Monday, April 26, 2010

you can’t go back to sleep
that year it was like everyone i knew fell out of a tree, hurt
themselves recklessly for show, a display of wringing limbs, self-conscious origami of appendages that seemed suddenly new and necessary, as if we’d just received these parts, just learned that there were unknown things they might do, other possible uses suddenly possible plausible, and i follow you on your bike through the path you choose--twisting dirt alleys and ditch bridges, i sensed the weight of them then--arms and legs held together by the stringy heat of sinews and muscle, straining, straining to hold a course to follow you to the field behind the baseball diamond, the heat there a vacuum and let you insist that this was actually my idea, the way we hide our bikes in a shallow gully, sneaking through trash and weeds, taller, more sure than us, until we come to a spot where the grass is pushed flat by other bodies, other kids come to smoke pot and drink stolen beers we are alone here, and you might motion then that we lay down, maybe me on top of you, our faces not touching, not kissing, not looking at each other, slipping hands underneath clothes, into them placing our mouths on places other than mouths, our movements a mimic of something we can only guess at, until after several minutes, slick, uneasy, you say stop ok, you say, ok. there is a wave passing over us, a wind of smothering, a thick breeze, we dress and shake this off, don’t speak, move back to our bicycles, our action figures, our endless streets, sidewalks driveways, and vague ideas--the heats and stirrings, the hint of what we want and wonder if everywhere in that warmth everyone else is waking fumbling in bedrooms and bathtubs, at sleepovers and in tents, backyards, and under blankets, fingers moving moving and moving while the streets spread out, heat hazy and limitless, bodies become slowly aware of themselves, uncalibrated instruments, the wheezes and honks they produce, the uncontrolled bellows, the cacophony a not so secret language--the clamor of singing parts-- of hips, hands and curious palms, shoulders, thighs and suddenly upturned flesh, a chorus of hungry noises that will soon resemble a tune, a summer song we will eventually recognize as our own

-T. Cole Rachel
She makes my head dumb and my heart melt. She's dreamy and quite possibly too good for me.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Thursday, April 22, 2010

I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone
by Richard Brautigan

I was trying to describe you to someone a few days ago. You don’t look like any girl I’ve ever seen before.

I couldn’t say “Well she looks just like Jane Fonda, except that she’s got red hair, and her mouth is different and of course, she’s not a movie star…”

I couldn’t say that because you don’t look like Jane Fonda at all.

I finally ended up describing you as a movie I saw when I was a child in Tacoma Washington. I guess I saw it in 1941 or 42, somewhere in there. I think I was seven, or eight, or six.

It was a movie about rural electrification, a perfect 1930’s New Deal morality kind of movie to show kids. The movie was about farmers living in the country without electricity. They had to use lanterns to see by at night, for sewing and reading, and they didn’t have any appliances like toasters or washing machines, and they couldn’t listen to the radio. They built a dam with big electric generators and they put poles across the countryside and strung wire over fields and pastures.

There was an incredible heroic dimension that came from the simple putting up of poles for the wires to travel along. They looked ancient and modern at the same time.

Then the movie showed electricity like a young Greek god, coming to the farmer to take away forever the dark ways of his life. Suddenly, religiously, with the throwing of a switch, the farmer had electric lights to see by when he milked his cows in the early black winter mornings. The farmer’s family got to listen to the radio and have a toaster and lots of bright lights to sew dresses and read the newspaper by.

It was really a fantastic movie and excited me like listening to the Star Spangled Banner, or seeing photographs of President Roosevelt, or hearing him on the radio “… the President of the United States… ”

I wanted electricity to go everywhere in the world. I wanted all the farmers in the world to be able to listen to President Roosevelt on the radio….

And that’s how you look to me.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Monday, April 5, 2010