Alma

01:08 am: I'm storing up thoughts,
storing up words;
I think soon, I'll have
enough to use.

10:55 pm: meandering
I feel like I should use this more. I have it--why not?

I should be studying for finals. I have three tomorrow. One at 8am.

I'm not ready.
I'm not ready for anything. I truly don't understand how the world works. I don't understand people or relationships or what I'm supposed to do with my life.
There is part of me that can admit that I just really want to be involved in something bigger than me, something special. That there are bigger things than a BA in English, or even a Ph. D., but I don't know what they are. Or how to find them, or how to make myself an integral part of them. I don't know how risk works.
Today, I told someone that I really care about not to bother calling me. I told them that because I knew that for them I was just an obligation. One more thing to deal with, to check off the list of responsibilities. Even knowing that, I still half hoped they would call anyway. Prove me wrong. Someone prove that the human race still holds some amount of love for one another.
But that's not fair. I see that they do everyday. I experience it everyday. Sometimes it just isn't the people that you really want it to be. And even that isn't true. The people that do love me, are exactly the people that I want to love me, because I love them more than anything.
Maybe I crave martyrdom on some level. That isn't too unfathomable. I think, in fact, it is very likely.
I want to have something I care about so much that I can become a martyr for it. I don't know that it exists. Or, if it does, it isn't likely that sacrifice will be even close to necessary.

08:12 am: Has yet to sprout a title
*Note* Katherine, you need to teach me how to do the link-y thing again, yeah?

Dance with me again,
he whispered to the wind.
And as I spin in ever widening circles,
swing my mind out through the ends of my hair,
dropping dendrites as you move past.
Let them fall like foreign seeds on uncharted land,
drawing on exotic nourishment
to spread new ideas that,
although born of my self,
become unrelated plants,
producing completely different fruit,
responding, reacting, enveloping, sometimes rejecting
the spores of thought
you’ve torn from my lips.
Once he shrieked Eureka in the face of a hurricane;
that triumph grew strong twenty miles north,
in an everglade.
There was the despairing wail of pain
that floated west, and sprouted as a first love’s bouquet.
His words, his thoughts, his mind,
make love to the wind,
but wind is polygamous, loving many,
and just as she carries his thoughts in utero
to another’s metaphysical womb,
she offers him a stranger’s ideas to bloom.

09:51 pm: Slurred Dreams and Sour Candy
What’s gonna happen
when the levee to my heart finally breaks
and I can’t handle that you’re
in a different emotional and geographical state?
When will you finish gorging yourself
on my sarcastic-laden words and no longer want
me to be your mental sour-patch candy?
Or worse,
the bitter lemon bite you love
turns saccharine sweet because I, in turn,
fall in love with the disenchanted blues in your eyes,
and your aimless meandering words
that find me at the end of nearly every night,
curling just inside my ear?
Half asleep and completely drunk,
we both whisper slurred dreams
of unrequited fairytale fantasies,
shaken and stirred with a double shot of despondent cynicism.
But I’ve recently discovered that I really am
Something of a poet—
full of mush and sentimentality;
dreams and ideals that will never be realized.
I want love larger than life
and the world to hold my hand.
I want the romance and emotion
that are supposed to belong
to the words you keep telling me.
I want the follow through to your sales pitch
that I know you can’t give me.
I’m almost ashamed, but I want you,
in all your apathetic drunken glory.
And in my mind’s eye,
your world would suddenly fill with purpose and life’s light,
changing just enough so that I don’t get screwed outright.

09:37 pm: Summer Lover
Distance distorts memories,
making dreams seem real.
There’s green grass somewhere,
but it’s too far away to feel.
I’m standing alone
on a stranger’s snow covered lawn
with a handful of stale dreams and memories
to feed a few hungry doves.
But I’ve clenched my fists so tight
I can’t separate the pieces.
I remember
a rash trespass through verdant grass.
I dreamed
of radiating solace from a sun warmed field.
I dreamed I trespassed through a field
and remember a sunny embrace.
I dreamed I remembered
Then remembered the dream,
And my frozen, numb hands cling madly,
forming a ball from pieces of old bread
as the snow blows around my feet.

02:06 am: Words Can't Fly
Surrounded by freezing cold and lonely desolation,
Words can’t stretch
to reach heightened sensation
but fall back down,
cracking on the ice of reality.
Numbness brings expanded experience
dulling pain demands
blood run more profusely,
forces words to try,
makes them determined to fly,
to simply graze for half a moment
something that at some point
might have been a feeling.
Wings freeze in attempted flight
and a nosedive offers a colorful smear.
For a moment
warm blood melts the ice
on which it seeps.
Then cold prevails
Leaving another red icy stain.

08:37 pm: Free to Swing
Creaking metal chains reverberate
through the dark, early morning cold;
there’s no moon, but Orion is bright tonight.
Facing a chain-link fence, I pump my legs;
leaning back, my feet point towards the stars
and I rise.
Leaning forward, kneeling in midair,
the frozen sandy ground rushes up to meet my prayer.
In those few moments,
the pendulum motion from flight’s freedom
to humble prostration and back up to self-abandon
defines my existence.
I see the confining frosted fence,
the silent winter kickball field,
the unlit street lined with unlit houses,
and somewhere beyond, sky.
Every upward stroke brings me closer to Orion,
a little higher than the fence,
stretching the length of the chains.
And I am sure of one thing.
More than I am certain of the human heart or mind,
of my own heart or mind,
of Milton, levy, Julian of Norwich or Hemingway.
More than I am certain of the strength of my legs,
the steel resilience of my bike,
or the love of all the people I've called home—
more certain than all of these,
I know I can fly.
I can leave this rundown playground,
float passed the chain-link fence
to fly.
Having found such unbound inhibition,
I bow at it's sheer and simple beauty.

10:53 pm: Starved for humanity
It’s a new beginning; I’m a new girl on a brand new scene.
With new rules, new people, new city—
That comes complete with party allegiance and politics.
And I’m getting a crash course on all the current policies.
I’m hearin’ oratories on community support and solidarity.
How it’s all about trust and faith,
Not in the government, but in the human race.
I’m trying to build a house out of cards and radicalist sound bites,
But this two-faced Jack keeps falling on my lap
While I’m sitting at the table with the latest dude that says
He thinks a lot like I do,
But has no qualms dropping friends
Without a moment’s thought or notice.
I’m starting to see that a loose translation for solidarity
Is closer to convenience:
“I think like you when it furthers my self-interest.”
Another used-car salesman of relationships
And cookie-cut extremist ideals.
If there’s a supportive community,
I’ve yet to find it,
Instead predatory behavior,
Self preservation and survival have been most prevalent.
We’re social, pack animals and all I see is dog-eat-dog mentality.
People attack others within their own communities,
Without even enough humanity to eat outside the family.
When I got here I was looking for a communal connection,
And I'd rather starve
Than attack or abandon those I choose to love.

02:16 pm: Autumn Afternoon
Autumn afternoons blow your music through my living room;
Guitar chords waft gold and copper through the open window.
Light from the southern sun and your crooning acoustic sound intermingle,
And harmonic discord reigns throughout my house,
At once soothing and unnerving.
Your lips give me love as easily as if it were a Beatles tune,
A simple well-known song, but sung by one,
In overlapping loops and rounds in multiple harmonies.
Your words are layered, looped and circling ‘round my head.
And the sun shifts a few degrees further to the south,
Reminding me that time and life have yet to freeze
And both reject the coming winter,
Requesting that I dance to the rhythm of the signature you keep playing,
Crooning, bending on the strings of reality.

03:17 pm: The City had a Wreck and Human Contact was Made
Thunder echoes off the walls of skyscrapers
That have disappeared behind an icy wall of torrential rain,
Forcing city workers on their lunch breaks,
As well as activists and hipster kids, to abandon Congress Park.
Leaving only the bums to take refuge
Beneath the thrashing, dripping limbs of the poplars, elms and oaks.
But the five o’clock traffic takes no notice of the storm,
And a new white Ford truck crushes the hood
Of some old red car at the light on Colfax and Broadway.
A man and woman appear, forced to come in contact
With something other than their vehicles. They write
On pads of yellow paper, quickly sodden from the downpour
And torn by ballpoints and policy numbers.
A bicycle messenger watches their interaction
As he huddles against a wall,
Hiding from the cold and hail and rain.