Around the corner crouches spring all ready to pounce. Hear her hot breath and feel the rise and fall of her coiled flanks as she times her breathing to the phase of the moon and the turn of the tide.

The speed and rush and velocity, the either/or intangibles of thought. I’ll just have to lament and make of it what I can, gather together the corners and fold it closed, before it falls away.

Dreamt last night of amphibians marching two by two, salamanders and oxlotls and newts and efts glowing iridescent and bright green, red, purple, orange, like brilliant soft-skinned Life Savers they marched across the floor. And then I noticed the frogs, the little tiny tree frogs, the baby frogs.

A friend once bred leopard geckos and the babies were just miniatures of the adults, identically proportionate, no difference in the size of limbs or heads just shrunk down so small three of them could fit on a dime.

And in my dream I noticed all the multitude of frogs, all sizes of frogs, some silent, some singing, at first hushed because we approached and then tentatively beginning their chorus again.

We were in what once was a backyard with a gigantic swimming pool shaped like a T but with round edges, and at the crux of the T was a big rock monolith. I imagined probably something like a hundred years ago it had fake ferns and pink and yellow mood spot- lighting and a filter pumping water in a waterfall to fall back into the pool.

In my post-apocalyptic night time mind's eye vision it was all overgrown. The dark tree branches closed in on all sides, and cool condensation from a recent rain dripped into the pool's clear water.

The bottom of the pool was all yellowed and brown but the water was tepid and clear like a rainforest pond and we decided to go swimming. We communicated with looks and gestures, we did not need to speak. We swam silently with the meditative sounds of water dripping and the springtime sounds of frogs singing, I felt your skin against mine as we slipped together through the cool water.

The twilight of the world reflected dim against the water’s skin, and your eyes were the dark blue of dusk after the sun has spun all the colors from the sky. I love it best when I dream of you.

It’s the kind of day when spring comes slow and hazy, but the river rolls rough. I ran across the suspension bridge, the milky jade liquid unsettled, surface shattered with white shards as the wind rasped against the current.

I ran because when other joggers pass me as I stand at the halfway point, in a vain attempt to overcome stomach flutters of vertigo or possibly the desire to jump, I can feel the bridge’s barely perceptible bounce with the weight of their running footsteps. So I ran, too, although I could not feel the bounce caused by my own rhythmic motion.

I ran in between raindrops, past the barest bulge of willow buds at the end of long bare branches, through the arched curve of tree branches, under the steel grey sky. Some days feel like the clouds have descended to earth.

Exile exhale, dive through the secret door, what, who, me? I’m impossibly irrelevant. I avoid it.

On my fridge there’s this worn faded scrap of pink paper it used to be red paper but I washed it in a pair of jeans and now I wear a fuzzy faded pink ink part of it on my ass.

It says in a true friend’s handwriting

Defy Consumerism
Ignore the Media
Seek Mystery
Be Alone

Don’t buy anything and don’t answer the phone. If holding the palm outward doesn’t ward it off then deny its existence turn three times to the left before every answer, power lies in threes and sevens.

Tomorrow it’s into the belly of the beast with me, through security, and since I know they’re coming I’ll make it through. The grandmotherly security lady told me last time if she had to check everyone’s shoes she’d take a jump out the window, and she nodded at the big tinted security glass, above the tops of the tree branches.

An airplane went silently sweeping across the sky.

And since I know they’re coming, and since I’m irrelevant and incognito and unimportant, I’ll wait, breathing slowly, until I see the reds of their optics.

I only regret I won’t be wearing those jeans.

Little pieces of the day fall into the crack unmentioned but worth remembering, time the culprit for lost thoughts. If I could make note of the things I forget would it be for the best, or would I read it in a year and ask why I cared enough to write it? But not having the time to write makes me want to write it all down.

The days pass so quickly. Cherry blossoms are beautiful on the tree but once they fall they stick like old tissue paper and become mushy before they disintigrate.



Went to the sushi place with the walls painted black, pop culture trendy, gigantic oil paintings of faces, colorful ribbons hanging from the ceiling, unpainted pine panels, mood lighting and sexy waitresses, fish tank with the most gorgeous black angel fish, music loud enough to hear it's Japanese rock. Sounded to me like a cross between Steely Dan and Depeche Mode, like it's the 1980s again. Or some approximation of that. Miso soup and unagi don and sake, and it's rainy and cold and dark so give it to me hot, baby.



I'm tired.

Life with a grad student... what do you want for dinner? is a quietly resigned question that requires so much consideration.

Not so tired as he, his eyes lusterless, glazed over by computer screens and mountains of paper and books. One more week. His shoulders feel like cast iron.



Been drinking too much wine but I never get drunk, nor do I turn into a whiner except sometimes in my own head. And then this voice that sounds like my Grandma says Hey, knock it off.

If I live that long I know I'm going to be a sweet old lady who smiles all the time except when I arch my eyebrow, with a backbone of ramrod steel, patient as the longest day but singing of Olaf glad and big, no shit for me and thank you kindly.


I got pinched this morning.Thank you, sweet man. It was nice.

This makes me forget... what was that guy's name, the one who wrote that poem I love but can't remember.
Lavender smokes sweetly, a cleansing scent, a smoldering fire, and cinders transmitting to nerve synapse.
She is braver than she is sometimes. Do not doubt it.
Jimi rocks the serendipity, and all is right with the world.

A week of ill omen?

Something lurking in the shadow cast by a waxing moon on the division of the month, the Ides, beware, the soothsayer said.

The ancient Roman calendar marked each month with kalends, nones, and ides.
In March, May, July and October, the ides fall on the 15th day.

In every other month they fall on the 13th.

As the name implies, the ides divides.

Connected corrections

Added statistics

Changed paradigm

Missed calls


I’m failing on the memory of yesterday. Where once I could hit that record button in my head, it’s unplugged now, disconnected. It's a white noise constant dial tone, and in the undercurrent I can hear a hundred thousand conversations, filtered through and through and through.

It feels like my thoughts are coming from the floor of the ocean, the silted depths of some forgotten chasm. It feels like a miscommunication because it’s delayed by the water’s weight, redirected by the ebb and flow of currents that swirl one sea into another and let's not forget the ice caps, melting.

Melt down.

To maintain flexibility, the body has to move through its normal range of motion.

To increase flexibility, muscles must be stretched to the end range of tension.

Correct your posture by becoming aware of your body's balance. Can you stand balanced on one foot?

With your eyes closed?

Stretch.

Thoughts of motion fill my soul. I could watch the bare black maple branches sway in the wind in the falling snow all day, watch the patterns of crows so impossibly dark against the white sky, lose my thoughts in the rippling green of cedar boughs high above my head.

I hear music in my head and visualize. Some sultry violin and I want to move serpentine like wind across the surface of a deep green pool, feline, muscles and sinew. Staccato drumbeats and I’m a tin can kicked on a gravel road, a horse running, a quick kiss. Airy flute and I’m a single high waterfall shaking as I plummet, the updraft catching the resounding spray, or I'm some little bird fluttering branch to branch. Heavy bass makes me a mudslide, a wave pounding the cliffs, a falling tree. How does sound move, this is my question.

Death fells the three sweet gum trees across the street from the park. Limb by limb they crash, the chainsaw sounds like the giving end of a righteous argument, angry and justified. The trees’ offense? Buckling the sidewalk, dropping big round seed pods, and hosting birds that subsequently crap all over cars parked in the shade. So decapitation, into the grist, into the chipper, their sap sticky-sweet on the rough hands of pinch-faced men wearing heavy coats and black boots.