IL MARCHER

20 May 2013

Mon, 20 May 2013 09:46:18 -0600

#1
Ask me my name and I’ll tell you three colors:
Yellow
Red
Green
If that doesn’t help you, I’ll tell you about how I was raised in a city without selfishness and you’ll discover a city full of ignorance.
You’ll ask me again for my name,
and I’ll shove words into your ears that will remind you of your mother, or the family dog,
but you were born in a bed of fame and wealth
and you can’t understand my name.

17 May 2013

Sat, 18 May 2013 00:01:15 -0600

#1
‘Why do we always hurt the ones we love?’
With white walls,
and shimmering blue pools
India calls my name
With brown skins
and beautiful gods.
I walked around the new library
appearing and disappearing amongst the shelves
and discussing fair food with the librarians.

#2
Tomorrow is four years in the making.

#3
And I dreamt of you
You kissed my lips
You pushed flowers into my hands
And you smiled with white teeth
And you smiled with a boyish grin
You folded me in half like a love letter and
Licked
The
Envelope
Closed.

14 May 2013

Tue, 14 May 2013 22:07:48 -0600

She broke her hand when she was thirteen

and when she won the lottery she died

of a heart attack

and they didn’t know who to give the money to

—the one hundred and sixty million dollars—

so they gave it to charity instead

and it went to people who fixed hands.

He could count on his fingers how many times someone told him that they were in love with him,

but he couldn’t count on his fingers how many people he had kissed.

He sometimes wished he was someone else,

and laid in bed thinking of what would happen if he was born in Tokyo, or Beijing

maybe he would think people were all the same

maybe he would think people were slaves

or maybe he wouldn’t think any differently at all.

Sometimes he loved himself above all others,

and spent hours reading Tolstoy in coffee shops, staring at women who stared at the impressive titles that he carried in his hands.

Falling asleep on busses

Spending money on food, but more money on coffee

Eczema and itching, itching, itching

Cleaning house and dreaming of Idaho

12 May 2013

Sun, 12 May 2013 23:07:42 -0600

You won’t remember this

A man placing your hands in a cold bucket of water,

holding them gently and massaging your knuckles with his gnarled fingers.

The sun is beating against your neck,

and you are sure that if you listen to one more pop song

you’ll just leave it all behind.

“Call your mother” written on the windows across the street

“Mother’s Day” written on the cards in the shops

Flowers blooming out of tin vases

Families rushing around downtown, seeing movies and holding hands.

Stuck in place,

with four days to go.

08 May 2013

Wed, 08 May 2013 22:17:53 -0600

An ad comes on and it tells you to “survive the night”

and a car is suddenly crashing into your bus,

throwing passengers around like limp noodles

and your mom is telling you to go to the emergency room because you might have a concussion

but you don’t have a concussion

and maybe you don’t want to find out if anything is wrong with you.

speech comes slowly, flowing out your mouth like an unborn child

you notice people looking, and you think about yourself saying words and pronouncing verbs and you stop

and what were you talking about

did it even matter? does anything, really, matter?

nihilist. nihilist. nihilist. you just keep saying that to yourself.

and the people are still staring,

waiting for you to finish your sentence.

1 May 2013

Wed, 01 May 2013 16:31:00 -0600

Is your sunburn peeling yet?

I feel you around, even when you’re not here.

Coffee addicts, and sore legs.

‘Look, but don’t touch.’

Her voice reminds me as I stand in a room filled with thousands of boys with thousands of tongues and thousands of hands and thousands of eyelashes and thousands of hearts.

‘Water water all around but not a drop to drink.’

Where were you when I was struggling to find my footing in my taste of music? I found myself hating hip hop, and listening to music about lost love and things like that.

Now, I’m floating on a sea of rhythms concocted by a man with a name that is short and stupid but funny and wealthier than I’ll ever be. I dance at parties without abandon, and stand above the crowd and something like that.

Where were you when I used to tell myself that I was pure and my body was a temple? Now I shove it full of genetically modified food, cigarettes, weed, alcohol and other vices.

My temple is full of experience, I now tell myself; experience that sometimes haunts my dreams and fills my days with regret and heartache. Experience that slows my brain, and allows me to live in the right now. It’s a tradeoff.

I’ll always remember my early twenties as the days when I was living to die, and in the process, meeting all sorts of people along the way. People who talk to themselves on the bus, people who lead me into movie theaters with 3D glasses, people who dab powders in bathrooms and ask how they look before they leave the house.

27 April 2013

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 22:11:49 -0600

Have you ever dreamt you could fly?

Both of my aunts used to tell me stories about how I would obsessively roll in bed, singing church songs, flapping my arms and screaming, “I can fly I can fly I can fly!” I was little then, and my imagination took me places my feet refused to go. Later, I’d daydream about flying as Peter Pan, and stealing Wendy away so we could live in Neverland forever. I think the story went that Wendy was in love with Peter Pan, but Peter Pan didn’t understand that. Peter didn’t really understand anything at all, but he knew how to fly.

People like to ask you strange questions like, “If you had any superpower what would it be?” I don’t really know why, but they do—and my answer was always invisibility. Vulnerability, anxiousness, and paranoia come easy to me. They’re my first reaction to things and sometimes stop progression in my life. So naturally, invisibility seems the most obvious decision for me.

But, to be honest, I have always wanted to fly. I envy birds, and spent many of my high school days earning money to travel to the next big city—largely for competitions, but also for the chance to fly in planes. Conversation never occurred on these sorts of trips, I spent the whole ride next to the window gazing down at the quilt-like patterns of farmer’s fields, or feeling helplessly small as we flew next to a mountain range. I remember a part of mythology that talks about how the Titans became mountains when the gods finally stopped them from destroying shit, and I totally believe it. Flying over the mountains, and flying away from the mountains were always the most pivotal parts of the journey. I’d find myself suspended in one moment of time, not breathing, hoping but slightly fearing that the high altitude and thinner air would allow me to hear the mountain’s heartbeat.

That never happened until this last winter when I flew to Seattle. “Rescuing myself from a self defecating situation.” “Turning a new page.” These are things people tell you when you say you need a change in your life, mostly because they don’t understand your story, or refuse to really listen to it. Those statements never really meant anything to me. Yet, flying over a mountain in a plane going to Seattle, and realizing where my life was headed the minute I touched ground at SEATAC—I felt I had flown for the first time. Then came freedom I had never before experienced.

I don’t have flying dreams anymore. At least, not as much as I have ‘server’s nightmares.’ They’re common, from what I’ve heard. A biproduct of working long hours and long weeks. Now, I have dreams where I’m scraping loads of green money off of dinner plates into recycling bins, or describing ironically the parts of the human brain my tables are about to consume.

But humans evolved without wings for a reason, and I’m searching for the day I can make another flight attempt again.

26 April 2013

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 18:04:59 -0600

I am questioning myself always.
I wonder who I am and think about where I should be all the time.

I think it started when I was ten and they tore up my fantasyland like it didn’t mean anything at all. I think it started when I was little, when my parents were fighting and I had three younger sisters I had to care for, who didn’t understand that sometimes people fight and I didn’t know why. I think it was sometime in high school, when I began to question if I should let girls fall in love with me.

I just keep missing IT
I just keep missing you.
I stand here with my arms open, my cup empty and my stomach hungry for answers I wish were easier to come by.
I’m alone.
I am constantly alone.
I never thought that’d I’d find myself struggling with friends and family or people or love or kindness
But here I am alone, and the only feelings I have left are boredom
and tiredness.

‘Now I’m falling asleep to look at you.’

23 April 2013

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 17:31:25 -0600

#1
The pine trees are calling from afar,
‘I’ll wait for you,’
I say to no one in particular
Leaving the trees a distraught mess.
They loved me before all else.

#2
Working and
Working and drinking
Working and wishing
Working and regretting
Working and

#3
SUNSHINE

16 April 2013

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 10:48:54 -0600

They gave you a few coins to spend on the bus and you used them up without thought—hoping for the nerve one day to never pay for a ride again. And you’ll always remember the winter of 2012 extending well into 2013. You can’t really remember the last time you kissed someone on your own fruition, or even what you and your boyfriend of two weeks talked about when he was doing homework and you were skipping class.

#2
Sometimes grudges are little monsters we carry around on our shoulders for longer than they are alive.

14 April 2013

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 21:52:33 -0600

Better not let go

better not scrape your knuckles on the way down,

or let your fingernails let your whole body weight fall off.

Hold, and reach. Fix your eyes on the next step,

and reach!

PULL YOUR BODY FOWARD

Extending your calf muscles, and your shoulder muscles and the muscles stuck between.

You’re an explorer,

and the New World lies just beyond your fingertips.

12 April 2013

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 12:14:07 -0600

#1
If cigarettes don’t kill you then
Cars will kill you or
Guns will kill you.
Bacon will kill you,
and your job will kill you.
Kids will kill you, or degenerative diseases will kill you.
You will kill you, or you’ll be killed by someone.
Humans were born to die,
and we live to be killed.

#2
There’s a reason why big cities don’t exist in the mountains where nature rules all. Mountains are heroes and I wish most people weren’t villains trying to undercut their importance.

11 April 2013

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 22:49:31 -0600

#1
I wonder if you feel me
Sliding out of your fucking hands
Like those before you
Do you feel hopeless?
Do you feel anything when I tell you that this is going to be temporal?
Or that I’m just a blip in your life?
Maybe you don’t
Which is why I disappear
Hoping someday someone somewhere
Will stop me.

11 April 2013

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 18:13:00 -0600

Pull open my chest

and see what’s left of my heart.

But do it fast so I don’t know you’re in there.

First petal is telling you he loves you

Like the time he smiled when he met you

Or spent the next couple hours listening to you talk.

While the second petal is telling you he loves you not.

Exactly like the way you felt when you stumbled across the note you weren’t meant to see.

Refuse the third petal—all that lies in chance is broken luck or gain without commitment.

He told me how to spell, “mozzarella.” Pushing buttons on the screen and fumbling with the grammar himself.

My pride took a hit, and then I remembered

I don’t mean anything at all.

10 April 2013

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 21:37:06 -0600

There’s a voice that keeps whispering to you in the dark.
It’s telling you to quit
to give up
That maybe there’s not enough time in the days,
or days left (for that matter),
to makeup what you missed.
There’s this small voice that whispers to you when you’re feeling sentimental and lonely.
It tells you that perhaps you are
unlovable
and maybe you are training for the day when that’s not just a thought.
But a reality.
Drink.
Smoke.
Be merry.
They told you that the world was ending when you were quite young, and who’s to say it’s not?

09 April 2013

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 17:35:02 -0600

#1
What month is it
and where am I?
The streets here are carcasses,
remainings of a world forgotten,
without human beings and their
nonsensical affect for drama.
Peace and love rule the minds of the inhabitants, who crawl through the city in their streetcars,
with parts they bought from a stranger who works for pennies a day.
But we’re all just infinite atoms, and corks, and neurons. And we’re all a part of a huge brain, which may in fact be a person, and when he dies we all die and it’s already happened but we just can’t tell because we believe in time. Not even as an infinite loop, but a path that extends forward, straight and narrow.

07 April 2013

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 18:18:14 -0600

Books and coffee. Walking in the rain. Riding the bus with people from your hometown and not saying anything to each other, because you can’t stand the conversation they’re having with someone else. Arcade Fire. Weed brownies. Vests and sweaters and a boy. Rain clouds and homeless people and the river with seven bridges. Astrology, astrology. Leo and Virgo and Aries. A lion, a woman wrapped in the letter ‘M’, and a ram. But not the lion, just the woman and the ram. And how do they get along? Memories of nights with friends who you never bothered to know, induced with heavy amounts of alcohol that clogs the pores of the memory system. Sex, fucking, fucking sex. Touching legs with hands and feet with other feet. Flirting, flowers. Sleeping on the couch, sleeping with strangers. Sleeping. Texts, Internet, phones, similar acquaintances. And god, I wish I wasn’t so timid sometimes. Heart aches and heart breaks.

03 April 2013

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 00:48:56 -0600

I’m walking on the street and looking at buildings and my mind flashes to the time I was in Nevada

and there were men on the street asking for things they could shoot into their veins

not to mention

the bodies that were pressed against each other

shaking.

I took a picture and I felt like a tourist

and then I felt paranoid

and then I felt everyone watching me

my hoodie was too pink, my hair too off to the side, my walk too flamboyant.

Fucking don’t look at me

fucking don’t look at me

fucking don’t look at me!

And no one said anything. I was fine,

and I’m sad I feel a little jubilant about it.

22 February 2013

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 19:53:41 -0700

I ran up the stairs

fists clenched

rage filling my eyes with tears that were straining and pushing against my eyelids.

I wanted to hit Him with a fear and a passion I didn’t understand. It stimulated every part of me, throwing me into a state of ecstasy before slamming me into the state of utter nothingness.

I could hear his footsteps,

as he rounded the corner and was there

suddenly.

Flipping through one of his books, and trying on the fact that he was a fucking student now and had nowhere to go.

I slunk in the shadows and felt animalistic as I watched him climb up the stairs, unaware and innocent looking. Hungry, and daring I paced like a manic and waited.

We don’t all fight,

but some of us do.

It feels like a sudden burst of happiness increased only by the fact that you have complete power and control over one single moment and you had better not waste it, or it let it slip through your fucked hands.

I waited for you,

is what my eyes said when you looked at me.

And then I swung and caught your eye with my fist and

when it struck I felt your eyes bounce against my hand,

and my stomach churned as I threw my other fist in the air.

“I can explain,”

is what you tried to say to me when I closed your jaw shut with a punch to the mouth.

Straining and jarring—I felt your teeth move a slip to the right.

I felt the tears streaming down my face as I slipped in another slap at your face, and tried to calm myself by releasing everything. I was powerful and I was in control.

And when I awoke from afterwards,

I realized that you had struck me back,

right in the fucking nose.

There was blood everywhere, it had soaked into my cotton t-shirt,

the one with a dinosaur on it and read “Norma Jean.” The one that I wore that one time we went to a concert together,

and people pushed people into each other.

Kind of like ~~that~~ this one time,

when I punched you in the fucking mouth.

Kendrick + weed = lazyyy Sunday and Beyoncé documentary

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 21:53:22 -0700

Kendrick + weed = lazyyy Sunday
and Beyoncé documentary