FORTIS

2009-02-19T09:35:00.000-11:00

Kiss my cheek

2009-02-19T09:31:00.002-11:00

There is this and that
and so much in between
we don't say everything
too this for that
he is staring at the umbrella
differences arise a divide inside this well
yet she remains too much a pillow book
written inside his thigh
on warm nights when we stick to sheets
the cool side of the pillow
she will read her words
rearanged to spell its name
deep within records and revisions
she will cry when they go
off into the other
to reappear in later years
kiss my cheek and say goodbye

2009-02-09T06:07:00.000-11:00

2009-02-09T06:05:00.004-11:00

I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, And that enables you to laugh at life's realities.
-- Dr. Seuss

2009-02-09T06:05:00.003-11:00

There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes.
-- Doctor Who

2009-02-09T06:05:00.001-11:00

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
-- Eric Hoffer

2009-02-09T06:01:00.001-11:00

Only the mediocre are always at their best.
-- Jean Giraudoux

2009-02-09T06:00:00.001-11:00

Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time... The wait is simply too long.
-- Leonard Bernstein

2009-02-09T05:59:00.001-11:00

The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.-- Henry Kissinger

2009-02-03T06:58:00.000-11:00

2009-02-03T06:57:00.001-11:00

His parents must have said, 'you don't know what you're talking about' fifty times during dinner. Maybe it was a euphemism for 'I love you."
--Darkest Fear

2009-01-28T14:17:00.000-11:00

Boyd: "God says you look for excuses to be alone."
House: "See, that is exactly the kind of brilliance that sounds deep, but you could say it about any person who doesn't pine for the social approval of everyone he meets - which you were cleverly able to deduce about me by not being a moron. Next time, tell God to be more specific."
--House

When it rises.

2009-01-28T13:54:00.001-11:00

At the moment
smoke suspends
after four glasses of whiskey
at a nameless bar
she will drag him to a tiny bookshop
when they leave she will insist
they dance a tango
in front of strangers.

2009-01-26T06:45:00.001-11:00

Love's most common by-product is suicidal manic depression. Of course its worth it.
--Playing by Heart

2009-01-26T06:42:00.000-11:00

2009-01-26T06:39:00.000-11:00

“I've been on so many blind dates, I should get a free dog.”
--Wendy Liebman

Smile Sweetheart

2009-01-26T06:35:00.003-11:00

Don't tell me to smile
we are strangers on this street
perhaps I am planning efficient ways for death
or pondering
greath depths of emotion
maybe i am simply beyond
this moment too acute for us
we are so fragile and so thinly veiled
where are you headed?
home to more this
that place where it is empty, yet filled
maybe i am smiling inside
favorite pop songs running through
my steps are my smile
but you would have to know me
to know that
then again, a strangers smile may assauge
this fear of loss, loneliness, disaster
so i will smile, for you
because you are me and sometimes
i need a smile.

2009-01-23T02:57:00.000-11:00

2009-01-23T02:56:00.001-11:00

I try & walk a line between terror & ecstasy, she said & then she shook her head.
--Brian Andreas

2009-01-18T12:45:00.001-11:00

"So you do all the things couples do but without the sex? That sounds...horrible. The only reason people do the couple stuff is for the sex. Otherwise, what's the point?"
-M.

2009-01-15T06:27:00.001-11:00

2009-01-15T06:23:00.000-11:00

2009-01-15T06:22:00.000-11:00

Any woman who thinks the way to a man's heart is through his stomach is aiming about 10 inches too high.
-- Adrienne E. Gusoff

Found poem

2009-01-13T05:32:00.001-11:00

I carry you with me into the world,
into the smell of rain
& the words that dance between people
& for me, it will always be this way,
walking in the light,
remembering being alive together.

2009-01-13T05:27:00.000-11:00

Eulogy

2009-01-12T09:59:00.002-11:00

Five women
all it takes to change your life
Jeremiad song midnight
eulogies to the one that got away
--one thrown away
--one left in a parking lot
--one forgotten, then remembered
too late

Six found in happenstance
serendipitous positioning planets
our moon cycles fit subtitles
unecessary subtleties
forsaken for more direct route
i never was good with directions/maps
suggest destination endpoint
maybe
there is comfort in the ride wandering
past acceptable milestones.

2009-01-12T09:51:00.000-11:00

“i smoke and i drink
and every time i blink
i have a tiny dream"
--Ani Difranco

2009-01-11T07:02:00.000-11:00

Meredith: I'll tell you what I don't want. I don't want all this calculated artificiality. This dress, these stupid little bows in my hair, they aren't me. I mean, look at you. You - you don't sit around your house in an Armani suit, do you?
Trent: No. My house is black-tie.
--Playing By Heart

2009-01-11T06:50:00.001-11:00

2009-01-11T06:49:00.000-11:00

2009-01-09T05:35:00.001-11:00

This may be my favorite picture of a child. He's wearing a Frank Sinatra fedora with a feather. If he had little boy glasses, I would love him forever.

2009-01-09T05:29:00.001-11:00

Is this an Amelie robot?!?!

2009-01-09T05:28:00.000-11:00

Secrets

2009-01-08T12:00:00.004-11:00

-I save every voicemail in case the caller dies and I miss their voice.
-Those people dressed liked giant cartoon characters at Disney World terrify me.
-Sometimes I throw silverware away instead of washing it.
-"You Are My Sunshine" makes me cry.
-I wish everything were different and somehow the same.
-Mocking and shaming often work as best teaching practice.
-I'm not sure what I believe in
-I love my favorite sweatshirt more than I care about some people.
-First through third dates generally make me nauseous
-I am unsure and undecided about almost everything almost all the time, except when I'm not.

2009-01-08T11:59:00.001-11:00

Keenan: That's the ugliest cat I've ever seen.
Joan: She's an angel.
Keenan: She only has one eye.
Joan: Yeah, but it's her good one
--Playing By Heart

Favorite Photos of the Week...

2009-01-08T03:51:00.002-11:00

2009-01-08T03:51:00.001-11:00

2009-01-08T03:50:00.000-11:00

Dervish

2009-01-07T13:41:00.002-11:00

When the revolution comes back around
we are all reparations, apparitions
of what we have done, forgotten
before we've remembered.

To seven elements
how can we bridge
this language separation?

Let's have a bonfire
in secret
we'll burn old records, telephones and watches

Let's fall asleep on park benches
balled up New York Times as our pillows
we'll do the crossword
and sell the answers
to passersby too busy to do their own

Let's pretend you won
in a bar fight, spin a tale
angry words and bloody knuckles
how we ran from the police
and hid
in the all-nite movie theater
where we watched James Dean
and you cried

Let's set up camp in Times Square
you, on a box
whispering the parable of Judas
a kiss, in the metaphoric sense,
is just a kiss
me
collecting quarters from every state
humming french torch songs

Let's get drunk and sleep
on my old orange blanket
we can lay together and make lists
of all the things we hate

2009-01-06T14:28:00.001-11:00

Miranda : Why don't straight men have bodies like this?
Carrie : Because gay men have the possibility of sex at the gym. If straight men had that they'd be working out all the time too.
--Sex and the City

june

2009-01-06T14:02:00.002-11:00

It is important to let go first
you know what to do
at dinner there are limitations
she will learn this
before referring to something he said
and that time just before
if it faces east, if glow has texture
he certainly dissuades her
from a steady hand here
witticisms serve as supple skin
perhaps complexity its disguise
let's leave here
for there, let them piece us together
each has its own casuality.

2009-01-06T13:56:00.000-11:00

Max: Some girls like you to say things like that to them.
Joan: Some girls like you to take a dump on them. I'm neither one of those girls.
--Playing By Heart

2009-01-05T05:36:00.000-11:00

2009-01-05T05:35:00.000-11:00

2009-01-04T15:49:00.000-11:00

2009-01-04T15:36:00.000-11:00

"The follies which a man regrets the most in his life are those which he didn't commit when he had the opportunity." (Helen Rowland)

2008-12-29T13:37:00.001-11:00

“The true beauty of a woman is her inherent ability to make better a man in every way.”
--Don Williams,Jr.

2008-12-26T16:36:00.000-11:00

“When you look closely people are so strange & so complicated that they're actually beautiful.”
--Anon

2008-12-24T10:15:00.000-11:00

2008-12-24T10:14:00.001-11:00

rope trick

picture a line in the sand
then imagine that edge
as a hempen rope

move it near or apart
from you, or lift the border
& lay it down

around your double,
so that you merge to make
a new center
--Shin Yu

2008-12-23T06:44:00.001-11:00

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.-- Kurt Vonnegut

My Only Christmas Tree :-(

2008-12-22T07:28:00.000-11:00

2008-12-22T06:57:00.001-11:00

I
Your father is dead.

My mother wearing emotions I have never seen before. I think it is fear. I hear details. Heart attack. Talking to your uncles. Kitchen floor. It all makes no sense to me and for a minute I imagine she is speaking in another language; one so full of grief and shock that I can’t decipher the dialect. There is a buzzing in my ears. I can feel my blood flowing, shifting. Unlike my father. Who is dead.

Pack a bag. You’re coming home. My mother again, somehow moved to my kitchen, washing dishes that were not dirty. I am aware that she needs to keep her hands moving; to be useful. I let her wash clean forks and a plate, feeling this is normal. This is what people do in a kitchen. They do not die on the kitchen floor.

There is a feeling of waiting. I am waiting to feel this, like the brain waits for the pain of a stubbed toe to climb up synapses and neurons. You know it will come and that knowledge makes the seconds between impact and register so much the worse. Now, the word that comes to me is hollow. An immediate emptiness akin to a great hunger seemed to begin and would last for months to come.

I pack methodically, as if for a long planned vacation. I will need something black. I will need my shampoo, pajamas, a book, a toothbrush, something black. Something for a funeral. It will be clear to me later that somehow I had always understood this night. Known what I would need to take with me. What to leave behind. The dog is jumping and licking my mother. He wants to play.

As we drive the eight blocks from my house to my mother’s, we’ve remembered my brother. He is building houses in Tennessee with his students. His new wife is in New York. No one has the number in the remote part of the south where I imagine him quietly sleeping beneath a layer of humidity and hard work. We vacillate between giving him one more night of not knowing or starting the pain quickly. I want him to suffer like me. I need him to feel this in the way only children of a dead father can feel. I want my brother home, as whole a family as we can be.

In the end, my brother will spend two hours on a dark road in Tennessee driving through the night to an airport. I think of the student driving him, perhaps wondering what this moment will one day be for him; silently thanking his god that this is not his moment. My brother will spend hours more alone on a plane; suspended between now and then. 10,000 feet above this place where he is fatherless.

II

I want to go where he died, positive that I will feel him. I don’t. Instead, I pick up his slippers from the front step where I assume they came off during transport to the ambulance. I still have those slippers along with boxes of minutia. Silly things he kept in shoeboxes, beneath the bed, still unmade. Only I knew this side of my father: nostalgic, emotional, kind. As my mother goes about the job of practicality, I sit cross-legged going through shoeboxes. Every card we ever sent to him, every ticket stub, every crumbling, water stained baby picture.

Alike in so many ways, my father and I share this hidden softness. I have my own shoeboxes and this makes me wonder who will one day keep my small memories.

His glasses are on the table. I have never seen my father without his glasses. I make a mental note to pack them for the funeral. His heart medicine, which he sometimes skipped to prove his inner rebel or disinterest in life, sits open on the same table. Playing cards, betting slips, a picture of my brother and me. A life so clearly summed on a single table top.

I need to leave. My mother remains stoic, making piles and looking for his suit. The one suit he owned, all purpose for weddings, graduations, and funerals, sits in the closet. The inside pocket is filled with those little laminated prayers cards you get at funerals. This makes me laugh, strange in a way I know he would appreciate. I take everything I can carry. I will come back for more. My brother will take nothing.

We wait for my brother and his wife at the train station. Watching people come and go calms me. I will later realize this is a habit of mine; watching other people living their lives. A sort of park bench therapy. When he arrives, we hug and cry and do not speak. It is not until safely in my mother’s house that we speak, my brother angry, me wanting to show him everything I’ve found; a morbid show and tell of sorts. It is the baseball tickets saved from a particular father’s day that finally brings my brother to his knees. He will cry for hours.

III

I am amazed at the work required for a funeral. There is the business of finding a church; difficult since my father has not been in a church of his own accord in 30 years. We finally must beg my mother’s parish for a burial. My distaste for Catholic ritual is cemented. There is the issue of a post-funeral gathering. I do not want this. It is my one absolute. There is the casket, which requires going to the funeral home, where we sit in a basement room, signing papers and choosing prayers. The casket is of no interest to me. In the end, my brother chooses the first one shown to us. I cannot remember what it looked like.

I ask to see his body and am ushered to a back room. He says he does not usually allow this. My father lies beneath a pale blue sheet on a metal table. He looks like him. The gray hair he has had since I can remember; the slightly crooked mustache which has caused in me a leniency towards men with facial hair. I have a sudden urge to pull open his eyelids. To see what death looks like in the eyes. I do not stay long. Just long enough to make it final. Just long enough to be sure.

Then there is the ultimate show; this strange funeral ritual, which I never understood and understand even less now. As we walk inside the funeral home, I can remember walking along this same street, turning away from the mourners. It seemed only right to avert my eyes from something so personal. On this day, I want to be looked at, seen. This will one day be you.

Once inside, I place pictures of my father with various family members inside the casket along with a father’s day card. He has died three days before Father’s Day. I want to touch him, but don’t. He is in his black suit; it’s final performance at his own funeral.

We line up, beside the casket, waiting to be consoled. We are all oddly calm and I wonder how much total valium trails through our collective blood. Italian by ethnicity and neurotic by personality we are known to argue often and worry even more. Again, the buzzing in my blood as each of us escapes to his or her, own, personal state of removal. The space where we are able to be here. To do this. I feel the urge to laugh, to be surrounded, to sit alone in a quiet room, to dig my nails into the thin skin of my inner arm, to draw blood. A deep breath as the first people arrive, appropriately bowed and sorrowful. The night seems to move in hazy slow motion yet ends before I am ready.
I find myself angry with the people who continue to yell and cry and wail. Inside I am pulsing blood quick. Their displays seem false, designed for attention. Real pain is silent.

Exhausted in every meaning of the word, we each head to our bedrooms. The need to be alone and in some other level of consciousness is palpable. I fall asleep with the knowledge that tomorrow will be the last time I will ever see my father.

IV

We sit watching television and waiting for the limo to pick us up. We do not speak; all eyes glued to the television no one is actually watching. In the end, television has its benefits, its distractions. A short ride to the church of the elementary school both my brother and I attended. Where we passed through each Catholic ritual, where I discovered a talent for writing and where my brother began his short-lived phase of Catholic devotion and pot smoking. Where my father will be attending church against his will for the last time.

I am to recite a reading from the Bible, chosen from a pre-selected packet of appropriate prayers given to me the previous day. I remember feeling sad for the nun whose job it is to hand out these packets of death prayers. No one is ever glad to see you. I know that I read because I remember refolding the white paper into tiny, tight squares after returning to the pew. That is my only real memory of the church. The small, tight squares folded and re-folded.

I remember leaving my father at the gravesite. My brother making strange hiccupping noises as we placed flowers on the casket. My uncle, my father’s brother, does not leave his car. He simply cannot step out of the car. No one asks him to.

Once home, in pajamas, there is nothing. The rituals are over. Everyone has changed out of their funeral clothes. There is nothing. There is sitting and staring. The settling of dust. I believed the worst part of a death was the funeral; the endless hand shaking and head nodding. The saying goodbye. I was wrong. The worst part is the nothing, the absence of action, to know there is nothing but acceptance to be offered or received.

We discuss going to sleep, instead, my brother and I decide to get drunk. More drunk than I have ever been before or since. We drink until we are sick and then we drink more. In silence. I am trying to find the feeling, some feeling, something other than the sucking wound that comes with every breath. In the end I fall asleep in my childhood twin bed, surrounded by stuffed animals and the smell of funeral lilies.

V

It does not get better. It simply continues. I am reminded of a quote, whose author I can’t remember, “when your parents die, you no longer have an audience.” This is maybe the most true statement I have heard since my father’s death. The desire to call and talk about a bad day, a good movie, does not go away. There is no one to call. The moment between wanting to pick up the phone and realizing there is no one to answer, does not ever lessen.

2008-12-21T13:30:00.000-11:00

"Life is like a movie, if you've sat through more than half of it and its sucked every second so far, it probably isn't gonna get great right at the end and make it all worthwhile. None should blame you for walking out early.”
--JonAce Doug Stanhope

2008-12-19T13:00:00.001-11:00

“We try a new drug, a new combination
of drugs, and suddenly
I fall into my life again

like a vole picked up by a storm
then dropped three valleys
and two mountains away from home.

I can find my way back. I know
I will recognize the store
where I used to buy milk and gas.

I remember the house and barn,
the rake, the blue cups and plates,
the Russian novels I loved so much,

and the black silk nightgown
that he once thrust
into the toe of my Christmas stocking.”
--Jane Kenyon quotes

2008-12-19T01:14:00.001-11:00

2008-12-19T01:13:00.000-11:00

2008-12-18T13:45:00.001-11:00

Whatever you have forgotten, you can remember. Whatever you have buried you can unearth. If you are willing to look deep into your own nature, if you are willing to peel away the layers of not-self you have adopted in making your way through the tribulations of life, you will find that your true self is not as far removed as you think.

--Meredith Jordan

2008-12-18T13:41:00.001-11:00

2008-12-17T07:06:00.001-11:00

The least of learning is done in the classrooms.
-- Thomas Merton

2008-12-16T05:43:00.000-11:00

“Every faculty and virtue I possess can be used as an instrument with which to worry myself.”
-- Mark Rutherford

Chapter of Elements

2008-12-14T08:40:00.001-11:00

Get it out
now
like a splinter
the pain of a loose
tooth
almost too much
pushing, maneuvering
back and forth
looking for a good benzo
counting back from ten
in and out
this is always here
fuck it
so much babble of terms
call waiting
waiting
i will always be the one to miss them

2008-12-10T14:09:00.001-11:00

Sex is the most fun you can have without laughing.
~Woody Allen

I super duper heart this print....practically made for me really :-)

2008-12-10T07:13:00.003-11:00

2008-12-10T07:13:00.002-11:00

Robots are cool. Neon robots with flowers are the most cool.

2008-12-09T07:17:00.000-11:00

I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.
---Augusten Burroughs, Magical Thinking

I heart old typewriters with perfect keys,tiny pink clocks, and altered poetry.

2008-12-09T07:13:00.002-11:00

2008-12-07T07:26:00.000-11:00

2008-12-05T07:14:00.002-11:00

"Shyness is when you turn your head away from something you want."
--Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Heaviest Boots

2008-12-05T07:13:00.001-11:00

Things not remembered
he wrote
it is the opposite
naked only in those places
do you ever write about
him?
once.
not again.

2nd Favorite City Paper Love/Hate

2008-12-05T04:36:00.000-11:00

"Waking up, sweat on my sides, I felt comfortable, your breath was present but still, still your skin was apparent to me underneath the comforter, I felt I could not only unbutton but unbend with you."

2008-12-04T05:54:00.000-11:00

I heart photo booth wedding announcements and yellow wedding shoes..

2008-12-03T05:02:00.000-11:00

super cool apron for super cool cooking...

2008-12-03T05:01:00.000-11:00

Beautiful locket that reminds me of Amelie.

Things I heart right now....

2008-12-03T04:59:00.001-11:00

I have no idea where this is from, but I love the print and am determined to find it...

2008-11-30T13:08:00.000-11:00

Heavier Boots

2008-11-26T05:28:00.004-11:00

I'd like some coffee, a cigarette, free time and new glasses a good book on a good night this wonderful time of the year breathe in, breathe out the favorites are falling too quickly wasted or maybe not depending on the angle of the observer poetry over letters there is no true value of an arab on a beach this death like all the others a month of yes.

Awkward and natural shadows of alarm clocks on bedside tables je suis tu es "If I were to give a bracelet to you now, I would measure you're wrist twice" coiled spring between the books 4 am cold there are words and yet not warm and warming to this idea she has forgotten the definition of definition there is no going back though the psyche tries this lunar pull backwards there is a pull towards the other for one at least this is the inside of the inside blood pulse quick

Chocolate milk and hot cocoa with tiny marshmallows no plan, no time, later is now the prep time is dwindling with lines and squints the phone lines would be clogged only five minutes to go saving what we can you can come if you want we are our own gods.

2008-11-21T07:46:00.000-11:00

2008-11-21T07:42:00.001-11:00

Understand. I'll slip quietly away from the noisy crowd when I see the pale stars rising, blooming, over the oaks. I'll pursue solitary pathways through the pale twilit meadows with only this one dream: you come too.
--Rilke

My favorite City Paper Love/Hate..

2008-11-20T03:54:00.002-11:00

"My world is an upside down snowglobe. I love standing still with you."

2008-11-17T06:17:00.000-11:00

"Cooper: Diane, I'm holding in my hand a box of small chocolate bunnies."
--Twin Peaks

2008-11-17T06:14:00.005-11:00

2008-11-17T06:14:00.003-11:00

2008-11-17T06:14:00.001-11:00

2008-11-17T06:13:00.001-11:00

2008-11-16T07:16:00.000-11:00

2008-11-12T07:11:00.001-11:00

The only thing guaranteed in life is death. Friendships, love, vegetable gardens, contracts, and promises go awry and things go from good to bad to good to bad again. We live unresolved lives. Relationships are born. Relationships die. We all get sick. We are all suffering and heading towards an undeniable death. Fame, poetry, money, recognition, publication, exhibition, and certain forms of education, etc. do little to stave off this reality. I look you in the eye, Death, and will make you my friend.
--- Shin Yu

2008-11-11T06:55:00.000-11:00

touch, touch, burn

2008-11-11T04:39:00.004-11:00

food for worms
and so much daisy pushing
now
only/never
i was trying to feel nothing
i was collecting artifacts
i was artfully objective
------in half lit rooms
there is only this

i've been here before
this very street
these lamplights, that dog
it was late and we were singing

she is the ever present attempt
she is touch, touch, burn
she is keeping it light
-------drive time highway
this is easy listening

2008-11-10T03:12:00.001-11:00

"Things do not change; We change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts"
--Thoreau

2008-11-08T12:49:00.000-11:00

2008-11-08T12:47:00.004-11:00

"Secret forces are bringing compatible spirits together. If man permits himself to be led by this ineffable attraction, good fortune will come his way. When deep friendships exist, formalities and elaborate preparations are not necessary."
--I Ching

Party of Six

2008-11-07T06:10:00.000-11:00

Running out of gas three lights flickering
sky turning the color of kitchen gaslight
wooden signs advertising
antiques war memorabilia selling
chechian lotus flower backbending
thanks for your patronage
see you next seasonf
ollowing midnight afternoons
toddler snowboots and wine
that tastes like fall all sangria
and sunsets no oak involved
it is rare to see the moment
of this ritual playedon the shamisen
tucked in her back pocket
sharing in the most basic sense
two for us, one for them
slightly drunk and whirling

This is sacred and ordinary.

2008-11-07T05:45:00.000-11:00

2008-11-06T10:50:00.001-11:00

"Don't threaten me with love, Baby. Let's just go walking in the rain."
- Billie Holiday

2008-11-06T10:44:00.000-11:00

2008-11-05T06:16:00.002-11:00

I spent my entire life waiting to be ready for something or someone. You're never ready, and now it's over.--Six Feet Under

Its For Your Own Good

2008-11-05T06:14:00.000-11:00

Abalone shell lit from behind
toward nomenclature a way of knowing
body types, stitches ways to finish a seam,
a mouth full of pins
teach me a language for all
I leave blank against a mingling
of shop smells pretending to be both
sailing on our stomachs
touching broken fingerboard
certain empty slices of time
exact silence surrounds you
thick, the quiet of cloth on cloth
sometimes to be seen is to be saved
press bodies against words
cast into boughs succulent
with stillness thistled bloom
graft her heaviness to you
hips, breasts, weight of hair
thigh, skin a blank stretch
here rooms are kept cold

2008-11-05T05:48:00.001-11:00

2008-11-05T05:47:00.000-11:00

The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.
-- John Cage