desire lines are retraceable.

this part is inspired by a few things. this post, that is. one is red wine, which I am drinking now; this will become quite obvious. others: real conversations with real people. everyone who shares their honest thoughts with me is inspiration. 

1999. 

"Alethea and Her Cousin"

On a warm spring day eight years ago…almost…the sixteen-year-old virgin Alethea enters the bedroom of her cousin.

Alethea is a Catholic and a devout one at that. She attends mass twice weekly and remains vulnerable to the anachronistic orthodoxies of the institution.

"The church updates itself every four-hundred years or so to only be only a hundred years or so behind the present," Alethea's cousin tells her.

Alethea is also vulnerable to her cousin. He is a year older than her and obviously not Catholic.  Alethea is often startled at the accidental profundity of his thoughts and injures herself at night in maniacal attempts to persuade her hands away from her clitoris. Their bedrooms face each other from across the street. Currently his is dark. Currently Alethea's hands are burnt-up with the remedying effects of boiling water.

"What is this?" Alethea asks herself, holding her raw and shaking hands up to the mirror. 

Of all his parts, Alethea likes her cousin's eyes the most. They are the same blue as the Virgin's shroud. Alethea's eyes are brown like shit so she refuses to meet his gaze, fearful a prolonged connection will soil her immaculate soul. 

"Whose soul?" he cousin asks. "Why do you never look me in the eye, Alethea?"

"I don't know."

"It's me. You know me. It won't hurt you to look at me."

Alethea repeats Matthew 5:28 to herself as she lifts her gaze to meet his. The verse goes something like, "you might as well give up trying, because even just thinking about something bad is enough to damn you." The verse's resonance corresponds inversely to the ever-intensifying blueness of her cousin's eyes. The longer Alethea stares the bluer they get. 

"Oh!" Alethea says laughing. "This is easy!"

Her cousin sighs deeply and shakes his head. He puts his hand behind her head to feel her scalp. He pulls a few of her hairs. Out. "Come back to my house Alethea," he says.

She takes his hand, worn unevenly from the constant plucking of guitar strings, she takes it and finds it fits very evenly into hers, hers still burned from the night before. 

Alethea discovers that sex is like the cigarettes she smokes, the poetry she reads. She never knew she needed it until she had it, and now she cannot exist long without it.

Her cousin requests she takes off her shirt but she removes her panties. He puts his hand on top of her skin and she puts it under. He offers her a kiss; she multiples them, over and over, everywhere. She becomes positively helpless when he compliments her breasts and she hears the Holy Mother screaming in agonizing bliss when he discovers her clitoris. 

"I've never done this before," they say to each other, not knowing exactly what they mean.

* * *

Lena pauses in drafting her story, suddenly unhappy with how happy these teenagers are in this small and, in the whole grand narrative of things, relatively meaningless encounter. She arises from her desk and pours herself a glass of red wine. 

Lena is alone in her house, spare a cat, spare the aquarium of fish it taunts every dawn and dusk. 

"I am so devastatingly lonely," Lena says to herself. She calls her friend Jane only to repeat the sentence. "I'm so devastatingly lonely..." Lena catches a fish from the aquarium and tosses it to her eager tabby. The cat pins the fish between the rug and its paw, waiting for its struggle to subside. Before the fish dies, Lena shoos the cat away and returns the fish the aquarium. It is still alive.

"Come over," Lena says to Jane, who has been telling Lena all about something forgettable for the past several minutes.

"Lena, no."

"It will be quick. You can just lay there. You won't even have to move."

"No, Lena."

"Why not?"

"...I'm not like that."

Lena grips the telephone very tightly, and holds it very thoughtfully, before flinging it across the room. "Neither am I you bitch," she screams. The telephone hits a print of Madame Butterfly Lena has framed and shatters its protective glass. Lena rushes to pour another glass of wine. She pours the next glass of wine on her manuscript.

"Are you happier now, Alethea, you hedonistic bitch."

And Lena, frenzied with envy over a piece of her imagination, grabs the now-red notebook and crams it into her purse. She leaves her house and begins walking towards a tower. A bell tower.

"I'll exorcize you Alethea. You're going to change. You can't have all the fun now. I won't have to live vicariously through you, for your life will become dull and mine so very interesting. I'll have Jane. I'll have my cousin. I'll have my father, real Electra-style. And when I'm not with someone forbidden I'll throw myself on the various inanimate phallic objects that reside in my house. I'll have a fucking banana. Then have a drunken baby with the better end of a wine bottle. You'll be nothing, Alethea, just a child crossing the threshold of a single taboo, a single taboo to my dozens upon dozens."

"You'll be nothing," Lena lies to herself, applying lipstick, readjusting her stockings, putting on a face to face herself less fearfully. 

The gates to the church are locked, however, and Lena is forced to delay her exorcism for twelve horrible fucking hours.

stench. hits.

>>>>>

Your

your strange devotions –

Your strange devotions accelerate

Your strange devotions accelerate, then regulate

my prose,

Aware of your presence, your eyes lessen how I

demonstrate.

A portrait of Lena, she embodies your once-lover,

Who loves another, we love each other. We live

Together, we inhabit an interesting intersection

That compromises in order:

1.)    to mimic

2.)    to play

3.)    too forward

4.)    “touché”

5.)    to help-see, to add-a-layer

6.)    of her, to us

I won’t say anything, but I must.

But I will say this one thing, until I learn to trust:

>>>>

resolutions.

>>>


keep looking, little heart, for the warmth you know exists. pursue other angles, forget the angels, who most certainly will bore you, after a bit.

keep your heart alone. open your legs, feel yourself with yourself. foreign hands neglect glands, forget what you tell them you like.

ignore vacant promises. watch as the world outside doubles and halves, respectively. the action is no surrender, for remember, you are alone.

fill your heart with more words. not other women's words, only those whose point of origin is identical to your mouth, and keep your mouth clean.

do not forget that you are a creature, and your blood signifies hope beyond doubt. your formulas will fail, but your blood always repeats.

maybe he ain't lyin. maybe you will keep striving to repair damaged ideals, or maybe you won't. touch your own self with the love you think you have for him. you will find it greater.

>>>>

Memo:

>>>


When I never met you I saw you all grey.
Not mysterious - just boring, pathetically
augmenting your self away. Like an underground
worm deluded itself the sky-bound bee. You
dig high, but ground
vomits you up arbitrarily.
Like an aboveground worm deluded itself a hive-
found bee. Worm, you live on cement for five
minutes, visited just enough times

to gain
notoriety
in the spaces
of my lines.

post about disorder.

Thisis a GIF Illustrating a woman ambivalent about nourishing herself from the ample foodsouce in the BKGRND. She make s-s-sure she looks thin enough to eat - boy does that sound wrong - then sits back down, hungry, but with the ability to wear less clothes than before. She feels great about it.

Here is a truth not exuding any beauty because she just loves imagined competition with flowers and others. But hey who can get more honest than this truth. A dead bird rots a dead flower people press in books.

Lena 3: in which Lena Sucks the Life out of Herself

Lena had made no conscious decision to quit her dozens of lovers, but inevitably it happened. She had been enjoying the company of two men (one Irish, one Scottish, she could hardly tell them apart) when a man from the deep deep south was unexpectedly introduced to her. She found him interesting only because everyone else seemed to find him interesting.

Lena was used to leaving men and in fact a man had never left her before. Thus she expected the same to happen, for her to see this man from the deep deep south for several days or weeks and then leave him. But everytime Lena thought she would leave him he left her.

"I know we will say goodbye to each other many more times," she said at the first time she said goodbye to him. She was right and she still is right.

Lena forgot about other men because she wondered about this one. Instead of growing duller he grew more fascinating. He smelled better to her each day. He had a favorite flower. They agreed on fetishes. He had the perfect width of cock.

But as I said before he was always leaving her. He went back to the deep deep south and also went to the arms of other women. Some women were real and some women Lena imagined were real. Lena imagined many women and somehow this made the man even more attractive to her.

Lena lost weight and cut off her hair. She felt her skin go rough so she cut into it with razors. She felt her eyes dry and tough and wanted to cut them with razors too. The less Lena cared about other men the more they flocked to her. The less Lena cared about her body the more men flocked to her.

A flock of silly birds shitting and squawking all around her.

The more she loved him the more she hated herself. "I hate myself because I am no longer myself," she thought.

Her thoughts went faster and less complete. Faster and less complete. Fast and less. She became less and less. She didn't even want to read this story anymore.

Lena was at her least when she met a woman whose named sounded like Advice.

Dirty Dream no.2

I feel asleep in a familiar place for what was about to occur and perhaps that particular spot summoned an overlapping memory at any rate that's where the entire dream unfolded.

As early back as I can remember we embraced and I clumsily knocked something hard to obtain and costing you money into your lap; you effortlessly saved the prize and refilled the small capsule with what for some reason mattered to us.

Kissing you was desperation and I felt more eagerness from you which was strange because I always feel the more uncontrolled one; not used to feel like this anyway but I do now only with you.

Only you weren't you you were someone else who had came before. The arms which had just clung to your neck like tentacles released - no, pushed you away in disgust. I stared at you in horrible disbelief. Though you appeared identical inside I knew who you were.

You knew it too and smiled that smile I die when I see it I die. Now however now your insides taint that beautiful smile and you keep making very time-specific facial expressions each wonderful in a new and painful way. I want to suck them up for in my other life you are gone so much.

Mmmm skyscraper I love you - ringing in my ears (turned out to be the sizzling of a steak some bitch frying on the tele my god what a repulsive image to wake to my god). Strangled in a blanket (both instances) I fell off the couch.

I thought how to get you out of my house, my parents were upstairs. Hello they would tell you. But it's not really him it's him I'd say, as if this would explain why you weren't where I told them you were and neither were you especially not here.

Not gotten to the idea of hiding you near the furnace I actually woke. Oh god I thought oh god I am never taking a nap again because I dream so deep into my real thoughts, not like a runaway imagination but an imaginative run of real thoughts.

Really I told you though far (you're all far, all far from me) I don't compare I don't want anyone to get into my overlapping mastrubatory thoughts and late afternoon dreams one lunatic is enough one goddamned lunatic was enough and two was unlucky three a fucked up coincidence and four well four, well fuck you god I am starting to think it's me that's fucking you up, all of you.

crown on the ground.

"Does this mean anything to you?"

"Nope."

a.) cerulean is my favorite crayola

b.) watched "The Runaways" at the dollar theater

c.) undergraduate infatuation with graph paper

d.) invitation for stranger to draw on body

e.) interior castle - St. Teresa

f.) permanent diversion tactic

g.) jewelerrry. 

what you think?

Argument from Creations

It's the same as starting a sentence with "It."
A pause - inside flowered jargons - it provides relief.
In poetry it works too - evidenced -

Systems aside, it crawls from something - bastard -
Origins do not begin - in the present-tense -
"It is undeniable God is evident in nature."

presumptive bent - what is?
An it needs a first noun, de-proed. 
And it seeds in nothing - can't grow -

And nature forgets
Language, the true God -
validates it -

Your chatter - chatter
I hate chatter and grammatical-errors, gossipy-slang slung
around dangling participles as if

you've never heard God speak.
As if blasphemy excludes the semi-colon - while -
that damn commandment - "in vain" - it is

humane to speak anything, to speak something
or - circles - around it -
says nothing - about it - 

Toiling the Earth is a Woman's Task

note: incorporation of archaic pronouns resultant of reading John Donne all week. That is it.


When lover's bested distance shutters blind eyes 'nother blink,
When two share one identity, two fuel or feud a link,
'twixt real and not, my lover's prose, my lover's nose,
delights at garden's brink,
where flowers fall to soil and fail to boil impassioned drink.

I love you lover, but what extent pretends communion's peace?
Hearts doth bear the weight they share with crippled past's deceased.
Ease my task, I pray thee ask what cost thy cost to me.
When cost is lost to vision
thy vision is released:

Deleted loves collapsed three-fold on swift-delivered lust,
A jealous thought consumes the plot of twice-devoted trust,
One mistress tends the lilies, one weeds the seeds she's sown,
Yet assign to me the duty,
of admiring what they've grown.

Kim. A Poem.

To a woman enviable: an enumerated critical recapture and corresponding poetic defense. My gift to you, curious pantheist. The present. How sad even here I cannot conquer self-obsession. How very right you are. How very right indeed.



***

Accusations:

1. overrated beauty
2. rude cultural savant
3. pretty bitch



"You are just as beautiful and smart as you think you are. You just grossly overestimate how much we all care."

*****

KIM. A Poem.

If a woman offered me a trade - existence -
I'd trade existence, deliver her assumed
convictions. To a doorstep doomed threshold-
less, nobody opens, therefore nobody
could claim the present. Past lives - you've
had several, I understand - dissolved with
a solution of time and taste. Yet nothing
solved unwritten words - unwritten words
remain unerased.

Woman, I'd bask in the fuzz of your stable
love. Men they leave me, yours stay freely.
My disposition's dark where yours is cheery.
My beauty chokes without depression, my
IQ strands me from convention. As a novelty
I'll be dismissed, whereas you forever
enjoy the gift of...not having people abandon
you when enigmas are lifted.

To reveal what? A baseless woman without
so much as anything to do but
make up lies and
present them true.

You win, Kim. You won.
I'd trade with you.
but you'd shun the
chance to be me. Rather
see me exposed, sans
fancy clothes and pretentious
prose. Deceptive simple

rhyme scheme, a dream I
had was reduced to

no dream.