everyone feels like they're born to this one
sure place, whether it be years ago like me,
or just yesterday. why do the
flashes through our eyes control what we
know in our hearts to be untrue?
it's because we let them, and we look for
a visual memory, more than any other
kind to smooth out the imperfection of
our perceived past (memories
imperfect)

i would like to believe that genuine love has no motives.

as much as i can choose to love someone,

once that love exists, it does so infinitely all the way down.

it would become just another facet of my existence,

as pervasive as a phantom limb - a polydactylism of

the hands that work me.

although i boast of fearlessness,

the reality is that i might just not be scared of the same things as you may be.

the reason i am scared of falling in love is that,

as of right now, i do feel an internal drive to find it.

i recognize that this is recursive,

but the reason i want to find love is that i want to love someone.

because loving someone would be proof that i can.

i hope to find the strength inside me to be selfless,

to accept that i am not so broken that someone could love all parts of me,

to find patience in times i am burdened.

there is a parallel, i think, between this

and my lack of fear of death.

i would just rather choose to live for the sake of

the beauty that is life.

i will tell anyone who will listen that to live

is to be sad/hurt/confused/deconstructed sometimes,

to accept the bad with the good as it were.

while that is true, i am as vulnerable and weak as any other person,

and the pain of these things i meekly carry around

until my dying day.

because i believe love should not serve a purpose,

and because i want love to serve a purpose,

i am trying my hardest to choose to not look for love,

but to let it come to me in time.

- loosely shaped hits of the summer -

i was never asked,

but i learned to impress the 405.

i sift contentment through the details of our days,

and found me better hooked by your arm through the

shifted lights of 2am street-counting.

we built something together.

morning hours hit me uncomfortably on the floor,

and our unspoken promises bind closer

when you come out to see me strewn about

with the rest of the unfinished furniture;

circumstance may have realized us at first,

but now we are barely our whole lives diving in

for the great we seek by each other.

"evil has a sweet, sweet scent/

wickedness is fresh and new each time."

- from 'Your Only Escape' by Gatsby's American Dream

it took me 80 miles and some sleepless hours to find snow at night in southern california.

the wind broke off its whisper to direct me south,

so i passed by small towns with lights and uncomfortable benches,

even a few dogs gently urging their owners as they can only do

in the barely function-able hours.

the snow i found fell continuously, a horizontally-fixated detritus

hiding some endlessness;

both orientating and abhorrent for my only self.

although i had not found what i was looking for leaving home,

i did find snow, and i threw my weakness at it to cut a piece of the ocean

as my own for just that moment.

i do not think loving is understanding,

but simply trying to understand.

"you ask me to stay/
but there's a million reasons to leave."

- "one way trigger" by the strokes

i know i am being convoluted when i say that i would like to be the one to be asked to stay.

(originally written approx. a month prior to published date)

when i know:

it comes from everything around you.

i see it in the softness of the lines of a paragraph,

the rare times i space the letters just right and the tapering curves

of each 'giving' and 'fleet' give balance to the meaning

so that i can look at the thing and smile for once after pages and pages

of overabundance, not-quite-so-parallel, and shifts.

i hear it in the depths of a voice that sings about what it knows,

not even the singer but the actual voice;

the resplendent cusps of emotion becoming the breath

of what a person is thinking and conveying without trying.

i smell it wetting and drying the limbs of strangers,

not giving us the chance to even out or believe that anything

so delicate, so rare and uncatchable can last more than the moment.

i taste it in the water we will all beg for.

i should seek more often not the days that are long but the days that are large.

large days will sit heavily in your life, giving you plots to grow on and delineate from.

long days have been for me a desperation,

a reach for something far and threadlike in its strength.

settling the beaten down prose a tad-

i finished reading Every Love Story is a Ghost Story again.

i had this great idea about how each one of us could be making

someone's life completely different without realizing it.

if DFW had known that i existed, maybe i could have been the person

that helped him understand what it was to be a "fucking human being".

the scary part is determining whether or not you are up for the challenge,

but i like to think that frequently we step up to the plate without even realizing it,

getting someone to that place just by being ourselves and letting someone,

or some people, bask in the effortless care of their love.

i love that the people that love me care effortlessly.

they have no clue, and i admit i chuckle when i think about it.
soak it all in, and taste that delicious goodness that is me.

"if i could pretend i don't depend/

i can deny, deny denial.

yet when push comes to shove, and all the above/

i decide to live the lie."

- from "invisible monsters" by mcs

honestly, i should not feel guilty for reaching for happiness.
i suppose i have a hard time leaving others behind.

- the burden of sentiment -

my bed stand gets louder at night.

i look for caution by the bookshelf,

but jumbles recognize each other through the mess.

this was not a moment i could find dressed up

with the instances of myself that i know,

and by living through the lure of this drink

i submit proof of my past:

the draw of everything i am not.

one interesting aspect of emotional instability which

my dear reads might not be aware of is its propensity to

completely wear one down throughout the day.

i was basically complaining to everyone who would listen today

about how exhausted i was.

granted, it may have something to do with my incredibly poor

sleeping conditions last night (thank you linda),

but it probably had more to do with my fearful realization

that i am just as vulnerable as i have been.

which is not the greatest realization to have

in the office around a bunch of patients.

fortunately, i have been a master of the

"fake until make" school of dysfunction-masquerade

for quite some time now, so everyone thinks i am not a wreck.