anxious

i think the word i have been searching for is anxious.

i've lined up so much for myself to live and prepare for and recover from that in the interim of being inspired and awestruck i am left incredibly anxious. pee your pants, spontaneously throw up, cry hysterically in public

anxious.

and yet every moment in the moment feels awesomely slow. my air is viscous and my joints are stiff as i struggle to center and align before the next round of plans. i don't mean to implicate that i am not excited and so expectant of greatness, only that the brimming over of these things is making my insides quake.

good news, i'm writing again. being lost in graphite and charcoal is a beautiful bouyant way of linear thinking, but words are solid. stacked between ribs and piled on the backs of my knees. it's nice to feel another style, it makes you want to respond with your own. you can't ask much more from your writing if it forces response. four weeks of only words is going to be challenging

non-negotiable.

being as incomplete and amorphous as i am, your completion and full-faced smiles are so comfortable.

you haven't said too much.

my grandmother

my grandmother is getting thin
like a dried autumn leaf
and her bitterness gives me shivers

her garden is exhaling and rolling up out of the earth
in notes of sunshine and water
and i sit across from her in the twisted wire rocking chair

fifth cigarette drifting in her smoky eyes
bouncing between her lips
with every lovely thing she tells me

in her most eloquent vocabulary

she is the wisest person i know
and she stands alone shaking in her roses
its only me she lets wade in her tarragon

and listen to her fabels

her eyelids
are heavy and thick and as white as her eyes
and their milky boundaries magnify the cool blue of her wisdom

her silver hair is pulled like thick boat ropes
away from her face
and it always feels like shes running at you
with words

like pellets that sting
stick
sink in and lay in wait
until they are needed

i pick them out regularly
and put them in my jewelry box
along with my paints and purfume

my grandmother pushes up her sleeves
over her gardening gloves and tanned tissue skin
and her beauty is always astounding
despite all of her turmoil

back to colors

i’m driven to paint.
i miss the solidarity that crashes over me when i smear colors on linen with the insistency of hips.
i miss the compassion i feel for my brush, colliding with an Image i’ve plastered on my eyelids,
a silhouette that dominates every blink and every space between my thoughts.

i long for that ability to create the emotions of the day - instead of our usual positions;
me, standing at my tallest five two
and the day, tackling me with all of its blustery beauty and tortuous elegance.

when i paint the blue shadows beneath your eyes, it is with all the steadiness of a cold, deep sky.
i can fill the infinite darkness with the titian red of my anger and the cool hungry violet of my heart.

the stars settle stubbornly
condensation in the hollows of my collarbones.
as i paint with fingers wet with the day
on skin stretched and lips open
with suspicious eyes upon me I lay out on the rained-on blacktop
Smelling it Painting that cut grass green eyes

but trying to find you in my colors
is like trying to blow the clouds into motion.

insomniac

Because I don’t sleep at night
I inhale constant volumes of you
The space beside me
Is one of my voluminous exhales
And gives graciously against my palms
The night slices off pieces of itself
And they fall like great blocks of marble beside me
Crushing my exhale with a great whoosh
And my lungs inflate with your violent wingspan
As I struggle to chip away the icy stone
Trying to palpate the arch of a rib
or the hyberbole behind a hipbone
or the curve above the heart’s repugnancy
my belly sinks into the cool permanancy of wakefulness
eyes peeled open
you, still battering and twisting in my torso.
You will not be still, and I accept your chaos.
For in all of your dulce-darkness and turmoil
My breath would cease in your stillness
And in sleep your volatile beauty would fade.