I assured myself again that I was completely alone. Gingerly, I sat on the corner of her popcorn-and-perfume-scented bed and allow my tingling fingers to reach out and open that sacred journal again to page one. I never really understood it but maybe if I read it one more time. “Things I Wish I Never Knew:

1. People are selfish almost always.

2. Shaking hands does matter. ******.

3. Wine hangovers are miserable.

4. Puppies **** behind things ‘cause they feel guilty; you wont find it until it smells.

5. Friends really do come and go.

6. Neti Pots absolutely **** and bring you nosebleeds NOT relief.

7. Attraction and love are different. REMEMBER THIS ABOVE ALL.

8. Joy is clicking add to dictionary in Microsoft word.

9. If you can make it through Taco Bell kisses, morning breath will be a breeze.

10. Be jovial, it’s a choice and a side effect of living in daily adventure.

11. Make sure that your family knows…” I pause because I think I hear footsteps padding up the fourteen red-carpeted steps to her bedroom. I know I can’t move, the old wood floor in this crumbling house will definitely creak and give me away, so I just sit on the edge of the bed at full attention.

        “…No, ma’am, everything’s basically back to normal again, we’re getting the locks changed on Saturday. I’ll tell her you send your love.” The footsteps and voice were at the top of the stairs and I saw a shadow fall across the dusty floor in front of the white wooden door. I know it’s my neighbor Annie because she lives here. We grew up together. “Yes, ma’am, I love you too. I’ll try to make her call you soon. Bye.” Her phone beeped to signal the end of the conversation followed by a loud sigh. I peered from the bed into the hall and saw her sitting on the floor. Annie is a pretty girl. All the girls who live here are. We used to go to school together until my grades got too bad and I started my special school. We used to play in her front yard with her sister, Kelly. One time I kissed Kelly, but we were only seven. She is my only kiss. They both leave for most of the year now to go to college but come home for Christmas break. I will never go to college, but that’s ok.

        I felt my pants vibrating and the theme song to the TV show Who Wants to be a Millionaire was somehow blaring from somewhere around my crotch. Before I could silence it, the shadow at the door became a tangible whirlwind of brown hair, sharp screams, and clawing grabbing fingers as she tried to wrench the ratty Moleskin journal from my fingers.

        “******, Cyril, I thought I heard someone in here. You give it back and get out of this house. You can’t, like, break into other people houses like this. This is just not what normal people do. Can’t your father control you?” At this point we’re both standing in the middle of the bedroom. I’m confused so I just dangle the journal in the air above her grasp. “It’s not yours and you know that. I know you at least understand that, right? Right, Cyril? What the hell would you do if Kelly had been showering or changing. Oh my god, ew, do NOT answer that.”

        “Ow,” I yelp as she scratches at my forearm to retrieve the precious journal. “Your claws are sharp, Annie, I have more scratches from you than I do Jimmy-cat and Jimmy-cat is mean, mean but fluffy… and he purrs but you don’t purr. Is that because you don’t like me?” I lower my arm and Annie snatches the Moleskine out of my fumbling fingers, avoiding eye contact at all costs. I hate it when people do that. I notice it, but they don’t think I do.

            “Cyril, get out.” Her right hand is now securely around the Moleskine and the other is shaking, pointed towards the doorway. “Now.”

            This is always the worst part. I walk out of Kelly’s forbidden bedroom: head hung as I creak down the fourteen red, carpeted stairs and make my way to the front door. It’s always quiet and I don’t like the quiet so whenever it’s quiet I count. I am good at counting. …Twelve, thirteen, fourteen…silence.

        I turn to her, “Annie, I’m sorry…”

            “Out.” She opens the front door and points me to my apartment, directly across the street. Its autumn now and the leaves and cold rustle down the street and I crouch deeper into my black coat as I step outside.

            “So maybe I’ll come over tomorrow?” I turn as I start down the steps, hopeful to have conjured up a smile from Annie, but all I see is the flash of brunette hair disappearing behind another thick, white wooden door.

            “Get off our property before I call the cops, you creep!”

            That’s what I’ve always been to these pretty girls: a creep. I don’t really understand what the word means, but I’m pretty sure from the way they say it that it’s not nice. Pops always tells me that I’m different because it’s better to be different. I don’t understand why Annie and Kelly don’t think it’s better that I’m different too.

            I decide to walk to Captain D’s and tell Earl hi because it’s Friday and that’s what I do on Fridays. Earl owns Captain D’s and has forever. Earl is my friend. Earl and Jimmy-cat at Captain D’s that I feed my left over fish are my friends. At least I think they are. I named the cat Jimmy-cat because Pops says mom used to listen to a man named Jimmy Buffett before she left us. I don’t remember those days.

            I turn the corner knowing Captain D’s is just 560 steps ahead and that to get back home I go 910 steps back and I’ll be at my front door. Counting is one thing I am good at; even the tests they used to make me take at the doctor’s office said so. I am good at numbers. Seven is my favorite number.

            I walk into Captain D’s and, like normal, its just Earl inside. He makes me two Fish-Filet sandwiches and we go stand outside. We usually don’t talk much, but I like that . I sit on the crunchy curb, put on my hood because the wind and leaves have made my ears sting. I unwrap the greasy paper on my first sandwich and Earl pulls out his red Marbolo’s and sits beside me lighting up his first cigarette.

            “Why do you smoke, Earl?” I ask him every Friday and he always responds the same way.

            “Eh. Why do the fish swim Cyril? Why do the Eagles and Crows fly? You know we don’t know why Women like shoes so much.”

I never really understand what he means but it makes me giggle and before we know it we’re both laughing. I’m pretty sure this is what friendship is. I lick the wrapper to get all the tarter sauce off and start on my second sandwich. Earl starts his second cigarette.

            “Where’s that alley cat you got trained up, boy? Go get ‘em and I’ll cook him his own fish patty.”

            He means Jimmy-cat. I wipe my fingers on my jeans, tear off a piece of the damp fish from my sandwich, and walk towards white picket fence that Earl built around the dumpster where Jimmy-cat lives. Jimmy-cat has a good life; he can eat anything in the green dumpster he wants and he is safe behind the big white fence. I don’t like the smell but maybe cats like eating and smelling the furry tarter sauce that clings on the sides of the dumpster. As I pull the lever to open Jimmy Cat’s home, I think it smells even worse than normal. After jiggling the latch a while, it clicks, and I swing the door open to Jimmy-cat’s house. It definitely smells worse. I step up one step and crunch on leaves and squish cold fries as I circle the dumpster. “Jimmy-Jimmy-Jimmy-cat, where-oh-where-oh-where ya at?” I stop as I enter the back right corner, I see Jimmy-cat but I don’t understand what is happening. I don’t understand what is wrong. He is covered in ketchup, maybe? But if that’s true what are the little white thingssss crawling around his stomach and why are they covered in ketchup and mayonnaise too? He is mewling and I’m scared. I smell fish. Fish and furry tarter sauce, one, two, three, four, my feet are crunching on the cold fries and leaves again, I know I’m at the door without even turning around.

            “Boy, what you doin’ in there?”

            “Earl?” …One…two… “Earl, can you help me? Earl, I, I don’t understand. I don’t like it.” …Three…four…five… “Jimmy-cat needs a bath, Earl, and something is eating his stomach.” …Six…seven…silence. Earl’s hand fells like a dead fish on my shoulder as he walks me back up to Jimmy-cats home.

            “Stay here, Cyril. Just gimme’a sec to see what’s happening.” Earl disappears into the leaves and fries and fur.

            eight…nine…ten

eleven…twelve…

            thi­rteen…

fourteen…

            silence.





            “Boy? Come back here now. C’mon.” Earl’s voice echoed around the green corners and I followed. One…two…three…four…five…six…seven I stand above Earl and I know the ketchup and mayonnaise and Jimmy-cat eating monsters are just on the other side of his crouched over body.

            “Well don’t be shy, come look.” Earl stands and I see his work apron covered in the ketchup and mayonnaise but beyond that in a bed of Fish-filet wrappers is Jimmy-cat and all the stomach eating monsters mewling at his stomach, as I get close I think they look kinda like little Jimmy-cats. I push my hood off my head as I lean over closer and that’s when it hit me, “Kittens! Jimmy-cat had kittens, Earl!”

            “I think Jimmy-cat may be more of a Jasmine-cat or Jennifer-cat.”

            I laid down the piece of fish I brought and Jimmy-Cat looks up into my eyes and I swear he was happy to see me.  I looked up at Earl and he was happy to see me too. I sat down in the mess of wrappers and fries and mold and laughed and laughed and laughed.

a mini moleskine notebook lays in the
pocket of my bright yellow raincoat
binoculars in hand, I seek out your face
amidst the crashing tundra waves.
you call out my name just as the fog
horn blows, I stop to smile, and continue
to watch the goldfinches zoom out of
sight into the grey vast sea of everlasting
winter solemnity.

I think about the days that should have come
as puffins nestle in cozy branches hiding
away from the bitter cold, as you and me
are left outside, bare.
skipping rocks has become such a bore
if I am not able to do it with you.
the touch of your delicate lips as
we swooned in the moonlight to
french jazz and the fishing knots that
would come undone no matter how many
times we tried to go ashore in that rusty
old boat, both dressed as sailors.

I’m content here in solitude away from the
ambiguous world, in our own making,
hidden from reality.
in our own frost-ridden snow globe,
if you must. lost in time, stepping
to our transient melody.

Come here.
Let’s.
Let’s?
Let’s…
Let’s.

Come here.
Listen to Edith Piaf
(So hipster, n'est-ce pas?)
and the scratch of her
voice on the turntable,
will be ours
to keep in Moleskine
notebooks of memory.
So that we’ll try to believe,
love is actually a thing.
Let’s.

Come here.
This quaint room will be
ours,
our guest, as we breathe life
into the coffee cups, wooden chairs.
We’ll give it a nose, yes.
Lightbulbs will smell red
wine in fingerprinted glasses.
Windows will drink
us,
to us.
And we’ll laugh, our faces
hot and sad, mouths
crammed with French
fries.
A scene blurred with happiness.
Let’s.

Come here.
Trash the hands of every
boy, who’s spread himself
out on marginalia of our days.
Slathered himself on pieces
of time we wish we had hugged to ourselves.
Hate, hate, hate
him, we’ll say.
And his **** hands.
Let’s.

Come here.
Our eyes will be fireflies
behind our glasses,
in this cinema’s night, as we ‘swoon’
at rom-coms as buttery
as the popcorn we bought in the interval.
Life’s too short, we say.
Eat about it, drink about it,
maybe even talk about it.
Forget about it.
Let’s.

Come here.
Talk, about nothing.
We’ll all be dead one day.
Let’s.

Come here.
We can be friends.
Let’s.

Let’s.
Let’s.
Let’s?


(And your giggle will end
all and every verse written.
I’m **** sure of it.)

I’m sitting on a fume couch with ashtray
legs, counting the khaki strands
in the beaded curtain that dices
the hallway up into barcodes. The table
by the fridge is a cable spool lead-
painted to match the molding. Around
it is a mesh-back lawn chair, a SoCal
fold-out from a SoHo dumpster,
a spill-trayless booster seat,
and a bottle cap barstool. Everyone’s
wearing second-hand sport coats
with seam stitches as loose as telephone
wires tacked up with undersized lapel
pins.

**** Capitalism. **** Disco.
Bathe Avant-Garde. Eat Paint.
Bleed *******. Smoke Local.
Espresso, Or Genocide.
Dresden Was A Lie.
Shrink-Wrap It All.

Everyone is clustered around the cinder-
block stand record player, grooving
to the pops, looking like a rag-tag tide
change beneath the broken-oar ceiling
fan. Everyone’s wearing ironic scarves
tight like corporate ties to keep their throats
from popping ten-cent parasols, loose tobacco,
and *******. Amid their rubber flower talk,
I can pick out San Pelicano, someone critiquing
Keats’ “Politics,” and a rant regarding some
guy downtown’s stab at post-contemporary
Pointillism in some gallery I’ve never heard of.

They’re flipping between topics like a Moleskine notebook
while I skim through a copy of the Onion,
teasing the edges with a lighter I found on the floor.

I never really notice the color of people's eyes but
I can tell you that the way you hold a pen makes me think
the words twisting inside of you
are streaming and surging and sharp;
a deafening waterfall I can't chase.
They're throwing themselves into the dips of your eyelashes and demanding to be set on fire-
they're screaming to be loaded into a barrel,
cocked and aimed at the crosshairs of your moleskine-
You're hunting wild words for the thrill of the ****.

I don’t remember your license plate
so each passing pick-up,
(cobalt, clean, too high to just step in) sends me reeling.
As winter fades, the memory of rushing heat
that struck bare shoulders and spider-scurried
in deep, mascara-laced blinks from your passengers seat vent
to the base of my spine replays sweetly-lonely,
it echoes tightly-comforting.

I tread sensory smiles because spring can't get here fast enough.
My boots are always drying.
My thoughts are always climbing.
I'm craving a day that has shriveled up
and blown away; giddy on these too-tough
March ghosts and gales-
being tangled in it feels almost safe to me now.
In a certain moonlight rejection resembles refuge.
No border tries to contain me;
I burned my passport.
I'm growing out my hair.

These light-and-sweet iced coffee, round-tummy, solid-thigh days
find me a galaxy away from the springy, sinewy nights of us-
the nights when I didn't slouch
and I had hands worth holding.
My shoulders aren't the smooth golden brown;
(shea-butter-softened, an amber, wrinkled velvet

that demanded your caress, 
that confused my heritage,)
they were when you were driving me places-

They're thicker now;
thick and full and that yellowy,
greenish kind of pale that pulls drum-tight over dewy purple veins.
Veins that weave and sprout in every direction;
that bottle Mediterranean blood across leaky night lectures
and fevered weekends.
An arrangement of flesh that smiles the picture of pretty health
and tired vigor with a vineyard tan;
but limps sickly sallow when dodging the sun.

I'm flipping through notebooks and turning out
coat pockets. I'm looking for any little bit
of my autumn daydream to slip out
and remind me that it was so much better
inside my head. The receipts have faded
and we didn't take enough pictures-
fingers clutch my memory’s b-roll negatives,
the soundtrack a roughly translated laughter
in a knotted, almost-vocabulary.

My hands are full of crumpled words
and the small, neon lighters
that I liked to buy and forget about
at midnight October gas stations.
There are words hiding in other places too-
words I've strung up
like Christmas lights and dubbed poetry,
the frozen solid words you held
which I begged for but could never extract,
and the noble, solid words you offered me
like a fireman's blanket while we both sat upright and facing forward
from opposite ends of the same couch.
The words that detailed, in no uncertain terms,
all the ways in which I was not enough.

I think, if I ever fall again,
I will let the dressed-up details
coarse through my veins first.
The descriptions, the elaborations,
the tacky garnishes-
they can bloom in my memory void of language.
I'll let the tiny bits that do nothing for me
perch on my sternum,
then, sweet as a mockingbird,
call out, sing to and mirror back the lives
and centuries and twisted roots
of migration and exploration within me.
My birth certificate is lying-
I've been biting my nails and humming
across six thousand years.

I'm still learning;
now I know the shade of your eyes,
the make of your car,
the cds in your glovebox;
they're fine details I can shoulder
through the winter and won't imitate
bullets the way words seem to
when it's time to hibernate inside my skull.

Maybe by next spring
I'll shake off the novels my thoughts
are dripping with and writhing on the floorboards in reaction to.
Maybe by next spring
I won't wake to find my finger on the trigger
of a loaded paperback gun,
its howling muzzle aimed toward the sky.

Tonight, my bed is uninviting, and the moon too bright.
I get down on my knees; I send you
a prayer:

I hope you still find strands of my hair
clinging to your sheets, collected in the dryer’s lint trap,
strewn at the back of your dresser drawers.
Despite the figures of my absence-- in lunar cycles and miles--
I sometimes linger in that humming interlude before sleep,
picturing you twisting in those wrinkled sheets,
flipping the pillow only to uncover my lingering scent.

The full moon is glaring; You,
like myself, must be restless
at this witching hour, stringing
words together, our thread-count tripling
as the stars blink out. But,
close that tired moleskine eulogy. Tuck
it in some ill-attended corner of your
room along with the remaining,
waning remnants of me,

and sleep.

Le Troquet le Méribel à Croix-Daurade

(Chronique des années de Blues et de fièvres)

C'était un bar de Croix-Daurade,
Dans les années soixante-dix,
Placé sur la route d'Albi,
Près du Lycée Raymond-Naves
Qui lui donnait sa clientèle
De jeunes gens émerveillés
De découvrir leur liberté
**** des regards de leurs parents
Ce bar était dans l’air du temps,
Des banquettes de moleskine
Un jukebox passant les tubes
De ces «golden seventies»
dont les jeunesses s’étaient saisies
Pour jeter les bases d’un Monde
Qui puisse leur ressembler un peu
Les chansons étaient leurs bannières :
Parfois «Let It Be» des Beatles, parfois
«My Sweet Lord» de Georges Harrison
Quelque fois, l'harmonica de Dylan
Évoquant Monsieur «Tambourine Man»,
Et bien d'autres que j’ai oubliées.
Nous buvions le plus souvent
Des petits noirs sans soif ni fin,
Parfois quelques bières pour les garçons
Des diabolos menthe pour les filles.
Nos conversations infinies,
S'enflammaient d'esquisses de flirt,
Et nous étions tous fascinés,
par leurs regards pareil à des aimants,
Leurs les longs cheveux dénoués,
et leurs yeux emplis de lumière.
Les filles nous semblaient belles et douces
Et nous n'osions pas assez le leur dire.
Mais leur présence charmante
Piquaient notre fièvre de «Tchatcher»
Lorsqu'il y eu la grève au lycée,
Suite aux blessures infligées
au normalien, Richard Deshayes
Le café devint un vrai QG,
Où nous préparions nos expéditions,
Des militants vinrent recruter,
Et nous initièrent aux querelles
Qui n'avaient rien à envier
A celles des Byzantins assiégés.
Il y avait le bel Alfredo,
Et des étudiants qui faisaient
Tourner la tête aux Lycéennes .
C’étaient comme l’écrivit Louis Aragon :
«Des temps déraisonnables»
Mais c’était une époque de fantaisie
Ou le demain se conjuguait
Au rythme de notre insolence
Et d’une soif de vivre sans pareil.

Paul Arrighi

I wonder why everything I write on paper is so depressing
And why my mind picks random lines from poetry to recite over and over like quiet prayers (is this my religion? words and stories?)
Why red ink tastes like sin (no that's too cliche) like seduction?
Why the cover of this moleskine is so soft and forgiving (I swear just for me) the sigh into a trusted friend's shoulder
I can't cry any more so I'll sing badly but fervently songs that help soothe the gnawing ache inside
Cherish the few people who make me feel full and whole (Banish the phantom pains for limbs or extensions of me I've lost)  
I'll exhale poems to ravel up the bad feelings
It's a struggle or maybe just a war that I just don't want to lose any more

We are small men, both of us,
For all our these won’t happen dreams
That we write down in Moleskine notebooks
Bought in last year’s sales at bottom dollar,
Both of us in ‘high performance’ coats with waterproof taped seams
And hoods that fold away inside the collar,
Both in don’t quite fit me supermarket jeans that don’t improve our looks.
But both of us are poets, each in our own way,
Though neither of us, really, has very much to say.
We are small men, both of us,
But both of us are poets, each in our own way.

I am a therapist

But

I wanted to be an artist


Clay under my fingernails, in my curls, drying on my skin.
Filling up my moleskine
Occupying my thoughts, my dreams,
each moment of every day




Now.....

Now, I listen to people's pain, their sorrow, their hurt.

5 years of grad school, fancy acronyms at the end of my name, they can call me doctor...some do. some insist. perhaps it makes them feel like I am more than just an imperfect human like they are.

My clients come to me with their pain, I see them, I hear them, I try, I try so hard to soothe them, make them feel worthy, make them feel good enough. make them feel loved. deserving of love.

Some days, being a psychologist provides so much meaning to my life, other days...other days I cry and punish myself for not pursuing art.

Why didn't I do it?
Why was I so scared?
Why did I let the **** talking from my parents and the judgements of my family keep me from doing what I loved?

WHY.



Hey, you want to know how to make me cry instantaneously?
               Ask me about what I gave up to be where I am today.


        what I lost for the acronyms,
        what I lost for the title,
        what I lost for the salary,
        what I lost so my mom could tell people her daughter was a
                            "doctor" (not a real one even still)

Ask me what I lost.

Ask me how I lay awake at night, stare off into space, doing math in my mind, thinking, wondering, planning out how to grow my practice to make enough to rent a studio space, buy a kiln, and make art once again.

Ask me why I got a doctorate in psychology so all I could think about was how to make art again.


Ask me.
I dare you.


My own therapist just did and my make up smeared.
I think sobbed is the technical term.

Or perhaps, I just let all the feelings and sadness bleed out of me. every now and again they do

every now and again I let down my defenses, remove the distractions, and find the time to really think and reflect on what I lost.
what I gave up to allow myself to make money off of listening to people.
I allow myself to be used and profit from it.


JUST like my family uses me and takes up far too much space.

I provide care to others because it's my job, but it's also what I've always known how to do, what I was taught to do.

Taking care of others is ******* exhausting.
I love my job.
I hate my job.


Ya know what?

I never hated art.
I never did.
Art never took from me.
Clay never used me and spit me out or told me things like "I'm not getting anything from you" like my clients have told me.

clay Doesn't take.
clay only gave.
ceramics only ever gave.

WHY the **** did I not allow myself to take?
WHY did I create a life for myself where I am continuously giving and people are continuously taking?

I am so ******* empty and so ******* tired.

I just want to make art.

all i ever wanted was to make art.

draw me out of your moleskine,
I'll come alive that way.
I can be the one you want,
if not then on the pages I will stay.

you can dress me how you like,
just make sure you use pen.
you see, there's nothing worse
than uncertainty in men.

The Moleskine™© is Chinese now, has been for years
And anyway Hemingway would probably type
Into his electronic personal device:
“Jose was dead. So was his fitness watch.”

Still

There’s rhythm in a pen as in a key
One flows, the other taps, syllables dance
Your thoughts into an opera of life
Performed in a theatre of silent stars

The Moleskine is in your hands now, will be for years
So choreograph your thoughts onto that page