this box of secrets

poems ‘n stuff # echo “” > /dev/null

[brainshivers]

ghost stories

If I had to write you a letter would I know to whom I should address it Or where, even, it should be sent Because I don’t recognize this person now and have no clue where you went. Was it all a case of mistaken identity Or have you changed your face, your voice? I could have listened to you talk for hours About topics that flew above my head For I was interested in what moved your…

View On WordPress

[brainshivers]

[laughter]

everything is in the past tense nowthe way i think about the worldthin, dusty spines of Memories bookended by tragedy or accidentA whole closet full of Moments that i don’t know what to do with anymore everything is in the past tense nowthe things we liked and loved, and saidthe Future we imagined, the plans we madeand it’s now the utter silliness of promising anything – to anyone,even yourself…

View On WordPress

[brainshivers]

Phases

I look up in the sky and see a waxing gibbous

And I know:

I’ve looked up the phases of the moon and what they mean

Parsing out the spaces between our ‘love you’s’ and (last) goodbyes

Finding common ground on a distant rock I know you look up to – because you can’t help but –

Did you know that when the depths of the deeper moon move, they’re called moonquakes?

These are only some of the things…

View On WordPress

[brainshivers]

Auras and Ouroboroses

Our words spill from open broaches

Your breasts – and mine- tumble from their lockers, and

I am into you in a big and unfortunate way.

Off the flattering of a cornflake in some space, I am still present somehow?

A misreflection of the both of you together: well, a reflection of the two apart gives me, plain, the starts.

And we meet on subtitled plains, cracking hilarity from the very air that…

View On WordPress

[brainshivers]

Rain

Every time you leave this town I love you more

Every time you leave, you leave — and it rains:

Like the first time our lips found each the other’s in the dark, beneath the stochastic, yet tender, roilings of a thunderstorm’s lower half, broken into two and imbued with such gravity and nuance that the moment became holy, laid out behind us — and ahead— something prophesied by the ones before,…

View On WordPress

[brainshivers]

Blue eyes, roses: an ode in loose fiction

“I still do things because of you - you diffused into my routine, my decision trees (I still do things for you, even if you aren’t around to notice - you wouldn’t appreciate these things that I do; with your priorities and grievances , the salient remains of who I was to you have not faded so much as degraded - not with time, but with words and the disgust that comes, part and parcel with them; my words were something of another world: not only do I not remember their speaking, I don’t remember the person who would say those things — to anyone)
 
I wrote missives apologizing for events I couldn’t - and can’t - recall, and I wrote pages apologizing for those words, thick-bundled folds of paper that I mailed and e-mailed [and wrote in the margins of the library books I did return, chalk outlines in the shape of my thoughts, the meaning of the words. Sometimes I left copies in the mailboxes of strangers just so I wouldn’t be alone with the finite and imperfect syllabic runoff, so that I wouldn’t be the one with those pages, so that at least one person might begin the preface and set it down, or no.


I never went to you, i never followed. I saw you sometimes and never approached out of respect for the brief lines you gave me. I didn’t want forgiveness: only to wholly and sincerely acknowledge the acerbic screens I filled and the ghastly, glowing screens of digital dots that lit, in part, the contours of the face I lost....

I realize now, half a year, most of two seasons later, there are no and never will be words to account for what I did to you, and the length and breadth and venom soaked into the words I forced upon you for so long were salt, vinegar, lemon, acid - lye, even - in the wound. I chose myself over you and didn’t see it. I saw waking up in the morning and feeling like I didn’t belong, like I wasn’t worth anything: and I hurt, tremendously, the world all filled with sharp and spiny edges, my outsides like the bubbles in a kitchen sink. I chose myself - selfish, navel-gazing, narcissism, cloaked in the guise of ‘real, Serious Problems’ that required oblivion, obliteration...”

“You will always be in my memory, reminding me what to choose”: a past history

[brainshivers]

octopuses

How to describe a painting of an octopus

Given by a love long deceased?

How can one transcribe time’s etchings and murals

Without the meaning left so... bleak?

Are these references without etiquette or rhyme?

Perhaps.

— Or are my porpoises too unique?

View On WordPress

[brainshivers]

Searching

I still go out at night, searching

Looking for the last vestige of something I know I’ll never find

You are dead or, I am dead to you

But I talk to you in bed, in the hidden spaces

Of the places you’ll never see.

I remember everything

And each day must become a testament to

All that I remember, fault lines in view,

Destined for the death I was not ready for

But brought to bear all the same.

I am…

View On WordPress

[brainshivers]

Pea Coat

I only wear dead men’s clothes

He died with me in the back seat

And my mother picked me up at the police station

This coat is too big for me

A jacket that I’ll never fill

But stories flesh out garments

And give them weight, heft, and meaning

Like Oxford commas and bad poetry

View On WordPress

[brainshivers]

Freudian Slips

I have these dreams lately

Where I am chasing dogs whose names I do not remember

They keep changing and I keep chasing

Always destined, this next home is the one

It reminds me of dreams I had as a child awake In Los Angeles

Always stepping out of bed to the sounds of bent aluminum

And later I would step from my bed and those beautiful sounds would follow me along

The clinking was like music to…

View On WordPress

[brainshivers]

Linger

This other side of the country I’d never be on,

Let alone see breathe again or – bloom, again.

Alone, here I wander, along streets all bricked unfamiliar

On feet that aren’t so fleet footed anymore,

From room, to room – I’ve felt snow,

I now know – and yet,

This lack: what then, what now?

  History that runs along in currents I cannot wonder what

these memories used to mean, the people, borne of…

View On WordPress

[brainshivers]

Illuminations #fire #camping #slomo (at Burnham, Maine)

[brainshivers]

#2017bestnine #2017 #newyear #newyearseve #tbt #happynewyear #happynewyear2017 (at Guilford, Connecticut)

[brainshivers]

Vibes man #vibes #iphonex #portland #lights #pretty (at Portland, Maine)

[brainshivers]

"Falling ice and snow"

Something I never agreed to

Holidays spent cross country

Something I thought I was done with in twelfth grade

I sold my shoes: thought I was finished

gloves and boots

And things that are unnecessary

Cold hands and one way streets

bumper stickers that border on gauche

I burnt a whole in my glove, now how will I stay warm

I can't feel anything and how will I ladle l make it to spring, which I hear is not much better

The West coast is speaking

and i hear it every night

I'm not in love yet

But I will be soon

speak to me Allah, budda, and other gods

Tell me what to do

[brainshivers]

I’m dreaming of a spooky #Christmas #portland #holidays #winter (at Portland, Maine)

[brainshivers]

Look at all these #vibes @angelolsenmusic #music (at State Theatre, Portland, Maine)