The plucking distance stretching tight, tugging my skin and veins, thinning my blood. I retain my heart in bits and pieces, shipping the rest like postcards--vague and insufficient. I sign my name with pens stolen from motel lobbies; a running travelogue of cautious goodbyes and eggshells.

My pangs of longing are rife with bad timing.

Appomatox?

I want to be born of the River Fog and move silently through the night; to be a whisper upon the water, harboring secrets--my calm reflection.

North Carolina

My mother didn't know she was driving the wrong way--north to Boston, to a psychic fair/convention to ask about her grandmother (deceased), me (alive), and my brother (?). I told her I was going south to give R----- my blessing to kill people who want to kill him. To give him my goodbyes and my blessing to live or die.

I keep up correspondence. My fingers inked and pressed upon stationary colored with butterflies. A log of (new) scars acquired while trying to be domesticated, in the kitchen with a bull. Blade-burns, I should have been born a boy or not all. The bull glares--my biology is the mark of evil. Spots of red--my vindictive rage--a pipe that needs repair. I've stitched my lips tight, blue-black fingertips, the thread tugging my tender mouth. My letters silently coded. How I've changed, or not at all.

Do something.

I don't know how to keep it consistent except to consistently not try.

I asked him about his army and the hundreds there within.
"They don't know they're all apart of me. I carry them all on my back and my sleeve."
His eyes twinkled at the very thought.

Miscellaneous notes from my composition book

1. Plateaus (indifferent)

2. Loops

3. Matter vs. Anti-matter

4. subterfuge?

5. Insult: "

6. Jennifer*

7. chimerical ethereal tenuous illusive

8. In the offset chance I go into remission

9. Abide: to put up w/, submit to, carry out (promise, agreement, rule)

10. need is need based

11. cans of ink. bottles. his mother.

12. "Here lies one whose name was writ in water" --John Keats

13. I wasted days believing him instead of

14. "To Betty Kessler, from the world's luckiest man--her husband" (inscription, Prince of Tides)

15. No one ever believes they could produce an ugly child.

16. Wie schlafen sie nachts oder wie schlaefst du nachts?

17. Studies in somnia

18. She pressed cranberries into her lips--a color well suited for

19. callow pared jejune

20. apologies sorries condolences

21. (I titled them)

22. 2:25 250 Script music

23. Homeostasis? found 2/20/06 10:30am

24. Colors? Textures?

25. "I can't feed you."

26. Kitsch?

27. Zebra Elena Janey

28. Lars divided by Andy

Anthropomorphic Character Sketches

1. Lucy is scattered marbles about the floor--37 glass balls, clashing kinetic energy, idle pieces of an insoluble whole.

2. Liam is rod-iron: dividing/subdividing terms: you-me/them-us. Rusted gate clang.

3. Madeleine is pulsing tea pot, boiled blood. Screaming steam(heart)engine, evaporating, metal racking.

4. Harold is broken phono- broken phono- broken phono- phono- phono-

5. Roy is a velveteen sack with rich folds undulating in shifting light. Sole keeper, protector, empty with purpose: lost his marbles.

All along we were preaching to ourselves.

When I lived in her womb, I might have understood her insides. I play ignorant now; she feels guilty about the wrong things, holding everything in but me. I pushed out days early to make room--a vain enabler. My late nights are distant attempts at comfort; her insomnia is my blood. My mother will wake for an all-hours walk not unlike midnight feedings. Slick asphalt glows under steel blue streetlights. Fog wrapping around the naked trees will make her think of me. She'll remember how I made her hold still to feel silence. She'll hold still and breathe. The fog is her breath I'm driving through.

He told me to stop writing about sleep; start naming names.

He. He. He.