Monday, May 23, 2005

notes from a waking

you can always tell who was in the accident as you drive by.

I love the laugh of full laughers
or my hips inside yours, cruising and shooting and fucking in the movie
the fit of the fittest
roaming the roam of the passing white lines
tumbleweeds
speed limit signs
telephone wires and a now distant roadside fire

on the elevens I don’t talk much
liking the places inbetween, all mine

a night’s slip papercut
a groovy open
a wish for a bad movie of the week
hours and hours repeat like a bad movie on an airplane

you have failed to notice that waves come in sets

you stop and wait for your ghost to catch up. fruit still hangs on the vines. he does not look like you. he is lighter, not as small. yet you are the same. waves spill over the highway.
spill over you say to your ghost.
then ask are you following me.
he looks out towards the water. the sun’s reflection splits the ocean. sympathetic mist settles into a sympathetic longing. you feel time speed up. he glances furtively your way.
you got a haircut
yeah
it’s strange the things we notice sometimes

he is slipping behind again. this can be felt. you envy him. the light off the water shines greener in your eyes, but you envy him.

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

i-pod wars

Baby, We'll be Fine All night I lay on my pillow and pray for my boss to stop me in the hallway Lay my head on his shoulder and say Son, I've been hearing good things I wake up without warning and go flying around the house in my sauvignon fierce, freaking out Take a forty-five minute shower and kiss the mirror And say, look at me Baby, we'll be fine All we gotta do is be brave and be kind I put on an argyle sweater and put on a smile I don't know how to do this I'm so sorry for everything. Baby, come over, I need entertaining I had a stilted, pretending day Lay me down and say something pretty Lay me back down where I wanted to stay Just say something perfect, something I can steal Say, look at me Baby, we'll be fine All we've gotta do is be brave and be kind I pull off your jeans, and you spill jack and coke in my collar I melt like a witch and scream I'm so sorry for everything.

from the album alligator by the national

Monday, May 09, 2005

sayonara, gangters by genichiro takahashi

this book is mostly beautiful nonsense. it's also completely unsentimental while being all about sentiment most of the time. it's poetic and funny and it has it's own imagination. you can read it in a day and then go back and read it again the next day. you might have to, it haunts you right after you put it down and then you forget about it and then not. next time you're in a bookstore or a library pick it up and read the opening, it's worth reading that much of it and then finding out that the book was actually written a number of years back and has only recently been translated.

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

that was the year...

that was the year we thanked people for cutting us off in cars. we looked through
windows that looked through windows while eating scrambled eggs. we fucked
like models and a strange rotten egg smell came out of the sewers and followed
us everywhere. I myself lived everyone else’s life for ten minutes at a time. yes,
it was a very long year.

that was the year I saw no point in going home. a year of static tuesdays and everyone
knows that tuesday is an empty bed. beds, well I use them as tracing paper even
when I’m a little shakey. then I hit back, laid the paper along the curves of your
hips, those two lines in your skin that no one else seems to have. when you
turned over new sheets I scratched out new scars you didn’t know you had. at the
hospital we kept drawing, you for me and me for you. people tried to look over
our shoulders, but we wouldn’t let them. we gulped gasoline and blew blazes at
them. we wristed originals but the rags refused. it threw looks at us that appeared
harsher than intended, said you’ll have to wait until you do. we smiled lingering
smiles and kept at it. we drew fish that looked like the tendons in our legs. you
tried a doodle that shaded into the indentation of my missing rib. people left
town, we tried to cool down, stick figures with gaping holes in them. circles
rounded into asses, we protruded and clawed and pretended, but that was the year
none of us were allowed to forget who we were. I still have everything we
sketched, the old college try of after all pieced together and wrapped in wire.
you hang there now in my kitchen like a potted plant, an exit, a ring left by a glass
on a table. you’re there in my hands, trustworthy, and miles from home.

the was the year...

that was the year we called the death year, tubes of the second coming. despite
everything you spited everything. maybe they should have said what it was
going to be like when you woke up. it was nothing like a reverie. it leaves
anything you throw at me now as just that, you throwing something at me.
I wake up either way, just like I did the year I died.

that was the year we realized we had all been to our own wars, none of them in
america. some of them seemed, supposed and rosied up more than others.
how was it that we all had a skirmish. how was it that none of us remembered
the enemy after a few years had passed. how that none of it mattered, we only
wanted a coming death. death to end death. we kissed like that, a chair pulled
away from a table as a gesture of good will. go on, sit, sit.