I don't have any reason.

I don't

I don't get

I don't

I don't

I don't want you

I don't think you know

you know it's not today

not for months

not you

I don't want you

you

and

you and your back problems

and fancy coffee

I don't need to smell you -

you're there

you're not enough anymore

enough for you

enough to be yours

to be whole

to break into pieces

pieces you lost

pieces scattered years ago into your fancy coffee drinking habit.

say goodbye my baby

lyrics to my favorite songs and never admitting that I'm wrong. high on that rocky mountain and it hurts and you're gone but you couldn't take it. all my songs will be about you and I'm your man - would you be my widow? i am currently driving past a cemetery. it is overwhelming. could you wake up to that every morning? broken windows. this won't end well. the streets sleep but i'm stuck thinking. scream. scream. this is not the time to break down. is it ever? value your Time. in plenty of time. the world will end. this worries me. i'm caught up in the moment - won't you join me friend? i need someone walking beside me from time to time. just keep coming up with words along this bumpy road and i'm counting the change in my pockets and by chance, i'm stuck in traffic. and you won't come near and you won't be found close to me.

I know the game.

We just keep going.

We smile like children, like old men

and when something bothers us

we resort to panic attacks

or we rise above.

Do you rise?

I eat bread every day.

I pick my nose every morning.

I stare at strangers.

I imagine them naked.

I cry a lot.

I am a fool for you

if you ask

but there's a password.

I hate buses.

THey make me uncomfortable.

Slugs. And buses.

And voice mail.

Do you have an iphone?

If I had an iphone I would never have to think

about how much

I hate

riding in buses.

Ode to Stinson Beach

Oh Pablo Neruda,

 I bet you've written plenty about

 this coast.

 It's ruthless.

 Total concentration required

 otherwise I am

 left vastly alone

 with my thoughts

 and the ferns

 and the sand

 and the breeze from the thin

 thin

 air.

 I drive past an art studio,

 and a lone horse at a ranch.

 Brown meets blue

 no

 enveloped in blue

 so long 

 as I can still see 

 the glistening rocks below.

 Only when Eucalyptus

 infiltrates my senses

 do I realize

 I have escaped the coast

 it's overwhelming clarity

 away from mirror

 so much safer to

 keep my distance

 yet so much more

 alive

 along

 that coast.

Didn't you get my postcard?

eyes like jeans

faded and clean

Baby, it's a good life.

Closing Remarks:

You came to me in the end

and

melted away

out of yourself, a

substance

and

in myself

I instantly see the change.

The inevitable forward motion

into futures untouched,

into empty fields,

into dark rooms,

into sad blue,

out of a hole,

eyes open.

Take it from the west side

“As concisely as possible, this is it: [M]usic has intrinsic

meanings of its own, which are not to be confused with

specific feelings or moods, and certainly not with pictorial

impressions or stories. These intrinsic musical meanings

are generated by a constant stream of metaphors, all of

which are forms of poetic transformations. This is our

thesis.”

– Leonard Bernstein

Act II

A. Everything?

B. Everything.

A. Now?

B. Yes.

A. Now.

B. Now!

A. Why don't we just wait awhile?

B. (to self) wouldn't that be funny? giggle

    (accusing) You can't even look at her!

A. It's a sign.

B. I don't know if I believe in those...

A. Well who told you it was ok?

B. Who told you it wasn't?

    Who are they?

    Did they make you?

    Did you sign some contract?

    Did they give you that hint of ocean in your eyes? Huh?

A. (astonished) How could I be sorry for this?

B. I'll be with you even after your lights go out.

the climb

In my mind there is a place

that I keep to myself

my secrets stay collected there

stored upon a shelf

Storms come and go, as people do

absence is always felt

so I retreat into the place

where I protect myself

April showers

I count the hours

delicate

kept high in towers

let me see you smile

and then I'll let you climb the ladder

Clock on the wall is tolling

it's about that time again

back into my room to feel

the absence of a friend

Heavier things

Grass lies strings of light

dancing across a field

the field where we sit

the field where we sit and watch the sun sway

over our bare skin.

Your brown hair mingles

with my fingers

they keep their conversation light

while our eyes speak of heavier things:

the day when the sun shines slow and warm

and wonderful

and I'll walk slowly

and I'll drink it in, the moment

when we get there.

Poetry.

For I am certain.

Just enough to get there.

So we continue

Slowly

I want you

and your hungry eyes

I want your thoughts

in my head

so I can spit out the answers

the right thing to say

the words in your mouth

I'm whispering in your mouth

You've turned out the lights

but I see you staring

You're burning me

slowly

Do you feel the heat?

my mouth in your mouth

I tell myself the pain is good

I know you won't let go

I'm burned into you now.

Acquainted with the Night

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain - and back in rain.

I have out-walked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet

When far away an interrupted cry

Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say goodbye;

And further still at an unearthly height,

A luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

to the lighthouse.

...she did not feel merely snubbed back in her instinct, but made aware of the pettiness of some part of her, and of human relations, how flawed they are, how despicable, how self seeking, at their best...

...we know nothing and the sea eats away the ground we stand on...

...as if to be caught happy in a world of misery was for an honest man the most despicable of crimes...

...it was the refuge of a man afraid to own his own feelings, who could not say, This is what I like--this is what I am; and rather pitiable and distasteful to [those] who wondered why such concealments should be necessary; why he needed always praise; why so brave a man in thought should be so timid in life; how strangely he was venerable and laughable at one and the same time...

...teaching and preaching is beyond human power...

...life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up with it and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach...

...what art was there, known to love or cunning, by which one pressed through into those secret chambers? What device for becoming, like waters poured into one jar, inextricably the same, one with the object one adored? Could the body achieve, or the mind, subtle mingling in the intricate passages of the brain? or the heart? Could loving, as people called it, make [them] one? for it was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscriptions on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to men, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge, she had thought...

...nothing happened...

Page 45, It was a disguise... etc.

When I told you that I was reckless you said that it was okay, that you liked that about me. Maybe seeing the enormity of my recklessness was too much for you to handle after all.

It's the only life, after all

the water is wide

no subject.

Love cannot be wrong.

Hard Arguments.

I deserve better.

You, the coward. You, the one who promises the world and then hides in his cave. You, the one who could change my life, and has - over and over again, yet chooses to pretend that I don't exist. You, the one who told me it was OK! and then went and decided that it's not true, that it couldn't have been true, and for all I know, the sky is green!

There are people that enter our lives every day, but for some reason we can only hold onto a select few. For me, you were the person. The one I compared everyone to. The one I put up on a pedestal and hoped that one day maybe someone else I met might reach almost as high.

It's a shame, because now if I keep with my tradition, no one will have anything to measure up to anymore. I may as well have no standards at all. No expectations, that's for sure.

You are afraid to open your eyes even though deep inside you know the only thing waiting for you is me - meeting your every gaze. 

It doesn't help that you're so far away.

And so, for the rest of your life I will be with you, in your dreams at night and your thoughts in the day. It will not grow easier with time, but harder. I will not fade. I will not falter. I will not disappear. There will not be a day that I don't cross your mind. You will live with that regret forever, where as I will have none - because I have done everything in my power to help you see me.

God help the boy who lives with his eyes closed. He will one day fall. Hard.

Who will be there to pick you up?

I could be too far gone to reach you by then.

Hopefully you're smart. Hopefully you still read this.

Art objects to the lie against life that it is pointless and mean. The message coloured through time is not lack but abundance, not silence but many voices. Art, all art is the communication cord that cannot be snapped by indifference or disaster. Against the daily death it does not die.

Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery 

Jeanette Winterson