two people

beginnings hurt. childbirth is a beginning.

exactly.

...exactly.

no, it's a good thing. like riding a bike. you know, cuz at first you fall a couple times, then once you get your balance and ride off, yeah you ride off.

forget about yourself

the past is a black crow flying in the opposite direction. and you're walking away and becoming quiet again, and this moment actively going somewhere. instead of stepping around the coral tree you're climbing through it, where between branches of growth and limbs of surrender you recognize a sense of passage. without shielding your eyes, it can be scary, bright, forward. it can also be beautiful watching time unfolding messy abstract art with hints of linear. where now the day beams through your window in friendly greeting.

when love bites your head off like a pigeon

i know you said she was spoiled and obnoxious and she closed her eyes in a smug way when she was talking but she enchanted me. she enchanted my life. she was so fucking precious to me for awhile and i still miss her. i hate her for entering my world and i deeply deeply miss her for leaving.

and love like ancestry is a series of improbable events. a couple of glasses accidentally touch in a bad excuse for a sports bar and then lightning strikes and a storm follows and a world that was hidden in the infinite darkness of possibility springs forth into the one and only world you ever want to know.

you wanna know what a relationship is? what it is and what it becomes...realizing that the screen saver on my phone is a picture of you walking down the shoreline at dusk. your figure dark, pacific ocean at your feet, the grey muted earth apparently moving, while a life exists entirely dependent on the belief of two people involved.

because you grow this beautiful love and see how much of it you can preserve. and i would've loved to read all the letters you said you wrote me but were too afraid to send.

and in adaptation we were fixated on donald's line at the swamp. and like magnolia i now have all this love to give and nowhere to put it. and eternal sunshine i can't delete you because relationships as tumultuous, life affirming as ours, make us who we are, give us reason to care for this existence and all it's painful beauty.

and i keep having these dreams with you. one the other night where i'm walking around dolores park waiting to improbably bump into you. and another where our truth spills out in the most honest of ways.

and one time i left you in the morning and ran down the beach and jumped over the most incredibly wide storm drain river that had been slithering into the ocean. i ran and leapt to it's other side and the distance was further than i ever could have imagined clearing, but i did. and i likened us to a swimming pool analogy when we first got together and something about being shown the deep end. it was too stupid to tell anyone about and then time passed and eventually i made you everything to me and i'd resent any moments you weren't.

and then my friend and i were talking and she wondered why i was sad and i told her that i hadn't been through anything more than anyone else, i've probably just spent more time examining it. and this sadness, this fallinginlovewithsadnessthing is boring i told myself, it's time to find a new thing. and i think i just needed a little more time to be alone. and it's important to find a new thing. the hemmingway line.

and if you and i were to become sand right now, we would intermingle and become indistinguishable.

surrendered on sand

i wanna be beautiful like george harrison. she was telling me about the documentary and clapton, the layla inspired wife. george took it like a man, with love, a little bitter, but with love. we're always losing things. holes in our pockets, hearts singing accordingly. cooperatively beating but feeling hurt so tangibly. the wisest man on the beach told me to listen to my heart, there is a truth. always a simple truth. the brain schemes and survives, even owning 40% of the heart, she said. brain cells in the heart. not enough to shade the truth. it arrives blue, beats blood red and governs the universe. i can feel it searching like a prison tower or lighthouse, contained or vast, scanning for life, a creature, a ship, home. insert one of those recovery mantras about gratitude, here. after the rain, there is a day of wind, then a clear sky, calm, warm sun, uplifting heart beating tirelessly for these moments and is flowering and expressing thank you, thank you again.

franzen

"no matter how carefully we defend our selves, all it takes is one footprint of another real person to recall us to the endlessly interesting hazards of living relationships."

song 26

i was laying in the afternoon sun, waiting patiently, for you to come. but you know it aint easy, being patient, when you love someone. another bird came and flew on my line, said she was only asking for the time. she showed me her feathers, of the brightest plume. so i took her to my room.

loneliness does not exist.

crazy people

have apartments and houses and dogs. and crazy people work jobs and have friends and pay their bills on time. and crazy people color coordinate their clothing and tie their shoes and laugh at funny jokes. and crazy people fall in and out of love and somehow feel greater because of it. crazy people are just like you and me.

oscar party

the lights below look like wounded stars. wandering around civilized lives with heads cut off, dreaming of versailles. some inner garden.

windward

somewhere they pray imbalanced. dizzy, winding back and forth on the curb, they fall and trip and timber like wavy trees. bruised knees, laughter, gravity pulling down dark. alternating between smoke and fresh air, lungs grateful. taxi cabs, phone numbers, leaning home on friend's shoulders. keep it together. voices calling into the streets. life spilling in unrecognizable shapes, dripping from deepest wells, seeping, bleeding into the soil, it's almost like hearing someone young again. secret phrases, an engine of joy churning beneath the physical anguish and toil of suppressed years. this happy child always trying to get out, even at the cost of a colder world. i used to say that intoxication was about getting to the smile, maybe it's just the child. our cells evaporate every so often and apparently we change, yet still recall decades of memories at the speed of light. no matter the flaws of perception, the interpretation is art and sometimes so vivid our hands sweat. put to rest, dreams, headaches, bright streaks of light stabbing the day.