are we lying to the world about how god satisfies us? i don't feel satisfied. are we called to be unsatisfied, or any particular way at all? i'd like some answers. i read poems and i only find the same questions through different metaphors. i'm finished feeling this way.

i don't want to be alone anymore.

just a thought:



thank you.

if anybody is wondering how i'm doing, i am alright.

ever since you moved out, i've been living in the park. i'd rather talk to the wind than an empty apartment. and i wish i could forget how a billion birds flew in my hollow dying heart the first time i touched your arm. there were a billion passenger pigeons - so many flew by - and they darkened the sky. but they were clubbed and shot, netted, gassed, and burned until there was nothing left but miles of empty nests. i can't believe how easily a billion birds can disappear. now it's so cold out and all the paddle boats are covered up with snow. once again it's dark. the electric lights snap on, but i'm still sitting here drinking frozen beer and throwing potato chips into the white snow drifts just in case a bird decides to fly through here tonight.

i really am alright. just pro found ly ex haust ed.

on reading the bible

i hear god
twice-parted water piles
for an undeserving nation.
i'd rather have seen
the shoulder stack
than read red pursuit
through a many-trickle filter.
i'd rather have been
buried in upwater bank heaps.
i'd rather have been a thirteenth stone.

i've had this feeling lately that every human being could be any age at any given moment. when i consider that my life is really just beginning, i can't help but stand up and walk around for a while and realize that i am young. incredibly young. i could be any age tomorrow, so anything is happening and it's all so heavy. this latches on to me like scuba weights keeping me below the surface of the water. i don't need oxygen - i live underground. i live underwater and the bubble ends begin. it's glorious and the bubbles end and i begin begin for the first time since the ending.

i'd not like to diminish the beauty of a metaphor, but i've been thinking of metaphors all morning and have perhaps arrived somewhere. a person says thing x is thing y. it's no so extraordinary, because today i feel that everything is everything. the sound in the air is an orchid is a candle is my stuffed koala is mama's college art is a striped and collared shirt hanging on a white hanger from the edge of a kitchen counter. and that's just in this room!

it's all a bit of power, isn't it? the brain without.

i have everything to write.
i have to write everything.

this is not a poem, but
i have
been asking everybody i know whether
they think two poets could
be
happily married. and!

we've come to a new definition
of "what sarah said."

love is watching someone die is well
and good and well, but my friend sarah asked
me
this question:
"would you rather write a really great poem
or live a really great life?"

(of course we know they
are not mutually exclusive.
we recognize and accept.)
however,

i did not think about my answer at all, not
in the way that people say "oh, i
just wasn't thinking," but
in that
i didn't have to think about my answer.

it's romanticized, i know, but
of course i would rather write a really great
poem if it came to that. i don't think that is crazy.

so, is gender learned or given to us by god? i don't think
this renewal is a one-night stand. i woke up the next day i
rolled over and he was still there
and i was still there and
god was still lying beside me and the warmth
was still all around me. how is THAT
for the amosesque meeting of spirit-
uality and sexuality. so take what you want and while
you do, my heart is here
waiting to be battered by a three-person'd God.

i've never seen a
ciderpress, but i'd imagine that
it looks pretty much like
how it is
in pictures. maybe less
grainy and in color,
though. i'm feeling
very aware of my stomach and
thighs and above it my collarbones.

mankind ought to be more
of a team. i'm taken back
to when
i was part of a team.
a win was a win and a
loss was a loss for everybody.
my gain is every person's gain. we
all just say the opposite. i'm on the verge,

having needed a great change so
all of the sudden tomorrow
is today and i'm twenty now, did
you know? a basset
hound named stanley licked my
long toes. no, it wasn't that way, it was
more like this--an unobscured mountain photo.

i'm starting to really believe things.
one of these things is that i
have something inside of me that most
people are without.
i've never wanted to believe
something believable. that's
what keeps us from reality.

i have that problem--you probably know.
with the fitting it into columns.

but here is what i think i
might know:
the world is splitting down the center,
down to the center. there are two,
a new and an old. i am
part of the new. i am
holding on
to the good. i am
not not not missing the old.

among a list of specific details,
facts about karyn to know and to tell,
you could find "karyn hates the sun."
i do. i hate how it makes me
squint while i drive. really it's for
the sake of my eyes. don't give up--
this will be important later.

my birthday has been beautiful. here's an easier block:
sometime before midnight, katie drove in from missouri to spend the 24 hours with me. my 24 hours. at midnight, i was sitting down at a waffle house drinking a coke and blowing out the match stuck in the top of one-fifth of a chocolate pie. and i was with people. so after the cake was half gone and half ungone, i went to stand in the bathroom for a while and inspect my new self in the mirror. my eyes looked very different, both what i was seeing AND what i was seeing. (i hope you can understand.) they still look very different. then, back to the apartment to perhaps sleep - i found the upstairs room empty and placed myself on the bed the music of my laptop and a volume of poetry. i read and read, until finally there was sleeping, which came after katie read nine poems of my choosing aloud to me. and the sleeping until something like the morning. and the morning until something like bobby's for breakfast, then the apartment, then the presents, then the wal-mart, then the park and the spraypaint. it was fantastic. we burned some scattered photographs of very naked very men and katie nearly finished the bukowski book for me, by making his art a spoken art and my ear a listening ear. i'm sure we'll finish it tonight. and we talked about how it might be if we really do what we want to do, and how for the rest of our lives we'll have known each other in college, in college. i'm watching her become and she might also be watching me. ALSO I BOUGHT THREE GUITAR PICKS.

we return to our earlier discussion. when we drove away from the park, the sun was bright against my face and in my eyes. i realized that it was there, and that i would begin to squint until i could barely see the road, but i kept my eyes open. in fact, i opened them as wide as i could while i was driving. it made me cry a little, but i looked just like a child with my eyes so wide. not in the way that children are innocent, with figuratively wide eyes, but actually just the physical look of wide eyes. i think that makes people look young. also, pigtails.

i'm going to be crazy and scraping and undone and flailing and without necessity, because i want to write. i accept it all, and i am in love with something. could i have found?

i would apologize for making this so long,
but i'm not at all sorry.
how's that?

my goals for spring break,
apart from school work,
are the following:

- watch waking life again
- avoid watching reality bites
- listen to "funny little frog" as much as possible
- read some poetry
- save everything i write
- take my medication
- pray every day, something more than desperate prayers

i think i'm off to a good start, really. i watched waking life over the past two days, i left reality bites in my dorm, i downloaded "funny little frog," and i slept between charles bukowski and joanne kyger lines while my clothes spun. i wrote out a lot last night at the guys' apartment, folded up the paper, and kept it in the back pocket of my pants. i poured out my pills and counted them - 79 left and if i take them regularly, i'll run out while i'm in france. i went driving last night and only closed my eyes to blink.

and i've been talking to god. this morning i took communion for the first time in a very long time, and--what's more than that--communion meant something to me for the first time in years. i don't have to feel this way anymore. this is freedom.

yes, years. i'll talk about that more later. i can get through this week. i'm sorry about the angry phone call, dad. i love you.

i had a conversation with you at night
it's a little one-sided but that's alright
i tell you in the kitchen about my day
you sit on the bed in the dark changing places
with the ghost that was there before you came
you've come to save my life again

oh
my
lord
i
am
so
lonely.

i did laundry today.

my new year's resolution was to better understand myself.



as drained as i feel about it, i have not given up.



this weekend, i marinated for hours in cars and on sidewalks.



i think i've found the key to every single thing about me:



i cannot be left. i cannot confront it or survive it.

(i'm sorry.)

if indeed the world has the manner of balance that i've heard advertised ("i have this planet of regret sitting on my shoulders"), somebody had an awful day yesterday. because mine was almost perfect. lou reed perfect.

so what could i really say about it here? i had "i felt your shape" stuck in my head all day, even while i was sleeping. i sang it while i walked to chapel. i sang it while i sat in the park. i sang it while i drove with my windows down and my everywhere-hair. i sang it with my eyes open in the shower water. i sang it on the phone while i was trying to fasten a belt with one hand.

and i've been writing oh i've been writing more than i've ever written before. i'm not afraid to say things now that i used to be afraid to say. i'm using new voices. i'm becoming.

i have no fears of being twenty. i never wanted january. at the time, i didn't want february. but i've made my peace with march. i cannot believe i had allowed myself to grow accustomed to that quality of life. i don't want to hurt anybody, obviously, but i'm seeing now that it is so good to be hurt.

you just keep me hanging on. and you're right - it is not completely you. but you have achieved a level of importance in my days that you should realize. language is only symbolic anyway. let's dance!

more later.