Raw Sugar Tales

WITHOUT A HOME NOW ON DVD

2011-11-06T10:56:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends,
After many years of laboring over my movie, Without A Home, I am proud to announce the release of the movie.

Please support the movie if you can by ordering your own copy which you can do here or on Amazon.

Also please feel free to post and blog about the movie and release on Facebook & Twitter.

Thanks for your support and stay tuned for more info about screenings and more exciting news in the near future.

Love,
Rachel

What Can I Do? Campaign - Greg Siff & Lamp Community Art Center

2011-07-12T10:54:00.000-07:00

For the July installment of What Can I Do?, I'm very honored and excited to present the beautiful and inspired work of artist Gregory Siff and Lamp Community. If you haven't already signed up for our mailing list and checked our website please visit us here.

Read more about Lamp Community and their exceptional work with homeless artists here. Lamp Community permanently ends homelessness, improves health, and builds self-sufficiency among men and women living with severe mental illness by meeting each person where they are at in life and offering immediate access to affordable, safe and permanent housing and other supportive services without requiring sobriety or participation in treatment.

New Website Just For My Photos

2011-06-11T15:29:00.000-07:00

Photo By Craig Bennett

I had a wonderful photography show the other night, photos coming soon. After receiving many requests from friends who wanted to see and purchase my work but were not able to attend, I decided to set up a little website of the images from the show. And just for fun I featured two additional images that were not in the show to keep things exciting. Check out the new site when you can and let me know what you think. Thanks

Time For A Photo Show

2011-06-06T22:02:00.000-07:00

This Wednesday evening, June 8th, I'm having my first solo photography show at Portfolio 360 on Melrose & Stanley in West Hollywood.

Max Goldblatt, will be gracing us with his sonic magic, ONE Coconut Water will be bestowing us us with delicious custom cocktails and Landish Studio is creating some stunning floral arrangements that are sure to make you swoon.

We will also be raffling off one photo from the exhibition, with all the proceeds going to Lamp.

If you're not able to come to the show but are interested in viewing more of my work and obtaining a print please write to me at rachelfleischerphotography@gmail.com

Thanks and I hope to see you there.

love,
Rachel

The Time Is Now

2011-06-01T09:27:00.000-07:00

I'm extremely excited and honored to introduce a new campaign I've been working on called What Can I Do? to raise awareness and compassion about homelessness through art & social action. Please take a moment to check out the beautiful artwork by Lili Cuzor and click on over to our Call To Action page to find out more about what you can do to help the homeless.

This campaign is for the people by the people so please spread it around and together we can create lasting change!! Thank you everyone!!

love,
Rachel

WHAT CAN I DO?

2011-05-26T23:15:00.000-07:00

I'm very excited to announce the launch of a new campaign that I've been putting together for the last few months, called What Can I Do? What Can I Do? launches this Wednesday, June 1st. The campaign raises awareness and compassion about homelessness through art and social action.
Please take a moment to check out our website. You can also follow us on twitter and like us on facebook to receive our weekly calls to action. Join our mailing list and learn more about how you can help the homeless.

Thanks
love,
Rachel

Inspiration

2011-05-12T10:56:00.000-07:00

My dear friends at Landish Studio, and Tigers to Lilies have had me really inspired lately. Their beautiful flower creations are full of life, joy and tremendous beauty. And I've been reminded of just how easy it is to simply step out of my house, find some flowers outside, and just like that, everything is so much prettier. Thank you Olga and Lili for your infinite beauty and inspiration!!!

Happy Mother's Day

2011-05-08T15:41:00.000-07:00

Brandy and Blooms

2011-04-06T12:22:00.000-07:00

It is hard, painful even, to accept that some moments may really be ephemeral, simply moments that don’t last as you’d thought and predicted they would

His beautiful eyes that stared inside my heart
Breaking me down inside that house I will never forget
Our gaze breathing between the walls of an otherwise unloved kitchen

How I believed it to mean something of substance
Provide a window however remote into a tiny future that might give birth to more lines and shadows
More lopsided heartbeats that I could untangle later
After summer, but not before I had a chance to sift and soak in some kind of diaphanous golden heaven with you

I had already written the scene
Feathered with clouds and vineyards
Brandy and blooms
Corsican light made its way in cathedral slivers across your face

We had a time making voyages
Our eyes fell apart
Writing books, studying oceans and tasting the waves

We would drive into the desert
Let the orange heat unscrew our souls long enough to feel lighter and more pure

Words were never spoken
The silence had always been enough
Oil and sand covered your mouth
And I was the only one who understood what it took to free you
You said nothing
But I knew you could open up the sun if you wanted to

It would end without the presence of time
With figments and fabric dangling, almost unnoticeable

And in time I’d see your face again
Hanging against the burgundy and chrome of an old theater
Ivy leaves would frame your perfect face
You’d whisper my name and let your breath press upon my cheek

The rush of your sighs
The dreams we deprived
An army of swallows
Made up for lost time

Ambient Love

2011-04-05T21:03:00.001-07:00

A softness in your stomach is exposed
A corner of your heart revealed
An ambient kind of love is born and I don’t want to flee

First Taste of The South... Atlanta

2011-04-05T10:31:00.000-07:00

Under The Sea

2011-03-14T08:33:00.000-07:00

I spent the day at the Atlanta Aquarium with my cousins and saw some truly beautiful and unique creatures. It really made me want to go scuba diving one of these days and see this incredible sea life up close.

2011-03-04T19:31:00.000-08:00

Your glistening heart will not step down
The flood will carry it home
And soon the earth will unfold your secret

The walls of my soul keep caving in
I’ve never lost my way
And this evening in the catacombs
You’ll find my tears splitting lines through the sun

Happy Valentine's Day

2011-02-14T14:57:00.000-08:00

Journal from Greece (γρεεξε)

2011-02-06T17:20:00.000-08:00

Sitting at breakfast, Americans discuss whether the honey is French or Greek, as if to determine this will unlock the secrets of this magical place.
Anything to more deeply inhale and clarify beauty.
The rocks pound the chaos into your soul and the water swallows it back into the sea and you're left with the breathing of your heart.
To be presented with such devastating beauty boggles the mind. What to do with it... ?
To write about it, gaze upon it, photograph it, speak of it, think about it, get lost in its infinite magic, allow your mind to waver away in the metal of the waves.
The ocean puts a spell on you. The ripples of the waves are like tiny veins dancing, exposing the heart of the planet through a golden tapestry of the softest blues. Massive rocks planted sorrowfully in the sea, heaving as ships dot their dreams, making voyages for more beauty.
Such a nice place to do nothing...

The Stroke of A Line

2011-02-05T19:46:00.000-08:00

It begins with a flood
The stroke of a line
Swiftly and without warning
You are ushered away from yourself
You don't have to wait long
The change started long ago

Family - New York January 2011

2011-01-24T17:41:00.000-08:00

Snow

2011-01-21T13:30:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!!!!

2011-01-03T13:02:00.000-08:00

May 2011 bring everyone all the health, success, love and joy in the universe!!

This House Was Always Here

2010-12-20T16:39:00.001-08:00

I cannot paint you of of this house I built for our love
No matter how hard I may try

Instead I find a window and force my shadow to climb through it
Yet still I feel parts of me die

The lines are grey and the walls are bleeding all around me
My heart scales open and sleeps in the basement with the waves

While the smoldered shackles of our love hang in caves

And my eyes close again
If only I could sleep

I catch myself in the middle of tears who were born long before me
Tiny rivers that meet to form this raging sea that destroys me

Your body moves through mine

Cycling through the moments when our love was alive
Like velvet with a heartbeat and a home

When you loved me I’m certain

When you felt the need to hold onto me
In the middle of this grey sea

How would you like me to change

If the patterns on my hips disappear
Will you still recognize my face

Now I don’t believe it

To think back on our time
To somehow think it was a ghost
A shadow
A spot on your eyelids that formed and faded while you slept

I do not know what that was --

I wake up
But was I sleeping?

Why does love ending always darken
And paint me out to be forgotten

Like a thick needle inserting my heart with cold steel
I am forced to dream away the moments that were good and real

I wonder what kind of dream this was

And still I sit in this house I built for our love

It was always here

Happy Hanukkah

2010-12-07T20:49:00.000-08:00

There Will Be An Explosion

2010-12-06T22:05:00.000-08:00

There will be an explosion

Nightly my heart will combust as it always does

Things will realign and I will love again

Bleeding out for love

Reaching out just to be touched
The skies reflect the love in your eyes

The men return home

Sipping tea from china

Drinking from other lips

Basking in a love that is calmer than mine

And still I know I will be fine

Someone lives outside the moon

Where rooms expand and throb with time

The poles of the earth won't fit me
My hand splitting open won't miss me

And as if in a dream we will circle this place together

Cautionary Tale - Naomi Greenwald

2010-11-08T13:40:00.000-08:00

Directed by Rachel Fleischer
Cinematography by Jimmy Fusil

Naomi Greenwald "Cautionary Tale" from Rachel Fleischer on Vimeo.

"Cautionary Tale" Naomi Greenwald - Video Shoot

2010-11-03T23:13:00.000-07:00

Video Coming Soon...

Self Portraits

2010-11-02T15:57:00.000-07:00

"We Came Home" by Ariana Delawari

2010-10-25T16:35:00.000-07:00

"We Came Home" by Ariana Delawari from Rachel Fleischer on Vimeo.

"We Came Home" Ariana Delawari
Directed by Rachel Fleischer

Cinematography by Jimmy Fusil

Edited by Max Goldblatt & Rachel Fleischer

Special Thanks - Lior Geller, Grace Oh, Thomas Edison, Ellis Island

Istanbul

2010-08-25T18:13:00.001-07:00

A Wedding, A Poem

2010-07-13T12:43:00.000-07:00

Lili & Elijah got married in Gien, France on June 26, 2010
I was lucky enough not only to go to the wedding and take part in the magic that was the ceremony...

But I also had the honor of writing and reading a poem about their love...

IN A GOLDEN ROOM

In a golden room love hangs
Suspended by a network of glowing veins
And in the quiet shadows something infinite was born

Crowds have gathered to bear witness
To swim and soak in their magnificence

Amidst the chaos and the yellow
Two ethereal beings pave the way for the parade
Faces so beautiful you simply weep
Their love drips in a melody
Flooding the streets

And new oceans are born
Boundless compassion carries them across the violet shores of time
And now all the world looks on
As heartbreak is converted into hope
Never before have two souls been so close
So pure, so sweet, so light In love

Priveleged to witness this spectacle
As their hearts grow bigger while melting together

And tonight in our slumbers
We'll dream as one
Humbled by time
And the spell of love
We are under

Prelude to Summer - To Wait is To Love?

2010-06-09T22:29:00.000-07:00

You wait so long for something to happen
And then you wait for it to end
Why we don’t stop and believe in the present and the future
Instead of a past that mind as well not exist
The lines blur and history can change
Worlds melt and hearts are unbroken
Is it so much to ask for love to be spoken
And born when the lights are softer and the liquid is now warm
I could feed you or love you or swallow you
In the end my love wouldn’t change
I would still hold out the same heart and ask for something greater than words
Oceans aren’t forbidden and the lights change again
I travel endlessly through the coffins of time
Searching for the flickering heart
The screen with two eyes
That inhales my scent and sees the flames on my flesh
The danger of hope
The need to be whole
The smell of pink and summer as it changes
I am whole on my own and no matter what I will be fine
It’s just that in moments like these I long for love
For something outside of myself
And still I know I am enough

Without A Home / Saint Joseph Center - Screening

2010-05-25T13:32:00.000-07:00

May 24, 2010 - SmogShoppe Culver City, CA - It was a beautiful and intimate evening where we screened my film WITHOUT A HOME and were lucky enough to be joined by The Saint Joseph Center, an amazing local organization based in Los Angeles.

The mission of the Saint Joseph Center is to provide working poor families, as well as homeless men, women and children of all ages, with the inner resources and tools to become productive, stable and self-supporting members of the community.

SJC staff and volunteers came out to provide information and offer a plethora of opportunities for people to get more involved in helping our homeless brothers and sisters living on the streets.

We had such a wonderful turnout, delicious food courtesy of Bite Bar, beautiful flowers by Holly and yummy drinks courtesy of St. Germain and Hob Nob Wines.

Thanks everyone for making it such a special evening.

Below are some pictures from the evening. Thanks to Joanna Adler, Heather Taylor, Alex DeCordoba for hosting the lovely evening!

For more information on how to get involved in helping the homeless please visit us here.

"We Came Home" Ariana Delawari - Video Shoot

2010-05-19T14:28:00.000-07:00

VIDEO COMING SOON...

Israel

2010-02-03T16:57:00.000-08:00

Lived In Bars

2010-01-15T13:04:00.000-08:00

Woman With A Movie Camera

2010-01-14T10:37:00.000-08:00

Colors of a Cousin

2010-01-12T13:22:00.000-08:00

SelfSuck

2010-01-05T17:38:00.000-08:00

SelfSuck from Rachel Fleischer on Vimeo.

USC Student Film
Written and Directed by Rachel Fleischer

The Composition of Leonard

2010-01-05T17:35:00.000-08:00

The Composition of Leonard from Rachel Fleischer on Vimeo.

USC Student Film
Written and Directed by Rachel Fleischer
Starring Jessica Fleischer and Simon Helberg

Outside

2010-01-05T17:17:00.000-08:00

Outside from Rachel Fleischer on Vimeo.

USC Student Film Written and Directed by Rachel Fleischer Starring Jessica Fleischer & Charles Fleischer

A Lonely Day With Maxwell Stardust

2010-01-05T17:15:00.000-08:00

A Lonely Day With Maxwell Stardust from Rachel Fleischer on Vimeo.

USC Student Film
Written and directed by Rachel Fleischer
Starring Simon Helberg and Jessica Fleischer

The Science of Loss

2009-10-17T16:43:00.000-07:00

What is the science of loss?
Of missing someone so much you taste it as their face appears in your soul
So vivid are the colors of his skin
To touch his face again
At which portal shall I meet the ghost
To collect the dust I lost from my heart
I will myself to stay strong
While my loneliness lives in memories heavy like bloated fish
being pulled up from the bowels of the sea
and invited lovingly to the shore

In Some Other Room

2009-09-17T00:44:00.000-07:00

In some other room
We could be in love
But in this room
It’s just too tough
You’d have to leave her
I’d have to believe you

From the bottom of my heart I’d do nothing but kiss you
From the top of the moon I’d miss you
Up in the clouds, we’d stare at the stars
In some other world this night was all ours

Why can’t it be easy?
It’s been so long
I miss what I lost
But it’s already gone

Stealing kisses from the man, who gave birth to my scars
We flee from the place we all were born
But I’m not afraid to return to the war

What was love will be loss
But the rest will be found
Synch up with the sky and inherit the ground
For in this life there’s no telling what’s left
For in this life there’s no telling what’s next

The dances we do
The hearts that we loose
Just to believe and just to prove
It’s silly that time plays tricks on the mind
We try to perceive the ghosts through the wine

But just when we start to sink with the ships
The saline obliges to bend with our lips
The caverns are crossed, the waves are embossed
Her scent lifts you up through the towns you forgot

Remember this night
My love etched in your eyes
I felt your hands
Dancing patterns upon my thighs

Who knows what another coast will prove
That we should find love
Or that time is a fool

My heart is a ship that circles the tide
It wants to believe that love does not die

I Will Not Enter The Season With You

2009-09-10T10:31:00.000-07:00

We will not speak of ex loves or travels to cities where words are lovingly lost and longer shadows are born.
I will not enter the season with you

Together we will speak of movies, books, music and friends you’ve met whose names you don’t know.
Poetic themes are hinted at, alluded to and given distant affection in the background of your imagination.

Occasionally your eyes will hold on me for enough time to feel like a wall in your heart has been broken;
but then it will be fastidiously built again and we will circle through this gray world together until one of us must leave it and then who knows...

But I like the experiences, the feelings, the uncertainty, the questions that are not answered.

On certain nights our hands loosely feel away from each other
Our breath like two cities, respectively moving from the center of water and light to find new homes on opposite shores of the small universe we momentarily lived in.

All that I had to lose stands before me and it isn’t so much.
But through the wants and vulnerable desires that leak across my heart I hear a voice just as pure…

Grape

2009-08-06T16:28:00.000-07:00

I am in love
with the half drunk perfumed silence
my tongue takes on as it waits for more wine
But has had just enough
to start serenading the rest of my body
with loving lies and future gifts

Waiting to find me and deliver the temporal ecstasy
In the spaces between day and dreaming.
The language I cannot contain--but love the voice.
I do not ignore it but do my best not to force-
It finds me lovingly
As I sip on the finer solitude
that wants to hold onto me for eternity
And I sometimes must tell it,
“This is enough for now,
Enough for tonight but I will find you again soon.”

Like a real love,
A beautiful light,
How can I not love you?

WITHOUT A HOME Trailer

2009-05-04T19:53:00.000-07:00

Directed by Rachel Fleischer

A young woman’s desire to understand her connection to the homeless takes her on an extraordinary and unexpected four year journey into the lives of several homeless individuals and reveals the challenges and triumphs that arise when we choose to help those WITHOUT A HOME.

Washington Heights - New York

2009-03-31T21:50:00.001-07:00

The Ship Moves Backwards

2009-03-18T16:15:00.000-07:00

Follow me on a ship, watch me swim the way I used to
This longing must end soon or the water should carry me back to you

I know in my heart that it’s wrong to long like this
But I don’t know how to restrict such a sickness

This weight stands heavy on the ocean floor
I think it’s enough to cough up the shore

If you’re tired from swimming and you feel like standing…
I can be your hearts new landing

Just remember in the dust when the waves seize to lift
That I was the one who invented the ship

And it’s fine to move on with sailors from the west
Your heart won’t remember that I was the best

Move on through her skies that have blinded before
Be proud you still see, should you return to the shore

And if not I will wait every single day
As the madness creeps in I will push it away

Thinking of your love which palms in her hand
I fall back on myself and find love in the sand

As the ink moves backwards your face appears
In the bowels of the ocean I trace my tears

Home Movies

2008-10-24T10:27:00.000-07:00

Song My Sis Wrote About Palin

2008-10-24T10:23:00.000-07:00

My Father as a Bird

2008-10-24T10:19:00.000-07:00

Scars & Hats - Spring 2008

2008-07-31T16:03:00.000-07:00

drawing by Jessica Fleischer

I showed you my scar
You left through the door
I’m missing a million parts
but you’re missing more

You came to me in time
Kissed my heart let it shine
With the spell of my mind
the darkness of time
I’ll leave you at night
you’ll fade from this sky

It’s not that I love you
It’s the hope you offered me
It’s not that you loved me
Just the chance to set me free
I’m doing things different
Gonna take my own body
To the place where I left it
And live beneath the sea

I captured your eyes
And bled through your lies
I knew the patterns of her thighs
Before you ever made me cry
It just had to be that way
You would leave and make me stay
Left with the cold and the bitter taste
Her bitter womb won’t ever change

It’s not that I loved you
It’s the hope you offered me
It’s not that you loved me
Just the chance to set me free
If I could I'd still meet you in the middle of the night
Just to taste the gasoline as it makes your cold heart bright
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The sadness builds and mounts coming in and out like thick waves of chrome, sitting on my heart, reminding me of what I could have if only I were someone else. The boy in the hat is a reminder of all the hope I could have had, all the dreams I wish would sail but seem to forever linger in a large black closet. The musician who left me for his girlfriend I’m told is a bullet I dodged, not a missed opportunity for happiness. If my own happiness is just me then I suppose all these external stimulants are extraneous anyway. We come in alone we leave alone and the in between, however long it is, is what we do with it, how we make it ours... Time and history have told me I can see a soul through a face, trace the lines of love in his eyes. But sometimes it turns out that I’m wrong. I don’t want to sour and stray away from the light. I'd like to keep believing knowing things change in an instant, trust in the infinite light of the universe... and I do it’s just that today I am sad.

Summer 2008

2008-07-25T11:31:00.000-07:00

The walls in my memory are leaking
Kisses older than a century are finding their way back to my eyes
And the quarter moon is falling off the sky
Gliding on the tracks of an old ship
We move without thinking
Waiting to transpire
Misting through time
It's enough just to swallow
And your eyes...
Though I may never look into them again
Are forever burned into the pathways of my grandmother’s memory
My heart chimes for steel
Wooden panels house the umbrellas of love I could feel for you
But choose not to
Because it’s better to love myself
Better to wait for someone else
Who can hold my hand under all the colors of a cloud
And not look to the ocean for love

The telescope waits in my heart for something to start
Black marbles mutate
and the sea tries to part
I can’t remember everything about our night
Your stomach bent to kiss my soul
Your hands and fingers linger
in the spaces where palm and honey are useless
Maybe it’s just the month,
the moon
the time that’s passed since last I was loved
Your eyes are blue like an unknown shadow
The quality of your skin
The brown in your hair
Your voice
Everything about it fades from my mind
but not my heart
And who you are to me…
A passing fancy while my soul retreats
A tidal wave planted in the soil sprouting upwards towards the sea
Find the grey in my eyes while the ships move backwards
Find me at the top of the bottom
where the waves are yellow and the light is cracked
Tiny flowers sprout where once I was halved
In the waiting rooms where faces hold tight
Your love finds it useless to pace or hold steady
On the ferris wheels
where the young girls squeal
cutting lines though the moon
They will shadow the doom
As the room starts to spread
Move away like a candle
In the dark you can see
it’s only love you can handle

Croatia, Slovakia, Slovenia - Photography

2008-02-10T00:14:00.001-08:00

Bratislava, Slovakia Split, Croatia - Mother and Daughter Bratisalava, Slovakia - Hotel Lobby Ljubljiana, Slovenia - 3 Nuns

Prague - Photography

2008-02-09T23:53:00.001-08:00

My Love Wears Silver

2008-02-09T23:28:00.001-08:00

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

2008-02-08T10:24:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-08T10:22:00.001-08:00

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

2008-02-08T10:09:00.001-08:00

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

2008-02-04T14:41:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-01T17:05:00.000-08:00

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

Self Portraits

2008-02-01T16:39:00.000-08:00

Coney Island - Brooklyn, New York

Brazil Photography

2008-02-01T15:08:00.002-08:00

Copacabana, Brazil Illa Grande, Brazil Little Girl with Candy Box - Rio De Janiero, Brazil Little Boy on Boat - Illa Grande, Brazil

Rio De Janiero, Brazil

Rio De Janiero, Brazil Illa Grande, Brazil - Father & Son

Los Angeles Photography

2008-02-01T14:53:00.001-08:00

Sara, Deaf and Mute Homeless Lady

New York Photography

2008-02-01T14:24:00.001-08:00

War Protest 2002. New York Train to Coney Island, Brooklyn Brooklyn, Diner Buick, Brooklyn War Protest 2002, New York Brooklyn, Diner Washington Heights, New York