Etches

feet

2008-07-24T08:26:00.001-07:00

my feet are numb
yours are cold

and I wonder

how far we walked ?

the musician

2008-07-06T21:41:00.000-07:00

the musician.
writing yet another song.
but these lyrics
I hear
are they truth
or fiction?

validity in three strummed chords

calloused hands that strum
pieces of truth

calloused hands that search for
tangibility.

.answers.

more than rhyming lyrics
more than something fitting

.brilliance.
[complete and utter]

another puzzle piece

the musician
writes another song.
these lyrics
I read.

who are they really for?

Day Breaks

2008-05-26T12:31:00.000-07:00

I made my bed.
I no longer wish to lie in it.
I dream.
Laying here where we once were.
A few more moments until day breaks.

glutton

2008-05-26T08:13:00.001-07:00

I'm a glutton
for punishment

replaying songs
reliving memories

like drinking poison

it does me not a bit of good

your face I can not see
your skin I can not touch
your voice I can not hear

but my heart still beats.
my lungs still breathe.
my skin still prickles.

just not for you.

writer's block

2008-05-04T07:15:00.000-07:00

I open my hands
I fail to write anything
What can you give me?

Something I can write
I have so many words to say
What truth can I write?

stars

2008-05-04T05:02:00.000-07:00

I rest on the stars with you.
The Earth is too small of a playground.

Dancing through the galaxy.
the planets are our steping stones....

We are so removed
No one will see us.
So, go ahead and kiss me.
(is that the warmth of the sun I feel?)
Once more...
please
cosmiCoLlIsIoN
kiss me once more,
Before we fall back to earth.

Ja Jsem cizinec(ka)

2008-02-26T01:14:00.001-08:00

We live in a yellow painted flat above the pivnice on Dvořákova, near the park.

We live...present simple.

Ja jsem učitelka agličtny....an glee chee tny...
Ja jsem učitelka agličtny.

I am an English teacher.

Every night is a party.
vic..Pilsner, prosím
Petr, my boyfriend loves when I attempt to speak Czech. He's tall and handsome and rolls vanilka cigerta.

Cigerty? ne, vanilka- feminine...cigerty masculine...changes to cigerta. Feminine and Feminine.

Czech is complicated, but Petr has reassured me that I will learn it. He has confirmed that I must learn it," for Czech is a poetic language of great beauty and the mother tongue of Kundera, Rilke,and Kafka."

Ivana and Tomaš make out on our leather sofa. Ondřej passed out two hours ago. He had one two many pivo..ne, pivi.... beers, to put it simply.

I am merely an observer tonight- an expatriate navigating this strange world.

"Ahoj...krásna," Petr whispers to me, wrapping his arms around my waist, his breath smelling of vanilla tobacco and beer.
"Ahoj.." I say with a wide "American smile." "miluji tě," I say, very quietly.
"I love you too... krásna," he says back with a larger, surprising-for a Czech- smile.

Krásna. Adjective. Translates into English as, "beautiful;" also krásný depending on it's use. It’s one of my favorite words in the Czech language. I love how it sounds. I love how it rolls off my tongue. Krraa-sna.

I am relieved. I never uttered "I love you" in any language, let alone a foreign one.

"Co že?" Ondřej woke up from his druken nap.
"Nothing....we didn't say anything. Why don't you just go back to sleep?"
"tak..dobře."

Petr, still attached to my waist, nudges me and motions to the two on our couch.

"Hey, you two going to come up for air anytime soon?"

"Oh umm...we are you know how we say, in love, jo?" Tomaš utters brokenly with a mischievous laugh.
"We should leave, thank you for beer" Ivana said, re-adjusting her top and flattening her make out hair.
"You're very welcome."

Our friends leave, except Ondřej, who lays on the floor snoring and drooling on him self.
"Dobrou noc," I say to him, laying a throw across our inebriated friend.
"Let's go to bed," Petr says kissing me.
"Tak..I'll be there in the moment."
"Tak. Krásna."

I looked out the window. The street lamps light the now quite street. The pivnice is now closed. A homeless man pees in a trashcan. Lovely.
Two hulky policemen tred loudly down the grey, brick street where we live. They scold at the urinating homeless man and reprimand him for his shattered and abandoned beer bottle.

So, this is my home. This is where I live.

I walked into mine and Petr's bedroom. I smiled and looked at the man already fast asleep.

I swept some hair away from forehead and softly planted a kiss.

"miluji tě..." I whispered in his ear.

Is it Insomnia or Is it Fear?

2007-11-26T12:08:00.000-08:00

Is it insomnia or is it fear?
Fear of no resolution.
Another restless night.
I remember certain things you told me.
Things I’ll never forget.
Things I chose not to forget.
I haunt myself with your words.

Open Heart

2007-11-22T12:13:00.001-08:00

I opened my heart
And poetry began to pour out
Over flowing
Embarrassing amounts of poetry.
Adverbs and adjectives by the handfuls
Like grains of sand slipping between the cracks between my fingers
Confessions.
Fears.
Desires.
I felt my cheeks flush.
Why did I keep so many words in my heart?

That's nice, but what have you written lately?

2007-11-10T07:15:00.000-08:00

That’s nice, but what have you written lately?
A smug expression.
Writer’s block has never been so gracious and so satisfying.
You lazy writer.
You write stories in your head, but never on paper.
Sometimes your first instincts are right.
Don’t be afraid to get wet. Be wrong. Write a bad sentence.

She bit into the orange and the juice ran down her lips and then trickled down her chin.
Good job, you wrote one measly line of a potential short story or yet another unfinished novel to add to the pile next to your bed.
Hot chocolate in my cup. It warms my hands.
Oh please. What was that? Another
CLICHE.
At least, you are writing instead of sitting in front of your computer screen looking like a piece of drift wood.
ctrl C ctrl p
hiding mistakes and rearranging again
You must be afraid of pen marks on paper.
The computer is merciful.
Keep writing.

I am a Feminist Dragon Fighter

2007-11-10T07:05:00.000-08:00

I fell down the rabbit hole.
Been lost in that hole for years.
I've been tossed betweens dwarfs and a deadly finger pricking.
I lost my glass slipper.
I lost my Prince Charming.
I lost my heart.
Enamored.
Poisonous apples of fairy tale romances.
I could not be rescued by a White Knight.
A feminist dragon fighter.
I stand alone.

Bars Were Made For Drinking

2007-11-10T07:02:00.000-08:00

- A short story-
His eyes scanned the room. Tall, blonde, leggy, and slightly malnourished- it was like a heroin coated Dolce and Gabanna ad come to life. Normally, he’d slide next to one of these cliché beauties, slip the bartender a folded Jackson and drop a stupid pick up line that he read on MSN. Sometimes his cheesiness would rub off as boyish charm, but most of the time he would walk way with an overpriced cocktail in his face.
He decided to walk up the woman in the glasses. A young woman in an Uptown bar with glasses? He was already invested, despite the old adage about girls with glasses. She was most certainly getting passes, at least tonight. Besides, he was tired of going home smelling like vodka. After all, he was a Guinness man at heart.
It didn’t hurt that she was nice to look at. Well, if you ignored the glasses, the "I Heart Dorks" tee shirt,ripped jeans, and dirty green Chuck Taylors. He glanced at the tote bag hanging on her shoulder. It read, in red script, "Reading is sexy," with an image of a woman with glasses peering out of book. She was cute, but what was she doing in an Uptown bar? How did she get into the bar? She looked like a homeless college student. All of this intrigued him more.
The Village art scene had grown stale. She was tired of being dumped by men with "existential crises" or had to find their "inner Warhol- Marx conglomerate identity"- whatever that meant. Finding your self was code for personality disorder, she thought. Being a Tisch grad, she knew how to wade threw the pseudo intellectual fecal matter and to be frank, all she had to do was listen to her ex-boyfriends talk. The preachings of her emotionally dead ex-boyfriends were not, in fact, brilliant observations of the world around them, but rather pungent crap that excreted from their drooling mouths. She feared she would ever find sincere intelligence in this town.
Why head to a classy Uptown bar? She figured, if she could listen to the prattles of whiny intellectuals, she could listen to the reveberations of self absorbed business men. Sometimes numbers are more benign then letters. Plus, even in the world of endless self expression, she grew jaded and slightly burned out. A change of pace was most definetly in order.

Blue Inked Pages

2007-11-10T06:43:00.000-08:00

Twenty five unfinished projects
A thousand ideas
I am writing again.
Blue inked the pages one letter at a time.

poetry and prose
forming
well constructed sentences
with grace and demeanor.

Seamless transitions show no evidence of
writer’s block.

Gracefully
sentences
rest
on the page.

I swallow words whole by the mouthful.
Gobbling and slirpping each one.

I found a new launching pad.
Write, write, write.
Write while there is still time.
Something interesting.
Something brave.
Something captivating.
Something tangiable.
Something real.

I create.
I destroy.
I write.