this is the end

or more accurately, the middle.
no-one ever writes poems on the middle. though when drawing a play synopsis in colours and pictures, not words, the middle is the loudest, tallest part.

today feels like change. there's people coming and going in my life. where and when i don't know. but the change is happening. it's mid year and that means that there's only a year and a half left until i can sleep, paint, drink and read as much as i like at all hours of the day and night. it's wednesday and that means it's only two days till the exchange student gets here.

it's a middle. the middle of everything.
resolution come soon.
the story of my life would make a pretty awful novel. the plot's all fucking over the place and the characters are so incomplete and unbelievable.

listening to my brother play the intro to come as you are overandoverandover is not as exciting as it may initially sound. neither is working in a supermarket. neither is behaving as though one were an overgrown 12 year old girl.

fuckthisshit.

all of your friends are all letting you go

we will take off our clothes, and they'll be tracing fingers down the notches in our spines.

god is a place where some holy spectacle lies
when we break
we'll wait for our miracle
god is a place you will wait for the rest of your life

rosemary paperjam

saw a pretty lady on the train today, in a big tweed coat and a purple scarf. she had amandapalmer hair; red, a little, but mostly brown, curling unkempt around her face in a funny bob. her nose had a little bump. her eyes were very blue and against her pale skin and reddy hair, with strays hovering in the air above her head, they were smiling. she had one hand on an old leather bag, the other, around a baby. the baby didn't cry or scream or mumble. it looked happy. they were friends.
people in the train carriage smiled at the baby, and mother looked on and smiled to herself. she watched her baby in his home knitted booties and they looked like jesus and mary, the connection of something bigger than ordinary.
i thought of what bec said; that people loved children because they represented new life; and then of kurt vonnegut and his characters; that he didn't create real characters because there were already too many 3-dimensional, living, breathing people in the world, and look where it had got us. i thought of bec and little fin, or simon and nadine and flynn, of helen and patrick. of izzy, tilly and of murray. of my mother. of this lady. i will paint her one day.

my witness is the empty sky

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"

all persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental.

"you know, the truth can be really powerful stuff. you're not expecting it."
- kurt vonnegut

today's playlist

i didn't understand - elliott smith
oh comely - neutral milk hotel
radio cure - wilco
the canals of our city - beirut
between love & hate - the strokes
haligh, haligh, a lie, halight - bright eyes
wrapped up in books - belle & sebastian
everest - ani difranco
carbon monoxide - regina spektor
the seer's tower - sufjan stevens
sleep - the dandy warhols
easy way out - elliott smith
we both go down together - the decemberists
warrior - yeah yeah yeahs
communist daughter - neutral milk hotel
this mess we're in - pj harvey
reservations - wilco
girl inform me - the shins
oh well, okay - elliott smith
bowl of oranges - bright eyes
tiny vessels - death cab for cutie
come and find me - josh ritter

yoko.

I

I should have been studying, communicating, reading, emailing, filing, cleaning or sleeping.
Instead I wrote you a story.
There were damsels in distress and man-eating sharks and fire breathing dragons and unrequited, forbidden and arranged love.
I wrote you a story last night;
By the light of night-silence, the scratch of possums in the roof. I was alone.
I wrote you a story last night;
Of a flowered dress that doesn't quite fit and the bitter man whose daughter wears it, just for him,
I wrote you a story last night;
A tale of a million citiex and a million broken hearts, a million happy endings and the mirror image tragedies. There were reflections, subplots, disjointed disconnected disappearing time sequences, and lots of bad grammar. Let's call it 'experimental'.
My thumb stained ink blue and blistered.
I wrote you a story last night;
Of love, loss, betrayal and hope. A story of family and relationships, of war, politics, religion and sex.

I wrote you a story of death -
Ours.

clockwork changing

1. follow attractive, interesting or otherwise stalk-worthy people
2. graffiti. carry a sharpie and fill public toilets with art and poems.
3. human canvas.
4. izzy; go to art school.
5. paint the shedroom wall
6. flowers for strangers
7. ...it's not sporadic if you plan it.
8. wear interesting hats
9. a picture a day.
10. feel.

greenbook #1

"And they'll say; we could have been GREAT, together, apart, we could have been something, someone, but now, we're nothing, curling up into the very origins of where we've come from. That's right, they'll say, it has all come to nothing"