Gold Dust

It makes the pocketwatch far from
My pocket
Tick against my thigh
At the type of speed
My heartbeat misses. It's like
The rain can't be wrong today
If it's dropping gold for me
From the hands of a man
Birthed in foreign fields--
Expelled from a womb
That still tells her wives' tales
In terms of pasos and siestas.
It's "adios" to that
For the man
Who now loans me the dollar
So I forget how to nap--
Forget how to eat in a world
Taking it too easy
In a world
That won't stop moving
In a world
Bound to a clock
From some world
That can't tell when time's up.
I choose to roll in gold dust
In a world
Where I can't be golden.

A Biography

It feels so good to be cold again.

But this is more of a lukewarm,
And yet it still makes me smile--
A little less than last time
And even less than the time before that--
All in reminiscence of my first
Aspen winter.

I was a September baby
And you can't ever let me forget it.
I tasted a morsel of summer
In the
Lukewarm
Rays of a dwindling solace
Until that something of a dreamer
In me
From you
Saw something simultaenously
Frozen and aflame.

Everything licked me at once
And I was smothered
In such "abrasive"
That I can't have all to myself like you can.
They changed me with their sticky tongues,
The moon and
The sky and
The coastline and
The mountains and
The look on your face when your heart was breaking
All over again
While you sang to me
The words you once wrote.

Its all encapsulated,
The things that changed me--
All of it encapsulated but
Me.

I got through one hell of a winter
With the promise of living again
In the heat

But on lukewarm nights
When the sky doens't cradle me
Like it used to,
I hear your voice and

I desperately miss the shiver.

The Beauty of Hidden Moonshine

A lady in the sky tonight is telling me that I am meant to be this convoluted. I buzz towards her, captivated by the idea of licking the remnants of her from between my fingers. I reach out into the night, gingerly at first, whispering, "I know you don't wanna come out, sister honey, but I bet you taste so sweet."

I can hear the moon smirk at me but no one else can. They see her sitting pretty behind the cold front of steel gray masses that makes her seem cold, too. She's warm and I can feel it, but not when she smirks in that way that only I can sense, penetrating my blood and bone. The moon wants to make me feel crazy, and she knows I'm crazy just for her and her alone.

I come out here every foggy night, no matter what I have going on behind the closed curtains. I couldn't care less when the sky is perfect-- I'd rather be draped in the limbs of a very imperfect lover, or even sprawled on my bed alone and bare as one big unworthy and utterly predictable mess. There's something about my sister that drives me to her side like a worker bee to raw pollen. I could make something beautiful out of her, I assure myself, as I reach out farther and farther to the silent clamor of no avail.

Sometimes, I hear her in my dreams, when the night breathes her in and her vapor awakens all senses. Her voice lathers me in buttermilk:

"You can be art, too, if you keep your chin as high as your heart."

Death Row is a State of Mind

The day I decided that I was no longer living for you, I started my slow descent to the bottom of the Dead Sea. Buoyant force doesn’t do shit when the atmosphere feels as heavy on your head as it actually is. All this pounding in my ears and implosion on my skull makes “light as air” simply not good enough; I want it to be lighter. I want a long drive at its best with somebody who has nothing to talk about, a Yuletide most celebrated without plastic garlands along each banister—but I crave casual conversation all too much now, and Christmas just can’t be Christmas without halls decked in holly.

You have come to show me that death row is a state of mind, a sense that cannot be shaken by that feeling you’re supposed to get when he holds you, or when your little boy paints a pretty picture and tells you to keep it. I’m the one of the two of us who sees beyond the plank, searching for heaven out of a seven-forty-seven window and finding solace in the wiser words of foolish men. You’re the one with September nights that have morphed into witching hours, blankly tapping the heavyweight bag twice with your left fist, soon after swinging around with the right.

And the truly amazing thing is that I can watch you without sensing each blow now. I’ve got a heaven and a hell to find and a way to find them: through midday moons and gasoline, red-tailed cardinals and dogwood.

The truly amazing thing is that you’re the only one with sore fists while I can finally see every star as the Northern star.

Bonne Hiver, the third chapter

I wrote this to be a personal narrative for a creative writing class-- the only problem is that it's too personal and not quite a narrative. Here's an... esoteric memoir, if you will.

___________________________________________________

My name rolled off her tongue like honey. With her, the four letters that constitute who I am didn’t have to puncture the sweet still of silence lingering between us. Her tongue twisted the word just enough that it eased between her teeth and lips and into the emaciated air, her breath flowing freely to me from across our desks. The quiet was interrupted by something far too beautiful to consider a burden: the softness she expelled from her lips became my mantra; it rang to me in that transient moment and rings to me still.

“Dani,” she said, her voice slightly quivering, “tell me everything.”

And I did. I shakily recalled the worst moments of my life, choking in my attempt to exhale each syllable and string them together in a way that might make sense of my desperation. I told her what I knew of that sickness she had studied, the one so ancient and cross that no crucifix could ever fix it quite enough. I told her that I was happy and healthy and free, all while my heartstrings stretched and eventually shredded under the mere thought of return into open empty arms. After minutes of the most honest communication I can remember having with another, I made a point to assure her that I was just fine—plain old fine, one big step ahead of it all.

Yet, she still asked the question: “Are you afraid?”

I hesitated, and then my eyes climbed from my feet up to her face, and then inside of their counterpart within her own: “Yes, I think I am.”

I tattooed it to the inside of my mind, the way she looked at me after I was finally revealed. That stare targeted my eyes and spread like wildfire, the synapses between my every thought and bone firing signals left and right until my toes were alight. I fueled her somehow, resonated to something inside of her that I know someone else riled up a time or two. Her eyes held no questions of whether or not that moment was the one in which she should expand herself to some greater purpose; she knew it, her certainty emanating through the most convincing of charcoal irises from beneath a velveteen layer of tears. I could sense that I was being analyzed to every intricate detail of my makeup, for eyes like that discover scrolls of scripture, witness the crumbling of our modern Egyptian Alexandrias and always feast upon the simplest mechanisms of a beating heart.

It is in that stare that I fell in love with being loved.

April Ramblings

Here are two short "creative rants" that I have written within the last week.



No Direction Home (April 11th, 2009)

I worry about you so unbelievably much, but that stoic face tells me that I have better things to spend my time worrying about. It’s not as concrete as you’d like to think I believe it is—the chiseled nods of approval, the eyes carved out of limestone. I am lying against your shoulder like I am because I like it here and because the empty exasperation in your sighs breaks my heart every time they escape you. I know you—you don’t write because it’s cute. You don’t inharmoniously sway to “Like a Rolling Stone” with tears in your eyes out of some glorious life revelation that comes to new light within the subtle twisted twine between Dylan’s barely-there notes. I see it.

and I can’t do a fucking thing about it.



Writer's Block (April 15th, 2009)

I guess the worst time to write is when you need to write the most: the words that mold together to form the fibers of one’s very being pound against an empty skull, the old contents now vaporized when met with the ceaseless heat emanating from an angry heart. It is then that I want my passion and intellect in some sort of equilibrium. In these moments when I cannot escape my painfully visceral state, my right wing fruitlessly grapples at the air surrounding it, beating tirelessly for the purpose of justifying all those things it can feel until all it can feel is plain old tired. The left wing mechanically rises and falls the same distance every time, always to an identical time table. It cannot sense how fervently its partner works to lift me higher and higher, into some state of revelation that one can only pray will eventually become mediocre art. The left wing has a job to do: it stretches as far as it can away from my body and beats on until it is driven into the cold, cold ground.

Cocoon

I dealt with my cocoon:
Birthed from the ancient alabaster columns
Of a long lost civilization;
Draped under a star-spangled banner
In a poppy field;
Encompassed by city lights
In every which direction—
Bound by the size of the bills
In my neighbor’s stuffed pockets
And chained,
At the end of every day,
Under a blank name and face.

Yet such a cocoon served me well,
Kept my arms from spanning wide enough
To tug too hard at my heartstrings.
I was situated just right
So that I could pluck them,
To itch that scratch—
Scratch that itch that was fed
Every time I had nothing
To cradle
Or be cradled by.

“Play for me soon,” they cried,
And I would. I’d play anything
To hear the slightest of empty sighs
Escape them,
To feel the faintest skip
Of a heartbeat or two
Disrupt the gentle sway of the room
We stood in.

The transience once fueled me.
It asked to persevere;
It wanted the single instance in time
When a specific note I played
Was a little prettier than the rest
To sit quietly at the bottom
Of an underground box,
Awaiting revival—
A time when my blank name and face
Became beautiful
While I tried my best to explain
The ugliest things
I have ever seen.

I used to deal with my cocoon—
When the claps drove me past the poppies
And the frayed flags on every
All-American wrap-around porch.
I dealt with my cocoon
Until the ugliest things
I had ever seen
Had nothing to say to me anymore.

Duchess Falling

I can’t sleep when the bed sheet fights
Its way back to your side
And you’re not even there
To pull it over you again--
But that cannot keep me
From tiring of the tireless nights
You grant me,
Or the dazed days when I want
Nothing more than to know
Who you are,
Or the dawns that make me smile
With the golden rising orb
You love to hate and
Hate to depend on--
Setting at dusk
When your prideful moon rises;
When I can watch, breaking,
Knowing you will never be
The duchess to rise
When all else goes black,
Or the woman to stand straight
Just because she wants to,
Since you’re no woman to thrive
As a transient nomad,
But the only one I know
Who tells me she can
While laying cradled
In stronger arms.

Gift

I would have, and would still
Give anything to catch you.
I would fold the sky into my palm
And place it in your pocket;
I would chase the sun
All the way to the sands
To be the one to hear your heart
Palpitate
To the sound of the sea breathing.

I would dance for you,
I would change for you;
I would weep in the glory of
Giving the tiniest star your name
And flying you there,
Where it won’t seem so tiny anymore.

I cannot move earth
And heaven:
The Great Ceiling is boundless
With not an edge to fold inside itself;
The sea holds in her hands the
Bewilderment
You cannot yet face;
The tiniest star might just be
Not
Quite
Tiny enough.
I'd leave more on your doorstep
Than a heart and a head
If I was more than that myself.

Please, as you wander now,
Often watching me wander,
Seeing every bright streetlight
As the newfound Northern Star—

Know that
I will still dance for you,
I will always change for you.

Whenever you wander,
Maybe watching me wander,
Remember that I can always
Write for you.

Bonne Hiver, the second chapter

I look at you now and hope with all my being that you’ll remember me, even when you get distracted and could easily forget to.

My stomach couldn’t quite find the energy to churn while I sat next to you, arm pressed against arm. It should have, given the circumstances. It was unbearably difficult for me to comprehend that you actually followed me into the dark just to be given the chance to pull me out again. Yet, we listened and we learned. You looked at me every once in a while, scanning my face for any signs of unease that I could have told you didn’t exist. I was, after all, with you, arm pressed against arm like we were. I could smell something in you that I finally could breathe in with my eyes closed, taking in nothing but the glory of experiencing who you are.

I wish you knew how much it means to me, how glorifying it is to be able to look you in the eye and claim that I know you. You don’t like making decisions. You prefer to cross your right leg over your left. You hate yourself for your fervent love of dependence. You like to write notes on your left hand. You work very hard to suppress your cynicism every day. You’ve had the same haircut since high school. You love debatably more deeply than anyone I know, but you don’t express it unless you genuinely trust someone and even then, you make it difficult to decode.

In many ways, it is safe to say that I know you. I want you to want to know me. I pray every day that you sat next to me that night for some greater reason, that you felt so inclined to walk me through the fire only partially because the fire once burned you.

I want you to love me. I promise I will love you, that I will make you feel useful and appreciated. I promise I won’t have to use words to tell you. I will just let myself grow overwhelmed in your presence and you will feel it somewhere in the corners of your consciousness, and that in itself will be enough.

I want you to know what it feels like to be needed. I want you to need.

I look at you now and hope with all my being that you’ll remember me, even when you get distracted and could easily forget to.