Julia Lane: Favorites

Sep 2013 Julia Lane

William Butler Yeats

Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.

Sep 2013 Julia Lane

Concrete Walls

Sep 2013 Julia Lane

The New Kestrel

Concrete Walls

Different...*
That's all I can say.

I can only wish it gets better
And that these concrete walls
Are, somehow, torn down.

Sep 2013 Julia Lane

The Statistical Probability of Being Struck By Lightning

Sep 2013 Julia Lane

Mikaila

The Statistical Probability of Being Struck By Lightning

I'm pretty sure I dreamed you up
Late last night while I was walking in the rain.
I probably shouldn't tell you
That nobody's ever been
Proud
To hold my hand
In front of anyone else.
It probably shouldn't mean something to me
That your fingers felt natural laced with mine.
Everybody has hands,
Everybody can touch me.
Ah,
But few people can touch me
And make me feel it.
I could go on about your voice,
The way you stumble and trip over your words
That tugs at my heart in this deliciously painful way:
I want to stop your confusion
With a kiss.
I could talk about your eyes,
Sparkling, sparking a connection like a short circuit in my head
That makes me have to stop and re-collect myself.
With a ring of dark around the edges of the iris
That I read somewhere makes somebody more beautiful,
Scientifically.
It didn't feel scientific.
It felt gravitational.
I could say lots about the way your hair
Never falls the same way,
And dances, reaching, in the breeze
And somehow the image makes your eyes glow more.
But your hands...
Contact is a thing for me, you see.
Skin.
(Yours.)
I love contact, and it's because
No words get in the way of what you want to say.
If you feel and wish, you need nothing more than a brushing of fingertips
To say exactly what you mean to.
I think you heard me, all night.
I was saying everything
I wasn't saying.
You kept drifting back to me, your fingers on my knee
Or resting in my palm,
And I think that's really what did it,
Honestly.
What made me decide I don't care if this is a terrible idea
(oh it surely is)
I know I should probably make a better show of it-
A token attempt, really, to be smart.
But then again, when
Does that ever work out?
And your fingers twined with mine...
I think you carry some kind of low level electric charge,
And it sizzled through me every time your hand touched mine.
I thought of breaking the connection a hundred times,
Easier for you,
Easier for me,
But god, how impossible.
I held the thought in my mind and it hurt me to consider.
And so instead I pulled you a little closer
And kept going.
Outside walking in the rain early this morning,
When the streets were paved in silver and gold from the sheen of the water
That caught and held the soft glow of the streetlamps
I thought,
"Well ****, this is going to keep me up nights, isn't it?"
And it began immediately
To pour.

Sep 2013 Julia Lane

hurt hurts

Sep 2013 Julia Lane

Ting-Jun

hurt hurts

I haven't hurt myself lately
but that's okay
there's enough of that
where you come from

Sep 2013 Julia Lane

I have a thing for

Sep 2013 Julia Lane

samasati

I have a thing for

sail boats
and oceans

and really anything that floats and carries a person

far away
in a big body of water

I don’t think I have to say why

it’s obvious

I’m sure everyone has a thing for sail boats
and oceans

I like busses too
I seem to get really impatient on them, and I like that a lot
because I know I can’t do anything about it

it’s a game of
Will I Go Crazy Or Will I Have A Snooze?

I like being stuck between being stuck and being unstuck

one day I want to sit on a bus for 24 hours and see what happens
(I will be doing a lot of that in the month of October)

I’ll bring books, my iPod and movies to watch on my laptop
but I’ll probably just stare out the window hours on end
tall buildings will turn into blurry trees and blurry trees
will turn into pixilated neon canola crops
and there’ll be cows and ponies and one long road

to Montreal
then Toronto

then who the **** knows where because I am already dreading
going home after the trip
even though I haven’t left for the trip yet

it’s months to come

I have a thing for finding a new home
everywhere I go

but I never find one

I like the process of looking for a really long time
then giving up from discouragement and sad feelings of
abandonment stemmed from my childhood daddy issues

I’m pretty sure everyone has daddy-abandonment issues

I have a thing for assuming every one has the same problems
that I do

but it turns out that there are loads of girls that like to eat
lots
and don’t feel ashamed of the extra scoop of
double fudge ice cream

and there are teenagers that get along with their fathers
and look up to them
they go out for lunches and joke about dates and fix cars
and tell their little girls they’ll always be their little girls
and go on awkward shopping sprees and barbecue

but everyone has a thing for sail boats and water
we all want to escape

our eating disorder and drinking problem
a skinny body or a bulky body
bad grades and perfectionism
the people pleasing pushovers
fathers and mothers and old european traditions
family dinners that go perfectly and are so boring because of it

the fragility of feeling unique
the arrogance of feeling unique
the lack of faith in ourselves

being alone

Sep 2013 Julia Lane

bête noire

Sep 2013 Julia Lane

samasati

bête noire

there is cotton in my mouth.
my fingers become tweezers, plucking, yanking, culling;
but there is still cotton in my mouth.

it reminds me of the time the spooky man from the shadows called me sugar
and then called me over like I was a cheap doxy.
avoiding him was obvious, but then dodging him became obvious and
the moment I felt ***** hands brush my left hip,
I knew I wasn’t safe anymore.

there was cotton in my mouth.
fragile like a pretty doe with a wounded hind leg,
I could not scream or attack; for there was jelly in my bones too.

but tonight, there is cotton in my mouth, again,
for different reasons; though, the same.
fear.
and while there is no bête noire with a knife
clutching onto my left hip, calling me sugar;
there is this certain bête noire I had neglected,
to discover radiant lights dancing above
and rich, resplendent tickles and tingles coming through my heartbeats.

I found a black spot; a hole or tear; rip in the curtain; stain on the carpet.
a darkness, a moon gone missing; a reversion to autopilot; comatose, asleep.

there is cotton in my mouth and my fingers still
cull the plush barrier; but it grows like a monster
and I have nothing more to say anyway.

Sep 2013 Julia Lane

I think you could be great

Sep 2013 Julia Lane

samasati

I think you could be great

I think
you could be great
with cinnamon and sparkles in your heart
I’ve always thought that
of you
like I’ve always thought
dresses are comfier than jeans
and the moon watches me
when I can’t sleep.
I think you could be great;
you’ve already got
the big heart
and the “I fall hard” innocence
and passion sits well like a cushion
in every corner and chasm
and artery and vein;
it’s just your head and your hands
that are too busy and afraid
to sit still.
Your hands are hectic; fussy
and your head is too unavailable,
occupied with thoughts of
loneliness underneath starlight
and bitterness and romance,
or who you should love and how much you love
and do you really love yourself
or are you just so used to lying, you’ve forgotten
how to
truly
find comfort in being alone.
I think
you could be great
but you want too much
and don’t give yourself enough and you think
you’ll lose yourself
in love
because you’ve only seen yourself real
in someone else
and that’s always a constant whiplash
between being a great idea
and being a haunting one;
if they leave, it feels like part of your identity is gone
and we can’t have that now, can we.
I think you could be
so great
but you love outwardly before you love inwardly
almost always;
and though you’ve held damp soil
in your palms
your hands, crafty and clever as they are,
are too empty and broken
to know how to nurture a seed.
I think you could be great
I think you could be
so so
great
but your art’s not real
because you won’t allow your heart to feel.