I have been noticing the world in a whole new light recently.

Things are changing in the most spectacular way.

This is hard.  I've started and restarted and reworded the first line of this a million times.

I'm trying to keep up with my thoughts, but either I'm ignoring them or they're moving too fast for me to notice their importance.  I feel like I'm trying to write it all down with a paintbrush.  It's clumsy, illegible, possibly irrational even.

I started a painting and hated it.  I know I'm good, so why do I hate it?  It's not bad at all, but every time I look at it I'm disappointed in myself. 
Now, I'm staring at a masterpiece.  I've kissed that mouth, held those hands, and loved that skin.  As much as that should please me, I'm disappointed again.  I've done something wrong.  I've missed a step.  A sketch.  A technique.  I haven't learned everything.

When will I learn what I need to know?

I've been sleeping too late.  These dreams I've been having are entirely too fascinating, and when I wake up I feel the disappointment again.  I'm dreaming of feelings I've never felt, but I know I could, and I know someone could feel them for me too.  But everyone backs out.  I smoke too much, I drink too much, I weigh too much, I care too much, I exaggerate too much, I fantasize too much.  I'm too much, I get it.  However, one of these days I'll paint my masterpiece.  Then I can kiss, hold, and love.  I'll be a masterpiece too, and then I won't be too much.

My heart hurts so damn much.

the trapeze swinger.

Please, remember me happily by the rosebush laughing with bruises on my chin, the time when we counted every black car passing your house beneath the hill.  And up until someone caught us in the kitchen with maps, a mountain range, a piggy bank,
a vision too removed to mention.

But please, remember me fondly.  I heard from someone you're still pretty and then they went on to say that the pearly gates had some eloquent graffiti like "We'll meet again" and "Fuck the man" and "Tell my mother not to worry."
And angels with their great handshakes, were always done in such a hurry.

And please, remember me that Halloween, making fools of all the neighbors, our faces painted white.  By midnight, we'd forgotten one another.  And when the morning came, I was ashamed.  Only now it seems so silly, that season left the world and then returned, and now you're lit up by the city.

So please, remember me mistakenly.  In the window of the tallest tower, Calling passers-by but much too high to see the empty road at happy hour.  Gleam and resonate, just like the gates around the holy kingdom with words like "Lost and found" and "Don't look down" and "Someone save temptation."

And please, remember me as in the dream we had as rug-burned babies.  Among the fallen trees, and fast asleep aside the lions and the ladies that called you what you like and even might give a gift for your behavior.  A fleeting chance to see a trapeze swinger high as any savior.

But please, remember me, my misery, and how it lost me all I wanted.  Those dogs that love the rain and chasing trains, the colored birds above their running in circles around the well, and where it spells on the wall behind St. Peter, so bright, on cinder gray, in spray paint "Who the hell can see forever?"

And please, remember me seldomly.  In the car behind the carnival, my hand between your knees, you turned from me and said, "The trapeze act was wonderful but never meant to last." The clown that passed saw me just come up with anger when it filled with circus dogs, the parking lot had an element of danger.

So please, remember me finally and all my uphill clawing.  My dear, but if I make the pearly gates, I'll do my best to make a drawing of God and Lucifer, a boy and girl, an angel kissing on a sinner a monkey and a man, a marching band, all around a frightened trapeze swinger

DREAM #1

This could be entirely out of order.

A dream I just woke up from:

There was a parade of sorts going on in a town I was unfamiliar with, but I knew everyone who was walking along with me.  I was in the bed of a truck with Matthew and Kyle.  It reminded me of the little red Colorado I used to have.  I turned around to look at the mass of people following behind us, and I see all of these random, but familiar faces from high school -- Mary Kate in particular.  I waved to her simply to be kind (our friendship was mostly false.)  She grabbed me, pulled me out of the truck, and without hesitation took my spot on the tailgate.  I tumbled on the pavement for a minute without anyone considering helping.  They just kept moving at the same pace as the vehicle, parting around my body. When the crowd finally stopped moving, I shielded my eyes from the sun with my scraped-up arm, and I saw Adam approaching Mary Kate and then he kissed her.

Skip to my house.  I'm in my room, watching a movie on Netflix while this same parade group of people is at my house.  They're in the pool house or in the pool, and I'm still angry for what happened earlier at that damn parade.  Devin comes into my room, soaking wet, with a large brightly colored hibiscus patterned beach towel.  He says something about Captain Morgan, and I walk away annoyed.  There are people all over my house, so I wander back in to my room.  Adam was in the door way with my pack of cigarettes.  He took one, put in the corner of his mouth, handed the pack back to me, and headed for the porch.  I followed.  He lit my cigarette for me with some blue BIC with waves or something on it,  and then he broke his in half and told me to quit (nothing out of the ordinary there).

Skip to Adam's "new" car.  It's really some old, old GMC truck with new seats put in it, but he was excited about it so I couldn't burst his bubble.  It was a lovely ride, but I wasn't sure where was taking me.  At the time I really didn't care.  He dropped me off at some building that looked like it could have been a high school, a hospital, or jail.  Or maybe it was all three.

I hopped out of the truck and ran for the door, assuming Adam would be right behind me, but as I got to the double doors and turned to look behind me the truck was gone and so was Adam.  I went inside to find a woman at a desk who nodded at me like I was a familiar visitor.  Still not knowing where I was, I came upon a shower, and I decided to get in it.  I switched the sign to in use, and turned the water on as hot as it would go.  I heard a gunshot down the hallway right as I had rinsed away all of the gross mint shampoo out of my hair.  I peeked out of the curtain, (now this shower that was once in a bathroom was right off of the hallway) and I saw Sasha.  The Ukrainian student I met at Tech, who I spent a lot of time with.  I was so stunned, I held the curtain as tight as I could but I knew he had seen me.

Skip to my living room.  Sasha is there with his gun.  Kyle, Roslyn from work, and some random people I'd never seen before were on the couches as well.  Sasha kept handing people the gun and he would ask them to shoot someone in the room for redemption.  I was so confused.  Redemption?  So when the gun came to me, I shot him.  I thought it was logical.  Shoot the guy who is causing all of the terror.  Why was I the first one to think of it?  Then Kyle turned the gun on me, and chastised me heavily for doing what I just did.  Like I was a puppy he was about to take to the site of its piss on the carpet and rub its nose in it.  Sasha was still alive, somehow, and moving around without any problems.  Just some measly bullet wounds. 

Skip to none of this happening.  I'm sitting in my color theory class while Adam is playing with my hair, kissing my forehead, consoling me about something and I'm picking orange paint from under my fingernails.

i've been having some sort of strange anxiety issue for the last couple of days.  sleep is becoming challenging, and once i get to sleep i'm interrupted by the paralysis.

my fingers smell like formaldehyde, my lungs ache when i wake up in the morning, my hands shake, my car is covered in ashes, and my hair and clothes can tell you how many i've smoked in one day.  i'm really starting to disgust myself.  i have to quit sometime.  when will that time be?

i'm too stressed to quit now.

i knew it would be a terrible, terrible thing for me.  much like my habit.
i'm stubborn, though, even with myself.  i want to prove everyone wrong, including my rational judgment.

for now, i'll wait around for conversations that never continue.

just one more kiss, please?

i keep dreaming of heartbreak.