I hurt myself:

I shake, and no hand stills the rudder.

A line? A line. No peak or trough, so what is it?

Just, that acute sensation of all things painfully, sharply, even the exciting bits. Life as gradations of pain and itch. Centrum of pain.

It's like this most days--waking up, feeling empty, but knowing (not having to convince) that I am doing something that I cannot live without. Something irreversible. Yes, I know that. But I still wake up in the lowlit grey. Gravity thumps my feet every time.

There's this other weird feeling--I've basically been generating about 3-4 poems every 2 weeks (so, like 1-2 poems a week, usually 2), which is a really productive rate, considering my professors consider these poems to be keepers (I think. I'm pretty sure.) I even consider them pretty solid. As in, they aren't paper igloos.

This is a huge feat for me--I only wrote, no eked maybe 3 good poems during my 2 years out of school. And in my last quarter at UCLA, I think I only wrote 2 great poems.

Right now, I have at least 10. Both of my poetry prof. and workshop instructor tell me to keep doing what I'm doing. There's so much encouragement--and kind words--and I allow myself to believe just a little bit of it. Enough for me to not burn words.

But last week and this week, I didn't really have to generate completely new poems, which meant I got a little bit more sleep (plus, E was here), but today I feel so listless--like I can't write a poem anymore--like I lost that momentum and now everything has fallen to shit.

Yes, more sorts of empty. Even my poem last week for class was weak in my opinion. I struggled with the assignment, and wrote it out of exhaustion while E laid next to be in bed, staying up with me until 4 am so that I wouldn't have to suffer alone.

Even though there is this great person, not too far away, but yes, admittedly far, things feel unbearable. It's raining, has been raining, and I love rain, but things are so unbearable. I don't even want to talk about this with him because I really don't think there's anything he can do that he isn't already doing. I hate this helplessness. It's not depression. That was 2 weeks ago.

This--this has everything to do with my body, the leap between, and the terrible looking down from the bridge. Uncertainty. But I know that to have certainty is ruinous. So there is no solution. No peak or trough then where am I?

Surely, I stop existing. I'm scared. I don't want to lapse back to my old faults. To hurt him again. To have him unintentionally hurt me.

We both already are wounded dry by this situation. We are dulled and heightened and alone. I asked, but didn't ask, and was scared at his reply.

Is it the right thing--I just want it to stay right. To keep--I do not know how to make it.

I'm tired--I don't feel safe, my last laughter seemed so long ago, but I know it must have been yesterday.

Come fetch me. Bring back the deflated driftwood balloon.

Not Lost things

I have so many things I want to capture, but I end up jotting them somewhere else, and then spending late hours in the night building poems as empires. It's draining & exhausting, and I forget to purge my emotions here.

Or by the time I get here, I'm too tired to remember, and later, when I somehow catch up with myself, the recent past seems too distant. Playing catch with a sieve, you see.

I woke up from a vibrant dream to sunshine (yesterday was pouring rain) and there was a live marching band outside. This is really strange since I didn't think that I lived on an Avenue where such band/parade type activity would ever occur. How bizarre!

In a rare moment of reveling on a true day off, I stayed in bed until 3 am. I had 2 more extremely vivid dreams, and my beautiful moment called me from his bed. He is the only one who can lift me to where I feel pure and laugh that free clear laugh. I used to resent this, but then, I was much more miserable and alone.

Despite the distance, I am not alone. I am filled with his presence, which is a creepy statement since it seems like I'm referring to Jesus or God. Whoops. Love is disgustingly creepy, sorry.

I'm glad for everything in my life--school, work, and the writing I'm hammering out. It's not easy, by no means, but for the sleepless effort and time I'm punching in, I feel as though I'm progressing. This is so important because I wrote essentially nothing in the past two years, and in my last quarter at UCLA, my poems dribbled on the floor like insipid drooling imbeciles. No joke.

It's difficult to be unable to control what you do. Earnestness doesn't cut it.

I worry a lot, off and on when I can't suppress it, about what I'll do after the 2 years are up. It worries me, but then, I know that this worry also prepares me to make sure I'm in an okay place which is suitable. But still; I fear disaster constantly. Not failure, which is inevitable as much as success is, but I fear disaster.

In another plane, I also think about where I'll be physically--do I go back to SF or stay in NY? It depends. Will we ever be finally united? I don't know. I'm scared to ask because we both don't like what ifs, and I also don't want to seem like I'm pressuring, because I'm not. I just want to know the possibilities. It's hard to gauge.

I think about him, and all the things of him, and a life with him. Sometimes I think this is dangerous, but I cannot shake this feeling. I want him, and this. All of it.

And for now, I'm okay with how things are; I'm only miserable when the line distorts, cuts, or changes without my participating. I worry about this disconnection--the growth of two apart and not together. I fear chasms.

I have never loved anyone so much in my life. I do not do harm or involuntarily want to do harm; it's out of my hands how things are--and they align. We align.

narrow distress

It's funny that when I look back at what I wrote two weeks ago (my poem assignment and previous entry, I can't remember what it felt like to feel that kind of slack-anguish.

But it comes back, sanguine & quick.

He was here for a fortunate few days last week. It already seems like years ago--it was better than a dream. I got to be on vacation, too. Took off work, skipped Sculpture class, slept in, did nothing, but just, be together, next to one another. Rolled dough, baked pie, made BLT&Es. We walked a lot, held hands.

It felt better than any other moment we have ever had together. I wish it had always been like this--but I know that we had to endure what he/I did to get to this point.

I hadn't seen him since July 20.

I was foolish. I am a fool.

It is difficult to adjust back to my hectic life after that beautiful lull. We went to the contemporary art museum with 'unusual' art installations at Beacon in Upstate. Took the train. My heart hurts even now, to remember how it was, with him. The exterior space around me which accommodates, matches my shape. I feel like crying.

He took these beautiful pictures by the Hudson while we waited in the freezing cold for the train home. I wrote later, My beautiful, indefatigable moment. My hour, my season. I can neither force nor help how I feel.

Wild river.

My fears remain the same. I rode the train to meet him at JFK, and went with him again five days later, standing at Security until his green sweater disappeared around the snaking corner. How do I go back to my life?

I live nowhere.

He purposefully left his toothbrush behind in the bathroom paste/brush holder. I use his towel everyday. Loss is a weight; emptiness is worse than gravity.

School is going well; my professors encourage me to continue doing what I'm doing--they're pretty enthusiastic that I have to be excited as well. I'm fortunate, they say. I worry too much to be able to fully appreciate.

I got lost today. Felt the tide of departure come, burning me like a mist. I hate that it slips me so easily.

Some days, basic tasks are more difficult than usual. But we have days to look forward to. I'll be there in November, in Dec/Jan. We make plans. We miss, very much, but we're in the same place.

What further fuels, but blows my mind

Today, walking from class to work, I was crisply aware of how brittle, how frail & tenuous I've been. I am.

I'm so resentful of seeing lovers on the sidewalk. But I do not envy them or wish them ill. The pain which hits me like with a blunt punch stems from memory and routine.

Isn't it, hasn't it been the same? I cannot answer; I do not trust myself right now.

I've been reading Jesus' Son off/on the train. The short stories move quickly, and embody exactly the strangeness and terror which grasps me daily now.

His blood bubbled out of his mouth with every breath. He wouldn't be taking many more. I knew that, but he didn't, and therefore I looked down into the great pity of a person's life on this earth. I don't mean that we all end up dead, that's not the great pity. I mean that he couldn't tell me what he was dreaming, and I couldn't tell him what was real.

-----

Will you believe me when I tell you there was kindness in his heart? His left hand didn't know what his right hand was doing. It was only that certain important connections had been burned through. If I opened up your head and ran a hot soldering iron around in your brain, I might turn you into someone like that.

-----

When we were arguing on my twenty-fourth birthday, she left the kitchen, came back with a pistol, and fired it at me five times from right across the table. But she missed. It wasn't my life she was after. It was more. She wanted to eat my heart and be lost in the desert with what she'd done, she wanted to hurt me as only a child can be hurt by its mother.

-----

The sky was a bruised red shot with black, almost exactly the colors of a tattoo. Sunset had two minutes left to live.

-----

First I put my lips to her upper lip, then to the bottom of her pout, and then I kissed her fully, my mouth on her open mouth, and we met inside.
It was there. It was. The long walk down the hall. The door opening. The beautiful stranger. The torn moon mended. Our fingers touching away the tears. It was there.