leaking words and

I have an obsession with thinking by way of words, words, words. A sad, soft, dewy sort of thing, one's past actions, past events- one can conjecture all they wish, but it's a leisure of those who think by inscription. Of those who are overflowing and build dams with the construction of a sentence. I am always aflame! And a poet by default. I have always had this peculiar mind-tic, where something nameless, almost an itchy nebulous force, feels as if it's physically pushing into my cerebellum, ceaselessly, until it can take some sort of form in the outside world. It manifests itself physically; I stay up all hours of the night, unable to sleep, I get breathless, nervous, excited.

I'm not sure why poetry captured me, because as loathe as I am to admit it, I was never introduced to any poetry. When I say any, I mean that the first poetry I read was the Canterbury Tales in 11th grade and on my own Baudelaire, just a year later. That's about the sum of my education. I grew up with a father as in love with words as his daughter, and I remember seeing Tennyson and Frost nestled among the legion of print he had collected over his life, but never chanced to open them on a rainy day.

But countless other books I did devour, never much for television. I loved nature, living in the forest, but I always managed to have some existential episode that tripped the wire for that strange force that drives me to words, art, expression. Even at age eight; when swimming in the river in my backyard, I watched water run from my hands and land on the surface, one droplet that caused countless echoes, waves, possibilities, consequences, running into the rings from droplet number two, three, twenty and became absolutely overwhelmed. I was abruptly confronted to a philosophical question far too complex for my eight year mind to rationalize. I spent the next several years listening and watching, a far cry from the boisterous kid I was before.

In the name of creation and wringing new viewpoints from the structure of language; poems!

Calls it Captivity

This is winter, a jump-skip between spring,
truer electricities and in this, they are fatherless
without history, without ties that bind
and binds that tie
One affront after another glides through 4 walls
and speakers trasmit some red-black magic
until music goes unheard

And a leg appears in a hapless sea of bed covers,
reaching, arching towards a daylight
I shall be careful, finally
Sudden finalities bred through not-so-sudden inactions, actions
A seesaw sort of mechanical

breath-breath-roar
she pines for New England and easy action
and pines for people she doesn't miss
and for the stability of an equation whose sum is one
she's a fading rod, rolled from causation and as she suspected
maybes
imagination drawn realities and cure-all philosophies

A bit tired of escapism and it's crowing, gaping mouth?
A bit fed up with escaping and disappearing acts

This is winter, and a complete lunar cycle later,
she has only begun
This equation begins and ends in chaos
infinity

***

Oxygen

There's all sorts of problems with square footage; first, 35 square meters isn't nearly enough to spread around the blame. And a bed's a table-lounge and there is never enough room to escape an ego.

So what does a girl who tries to protect herself do? She constructs walls. First one was flimsy, she'll give you that, all paper mache baby girl shit, constructed from all his pretentious art magazines. The second wall steadier- made of boards, but it changed moment to moment from cardboard to wood and both walls were liable to go up in flames. Both of them, because Paris ignites. Chemical imbalance meet chemical imbalance and Poof!

And in 35 square meters, that's a lot of smoke to inhale.

The third wall is constructed from Belgian brick, a testament to their recent weekend in Brussels. This was where she realized that he was as upset by taking care of her as he was scared of her surpassing him one day.

Belgian brick- one, two, envision the thick grey mud glue binding brick to brick into a wall that surrounds her. Solid. Airtight. Protection from inexorable anger, from giving into a failure he doesn't realize he tried to set her up for.

So in these 35 square meters they both fume, charred still, and the couch is a chair and the table a bed and she has no more room for ego or for directionless frustration.

We all lack space in this city.

We all lack any goddamn oxygen.

****

Dinner's Lament

we sit on the cusps
of coffee cups, every morning
speakeasy, it's only me
gentle, just the night coming down
i'll tell you i'll come at lunch
you'll tell me no

half assed days
'what did you do today?'
'just wrote.'
just
while you take over the world
and the hilarious thing is
this writing,
usually it's a lie

over dinner on friday night
the first evening i ventured out all week
(manic depression, you dig?)
interrogated about
'did you bring out the garbage?'
'No'
eventually turns to
'How can we have children! Life requires rigor'
and, as usual I am watching the hostess
who told us a table for lovers
'do you think if she sang, she'd sound like a bird? Her rib cage shows and i've always imagined better acoustics'
napkin on the table and you give up

we arrive at the edge
of free-fall, we're here and there
years apart in every moment- 13 to be exact
and if we count them down, 13, 12, 11
counting's a game of syllables, 1,2,3
series of minimal tongue pulses
maybe we can cut out the rot

the soft sort of anonymous, 'compatible'
neither of us jailbirds seek

so she says instead,
bird-speak chirps
'Paris is tired, the city is exhausted and open the shutters in a farewell because winter is only a prologue to spring'