Monday, June 22, 2009

Girls rock


Words of wisdom, from my little sister, saved forever in my phone:

Girls rock boy jrowl 

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Sacrifice


I desire for there to be a deep-seated deity in the pit of me who is never satiated and whose hunger goes unabated.  Who won't be quenched even after I've sacrificed all pleasure and leisure to her.

She shall demand the impossible and she shall be wholly blind to all half-assed attempts, seeing only victory, never settling.   She will be able to digest only whole bodies, my body, my soul, my bones, again, and again, and again.

I want her to wear my very teeth around her neck. 

Carbon Copy


He was a carbon copy of a human being.

He left residue all over me, and I couldn't clean it off for so long.

And he wasn't even the second sheet.

He was the last one, the one that you have to force the pen against the paper for, in order to hope to imprint.

Only, the words never quite make it through.

You can keep the copies.

I don't want your record.  

Monday, June 15, 2009

374

somehow, stepping on glassy slivers
produces not the shivers 
i'd thought it would

i catch my fingers on iron spider webs
and as i walk i am followed
by unbreakable threads

i have often wondered what makes
a man sparkle
i say now that it is the 
jewel of a woman

288


the stars on my ceiling sky
don't glow as bright as once before
and notice this did the angel
resting his chin on my wall

the lights in my little world
do not come up as often
i've noticed, ever since
you unclothed me
   i shall say, instead,
   since you uncovered my red

the flowers agree as they
dangle on their vines
they slip loose pink
tile tears that dance 
on my carpet
and i feel like a god
as my kingdom mourns for me

310


i have tired
like the words
you say too deep to swim
and sink you quick
   i am sorry for 
my face, that the chasteness
in your eyes says

does not lick, from stretching
on the toes, the twelfth 
layer

where crimson legs cross
and throw jade bracelets
  for an offering

to which you markedly decline
and decide the 
   tear in this lining
   unforgivable to the task
     at hand
   on the pads of your fingertips

and leave quicksand 
   on my pages

Sunday, June 14, 2009

283


To put it simply
your words float around
like burning butterflies

with each flap of their wings
more ashes settle in my eyes

It Was Chilling.


I shake a delicate finger
at those who stop dreaming
only to be still with 
the mad drive of a
mean, elaborate eternity
here for you & there
in me as we whisper
together and rob a language
beneath the shine of a
delirious sky.


A poem, from 1997.

Refrigerator poetry kit, bless you and your efficient economy.  

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Cent


1.  I have a hemangeoma in my upper left gum.  

2.  If it were to be punctured - which is hard to do, and I know, cause I tried it once - there's a good chance I'd bleed to death.

3.  This is probably the only reason that I didn't pursue boxing.  

4.  And I love, love, love hitting things.

5.  I also love, love, love makeup.

6.  The thought of creating a really beautiful eye, with a lot of shadow and liner and mascara, and especially a really great eyebrow, is what gets me out of bed in the morning.  Never underestimate the power of a great eyebrow.  It lays the foundation for the whole face. 

7.  I paint.  Abstracts.

8.  For the past 6 years, I've had random visions of paintings.  

9.  Prior to "resuming" painting this spring, I hadn't touched a paintbrush in precisely 22 years.

10.  I call my paintings "my children".  

11.  I firmly believe one of my paintings, entitled "Genesis", will eventually be featured in art history books.

12.  I have an older brother from our parents' marriage, and he and I have two little siblings from my dad's remarriage.

13.  I didn't meet them until the one was 4 and the other was born.

14.  For about a year after I met my little brother and sister, when people would ask if I had siblings, I forgot to include them.

15.  I don't feel guilty about this.  This is merely a fact.

16.  I get very uncomfortable with too much attention or affection.

17.  But I find it highly irritating when people, to whom I dish out love, affection, and attention, can't seem to take it.  

18.  I believe that consciousness is everything.

19.  I think, but do not yet believe, that the point of life is twofold:  to work, and to discover that we are God.

20.  I have dreamt of being the following:

21.  An actor.

22.  A director.

23.  A marine.

24.  A spy.

25.  A monk.  (Not a nun.  A monk.)

26.  If it's true that the one sin God does not forgive is cursing His name, then I'm fucked.  Royally, irrevocably fucked.  

27.  But I'm not worried.

28.  I am not a Catholic because of their idea that suicides cannot be forgiven.

29.  Barring that fact, I think I'd be wearing Rosary beads as jewelry.

30.  I spent the better part of a year.five believing I was the Messiah.

31.  The idea took off when I intentionally deprived myself of sleep for about two weeks straight.  

32.  I had the most amazing visions, revelations, and abilities.  

33.  At least once a week, I wonder what I'd be like, if I continued thinking that way.

34.  Or, if I had continued to deprive myself of sleep.

35.  It made me understand, in a very different way, that gravity is what keeps life together on earth.  It's what makes us interact with each other.

36.  It sounds really spacey and flakey, maybe.  But is it truthful?  Yes.  Take my word for it.  

37.  I have told several people that I loved them.  

38.  But the only time I stayed in love, was once, with a man I dated for four years.

39.  My puritanical upbringing leads me to delude myself into feeling the need to fall in love with someone, when, really, I think I just want to get laid all the time, not have to deal with the boring day-to-day shit, and not feel guilty about leaving whenever I want.

40.  With my luck, the first guy I try this with will probably be the guy I marry.

41.  I never wanted children, really, really, wanted children, until a few months ago.  

42.  I once had a vision, a year ago, of having had children, watching them playing on a swing set in a backyard.  I only saw the backs of their heads, the sunlight shining on their light brown hair.  It was, without a doubt, the single most pure, beautiful, sweetest feeling I've ever, ever had in all my existence.  I believe it was a vision tied directly to a guy I was dating at the time, to whom I felt a very, frighteningly deep connection.   

43.  This is a guy that no longer talks to me.  

44.  This was only one of many reasons as to why the cursing out of God commenced.  

45.  I love to dance.  

46.  I love to sing.

47.  When I sing and dance, I remember that this is what life is supposed to feel like.

48.  I plan to learn the moves to the dance-off of the MSA gang in "Step Up 2: The Streets."  

49.  I believe that to be the single greatest dance sequence ever committed to film.  

50.  I see sparks, everywhere I look.  Sometimes they are the color of the object I'm looking at, but I can see something that looks like moving particles.  Sometimes they're big, bright, and blue or white, or red or black.  I will also look at the ground and see swirls, as if I were able to see the wind.  

51.  This began about a year ago.  

52.  I thought it was due to bad vision, but it happens whether I wear glasses, contacts, or nothing.

53.  I'm curious as to whether everyone else experiences the same thing, or something equally odd but similar.  

54.  I once reached out to my brother to try to build a better relationship with him.  He couldn't understand it at the time, and that hurt me, tremendously.  

55.  When he came around, a few years ago, the pain from my initial attempt had made me calloused.   His attention didn't even enter my consciousness.

56.  Now that I've realized that I should have been more welcoming, he's stopped calling.  This hurts me, deep in my heart, more than anything else.  

57.  I often think about being adopted into a family, now, so that they can raise me, the way I was never, and should have been, raised.

58.  I know I had a really good life, in comparison to many and most.

59.  But this does not prevent me from knowing that I missed out on a great deal.

60.  I have an obsession with Alexander the Great.

61.  If his semen had been somehow preserved, I guarantee you, I'd find a way to get it, and carry his children.  

62.  It's moments like this when I think "Fuck, I'm an animal."

63.  "But at least I'm a smart fucking animal."

64.  Is the product of 8 x 8.

65.  It took me about a decade after it first became cool, to finally embrace hip-hop as the tits lifestyle it is.  

66.  (I'm a late bloomer).

67.  I wish I had been a 20-something chick in the 70's, when Sly Stallone hit his stride with "Rocky."  

68.  Because then I'd be having his babies.  

69.   From "Rocky" to "Rocky 4", he has, without a doubt, the most beautiful face and body of any man alive, before or after.  

70.  I really, actually, would like to look like Barbie, and no, I'm not ashamed of this.

71.  What can I say?  She's hot.  If they'd made her a redhead, or a black chick, I'd be saying the same thing - in fact, I'd probably have admitted it earlier.  They didn't.  Get over it.

72.  I believe in makeup as a spiritual tool.  And no, I'm not kidding.  Think about it.  

73.  I don't read as much as I probably should have, to spout off some of the shit I throw at people.

74.  I get bored really easily.

75.  If I had to take only two books in my hands while the rest of all other literature burned, I'd take Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Collected Essays", and Kimora Lee Simmon's "Fabulosity".   Between Shakespeare, the Baghavad Gita, T.S. Eliot's poems, E.E. Cumming's poems, and boatloads of other texts, there's no comparing within their own canon.  That said, I'd rather keep two works that inspire me under every circumstance, and that are outside of the realm of classic literature, and are like two best friends, constantly advising me and cheering me on.  And no, I won't rethink this position. 

76.  I like a lot about life, but if there is going to be a Messiah, I'd like him to come soon, within my lifetime, hopefully before I start to get gray and wrinkly.

77.  I may find a way to end it before I get old.  

78.  I can only commit to so much, to so many people.  

79.  When I found out they were hanging out, I had very violent thoughts about them.  

80.  God cursed me with an obsessive kind of love for people who wanted nothing to do with me. 

81.  I realized that you have to crawl your way out of hell to escape it.  Nobody, but nobody, will ever save you.

82.  But think about it:  if it came down to only being saved in order to escape hell, well, then we'd REALLY be fucked.

83.  Unless that messiah comes....

84.  I used to take tons of photographs of people that I love.  

85.  I don't know when or why, but I stopped.  Like, I screeched to a halt. 

86.  I write poems.  

87.  I'm not more proud of my paintings, but my paintings do give me a feeling that nothing else on earth provides me.  Not writing, not love, not accomplishment.  They make me feel whole with a very tangible steely quality in the pit of my stomach.  

88.  For a while, I wanted to marry Jesus.  

89.  Not like "become a nun" marry him.  

90.  I mean, like, He comes to earth and I get to be His Girl.

91.  Since that's not looking like it'll happen, I'm gonna have to look into other options.

92.  It's amazing the difference that a full face of makeup makes for me.  

93.  I am helplessly attracted to pretty but masculine lesbians with skinny Madonna arms - pre-yoga, like during the Blonde Ambition phase - who wear wife-beaters and boys pants.  

94.  I don't do anything about it, but that doesn't mean it's not hot. 

95.  Speaking of hot:  Gene Hackman.

96.  I disbelieve that Daniel Day-Lewis really wanted to do the film his wife directed.  

97.  I also disbelieve that she knew how to film him correctly:  you don't swing the camera around when you're filming the Jesus Christ of the acting world.   You keep it still, and you make everything revolve around Him.  And by Him, I mean, Daniel Day-Lewis.

98.  I agree with Picasso:  women are either goddesses or doormats.  

99.  But I disagree with the bullshit that is the Madonna/Whore complex.  Go fuck yourselves, whoever goes along with that idea.

100.  I'd rather be surfing.  

This Cowgirl Told The Blues to F**k Off


It took reading one sentence from one girl's blog for me to realize this startling conclusion: 

Why the FUCK am I so down on myself?  I'm a fucking GREAT person! 

Thanks, Cowgirl.  

Friday, June 12, 2009

Yes, Those Are My Knuckles Bleeding. Why Do You Ask?



I'd make an amazing spy.  

I almost joined the Marines.

I taught myself how to throw knives. 

I hollowed out a serious dent in my 80lb heavy bag - with bare knuckles.    

I'd make a great stunt car driver.

I do all these things, and have bragged to men I've dated about these activities, for what reason?

To protect something inside of me that is as vulnerable as a bird with a broken wing. 

Could You Put the Mask Back On? It's Better That Way.


I have a thing about worship.

I tend to do it, a lot.  

I have been a very, very lucky girl, and I happen to have had, and still have, many people in my life who simply amaze me.  And I have told them this.  And some of them have expressed the same back to me.  My best friend once said, "I think you should be in love with your friends."  I'd have to say, then, that I'm in love with a lot of people, some whom I've never technically met.  ("Hi, Steve Nash?  Want to follow me on Twitter?")

A guy I used to date ("Electrical Storm") was obviously trying to tell me, through his actions, that he no longer wanted anything to do with me.  Canceling dates, not calling, barely responding to texts, etc.  I gathered what he was doing, and I sure as hell was not about to let him off easy.   This is a guy I once baked a carrot cake for, and walked around the city with it, in a bag, just to deliver it to him.  This is a guy that had no response for me when I told him that I had fallen in love with him.  This is a guy that I would read to, in bed, late at night, when he was tired.  

The last time I saw him, I asked him point-blank.  "I can take it," I said, which is true, and was true.  "If you don't want to have anything to do with me, just tell me."  He looked at me, eyes slightly wide, poker-faced.  He couldn't say it.  He looked down at his fries and picked one out and said "Are you sure you're not just trying to be hard?"  "No, I simply prefer honesty."  "Look," he began, chomping on the fry, "I think it's better for you if you spend some time away from me."   What about me suggested that I couldn't handle him telling me to fuck off?  

And what is it about brutal honesty that repels people?  And I mean, being brutally honest about both the bad, and the good?  Why does just hovering around zero seem to feel best to most?  

When was it decided that embellishing the truth, or flat-out lying to people, was the best way to go about things?  That divulging a passion, an obsession, was worse than being quiet?  That prolonging a falsehood, and extending pain and discomfort, and unawareness, was better than a swift, blunt kick to the crotch?  Or, punch in the boobs?  Or that dispassion, and nonchalance, were somehow the ideal?  And were infinitely more comforting than the warmest, most nurturing embrace?  

I love honesty.  I realize that in all situations, it's not wise to deliver it, but fuck, when someone asks, why not just tell them?  Especially when your later behavior makes it ABUNDANTLY CLEAR that you should have just put your cards on the table?  

There's a book called "The Four Agreements" that says that we agree on elements of what we call "reality" (which in many cases, can be un-truths) in order to be able to communicate, and live harmoniously.  But when so many of us are so often doubting each other, smelling something foul about another's behavior, and feeling so out of harmony, then where do we begin to break the cycle?  And I'm not just talking about the lies we can sniff out.  I'm talking about the beauty we can feel:  that the client from work would totally want to hang out with you outside of the office; that the guy you're dating is falling in love with you; that the friend living in the state you left misses you so much, they wish you could come back and move in with them?  

Why can't we be a Declaration Nation and SCREAM IT FROM THE HILLTOPS?!

I try my best to come up with explanations for people's behavior, as a mass.  I try to give them the spiritual benefit of the doubt (except, of course, in the case of individual guys I used to date.  Their diagnoses are still TBD).  

So, regarding the "unreality as reality" agreement, I would argue this: that maybe everyone, deep down, really just wants to love everyone.  Maybe, since it's easier and nicer to feel good towards someone, or, to have no obvious negative feelings, people - myself included - are more inclined to go with a slightly skewed version of them.  Maybe the goal for all of us is love, under ideal circumstances.  If it has to be from a distance, then so be it.  If it has to be by not having them in your life, so be it.  If it has to be by believing that they will one day stop doing drugs, or "stop being gay" (as if that's a choice), or that you were the one who pushed them away, then that's the way the cookie crumbles.  Or I guess, in this case, this is how the cookie is kept together.  

Love from a distance is more pleasant.  Sometimes it burns too brightly.  Sometimes it's so intense, like an infra-red light, that you feel uncomfortable with it.  Perhaps because love is truth, and truth feels the same way, people feel similarly in the presence of both.  I don't know many people who can handle worship, or constant admiration and adulation.  Most I know still struggle with it and run in the other direction.  There seems to be a pretty standard frequency of expression of affection among people, and the same level seems to lie within people's comfort zones.  

I see the sun as a physical symbol of the Light, or love, of God.  I believe God set it up that way so we'd understand Him through our senses and our intelligence.  It's a constant reminder for us, and science confirms it:  the sun never goes away, it merely lights upon other parts of the earth, when it's out of our sight.  Even in the darkest night, we know it will rise the next morning.  And even under the grayest cloud cover, we know it is there, trying it's best to reach us.  

Maybe with the ozone layer slowly depleting, we will adapt and our tolerance to light will build up, generation after generation.  Maybe in a hundred years, we'll be able to embrace people we used to fight with without having to say a word, we'll be able to take in strangers off the street like they were our own children, and we'll be able to be totally honest with each other, because we know it won't be the death of either of us.  And we'll be eager to honor and love and worship each other, because we all deserve it, and we'll be quick to show it in ways and with a frequency that is now beyond our reach.   

To do my part, I'm going to stop wearing sunblock.  

Reflection


I want to come home to him.

To someone that I love, more than anything, more than anyone.  

To someone who is my best friend, to someone who makes me laugh, to someone who laughs when I try to make them laugh.

I want to come home to someone I can take care of.

I want to come home to him.

  

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Excuse Me, Have You Seen My Nose Hair Trimmer?


I really, really, really love makeup.  

Like, take-it-behind-the-middle-school-and-get-it-pregnant love it.  

Eyeshadows.  Lip-liners.  Bronzers.  Brushes.  A great foundation.  An amazing highlighter.   Makeup rules! because it is a daily way to transform yourself, to transcend, to be new, different, better.  

Being a woman, after all, is ALLLLLLLL about artifice.  Are her eyebrows naturally perfectly arched?  NO.  Is her hair naturally buttery blonde?  NO.  Is her skin naturally so even-toned?  NO.  Are her boobs naturally that perky?  Heyoow NO.    

Bitch, please - you're gonna tell me that there's such a thing as natural beauty?  

I can show you waxing strips lookin' like Chia pets that will tell you no girl, no way, no how, doesn't do some grooming or some spackling to pretty it up.  

The fuckin' nature of bein' feminine is all about fakin' it till we makin' it.   Come on!  Dying, shaving, plucking, powdering, squeezing, freezing, frosting, glossing, teasing, shaping, draping.... It's a testament to the power of regeneration that any chick continues to grow cells and hairs on her body!!

So it bugs me when men say "I like a natural beauty."  AGAIN:  Bitch, please!  
I can show you natural, and it looks like YOU!  It also looks like the guy sitting next to you who hasn't shaved in a week, and who, by the way, is scratching his balls. 

So what the guy is really saying is, "I want a girl who spent hours trying to look hot, but who doesn't actually look like she spent hours trying to look hot."

I say, if you're going to be faking it, ladies, REALLY make it fake.  BE AGRESSIVE!  B-E AGGRESSIVE with your beauty!  If it's out there and it's transgressive, it's gonna be rad.  Hot pink hair, 5-inch heels, weaves, breast implants, plastic clothing, go for it!  

Make your beauty like spinach:  ironic!  


Tuesday, June 9, 2009

9.


1.  I take pills.

2.  I like them, a lot.

3.  I like to fart.

4.  I dated my cousin.

5.  I didn't write back to my ex-boyfriend (not the cousin), and 2 weeks later, he killed himself.

6.  The day he hung himself, I went walking, and felt God was trying to show me something.  He showed me a telephone pole that looked like it was being strangled by wires.  I missed the significance, completely.  

7.  Until that time, I thought I was Jesus.  

8.  After my ex-boyfriend killed himself, I realized I couldn't save anyone, not even myself. 

9.  I don't have the strength to publish this yet. 

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Not for Nothing


He was the last lil' bit.

The last lick, the last morsel, the last bite left on the plate that I just couldn't get rid of.  

But you came along and you wiped it clean.  

You replaced that last piece with something else.  

Something non-addictive.  
Something substantial.  
Something that replenishes.
Something that doesn't deplete.  

A ray of light, from miles away.  

"The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray."


Saturday, June 6, 2009

2


There are two kinds of people in the world: 
those who simplify everyone into two kinds of people, and those who don't.  

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Since You're Gone


I'm on a tightrope and I keep falling off.  I don't understand why, but I keep finding myself back on the tightrope.  Sometimes I fall off, sometimes I jump off.  But I always end up back on it.  And my heart feels just like the guitar chords from the Cars' "Since You're Gone."

Even now, as I'm thinking this, and picturing it, I'm irritated to have to write it (visual of me, in bed, sighing, frustrated, in the dark, headphones on.) 
Why?
Cuz it feels so pointless.

This afternoon I was driving down Rand Road and remembered one night, pulling over onto the meridian of this stretch of road, to cry, and cry, at about 2 or 3 am, because I had just left him, and he had said something about not being able to have a lot of time for me, for some reason, something he said he was going to be doing.

In a nutshell, here's my beef with god.  I find this man who I fall in love with and live with; we go to a church that tells us that in order to be obedient to god, we cannot live together.  I move out, then we break up.  Then a year later he kills himself.  Turns out us living together - a.k.a. me, keeping a 24 hour watch on him - was the only thing keeping him alive.  

Do you see why I'm bitter as fuck?

Own It.


Revel in your own destruction.

Revel in your rebellion.

Because if the ship is going to be sinking, you may as well be singing.

We trademarked that permission.  That's for YOUR enjoyment.  

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Too Late


It's a strange thing, seeing opportunities that have passed you by.

Do you ever notice, when you're with someone you know is fantastic, that you sometimes totally shit allllllll over it?  Like, it seems with your every move, you are holding your middle finger up right in their face?  And when they don't seem to have seen that, you kick them in the balls?  (Or, shins, if they have no balls?)

Or is it just me?

I seem to be confronted with all these ghosts of opportunities past, that I was either too stupid to appreciate at the time, or too afraid, or both.  Now, when time has passed, and I'm more wise, it's too late.

I know there's always a silver lining, that the grass is always greener, that you don't know what you've got till it's gone, and any other random cliche that applies.  And cliches happen, I know this too.  And I know that there's going to be something headed my way that will make me look back and say "See, Jess?  THIS is why THAT didn't work out."  That's happened before, and I know it will happen again.  But I cannot help but to wonder: Did I throw away something that was really worth grabbing with both hands?  

And why, why, why does this seem to happen, again, and again, and again?  

Why on earth would a person shrink away from being loved?

I can think of only 2 reasons:

1. They doubt the authenticity of the source.

2.  They disbelieve they are worthy.  

Clean


There's a mess on my brain. 

There's paint all over the inner ground of it, after you slip right through its translucent sky.

But someone's taken a rag, wet with solvent, and dabbed out the stains.
With each thought of you, the rag blots you away just before you settle.