Moving Cities

I took a train only once. That is when I first noticed my glimmer for sights beyond me. A part of me, I've witnessed, is a hopeless and aimless nomad. That is something I cannot help. The train took me the farthest up the coast I'd been at the time. Being in one place for such an extended period of time, I forget that people exist elsewhere. These people fight with their families. They budget and struggle. They get drunk, too. They frequent their favorite spots when they feel unlike themselves. They are existing right under my nose. I want to be like them. I want to frequent all new places, so that they, too, can become familiar after some time. I want to be a part of something grand. Something that shakes the Earth. I could just sing. I may have a blind faith of self. That is good, I think. Even when I fail, I can always say the effort was there. It was. It is. There is no saying in where I will be. I just need to jump in the pool. I don't need to know how cold the water is. How deep it is. How long I can hold my breath. This will break my heart. It will mend it, too. 

Make Bets

today i felt so real. my week has been lopsided. sketch for summer by the durutti column is playing. i am miles away. possibilities unimaginable seem tangible. there may have been something falling down from the clouds today. some feeling of truth and wonder. i met this girl today. her name was zoey. she was wearing this turquoise ring and her hair was poked in every direction. first, i noticed her sweet ride; had a great feeling soon after. she told me her plans for the day: a trip up the coast. i wished her and her friends, who would be accompanying her, the safest travels. she asked my name and wished me a beautiful life. i gave her the prayer mudra. we parted. i thought of her the remainder of the day. these microscopic gifts exist every day. god, they are directly in front of me. they aren't always blatant and mystical like zoey but that doesn't mean they don't exist. tuning in more. attempting to. keep secrets. read the paper. smoke a cigar every few years, only alongside an older man. find your viewpoints, solidify them. look yourself in the eyes when in the mirror. smile to your reflection. believe in absurdism. believe in yourself. now THAT is absurd! always give the kids outside the grocery store some cash. do take walks when it doesn't make sense. take time getting out of bed in the morning. watch your coffee brew. you can eat in silence. drop out. perfect the adequate grip of a handshake. sing mantras to yourself in the shower. buy huge bars of soap. eat dark chocolate. remind everyone that they are special in some way. never let the people in your life forget that you love that they are there. don't assume everyone will stay. life is hard work. find the pleasure in the cracks of it. admire animals, especially swans. make bets. believe you will win. really fully listen when people are telling you a story. ask questions after. do all that you can to love who you are. an apple seed should accept it will be an apple tree. it knows there is no point in wanting to be a grape vine. take time. spend it. be in it. exist outside of it. feel no shame. delete desires. 

Do I still linger here?

my womanhood has been a series of industrial-strength growing pains and embarrassingly loud imprudence. not to mention: the ever-present, always multiplying love only I have come to know. love varies for everyone. i think myself layered when we come to this subject. none would go as far to say that i am complicated in love. i love everything. i love three a.m. like i love jam and white bread. i love shoes on my feet like i love my feet shoeless. i love women like i love silk curtains. i love the ocean and mountains just the same. i have love and i've got goodness. a reminder to myself is necessary, at times.

when this song plays, i know exactly who i am. i know the effect i've got on everything in a twenty-four mile radius. i'm in the city. i'm in the city. i hate capitalizing my sentences so i don't. lately, i have noticed that i relate nearly anything i can to the cosmic order of the universe. the steps appear sorted out in front of my eyes. if i leave this stone here on the ground, and if i kiss it and whisper the utmost blessings upon whomsoever happens to find it, if and when the stone is stumbled upon, without whomsoever being aware of the blessings bestowed upon said stone, they will be blessed. it is my cosmic will. the will that i leave behind. my greatest wish is that my existence is perfumed and that it may permeate everything it touches. i've got to leave the scent of love to just dowse this place. my cosmic footprint. my eternal grass in the sunshine. the weeds grow like crazy. love is untamed and it is something i want to instill into myself. that notion of boundlessness. 

i like sleeping alone in my big bed at night. i like waking up alone. i like taking walks by myself, especially on the edge of the sea. i like eating alone. i used to always eat alone. every morning. my entire first year of college. each day, rise early, bring your music, sit alone, have your ritual. there is a chance i was able to face that incredibly fogged era in my life because i at least had a breakfast to myself every morning. 

Retired

There are times when I have to steadily, and like an ambivalent mother, walk myself home to the fact that I am a good person. At my core, I believe I am. I falter like everyone, and follies have paved my way here but deep down, I know I have bright eyes for life. I know how to dance to whatever happens to play. If only I could be more decisive. I want to scream at my own face in the mirror when I find it impossible to have a stance on where we go to eat shitty food tonight. That is really what just irks me about myself. It isn't like I don't hold any preferences. I have preferences, a surplus, at times. I just need everyone's desires to be met. At the cost of my own? 

Spring will say hello in the following weeks. I'll go see one of my favorite bands play. 

Normally I am very careful with my money but lately I just want to experience things. 

I am certainly not getting younger. Been feeling like such a retired lady. I should only ever retire to meditate and even then, I see myself older at that point. 

My room is smoking, and I wonder, how much longer will this be my room?

I want to leave this town, but I don't.

Truthfully, this is not a place I loathe like everyone else does. 

It is small and it is simple. It has every necessity. It has provided me with sunsets God cries over.

What if I did hard drugs

I just want to be the lead singer in a band

Backyard Cry

 i sobbed today the ugly sob you only do alone the cars from the other side of the road looked away they saw the ugly too i laid in bed a few hours later and sobbed again there was more in my system to purge then i thought it best to smoke my last cigarette from the pack i bought for myself on my birthday when i bought that pack i promised it would be the only pack i'd buy smoking is very bad for you my favorite song by johnny cash came on the one i used to sob to in high school he talks about how sundays make a body feel alone, wishing lord that i was stoned and i decided to have my last few puffs to his little lonely song because i felt alone in my feelings i looked up at the night sky a sky that is seldom starless and tonight god was it blank up there so i sat and smoked and no tears were coming out that made me sadder i felt stuck one little star in the sky i saw just one and i gazed at it took a drag and the edge of my cigarette sparked bright and sickeningly orange the single star twinkled there was an intimate moment there between that star and my cigarette and i and the loneliness fled i sobbed again something out there in the galaxy was speaking to me saying you on that bench you must be freezing don't worry it'll pass you just have to go to bed a little earlier you have to eat citrus and call your brother every now and then even when he doesn't call you back you just have to tell people how you feel a lot of the time they understand so long as you say it you and i are no different in fact we are exactly the same that star even knew the lyrics to the johnny cash song i felt ease i felt like i could crawl back into bed with some sense of peace knowing something much bigger could see that i'm mourning some things in my life i want my innocence back how do you find it when it leaves you then i looked so hard and long at that star i noticed it was moving away the star was a plane and i found it in me to cry some more not every day will be so solemn and isolated i'm always learning something these days sometimes you find new reasons to cry i used to not cry at all it is the best feeling when you can and i can and i can and i can 

An offering is not always beautiful

at some point I got so sick and worn thin from aching I started offering it up to my bedroom ceiling 

at some point I became so frustrated with the unknowing that I had to start burying my hurt in the soil

there is heaviness to any lesson I have learned and to all the upcoming ones

but with the pain from which I grow, there can be a direction and ultimately, I choose where these feelings go

I have space in my heart for many other things, even at its swollen size

and I'm unsure of who exactly told me I have to store all of that in there

but surely, they lied.

I give that pain up. Whenever I feel it rise. When my throat burns, I offer it to the heavens. I give of myself because there is no room for it. What is healing but being an alchemist and transforming your broken parts into relics you can hold with care? 

Bruised knee in the love scene

I love my dad 

I don't know who he is 

but I have caught these glimpses of him recently

He has a lot of pride, sometimes to his own undoing, but mostly in an honorable sense. 

Concerning himself with the outside world is not his first inclination, I feel like he even could be seen as hermit-esque. Maybe that rubbed off on me. I used to judge him so quickly. Like lighting a match, no opportunity to pause and look in the doors of anger and what can be guarded behind them.

And when I miss him now, I like to think of this one time. We were driving down a long mountain road in his new car. Everyone in the car lightly chatted about the day and the weather and the things people say to fill silence and all of that. A Death Cab for Cutie song came on. I Will Possess Your Heart. The conversation naturally trailed off and we continued passing ancient trees. I looked out the windows. God, how much I love this song. God, it reminds me of my dad. God, it might always be some metaphysical tie between him and myself. That tie can live in my heart forever. Peace can be immortal I am starting to find. 

I felt a foreign comfort in that. In the deathly long intro to the song. A small joy in how we all quietly sang the song to ourselves. A family not close enough to perform the song all together but singing it in our own ways all in one space. I felt love. Feels nice to write about that. I wonder if he knows that was special to me. He doesn't have to. 

I Intend to Butter my Bread

This is the color of my ache. This is what it looks like inside every channel I've got. This itch is especially tiresome. I can feel it as potent as a poison but with every dose there exists a chance of a cure. 

Everlasting gamble

Despite all odds, I take that bet nearly every chance I get. And did I mention how worn out I have gotten? How hope is distant and even my memories are starting to flee. They are being carried far away from me. It is the future me doing the heavy lifting and I will sing again. 

 Decay

I will do as I always do. I will say prayers. I will get up every day, even after those dreams that I get. Alchemically, I'll turn all these ashes into some relic. There is no spark in me to ask the stars to grant me just one word to you. Even the planets are averting their eyes. Let it die, they digress.

Cosmic facade 

All things boil down to a choice and I am choosing to up and quit. Quit you like I smoked my last pack. Quit you like a hangover the following morning. Quit you like an ache in the pit of your stomach after all those immediate delights. Refusal to wager any ounce of happiness I feel. 

Debut 

The thought of you, redundant. It is turbulent work to build you in a light that makes it make sense. All of this, nonsense. I kiss your essence and send it away, at great lengths. I intend to butter my bread tomorrow morning. Taking it slow, as I do. I do as I please. It's all for me now. 

I have an indiscriminate sympathy for absolutely everything. 

in life there is no winning, only being. only breathing. only noticing and pushing forward. 

my shoulders bruised from the sheer heaviness of this era, and it appears true 

True that I have carried this all and chosen to do so.

There is no 'sharing the load' in my mind, for reasons unknown.

I no longer yearn for what everybody else has. It could be a sign that I am coming into my own. Let it be a sign, God. Say it out loud. You are feeling the ebbs and flows with an even mightier tide now. It is like that song you used to sing, making your bed up all pearled and tidy, those summer dawns. 

Gotta pay some agony if we wanna have ecstasy