PREACH

"If owning a gun and knowing how to use it worked, the military would be the safest place for a woman. It’s not.

If women covering up their bodies worked, Afghanistan would have a lower rate of sexual assault than Polynesia. It doesn’t.

If not drinking alcohol worked, children would not be raped. They are.

If your advice to a woman to avoid rape is to be the most modestly dressed, soberest and first to go home, you may as well add “so the rapist will choose someone else”.

If your response to hearing a woman has been raped is “she didn’t have to go to that bar/nightclub/party” you are saying that you want bars, nightclubs and parties to have no women in them. Unless you want the women to show up, but wear kaftans and drink orange juice. Good luck selling either of those options to your friends.

Or you could just be honest and say that you don’t want less rape, you want (even) less prosecution of rapists.

When people scoff at the message that we need to teach people not to rape they make the assumption that the lesson goes: “Rape is bad. Don’t do it.” That is not what the lesson looks like. The lesson, once it is adopted, will be that every single person out there, regardless of any defining personal characteristics, is a human being of value, and with a right to make their own decisions about what bodily contact to have with others. There is nothing a person can do that makes them less deserving of that right. Violating any person’s right to control the when, what and who with of their sexual interactions is wrong. Do it and you will be punished, and you will deserve it."

-from A Short Post on Rape Prevention

como

watching you change your skin for different people, people who are not me, is interesting and horrifying the way I assume a close-up of a spider eating a fly would be.  

Either you are a professional or this is Instincts defined. I would believe you if you told me you were born for this but perhaps it just takes practice.  Fast food chains market differently in various countries.  Beef is not a hot commodity in India but arrogance might be. Would you tell me if I guessed correctly?  What are you selling?

I wonder at your shine.  Is this a facet of your personality, or the entire diamond?  Twist in the light, show us something ugly.

___________________________________________


You are not an actor. This is your life.
___________


I am trying to let go of mistrust, the grudges I still hold, and the hate.  It is hard. People frighten me. People who are hiding themselves, and giving you and everyone else only bits and pieces of whatever they think you want to see. I need to do this though. It is exhausting to dislike people that you have to see fairly often. How do I let go of this?

zoobi doobi zoobi doobi pum para

I have a final exam today, and I am not prepared.  I care more about working as much as I possibly can than school.  School is unimportant.  I figured out the other day that if I work full time for 8 months (at my current job and pay-rate) I can travel for four months.  I can do this every single year.  For the rest of my life.

The only problem is I don't really want a full time job... I want a job where I get to work whenever I want to, and I can stop working whenever I want to.

Basically I need two jobs.  Then I can work PRN for both of them and still get enough hours.

I JUST WANT TO TRAVEL EVERYWHERE.

AND I DON'T WANT TO END UP STUCK IN NORTH DAKOTA POPPING OUT BABIES EVERY COUPLE OF YEARS.


Sometimes I do want to find someone... but then again I don't want my wanderlust cured.  I don't want to depend on someone else for my happiness. I'm fine depending on myself and the future.

and then there's that heartbeat of lonely lonely lonely in the back of my head saying maybe I can't do this forever.

screw you heartbeat, maybe I can.

It's hard for me to do someone a favor without feeling like they owe me something.  I'm always on some "What have you ever done for me?  What will you do for me in the future?" running through my head.  It's sort of a bad mentality.  The people who do me favors All The Time never ask for anything in return.

If you knew Karma was fake, and what you did would never come back to haunt you or to help you, would the way you live change?

I hate to spend money, that's the thing.  Time, you can take all you want.  I guess I get that from my father.  I remember begging him for money to go to the movies way back in the day... Getting a pack of gum for multiple birthdays in a row.  Don't get me wrong, I love my parents, and I am glad they raised me this way.

But I guard my money like a cat guards her offspring.



(Less hissing and spitting though.)


Love you all
pretty much,
Amy

everything

i can be
alone by myself
i was
lonely alone
now i’m lonely
with you
something is wrong
there are flies
everywhere
i go

-Alone, Nikki Giovanni


The first poetry I ever really got into was hers.  Also I will be performing at a poetry reading tonight.  Me and my manly voice up onstage just doesn't seem like a recipe for a good time.  It's one of those things you do just so you can say you did it.


ALSO! I am working on a painting for my brother.

wwooooh exciting.

Peace/Shanti

Will you feel better?

I wish that youtube had music with no videos sometimes.  That's the way I like to consume it.

In other news, this is devastatingly relevant.  

----

Oh HEY I got accepted into the Northern Eclecta, which is a journal NDSU puts out every year with creative submissions... I am happy.  This next poem isn't the one that got accepted.  I just wrote this today actually.  

Paring

would you cut out

the rotting parts of your

past as if it were a slightly-too-old

vegetable?

there have been times

when I wished for

forgetfulness

still, decay is good for the ink

in a way that easy-to-consume

isn’t

so I leave myself inelegant I leave myself

whole

another year of tangled half-brilliance

another year of enough imperfection

to blind someone

caution tape

hey please don't fall for me, just don't.

I'm sorry in advance for not having the courage to give you the warning you need out loud.  I'm sorry because impulses take precedence over what I know I shouldn't do, most nights.  I live with my eyes wide open.  I stay sober so I don't even have that excuse.  I can't expect you to walk the fine line of detachedness with me.  If I could I wouldn't be alone on my couch right now.  

-------------------

I've been thinking about Sufism.  And how maybe Judaism isn't the root of Christianity or Islam the root of Sufism, maybe its just that they needed to keep what they had been taught originally, but the end result is still Love.  

organized religion, hmph.  

I love Rumi.  I don't wanna call it Christianity or Sufism, can we just talk about how love is pretty much the only thing worth worshipping? The only quality I would allow you to attribute to God?  

and I'm tired, not making all that much sense, but I've been writing beautiful things.  That always comes to me as the nicest surprise.  

365

things are capable of changing

ice to water to smoke

over the course of a year

my heart has unfolded

the way a garden worships

spring

rebuilding itself from multiple

warzones of

a winter that has

gone on far too long

I can’t think where my

demons have gotten to

perhaps swatted dead

like flies while I’ve

slept

somehow

it took

less than twelve months

to finally be able to awaken

feverless

into a dark blue that is

only deepening with

stars

-----

time traveler. The past is looking more and more surreal every day.

you ever find yourself crying on an examination table to a doctor who insists you're only sad because it's winter?

you ever find yourself unable to even disagree because your confidence level is zero and you have de-evolved to something almost unrecognizable to anyone who knew you before?
----------------

Submit to love without thinking,
as the sun this morning rose recklessly
extinguishing our star-candle minds.

-Rumi

It is possible I have been spending too much time trying to make sense.

"With this story I'm going to sensitize myself, and I am well aware that each day is a day stolen from death. I am not an intellectual, I write with my body. And what I write is moist fog.  Words are sounds transfused with unequal shadows that intersect, stalactites, lace, transfused organ music. I hardly dare shout out words at this vibrant and rich, morbid and dark web which has its countertone in the thick bass of pain.  Allegro con brio.  I'll try to wrest gold from charcoal.  I know that I'm putting off the story and playing ball without a ball.  Is the fact an act? I swear that this book is made without words.  It is a mute photograph.  This book is silence.  This book is a question."

-Clarice Lispector "The Hour of the Star"
\


"Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history"
-Plato

If you feel like acquiring

some calm

I'm writing something.  Lots of fire metaphors.  Maybe that started the night we lit approx. 249 matches and held them, watching them burn out with all the fascination of a child discovering bubble wrap.

It is becoming apparent to me that I have been asking the wrong questions my entire life. So here it is, five years too late.

"Which one of us will forget the other first?"

daysleeper

My dreams try to find my balance for me.

When I hated my life (for roughly six months last year), my dreams were beautiful and comforting.   I slept for something like 13 hours a day.  I woke up wishing I could be living what I was dreaming.  I can't give you an example, the only thing that I really remember was being deeply content.  Transitioning to daylight was almost unbearable.

Now that I am more or less content with my life, my dreams are frightening and horrible.  Last night I had what I consider a classic horror movie dream, involving some sort of maggots laying eggs in my skin.  Also I dream about things breaking or malicious intent of someone I love.

When I have a bad day my dreams are better, but since I am mostly happy with my life right now, they are still tinged with a negative aura.

Flashback to a year and a half, when I wasn't sleeping at all, and something becomes very clear to me.  I wasn't sleeping, so I wasn't dreaming. All the very horrible and very good had to be expressed during my waking life.

Dreams don't make sense,  and when I stop having them, when I stop sleeping, that madness leaks into real life.  The yin yang is no longer separated into neat black and white curves.

Things get jagged.

Get Thee to a Nunnery

OA or Why I Became a Nun

I learned to identify rocks in high school: granite, quartz, diorite.  I still can't identify which men are dangerous, not even on an intellectual level, until I'm busted up on the side of the road, another flower in a bouquet of "I told you so".  Character judgement as a beginner's level course is something I flunk out of more often that I will admit to anyone.

Historically, I have been perfectly comfortable gambling on myself.  I have always believed that my heart can take any amount of abuse.  I would rather be a thousand splintered pieces no one else but me would bother to tape together than the reason you're flinching every time a woman walks in.  I would rather be with someone who doesn't care about me all that much and even I can see that's a trainwreck of a policy.  

I'm over here tiptoeing past the sleeping giant of my inner child begging for the cereals with all the sugar.  I'm over here with my "just say no" and my "I'm sorry I can't do this".  I'm over here keeping my heart away from things it could break, elephant in a china shop and sometimes

I wish I didn't have to.

----

some of this is probably B.S., and I ain't telling you which parts or how much.  OH MY GAH this is sophistry! Bam! Identification.

I will be homeless for the month of June (until the 26th when I leave for Korea).  Well... not really HOMELESS homeless, I'll still have a place to stay I think.  I just won't have a place that's mine. but hey! I won't pay rent this whole summer, which will go a little ways toward making up for the cost of plane tickets and the TEFL plus program when I'm in Thailand.

"When I'm in Thailand"

love that statement.

Found this, love it

I Lost a Bet

The best time to know someone
is when you don’t yet know enough.
Metallic tongues slipping dog-eared
excerpts; cracked smiles sticking
paper masks together.

Moments everything is fascinating;
times every word is effervescent —
we cling.
Discovery is the gentlest unknown,
spine just cracked, the novel’s first third.

Perhaps I do not know you
well enough to write about you, perhaps
I do not know whether you prefer pancakes
or waffles, how you take your coffee
or if you take it at all, what songs
smooth your cracks, or what words
could calm the cratered cacophony
when shattered is the only
best descriptor of your dreams.

But I do know that for one night, if just,
we found a way to make alone
less lonely.

The rest I’m willing to learn.
-jayarrarr

Tips to be healthy:

eat a bunch of oatmeal without cooking it first (oatmeal is healthy)

oatmeal is also dry, thus you will be forced to drink copious amounts of water (also healthy)

---

I can't write. anything.  I've written one poem in weeks and it was pretty terrible.  I am worried.  

maybe all the creativity is leaving my body when I dance.

bam, reciprocity

HAHAHHAHA

My favorite (actually the only one in the Fargo area) hookah bar REJECTS ANYONE I DON'T LIKE.  or at least, keeps them from having a good time.

WELL DONE pyromaniacs. well done.

 I never don't dance

why all the women there are jealous of me

I love the way an uncurled fist becomes a hand again
Because when I take notes I need it to underline the important parts of you
Happy
Sad
Lovely
Battle cry ballistic like a disaster in lipstick
Earthquakeing and taking out the monuments of all my hollow yesterdays
We’ll always have the obvious
It reminds us who and where we are
It lives like a heart, shaped like a jar that we hand to others and ask,
“Can you open this for me?”
We always get the same answer:
“Not without breaking it”
More often than sometimes, I say go for it

-Shane Koyczan

love this song.  Uff teri adaa.  also I'm in love with the hookah bar, but hookah smoke gets me too dizzy, so after a while I just eat smoke rings.  That is probably the only smoke related skill I have.  The ability to consume smoke rings.  I can't even make them. It's like someone who can't cook, just eat (which actually, is pretty much me, too)  anyways. a good song.

normally I don't feel comfortable in my hometown

this time, I did.

lovely lovely people

take me as a hostage

I'm not big into drinking, especially when it comes to solving problems.

but dang, the  lyrics to Pour Me Another are genius.

 Odd how it's possible to see getting trashed as an act of defiance.. an act of empowerment.
----------------------------------------

Drink it all away, numb it down to none
Stay awake tonight and wait for the sun
You say you hate your life, you ain't the only one
Let your frustration out the gate and watch the pony run
One double, for the hunger and the struggle
Two for the fool trying to pull apart the puzzle
Three now I smile while I wait for your rebuttle
By the fourth shot, I'm just another child in a bubble
Trying to play with the passion and the placement
Just to see what these people let him get away with
Still trying to climb a mountain for you
Hammer in my hand, still pounding on a screw
She don't listen so he don't speak no more
Nobody's winning 'cause neither is keeping score
Don't wanna think no more, just let me drink some more
Pour me another, cause I can still see the floor

stay hungry

a limping heart is not necessarily a
detriment

it is possible to be greedily
broken. to be fascinated instead of
frightened by all the
dead cats that one’s curiosity has bred

for some, pulse-less tabbies take on new names
with each stage of
rigor mortis

ink recipes
folk magic
the benefits of

pain


--------------

something random... I don't know why, but going to church straight up kills my writers block... I always end up writing something there.

lalalallalalaLOVE Stephin Merrit... (but I guess he doesn't believe me?)



So you quote love unquote me
Well, stranger things have come to be
But let's agree to disagree
Cause I don't believe you
I don't believe you

You tell me I'm not not cute
Its truth or falsity is moot
Cause honesty's not your strong suit
And I don't believe you
I don't believe you

You tell me of what once was
And all about Buck, Butch, and Buzz
How they were not like me because...
But I don't believe you
I don't believe you

I had a dream and you were in it
The blue of your eyes was infinite
You seemed to be
In love with me
Which isn't very realistic

You may sing me "They Were You"
And I start crying halfway through
But nothing else you say is true
So I don't believe you
I don't believe you

You may set your charm on stun
And say I'm delightful and fun
But you say that to everyone
Well, I don't believe you
I don't believe you

So you're brilliant gorgeous and
ampersand after ampersand
You think I just don't understand
But I don't believe you
I don't believe you
I don't believe you
I don't believe you

future

Also! All my plane tickets are purchased for this summer!  Fargo to Seoul, Korea to Thailand and then Thailand home.  


EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!


“Darlings, sometimes love will come to you like a fire
to a forest. When it does, be braver than I was. Just leave.
Take only what you can carry. No tears, no second thoughts. 
You have hands like tinder boxes, the smallest spark
will kill you.

Get in the car. Take water to the maps. Avoid gas stations. 
Don’t look at the flames dancing in the rear view mirror. 
Go to new cities, climb on the rooftops and slow dance with
your coldest memories. Wallpaper your new home with every
dusty, desperate love letter you swore you’d never send. 

Find a stranger with sharp edges and uncharted hips. 
Press your stories into their skin and forget you ever knew 
his name. Just promise you won’t think of embers or smoke.
Even when there is ash in your hair. Even when there is soot
in your lungs.”

-Clementine Von Radics

smoke and mirrors

sickkk remix

I'm in a weird place right now.  My life has never held me in this brand of chokehold.   It's interesting.

jacked this next bit from :  http://jhayjhaythejetplane.tumblr.com

In romance movies, the final frame ends with the inevitable kiss, the reunion of two souls that have somehow been forced apart and the ending reinforces the idea that they were meant to be together. They were willed together by fate. That they were made for each other. We shouldn't believe that that type of love exists, yet this yearning inside us all fools us. We root for them to be together. We watch them grow from strangers to lovers, and when the screen finally fades to black, we exit the theater and face our own reality.

Romance movies lie. We all know that it’s not how the story goes. Play the film in reverse, see the truth for yourself. We all know how it feels to have that happy ending. We all know the feeling of genuine happiness, the warmth, the moments in time where you wish you could keep it still for eternity. Play it in reverse and you’ll see the truth.

We go from lovers to strangers. We go from love to silence.

That’s reality for you.

there's nothing worse than feeling like a ghost

see it's like this

you want to be exceptional

but you're afraid you can't pull it off

you feed me novels of your past

refusing to entertain a stage of future hopes

you walk instead of dance

and you envy those with enough audacity

to fake rhythm

while yours sleeps in your bones

deep and deep and deep

you dream of apples

and leave the branches unshaken

you invite stagnancy in as an old friend

and are too polite to kick him out

when he's overstayed his welcome

---

f

(I thought I was writing this for you, but it may have been for the me I used to be)

the weekend was just so amazing I don't wanna go back to normal days...

single single single

Sometimes I wonder about the ones who only hang around because they think that if they're nice enough for long enough I'll bang them.  

Is it still friendship if I'm the only one who considers us friends?  If I can't tell the difference between my real friends and well... you...does it make a difference?  Can I still get something out of a friendship that is half-nonexistent?



sometimes I think I should wear a sign.


I WILL NOT SLEEP WITH YOU.

(oddly enough I've often thought about signs that I should wear)

Happy V-day..  I got a rose, and this year it wasn't from my parents.  Also, some insight.

been watching some tgs.  laughing stupidly.  livin' the good life :)
-------------------------------------

I'm not in love, but I'm happy so I suppose that's enough.

how to meet people

what’s your name?
what do you study?

do you have a list of socially acceptable
hobbies you repeat on days like these
when people want to know who you are?

are you comfortable with who you
aren’t?

have you ever spilled your guts
to someone who gave them away
for free? (because if so, that’s bullshit,
even kidneys go for thousands)

do you believe in God and if so does yours
hate  the ones who don’t?

do you listen to your friends when they
tell you who you shouldn’t enjoy the company of?

would you turn me down if I
asked you to dance?
-----------------------------------------------------

One day my sorority told us to think up some questions to ask the new girls.  My index card was too small to fit everything.  Also, mine  were not the kinds of questions most of them had.  I am not in a sorority anymore.

Pour me Another

All she wanted was a little bit of solid
Feels like love, it doesn't matter what you call it
Heal those cuts or hide em underneath the polish
Break another promise and take me as a hostage (take me)


Hold your job down and let the zombies crowd around
Thankin' mommy's god that it's a cop's town
Keep it safe for me while I chase a fantasy
Swerving through the galaxy, searching for a family
Happily surrounded by planets and stars
She was stuck uptown, you was landing on Mars

-Slug

once every 2 years or so I feel the need to get TRASHED as @#%*.   And I don't. 

just know that I really feel like not being sober.  Even if it's just for the effect, as if I'm a character from a book or movie who is trying to drown something emotional.

I won't.

dunno why this song depresses me

I want you all to know that I came very close to not being alone for Valentine's Day.


So this is the 20th one in a row.


dangit.

If you hear Indians talking, wait for a little while then turn around and say "Kya?".  It means "what".  Bam. helpfulness.  We're talking Indians from India, not Native Americans, you uncultured fool.

Kaisi Paheli he ye zindagani. - what a riddle is this life.

I can't front like I'm not excited to the point of dizziness

I was purchasing plane tickets for Korea, and when I got to the screen where you get to pick which seats you want, my hand froze.  I will be on a plane to Seoul for eighteen hours.  The seat I pick could change the course of my life.  I found myself wondering what sort of person would sit over the wing of the plane, which sort of people usually take aisle seats and whether I should just go with the middle seat so I can meet two people instead of just one.   Then I started using numerology, contemplating picking 27E since my middle name begins with E and I was born on the 27th.

I can't remember which seat I picked.

I suppose it doesn't matter.

This summer is going to be something.  you know, I wonder how I managed this post without ONE SINGLE EXCLAMATION POINT. oh wait, there's the allcaps. dangit.  

Spoiler Alert: unrelated poetry
--------

Metamorphosis

can't help but notice how
much brighter your eyes are
when you're sober

I want to take multiple photographs of the
way your voice doesn't
shake, the sunflowered way you turn toward the future
unafraid

watching you stand upright without
assistance is
a wine into water miracle and your

spine can be seen from
space