I Just Might

Yes, I am attracted to you
And your thin upper lip
A crescent that I wish to hold
on the sickle of my kiss.
The bristle of your mouth
plowed the hedges of my pout
And you left a freshly tilled
sensation that circled
in the round
I could not forget you.
I went home and laid down
Left my inhibitions with my
keys adjacent to my keys on the ground
A resounding wave
A repeating feeling
Something undefined
That you conjured
Left me reeling
I am convinced
that you are up to something
conniving or cunning
The willful way you let
me run the perimeter of
your mind
Personal indulgence be damned
"I didn't know if I wanted to
kiss you but that was very nice"
I wasn't fooling but I never
seem to know what's right
My inclination is to walk away
from an otherwise perfect night
I might
I might have known that
another one would come
bounding in from the throngs
With your pearls and your yarn
that you seem to string
along
I am wary of your wisdom
Your mischievous grin
Your conniving and your
cunning
The wiliness within
"But she's not garrulous," you
said.
And we cracked up with the knowing
We kept going
while I receded if only for
a moment
Do I surrender in defeat?
This never felt like a
battle
But I am hard-pressed to
find the calm that would
allow us to settle
Allow me
Let's enlighten ourselves
A million flashbulbs
just went off
We're dazzling ourselves
And the creases in your skin
never looked more
inviting
Than when I was certain
of what I was and
What I would be hiding.
Your mischief and your
cunning
Your prickly grin, half a laugh
and something shifting
on your lips
What looks to be a scar
What could have been a split
I want to tell you that
I know you and
That I know you're full of
it
But I lost it when I said "here"
and you took my hair and pulled it.
It isn't fair the way you
looked at me when the smoke
began to clear
Treading lightly around a burning perimeter fence
But my lips and your lips
just made so much sense.

Aftermath

I can imagine us on your motorcycle
A thought I've never had before
A gidget and her rugged Ken
Beach blanket bingo gone before
Just the sun and the road
Highway #1
No more Lolita eyes
trapped inside the fantasy
All grown up, maybe 16
I've taken to you wanting me.
Stopped the act at 17
Grown past the angst of 18-19
The indifference of 20 and cautious power of 21
And promptly regressed into mature young lady-dom
Still coquette, with a bandanna
in my hair
But something like that '50s flair
I wonder whether refurbished
wreckage still rusts in salty air

9/26

My first battle "rap"; Love vs. Love

Take It Or Leave It,
Call me arrogant
Because I felt like it.
I challenge you to love me with
the same kind of music.
You love me, you love me
And I'm devoted to the artform
More interested in praising
Than giving you the strong arm
I'm the hold steady
You're the rocking ship
I think the gods first named
you under the title:
Integrity is Bullshit
You're the wishy-washy
I'm the tub stopper
I've loved you more than
your poppy and your doting
grandmother
Test this devotion
Float some oil on this water
Check the temperature and
tell me if I'm ever tepid
fodder
I will provide you with none
Give you powdered flour for
your gun
Fill your bullets with sugar
And then you try to hurt someone
Try me, try to break down this
façade
The so-called wand that you
wield when you
called it a mirage
I know you fell for me,
And I know you remember
when you got up
Your knees were bruised from the impact
and your head was concussed
I couldn't have given you a
cushion if you'd stuffed me
with feathers
but I was gathering
affection
as you blew oxygen
on a fire that was a mere
apparition
I can't be blamed for a boat
when what you wanted was
a house
Mine was just as good
but you had to know I'd paddle
out
I loved you for the infinitesimal moment
that we had, but that passed
That doesn't mean it wasn't valid
Some things weren't meant to last

Explanation

When they ask, I will say "irreconcilable differences." The novelty of using the phrase appeals to me. I never knew what it meant until now. I'm fond of toying with my personal tragedies, making them all the more alluring. To the naked eye, it is just another sorrowful tale. For me it is drama. Theater of life. The tragicomic way that I draw out my grievances. Everybody is a writer. Everybody is an artist. What do the corporate blanks do in their free time? When the winding gears, the winding gears come slowly to a halt? This is when art beckons me. I want to do something creative. Make something colorful, weave something beautiful with my hands. Something light and iridescent like a bubble suspended on a spiderweb (something my dad just remarked about outside my window.) Art is beautiful, life is sadness, Art = Life (as Inside Out taught me) so sadness equates to beauty. I'm making my break-up beautiful by putting it into song. So this passage, this passage, this passage is my song. I'm making art out of life.

Poppycock

Getting drunk on an afternoon in Studio City
Placed among so many lonely wayfarers
With their kids, and snowcones, and megapixels
And what kind of lens have you got there?
Going on a run when it’s 90 + degrees in the dead of Spring
Thinking that it’s crazy to be slowly
Inducing such exasperating dehydration
...Goddamn, you must be out your mind, son!
(Though he could be my father’s age)
I exit the car and approach the bleachers
Son of Todd, daughter occasionally
Wearing a dress today
That’s liable to attract attention
I laugh and smile like it’s easy
Spread laughter, tell jokes, keep paces with the menfolk
Or just sit silently
Intent to watch the game in my unworn hat
Remembering the feel of the bat in my hands
The butterflies in my stomach every time I’d prepare to swing
I reminisce
As I am eyed and I feel lazy,
Uncomfortable and sleight
Lost of my power of sight behind shaded sunglasses
I am unable to describe to them my lethargy
Merely able to lay my head down on my mother’s lap
As menfolk pass by, sometimes inquiring aimlessly
Seemingly hitting on me
Others vaguely interested
Like being sniffed out by docile retrievers
That like to play ball, who enjoy playing fetch
The 9th inning comes after I have already reached the brink of madness and lost
To heat induced lethargy with which I cannot compete

At the bar afterwards, Joe T. asks why a college co-ed would refuse a beer
Limit herself to two
Play it smart
(oh only if you knew)
Yeah, I’m not that interested in beer
I want something nourishing, but then…
That first sip is so icy cold, such a good first drink
I think of funneling the alcohol down my throat with a syringe
Chilling my veins, shooting it up like liquid coolant under my skin
I am uninterested in this 30-something scene for comic loners
Some of them obscenely drunk on the patio
(Some of them, my father and uncle, age notwithstanding...)
I look past the fading couple
Sitting next to a drunk
They’ve got dogs
And we have our two Shelties, and Lyle, my uncle’s graying dachsund.
Rendered moot by stupidity and old age.
We are at the Oyster Shack
Only familiar from various photos taken when I’ve been away
It’s the first time I’ve experienced such a place
The place
For drinking after the game, infamous
I notice the Codgers pennant on the shelf above the bar
And almost as suddenly, I am asked to sign.
But beforehand, I am casually ogled,
Looked over with cautious tendency
Not to deny a glance, I return them with eyes a bit drunkenly
Distracted, but more so bewildered by my father’s arrogance and complacency

What?! I am silently wondering
You gave my number to Sean?
When, and why did this happen?
I’ll have to wait til the car ride to find out
To hear my father’s story,
That they were both (my parents) disappointed to find out that I wasn’t meeting anybody, so he figures why not?
In the event of drunken honesty, the frays in our perfect familial social fabric starting to show, he admits to the crowd that I am
Lonely,
unhappy, even.
Possibly enough to date one of these poor saps...
And anyways, Sean is a stand-up guy, he says.
He’s curious and he’s funny, I think.
Oddly, he lives in Echo Park and I’m almost certain he does the weathered or
well-seasoned hipster thing.
I haven’t met anybody like him, but nonetheless. I am uninterested.
His greasy beard, his Pennsylvania hideaway,
his standing as the all-around favorite among the men on the team.
I don’t care…
This was a year ago, or more most likely.
And besides, I’ve been seeing Nick.
Nonetheless, I can sense what the heat is doing
Making their vision blurry
Bringing on the hominy smile
I probably smell like bacon to them
Comfortable and homey.
A little wary of the consequences…
Or not.
Yeah, I’ve been here before
Attracting sad old men
Wistful for something they think they can’t have,
But Maybe.
Who knows what they’re really thinking
Lonely hearts club men
Some of them even married
Some at the game indifferent
I don’t like the ones I can’t touch
The ones that escape the heat and the booze
Before they let it get the best of them
But I pity the fool who pays attention to me
On a hot day in the San Fernando Valley
On a bleacher at the Studio City Park
At an unsteady table at the Oyster Shack
Where I drown my lethargy in a funnel of hops
And barely muster the energy to mask my indifference
Drag my dad out to the car
After a prolonged exit
After I pay my respects to my uncle
And finally, make it to the car,
Where mom waits and I shed my disinterest.

Your Spring Dress

Your spring dress
Isn’t so much a dress
As it is a plaid cotton long-sleeved shirt opened at the third button on your hairy chest
Because I’m the girl who still wears the dresses
And you’re the man who wears the underpants, sometimes, in this sort-of relationship
It’s a surfer thing, you said
Which I might have understood
Had I not been anticipating the feel of your smooth skin against my body
I only called it a dress because it's the garment that attracts young love in springtime
When young ladies like myself are all aflutter and blooming
Noticing men who are looking at me, and noticing that you might be casually looking too
Beneath the billowy skirt of my sun-dried hair
Where your mark lies hidden
A reminder of the cusp of something new
That I certainly hope will last beyond September

I am no spring romancer
But you, my dear, are irresistible
In your slow way, you call me girl
And I feel a tingle under my skin, down there
I am alight in your presence
Spinning well before midnight
When my romantic side normally gives over to my lavish sexuality
This is the adjective I think of lying in your bed
The next day, this early morning,
Whenever it was when we opened our eyes
When I took my time in telling you how good your body felt against mine

Lavish, languor, sensuality
These luscious terms that I roll upon my tongue when I am thinking Sex in slow and undulating rhythms
To be honest, I am always thinking of sex
Though it’s not the same when I have someone like you to incite me
Then I get a faint aching; for you I am restless,
Requiring your body
This isn’t the best time I could conceive of
To start pining for somebody…
To start marking my weeks from the moment I leave your bed ‘til next Friday
But I am happy

I am content with this new memory to mull over
To have laid you on top of me
And watched you nestle between my forgiving breasts
You are sheer manliness
Both vulnerable and strong
I want to write you an epic poem
And watch you turn it into song
I want to watch you twist my words gently
Filling in the gaps with your music

I am all clichés in the early days of spring
All nonsense and tulips springing from my lips like nature’s candy
I talk of spring dresses because I am begetting the image of a coquette
Fashioning myself with the help of your hands
Those hands that labored on the weekends in high school
Tending ripe avocadoes before it was hipster-cool
Leading you in a slow dance
Over the boundaries of propriety and taboo
Asking you permission before I tell you
What I’m looking forward to doing next time
With you

Tastes like Anis

I cannot seem to keep my eyes open for anything some days
Malaise of life you pass me while I mumble (but never stutter)
And think maybe I should grasp onto the positive light
Expand it like a prism
Repeat the good thoughts circulating
Above this aching chasm
I flounder,
And want
For words which will transport me beyond the funk I’m in
I seek the capacity for bullshit, and I am stumped.
So I slump, mellow in my shoes,
Slower and softer than I would if I thought this were to have some consequence
Or taint my social graces
So I let my words linger, draw them lazy on the air
Sparing no one the painstaking creation of
My lethargy. It isn’t fair
I think, to let myself go like this
Wishing that I could pull myself up by the strands,
The wisps that fall slovenly and solemn around my tired cherub’s face
I embrace the wallowing
The walking slumber
The dusty charcoal sketched upon my tangerine skin
I notice that I’m looking a bit orange
Before I remark casually three or four times
That I might be hungover
But nothing will condone for the empty bowl that I have left there
Sitting on the counter surrounded by its neighbors
Who wish that I would really just suck it up and attend to responsibility
But instead I linger
In the warm cove that I call languor
Eat a pastry and remark that the next (unnecessary) one tastes of anis

I will do anything to avoid sitting down to write this tome
So much potential,
Yet by the dearth of information, I am overwhelmed
So instead, I seek to fill it with mind games
Fillers of sorts,
Cotton candy
And those literal sweets in which I have recently delighted
Which satiate something in me that I cannot define
I will sit,
And sleep,
And watch,
Breathing in the reverie
Of the English countryside
The stereotype depicted on the silver screen
Which lights my warm cocoon
Finally, I emerge
Not wanting to step on the cold tile, lest I catch a chill
Wanting this warmth to last forever
At least until May 17th (or I guess I should say the 28th of April)
I disguise my time racking up slightly bitter exploits
Like checking my email for the third (or countless) time today
And then answering a friend request on facebook
Answering a late message
And finding the answer to my lethargy in a poem by a new “friend”, Anis, who I know from poetry and fell for once before
Watching reams of videos on youtube while I felt the freedom rise inside me

What a perfect culmination to a day
Whose morning was spent gorging
On some shared and borrowed histories
Not realizing I might have been eating at D-----land
But no, no, really. It wasn’t that kitschy
It was good food with prepared plates and plastic cutlery
I found it all so restorative
The tired void's been rendered
Now only a lazy vice at my temples
After the first bite
My ability to shoot the shit was restored
No need for real bullshit here
Just a little tact and good timing.
I could navigate the social situation after eating
And then spend the rest of the day anxiously languoring
Waiting for a phone call that never came
Which was a pleasant surprise
And fulfilling a contract to father
That I might have had to break
Though I try as I might
I could never truly open my eyes