Indie's Inanities

Nothing new to report, other than the fact that I woke up in an extremely good mood this morning. Kind of hard to explain why. Allegedly.

Poemish stuff:

daydream

cave on in, collapse and conjure

escape a lack of worth.

i am jumping the fence where fate
decides, there are razberries growing and men
playing chess under willows

all timers pause, all players look up when i arrive
in the chalk

painting.

they always want to talk and i, so fond of being
anonymous.

a small game in it, i find
so much more to tell when no one
speaks.

careless with all of this extra.. whom
can you ask to use more to

play on

don't stop. say i, with unintended breathiness
woman yes,

i watch.

so proceed with queen, you rook
to bishop

from just beyond the willows i sketch youall
drawin your countenences like several men
i will know intimatenever.


undersome tree feeling naked herself
each new player, jostling round

beneath her.



to miss when things happen

her face is a haunted house with big windows.
memory is holding her in so she teaches them
vocabulary words.

it is the sharp end of afternoon when all kittens
never saved are mewing. the homeless are cold.

every weak, it goes bye like this:
solace in mud, absence of conciousgarden
plants, worms are fortifying
all by themselves.

Spring is when and only when, ready
to sprout, yes thank you.

she stumbles in littlelate but
always sends daffodils.


i wish i had a lonelyboy i could spend the afternoon
facing, effacing. defacing.

racing through my head has already, been said.


she really loves someone for teaching her
to listen.
counting her out of qualiflying for the generous gifts
bestowed
upon the agreeable.


a donkey would be aware, the instant he turned human.

a person will seldom realize when
they have been a jackass.


like Spring, she shall rise when proper -
ly dressed. such that Summer will be a hot one, she May
consaunter herself, a fleeting moment in some distorted reflection.


before it become too obvious; her pantyline need
for love.


it is the same as being Winter, it is the first
thing anyone says when touching her hand: freezinggirl.

either warmed by strange obligation

or shunned for lack of tangible heat.


but really all
she is, is Fall -

every color, she is
them all.


night burns inside everyone
leaves.

several people are pleased, it has carried
all her dead colors haunting up the yard.

a heart dressed like a skeleton will be trick-or-treating soon.

while it is awfulobvious there will be no candy until
very late
October.



the state of having you

an unestablished colony, south of right
in the middle of just
thewayilikeit.

there goes my rooster now.

drinkable brooks, stony paths
call to the footfall of long awaited
mutual feet.

i am all over you, just over there. by the ivy

under the eave.
take me away from the house.


let it be we, that go by
till all ours
of the night.

walk me clear across

this state. so i can feel

all the little continents

divide.













The end. I love you. xxooXXoXooxXoOxXXo




(IGEdit: A stray bracket.)

Hey now it's the sun... And it makes me shine.

If you were talking to me, then I love you back. If not... [Ricky Gervais]Embarrassin', innit?[/Ricky Gervais]

Of course I was, silly boy.

New poem:


untitled)

everybody great is dying a little.
mostly
the best seem to be dead already.

it ain't all just perspective.
you're there.
i'm here, subsequently
apologetically,


love
lies after all
parallel to that which perpetually needs.

give away your cravings dear, we will always
be wishing here.

not for that which we are about to receive, or just to feel
a little

undeserving.

When you're strong you're given things
chores mostly.

but love
even when you are alone, if you shutthehellup
about what you don't have

the kiss is there; plainly
like sun.

an otherwordly longing waits until you close your eyes.

the whole of me you should've got is written
in disguise.

Well everyone's dying. Think about that.....


Though you'd like to know.....

All great men are dying and I don't feel so good myself.

This is nice, IG

Thank you!


I haven't much time today, since work has cracked down on our web-browsing, and I don't want to lose this job until I actually land a new one to run to.

However, I want to tell you all the best thing you'll hear this week:

I'se doin' grand. Had a totally crazy ass dream Sunday night. Are you ready for this? You might not be...

So, my family decides to go on vacation, right? Dad says we're all going to Alaska, in the Suburban.

We get to Alaska and there's this huge stampede of buffalo that chase the car all the way to Alaska's Northern border, up by the Arctic. So, we're stranded in the middle of nowhere, freezing cold at the end of Alaska and no one knows what to do.

My phone's the only one that gets reception, and so I call Andrea, thinking she will save us. She answers the phone and she's all whispery, "I can't talk right now, I'm over at Jed's house and we're having a deep and meaningful conversation." And I'm all, "Okay, I totally understand, we're freezing to death, but call me back when you're done and let me know how it goes."

Suddenly, we notice this abandoned warehouse to the side of the road that we somehow missed. We go inside and there's a bunch of boxes and stuff and a water spigot on one wall, and a gasline on the other wall. We decide we need to start a fire with the gas line.

Sooo....we open up one of the boxes and lo and behold, we find a crapload of crystal champagne glasses. Dad gets this "brilliant" idea. We line the champagne glasses up from the water spigot to the gas line and fill all the glasses with water so we can run our finger along the edge of the first glass and make it do that singy-noise thing. This will, in turn, send sonic waves through all the other glasses. The sonic waves build up sonic momentum or whatever, and catch the gas on fire.

This is the plan, and it takes forever and we all whine about it, but it works.

But the fact that it worked sucks, because, little do we know that the Alaskan Mafia has a border patrol that runs the northern border line.

Did I mention they drive Hostess trucks? Because they totally do.

Anyway, they see the smoke from our gas fire and notice our Suburban sitting on the side of the rode with a bunch of holes in it from the buffalo horns. The Alaskan Mafia storms the warehouse and takes us all hostage, throwing us in the back of their Hostess trucks. We all start yelling and blaming each other. Everyone eventually falls silent and we ride that way for a long time.

Eventually, the truck stops and the back door is thrown open. It seems we have stopped in some swamp town in the middle of the Florida Everglades by this obscure hole-in-the-wall Chinese Restaurant slash Thai Brothel.

Apparently, there's a huge Southern Baptist convention going on out front of this restaurant/brothel because there's a whole bunch of Southern Baptists congregated in the parking lot by tents, which in turn are congregated by 5 or 6 Greyhound buses that have be painted red with "Jesus Saves" all white and in the Coca-Cola font.

The Alaskan Mafia herd us into the restaurant at gunpoint and tell us not to try anything funny.

I start getting upset at Mom and Dad, because I'm convinced they're going to try to talk to the waiter or waitress in Chinese and tell them we've been kidnapped, and the Mafia will shoot us all. They're both like, we have to, it's our only chance, and I'm all, "No! You'll get us all killed! Don't talk Chinese to anyone!"

We all sit down at the bar, and the waitress puts plates of food in front of us, only it's not Chinese food by a long shot. It's okra and cornbread and fried chicken.

I get angry at her because it's not Chinese food, and we'd come in expecting Chinese food. She starts yelling at me that the mafia guy who dropped us off told her to feed us whatever they had, and they'd just finished catering the Southern Baptist convention, and had a bunch of leftovers. So we eat our cornbread and grump quietly to ourselves over the fact that it's not lo mein.

Meanwhile, the Thai prostitutes come into the restaurant in their skimpy silk robes and start trying to fondle my Dad and brother, and they're all "You want massage? You want massage?" And my brother waves his fork at them menacingly, and stands up on his stool yelling, "GET AWAY FROM ME YOU STUPID WHORES! HARLOTS! HARLOTS!"

And then they start asking ALL of us if we want massages, so we run out into the parking lot to escape the Thai Prostitutes that work at the Chinese restaurant that serves down-home Southern cooking.

There's a group of Asian businessmen out in the parking lot, on the other side from the Southern Baptist convention, and my Dad knows most of them. They start talking. The sun goes down and one of the businessmen is all, "Now that the sun has set, we must watch out for the snakes."

My brother leans against the nearest tree and all of the sudden there are cobras and rattlesnakes everywhere and on top of that, the prostitutes have discovered where we scurried away to, so we all run screaming back to the nearest Hostess truck trying to avoid being bitten by snakes and whores and my brother's brandishing his chopstick and screaming about snakes and harlots and how he hopes they all die in a fire.

...and then Andrea called me and I woke up thinking FINALLY, she's done talking to Jed and can save us! And I realize I'm in bed and not being pursued by venomous snakes and Asian sluts.

And I smiled, because I was safe.


Great dream, huh? I should totally make it into a movie.

Great story. The only thing preventing it from being a plausible movie is the fact that Alaska's Northern border is the ocean.

Wait, that wouldn't matter...nevamind.

Fine, so the Alaskan Mafia Northern Border Patrol is more of a...coast guard...of sorts.

I didn't even know they made Hostess(tm) boats! I want one.



In other news: Poetry from this weekend, now that I'm on my break.


everything sometimes

i have seen frail turn lucky
and the slightest something, barely there
turn dust into lightning
which is very much the same, as far as
subtext.

i could.

for our purposes we will hold hands
here in the thick of not giving three damns.

we will see what happens when you do not
worry about anything
everything, my silly

how could you know what
to do
with something like
us?

just kiss me sometimes, i promise to
stay myself.

and love you stupid, smart forsaking
all you know you could've filled

with something more

than nothing.



draining the sea

i will always have your astonishment

smile.

little women can wear snakeskin, my toothpick
stems the creativity in holistic funnels
down into the city through these high
heels.

you cannot afford the cheapwine in my lap
someone is getting me another, you observe
a year spilt on my thighs, and savor there will be
no tasting.

disbelief is a dulcet thing, across that face
inside your head. our secret will be that we really
did

i won't tell anyone you could have had me
all
to yourself, when they ask
about forever, neither
one of us
will turn around.

no one suspects fear. all the darlings are living out
their eyes

i think,
you have always feigned unchanging.

i can't remember when last i was not attached

to indifferent sky, all the way down the back of me

to earthly ground.


in formative years, you maybe inclined to expression.
take all you have to try, and find me.

i will save your love
face.



someone said once

if you could just get yourself home

it is
waiting for you by the bed .


you were reading, before going out
occurred to you.

or

here lies your fate in the hours
you spend, without a book.



You are being a story now.

shh...

everything you need to know is spoken
at a whisper,
in a song

something in the distance, you will strruggle
to hear. it has tried to reach to you,
countless sounds before, and you think
so wise of yourself now

because you hear it.

silly you think,

this was the first time destiny told you
anything.




late night pool

i get a bad rap for
being pretty.
fuck all cause once i looked like your friend's
sister.
i was hardtoothed same attitude stuck up with flavor
now i am brunette by default and tired of
pretense.

what of me when
i was your sisters friend...what good
have you to offer back a smile, at
any age. i am half a decade better off and you
still lookin like this guy...

i think of you when your passion had purpose.
gladfully, i will think of painful chivalrous some
strange unwanton thing.

gasp godforsake her, she has come
with full knowledge
of the game. full knowledge enough for those who
forget
their own.

you sometimes wear a wifebeater, cause no one told you
the story, of the guy
wearing one, who beat his lady... who can blame the
drunk, living up to the tale..
he hasn't heard another one about a guy,
in the same shirt. who gave over the table for a
greater good.


i loved you and some may know already. some say hey,
goood girl baby
you get your love where it is at...

but it is an old tale with lengthy silences and even
we
quiet types... can do bettter

than that. forsake of a good
story.



i love you still.

as balls are round, you see.


you can't make a molehill outof a mountain
like me.




baby soul

hold this,

she hands over her body languid
silver tray reflection.

he takes her like a straw
for his drinking

all the ways to sip end
to end,
they are passing with the girl.

she is his undiscovered thing
and turns about his hands like something made
from thumbs.


hold this,
the weight of water is a lot.

add salt : find yourself.


hold this,
until it stops
crying.

throw it against the wall

make her laugh.






IGEdit: One more.

broken beasts

he wants to see her canonfire,
just can't not
bring about destruction. craves it

comes in while he is trying not to
listen, anything but
the hum.

there has to be a way to
get hurt
around here.

her hothead is cool
when the need...

she is good
with the defensive,
the innerly-injured,

like a monsterdoctor,
faithealer for the unbearably un
pleasant.

he has wrecked himself again
under another rude disguise, she sees it
and what he swears isn't

aglow beneath.
little wild thing,
get over yourself.

her song isn't soothing
to him now, she thinks this is
incidental.


Can I tell you how old it gets, this game of him pulling pigtails and then running away to see what I'll do? Sound childish? It is.

Perhaps he thinks it will sting or something. It mostly just makes me laugh, and then it makes me sad for him. All he does is confirm the fact that I was once so prejudiced in his favour - so keen to delve deeper and find some good thing - that I didn't recognize how thick his gritty surface is.

He's not nice, he's not good. He's appropriate if a situation calls for it. He can be polite if you haven't pissed him off with some stupid little thing.

I don't understand it, and I thought I could. I don't understand the way he picks at his old scabs, and watches them fester. Nursing his old wounds so they maintain their state of woundedness. What the hell for? It's an excuse, maybe. A plausible excuse to give to people when he needs one for explaining why he's an ass all the time.

Get over yourself, you creep. Hasn't two years been more than enough time spent in that dirty hovel?

Why don't you just learn to like yourself, instead of spending so much time trying to convince you that you already do?

Aren't you tired of picking at things? Rip it all open and watch it bleed out. I'll be here, willing to see it flayed all over again and call things what they are, if it will get you to stop being this person. This half a person. Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day... rip it off and throw it away. Name it first. I don't care. Just stop the damn picking.

Find something to let go of or hold onto that makes you grow the fuck up.

That poem's for you. I haven't written one for you in a while...and look what you've come to inspire now - it's a lot different, isn't it? I hate the way you have had to rampage through me and vandalize any good memory. You broke them all, and keep trying to break them. Do you not know how to build anything?

Get out of this ellipsis. It was a stupid idea in the first place.



That's all with that. For now.



I also wanted to post something I scribbled out last night after Su's shower was over...

bells

my name isn't on any thankyou notes
addressed to you, MR.
are you sure you weren't married

once? you seem
widowed. they think
it was you who picked out their gifts.

i stomp around like a ghost. no one
will hear that either.
long ago, i must have died.

i will write letters of apology
that you won't read
for letters of scorn that you never got

i'll say:
i was being silly, foolish
apparition me.

asking you to hold the air
where my
body might be.

indeed, i must've been gone for an extended
kind of time, was i
dearly departed within confines of a rhyme?

who pays attention to why i'm always cold?
why do you seem so sour, when i'm not
feeling all that old?

so kind you are and thoughtful too
remembering me this way - you'll think of who you
wish i was, at some point everyday.

That one's for Dan.

It seems to be a day for dusting off old things, relabeling them, and putting them back away.


I am happy with where I am now.


more than happy

i am:
yes, please!

in the spaces between
your lines and hung

on the rings of your
laughter

the feather breathing you
slowspin
tickle to my ear

i have done
some fair derivation,
darling

and you are all that is right with me
and i need you
and i claim you.

i knew it would be this spiral
the morning i picked up
your voice.

i muse the thing
we've been building.

it's a good us,
a great one.

you are the other
half of all my sentences,

the inhale of my ex-
hailing,

something warm
like
infectious calf-heat

ERRR -

hot chocolate
in

my canteen.

self-portrait #A76E4

she talks in Kandinsky;
erratic diversions
shapes, ADD lines.

she'll give you a relic
to interpret - it is histrionic
and uncalculated, fast as it comes to her
it's out - big as
the world.

she studies everything because it links
the secrets of humanity. wanting to know
it all at once.

our lady
of confusion.

and "nautical"-themed clothing.

she is aquarius: water
when it freezes
glides long the top of ice
like someone bored with it.

magneticent: i dare you, not want
at least her name.
eyes bloused on a chest.

if you never loved a woman, you do so
now. find facination in this
interest, her passion in seeing
everything

as new. original in stature,
in candor... each new face
a set of understanding

all's new that ends well.

he likes when i wear black, thinks
me crossing a room, is a tiny little
heartattack.

consider whom
you would most like to dance with
over there swaying

with someone lost

she found.

chase me, then

do not go gentle into that good boy.

Riselightly effervescing
all the while awares,

unaware.
oh, fabulous.

i like your spit smell.

let me not grab so tightly
with my exaltation, that you should
flee. from me.

let me say the rosary, Hail Mary full of
surely you are more important than
firstyou thought.

a love like that could produce Jesus.

she will never say it
at a party. she's away

by the manger. and it's better than
Palm Springs' peak spa.

strong women do not need anything. for
they carry it, with them
like the St. Bernard theory.

i am cartoon black
kitten, my white stripe - is paint.

pursued by skunks, who think i am one of them.
Oh cheri... and i mew. because i love milk.

and the day chooses it's own color

my power is such
that i know what it is not,and
all my stripes obey forthwith.

Well, what a weekend.

Andrea and I have had our first official "fight". Apparently she took me totally seriously when I told her to go to hell Friday night after her and Collin sat around my living room talking through the whole movie we were watching. They mostly talked about me. And about what's going on in my life and what they thought about it while I was sitting RIGHT THERE.

Speaking of me sitting right there, I sat right there DUMBFOUNDED at the things she was telling him. They had a nice long rant about Dylan, and then they had a nice long discussion about how much I had changed since Collin got home, and then they talked about how I wasn't doing anything with my life and how I needed to be in school and how I needed a new job and how I probably needed some therapy too. She told him all about my attempted suicide and pretty much slit me open and poured my guts out into his lap for him to laugh at.

I got mad.

I lost it when she told him about telling Jed about me being in love with Seth. Number A) I don't love Seth. Number B) I am so freaking sick and tired of her making shit up about me to tell to Jed just so she has something to talk to him about that's not her freaking abnormal 5-year silent obsession with him and wanting to make his babies for the rest of her life and beyond.

That's when I told her to go to hell, and kicked them both out of my house. Which, you know, went over exceptionally well, and was totally genius on my part, to kick the biggest blabbermouths in our ward to the curb and tell them to go to hell. Then they sat in her car in front of my house for another hour talking about me. Go them.

Friday night, that same night FYI, my cellphone is deactivated because I'm still $200 behind on a $600 bill. So she tries calling me and thinks I've blocked her number. She gets even more offended all Saturday.

Sunday, yesterday, we spend the entirety of church not talking to each other. Though I totally would have talked to her if she'd come up to me. Instead I sat by my dear friend Jodie who happened to be at church that day and who I hadn't seen in ages. We do some catching up and talk about what happened on Friday night with Andrea, and Jodie is like, I can't believe she was saying those things to Collin, let alone RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU. And she was like, Chels, we totally need to hang out more. You and me, we're going to see Reel Big Fish and NOFX on Wednesday. And I'm paying.

Jodie is my new best friend. We talked about her love interest John who isn't a member of the church, but who is an awesome guy who treats her like a queen. He's the best thing that's ever happened to her, and I told her that no matter what anyone else said, I totally understood and that I would support her in whatever she decided to do, and she started bawling because apparently Andrea and all of our other friends have been running smack to her about him because he's not LDS. None of them take her relationship with him seriously and they've all told her that she's crazy and that he's totally wrong for her and if she had any standards or morals and wasn't so freaking desperate, she'd stay away from him and find herself a decent Mormon guy.

I got more mad.

And I started crying too. Because, hello, I can totally sympathize. I told her about Dylan, and for the FIRST FREAKING TIME one of my friends was HAPPY for me. One of my friends was completely 100% on board and supportive about it.

That made me cry more. We drove around and talked all last night. She drops me off and my house and *dramatic cavalry music* guess whose car is sitting in front of my house.

Yeah. Andrea's.

She's inside in my living room have a discussion about music with my brother. Turns out she's been there for half an hour waiting for me to get home.

Let me tell you a little story about the Showdown at Casa Del Meacham:

She accuses me point-blank in front of my entire family of hating her and wanted to know why I had told her to go to hell and kicked her out of my house.

And then she was all, "So now you're going to be buddy-buddy with Jodie and we're not friends anymore?"

And I was like, "Jodie's my friend, hello. Am I not allowed to hang out with anyone other than you?"

And she was like, "Well, Jodie hates me after what I said about her sister, and now you two probably spent the whole day bitching about me to each other."

And I was like, "Paranoid much?"

And she glared at me, and then she started crying and she was like, "I went over to Jed's because I didn't know what to do because of how angry you are at me."

And that just made me more upset, and I was like, "What kind of insight are you expecting Jed to have about me? You're always whining about how trauma and drama everything is, but you MAKE it that way. And I'm pretty upset that now Jed thinks I'm a total headcase because you go talk to him about me all the time."

And then she said, "He asks about you, what am I supposed to say?"

And I said, "You want me to unload your life story to anyone who asks me about you? Because I totally can if you'd like."

And then she pretty much just glared at me and said she was sorry for bringing Collin over on Friday night and I told her that wasn't it. I told her it was the fact that I'm tired of the way she uses me to have a life...that I'm tired of how she's so nervous and paranoid about being herself that she decides it's okay for her to take all these "risks" vicariously through me.

She was like, I'm sorry for whatever happened. And I said I was sorry as well, but I thought that I needed to spend some more time with other friends too, and that I can't only hang out with her, because we'd gotten too close.

And then I tried to explain to her about what had happened with Seth.

Seth and I have been awesome friends since like 8th grade. He's probably my best guy friend. Seth's had a crush on me for the past year, but he knows that I'm involved with someone else, and he respects that. For the past couple of months, Seth comes over to my house in the afternoons a couple times a week to play video games or hang out or whatever, because we're friends and we like to do stuff together. Last week, Seth and I were out window-shopping and Andrea calls me to go to Target with her. I tell her I'm out with Seth and she says he can come too. I discuss it with Seth and we decide to go meet her at Target. She spends the whole time wandering around the store telling him all these things about me that I had told her in complete confidence because she's trying to make him laugh. She starts playing with his hair and talking about what a cute couple we are and pretty much being totally embarrassing and wholly inappropriate. I can tell Seth is uncomfortable, because he doesn't ever hang out with Andrea and doesn't really know her as well as he should for her to be acting the way she's acting. I'm getting angry and embarrassed about all the things she's saying about me. We finish shopping, and we all go home. Seth drops me off at my house kind of awkwardly.

I haven't heard from or seen him since. He won't answer my phone calls. I told her this last night. She completely absolved herself of any responsibility and said that I just needed to talk to him.

By then, it was 12 and I wanted to go to bed. I told her we should talk about this all in the morning and sent her home after she gushed for 5 minutes about Jed's new glasses and then asked if she could borrow my copy of Batman Begins.

I went to bed distraught and relieved. Distraught because I feel like a horrible ungrateful friend for being so mad at Andrea about things that don't really matter in the long run and some things that do and I don't know how to tell her that she's ridiculous, inappropriate and embarrassing...and relieved because it was so nice to talk to someone that day who took me seriously, didn't treat me like some headcase little sister, and who actually supports me in the decisions that I make instead of calling them into question with everyone but me.

I love Jodie. She's awesome. I want to be her when I grow up.

I got paid today, and paid off my phone bill. My cell phone works again. Yay phone!

I think I'll go see a matinee after work today.

Jodie is my new best friend. We talked about her love interest John who isn't a member of the church, but who is an awesome guy who treats her like a queen. He's the best thing that's ever happened to her, and I told her that no matter what anyone else said, I totally understood and that I would support her in whatever she decided to do, and she started bawling because apparently Andrea and all of our other friends have been running smack to her about him because he's not LDS. None of them take her relationship with him seriously and they've all told her that she's crazy and that he's totally wrong for her and if she had any standards or morals and wasn't so freaking desperate, she'd stay away from him and find herself a decent Mormon guy.

I got more mad.

And I started crying too. Because, hello, I can totally sympathize. I told her about Dylan, and for the FIRST FREAKING TIME one of my friends was HAPPY for me. One of my friends was completely 100% on board and supportive about it.

Click to expand...

But I want you/And you want me to/And you need this/Wanna give it to you/And about this time I say something cool...

When this blows over and the mainstream coughs up another show/Will you?/Let us back in your underground/Well, i guess that's a "no" and it's just as well, Cause!/You never supported us/All you wanted was to see us fail

News...news...news....

I've cut the hair. Not just the hair - all of them. Stupid salon lady left the top too long though. It's just too long to spike it. I might just trim it myself. With my mother's special machete.

*ANNOYING!*

Other news - saw "Lady in the Water" yesterday.

*WEIRD!*

Not good weird - just weird. And Mr. M Night Shamaniwannalayu gave himself a major role. As a writer who instigates a revolution with his political commentary book "The Cookbook." Sounds like what you anticipated on the trailer, doesn't it?

It wasn't scary, it was like a lopsided fairytale that revels in its own ideal of its seeming brilliance. This is as lame as Unbreakable, only that one had Samuel L. to redeem it slightly.

Not that I don't like Paul Giamatti, he's one of my favorite actors. He's great. Good on him, but seriously...

*WEIRD STILL!*

Go out and buy "V for Vendetta" instead. It's gonna be on DVD. Special Edition. I'm getting it.



IGEdit: less one apostrophe.

V for Vendetta = my Natalie.

So, I was looking through my other blog on a different site (no, it's not the s2) and I decided to aggregate my rhyming poems into a post. So...these aren't new. If you care.


old rhymes...


(untitled)

eager for some awed perception;
the fallen toss her glimpsed perfection.
earnest sharing 'midst the stumbled
makes pride seem that much more humbled.

give to me no half, no fraction
soul self-devouring at each interaction.
some buried, crumbled, bleeding "we"
resents the fact she is not me.

i gather silence billow-clouded
to still the dark in which i'm shrouded,
and lament your lost attentions -
selfish, screaming interventions...

can i leave again completely?
i build a goodbye just as neatly.
hollow laughter - crass, affected,
leaves heart sincerely quite dejected.

i finger the smiles in your collection
at night, within my felt-rejection.
yet another road unwinding,
leaves me bound in light too blinding.



kind of like dan's

intangible the way
night trickles into day.
in each i wind my wanting,
the hours so thought-haunting.
new carving, new unearthing,
insights my spirit's birthing,
and i finger the things unworded
with which my soul is girded.



Quadriped

Variegated resignation
gnaws my sodden consternation.
snarling teeth tear vegetation,
tendons, skin...no hesitation.

The deepest writhe of his eschewing
distills some dew in lack of doing.
Airy linger scents of brewing,
o'er the picturescent viewing.

Eager races a stone distance
marbled by one's legs' resistance.
Are we always shackled to existence?
Perplexing, our plodding persistence.

Wearied, worn, and ground to tatters,
a heart no longer holds what matters...
Beneath it, proof in bloody spatters:
the wretched refuse when hope shatters.

So e'er long I weave forlorning
in threads and fibers for adorning
the teeming shores of plea and mourning,
though - between strands - myself I'm scorning.

So, in confusion, I will end
a poem written for a friend.
And pour heart-words I've never penned
o'er a confession I'll never send.


Initiating...

Impulses quicken and inspire.
Love-thoughts through the dark transpire.
Observation without the senses
vanquishes my staunch defenses.
Each denial veils a curtain
draped upon my being certain,
and this pillow of lash-leaked longing
nestles fragile heart amid the thronging
lilt and tempo of desire's marches.
Over difference, my hope arches
through mist of doubt and rain of tears -
the glimpses of it span my fears.


Erubescent

Winding crimson ventricles
entangled heart, like tentacles.
Tight-wound wrapping,
blood-bound trapping.
Throb so hollow with each beat.
No room in this empty seat.

I have a heart but it can't hold you,
full of empty - hard to show you.
not that I expect your empathy;
some long-truncated symphony
of vague, cynical disbelief
is convinced I fabricate my grief.

So I continue bruised and aimless
weaving words heartful and shameless,
in hope that one less-hard of hearing
can peel my fruit of all its fearing
and find in me some sweet enticement,
so all these bitter years were well-spent.

Carve me from these thorns and shell -
flung heavenward from out this hell.



Confessions...

I can't keep this well-worn hiding
from your sight, and thus your chiding...
I kept the words you gave to me;
I hear but can't speak honestly,
at least, when it comes down to you.
There's part of me you won't see through.

It's not some vague flamboyant lie,
just want of you that I deny.
In all the closeness which you rain
I burn in distant throes of pain.
And though your nearness sets me grieving,
I'd bleed to death to feel you leaving.
I'm struggling for that middle way -
to love like friend and hold today
as precious in its now and instant -
and not weave hopes tomorrow-distant.

Sometimes my girlish heart escapes me
to skiprun wild through fields of maybe.
But at each return from its jaunting
the problem of you grows more daunting.
And I write in questions' dark
illumined with platonic spark.

The problem with your kindred spirit
is you see mine so well I fear it,
and sooner or later time will show
the bits of you that in me glow.



Abode

Footsteps echo down my halls,
his voice reverberates off walls,
and I just realized it's too late
to go outside and lock the gate.
He's slipped past my cautious guard
and didn't linger in the yard...
he's found my dwelling and he'll stay,
each room is full of my dismay
at the ease in which he entered.
My poor heart's no longer centered
on a staunch, firm disavowel
to bury love with earth and trowel.
I moved on, I didn't know
that love, though buried, still can grow...
now hesitant, I watch it bloom
from each no-longer silent room.



(untitled)

My heart holds a pang, wish -
it's burning in anguish -
a clutched indecision
tied to pain and derision.
I can't retreat now,
no feet if I knew how.

I'm drowned in desire,
your heart I require -

no, I want all.
I want completely.
I can build half,
and helpmeet, so neatly.



A Bit for Bobb

Line by line
in metered rhyme
he'll point out sparks
lit in soft dark;

shine unexpected words
from hiding,
he'll phosphoresce
silent confiding.

The beam shone
from his angle of thought,
illuminates
your small dark spots.

In light they find
a different feeling.
It takes a friend,
this self-revealing.



The Lane

Listless beckons some horizon;
some long future we've set eyes on.

Trampled, trembling - easy bruises
at each look of yours she loses.

Is there some unworded knowing
we both walk one way of going?

Or is your wordless disapproval
daily wishing her removal?

Silence: the reason that she lingers -
with tremble in her voice and fingers.

Speak your judgement: yes or no.
One: she'll stay. The other? Go.



Rambling Rhyme with No Real Pretense

My portrait was destroyed by fire.
Fate ne'er reacting - watched the pyre.
And behind long locks of hair
I caught her eyes in glassy stare.
Something in them wasn't living,
she knew neither take nor giving...
winding thread in glorious uninterest.
Deaf to each pleading request.
Carelessly she wields her shears,
bored with Death and all our tears.
Nothing new heard in man's cries...
no pity left behind her eyes.
Callous a thing, contrite in boredom
tied to Time in reckless whoredom.
And with each flaxen cord she'll weave
tapestries, and ignore wants to leave.
So detached, she'll builds in truth
the stories from the world's lost youth...
so lifelike, real, are her creations -
the histories of men and nations.
See them writhe in screams and tears?
There's no way to hear; Fate has no ears.
And thus we understand her apathy:
were we deaf too, we'd be like she.
There'd be no pity, no compassion...
man grows callous - after her fashion.


symbionic

tentacled heart-anemone
starved. to gather endlessly:
grope at all the swim-by *WiSh*es.
sleep - still empty - with fishes.

Rambling Rhyme with No Real Pretense

Click to expand...

Everything you write is pretentious.

Also, a new one written about my dream last night (warning: it's very long):

Drawn Out

There were orcs and wargs
and elves with looks of terror
as they were slaughtered.

And two orcs
haggled over how to split
a head off of shoulders,
but while they argued
one of the wargs
bit the head clean off
and neither orc was looking...

And I laughed.


There were axes,
and dwarfs with threats
that didn't match
the way they looked.

And a dwarf
leaned on his axe
and told the orc
that he'd kill every
orc woman and child
and leave them in the tent
for the orc to see
when he came home from battle.


And I didn't know
if I was an orc, or a dwarf, or an elf...

And no one fought me
because I was watching,
and they don't attack
if you're only watching.


And something
about the whole thing
was wrong.


Mom couldn't find a table
to fit the whole family,
and something was happeneing
to the kids by the water,
and suddenly
we were all at home.


Then he came over
and I wasn't sure what to do.

I let him sit in the office
but it looked like the living room
and he was on the couch.

I sat on the arm of the couch.
And I read something he wrote
about how we never talked
but that there was
so much communication
in all our silence...


And he liked it.


And he wanted to be here.


I left to put my pajamas on,
and mom was calling,
so I went upstairs again
but he wasn't there.
But he was still there.

And I looked outside.


There was a llama with a harness
where his car should be.


And I remember
thinking at first
that he had ridden the llama
but the part of me -
which couldn't accept that -
insisted his car
was somewhere else nearby,
and the llama
was just a decoy.


And I shut the door.


I never talked to mom directly.
She was on the phone,
in the kitchen.


I went back down to my room,
and he was standing in the middle of the floor
looking confused,

looking torn.

And before I could talk
he said he didn't know
how he felt

about a girl who could draw
seals like that out of her head.


And I turned to see
what he was looking at.


I had a Wall of Make-Believe
(it was labelled as such...)
and it was full of my drawings -
all the drawings I had done
without a reference picture.

One-hundred percent imagination.


And I remember thinking, "Seals?!"

And I looked agian -
and there were pictures
of seals on books,
and doors,
and gates,
and boxes,
and that made sense to me.


But he wasn't looking at those.


There was another seal picture -
small,
in pencil.

A family of seals
on an ice floe,
floating in the middle
of a vast, frozen sea.
A mama seal,
a daddy seal,
and baby seals -
all so close together.
And they were happy.


I liked the picture.
I liked that it had come out of my head.


And it made sense to me, too.


Then mom was calling down
that he and I could play downstairs,
and that he didn't have to go home yet.


As I looked at my pictures -
and my room so familiar, but
not at all like the room I have
when I'm awake -

He sat at my computer,
and listened to my music.
But the songs kept skipping,
and he soon gave up.

He wandered over to my art table
and found my stack
of unfinished self-portraits.


And something in me was anxious.

He looked at each of them,
and picked out his favorites.


I stood next to him.


He looked back up at my wall,
and told me I should draw some sagebrush,
and to look at the pictures from another angle.

And then he turned back
to my portraits in his hands -
and he said
none of them looked right.


And I thought it was because
none of them were finished.


But suddenly he took some paper,
and sat down beside me,

and said, "Please let me spoon
this out of you."


I shifted nervously
as he began to draw.

And he stared at me persistent,
and sincerely,
and he drew.


And he was getting it right
the way I could never get it right,


and something was lifted
that hung between us
and I was quiet,


and I was scared.


He was capturing me,
closer, closer,
and I was

more nervous,
more scared,
than I had ever been.

And I had to open my eyes
before he was finished.
Before my heart was broken,


because surely, surely
it was going to break
for how right he was getting me.


I woke up,
and sat up in bed.

It was only four o' clock,
and I couldn't sleep.

So I had to write this all down.

Dude... If that's about me...

Trippy.

I HAVE FREAKISH DREAMS! It's a proven fact. I do. Seriously: weirded out by symbolism. That's the best I can describe my reaction to the dreams I have lately.

My friend Seth thinks I need to find a new job where I'll be happy. No wait - he thinks I need to decide on a career path, instead of being in perpetual limbo. Those were his words. Then he gave me several suggestions: trucking or the mafia. Or selling porn on the internet.

Seth has three jobs. He works as a chef for a catering business, at an opthamologist's office, and as a graveyard shift counselor for troubled teens.

Actually, what he said was if I stopped being so cynical and pessimistic, I might settle nicely into a normal job and NOT hate it.

This frustrates me, apparently everyone I know thinks I hate what I do.

Andrea and my brother were talking about this the other day, she told me. Well, actually they were talking about my blog. And my brother was like, she just needs to find a job where she can blog all the time, then she'd be happy. And then he quickly edited himself, and said something along the lines of: "but then she'd have to blog, and that would make her hate it. I mean, look at her illustration major. She loved art, loved drawing, decided to do it for school. Suddenly she hates it because she has to draw all the time."

Gosh. Be iffy on choosing a major and people think you're indecisive and troubled and don't know what you want.

I didn't want to continue my illustration major because art was something I loved. IS something I love. Somehow, I knew in my gut that if I tried to do it as a career, I would hate it. I would never draw for fun anymore. I would run screaming if people came at me with a sketchbook.

Doesn't anyone understand that? I didn't want to cheapen my completely pristine love of art by commercializing it. I want to "do art" for the sake of art itself, and not for a bottom line or an angry boss or a demanding client, because then it suddenly loses its inherent nature of being art. It's not art anymore, it's a product. Something in me regards my talent in that area as precious, and turning it into a product...cheapens it. And because art is, by it's nature and mine, intrinsically a part of me and who I am, and therefore I feel cheapened. I feel like I'm turning this gift that I have into something...superficial, insubstantial.

Can this make sense to you?

I suppose it's a self-imposed theory that I apply to everything and - can I tell you? - that I don't mind at all doing some menial thing for a menial job. Because the thing is menial itself, I have no problem with it being cheapened by the fact that I'm doing it because I've been told I have to. For someone else. For money. It's something that I'm not attached to, and therefore I have no problem whoring it to the masses.

Maybe that's it. It's just my anti-corporate attitude that needs adjustment. I'm not anti-corporate, though. I don't throw bricks through the Walmart windows, or leave their carts upside-down all over the McDonald's parking lot. I understand that people need things, and that money helps with that and that if we didn't have some sort of capitalist economic system in place most people would be worse off, in theory, because people are selfish slimeballs.

I don't hate people either. Let me clarify. I hate people in groups. I hate people en masse. I hate people as a "society," or as a faction, or as a "community." I love people as a family. I love people wonderfully as individuals, for their inherent uniqueness - nay, divinity - as a person, as a perspective, as a sentient being. I love people. One at a time. I hate people as a "public consciousness."

A group is as smart as it's dumbest member. (This is true.) And there are some awfully dumb people out there. Additionally, many dumb people are unusually loud and vehement about their imbecility.

I dunno. Maybe I am cynical. Maybe it's because I know too many people who treat other people like crap and it's skewed my world-paradigm.

I want to write. I know that for sure. I want to write because words are...words are all-encompassing. Words are like people. And I don't mind selling people to people. I like words because they operate in a structure or outside a structure, and you can make them as conformist or as individual as you want them to be, because either way they have to be filtered through you and in that process of filtering they become yours. I can share words with people. Millions of people can use the words that I use, but none of them will string them up exactly the same way that I do.

But you know how I feel about words.

I've been reading Lenin lately. I don't know why. Someone once gave me a copy of his writings a long time ago, I think it was my World Studies teacher in 9th grade, Mr. Willey. He's one of my heroes. He, if anyone, would be the reason if I ever become a teacher.

Anyway, Lenin... Interesting character, that one. I enjoy reading Lenin because it's fascinating to watch the way he stumbles into truth.

"Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle," he says.

I love that. You will be miserable if and when you have nothing to fight for. In the midst of all his cries for political (don't worry, I use that term lightly) revolution, he says so many things that can impact your state of being, if you'll excuse the pun.

I dunno. Read Lenin. Ponder individuality. Don't be miserable. Fight for the things you love, and love things that are right and good.



All the great ones were writers in some form or another anyway...





IGEdit: the Grammar Gestapo strikes again!

Not too shabby, my dear.

Do what you love and love what you do.

Finding out what this is, of course, is the tricky bit.

Hmm, so much for my advice...I'm off to hurl bricks at fast food establishments.

Syd, you sounded like Oprah for two seconds, there. I was nearly frightened.

And okay, honestly, I really have gone and left Walmart shopping carts upside down all over the McDonald's parking lot in the middle of the night before.

There's something so comforting about falling asleep on the phone, by the way. Just thought I'd share that.

In other news, I'd like to talk for two seconds (or minutes, more likely) about something that's been rather prevalent in the news around here lately.

Let me introduce you to someone you'd love: Destiny Norton. She's five years old, and and bright and spunky and individual as they come. She's got short, honey-blonde hair that's been streaked with green, after much pleading to her mother. She's got a silver row of bottom teeth in her light-the-room-up grin. One look at her, and you fall in love with her, want to hug her. She smiles with her whole being, not just her mouth. She's adorable. Endearing. Unique.

Last week, Destiny's body was found in the basement of her neighbor's house after people from all over the community had been searching for her for days. She'd been brutally murdered by her 20-year old neighbor, who had lured her into his apartment from her own backyard.

Earlier this week, a 12 year-old girl named Shanda was hospitalized and later died from severe battery. The perpetrators? Her parents. Further investigation upon her death revealed the scars of continuous, routine beatings.

What I want to say about all this? People who hurt children, whether it's fatal or not, should get the chair.

It's the ultimate act of cowardice, abusing a defenseless child. And the people who prey on children and who harm children, are the most despicable of cowards.

It's been two weeks here in Utah, and two children aren't with us anymore. How many more kids are being beaten and abused at this very moment, all over the world?

Something should be done. Somewhere along the line, we as thinking and feeling human beings, as people who aren't defensless, need to take a stand and say that we won't let these people slip through the cracks anymore. There needs to be punishment, and it needs to be severe enough to deter the crimes from ever happening in the first place. We need to speak up for the children who can't speak up for themselves.

It's not right that this light and so many hundreds of thousands of others should be missing today:



God bless you, Destiny.





That's all I have for today. Peace.

Don't worry, I'll never be wide enough to be Oprah.

There are some real sick fuckers out there, what happened to those little girls was tragic. Unfortunately there's no shortage of those kind of stories over here, either. (Believe it or not) I work with children much of the time (trainee teacher? The likes of me?! They let anyone through these days), I cannot understand the mentality that would want to hurt them. At my school a month or two ago (finished for summer now) windows must not be opened when there are children in the room, no matter how hot it got. The reason? Because someone suspicious had been hanging around the school, they might snatch a child from the classroom.

Sigh. Yeah.


So...originally I had planned on writing about Su and Dan's momentous Saturday wedding affair, but I am far too emotionally spent for that today, and I'll have to save that for a day comprised of far more psychic fortitude or something.

But I'll type up some poems to share:

for jed, turning 31

on the wind you snatch whispers
of what may have passed you by;
collected: pockets and fistfuls of crisp leaves -
of proof you could have blown away.


days you stand, in doubt of
the fact that you are standing;
you stand as rocks stand -


step by step you leave yourself,
waiting for something which is not rain.

a drop from the beautiful shoulder
of an indifferent evening.

certain only
that today nothing will be decided.


the gaze is everything in this blind room.


past what you hear in a shell, the roar,
there is almost no sound...only the redundant stir.

the beach is still; the sea
cleansed of its superfluous life.


there are some things you
cannot do with hands.

what light burned the stoic in your skin?

always the mountains are moved in your soul:
you: the calm, the glassy surface;
unseen movements in the deep.


the darkness lifts, imagine, in your lifetime.

eternity in every room, encircled by a name.




for you

teach me the song
that chokes my throat.

i try to become you
because you are going to die
and all my life here
would cease to be mine.

night's ring placed
solemnly on my finger.

we have, like everyone
the miracle of every day
dripping from the roofs.

things glisten over the treetops.
there you are: where the sun
fits like a halo
complimenting your image.

i think the future is another thing:
a verb tense in motion,
a searching movement toward light.

i'm on this line.
in this deep trajectory of agony and battle.

with my hands
i open, close, leave,
obeying the heart that orders.

when you have nothing,
give me a corner of your mouth.

i can see joy overtaking the fear
in my eyes which
amazement opened in one
great, bright leap: this cry, laughter

that i love and ponder.

we caught a glimpse of the dreams
that vanish with every dawn,
the gold-crowned dreams that set
their glittering gifts
beside the newborn child.

a weight of thoughtstones.

the uneven balance
of dreamountains. we still
live in another world,
perhaps the interval.

calm blooms spectacular into the night air
through disjointed stones and the
riddled heart

at the instant you appear

like a sea of blood from a splinter.



the tiger

I.

oh help me
untangle.

if i turn it low enough
i could be left distracted.
and not quite waiting
forever.

the weight of thought
holds my hands
away from the dial.

i want the white-noise
tortured between stations
and not your constant replay.

i can't keep singing everybody's song.

it's breaking everybody's heart.

or just mine - as big
as everybody.

as big as the silences
where you don't think of her.

II.

your face in windows
outside forever.

nobody dreamed you'd save the world.

just me.
and i feel you clawing
out of my wounded place

and i am not ready
for this careful apathy
to shatter.

the march is over.

the great destroyer - she
passes through you like a knife.

oh, take me with you.
sometimes your voice is not

enough.

III.

soften your lips
to the rise of your stomach.

her long, filthy fingers
keep jamming words down my throat.

nothing to steal, we've got
nothing to love, because

oh, we're so innocent
on the edge of...

the ocean repeating -
receding into the sun

at last bleeding into
the edges.




to live is to illuminate

let go of August's lowest murmur.
it is in the dark foliage of sleep.

at the window i might catch
the still dying of the light.

a life of burning hands is never easy -
the taste of blood
does not lead to a crown of flame.

it is the composition of my suffering
that tidal breezes always bring
over black sheets of water.

to live is to illuminate
the blindness of the wall.

the soul's work is unlearning,
quenched, or crumbling to dark.

a little boy climbs the stairs
as autumn hangs by a thread.

i'm not bitter, i tell him - never
in my shadow did
luminous things die,
so young and obscured.





IGEdit: Typos.

I love you.

Everything about you.

Wot he sed.

I love you like that.

A couple things from the Secret Vault:



AND

So, I was home sick yesterday with a rather sore throat. It was a pretty crappy day, actually. Between fits of coughing, cherry popsicles, and movies too cheesy for their own good, I spent most of the time crying over unimportant things, and then getting mad at myself for it. And mad at other people too. For being mad at me.

Somedays I don't understand.

I wrote a huge poem, too. Y'know...sitting in your room, being sick, writing 14 page poems, like you do...It was awesome.

"What, like a hot dog?"
"Like ten billion hot dogs, sir."

(Eddie is always helpful when life needs some perspective.)

I like making new friends. I like being able to get to know people, to dig them up and discover things and interact and laugh and share and joke and explore. I like to be obnoxious with people, or whisper things in the dark. I like a sense of similitude in the incidents of stranger-danger.

I didn't bring the notebook with me, because I figured typing out a 14-page poem would be a trifle more conspicuous than I usually can afford being at work. Perhaps if I can scrounge up a couple bucks to refill the scooter tank, then I will saunter down to the university library later, and type it up there. There are some lines I remember, because they worked so well in my head:

she's a girl back from danger.
crops her dark hair short
so that less of her has to frown
when someone gets hurt.

...

the smell of coffee is geography.
he drinks his coffee and his dreams.

...

how did Samson pull down the temple
standing eyeless, saying: 'let me die with the Philistines.'

did he pull the pillars in like a last love,
or push them away from him
to be alone in his dying?

...

Narcissus was so much in love with himself.
only a fool doesn't realize
he loved the river too.


I was proud of it. For its rawness, I think. "Mistakes are spectacular and / simple as life, as death / as the arithemetic books / of small children." that bit was in there, too.

I don't want this to go fast. I don't want to look back and wonder about the way I went. But am I going anyway? What is going? What is wanting things? I don't know. Something about moments.

Something about letting the unimportant things slip away.

And I was slipping.

OK.

Not you, babe. Not you.




Writing this morning...

swim

we could talk in the shallow end
if it would keep you cool.

i'll stand tippy-toed, mouth just below the surface
until it's my turn to talk then
my head will tilt back, i'll spew forth chlorine like cleanwater
and we'll pretend what i say

isn't deep.

it is unnerving the amount of time i can spend
submerged. it is astonishing that i can still hear you
your murmur calls me;
like the filter at the bottom.

you'll think for a sec... she be dying.
she be otherwordly
mermaid chick.

i've got a bathing suit full of sandy wishes.

we are not
at the beach.

there are cats falling from the sky so
surf with your mouth shut.


this is my restaurant now wait.
to be seated. we've got peg-board games in the lobby.

we've got peanuts drop
shells on the ground we've got
an idea of what you don't
need.

no one will ask me
what kind of water i want.

no one looks at me funnily when i order
a glass of milk
with ice.

in the new age, i will say Eat me...
and it will be a blessing
i will say Fuck you and finally.

it will be seen playfully.
like the insult;

like the compliment.


exotic birds

she's sipping her tea with elevated pinky
not condoning war but esteeming the soldier

i want to buy them all new socks, she says
and sips.
her face is changing due to temperature;

tea chilled now.
been talking.


She is part machine: all screwed
bolted to the floor for safety. she shakes the walls
at max capac.

She'd lite a cigarette like a fire
hazard.

If gravity were a man she just might
float upward altogether

something would make him forget
his duties.

She'll pass over cake, for a bite of whiskey.


She kicks herself when people feel bad. couldn't she
have helped out, passed out cold
cuts. cheese. something on a doily.


this is levitation.

force love on gravity
and even he will

forget you.

these birds are stuck here;
limited flight
and if you really loved
them, she says -
the sky would be open. ideal ideas.

we all have chain links, at some point
above our pecker heads.

she'll sit in the aviary and move
like a bird.

loves soldiers.

she does not require
wings.

Is that gash on your leg...

*IndieGirl gets up on her relationship soapbox. It won't be pretty. You don't have to read it.

One of my favorite writers/people, George MacDonald once said, "To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved."

Naturally.

So, I'm trusted, I am. I know this. But stuff still feels off.

Somewhere along the line, there's a lack of trust, and I find myself guilty by association. I don't want to talk about it anymore. I just want time to think. And that also means writing it out. Making sense of it to myself.

Walter Anderson said, "We're never so vulnerable than when we trust someone - but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, we can never find true love or joy."

If you can't tell, I've been pondering trust a lot. I shall continue in this vein.

The key is to get to know people, and trust them to be who they are. Instead, we trust people to be who we want them to be - and when they're not, we cry.

Do you know what Marie Curie said? "Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained."

Do you know that? Do you believe it?

Golda Meir said, "Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you would be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny little sparks of possibility into flames of achievement."

Do you trust yourself? It comes down to this. If you don't trust yourself, how can I ever hope to trust you?

But I do. God, I trust you so freaking much it scares the shit out of me. There's no other way to say it. Do I trust her? No, honestly, I don't trust her, but I don't let my mistrust of her taint you. I trust you to be who you are, and to know who you are, and what you want and what matters to you. You say that's me. And so I operate in our relationship according to and upon the foundations of that trust.

I said it last night. You trust me, but do you have faith in me?

There is a difference.

This annoys you. This whole conversation annoys you, but it's something that I have to say, if only to myself.

The Irish say that when mistrust comes in, love goes out.

I don't want that to happen. I don't want anything to happen. I want us to keep on going, but I can't operate under some sort of ultimatum, whether it's spoken or not, expected or implied.

I trust myself to know what I want, and who I am, and the things that are important to me. I say that's you. Can you operate according to those foundations of trust? Do you trust that I trust myself?

I don't want to stop talking to him. He's fun to talk to, and he's a great guy. He makes me laugh. But he's not you, and I don't even think of him in any way, shape or form, in the perspective of "that" frame of possibility.

I don't understand why you don't trust him. I wish I could.

I don't understand why I don't flip out every time you hang out with her. When you spend most of the night being with her and having deep, meaningful discussions with her in person. I wish I did.

I just...I don't know. I hate seeing you like this. I hate the fact that suddenly I feel guilty about just wanting to be friends with a person. I feel guilty for talking to him, when all we talk about is stuff like boats and dogs and music and how his brother stepped through his guitar and broke it.

I am not Star. I am not Amber. I am not any of the other girls you've dated. I'm me. And I want our relationship and your trust and your expectations of what this is to be based only on that fact.

I wish I could let you inside of my head to see the thoughts and feelings and everything that I have been so carefully winding about all of this. It gets hard to explain.

So now, I'm left with making a decision. And I find myself pondering the nuances of interaction. We can't talk, but can we text? Or is there no phone allowed? If there's no phone allowed, can we email? Can I talk to him if he calls me, and I promise not to call him? Do you want me to log all of our conversations and then tell you about them later so that you get some sort of moderator preview over any interaction with him?

Does that seem as stupid to you as it does to me? I keep feeling like your answer to that question would be "no."

I don't get it. I don't get...you and it. I don't get how suddenly me trying to be involved in your life on another level has blown into the biggest argument we've ever had.

I want us to be open, literal, frank, blunt, painfully here. Does that make sense? I don't want to tiptoe around your feelings. Not when it comes to such petty things like who I can or can't talk to. And then I feel like a jerk for saying that. And I feel like a grade-A crap girlfriend for "going against your wishes."

Sure, it's a bit endearing to see you so selfish about me. But you'd flip out if I did the same thing to you. What if I told you I didn't want you talking to her anymore? Or seeing her? Or hanging out with her or chatting with her, or playing video games with her? What if I said that I wanted you to call me every time you and her do anything together so that I can just sit on the phone and listen, and know what's happening?

Fuck that, you'd say. Because it's ridiculous. Because it's insane. And I come to that conclusion with my awareness of your history with her. I would say full knowledge, but I don't have a full knowledge, and it's not really my place to. That's between you and her.

Like I say, I trust you so much it scares the shit out of me. Normally I would go crazy about any boyfriend hanging out so much with his ex. But I don't, because I trust you. And I trust me. And I have faith in us.

Do you have faith in us?

I've nothing to say.

Please don't make fun of daddy's voice. You know he can't help it.