paranoid android

at a fall astronomy lecture, i took some notes that i found in a drawer i throw old journals in. all my life on little scraps of paper in 2 drawers.
shit.

that day i learned about the life-span of stars, considered the origin of the universe, and understood the logistics of sending information through space. i had the normal feelings of insignificance. and at the same time, felt connected.
stars have a life span.
they are born, live, and die.
just like us.

the sun we revolve around is half way through its life cycle. the damn thing will be dead in a few billion years. and so will we.

what struck me next is that NASA continually sends messages to places light years away. some of the smartest people on the planet are trying to connect with little scraps of cosmic communication that will NEVER get to anyone while humans are on earth. we will all be so dead that sending it doesn't matter.

in those drawers, i also found the scraps of my last marriage counseling session. the therapist made us write down 10 things we loved about each other. our in-class assignment was touch the other person and read the list of 10.

i was so many light years away from him that i literally almost laughed when he read his to me. that was the last time i said i love you, and i said it from an out-of-body, outer space place.

tangled in the astronomy notes, i found his list of 10. like the brightest minds in science, he had written a hopeless message. and we were so dead that the sending has never mattered.

sharon rose

my great-grandfather spent the 1930's collecting sharon rose depression glass. it's baby pink: rose patterned. duh.

when he would buy washing detergent or gasoline in the 30's, the reward for choosing brand "a" was this glassware.

i've spent my adult life collecting it.
even though i think it's the ugliest shit out there.

for years, grandpa wynn's glassware sat in boxes in my attic.
i was waiting for the right cabinet, the right room, the right moment.
i was waiting for some place in my home to be enough.
when i moved last summer, the moment came: in the form of necessity.
those were the only dishes i had that would fit into the make-shift cabinets i had constructed from bookshelves.

for a while i was worried that i would break one of them.

finally did.
it wouldn't glue back together, just a hot fucking mess.
and i had to let it go.

i look at some people in my life the way that i look at sharon rose. i have put them in boxes, wrapped them in a bubble-wrap fear, and stuck them in an attic. and i still can't seem to eat off the plate. i look at it, imagine the perfect chicken salad sandwich, but can't use what people long gone have given to me.

queen of the surface streets

i never knew that heaven
a) would be in my kitchen
b) would have me baking chocolate chip cookies
c) would include a soundtrack by devotchka
d) would only serve local yazoo ale
e) would require a dress code of underwear and aprons
f) would have no air conditioning

white wedding

this morning when i was walking from my parking lot to the garage, there was this white balloon floating about 2 feet from the ground. it was on a ribbon that someone had curled at the end, and it wasn't an egg shaped balloon. it was shaped like an orange.

it was beautiful against the asphalt and it made me think of the kind of wedding where people have crappy food and flowers, but they are in love. like really in love- to the point where they never once thought about her bouquet of white carnations.

i like white carnations.

sestina, baby part duex

sestinas are fun. i've played with them before on here.

i wrote this one on the plane from chi to nash.
the words were given to me by my man, who was sitting next to a man. a very. big. man.


Hell hell hell orange gummy big Sestina. Hell.

Her Sestina for the Newlywed made swell
An in-flight urge to write my own. Well,
I unfurl your contribution and see hell, hell, hell.
Now I am unsure. And the glare of orange
Sun from the wings makes my gum
Turn my stomach as I notice how big

The man we would pass these six words over is. Bisecting
The aisle with a note, I feel embarrassed. Hell,
Kind of annoying. But I am so bored. My
Eyes cross over the part of him that he
Can’t keep from spilling into 27B, a swell
Of bad choices, covering your arm rest. He is foreign

And too must feel as though in hell.
Snicker of a drunk. Reach of your arm. How big
He is in this airspace. If he sat by the window, orange
Light reflecting from fuselage would not pass. Well,
Maybe I’m exaggerating. But his hell
Is as our hell is as her hell: kind of gummy.

Present, congealed, of our own creation. Yup. Gummy.
Like the worms I bought in the airport shop. Not candy shells
But soft and changing as we spit, worry, and chew. He
and his excess blocking the sun, big
with heat and sweat. I wonder if like fires in hell
the light he sees in the glare of memory is orange.

Though I hate to do such shame to orange.
It’s a lovely hue. One of my
Heart. And anyway, I don’t believe in hell.
Couldn’t possibly. Have you been to Chicago? Hell.
A bed on Columbus Avenue with motor oil bisecting
The concrete palette of sleeping regret. That’s hell.

And in the smell of that street, my chest swells
With pangs of an eye twitch, a telling orange
Moment that that seems small in the big
Space of what we might create. If we don’t gum
It up by stoking the fire of what we know as hell.
The little pieces of them we carry. Real Hell.

Can you write about hell on an airplane? A shell
Of steel, not so big this far from Midway? Orange
Window-seat light at, well maybe, 30,000 feet. Oh Hell.