Art History

Simon Evans – Symptoms of Loneliness (2009)

Just stuck between a lampshade and the drunk.
Sentenced to an evening as the party entertainment’s prop.
Oh but it’s only you that I am thinking of.
Please return to me,

Because it’s so hard to take that I might break.
I’m discovering that there’s so much to consider worthwhile,
But most of all I’ve learned to hate that I’m still stuck on you.

If time has taught us this much,
It’s that honesty is the cornerstone of trust.
Well to tell the truth I’m tired of watching clocks,
Waiting for endings of evenings that never seem to stop.

This Town Needs Guns – Panda

Get it. Got it.

She leaves me wrapped in telephone wires: a tongue-tied bright firefly. I’m a happy accident making mistakes with my wishful thinking. I should know better than to let daydream dazing get the best of me.

I Hate It Too

She runs her tongue across my teeth, and I shiver. The lights are low and so are the inhibitions. Her hands are searching for something in me that isn’t there, but I’ve arched my body into a false topography for her to trace. Her lips aren’t the pair I’m looking for. Her hips aren’t the pair I’m longing for. She doesn’t hold me right.

I’m dying to tell you

She stands behind the counter casually counting counterclockwise ticks against tocks. I’m smitten and smiling, nervous and nourished as she folds origami words in an aura of smooth syllables.  My synapses snap and trap the thoughts of rehearsed confessions collapsed on clasped hands. The sound of blown kisses tripped and missed echoes across the sewn space between us.  Goodbyes briefly bring us closer before I’m gone strutting and stuttering the rhythms of her soft lines and laughs.

Art History

Louise Bourgeois – Obsession or Confusion (2004)

These unsure hands could never soothe you:
Too afraid of doing something wrong.
And this confusion wears me down,
Until I feel like a nervous stranger

And could I help you grow?
I guess we’ll never know

Set up for a let-down
These things happen all the time,
And I’m not longing to explore it again
I’m too scared of what you’ll find

And this confusion wears me down
But I’ll smile when I’m with you
Because there’s so much we could do
Together or alone
I’m not afraid of being alone

Sebadoh – Together or Alone

Send “Together or Alone” Ringtone to your Cell

Back and to the left

Autumn attacked suddenly with its winds and whispers of lover’s stories. Each degree that the thermometer dropped was another degree of separation between us. They added up in increments of minutes and miles, the space between words and breaths. I’d been here before and used a map of her name to guide me through it: x’s marked the dimples on her back and all the places where I went wrong. Every conversation with her was recorded onto heart attacks and read back on EKGs to find rhythms of my heart’s memory.

 

The splash of my tongue melting you like a sugar cube.

We were in the gold room where everyone
finally gets what they want, so I said What do you
want, sweetheart? and you said Kiss me. Here I am
leaving you clues. I am singing now while Rome
burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack,
my silent night, just mash your lips against me.
We are all going forward. None of us are going back.

Richard Siken – Snow and Dirty Rain

Why do I plan and plan?

She talks in semaphore, and I listen for semblance of what was before. Subtle syllables shift the meanings of lonely movie stories. Her grace is my gravity, and I picture her grabbing me, tease touching t-shirts to find skin below.  Brave this telephonic distance with bravado. It’s not that we’re too far away, we aren’t: we’re too close for credit rolling kissing.

Ask yourself quietly

I’m a small print critic, a frantic heartsick mystic, jaywalking between past and present. Anxiety anchors ankles to asphalt, its my fault I’m a bright breathing funeral.

Hold me tight, it’s getting cold.

I’ll give you my heart to make a place for it to happen, evidence of a love that transcends hunger. Is that too much to expect? That I would name the stars for you? That I would take you there? The splash of my tongue melting you like a sugar cube? We’ve read the back of the book, we know what’s going to happen.

Richard Siken – Snow and Dirty Rain