Well, this weekend I’m driving about 6 hours away to a different Northwest city to meet a good friend whom I’ve never seen in person–unless you count via our mutual friend’s webcam. Ah the age of the internet!
I started out hating the internet. As a late teenager, early twenty-something, I was pretty much a hippy. Plus, all I saw of the internet were dorm-mates wasting their time chatting in AOL chat rooms, while I was out meeting new people and experiencing the world of Berkeley. I did use email but very sporadically and I’d wax poetical about the evils of using the internet to have a social life. Now of course, I have two very good friends, both of whom I met on the internet.
So what happened? Well, I firmly believe in synchronicity, call it God, call it the Force, Fate, whatever. But somehow we all meet the people we need to meet no matter what and who knows, the internet may very well be that medium. Now, to my defense, I didn’t meet them in chat rooms. I met one, “Lionel” on World of Warcraft–neither of us play it anymore. I met the other “Carrie” on a poetry critiquing forum. Somehow, we all became fast friends.
Interestingly enough, my boyfriend at the time really befriended “Lionel” because he was younger and going through some tough times. “Lionel” even came to visit us. Then, after our poetry brought us together, “Carrie” was interested in meeting my other internet friend who lived in the same city she did. I introduced them via instant messaging and let’s just say the rest is history. Now when I visit them they have been sharing an apartment for the past year. It is really amazing though to be witnessing “Lionel” grow up via the internet.
Wake Up
comes the delayed call
shivering through oily swamp silt
eyes closed
sunlight, soft
sifted through a stained glass brown and blue.
I lick my lips,
moistness gathers a sweet sigh
-the mind gasps clenched pillows-
-the lungs inflate and deflate in exile-
tomorrow should be here today
but today,
hanging moss brushes my eyelids
lightly closed under a thin film of water and mud,
no need for breaths
my chest vacuums every impulse
until I’m crying at the lightning striking.
I want to feel your breath on my shoulder
I take an expedition into your eyes
and never return
I was recently introduced to the world of Japanese people who make homemade wind instruments out of vegetables and post videos of themselves playing them on youtube. Here is one that was too good not to share…
I roll over to jerk out another load
bored with another night
of vacant bed sheets.
It’d be interesting to say,
but I can’t.
because I don’t have loads to jerk.
But,
I have learned to see color when the bedroom lights go out
my life washed in hues of the places where my sheets have been
I’m never bored.
Instead I struggle to drown out former songs
to not see the same looming face.
I roll over to beguile another freight of trembles
because I’d rather have a different dream
and I never jerk
no, jerking is for those who hate their sighs of pleasure
embarrassed of what lies under the fig leaf.
I gently knead my dreams so soft gasps
chase me towards the muse
hiding from you
so that when the lights go out I can meet you on my own terms
hiding from you
so that the inside of my eyelids replay our first meeting.
If I look into your eyes for too long
an earthquake the size of 1904
travels down my vertebrae
until it reaches my entrails
That’s the stuff that’ll really start a fire
and so I must be wary.
Fire-starters need to be careful of the years of intensity that may follow
The Need is a powerful thing.
And so at night,
I lay watching the moonlight drift its arc across the window
with a dark landscape prey to my supremacy
I arrange my life along the current of my need
soothe the troubles
swell the pleasures
and in that shadowy scenery
I look into your eyes for too long
my temples pound
and unload another freight of trembles.
