Online Journals

It’s been years but I have some words dying to be vocalized before they fold and spoil behind...

Tue, 20 Oct 2015 01:50:01 -0400

It’s been years but I have some words dying to be vocalized before they fold and spoil behind my esophagus: don’t join a conservative religious group and dedicate your life to it, don’t choose any truths bc they are are false, work hard but do not sacrifice yourself to the state. All of these warm arms around you will begin to burn and very soon you will be flailing in flame, cursing yourself for your own innocence or, perhaps, the way your clothes appeared flame-retardant.

I think the end has finally come

Tue, 29 May 2012 10:20:17 -0400

I think the end has finally come:

I’ve got a post up over at Young Manhattanite explaining things a tad, but basically I’ll be leaving for a few years and who knows where this whole thing will have gone in that time? So thank you all for the support over the years. It’s been great.

Sincerely,

ARC

Frederic Fitch has a theorem which proves that if all unknowable truths are unknowable, then all...

Sat, 12 May 2012 09:18:47 -0400

Frederic Fitch has a theorem which proves that if all unknowable truths are unknowable, then all knowable truths are known.

Somehow I think that we are thousands of miles apart and yet intimately communing together throughout the day. Not in the tired rituals of daily life, though there was a time I couldn’t cook food because it reminded me of our year long standing dinner appointment. Not in the brushing of teeth or the drinking of water, although you do reside in those places faintly around the edges like seams on pillow. Not in the sleeping or the walking or the writing out of numbers on ticket pads. But something in the way our minds pulse, our blood moves, our human condition beats like teletype through the substance of existence. So I’m reminded of your immediacy when my heart thuds and squeezes while I’m driving over the bridge to work. So I’m updated on your truth as I stop to bite my lip, thinking of your face and hands.

When you love someone deeply, there exists a state wherein everything is true and nothing is true. You are near and far, knowable and unknowable, accessible and unreachable, real and non-material, but always loved loved loved.

And it was that I, the whore of Babylon and Cincinnati, the moaning clutching sweaty palm of...

Tue, 08 May 2012 03:02:17 -0400

And it was that I, the whore of Babylon and Cincinnati, the moaning clutching sweaty palm of sadness, somehow became unsad, glued up in the pale early afternoon by kind hands and frequent trips to the restroom where, indeed, I rested. Medications trimmed like wicks, perfunctory tasks accomplished without torrential internal turmoil, three liters of water consumed per day in an attempt to love myself to pieces. No longer do I live for the thrill of wearing myself out. Perhaps that’s why I’ve become so quiet lately; nobody wants to hear gospel from the recently converted.

Breathless wonder Oh my kitties! Sing! Open mouths and garbage bag hymns cluttering the hallways I...

Tue, 08 May 2012 02:53:10 -0400

Breathless wonder

Oh my kitties!

Sing!

Open mouths and garbage bag hymns cluttering the hallways

I stayed up all night at my bookstore job

just to read the inscriptions on the

front pages of

each morning sky.

Happy in my solemn, lonely own way

granola and yogurt eaten in haste

doors open with the rain collected

in hands by the bucketful.

But of course I am held ex

manos in memoriam

of waking gently

in every bed we dream for

to watch the whole earth sleep in another’s face.

You told me your deepest secrets in a meowing foreign tongue. I didn’t even listen, I knew I...

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 22:48:29 -0500

You told me your deepest secrets in a meowing foreign tongue. I didn’t even listen, I knew I couldn’t hear them properly, so I put the phone in my hand, cupping my palm to the speaker and tried to catch them as they poured out like quarters pumped from the belly of a pay phone. I tried to hold them all, I did. But here I am two weeks later and I check every pocket and not a damn bit clung to the grasping fabric of my fingertips. You told me other things, though, and I chewed them for a long time. I put the speaker in my mouth, that time, and I let your voice fill the cavernous space around my fillings and tongue and I tasted the sweet way you are. So comfortable against the pinkest, most vulnerable parts of me. So kind and gentle. So lovingly unaware of how much I want to hold you within me, right next to the beating sensation of my blood.

How awful it would be to not miss you.

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 23:52:46 -0500

How awful it would be to not miss you.

Supposedly a yawn signifies the transition between different stages of arousal; one yawns when a...

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 19:42:50 -0500

Supposedly a yawn signifies the transition between different stages of arousal; one yawns when a body is sliding between realities. I’ve been here for three weeks and I feel, today in particular, a sort of suspension. The sense one gets just before they realize that gravity is trying to push them earth-ward. The feeling of waking from a dream only to find that all of your spider-webbed assumptions about the nature of truth have been constructed in the space of five and ten minute intervals and need to be brushed away with the back of a hand. I have the urge to tap on the walls, to test the durability of this drunken new wine mirage. I peel skin from the soles of my feet in long strips and deposit them in the trash without ceremony. I am intent upon the details, the dots and lines of the rooms, sidewalks, and television images, and am completely unaware of the paintings, shows, or buildings they constitute. I see the future in the lens of a microscope, and the focus clicks forward, closer, backwards, farther, over and over again, an unsteady intake and expulsion of air. Shake your head to the left. Do you feel your world open in the unexpected minutia of a different perspective? If you don’t, watch someone open and then close their mouths, like angels singing alleluias in a car wash. Then, respond.

For days I wrap myself in your stolen words, in your hidden moments, captured and wrestled into my...

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 20:20:34 -0500

For days I wrap myself in your stolen words, in your hidden moments, captured and wrestled into my world. I want to respectfully stand on the side of your home, with an arm and my head sticking in through a window, glimpsing and feeling blindly, roughly at all of the beautiful jewels you’ve accumulated and created over time. I want to knock softly on your window in the morning to see if you’re awake. I want to hold your hand in sleep. I want to give you spaces for you to think and grow, all the while staying within arms reach. I want you. I want you constantly. I can’t shake the hunger. I can’t shake the sorrow I hold for all of my failings and weaknesses. For all of my broken and perforated skin; such a shame, the way your hands halt upon them in the shallow light. I know self-flagellation isn’t the way to secure your heart in steady hands. I know equal mixtures of sorrow and confidence are healthy, even if they rise and fall like oil on water. I know I’m growing constantly in these clothes, and that eventually I won’t feel constrained by last winter’s wool. These are promissory notes clenched in my fist. I will burgeon in time; I will slash myself through with tenderness. And if beneath it all this throb continues, I’ll find you in the elevation. Will you take me as I will be and never again as I was and am?

Heavy perfume billows from the night busheseach bloom breathing differentlyremoved of clothessun and...

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 02:16:42 -0500

Heavy perfume billows from the night bushes
each bloom breathing differently
removed of clothes
sun and visibility
heat and noise
exposed and raw they contract like sleeping women
or children
or men stripped of their conscious guilt
they whisper into you in every tongue of love and comfort
and each wine-soaked petal is a finger longing
for a hand

Acute pain under my rib cage where you used to put your fingers on the shortest nights I’ve...

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 15:41:40 -0500

Acute pain under my rib cage where you used to put your fingers on the shortest nights I’ve ever lived. My eyes still moving from when I began to count every hair on your head, like a nervous tic to keep the dawn from coming.

Crystal moon over the La Sal Mountains and I’m tired, tired from staying up all night watching...

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 02:15:09 -0500

Crystal moon over the La Sal Mountains and I’m tired, tired from staying up all night watching your face turn and twist in the sheets. You’re just a voice now. Far away, somewhere in the snow, you echo out of the rocks and bedroom walls and somehow I hear you and my chest opens up to inhale you. The elk stand out against the snow and I’m tired of missing so much.

External forces pushing my bones and skin out of line with each other, creating within and without...

Mon, 05 Dec 2011 17:00:04 -0500

External forces pushing my bones and skin out of line with each other, creating within and without me a distorted figure of self. God, who am I? The time will come when that won’t be the only question on my mind.

Taking wide, giant steps across the earth of myself thousand mile stretches hurt good in the calf...

Sun, 04 Dec 2011 14:58:08 -0500

Taking wide, giant steps across the earth

of myself

thousand mile stretches

hurt good in the calf and thigh

long drive to Dallas

eat some corn beef and soda

in the car next to Elvis.

Walking away from it,

a three way mirror and broken steps

cold walls in the winter

and twenty-four hour supervision.

Abuse smell like sweat

and hair when it gets too close

and scared.

I’ll still love you, even when you’re in Bulgaria.

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 03:24:50 -0500

I’ll still love you, even when you’re in Bulgaria.

You stepped into the room with the door slightly ajar in the first moments of morning a billboard...

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 05:03:27 -0500

You stepped into the room

with the door slightly ajar in the first moments of morning

a billboard said it best

“good things come to those who wake”

Our tongues curled up together for 11 months. We became sinuous in one another, our arms long and...

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 10:29:17 -0500

Our tongues curled up together for 11 months. We became sinuous in one another, our arms long and growing to stretch out only. We became time, fleeting and flexible. We became lust, carnal and nodding the ways and waves of our bodies against each other. We became sick, with apprehension and the transformative power of love and gracefulness. We became sad and happy, all at once. We became until we got tired and then became some more and, when you’ve had that, it won’t go away. We’ll become until we die and then become some more.

I’ve got a hunger deep in my heart for something. You or food or God or play. Something, down...

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 01:20:31 -0500

I’ve got a hunger deep in my heart for something. You or food or God or play. Something, down there, lurks in wait for something to love. Why can’t it be myself?

I am an animal, panting in the heatwind of my home. We have signs enough; signs to speak love,...

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 12:42:00 -0500

I am an animal, panting in the heatwind of my home. We have signs enough; signs to speak love, happiness, eternal sadness, loss, goodness, compassion, let’s get a burrito, all compact within the inner sanctum of words lost and never thought. We are compiled of ancient symbols. An open mouth to tell of nostalgia and bittersweet anxiety happy. A closed palm to indicate dedicated resignation, past the point of logic. What happens when we are grounded in the moment? Does it become unbearable to lose and give? I don’t think so but I’m not the expert.

As I slept and the snow fell in my mind, I became a million tiny little threads. And I flew to sew...

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 14:28:30 -0500

As I slept and the snow fell in my mind, I became a million tiny little threads. And I flew to sew myself into the rest of human experience, all torn to shreds just to become something.