paperpulse

paperpulse @ 2005-12-04T11:12:00

2005-12-04T11:12:43Z

the great undoing. "I have not been okay for some time," I tell no one in particular, "but that's alright. I don't expect it anymore. Sad as it is, this is easier."

paperpulse @ 2005-12-03T13:38:00

2005-12-03T13:41:00Z

it's, well, it’s easier this way. softer. crawling home at sometime-past-three in the morning with easy words and soaking wet jeans (my shoes are ruined from the effort of not saying goodbye hard enough) and then up! to bed until he shouts up and I roll over and he bellows ‘sleep well’ like it isn’t a fucking joke. they're mad because I wanted to go home, made them go home. or something like that? it’s all nonsense, frankly, so I’m up and I’m breathing coffee-breath into cupped hands and wearing bottom-of-the-closet clothes and nothing like a smile. when they were up! dancing a man pulled on the bend of my arm and said “cheer up, will ya?!” like I owed him something, like I wasn’t okay with my glass and my corner and my coldcold ankles. like it had anything to do with him and all I was was shocked. don’t touch me, okay? you son of a bitch I’ll kill you if you ever grab me like that again! but he was gone when I’d crunched the last of my ice. Cheer up. I am awake and that’s it, all, enough, more than I thought I was capable of. not hungover (not drunk) but heartsad and heartsick and lonely like it was something I misplaced. pulled myself out of the taxi and now Natalie is probably mad at me and I possibly don’t care. all smoke, more fire. a personal collection of petty jealousies and I keep them on a high shelf even I can’t reach. Softer.

paperpulse @ 2005-12-02T15:52:00

2005-12-02T15:53:03Z

my triumphant return to not giving a shit.

I hope you're happy, love, I hope it's better this way.

paperpulse @ 2005-11-30T20:11:00

2005-11-30T20:12:15Z

persistent noises and I keep you in my bones.

Don't be angry.

paperpulse @ 2005-11-27T21:31:00

2005-11-27T21:31:10Z

stranger things have happened than sleeping in unmade beds

paperpulse @ 2005-11-27T21:23:00

2005-11-27T21:30:38Z

fight and be fought with

"when all I want to do - all I really, honestly want to do - is force my hand against a heart and feel it fucking beat, remember it as more than just cyclical, clinical systole and disatole, more than just impulses and receptors."

paperpulse @ 2005-11-26T19:24:00

2005-11-26T19:24:55Z

it is enough to miss you.

it goes, and keeps going.

paperpulse @ 2005-11-26T15:38:00

2005-11-26T15:47:25Z

The 'not at all complete but close enough for now' mix for Lindsay:

1. Imperfect
2. Your Dirty Answer
3. Crosses
4. Studying Stones
5. Good Times are Gonna Come
6. Wonderwall (cover)
7. After Hours
8. Visions of Johanna
9. Breathe Me
10. All the Morning Birds
11. King of Carrot Flowers pt. one

This is a handful from one computer - I haven't looked on my mp3 player or my laptop yet and I know there were some songs I thought LINDSAY! when I heard them that I haven't posted yet.

paperpulse @ 2005-11-24T20:53:00

2005-11-24T21:00:50Z

And the history books forgot about us and the bible didn't mention us, not even once. You are my sweetest downfall - I loved you first.

paperpulse @ 2005-11-24T19:08:00

2005-11-24T19:16:20Z

I start wars with soft voices, and all of a sudden I have no idea how it happened and why I’m cleaning broken glass out of the bathroom mat with a ridiculous smile on my face.

"Expand," you say, so I stretch my arms up and find the tips of my toes and you say "Try again, little bird" so I reach my arms out until I'm sure I'll hear the mechanics of my hidden chest groan, complain, and almost give up. Almost, but not quite. I have a brand new hum to dance my days to. It is big and I find myself frightened awake by it sometimes at night. I stood in the rain today and played it for my friends. They think it's the perfect direction for me, so I undo each of the buttons of my coat and admire the sound made louder.

There is a drumroll I hear when I cover my ears. And it is me.

paperpulse @ 2005-11-23T22:37:00

2005-11-23T22:40:46Z

sometimes
we have been beautiful despite
the fact that we have been
rash,
inspite of the way our beauty may,
or may not, have moved
when the camera tried to focus
its one great eye
on us,
inspite of the lines we smudged,
or maybe because of them.

paperpulse @ 2005-11-23T22:36:00

2005-11-23T22:37:23Z

it's drastic,
like turning on the light and seeing your hand on the wall where you left it.

paperpulse @ 2005-11-23T21:54:00

2005-11-23T21:55:03Z

“I do not know what the weather did (or how my mother felt, or what my father whispered, standing over my brand new self) but what I do know is that my blood was wrong so they took it away, pulled me apart and refilled me to pink, pulsing perfection.

I pretend that I remember it, the needles and the confusion and the mess, but really I have just pieced it together from the things I haven’t been told. Here is what I know: my blood was wrong from the beginning, and that has made all the difference.”

paperpulse @ 2005-11-19T17:57:00

2005-11-19T17:57:41Z

a complex history of Getting It Wrong.

paperpulse @ 2005-11-19T11:02:00

2005-11-19T11:04:01Z

- morning after the night before makeup
- "the sky was cracking its fingers"
- the lines that came together. Or. watching him on stage and all I could think of was Things That Should Be Written.

paperpulse @ 2005-11-18T15:40:00

2005-11-18T15:41:03Z

"most people, they walk. you and me, we sprint. when you sprint for long enough you don't go to jail, you don't get shot, you don't find god and get reformed, but eventualy, you'll run out of breath."

notes

2005-11-16T21:24:33Z

something about rooftops and a shifting weight. Until you my poetry was concerned with metre and meaning - you throw words at me like rocks at a window - literary vandalism. Before you (said like you're my very own private Holy boy) the only thing to slide down my back was cold sweat and palm-flat-affection. Now sibilance pools in the small of my back, now metaphors run from my shoulders, now my shirt sticks to syllables.

Regarding confrontations:

2005-11-16T07:35:38Z

What came first: the brick wall or the collision in my blood?

I live vicariously through conversations I have planned so well they could never leave me anything but a bloody wreck on the hard shoulder should the words actually leave my mouth (all tongue and teeth and malcontent).

paperpulse @ 2005-11-15T22:25:00

2005-11-15T22:30:03Z

my general RE class on bioethics makes me want to bang my head against the wall.

what makes my friends want to bang my head against the wall is the fact that I just sit there spluttering (and, yes, banging my head against the wall - quite literally) and do not say a damn thing.

I forgot what going back to a catholic school would mean, I forgot that they would say "people are far too flipant with abortion. God does not create life for us to end it" and pull faces and dismiss all other arguments and assume that the entire world gives a fuck what old men in far off buildings have to say about the choices I make and...I'm banging my head against the wall.

I have to say something. For crying out loud, Rachael, get your act together.

(remind me of that?)

paperpulse @ 2005-11-14T23:35:00

2005-11-14T23:38:44Z

last night [true story] I didn't sleep past two aye em because I opened my eyes and someone was all arms around me, lying against my wall and choking me or adoring me and when I kicked my legs they let go [true story]. These ghosts are out to turn me into a romantic wretch with sad oceans in her lungs and a burning desire to just be fucking kissed. I laugh, throw my hair and say too god damn late.

[true story]

paperpulse @ 2005-11-13T14:19:00

2005-11-13T14:28:48Z

- every movement is an act against the willingness I have developed to live a stationary life. Do not tell me it has been easy.
- he seems to think the extent of my outrage is expressed when I mock his speech about what constitutes a 'girls drink' and what what constitutes a 'mans drink'. I tell him, look at the words you chose. I tell him, come back when your opinion isn't rounded off with "but, like, that's just the way it is. Calm down." I tell him, would it be alright if I just never fucking spoke to you again?

paperpulse @ 2005-11-04T22:51:00

2005-11-04T22:55:23Z

I've been thinking about bravery in terms of "I don't even need to touch you anymore!" and I don't know if that breaks my heart or opens my lungs but I keep making my bed and brushing my teeth and reading bad books about terrible people anyway. There's more to this story than I am letting on, but I stole that from a song so I guess it doesn't matter.

I only want to talk to you. Don't tell anyone about this.

paperpulse @ 2005-11-03T18:16:00

2005-11-03T18:17:11Z

It would be late if we’d ever decided to go to bed. Instead we ate the better half of our sentences and drove like we had somewhere to get to rather than something to run away from. We drove like that and held hands with the steering wheel, and the turn signal, and the radio dial, and never once each other. I smoked regrets out of the half open window and tapped the ash on the backseat. Empty backseat. Crime scene backseat. Half the battle backseat. There was music in the motion and can’t you see I’m ignoring the pretty little vowel I used to put in front of that word? The red light and the speakers and the mood shifting with the gears. The cigarette lighter and the headlights and the realisation that turning around was the same as going forward. I let my head rest and I kissed the you that dominated the rear-view mirror and can’t you see there’s a metaphor there I’d rather not sink to? I filled the notebook I keep on my skin with the poetry of place names made blurry by angry speed and harsh braking. We drove like that, like a head-on collision that just kept going. Windscreen wipers and broken air vents and broken glass in between my teeth.

paperpulse @ 2005-10-26T18:31:00

2005-10-26T17:33:33Z

writing on trains about how many times I've said "I miss you" today.

I can't even remember your name. I doubt you ever had one. I am sick of writing to myself, to you, to the dust that's settled between this hand and that one. I am so tired and you are still absent. I haven't a head for the long haul.

paperpulse @ 2005-10-23T18:17:00

2005-10-23T17:19:43Z

May 12th, 2005

"I wanted to put my hand through a window last night, translate the glass into a different language.
"How horribly Holden of me," I chided as I closed the curtains against my urge, "how horribly pretentious."
How predictable, these impulses for minor destruction."

If you don't think I'm laughing at myself, you're wrong.