28

i used to be a good runner.

then i knew that pain wasn't a trap door

but a vehicle, and i wanted to go places.

it takes momentum to be in motion:

every step is a conscious decision

to keep moving

but lately i've been running backwards.

humans are meant to run long distances

but we are apparently good at

ignoring our nature.

27

though i am so weary

as to seem narcoleptic, falling

asleep suddenly while seated in a chair,

i "look so happy"

and i suppose i am,

but really inside is a

pleasant emptiness,

a vague sense of boredom,

a vague sense of excitement

yet somehow my muscles tend to

relax in a smile

26

feeling nostalgic

about entropy:

what did not happen

in the past, and

what will not happen

in the future.

the subtext to every

conversation; the words stored

in the front of your mouth

ready to be spoken but

the moment passes

and you swallow.

the emotions which

coat your organs, begging to converse

but you seal them in mason jars,

an afterthought, for next year maybe.

they perish.

why is it that we focus on

negative space:

we see the white vase,

not the darkened faces.

ideas have a peculiar way of

stiching themselves into the pathways of

your mind, so that when they

do not emerge from there

either a thick thread remains

constricting your blood vessels

or you rip it out quick and the pain

comes all at once.

imagination can be a wretched curse.

25

I like men

who look like John Lennon;

all I need is (their) love

24

held here, happily stuck in a

jello membrane

i can hear the sounds outside shouting

in distress

but only the murmurs make sense.

my face is a smile

which is why i don't fit in here

nobody smiles anymore;

it's gone out of style.

23

you gave me

a fake email address

because you don't

own a telephone

(likely a lie)

i thought that

people are attracted to

boldness.

but it appears that

either they are afraid

or repelled by boldness

or by me.

okay,

okay.

i will turn off the secret

radar behind my eyes,

searching for a mate

(but really, some person

to love, because i

miss that like nothing else)

the switch is stubborn,

and i burn my finger

trying to stop

22

21

time falls into my

lap as i fall out of time.

still after long spin.

20

i show all my teeth on accident

when i think of the beauty of another

oregon summertime.

my mouth imagines

interacting with other mouths,

hippie mouths, crazy mouths,

painted, intrepid green mouths.

and being filled with the

sweetest strawberry acid

on the planet.

19

hurting through

a painless vortex of

card board and

bland fiber material--

fractals are everywhere.

my faults occur in patterns,

my troubles in

geometric shapes.

"i am a failure"

repeated into infinite distance

so that the phrase becomes

irrelevant

18

i am uncomfortable in this culture,

despite being its champion and

not its victim.

so many words feel empty to my mouth and ears,

"career" "insurance" "achievement" "education" "internship" "citizen"

"schedule" "competitive" "grade point average" "salary" "qualifications"

i am splayed out mid-air,

my brain is not in my head it is

talking to the trees in a nearby lot.

i cannot claim i am an alien,

this is where my body has grown for so long.

i always did feel a little lighter than gravity.

17

I cringe at the internal reference to the Great Gatsby,

as I realize my own "green light" has been leading me

across the ocean to I do not know where.

my eyes too have been glazed over from that

sparkling, warm, buzzing yellow-green,

I thought it was the future and the now.

the word "green" forces the mouth into a smile,

corners of my lips curled outward, eyes gleaming.

green is only a color,

a perception of the human eye

it casts its airy blanket over anything and
I follow.

I like brown and black and yellow and purple and orange and pink and red as well but

everyone understands green.

I tend to think in colors and not words.

16

some

times

I

have

no

words

15

we drive in squares, in circles,

and even though

we grew up on a dead end

we are spent with nostalgia.

you are my brother and

we share the same blood

and strange quirks and jokes

that seal us off in our own

happy bubble of remembrance.

home is not a place.

to me, it is you.

14

i had forgotten you know

what my fake laugh sounds like.

"it's okay, we have a history"

histories are okay to repeat

it is a historical reenactment of

our former loving days,

i go forth secretly for you

and do not emerge to the

rest of the world for hours.

angry voices are chattering at me

and i know i should care but

it is hard to count minutes

in the absence of time.

13

your friendly body

folded twice over mine,

we enjoy the newness of touch.

basking in the sun of your smile,

for a moment but

it isn't real.

it isn't real.

it isn't real.

12

who are you looking at?

i think your eyes are good at

imagining.

their light is that of a

projection screen

not the sun.

i do not know what you are

delivering me

other than discomfort and

uneasy, hollow laughter.

"i like everything about you."

a bloated silence of questioning.

no one knows everything about me,

but me. and i can say

i do not like it all.

"my feelings for you are really deep"

but only as deep as the floating layer of dead cells

of skin that i scathe off in the shower.

it is not a compliment

to worship a human being as a

shrine of perfection

instead of bowing to the ground with them,

loving the scars on their knees

and the hidden songs beneath the floorboards

as much as the flowers in their eyes.

together, the rotting and the growing,

the putrid and becoming, all at once.

that is a true feat of emotion.

11

i am not meant to open my mouth to you.

first, my saliva disappears.

where my words tend to be

cradled in my mouth with

a thoughtful wetness before

their release, that night

all the liquid was sucked out through my

throat cracks

and i could not speak to you

above a forced whisper.

second, a heinous odor appears.

someone slipped a secret offense into

the dinner salad, raw onions

penetrate my speech, my thoughts afraid

they will repulse anyone with a nose.

you have a nose. i talk to you anyway.

it matters not,

because after all, you

are and have been and will always be

a fabrication of my increasingly bored mind.

there is no magic, this is not

a love story.

this is not a story at all.

"why are you still awake, Lisa?

turn off the light and go to sleep."

I already am asleep.

10

"don't you know

that wretchedness isn't becoming?"

but wretchedness is all you know.

you are the breaking of day,

of bones, you feel the world's strongest hurt

in one moment. you drown in the heat

of your own saline tears,

the world's greatest irony.

it was your own sadness that pinched your flame.

behind...

whoops.

poems to come:

10: wretched ophelia

11: sucked dry, raw onions

12: eternal puppy love

13: palpable dreams

14: mannerisms, a history

15: circles, sameness

9

my vision realized:

I am eight feet tall on your body but

even taller in my mind.

brought to full height with

euphoric blasts of music and light.

the crowd is one organism of flashes and

chaotic movement, moments of unity interspersed.

this is a religion.

but you tall, lean, curly haired boys

(giant hair! a majestic mane)

with immediacy, i am taken by you

and oh you are special,

but no, not for me.

you are the ones i want the most

and the ones i should really never

even try to have.

it only hurts to want you.

it only hurts to see your beauty

to touch it, access it briefly--

before you walk away

8

warm amoebas and the sound of your jazzy voice

set me afloat, and i feel more orgasmic

through my ears

than i usually do in other places.

so slippery sweet, the smiles upon our faces and our

little dancing feet.

my smile is bigger than my face

my spirit expands to the walls

i like twisting your elbow because

i still like you and

i will probably always like you

and i think a tiny part of you still likes me

because you loved making me laugh and

letting me hang on your elbow

and we secretly make eye contact

like wounded deer alone in the woods.

but let's not think about that, it would

ruin our friendship

(but not really since i don't see you around much anymore.)

this poem is really bad.

but

i am really happy right now and

acting drunk when i'm not.

7

we're in my dream and

my subconscious makes a fool of me again,

thick heat and the purple warm mud of

southeast asia (which I have never experienced)

and a large room full of steam

and you. you don't know me

(nor do you in waking life)

but i have studied you time upon time

as you enter the contours of my daydreams.

our eyes do connect and there is

something there, an undeveloped spark,

unrequited something...

will you be like all the others?

a temporal figure then a figment then a dream

a wisp tumbling in the wind,

gone forever, or at least far away.

i sit alone,

and wake up to the burning sun

6

"liminal space [definition]:

a place where boundaries dissolve a little and we stand there, on the threshold,

getting ourselves ready to move across the limits of what we were

into what we are to be.

it represents a period of ambiguity, of marginal and transitional state."

closed eyes,

raised arms,

feeling, feeling, feeling.

5

constructing a construction constricts,

de-constructing constructs constricts

just the same.

4

a scientific investigation of the imagination:

1. question. you cannot go about this world without questioning a thing.

2. research. i do research through my eyes, seeing and feeling.

3. hypothesis. what's the strangest dream you've ever had? pluck it apart and strangle it into an airtight sac.

4. experiment. don't be afraid to punch in the dark. throw the sac down the stairs. watch it hurdle downwards.

5. analysis. jump up and down precisely 147 times, confetti twinkling from your loose fists. what do you think now?

6. report findings. write us a story with your eyelids closed.

7. conclusion. there is no end. there is no end.

i am not objective. i am not a tool, a machine, an instrument.

my results are inconclusive.

3

this poem felt forced. so it goes.. there might be a lot of these this month.

radical means extending to the root.

the most beautiful visions i have are underground,

where life is complex, viciously alive.

i picture you and you and you and me

growing from the roots

where life is complex, viciously alive.

it's difficult to get at the roots

where no one knows anything and no one knows nothing

where life is complex, viciously alive.

you must fight for equality,

at the roots, where equality is only a dream.

somehow no one dominates

and everyone is important.

equality is only a dream,

where life is complex, viciously alive.

(i'd rather feel ferocious than feel nothing at all)

2

barefoot in Minnesota,

I can feel the life through my toes again.

I study structure and chemistry:

everything in a crescendo right before the end.

waking up sweating to the sun.

the stance of a successful slackline.

chemicals with long names I will never understand.

letting myself laze about.

your curly hair. your curly hair.

the chemistry is there.

1

whenever I feel

happy I worry it will

disappear. April Fools'?