Captain Smellycrotch!

dear livejournal,

a lot of people call me max nowadays. i tell them it is short for maguire, which is a bit of a stretch, but who cares. i sell coffee four or five days a week, along with assorted pastries and the occasional mug. The mugs are ugly and advertise the corporate chain i work for. For a while all i dreamed about was my job; pulling espresso shots, steaming milk, wiping down counters, pouring drip coffee. Now that i am working less than full time my dreams have been changing shape, growing long and watery with a strange emphasis on details and the smallest actions. And they never happen in the places i live in.

Admittedly, i spend too many of my waking hours with a boy named daniel who already has a girlfriend in portland, oregon. when i'm bored i spy on her via myspace because that is appropriately creepy. in the near future i would like to see more of: Garth, Alan, Kevin, Micah, the ocean. i always miss julia and molly and timothy and andrew and anna and kimi and alessandra, but i can't see them any sooner than their return from college permits. i would also like to hang out with someone who has a vagina, for once.

For christmas i'd like a wide-angle lens, a new pair of shoes, a sewing machine, and a bus pass. Oh, and birth control, because i hear that stuff's the shit.

Last night i attended my first ever party with co-workers and learned many interesting things about them. for example, althogh max is red-headed, he is jewish, and is okay with jokes about throwing him in the toaster oven at work. My manager, Tiffany, has slept with someone younger than her. Amanda has never cheated on a boyfriend. Troy is not actually male. My co-workers all learned that i've dated someone ten years older than me. It was fun. Lauren and i finished two bottles of wine, and then i fell asleep on the couch. in the morning i discovered that my car had been towed. Then i ate waffles with strawberries.

That, dear livejournal, is all.
kthx.

p.s. i finally met marina over thanksgiving break. she's swell. i met mikl, too. he smoked me out and got me drunk in a hotel room in San Luis Obispo with julia and rosa. although mostly we made rosa sit in the car. because she's a dog.

we woke up this morning and discussed the violent deaths of small cuddly animals we have known. and then laughed until we cried. the best/worst one being the parakeet that flew into a CEILING FAN.

By the way, i'm in new york city until friday.

i feel like rotten teeth. really rotten ones.

JULIA WHAT IS GOING ON WHEN DID YOU START DRINKING COFFEE?!

ahem.

there are a handful of you out there to whom i owe a ring on the telephone. please do not feel neglected. rather, think of yourselves like little stars trying to blink through the smog of my brain, which is thick at the moment, and know that you are such shiny happy people in my life that i will eventually see the light and call you.

err. yeah.

i was trying to explain this to someone when it started making sense
that there is this song inside of me
not even a song a single note a resonance
a frequency like a small, cool hand on a fever
the ring of a bell there is a bell
there is a bell inside of me
that hardly ever rings.
that's what it is, a bell
that will not make a sound.

if you could build a plant out of fire,
so that it blooms chinese dragons
in the springtime
amongst all the slippers
and hearts and shyness of your
garden, and then darkens
just as quickly into smoke and
sorrow before taking one final shape
some afternoon in july,
if you could do this,
and look into the smoke,
even while the insects rise from the grass,
and your girlfriend is calling to you,
and the vegetables burn in their foil baskets
(having been part of your barbecue plans),
engaged as they all are in daily life,
engaged as if by contract,
if you could look into that smoke
with a steady gaze
before walking away,
i would let you go.

Alex dancing on the hardwood to punk rock and
tim leaning over to whisper, ‘you break his heart,
I’ll break your face,’ before lifting me in his arms
and tripping into the kitchen, setting me down
between fridge and sink. There are no shot glasses
so he fills a juice cup with Jim Beam and we throw
back the amber in turns. We can feel the fire bloom
inside us, soft explosion after soft explosion, the
muted action film feel of it, the flowery danger of
it all replaying in our bodies, reels turning
sluggishly in our hearts and heads.
‘You don’t have to drive to the airport,’
tim insists. Grabbing me, we dance a little dance
to david bowie and canter into the living room to
rejoin alex and molly. We sing and scream and take
cigarette breaks on the porch. Alex leaves the door
open and his music leaks into neighboring yards,
into the feathers of their dead grass, into their cars
as they drive by and stare. We pretend I don’t have
to leave. Or maybe it’s just me. Even as I slip on
my shoes, my purse, even as I kiss my friends’ faces,
I want to stay. Alex walks me to my car and tells
me about my eyes. He asks if he can call me and I
laugh. I don’t tell him that in my phonebook his
number is listed under ‘!!!!!’.

two bowls of soup
paint in the fingernails
chuck berry on the stereo



I feel unbearably fortunate. I bought gasoline and cocoa today and didn’t spend a cent.

nich
interstate 5 (heading north)
august

.

i talked with this crazy cat yesterday.
i was delirious and ill, he was in texas.
our situations evened out, mostly.

at the bookstore, molly says: Why are lust and envy so very far apart?

while drawing birds with crayons, julia says: have cornflowers always been blue?

when asking my mother to be quiet, my father says: Let's play the Thomas Merton game. the first one to speak
gets electrocuted.




.

gasworks park after a concert
october

east calhoun street
august 2004

jubee's gestures
wailea, maui
september

andrew illuminated in his dormitory
burlington, vermont
september

I wish the whole world was blind for a day. just a day, so that we could only see as far as one another’s laughter. just a day, so that we had time to appreciate but not to quantify.

It would be long enough for people on the street, in passing, to clutch each other by the arms and ask how they feel in the deep fields of their muscles, in their lapping beds of blood.

No one would look to the sky to talk about the weather. they would feel a stranger’s fingertips instead. and then they would begin to understand calluses, and ache.

In greeting, we would kiss shoulders and earlobes, the arches of feet. in eating, we’d give up on utensils altogether. in sleep, we would draw in close like the folds of a gathered curtain, an analog of heat.

Then, when everyone is tangled and whispering, we’d discover the true meaning of our lips, how sensitive they are and how much more alerts them, and we’d forget that kissing was ever forbidden or private.

And finally, when we wake up, we will look around at where sleep has landed us and realize the identity of our hearts is not as a scarlet bird under the bone, but as a small, sweet fruit hemmed by its own skin and longing.

To Messieurs Alan Hui-Bon-Hoa and Conor Lowe: You are my two favorite boys in the entire world.

why do we cry?