comets22s

a swooning overture to capitalism
pillars glistening with afterbirth
from the union of barely open wallets
and tightly stretched, dilated city budgets
with feet wide, toes reaching skyward, an
homage
eager plea
to the deity of investment

the high gloss lipstick
(from midrange department stores)
the tightest distressed jeans
(made in thailand by workers who
make a living putting holes
in otherwise functional clothes)

the product of warped Darwinian races
to get suburban housewives to sell
themselves
at the corner of Williams
& Sonoma

(I'm finding myself void of passion, in a very "it's not you, it's me" sort of way. It's as though the most interesting things in the world are hovering in my line of vision, but all I can manage to do is stare blankly past them, focusing on some unimportant point, or perhaps not focusing at all.)

I've heard
that you should keep your eyes
high on the horizon
the road

that your gaze should be constantly changing
and if it can even be called a gaze
you're doing something wrong

my rearview mirror contains artifacts ignored
as you don't stop for those signs promising
the midwest's best
but it's not you, it's me
and i still see the crack in the windshield
no matter how much i try to look past

the exits fly by with their promises
of hotels and restaurants
green backgrounds and bold white fonts
but why stop if you quit being hungry weeks ago?

To let the engine idle, conditions ideal?
park and confide
in the carbon monoxide

exhausted


(None of you, by the way, should take this incredibly seriously- I've been trying to do assorted writing exercises, including attempting to write about emotions I don't feel)

Time for another incredibly rough draft.

you struck
with your best shot and
i stagger up
swinging and slinging
punchdrunk and bulletproof

tensing muscles flexing guns
demanding more
leaning against the corner support
my suit of armor chain mail
just another tin soldier
waiting for back up alloys
in barefisted moonlit alleys

bruised knuckles shaky hands
blurry vision adoring fans

flawed hero hanging on the ropes
dashing all her greatest wishes
looking at you
seeing stars.

I still don't know what I think of this, hence its friends only status (which I've actually never done with an entry before)

Shifting


The little black dress
think strappy
form fitting
short skirt hitting
just above the knee

Eraser-point stilettos
uncomfortable on a frame expecting
dependable and reassuring
worn t-shirts and Asics

She strides up, asks me
to dance
making me all the more aware
of that little black dress
and the ironic discontinuity of its
smooth curves
on my body pale
from standard shadow-dwelling

she's a dancer
confident, assured, fluid
but as she looks into my eyes
she only sees their constant movement
darting about the room & catching
glances of those who want to cut in

I am wrapped, trapped
in her arms, enjoying our
experimental two-step
but in constant fear of
stepping on her toes

No idea on a title for this one.



A 200 watt incandescent
in a world of burnouts
and fading fluorescence

the heat sent in my direction
enough to turn my complexion
seven shades darker just
as my mood brightens

a perfectly aligned white flash
of insight
a crack in the mask.

This is intended to be slammed, so I'm taking some liberties with rhyme schemes and melodrama. If anything strikes you as too over the top/forced though, please let me know, since I like feedback and because this is still a pretty rough draft. It also lacks the font effects that it should have, b/c I'm dumb when it comes to LJ code. (edit: thanks to Adam/Hannah, I'm no longer LJ idiotic). Oh, and if you think this is about you? It isn't. Or, I guess it could be; I really have no idea who reads this. So just assume it isn't about you... or start humming "You're So Vain" to make up for it.

“Stumbling for Her”

If she came back and apologized
came back and pulled out every cliche she files
next to “it’s not you, it’s me” or
“I think that perhaps we’d be better off friends”
opened her folder labeled Mea Culpas for Perpetually Fickle Romantics,
stared at her Eurotrash Adidas, those black and white reminders
of how good she always was at tripping me up, and whispered
“I was so confused, I didn’t know what I wanted...
I don’t know how I missed that you were the right one for me...”

I’d take her back.

The instant she put her hand on my shoulder and started to speak
I’d silence her.
“It’s all right. I understand.”
When all I could ever mean by that
is “It’s all right. You know that through these eyes
every sign of your affection is
more of a reflection of my self worth
and the fragments of faith that I was finally putting together,
the fragments that convinced the world I was confident,
my fragments
You hurled those into Lake Michigan as the daylight was dying
They hit bottom at the same time I gazed across it, told myself I was over you
and knew that I was lying.”

But all you’d hear is that it’s all right.

I’d be miserable in my passive-aggressive silence
choking on my self imposed gag order as she continued scheming
And all while my mind would be screaming
This isn’t right for me, I deserve better
Not someone who exploits me, who gets away with it because I let her

We may be Young and Restless, but this has to end, this self destructive trend
because I want to be a politician, not a daily soap writer
Not to mention, the way you broke things off, could you get any triter?
I need someone who respects me, who knows what I want
Who doesn’t take each opportunity to flaunt her ability
to break me into pieces using anyone around
Someone who knows I read into everything
because I’m too much the intellectual
that my overanalyzing is perpetual
or better, someone who knows that’s just what I tell myself
when I really just don’t trust my judgement enough to go
with my first or second thought instead of my twelfth.

She’s not that person and I know it
I can’t trap her into my standards as easily as
she’s wrapped me around myself so that I fall over her every word.
But until I learn how to wish that person into existence, I’ll continue stumbling.

How about a complete stylistic shift from the last post?


The cold droplets
soon became pellets of ice
whipped into my face
by winter gales

But I didn’t come this far to go back.

My hands were numbed
my eyes blinded
But I somehow found a
battered shell, empty of spring’s hope

I stared at it, resting in my palm
Completely mine. completely worthless
Closed my fingers around it
felt it transfer its pattern to my hand

And then I followed its path
Or my path? I made it.
watched it splash
among the capping waves
stumbled back towards my own path
and discovered I was surrounded by
more husks, these filled with seeds.
The sky lit up and the only thunder
of the day cleared my mind.

I had set out for the lake
and settled for the ocean.

I want a response so solid
I would break my hand
if I tried to fight it.
Concreteness.

I know how to deal
with concrete. It has its
borders and I have
mine and any attempt
to pass through ends in
scrapes and bruises

Flesh is (too) forgiving
allows for too many illicit
border crossings
when your guard is down

But right now, with your
patrol duties
your semiautomatic
prohibition
of the interaction I need to
stay sane your
gaze
(held barely too long)
still lets me glean
hope
I’d rather not have.

I’m losing myself as I
search for a
safe passage
Why can’t you just
build a wall?

If you think you're reading too much into this, you probably aren't. I'm more than willing to confirm or deny what it's about if you ask me.

Untitled (as of yet)


I don’t want this to be
another tired story of
a tragic hero who has had to hide
her supposed character flaw
since the day she realized
she could choose her interaction
with the world.

The metaphors of closets
and masks, and carpets
have lost their sweeping
shields and doors.
Because it isn’t that simple
it’s not something I can
compartmentalize then ignore.

And no weights have been lifted
from my pale shoulders
no shackles removed.
I was never anyone’s slave
but my own.
Which says little more than
I am myself.

I have been pounding on
the door to my own sanctuary,
the unfaithful lover crying out to
the betrayed romantic
begging for acceptance for far too long.
And with each reunion of raw knuckles
with slowly splintering wood, my resolve
weakens until the door swings
open
and we embrace.

I'm posting this because I haven't been feeling terribly creative recently, in truth, I've just been feeling terrible ("wow, this is one of the worst cases of strep that we've seen in Student Health in quite some time!"). I really enjoyed writing this essay, but fair warning, it might not make tons of sense if you haven't read "The Division of Labour in Society" by Emile Durkheim. Anyways, the prompt was sweet (in short- Analyze the importance of moral values in the past election with a Durkheimian perspective, conlcude by evaluating the plausability of this "structural functionalist" account.) and it managed to get an A out of my hardass of a sosc prof. I haven't incorporated any of his corrections yet, but, oh well. If the title itself doesn't scare you off reading it, I'll also warn you that its 6 pages double spaced, rather dry due to the fact that it's a sosc essay and my prof was constantly on my case for "overwriting," and on here mainly because the suspicious clicking of my harddrive has increased in frequency.

( Moral Values as an Abstraction of the Collective Consciousness )

every room I went to
had those circle indents in the carpet
the kind that are revealed when you move furniture
that’s been sitting in the same place
for longer than anyone can remember

and my normal sock-footed slide
through the hardwood dining room
turned dangerous when
I nearly flew over
the table that had never been there

my mother’s youthful blonde hair
now comes from a bottle

the floral sheets
just look wrong on a bed which
has always had stripes

I wasn’t expecting everything
to be exactly how I left it
aside from a layer of dust

But I also wasn’t expecting
to be attempting to blend into the shadows
created by freshly painted walls

because I wouldn’t have guessed
that relocated furniture would make me
the object that’s out of place

I don't usually do this, and I may pull this entry or make it private, or something within the next couple of days, depending on mood. But... the poetry format of this entry was far worse, I think, and I want to make sure I don't lose this if the mysterious clicking of what I think is my hard drive does indeed signify an impending crash. In fact, I'd suggest that you just don't bother reading.
Without further ado...

I’m discovering that for the first time in my life, I’ve found myself in the position of having a choice to write people off; and I’m actually taking the opportunity to do so. It’s a strange thing, to have gone through nearly 19 years on this planet, and to have not needed or wanted to really quit giving chances to people who haven’t committed absolutely egregious offenses toward me. More specifically, I find it interesting that I’m writing off people I would have earlier named as my friends, albeit not my very closest ones.

Why? I’m not entirely sure. Maybe college has made me more mature. It’s certainly taken away some of my naivete. But what I don’t know is whether that’s made me a better person. I was probably a better person before I started getting a taste of life outside my isolated suburban bubble, because then I had time for almost everyone who wanted it, and was willing to give people a lot of chances; I probably gave more chances than were deserved.

But somewhere between West Des Moines and Chicago, I got more impatient and less willing to put up with being mistreated. Perhaps it’s a good thing, an indicator that for once, I finally have a spine and am willing to stand up for myself. At the moment though, I’m just seeing it as a demonstration of the fact that I’ve become more jaded and callous, with a continually decreasing faith in human kind as a group, and to some extent, my own humanity.

That’s not accurate. It can’t be both at once, both human kind and my own humanity. If I’m losing faith in human kind, that should mean that I’m becoming more aware of my own humanity, because I’m becoming more disappointed with myself at the same time I’m becoming more disillusioned with the world, and ultimately for the same reasons. It’s merely a difference of scale. I’m not the person I want to be, and I’m not the person I’ve been. I’m disappointed with myself because when I take a step back and observe, I view me turning into the people that I’ve always loathed, those with no regard for others. I’ve spoken with people about this disillusionment with human kind, and everyone misinterprets what I’m saying and says, “Well, it’s just four years, it can’t be that bad.”

It’s not about the election, it’s not about George W. Bush. It’s not about red states, or evangelism, or the crumbling of the individualistic foundation of this country; it’s bigger than that. And it’s not about the genocides in Sudan, or the ones in Rwanda and Burundi that I was just reading about, or the poisoning of the Ukranian presidential candidate, though all of those play a role. I think the problem is that the more I learn about the world, the less I want to hear because I know it’s not likely to be good news. Ignorance really is bliss, sadly enough.

And what does all of this despondency about the world have to do with giving up on people? Well, on a personal, intimate level, it’s all related. I’m believing less in the goodness of people, and more in my own mortality. I’m realizing on a higher level that the time I have here is limited. So I’m being more selective about who I spend my time with. I give people a few chances, but if they don’t take any of them, I give up on them and move on–meaning that the bottom line is that on some level, I’m engaged in the same kind of uncaring selfishness that causes my unhappiness. Or maybe I’ve simply figured out at last how to defend myself from emotional vampires. It’s ultimately your call, though it should be mine.

Ironically, once I finished writing this, “Lost Cause” by Beck started playing. Even iTunes agrees with me.

With a crimson anger
fueled by hypocrisy and evasiveness, I
set aflame the strings
that allowed her to manipulate me

and as I watch the flames
flicker and dance
they lash closer and closer to where
the numerous lines
held me enraptured
and then:
the painful recognition
that I've caused myself to get burned
--------------------------------------------------------

Before you acquired all the horses and
shields for your crusade to feed your hero fetish
did you stop to
think
that maybe they don’t want
their oppressor
as their salvation?

"Progress"


The workmen came today.
They told me “it’s just a small hole”
“it shouldn’t be a huge problem”
How reassuring.

“You’ll be gone when it happens”
that doesn’t change the fact that
You
are drilling in
My
space.

How is it that they do not understand
that I’ve grown quite used
to the way things are
and were supposed to be
and that I don’t want any new holes
or invasive procedures?

Size is not the point
my neatly compartmentalized world
is still getting torn apart
and I’m not even allowed
to witness the destruction
choking back a quiet protest
that would be ignored regardless

because it has to be “fixed”
it cannot continue to exist in its current form
as it has for an unmeasurable amount of time
more influential voices have dictated
“this has to be more convenient for us”
and as for me, and my space?
“Buy her silence.”
With useless gestures of placation
shiny currency with no real worth,
not when compared with
an undisturbed order.

Each goes by
with hushed whispers or barroom swaggers
tweed blazers, bowties
corporate status symbols, hornrimmed glasses
four dollar coffee
topshelf vodka
and driven, strident steps

“Well, you know Plato...”
“...Don’t we just need to strive harder for the laissez faire ideal?”

yes. keep on talking about the
world
in terms that avoid its truth
keep thinking in lofty theories
that have as much of a connection to society
as the beggar has to your gated community

your words and thoughts
don’t give him any more warmth on a wintry day
than the backdated newspapers he uses as
blankets

but you’re right.
when everything is discussed in language of Adorno this
and Aristotle that
it’s easier.
because the lazy, welfare receiving tax thieves
the white trash
the coloreds
the queers
and all the second class citizens that make up the great majority of the richest, freest civilization in history
are easily avoidable.

The whole of society
rests upon foundations laid
by unskilled masons

As layer after layer is added
and the structures of relation
form jagged horizons
stretching to find their places
among the stars

that same foundation weakens
under the weight
of promises unkept
broken agreements
and unrecognized backroom deals

the question is not
will it happen?
But when?
Will it come crashing down upon
itself
a spectacular implosion of
ideologies, dogmas, and most important: difference
leaving behind only crushed rubble, shredded sacred texts
and glittering shards of stained glass
that reflect a still hopeful light
through the oppressive, choking dust.

Is it possible to be aware of a sensation
yet not know what it is?
The very idea defies
language and thus logic

words should be applied
or invented
until the sensation is defined

but cause
is not so easily derived
while gibberish can be created
and the feeling attributed to
gibberish
it doesn’t really do the tangibility of it all
any justice

for you haven’t really attributed a cause,
you’ve created one.

nonsensical is nonsensical, even if given a new name
and the only reason it could even be considered nonsensical
is because it’s merely the denial of truth.

Focal Points?


When it takes this much effort to focus my eyes
it’s no surprise that mindful clarity
resembles a photograph taken as its subject passes
at 98 mph

staring blindly into reality interrupted
by dark black frames
sharp lines cut through an otherwise blurry picture

“I don’t know
if you could give us some helpful hints on what to
start with?”
“Well,
there are no helpful hints.”

So all we’ve really established is that there’s no
right way
to do things
meaning that I have a deadline
by which I need to figure out an answer
to a question without one.

Enigmas are fascinating because they have no solution

every attempt
to bring things back into focus
results in a further complication to the picture

the trick is that frames, which usually limit
an image to a confined space
so that it can be placed neatly on a wall
edges aligned with the floor
other walls
straight, regular lines

in this case serve no constraining purpose
reality exists inside and outside of them
so the lenses within can only clear up so much
a 2" x 1" space, two times over
yet the mysteries extend so much further beyond
a four inch block.

This was written at work after a terrible week and then a burn from a 350 degree surface. I love the fact that I had a job that allowed me to sit outside, flip out, and stare at the rain. Regardless, it's an experiment in stream of consciousness writing, which I'd never tried before.

Free thought:

I feel the heat against my hand and watch my skin disintegrate
I pull back instinctively or because im a coward
and I look at myself, cooked like the animals that I no longer eat
having done a better job searing my knuckles
than French chefs do with veal.
Pain is truth.

Sitting against a brick wall I see rain in the air but none on the ground.
So I wait
Long after it should have, the pavement changes colors as water spots turn to solid shades and I notice the lukewarm droplets on my forearms as verification of my existence, my ability to feel something other than a lingering burn

The space in front of my unfocused eyes turns from plain to blue to grey to green to plain again. I stop and look up at yellow, expecting to see the sun, but my mind is playing tricks on me once I focus on the light its gone.
I focus harder on unfocusing to see if I can turn the world red or black. I can't.

I don't know how long I've been sitting motionless against the same brick wall on the same cement patch with the same empty expression on my face and in my eyes. the color changes may have lasted for seconds minutes or hours but seconds are minutes and minutes are hours, theres no way to gauge when looking straight forward and seeing nothing. time is just another way to make sure that there's some sort of systematic pattern to my random bursts of thought and action.

I can no longer tell whether it looks like rain because of the water in my eyes or whether the drops on my skin came from a source other than me. The separation between myself and not myself between internal and external between going through the motions and living isnt there. the sounds of the occasional raindrop could as easily be my heartbeat.

it hits so hard it bounces off the pavement. i want it to be bouncing off Me.
i am numb.

i can know i exist as an entity by looking down and watching the rain streak my khakis but that only proves i have a body, a shell, and could easily be hollow on the inside. perhaps i am.

the rain starts to come faster, harder, rebounding higher, hitting stronger. water pools. maybe a flood will occur, i want a flood, i want there to be an overload, an impossible, incalculable mass amount of something, anything, because it would mean that i'm not empty

Instead
I stand with my face pressed against the window, divided, a watcher not an actor, unable to break through, to slam through the glass watch the shards slash my fingers feel the rain no see the rain wash red hot down my arms send it to the ground in torrents and scream

scream in pain in fury in frustration unmuted untempered for all the screams that have never been unleashed in a lifetime.
howl at the sky with the cry of both the betrayer and the betrayed
pure emotion converted into intolerable soundwaves loud enough to be heard by all who ever had a stake in my vibrance and then some loud enough to drown out the competing thunder loud enough to stop all of the machines and the people that had ever tried to control me, ever tried to control anyone ever tried to assert their own self righteous sanctimounious sense of being right in their superficial steps

None of that will happen. I don't have the nerve

I let the opportunity pass, like I've let so many others, like so many opportunities have turned the tables and passed me. It wouldn't have been worth it, i wouldn't have been worth it, never have been

My world is grey.
no passion no fury no vibrancy no commitment no sunniness no anger no rejuvenation no rebirth.

Grey.



Filtration:
I burned myself at work today- hurts like a bitch. It's raining. And I'm losing my mind.

Mid August

The crisp green leaf
slowly fades to brown

and spirals to the grass
deceived by a premature cold spell
with little regard for its effect on crisp green
leaves

the sky
shades of civil war uniforms
constant clashes of dark blues and greys
and clouds doing their best to outpace airplanes
as they speed across the sky because of

the wind as it
catches the fallen leaf and lifts it
up
trying desperately to return it to its rightful place

but gusts are sudden
and as soon as they arrive, they die
much like green soldiers
or even green leaves.