Alexander (the innocent)

You are wrinkling your nose, wringing tears from your eyes; I am not your mother. You object (momentarily only) as I scoop you up as if it were my right. But my hip juts out, my arms can easily hold you, and in a breath or two you find your peace in the familiar slope of breasts. After that you do not care who I am, or that the orange crayon is broken.

It hardly seems worth bathing anymore. I go to the lake and sweat under the sun, at the pool I sweat and come home smelling of chlorine and not sweat at all, worse. I sleep and sweat as I fight with the sheets or if I take a pill because I am too out to even pull back the covers. I go to the coffeehouse and sweat out all but the caffeine. The sun turns me pink and red, my relief comes in blue goo aloe, without it I feel like my skin will all just flake away leaving my organs on the pavement, and revealing that my nose--cute with freckles--is really quite odd. And even all that aloe can't seem to heal the little places were the bugs got me and now blood seeps out because I forget in my sleep not to itch and there are so many more interesting things to do in the day than remember to cut my nails. My hair is getting longer, as if it was not already unruly. I want to go peach fuzz but I'm afraid of fretting little Alexander when I return one week without hair. I put all my paintings up in my room to mock me--with Picasso's eyes--into words. I've been writing again finally but I'm not sure if I love them or hate them. And I'm not sure if you would love or hate them, call them merely pretty, as if it that meant they were not other things as well. ....is coming and Fluffy is fretting over a gathering. But fretting as she loves to. She knows if I let her I will let the day slip by unmentioned and unmarked. She asks what kind of food, and what people, etc. and I shrug at her. If someone will play pool with me, and Smack & Fluffy will smile, and Gale will spin tunes... even that all seems so sweet. Others are coming she said and I used to hide from them, I still don't know why. Fluffy assuming I was just being stoic does not know I still forget how to speak. But what do I care of them now? They are good people, I have nothing to fear of them, no more than ever. How do you run away from fear? If I stop moving it swallows me whole. Not that I'm afraid right now, but only because I'm not letting myself be anything at all. It's really not so hard.

too late to wish I guess. I'm trying to stay busy enough to be fine, to not think. Everyone is running from their thoughts. She said, 'he's here, for a week.' I need a reason to not go Tuesday. I need to go Tuesday; I need to go unafraid. There's nothing left to hurt me in this town but ghosts and if I yell loud enough they will (should) scatter in the wind off the ocean and be washed away by the misting rain. His name is bile rising in my throat and it tastes like death on my tongue. tomorrow is my day with innocence. I'm afraid the silence will crack me open and I felt so strong four hours ago, I could even take life back from the water four hours ago. My body was stronger than the cold and my mind knew every step without flaw and there was never the falling feeling of impending failure. I watched a movie with Fluffy tonight. The husband fucked his wife as if she was just a void he was filling and the look on her face said that she knew it. It made me want to hurl more than all the blood, besides the end...

Family you choose for yourself

I went with her back to the site of her first rebellions to practice our latest. We'd been so good lately. I pulled smoke into me: at 3000 miles I can't even touch him, let alone keep him inside my ribs. He, the green guardian gardener, up turned the earth sifting out weed roots. The soil took a breath before I gave the most I could ocean-flavored rain at the painful release of being loosened little by little and one day at a time. The loosening felt like the apocalypse, of me, of us. I pounded fists against walls of silence, fighting myself for the right to even whisper, let alone yell. She reminded me of myself, of us: we two cared for the rest, never minded rainy days. Our tears were part of our heartbeat even when silence was in demand We always met demands. There was comfort on the drops, falling against the windshield, playing our song; all of them. I save my small well-formed quiet truths for them. The moments of voice too sure of having me pegged implies foregone conclusion wholly separate from me. They are worth breaking through anew.

pleading with a machine

"fierce flawless" -Ani Difranco she was cuffed to the truth like the truth was a chair bright interrogation light in her eyes her conscience lit a cigarette and just stood there waiting for her to crack waiting for her to cry his face scampered through her mind like a roach across a wall it made her heart soar it made her skin crawl they said, we got this confession we just need for you to sign why don't you just cooperate and make this easier on us all there was light and then there was darkness but there was no line in between and asking her heart for guidance was like pleading with a machine cuz joy, it has its own justice and dreams are languid and lawless and everything bows to beauty when it is fierce and when it is flawless on the table were two ziploc baggies containing her eyes and her smile they said, we're keeping these as evidence 'til this thing goes to trial meanwhile anguish was fingering solace in another room down the hall both were love's accomplices but solace took the fall now look at her book of days it's the same on every page and she's got a little tin cup with her heart in it to bang along the bars of her rib cage bang along the bars of her rib cage ... a few nights ago I finally understood why the woman I'm pretending to be said she tends to leave the lights on all the time so she won't come home to a dark house and why she keeps a mentally challenged golden retriever, two cats, and half a dozen chickens, so she'll never be alone. I wake up alone in the morning to a dog that wants to go play outside and chickens that need feeding. Get up and take care of them because it's easier than listening to the silence and stretching across a bed thats empty except for me (and sometimes a hooligan kitten). Read through the morning and afternoon, not quite able to lose myself, making meals and even setting the table this once even though I'm not hungry and don't care, just to make note of the fact that time is passing as if paying this homage will make it continue to pass. The shadows start to lengthen and I make the dog's bowl of food: dry and wet food, pills, and then float the lot in water. The wet food is real meat and the smell and look of it nearly makes me gag. Someone at work says hello to me. I reply. It is the first time I've spoken all day. ... I went to my old highschool the other day. My twenty-something friend, Erin, is still there. Trying to make a bunch of stupid teenagers give a damn about words. It's the sort of thing that it breaks my heart to watch. It will break her in a few years if she sticks with it. She tells me she's looking into a job at an alternative highschool in Rhode Island. She sounds excited about it the way she used to talking about classes a year--maybe two years--ago. Her daughter will be nine on my nineteenth birthday and I promise to visit RI on her behalf when I go back east. I'd love to get her and her daughter (and sure her husband, why not, though I've only met him once) out of this town. Her daughter is what I was when I was nine, down to the crooked teeth, huge bifocals, and uneven pigtails. She'll come to hate this town just as much as I do if she stays, maybe more. My hatred grows as I read the papers. They're putting in a Walmart and sooner or later a strip mall. I'd like to see the highschool, at least, burn to the ground.

WHAT TYPE OF WILD CREATURE ARE YOU? (New Pictures!)
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"Anyday" -Ani Difranco

"i will lean into you and you can be the wind i will open up my mouth and you can come rushing in you can rush in so hard and make it so i can't breathe i breathe too much anyway i can do that anyday" [I don't mind at all. I tend to hold my breath any way.] "i just wish i knew who you were i wish you'd make yourself known probably you don't know i'm her the woman you want to call home i'll keep my ear to the wall i'll keep my eye on the door 'cause i've heard all my own jokes and they're just not funny anymore i laugh too much anyway i can do that anyday" [I'm trying to know and I think you do. I'm listening closely... But I'll tell them all again anyway to imagine you might crack a smile.] "have you ever been bent or pulled have you ever been played like strings if i could see you i could strum you i could break you make you sing but i guess you can't really see the wind it just comes in and fills the space and everytime something moves you think that you have seen its face and i've always got my guitar to play but i can do that anyday" [Nay, none moves you against your will. It would be unlike you. If I move you it is that you're seeking the meaning that I tend to leave between the lines, maybe you find things I never knew I was hiding, but it's only different to me.]

renouncing allegiance to the threats: I owe them nothing. "I can live your life and dream of wires or I can live my life among the angels and electricity" -Eddi Reader, "Prayer Wheel" not all roses are meant for me to tend and if not then I don't need to stand for their thorns. "but if you'd never come here you'd never have had to leave" -Eddi Reader, "Postcard" there is no reason I need to or should stay to bear their marks. so I won't.