Film of water on sidewalks
this morning was still
though drops are falling
in the heat thickend air.

You are a poem I wanted
to write without the word I.
I couldn’t do it, so now
I am running, feet falling

in puddles to break this
silence; with each shoe fall,
the world hears our name, you
and I, and you. It’s always

full circle. I start at my front
door, and even the cars passing
are silent, the sun rises silently as I run
away from home, into the circus

that is you circling in my mind.
I think about the trees, rocks,
water falling in fat crystal droplets
from powerlines, but the poem of you
without an I keeps coming back
into focus. When I run, I run away

from my house and to a trail full
of other people and ducks, rabbits and mud.
I run away and it feels like I’ll never
come back, I’ll never be done, until I turn around
and return. Coming back is just like leaving

in reverse. And I am coming back
to the poem of I with no you in it.

I’ve been studk in a rut lately, but a recent post over at mygorgeoussomewhere kicked me on the ass mad made me say, I wanna do that too.

So, tomorrow… All day tomorrow.

Ask me anything, anything you want: I will answer. Honestly.

Just like dear Dana says in her rules, I will hold three chances to plea the fifth, but other than that I’m all answers.

And here’s a pretty button!

I write a lot about love. and a little about sex. And a little about violence. Or maybe it is all colored and narrated with violence.

I’m having trouble writing lately. I think it is partially beacuse of stress. I think that it also has to do with the fact that Love, my main muse, is confounding me lately. I usually understand it completely, am able to remove myself from it and look at it. As though love were a paperweight. I always get it.

I don’t anymore.

My brain’s landscape is changing. Things are shifting. Yesterday, I was talking with a friend, and I said that I don’t want to be in a real relationship ever again. I said it, and I realized that I meant it.

I understand the future, and I am building the appropriate walls. But now I fear this: will these walls completely sever my tie to my muse?

Maybe the answer is to just write more about sex.

I realize now that we are all too beautiful to actually exist.

She worked in the archives of a small college university for a year. At first, she used a little vacuum to clean the dust from the delicate pages of ancient, crumbling books for eight hours a day. She loved teh work, carefully, slowly hovering over a wealth of knowledge, having the power to destroy it all. For hours on end, she would stand in the little ladder and wave the wand over those closed pages, holding information and history so beautiful that they books could never be opened again. When she finished the very last shelf it was time to vacuum the first one again.

But then came the poet’s death. Even more boxes, more letters. She sorted and sorted, until his life became hers. She read and was nourished, findign victory in cronographically sorting the drafts of famous poems, book proofs. Suddenly, all of this became her voice, and she quit longing for the drone of the vacuum, the repetition of the wand.

all come to me
in search
of love.

It starts
as an inkling
a quiet need
that blossoms
rapidly into obsession,
into passion. It blossoms

only to wilt. Why can’t
I quit using the word,
why can’t I leave it
behind to the archives.

I want to cut thru the air
like a knife. I want to feel
sweat evaporate. You forgot
time and time again that I want
too.

No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories by Miranda July

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
A great collection of odd short stories. Topics and characters range from a lesbian in love with her childhood best friend who ends up working in a peep show to discover that by being another person, she can momentarily have what she wants, a woman jealous of an old rivals’ incestuous relationship with her own father, and other people searching for their fates who discover that fate is not what it is cracked up to be. Strange, quirky detals keep even the most seemingly depressing story from being truely tragic in this delightfull and strange collection.

View all my reviews.

She woke up. The sky was so blue she thought she could cut a piece of it off and suck on it. She thought it would dissolve bit by bit in her mouth. It would sustain her.

Until today. Today, the sky looks at her like need. Today, she will leap. Today, the effort will be worth it.

I was wanting
to fly - desperate
for one moment of sheer
joy, passionate for excitement -
no matter how short lived.

So, I climbed, placing one
foot above the other, dragging
my emmense weight up
up up into another woman’s heaven.

At the top, the world
was a child’s play thing. I imagined

a giant blue air bag, the sort that
stunt men use, and I ran, I ran as fast
as I could, right arm windmilling

like it did when I was very young,
running to get into the line
that goes back to class at the end
of recess. I ran to the edge

and kept on going and flew. I felt
my body travel out and down,
an arc to the ground. I chose

a shorter building, so there would
only be joy
none of that
oh god
what did I do.

There was heart punding joy,
like riding the best
roller coaster ever

and that was it. That was
the end.

You have to see this, a photo collage on NYT that has pictures of every soldier killed in Iraq. Too moving. Here is a poem.

These dead

We have all been
a tomb
for your ashes,

you men and women
we will never know.

Where are your accolades, where
is your coffin? I never saw

any evidence of your existance,
save for a picture in the paper,
a uniform clad body, face stoic

or smiling. What choice
was it, what made it?

a quest for honor, a quest
for another life? Did you go
there to erase something
someone else did, was it the

sign on bonus? You live
in a world where no questions
are asked, no answers offered.

You lived, that is,
but now you are
another question.

Let me build you a pyer
out of anger and loss. Let me
turn you to ash with tears.

It is the least I can do
as you were sent to the
slaughter for naught.