Sunday, April 28, 2024

unchangeable

I keep waiting for it to get better:

(I think of Noah's line, the one I have heard criticized for being too angsty:

you ask me to cheer up, why should cheer up? it might not ever get better)

still

pieces of you everywhere - in cities I have never seen you - in cities I never will

it's an equation my mind cannot compute, it does not equate:

the simplicity and incomprehensibility of the statement.

The reframing of the context, painful and irrevocable.


Sometimes I feel like throwing a carton of eggs at a wall

Sometimes the sadness feels like dragging a rough stone across my skin or

a thin shard of glass leaving lines like the splintering of something wrapped in plastic

(these are all mental exercises to occupy my mind, block out thoughts with sensory details)


The other day I fell to pieces. I was crying in a way I did not recognize.

Suddenly and bodily, in waves it overtook me: I painted, I shook, 

I painted, I quaked. Longing for something, anything, 

the cool touch of the paintbrush on my skin a metaphor made real,

I drew myself into a tree of leaves

(My sadness growing like a seed -

into something better).

Tuesday, April 16, 2024

bloodstains

any 

woman 

knows something

about getting blood out of fabric.


maybe, if you ask nicely,

she will tell you.

Monday, April 15, 2024

Everyone in Vienna is so quiet

it's like the entire city is a library

on the tram

no one speaks to each other

every one cool calm and collected

moving through in their own private pierced 

world, with a Freitag bag on their shoulder,

and a beer or a cigarette on their lips,

these beautiful people stand by the side of the Donau

and they are not ashamed of their nudity

(why would they be? they are beautiful.)