letters_to_no_one chairs missing i carry your words with me like spare knives, stabbing out impressions, prying dirt from fingernails with the tip of the cleanest blade. i press the grind against my chest to feel you there, on a bed of fire, paper-fed. you'll crawl under these covers once i've gone, to sleep beneath heavy ash and an unlit prayer. 121215 ... chairs missing i will follow you through a field with no clear entrance or exit path, just close enough to keep up, sidestepping twigs poised to break like spring-loaded traps left for my uncertain feet. a slow-motion chase free of any urgency or menace. you'll come to a tree you like the look of. you'll stop, tilt your head to the side, assess its qualities, before scaling its thick, knotted body. you'll climb into a nest made of copper wire, and sit. an audience of one. i'll unhook the stars, tying each one to a piece of string, and puppeteer the night sky. 121216 ... chairs missing you're singing a long-distance lullaby, but your lips don't move at all. i can almost feel the thrum of your throat, like the slow beating of an underwater heart. 121217 ... chairs missing everyone should have a coat for all seasons. something they can wear in any kind of weather, almost as an extension of their personality. it took a while to find mine. i've had it now for, what, fifteen years? if my coat were a person, it could be said that it's aging gracefully. growing into itself. it'll probably age better than i will in the years ahead. no greying around the temples. just the odd line or crease to give it character. a careworn and rugged face. the only real wear up to this point has been to the pockets. there's a hole in the right one large enough for half my fingers to fit through. it would be an easy enough fix, but there's something comforting about not being restricted by the fabric. so i leave that scar alone. i hope you have such a coat, that you can drape around your shoulders and take with you wherever you go. an old friend to double as a shield against the elements. 121218 ... chairs missing my wounds have almost healed. i'm waiting for the last of the scratches to fade, so i can be bloodied again and born anew, in the cold arms of shame, or the soft crook of your neck. 121219 ... chairs missing i hear in my dreams what you say in your sleep. 121220 ... chairs missing we're still here. the world didn't end. but if it had, what would you want to come back as? i think i would be water. i could travel almost anywhere, if conditions allowed. i could be clean. i could be polluted. i could be freezing cold. i could be frozen. or i could be scalding hot. boiling. a dangerous pool. i could be all alone, or part of something much bigger than myself. i could evaporate. i could be the leak in your roof. the hail that pours down like manic confetti. the light mist of rain in your hair. one element of the broth in your soup. the first drink when you wake up, and the last one before you fall into sleep. but right now, i would be snow. is it snowing where you are? i picture you sitting alone in a small café, warming your fingers with hot liquid hugged by bone china. a book of poems on the table, with a ribbon bookmark sewn in. a private smile parting your lips. 121221 ... chairs missing your teeth are copper rose head nails. i hold a few in my hand and lose myself in the ridges. how do you eat without biting your lip? 121226 ... chairs missing if_clouds_had_eyes, what do you think they would feel about what they see? i think they would be equal parts amazed and horrified. maybe that's the real reason they douse us with water. not the scientific reason, but the emotional one. maybe they see more than we think. 121231 ... chairs missing we are blank canvases, and we are the artists who paint ourselves. here are new brushes. here is new paint. here is last year's painting. i am rolling a boulder up the side of a mountain and all the springs in my back are popping as if my body were a bed tasked with holding too many careless lovers with too much meat on their bones. the mattress dips and bends but will not break. i keep straining and pushing, my eyes filled with sun and sweat. i want to see what's waiting for me at the top. i wonder what yours looks like. 121231 ... chairs missing sometimes i feel like a gut-loaded cricket, fattened up just to become food for a larger animal. i'll keep singing anyway. what else is there to do? 130102 ... chairs missing if my fear don't make me weak, i've a secret you can keep. i'll wrap it in wax paper and leave it on your doorstep with a note that says, "not to be shared." it's not a gift, understand, but an offering to be abandoned when you can't find a place for it. 130103 ... chairs missing timing isn't everything, but it can be the most interesting and slippery of things. sometimes you fall and break your leg. other times you steady yourself and engage in a little unintentional aerial ballet, amazed at how graceful your body can be. maybe you even glide past another accidental dancer while you're airborne. or maybe nothing happens at all. timing isn't everything, but it's one more thing worth keeping in mind. 130105 ... chairs missing you should see the way the light hits the snow here just as the sun is going down. it's like a quiet kiss from the fading sky. sleepy and slow, but no less meaningful for it. 130108 ... chairs missing something grows inside of us in the dark embrace of studied silence, when we ruminate on all that we are and all we've yet to be. i cannot bridge the gap between where i am and where you are. something compels me to try, knowing the futility of it. i turn my back to the nobility of failure, bloody my feet on the twisted stones of self-abasement, wade backward through a river of damaged hope, and reach the other shore, where something waits for me that my mind doesn't yet have a name for. there's something you've written that's carried on the wind. if i wait here long enough and listen, maybe i can parse it out. 130110 ... chairs missing we sing for our supper; birds sing just to hear a song. 130115 ... chairs missing words are tender constructs. they can caress. they can attack. they can seduce a smile. they can force tears from your eyes. they can follow close behind you without being calling attention to themselves. they can frighten with the force of their need. they can be gentle and insinuating, all soft edges and smooth, clear lines. they can cut right through you. jagged. thoughtless. they can lead you anywhere your mind can follow. they can turn against you. they can desert you when you need them most. they can show you who you really are. they can trip over themselves. halting. uncertain. or they can flood you with a rush of unbridled energy and invention. there isn't much they can't do, except wrap their arms around you. but if i could, i would make a body of my words, and i would hold close you the whole night through. 130119 ... chairs missing they can also get tangled together in your mind and lead to sentence fragments with personality disorders. being calling. floating falling. some words make you wish you could watch the blood drain from their bodies while screaming and spraying their faces with spit. 130119 ... chairs missing and they can taunt you with fuck-ups like "hold close you". motherfucker. i give up. 130119 ... chairs missing i wish i could say i was drunk when i tripped over those words. some days nothing you try to say comes out right. there's a roadblock between the heartmind and the mouth, and no construction signs to warn you of the detour ahead. you aren't aware anything's amiss until you find yourself spinning your tires in a ditch. i always thought those two words carried a lot of meaning for all the casual, innocuous use they get. "find yourself". you might find yourself. you might not. and what if you don't? what then? today i am a grey sky belching gold smoke, conjuring a fine mist for you to get lost in. walk around a while. you might find yourself. 130121 ... chairs missing you keep having this dream while you're awake. you stand on a moving sidewalk. a slow crawl in a straight line, with no beginning or end. though you're always in motion, there's no sense of any forward momentum. no feeling that you're ever going to arrive anywhere. no feeling that there's anywhere to get to. the same bland scenery keeps repeating on the periphery. cardboard and plastic, garish in its artifice. each night before sleep comes, you fall into the jaws of hell. alone. afraid. in the morning, you chew through the belly of the beast and emerge, bleary-eyed and caked in grime, to do it all over again. after what feels like a lifetime, you notice someone standing beside you. an ally. a confidante. a companion. you share your secrets with them. you come to trust and depend on them. just when it seems like you might be getting somewhere and the backdrop has taken on a modicum of realism, your companion sticks a knife in your gut and steps off of the moving sidewalk. you watch them disappear while blood pools between your fingers. the cycle repeats. each companion leaves you in the same way. each time, you expect to die. each time, scar tissue forms in place of the wound fast enough to stop the bleeding. each time, there's a little less left of you. you never die. 130122 ... unhinged blather 130122 ... chairs missing hungry_ghosts are moaning at my door. i'll gnaw at their fingers until they lose their nerve. even ghosts must have a threshold of pain. 130123 ... chairs missing something is made from those dark, soft parts that resist being named, as silent architects work under cover of night, building a world inside your eyelids. i want to walk around see what you see. 130124 ... correction (i want to walk around *and* see what you see). 130124 ... chairs missing words are still getting away from my fingers. the brain seems to think it's providing a service by filling in the missing pieces, when really it has its editorial duties confused. i think it needs a soft spanking, or a hard talking-to. 130124 ... chairs missing a fractured love is really only bruised — not impossible to repair. a little skin from over there is lifted to fill in what's missing over here. a little tape and glue judiciously applied. some evidence of tampering may show in the unforgiving light of day, and it'll never be good as new, but it should pass for "socially acceptable" without much trouble. how do you heal what's wounded in you? i'm more into tape, myself. less residue that way. and less margin for error, because anything you do can immediately be undone and then done again. 130125 ... chairs missing whenever there's a full moon where you are, no moon is visible here at all. funny, isn't it? looking at the moon always makes me feel like i'm awake_and_dreaming. i stare at the satellite's glow, and it stares back at me, never betraying a hint of emotion. the moon has a perfect poker face. smooth, unblemished, and implacable. 130126 ... chairs missing fall into soft arms like the slow setting of a tired sun. listen to the band play one more song before last call. set your drink down and let the glass sweat a hollow circle onto the table. don't sit. stand and sway. move the way you'd speak if you knew the words you wanted to say. 130127 ... chairs missing i am looking for that place where pain mushrooms into something deeper and more interesting. pure intensity. it's less of a need, and more of a want. which, of course, makes it all the more difficult to ignore. maybe you can take_me there. all my bags are packed. 130128 ... chairs missing time to trim my talons, lest i deal damage to someone not deserving. lest i slit my wrists with my own protein, unaware, while deep in dusk's embrace. and who are you to say it should be any different? who are you to coax me into attempted flight with wings ill-equipped to support my weight? your plumage is a brilliant distraction, but you're just as tied to the earth as i am. so walk with me, and we'll see what we'll see. 130201 ... chairs missing i am holding onto minutes and hours that break down and slip through my fingers, not like sand, but like white pills crushed into uneven powder. what falls to the floor, you suck through a long straw. stealing moments. stealing time i can never have back. the moments that belong to you have taken on another form not so easily intercepted. 130202 ... chairs missing turn to a dog-eared page you haven't seen in a while and try to imagine a coffee stain that isn't really there. an imperfection to give the paper some character, since the story itself holds no surprises for you. maybe the real story isn't in the words, but in the physical characteristics of the thing. the musty smell. the smooth feel of the thick spine against cold fingertips. the way pages turning can sound like lazy feet dragging themselves across carpet. the black ink that's started to fade with age. the inscription written inside the front cover: "this_is_who_you_are." i'd like to borrow that book when you've finished with it, if you don't mind. 130204 ... chairs missing this book is written in a language i don't understand. i can say the words out loud, and my pronunciation sounds authentic, but i have no idea what it is i'm saying. though i'll never be entirely fluent, maybe you can teach me just enough of the rudiments to enable me to work out the most salient bits. 130205 ... chairs missing your breath makes vapour trails in the cold morning air. you like to pretend you're expelling smoke from somewhere deep inside your lungs, but it's your eyes that are blazing. that's where the fire is. that's what keeps me warm. 130207 ... chairs missing you walk like you have no idea where you're going, but you're not troubled by the absence of a clear destination. you'll know where you're meant to be when you get there. the world will tell itself to you in a voice as comforting as it is unfamiliar, palatal consonants leading you to the next fork in the endless dirt road that is your life while dust stains your shoes, making them old before their time. i'd suggest which path to take, but that would defeat the purpose. it's something you need to decide for yourself. 130210 ... chairs missing i want to sit with you beneath revolutionary_skies and watch as their conflict plays out above and around us. i don't care which side wins; i just want to see some action. you should bring your camera. preserve the aftermath. 130211 ... chairs missing falling_down is difficult to do with style. we're always hoping no one sees us in our clumsiest moments. but it's in those moments that we reveal who we really are. 130226 ... chairs missing we invent words and expressions to better articulate our thoughts. we take the language we grew up speaking, and twist it into something more distinctive. it's not code, but an invitation into a private club. and if you're denied entry into mine, you can always open your own. someone is bound to stop by. 130302 ... chairs missing moss has made a carpet on the small, smooth stone that is your heart. 130311 ... chairs missing a heated piece of metal makes an improvised blade, slicing through my butter heart, cleaving it in two. in time it will heal, and the scar that's left behind will form a crooked grin. if you want to see me smiling, all you have to do is open up my chest. 130322 ... chairs missing so yours is strong enough to be used as a weapon, while mine will melt if exposed to any significant heat. hearts are funny things. 130322 ... chairs missing i am writing love_letters_to_hate_you_by. i haven't finished the first sentence of the first letter yet. it's a long sentence. it veers off in many different directions and changes shape and tone at will. it could be a letter in its own right, but it's only a sentence. it's just the door you walk through before you know where you're going. 130402 ... chairs missing you made this deal with yourself, to paint over something you wrote. there's nothing wrong with adding a little colour to the room. but don't forget those words of yours. don't be afraid to let the paint peel so you can see remnants of the truth beneath it. your truth. the truth you made when you didn't think anyone was looking. 130412 ... chairs missing we'll climb out this window together. if i slip, i'll catch myself, so i can be ready to catch you. 130610 ... chairs missing there is one last unbent poison arrow in my quiver. i've got my eye on you. your eyes are busy living in their sockets, taking what they can, letting the images that can't be carried shimmer_and_fade, until they're just gone. 130731 ... chairs missing the blood of a plant to red your lips. cleaner dirt to bathe in. a slow train skating on a track of silt, unoccupied. these are things i have not seen but hope to see, before the long night that has no light. 140821 ... chairs missing i know i could find you falling down stairs if i searched the negatives for that film my mind made. not falling to hurt yourself. just falling to fall, to have something to recover from. 141212 ... chairs missing i made my own fortune. it was a strip of paper with nothing to fit inside of. it said: "hold your head firm to its hollow rod, and keep the swivel joint strong. this year won't take kindly to not being looked at dead-on." now you do yours. 150102 ... raze i really like some of the early things i wrote here, but man, those typos ... those things kill me. it's hard getting past them, even now. that's probably what i get for using a different name and trying to write in a different way. it was a worthwhile experiment, i think, but i was never able to find a good note to end on, and i still can't. really, the_nearest_thing_to_being_close feels like the ending that should have been. 150128 what's it to you? who go blather from