prickly thoughts

I am scratching at an itch on my forehead and I can't reach it so maybe it's buried deep down inside.

three mornings

I think I love today. It just feels like a good one.

along with all of my heavy

Some days I feel as if my two poles are soldered together, but magnetically opposed. I both want desperately and reject constantly and
it’s
becoming
exhausting.

I advise me to pick my battles.

I wonder what winter will mean to me. I eat plums and pistachios. I develop an affect. I squeeze. I number things again.

I want to color and smash playdoh between my fingers. A constructive (deconstructive) fist. I want to read Little House on the Prairie and crush pine needles so I can smell Christmas. I want to start a fire and pick a bouquet of dandelions. I want to squish mud between my toes and then immediately run under a waterfall to wash the rime off. I want to stand out in a summer downpour, arms outstretched, heart beating in the tips of my fingers and in my tongue, reduced to organs and bone ‘cause my skin’s washed away along with all of my heavy waiting.

KISSING

“Why is that fun?” I wondered as a kid—
the press of mouths, rubbing of lips,
sharing of saliva and stinks: peanut butter
with jack cheese, tuna with milk.

Did the kissers mean to form an air-tight seal?
Would they twist together like lead pipes?
Were their skulls like tortoises trying to mate?
Later, I learned that some kissers are vacuums,

Eager to yank out their partner’s guts.
Some are shuttles that link up, hoping
to construct a safe station in space.
Some lips, when kissed, are rubber bumpers;

others, suctions cups. In the “French kiss,”
tongues embrace like slippery snakes.
Kissing, for men, is more intimate than sex;
the mouth’s portcullis lifts to let the female in.

If breath is life, and human life has soul,
A kiss is two souls mingling. But breath is waste,
a by-product of oxidation; so shared breath
is shared excreta—intimate, yes; but romantic?

Not all cultures kiss. Some tribes rub noses,
or just fuck, struggling not to knock heads.
Kissing may be a safety precaution for heads,
Like bracing melons so they won’t roll off a truck.

I’ve felt lessened by kissing—emotionally shrunk.
With you, though, it’s a perfect trade.
We part, having given what we have in surplus,
having gained exactly what we need.


~Charles Harper Webb



(from Webb, Charles Harper. "Kissing." Amplified Dog. Los Angeles: Red Hen Press, 2006)

again

I just yawned and drooled on my desk. I think I've been double-clicking too slowly. But at least I did the cheerios right this morning. Milk in the bowl, juice in the glass. Drip drip drip.
If my shoulders are relaxed it's because of the massage last evening. If my eyes are sparkling under their drooping lids it's because I'm sitting on a bright future. If you can read my mind and cut through that high warm buzzing that comes first, you'd see all that I laid out before myself last night being echoed back. Look, April, you were this, you were the girl who stood on her desk and dipped into glitter and painted her lips bright red when you were on a precipice.
I have been reading back through my archives, trying to encourage myself to remember, remember that I'm still tall and that I'm taller.
I refuse to accept your pronouncements of 'wrong.' I know what I saw and I know what I felt when the bodies and the sounds all came together, when the line of high school boys advanced across the stage, arms linked, bottles balanced on their heads, when the marching band lifted their horns even higher and rushed toward the stands. Again, again, again.

little death

Today there is a lot of silence, and a long, slow recovery from the orange juice-soaked cheerios.

bwaha

"I went to the zoo the other day, there was only one dog in it. It was a shitzu."

jacksquat

I wonder if I'll ever fully understand how someone can look at me and think, 'jackpot!'

what's left

When I was eighteen I had this list of a hundred things that make me full and happy and I've since culled it down bit by bit, throwing up shields. Or maybe editorializing... maybe becoming less of a presentation and more of a just am. What's missing now is adding on, making the list of what I was become a record of what I am. The key to keeping myself authentic, though, would be keeping it in my own language, behind closed doors. What went awry the first time was collecting these things in order to air them.

I like cleaning the lint trap in the dryer. Waking up a few hours early and knowing I can just float back to sleep. Quirky cats. Poetry. Secret smiles. Reading the instruction manual only after I've figured it out myself. Deserted highways. Yarn. Mountains. Depressing songs. Certainty. Easy decisions. Curiosity. Shampoo. Answers. Changing into someone new. Second chances. Touch. Pine trees. Winter songbirds. Feeling the cool of the ground through the soles of my shoes. Counting by 3s. Jigsaw puzzles. Laughing first. Taking things apart. Libraries. Being alone in a crowd. Minor keys. Knowing what I'm coming home to. Dwelling in possibility. Your hands. Languages. Airplanes. Goofy grins. Orange juice. NPR. Roller coasters. Basking in reflected glory. Swans swimming in pairs. Music teachers. Feeling securely loved. Cozy couches. Grammar. Sun dogs. Procrastination. Strength. Toast.



But no matter who's reading, I'll always end with a word like toast.

novocaine

Yesterday I picked blood from under my nails and hiccuped eight times in a row. Today a dentist reached into my mouth and pried out the small sliver of tooth that had, like an iceberg breaking free from a glacier, splintered away from my molar and lodged itself deep in my gums. Stiff in the reclining chair, I couldn't stop thinking of horses, of the way my hands circled each other, strangling, of stretching my neck free and letting
it
all
become

falling.

scraped clean

My toothache is stopping me from eating my favorite apples and I have a sore finger, bitten and torn by the physical world, which I do, indeed, trust too easily.

dipped in good fortune

I am feeling like I have been dipped in good fortune today. The skies, the polka-dot shirt, the warm bowl of soup waiting for me, the evening ahead full of giving and receiving music. An upjump in number levels for our transactions at work--60000000 becomes 70000000. I have a way of zeroing in on the call numbers and which email to send. Things are stacked so nicely here! And I have a mother with downy new hair who adds the shampoo I like to her shopping cart, a best friend living a five minute walk from my home with generous arms and emotional truths, a man who drives across town in the evenings to tease and pet me to sleep. Do you KNOW how good this is? I'm laughing into the receiver of my phone.

living down

I have an illegitimate desire to punish
you
for worrying that
you're punishing
me

seasonal affection

I wouldn't have bet that I'd be handling a week like this one as well as I am. I'd have said, April, you'll be a grumpy mess by Saturday. I'm not, though. I'm NOT. I don't know who to thank for my continued energy and high spirits, so I'll lift my hands to the beautiful blue that is October. This season has me securely in its pocket.

HUMMINGBIRDS

Who, in cold lands where hummingbirds

                are rare, would see a bee-like bird,

and not a wee green man or pixie girl

                in emerald gown, with crystal wings?

Who wouldn’t hear in hummingbirds’

                metallic twitters, elfin tongues?

Finding a nest the size of a child’s teacup,

                woven of moss, lichens, spider web,

who wouldn’t think some fair princess

                had slept there, naming her Titania,

Tinkerbell, or Calothorax Lucifer (light-bearing,

                as the morning star)? Who, seeing a creature

sip from lily-throats, emerging covered

                with gold pollen, wouldn’t think of fairy dust?

Who wouldn’t see sequin-sized feathers—

                ruby, pink, azure, magenta—as coats

of iridescent mail, and feel the wearers

                of such wealth could call down mist, and weave

rainbows—that they could turn invisible

                (buzzing off, too quick to see)—that they came

from a world untouched by disease or time,

                where a mortal who spent one day,

then returned to his own land, would find

                his friends long dead, himself an old, old man?

~Charles Harper Webb


(from Webb, Charles Harper. "Hummingbirds." Amplified Dog. Los Angeles: Red Hen Press, 2006)

flat

It's true that in the past four days the only time I've spent with my lover is the thirty seconds it took him two days ago to get permission and then climb up on the set on the theater stage and join me, kiss me, tell me he loves me, and slip back away before the curtain call.

This is the part of life when I grab a deep breath after rushing home from work and then re-square my shoulders and fade into spotlights and entr'actes and one-more-time play-throughs until my contacts dessicate into my eyeballs and I DON'T EVEN CARE when I've stopped making sense. Sometimes it's hard to sleep after one of these five hour rehearsals and I am remembering now that this does tend to happen.

Then the alarm in the morning plays itself out. I never press snooze. I never have. But sometimes I will let the alarm play, and play, and play. I was dreaming this morning that I was covering my skin with green powder and that I'd just met a cousin I didn't know I had, and hole-punches. And warmth.

I got a flat tire last evening. I'm not sure if even I believe this, but it was my first one. I mean, I've never actually had a flat tire on my car, ever. This is why I haven't fallen in love with this new car. I do not trust it, and see? I shouldn't. I was late for rehearsal anyway, and it was blustery chilly, and the feel of the flat tire flapping didn't inspire me to action, it ripped me up a little and after I got out of the car to inspect it I just stood there, lip quivering. After a time, I tossed my oboe into the bike basket and pedaled across the neighborhood. Should have been doing that anyway.

S came over later to put the spare on for me while I was gone. I don't know how to express my gratitude for this, the simple feeling of safety his presence and constant willingness to come and help provides. I am coated in a layer of foam.

I didn't sleep for a long time last night because I was pinching pennies in my head, and I realized I can't pay for new tires until the next paycheck. I am embarrassingly down near the bottom of my checking account, again. AGAIN. I'm remembering how hard three weeks without a car at all was on me and trying to convince myself that I'll be able to do it better this time, this time when the car just stays parked until I can afford to re-shoe it.

I am not going to stay down, not today. I'm going to be well.

telling the sky

I'm instituting a strict non-negotiation policy with the Big Dipper.

inhaling the sound

I am trying to be honest because I think
you think
I am.

Last Friday the President’s Own Marine Band gave a free concert at the high school. S and I found seats in the second row and this was good. I felt that. The band, as an ensemble, is probably as close to perfect as I will ever hear. One of the pieces they played was music from the Firebird Suite, and as I kept being struck by the wholeness of their sound and the redness of their uniforms. It was so real that I lost my body and unconsciously grabbed onto S’s arm and buried my face in his shoulder. And then I looked up and saw that S himself was hanging by a wire and then he was crying—tears running down his face. The music was that big, that close, that beautiful. It got him. I do love him so much when he’s feeling music that way. He hears and feels sounds differently than most people do—much stronger even than me. Me, breathing deep to inhale the music, goosebumps coating my arms. I’m still not as open to it as he is. I’m still not quite as close to understanding how this all comes together. I sat there with my head against his shoulder thinking that a year from right then we’d be escaping somewhere together on our honeymoon. Probably somewhere mild and cheap (sadly) but escaping even so, and we’d be able to just be for days. Him, me, our selfs, our newness. It’s going to feel similar, I think, to the way the finale of the Firebird Suite sounded.

PUMPKIN-ENVY

How many hours did I lie in bed, thought stapling
my sixteen-year-old arms to the sheets,
thought's curare, when I finally did dial Tami Jamison,
numbing my lips too much to speak?

How often did I think, "I'm dead," feeling
my strength leak away, phlegm drown my lungs,
sarcomas thrust like red toads up out of my skin
in the three days between the blood-drawing

and the doctor's benediction: "Negative."
Thought is a rope that pulls the kite out of the sky--
a cramp that locks the boxer's chin as fists hiss
toward his head. "What sharks?" my friend demands,

launching the sea-kayak that gives him so much fun.
How many odes would Keats have traded for one
night with Fanny Browne? What did understanding do
for Nietzsche, but make him more insane?

Thought is more deadly than crack or heroin.
Its pipe to my lips, its needle in my vein,
I loll in my dark room, and envy pumpkin vines.
Whatever's in their way, they overrun. Unafraid

of blight, birds, drought, or humans' being,
they stretch out in the heat, let their roots drink deep
and--never giving a thought to anything--
make a million copies of the sun.

~Charles Harper Webb


(from Webb, Charles Harper. "Pumpkin-Envy." Amplified Dog. Los Angeles: Red Hen Press, 2006)

restraining

I'm a horrible listener when I tell me 'no.'

-1

You and me, baby. Let's do this.