Raw Sugar Tales: February 2008

My love wears silver annually now so that I might keep the time.
He loves my nostalgic face
that smells of twilight when he looks away.
He loves falling asleep watching my dreams as they collide,
playing next to him in our bed.
I fall just to watch him back.
He loves my telescopic heart made of optical lenses and Saturn’s oldest marbles.
What good does it do her to speak of him though,
when he is gone?
The sadness a heart can inhabit is underestimated.
And when your heart collapses he looks at you
as to show silently with his eyes of black dripping sugar,
that he has seen your face in all the rooms of his head.
His eyes reveal his temporary blindness but also the permanent sun in his thick chrome heart.
He loves you.
This kind of love receives not nearly enough authentic compassion in books
and science and the fractured lights of some movies.
It is not to say that some do not regard it properly,
but truly have you ever been a teenage girl who thought and believed she was in love?
I have lived this Novocain dream;
I have inhabited this symphonic silence.
There is nothing more wonderful than to lie on your bed
revealing your heart under skies and swimming pools
which appear to rest above the city;
To emerge from the stairwell of your heart
and wait for him just to say your name.
How can I ever tell you about his bathroom
and the mirrors,
which sometimes held scraps pf paper which made me suspicious of other girls
or a night spent with guitars and cheap cameras?
But planes of glass
which have seen and held countless faces
As my stares wanted to be things of beauty
the look which would solidify his dangling love for me.

Russia -Photography

Moscow, Subway Station Moscow, Subway Station Moscow River, Moscow Moscow, Subway Station Moscow, Train Station St. Petersburg St. Petersburg St. Petersburg St. Petersburg Moscow Moscow St. Petersburg Palace Square, St. Petersburg Palace Square - St. Petersburg

Edge of The Sea

I would like to move with you to the edge of the sea
and dwell there possibly until all the lighthouses explode.
Bleeding nautical shavings and broken glass taverns of exiled lovers,
we could laugh at this thick world before us,
only with the knowledge that transportation for saline voyagers is provided
and the armies of sad lovers march through empty white fields
to find each other’s chrome hearts on the floor,
thick with nitrate and the imprint of fallen swallows on certain chambers.
Beneath the ivory,
I can see the creamy hollowness of a torn face,
which after nights of perpetual crying
distorts itself into faces of ancient lovers;
and the architecture of my tears imports itself to foreign places,
where girls cry under diaphanous oceans.
Between images and fractured hearts,
I lay on my bathroom floor,
flooding the spaces around me with black nostalgia
and an eternal memory built into the walls I throb inside of
That I will always remember the nights spent with you in my mind,
crying for a strange kind of love
for the boy who could not understand my understated sighs,
or the wailing vacancies in my heart,
which leaked pigments across the telephone and spoke to you.
Through the shores of scientific love,
you will be shown in my museums as the 2nd great love of a Vatican,
and in the walls of perfume
you linger between light and a lovers sense of time.

Suffocate City

This city sleeps improperly in such weather
its pores are suffocating
its teeth restless.
One can only move through the streets in a hurried haze,
oblivious to the armies of people parading through colder streets elsewhere,
where dampness has formed and not fled in fear of the coming war.
The overture arcade assures its people to stay put,
love the sweet perfume,
which drips invisibly from the mouths of soldiers.
If love cannot save this poor girl
time will soon be useless.
If all the bridges do not sweep her away from her heart
she is a failure.
If the memories of Mexican wine and cavernous alleyways
which held kissing scenes
no longer serve as sufficient injections to her sick heart,
she will have to dive into the green river which sleeps in curves
and moves with time.
The barbershops have all lined up together awaiting the news….

A Steady Throb

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- November 28, 2000
Descending upon the arc of this great forgotten city,
where cowboys search in slumber for adequate bathrooms
and storage spaces for drowning mermaids.
Feathered crowns dust imperial shores
where knighted waitresses swim in search of old loves and bronze combs
with which to glide through the empires of their tresses.
Twitching pilots seek to help them explore a village
un-acquainted with disdain for pearls and perils of the saddest kind
Only they realize upon their journey through the overstretched sea
that nothing can be found or felt
when the absence of love saturates your mouth
so that even you know all to well what it’s like to stand on your own feet
and it is then you realize
when out of love
that swimming is effortless and without point.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is not how it should be,
I assure you.
I have noticed though, that with a substantial decrease in my anxiety
has come perhaps a coincidental but distinct decrease in the amount of my writing.
I am aware that these phases exist
Where every word that leaks from your hand
seems to only induce nausea and embarrassment
But I know that consecutive love of ink only strengthens the boat which holds my heart.
I smell bleach and nausea
aquatic billows of smoke and saline
and punctured ligaments that dwell in-utero
while absorbing stereophonic cells and laborious tunnels of all that is plain to the eye,
all that is landing.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ July 20, 2003
I am sad in the most helpless way,
the kind of desolation,
which offers no romantic escape.
No summer to speak of,
the weight grows thicker
and the void extends itself from my soul to the farthest highway.
I have settled into a darkness,
which is far from enchanted,
far from purity or a steady progression from season to ice.
This is miserable,
tolerance for abuse is a disease I have constructed and planted years ago,
when I was too young to bathe alone.
Perhaps my soul like my heart didn’t close properly.
The shadows have grown heavier in my heart,
the light pours in like shafts,
collecting porcelain and dust in the sunken crevices of wood.
My soul is pure, from all the nights of alcohol,
powder and pain
but I still shine like a corpse.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Spring 2004
Thank you for waking me from this dirty dream,
thank you for waiting for that ship to pass
and reveal something more ephemeral than the dreams inside me.
It’s nice to be awake and smell you in the morning when the sun is up
and shines open your eyes.
You will never know what it means to see the buildings in my heart reflected onto my bed
while you sleep and your skin stays with me
your love shines thick with song
and the golden smog of a forgotten city.
Could this be the mechanical ache of a tired soldier
or the shifting empire of a queen with emerald coils buried deep within her tresses?
Will I keep this up to assure that time reflects not the loss of sleep
but instead an opening space in my hand where tiny villages can perhaps be reset in stone
and the men can finally come home from wars and crawl back into bed.
Thank you for not hurting me
Not throwing me across the world
knowing that the only place to fall is back in your heart.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Entries on Heartbreak

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2006-2007 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

One day you will be gone
cleaned from my system
emptied from my heart
no trace of your spine in my blood
But for now you’re lingering in strange places I can hardly describe
Traces of you can be found everywhere
scraps of you torn off and dangling in the caves of my eyes
the basement of my soul

You’re still here as much as I would like to cut you out
I’ve erased your number from my phone
a symbolic gesture that I never expect to speak to you again
An obvious lie
anything to tangibly take action
to recover from the tidal wave of loss
that hits me nightly while I sleep in a well
of sorrow and broken memories that fade far down the line but refuse to disappear

A forever dwindling light that keeps burning and torturing as it slips upstream

I will forget you
But for now
as I try to reconcile the loss
I have terrible dreams where you break up with me again
like re cutting the open wound whose golden flesh is just beginning to crackle and harden in tiny regions
You tell me you never loved me
And you say it with great pride and determination
and I believe it in the dream
I even believe it now
in the consciousness of a perfectly sunny day

I believe you never loved me.
Isn’t that strange?

Just thinking it makes my stomach curdle
Just believing it makes me feel as though I’ve actually died
It’s the only way to process what has actually happened
It’s the only way to explain what you’ve put me through
I told myself this story
and now I have to believe it

I loved you
and you never loved me
and that’s the only way one could put someone through such pain
is to be void of love for them, possibly for anything

These dreams help me care for the grief stricken soldiers
who can’t walk only crawl
and push their way through the blades of grass who have called my heart their home for centuries now

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Today I caught my reflection in a pane of glass
and saw the pain in my face
The wear and tear that perpetual pain and crying have caused me
The ways in which the incessant grief and sorrow have changed my face

I look wiser
delicate and older
despite my youthful face of 16
I am now a woman who has lived through her own personal tragedy
And I can see in my eyes the mountains my heart is still trying to climb through

Like a pirate swept away from the salt and waves
I have changed
and am restless from the throbbing vacancies of the sea
Its bitter taste has left me weak...

I want to love again
I want to wake up and repeat the dreams from my head
and store them in my spine

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I wonder how you’ve moved on...
What cells in your body have departed from the way I taste and look and smell
and what figments of you have progressed into things and notions I can’t fathom

This weight, which has caused seizures in my heart
and eruptions in the basement of my lips, grows heavy

I miss you
I want you
I love you
dare I say I need you…

But now as time has progressed steadily
and with the dissonance of dreary soldiers on parade
It’s even less clear where your love lies
Do you think of me when you’re with other women with shallow pools for hearts?

Why won’t you come back to me and tell me you love me?
That you will never leave me again
You’re sorry
Hold me for a year until the trauma has subsided
while I sleep in your arms and the pain is drained from my corpse
one vein at a time
Your love like a needle extracting the sorrow
Your skin like a warm forest in my heart
Your voice a place to sing my tears to sleep

The ruffles in my bed are warm from the dreams I have where you pretend to care
I still see you in my bedroom kissing me in the spaces of gold and dust you left behind
I still hear you through the waves in my windows as they break open
and beg for colder nights where our love lies in the snow
and the world hasn’t left me behind

I still touch you in twilight where the pain is steady and throbs gently in my throat like a ship moving backwards
I still know your face beaming yellow song that tastes of gold when it’s melting

There is a vast thick river of green earth and blood
and the tears of saffron swallows charging below me
forcing wet beads to bleed from my eyes
that sear my skin on their way down to touch my swollen feet

The acrylic lies I tell myself don’t work
the vacant room in my head still spins with wet daggers and sinking ships

The sailors have retired to their wives
and sleep with brandy smiles
while you still tread the thickness of morphine waves and count the swans that spill your seed
while the sky closes in from the ground

And what happens when the pain stops?
What do I feel then?
If it ever stops
Will it ever stop?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lately I have been feeling as if the orbits of soldiers have dragged me
into a swollen mine where my dreams are left to mold and tingle
in what’s left of me

My body slowly fades
perhaps trying to escape the war
and find quiet in a cave

I see myself through a telescope perverse and undetermined to rest
falling out of sync with the drummers who line the streets waiting for the waves

The roads are tangled
and the children play in salt mines with bombs and gold
holding their breath

The pedals of pianos are spotted and chipping
My name is called out to me
and it recharges my heart

I could do this forever
with or without love
but it’s harder
when it’s easier to find the poison that makes you real
and converting lithium from love has never been discussed

Trim the glass between your dreams
and expect to find what you left behind
While your flying with the circus
the ocean opens up for you

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- HOPE 2008 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I’m remembering what those first months felt like
The first five months,
first six months
How incredibly different they were
How incredibly different I was

Every day I woke up and died again
The dreary hopelessness that flooded my membranes
swallowed my heart hourly

There was no escape or relief
And the knowledge of being so thoroughly trapped
only added to the miserable river I was drowning in

Now I am alive again
Human,
very human
And the pain I can finally say with conviction
has in fact strengthened me,
has truly made me a better person
has deepened every fiber of my flesh
spirit and soul.

I think I can now say
that I am actually grateful for the experience
Maybe having one more like it in my life
wouldn’t actually be such a terrible thing
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------