the way out is through

something I can never have

i will be carefull with your name
i will covet things unsaid
if it means to dream of you that night

you were making wings for an airplane
cutting wood with a jigsaw
i yelled because I didnt think you knew what you were doing
I told you it wouldnt fly
you walked away
I will covet things unsaid
I couldnt understand why you needed to make an airplane
clearly everyone else was dressed for halloween
there was adrian
dressed as richard nixon
I was just in love with you still
I will covet things unsaid

I caught up to you and didnt say a word
i sat you down across from me
you crossed your legs and looked at the ground
I lifted your head and our mouths met
I will covet the things unsaid
I awoke in time to realize
I couldnt remember how you felt
it had been too long
I will be carefull with your name
because the face is already something
Ive forgotten to feel
I tried to taste that kiss
the way it should have been
my mind can create you in dreams
so real
but it can not feel a thing
I will covet the way we left
the name I will no longer say to anyone
if it means to dream of you again

i laugh more often now; i cry more often now

i wish

young folks

"500 days of summer, have you heard of it?" I looked at him, desperate for a starter, it was so awkward meeting him again as friends, or maybe we were meeting as X boy/girl friends.

"Yeah, I’ve noticed the movie. One believes in love, the other doesn’t." He looked into me, searching for the wisps of happiness that used to be there before every time I was with him. He wasn’t used to me being melancholy, well, maybe he got used to my emotional ripples during the end of our relationship, but still, he didn’t see the break-up coming. I sort of slammed it into him face.

"You believe in love." I did that a lot. I disguised questions as facts when I knew the person had believed in what and what before. But people change. So I was half questioning, I should have said do you still believe in love or something but that wasn’t how I worked. I like assumptions, just as long as they aren’t made on me.

"Do you?" He didn’t want to see a stranger. He still wanted me to be the person he had loved, or maybe still loves.

"No. Love is overrated."

"You believed in love. You used to hold on to me and ask what would you do if I left you first. You used to wonder how would you go on without me. You believed in love." He was accusing me. He was accusing me of abandoning him, wasn’t he supposed to be the one that should have left first?

"Maybe I still do, I still believe in love, just that its not for me. I shouldn’t do love." I had thought about this problem recently. Or maybe I was jumbling romance with love. Anyway, romance turns into habits and then habits turn into something that ties you down. I think it’s the surprise element. People are shallow. Everything that orbits around us are just toys to make our stay in this dimension more worth while, or at least to make us feel more worth while. How many toys would you really like if there was nobody to take it away from you? My favorite teddy was the one I stole from my sister, and I still go to sleep with him.

"Yes, you still believe in love."

I looked at him, not knowing what to say.

"You just love yourself."

a left cross

there isnt a shred of her left in him
already
they lasted a month
some would say less
he held on
he started dating her shortly after the x
the x
she threw a fish bowl at him
lacerated her own wrists
then blamed it on him at the hospital
he was taken in to custody
he told the officer the
bite marks were playfull
she had a dentist examine
her arms
the officers just passed him
tea and told him to seek a divorce


this one had small arms
the smallest arms he had ever seen
razor thin, not a mean trace of anything that
could hurt him
his friends said she was too skinny
for them
but he says shes at least a distraction
from the monster
she holds all the card
the one who struck him in the jaw
on the way to bed
a left cross
he tasted the iron, the mineral, almost machine taste of blood
then he pushed against it, he felt his mouth swell, the shredded parts of his lip
rubbing, get caught in his teeth

the razor thin arms
at least this one, the new one, she was
some one who couldnt lift a fishbowl

so tell me, is he into me or not?

i stare at the computer screen, too tired to think about analyzing the moves and steps between him and her

he touched my hand, what does it mean?

earlier i would probably ask,
how,
how did he touch
how
now i only reply with i don't knows

i don't know
he likes you
thats all
no and i'm not sure if its the like like
the friend like,
maybe
i don't know

weren't we supposed to learn this in high school?

the mainlander can write

im casting all previous thoughts aside

she did her mfa with cal arts

tonight she left early to do a reading

and we had a paid hour break

where another teacher asked her to read for us

what she was reading later that night

she began the reading, we timed her like vultures

watching every word, every thought

she was going to read, for us

before she read at a cafe in downtown

the story was published

shes no fluke

it was the lead off story in the magazine

the first story is always the editors cream

the crop, the opus,

and it was there, first story

hers, the mainlandeer

she can write

texual first person narrative

so much so

my co worker thought it was non fiction

my co worker really thought she had an abortion

the signs of being convincing

writing in first person is good when

your audience think its really you

and she handled it well

she hit all the points

but the ending

the ending was forced

it was good but I felt aborted

like the child the narrator kept for eleven weeks

maybe thats what she wanted

and thats why its good

the narrator talks about being obsessed with michael jackson

who he was

she wrote it before his death

but her words are finding an audience now

death does this

shes up there

if she learns to slow down the reading

she could be an ira glass story

and she knows this

she mentioned it

shes been on his show before

all i can say is that it was good

the ending was forced but the literary patterns

of white teath turning red

and the words she used in her element

they were good

she just had no idea how to end the story she had begun

which is alot like unwanted pregnancy i guess

Im guessing she made the narrator pregnant because

she didnt now how to end something she didnt want

she dropped it in so quick

one sentence

the rest was about being obsessed with michael jackson

and it worked

it was a vehicle of distraction

the title

was

"the chosen one"

this is what comes out of an mfa

ambiguity

questions

murk
opaque

writing appeals to modern senses

she mastered in writing

I mastered in reading

I asked to see the text

and I noticed it was meant to be listened to
not read

the motion seemed forced

immediate

but when she read

i knew she was a pro with the craft

that years had gone into this story

and that she had more to tell

this is why you meet writers

to see them before its impossible

to understand them

this city

the voices

she told me she could never leave LA

I told I needed to

"You'll come back," she said
"your a native"

"Im a mainlander?" I asked

"What do you mean?" she asked

"I like ocean too much because it doesnt surround me,
I like the feeling of an edge"

"I have never been pregnant," she said

"i know...I know"

be careful of the promiscuous children

an auntie had said that to her father over lunch
they were talking about sending her sister to the states
she could imagine all the voices echoing

she's only sixteen! too young to go out there all alone! too young!
the neighbor would say, shrill with her neck stretched long as if it would emphasize her statement more
her parents' friends, the teachers, would sit her sister down
look her in the eye and ask her questions
well, not questions
statements masked as questions
the "are you sure" kind of questions
they probably just wanted her admit how young, how naive, how helpless she would be without them

then there was this auntie
she was nice

she was chinese

she remembered listening to the auntie complain about how awful her new handbag was
"i don't carry anything other than coach, and i try something new and this is what happens"
or was it prada?
it didn't matter, they were all the same
she looked at her aunty's handbag, and picked off the stain for her

the auntie smiled, embarrassed

it didn't matter,
it wasn't coach

now the auntie was telling dad about the dangers of large cities in the states
don't send her there
be careful of the promiscuous children!
they are different from us!

the auntie looked at her when she was saying this
as if wanting her to parrot
yes!
they are different from us!

she just smiled

give them hell sis

we were talking about numbers
1 would always be boyish, full of fun, and had a cute smile
stuff like that

five girls talking about numbers over whiskey

maybe we all wanted to talk about something else
but five was a safe number, secure

we were all in different phases in a relationship

yet,
aren't we all?

she had just started to get serious, with a junior
she was like 7
straightforward and popular but awkward at the same time
she still didn't know how to live with being a lesbian sometimes

she wanted to marry her boyfriend
the 21
we all thought twos were charismatic
yet 21 had something else, she knew how to think for herself

she was the third in a love triangle
she was the invisible one
the 76
sevens were strange
she had yellow highlights in her hair and wore a splattered tye-die jacket
she was the only person we knew that could hold it together
she didn't care what others thought

she liked him
he liked her
yet he wouldn't say anything
they all pondered on what number she was
she was hard to pinpoint
they all concluded that she was sensibility wrapped with sense
wrapped with layers and layers of sense wrapping paper

and i am, or they say i am 43
they spent the longest time explaining
how fours were a bit taboo
and how three made it stand out
people noticed 43

strange

the puzzle on his wall gleams like a jack-o-lantern
smiling like one big practical joke
he remembers how they scattered the pieces on the floor and put them together
bit by bit
hair and dust would get caught in the pieces
it drove him crazy
that was before she went abroad

he tries to grasp onto all the pieces
he doesn't want to let go

the stories she would tell him
talking lollipops and trees that bore medical equipment

he still sleeps on one side
leaving the other half of the single bed empty

he still keeps chocolate in his apartment
they lay there, waiting
her infatuation with sugar

he never did buy another helmet for her
she would always wear a friend's or something
he wanted to but they never got around to buying one

he remembers how easy it was to get used to her sitting behind on his motorcycle
how warm it was

he doesn't listen to his ipod that much anymore
he knows he'll start wallowing if he does
every song seems to remind him of her

she never really could sing
she would do it just to annoy him
singing off tune loudly

he knew that she liked testing him
his limits
his love

She talked alot about sentence structure
she was on auto pilot
she had been doing it forever
I think she knows I like her
becuase she still tells me "happy halloween" when the day is done
i like that
We are teachers of a language we refuse to believe is dead
we use it in ways that are living
and we say "happy halloween" instead of goodbye
even in november
my other co worker, the mainlander
keeps asking to see pictures of halloween
I tell her they are here
they are there
I tell her they are on facebook
but I know they are not
she hands me her blackberry
and I thumb through passwords
class begins just in time, no time for this
I dont think I wanted her to she pictues of me wearing
diamond studded sun glasses while wearing an orange convict outfit
i like the one who still tells me happy halloween mid november
the old one in her fifties, the one who wears the same clothes everyday, the one with plastic rings and dirty fingernails who turns her lesson sheets into pictures of screaming ghouls and tortured abstract thoughts
i will talk to that one
not the mainlander

He left his taste in her mouth.
It was acrid, distinct, and didn't mingle with hers.
She didn't like it.
But it was exciting.

He walked like a wolf.
He prowled. His stance looked like he was ready to pounce any moment.

He had said something about viewing her as a confidant first and a 情人 second.
情人 would have meant lover.
But they were 情人, not lovers.
Lovers had love, 情人had feelings.

She knew he said that just to deal with the guilt.
He said it more for himself to hear she thought.

He didn't want to think about the limbo they were in right now.

She loved it.
She wanted to suck his stories out from him and move on.
They could always still be friends, of course.

He told her about family, a dad that loved him in a way he couldn't yet understand, a depressed and crazy brother, all that shit.
He told her about friends, about brothers, fights, betrayals, and revenge.
She listened to everything thinking how absurd everything really is.
What for?
But she couldn't help it, she was curious.
Oh, and the many women, of course.

She thought it was funny, how maybe she would be counted as one of his trophies later on.
She didn't care. It wasn't important.

All his stories were cliche, truthful, deep, and cheap to a point.
They were pre-written, or so it seemed to her.
But they were stories.
And she was collecting.

For how long must I be filled with possibility and nightmare
I awoke and there were no filters for my coffee

I stumbled in the dark, looking for keys, a wallet
I took to the streets for coffee filters,

I walked around the corner to the shop at 6:45 a.m.
they opened at 7, the place was dark,

I took to driving, to the larger, and always open market I went

Back home, I turned on the lights and looked at them carefully,
there were words on the tiny bulbs
they read "decaff"

life sets off alarms all day
in which sleep and dreams try and defuse

we forget the things that
keep us awake
and live, and live, and live
we dream

going home for the weekend
living ghosts vs. the ones hollywood knows
there is something less frightening
when they are marketed for screams,
those ghosts, the ones we give our money
for a distraction from what ever one needs distracting.
they aredesigned with intent

then the real horror of home towns
what they have become is more or less mysterious
they take place in daylight so bright and obvious you wish
they werent so obvious
that the mind is crippled with the past, mutual past, and it
is shared between two of us, how frightening, it was, we were, we went,

living ghosts are fragile, and loaded with what life is trying to really say
we walk through the familar, yet we ourselves are different
we alone seem different
what fresh hell is this?

A cliche, (and all true) account of haloween

-

we were some where south of san diego
ten minutes from the border of mexico im told
"were's the inland empire?"
I didnt bring a costume
i was starting to think of life as too much of a costume already
here we were, and the streets were going mad, there was a serious danger to this place
la is nothing compared to the seediness of this border town, and yet, here they were, the young,
the not married, the near twenties and early thirties mediocrity gone amuk
there were homeless, taking to the streets and butting cigarettes at young pretty girls
walking by, the homeless had a kind of uniformity to them all, not like homeless in downtown los angeles, they all looked like the fall out of entire generation,probably in san francsico in the 60's-
the hippie children, of love and flowers and happiness, of free love, of being "one with the world" and becoming vegatarian, "ALL WE ARE SAYING IS GIVE PEACE A CHANCE," ya, those people, forty years later...here they all seemed to be, in this border town-they had done too many drugs, lost teeth, had long, cutting, lines of greese, and filth, carving into their faces, as the result of forty years of sleeping under freeways, sleeping in vans...they had lost it, tim leary screamed "TURN IN TURN OUT" and they did, and here they all are. they slowly crawled south from san francisco to the fringes of the country...Mike was dressed as something between a warrior with an actual steel helmut, and real dear antlers sprouting from the helmet, and a balarina skirt, it was when he put on the leather jacket that i thought of you, Ken, wore authentic leaderhossen he bought in germany from an man in his 80's who was the countries best authentic leaderhossen tailor it took him a day to make kens custome hossen. he looked like he had been casted in a fifties musical about happy germans, Sirus, he took a razoz to his head and spend two hours carving shapes into his skull, removing hair, im not sure what he was, be he was. The evening was surreal, as it should be, the balarina viking warrior walked into other peoples parties and we slowly shuffled in behind, we heard groups of gutter punks-the new hippies, banging on belly dancer drums while two gangster looking shadows came over and started free flowing over the drums, it was after that about 4:30-5:00 that we ran into her, she was sulking into a pay phone in front of a 7-11, she saw us and asked us if we had any alcohol, we had alcohol coming out of jackets, spilling into streets, on dance people in clubs, i carried three bottles of southern comfort, but there was something wrong with her, she liked to quietly sneek up on people, it was her gift. she was old and creepy looking, drugged, and wearing all black, wispy black, like you couldnt really catch a glance of her eyes, she hid them into her clothes, she told me I was "looking for trouble" because of the way i dressed-my costume-trouble? It was a harmless costume, why me? Why you, crazy old vaporish hag, are you talking to me?" I started walking away from her, I stopped at the corner and turned around to see she was walking exactly behind me step by step, I turned in time to see her try to steal my wallet. The other guys caught up and I didnt say anything, but I should have, something about her had gotten under the skin of the other guys, we didnt know how to get rid of her, we sent her on an errand to buy cigarettes and when she did, we ran, we ran like athletes, turning a corner, we stopped, smiled, and started walking, just as we caught our breath we turned around to see her standing right behind us, we were breathing hard and she said "hey you guys." It was at this time that a police car went by and turned around back towards us, she disappeared. Later that night we got home, mike checked the pictures from his camera, there was something wrong with the ones of me, the eyes, or more correctly, in the reflection of myy glasses, it like something was moving towards me, behind me, as the picture was being taken