k to stardusk

dear Stardusk,

these jobs on the old earth

(aft of second sun) they really 

suck your soul thanks 4 

the AI flowers what a surprise

i hope you felt the emoticons

i charged  

orbiting you always 

KatYa 

they.i.touch.carbon.letters

we put our letters in a metal box and in the 20th century it was the number one way to communicate in a nonverbal, confidential and intimate fashion. it was only 2020 and the post office and the library and the climate were endangered. i found all my documents. i looked them over and shredded them. i used the shreds for a nest for my endangered species. i am defiant. i will protect them. you cannot locate me in my inbox. my inbox may be convenient but it’s no fun. driving my car helps me calm down, despite a history of accidents, but i may worry about my carbon footprint. you cannot touch anyone anymore in a carefree spirit. you must ask for permission. personal space comes at a high premium. we are self-isolating with our phones. our tablets. our laptops. our desktops. pretty soon we won’t be talking anymore, and the word friends will be incomprehensible.  they will be singular. i will be plural. will we ever know a love like that, again?

typewriter.seven

the irons
the letters
rise up slicing
the gunmetal
sky

striking definitively
marking indelible
paper thins
wet with ink

forming words
forming sentences
paragraphs

pages replete
with ink dry now

gather up your work
in a bundle

tie with twine

wet
with
meaning

chalk it off

chalk it off as existential slowburn -iii

… i was foolish. i tried to convince you i loved you. maybe it was all i was capable of – a desperate time – we hardly spoke anymore, one of us bound to be triggered or hypersensitive or so very much in disagreement we would rather be silent and avoid the pain, stuff flared up anyway when we couldn’t keep it in any longer – yet love doesn’t need convincing – i’ve never felt like such a colossal failure, it’s really fucked, the enduring pain of being alive and becoming more aware of whats really going on with everybody, so few people really making it and us, sad and repeating, start out so well like we do, overcoming adversities and falling in love, making a family where there was none, then stricken by some or other corruption, watch sanity slip away in the residuals, wicks away, sad reminders of love affairs we dusted, wondering how they could be so indifferent to us now, realizing in hindsight how i could be so insensitive sometimes, life gets stressful and the bond between two people begins to fray if it cannot hold. love shouldn’t need convincing but we go there anyway. chalk it off to existential slow burn.

chalk it off

chalk it off as existential slowburn -i

An old letter i wrote to someone i was in love with …

PART I

i guess i have been thinking about this honest expression you wrote to me last night
and really worried that i might not be up to addressing it, responding in to it, even reading
it all the way through – which i finally did just now. not so many hours ago you wrote it, and
not so many hours later i read the beginning and purposefully sped through it so the feelings
would not arise. the tough ones. the ones that are the simplest proof (to me) of my love 4 you.

you really opened your eyes and stared at it, didnt you? i mean the relationship, as is, as has
evolved, what has become. i can tell. my question is rhetoric. and its very fucking discouraging,
traumatic and sad, if i look at it one way. the way i see it all when you show me no mercy and
i, in return, show you none back. why? like the argument by the bathroom that must have had
to happen (even though it sucked royally) so that we could be forced to talk about the things
that you very tellingly reminded me we have been brushing over or forgiving or letting slip out of
mind in a patterned way… to be continued

letter

from a letter i wrote to someone i once loved
– KatYa

Mt Rose, 2016

“i love you. we’ve been through alot. i wont forget it.
all i can do now is just live through it with you. until maybe
i need to live through it without you? i dont know. its different
looking one day to the next.”  (2011)

light in august

light in august and shredded mail

The guitar. The bicycle. The running shoes. The webcam. The laptop. The unopened mail. The opened mail. The shredded mail. It’s August and sure enough I risk being overexposed again. Doesn’t take much nowadays. I do my best work predawn. And I’m sorry to the ones I love whose lives are not yet settling with the dust. There’s little chance I will be able to open my doors to let you in, this month.

August and the light cannot be intimidated by glass of any thickness. From a distance I see (and even feel) your struggle, for it only takes a few words or an image to convey. Maybe you want to stand before me so I can see and know more, but what good would it do? We both know I am not the solution to your troubles, though I may make a petty salve. Triple antibiotic. I offer my heart, my mind, my spirit.

I would so like to say I love you, the spirit of you, the best in you, but what good would it do? You should know by now, you should. Deep down I think you do, otherwise you wouldn’t be inviting me back in again. I am honored, too. A few years ago nobody was inviting me anywhere. I was always tryin to be so hard and now I have softened again under the sun, how did I become so soft and hard like glass to light? Who am I to be a walking contradiction and how do you walk, this way?

August. I think on Faulkner who somehow captured it for me, or wrapped my sense of it with his own personal papers. He made August more real for me. There may have been others but I cannot remember. I think of Rodin, but only because his first name was August. I won’t have any children, but if I had a boy I might name him the same, for we could nick him – Oggy!

We see no end to any summer in August in the valley, the light and heat will have their way with us through September and often into October. And some of us, what once was me, will see no end to misery, misfortune and pain. Nobody should be told they brought this on themselves, but if you have been there like I have, you also know that you had some part in it, and maybe even the largest of all the roles. For you are always there in the center of it, are you not?

Learn your lines well, my dear, and know you are not alone. I am behind you as well, with others whose parts are also to be played. I will take that deep breath from behind the curtains, steady myself and walk in under the lights with you in my own time and when the script demands it. Your stage presence in your own life is irrefutable.

ellipsis

I unearthed the secret message you sent me, when I took all the words away from your letters and left only the punctuation marks and remarks. Now I can connect the dots and see what you mean. I understand you feel connected. And I still love you, too. Maybe some day we can exchange words. I know that meeting up in person is impossible. I would fall unconscious if you touched me. I accidentally rubbed all of the coating off the photograph, so there is nothing left of us now. Was the question mark between the two exclamation points several sentences apart, considered cancelled out? I will keep it circled until you tell me so. It all ended so abruptly. I am under stress and over emphasis. But in places where the words ran off the pages, I lost your meaning, you see, I sponged the table after breakfast and must have washed them out. I must dash away now. I’m really sorry for to have to ask you to repeat yourself. But I need to be sure, or else I will make a fool of myself. Please do not worry anymore. Like light over time, the image is always moving. Changing. Sometimes I wish it was blurry again, because when it’s this clear it can be so sharp it hurts. Do not forget I …

i wrote

books dissolved into
passages dissolved into
words dissolved into
letters dissolved into
tears

Standby

Maybe the greatest blessing i have tonight, are these long moments without you, for i can see you from afar and you’re not dangerous anymore, and my once relentless mind has gone on standby.