Email Correspondence

Always down thinking never or doing full like not when trying the plane flies, do you ignore see it closed following hiding from the annihilation sound, the weak shadow or lose it’s shape everything?

From: Collin
very strange. neither sentence makes much sense and combine they say nothing clearly.

From: Anne
Isn't that weird?

From: Collin
what did you intend with that weird sentence?

From: Anne
I thought we were just pontificating. When I went rollerblading earlier that day, I watched a plane fly past and thought about perception and reality and how I could define the plane and its position in my reality in many ways, such as, I could use the sound to locate it, or I could look down at the shadow the plane threw against the ground, or I could also look up and see the plane against the backdrop of sky. Each of these are clues as to the reality of the plane and all of them existed in that moment, but each revealed something different about my experience of the plane. And then I thought about negative words, and negative thoughts, and how my use of them affects my perception of reality and so I wove negative words into the other words and then struck them out. I guess what I am constantly trying to change is my own attitude in my life that feeds my perception and my experiences. I know that I am the conduit of my reality yet I constantly take a passive stance in controlling the valve.

From: Collin
wow. the thing about the presence of the obscured words is that it took effort not to try and read and incorporate them into the sentence. they definitely had emotional impact, though. makes me think that to much time with those thoughts will taint even the most confident mind. come to think of it this might be an interesting study of content and affect...

From: Anne
exactly. I don't want to be 50 years old and look back on my life with the perspective of a fifty year old and say to myself, my life wasn't that bad. I just continually tainted it with my negativity. I guess what I'm realizing is that I want to enjoy my life. I want to be happy. I want to be fulfilled. After coming back from India, I realized that all of these pressures I put on myself are so ARTIFICIAL! Why? Why do I put up with these unrealistic expectations - some measurement of happiness and success that is on a time line I am constantly revising anyway? And I get stuck because I'm in this same rut picking at the open wound of my ego because it feels better to think I'm a failure and feeling sorry for myself then thinking that I actually control my situation and my life to a certain extent, because that's a fucking scary thought.

Quick Time

Four Folds on her skirt
Four Pleats that she holds under her hand
She outlines the rough bits with her finger
tracing a seam of crooked piping
while she chastises herself about her inertia

but she doesn't move.
Instead
She thinks about this morning
which like all the others
holds a quiet promise of verisimilitude
which reminds her of a nervous tick she can't help

So she switches gears and thinks about yesterday
and a call she received
Something he said evokes a mild feeling of disappointment
she touches the folds in her dress again

Finally, with a sigh, she stands
and treads along the wooden floor in her bare feet
To the closet
where she crisply sorts through wooden hangers
that have glided across the span of this space
too many countless times

something unforgiving
buzzes behind her eyes
And she stops to gaze at a wrinkle on her hand she's never seen
before
She is immobile
Frozen in her thought
she imagines herself as a Polaroid
a square image out of focus
flat and poorly taken

till she notices
the silence that surrounds her
It seems as if
something has shifted, but glancing around
Eveything is exactly
as it always was

what was it, she was trying to recall?
Something in his eyes, voice
The way he looked at her
But he's not the one she was thinking about
And the memory of him seems worn and faded
Just as the voice yesterday was a rerun
watched too many times

And looking down at the folds of her skirt again
the thought finally seeps into her mind
but like all thoughts she turns it over
and finds no absolution in it's birth

So she sits down on the bed again
still half dressed
and folds her thoughts around her.

Fern Ghazal

Moments arranged from drive thru memories
As I look down and among the ferns

I lived once as asphalt kissed the tender soles of my feet
Gladness like glass was lifted from me, down and among the ferns.

Swollen noises float above my head as I strain
Like folded hands, betrayed in webbing that runs down and among the ferns.

Shed from me, shredded paper, bits of confetti
they come from close by, down and among the ferns

Tendrils of water find no resistance
Gushing down and among the ferns

A flutter of my eyes, and the small black bruises turn green
What is crushed down and among the ferns?

It reaches a pungent silence, curled up and dotted
Unmarked, it begins again down and among the ferns.

Chaos and order

Religion mixed with Starbucks
There
a journey down a lonely road
is overshadowed by a vast heaven reaching into obscurity
While angels linger along the wayside

The earmarks of a daily life
Fragmented, crumpled and layered
Those pinpoints of light from your window
Dance without movement
Forming shapes that fade
As night crawls across the room

You’ve picked up articles
Set them to your tasks
Seeded notes and stockpiled
And it seems as if the walls shed too

The heat sweeps by her feet in waves so fast,
it catches the movement at the edge of her eyes

Over her, sprint the shadows of invisible geckos
Tracking wind storms through her imagination
Leaving wispy trails of effervescence like sweat 
against the outside of a glass door

Around another watery bend
And a brick fountain
Glowing in the afternoon neon storm
Whose mirrored surface reflects the bursts of wild forests 
rising like zeniths from the piles of despondent trash
Flung in an urban snarl

And above her, beads cast down as glistening drops 
Between the uniforms of towering silver 
and changing black, gray-swirling whiteness

And this heat
Cloying, soft and plush

She's cored inside out and twisted into waves so tangled
Whitewashed from the backs of worn, tired souls
And mute
And she's drowned by the cicadas who waltz and snap
while something heavy grows.

Dynamics

My slither is the salt bed underneath my skin
Hot pin pricks plucked like arrows from the sky
The birds twitter in the branches of the trees
Side by side they sit, black shadows alive among the leaves

My shadow separates. And I feel nothing
But something's annihilated in the smallest of nighttime acts

Under the rock
Waiting to be over turned
No one hand reaches out first
Afraid of pockmarks and deep things

East West Bound

He had a plan to get home.
It was long overdue.

In the middle of an unfamiliar silence he carried his plans forward, filed alphabetically in his mind under TO DOs,

Until his plans, like a gust of wind, shifted
And he found himself out of order,
in a waiting room

An endless hush gave him time to notice the seams of whiteness where the corners of two walls kissed and ended.

And as time shuttered and flickered beyond the edge of his thoughts

He thought that waiting was like holding his breath.
But threaded to him,
Away from him,
waiting for a doctor,
waiting for him,
waiting on death
waited his love

And time became the unstoppable army

Snap Shot

Cold shadows travel across the faces
An incoming tide
changes pebbles into sand
the marble guards the faded plastic flowers
Half covered in dirt
They shift in permanency as memories die away

Through the stillness of a tunnel well worn,
Footsteps bind us
And I look to see a kite flying high above our heads
It's Connected to a young couple hiding
behind a tower
they wait for a break in the clouds

Under my summer sandals the grass gives way
Your shape grows smaller and smaller, fading into
A dark outline

against an unchanging backdrop
I crest the hill and look back
Seeing the contrast along the edges
The finality of cold stone and a vastness that expands into my heart

Whatever I was thinking
Is carried away on a whisper of wind

Three Headed Man

I can see your thoughts floating around us
You carry three heads upon your shoulders
And you shift your face repeatedly as I watch
I'm stunned by my reflection in your eyes

Do you see something else in me that washes away when you blink?

I can't help wonder
If all that stuff inside of you will implode
tendrils of soft heat parting your lips
Becoming a veil of nothingness

I'm tired
And bored a little
Do what you want
My hands are busy
With something trapped in my mind
if I look away it'll disappear

Anyway...

Isolating Variables

It itched.

Some incessant gnawing – in the silence –
Crawled over his skin under the blanket of night

In response he played a book on tape and filled his mind with steel wool sheep

In sleep she draped her lead cloak over him

Each time her warm breath tickled the hair on the back of his neck
He thought of warm moist soil pressed against his skin

And sleeping, he dreamt of rats
Running from control to cheese
No direction any better than the one before
And this sea of rodents
Carried him along
Till the wall before him dropped

And he heard the familiar melody of soft breathing
and thought of molded clay

Earth, touching his side

Wet and cold

He rolled away and tucked his head to the side
Alone against the edge of the bed