the sudafed vignettes

Do you love him?

No

Then, why not leave?

I guess cuz he feeds me as much blow as I want off his car key when we're out together

And is that all you want?

Right now, yes.

I fell in love at first sight with this blonde blue-eyed with a round odd face and probing eyes and it was at first sight. Very important that it was at first sight. Her face! I never remember a face but the memory of her face is waking me up in the middle of the night! 

That's a myth - love at first sight

No! I used to think that but as I'm getting older, I'm starting to believe love at first sight is the truest form. I'm starting to believe that the very first moment is the most powerful and that everything else dims after that, subtly/slowly in the best of cases or rapidly/violently in the harder world of things but it's that first moment that pushes into your perception of the world and changes its shape and course forever

That's the saddest thing I've ever heard. I don't know why. I don't know why

Yeah, well

I don't believe in love at first sight. That's just the sunrise, beautiful indeed. But I believe love follows an arc like the sun. With plenty of beautiful moments, including high noon ---

Yeah but you're always talking about the damn sun!

That's cuz like love, it has always been here for me, even if it seems to go away for a very dark night or two

Can I help you?

Yes, I'd like half a pound of--- um--

Ma'am?

I'm sorry, excuse me. I'm just-- I'm sorry.

Where on Earth have you been?

I've been around.

Around? I went to Around. I went all Around. I didn't see you there!

Remember? That's cuz remember? You don't remember do you? How we once agreed - that if we hadn't met that one particular way we did - that we never would have

Yeah but I thought we were just saying that cuz I was tangled in your arms and we were naked and close as close as two people could be - so we could say risky things like that to each other

No, it was true. We were never gonna find each other again, our souls had never met before they had that one night remember the feeling of it we both shared in my bed that one morning long ago?

I remember but...Well then how do you explain this huh? Here we are! Here we are! We found each other again!

That's cuz you called me

i wrote this in my phone either before the hospital in it or after

It all wants to make you serious, don't. It's been indescribably hard but life building and strengthening. Muscles are supposed to tear before they repair. And the last year I've just been tearing.

He built her a castle. She gave him her youth. They left each other bankrupt. And they both were right and wrong and they made us.

Then she moved us to a rundown mouse-infested beach house that was powerfully rocked back and forth by the crashing waves. And one night it rained and the skylight above our bunk bed blew off and I figured because I was on the lower bunk that I'd just stay there and survive and I did. Wet and everything.

Then I grew up and started remembering things in pieces, that threaded into me as I changed. And an important thing to remember about a thread is that for the story to continue it must disappear and rise back up with a faith that it first went to another side.

the blat of Jack's horn

OH no I'm starting to feel my heart well-over

Let it

But so much

Let it spill onto your toes and into the Earth

Sometimes I don't know if I can stand it. The way I struggle and toss and turn with this faulty proposition

Struggle then

I've been walking home a lot
I've been freaking out a lot
I've been waking up with tears in my eyes that aren't even irrational but instead true
My tears have been true

You've been moving in the correct direction try to feel every fucking inch of it til it makes you a sun

superrito

I know why I felt bad leaving the stage. I had provided all these between the joke windows but refused to explain what they were saying. And they didn't necessarily care. An indirect viewing of how hurt I was, without just saying it.

Laughter wasn't the point for me but I functioned under that guise and toed the edge.

They were there to get away from theirs. You were allowed to do the same. Just be there for the joy.

I dunno sometimes I just feel like the ugliest girl at prom. Remember that tag next time, it makes the joke, ties it up into a bow.

before google eats us alive

We could be that slow drunk couple drinking at the Cock N' Bull on a Sunday night. I'll be buying your beers and it's the sweetest thing. The way I tend to your drink when it gets low. And you have your legs and torso swung in my direction with hands on my knees in the sweetest body language. And when that old folksy song comes on, we sing along, better than expected.

Or we can be one of those new age Bohemian couples with our finances in order. I'll spend my weekends tinkering with the soil of the vegetables in our urban garden, talking with the solar panel technician about doing the water heating system, and motoring to and from Little League games in an electric Tesla. Our two children have long hair and Sanskrit names that could be shortened to sound harmlessly Anglicized if they want. But they'll probably embrace em especially as they get older. It's really up to them. And you'll have that room where you paint and meditate up in that separate guest house perch with the huge open window that catches the afternoon ocean breeze and you'll say it's your favorite time and place, the afternoon time. And even when I emerge from my own zen den grumpy and manic you're somehow always ready to embrace me because you know creativity has so many forms and sources and that it is endless.

Or if those two don't work for you we could be that couple I've seen on Lincoln Blvd. late at night or on the Venice boardwalk early in the morning. Living on the streets and sidewalks. You yelling out your demons at me, I, threatening to leave but never going further than the shore, us, always coming together tenderly. The two beings between our bags in the evening, breathing in the Earth together, intermingling with the saltwater air and fooling the naked eye upon us because we are involved.

This could be the part where I say we've never met. But we have. In tiny fragments as you drove by, caught my attention on a promenade, or middle of the darkness while I slept and dream-formed your presence and how it felt as we cradled one another as a boat on a sea.

book review

I'm not sure about prior generations but our own life-long love stories will be with ourselves. I will look back and treasure what I saw with myself. And who I loved with myself. It is a modern alteration for sure.

We evolved genetic change in sweeping numbers beneficial to the climes and they manifested into collective behaviors and constructions that took on lives of their own.

I felt God wrap tentacles around my heart, first like an out of control weed, then as a hug of vines.

I bought the pen I wrote this first draft with at Dog Eared Books in San Francisco to ensure the $10 credit card minimum was met.

Saltwater in my hair and a smile in my heart I fell asleep last night re-experiencing diving under the waves and whitewater and looking at the light under green ocean on my legs and the time I've spent in the world below the surface and how extraordinary it is that we've figured out how.

A girl asked me to walk with her to the sunset. I told her the ocean is not our home but we are brave for figuring out how to belong in it for awhile. Humanity clinging to shorelines because it expresses a breaking wave and its return to the whole, dispersed but into a significant One. And it feeds us in fish. It feeds us in spirit.

Back for another coffee already?
Yep
Today's the day.
Today's the day I fly away.

I put cream in my coffee so that I can drink it right away. Last night I rode the bus. I walked for miles in the dark. Spoke to my mom on the phone. She wrote a children's book about the Universe. The scientist in the NY Times book review this morning said we are nothing like ants. I want to go see the Matisse works at MoMA. I want to go to New York City. I want to bring this entire experience with me through life and eternity.

thus it was written

Having little to do with the institution of marriage, how we are at a wedding is how we feel about romantic love. Sober and withdrawn I walked through the ceremony more or less unimpeded. I have this praying thing. Where I pray. And it's not to any personified entity in particular except maybe myself. And it's amazing how much love I have for everyone including the most random people. And if they flash into my head I announce them in prayer and it makes my heart feel corrected. After my car accident I was telling Britt that it was broken. And maybe it was, is. But it keeps correcting itself in a state of prayer and plenitude.

on my knees

The only people who know how to be nice are the mean ones. I know because I am an absolute defensive asshole piece of shit and the things that go through my mind would make the average middle of the roader vomit endless bile onto their shitty made in China by young children shoes fuck them fuck the labor laws fuck what people do I swear to God sometimes I want to kick everyone in my path down onto their backs spray them with gasoline and light them on fire laughing as they struggle and----hang on let me get that door for you ma'am. Well yes you have a good one too ma'am. I most certainly will make a nice little place for you in my prayers tonight ma'am, right there alongside the shadow of my own soul.

Dude

I was eating too much cinnamon. It was making me light-headed. It is a blood thinner, cinnamon. It was giving me vertigo, the cinnamon. I'd been putting it on my oatmeal every morning. Too liberally. I'd be walking and getting like I was going to fall down and I thought it was the stress or caffeine or skimping on food but it was the cinnamon. I stopped and the problem went away.

The story is too long. So I won't tell it yet.

When a bus goes by and I'm on the skateboard it is a smooth wave of wind. You'd be surprised because there is nothing worse than being on the sidewalk when the bus fires up again into your face. There are worse things but you know what I mean, it is an expression. But when moving at a speed closer to that of the passing bus, it is a smooth feeling.

I am almost 30.

we are a naked baby getting diaper changed on sidewalk

Sir, we are going to have to ask you to leave

Wait. What. Why.

Sir, we have had complaints.

Complaints. Complaints. About what. Wait. Is this because I told the barista I wanted my coffee black and then winked at the barista and stuck my tongue out like a lizard. like a lizard at him. Is that it. because if it is. I am sorry. It was a bad joke. I could have sworn it was only in my head. I get these bad jokes in my head sometimes. I don't mean to ever let them out but I get that me doing it may have been offensive. So I am sorry.

That would have been cause for removal absolutely sure. But we do not currently have a black barista.

Who said anything about him being black.

We have not had one in months. Not because we are trying not to have one. It has simply just worked out that way.

For the record it was not a racial thing. It was a-- It must've been somewhere else that I did that then.

Sir, your admission about race and coffee would have indeed been enough. For sure. But we must ask you to pack up your-- is that a typewriter.

No. Yes. I am done with the lies.

Your typewriter and please leave immediately or we will be forced to call the cops. And you know that the police are not friendly in this town.

I still do not understand. Am I being persecuted because I keep staring directly between the legs of each woman and man who walks into this establishment without ever looking anywhere on their bodies but directly between their legs. Is that it. Because if it is then let me tell you I am just curious about their private arenas er---areas not arenas - though when you think about it our private areas do become arenas of sorts. Mine would be like the Lousiana Superdome post-Katrina. A total mess. An arena in disrepair then hit with a hurricane and thousands of lost souls.

Sir. I am going to have to cut you off. You must leave because one of the customers overheard you talking to yourself.

Oh! Is that all! We all talk to ourselves! Survey the populace. Do it anonymously if you must! Survey them! You! You must talk to yourself!

I do.

See!

But I do not do what you do. I do not say what you say.

What. what. did I say. that was so horrifying.

It's really not appropriate for me to repeat in this coffee establishment Sir. We have too many members of the tech industry here with too much start-up capital and clout. I do not want to offend the members of this evolving community's virtual lifeblood--

That I'm a poet. Is that it. That I said I was a poet.

Sir.

It's that I'm a poet. That I said that I was a poet. You are kicking me out because I am a poet.

Sir. Please. I am going to have to call the police.

Fine. Fine. I will leave. I will pick my typewriter up and leave. I get how shudder worthy it may sound to folks these days. That there is no path. No interest. Not even fleeting click-bait. That this is not a world for the poet.

Sir.

I placed my heart into a case
with her own

Sir. Please. This is embarrassing

in a case
in case
what we did
became too messy
and there they were
like clowns packed into a tiny car
our hearts
unrecognizable
indistinguished
from one or another
so that
they were one
our hearts
a blubbery unified
heart
and the case
was above us
and we were moving
in motion
on a bed
for hours
and
hours
and
hours
and
sweat
I did that part
to give her so much pleasure
so that the other ones would have to become unrecognizable
that
she would be so overwhelmed
her senses had to start over
that
they would have no trace
and it was selfish
the best lovers
are selfish
we are selfish
the best lovers
the best lovers
the best lovers
want to haunt their lovers as the only ghost
the best lovers are selfish
they want to haunt their lovers in a way that has nothing to do with love
and it was selfish
that
after I had left
that
her body was empty of any trace
of any other touch
and haunted
that
I left her haunted
and that it took
a long while
for her blood to return
and
it took a long while
for her to take her heart back out
from that
already left-opened
solely inhabited
case

Sir

I'm going. I'm going.