The Both of Them Boys Can't Quit

Ya might as well just leave me the fuck alone
I don't need your
I don't want your
I don't like your
So just quit.

are you sure it's not love

are you sure it's not love
when he's pumping inside me
when I come on his cock
are you sure it's not love?

cause my body deceives me
in the waves of my pleasure
she is screaming to me
this is love, this is love.

are you sure it's not love?
when we collapse together
our sweat intermingles
my hands in his hair

and our hearts beat together
now we need one another
forever united
are you sure it's not love?

god...

DAMN YOU mockingbird.
The fucking demon is back again
While I'm trying to sleep!

Trying to innocently
Peace here and your
nasty
stuttersong

Full to spilling over with mental disease
Teeming with schizomania and psychonarcissism

My fucking skin crawls
And I try to feel my heart

Beating hard under phantom ticks in my palm or on my chest

I hate the way you steal the night

Just out of sight
Of my uncle's shotgun.

Motherfuckingfucker.

Time to drag out the white noise.

Mockingbird How could you

Mockingbird
How could you

Sneak into my night
Under the guise of an innocent one
Just faded childhood memories

Disguised for a time as solace

Till you tire and
Cave.

Repetition falls to
Nightmare
You are mocking my black pain

Stuttersteps fall from your branch
Laced with nights next to him in this bed

The book open
His glasses on
It's his favorite story and
He is sharing it with me

My first time.

As you fucking forget common decency
Such as not ripping my heart out from your treetop stage tonight
He could be shooting anything in his veins

And how would I even know to attend his funeral?

Sing away you fuckwit
Careless
Cruel

What could it matter my heart lies pumping its last red onto the floor

You're a demon in the dark
And they call you
The innocent.

I'd kill you
Bastard
If it meant

Keeping dreams and hopes

alive.

springtime and the promise of an open fist.

Merciful mosquito
Peeper in the night rides the trainhorn to my bed
Huddled undercover
Fuck that heater
Daffodilio
My accessory
I am so delighted I burst into
Raucous laughter

All I know
I go to work with the sunrise

And isn't hope what the fuck I'm here for?

(A
Men.)

Where I'm From

Template from George Ella Lyons


I am from shallow creek beds
from snakes in the grass
and snappin' turtles
Won't let go til lightnin' strikes
I am from down in the valley
On Pine Valley Drive
Named by my father

And the inground pool, chosen over air conditioning when my parents sold the sailboat.

It felt like night coming on and settling between pine branches
It felt like heavy sobs
In trouble again and
Dad hits hard

It felt like recurring nightmares
That Catholic conscience wouldn't let me sleep
Felt like my sisters in the woods
The only place I wanted to be

I am from the garden
the sunflowers and little cherry tomatoes
Mom let us keep a plot
With a pinwheel
We would neglect to tend it
Weeds and dried out soil

I’m from the wintertrips to Florida
and odd sense of humor
from Anna Mae
and Marcella
and Bud, before suicide

I’m from the Miller good looks (we don't make ugly children)
and Catholic Republicans
From Whippoorwills that eat little girls
And I'll give you something to cry about
I'm from Saturday mass in the balcony courtesy Dad's social anxiety,
And God told me to knock the shit out of you the next time you don't say your prayers at dinner.

I’m from Germany, Germany, Germany, wieners and whiskey.
From the wooden leg of uncle so.and.so
the drugged and raped by their father at night.

Miller family reunions at the campgrounds in Ironton.
I am from rusted cobweb memories which are many better staying put. From the woods I came and to the woods alone I belong.
I am mother nature's child and hers alone.
I am.


Sarah Marie Miller
Berea, Ky

now.

and it was so sta-range
how you whirled the sound
the rushing sound
blood swirls
my brain
you speak in Reverse
counterclock the whirl
while time is stopped
for me
for me

my hand rests in yours
it's like first kiss
I don't want to move
I don't move to speak
want to tell you stop
saying over and over
how you can't be here
brother, you are here

as am i, breath held
to leave spell intact

and we linger on
do you dare to go?
do you dare to stay?
We deny ourselves
my heart and veins scream out
swirl their needy madness
rushing stops
my head on your heart
squeezing you so tight
telling myself not too tight

and you go.

Peel our energy off and escape
through the back

the downy fluff of my cat
carries
rose oil and unnameable you

we are together there.

happy freaking new year

new year, new you.

same as it ever was.




(but who's to say
who's to say i need any more than this.
these cats they love me
i mean really
really love me
and god knows you couldn't

god knows no one will
until i love myself.)

love, Lexington.

we are growing up together

we are creating one another

we are every abandoned building

circle splash streetlight

naive dream

we lie in the road together

horse fields surround

downtown at the horizon

we hold hands and laugh red into night sky

we share dearest friends

lovers

ex-lovers

apartments

space and time

beds and saliva

we walk dogs in pairs to the park

in fresh snow

to leave our angels in white shadow 

backlit naked trees

we fight with passion

call it off

pack up and move away

no matter, no mind

the Vortex brings us home

we find heartchips in the eyes of old dear friends

we sway to our rhythmic same same hearts

we strip and run screaming into backyard summer monsoon

the moon lights our eyes

we are light as feathers

we are free as birds

we knock on doors late, late, late

we are welcomed 

our vices at hand

we fly high holding onto eachother's dreams 

we collaborate to create

dreams alive

we get it

together

we are 

we are a cycle

a spiral of outward growing healing

we are

never answering our phones

we are

found in the streets we are

never really at goodbye

we are family.

forever gratitude, Lexington.

i am you

you are me

we are one.

summer 2005.

i had totaled my car and i needed a ride home from the drawing class i worked as a model for. you were the professor. you offered to take me home. i said yes. you offered to take me to pazzo's pizza before taking me home, and i agreed. you ordered a pitcher of beer. i thought that was cool because i'd never had beer in a restaurant before. i was 19.
you said you felt it your job to protect the models from 'looky-loo's,' men who tried to sneak peeks of the naked girls when they weren't even in the class. i felt safe with you. you were funny too. you offered to burn me a CD of music from a band whose song i'd played during a class you were monitoring for. i said ok, and you took me to your shitty university-provided apartment, to burn it for me.

you offered me a beer from your fridge. i was sitting on your couch in this tiny one room apartment. the couch also functioned as your bed. i see the CD on the table with your messy handwriting on it. i see your big white computer monitor across the room on a table.


then i black out.

then i woke up. you were on top of me, you were kissing me. then i realized your fingers were inside of me.

i was panicked. like WTF. i was never attracted to you. not even a little. i just wanted to get a ride home. you were nice and bought me beer. you had music i liked so that was cool. and wtf why am i asleep and why are you inside me.

those thoughts raced through, next second i am running with my cell phone out of your apartment down the block to the end of the complex. i hide behind a dumpster and dial all of my friends to come get me. nobody will answer. i am waiting out there for hours. finally an acquaintance whose number i had comes to get me. once he arrives i feel safe enough to run inside and grab my guitar - my most prized possession, and leave.

you called me several times after that. i was too mortified to speak. even when i finally answered, and you asked 'what did i do?'

i was too mortified to speak.



when i told ross zirkle, the head of drawing classes, that i could no longer model for any session you would be in, he understood. he said you would never again be in the same room as me while i was modeling nude.

i couldn't stand the thought of you
A) being in the same room as me and
B) having the privilege of seeing my naked body.


i didn't tell him what happened. i was too mortified to speak.

a year later ross got sick with cancer. he'd been teaching a woodblock printing class i was taking in the summer. i heard you were going to be the substitute for the rest of the year. the hell if i would be in your class. be in the same room as you. your disgusting demented drawings depicting yourself in portrait, the twisted garish features, with beautiful busty young women, had haunted me all summer already.

i went to ben withers, chair of the art department. i told him i could never be in the same room as you. i don't remember what i said, but i know i didn't make anything up to cover the truth. i didn't tell him what you did to me. i was too mortified to speak the truth.


it stayed under my conscious like a cancer for eight years. for a short time after it happened, it bobbed its nasty head when i would see you around the building. i was terrified of you. eventually i told a few friends what you did to me. i said you tried. to rape me. in my mind that was all it was. an attempted rape. if i hadn't woken up of course you'dve gotten your dick in me. i woke up just in the nick of time. what the hell were you doing trying to get with me while i was asleep anyhow... and why the hell was i asleep?


i didn't even think these questions until years later. years and years and years later they came to focus under a microscope that had been building in my brain through eight more summers, eight winters, eight springs and eight falls.

then jerielle sat at my kitchen table. lamenting that she saw you out at a gallery hop. 'he disgusts me,' she said.

and i remembered then. i remembered why you disgust me, too.

because you are disgusting. you are a fucking creep. you god damn fucking raped me. i'm old enough now to know better. rape is any kind of unwanted sexual contact. just because you didn't get your dick in me (i woke up too fucking soon) does not mean you're not a rapist.

you are a fucking rapist.
you are a fucking rapist.
you're a fucking rapist and i'm taking your ass down.


you better thank your stars i'm not a violent person. i'd have to slowly macerate you, chop you bit by bit and keep you alive as long as i could.
just to show you what you've done to me. just to demonstrate the monstrosity.

because you're walking around this earth like you're just fine. like it doesn't matter, like it was my fault, like i fucking WANTED IT YOU TOLD THE POLICE you fucking liar. you fucking liar.

i may have been blacked out. completely. but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that this beautiful young ambitious apparently-too-polite girl who should have never given you to the time of the god damn day, would never EVER get down with a boy like you. you were too ugly. i'm not sorry. that's the god damned truth. you were too ugly and too old for me, but mostly just too ugly.

and now you're a fucking rapist. too. god what a winner. your girlfriend, your former student? fuck i wish she could know. when i'm done with this, she will. everyone will know. you're a fucking rapist and you raped me. it was not my fault. what the fuck did you do to me anyway? you HAD to have used a drug in that drink. there was no knot on my head the next day, no signs of battery.


you MUST have put something in that drink.

dead man walking.

mother fucker you better watch your back. mother fucker i am taking you down. i am taking you out. it's the end for you.

enjoy these last days of freedom. dead man fucking walking.


they will know the truth. you are a fucking rapist. you are a fucking sicko. you are a fucking creep and you are going down.

plastics make it possible. 9.15.2010.

Plastics make it possible.

My art. My camera, the plastic film reel, the chemical coated plastic film, the cancer creating chemicals I use in the darkroom, the CD I have my photos burned to for upload onto internet from a plastic computer, the notebook I write in with plastic pen on recycled paper with plastic coated cover, tape I have put over it to keep it from falling apart. The handle of my paintbrush. The container of my watercolors. My digitized documented art files. A premature baby’s heart monitor. My refrigerator. My grandmother’s heart. The heater for my home. My cell phone, my iPod, my toilet, my shower. The sticky back of my pantyliner. The wrapping on my tampon. The packaging of my medicine. The cap on the bottles of essential oil I occasionally use for deodorant.

The 1000 to one ratio of plastic pieces to plankton floating in the ocean. Women who cannot have a successful pregnancy, but continually miscarry. Countless diseases striking those in Honolulu. A plastic island floating in the Pacific twice the size of Texas,  8 times larger than Italy.

Last night I answered my phone in the middle of my meditation, my sea soaking my rain pouring singing crying sobbing into the sea. It started pouring even harder and I decided I had to leave, let alone get off the telephone which was getting soaked. I shook off my notebook with its tape-covered edges, put there to protect it from damage, and my favorite pen I’d clipped to it flew into the sea. I lit up the flashlight on my cell phone and tried to search for it in the pouring rain, on slime covered craters, to no avail. I littered in the sea without even trying. Simply because my materials are harmful and I am occasionally not all of mind.

Today for the first time I set out to clean up the sea, alone. In telling a friend about it I got teary eyed again… thinking of the night before and my plastic mascara covered tears falling into the sea. I only had one plastic bag as I have used the rest for garbage bags, and don’t go shopping often, but it was a very large grocery bag and I knew I would find more on the way.

I stopped at the closest place on my way back across the island, the beach, near the fountain with fresh spring water and ducks and rats floating in it. I thought I was going to have to hop a fence, as the seaside was busted up exposing pipelines  running under the sand and sidewalk, but I found a hole cut into it by locals who want to swim in their own shit and trash and the oil of the boats in the bay.  At first I thought wow it’s not so bad here, as I picked up countless cigarette packages and the Styrofoam containers fishermen use for bait. I was nearly blinded, had an eye only for the garbage until my gloved finger squished into something smelly. I noticed another creepy man watching me from the fence. I gave him a ‘What the hell are you looking at?’ look and continued my work. After a few minutes I noticed he was still casually leaning against the fence just staring at me. I yelled in Italian ‘Are you going to help me or watch?’ and he came to help. I handed him a glove, the plastic ones they offer customers at the grocery store for picking up their vegetables to place in plastic bags, tie up and then place in plastic grocery bags (ridiculous) and we talked a bit while I picked up trash and he stood there, occasionally picking up a plastic bottle and placing it in my bag. He said ‘You’re not Italian are you? Because the Italians would never do this.’ He was Tunisian and had come here for work.  I told him in Italian about the plastic island. He couldn’t imagine it. I don’t blame him, as I can't really either.  I can’t imagine something the size of Ortigia made of plastic, let alone Sicilia, let alone Italy… let alone eight times that big.

We finished at the beach, filling the plastic bag full in only ten minutes.  I dumped the contents into a nearby dumpster and got ready to reuse the bag.

I told him I had to cleanup elsewhere, and he said he’d accompany me. I said it was a pity I didn’t have another bag for him but was sure we would find one. On the walk to the other side of the island, we did, stuck into a fence right above the sea by a fisherman who had used it for bread thrown to attract the fishes. We arrived at the scala, ladder, where I have climbed down the 40 foot wall of the island and swum until recent days, when the water is too disgusting, lined with garbage and a train of scum floating in and out with the waves.  I dropped my bag on the sidewalk, half full again with trash found on the walk here, raised my skirt and climbed over the railing.  Once on the other side,  I told him to hand me my bag. He did, and then stood there incredulous, watching me hanging off a ladder meters above rocks and sea. He said I thought you were crazy when I first saw you picking up trash but now I know that you are. I said Certo, io sono pazza ed anche tu. E se non vuoi ad aiutarmi, dammi la busta. Ciao. Sure, I’m crazy and so are you.  And if you don’t want to help me, give me your bag. Bye.

The night before on the rocks I had seen three crates, two I knew were made of Styrofoam, because I watched them floating on the waves. One stayed stuck in between the rock barrier and the wall of the island, and the other I watched float out onto the horizon. The last was sitting on the rocks, and I vowed to get it the next day, thinking it was another wooden crate from the market. It wasn’t. it was Styrofoam as well and thank god, still intact. Unfortunately there were many other Styrofoam crates here at one point and now they were millions of tiny Styrofoam bubbles floating around trapped in the crater rocks, little rivers flowing away back to the sea, waiting for a big wave to wash them back out again. They are left here by the fisherman who buy their bait in Styrofoam containers and leave the plastic wrapping and everything, right where it lay. Killing their own catch.

I stood incredulous this time, with my hands disgustingly dirty, my glove full of salt, seawater and sweat, my fingers encrusted with dirt and trash juice all over my arms, and tried to readjust my sunglasses and keep them from falling into the sea.  I was holding a bag overflowing with Styrofoam pieces and they kept sticking to my fingers and falling out of the bag, and I wanted to cry. I felt helpless. I looked up to see a man watching me from the bridge. He waved and gave me a thumbs up sign while talking on his cell phone. Aiutami! I cried. Vieni! Help me! Come! And he waved that he couldn’t hear me, and he had to go eat. After a while he got off the phone and came to speak to me, and said ‘Il mare ha portato la spazzatura.’ The sea has brought all the trash here. And I said ‘No, siamo tu ed io che l’abbiamo portato. Non è del mare, è di noi.’  You and I have brought it. It does not come from the sea. It is from us. He said ‘Yes, and everyone else.’ I told him I would be here every day. He said he would return.

It took three trips up the ladder to carry everything and I had to be strategic about it because there was a tire from a vespa which was heavy and awkward and the Styrofoam crate was large and I had to put it on the rungs above me and then climb with my two hands free.  The other side of the rocks had no garbage because the waves kept washing it back into the sea. This was worse. A rock wall empty of garbage, knowing it is all at the bottom of the sea and floating around in the bellies of the fish.

The waves rhythmically lashed against the tiny sidewalk there, a foot above sealevel, and threatened to carry me out with them, I was a little afraid every time, after the night I was here with Ciccio and we almost got washed out  to sea when the wave came over our heads to crash against the wall of the island, and pulled my shoes off my feet.

and someday

we will all meet our death

if we're lucky it won't be racked with violence.
if we're lucky.
if we're lucky we won't suffer long. it won't be at the hands of another. it won't be tragic, trauma, sudden, crash bang powerful bleeding painful screams.

if we're lucky it will be in our sleep. or at our own hands. if we're lucky.

1/10/13

white seagull ankle tattoo. twinzy tattoos with my baby sister and niece.



yesterday elise said 'I want Pop to take me in a helicopter and a jet and a ____ (some airplane I don't know). I want him to take me on both those.'
Katie said well, you'll have to wait a bit because Pop can't fly right now. Not until he's well again. You have to be in tip-top shape before they'll let you fly and Pop's kind of sick right now.'

Elise thinks for a minute.
'Well, I promise I'm going to drink alot of water and eat all the healthy foods, and when I grow up I promise, I PROMISE, Pop, I won't be sick and then I'll take him flying.'


(on peeing in the ocean) - 'are you sure about this, Mommy?'

(points to our seagull burial of the day before) 'Hawah, do you think that's a sandcastle?'
Me - 'No.'
Elise - 'Yeah, cause it's the birdy under there that we buried. And you said, Hawah, that it was going up to healthy but it's still there.'
Me - 'Healthy? You mean heaven?'
She nods.
I explain to her that the bird is not really there anymore even though its body is. It has gone up to heaven, which really means that it is now part of everything. She said so when I die I will be part of everything too? I say yes.


'Mommy, come here and sit down. We need to have a talk. Why are you always yellin' at me?'


'My heart is boken cause we're not at the beach. It's baking, my heart is baking. We have to go back to the beach.'

(on the phone yesterday, she pauses for a bit and I hear some sounds far off ) 'I can't see you Hawah.'

'That's because I'm at my house and you're at your house and they're far apart.'

'I miss you Hawah.'
'I miss you too. But I'll see you soon.'
'Really?'

high in florida.

1/7?/13 . Sunday night in FL w/Katie and Elise.

Katie paying my way to Florida cause it's the only way she could get me to go with her.

The ocean and the sea are so very different - nothing alike.

Underwater with the light on in the hot pool I can see scars decades old - on my shin where I tried to be superwoman with my sister and her friend Corin McCray in the creek and I dropped the huge slab of slate from over me 48 pound 8 year old head onto my shin and just knicked it - pouring blood into the cold bubbling creek as sister and friend splashed away at the wound. an attempt to thwart a trip with a sobbing baby sister back to the house, where mother would be waiting.

the ocean storm breeze rattles palm fronds and they skitter and squeak like a vibraphone or a xylophone.

a black rounded mountain monster slowly rises into the sky, sweeping over blacking out the ribbons of grey silk frozen there in mid-ruffle.

the storm moves ever gently on. i am warm outside and i am nearly nude. and wet.

the sky's enveloped in misty charcoal soup.


not a soul on the beach as i break my gaze from the black horizon and burst into sprint across the shore. the drum beats steady to my right and in my chest, my fists are pumping and i'm going for distance. i'll never tire at this rate. i could sprint right down the coast, around the tip and stop only when my nude toes froze in the tundra of Iceland.

Family secrets.

Mom leaving in the middle of the night  age 16 - with car full of her shit. Working her way through nursing school and supporting herself while dating my dad. They married when she graduate nursing school. She was 20. He was 22.

She gave me this little metal pot and it was my only after Spain. Has been for 2 1/2 years. Lightweight and dinted, a tad rusty from the years. It's the first pot she ever bought herself. It cooked her teen belly meals in her own apartment. At age sixteen. In the fucking seventies. 

10 days and counting

Ten days til the end of the world. It oughta hurry up and get to ending. The entire world is a whole lot to deal with if you're talking about shutting down. I'm sure a process like that could technically take years.

And still.
All it could ever be is the end of what we know, modern society, capitalism, consumerism... fuck, it could even be the end of civilization. But none of that qualifies for 'end of world' status. Just as with the dinosaurs, she always bounces back beautifully.
I'm not worried about the world.

And you can try and save yourself.

Me, I'd be content to go down hand in hand with the ones I love. I'd be content with that.





I mean, none of us are getting out of here alive.

doe on a funeral pyre.

wasn't it lovely? wasn't it a propos?
the doe on the wood pyre, waiting for salvation.
the spent placenta on the ground, the freshly depleted sac and the swarm of insects, thick.
the entrails in the corn field, plowed straight to the bone.
littered with the fragmented remains of a late harvest.
the death of the wild and the innocent.

the death of you and me.

funeral pyre for a wild wild doe.

she died giving birth and her baby is nowhere in sight.

the crimson of the naked corn cob flesh. flecks of gold, its last hurrah. the last hard useless plastic seeds.
nearly all the corn grown in the US is inedible as-is. is this that useless corn?


what the hell kind of place is this anyway?

desperate single lady.

oh they say he's just a pansy 

just an anti-social flake

what's a girl like me got business with a guy like him?

what's a girl like me think she's gonna get?

you know he's got a dick so he is one, that ain't NEVER gonna change

-ah, you were hoping he'd just fall in love, just be the one. just die in your arms tonite?

-it could happen, sister. i've seen its start. there's such a spark...

-yes, but he's scared. and you've got a nasty habit of being an anti-antidote when men are scared of love.

-me- 'oh, do i? dammit sissy, why you always gotta go straight for the weak? kick 'em when they're down, that's your motto, ain't it now? i bet ya think i'm no motha' fuckin' shakespeare neither, don't cha?

(ah, but it wasn't shakespeare who had a god damned thing on her.

it was only herself who held her back.

true happiness, true peace

lie right inside her small heart.

whole, just as it is today.)

cold sweat.

the cold in me
the sweating constant cold
perpetual cycle
the gleam
the shine
it's brought to light
my salty skin
it's cold and oh that wind just a blows
clippety clap snippety snap


i am in bed under too many damn covers
in too much damn clothes
but in my childhood bedroom
in my parent's house

i'm awake in the middle of the night
trying trying
my skin is just crying
but when i move the cold air on my skin
turns my clipped leg hairs to spines of danger death.

goosebumps and sweat
and its been like this all night

how's a lady to get sleep in this skin?
how am i and just how might you, sir...
what the fuck am i to do with this?

she shakes it in his face
flesh bulging between her fingers, sweat dripping between the boards in the floor.

her face is red
but they shake their heads and carry on
they know it's all a show.

sissy's at it again.