Saturday, April 19, 2008

first impressions...

...are the hardest to forget.

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If I had to pay money to take back all I did and make things right, I would be in debt for the rest of my life. All the lies, all the wrong decisions, all the stupid mistakes and pointless fights. Trying to make things right is difficult, nearly impossible, when all you've done for the past three years is screw things up. You can't make someone forget what you've done, especially when while you're trying to fix things, you continue to do those things that screwed everything up in the first place. Maybe it's too late. I certainly don't want it to be.

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I'll never be able to forget how I felt the first time I saw you, what I thought. I'll never be able to forget the night you said you were in love with me and my stupid response of "Oh." Oh? Seriously? How about I always knew. How about I was hoping you would say that to me. How about I feel the same way, that I have since we started to spend so much time together: before the late-night paper sessions, before my riding my bike over to your apartment in the middle of the night just so I could spend a little more time with you, even though I had just dropped you off an hour before, even though I wouldn't be able to sleep all night because I didn't want a single minute to go by where I wasn't looking at you. I felt the same way before we finally went out together alone, when we sat in that bar, in that front booth, after everyone had left us there to talk about everything. How about I'm in love with you too, but I'm just too afraid to say it because I've never felt that in that way before and am afraid of what it meant to the rest of my life, to my life before I ever met you. I want it all back. I want to go back to that night we talked in that bar and do things differently, completely. I want it to be OK to be selfish by wanting it to be OK to say that I need you and want you forever, to be OK for you to feel the same way again. I don't want it to be too late.

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Truth 1: It's not too late.
Truth 2: Maybe it is.
Truth 3: It's always been you whom I've been trying to impress.

Saturday, April 12, 2008

one hundred

And for my 100th post, one more Rilke quote, one that I couldn't agree with more. I love this quote because I always think of this type of prison as the fear of hurting someone you love, not the other way around. This couldn't be more true:

There is no more wretched prison than the fear of hurting someone who loves you.

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Truth: I'm sorry

one more day...

Letters on Life

This, indeed is life's most fervent miracle: to suspend us in a state of hovering from which we may still impart something but can no longer reveal ourselves...

*

One never knows to what extent small and even the pettiest things might console and affirm us with regard to that which truly matters.

*

How telling that some people have defined the human to be the common element and the site where everybody can find and recognize each other. One has to learn to realize that it is precisely the human that makes us lonely.

*

All of our insights occur after the fact.

*

Is not everything that happens to us, whether or not we desire or solicit it, always glorious and full of the purest, clearest justice?

*

There is a single, deadly mistake that we can make: to attach ourselves to another human being even if only for an instant.

~Rilke, trans. Ulrich Baer

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As great a poet as Rilke was, I can't believe how amazing his letters were. It's interesting, and fairly obvious, that others can say exactly those things you are feeling, or at least can express as closely as possible those things you are feeling, that you can't seem to find words to get out.

Friday, April 11, 2008

so empty, so estranged

She lifts her skirt up to her knees,
walks through the garden rows with her bare feet, laughing.
I never learned to count my blessings.
I choose instead to dwell in my disasters.

I walk on down the hill,
through the grass grown tall and brown.
And still it's hard somehow to let go of my pain.
On past the busted back
of that old and rusted Cadillac
that sinks into this field collecting rain.

Will I always feel this way,
so empty, so estranged?

Of these cutthroat busted sunsets,
these cold and damp white mornings, I have grown weary.
If through my cracked and dusty dime-store lips,
I spoke these words out loud would no one hear me?

Lay your blouse across the chair,
let fall the flowers from your hair,
and kiss me with that country mouth so plain.
Outside the rain is tapping on the leaves.
To me it sounds like they're applauding us,
the quiet love we make.

Will I always feel this way,
so empty, so estranged?

Well I looked my demons in the eye,
laid bare my chest, said do your best, destroy me.
See I've been to hell and back so many times,
I must admit you kinda bore me.

There's a lot of things that can kill a man.
There's a lot of ways to die.
Yes and some already dead and walk beside me.
There's a lot of things I don't understand:
why so many people lie.
It's the hurt I hide that fuels the fires inside me.

Will I always feel this way,
so empty, so estranged.

~"Empty" Ray Lamontagne

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I have to say that most of that song applies to how I usually feel. Especially the "I never learned to count my blessings. I choose instead to dwell in my disasters" part. It's just hard to let go of the bad things from the past and so easy to forget all the good.

so let's start at the beginning of this story...

There you were in your perfection looking on.
You could see that I could only run in circles for so long.
You just press on and on and on until you finally catch a grip on me.
Like gravity you take me around and turn me upside down.
That's when it all came screaming back.

Just like gravity, what draws you to me,
someone I didn't know I needed?
It's like gravity, it's stronger than me.
I need you here.

~The Fold

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

battered and just left for dead

take this song of love
disfigure it in any way you can
while you have your chance
'cause I'll never sing of love again, again...

~Nural

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I felt like complete ass today. I hope I can actually get some sleep tonight. At least more than last night. I wish I could actually describe to someone how I actually feel everyday. My difficulty in doing so is mainly because I just can't seem to put it into any words that would actually make sense. I suppose I feel like I'm constantly falling to my death from an impossibly high cliff. I know what's at the bottom, but I can't help but hope that it's something else. Anything but what I know it is or just more empty space.

Oh, and I have the title for my first book of poems I'll probably never publish, courtesy of Chazz from Blades of Glory: Let Me Put My Poems in You.

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Fact: "Love is not a bandage to cover wounds." ~ Hugh Elliott

I just can't seem to get it right today.

I guess I'm gonna give up.

~JP

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Truth: Life is full of only holding on and letting go.

Monday, April 7, 2008

Leave it to me to live out a lie

Mice playing the piano?

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I suppose living by myself wouldn't be too bad. It's just not the same though. This place is so empty right now. It's pathetic that it's only been two full days and I feel like I do. I just don't like it too much. And as much as I love the dog, she really doesn't say too much.

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Truth: If you don't have something nice to say, you probably have an opinion.

You have broken me....

...all the way down.

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Anywhere but here.

Saturday, April 5, 2008

t-freaking-mesis

Finally, after weeks of trying to remembering the damn word, I've found it: tmesis. Tmesis is abso-freaking-lutely awesome. One of the best words ever.

Alive In Conclusion

There's possibly nothing worse than hearing from your doctor that you're at risk of heart disease because of high cholesterol. It has me thinking of the same damn thing that I always think about at night that keeps me from going to sleep. Something I haven't thought of much lately. Something I write too much poetry about. The Big D. And, um, I don't mean Dallas. Or divorce. Honestly, we're all too young to die. Maybe I'm being selfish, but I think that everyone living forever wouldn't be a bad thing. And why is it that we haven't found a cure for death yet. For the most part, we die because our system shuts down and crap stops working. Why can't we fix that? I just can't stand the thought of not existing any longer.

And if we somehow are reincarnated in another body with no recollection of our former selves, that doesn't seem like much of a consolation. People always say that they must have been bad in a former life to deserve such a crappy life. For me, though, it was this one I've screwed up so much in that has caused me grief, that has caused my life to be so crappy. But I shouldn't bitch, I've got a pretty damn good life. I just wish I could change a few things.

Where do I stand?

Someone keeps shooting out the street lights.

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Uncertainty couldn't be the worst thing, could it? I'm standing on an empty street in the middle of the night. I can see headlights. The car could hit me. Or, it could pick me up and take me somewhere better than a dark street in the middle of the night.

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Holy crap!! What is with exclamation points anyway?!?! Talk about fake, useless, pry-some-emotion-from-your-reader punctuation!!! And the worst part is that they come at the end of a sentence so you didn't even know the sentence was supposed to be an exclamation until the end!!! I can't stand it! Especially in freaking poetry!! At least they're not as bad as WRITING IN ALL CAPS!!!! AHHHH!!!!