the Sun--
Radiant and True--
a Giver of All Life,
Flame
of a Thousand Hearths.
yet, i do behold such Fury in Her--
for She
is the Bearer of Many Secrets;
Keeper
of Many Pains:

One day, She
will paint us all the color of
a fiery, molten rain,
Birthed
from the belly of an
Ancient
sorrow; and we will all know
what it feels to fall,
We usurpers of a
Feigned love.

sunshine

in my window at
three
(ante-meridiem); i never know if she'll
stay
or wander hopelessly on to some
other
stranger's bedside;
i never know if she'll find
solace
in the dark shadows of some
foreigner's
room, safer from these
city lights
beside a
country belle,
guarded from this
concrete
cage by a force
greater
than my own--none-
the less
she always
always
returns,
at three a.m.,
to pay me
homage,
perhaps:
ma chercheuse éternelle
de la face cachée
de la lune.

the line

between black and white has
faded to gray--
(it wasn't intentional...)
a bleak opacity blurs what was left between
pale feet beating on a
steaming blacktop.

...
you wouldn't think charred heels
could carry the secrets of
life, and death.

remember

that promise you made me?
(it's gone, it's gone)
i felt it slip away...
like so many other days...
out the window of a hum v...
and a trip to france.
don't worry
(i don't hold it against you).
a little reflection...
never hurt anyone,
did it?
a little reflection...
in a little-too-dusty mirror.

days fade

into a mélange
of repeated words
and overstated
understatements.

people fade
into an exasperated muddle
of lost thoughts
and misdirected
misconceptions.

alas,

life fades
into a chaotic jumble
of what could have been,
and what is not,
and in the end
...
oh,
to hell with it all,
anyway.

Caustic

a hand
runs
across the
base
of my neck...
foul
thoughts swell in the
dark
crevices of a tainted
reality...
was it i?
who brought down the
mountains...
i, like a
fool
in a sea of
undying
regrets and
insurpassable
memories of a time that
was
and no longer
is?
tie me
to the axis of a
flawed
world in which i have
no memory of
right
and wrong;
no recollection of
good
and evil,
and where
inhibitions
are the playthings of a
long-lost
past...
tie me...
to the spokes
of your
ever-changing
what was...

1/14/08

These, my love, are not the times you write down:
I've waded too far out,
into too deep waters,
Chasing a vanishing dream.
Don't fret, my love--
you did not fret then,
when my heart was pounding in my heaving breast.
No, I feel it still--
you do not think me so hard as that, do you?
(That's not it.)
I was wading, wading in the heavy current
...and you were my destination, you were...
But the current swept me away,
Body displaced from soul
Carrying out deed displaced from will,
but it's all the same, anyway...
you were never coming back.
Break me down--
into bricks, for the building blocks of a
new destiny,
vested in me, the future, and no "us" present
for the burning of bridges:
I've done that before...
and a Brickmaker is not in the business of
rebuilding burnt bridges.
If I have learned anything,
O, let it be that.

The Last of Broken Sunrises (3/5/08)

I watched as she rode in from the east,
like a shadow of ill omen,
casting darkness over a multi-colored sunrise.
Was it always like this?
I don't think so, I don't think so.
She just woke up like that one day.
Sometimes,
you can see her riding across the horizon,
her golden hair ablaze,
bringing light into the world,
chasing the moon.
Who was it that opened Pandora's box?
It wasn't on fire...
it wasn't on fire, she let her
amber tears fall all across Europe she
let them fall and fall and she found him
in the end she let out
Hope? like blades of grass that cut like paper-
mâché people and
in the end she's
--what?
full of doubt and an air of
emptiness and fear mingled with
thunder rolling in the distance with all the rains that
won't come and wash away a gentle
clamor in her steadily-beating chest while her
mind runs rampant and she doesn't know any more
if she can be that girl that she wants to be who
ushers in the sunlight while the
night hugs her back and makes her
skin damp and cold while everyone is watching
if she falls
if she falls
they are watching, but she just
wants to be a girl who is,
in the end she is
tries to be a girl who is
always, always, she is
stronger.

oui, j'ai dit que je t'aime

so tell me you’re red
fading to yellow
fading to green
fading
into me…
so careless
liberated
à l’aise
And me, I’m:
. ; ,,,
Punctuated.
Scared.
Uncertain.
Fading.
From green.
To yellow.
To red.
Out of you.
and you’re holding on
regardless
I guess that’s why,
among other things,
I love you.

(oui, j’ai dit que je t’aime.)

2/12/08

Baked
in an ephemeral state
(i know, i know)
...it's passing...

like a moon-lit tide,
fading in
and out
of the horizon.

She took my hand,
but it's slipping...
(sometimes, sometimes i slip, too)

...I'm trying
as hard as I can
to hold on.

"C'est pas si grave que ça, ma belle..."
(je sais, je sais)

...just a little longer
on the edge.

you took my hand

and asked:
why?
i said:
eventually smiles and
secret glances
no longer matter.
eventually,
it's not enough.
you asked:
why?
and, choking on the tears in my throat,
i said:
because eventually time goes on
and sunlit days spent in shadow
are no longer satisfying.
eventually,
it's not enough.
you said:
but i thought we
--no.
YOU.
yes, YOU.
i bolded those letters.
and mounted them high on a mantle piece in my heart.
i carved them carefully. attentively. lovingly.
so as not to,
in any way,
smear your beautiful name.
so as not to,
in any way,
ruin you.
you said:
we--
i said:
no, you.
you asked, pathetically:
why...?
and i said, finally:
eventually,
i want you to remember me
and know
that eventually
...it's not enough.

Rocky Road Thirties

No,
I won’t be your
thirty-five-year-old
regret,
drowning in
rocky road and old
black and white movies.
I won’t be your
stay-at-home-mom
swimming in
old jogging suits and
age-old tennis shoes.
I won’t be your
one-stop-shop
for years and years of
lost chances
and broken-hearted goodbyes
to lost dreams, selves, and
what-could-have-been’s.
No,
I won’t be yours
at all.