#thebluevase

[thebluevase]

Sorry

The cry you heard

was me mistaking the bike in the stairwell

for some spook 

not an exclamation revealing 

schizoid tendencies 

although there is nothing wrong with that

considering modern medicine

and the fact that 

the ages of 18 to 25 are when such maladies manifest so

yes I could be a ripe plum of chemical imbalance

bursting with a chaos I don’t understand 

but regarding what you heard

I swear it was simply the bike in the stairwell 

as I did not expect it to be there.

[thebluevase]

"A Midnight Sun"

Sunset on the moon tonight

Our love feels as thin as the atmosphere there

Or am I talking too much

I don’t mean to talk too much

I want us warm the way we’ve been

Now chilly in the solar wind

 So lovely when you smile

So shy

You felt safe enough to orbit

Now safe enough to touch

And when we touch

Each landing softer than before

We drift away; light years and miles

And still you smile and smile

 But I can’t see you

I can’t see you in your eyes

And I can’t see me in your eyes

You pulled your visor down

 Your ultraviolet rays

Loving you’s left me in a haze

I try to burn myself away

Your gravity captures me again

And I see

We can’t live as one

Not with the blazing midnight sun

No shade, no rest, no relief

But beams beating down, down, down

On me

 Do you want me?

Have you gathered light enough to even see me?

I am waiting on you

Waiting, hoping needing this transmission to break through

 With my trajectory unsteady I've

Come to terms that there’s no life stuck in

This pathetic piece of tin

My warmth will fade out into space

 My mission failed, I spiral fast

No harness as I hurtle past

The galaxy, neblula, neighborhood,

And now back at your front door

  No

 Refuse the orders sent from ground control

Took my body you won’t take my soul

It flies free from thrusters and rockets

not even your collapse could pull me back in

And from this height I see me and you anew

The asteroid storm you put me through

But my craters formed are beautiful

You’re so much smaller than a star

Smaller than what you think we are

 There’s no Sunset on the moon tonight

You have to choose between the side of dark or the light

Or else choose neither

I choose neither

 But I see you in the night aglow

Half of you shines but we both know

You’re cold there in the sky alone

Your atmosphere just wouldn’t form

My supernova couldn’t warm

We drift further now

As the universe expands

Goodbye my moon

[thebluevase]

and you wake up with spider bites too

bringing in the i-beams, making the frame

to keep everything supporting everything

fingers twitching steadily on plastic,

vain mouth for a backhand praise, an obvious booster

but enough about more of the same how about when

  entering the house using a phone’s flashlight

finding the six-toed cat, patched and scabbed

wading through the clothes like dead swamp

vegetation like you do to get to your desk now isn’t that right

and stopping when your cousin says to wait

and examining the ground and declaring there are

fleas, everyone out.

everyone out.

  no food, a mess but no food and the teabag

rots away in the mug by the other mug empty

still unclean.  

one jumped off your arm in the grocery store parking lot

disgusting it was intolerable and your cousin she kept on

“I had no idea.”

and the

“No wonder, it’s no wonder they are both always sick.”

  your fingers can twitch and bring as much

sustenance and energy as you think you need

  but your cough is getting worse

  and the clothes have piled and you don’t

know where it is when you need it NOW

  pleasing people, delighting friends isn’t the same as

helping those you love

butohwell you don’t need to do that slip away go

  no, no good job working on

              you

and I can see you’re really working here

what

with the daily ingest of dust and dry air

avoidable this was all avoidable and you didn’t have to lose her

but you might have

[thebluevase]

Journaling

I listened to music as a child

and teenager that would make me 

Feel

                  Dependent on Thom Yorke and Isaac Brock 

to understand depression in my friends and girlfriends 

and to be easy when they cut 

themselves and make themselves vomit

                     to be understanding when they told me,

An emotional gimp

that they tried to kill themselves

                      and that’s okay

                  Today I listened to a happy song

and I cried

           I still feel false but it feels better

[thebluevase]

Sunset on the Interstate

With the old man quiet, I’m able to keep calm.

My arm hangs out the passenger side window- I focus on how red the world is now.

The sun against the rocks in Arizona, looks like god turned on a blazer of a neon light with a black strip of highway run right through.

The gray-haired man adjusts his kevlar vest and taps the ash of his cigarette out his window.

"What you’re going to see," he says "Is a man. ‘Bout forty, white." He paused. "Mustache. Driving a ‘74 state trooper Javelin."

My heart asserted itself as the jackhammer it was when we first drove out here.

The sun was further gone now, streaks of pink and red across the few clouds out.

He took a drag. " ‘Cept he ‘aint no man." He turned his head to look at me.

I kept my eyes on the sunset.

"Once he starts on you, he won’t stop 'till you're off the road, and then …”

I’ve been debriefed, and the world is red.

You hope it’s quick when he gets you, and the sky is closing up in fire and light.

He laughs, once, short. "Most folk would take a bullet before they meet Ol” Smokey.”

Bodies found, torn apart, raped, the exterior totaled, the inside burned,

and the fire in the sky has gone out.

The Native Americans around these parts will warn you to stay inside as the sun goes down. Stay away from the mountains and the highways.

He says, "Shapeshifters had the Navajo spooked since they first settled down in the desert. Sometimes they will take the shape of a friend, sometimes an enemy. Sometimes an enemy with the face of a friend." 

He takes a drag. 

"I don't know if that's what our Smokey is. A devil or maybe a shapeshifter who took the face of a lawman and.. Just got stuck."

The old man throws his cigarette out the window and starts the car.

Our job is to be the bait for him. For it. We keep running until sunrise to keep it busy.

The last beam of light peters out behind us.

On the road, it’s us, our headlights, and the yellow line.

A half-hour gone to the night now, it’s almost soothing, the silence. Then

behind us, the red and blue lights pierce as the siren blares.

The old man accelerates. "Here we go. Hold on"

I turn to see the car chasing us, windshield broken, hood dented to hell and the man- the thing driving.

I don’t see much, but I do see the mouth. No lips or teeth, just a black hole.

The radio crackles to life on its own, suddenly blaring a sound that comes from the black heart of some alien hell that men were never supposed to hear, a mutilated voice shouting out through our stereo :

"RUN, BITCH."

"RUN."

[thebluevase]

driving back from the party where you laughed twice

you complain about a mosquito bite between your fingers

and I know you've been unhappy enough for it to ruin your day.

I don't need to take my eyes off the road to see your brow

dug into itself, your lips tight and bitten as if to say

"I love you enough to share my depression shit with you."

I say I'm sorry as I communicate only in apologies.

maybe you didn't want any response or

maybe you were looking for me to say something real and

I fucked it up again .

who knows.

all I know is

I could listen to you complain about a mosquito bite between your fingers

for hours. 

[thebluevase]

40 Grit

               No cartoon retching sounds for Kasey behind the bathroom door, only the slight glottal resistance before the whiskey splashes into the toilet. I sit cross-legged on her bed, gripping my feet in my hands as I hear her spit, flush, cough, water-wash, spit, and clear her throat, ready to open the door and reenter the bedroom. Kasey wobbles high in the doorway. I know she is looking at me but I won’t return the look.  I know she is looking at me but I will not lock my eyes with the vessel-burst blues buried in her sunken head. I stare at the falling waistband of her jeans, where her hands hang, shaking. She won’t stop wearing her people clothes, her Kasey-clothes, her shadow, mascara, and winged liner now vague and wet around her eyes and cheeks-

               “Shut the fuck up.” says Kasey to me. I’ve been looking back into her face for some seconds now.  She holds my gaze for another shaky inhale before walking forward to the bed. My mentor, my sexual standard and idol, my tall, beautiful friend, is very sick. She reaches for the bed, and bends down to sit as if her skin were at risk for tearing. I take this opportunity to stare at her pale, bald head. She sits and breathes very carefully, mouth open. She glances at the picked-it-up-cheap bottle of sour mash on her bedside table passively before suddenly swiping it onto her carpeted floor. I start, but it doesn’t break; a solid bottle.  She says, “I don’t care if I can’t keep food down. But fuck this.” She pushes the bottle away with her foot. “Fuck you.” she says to the whiskey.

               We sit in silence for a minute. I cannot speak. Kasey allows herself to fall to her right, away from me. She stretches her legs out, depositing her right foot into my lap. Kasey grimaces and reaches blindly at her back with her left hand. She lifts her shirt up. She inhales sharply through her teeth, then shoots the air back out. “Look.” She says.  Since I met her when I was 14, I dreamed about seeing Kasey’s breasts. Small, but as energetic as Kasey’s mind and mouth was. I didn’t masturbate to the marbled pink lines that stole her nipples and shape from her. Scarred and beautiful still, but not sexual.

               “They burned me.” She points between her breasts, where the skin is cooked red. Kasey takes another loud, tired breath. Her arm hovers for another moment before dropping, her hand still stuck inside her shirt. Is she waiting for a response from me? What the fuck am I supposed to say here? I guess I take too long, as Kasey grunts and rolls onto her back, looking up, though the ceiling and our lives.

               Her voice is sandpaper, 40 grit: “I never tan. Only burn. You know, with enough radiation you can get a tan. Did you know that? I spent all of last night on the ‘cause of death’ page of the Chernobyl site. A nuclear tan.” She lifts her perfect head slightly, folding her neck-skin around her chin to look at me. “And that’s from being wet- soaked with the irradiated water and steam.”  She continues to look at me. She drops her head. “I don’t have it as bad as they did. The ones with the tans went quick. The ones that survived died soon after, in agony.” A pause. My face is stuck fast. I cannot look away but I cannot connect.

               “I can’t stop thinking about the people who got the low dose, the slow death. It says one in four died before forty, and they all had to recover from the exposure. And here I am, exchanging their death for mine.” I don’t follow what she is saying, but every time she says “death” my eyes wet. Her foot has begun rubbing my knee. She is silent for a spell. “Now that I think about it more, it’s all cancer, so it’s probably the same death. And I’m not getting radiation poisoning.” I look at her eyes behind her sharp nose pointed up. They are wet too and getting worse. “I didn’t think that through all the way. It’s an incomplete metaphor. I don’t know what I was doing.” I can hear the fluid rushing to her nose as she talks. She sniffs once and punches the bed weakly. “Fuck.”

                 The floodgates of my mind and heart burst at that. I uncoil myself from my sitting position and lay myself down directly behind Kasey.  I reach around her, holding on tight, connecting her to me through our bones and meat. She is full-on sobbing now. I can tell she’s trying to be quiet, but she is doing a bad job. I kiss her on the back of her sweet, bald head. She sniffs once, hard and says through her galloping voice, “Watch out for my tits.” I still cannot speak, so I press my forehead against the back of her skull and close my eyes.

                 I breathe big gulps of air so she feels my expanding diaphragm against her back. Eventually her shuddering lungs slow and accept the tempo of my own.  I can still hear her breathing heavily through her mouth, but her energy is gone again. I swallowed it up. I feel her place my hand around my own atop her rib cage. She slides her fingers in easily through mine. Now I feel her eyes close and her body join mine together in the world. She’s swimming alone through the poison and dirt in her blood, but I am with her today.

                                          I’m with her now.