bears...

Dealing with recovering from illness, having too much to do, and trying to reconfigure my pseronal identity is weird. Yet more involving than other things, or times of my life. So whatefver,things are going ok, though i have to defend my thesis the day before halloween....argh!
Here's a poem that occurred to me in the bathroom at a cafe. Over the last few days, people have referenced Grizzly Man, The Bear Necessities, and many other bear-things several times. This morning, I unconsciously put on a bear t-shirt, which, when i saw it in teh mirror, reminded me of the many people who have related me to a bear or a teddy bear. So here's a poem on that.

Grizzly

brown hair, green eyes, hands that
rend the air, tear the flesh; the teeth show indications
of grinding vegetables and
legumes. fuzz-faced, bewildered
by technology yet
able to manipulate the concentric circles
of liife. The grizzly in spring feasts on madly
spawning salmon; i find friendship in the strangest places,
when parties gather chaos into
coordinations of parts, the friend from last year, the
aquaintance that laughed. green landscape,
populated by awkward beasts, antlers, ears, and black eyes,
brown defined in me. when it attacks, some say
roll into a ball while others would
run as fast as their feet will carry. I
would not respect either, though
my claws have been known to turn to shattered glass
and decomposed root structures with an offer
of kindness. when looked in the face, full
like the moon in my eyes at night, the threatened
creature bends, arbors in the wind, his anger
cracked by the sweetest wind. a breeze
in autumn calms the heat-driven hand of fury

flew the storage coop

i hate opening boxes with secrets inside

but only when they are my own; i opened the box i keep my photography materials in, the negatives, tripod stuff, plastic envelopes for large prints, spare camera parts, cameras i don't use often, and photographs
so i figured, after my gathering (the one i referred to in the blog i just deleted), i would just look through the photos to see if there was anythign good in them---and there was, a few cool nature shots, a pic of ML from OH in a really cool art deco pool, a few of my graduation party after undergrad, and then a pic of one of my friends
normally, i might have been able to shrug off the nostalgia, or even just the sad little bit of regret that bloomed when i saw said photo, because it was just a particular moment, the kind of moment where you look up and see someone just EXISTING at the same time that you are, someone who makes you feel comfortable, like there's nothing you could do that would be unexpected or strange or at least humorous

looking at that photo, i realized it was gone, that sense of a home without boundaries, a home that never dies, a space where you can scream and breathe and live, just because someone somewhere understood
i feel like, in a series of missteps, i have lost that space, that sense of trust---it was something i never thought i would have, something i never thought I could feel, that i was beyond it, that i would never be so emotional or blinded by life's goodness that i could ever trust anyone---i found it so quickly, so unexpectedly, with so many people, and now i know it's gone
i've known for a while---i think our whole lives are just a half-hearted search for not being afraid, not feeling uncomfortable with ourselves and the people we love, and we so rarely ever feel that sense of just being able to exist, of feeling like there's something worth living, fighting, loving, or just getting up in the morning for---the sense that you can sit in the same room as someone and be heard when you speak

and i guess i lost mine; maybe it never was, maybe i was blinded by the sense that maybe someone, someday could deserve trust, or maybe i'm just wishing i hadn't trusted the people i trusted
because no matter how hard we trust, no matter how much we love, whether friend or foe or fuck-buddy, it ends----only a fool would think it didn't, and i think i was fooled because i thought only a fool could value something transitory
but i did
and i will, and i do right now---after an evening with friends, i feel good, i feel stronger than yesterday, because i laughed and let go, because i didn't have to be in charge of things
i could let things slide and they wouldn't get out of hand; i could stop being in control
which is a feeling i haven't felt since a few christmases ago when i fell asleep in someone else's basement

there's no conclusion, just a reminder that no matter how hard we fight, the dark does come, most times sooner than we think, but that doesn't mean the day is any less worth while---for the ancient Egyptians, the night was the time when the gods of the day fought through the netherworld to rise again, to be reborn---after all, what's life worth if it's handed to you on a platter---what's a friend worth if you never get to watch them fly away?

Left the Centrifuge at Home

i wake up in the archaeological remains
of me. Sun spinning through the sky; watch it ark
in space, spy through my looking glass heart;
see the world my way. Pick up
the glass plates on the microscope and cut yourself on
the shards of what i did, what i failed
to do. Take the grains of flesh
and mind, dissolve in salt water, spin at a distance
to locate the time and the place, the lightyears
of distance to stars burning through my lenses,
my hope. The sun's zenith above becomes
the veins in my chest, the arteries of blood,
memory, and thoughts thought long before. Ancient
languages run like fibers through my being. I
touch the grass but it's barely there; break it down,
tear it apart to find the evidence that we were here
before, that what we do matters. Cut up the world
to find myself standing, stars-collapsed in my lungs,
breathing the sweat-drenched death of hope
until I start again, shudder, and walk forward.

HOLY SHIT

MATER LACRIMARUM
IS
GONNA KICK
YOUR ASS
or not

a realization

i realized that the reason i cannot chill out or be happy with my life in general is that:
i feel like i'm responsible for my family and friends.
if i don't constantly take care of people, myself, and everything in my life, then it will all fall apart---if i let my guard down, shit gets fucked up, from diseases to friends to medical problems to the world
i can't relax because i have yet to do enough to make sure everything is gonna be okay
unrealistic yes, still a problem though

Pricked my finger on the spindle

I'm spinning in my head
a child's solar system that breaks
and then evolves, sun of recycled
styrofoam, a thousand voices
once called home, the cool
incandescence of the space held in the hand,
a palm covered in string and pin-dots
the scars of speaking and
being spoken to, of being formed
from the nebulous clouds of creation

Unlike the science fair exhibit, I
am unloveable, impossible to
deconstruct and then fill up again,
no cardboard box of marker stelae made
with sticky fingers. I revolve, yet
no wool forms over these words.
If I am the spinning wheel, then where
is the spinner? If I am a solar system,
what then is my heart?

book meme game

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
5. Don’t search around and look for the “coolest” book you can find. Do what’s actually next to you.

"Remove appendix(taking care to avoid spillage)" - This Book Will Change Your Life

and another

"'That seems a peculiar reason. What's wrong with reading to the end?" - The Three Cornered World by Natsume Soseki

i move "like a tree moving in and out of windows"

i spent this weekend hanging out with ml, trying to make up for being sad, grumpy, angry, and otherwise notsosocial this summer, only to realize i'm still not past this, whatever it is (i haven't ruled out a quarter life crisis, tho i've yet to buy a vespa)
last night was a night spent fighting computers to make a mix, and today i spent with her and fighting computers to get my pc running
so here's to fighting for our lives (clanks glass with yours, drinks, pauses and looks drearily out the darkened window)
and this poem, which is about nothing of the sort

Making Mixes at Night

charmed, i am
by the sound of hope
bouncing out of someone else's
piano-dancing fingers, drenched
in the mechanized gear-crunching noise,
pouring into my cochlea labyrinths
until i cannot sleep
for want of someone to hold
dear

darling, dear, words i don't speak,
but i think in five dimensions of color
colliding with a textured intergalactic woven
mat, rising in the not-so-outer space
of dark, good night; remembering friends instead
of love stimulates more than sound. i think
i miss you now like i should have missed you then