faint-headed, light-hearted

coffee makes me nervous.

two cups makes me even more skittish

none of my problems matter, in a matter of speaking.

but somehow these little mishaps or empty wants have made me so unbalanced and shakey. my hands are steady, but my insides gurgle with strange pace, as if to tell the rest of my body to follow suit. 

change scares me. even great, upscale grandiose change.

for better or for certain, i am a nervous nilly, riding happiness like a child on the pay-as-you-go pony outside the supermarket, until i run out of quarters.

i'm a captive to my emotions,
they cascade and crash,
steep and build,
 all to eventually meet the pavement.

i want to be grounded.

 i want to feel happy.

 i don't want to feel lost anymore.

act accordingly is the social norm, but i've never quite been able to follow guidelines or learn things completely.

so i hide, and what's worse is even though i've made this solace for myself, locking myself away from sharing a home with anyone.

the irony is i love living alone, but hate being alone.

i'm not a complete shut-in, and still like being out socially, but lately the fears or anxieties that plague me are making it harder for me to be outside.

i know that people like me. and people love me. but i still haven't found someone to love me. and despite all my accomplishments, all my fulfilled dreams, all my successful attempts to rescue myself from seemingly desolate situations, i find myself right back here, feeling depressed and invisible.

letting go of things (and people) is the longest walk, being a circular pigeon in all this ungravely mess. people wander in and out of my life and i've gradually learned how to forget, or passively ignore them, but it doesn't make this life of living and hurting any easier.

i know all of this is trivial. and still i can't help feeling helpless.

remembrance.

how can so many things be going right, yet i feel like everything is coming apart at the seams?

high and drowned

her lips taste of bubblegum
awkward standing in the snow
to our carefully patterned podium inspired pause

she smells like morning tossed in roses and waterfalls
polite and unbeknowing

off to business for the holiday

no precursors or method
striking and unavailable
ready for day's bravings

so prim and drove for recess

the smiles break slow
in the kind trail of unspoken drop

stomachs clenched memories washed
loss for translation;
and all we can muster is assurance of our space.

 i'll talk to you, tonight?

blah blah blah

smile

quip

question

silence

follow

smile

quip- 

indifference

waiting...

waiting...

smile

nothing

discard

discourse

quip.

quip.

quip.

ignore.

pollard beauty.

post-like-esque

i've chance encountered but three times in my life (and musical musings) that i've been affected by certain individuals who have propelled me out of various hibernation or transitionary moments.

it's in these brief wanderings that i'm at my most vulnerable and awestuck.

sometimes i feel like i'm the only one out here not willing to play "the game."

i'd rather stay in all day and watch telly. and think freely with my heart.

likely to assume, these things never quite end easily.

if you were ever close to me, you'd probably notice my musical output is directly related to ships that sail momentarily.

i leave these parallels with a handful of songs and pockets of swallows.

and this so repeats, for however long i am around to see it through.

malkmus doing can.

my every day...

dull.

i shroud my head in normal happiness
what could be misconstrued as proper imbalance
your hand is a confounded irony
my head is an apology

stray fire.

spools of thrones, unraveled in the marvelous mesh
of deaf cries and manicured contact

unfinished sentences
conversations barely begun
lines legibly escorted to their tipping points
pens drained

no questions bartered for emblems
i'll wear you on my sleeve
but this old sweater is a pass me up-
picked up on the way to
the well dressed soirée that is avoidance.

i could have told you.

you're all i could ever ask for. someone who asks, why me?

contextual acquaintance sailing

here lies the radiance of a paraphrase

forgotten specificity

amidst the non-sequitors and troubling musings

honor your circular habits

but there are no sign posts here 

there's no backspace

where we are in our second best suits

smelling of cheap beer and vertigo

we speak in fragmented spurts

and await the staccato retorts

answers and assertions

wring around the collars

fancy the lot of you.

and like most of you

it is only a flaw

to read and remain read

follow the lines like a jealous tea cup

no more porous or caverned than the last bit of sneering pride

with our previous conversations erased, left behind, 

i'm only to rely on memory, 

no space to wallow or revisit words we once wrote

only rewritten for my mind's draft

i hate the space between us.

i want to talk like grover and jane

day late witticisms and strangely uninformed stories

but i have no ink to fill this distance

i know i'd rather sit and wait

than sit and await-

these blank slates,

way too easy than interaction

in all its indisposed starkness

i want to be your phone call

your gentleman in static

still a lifetime away

hiding between these sheets of space

and the memories race

and the conversations fade

and the feelings replaced

and all the memories erased.

strings in composition.

steal my bones, i've never been committed to memory
only following trails and scrape marks
sparse heavy wonder
silk fine tuning

swarms of marine lives
blue fractioned farm frill

the anvil is a lightweight

meticulous paraphrased excuses

tempting for the eager to fill space
spanning time, as someone once spoke

where will you find yourself
in the lonely halls of the company of men?

snug, fit, coarse, inquiring, fashioned and young.

naivete is our solace,
our soft blanket
comforting and temporary once we leave our beds.

sides and preferences, compromises and settlements.

i've grown tired of my indents, slacks way too loose
tight and derivative

these conversations came to a pause.

oh, to wonder.

to drink, half empties and fill our glasses with hopes.

droll, folded clothes, suitcases packed in our heads
with nowhere to go.

soundtracks and films in foray.

i don't want you to leave, but i need to go.

undo this backspacing.

swimming backwards, no eyes on tomorrow.

post-after musings

in light of musical inspiration i've gained from a likely but unlikely source, i've begun finding myself again. the past few months have been physically and mentally exhausting, (not to mention emotionally so), but within that i've wanted more, reasonably more than usual, and finally i've begun writing again, propelling myself off a plateau i thought flatlined long ago.

i've also started up another weathered desire of mine, to start making art collagey type stuff again. i'm super rusty, but i want to start doing these on the regular.

it's true, i like girls. and fashion magazines thanks to my old friend dani. but between the new inspiration and my ever-so and neverending obsession with all things Robert Pollard, the collage hobby is a foot forward. so there you go.

unscripted

i spoke too soon
or too early

you're not ready for me; silver bearings

crept and kept
unexpected
game and sect

you're so fine
that i can't see
miniscule lines and boundaries
i'm alive
there's no key.
heart to walk, blind to sea
awash in our rhythm

no return
moving past,
free to concede

i can't be so competitive
with someone so borrowed and blue

we; chance romancers
burnt out and hollowed out carvings
for the picnicer folk.

you're too much, i'm too soon
and so we walk away
for the betterment of twos.

dwindle and fuss.

this year i've accomplished more and fulfilled things in my life i never would have expected to, moreso than any previous years. i finally came back to a point where i felt i could say i was happy more often and made changes to ensure i was on that path.  now, even with how far i've come, i've never been so depressed and unsure of myself. i get past  one obstacle and another presents itself. some days i feel like giving up. i haven't though.  and here i am writing to an invisible audience all the while longing to be heard.

here come the painbirds

oh mr. linkous, you know me to every inch of my soul.

i will write a thousand songs for you.

it's the only way i can release myself from this painstakingly proposed ambience.

if it takes my whole lifetime i will make it so.

if it lasts less than these moments, i will return to you in notations and flutters.

lasting, lost, expressive, billowing, whispering.

this is my one and only promise.

drizzle.

there's no heart in sight

my mind is racing

stop 

well.

strip woes.

call on favors the thoughts are aflame

can't keep tabs, pull off the frames

the lies are sheathed, well kept in our countenance

stay firm, ready for exclamation, slightly exhausted

to keep our corners

folded and neatly secured

no more trapper keepers and hallway notes

staples of our once believed life

and my heart is racing

no slumber, 

fighting off the sublime

smiles are meant for days beyond our days

in the meantime we wear our what have you mays

drenched in the perfume of warm beer and mint cloves.

alternatives and compromises, diets and starved minds

staring at barren cups and speckled saucers

wondering what vague universe has packed away for their undoing

and my heart is pacing

slow.

slow

keep tracing the lines of your ageless suspicions

washing the filth from your 'ware

dirt from your nails

scraping the barrels, 

scratching at the cats eyes

we are here for the occasion

and my mind is racing

dream

spent

days

end.

over and doneso

i've come to the realization in the past few weeks, that i've finally let go of all of the directed anger once dominant in my immediate life. there are a handful of friends and family i've chosen to disregard for various legitimate reasons, and only recently have i reconciled with my emotions, so much so that i feel the weight of my past has finally lifted into a cloud of no importance.

mind you, i still continue to remain silent to these parties, but at least now i can move on with my life and not dwell on useless remains.

so cheers to you my faceless imaginary friends, whose eyes and mouths identify and encourage me in my constant meanderings, and hold not hatred towards my predictable actions.

xoxo,

gossip girl.

one trick tonal

all awash 

with the greys of another day lost.

crawl space, attic highs,

knees weak from dead horses

relinquish and delay, capture and release

my chamber is endless, human and scarred

wavering and spontaneous, but well thought and obsessed

there is no OFF! button or human switch

bait me with half wit and unrehearsed dialogue

to have and have not is the norm, 

and charm has lost its grace.

to walk wire and string balloons as high as chance

to wander in this trust, whatever it may be.

i see the looks and gazes

the way you hang like portraits of perfect dysfunction

been way too encumbered to have read between 

expiration notices and unsigned leases

this is a wash.

this is a claim.

we seem to fade

as quick as our ad libs and retractions.

i could write you the perfect paraphrase

to your unrealized quips

and unfinished biographies

no summaries or handicaps, 

just unborn literary drones

i'll stay here now

forever in the womb of intention

stammering; on the straight and careless.

my only mistake was letting you see my sleeve.

gone.

i am captive.
to the lines in your eyes.

captioned.
by question marks, uncertainty and punctual gazes.
perpetual lives, standoff on the far end of ships already sailed.

i am captive.
with nowhere to fall, ears deaf, bodies stone.

unrelentingly slow and undeterminably absent.

stray fire

i stand here so painfully obvious in your courtship, however so polite, as boys will be on occasion. 

drinking from your lips' sweet consonants, the mouth of a drawn out life lorn passenger, relentlessly trying to manage the balance beam, shifting and straightening; making certain the air pockets stay within their limits. 

how is it, to work our lives away, and spend none of it creating anything of importance.

i lay my legs folded next to yours, pattern your angular posture, breathe your air and mimic all the skies temperament to simply be in alignment, and understand all of the woes of latter teenage angst, driven off by broken spirit and bloody noses.

my want is the only constant. our chanced detours are few and far, specific and grandiose. i make the most of us, and leave you to be your own, forgetful and unaware, but wholly self-conscious beauty.

i know i'm of no bother, the moments are welcomed and indulged, but never recounted. i stumble, too cautiously, my flawed life insistence, to falter alone by my own wronging. 

i am an appointment, a scheduled fragment, a number drawn, in the ocean of your convenience. 

pedestals aside, to wonder, if your eyes and anxieties ever will coincide with one willing boy king.

steam tilt wavering

we can drink in parking lots

and wear out our centennial sleeves

posture perfect banter 

in the overlaying, skylit reprieve

shut in. lungs. stall

fenced. out. trysts. teen crawl

do do do do, 

do do do do, 

(steam tilt wavering)

do do do do, 

do do do!

(steam tilt wavering)

(x2)

hands are tattooed yesterdays

from a momentary align

smell you on my cigarettes

and a surrogate burned, into my face

i could wry a thousand lives

and comb, the drawls of our menial cries

stark. mill. dull freight

part. tall. scratch. wrists. ache

do do do do, 

do do do do, 

(steam tilt wavering)

do do do do, 

do do do!

(steam tilt wavering)

(x2)

frontwards (roads in detour)

the world was all strung, headed up like a toddler. my first half, at first felt like nothing absolute. then pour, oh detour felt the surge in my thighs, pulsating through my bloodstream, like a new glow, quite acute, as sure as a childhood cartoon. glowing happy. sold and bought off. no crashes. and i thought of you. we stood like detours in the stream of half minded wit. dancing, touching toes, but never fingertipped in the fancies of our trivial marriage of consonants. mouth, my sweet intention, it's only to pare down our awkward, merely a exercise, hardly hinged and misdirected disparage. i could stand and stand well in the midriff of your literary device, and take more abuse than welcomed, if only to hear the sweet thistle of your calm, weathered pragmatic emblems. i could live and die in your gaze, averted and invited, beaming like the proud womb of perfection.

distractions

while you were gone i cornered the burroughs of my mind carried the felt, kept at harbor while i trailed off
divided sunsets and feelings imposed impartial and imparted
no reassurance, just hope and highs thrown into myself nerves and all bones, fit to break at any given stride
i've seen shine, and all too well but never so reasonable when you're hands away
the moment that strings grow dissonant and ears go untuned and we only hear what our heads want us to
this is what it's like to stop. as the moment continues to breathe
i could muster words like trembling lips; sparse, literal and unequivocally forward, as we write our lives like foreign roads, feverishly curious and fragmented.
there is no unison, only exchange, excess and underwhelm. should days become mundane, and at week's end our galas find resolve, i welcome the chimes of another found chord, lost unto its own.

posturing

oh here she stands, in the sweltering of our madness, inhaling the dutiful asterisks and exclamations made by parties, once stranger, now all but familiar, wondering where the dusk left us.
at a courier's pace, breathing breathing breathing.
you and i are a cusp, so if we continue to rest, will our memories smolder? or remain a flicker, unsure and satisfied.
she smells of rose petals and hot summer skin, all the while unrelenting and forward footed.
she could write harmonies with stares, and crush boys with biting smirks.
hold remind; forget of me sweet reciprocated shuffles. hand in heart, wallowing aimfully, until keys unlock doors and embraces serenade the farewells we all know too well.