the woman in black

the word bag is mean and
when i am skin and bones

there are times of that

hanging from the ceiling of your mind,

enemy, foreign, i offering coffee as
insult to your sonhood, not taking
traffic circles seriously enough.  these
times i fly side to side anchored to

knowing i am despised and strangers
say hello and call me dear and it's

because they don't know my eyes
without black rings, my mouth colorless

those fists of thought, of words, fists, jabs
from eyes and frustrated sighs and
fake smiles as walking down the sidewalk,

we don't get each other's jokes.

a phrase between us  
   

i bite your beard
you holler and wounded, i look into your eyes and
bite again.  acceso.  this time.  you scream don't   and
i look into your eyes again and wounded    barbarous i
again, bird's eye baby             no blood shows it moves

measured, as i do, pushing, incinerate in common time,
this canon      bite scream bite scream pause.

pause.    (this is the romantic round)

holler more.  work the straps if you want, tongue a riff 
sing your voice across the vertebrae, our octaves, the top
c.   sure, i'll  play it      bite    float you
above, ground hard, coda.    

we are movement in this somewhere

into our love, i'll fall

this sacred eyesore nevus, this cratered hurt.

so scabbed and dark,  this righteous indignation
pockmarked broke, and dirty spark.
deformed.

this buckled malformation,

i weeping willow, mounded ash.

adore my venom sweetness,  and paw this brow

of slash.  i'll be your true

annihilate, no comfort

come with blight, i'll be your wicked mercy,

caressing open, reptile bite.

into our love.  i fall.

Laquer me

ours.
you laquered me in tender.
pretty, patient,

holding out.  that doubt would lie
you powdered me in the grit
of your nerve, and the madness of

sunned bone on black.  it was here, it was there
you waited.

ours.

the prowess of lovers

howls promise

cackles fright,
frigid squalling, and you.  liberating,
you dispossessed.

the skin of my protection scaled and
peeled with judas kiss.  the giveaway true failing.

and mr. steinbeck, too. and then i'm done for the evening.

one of the most important things for a writer to do, it is said, is to write, but also along with that one most important thing for a writer to do is another most important thing, and that is to read.  a lot.  to do a lot, in fact, of both of these important things.

so, and, when one reads carefully and pays attention there are many thoughts written and read that are utterly forgettable and should be promptly forgotten, in order to leave room for the good stuff.  (it would be better, on the whole, to learn from having read whatever or whomever and just pass on it the next time around, paying attention to one's own patterns, to learn about self, and preferences; desires... and to respect those things...  another post, another post.  -- and yes, yes, only dropping after having given a few shots, but not too many, because we owe no word or person undeserving ANYTHING of our us, beyond consideration and politeness.)

oh, but and then there are the glories.  the words one finds which we want to slice from the page and suck on, letter by letter ingesting the sweet or strong or hue of it.  since that can't be done, least of all we don't forget them, we don't want to forget them, and we want to share them.  even those of us known for our greed of all things of the senses.

here is one i would suck dry, were that possible.  somehow it strikes me odd it comes from mr. steinbeck, and i find it gut-lovely.

from Steinbeck:  A Life in Letters:

There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you — of kindness and consideration and respect — not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had.

***

in which way are you loved?  and in which way do you love.

bitter pills for some, i think.

a present from mr. henry miller

...so i'm working and writing and working on writing but nothing is ready yet.  but look what mr. miller has to say, said so beautifully and in his own way, that makes me think:  oh yes.  and makes me wish for a small jiggerful of his intoxicating talent.

alas for me. 

but here, from The Wisdom of the Heart:

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. In this state of god-like awareness one sings; in this realm the world exists as poem.

******


see what i mean? 

it IS all about the sprinklers and the clementines--precisely these.

dancing this one shade of nighttime when there are no stars

so rah rah. 
feeling blah blah

since last sunday.  lots of words clumping and clomping, things like fingers spread wide catching nothing,  six days of puny and of envy: of jaundiced skies and ropes let go, dance dance dance and don't hold the wall, and long red dresses flying like birds acing the sky. 

of course there's admiration too, and lack of confidence, and underlining it all is one holy, one pure icelined resentment of suicidal maniacs. 

it's been a week of smut and rime. 

so here's this little bitter uplifting, for me.  for you.  it's a quote from Hunter S. Thompson, the man who lived like bukowski and other beautifully imperfects. 

                                  The Edge… There is no honest way to explain it 

                                  because the only people who really know where it 

                                  is are the ones who have gone over. The others — 

                                  the living — are those who pushed their luck as far 

                                  as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, 

                                  or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it 

                                  came time to choose between Now and Later.

 

carol

coming from the back of the house
she was surprised by my presence.

with wet hair she sat and smoked

my cigarettes thinking they were her own, and
when she realized her error, she said

she was sorry and that she hadn't meant to
steal from me. 

and so on this occasion i could
point out that there is a difference

between stealing something and

being given it.  and that i had watched
her smoke my cigarettes and not stopped her

so if she had stolen something from me
i'd like her to say what it was. 

she looked away, fast and
she looked at him.  and he

stared at the floor.  the

dust motes drifted in the
sound of the aquarium bubbling

but no one else moved
and no one else made a sound.


i enjoyed the moment.

steampunk kitty saves the world

steampunk kitty cat
piloted the dirigible over
fields dotted with dandelions
and dropped catnip seeds through
a chute all along her route.  she wanted to
liberate the feline world and this was her individual uprising.
kitty kitty knew her way around. she never used
a copilot, but did have a tiny parachute
in the event of an emergency
adventure.  and she had really great goggles.

steampunk kitty cat tried.  she
tried to make the world a better
place, after her own fashion.
she tried to shove shoes on the
octopus, she tried to train
the mice to jump through
the holey cheese, she tried to get
the dog to wear lipstick, but her circus
never made it.  the acts were not
good, and the people
just weren't ready.  fleas
were more to their taste, but
she wasn't going near that
shit, no way.  so she wore the
shoes, ate the cheese, and threw
the lipstick away.  the notion
of dog lips made her shudder.

kitty kitty kitty cat had disdain for people.  she
barely tolerated being domesticated and had been
known to scratch and slash any flesh trying to keep her inside.
she dared anyone at all to try to get her to use a box, an act,
to her refined sensibilities, utterly distasteful.  but the backs of closets were good.
she was independent.
though she didn't really know what that meant, in a practical sense.

creating her next caper, and wearing
tulle and one tiara, she sat one late friday afternoon
in a cafe called the ruptured duck.   sipping a white russian, 

she wondered if she should call a pal to hang out with, 

to loll on pillows with and smoke hookah all
night long with and then entertain people with at dawn
by knocking over garbage cans 

and singing james brown songs in the alley. 
she decided she really didn't want anyone else.  meow.  

sidekicks were not her thing.

she ordered cream puffs
and sent a golden dream cocktail
to the handsome tom sitting by
the yarn balls.  after eating and giving herself a slow and
meticulous wash, stretching one leg at a time
as far as she could behind her ear,
she began to leave.  she slinked past tom-cat
and as he tipped his glass her way and tried
to make eye contact, she looked back over her shoulder 

and swished her tail toward his whiskers.  which
felt good.

in the cool air she remembered she'd
never gone that blimp route again to check
to see what had germinated
or if she had wasted all that rip.
without proper follow up:  mission fail.
naughty kitty, she said to
herself. no one else was
around to say it.  she was nothing
if not fair, though she wasn't down
on herself in a clinical, neurotic way.
she knew she was splendid.

 so:   
as for her next move in saving the world from all that is flat 

and unlovely, where was she going to get a
scooter?  she would look
fabulous on a turquoise vespa, she thought. 

while wearing lace up granny boots.  successful or failing
it may turn out to be, 

but: it was a plan.

the cornerman

oh that benevolent buckle-stopping
that came from his eyes, that
brilliance. pulling me from the
conversation with one wink across
the ring
                    then TKO:  out of chasing definition,
                    out of rising palpitation and finally, out of
                    those goddamned christmas eves of dissalvation. 

those eyes beaconing me, sending a tiny gesture
no one else would see and then: we were ha. and
i was again loose.  fine.  shook it off.  he gave me
spar and irreverent and they. 

i had all that.

that pale thistle dress

that finger doorslammed dawning
four months and sixteen years late:
i am still that.  of here now, but visiting.
there too and everywhere at all, just outside and
accustomed to the am that slowly gentled off
to used to be.  opaqued. 



(then:  come here. play me the right song and
i'll careen this car through our rolling
our restless and we will sail over a ditch of
their chaff.  clean.  come here.  bite me just right and
i'll show you my breaking and entering ways.  
with wine and make me sigh just right and come here.
i'll give you bare, sweet secrets to take.  you'll
carry them with you, tomorrows.  come here.)



and inside the crouching building of falling
light here, at any coast it is, this pile at my feet.
this pale thistle dress and sunset cigarette of then
remind me define me back bind me today.
i'm seenless.  i am words and sound and

that, now.

brown eyed handsome man

                                                                    

 nina simone

sings it pretty, says it true

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf-FwOGVvHc

...way back in history three thousand years

in fact ever since the world began

there's been a whole lot of good women shedding tears

over a brown eyed handsome man

it's a lot of trouble with a 

brown eyed handsome man....

***

(and yet, if i may say so, worth it.  absolutely.)

spring!

pablo neruda wrote:

i want to do with you
what spring does with the cherry trees.




isn't that just? yes.  it is.

(thank you fred, dear, for sending me this)

hey cowboy

you scotch smooth, a stretched burning kiss. 
and you midnights of scorchlight and
stars, we feeling small and we feeling large,
we fleeing from or to,

writers.
in writingless occupation:  no lines of pure or dirt
to answer the question it was:  to, or from.  that was
always never uttered never wondered wanted known

until you yessed.  yes you drew a
line. and yes from that taut place you sprung, and yes,
if not graceful, you were positively charged with power

and there you submerged.  jackrabbit sharp
and into that under, that blanket burrow, that head down
and into that secret plain of broken twigs and rag, into the

unsplendid honor that you'd maybe'd for years while
riding buriden's ass on down to Abilene, for want
of other direction, protected from danger
or distraction or your everything, and but:

one hundred percent of zero is nothing.  treasure that,
cowboy.  my boots are on, and they're red.

today i held my breath

today the sun shined.  it looked
like spring outside.  the hyacinth
in a yellow vase perfumed quietly,
and the white walls reflected light.

and i read:  that humans are equipped
to send and receive signals of emotion
solely through touch.  and blindfolded,

we recognize eight of these
expressed:  anger, disgust, fear, sadness.
gratitude. sympathy. love. and happiness.
 
today i wrote and deleted. 
i held my breath.  i tried to re
let go.  today was scrub brush,
burlap, and jag.

those honey lips

gasped parting.
murmurs down my spine
twist trace the way.

breathe

and
damp descending slices
twirl razing blades,

breathe
that mouth against my sole
hands, honeyed lips
a white ballet
and your brown melt me eyes
were jaguar deep and darkened cave
breathe.




  

the significance of scars

i asked a friend if he could love a woman who had no scars.  he told me that when one began discussing scars, it was the sign of last resort--nothing left to discuss.  i disagree, wholly, as i believe mulling over scars is just the beginning.  

my recent and not so easily gotten over lover had two scars--one under his chin, where he had gashed it as a kid somehow on a bed frame, and the second on his thumb, a result of a near-lethal paper cut.  i've always liked to crawl the map of someone and hear their scars.  but lately i've been thinking about this fascination i have, with healed injury, this fact of his not having had many healed injuries, and of course, as usual, just him.

i prefer not to think about that last part.  but the good news is i just remembered i think he had a 3rd scar, around his eyebrow, but i am not at all sure of this... .  anyway.

i prefer to think about this:  is there significance to scarlessness?  we can't see inner scars, you say, and i say true.  but... how important is it that one suffered their body for desire of their guts?  why do i have a sneaking suspicion that though it may not be important that one does, it is at least telling if one does not.

is a scar a stamped letter of strength--that someone has been hurt, and endured?  is a scar a reminder of passion unfurled?  does a scar signal a warrior spirit, in a man proclaiming one who is fearless and strong, and in a woman demonstrating resilience, and as well, strength?  (of course for women probably the scar would need to not detract from her attractiveness overall.  there's gotta be equilibrium:  woman as decoration and as a good candidate for a long line of reproducing,  and woman as utility--her ability to function successfully as a birthing vessel that won't throw in the towel or go mad-dog or collapse after the experience of pregnancy and birth the first time around) 

perhaps this is all about rationalizing my own marred bod and justifying an extreme suspicion of the scarless-types.  and though this is definitely not intended to flaunt my non-caddishness as exemplified by unpristine skin,  i do have to consider my own scars, and what they mark, and what they possibly contribute to the fleshing of my spirit, in order to see if maybe there's something to my notion that scarlessness--or nearly that--is sinister.  or put another way:  that the extent to which one is visibly scarred tells of character, and functions either in a positively or negatively charged signal.  i tend to lean toward more scarring, more experience, better.  but this is my bias. 

So:  i have a deep smile where my 3 c-sections were performed one on top of the other, that surprise when my bikini is removed; i have what appears to be a permanent blotch the size of a half dollar--dark purple, round, on my ankle--from being on my knees with that particular bit of body pressed onto a fire-hot piece of metal which was burning the holy fuck out of me without my even knowing; i have a slit next to my nose where a dog bit me when i ran to him all glee girl and hugged him, which gesture he did not desire at that moment; i have a thin white line  curving around the top of my finger where i tried to make an adjustment to a purse strap with my pocket knife and wound up slicing myself to the bone right before the plane was going to take off, which required the plane to be delayed and an ambulance to come out on the tarmac and etc. etc.   there are small dotted scars running down my spine from carpet burns.  there is a starburst shaped scar on my hip from the removal of a suspicious mole (it was nothing), and a smaller scar that never gets tan, from same, on my thigh.  i have scars on my eyelids, now, from surgery.  i have a scar on my breast where a tumor was removed (again:  aside from the terror of waiting, nothing)  i have stories of stupidity and passion and aging and experience and self-determination written on my skin, and these are lived.  i mean that word:  lived.

hm.  i mean, only some of these are caused by my own actions.  so then perhaps a consideration of the ways in which scars are obtained is important--although that can hardly be known at first sight--in clarifying character.  is she healthy?  is she clumsy?  is she so engrossed in the moment that she is unaware?  does she routinely cause people to miss their connections? there must be a mechanism inside us somewhere posing the questions, analyzing the answers, and based upon some unknown-to-me threshold, calculating desirability of the people we encounter.  the desirability of their character.

so.  in general, i doubt men with scars look like fools.  the more scars, the more they demonstrate their "animal".  but i am wondering if women with scars just wind up looking like dingbats.  some scars, we are strong and capable.  too many, we are another liability. 

i'm trapped in the damn zone of blur==where the conclusion to be drawn about a person shifts from "one who moves forward despite risk" or "one who has good stories" into "one who is just plain stupid", and "one who is inert" or "one who mistakes comfort for happiness" into  "one who is just plain stupid".  and where do the scarred, and where do the scarless, fall.  i wish i knew math--somehow i want someone to draw me a map of this, and then tell me how it is.

rats.  i don't feel one bit better after having written this.  especially since i know on tuesday i go get more stitches out, and am going to have a big ol bunch of new scars.  pfft.

want

i
wanted
bald blaze
and true and
running through mud in
good shoes because there was
rain and who
can resist petrichor and why
would they and how sweet.

dark comes.

i
want
unspeakable.

i
want
split figs and
nightmares to share and
that sweater stitched of sticky
spider web.  i want that horror on my shoulders

on my back.

and make me a necklace
from your second teeth, and
give me your hair for the locket
capture your sweat in a small glass phial
and give it to me to drink. your tears are
no good.  give me the salt of exertion. 

i
want
slam.

and in turn, i will crush
violet petals under my heel and then
spit into that pretty pretty pulp,
and you will tattoo beg
from that ink into your sacred
skin.

i want to set fire
to your love.

traces/left behind

whiskied nipples against pressed palms
our damage naked, aspen.
you soul patch balm,
i bleed.

do nothing.  ask it:

wonder, how did we arrive here?
it doesn't hurt. your dna covers me 

and that touch: we catch of divine, 

nascent.  alive

swimming against deadines

but stumbling across ahas & clicks & wanting to share:

the following is some hefty; some validation and axing all at once.

Robert Kurzban, in his evolutionary psychology blog (a great place to crawl through interesting), recently posted about the evolutionary purpose of love--which is something i've considered, quite.  i want some answers, damnit.  i post some of his original writing, here, but you can find the entire essay at the link below.  but now, pulled from "LOVE":

"...limerence causes a certain amount of failure to engage with reality, seeing hope for the possibility of a relationship where a more dispassionate appraisal would suggest there is little, or none."

and, assuming the emotion of love has evolved to function as a commitment device: 

"... suppose love does, in fact, cause someone to stay with their current mate even when a better option comes along. If love has this effect on decision making, then the benefits of signaling commitment would have to be relatively large to offset these potential costs.  Still, to the extent feelings of love genuinely foreclose alternative options in the service of signaling commitment, a potentially treacherous tradeoff is being made. The details, of course, ought to matter. How likely is a better alternative to come along? If one does, how much better is the alternative likely to be? Love’s loyalty makes the most sense in a world in which the next best option is only marginally better than the status quo. Does love look so peculiar to us in part because of the modern world’s greater vocabulary of possible lovers? In ancestral environments, if the variance were lower, then commitment might have constituted a potentially less costly tradeoff."

and finally: 

"...what are we to make of the impact of the detritus of love denied, when happily ever after eludes us?  That is, if love is a commitment device, when love passes out of reach, why does it persist and torment – causing both Romeo and Juliet to endure the greatest of all fitness costs –  rather than gracefully simply fading away? The agony of unrequited love, so paralyzingly horrible, seems absurdly counterproductive, in addition to, from the point of view of the unsuccessful suitor, transcendentally painful. As an adaptive matter, it would seem that the right response to doomed courtship is resuming the search; the worst response is lover’s leap, the course favored by so many. Even those who have resisted paying the ultimate price when their favored mate proves out of reach, the aftermath of rejection seems to pose enormous costs in the form of withdrawal from life’s other pursuits. The dejection of the spurned appears as painful as it is unproductive. If there is a crueler burden with which we have been saddled by evolution than the agony of a broken heart, it is hard to imagine what it might be."

 *****

sigh. 
anyway, the essay can be found here:  epjournal.net/blog/2013/02/love/

shamelessly stolen from rob wiblin on facebook, but perfect for valentines day.   this ever happen to you? 

Robert Wiblin

about an hour ago ·

‎"Susan, we need to talk. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. About us. I really like you, but ever since we met in that econ class in college I knew there was something missing from how I felt: quantitative reasoning. We can say we love each other all we want, but I just can’t trust it without the data. And after performing an in-depth cost-benefit analysis of our relationship, I just don’t think this is working out.

Please know that this decision was not rash. In fact, it was anything but—it was completely devoid of emotion. I just made a series of quantitative calculations, culled from available OECD data on comparable families and conservative estimates of future likelihoods. I then assigned weights to various “feelings” based on importance, as judged by the relevant scholarly literature. From this, it was easy to determine that given all of the options available, the winning decision on both cost-effectiveness and comparative-effectiveness grounds was to see other people.

It’s not you, it’s me. Well, it’s not me either: it’s just common sense, given the nature of my utility function.

The calculations are fairly simple. At this point in my life, the opportunity cost of hanging out with you is fairly high. Sex with you grants me seventeen utils of pleasure, but I derive negative utils from all of the cuddling afterwards and the excessive number of buttons on your blouse that makes it very difficult to maneuver in the heat of the moment. I also lose utils when you do that weird thing with your hands that you think is affectionate but feels almost like you’re scratching me. Overall, I derive thirteen utils of pleasure on a typical Friday night with you, or fourteen if we watch The Daily Show as part of it (fifteen if they have a good guest on the show).

Meanwhile, I could be doing plenty of other things instead of spending time with you. For example, I could be drinking at the Irishman with a bunch of friends from work. I derive between 20 and 28 utils from hitting on drunk slutty girls at the bar. Since Jeff always buys most of the drinks anyways, the upfront pecuniary costs are low, and I have no potential negatives in terms of emotional investment. However, most of those girls don’t laugh at my jokes, which drives down utils gained. Thus, I could get between 14 and 21 utils from a night out at the bar.

If you’re looking for the kind of guy who’s interested in maximizing the worst-off outcome regardless of potential gains—well, I’m not that guy. All you have to do is look at the probabilities and compare the feasible range of outcomes in terms of number of units of pleasure to see that we’re going to have to call this relationship quits.

This may feel cold, but there’s nothing cold about well-reasoned analysis.

Like all humans, I know I am fallible—and since I have a natural tendency to improperly discount the future, I have made sure to accurately determine present future value of costs and benefits. But even considering the diminishing marginal returns of hitting on the aforementioned drunk slutty girls, the numbers simply do not want us to be together.

I know this breakup might come as a bit of a shock to you, which I have also factored in. The disappointed look on your face costs me 5 utils of pleasure, but the knowledge that this is the right decision in the long-term makes up for that. Additionally, I have included in my calculations the fact that as a courtesy I will have to pay for this dinner in its entirety, which, given the gender parity we have previously expressed in our relationship, would normally cost me only half that.

I want you to know that this decision isn’t just for me—it’s for you, too. I’ve done the calculations. There are plenty of eligible bachelors out there who are probably able to more vigorously, consistently, and knowledgeably have sexual intercourse with you. While the thought of you being with someone else causes me a substantial negative utility that makes me feel as though I am going to vomit, I know that in the aggregate everyone is better off, and therefore it is the right decision for us to make.

There’s no need to try to persuade me otherwise, Susan. We just can’t let our feelings get in the way of the math.

In the meantime, I need to get back home. My utility calculations tell me that the best thing I can do right now is strip down to my boxers, microwave a quesadilla, and watch a bunch of episodes of The Wire. It might seem strange and horribly unproductive, but it’s not me—it’s just my utility function." HT Misha Saul

It’s Not You, It’s Quantitative Cost-Benefit Analysis.

www.mcsweeneys.net