Sally

 Loma pushed me onto the other side of the bed last night. 

 Dreamt that I was spending Halloween w my family. Went to the park to meet them in the middle of the afternoon and saw a lot of people there, different families, having picnics enjoying the weather. The place was filled w dogs of all sizes, small, medium and big and they all looked like Sally. I rolled onto the grass and one of smaller ones came up to me and started tummy grumbling while I squeezed its side armpit chub. Same face, same markings pattern as Sally but a little more chocolate brown than black patches and more like a puppy. Thought about calling to tell you about all the dogs I saw but remembered that you had other plans on Halloween so my sister and I went driving around the neighborhood.

A few months ago, mom was sitting on the sofa
in the living room
of my downtown apartment.
We were making light chatter,
trailing off.
I took a lazy slouch
against the kitchen sink counter and
looked away to guzzle
on a bottle of distilled water.

From the corner of my eye, I caught her movement
leaning over that leftover puzzle,
the one I bought but you started.
Pressing a few pieces here
and
a few pieces there.
I felt each one
click softly
into place.
The way they would turn
in our fingers at night
and slide into a comfortable position, sometimes
on the very first try. Sometimes
not quite.
It's a good thing,
one of us kept at it
in spite
of it all.

Looks like a few
pieces are still missing.
Maybe they were never there to begin with, or maybe
we lost some
along the way.
Some are probably stuck to the bottom of my dress shoes
or in that old bookbag you took to the lab
or in the dirt somewhere,
tracked outside
and into the hallway
and into the living room of
someone else's
place.
Maybe gone forever or maybe
they'll turn up later.  Maybe
when the new tenants move in.
They'll call me up on the phone to let me know
what they've found.
Come by and pick 'em up when you get a chance, they'd say.
Thank you, I'd tell them gleefully.
I've got most of the pieces,
but I'll be there as soon as I can.
No rush, they'd insist.
Gimme five minutes, I'd reply.
Keys in the ignition, parking brake released, foot on the gas.
Glancing over my shoulder
to check for blind spots,
some of which don't show up in the mirror,
some of which I was born with,
some of which are closer than they appear.

Not quite finished
but laid out on the coffee table in front of us:
an oil rendering of the whitewashed cubiform expanse of a Santorini clifftop overlooking the sea.
Took my breath away

obsessed with details
looking for the big picture
snatching victory from the jaws of defeat
stealing candy from babies
eating salad with chopsticks
carving steak with my bare hands
hungry not thirsty because I stay hydrated
guzzling from this fire hydrant
we call life

A tasty beef bone

And a bowl of chicken feet,

Lots of hugs and

We put her to sleep

Hey Cocoa
Howya doin’ Cocoa
Hey Cocoa
Hey Cocoa
Hey Cocoa

Silly rabbit. Tricks are for kids.

You are peeing into my closet. Onto my shoes! And I can hear everything! I grab you by the hand, I try to pull you out. Haha! You won't let me do it. You slam the sliding door shut and sit on my shoe rack. More peeing. I try the door, it doesn't budge, your hand is blocking the way. C'mon out already! Let's go! No reply. I am still laughing, but in between, I am nervous and a little worried. We okay in there? I start pulling at the door again, but it still won't give. I ease off a bit and relax and try not to think too hard about what to do next.

So, what have we now-a tear in the fabric we stitched away at for years never knowing any better or for worse but your face is coming at me and there's no stopping it, its gone now, a million times per second is more like it, the way you would come to me from afar and I liked it like that, I did, I was good at that but now I'm here and you've passed me by on the way to something that's nowhere in sight, nowhere in sight and there's nothing around but tousled hair and wrinkles on my pants, wrinkles on my new shirt, wrinkles on your face around the bridge of that nose that crinkles when it laughs and laughs or maybe it doesn't, I'll never know.

I am blazing through a pile of freshly cut grass
on a bike that knows how to fly.
Everything else you say
just rolls right off me.

Four fist-sized peaches
I ate them dripping over
the bathroom sink. Plop.

The crazy way that I’d love to look into your eyes right now and laugh and laugh and chortle and chuckle and snortle and snicker and titter and twitter, giggle and gobble, prattle and tattle, hooter and holler dancing around on both of my feet leaping up high into the air above your head to clap my hands and lick my chops and howl on and on like the poor little dog that cried Wolf! Wolf! Wolf! into the night and into the woods, into the dark and into your face, over the hill that stretches past the place where your feet stand planted in a layman’s garden of roses and thorns, bushes and bushels of nothing but love and hate and shame and fate that grow ever the thicker with every the step that you take, every move that you make, every breath that I fake, every shred of logic and sense and reason and feeling that you and I choose to forsake, and for the sake of what? has nothing at all to do with how I’ll probably still feel about you later.

Look. I am sitting in my living room reading a magazine eating a banana crouched over the piano like some sort of crazy ape that feeds off the noises that you make. Although really, I could do this on my own all day long. And since nothing that we can do really seems to mean anything at
all, you will tell me to my face that I am not seeing the sound of your breath that hangs over our heads in front of my nose like the white-green birdshit that is plastered all over the windshield of my freshly washed station wagon which I parked under the canopy of that silly willow tree in front of your apartment just three minutes ago.

Okay, look. Just tell me what the hell it is that I'm supposed to be crying for and I'll do it. I'll do it, I swear I will because I want to see something else besides the birdshit on my windshield and I'd really appreciate it too if you would just tell that silly willow tree over there to quit weeping all over the place, pretending to be so incredibly fucking sad all the fucking time when really its just dropping shit everywhere, all over my car making a big deal out of nothing, nothing at all. And thats all that we're going to end up getting if we keep this up the way you swear you want to. Because nothing begets nothing. Just the way you like it. But since lately we've obviously been having nothing but a whole lot of nothing around here, it really shouldn't be a problem for the either of us.

The L & F

I think its really great,
really great
that you think
you've found yourself
and all.
Once,
I thought
that I had found myself
too.
But I guess,
I guess someone beat me there.

Just there waving my body like some sort of lunatic seaweed in a surging forest of like-minded sea flora and I’m just going, we’re all just flowing and it doesn’t stop, no it can’t stop, I am dripping with the sweat of the person next to the person next to me and we are a throbbing salivating hot mass of nothing but love for the gods of sound that rush our ears from the steel chords that swing from your shoulders and in this moment nothing else exists, the bassline beats my entire being into sweet submission and you flood our bodies with the black and blue sounds of your vocal chords straining and stretching in just perfect harmony; the violently outstretched hands and fingers, my fogged up glasses, the snapping and twitching of our heads can barely do you any justice but we try anyways, we rage on and on against your music and we fall in love with you all over again and again and again and its all just amazing, thanks.

Man, its blowing hard out there. And when I open the window, it starts blowing hard in here too. My window shades get knocked all around and the things on my desk start flying all over the place. I start to fly all over the place too! I fly out my window and head straight for the moon. I fly out my window and head straight for you and I am flying in the name of love. I am flying in the name of all things that fall at one point or another and pretty soon I start falling too. And at first it feels like I’m only floating but then the feeling passes and I start to feel like I’m choking. I start to feel like I’m choking and I start to try to catch my breath, I start to try to catch my wind but the wind knocks the air out of me before I can catch anything and I go flying. I want to pretend that I’m only dreaming, that its all just a feeling but really I’m only feeling like there's only one thing left for me to do, just forget we ever met, you.

When I’m following you down the street, sometimes I forget myself and I almost step on one of those cracks in the sidewalk that come out of nowhere. Most of the time, I feel them coming and I can catch myself in mid-step. But there have been instances when if it weren’t for my unusually large oblong-shaped dome, I would surely have fallen and slipped through the cracks. I would have fallen straight down to the center of the earth where I’d be dashed to bits and pieces on a bed of jagged rocks and broken hearts. After taking a fall like that, no one would ever be able to recognize me again, a bloody mess of busted ventricles limply spelling out parts of your name with each dying twitch. And I suppose it would be just as well. Walking around with my heart tied to a string all the time just isn’t doing it for me anymore.

I found myself on the ground not too far from the edge of the sidewalk that you walk on, head buried face down in the dirt and my tail half-covered with sand and bits of gravel, still shining like fool’s gold to catch the eye of anybody who was lucky enough to spot me. Or so I thought. But no one spotted me but me. So I ran to where I was lying and falling to my knees, I picked myself up off the ground and put me in my pocket. I’ll just save it for a rainy day, I said out loud as I brushed the dirt from my pants. I got to my feet and started walking on that sidewalk of yours.

At times like these I like to pretend that I’m walking really quickly in a straight line. I would walk so quick and so straight that you would have a hard time keeping up. After a while you would give it up completely and call out to me from the side of the street but I’d just keep on walking dead straight ahead. I'd act as if I were totally oblivious to everything and pretty soon people would get the point and they would scramble and trip over themselves just to get the hell out of my way as I bore down upon them with my jaw set and my steely eyes flashing at nothing in particular. And of course I wouldn’t run anybody over, intentionally, but I’d leave you all behind all the same, coughing and wheezing and rubbing your eyes in disbelief in the dusty wake of my bipedal locomotion, taking me on my way straight out of this town, out of this world. I could go on like this forever, walking fast and never slowing down, pretending that things won’t ever catch up to me.

This razor of mine,
The sharpened edge that the hairs
On my chin live for.

That way you shrug your shoulders and turn your neck to look at me is probably gonna save the world someday. And who knows? Maybe it’ll save mine too. But for the time being I could really care less about that. I’m just going to sit here and pretend not to notice while you go on tickling my nose with those shoulders. I hope you don’t mind.

The sweet smell of grass
Lingering in your hair, my
Nose begins to itch.

Sometimes when you speak to me, spittle flies from your mouth into my face and even though I am already drenched in the sweet-smelling stuff, you continue to shower it upon me like I’m some sort of poor little dirty third-world orphan baby who is sitting and playing in the mud by himself on the side of the street. And though I swear to your face by everything that was once beautiful and sacred to us that I don’t need anything from you, much less sympathy, just your love, you still insist on letting it pour down onto my head like buckets of dirty rain from your lips that are trembling and shaking above me like some big fat heavy gray clouds that jiggle and wiggle (until there’s no more wetness in them) but even still they just keep on going, just keep on going.

Baby, when it rains it pours, you exclaim to me in the midst of all your shaking and I start to cower and cover my head with anything that I can grab but you still manage to soak through everything so I just reach up and grab you instead, by your throat with both my hands and hold you out as far as my arms will go and shake you around from side to side until your lips stop making that sound, the clouds stop trembling and the light shines through in all of its heavenly glory. I can feel the wind at my back again and the sun on my face so I let go, of you, and I fall back to the ground right where you found me and I lay there with my chest heaving and my eyes closed because I really don’t care much for rainbows anymore.

I am falling up. I am falling down. I am falling all around. People turn their faces to the sky and lift their chins to watch. Everywhere you look, I’m falling and if it weren’t for me falling all over the place, it would be a beautiful day. But I hit the ground crashing like someone spilled a big bucket of something cold and wet at your feet and I am the sound of a heart exploding all over again. People turn their faces to the sky and lift their chins to look away. I don’t blame them for it. After a while, I start to fall up all over again and there’s nothing that you or I can or anybody else can do about it but just stand here and watch. Things are looking up.

You are sitting back in my chair and we are telling each other things. It’s nice. Every so often we let the conversation break in such a way that everything around us becomes clear, and it’s beautiful. The sound of your blood rushing through your veins stirs me and at times like these I can’t remember if I’ll ever see you again. In fact, it never crosses my mind once. Then one of us resumes talking and I begin to get angry with myself for letting it happen. Of course I don’t. But for the next time we see each other, I wonder if we’ll ever let the conversation break like that again.

Today I told the doctor that my eyeballs were having a falling out. I think that my eyeballs are having a falling out, I said. She looked at me in a funny way and went back to writing on that silly clipboard of hers. In a pleasant voice I suggested that she have me referred out to a specialist who could handle these kinds of things. An eye specialist or something, I said. She gave me another funny look. I told her that she ought to be seen by one too.

I just yawned so hard that my whole jaw nearly fell off and bounced from my lap and onto the floor where it would have laid trembling and twitching. I’d probably be trembling and twitching too. After a few minutes, you would have walked in and seen it there, my tongue flopping around on the floor like a fish out of water, gasping for air, slowly drowning in a shallow pool of its own saliva. Of course we’d both be speechless, I for obvious reasons, and we’d remain there motionless for a little longer, overcome by the wet slapping sound of my tongue thwacking the floor and watching the dying convulsions of my jaw until one of us gathered the nerve to speak up.

Someone else would hear all the commotion you were making and they’d burst into the room in a cloud of dust and broken words only to turn away in disgust with both hands clasped tightly over their mouth, as if their jaw were about to fall off.

I’d get up calmly and wait for my jaw to go slack before picking it up off the ground. Grasping it firmly by the chin I’d drop it into a plastic Ziploc baggie, already half full with a handful of Cheerios and granola crumbs-and I’d pack it all up and head off for class. I’d arrive with a big wet sloppy smile plastered all over my face but no one would get it, not one single person. It'd make no difference to me. And I probably wouldn't be able to stop laughing anyways.

It was dark and no else was awake. The gardeners with their loud blasting lawnmowers and weed-whackers hadn’t arrived outside yet, so it must have been early. Then again, he thought, Maybe it’s not Thursday yet.
Or Wednesday for that matter.
He couldn’t remember which day of the week those people normally came over to cut the grass and straighten out the hedges in the front yard.

Rubbing his head now, he paused to lean in the bathroom doorway and cross his arms in the dark. He examined his reflection in the gigantic mirror mounted above the sink. This mirror! It must have been almost as tall as he was and at least three times as wide. What could she have been thinking! He flipped the light switch, the whole room blinked and suddenly he was aware that the toilet was sitting in its usual position in the corner. It was the same with the washtub and shower curtain, the bulging hamper and the square plastic weigh scale that he had purchased last year for half off at the local Rite-Aid. It was a two for one deal. As he tilted his head against the doorway, he felt as if the lights above the sink had always been on and for a moment he forgot that he was in his own house.

Still leaning against the doorway, he returned his gaze to the mirror and without uncrossing his arms or breaking eye contact with himself, he abruptly shrugged and walked towards his reflection, stopping again when he felt his hip touch the sink. He stood in the silence and regarded himself in this way under the yellow light bulbs, arms crossed in front of him, his face slightly tilted up and to the side, feet planted firmly on the squeaking rubber mat beneath him. He straightened himself a bit and then leaned over the sink to put his face closer to the mirror, turning to the side so that his nose wouldn’t hit.

Peering at the reflection of his jaw line from the corner of his eye, he breathed slowly and deliberately through his nostrils to avoid fogging up the mirror’s surface. He could see the scars and blemishes on his cheek from years of acne. He could see that his eyebrows needed plucking. He could see that his nose hairs needed plucking. He could see that the flesh on his chin was beginning to sag and there were these strange lumpy things on the fleshy part of his throat. He could see the places under his jawbone that he had missed with his razor the previous morning. He saw the dotted splatters of toothpaste and soap scum across the glass next to his face and he suddenly felt disgusted.

He was squatting on the counter over the sink, wiping the mirror with a wet face-towel when the gardeners rang the doorbell again, asking in their loud broken English to be let in through the side gate.

I’m grinning at my computer screen.
Grin.
Grin.
Grin.
All I do is grin. I can’t help myself.
So I grin.
I’m grinning like I know something you don’t.
I’m grinning like I know who you are, like you know who I’m not.
I’m grinning like it doesn't matter.
I’m grinning at your reflection in my mirror.
Who’s today’s big grinner? I am!
Grinning.
Still grinning.
Grinning away.
You see me grinning at my reflection in your window and you say, Hey!
I turn to you and grin. You can’t help but grin back.

The sound of your laughter is going to change my world forever. That day I walked outside and a drop of rain landed on my shoulder, knocking me down. I slipped and fell into a plastic bucket that you had put by your window to catch the rain. I floated there for a while. I pretended to enjoy the scenery. Pretty soon you walked by- you looked at me swimming around in your bucket and acted as if you were surprised to see me. Surprised? I called out to you and I laughed. You began to ask if you could help me out but I interrupted with a brilliant display of my free-style form. Around and around the bucket, I churned that water like a tai chi master and water got everywhere. You cried out for me to stop and I cried out for you to join me. But this isn’t chess, you said aloud and you went back inside to change out of your wet clothes. I stopped what I was doing but I pretended not to notice until I noticed that I was drowning. I started splashing around in that bucket again but you couldn’t hear me because you were laughing at something-that’s okay. I’m sorry that I got us both wet.

One time I had this crazy dream and you were in it but that wasn’t the crazy part. When I woke up I had the feeling that things were going to be amazing and then I opened my eyes and I flipped/rolled out of bed and loved every moment of it-especially the part where my alarm started ringing while I was mid-air.

I stepped into the bathroom and the tile (linoleum?) floor was freezing so I transferred my feet onto the mini rug that I had purchased from Target specifically for these kinds of situations and the difference was incredible. There was nothing else for me to do while I waited for the shower to heat up so I stepped back onto the floor over to the toilet to take a leak, and that felt nice too.

The shower wasn’t too amazing; perhaps I had gotten my hopes up too high too soon, but nevertheless as soon as I stepped back onto that floor and out of the bathroom and into my room, the cool air hit me like a kiss on the neck and things resumed being awesome; I didn’t really need to dry my hair but I spent a few minutes shagging it up with my towel anyways and it was good. It was so good that I almost forgot to brush my teeth.

I pulled on a pair of boxers and some brand new black socks and picked out a pair of jeans. After some thought, I selected a shirt and a jacket. The reflection in the mirror did not disappoint so I slipped on my belt and I was complete-a few minutes and a granola bar later, I was out the door.

(The preceding account was a true story based upon purely fictional events that took place in the life of a man who doesn’t really exist but he rather wishes that he did because if he did then everything would be alright and he would be able to overlook the fact that you are still on my mind).

I am a pack of cigarettes, the kind that you smoke dangling between two fingers that curl towards your face and you blow me out of your mouth and into my face and fill my head with your smoke and my eyes water and I hold my breath until every single thing you don’t begin to do makes me want to scream and shout and fling that burning butt from your lips and grind myself into the ground under the heel of my shoe because if it doesn’t kill you, its going to kill me first.

Love sounds like a good idea.

Save your tears,
Please don’t waste your breath
On a boy who has no fears, or
A love that doesn’t regret
Anything, yet.

get up and go
bottle up and explode i'm seeing stars
you look at him like you've never known him
but i know for a fact that you have
the last time you cried who'd you think was inside?
....you never show
bottle up and go if you're gonna hide its up to you
i'm coming through

-thanks elliot

Look at his face and see how it glows.

He is seated in front of the computer screen, slanted in his chair. His body is folded forward, it looks crooked or crumpled-he is held together by a series or a string of broken connections that have never failed him up until this very moment, his thumb and ring finger never lose their connection to the sides of the round little optical mouse that slides back and forth, to and fro, side to side, sometimes in jagged little half-circles, sometimes cutting precise lines, sometimes wiggling (or wriggling?) its body to make it look like its humping the desk or like some guy who is lying face down on his bed trying to arouse himself from sleep. The remaining fingers on his hand are resting stiffly upon the-wait, no, not anymore, now they curl and hover, ever so gently, a hair’s breadth above the mouse; they are poised to stroke or caress the half-warm, naked and slightly sticky plastic surface but when the command is given, they twitch to life and jolt and come down upon it with a crashing click, more crashing clicks in staggered succession and another and another and another and another and another.

Can you see? How the head on his left shoulder is propped up by its chin and it teeters and rocks a little on the surface of his upturned thumb that remains locked in place underneath, one end of it attached to his curled hand adjusting in front of his lips to the slack and pull of his wrist and his elbow that pivots and nudges across the desktop, the other end is pushing, staying attached to his jaw-but can you imagine just what would happen if his jaw were to disappear completely with his head? He should beware that he doesn’t end up stabbing himself in the throat or even the heart with that thing. It may sound crazy but let’s face it folks, it’s a disaster that’s just waiting to happen. And for some the wait is over.

The sound of my life
Ending is really the sound
Of my computer fan.

One moment quiet
Please says the computer fan
Don’t push my off.

It can be nice once
Done, you turn it off-realize
You aren’t the one
Dying.

YOU are the warm fuzzy little center of the universe.
YOU are the middle kingdom.
YOU are the fulcrum upon which the the whole world spins and spins and spins. Without YOU, half of the world's inhabitants would live in a state of perpetual darkness.
YOU are the love child of every beautiful and genius thing that has ever graced the human gene pool.
YOU are one perfect piece of fucking DNA.
YOU are never wrong unless you admit it to yourself and even then, its ok because you've admitted it, right?
YOU are always late to everything but thats fine.
YOU don't always keep your promises, even though noone knows that.
YOU can tell if people are full of shit. YOU can't tell if people are telling the truth. Because it takes one to know one.
YOU havn't changed one bit since the third grade and fuck me if i'm wrong, but YOU will never change. Fuck me if I'm wrong, but isn't your real name *insert wrong name here* ? ( I got that from a book of cheesy pick-up lines)
YOU don't know what its like to be fucked, deeply and seriously.
YOU know what its like to be me.
YOU are the shit.

The falling flower
I saw drift back to the branch
Was a butterfly.
-Arakida Moritake

i want to know what the hell it is that i am feeling right now.

i want to feel like i've accomplished something great, something noble and worthy of your praise, your kisses, your admiration, your respect. i want to feel like you know and understand all the shit thats going on in my head and i want you to say that everything will be ok, i'll be fine and you'll be fine and the world will go on.

i want to feel like i've done something sweet and thoughtful.

i want to feel drunk with happiness and elated that i've done the right thing, that i can move on with myself because i've done the very best thing. more than you could ever want to know and life will be simpler and i'll be able to get my shit together and grow on my own and become a well rounded and well balanced and well adjusted individual and all that jazz.

i want you to know that i realize that i am an asshole jerk. i want to actually feel like an asshole jerk and i want you to be the one to say it to me. i want you to say it like you mean it and oh how i wish you would drive over here and just slap me so that i could see you again. i wish you would curse at me and at my family and then you would cry and apologize and then i could cry and apologize and then maybe we'd go get something to eat.

i want to feel what its like to be in love with an asshole jerk. i want to feel what its like to be blind and deaf to all crappy little asshole jerkoff things that they do and say to me and still be in love with them. i want to know what it is like to love somebody who treats me like shit.

i want to know how it feels to know that i've made the right decision. i'd like to take that feeling and share it with the whole world so that more people will make the same decision that i did and that way i wouldn't be feeling so alone right now.