Had a dream that most of my teeth fell out, took the roots with them. Lotta blood and I am tonguing the holes they left behind. Feels tender like a new burn. In my dream they fell out but now I am not dreaming and they are still not there and I am not dreaming but my teeth are not there.

Self Portrait

We're starting to try to fall asleep again. The groggy, depressed sinkhole, no bottom in sight. They promised today would be different, but it is not, so everyone's bailing. Headed for a bigger and better lighting system.
you check your watch.
you look outside again.
no change.
We're still here, though. Got our dime bags and knee pads...ready for a brawl.
We'll take 'em on with dirt blind eyes and long-winded whispers. Take them down hard, pound their faces into the grass until they see it: they can only go deeper.
you'd be fine with a smaller part.
you'd like to try one where you listen a lot like a mother.
the animal and the small man watch the sun go down in shifts. sometimes together, though.
we crawl out through any cardboard boxes we can find, lying on the side of the road.
rolling down washington stop hill in circular trashmade items.
bring it back, bring it back, bring it back.
i got your backs.

The first picture is from around 2005 when we first moved out here, and the second is from just last week. i think it's pretty sad. My friend went into the gas station this time and said the woman was working and there was a picture of her husband hanging on the wall behind her.

I coughed on her wishy-washy ideals while trying not to stare directly at her as our steps separated us from the herd. It was a field trip that we shared little interest in, and yet nevertheless were excited about. I guess, when push comes to shove the whole relationship was kind of like that as well. It was the anticipation of finding a seat on the back of the bus, followed by the occasional bump along the road that kept us alive enough to deal when we were seventeen. Our eventual arrival at the museum as well as anywhere else was meant to be disappointing, and yet I was content to be let down more often than I thought possible.
I think I was this way simply because she could always handle herself better when we were forced into some highly awkward or falsely educational situation. In class our notes would be cryptic, hers full of penetrating sketches of landlocked lovers and fornicating mutants after the freefall. I held onto every single one as if they were invitations into her subconscious, and yet now as I occasionally open the folder appropriately labeled 2001 not many feelings wash over me other than disgust.
I try to think about how I could possibly be the person so young and naive and in love with a girl that sketched out her insecurities on lined college-ruled notebook paper. The questions of whether or not I was in love at all then seems to come into focus as I'm taken back to the maroon carpets and bone structures behind thick portions of glass smudged by chocolate covered fingers. The young and impressionable are claiming that they understand why one portion of rock is connected to another, and how they all worked together in perfect and utterly doomed harmony once.
I remember how her hand felt in mine, as we ditched our chaperones and searched for the luxuries that the stars and space had to offer. We named our own constellations and eventually searched the sparkles of each other's retinas for a return to the earth's atmosphere. The ride home was a hand job and a shared nap. I was seventeen once, and now it's like I'm watching everything on display, waiting in line with the rest of the assholes holding overpriced souvenirs.

all organic means to me is what's stripped of bullshit. of ego. in music or other places.
and at least i wasn't paralyzed. celebrate!
with fireworks.
and when i was standing next to him i told him he was a dad.
then i told him he was the best dad.
but he's not my father.
then that rock island landscape changed..got scattered. and it was like dying.
i think.
made my funny bone bleed today when i was in the shower.
didn't know it was bleedin till i got out.
and now it just hurts.

fuc.fuck. fuck! fuck. fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck! i did this. this pattern, repeat walking down the sidewalk in the sun and somewhat cold today. because. because. we tried to teach them about cause and effect and one girl couldn't grasp it.
tried to tell her teacher but she said "yeah she can't grasp anything."
grasp it, fucking grasp it! listen! learn!
oh
oh
oh christ. oh my. oh me. oh god.

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ohhh oh ohohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

it's over. it's something new.

My fingers go bloody to the brim,
and leave behind crusted cavities from skin gone bad.
That bird shitting on me
wasnt good luck.
I've grown plump from the things I tried to lose,
and my bones have become fragile from lack of attention and love.
Everything goes bad when you bite it long enough.

From "We have too many words."

Damn bugs and their biting. Walking on the same line I'm towing and dusting my tracks as I make them. I swear, cause when I stood and spun in circles, you were right behind me with a hand and an arm.
And I laughed, while you watched me fall. And you laughed, and you spoke of what you saw. I laughed harder for the reality of it, and thank God for the reality of it, where is what is something I don't even know. Know in the sense of felt or heard or saw.
I bet you do. (Believe in God) Or shall you suprise us? When I saw your face, I saw you on a beach, I swear, where you had short hair and tan skin (maybe reddish) and your head was facing down, but you were looking up with eyes that push myself into myself, into my spine, so it's just bones and tiny senseless explosions within them.

I saw you on a beach, in a swimsuit, looking down but looking up, eyes bright. You saw me, sitting indian style swinging my belongings around. I dropped nothing, but you picked everything up.

I Am The Waiting Game

It all burned out faster than we thought possible. The tiny bulbs in the street lights and on front porches were the first to go. Then the larger self-indulgent ones in out-dated film projectors and those softly hidden behind television screens. By the time our block was mystically darkened by an unexplainable wave of square-grid failure, there was no choice but to accept the inevitable. We would need to unwrap the commemorative candles from their cellophane and hope that the wicks hadn't softened and become routinely flimsy with time.
We could only pray that they would hold onto some ancient charm more than other momentous afterthoughts had in the past. We had forgotten what love looked like even when the cartoon hearts and cloudy cupid wings were deliberately etched around our heads in some kind of double-sided panoramic animation cell. The flip side never quite offered up enough perspective even when it was blank and lacking definition; identical to our outlined faces in the somber living room. We had all decided to sit impatiently on our cold-forming and licensed-for-comfort furniture, smoking the last few violent puffs of our cigarettes and wondering if anyone was working hard on some kind of inevitable solution.
Reactions were subdued; an expected mixture of disgust, intrigue, and tender boredom that had started drifting out of our inaudible mouths with each chest-filled breath. The electric heat was a convenience that not one of us took for granted, even on sporadic and out-of-tune days like that one. The bill was astronomically disappointing, each and every month, without any stifled or lowered costs, even when the sun did manage to surprise us.
I had recently stopped looking and waiting for its blinding presence over the hills, knowing full well that if the two of us were given the proper amount of time to know one another, the act of sustaining my happiness would be quickly crossed off of the list. People had come first. Friends and family (if you could call them that,) book definitions getting slightly twisted when forcibly held up to a mirror. Steam marks never formed around their expressions, but rather I abruptly discovered that I was living in a manufactured society of ghosts, all of which hoped they wouldn't notice everyone else's transparent faults.
And so I quickly darted towards those that I could use or who I couldn't help but be used by. Shared and free-forming addictions that helped sustain me until finally the classifieds offered up a lopsided solution that meant I wouldn't really have to worry about the disappointment of conversation anymore. They were all blind and deaf except me, cold but unable to express such feelings of bitter frost, every single one knowing that the other wasn't listening.
They hadn't noticed that the lights had burned out, or the unexpected murder of mostly everyone's vitality the moment they realized that this temporary inconvenience could very well be a permanent stain on all of our overcoats. I didn't say anything out loud, though, or bother to move or stir in my spot the second the couch stopped receiving a thermal boost of warmth from the encased heating vent.
Instead, I merely bit my tongue in the dead bolted living room and wondered if the new blond nurse would arrive at the same time the following morning, with promises of dry lands and rounded corners. I wasn't sure if she knew the truth about me yet, and was simply keeping her mouth shut to avoid dramatic shifts in her daily routine. Part of me hoped she did know, and was just biting her lips just as I was refraining from any deliberate crucifixions, both obtusely aware of the fact that who we are and pretend to be in the places we occupy usually is directly dependent on how much we can legitimately ignore.
She was doing a stand-up job, and I almost felt inclined to tell her about such a well-received performance, but instead I huddled my knees to my chest in the growing shiver and figured that the weather was supposed to be much brighter the following morning.

About a year ago.

At the Fountain With the Turtles in It

They’re swimming up spitting water at me
With a profundity never found in the hapless
Circumstance of being a boisterous mind in a fragile shell.
They do not know, care, that the television set flickered
Spry visages of their mutated kin all through my formative years
While my brain was shaped, getting swollen with pain, knowledge of the facts
Like on Sunday night you’re really sad because Monday is next
And you’ll soon be in the brown bricked school and your socks will be wet.

To the turtles swimmin’, spittin’;
Thanks for forgiving even if my brother hasn’t
For my forgetting at age ten to latch the makeshift pen
When he found one of you mashed by a speeding car,
He built it in the corner of the unkempt back yard
Where grasshoppers spat tobacco from down so low.

And maybe I don’t want to see them (turtles) again
Because you got the girl you loved one at the ramshackle carnival
After inching to clasp her hand in the spinning spaceship
And stopping time because you thought that there you two couldn’t die
But I won't make you cheap like that

Even though now they say I look like you
With my hair falling out and my skin hanging off
I won’t make you cheap like that, little turtles
Because you know not what you do you just do
And leave us hanging (spitting) like the dogs we should play with instead

Keep swimming, spitting.

Free write

The drums are slow. The bass is slow. The guitar is... is striking. It sounds like a sun tan. Sounds like like long hair and golden colors from a sun 40 years younger than she is now. Stay with me. Stay with me baby, it cries, she cries. Are we young forever? Does the wind whip forever like it does today or the way it did yesterday and the day before? Why do we cut our hair? Why do we shape it, mold it? It hurts to get out of the chair. Her hips ache from years and years of movement, of work, of play. She remembers the way her hips would ache in the younger sun. On her way to class. He would bring her vegetables from his mother's garden so she could eat for the week. She laughed then, and she still laughs now, when she thinks of the time she switched sides on the bed. He didn't know, he was suprised and had to jump farther so he wouldn't land on top of her. He flew across that queen sized bed straight into the wall. He didn't feel it then. He feels the ache now, he has to roll off the couch and get up from the carpet.

The sun is set. They've spent hours alone, one upstairs and one downstairs. She didn't think how the music moved her then. She was busy at the time. Now, though, now it is a relic. It is a reminder. Are we young forever?

She creeps into bed, onto the sheets she thought were green, but in the light shine gold. She turns off the light and rolls to her side. He comes to bed a bit later, and finds her on her side. The positions haven't changed for 37 years. He aches, and he isn't suprised.

I keep myself from falling into knotted parts and try to grip what my hands can wrap around. I fix my bed before sleep often, and then I raise my hand to god in the middle of night. Like I praise something.
I trip into cavernous ruins, or daily run-ins, if you will. I do some calling, with fingers like whistles, to things I know exist somewhere. We start to write what we think we know. Extend that into talk like we mean something.
The only things we share are talk and write. No one sees knots anymore. We're all too careful.

unconversations

boy: you edit life so wonderfully (to another girl)
girl: no revisions. ever.
boy: no. you need them.
girl: you think? why?
boy: incase what you said isn't what you really wanted to say.
girl: but part of you might have wanted to. and who knows when it will peek it's head out again. could be years.
boy: i guess it's all balance.
girl: or the need to be balanced.



girl feeling unbalanced and okay with that(to you and to herself but not to boy): i guess i will always be too much for him.

"our philip seymour hoffman."

oh shut up.

crawlin. just crawlin.

Found two girls on the hill. One in a bright yellow dress--the other in a beige dress with flowers at the bottom, like they had just fallen there. They had a camera, so I started taking pictures of them. Made them touch knees and hold strenuous poses. They loved it. Got bored with them. Sat on an old tree stump. A part of one of my molars fell off and rested on my tongue. Spit it out. No blood. Put it in my pocket. There were birds and dogs chasing them. The sun was too big (not bright) to look at. An old woman ate bread slices out of the bag. I think it was the kind with all the nuts in it, but I can't be too sure.

Green grass, then structures, then smog, then chemical dust. I'm at the bottom as far as I can see. And you, well, you're across the lawn cause I said something that made you not want to sit next to me. And am I the only one who saw the hawk above the trees? It seems it's this way too often. And I am tired. The boys are using metal bats to hit their balls. And the trash just sits on the ground while the robins graze in only one spot, all together. They must trust eachother. I draw a line from my index finger to my only scar and you are watching and you are wanting, but too big inside to walk all the way over here to ask me why. I would not have an answer for you.
"So what's the point?" you'd ask, like you always do. And I'd tell you, "I don't know," like I always do. And then we'd stare, and then we'd turn to look at anything other than eachother.

Some pix from TDC08 party...

this is a demo and i don't know if you'll like it now but you will later

here you go

It was the night after he had gotten too drunk and dreamt that she said "I'm in love with you" in the old mall food court while carrying a Styrofoam plate full of cheap Chinese. He then recalled seeing his own expression as if the dream was a film reel with static undertones. Jonathan smiled largely, his eyes going wide; the act of his heart instantly sinking, visible even to the the naked eye as both showed their teeth and sat down for further discussion.
Of course, that mall had been torn down years before and replaced with a freshly-painted building for professionals dead-set on overcharging their clients. Furthermore, Beth hated Chinese food and would not so much as crack a fortune cookie open for some kind of throwaway prediction of ambiguously-defined future events. She preferred salads full of hard to pronounce vegetables or not eating at all. Nevertheless, Jonathan couldn't help but think of the childlike expression on his face in the dream; its subtle contour throwing him off balance as if such an expected occurrence instantly cured all of his complimentary ills.
The way his face looked that night as he dressed appropriately for a prom-like theme was distilled. Jonathan was halfway between awake and asleep, stoned and of sound mind. His mouth was closed, able to smirk only when his eyes would shut and the same invading images would pound away at his insides. He was at the round table with Beth, pleased before the anticipation of sex and lazy Saturday afternoons managed to filter into the background, and yet even the well-defined version of Jonathan in widescreen was still fearful of waking up and realizing it had all passed by.
He cracked his neck, straightened the white checkered tie, downed the four remaining shots in the fifth of generic rum, before locking the only exit to his apartment and lighting his first real cigarette of the night. The sidewalks were starting to clump with lines of trashy elementary education majors wearing tight, form-fitting outfits purchased out of spite for their mothers. Mumbling cavemen with crucifix key chains stood behind them, sharing the functions of new technology with their fellow fire-seekers.
Jonathan passed them all by, leaving a trail of smoke behind him as questions of substance and genre filled his descending brain. He had checked the webpage of guests who had bothered to RSVP, a standard sense of fear and intrigue washing over Jonathan; swinging barroom doors soon changing into cluttered front porches as the make-up of the town shifted with each step. He felt sorry for and envious of the shut-ins with their lights off and blinds closed, knowing that his lack of will power to shun an invitation was as much of a plague on Jonathan's well-being as the dream. He had no control over all of his eternal struggles, such a habitual standard to pick themes and types of beer, weighing down on Jonathan as he entered the scene without knocking and started to search for her.
Beth was hula-hooping in the backyard, swaying her hips back and forth to poorly chosen reggae as a parade of guests lounged in their formal wear. The majority of the men were enthralled with her circular motions; the lime green dress flowing in a pattern that even the fabric was taken aback by. Jonathan found his limbs frozen stiff at the sight, Beth's grin like his from the dream: full and involved. He wondered if she was actually happy or just fucked up, before the hoop fell and subdued cheers filled the air. She laughed with her chest, picking up the half-full blue plastic cup from the ground and placing herself back into the mix.
Jonathan was the first to offer her a cigarette; Beth obliging him with the open spot next to her on the poorly-crafted picnic bench. Both sparked the white stick blowing their breaths towards the wind before she shot up with the vitality of a recently-hatched bluebird.
"So I almost forgot... I had this dream about you last night, Jonathan." She said, enthusiastically.
He couldn't fashion a reply until his next puff. The lingering joy of possibilities was crippling.

Thanks for having fun with my kids













































































Even if the fun was on you.

There was a thunderstorm and you were keeping the windows open
in the attic.
That was once, one of the times.
There was another where you said, "no, keep it loud and low and slow"
That was two.
And there was then, when you said to leave it on the floor, and it was fine to do so.

Pop songs on the radio, with you driving during summer.
We were down with down.

Sex was almost too simple, it scared me.
We knew we were only bodies and we were just complying and the
place where the shame
usually goes was filled with something new.

You know that I don't know
how it got to be like this for me.

No, I'm not a hard worker,
wasn't a good student,
No, I was nothin at the time
but sometimes things just fall if you let 'em
like sitting under apple trees by yourself on a nice day,
not doing much of anything.

outtakes/in progress