My father used to sing me this song.


Moon River, wider than a mile,
I'm crossing you in style some day.
Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker,
wherever you're going I'm going your way.
Two drifters off to see the world.
There's such a lot of world to see.
We're after the same rainbow's end--
waiting 'round the bend,
my huckleberry friend,
Moon River and me.


I need him today. I need him to sing to me tonight.

I wish I knew you before them.

+

You lucky lucky girl.
I'm almost wishing you and I could trade places;
I be the past, you be the current flavor of his senses
so I could secretly feel smug,
and tell the world he once held me tighter, longer.

+

leaving is not enough; you must
stay gone.

Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell
by Marty McConnell


leaving is not enough; you must
stay gone. train your heart
like a dog. change the locks
even on the house he’s never
visited. you lucky, lucky girl.
you have an apartment
just your size. a bathtub
full of tea. a heart the size
of Arizona, but not nearly
so arid. don’t wish away
your cracked past, your
crooked toes, your problems
are papier mache puppets
you made or bought because the vendor
at the market was so compelling you just
had to have them. you had to have him.
and you did. and now you pull down
the bridge between your houses,
you make him call before
he visits, you take a lover
for granted, you take
a lover who looks at you
like maybe you are magic. make
the first bottle you consume
in this place a relic. place it
on whatever altar you fashion
with a knife and five cranberries.
don’t lose too much weight.
stupid girls are always trying
to disappear as revenge. and you
are not stupid. you loved a man
with more hands than a parade
of beggars, and here you stand. heart
like a four-poster bed. heart like a canvas.
heart leaking something so strong
they can smell it in the street.

Emphasis mine.

I am not an inherently sweet or thoughtful person. Not in the least bit affectionate.

I am not the type who hands out small gifts to people randomly or the type who sees something nice and out of impulse, procures it because it might be liked someone I know.

The irony if it all is that I am surrounded by people who are.

Just the other day, someone replenished my TicTac. For no reason.

You know who you are, people. You make my heart all mushy and gooey. Thank you. You make me want to nourish the sweet gene in me. It is merely hibernating.

"Lit (or: to the scientist I am not speaking to any more)"
Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

Don’t say you didn’t see this coming, Jason.

Don’t say you didn’t realize this would be my reaction
and that you never intended for me to get all worked up,
because if that were true, then you are dumber
than Lenny from Mice and Men, blinder than Oedipus
and Tierus put together and can feel less
than a Dalton Trumbo character.

You put the Dick in Dickens and the Boo in kowski
and are more Coward-ly then Noël.

But you don’t understand any of these references,
Do you, Jason? Because you ‘don’t read’.
You are a geology major and you once told me
That, ‘Scientists don’t read popular literature,
Cristin, we have more important things to do’.

Well, fuck you.

Be glad you don’t read, Jason,
because maybe you won’t understand this
as I scream it to you on your front lawn,
on Christmas Day, brandishing three hypodermic needles,
a ginsu knife and a letter of permission
from Bret Easton Ellis.

Jason, you are more absurd than Ionesco.
You are more abstract than Joyce,
more inconsistent than Agatha Christie
and more Satanic than Rushdie’s verses.

I can’t believe I used to want to Sappho you, Jason.
I used to want to Pablo Neruda you,
to Anais Nin And Henry Miller you. I used to want
to be O for you, to blow for you in ways
that even Odysseus’ sails couldn’t handle.
But self-imposed illiteracy isn’t a turn-on.

You used to make fun of me being a writer,
saying ‘Scientists cure diseases,
what do writers do?’

But of course, you wouldn’t understand, Jason.
I mean, have you ever gotten an inner thirsting
for Zora Neale Hurston?
Or heard angels herald for you
to read F Scott Fitzgerald?
Have you ever had a beat attack for Jack Kerouac?
The only Morrison you know is Jim, and you think
you’re the noble one?

Go Plath yourself.

Your heart is so dark, that even Joseph Conrad
couldn’t see it, and it is so buried under bullshit
that even Poe’s cops couldn’t hear it.

Your mind is as empty as the libraries in Fahrenheit 451.
Your mind is as empty as Silas Marner’s coffers.
Your mind is as empty as Huckleberry Finn’s wallet.

And some people might say that this poem
is just a pretentious exercise
in seeing how many literary references
I can come up with.

And some people might complain that this poem is,
at its core, shallow, expressing the same emotion again,
and again, and again. (I mean, there are only so many times
you can articulate your contempt for Jason,
before people get bored.)

But you know what, Jason? Those people would be wrong.

Because this is not the poem I am writing to express
my hatred for you.

This poem is the poem I am writing because we aren’t speaking,
and it is making my heart hurt so bad, it is all I
can do just to get up off the floor sometimes.

And this is the poem I am writing instead of writing
the ‘I miss having breakfast with you’ poem, instead of
writing the ‘Let’s walk dogs in our old schoolyard
again’ poem.

Instead of the ‘How are you doing?’ poem, the ‘I miss you’ poem,
the ‘I wish I was making fun of how much you like Garth
Brooks while sitting in front of your parents’ house
in your jeep’ poem, instead of the ‘Holidays are coming around
and you know what that means: SUICIDE!’ poem.

I am writing this so that I can stop wanting to write
the ‘I could fall in love with you again so quickly
if only you would say one more word to me’ poem.

But I am tired of loving you, Jason
cause you don’t love me right.

And if some pretentious-ass poem can stop me
From thinking about the way your laugh sounds,
about the way your skin feels in the rain,
about how I would rather be miserable with you,
then happy with anyone else in the world.

If some pretentious-ass poem can do all that?
Then I am gone with the wind, I am on the road,
I have flown over the fucking cuckoo’s nest,
I am gone, I am gone, I am gone.

I am.

I am full to the brim with other people's sordid secrets.

Of course, I don't intentionally investigate what goes on beyond their public portrayals of themselves but somehow, most of what they keep from the general public find their way to me, and I shake my head every time.

And I thought I was crazed already. Some people are so much crazier.

Please, if you have secrets, strap them tightly to your clutches or keep them guarded in your pandora's boxes lest they fly out. Choose the people you spill yourselves to. 

the morning after.

Don't be polite.
Bite in.
Pick it up with your fingers and lick the juice that
may run down your chin.
It is ready and ripe now, whenever you are.

You do not need a knife or fork or spoon
or plate or napkin or tablecloth.

For there is no core
or stem
or rind
or pit
or seed
or skin
to throw away.

I thought I had a slight fever last night but the supposed sickness didn't last. The stench of the smoke didn't last. Even the annoyed feeling that banned person inflicted is now just something to cringe at.

This is my poem for the day.

I Know the Way You Can Get

I know the way you can get
When you have not had a drink of Love:

Your face hardens,
Your sweet muscles cramp.
Children become concerned
About a strange look that appears in your eyes
Which even begins to worry your own mirror
And nose.

...

Even angels fear that brand of madness
That arrays itself against the world
And throws sharp stones and spears into
The innocent
And into one’s self.

O I know the way you can get
If you have not been drinking Love:

You might rip apart
Every sentence your friends and teachers say,
Looking for hidden clauses.

You might weigh every word on a scale
Like a dead fish.

You might pull out a ruler to measure
From every angle in your darkness
The beautiful dimensions of a heart you once
Trusted.

...

From: “I Heard God Laughing"
Renderings of Hafiz: by Daniel Ladinsky.


+

I know now why I have never liked you. Or been frustrated about you. Because when I look at you, I see myself. We always have "one feet out the door". 

from now on.

I wanted to write about how queer it is to reach this age and to be single. I browse my love tag: of love and other demons and see how many posts I've tagged it with and it was almost always the reason why I write things down to begin with.

Now there is nothing to write, nothing to be pained or happy about and the words don't burst forth as when I know I am about to contemplate or complain about it.

There is a sudden lull. Something halted to an abrupt dead end and all the eloquence or poetry, no matter how morbid or splendid, died with it.

One thing is for certain though: I am now weary of the chase. As in the poem, these things happen only once. I feel terribly old and choosy and no pick-up line will ever work on me again - I've heard everything.

So here's to being single for a long time.

At the rate things are going, it would be close to impossible for me to fall for anyone again. 

"Abschieds Symphony"
Dorianne Laux

Someone I love is dying, which is why,
when I turn the key in the ignition
and back the car out of the parking space
in the underground garage, and the radio
comes on, sudden and loud, something
by Haydn, a diminishing fugue, and maneuver
the car through the dimly lit tunnels
with their low ceilings, following the yellow arrows
stenciled at intervals on the gray cement walls,
I think of him, moving slowly through the last
hard days of his life and I can't stop crying.
When I arrive at the toll gate I have to make myself
stop thinking as I dig in my pockets for the last
of my coins, turn to the attendant, indifferent
in his blue smock, his white hair curling like smoke
around his weathered neck, and say Thank you,
like an idiot, and drive into the blinding midday light.
Everything is hideously symbolic,
and everything reminds me of cancer:
the Chevron truck, its rounded underbelly
spattered with road grit and the sweat
of last night's rain, the dumpster
behind the flower shop, its sprung lid
pressing down on dead wedding bouquets--
even the smell of something simple, coffee drifting
from the open door of a cafe and my eyes
glaze over, ache in their sockets.
For months now all I've wanted is the blessing
of inattention, to move carefully from room to room
in my small house, numb with forgetfulness.
To eat a bowl of cereal and not imagine him,
scrubbed thin and pale, unable to swallow.
How not to imagine the tumors
ripening beneath his skin, flesh
I have kissed, stroked with my fingertips,
pressed my belly and breasts against, some nights
so hard I thought I could enter him, open
his back at the spine like a door or a curtain
and slip in like a small fish between his ribs,
nudge the coral of his brain with my lips,
brushing over the blue coils of his bowels
with the fluted silk of my tail.
Death is not romantic. He is dying,
no matter how I see it, no matter
what I believe, that fact is stark
and one dimensional, atonal,
a black note on an empty staff.
My feet are cold, but not as cold as his,
and I hate this music that floods
the cramped insides of my car, my head,
slowing the world down with its
lurid majesty, transforming everything I see
into some sort of memorial to life,
no matter how ugly or senseless--
even the old Ford in front of me,
its battered rear end thinning to scallops of rust,
pumping black classical clouds of exhaust
into the shimmering air-- even the tenacious
nasturtiums clinging to a fence, vine and bloom
of the insignificant, music spilling
from their open faces, spooling upward, past
the last rim of blue and into the still pool
of another galaxy, as if all that emptiness
were a place of benevolence, a destination,
a peace we could rise to.

I want to get away from here. This place is getting sadder and sadder everyday.

For Paolo

I bear equally with you
the black permanent separation.
Why are you crying? Rather give me
your hand,
promise to come again in a dream.
You and I are a mountain of grief.
You and I will never meet on this earth.
If you could only send me at midnight
a greeting through the stars

А́нна Ахма́това

Someone broke my heart yesterday. Or something -- a book. And someone -- because in the story, he died. His name was Ambrose Zephyr.

Despite the heartbreak, I feel the book was meant to be found. By me. This was for me.

And why? Because. This was about my favorite things: travel -- from A(msterdam) to Z(anzibar), fonts, living and dying and settling down.

It is only 139 pages, in my favorite typeface and designed as if Zipper just finished writing her journal. The book is really her journal.

When I read the last words in the last page, I almost wished I didn't read it too quickly. Because he wouldn't have died as quickly.

She asked his hand in marriage and he managed to say that they didn't have enough money yet for a house. His answer was still a reluctant "yes" to her and a yes was still a yes. He didn't say no outright so that was enough. She even gave him a ring for the engagement which he wears every now and then.

He makes her laugh, she cooks for him. Right now, she's in Abu Dhabi, working as a nurse and he has a job, here. She is not half as beautiful as he is, and most people wonder what glues them together. He womanizes, but she never knows and perhaps, never asks anyway.

I can't believe they're getting married soon. He was talking to her again today, I think they were planning to buy a house even if it was far from here.

I don't get it why I am not happy hearing them plan about their future. Maybe I'm just being my usual, selfish self.

This is my good night quote for today:

To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget.

- Arundhati Roy

Good night, stars. See you again tomorrow.

Why the necessary tragedies?
To toughen us up?
To balance the distribution of good and evil?
To channel us to look at the brighter side?
(What brighter side?)
Why?

The answer: No reason at all.

The answer came in the form of a blueberry pie movie that was a flop, before I even asked, "Why the necessary tragedies?"

Because they're necessary. Just that: necessary and nothing else.

My troubles are petty compared to other people's. Yet, I am about to snap as I cannot decide for myself. I would like to do one thing but I am not sure of how it will turn out. There are too many signs, as I have said, and all of them are pointing to different directions. I would love to explore everything as they all are worth the trouble anyway but I only have one body and it cannot be in three countries at the same time.

I am praying for guidance.

This is my poem for the day.

The title is too sappy for me, so I'm omitting it (sorry, Rabindranath Tagore). Besides, it's not a sin to omit titles when you have good reason to.

I feel giddy to start another 24 hours or so with this:

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it’s age old pain,
It’s ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time.
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers,
Shared in the same shy sweetness of meeting,
the distressful tears of farewell,
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.