Circe's blog

I always knew that I was part of the Universe.

Ever since I was little, I was never quite grounded in my body and had a rather vague relationship with “self”. I remember unconsciously finding myself in someone else's brain and then looking back through a different pair of eyes. I loved the sensation of twisting my mind to accommodate another point of view. Sure, I knew I was B, and that I had soft brown hair and sterling blue eyes, but my subconscious knew that I was also part of the Earth and that it was my Mother. I reveled in that sense of being one with everything.

woman in diner

She sits,
pixel legs crossed
on the diner seat,
her eyebrows plucked
into submission;
she maintains the façade
of startled innocence.

But we know that life
has not been kind to this woman.
Smoke peels from the ashy remains
of a cigarette in her pale hands,
and her hair is dyed
an unpleasant and grating
shade of burgundy.
The demons in her eyes are not
beautiful,
but she has the delicate and
fragile attraction of a spider web;
a woman worn thin, but

Circles bounce in
shattered wavelengths,
ricocheting through
the imagined reality
that can only take
place after my
oh-so-important
Public
School
Education.

Patience has never been
one of my strong suits.

I'm far too hot-headed and
my fancies run away with me
into the woods
to dance
with the faeries
and sleep in bamboo huts
full of
independence.

I want to live,
because I'm trapped in
this damn whirlpool
that has carried so many
cookie-cut humans
through their lives.

I'm bored with my
reality, and everything
rainbow & rebellion

Watch us destroy our miracle,
our Green Machine,
cuz it’s right in front of us,
even though Christianity has
been looking for it for
centuries.
Watch them search for a
dead man who was
dead once and is never
coming back;
watch them worship
a book
written by a politician
in a play for power.
Look at their fruitless
searches for salvation.
I mean,
what would humanity do
with a miracle anyway?
Probably squander it,
just like so many of us
squander our
one-track,
meaningless,
boring lives.

Hello and welcome to
the real world.

You're standing on

Woman on the Muni: art

A mind full of gears
and green
gold-flecked eyes
rimmed with knowledge,
I envy the sophisticated
beauty of his
thoughts.

He so mirrors
yourself,
aloof and controlled,
but younger, softer,
and maybe not quite as
refined or aware.

We talked books
and math problems,
our academic pursuits.
I hadn’t realized
how much I miss
having real
conversations with
people my own age.

It would be a house
on a deserted seashore,
with hardwood floors
and a blue driftwood fire.
There would be soft
golden paint on the walls,
and chocolate colored pillows
on a couch that could
cure ulcers.
The sand-pocked door would
open into a grey expanse,
the air salty with brine
and purpled with
gathering bruises
in the distance.

I would be there,
swathed in a
long-sleeved lemon dress,
letting the storm
brew in my irises, and
reflecting overcast shadows
back into the darkness.

Alone,
but unplagued by loneliness.

Human flaws cannot hook

The wind whips curls of storm-filtered air across the stomach of the hill, and green tinged grasses flick slender fingers
against the ground and
up
again into the violent grey sky.

She stands,
immovable
but flexible,

an aspen tree hissing like ocean breakers against the pebbled shore.

Ripples of dark bronze curls dance in the air, shimmering at the zenith of their pentagon-shaped spiral. Her eyes, somewhere between a tsunami and sapphire
flash with golden flecks,
reflecting the fire of the sky.

Stone and green earth pulse around her in a frenzy,

Palms creased
with indigo shadows
revolve
in the dust-swirled
air.
Those silken
spider hands,
pale as the moon,
stir molten
oxygen into
oaken ashes.

Charcoal-lined irises
watch the pale
streaks of fire,
her poisoned lips
mouthing
bloodshot
crimson words
into the blackness.

Somewhere...

The golden fingers
spin away,
a melody
to the rhythmic
thumping
of the headboard.

Her mind wanders
the aqua
expanse of heaven,
sending
doves
spinning into
the curves
of darkness.

The walls are collapsing.

Her eyes close,

President Obama said on Monday, "I'd rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president."

Amen. Now go do it.

Personally, I wanted Barack Obama to win. I sat there on election night biting my nails and hoping that America would fight through boundaries of change. He was a powerful, intelligent man with the voice of an angel. I thought that surely he would be the wake-up call we needed and that he would put us back on our feet. A year has gone by, and few of his promises have actually come true.

The sky poured
with Cyclops's tears
and water dripped
off the eaves
in crimson
cascades
like a gory
waterfall.
The pavement turned
pink because,
if you mix
blood and ice-cream
you get
a rose-petal beauty
that doesn't
quite
exist.

Do you
Remember when
we held computers
in our hand
and
sent scrolls flowing
off our tongues
instead of chatting
symbol-speech with
our-
(twisted, distorted)
-minds?

Remember when
we could write words
with a pen
and coax them into
delicate~symphonic~struggles
of life&death~ of beauty&of~ pain?

Her name

would have been

Marguerite Phillips

and she would have been

the most beautiful

baby girl

in the world.

~

If that day, in the woods,
with the sun falling golden
around us,
what if
I had fallen
into the chasms of
your eyes...?

~

She would have looked like your sister,
except softer, with a hint of red in her
curly brown locks and more hazel in her eyes.
She would have been
precious,
beautiful,
mine?

CouldIwouldIevendream/dare/think

that this perfect, angelic child
could have-

existed?

~

I wish I had that
comfort
of knowing
that I could be
whomever I wanted
to be
without
getting those looks
in the hallways.

I wish I was a true
500-winger
and that I didn't
need to appeal
and appease
conflicting
friend groups
as well as my own
vanity.

Because
I'm tired of
being stared
at and seeing
through the flimsy
compliments.
It seems
that the people who
say that they
like my skirt the most
are always the
ones who will
trash me later
on the bus.

I just wish
that I didn't
have to smother
myself for
everyone.

I live for these twilight hours,
the cloud wisps curling across the sky
and melting into the molten gold
resting on charcoal smudged
mountain-tops.
But I'm not here
to stay
and fragmented frames
of the horizon are all
that's left against my retinas
before the almond swirls
of my lids have turned
elsewhere.

These snow-cradled valleys
are frozen into my dreams
and I'm left wondering
what hides in their
oaken depths
below vapor trails
crisscrossing
overhead.
Maybe someday,
I'll return to this haven
of unexpected beauty just

Wing-tipped wonder
refracting treetops
in golden hunter eyes,
wheeling in lazy loops
along the souls
of thermal currents.
I am power.
Untouchable, intangible,
and majestic.

Your winged machines
merely mock me
and I am more graceful
in flight then you could
ever hope to be.

Come back when you've
grown feathers.

Forgive me if I don't pay you much attention.

I got lost within myself,
remembering
bare feet whispering like water
over moon-smoothed pebbles
and leaves hushed &
murmuring at ankles
left unclothed.
~
Streaks of fire against legs
dangling to the rocks
and someone else's
fingerprints
along my hips
and kneecaps.

"J'ai conduit au...."

Inevitably,
black
and
white
stop
action
recordings
re-
trace
and
re-
face
~~~~~the screams lost in
thunderstorms and
seashores
plastered to my
irises.~~~~

I am a monsoon of regret,

I went to the Winter Tales production last night, excited, uncertain, and apprehensive. It was brutally cold and the walk from the parking garage froze my blood into shivering submission. We crossed the walk filled with people doing Christmas shopping and stepped inside. The Flynn Space was warm and my hands gradually returned to normal mobility and hue. Down slick stairs and to the left, the theater, but it was nothing like what I had been expecting.

I feel like scattered atoms,

microscopic
computerized
digitized
Life

in tiny technicolor
squares,
and
with
every
second
I
am
dissolving
into
cyber-
space.

No longer a
substance,
a mixture
of brain
and machine,
I am mere
air
magnified
exponentially
like bacteria
under a lens.

Distort me,
until the
thoughts and
feelings that
define
just
exactly
who
I am
are gone.

Stretch and morph me
until I am

nothing
and
everything.

I am tired of listening to sentences
that are half profanity,
because I do not understand how
swearing makes these immature
idiots feel more grown up.
They cannot spell,
employ proper grammar
or multiply decimals,
yet despite, or maybe
because
of this, they are
considered cool.
Since when is popularity
measured in how awful
your grades are?
These people defile the label
"Freshmen"
because we are the
clueless nobodies
who clog up the hallways
and smother our personalities
in conformity.

Supposedly.

Yet there are exceptions
and I hate that the fact

A sharp inhale echoes across unpainted walls.

Gasping.

A man's drunken slur.

From the street, rap music rattles the panes of the dirty apartment windows. A hoarse shout and muted honking mingle in the background.

Tucked into a mildewed corner, a young boy crouches, his bare feet curled around the buckling floor boards. Cupped in his palm like water, five blue marbles clink gently against each other. He kneels, and sends one careening across the chipped and splintered floor, watching its cat's-eye revolve in the glass orb.

I am the faceless wonder
lost in a sea of
dying, decrepit souls.
A wordless mouth
with frozen lips
crackled in frost
and what's left of
a storm.
Fire-eyes,
unquenched
by flooding waves
that have murdered
your rebellion.
Seashell hair in
waters bleak and cold,
white bone-bleached
limbs floating in
choppy breakers.
I am beyond you now.

Hundreds of gray
sleek stones
pound against
the shore,
undertow dragging
itself back into
the depths with
clammy hands.
There's something
beautiful in loss.

"I'm sorry, I was trying to set you up with my teacher!"
Oh my god, you will never believe-
"Don't use the donkey theorem when solving for congruent triangles."
-I can't believe she said that to you! Like-
"Pulses creep me out."
What's our homework-
"I'm going to take a video of you!"
-Who is she going out with-
"I am a NINJA!!"
- I'm so tired-
"My teacher used to hiss at us."
-practice-
"I hate these stupid babies!"
You retard!
"If you eat too many carrots your skin turns orange. Why is that a bad thing?"
Ugh...

We are mere mixtures,
muscles and bones strung
together with sinews
tangled with strands
of human fears.
What is man but
morbid bundles
of excessive emotion,
nerves, and a little carbon
thrown in?
Self is illusion
and the thing that we call
I
does not exist.
You are not your eyes
or legs or your brain.
I dare you to accept
the impossibility of
existence.

Mommy, I miss you.aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaI miss aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayou aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatoo, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa baby.
How long this time,
aaaaaaaahow long will you be gone?

Perhaps, immersed in these piles
of teetering papers and
broken pencils,
I'll find myself.
It may be that my
soul is written on an
English essay and my
personality is embedded
in the snarls of
a Geometry problem.
Maybe if I keep looking,
keep fighting my way
through schedules
force myself through
another assignment,
I'll be a better person
in the end.

Because, after all,
aren't I here to
educate myself and
discover who I am
and where the hell
I'm going with my life?

I do believe I am
turning into a
cynic.

I want to run away,
laughing
in somebody else's
flannel shirt
and
grimy
old
leather
workboots.

Want to run through a
cloudburst
along emerald meadows
shimmering with
purple along wood-
fringed edges,
and falling into
hip length grass
that cradles me
against the ground.

I wish I could
slick my damp curls
out of my face,
and hear you laugh
and tell me how
beautiful I am,
lying there in
the rain,
wearing your
old
leather
workboots

and have it
for once, be more
than just my
imagination.

Backless stools lined up along a
clay-streaked floor,
and I'm still
wondering if
it would be possible
hide from the
rigid jawlines
of my table mates.

I'm still surprised
how much they scare me.

I spent my day on the roof,
drawing fire-eyes &
wind patterns on the
shingles that shimmered
with crystallized tar.

I felt dangerous,
dangling my toes over
the edge
& feeling the swell
of air beneath my bare toes,
announcing that
had I fallen,
my body would plummet
forever into the
murky depths of the
frog pond.

My miniature, a mere
reflection of myself,
mimicked my acrobat's
walk along the precipice
of daring, dancing across
the metal-plated
chimney coils in
an attempt at recklessness.

I watched the sun prance
along the horizon,

She's watering clouds with
a stainless steel can,
planting seeds in barren ground,
hoping they'll make a stand.

Opaque as storms are,
Hope's lost in the rain,
her tiny feet pounding
with undeserved pain.
She's walking down streets
filled with rivers of blood,
watching children carried
away in the flood.

Psychiatrists open fire on
comrades in green,
soldiers comfort loved ones
at the crime scene.
Young lives were stolen,
and souls flutter about,
the fallen left wondering,
their families doing
without.

A pregnant woman,
a family man
a quiet boy,

We traveled the long miles to town in a rickety old carriage, the potholes in the road jolting us roughly against the unforgiving wood. I arrived to the sooty, dirty streets of Braxton appropriately bruised and battered. Sneaking a glance at Sadie as we disembarked, I saw that my friend's thin face was pale, and she wore a puzzled expression. I wanted to grab her hand reassuringly, but instead I looped my arm through hers, a more proper display of affection. We entered the place we were to stay during our visit, a large, rather grand house in the wealthier side of the city.