it's been a while since I wrote "a day in the life" or even
those little diatribes about the girls I like
but tonight the keys on my keyboard feel shorter, somehow
more eager to go down
and I'm tired
but it's good to write.

I'll start with monday I guess because that's when today started
I don't know how I keep this up and survive, but
I'm pretty sure I've been sleeping three nights a week for
months now.
it's like... haha... a year after polyphasing I need to make up for lost time.
Monday was Dana's parents ("parental") anniversary, it says in
the pink striped box, on the week view, of my calendar
I don't remember getting up but I started the clock at 10am sharp with
"remove sets and 5 easy steps from current"
no, never mind, I remember it now
(I checked my texts)
Damian invited me to breakfast, Tuneup, I said 8:45
he said he'd be there earlier. I got there at 8:30, before him
and sat in the back room. read the cached news items on my iPad. ate
a breakfast burrito with bacon, smothered, green
because I didn't want him to see me eating, again,
a burrito with the chili inside.
but he sat in the other room with… someone I can't remember
(I heard them, grabbed my coffee and switched seats)
he had kids, though. so we talked about kids. and they talked about kids
I don't really care about describing work any more.

Dana's mad at me, now, definitely– if it's 10am on Monday
It may have started last night… I don't know. She's mad because I work all day
and she has off
not that I know what we'd do to celebrate.
I went to Northern New Mexico College… impressed Sandy... Sandy something.
Impressed Damian by impressing Sandy, and as we drive back from Española
I realize that he's somehow grown into a larger part of my life than I thought would happen
and I'm almost wondering now if
when we leave from here
Dana will be enough to fill it.

It had snowed over the weekend, the mountains above Santa Fe were red with blood and the
valley spread out beneath us was white like… "white people", and it was (I think, should have been)
dark by the time I got home.

Dana had cleaned everything… and she never cleans everything, but she was so mad
and I was mad. hell. I was mad. because I don't want to be this person either
I mean, of course I do
can we ever be anyone, but who we want to be?
but more than this person I wanted to be somebody who suffers, and suffers for something good
and I knew that I could righteously suffer for this trip and for Damian and not have to suffer
for whatever person I might be afraid of becoming.

So when I told her I was going to work all night, she was even more upset and then we were
leaving for her christmas party but I realized that I have no interest in Starbucks or
the people she works with and she had no interest in me right then so I told her I would stay and
I guess at least she only texted me three or four times furiously.

and I… worked. I could tell you how. but I don't care.
and she came home. mad.
but Jones and Katy came over later, it was my idea
and I tried to install my new electronic sensor gadget while they three
sat on the bed and read poetry
(Katy and Jones had broken up earlier that day)

and after they left… at maybe three, Dana was being nicer to me
and I held her some, and we made out, but I
worked
but maybe, this time, it was a little more ok.

I went to breakfast, again
went to Patricia's, felt sad.
Came home, again. drove Dana to work, again.
Checked Ryan's mail box to see if I'd missed our delivery.
spent an hour and a half on Skype with Jeff, Connor listened...
I want to say admiringly

and then we took more adderall and started writing code and things got
a little fadey for a few hours, but I was ok because I am always ok and Connor
is really good at this, really– I mean. Connor is really good. and I want him to be happy.
and to try and tell him this I bought him burgers at five star (in Devargas, where we saw Todd)
and offered to give him my car.
we dropped off Katy's phone at Connor's house and came back here, took more drugs and tried to write but
it's getting over our heads now, and I'm feeling soft and strange
but soon Dana is off work and she seems, even, happy now
as we drive to Ben Sobol's birthday, where I gave him a book
and allowed myself to entertain, for a few minutes, the thought that Ryan might come to Lima. but we had to
come home

because I know I might be tired by now, know I was once before.

and tomorrow there is so much to do.

but sleep wouldn't come and I started writing my thoughts out, about instagram and privacy
and, to Damian, about whether compiling .less was worth it in the long run
and, thinking, who will argue with me like this when santa fe is done?
and then Dana and I had *** and now is the part where I sleep so hard it hurts but I keep thinking and it feels nice instead.
and so it's four am now, and I write.

and write. caught up on time.

still trying to catch my breath, from the ***– I've had a whole pack of cigarettes today, haha, maybe I'm
suffering myself to death
but mostly it doesn't even hurt, I just can't breathe, and my heart races to break free of my chest
(to go where it will be better kept).

so I wrote this because I looked down at my feet on the berber carpet lit by the rope light under our bed and I was afraid
that I might never again know what it was like to look down at something like that,
soft, orange, warm. home.
and with Dana, falling asleep to my left.


we leave for lima two weeks from today.
I told Ryan last night that it's because it's too easy here, because everything's been done
but it's a cruel thing to say… I think… when no one has it easy here, nobody has what they want
in fact it seems like almost everyone, not just here, spends most of life trying to get this
while we see our satisfaction only as an imperative to throw it away.
but.
hey. I guess I said I'd
like to die a poet
and now it's looking that way.

and I guess the reason I keep standing outside, the reason I texted Rachel from Danny's porch is that I've always
left every place with a plan to come back to
all those Rachel's fire escapes.
but I've never yet looked back, and certainly never gone home.
so the question, as I see it now is:
am I always going forward because I've always been running away?
or is it just impossible to go back to where you came?

because I am happy here. and this, for the first time, does not feel like an escape
so I'm scared it will turn out like one anyway.

Dana:

Comes like breath, feeling the distance of
a heart you want, far away and fast asleep.
Pinpricks on light sleeping skin:
a restless stir and then forgotten.

This, a confident prison sonnet, made under
a bed in a black trash bag. Not a sonnet
a poet would construct, but sonnet-like enough
to leave you drunk.



Before last week I’d lose teeth in almost every dream:
Sometimes a front tooth would inexplicably fall away,
requiring expensive surgery:
Synthesizing a piece of plastic
into what was, once, entirely my own face.

Another: opening my mouth to introduce myself,
at some sort of business meeting. Teeth where they should be.
Then unable to speak as hundreds swelled, sprouted, fell
from factory-gums.
Trying to excuse myself to well-clad faceless men,
Blurred doll heads turned to the hostile hole in my face,
Flat planes of skin somehow emanating disgust and shame,
as yellowed little mouth bones spewed endlessly into the room,
and endlessly were replaced.


Months of these dreams built a muscle memory (that
life-affirming twitch we all have when we wake).
Alert suddenly in a cloud of cold sweat,
mouth open with hands clutching my face:
confirming tooth by tooth that each were in place.

I’m told we’re born with a visceral fear
of breaking something we can’t regrow.
She’s been here a week, and I no longer dream of teeth.
But I wake up just the same: wet and cold,
though my mouth is closed,
still reaching mindlessly for something to hold.



Remembering real change and knowing your voice:


That hearts care hard.


But can shift from heavy to sweet, and do so gently,
And do so while asleep.



Dana:

A song to leave a thousand suns trembling.



Dana:

Fingertips finally finding means.
Boys congregate, grow dense in your shadow:
always the odd. We, the tasteful insane:
who burn from both ends, so death
might spare us witness to the horrible
torture of slow decomposition, while
broken and weak we watch everyone we’ve
ever loved and all that was once good
grow colourless and succumb to the same slow decay,
until at last we crawl defeated into the grave.

We are selfish: we who want to never know.
We who want to be the first to go.


Dana:

But your soft wet dreams left a taste that tied
nights to dawn. A single bruise. Window left open.
Someone clearly gone, yet careless with evidence.
In the bathroom, a faint honeysuckle scent.
Too sore, too tired, to comprehend what complex animal
could outdo and subdue, fiercely clawing, and teeth,
then leave such lingering sweetness when it went.


(In the kitchen there was a new vase,
in it a red chansonette: still curled into itself
in the cold of the pre-dawn house.
But as you approached, the rising sun touched
a gap between fence and garden gate,
and light reaching the flower,
like a lover, she stretched her arms to meet the day,
refracting the bright Santa Fe sun,
filling the whole room with the most delicate
red glow.

And then the light was gone. The sun had climbed.

The next morning you raced downstairs but
the angle had changed, no light came through the gate.
It stayed closed, and soon after died.


Chansonette, the flower of faith.


A brilliant and cruel animal,
astronomer and botanist, master of optics,
violent with hands delicate as flower petals.


Chansonette, the flower of faith.


A year later you put a new flower in the old vase,
a pencil mark indicating the exact place.
Started the coffee ***, daylight broke.

And in it came.


Dana:

I want your futures to be maddeningly
beautiful and terrifying like a wild animal
ready to want to destroy you.



Dana:

I’ve never seen you make breakfast.
But who am I to say you never make breakfast alone?

Then an unexpected sadness. Probably from lack of sleep.
And then a tear.
And then tearing a poster from the wall
For a concert missed three weeks ago.


God woke and made the flower.
The flower cannot wake and play god.


Dana:

So strong, finding you lying weak,
longing for anything to fall into place.
Hit by supposed fear, then lust, and
life ****** from impossible lungs.

Born with legs, made to run.
To say.
To breathe.
To cut.
To take the time to count out
each unit of my spine.
To reach, and failing sink
into the slippery brass circles
of the self,
until the hundred metal lines are dry
and the hundred birds, so welcome, lift you back on high.


Dana:

In focus: a bass-relief. Pale. Coppery.
Found in the British Museum, or similar mausoleum.
Miles of roads running beneath.
Goodbye sentences that may be pretended.
Always I, grasping at a shudder: choking
tremors into quieter worries.
Until later.
Until I can grasp the right point on the spine,
the right vertebrae,
pressing it and the human frame that comes attached
deep into beds always-washed.

Bound now.
Dirt and clothes and everything fake no longer speaking.


Dana:

A woman with a plan. Running steady stairs.
Wondering how to measure the ache that comes with longing.
Waiting awake, probably loved.
When once given sadness: dried the wide and beating
insignificant sayings, pencilling each
into small red notebooks.
Then silencing the sounds from every hurtful word:
out of the air and onto the page, transformed
into the arbitrary scratches of penlines we call words.

Into the fire with them:
to the fire with regrets.
With the ashes
spring a whole field of Chansonettes


Every line ends in silence.

Beg.
Build, especially.
Fill great books with great words.
Burn the rest.
In seas of ash, don’t swim: float.

There is a hunger you can’t forget:
it lives in the throat.