Feral Affinity

2007-11-27T14:46:00.000-08:00

ROUND ABOUT
By Jessica DePue

Turn it over and over easy
Does it turn you at all
In the process of processing
Progressive aggression
Distressed regression
Syncopated disharmony
The unharmonic grind of it all
Of your all encompassing slack
Of resolution, what of it?
This resistant dissolution
Creates more than it destructs
Love sick sediment, some stampeding meteor
Some one aches to fetch
Same one wails infinity
Infinitely through mirrored lungs
She bleeds your fuel
She gnaws remote detection
Claws her own misgiven sense
Of arsenic you dispense in traces
In smoke trails
Ungutted entrails
Tongue in cheek efforts
Your hard earned approvals
Her hardend heart ends...
Turning around and around
As I spin on a whistle
No longer you
No longer the you who howled
All those times

2007-11-20T09:32:00.000-08:00

THEN and NOW
By Jessica DePue

Two mornings shy of Thanksgiving
Grey pillars, sly expansion
No thinning sky to uproot
By one clean sweeping sun
Most veils slide behind
Northern Mole Hills, mountains
I've challenged to extirpate
Unmentioned Marigolds- glamour golds
Amourous bolds, blazing hues through now
Some field back then
Some old family land
More earthen, less flourescent
Less city, more country than medical
Cowboys kicking up scrubs these days
Surround my chunk of city street
Weaving and dodging small town speculation
Went buried, unturned beneath my feet
Loosely spun compost heap
Unnatural misgivings gone thorny, dried
Against peripheral hindsight
The present persists its thirtieth turn
On a clean bill of health
My crystal crimson pools
My Swarming Potential-
These hallways it haunts

2007-10-30T16:48:00.000-07:00

COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS
By Jessica DePue

Creamy spinach dip
Too salty tortilla chips
My lips burn
I'm sleep working
Waking up to walk home
To bed unmade, its seductive design
Yesterday I drove too far for therapy
Disguised as a sympathetic stranger
Trained to understand whats ripping me
Trained, as well, to be there by appointment
So I've appointed her my thrown of graceless hope
Hapless grace as I hopelessly graze
Concrete pastures, cow on my key chain
Lights up and goes Mooooo
Flashing my new poetry book
Bukowski was a Leo, who knew to care
My Lion in a public storage somewhere
In San Gabriel Valley, loading up unmemorables
We paid too much to lock from collective memory
Last time we went packing we brought our pet feline
Don't ask why
An answer I'm currently forgetting
In process, we keep making rent
Making due re-inventing our personal Nobel Prizes
I award each day with a shower, re-buff
Shine my good luck harm of being alive

2007-04-06T17:22:00.000-07:00

EARLY STARK WAKING
by Jess DePue

So much for that
Today I find you parting clouds
Found my departure less loud a part
From our eyes' instinct to laser
Down morning's red sound alarming
Newly dismissed from my lips' surroundness
Rarely does a stir churn your limp side
Around pre-dawn I anticipate
Last hours to keep sleep's promise
To keep me held completely, our
Submission balances two worlds
Together externally welded
When our skin's warming graces
Take formal embrace of the other
Re-trace ourselves undercover molds
Before sun plants its plaid pattern
Across my vaporized mirror
Next door you grow nearer to dreams
Inhale mist and soothe our cool sheets
As my reflection exceeds its own likeness
Tooth to tooth to impart new clean
Wondering through aimless rounds
Foaming at the mouth
Gumming at beginnings

2007-02-19T08:37:00.000-08:00

PUSH SPOOL LOVE
by Jessica DePue

Grazing grown rhythm...Modern Atlantis sighs
Too early sizing up rain taps
This hide away found us odd
Hours kept even night awake
Fighting to hold our lost liquor
A gain. An other refrain from
Lonely you amused me
Carving comforts for Christmas...
This second occupance sold
A heart wrongly rubbed around
Cul-de-sacs, surround my glass frame
Driving into our ocean green land
From there we stammer high
Vibrating inside our rude conscience
Inclusive and charming and lean
Ensnared in past crash arrivals
You resided perplexed and aloof
You finessed and fine goof
Abrubtly subdued my brazen tude
Buttoned-up throat choked up three drinks
Were we just joking or straining away
Next to your over due lip service
Kiss me two ways sideways today
That unlikely local we swayed in
Caved in and clung to eachother
One other thing about that-
Mac and cheese found us fat in bed
Wings spread like flying fried pigs
Perfectly tied in deep nopes and nots
Otherwise completely got by our best
Never imagine rest without you...
That me could be a no bluer black, so
Lovingly threading we two seams
Sew through
And through
And through

2006-12-21T15:17:00.000-08:00

SMALL TREASURE (REVISIT)
By Jessica DePue

I know its a crap shoot
Bills over due, unresolved issues
Collect mites and dust
Our party continues over there
Somewhere beyond sunset people wake up
Home is an expelled word
A shoebox housing something
Perhaps relief is a bombing
Some estrogen walk-in primed with pleasure
Making the impossible my personal measure
To unearth latent rights of passage, your's
The smiling nerve of change is unnerving
Assuredly licking every fiber from being
Gawd how torn down corrosives do stink
Worsen stench of singed lungs or livers
Our meaty hearts sick ticking
Against odds unrejuvenating
Then slips in the trick
With indulgent wastelands of pity
Gritty, this most appauling of jokes
Gotta' laugh and sock it to you-
Near gonner your martyr's strong choke
Invokes what choice but to love?
Or hate if it managed past loving
Our truce to build straight through
Desires embue wish with
Your fire furnace embrace
Shivering until placed inside
Simplicity of motion again becomes us
Colliding freely we rest
To hell with the rest
Damn man, you sparkle!
Day past resplendent day
Nightly resolves surrounding new slates
Even as seasons weather to ice
Regret weakens ever slightly
Her hefty clutch releasing
Impossibly thin strands of gold
We hold spun woven rinds
As sun blinds its bright smoke
Our pocket flows
We flood

2006-09-27T10:00:00.001-07:00

UNEXPECTED DELIVERY from MY ADOPTED MOTHER(fucker)
by Jessica DePue

I recieve four cardboard boxes
Snail mailed from my childhood address
One letter from a person I called "Mom"

A few words in black and white
She typed unsentimental closure
Sent a book by Asshole Schlessinger

Titled "Bad Childhood Good Life"
This after years of absolutely nothing
Not nothing as in happless attempts at something

Nothing as in nodda
Until today's special deliverance
Typed words about returning my possessions

She signs her name no "Love", no "Sincerely"
I contemplate tears over laughter then
An anacdote appears- some copied glib bow

About "Letting It Go" christian style
By the grace of God this woman is entitled
To lasso her high horse and cut me out

Then excuse herself with a cutesy quip
Southern Christians have simplistic consciences
When it comes to reasoning the Lord's way

I absorb this estrangement
Cast from the Southern tip of space
I look up at my man- laugh, squelch hysteria

And suggested we hit the bar to find Gary
Casting his eccentric spells at Mirabell's
I forget my aforementioned rejection slip

We're at Gary's high rise upon La Cientega
Balancing wine bottles nose to nose
If you inhale the spell disintegrates

I'm flooded with a clear glass bottle
Of vodka encasing a pear for amusement
Nobody knows my pain is leaking

Yet I feel something twisted gnawing
My heart is like that intoxicated pear
A fruitful chamber to some toothy worm

I want to smash the glass, bite the pear
I want to poison myself with fermented fruit
Feel its juices interogate my liver

I want to slam my body against the tub
I want to fall asleep ass up
Half way into bed

I'm taking punches from Texas
I'm slammed, contorted against the can
Whailing "I'm dying- I'm not- but I am,"

I've done it to myself
The cold tiles press chill into my cheek
I'm frozen
I'm dying and trying so hard
To let it go

2006-09-06T22:06:00.000-07:00

CONDOLENCE
By Jessica DePue

I know you must be human inspite of your purple heart
My choice color and organ of preference

Lucky days. Empty lots our street across
Became treasured past midnight's trysts

Life beyond your impact marks my skin unfairly
Pale form dissolves to water falling

Maniacle inspection and one telling infection
You were never wrong, it was me all along

Getting off towards this wayward abandon
Cryptic parallels got me thinking new worlds

Possess keys to love your void
Creative vices answer silence with more

Fuck my size against your sighs
Transcend my therapist's degree

I like talking into blank tapes
Bleak and strung with hopeful lust

My emails mimic voices coherent into wind
So many times you fail to listen

Succeed to carve my cavities
Stoic blocks of hollowed ice

I am a physiology diagram
Where the body split open sesame

Revealing acute dimensions
Except for where I drip asymmetry

Messy leak bleach clean my spots
Donate a mess to Science

Make my display steril
Brush me away, change everything

As I observe through plastic veins
No feeling

...Good

2006-08-18T16:58:00.000-07:00

Come upon me, over
Me you over me you
Rejoice in this
Male lion above
Our kingdom
My eyes awake
You are morning
My morning
Vision of sensation
All over and through
Straight through me
You pierce and tug
At my oh- and there
THERE THERE
What have we found
Found again
And again new
Four walls can't contain
What the heavens unfold
I said nothing-
I said so much
With your breath on my tongue
My tongue touches
Between the shoulder and jaw
I said so much
With a shove further down you
Down you and up my soft squeeze
Pull you further
I said deeper
Into our bodies
We go there
We go there
Stay
You belong
You belong
You belong
I'm rushing too
You

2006-06-14T23:33:00.000-07:00

SANS GRANULES
By Jessica DePue

You want a heart
Beating new
We all need to hear
Something ticking at night
Inside or without
Mine is not for grabs
Or swift puncture
The tissue, resilient
Gave way towards collapse
Was never your piece of red velvet
Cake or some ribbon sufficed for a choker
That day is a photo
Nothing lives, what now?
Those cactus sole survivors
Thriving off thirst
Then float forward famine
Its privileged decline
The type we gals choose
Our waistlines love spindle
And sway bone to bone
This day brings our daily recall-
Aching is a pleasure
We keep awake to feast upon
Sorrows never measure
Truth with accuracy
Instead they heap our tears
Upon a bed of rusty springs
Make me pace in silence
Kiss away salty eyes
Shake our fears, the creaks and bumps
Wish yourself back in my space
May the mirror hold us steady
With its fucked askew reflection
A mind of stone
Set its gaze and moved me
Past my comfort zones
Words never meant
To reach my ears
Pierce me through the drum's skin
Its best left inside
A boy upon the shimmer
Dances where waves promise
No more than a glance to his future
Merely a nod back to shore's
Erosion, its slow and yielding sands
Recreate the landscape
Our feet are at its whim
We loosen together
Over again

2006-01-27T15:11:00.000-08:00

Poetique

LOVING
by Jessica DePue

A man layers in bed with a woman
His body is lean and long
He touches her lightly

She lets him lift her skirt
Although it is already missing
He presses his fingers on her flesh
Although it is more than his fingers

A man layers in bed with a woman
Her body is round and moist
She angles to invite him over

He lets her extend this invitation
Although he is already on his way
She places him sideways against her
Against her against her against her

He is lean and long
She likes him this way
One foot above her

He positions up to her
Hips to hips, eyes to eyes
They see eachother
Through and through

She says this and that to him
He is happy to hear her
Sometimes it sounds like she's aching

It makes him hurry to cover her

She throws off the covers
He is sweating through her now
She tells him to keep going

He does

They will kiss after this
They will hold hands and peak
Their knees and palms tangled
In one steady mass

She will roll over
Quiet and restful
He will sigh, watch
His breath warm her neck

WHAT WORDS MEAN
By Jessica DePue

I wrote this poem
It meant nothing
It meant alot
I showed words
Inscripting my body
Words are words
They. Like. To.
Sometimes
Confess, accuse
Clarify, misconstrue
Words are words
They mean nothing
Mean alot- you
Make literal
Assume a possum is a possum
Not a creature with razor teeth
Rats tail- not a disgusting
Specimen in my poem
Athough my flow
Of syntax be figurative- you
Assume visions of empty space
Fill in blanks
Where.
I leave out answers
Tricks to scramble loose ends
Lose mends, lost minds
Seam to seem
Without reason
Lustre of seasons
I pour nonsense in gallons
Make you itch with voids
Laughing, annoyed
Refusal to disarm
Proofs, theories
Make truth of knowledge-
Its only what we know...
Its only what we think we know
What do I know?
My body's shell
Can of organs
Bucket of fluids
Rhythms and pains
Four walls one ceiling
Housing pain
I try to forget
Time to time
I succeed in this
What is literal
Is real iz
Hardly here at all
What words create
Iz not here at all
An invisible present
Opened my dream's seran cling
Stark presence
Frightens the cat
Races wind to raise pores
To caution or warn
I am full of words
An incongruent mass of lexicon
In my head, tatooed
A rogue
With syllabols too many
Feeling too much
Sharpening the blade
Shaving odd ends neatly
In my head
Onto the floor
Dirt, dust
The moon is a word
A circumferance, a blurb
Spotting night
My lips form the tunnel
My mind sees a shape
In the sky
It is anything you call it
Always the moon
In its rite
Pale, ignited
Impale my heart with relic things
Turn sleep into my lazy gain
If I could get there
Where to?
You listen too
Implore towards more
Than words, tell me
That's beautiful

A NIGHT AT HOME
By Jessaica DePue

Your boyfriend is driving
He'll be home in awhile

He's British
You don't understand every word

But you like his accent
He makes you happy

Makes you laugh
Every time you say "what again"...

Sometimes you're kidding
He never minds

Maybe you will make it to the bar
Its midnight already, maybe not

You are freshly showered, shaved
Shorn legs and all you like smooth

Perfume would mask the lather over lap
Of soap, it's clean so you skip the smelly

Stuff. Fighting Cock, aged 6 years, young
You do shots with your room mate

Who talks too much yet keeps you
Company. Sometimes you think

I'm too old to have a room mate
I thought I'd be a famous artist

(by now)With a high ceiling loft
In San Francisco where the cool cats roam

Or harbor themselves inside from the cold
The heater is stuck in your L.A. home

It's charming though, hard wood
Old and cute in that sort of way

You think maybe I'll write something
That will get published. It makes you smile

With Sunday between you and early work
Monday morning. That screw assed job

Holds weights on your manner, free
As a bird. Another shot

Of Fighting Cock makes up lost time
Candles before flourescent lighting

The shot glass says "Alcatraz"
Souvenir from the San Fran drug store

You slipped a little south
Things in Los Angeles are good

The weather is hella' sunny
The Brits at your local pub-

They all love this weather, rave and gloat
With sunburned accents, drunken smiles

You just tried an at home touch up
On your roots, tried to save big bucks

Those salons sock it to young women
Who go for big blonde, old ones too

Its a shallow look but you're Texan
You go back to your roots

Even if your roots need some work
You like it and you jacked it up

This time its brassy
Needs to be toned down

Start chemistry on your hair shaft
And expect the worst...

Fighting Cock
Bad hair job

Nothing's perfect.

SIMPATICO
By Jessica DePue

Fill in the blank.
He feels in my ________. Lately I can
Run forever I am
Busting through windows, smiling bloody toothy
Grinning like that
Dreams leak broken glass, stain
His legs and mine he gets comfy
By my side entwined soft skin, flexed thigh
Muscles hold him dearly near
He sheds tears for my own
He feels me closely his empathies
Touch my face with wet sentiment
I am falling in love it cements
Afloat this warm fluid and warmth up to our waists
I hit the bar, slam
A Long Island, another
Faster please so we may expedite our friendship
Duplicate ourselves as friends slide by slide
Hands travel fast, pause in middle alleys
This xx bends over backwards before his xy
She wants her tits to jut, wants to add another x
To her resume because she needs attention
Her face is pretty mean
I mean pretty and mean and almost not pretty
From the back door he sees me
Retrieves me for more
So gosh so gee golly darned dern
He's tall, he's ready to leave
He's ready to skip the drama abusers
Amuse us they do, they will continue too
I'm ready to get on him get going on
Home to laugh to give in to our own
Special needs
Me? I'm a bleeder. It's internal
It clots. I sing terrible kareoke
I was again hoping maybe perhaps maybe we could uh-
Go waste sets of sheets
Feel some skin get in his heat sips on me
But he feels my oh so slowly slight blur
Whirring why why why and pointing
(Never!) again to that hallway behind
There were ways he placed his hands
To make me familiar to the light
That cue every morning, for touch
I'm conditioned to watch
Dawn creeping in at our window panes
Our emergence of wills undress us again
I close my eyes keep them closed
Keep closing them tight as he comes
He is already here
Inside my place
I've invited him to visit
To rush in and stay
Yet I catch him in dreams
Pinching my synapsis to remind me its real
Its the real deal its a wonder
No wonder we savor each piece
Before I resolve into him
Disolve ourselves into ourself
One self as we sleep
Morning makes his tears like mine
Melt into my cheeks
Beautiful sympathy, simpatico
Let flow that rhythm he brings me
To him(You bring me
To you)
Back to my whole heart

INDISCRIMINATE EMPATHY
by Jessica DePue

Maybe is definately limbo
We straddle left right always
Seek balance both sides logical/nonsensicle
Equilibrium left
Heart beating my chest's almost middle
Operative words left brain right brain
Cerebral cortex imbued with awareness
Grey matter matter's not after all
My other hand lost, is clumsier
Without yours holding
Your balance your steady back side
I lean I lay low lie flat
Kinetic inside
Motionless sleep beside
(you understood) That prehistoric rhythm
Four limbed fish clawing land finally
Carving grooves to petrify bones inside
Shells with sea sounds whispering
The deafened sigh of empty space
I can't fill everything preferred to be
Anything aside of numbness O.K. feeling
From this angle light filters itself
Blood through a gash oxygen
Gives blue red to dry
Beneath the door one inch lets open a gate hinge
Gives your shadow the hall to cruise
Way back and forth stepping on cracks out there
Over each beam bearing my gaze
Eye you challenged near my absence
As breath fogging my lungs
Your temperature moderate forecast misty
My eyes hear your eyes darting there
My ears see you listen
For my pale likeness where?
You never knew to lift some burden
How come? How good feels
That screaming wreckage through glass
Throwing it
Before impact smashes itself to vanish
Yesterday's half lives with it
How pretty shards and pieces imagine can you
Glistening the reflection of blotted grief
Clock's minute hand on our second slow stretch
Back to you whose heart adapted stasis
Beats once per day then swallows air in holes
Chokes on moisture which tastes of tears
Apart from this
Apart from me
Insist
You have been gone
Resist
You will be broken
Which way?
Points to never
Siamese cat goes cross eyed
Each time it zeroes on prey
Who may be that unawares
Caught fly snagged on the wall
Before departure
Merely seconds away

2005-12-22T15:33:00.000-08:00

-ViZual Contrast at Bar-

EVENTS 2003
a Poetic Memoir
by Jessica DePue

Greg he writes letters with his birthday pen
Sometimes he's aware that they're drawing him in
-Tori Amos,"Pretty Good Year"

Mamaw signed out permanently
Etching her name in stone
Straight north I moved
To a modern Atlantis
Multiplying whims
Love tracked me
Expired me
Dodging its momentum
Moved with him
Duplicating the Fool

My father's ghost flew in
An apparition
From a dream before the phone
Divulged his distant death
I locked the bathroom door
Bled tears replacing tile
With my salty foundations
No sun could penetrate
This lucid skin

That guy's gaul
Jumped the fence on my grief
Suggested I "Take a jog, shake it off"
Rubbed my absence every wrong way
Revealing more of nothing
Hatred bred black hearts that spring
Clung in my chest heaving
Resentment in spades
Inhaling discontentment
Drinking everything
Cutting lines disgracefully
Through my head

Omens in the water
Someone's loose screw
Set a poison to my cats-
Let them die without me
Three autumns past
I lie still unnerved
My pre-dawn hours probed in bed
For answers that question themselves

I met nicer people
The manager of my local bar
Drove a mean truck
One dry day saddled up, suggested a tall
Cool one, took me for milkshakes
Completely distracted my lactose
Intolerance with intricate mobiles
Swinging from his ceiling
Influx between
Visual elations

He fell into the four letter gap
With black hair, biker flair
Moved with her
To some vapid vortex
While the mean one sends parcels
Creeps them in
Persuading discomfort
My unlikely position views
Beauty again
Beauty begins
Her absurd whims goose me
Into stitches
On the sly

I hiked to Coit Tower
Absorbed Pacific's blue avalanche
Pooled between Golden Gate and Bay Bridges
Repaid visits to Mark Strand
And Pablo Neruda, red books in grey fog
Downed hot dogs and root beer
Steared clear of tourists
Wore socks with sailboats
Afloat my feet, recaptured
Sunday's slanted breeze
Warm and bouyed
In Jeffry's yacht

Parrot cries descended with leaves from those trees
I may have cried with them displaced in those trees

2005-12-11T21:36:00.000-08:00

SUNDAY AFTERNOON DETOUR
by Jessica DePue

It's so easy to play up your breakdown
It's so easy to fly through a window,
To fool with the sound...
- The Cars, Moving In Stereo

I am wheels on cement

A heart burning herself
From lifetimes removed

Fragments in motion

I looped Moving in Stereo

Suspended my flight

Through windows

High tide threw rocks
Shattered infinity

Lapped up our sodium ancestry

Like a prehistoric salt lick

Stones crashed, splintered
Segwayed irratically
The way he drifts

In and out

A consistent variable

Bucket seats incubate nerves
Detach, reserve windy hours for
Desert detours
Nothing touches
I pull myself closer

Held this way
Steadied

2005-11-18T11:45:00.000-08:00

OVER IT
by Jessica DePue

I've had it with confusion
Gimme simplicity
Multiplied intricately into
Open air, easy breathing
Each time I forget my keys you go ape shit
Spinning the car around, blaming each blockade
On me. Consulting your Xbox

I've had it with fall backs, broken crutches
I want space, horizons
Nights that light up like midnight in Texas
Each fuse you blow sends me away
Further than yesterday's daze
Before that

I practice forgiveness though this can't be good
I'm bored, contorted by raunchy moods
I'm not into controlling pain or painful control
Unless pleasurably delivered
From someone who likes to have fun
Like I do

I've had it with this version of love
Decoding, recoding L-O-V-E
As it stands between these unruly things
I'd rather be doing with my legs
Spread
Apart

I've had it with three ways
Your dependency on this eclipses intimacy
Measures my moves for dead give aways
What happened to fucking for fucks sake
Sleeping together then asleep together
Makes most sense of preferable sensations

Taking it in
Small doses and bingers
Pulling desire through my thighs
Branding it here until something comes
An armpit to curl into, a body to hold
Never got old in my book

2005-10-25T12:39:00.000-07:00

MY RAMPANT HEART
by Jessica DePue

Sometimes guttered between juniper toxins
An alien mass heady with platelets
Holding its breath
Preserved this way

Or striding a ledge between daybreak and flesh
Staking territories, exacting claims
Of hope beyond a hemorrhaged world
Precisely incised as a valentine

Sometimes over stimulated, flushed
Leaking profusely pounding towards climax
Preparing to burst all over again
Gurgling seamen, gleaning exhaustion
As I catch my breath

Lean into him, rest

It slurrs names, does shots
Like a gambler on a roll
Towards arbitrary fortune
Nose diving, radar surfing
Sprawled in a pool of gravity

Sometimes in limbo for love
I play diplomat, rationalize
Orchestrate denial no feeling no feeling
In B minor flat lining... static... stasis
It plays whims, pulls triggers, dares fate
Against my half full glass

Squeezing my core into a viable fist
A purposeful void of yesterday's wash
Soaking red sopping wet
Pumping blue lines beneath the surface
Supplying my aorta with more than enough
Drop by pulsing drop

2005-10-25T10:01:00.000-07:00

OCTOBER 25th
by Jessica DePue

Birth day across town
His day over there- hey you
With the numbers and fire

Sushi spread beneath black sky
Spanning that plaza pool deck
Salmon roe on salty tongues

Un hatched un born
Unkempt hair grew wild
Just so
Unbound- wound up
In black satin eye masks

Scorpio likes Gemini
Assumes ardent task
Of coincidental lover
Makes him stray
Up close
Stay go
Remain

Expands his wishes
Upon rubber stars
Stretches inches
Through their scope
Consumes their space
Portals erased five years
Before
I transparently recall

Standard rules snapped
Midnight anulled new days
You deconstructed elemental absolutes
Diluted
Elusive as sloppy cursive

Silver ink lining cards
Sleekly
Defined jet streams
Deafened sonic speed
With indefinate screams

Dotted lines signify
Resolution underlined
Punctuate that date in
Resilient hues
Of markedly clear absence

You concentrated
Diffusively conducive to
Spotting comets perfectly
Memorable too

2005-10-12T14:17:00.000-07:00

DESIRE
by Jessica DePue

Seeing him reminds me
Of everything I'd rather be doing
With him straight through me
Uncovers, slips under
Distracts me with pretense of doing them
Makes me search for a corner to take him
Drink in, take in, take him in
Every possible way between sips
(rhymes with hips)
Sedate nerves, lose discretion
Get to know him better
Without words
Save for (savor) select syllabols
To signify intent
Dis
pel
que
ry
qui
et
ly
sug
gest
po
ten
tial
ex
po
sure
Expose entirely
Urgent deliveries
Given, give in, give him
Recieve him again
And again
And again

2005-10-06T12:20:00.000-07:00

SPECULATION
by Jessica DePue

There were children and fires
Eight kids, several fires
One after the other after the other

Breast fed, home schooled kid
Knapped by concerned relatives
Make shift homes by chance constructed

Mom went off the deep end, dad went off
Too often deepening the creases
Of love, it's obligatory reign

I chose estrangement
Formulated uncanny versions of absence
Checking in with equations, formulas
Exacting proofs that existence is real
Within this dream
Of non sequiturs

The Waco Tribune Herald informed
McLennan County he had ignited himself
My Dad mastered critical conditions

It was determined an accident
My doubts directed towards suspicion
Speculating his lack of control over anything

Visions of him striking a match
A split second dividing clean flesh
From scarred tissue and burnt screams

That permeate like ink on paper
I've stood above a sink, sickened
With sentiment

Watched words and polaroids curl
Into themselves, into vapors
I've felt the heated appetite

Of a flame consuming life
From inanimate objects, satisfying
Itself with the smug task of voidance

Leaving memory and error alone together
Like a man
Left alone with such tools

2005-10-05T11:06:00.000-07:00

ACCIDENTALS
by Jessica DePue

There were a few hermit crabs
Molting, needing new homes
They'll adapt to anything
(Empty coke cans, the odd
Martini glass left upside down)
Just to keep covered
Too often thrown out
Dormancy resembles death
To those unfamiliar
The crab gets trashed
Along with crushed coke cans,
Broken glass
Just like the orchid
In it's final phase of bloom
It's last leaf lost
Look at that stem
Holding up solitary bracing
It's next cyclic emergence
First winter toils, threats
Externally the plant takes risks
Left to withstand time's cruel delay
With roots strongly gripping
Spring's latent signals
The orchid survives influx
Just like you awaiting
A new shell to bud anew
In your faceless presence I've adhered
To steady law of deductive reasoning I've
Cleaned house cleared space
These voids you dwell from
Seem lackluster lifeless
I've gathered hoisted this invisible
Force over my shoulder hurled
You out with the rest of it
Like a stale crab, browning orchid
Mistakenly uprooted gone for good
Their simple lives permanently displaced
Unlike such accidentals
You keep coming back

2005-10-05T09:23:00.000-07:00

ANXIETY
by Jessica DePue

You almost feel the resistance
Trip wire catch, barely detectable
Tickling your heel

Thin as floss though much less useful
It gets in the way, succeeds in this
Masterful ploy

Was there a signal you bulls-eyed
A mark upon pavement, placed
Specifically for you to stomp

Activate, catapult every nerve
First a tremor, then tremble
Into oblivious shaking

Running is easiest, pushes
Air through vital organs
Your heart especially benefits

Never stop to question necessity
Of motion, smooth even until
Something gives

The hiccup, the fall
Backwards momentum, frightning
Relief

May not come until rest
But first breathe, hold tight
Don't break

2005-09-30T14:43:00.000-07:00

IRRATIONAL BEHAVIOR
by Jessica DePue

It is neither remarkable nor neurotic that people experience internal conflict. The world of possibilities and the nature of anyone's interest in those possibilities are not, after all, simple matters.
from Psychotherapy of Neurotic Character by David Shapiro

Words rattled off brain tops
Rolled off tongue tips
Better left silent
Wound up, reared back, thrown
In my head the sound of glass
Would have made a musical break
Against the cement barrier
Against the frustration of
Having my voice discounted
By control disguised as indifference
Why is this funny in back recesses
Behind heady scenes I hide a smile
Squelch it like mad, mad, mad
One wayward smile- this is not funny
Misunderstanding, misrepresentation
Mispoke, mispeak, miss silence is golden
I suck it up, hot heavy toxins
Grow faint, hold steady
Draw a bath, steamy epsom cleanse
Open windows to smog-smothered air
Imagine the cause of displaced anger
The force of internal explosions
Crackle, blaze, simmer, blaze
Night is quiet in spite of these sirens
Bath water forgotten
By now having cooled, salty clear
I release the drain, empty it all
By now sound reason failed existence
That pre-exposed box should not have been pried
Its slack jawed rust hinge
Clearly stating
Do Not Open
Open Me Now

2005-09-26T09:35:00.000-07:00

GROGGY
by Jesscia DePue

I am so tired
My desk looks comfortable
I want to climb on it, already asleep
Behind an alert projection
I am jacked, have been since I woke up
Two hours ago which was
Three hours after hitting the hay
Teaches me a thing or two
About Monday morning's
Nonexistent mercy
For those content
To extend our weekend well past 11:59pm
Sunday evening, my god
Straight men in lavender button ups
Beneath flourescent lighting
Do not settle well with me right now
Nor does the smile on my boss's face
Conveying his genuine enthusiam
That a new week is here, please
Spare me such thrill as I smile back
Conveying my fake enthusiasm
That I am here at all
Instead of curled up in a warm spot
Between cool sheets I am
Sorting through files at 8:00am
Drinking bad coffee to distract
My lethargic desire for any variety
Of comotose options excluding
The one of priming myself for another forty
Hours in this productively boring
Confinement which pays me barely
Enough to party too late and
Never enough to relax
Without counting black sheep
Not six hours ago I was dancing
It was sufficiently distracting
Kept me going longer than I should
Sleep or no sleep, I really must
Pace myself, pause and question
How the fuck I do it

2005-09-22T11:19:00.000-07:00

HORSE and HAT
by Jessica DePue

When Papaw went to meet his maker
It was an easy stretch from bed
Into Heaven he had been going there
His entire life, speeding in youth
Then creeping with Alzheimer's
You can't ignore the Lord
In these small Texas towns
He saturates our tongues
Thickens digestion,
Reminding of our every move
Papaw and Mamaw were proud Southern Baptists
I found a book called "Having Sex the Lord's Way"
Buried in Mamaw's lingerie drawer
I almost felt guilty
I was too young to know
People did it at all, that the Lord
Had his own way of doing it
That birds and bees did not monopolize
The domain of secret moves, primal necessities
I brought it out and Mamaw got nervous
Papaw laughed and got up
To live another ten years
Misplacing his dentures, forgetting himself
Breaking character at every turn and
Selectively avoiding church
Preferring his sleep to everything
Especially to weekly sermons
Telling him how to get to there from here
He had been practicing
He knew by now, had chosen his horse and hat
Prepared them neatly in the closet
Ready at arm's length, moment's notice
I couldn't blame him any excuse to escape
Sunday mornings' hour of eternal joy
I stayed in the car
Reading while he slept
While Mamaw attended service
Became adept at going alone
Socializing faithfully, methodically
The same way she scanned the daily obituaries
To see who had passed,
Who remained

2005-09-22T08:31:00.000-07:00

ALONE IN a NOVEL
by Jessica DePue

I dreamt that I was the character
In a novel by Milan Kundera
The sky yet unspoiled by war's haze
Bore an elegant gold
The gilded sheen of Barcelona
Painting my soul an ornate cathedral

My shoulder blades with weightless ease
Lifted, expelling gravity's depleting grip
Otherwise unremarkable, the day of my dream
Passed as any day ever does
Parting air, absorbing earth
Noting all nuance before I startle

From my pace in fiction
Get written into reality
Back to tireless aspirations and labors
Love in the literal, viciously imperfect
Always knawing with strong sharp teeth
Prodding, bruising my sensitive skin

I break out in rashes,
Unleash inner turmoil
Resist the inevitable erasure of memory
All the while laughing that I should cry,
Shed the uncertain relief of finding
Myself alone in a beautiful novel

2005-09-19T09:32:00.000-07:00

DINNER AMONGST STRANGERS
AT CASITA DEL CAMPO
by Jessica DePue

There were strong margaritas
The kind that don't disguise the fact
You will be tanked after two and
This tall blonde not beautiful
For being tall or blonde possibly
For having returned from Costa Rica
For donating time to help poor families
An excursion she experienced as humbling
Unclear as to what it humbled,
I engaged her on the pretense of how
I want to rescue baby sea turtles
Many hatch in Costa Rica, set about surviving
An unnatural world which counters all instinct
They propel towards the moon's somber echo
Primitive, innocent, wishing only to swim
I volunteered my approval of her selflessness
In addition to my amusement of her blonde tallness
Her boyfriend basked in yellow light from her hair
Increasing his tan as we consumed blue corn tamales
I entertained company to my right
With conversation of downward dog and a lewd joke
About occupying the position independent of yoga
I feigned opposition to all things tantric
While taking my time on chips and guacamole
I entertained company to my left
With little more than a nod towards the moon
Full of itself and looming overhead our patio terrace
Someone began weeping from the corner palm
Displaced by the hanged man tarot, clutching herself
I wrapped my arm about her shoulder, assuring
The hanged man was my card, it's creepy vibe
Nothing to cry over
Merely the absurd disposition of man suspended
Like a bat in repose
Had bats any sight they may share such enlightenment
(His placid surrender to perception
Askew of rigid ordinance)
Had we sonar senses we may possess the supernatural
Powers of night's generous splendor
The woman continued weeping, disappearing
Into a pool of koi
The smokers vacated their posts
Leaving a chemical trail as proof of existence
I lost interest in the ongoing festivities
Searching for the woman no longer there
An apparition of liquid and bone,
Radiant and haunting as the day is long
As bedtime gave way to our bill's late arrival

2005-09-14T14:15:00.000-07:00

UTTER SELF INDULGENCE of AN UNHEALTHY VARIETY
by Jessica DePue

I'm upset because I have not been to Japan
I'm upset because this is no one's fault
But my own-
I'm upset because I consider it a "personal fault"
I've had enough therapy to know better-
This sort of thinking negates my self
It honors her in a negative light
Turning her into a shape identifiable only
By surrounding darkness
I dressed as a Geisha for someone's Birthday
Someone not feeling as sexy as I
In retrospect he was lame and that night
Was particularly upsetting,
All dressed up and no Japan to go to
In Memoirs of a Geisha the main character
Becomes an official Geisha on my Birthday
This is a symbol, of what I'm unsure
Perhaps I was a Geisha in a former life
This explains my obsession with Japanese culture,
My love of sake, sushi, and most things miniature
I'm upset because it is almost my Birthday
I will share cupcakes and celebrate with friends
It will remind me that time is a funny guy
Who enjoys mockery
I'm upset that I allow his jest to rile me,
To become an unruly ribbing at my Master Plan
Because I've had enough therapy to know better-
This sort of thinking serves one purpose only
Which is to upset me, I've had enough
Therapy to realize I should know better
I am upset because I know better
Than to operate an agenda of should's and should not's
Because they usually wind up upsetting me
I am so upset now that I have to laugh
Japan will be there
Monarchs will survive their fragile migration,
Accumulate in a euphoric vision in Mexico
Sea turtle hatchlings will recieve assistance
In seeking the moon and finding survival
I do not need therapy to rationalize
My reasoning nor to explain my upset
That someone was let down
So I may do things I have not done,
As I please, in my own time
If ever- things that justify my ability
To break a mutual promise
With apparent ease
I'm upset because I almost got out of it
With out being upset at all

2005-09-13T15:38:00.000-07:00

THE SHOTS
by Jessica DePue

There is nothing left to say
After these years you pave a trail
Past quartz mines, the cornfields
From some other town, this time
With exquisite stones in your pocket
Loose, unpolished, jangling with copper
Like a song full of promise if only
I could decipher it's words against the beat
Return to where your hook catches
Look up from a picture replaced by
My affected view born into
A nonexistent world
You passed through dream scapes
Drifter who spooled me along by a thread
Red and fluid, blood bound my distance
To your absence, looped me to your side
As you went missing and missing again
Turning dust between my eyes and your wheels
Creating a vacancy
Where I've arranged to call the shots
This one may hurt, this one may numb
They all carry wounds
Until you get close enough to see
My Mother's likeness, my own voice
Filling you in, flooding an abyss
Call me J Bird, wind our thread
Close enough to make yourself familiar
To smile on me, effect my affections
This is the moment I choose to leave
Take that shot, miss you entirely

2005-09-08T08:35:00.000-07:00

DISASTER
by Jessica DePue

Your morning coffee with sidekick croissant
Disappears along with the paper mug,
Plastic fork, your attire, and appetite
Flooded, washed against bodies
Whose coffee, keepsakes, passions, bearings
No longer hold weight against the undertow
So you find yourself on your roof
Waving for help, hoping to be noticed
As infants, elders, and all this shit
Dogs, pasts, futures, existences
Are scrambled and spit out like god
Flicking a knat, picking his tooth
Or something more immediate,
Less empowered and just as baffling as deity
Reclining in the Lazy Boy, popping a beer
Before this frenzied media coverage
Proclaiming "Laura, I think it's the big one,"
Commenting on the poor state of such folk
The neglect and embarressment of a nation
Ruined before any storm ever hit
Luxury of speculation affords disbelief
That is not your brother, your child
Not your mother whose belly inflates
While the rest of her deteriorates
Among the rest of them, is not your land
Nor mine. Can not be, impossible
Must be third world, something lesser
Someone else's spoil, other people's problem
Belonging to some heathen culture
Devoid of identity, nonexistent aside of
Every television channel, newspaper cover,
Person giving blood, money, food, time
Can not begin to pick up the pieces
Of this sordid reality, nightmare
Vomiting the stench of life
Faces forgotten, a semblance of spirit
Perishing and thriving at once
As you dream of floods and strangers
Stranded and trapped in excrement, gunshot,
Rape, disease, animal instinct and discord
Of inexhaustible magnitude while you sleep
Inside a bed far from an astrodome
Wake up sunk beneath an exploding weight
Riveted by a voice asking
What can be done, where on earth
To begin

2005-09-07T22:29:00.000-07:00

MID TRAFFIC FANTASY
To James Spader
by Jessica DePue

If the Red Sea can be parted
Why not L.A. traffic
What sort of miracle might that entail
When I get home I'm going to watch
A movie about car wrecks and sex
I'm going to imagine what it would be like
To ram my engine into a wall and
Live to celebrate the repercussions
The morose variety of complex injuries
Contusions withstanding, not excluding
Less subtle implications of impractical preference:
Scrapes, cuts, my side splitting desire
To do it again
And again if I am lucky
To escape vaguely whip lashed, bounce back
Into a fractured notion of love, entertain
A metal get-up, strategically placed
To stitch up my seams, hold me together
Suggest recovery until I am sped
Towards another excruciating halt

2005-09-06T16:08:00.000-07:00

COUNTRY HOME ON OLD LORENA
by Jessica DePue

Acres sweltered to a halt
Beneath the fugue of blaze and ash
Earth did not rebound from this
Haphhazard slip of ill pressed luck

An heirloom fragile now as myth
Memory encombered by intractable loss
The old barn house bent and vexed
Her skeleton heaved against the flame

Her owner died a year before
Her vicious tears perplexed my youth
I could not ease my limbs the weight
Of that woman's torn complexities

An odd relief the years then warped
Drowned within their shadow walls
With them lurch and wane those days
Brewed and boiled our fated storm

On dry grass dwells family land
Sprawling as an outstretched wing
Flapping in the vacant wind
Which stirs the deadly Texas heat

2005-09-02T14:42:00.000-07:00

PUPPY NEXT DOOR
by Jessica DePue

So we moved into this place in Hollywood
Because he is a director
Because you can see the sign from one window
If the smog is clear and you happen to catch it
The sign is never what people expect
What ever is
We searched two weeks for this place
Living from a hotel on Sunset
Which seemed fun even as it robbed us
A 3 ring circus with scantilly clad clowns
Coke and cotton candy
These apartments were brand spankin' new
A decent promise for a start
Included preferable amenities, accepted pets
The rain was pouring, had been for weeks
We were ready to move in together
And drive each other mad
So we moved in, unaware of the tranny hookers
That work their tragic all over Highland
I find myself solicited on a regular basis
Mr. Rogers and the people in my neighborhood
Poverty is colorful, dredfully flagrant
From our living room window
The immediate housing is poor
With plentiful fruit trees
Amongst the collage of rusted mechanics and odd Americana
That pepper their backyards and our immediate vision
There appeared a puppy I watched from our window
A prominent mix of Golden Retiever and god knows what
It belonged on Lake Geneva, chasing balls off a dock
It simply was not mutt enough for this desolation
Amused by it's contrast, I was shocked
To recognize said pup in my fellow tenant's arms
I pointed her towards the owners, she found it
In the alley between our world and their's
Wanted to keep it nonetheless, she felt entitled
I kept quiet yet bothered by this knowledge
Especially with $200 reward signs about
Then I noticed the puppy back in it's yard
Content enough, somewhat larger
Guess $200 seemed a fair bargain
For a puppy not hers to begin with

2005-09-01T08:33:00.000-07:00

BUS RIDE FROM WILSHIRE to SUNSET
by Jessica DePue

The girl in the middle of the bus
Has bright orange hair with purple roots,
A heavy spray of glitter across her cheeks
She looks like fireworks with eyes and lips
Her expression denies her vibrant display,
Makes me wonder where she draws the line

The man at the front of the bus
Has the same white t-shirt he usually does
Talks on a cell phone and always smiles at me
Causing me to take the closest seat furthest from him
Next to the girl who reminds me of Rainbow Bright
On a bad day, riding an ugly unicorn with wheels

2005-09-01T08:04:00.000-07:00

GREAT BIG CHUNK of CHOCOLATE!
by Jessica DePue

I came home to an 11 lb. chocolate bar
A peace offering from my boyfriend
Who thinks I love chocolate more than him
What am I supposed to do with 11 lbs. of chocolate
I could bake a mold of obscene proportion
Or break my teeth working towards the middle
The two bars in the freezer, 70% and 85% cocoa
Suddenly pale in comparison
To this giant hunk of Belgian
Which is notably only 57%
Although this is one such case
When size makes up where content lacks
In the cocoa department, I am ambushed
Appalled by the appeal of debaucherous excess
I have the appetite and the nerve
All I need now is a hammer

2005-08-30T09:41:00.000-07:00

A FEW HEAVY NIGHTS
by Jessica DePue

This may be where our ending begins
You calculating our nights as numbered
Me next to you and dancing alone,
Divided in a club where I do not belong
Goth is to blonde as Beat is to conformity
Ask David Meltzer, I'm a culture whore
I'm bored with Depeche Mode and candles melting
On water clouding our imperfect reflection
Complex, reflexive, perplexed, aggressive
My hangover unnerves last night's last night,
Your violent fit over my concealed privacy
Must love incite such juvenile detraction
Then lead us out in pursuit of distraction
From the very inconsistencies that keep us glued
Bed persistently eludes me this way
I would bargain my soul for some rest
The type that hibernates, rescues, wipes out
Yet never arrives when I invite such peace
Behind sealed lids I am awake, painting
Those scenes which lead here, away
As you lay beside with nothing but dreams
When you return I will be on the couch
Perhaps the floor or caught between air, thinly
Spread, some formal expression guarding my heart
Ignoring my stomach's tight grips of hunger
Refusing the bowl, the milk and sweetner
Because I have more on my mind than Cheerios

2005-08-24T12:09:00.000-07:00

The Academy of American Poets paid tribute to poems about the human body inspired by the journalists at Salon.com. With Nike's "Just Do It" slogan in mind they addressed their naked selves, imperfections and all.
Here is my poem.

MY BODY
by Jessica DePue

My body is small, stark and pale
It glows in the dark as energy restores

In the shower I observe the curve of my belly
A pretty, slight form where no child has dwelled

As children we ran all the time
When I jog I still feel free

My hips have grown in tune with my breasts
My hips carry me all over the place

They center me while my body moves
My breasts go along for the ride:

They rouse alert to all forms of pleasure,
Direct it my way with pert persuasion

I am seduced by thier erotic sensations
Have endured pain to embellish thier presence

My nipples offer my preferred release
They are best friends with my ass and between

My legs are strong, not as long as I'd like
They developed through gymnastics and cheerleading stunts

They connect at the hip bone and bend back behind
Sometimes while stretching I sneak in a high kick

After running and jumping my body loves rest
It thrives on variety of performance and thrill

Even the tiniest bits of me, my fingers and sorely
Imperfect feet seek elation through moments of fucking

From my ears to my toes, from beginning to finish
I am inspired by the catch phrase "Just Do It"

2005-08-17T12:00:00.000-07:00

WAITING
by Jessics DePue

It could be a danger. Disaster
In the channels slinking your mail my way
Finding me where I have left off, again begun
Against the gentle erase of many things calling
I do not need your apologies as you need say them
I desire them when they never come, long before
Many things pass unattended until someone decides
My girlfriend is isolated after giving and giving
She gave so much she has trouble finding trust
To reconcile her father's words with those of her lover
She could be my sister. She could be my brother
We are separated, strung along since birth
Planes flown by faceless pilots, phantom passengers
Revolving between doors of vacated decades
I wonder of others who look much like me
Whose DNA mimic the codes I inhabit
My blood circulates invisible ties,
Identical layers of impending resolve
I search family archives for fragments of reason
Become a master of tolerance and solace,
Cultivate empathy for the devil's loose heart
Anything besides waiting out
The inexplicable absence of explanation

2005-08-09T15:57:00.000-07:00

EVENTS LEADING TO
by Jessica DePue

I walked into with stomach split in two
Lactose intolerance to be specific

Charm abated my side as did Tiramisu (for that matter)
A mad hatter, id flew about your loo

Trolling for pink stuff and internal coating
To quell the white lines decietfully jiving

With my attention span, rather with the least
Of zen jitters and nausea quivers you attended host

Omnipotently oblivious to my disarrayed oblivian
To nuance beyond my jacked up meridians

Must have been three a.m. thawing San Francisco
Lights elude surface through an undercurrent flow

Another drink exhausted each excuse to rest
Yawning and fading from your stranger's scene, aching

To split back into bed, undress and undo
You-oh so helpful implored me stay, this I remember

Through embers and ash of crass derangement
Estranged, I occupied blinders and benders

To asphixiate sensation or underscore elation?
You were into me. You were outwardly polite

As I searched for an outlet to unplug and disengage
From everything, even compliments you gave

Especially your heavy lidded, light headed gaze upon
My fringed bangs, Cleopatra in the house there you lived

Before we ditched town and our neighborhood local
Where we never met

2005-08-03T14:57:00.000-07:00

TRUST FUND TRASH GOES AWRY
An Unfortunate Saga in Rhyme
by Jessica DePue

Never deprived became depraved
Parent's love ever handsomely paid
Excessive investments withdrawn from accounts
Of failing good manners and consumer clout
Flailing endeavors gradually surpassed
Expectations of law school or PhD brass
Golden boy became the family black sheep
Inheritence insulating his conflicted fleece
From get go got paranoid, gone off the deep end
Glorified follies, creases deepened
Beverly Thrills gagged repulsive to acne
Acutane's rescue beckoned legalities
This medicated skin care he deemed too intense
Behavioral side effects: the price of clear skin
Bitter to boot, adored hating women
Oedipus cycles were his fateful given
His ego deflated, influx between sex
Retreats into money when things get complex
Horrific reality of Fitzgerald glamour
Romantic banality suggested as favor
Ladies dropped in left mostly distraught
Caught unawares in manipulative plots
To his sordid burdens Psychosis no stranger
A twit striving towards bastardhood,
Fucking dog in the manger

2005-08-01T09:41:00.000-07:00

Jessica DePue
NOTE TO SELF

Hello Dear, there is no one particular or
Particularly here I have waited to write
From vacant addresses, have hesitated to address you vacantly
Sometimes there is not much muse to muster
October's mundane chill, my birthday's annual blunder

My intent being to finish Crime and Punishment
Before I am Thirty or too old to care
This indulgence strikes on rare odd occassion,
Between distilled potatoes and mashed ones
I can't keep up with where I've left off

Tonight is as usual, it porously toasts
To endless starts and predictable halts
I anticipate unfolding the peculiar strongholds
Of Raskolnikov's obsessive demise, his Russian fate
Prolonged on my bookshelf and heavy on my list

This unfinished novel refuses dismissal
The ineffable persuasions of selective perfectionism
Point me astutely towards this labor, to polish it off
To delectibly savor his erosian of character
Kept neatly beside back issues of celebrity trash

August 1, 2005 Los Angeles

2005-07-29T11:19:00.000-07:00

EXTRICATION, EXIT AWAY
by Jessica DePue

We moved around, a family ungrounded, finely grated
By haste's insurgent plight, the frenzied whim
Spells love like a scribble dribbling downward from
The spell-bound heart, finally starts to connect with
A hole full of whole pulsing pleasure nerves unholy
Unnerved other times only empty space to restore
Or merely store the bent boredom of lament, discontent

We strew about like a slew of flies
These were not the stuff of keepsakes, seeped youth aside
No family flairs to St. Lucia, or Oprah's Top 5
Places to visit before you die and revisit
Fortunate selves long buried in goldmine flurries
Of the Egyptian's pyramid tribes angled perfectly
Impossibly peaked towards no man's mysterious land

Misery land is harmoniously bland in her mind's rewind
Undriven drive ploughs wheels through mosh pitts of mud
She always writes about God and his love for me
How his one wayward son bled like she bleeds
Eternally ruptured by my withdrawn affections

Seems sweet things dwell in swelled hives
Coating stung stings with thier thickly drip drip
Sickend as a heart throb, an ache overjoyed
Just to get by to get paid and breakout, to get laid
Out of line and succeed from under it

July 29, 2005 finished 12:25pm

2005-07-28T10:50:00.000-07:00

DEAR LACUNA, DEAR LARD by Paisley Rekdal
I found this awesome poem in Poetry (Novemebr 2004)
It immediatley became a favorite.

This poem is nothing if not genius, brilliant.
DEAR LACUNA, DEAR LARD:
by Paisley Rekdal

I'm here, one fat cherry
blossom blooming like a clod,

one sad groat glazing, a needle puling thread,
so what, so sue me. These days what else to do but leer

at any boy with just the right hairline. Hey! I say.
That's one tasty piece of nature. Tart Darkling,

if I could I'd gin, I'd bargain, I'd take a little troll
this moonlit night, let you raddish me awhile,

let you gag and counfound me. How much I've struggled
with despicing you, always; your false poppets, relentless

distances. Yet plea-bargaining and lack of conversation
continue to make me

your faithful indefile. I'm lonely. I've turned
all rage to rag, all pratfalls fast to fatfalls for you,

Mr. Farmer in the Dwell. So struggle, strife,
so strew me, to bell with these clucking mediocrities,

these anxieties over such beings thirty, still smitten
with this heaven never meant for, never heard from.

You've said we're each pockmarcked like a golf course
with what can't be said of us, bred in us,

isn't our tasty piece of nature. But I tell you
I've stars, I've true blue depths, I've learned to use

the loo, the crew, the whole slough of pill-popping
devices without your intelligent and pitiless gaze.

Everyone knows love is just a euphemism
for you've failed me anyway. So screw me.

Bartering Yam, regardless of want I'm nothing
without scope, hope, nothing

without your possibility. So let's laugh
like the thieves we are together; the sieves:

you, my janus gate, my Sigmund Fraud,
my crawling, crack-crazed street sprawled out,

revisible, spell-bound.
Hello, joy. I'm thirsty. I'm Pasty Rectum.

In your absence I've learned to fill myself
with starts. Here's my paters. Here's my blue.

I just wanted to write again and say
how much I've failed you.

2005-07-27T14:57:00.000-07:00

THE CITY IN WHICH I LOVE YOU BY LI-YOUNG LEE
A COMMENTARY by Jessica DePue
The poetry of Li- Young Lee has inspired me to abandon my inhibitions in writing and pursue a full fledged love affair with poetry. His words take the plight of compelling emotions and ground them in rich personal ancestry and past. The City In Which I Love You (1990, Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets for 1990) shares its title with the touching poem-saga which bookmarks the collection. In this poem Li-Young Lee tours us through a rugged journey of the heart. It is also a right of passage from the corners of memory that shadow his contentment with the stark mist of a world wrought with turmoil. His words reveal a desperate city in a fragile state of decline. The reader can relate to the poverty and violence that insistently gut our best efforts at love- to know love and share it. The City In Which I Loved You crosses lonely and sorrowful terrain to find what perhaps may never be found. The poet endures through his immaculate spell of language. One gets the sense that his language is his sole mode of survival; that without this gift he would perish leaving not a trace of the passions which exist to devour him. "A sky cross-hatched by wires...". "A pie plate spins past". "A nest of raw mouths...". Nothing is over looked or taken for granted as he scours the streets for a love he knows may be impossible to find. The reader wonders whether he is driven by delusion or optimism? Is he writing of the search we all set upon yet by some personal twist of fate find ourselves eluded? The poet is equally plagued by the desire to qualify his childhood self with his present adulthood. The City In Which I Loved You weaves us through perfectly exacted imagery of personal and social tumult. His beautiful words simultaneously lift you whilst pulling at the elemental roots of self. The poem ends with the resolute assertion "I never believed that the multitude of dreams and words were vain". When one labors towards what one loves and aspires against desolate odds to attain something lost, then there is nothing sacrificed that is not in turn gained.

2005-07-25T19:48:00.000-07:00

WONDER TWIN POWERS ACTIVATE
What Happens When Childhood Best Friends Meet Up
After Six Years of Seperated Soul Searching

I went to meet my best friend since 1st grade. We had not seen eachother in six years. Repeat: Two girls who spent every day creating juvenile variations of mahem and mischief went six years without seeing one another! Was there hell to raise? You betcha! But not before we talked ourselves into a passive stupor and napped for several hours like a couple of lame old fogies. Thus was the unpredictable kick off of our reunion.

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME
Its funny, how much things change and yet certain things never do. Andrea and I are both twenty seven to the twenty one age we last famialiarized each other with. We are both working to establish an acceptable foundation upon which to plot our still very young albeit not- as- young lives. We are taking ourselves seriously whilst simultaneously pointing at and chiding ourselves all the way through. A little time and frivolous experience has only served to teach us what we already knew. At the end of each day we are the butts of our own jokes- be them intentionally or haphazardously cast. The inner narcisist is contently humored to find ourselves through the ins and outs of our charades. Daily stressors become inanely important in passing perspective. We are thinking about our youth gone by, those days of yore that can never again be yet remain as constant in memory as the present. Andrea has beautiful blue eyes, long light brown hair, pale skin, and a whip smart wit that compliments her playful, girlish giggle of a laugh. These things have not changed. And the affirmative reassurance of that fimiliar kindred spirit was enough to send my already excited state into a fluent spin of nostalgic joy. Its pretty gay sounding but its true. Andrea is my home girl. She knows me like no other because we have seen eachother through an extravagant array of years. Ours span the innocent ages of six or seven through the more definitive pulls of adolescence. Somewhere along the way a semblance of adulthood rears its head in disbelief.

MEMORIES THAT LAST A LIFETIME
Some of our earliest memories are of trapping wild kittens. We were always on the prowl for those poor stray beasts. At twelve years of age we got our hands on some PETA propaganda and promptly became vegetarians. We were the only non-meat eaters in a small Texas microcosm of sticks and grass roots where farming cattle is the pride of the land. People began to think us weird. We were. From summer camps to high school graduation one can imagine the infinitum of ground breaking in- betweens that bonded our friendship into a sisterhood. The alliance was sealed by first periods, first dates, first kisses, endless crushes, and tons of practical joking at the expense of our peers. This was naturally accompanied by all of the awesome music we could possibly cram into late school nights and weekends that never lasted long enough. Um, did I say AWESOME music? Socially lame was more like it. We were dancing to 80's in the early 90's. To anyone who does not recall, the 80's were stashed away as tragic memorabilia until atleast twenty years passed and it was safe for the rest of America to open the forbidden neon box and laugh at their embarassing obsessions with hairspray and cocaine. Our insistence on the coolness of the 80's made us first order dorks to our peers who were hammering away to MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice. We were rebels if only in our own minds. Sweet, teenage rebels who grooved atleast one beat beyond our boring local.

CH-CH-CHANGES
Andrea finished college at Texas A&M. Her present job brought her from her new home base of Austin, TX (a city I once was emmersed in and continue to ardently revere) to San Diego for a week. This is where I came to visit from my recent perching in Los Angeles. We both have been through several moves. Andrea's initial job post was in Raleigh, North Carolina. My initiation into California was from Austin to Los Angeles. I have since moved to San Francisco and back to L.A. I have been divorced from a naievely premature marriage. I have lost two dear stongholds on my turbulent family web: my ethereally angelic Great Grandmother and wonderfully humorous Father. He was my Father by legal custody but still ther only father I knew and love him as if he were mine by birth right. Andrea has lost her beloved Grandpa. Nature takes its course and endows us with a newfound perspective of our place in the chain of imminent exemption. Along with a handful of nieces and nephews, Andrea's down syndrom cousin Molly is growing up. She is far from that tiny, wonderous bundle we held when we were only eight. Many book worthy tales of side splitting humor have ensued from Molly's blessed existence in our lives. Significantly, I have begun a fuzzy and somewhat unsettling relationship with my estranged Mother. Also, I recently met my real Father for the 1st time in oh, say twenty years. We met at the Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco and boy has it ever illuminated my dark and furious corners of self!
Andrea and I had alot to catch up on.

CURVE BALLS
Andrea and I share the the graphite strand that smears depression all over one's sensitive, young slate. We discussed how remarkably difficult our early twenties were to our fledgling spirits. It was a time when we were mature enough to go it alone yet too immature to relax and roll with life's inevitably merciless punches. The young mind adapts a dualistic perspective and reasons every let down in a fatalistic sense- as if nothing worse could happen. Our impressionable youth was ill equipped for the bite of reality. Most of what we thought was right became blurred or wrong. When one strikes out on the field, the standard rules do not always apply and it can seem as if one is dodging bullets. Ironically, "not knowing any better" provides one with the dexterity and resilience to plod along. This transitional time of turbulent ups and downs eventually passes. I had moments when I felt that this life bit was an out and out sham. I would have gladily thrown in my towel had the situation been ripe to my stupidly impulsive tendencies. Andrea as well has had her share of the evil blues. We arrived at the conclusion that the twenties are simply dramatic and emotional years for the whole lot of us. A perceptive and sensitive disposition combined with a perfectionistic personality can make for one heavy brew when stirred with the gritty stuff of life.
Thankfully we have outlasted our more impressionable days and the torturous spells of our wounded egos and hearts. The six years we were apart were years of dramatic experiences and perceptions. They were the years of primordial self assessment.

TAKEN CARE OF
We managed to reunite upon a respectably stable current. We are both in comfortably amiable positions with our jobs and personal lives. Andrea has a hot latin lover named Jackson who she met on the salsa dance floor. I had to laugh at this predictable liklihood- Andrea has always been attracted to latin men. I am in love with a kind, talented, and devilish soul named Bramley. I was pleased after our comical introductory lunch when Andrea said to Bram "Thanks for taking care of her". Bram was about to leave the two of us to the glory of our rebel reunion. What pleased me about the statement was its complete accuracy. Bram and I have fallen in love and hastily moved in together. What this boils down to is being there. We take care of eachother. We endured the initial phases of establishing our personal territories and private boundaries. Only two Scorpios would be so determined in their labor to control these sanctions. Through the ups of sweeping passions and downs of daily monotony we establish our personal lives in L.A.- a city hell bent on terrorizing the dreams of hopeful, aspiring talents. I have been compared more than once to Lucille Ball's character on I Love Lucy. The crazy shananigans that have ridiculously defined the larger half of my twenties continue (inspite of my redeeming moments) to runneth over. I'm not sure if it is in spite of this or because of it that Bram "takes care" of me. As I inturn do the same for him. Ours is a strange if not unique arrangement of gives and takes. Somehow this alligns in an enviable balance between two shared souls. Andrea called it with her simple statement upon his departure.

FORM OF TWO ARTISTIC NUANCES
Left alone with six years of catching up to do, Andrea and I could have steered ourselves in so many directions from the starting point. The road was open and untread. Between the two of us we have logged many newly discovered paths to selves unknown by each other. We are both severely artistic souls. Andrea brings an intelligent effervescence to anything she touches. Be it the tedious task of flood planning which she does for a living or the recreational hours spent crafting complex sketching and origami. Andrea's attention to detail produces nothing less than stunning results that serve to her credit as an indisputably creative talent. Her bold and unique art is the bristling undercurrent of an unassuming and polite mannerism. As far as kindred spririts go I am the written verse to Andrea's finely attuned, precise visions. I write and write and some more, write. Mine is a conflicted existence: I am a highly acclaimed and talented poet caught in the body and secular plane of an aspiring and significantly unglorified poet. In some parallel exisitence the two meet regularly and wax poetic over drinks.

THE POLITICS OF DANCING
Andrea and I shared the years that facilitated and paved the wet cement of our artistic grounding. Perhaps this is why we did not discuss our creative vices in extent as we might aptly muse to do. I did not even mention a poem throughout the duration of our visit. We also share in commom an astute sense of obligation towards our respective humane and moral causes yet we did not discuss any of our efforts or concerns at length. One might imagine us to have much discussion surrounding the wonderous avenues of science and philosophy introduced to us through our liberal educations. Still, we barely touched on any politically compelling topics. Little was mentioned of our post 911 world or my disgust with good ol' Dub-Ya. I am frankly surprised that I scarcely peeped about my obsession with existentialism and the personal truths I've excavated from Russian literature. Andrea and I found little importance in redefining ourselves before eachother. The rest just fell into place as if not a week had passed since we last gabbed over drinks. Whatever our respective politics- personal, environmental, and sociological Andrea and I meet at the ever pressing forefront of the politix of dancing. And we campaigned like hell all over the dance floor on Saturday night.

Then on Sunday I boarded the Northbound Amtrac back to L.A. and the love of my life... the life I have begun so far ahead of our homes on that little street called Bordon in that little town of Lorena in that big Lone Star state. Our reunion lasted little more than twenty-four hours. I can not differentiate missing Andrea before from missing her after. Nor can I reconcile the feeling with anything less than the necessity of seeing her again. Soon before the next six years fly us by.