December 2011
28 posts
year
happy new year from kyoto friends.
please excuse my absence.
i will be home shortly.
hasta pronto.
first night
seven hours, on five different trains, to travel half the length of honshu. we arrive at a house with five steps, down the length of an alley. chinese food with friends of friends: vegetables, pork, spicy tofu and rice. we have a room on the roof, to get there you must pass under the day’s laundry, sheets and socks. it warms with us inside and in sleep there begins a rain.
holiday
off to kyoto, nara, hiroshima, and osaka.
see you next year.
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december
snow falls.
i walk ankle deep,
my hand unravels into another’s.
we stand on a rock under a street light,
hop down and continue on.
at the beach the water is grey and green, churning in the snow.
a woman in the distance bends to the ground, squats a moment,
finds a stone she favors, and throws it to the waves.
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christmas
off into the mountains of nagano for christmas.
christmas with snow, not a hundred degree beach like last christmas.
thank god.
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fork with two tines pushed together
It’s fast and cool as running water, the way we forget the names of friends with whom we talked and talked the long drives up and down the coast. I say I love and I love and I love. However, the window will not close. However, the hawk searches for its nest after a storm. However, the discarded nail longs to hide its nakedness inside the tire. Somewhere in Cleveland or Tempe, a pillow still...
lunch with 8 year olds
a boy takes a stringy mushroom out from his bowl, screams, and tosses it at the girl across his table
the kid i’m sitting next to hits me two times in the crotch when i’m in them middle of eating my food
i turn to see a mouth opened hippopotamus style four inches from my face, the young girl in possession of it is wiggling her baby teeth, the ones about to fall out
i get a...
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thursday
notes in a desk, leftover emotion from high school.
i read them and feel like i’m peering down at a life not my own.
it is strange to think: i used to be capable of such things.
my finger swells, balloons, it is twice the size of its other.
i cannot write and imagine the nail tearing off, dislodged by the pressure below.
i wake thirsty in the night and drink water from a tap in the...
in dark bars
In dark bars with modest fires, John talks of love and whether one can have it despite the multiplicity of self. Believe it, John! I say, though I do not yet. We stuff ourselves into the photo booth, using our faces to elaborate on the moment as though time has already truncated it. I cannot answer John’s question, and turn up missing from the prints.
Science will say that the peak-end rule...
the coast
camping on the coast,
snow lies beneath our trees.
their leaves have thinned,
the branches drop.
wind blows in off the water,
it shakes outside, rattles the tent.
a fire burns,
the branches gathered,
give themselves up, break
and snap,
form an embrace against the cold.
morning light rises out
from beneath the water,
burning clouds grey above the
swell.
i will be
i will be the eaves,
that you hang your words upon.
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the stones
The stones we threw I hear
fall, glass-clear through the years. In the valley
the confused actions of the moment
fly screeching from
treetop to treetop, become silent
in thinner air than the present’s, glide
like swallows from hilltop
to hilltop until they’ve
reached the furthest plateaus
along the frontier of being. There all
our deeds fall
glass-clear
with nowhere to...
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rewriting the past
i’ve been writing about the past a lot lately and it’s begun to wear on me.
i’m reading murakami’s newest book, 1q84, and about writing on the past, it says this:
True, rewriting the past probably had almost no meaning, Tengo felt. His older girlfriend had been right about that. No matter how passionately or minutely he might attempt to rewrite the past, the present...
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november in the city
green and bright.
grey and wet.
dark and cold.
your hand in mine, walking through the streets downtown. wind blowing between the buildings, bright november sun glinting off the windows above. the ocean is not far, i can smell it in the breeze. city busses rumble past and it is cold in the shade. there are seagulls in the bay, above the docks, circling, crying, wheeling. when they land,...
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enemies
The thing about entertaining them, about keeping their company, about fraternizing, is you must remember they are bloodless and have many faces, though it’s easy enough to walk in sunlight, where either you or they become invisible, never together seen; easy to get in bed with them, to bed them, to be seduced by them— listing in their own dominance. Remember what makes one human, animal, is not...
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a list of questions
going through a notebook i kept while in thailand i found, as i often do, a piece of writing i’d totally forgotten about. while this can probably be attributed to my habit of writing when drinking it’s also proof of my inability to let thoughts go through my head without being scribbled somewhere.
so here is a list of yes/no questions i wrote for myself while in thailand, still...
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