War

Someone is smashing things against the wall downstairs in my apartment.

It's very violent (a fitting couple to the shrieking sirens outside the window).

Each smash is accompanied by a horrified shriek.

You might wonder why I am doing nothing to help or hinder the smashings.

It's because Erica and Gina (two of my four housemates) have declared war on our recent infestation--of flies.

And I would say I told you so because we never take out the trash,

but that would mean I never take out the trash. And I do. Because I can smell it. From my room.

We don't know where the flies came from. But there are about fifty large green, bug-eyed freaks nesting on the ceiling of our common room.


Erica and Heather refuse to sleep at home. Gina is smashing them by hand. I'm trying to purge my lungs of my innovative 409 frenzy (involving random spurting of the cleaning solution on the bugs when they landed anywhere. It didn't kill. Just stunned. Proven when I nailed a bugger and walked away as he lay screaming on his back, only to return moments later and find--he'd flown off).

Yes, I know. Fly hunting is the most enthralling thing you've read about this week. Probably more enthralling than the story about the four shootings down the street from me--last night. Probably more enthralling than the stabbing on the Fruitvale BART--ten minutes from me. Probably. Probably.

I don't know how I feel about Oakland.

(_____________ )

I think this is where the poem is supposed to go
(in this box), (though it's stuck in my toes),
So I'll put it here (is this even a poem?) as if I can
whisper my meaning (from the page) (to your heart).

Separate (my parenthesis, I think I mean) the phrases
I've put together (because, really, they don't go
together) in order to find something (anything) sig
nificant.

(I broke that word for a reason and when I die they're going to say
genius but for now they'll say idiot you're not making
any) (say it--) Sense.

Exhale

I am listening to the Silence of a crowded room, and wondering why the woman in the corner stares at her shoes (as if they contained the answers to the world).

When voices fill this space it's like walking into a vacuum, where my eardrums are sucked out through my chest (grotesque) and the thudding of my heart rings in the back of my eyes.

Meanwhile the fountain (in the corner) murmurs beside the woman as she watches her shoes, occasionally shifting her gaze to the trickle of the water, as if it's whispering secrets (to her feet).

I wonder, as I watch her, if she can hear it, too: the buzz of the vacuum beneath the hum of the voices that fill this crowded room.

I am feeling (typical) as if the vacuum has affixed itself to my chest and tugs its pulling--searching, I think, for something to pop out.

and when the nearly-familiar Voice whispers at dawn that He is waiting, I shudder because I am afraid that He will see me, in the woman, in the corner, beside the fountain, waiting for answers from my toes.

I push the vacuum against my forehead and strain for the answers, for the something, to sneak past the Silence

beneath the voices in

my crowded room.

damn.

(I rarely say that word aloud and I
just wanted to try it on the page to
see what it looked like, and it looks
nothing like what it sounds like cuz
it sounds like a rock and the page is
more like a sigh, into nothing like
hell or fire or brimstone but more
like something you take from a box
of pencils when you're looking for
the sharp one and finding only dull
ones and not even the color--blue--
that you were looking for).

This has nothing to do with anything

Hi, Magic Flower,
I'm feeling abstract
to make up for words
I may seem to lack

like the bulb in my face
that's blinking like matches
and phrases in teeth, stuck
like bears' metal catches

(clashes like jaws yawning after
gnawing because bubble-yum
is sweet and sticks like soda's
bubbles run).

And another P.S:
you must understand, it means
nothing unless you--you and me--'re
holding hands.

Just a blurb

Today Alyssa answered a question about me in a way that brought me much laughter:

Q: "What is Kellie's greatest weakness?"
A: Sugar. She's like superman but instead of kryptonite its sugar that takes away power.

hehe
---

Rain and thunder ushered me to the car this morning as I hurried to work. Now, I'm unable to figure out how to get the soothing music playing on our loudspeakers; however, the fountain is doing a pretty good job of providing a soothing environment.


Today I anticipate: much creative writing, punctuated with phone calls requesting Brazilian waxes and facial cream.

This afternoon,

1. The Mills clock tower chimes every fiften minutes, telling everyone, "You're--" "late", or "--early".

2. Bugs are stuck in my room, drawn to the lavendar reed diffuser.

3. A new story unfolds under my fingers while I wait for September to get moving.

Yesterday I aged another year

and I think it's an omen:

on 09-09-09, I turned 22. Repeating numbers better be a trend this year or I will be very, very disappointed. I hope everything comes in pairs. Like .... I get two cookies. I get two slices of toast. I get two A's. I get two thumbs up. Two... paychecks? (ideal).

Unfortunately I wish I was 33 because trios are more interesting than doubles.

Two wheels on a bike. Two harddrives in my failed computer.

Sigh.

Two .... I dont know. I'm out of ideas.



In other news ... hm. I'm writing a great story you all better read when it starts selling like mad in a few years.
In two years? meh.


I'm uninspired regarding this blog. My poetry has been weird lately.

Grad school in general is just bizarre. I'm sorry you had to read to the end of this post. I miss San Francisco.

Collage de lyrics = poem? :)

you're like a 6th avenue heartache

('it's drawn on me')

drawin you in like the end of a breath before you
*remember? that something before the nothing began?*

that Nothing from the No-one.

(I never understood before).

What_a_feelin.But Change is good. Take the road that leads back to Sullivan Street (home through the town past the shadows)


that fall down whenever

we: meet.
I'm nearly fallin' to my knees on the way home I'm forgetting
the way home. (drag the "e" so it sounds like an ho-oohm.) and for once I remember how I got here. }though I'm nearly crawlin on my knees, down on her knees drowning in your Sea{

(and then the motor runs while you're in my tub listening to the
thub-dub-thub-dub of my

[heart, duh] my hand when everything turned out right.]

I'll meet you tomorrow afternoon. I (I'm not your first fool but) I'm going to be--your last one.

I "work"

Well, hello, Dreamers

It's me: the Weaver.

---

Life Update:

Right now I'm sitting at the front desk of a lobby with a trickling fountain while soothing spa music filters through the mesh, Chinese-style screens. My brain is filled with the heavy scent of a lavender bouquet and, somewhere in the next room over, a woman is receiving a relaxing facial to the soundtrack of the forest.

Yep. New job perks: constant poetic atmosphere, coupled with green tea and potpourri. Is this job going to further my career? Nah. But you cant beat discount professional facials and spa products.

This morning, I drove to Fremont reluctantly, having skipped out on the end of this weekend's forest extravaganza: a group of us spent the night in Galen's cabin-in-the-woods--after dinner and a late-night-lake-hike where we chased echoes beneath the glow of the moon. But this atmosphere soothes in a similar way: low-stress, muted greenery, and the freedom to write poems and stories all day.

---
Happy Labor Day tomorrow. What is that holiday for?

From the Berated

From the Berated


Dear,

(you)

this is: Me.

word-writer, -seer, -reader,
-lover, -mutilator (?):

who doesn't really
/fit/

inside the brackets you
b_race around the

breathed-, scrawled-, painted-
taped-words you

(hope)

to strip squish onto your own
page--worthy of only

your own
Praise.

Pat yourSelf on the back,
jerk,

since

no one else
will.


----

No one wants to read poems that no one else can understand.

My poetry--my new poetry--is about the day, the moment, the hesitance of a breath. Freezing things so that you look again, and again, and again,

at the Normal: the concrete.

The things that mean something to everyone.

No one cares how may ways you can rape the word "they" through a series of ugly sonnets that only make sense when the world is high.

So what if being the poet laureate was a weak aspiration for sell-outs. I LIKE that academia has no place for my poetry. Words are for the everyday.

the World is my everyday and God is my Audience and if all I write are Jesus-poems and listen to the hum of the sea--that's

ME.

Bite it, tear it off, sink your ugly educated fangs into the Me that Listens to the Reader of the Day--

not the reader of the classroom who loses interest
when your tweaked nose isn't pressed
against their work yet still wanders home wondering,
How can I write so you love me?

I write--Knowing, dear, that you won't.
you're not the Point.

My aim: is Truth. And your wrinkles, your callouses
are proof of your
fear
of It.


(you will never be a Capital on my Breath.)