now a car.

I'm going to have so much fun saying h-yun-da-ii as Japanese as possible even though its a Korean word. The car is an accent, so having fun saying the name fits.

Now to find that apple bumper sticker I wanted a car to put on.

I survived another graveyard shift. Heaven knows how anyone can sleep there.

Tylenol pm has been helpful I'm able to get an hour in at least.

lost bells.

maybe this time around
i’ll sing for my
supper. try for aesthetic
darwinism.
starve when I have no beauty
to scrape up. and
crumble
under those clouds.

kicking around

I will be signing up for a few community classes.

One is signing with babies, which I am talking to help Norma communicate. The class listing said it can also be used with people who have disabilities as well, so I immediately thought of her when I read it. Hopefully it will do some good before she goes completely blind.

Another I have my eye on is either jewelry making or belly dancing.

I have wanted to learn sign language and Braille sometime in my life. The class I am taking is a first step towards it. At one point I want to be a sign language interpreter for a few years, I feel I can learn a lot from it. I would learn Braille so I could type up all sorts of public documents and books that would otherwise be unavailable.

Its early but I am too stubborn to rest just yet.

their turn now

I am only tired of the sinking
the subtle decline
the slow rot

flesh can only hold so tight
and bones never ask.

saying

I spend a lot of time phrasing things. I want the perfect way to lay it all down, almost as if it happened to the person I am talking with.

When you pass something on, there is always a small break in the connection, a bit of a slant, since we only read one word at a time, can only understand one object's detail at once.

plates like pennies

its between choosing to be
a white cloth
I want their fingerprints
and smears from the pen
that leaks out the rest of the blue,
and the
stains of wax

if I were mostly dishwater
i could hide things
like blood and early age.
maybe I could drown those
streetside words.

maybe my skin would be thicker,
my stare could be understood.
but white catches things
and my life brushes back up,
when I am not looking.

Cartoon Blues

I listen to a lecture of nonsense till dawn.
By a plagiary poet with dark glasses on.
He said "how did you ever dream up that song?
The one where the baby dies."
I said I'll tell you the secret which one's your good ear?
Yeah, people are made up of water and fear
If there weren't women present we wouldn't be here.
So lets make like we're friends.
Then the pot turned to powder and soured the mood
And the people I come with were gone from the room.
So I asked like a child may I be excused?
and disobeyed them all.
Into that late night latrine rain soaking through my shoes.
I tried walking backwards to get less confused.
Working off a theory I could never prove
That it was life itself to blame.
And time ruined the world
like a failed revolution.
A tumor we could not remove.
An old friend, a constant, the blues.
Now my days are distractions that ring in my hands.
Solitaire crosswords and films on demand.
Return from a cartoon back into a man.
You start to smell that human smell.
And so I sleep with the fan on to drown out the street,
and the noise rising up from the bar underneath.
For that inconvenience all my drinks are free
So I guess it's just as well.
Why do I envy the ending right from the start?
Just get it together to take it apart.
Watching the horse as it follows the cart.
I sweep up my broken spell.
And I felt something changing the world
like a new constitution
A thief I would have to pursue
at all times at all costs.
The truth.

-bright eyes

whats been taken

they beat at
dead bloody horses
stolen even skies
and buried them
like our dead.

it never was enough,
mining out the souls
with the stones.
no one spoke to
the shovels we took up
at our shoulders
where the cold collected.

perhaps the rivers would open
or the wounds would never
transfer into speech.

or maybe

it's just the weather.
the time of year
where everyone
keeps the memory
like salt next to pepper
so ready to forget.

maybe not so meant to be.

I work at homes with people who have special needs. I love this job, but I am still struggling with my manager. She is very unstable.

I am thinking about transferring to a new house, until I get more familiar with this line of work.

in your frame

I could only

sketch something with a face.
your comfort was in
making lines, structure.

you liked buildings and their
corners.

and you were so quiet. ( I connect with that)
you had your high walls, those doors.
I thought about you

penciled in small
in my yesterday,
and me swollen there
not understanding.

forwarding

Edibiri -
the pages were all
you could ever know.
more than those four walls.
Rebecca-
the world will not move
while kept home in your fist
remove the vice,
it swells.
Smith
The seat is hard.
Questions.
that building- rat races aren't remembered,
only expected. faster now. they might not be
looking.
Jeanette(mom)- you may never know
sometimes we overlap
the difference.
The word I use is
equal.

***
This is to several people. This is something I needed to let go of their disapproval, when I have given it my all.

manager's neurotic

Out of all the ladies in that home, I love Norma the most. She is gentle, and always quiet. i watch her alot, as she sits, seemingly blank, wondering what little things fill her head. Had she been born like the rest of us, she would have been beautiful. She has a small frame with dark thick lashes, and dark blue eyes that are beginning to go blind.

I am trying to get her to be more curious about the world around her. I put blocks in her hands. When we go to stores, I have her touch things, feathers, cloth, boxes. I want to teach her sign language as has been requested in her goal book.

Her pony tail came undone today. As I was fixing it the light caught her hair that had filtered through the shades. All of the gray became silver, like light even.

Norma picks up on when someone around her is upset. She will rub a persons back when she sees that, but only then.

Later on I was thinking about how I may have to leave this house, because of my manager who gets worse with everyday. I was so optimistic about this job, and thinking about the recent turn of events with it made me sadder than I can describe. She touched my back then and rubbed the back of my head.

I was very touched by it.

I hope so much that things will smooth over with the house manager there...

fishers!

I had to mention here that I finally got to go to the aquarium that opened a few years ago.

Damn! It was amazing.



I got to pet manta rays, which made me jerk and squirm at first. they look like they are going to have an exoskeleton or something, but they are slimy and squishy. I have to add that jelly fish are so graceful.

I want to go scuba diving at least once in the coral reefs, there are so many colors.

wasting away

I need to stop for a time. Maybe you already know that. You don't expect it, dad.

I still say all you need is for someone to believe in you. Someone to look at you and see good things, someone to let you know what they see.

You scare me a little. Just how you are at this age, still fighting the things my age group has. You are so angry, everyone else stopped listening a long time ago, because you are so angry

I stuck my neck out again, just at those things she says. Not that I don't try to understand her but its just how she reacts toward sensitivity. You try, she laughs and becomes darkly critical.

My parents could be people again if they were apart. Then again another divorce would cripple my dad. My mom is too proud for it, never a stain like that on her family's name.

I reminded myself this stay here can't be forever. I've been back for a year and the atmosphere has been less than healthy.

quotes

He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez

life isnt that long

There was a fourteen year old girl that didn't live too far from here that got killed last night. Both her and her cousin snuck out to go meet friends. They decided to cross the freeway to get there faster. She didn't make it and the car kept on going.

It got to me when my mom looked up her picture in my brothers school yearbook. She was a skinny girl with a shy smile lined up with all the other students her age, in black and white boxed frames.

Current M

her tennis shoes are tied
in the grasses around her
soccerball held at her hip

ponytail
to keep her hair out
of her face

smiled like she used to have braces

out in the field of
my old school yard

maybe she would have had married early
had two girls
who would
need ponytails

to keep the hair out
of their eyes
who would never,
ever sneak out.

How do you choose books to read?

Hit and miss. I take the time to browse. I make sure to spend time walking between the library shelves, aware that I could miss something. I let the titles run through my head.

They always say don't judge a book by its cover. Half the time doing so I find an interesting read. Whether it's by the font of the title, or the artwork it can say a little bit about the author.

Share a letter you've written. Or, write a letter to someone you miss.

It's been a while. Times have changed, and we have right along with them.

I will always remember you, the first person who taught me how to think and reason. You made it evident in your actions that things could be made different. That compassion and hope must be outside religion first. No matter what the situation were came to quick defense of the ones you loved. Ready to defend what people deserved. You still remind me of a lionness.

I've learned how complex interpretation can be. I've learned how sometimes certain actions represent pieces to a situation a person is facing, and people become not people so much as symbols.

You were always a go getter, when we were younger you asked me not to let you drown yourself in work again, it happens when you get upset. So when I saw it happening again, through what others were saying who still knew you I asked you to stay open, let people in still. Maybe you wanted to defend it. Maybe it was too strong of a message from someone you were straining to stay in touch with.

I accept that our lives are apart, and have been for years. I would try to contact you again, but I have to prove I don't need to be proved to you, even if its an invisible thing. The difference is, I know how to do these things by myself now.

I see glimpses of you in the people I meet. In difficult situations I sometimes recall what you've said, use as a sort of distant advice. The passion you had for life is still a source of inspiration to me, and I still use it as a fuel.

I miss that friendship. But here we are in the middle of forging lives for ourselves, the time period where now no one has time, keeping in touch is a chore, and it's a little late for repairs.

I just want to say I understand, or at least come closer to, the complexity.