Muck maiden

A lotus flower sprouts from the muck and it's stuck,
dries and it's dirt that won't shed,
clay red dust dyes the petals,
it dies in sensitive spots,
regrows crooked.

------

explaining away the roses

A tangle of
cerulean and mucus
yellow
snapdragons*,

soft stems
let their big mouths
bow,
and touch the
wormy ground

*the beautiful weed
with a lot to say,
hundreds of little
whispers,
noise in bright
garden patches.

------

grow back stronger (if they do at all)

a little bush
of just-a-baby
blue then ruined
forget-me-nots.

------

end.

------

trust issues

thanks for letting me know,
my bras hanging
from the doorknob,
head hanging in shame,
terrified,
if only i knew
and didn't just hope
(beg, in my head)
it was true,

i'm sorry,
look at what happened
when i let people 'love' me.


-------

Sometimes I just have to let the insecurities out before they become who I am. Before what happened becomes who I'll be. I'm ashamed of how sad and scared I am when it's truly not my fault. ("I have something I think you'll like.")

Imagine someone hitting you, slapping you across the face, over and over. Telling you it's normal, telling you it's what you like, what you're supposed to like. Eventually it does become normal, something you can pretend to like. Especially if you never knew any better.

The blood, mine and his. The welts from belts and feeling my insides melt in pain. The words that made me cry. Taking it all in stride to become special. Learning about their lips on someone else. Adding insult to injury, literally. It seems impossible to confirm something that doesn't exist but that's what they did. Somethings make you nothing.

I was gonna write this long winded poetic entry about it but I'd rather just say it straight and work on editing it into poems:
I love josh fortier.

I love Josh.
I am still little ol' scared me though, ESPECIALLY with the 'mones a-raging.

Poems still coming. Never at home, always with him. Hiking, bottling, kissing, smiling, laughing (hardest I have in awhile). I love him but he's made me scared to show affection. That's a negative. Guess I'll write about it. A poem for now.

---

stud belt holes; hope you don't.

almost every shirt he owns
torn around the bottom
by stud belts,

listening to lucero
and thinking about his skin,

my hands nearly numb
gliding over bumps
on his back,
fingertip cracks catching
on clogged pores,
tingling against alert hair
and tripping over the mole
middle left,

musk of sweet weed
filtering out of his lungs
as he sleeps
and the dry acid smell of
my spit soaked pillow,
the barrier of grease
makes his brown
hair heavy in my hands,
thick beard reeks of
fires in the forest,
arms riddled with
dried blood cuts
from chopping down trees.

------

On a semi-related note, Dorianne Laux is a beautiful poet.

Go Greyhound
by Bob Hicok

A few hours after Des Moines
the toilet overflowed.
This wasn't the adventure it sounds.

I sat with a man whose tattoos
weighed more than I did.
He played Hendrix on mouth guitar.
His Electric Ladyland lips
weren't fast enough
and if pitch and melody
are the rudiments of music,
this was just
memory, a body nostalgic
for the touch of adored sound.

Hope's a smaller thing on a bus.

You hope a forgotten smoke consorts
with lint in the pocket of last
resort to be upwind
of the human condition, that the baby
sleeps
and when this never happens,
that she cries
with the lullaby meter of the sea.

We were swallowed by rhythm.
The ultra blond
who removed her wig and applied
fresh loops of duct tape
to her skull,
her companion who held a mirror
and popped his dentures
in and out of place,
the boy who cut stuffing
from the seat where his mother
should have been--
there was a little more sleep
in our thoughts,
it was easier to yield.

To what, exactly--
the suspicion that what we watch
watches back,
cornfields that stare at our hands,
downtowns
that hold us in their windows
through the night?

Or faith, strange to feel
in that zoo of manners.

I had drool on my shirt and breath
of the undead, a guy
dropped empty Buds on the floor
like gravity was born
to provide this service,
we were white and black trash
who'd come
in an outhouse on wheels and still

some had grown--
in touching the spirited shirts
on clotheslines,
after watching a sky of starlings
flow like cursive
over wheat--back into creatures
capable of a wish.

As we entered Arizona
I thought I smelled the ocean,
liked the lie of this
and closed my eyes
as shadows
puppeted against my lids.

We brought our failures with us,
their taste, their smell.
But the kid
who threw up in the back
pushed to the window anyway,
opened it
and let the wind clean his face,
screamed something
I couldn't make out
but agreed with
in shape, a sound I recognized
as everything I'd come so far
to give away.

http://poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15479
http://poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16941

Reasons Lauren probably shouldn't drink:
-She almost always gets herself in situations with boys that end up being a disaster for her self-esteem.
-She almost always wakes up with bruises

Got really hammered for the Real McKenzies show last night. Embarrassingly so. I was yelling at the singer and he kept flipping me off so I was flipping him off and punching him. He mooned me and I punched him in the ass. haha Then he was hitting me on the head with the mic and I went to stop him and knocked it out of his hand. Next thing you know the bouncer is carrying me out the door. Boo! He came up and warned me earlier because I was being a prick but I was too drunk to understand at the time. haha

I was so gone. I can barely walk from the muscle pain. I have huge bruises on my shins from being bumped against the stage. AND earlier in the night someone fell against my hand and hyper-extended my fingers backwards, so now I have sprained knuckles! YAY! No guitar or bass for me for awhile.

I'll write more of this night later probably because a lot of shit happened and it was amusing, but that's the basic synopsis of disaster right there. :P

drove to boston, you took me to the ocean,
we were already over but i jumped in your arms
like the first time we met,
still, i had that feeling in my belly
but your love had gone still,
i let the waves crash on me and you ducked,
i pretended metal pipes and gears
were part of the machine that would end the world,
you told me to write a story when i got home,
i collected mussel shells and left them in your car,

that car took us all over from beavercreek, ohio
to brantford, ontario, our homes,
i filled it with toy monkeys and
we filled it with hand holding and backseat stains,
empty packages of gummy candy, beef jerky,
bottled water and i'm sure there are leftover
bits of laughter stuck in between
the seat cushions with the dna from my tears
that dried there,

how many times did we almost fight but instead
i cried and you apologized? how many times had i had
enough of you claiming you weren't enough?
but i thought it would be different every time,
i took your word and i took your pizza hut
gum machine ring and i cut it, stretched it
so it would fit, but we never really did,
still, somehow I believed you were the man
i'd be forever with, but your love had gone still,

there are memories that just rush out of me,
i could describe them in detail or just spill,
that time we hit a skunk on the way back from
our main parking spot and had to go through the car wash
three times, it still stunk,
the night we parked and watched lightning over fields
even though i was scared, the power went out later and
we laid in bed sweating, surrounded by candles,

the floor next to that bed where i took your virginity
and you reclaimed mine, reclaimed me as yours and it
didn't hurt, it really was a first,
you were the first to love back but
i could never hit you in the place you hit me,
never ever, we were in love, we loved, we cared
but i was never all the way in there,
and you pushed me to let you in as far as possible,
weaseled past all the pain, then disappeared,

drove to boston, you took me to the ocean,
we were already over, it was december but it was warm and windy,
that night we headed to cambridge to see the bosstones
and i ended up colouring your lips with my crayon kisses,
doodling outside the lines and dancing, skanking out the damage,
we were dressed up in our happy couple clothes
but pretending wasn't as fun as i remembered,

if i was born in ohio things might have been better,
if i lived there now we might be together
or maybe i'd never have met you on the internet
and i wouldn't have ended up at a red roof inn in a separate bed
trying to forget that we were 48 hours away from over,
drove to boston, i filled up the ocean
bay by bay but day by day it gets easier.

I am just plain ol' sad today. Maybe it has to do with the "this is why our relationship ended" conversation I had with Chris yesterday. Maybe it is because I waste my energy and my emotions and my life in general on things that are already over or never will happen. Hell, maybe it is hormones but I just seem to be getting more and more tired emotionally. Intellectually too.

My responses to things are so slow since coming off of that medication. When someone says something, the delay between hearing it and understanding it is huge. I usually try to say something before I fully understand it. Lately I have been getting deja vu, usually when I feel like I'm being attacked or abandoned and etc. I get so scared and panicky, but I can deal with my anxiety a lot better these days so it's really not too bad.

Really, I'm not too bad. Today is just not a good one for me.

FUCK MY LIFE! Note: Being able to actively speak about our situation in a metaphor does NOT help in liking him any less. >_<

lauren isn't susan says:
wanna know something that always bugged me?
Joshua says:
what?
lauren isn't susan says:
the way people look at marriage, and committment in general. I always looked at it as a way to have some stability and a person to live life with. To adventure with, not to lay on the couch and slowly fall in hate with.
lauren isn't susan says:
and when i'm in love, that's how it is. It grows and grows and grows and the other person distances farther and I'm stuck being all, "shit, i'm alone out here in the goddamn woods having fun and you're running back to camp."
lauren isn't susan says:
:P
lauren isn't susan says:
i was thinking about that for a long time today
Joshua says:
Lauren, im going back to camp befor we get any further into the woods, we can walk back together from here
lauren isn't susan says:
alright
Joshua says:
you understand?
lauren isn't susan says:
i do
Joshua says:
your to good a friend, to ever lay on a couch and fall in hate with
lauren isn't susan says:
i just wish we hadn't of hiked out so far
Joshua says:
Well im sorry we did, it was really special to me
lauren isn't susan says:
it was to me too
Joshua says:
im really glad!
Joshua says:
:>

My head and my heart are going to EXPLODE. Explode I tells ya!

I miss Chris.
I miss Chris, I miss visiting, his house and his family and his mom offering me strawberries. I miss talking, connecting, so much connection and knowing he'd be there tomorrow. It was never apathy, complacency, inertia for me. It was being in love everyday and wanting to be together everyday, at least for me. It was exciting until he stopped being excited. Until being called cute was going through the motions for him and it was what I felt for me. He broke my heart and I pulled away, he tried to make it better and it started to be, and he fell out of love finally and did it again for good.
And I look back and realize we weren't really that compatible, realize I didn't even like him that much the first time I met him. Now that I've met someone that I'm compatible with, I'm falling hard. Sex isn't helping. We fall asleep cuddled up and wake up the next morning amazed we actually slept the night together. That almost never happens. He's confused, as he should be. His relationship ended a week ago. Mine ended 3-4 months ago and I still get moments like now where I just ache from the mourning. But he said 'I love you' and that's tearing me entirely apart. I'm in the same spot as always, throw my heart all the way in and hope to god it works. Hope hope hope to god.
My hand is so empty and my throat is so dull from not talking and laughing.



How many times was "we should break up" on the tip of both of our tongues? How many times did we almost fight but instead I just cried and you apologized? How many times did I say "this is almost all I can take, I don't know if I'll be able to handle it again."? But I did because I thought it'd be different. I really, truly felt for so long you felt what I did. I believed you were the man I'd be forever with. But I could never hit you in the place you hit me. Never ever. We were in love, we loved, we cared but I was never all the way in there. And you pushed me to let you in as far as possible, weaseled past all the pain, then disappeared.