dear r: half-glad

dear r: half-glad


dear r:

this morning means : i am alone.
i on one side of the world, you
and her inches or forever away

how fragile everything seems when i am alone
sitting on my bed leaning onto the page and thinking
about how last december our footprints gave the snow
a history which remained until we/they disappeared.

what matters now is how the windows
cut the sky into different squares of light
as i am lying on the couch half-sick, half-glad.

JANEisnotplain 12.31.08

dear r: 12.9.08

12.9.08


dear r:

our fingers intertwined across the miles
you breathed hot on my cheek,
your smile waning.

you ate apples and let the
cores fall at your feet
you saw tears in my eyes and
you reflected them in yours

my eyes are dark but
your memory still hangs about
my silhouette like sharp laughter


JANEisnotplain 12.9.08

dear r: mistakes

dear r :mistakes



dear r:


i made several mistakes.
some of the music slipped.


JANEisnotplain 12.09.08

dear r: adjusting

dear r: adjusting

dear r:

clouds and sun,
wind and rain.
i am slowly adjusting.
there is so much to gain.

JANEisnotplain 12.06.08

dear r: 12.04.08

dear r: 12.04.08


dear r,

on an impulse i
gave you my heart
knowing you might
tear it apart.

i felt pain creeping
long before this but
i needed a new life,
a sort of liberation.

it will take time but
soon i will heal and
you will be all but
a memory.

JANEisnotplain 12.4.08

dear r: this is all there is left

this is all there is left

dear r:

many things begin with sex
and i understand that we might
never value love in the same way

loving you was
not something i learned
it was just something i knew

and you extracted a
concentrated love from my heart
to emolliate the collapse of
your failed heart beat

you seized my heart
with open hands and
called me a benefactor

always approaching
never arriving but
orphic and precarious

this is all there is left
now, two pages of words
and some burnt images
in my mind you
chose to fly away

my heart bleeds while
time ticks away
this is all there is left
and i am done with it

i want you to pause the
cogs and gears inside
your mechanical heart

to reflect on what
has been given : a
philanthropic bandage
on a wounded lonely heart

i continue my life
i survive



JANEisnotplain 11.1.08

VALEDICTION

Valediction

dear r:

there are mornings i dive deep beneath my consciousness
and hammer until solid at things that i will say when
i catch you unguarded and surrendering to my presence
[ as i surrendered to you].

hypothetically, this moment is ours
but if i approach you from inside
[as you approached me]
with my hands around your neck
[as yours were around mine]
and lean in to allow the light to reflect from
my eyes will reflect in yours.
cheek bones in slow contact,
brushing you with trepidation
[“so close, but how?”]

valediction.

i have nothing to say.
i have only to remind you
that you were never up to me.


copyright JANEisnotplain 10.08

dear r: untitled 9.08

untitled 9.08



dear r:

i know how this works and
the lies people say to keep one
around somehow, anyway

you gave mixed messages and
played clever, unscrupulous.
it must be terribly flattering for you
when people fall fast for your
false love’s hope one day and
then later you decide you need
the actual condition of self-
imprisonment, exile, isolation

perhaps a clean break needs to be made.
i abdicate. i elect for acquittal.
this relationship is a door we need to shut,
to lock for a while?
we’ve both been hurt and
we suffer an exile that
you’ve come to enjoy.

but its not what i really want.
i can’t seem to stop loving you.


copyright JANEisnotplain 9.08

dear r: i am leaving

dear r: i am leaving

dear r:

it doesn’t matter if i

love you or even if you

love me too.

we have no honestly left

between us and, where

there was once a sweet

blindness, now there is

only a darker guilt.

it doesn’t matter if i

love you or even if you

love me too. i am still

leaving.

Love,

JANEisnotplain 8.23.08

an explanation left on r’s pillow that morning which i am sure was discarded or never read.

dear r: 8.22.08

8.22.08


dear r :

our conversation tonite was forced and hesitant
buried beneath layers and layers of emotion
that we played with absent mindedly.

your words and actions no longer correlate.
you walk out of boredom, narrow hipped
and navigated by heart, the furniture giving
way to you like a crowd.

i watched you pace the room tonite trying to
think of something to say while my fingers itched
for something soft to touch, a place to leave some
proof of their existence.

JANEisnotplain 8.22.08


leaving back to the USA

dear r: 8.16.08

8.16.08


dear r:

it was just the two of us
our sex and our despair
all day (accompanied by
a few other pleasures, sins).

photographs and shots, just
bits of pretending to be okay
for moments at a time.

there was dancing and singing
there was food and music but
mostly, there were lots of things
under the surface that cannot
be explained or simplified
under the influence of anything
more than a certain pain that
mostly goes unspoken because
words are just too simple.

JANEisnotplain 8.16.08

on not making love, its over.

dear r: when you sing

dear r:

when you sing you
make me feel like
a child on the first day of school
all the pretenses and butterflies
and the words get stuck behind my teeth

when you sing you
make me want to write
to spill myself on a page in a barrage of colors and sounds
to sort through the cacophony
to find a harmony to match yours

when you sing you
leave me sleepless
searching for the perfect words
to answer the sounds
in your eyes



JANEisnotplain 8.14.08


when she sings HAND TO HAND

8.08.08: dear r

8.08.08: dear r


dear r:

its all in the perception right?
this thing that looks meaningless
and harmless from across the room.

but upon closer inspection i found,
captured in ink between the lines
on this wide rule notebook paper,
a life altering string of words written
in a hand unfamiliar to my eyes.

and now my jaw is working fervently
confronted with the sentiment of
my lover's lover, i ask why?

i cannot stay any longer.

love,

JANEisnotplain 8.08.08

on finding a love note to you from Vio.

dear r: 8.3.08

dear r:

i want to believe you
just don’t tell me that
distance is relative
as if my aching for you
were an invention

this space is not variable
eight thousand miles is
a long way to go and
i am not sure you’ll be there
to meet me once i arrive



JANEisnotplain 8.3.08

dear r: restless

dear r: restless



dear r:

and i have been so angry.
i know you can feel it.
i see red. my white is staining.
the blue is fading.

but what is anger?
one upset that is two?
(fire and sun)

what is sadness?
two upset that is one?
(moon and water)

or vice versa
) (


love,

JANEisnotplain 7.08

dear r 5.3.08

5.3.08

dear r,

i imagine escaping like this
with laughter sealed in the hollow of your collar bone
and fingers on the friction slope of your lips
cursive kept under your tongue like a love letter

i want a rush of consonants and vowels
and footsteps i cant retrace

but instead i have
notebooks to balance with percentages
schedules to show up for on time
miles to cover without a breath
things to stumble under

i smile
i talk effervescence
but i still cant find enough cotton
to fill this small hole
which whistles with sadness when i exhale

i don’t remember how to live without you
but i am, i am, i am


JANEisnotplain 5.08



r's response


dear e,

i've imagined escaping like this
with laughter echoing through empty halls
and fingers on instruments that no one hears
my tongue moving with every solitary song

I want a rush of ideas and dreams
recorded to visit again and again

and now i have
schedules to show up for on time
routines to settle into
fresh air to breathe
balconies to relax on

i smile
i sing effervescence
i weave the rainbow of my dreams
around my aching heart
to heal the lonely spaces

i still live within you
and you are in me, in me, in me

dear r: run ons

dear r,


quietly and unremarkably love you, i
practice being where i am if i invent
you i already learned a way to recollect
the major moments of happiness, the minor
tree branch, the live wings changing
how our lawn poses statu[e]s of collective
nouns imposed thus far without such various
coordinating conjunctions are not equal
to the task is being, knowing and
valuing whole this is here, so this
embedded presence defines present tense
as real and legitimate with and
without each other
one of us


JANEisnotplain 4.08


after one full month apart

dear r: equations

dear r:


who am I?
x = y

you are me
x2 = xy

you are a part of each of us
x2- y2 = xy – y2

we are less without each other
(x-y)(x+y) = y(x-y)

but, are we not each separate?
x + y = y ?

if you look beyond, we are actually the same
2y = y

and you will see who I am
2 = 1





love,

JANEisnotplain 1.05.08