Bailyraee's blog

Road. Snow. Air. Tree.
Slap in the face.
What the hell?
I believe after this point I was in a daze. Staring at my ripped open steering wheel. The deflated air bag coated me like a thick heavy blanket, one that could only be considered comfortable in this situation.
I was dumbfounded by the quiet. Taken by surprise by the contrast between the serene view of the mountains and the sickening panic that was taking over my brain.
Gas off. Seat belt off. Door pushed once, twice, three times before cracking enough for me to crawl out of my injured jeep.

Our plastic bottles carry all that we stand for,
lining the interstate five lanes wide
without a soul to see
but catch it and its free.
And you can stick it inside,
or put it in your TV
to watch other people be
and other people live.
With their houses they couldn't build
and their money they wouldn't give

to the sad sap singing them highway blues
with a fuzzy kind of truth
stuck somewhere in his throat.
We don't need some kind of savior
we need a scapegoat
because our towers of people
and our towers of trash
will give us all plastic bottles
to drink down our backlash

Our passion wasn't animalistic.
It was artistic.
We weren't trying to escape morality
just reality.

He wasn't giving me closure
just keeping my composer
wedged into the crowded cracks in the lonely lives
the walks to the car, the silent drives

the dabbles of his presence scattered without pattern
no absence
the length
of the one
before.

Circling me like a tiger or the rings of Saturn
touching down
when I decided
I didn't want anymore.

I realize I'm a hobby.
Not a habit
or fixation.
words slipped
a lost kiss
when their should have been
hesitation.

It's perfect outside.
I can't see my breathe but the chill keeps my spine strait. Keeps my alive and present as I wind down the mountain roads that lead me home. The roads that are lined with a snow that is acceptable, glittering in the fields, unable to chill my feet, safe in my almost-warm car.
It's perfect outside.

But only in February is this okay.

I trip over the reasons that keep me caring
As I'm stuck staring
At my reflection-turned-painting-turned-death-sentence
My warnings-turned-past-tense
turned roses that wilt
turned into love that's turned into guilt

Since everything turns into another something
and the consistency brings
skeletons in closets
--and mirrors
and things
that cause friction
when rubbed against skin too soft
finding things that were lost
--under pieces of you that were lost
so it equals out.
Oh, the things you can live without
before you realize that there's something you're missing.

The news is awful lately. If they’re not talking about Martin Luther whatever Day, It’s the Haitians. It’s making my ears bleed.
My mother winced at her dinner plate. I sat in a thick silence as I reminded myself why I was where I was. Sitting a crossed from the legend herself, I was on a mission of discovery. An opportunity for a thorough analysis. This weekend was a microscope lens; the organism under observation, my grandmother's wrath.
The choice of my grandmother’s conversation starters made about as much sense to me as her plaid tube top. As it wrinkled and folded her chest into its polyester confinements, it clashed relentlessly with her faux-leather vest. But all was not lost, the deep shade of magenta managed to accent the color of her bloody marry quite nicely, along with the hue of my cheeks as I blushed, embarrassed by the ignorance I had descended from.
And I said 'Tips? You're getting paid by the restaurant! You want my hard earned money too?' Cheep scam artists.
We were quite the threesome, my mother, dearest grandma and I. Myself, letting my eye brows rise and fall with every slur uttered about every minority I've been taught to respect. My mom, sipping her wine from her coffee mug, in some twisted form of denial that I might not know what shes drinking. And the saint herself, letting out every evil thought that's been birthed somewhere deep in the bowels of her corrupted mind.
But that abstruse head of hers was the reason I had agreed to this three-day weekend visit in the first place. It was not because I had taken up a sudden interest in gaudy knick-knacks. I had not acquired a new taste for lumpy milk as I watched a gourmet meal being prepared for her dog. I had not temporarily lost my sanity, deciding for a split moment that it was perfectly justifiable to keep the inside of a cabin in northern Vermont around two degrees warmer than the outside. Laying in bed, I watched my breath float up to the ceiling in clouds as I reminded myself of my original motivation.
Heating bills aren’t worth my time, and a cold house protects from mold, you know, so smarten up.
In reality, I was curious. My grandmother made her living as a live-in nurse for all of her life. She cared for cancer patients. With a career that required a heart of gold, her demeanor and reputation contradicted all that one would assume of a live-in nurse. Stories growing up between my mother and her siblings had hinted at wickedness I had grown an intense desire to witness first hand. Abandonment, abuse, absence—offenses that led to the resentment of her children that led to the isolation of her grandchildren that lead to the nagging curiosity I needed fed by these three freezing days. Where was this magnificent heart? Was I at fault for being incapable of picking up on this compassion? All I could sense was an unmistakable negativity, and she knew I could sense it, as she clicked her thick acrylics on the counter-top, but I wasn’t so sure she knew that I was aware of the pain she inflicted on my mom and aunts and uncles. Even if I hadn't heard of her wickedness, She did herself no favors.

And I looked at him, and I could just tell he was one of those, those homos, just by the way he stood there.

How on earth she could be so judgmental, after all the mistakes she had made? After all the suffering she had caused without so much as an apology? I could tell by the remarks she made she was insecure. How she sucked down those long skinny cigarettes. How every room in the house was filled with cheap clothes. How her sink filled up with celery stalks and tall red-rimmed glasses. Her mistakes had eaten her alive. She was alone in her big, cold house. And I, in my vengeful adolescent spirit, felt a kind of righteous satisfaction because of it. This was why I was here. I wanted to see the source of my mother’s tragic soul, the inspiration behind her empty wine bottles. I wanted to make sure that inspiration was in pain. I was just as bad as my grandmother.

Well I think that Michelle Obama is a floozy! I mean, just look at Tiger Woods!
--Maybe not just as bad. In fact, I scared her a little. I took comfort in that fact as she shuffled around my obvious predicaments. I was glad she couldn’t feel comfortable enough to offer support or advice, anything to widen the space between generations. I offered small hints that I was quite aware there was a battle I was fighting in my childhood, and watched them twist into her recollections of the pain she caused her children. I was evil, hanging this aged woman from her ankles and torturing her like a spiteful tyrant. I had had enough.
The air stood thick, when I finally stopped pretending to laugh along with my mother at grandma's cute little rants. Not without digression of my disgust did I excuse myself from the room and went off to bed, coughing loudly at the cigarette smoke. Satisfaction rose up inside of me as I heard the brief but substantial-and only- pause in my grandmother's complaining the entire night. My door shut loudly and her voice grew muffled, but I could make out the inquiring tone, and my mothers attempt to explain my sudden self-removal from the cheery era triplets.

Hmmm so that one has a temper on her hm? Must take after her Grandpa..
This woman would live with cancer patients, carrying them through the last of their days, while providing comfort for their families. My mother was always jealous of the love grandma showed these strangers. They thought she was a godsend, a sweet old woman with a spit-fire sense of humor. She worked and slaved for these people she didn’t know until they were gone. Maybe it was the lack of commitment. Maybe the expiration date on the receivers of her love was what made it okay for her to give it. I think that was the most flawed thought pattern my grandmother had. Beyond her homophobic, racist, cheap mindset, she couldn’t show affection if it meant long term, and in an end result, it shook her family two generations deep. I suppose she was afraid of being hurt. Her coldness was a defense tactic, within her home and her heart. I refuse to accept such a fate. No matter how many times my heart is broken, my trust taken advantage of, or my back-stabbed, I will keep my heart open and accepting. Those three days provided insight and a life goal. I am determined that loneliness will skip my generation.

Dedicated to an inspiration across the country

You were running down the interstate again.
The trail of red lights promised you there were places to go and you followed, star-struck by their greater presence.
Vehicles so threatening you mistook them for god.
You were breathing in their exhaust to sanctify your soul when when you were hit.

And I awoke again
choked by scalding sheets
sneakers still tied to my feet,
reminding me
where they've never been.
Reciting routes around the dusty floors
of your epidemic mind,
kicking at the doors
of the walls I hide behind.

I was 12 years old when I first met the farm at the end of Duffy Road. Since then we fell in love, and it has saved my life on numerous occasions.

It was Easter morning four years ago. The haze that I see when I picture it now probably wasn't actually there -- I've never seen that kind of fog outside my dreams and distant memories -- but it gives the setting a mythical quality I must have subconsciously created for dramatic effect, to honor the significance, the importance of the moment.

After the seventeenth time I heard you tell that joke, I swung my locker door as hard as I could into your beautiful face.
No I didn't. But I wanted to more than I ever wanted to hear you say that you loved me.

First crack at prose. Suggestions appreciated.
I'm not putting in an honest effort.
I'm embarrassed and eternally grateful at the same time for your exertion. As you pick up the scraps of my halfhearted mumbles, trying your hardest to manipulate them into meaningful conversation, I study my fingernails. Waiting for forgiveness to grow out of my cuticles and wondering how someone who seemed so good could make me hate them so much. The tension seems to sink to the heavier side of the car, and you choke on it along with all the other baggage you always seem to be drowning in.

They'll leave us alone.

We'll be filling things that are hollow
like the earth like our bones.
Fabricating fevers to melt our snow.
Freezing our fetuses and making them glow.
So later they can grow
into a savior we'll never know
in my head he's declaring we're dead
some kind of born-again cynic

Wielding a stun gun
that's making me sick.
Begging for an escort
to the caved-in-snow-fort
h1n1 clinic
that's melting under the
automatic doors
of the theoretical thrift stores.
So I can't get in.

And selling soulless satisfaction
Is such a deadly distraction.

Coffee-run show-times of my retinas provide
a view of the inside
overcast with purple bags
that will last the morning
and just long enough for you to see.
Yes this is what you to do me.
With the deprivation
of a solid sanctity
despite my life worth sleeping.
I can't forget where I've been.
Despite my mind worth keeping
I have misplaced it again.
And it always contrasts
with your logical love songs
that never last
longer than an echo that retracts
to the back
row seat of my microscope glass
biopsy
So you can see
Yes this is what you do to me

My accuracy is appalling,
and I laugh in spite of myself
as I hit the barricades set up to
protect my personal health.
Head on.
Dead wrong.
The outer rings of the bulls eye
becoming the circles I trace,
stumbling around your feet
trying to dance through an air
that's being twisted by the heat.

And there's a river crossed the road.
But only at this angle;
when we lay together it's a waterfall.
And I can't dance when my feet dangle,
so my target is gone..
But my aim was off anyway.
And if I just go to sleep
I can wake up and swim sideways

Freshly painted
finely pressed
clean-cut
well-dressed
horrible lover
that loved me best.
Who gave me sticks and stones to build my home
and words that will never desert me.
Whose trance-like trains
of thought trickle from my tainted brain
and they got prickles
prancing up my spine
cleaning out my cluttered mind
tarnishing my silver lines
that are tracing
the dream clouds encasing
the images of memories
I waste so much energy erasing.
Somehow they still find some way
to sink into my unconscious state.
Making reality go up for debate

Freshly painted
finely pressed
clean-cut
well-dressed
horrible lover
that loved me best.

sugar-hearted
candy coated
higher authority
freshly demoted
to the artificial taste
i used to sweeten bitter days
just to dissolve away
it would never linger
on pursed lips
waiting for more
than a fake taste bud trip
that just leaves my throat sore.

And you should know
he left me withered and warn
to the edges of my physical form.
with nothing left untouched
except the growing brush
in my head
pleading forgiveness
and a path to be trotted down

It's amazing.

How small a sample I was slipped
could be dubbed intangible by its insignificance
But with a pungeant persistance
a flavor that travels distance
it had an after-taste
i could almost trace
with my finger
one ment to linger
through hardened hearts and weather changes
letting me lead the graces
at a table where i was thankful for the strangest
variety of things

like words meant to sing
like cell phone coverage and empty lofts

that turn over tendencies
I never realized i forgot

like that a heart can be a stone
and then learn to feel soft

Trance-like trains
of thought trickle from my tainted brain
and they got prickles
trampling up my spine
cleaning out my cluttered mind
tarnishing my silver lines
that are tracing
the dream clouds encasing
the images of memories
I waste so much energy erasing
because somehow they find some subliminal way
to sink into my unconscious state
to remind me of the things I hate
because I love them so
no I haven't let you go
you can't blame me though
when every night there's nothing to stir me
from the images that have such intended fury
I stay under, without a hope

Constantly attaching
ripping away
and reattaching
in a different place.
Like to the sound of his voice,
the feel of his face.
Then to the fresh burn of lonely,
the shattered display case.
Because it was a hold up, like there was a gun to your head
you put the money in the bag and were left to the dead
robbed of yourself by the words that he said
the things that he did
the life that you knew
the shape of his presence
upon which you grew.

And it appears now you are mishapen.
It appears then you were mistaken;
he was not
incapable
of hurting you.
You did not find

We amount to pain and lust.
I realized that while I was soaking in it
Breathing it in like dust

As it emanated from your slouched form
Rose and mixed with the fires and disgust
Dripping from your mouth
Floating up into the atmosphere

Making the air as thick as the cracks the dawn left in the sky
That leak rays of heaven and promises of fear
When the cosmos are fully ripened.

In the prime of their potency
Making our air quiver from underneath
So the winds will fill the sails
As we navigate the river trails
In search of places we can one day call familiar.

Our eyes never lock
Because if they did, no one would be able to find the key
But your rhetorical question glances
Just keep finding answers for me
Burning the edges of puzzle pieces
To make sure I can’t fit into your gaps
You never thought I could use them like molds
Now my distorted form has you to blame
A half-finished hack job
Cut against the grain
A bird perched on a prayer
Deceived by the air
My wings were clipped ages ago
I’ll still sing for you every morning
A tired tested warning
About the ways to take flight
I still don’t know.

But you should really stop hanging those ropes in those trees
If you still believe in god then stay on your knees
But my back is getting sore
My knees are shakin’
And I can’t confess anymore
Where I was mistaken
I might just have to quit
Finding things to admit
With a body deceiving me
Like tied together toothpicks
That turn into matches that burn at both ends
But the charred remains
Ghost of my frame

Can you take in
What I’m dishin’ out?

In the light of past attempts
Failing to lose myself

In deeper meanings of value
In different measurements of wealth

I find no purpose
These bits of data are worthless
And oh, I’ve been taught
But I can pick up what I’ve got
And try again
A tired body
I’ve got those sponge-like blues
That convince me the truth
Is in everything I soak in
And ring out

are you absorbed in
the things you live without?

Well I’ve got
I’ve got the artistic license to distort anything and everything
That hold me down like kite strings
Till my sense of gravity pushes me in the crooked paths of least resistance
All over this canvas
All over this playing field
This war zone without any descent weaponry to wield.

The orbit I’m drawn to causes unplanned handstands
impulse In higher demand
with penciled in
ways to begin
to explain
any preconceived turbulence

Any mother who would give birth
To a child as needy as the earth
Would teach him to grow in circles
Give him an axis on which to spin
So that she could keep eternally
A watchful eye on him

And I feel the circles keep repeating in drunken fractals
Lazy to replicate
But destined to recreate
On a smaller scale
And we’re caught up in there twisted rings
That swallow up everything
Like millions of little fish
in the mouth of a whale

it’s why the sun spins in its crazy choreography
across the abandoned ballroom that mirrors the sea

it's why you could sail away in it

His presence is like poetry.
He’s a fluid strand of dancing suggestions that ooze
Out of my trained lips
In tainted hues
Of red
That send my photograph head
On abstract trips
That contrast so appropriately
With his icy blue atmosphere
That coated me so densely
I was certain
It would stain

He looked like a god standing out there in the rain
The sinful syllables that composed him
Were from no verse I ever read
And since then he’s become the song repeated in my head
Like sunlight in repetition
To make empty eyes see
Almost unwillingly
Almost.

But this literature dates back older
Than any lonely ghost
And his language burned
In lessons learned

About following broken gods
That like to stand in storms

How they’ll only leave you cold and wet
With nothing left
To keep you in your form

You’ll drip and melt into poetry
Your heart broken lines
Will be the chains that keep your mouth pulled open
So for the rest of your life

Sometimes I put colors to your words

The schemes I match to your vibrant screams
Could coat the mountains growing off my canvas
That’s stretched a crossed the pupils of my eyes.

And your brush promotes
In uneven coats
The muddled browns
Of your lies.

Brown- the result of too many colors mixed in
The illustration of deception

You had your perfectly presented pigments
But somewhere you got lost
Got your paint buckets crossed
Finally the colors met at the edges
And your tongues terrible treasons
Ran till they found reason
And resembled muddy water
Or the perspiration under your heated collar

Because you can feel the declarations of love splatter in red
A crossed the sheets hung up in the back of my head.

But your paints are only water colors baby
And though brilliant hues come from your diction
And promises of truth come from your depiction
My eyes can let off a steady stream
That will dilute the words that built that dream.

I asked, does the train always go by this late?

Yes, I stay awake to hear it, he said.
Cause I sleep like a dreamer who’s been chained to the bed

And the nightmares sweep up the dust I care to keep gathered
In the corners, quite content
So listening to the train
Through hazy midnight rain
Always seems to me, like a night well spent.

And I think it was the train’s sudden change in direction, which tore me from my useless reflection
And I finally caught wind of my phantom limb
Feeling pricks where there’s no skin, seeing lights that have already dimmed.
Looking at all these casualties, the disorders that make up our personalities
Trying to diagnose, what defines us most.
So what if me elevator moves in circles, what is so great about going higher?
This race to die, this unexplainable desire

Even the landscapes twist up in mountains
Like the earth wants to get out of here too, but no one built a sky you can see through

I love by surprise and hate by the book.
I steal hope from your eyes and the pictures we took,
I drink warmth from shifting sleeping bags and the crook of your neck,
And brace myself for an explosion as if a timer’s been set.
Because we are fragile
Like a dream you can’t focus on or else you will forget.

And never before have I balanced on sideways glances
And uneven breaths
Second chances
And bigger fears than death... For this long
And ohh, that girl’s heart is like a windup toy,
Just twitch the right switch and she will move on.
But no!
This isn’t one of them built-on-bricks-with-dreams-that-stick-all-the-reason-to-say-no-heart-made-out-of-playdough girls!
I am a house-of-cards-broken-glass-shards-tight-rope-walking-shooting-star-stalking-movie-worth-seeing fragile being in a cold hard world.
With light bulbs in my head that only seem to flicker
And a remedy in my blood that is making me sicker.

I come alive with the electric shocks of fuming stinking love!
I had fallen asleep to the groping of minds,
trying to find what we’re thinking of.
Yes the blood pumps through my veins
In a rhythm so suspiciously similar
To the beat of your feet
As you walk away.
That I give up myself to pay
For the hypnotizing pulses
And mini-earth quakes in my chest
That aren’t there anymore.
Like the next fix I’m looking for
I am addicted to your presence
And babe, I’m experiencing withdrawals.
You’ve got me etching scribbles and scriptures into my cell walls.

And OH it makes me feel so alive!
In this melodic universe
Bouncing between astrologic clusters
That never twinkle
Just the way they rehearsed.
Because you make my
You make my
You make my shields erode and my nerves explode
And my mind fold and my heart finally do as it is told!
We can slink between the riptides
And kiss upon the carousel rides
And ignore that everyone has secrets they hide