Room

In the belly of a bellow,

just past the halfway mark of winter,

our coughs and colds are less than daylong

and the heaving beast,

with whistling lungs,

with buckling, splintered legs

and shinier shoe polish camouflage,

creaks to a topple

to a wail of an out of tune crash of

too many voices.

Middle C is now Low D

and all the chords

are majorly mine,

piled in a puddle of cooling ivory,

stalling over sticky smudges,

popped knuckles rusted in place,

gracelessly getting to the next measure,

catching on to catching up,

off beat or rhythm, off key, out of tune,

out of time and town.

The dust alone dries out my voice,

and I cannot sing from the hoarseness

in a chorus, sing

in the absence

of Great Uncle Accompanist.

How did we get this knee deep

in scores, in piles of laundry and picture frames,

in the teeter tottering of imbalanced benches?

How did we get through the front door,

dead weight, wood, ivory, and Allah,

to suck up the space of a perfectly useful dining room

just to close the French doors behind us?

[retry]

How to make this meaningful

and clearly about you -

These are not possible selves you like;

these are not alternat[iv]e versions of me.

These are pictures of impossibilities.

There is dressing up in your absence. There is too old now [for now].

Your skin is not milky or porcelain, paste or paper

or translucent.

(But it IS one or all. I’m choosing better words for you. You deserve).

You are stretched over yourself, your frame of face

and veins

Pointing the way,

Soulless, ocular,

To more gloss.

Your hair leaves no room for movement

Or scalp.

But you are a head in a jar with unattended, buoyant limbs,

Lacking power over their placement,

They float alongside more bobbing and bobbling

As you pass and pinball.

to Yours truly.

Inaccurate Assessments: Part I - The Rant

I debate text message transposition. It is the year it is and I am indeed the least bit technophobic. I have grown into shutting down and out and, like my indulgence, have always tended toward it. I have prided myself on being stubbornly independent. I need no one and nothing, but my anonymous audience. Talking to myself has provided me with the necessary reprieve.

This brings me to inaccurate assessments. I am collecting feedback. I am not a day over 22, I am scary intuitive, I looked so cute last night, and I despise you.

I will be gracious, but I will not be demeaned. Somewhere in some book, astrology reminded me I do not forget any transgression or moment of pain inflicted by another. For me, it is like muscle memory. My body reacts. I will hold onto it for years and fling it back in your face in my defense. I know just the hurtful thing to say to you.

Inaccurate assessments: I am a hypochondriac, you are sick of my illnesses, and I always have something to complain about. I am your most high-maintenance friend.

Unofficial poll: You know one thing and it is that I am always entertaining. I have just as much to complain about as any other smart person. I am unattended.

I may tell you all about it, but I am in bed alone with all my sore throats, my low lows, the curveballs and inability to cope. I never ask for anything, but the opportunity to say it aloud. I never needed you. I have never asked. I am, for your own sake, just a drinking buddy.

I am increasingly aware of the melodrama. I pull back the reigns, shut down a little more, withdraw a little more, dim the lights, step back to observe, and am lonelier than ever. But loneliness has an undeservedly bad reputation. Any intended consequences or attempts to assuage my woes, temper my emotions, deserve a gentler and maybe more supportive approach.

Psychopathology Notes - The Poem

Something ordinary done in an extraordinary way
-Coffee Now = Where are you going? When are you going?

A good paper is a done paper, a done paper is a good paper.

Don't rob Peter to pay Paul.
-Don't rob Margaret to pay Sally.

Stay away from medication-related research.

Breaking social norms
-Failure to launch

As Requested

Welcome, december. jackets and canvas and wet warmth running around the corner of the open door to leave us alone, emptied. that is coldness and there is no single file. whether windows are sneaking in light. and the music is a collection of unfocused noise.

you’re welcome, gross thin feeling of insomnia and the fatness of trying to eat it to sleep. getting emptier. my soft soaking lungs. i pick up phones and know what is left for me at the end of the day.

welcome clothes and furniture and one in the same shifting like rugs, like slippery floors, like socks with holes and cold heals that don’t stick, don’t suction. from the bed, to the floor, to the bed. to the dryer. maybe to hangers.

welcome to where my knees don’t knock, stopped creaking, and moan. where the city is a different kind of collection. and i get bigger, softer. nondescript. i come running to get back at you, prepositions. to repeat odes. to american bento. and garb. repetition, and mistakes thereof. tell me ‘too far’ and you know what i’m saying.

All the Time

All the time. All of it.

we celebrate the games we’ve played and we’ve played them well. We celebrate our celibacy. The first rented room is always the ruined kind. dead flying things, moths most likely, in the lights

face to the ground, roots under rocks, and looking at iron-nickel wondering if i could see its increased gravitation. i'm spending the last of my twenties making flash cards. this isn’t what matters to me, but what distracts me. i have broken down concrete concepts until they’re simple one liners. i use them now.

i put myself out there, in there, sweat into my hangover all over your bed.

Jared thinks in terms of Facebook status updates.

Jared is writing a series of self-help books:

“Jared Gains Perspective”

“Jared Works it Out”

“Jared Chooses His Own Adventure”

“Jared Busts Out a Low C in Choir”

“Jared Engages in Retail Therapy”

Ruled by thumb and the rule of

I wrote this after living in Portland for one year. Now with one year left, it seemed relevant, even if outdated.

my sweat, my sweatshirt, my underwear

my back/pack, rubber/bands, my joni mitchell.

my staples and paper clips and adjustment to the safety pins. my push. my otherwise undeleted. my senate hearings, my weird, my weirdos, my men.

my advice columns and personal ads, my online shopping, my casual encounter, my casual romance, my casual relationship. my restaurateur, food snobs, beloved std.

my music, my misses, my cavities and candy, grammar, work-ethic, and cripppling inhibition.

my intentional misspellings, forward slashes, and self-conscious back/lash. my making of name and losing of voice and operating of phone and paying of bills to budget to back/stroke, to guilt, to guile. my fast/food, my drinking, i throw up, my rack of ribs, my cough and cover.

my shelter, my education, my expense and experience, my jazz and soundtrack, background and brothers. my three sisters, my three sons, my bicycle and impending impotence.