inter-net child

you cannot make me ashamed

of anonymous narcissism

dreaming again

the white tiger palace full of white tigerrs

the dark underground zoo portion has the librarian from your childhood

encased in glass and reading aloud with the lights on herr

she says every girl has a story it is about

slowly getting crushed

we escaped on bear-back through the arctic sea where the

whales are impossibly large, dorsal daggerrs

back in the shire it is time to run a race, you used to

win all the races but maybe not because you were

faster just because you were betterr at winning,

in any case today the feet won't fly and the skinny golden ones

make laps around the heavy bruise of you

my former classics professor is invited to my theoretical wedding

Action shot (click):

neuroses

i think when everything in life is generally going okay my brain is wired to shift the load of ridiculous thinking and anxiety to other areas, which is why i've been having panics almost every morning about how "fat" i "am"

but i mean really everything's pretty great

and green and the flowers

what sucks though is how when i'm pulling myself from this shit-winter and this season and my life are starting to become me very much it seems like so many of my friends are getting real down,

maybe i have just never really had friends like this and

this is how things are, riding varying and irrepressible little waves

next to each other, those at their crests always reaching down to support

i was much less angry

when my primary transportation was my feets

i wish everybody would understand how hard i work not to annoy or harm them

and treat me with similar gentleness

cause see, i, like many of my fellow citizens, have a license to

pilot a powerful machine the size of a young rhino

if the spam mailers or scam callers or tea partiers and selfish cocks don't shut the fuck up, someday,

this mild road rage might boil,

misdirected and inappropriate, like taking a hammer to an origami bird

because its tail-lights don't work, or it didn't turn when it had plenty of time

i do not care to be out and exposed where others can affect me

nine hours

is a long time to be in a place that's not home

this work thing feels like a boot camp of paper but then, ha, i remember it's every day now

it's good that my co-workers i am enjoying and being challenged by

and the work is interesting,

it is surprisingly hard to remember time zones

that they exist, i mean. be careful

when you are scheduling those exotic conference calls

to london and california

this document exists to explain how important a mother is to a son

and these photos prove that these two people are in love

a face ages throughout its lifetime on a series of gritty passport copies

i hope that my phone voice does not become my real voice

it surprises me how often a stranger across the country

trapped in some office just like me and using her phone voice

will complain, just a little, in a confiding way

i am proud of being extra comforting in those moments

spring effort

I was attentive to the tentative bristles of green and now all at once the leaves are too many to count; too thick and loud and gagging on the torrent of chlorophyll for me to be careful and observant.

I sat so long in emptiness and anticipation, whispering to the sap deep in the circling wood-folds and listening hard the way a child listens for the answer of a prayer to god: the child presented with a deity doesn't know not to expect magic.

(I may have been, tritely, ruined by religion and fiction in this way: awaiting what I believed to be a sure and inevitable climactic fork wherein the "ordinary" life I was living would be pulled away as a curtain. I would be presented with a vital challenge or quest that involved being somehow chosen or special and not just a respectable citizen who finishes school and gets a productive job. You know where this is going, it is the plot of most fantasy young adult books.

[Contrarily, the twentieth century brought about a great literary love of the salaryman/failure, with whom I also identify strongly.]

[I am now feeling the urge to watch and be inspired by some Kurosawa for some reason {Ikiru}.]

BUT there is magic, intoxicating. This invites fear. Retrospectively, the most magical times of my life were experienced just as any other present, and to think that hindsight is the only place where the larger waves of contentment can be recognized and plotted makes me afraid. Especially of getting old. Especially of not experiencing enough. Especially of being too overcome by my own small rabbit anxieties and existing in this state of visceral discomfort, masking the palpable peace that is within my reach, for no reason I can articulate. Especially of becoming boring.

[A thing I'm trying to say: There is so much joy now I am afraid I will not be able to gather it all up and hold it well enough before future-me is looking wistfully backwards.])

Now I touch the leaves with urgency in passing on my way to work; on my way home; on my way here and there. At work my tattoo lies under my sleeve and pulses in secrecy. My shiny gray new office and car make me feel so uncomfortably posh, sitting always on leather. Today I bought a small abalone shell, like an iridescent ear, to house my paperclips; it makes me think of the sea and love. After work I shed my sleeves. I pause on my bicycle to nuzzle the waxy magnolia petals.