keep me.

love me-
it's simple.
i wait so eagerly.
i'm here
so love me.

bend me-
it's easy.
i curve so carelessly.
i'm agile
so bend me.

break me-
it's painless.
i snap so suddenly.
i'm fragile
so break me.

hold me-
it's inevitable.
i end up here so constantly.
i'm broken
so hold me.

-RLL ©2005

In at least a more perfect world

I could have said something to you. We could have talked. We could have met in the middle of the lawn, me there playing Kali'ama, you there with whatever you do now. And I could have stopped and noticed you, and nodded for you to sit down. And I would have skootched over a bit, and you'd sit down. And we'd smile at each other.

I'd tell you how happy I was, how perfect it all felt, how blessed I was. How beautiful life was. How I found those wings I'd told you about...

And you'd tell me how you were finally happy, how life made all this sense to you, how you loved her and she was perfect for you - and how she made you feel alive inside. How you loved God and you loved her and you loved everything about being alive.

I'd sit there and strum a few notes on Kali, picking a few of them, even - just making conversation on her strings - and I'd smile at you from the grass, and I'd feel that joy that I hadn't felt in so long for you.

And I'd tell you I was happy for you. And you'd tell me you were so glad I found what I was looking for all along. Then maybe we'd hug or just nudge each other on the arm - and you'd go back to wherever it is you go now.

And we'd be okay with it, with everything. And we'd be happy with this life again.

That'd make everything better. brighter.

But this world isn't that perfect. And I can't have that closure, that assurance, that gilmmer of light from that corner of old rooms. And so, it will never be...

-RK

i mean nothing to you

docile streams stretch over short gray carpet,
weaving across the chaotic, cluttered floor
back and forth, back and forth.

a breath barely moving - shivers in the dark,
setting ripples in slowly spiraling swirls
in and out, in and out.

flickers from a candle somewhere
show soft something scribbled on her wall
mingled with mud, etched in blood.

black tails sift from flicker tonuges
spinning marionettes, dancing pirouettes
round and round, round and round.

faint, merely a whisper in the distance there,
echoes like sick short screams or shattered glass;
echoes dull, echoes still.

shudder, stretch, and shed this veil.
letting everything spill and spill and spill.
just one more moment, one more breath...

-RLL ©2005


[please critique.]

Haven't you heard?!

The new iMonkey is available! Hot on the shelfs just this weekend. Hurry, run to any local store and grab yourself one. They're so frickin' awesome! And, plus, they don't shed nearly as much as last years models did.

So, less vacuuming, less hassle. More music! What more could you ask for?

Oh, plus you can now order online!

And for a very limited time. You can also order your very own Limited Edition U2 iMonkey.

And, if you've already got one, you can rip songs online as well.

Hurry. Get in on the iCraze now! Or else.

Be sure to review your iMonkey warranty and protection rights before longterm storage.

-RK

state of consciousness

We were just sitting there, chilling. And then, you made one of those comments about how this was a moment, better than that night on the bridge - better than all the others. And I curled up closer to you, laughed and sighed, and had to agree. Though I wasn't sure why it was better, I had to agree.

Then, suddenly it occured to me we were chilling on a fire-truck. Now, hang on. What's that?!

Disappointed, I admited to myself the thing was most certainly not true. I confirmed my state, still alone in my bedroom in southern cal. Still awake at five am with no one to talk to about crazy things like life and the future. Still curled up beside a duck.

That is frustrating, I have to say. Seeming so real, so brilliantly perfect -- until you realize you're sitting in a stationary fire-truck, and your fifth grade teacher is yelling at Jimmy to get the silly-putty out of his hair, and your sister who's been living in Arizona for three years is suddenly moving to Wisconsin to be a part of the Oprah show down in New York.

Then, you sigh and shrug and admit the fact that it's a dream.

-RK

Wedding Cakes and Thrones

But I like the thrones, the oh-so-cleverly hidden triangles, the shooting vertical lines of the art-deco, the postmod and modern squares of the skyline where the wind is said to blow. But really, no one tells you that in fact it's the humidity that hovers over the tips of every skyscraper like a thick, alpaca blanket of yuck. Creating pools of exhaustion in the small of your back so that opaquely green river water from graying fountains sounds refreshing enough to chance.

Hand in hand. Me splayed like a ragdoll on concrete steps, just far enough away to see those eyes that go black in the dim light that twilight would have brought to this glorious little place. Staring up at the sky or watching boats with ghetto music roar past, or closing my eyes and pretending like I never have to go back.

Such colors. Like 333 West Wacker, like those brilliant 9 cylindrical columns, like the light refracting from the toxic river full of the dead bodies and the waste and the filth of the most pretentious city ever. Statistically, damn that river. Aesthetically, damn it too. But for entirely different reasons.

Basted eggs atop one of those silly skilets you've raved on about for months on end. French toast as a early dinner/late lunch. Donuts from Dunkin' for breakfast, and a coffee. With rainbow sprinkles of course. But I have to ask you now, did you get white and black on purpose, or was that just chance?

This isn't coincidence, there's no such thing.

Oh right then, you must have meant to. Fair enough, I'll accept that. It was brilliant. Only so brilliant it struck me how many days later, laying back against my pillow with laptop in lap, just done sipping my usual cup of green tea instead of coffee, instead of cafe lattes in little Italian vespas where I'd rather be any day.

It's inconsequential. I'm here now, and you're there. And I won't think about how long this time because I'll crumble and quake, probably have to go outside and scream and kick bushes -- or really tall grass again.

But for entirely different reasons.

-RK

to the shadow of my past

You might have never said it, but I know you believed it. That couldn't happen, it couldn't exist. Those thoughts in that context - it was impossibe. And we had better accept whatever it was we could get, whether we liked it or not. Whether it was a choke-chain around our necks smothering out our lives, cutting into our flesh, tearing whole chunks of bloodied tissue out of our souls, we'd better accept that.

Well, you were wrong. I'm living proof of that.

See, what you never took into account was that we were wrong. That we had everything backwards, not that the world was unchangably that way. That we were just two kids, doing things wrong, making horrible mistakes, seeing - constantly - with skewed, waery, lonely eyes.

But, I can't blame you alone. I saw just as wrong, just as backwards as you did. I saw the world with bleak light and dark shadows and sharp rock jutting out of every place that I might stand. I saw the same cold, hard, unlivable reality that you saw. And the only way I saw out of it was the same way you did: desperation, clinging for life to anything that still breathed, still lived, still seemed warm enough to at least hold onto. Crying out only in echoes, clutching to any hope that seemed like hope at all. And not letting go for all longing of somehow seeing light again.

But there was no light. There was no horizon with any scattered light coming from off in the distance. There was never going to be, and you know why?

Because you, I, we were wrong. About love, about life, about "us". And it made us believe there was no escape, nothing better to search for, nothing stronger or more tangible or more substantical worth groping around in that dark for. Made us believe all people were just as broken, just as hurt, just as shattered as we made ourselves out to be. And that no companion, no love, no "God" could do anything about it.

But we didn't see, didn't know, didn't actually have love. We had desperation, and fear, and doubt - and a semblence of some rippled reflection on some pool of water somewhere that looked a little bit like forever. Had some string of some wishes twisted up together and strung with a few random prayers in which we only sought the answers we wanted to hear.

And we made sure we heard them, confirmed them, grinded them into concrete and stood atop them. Declaring what we called truths that we'd come to know, the reality we'd come to accept, the pain we'd come to love - in place of that god that never did things right.

But one day, while you weren't looking, I got away. Like a sole-surviver from a plane wreck, like the scared little girl in the back of some derailed train, watching with ashen covered eyes, her entire family die and wondering how or why she survived. ...for some reason, I survived.

But I'm still not so sure that you did - not so sure you made it out of the sickening maze, not so sure you could breathe through the ash. Not so sure you ever really saw the same horizon - the same glint of the same light that I saw. And I'm not sure you knew it or thought about it, or even wanted to.

But I had to, and you damn well knew that. Knew that I had to break the chain, knew I had to scale the walls that were holdig us into that caged life, that hopeless existence, that steel barbed trap that we laid out to kill ourselves on.

Knew I had to do it whether I'd get shot dead, whether I'd bleed to death for all the wounds and cuts, whether I'd pay the penalty for my escape or not.

-RK

off toward the windy city

This time tomorrow, I should be basking in the warmth of blearly choca-eyes; a touch I sporatically realize I have the capabiliy of missing; the scent of a city I've never known until now; the shimmer, the dazzle, the brilliant coziness of being within ear-shot of the presence that makes me laugh uncontrollably - smile like it's authentic, feel merely five again.

Can you wait to be that juvenile, for what is technically seven days?

Never so much time to consider, to think, to be enveloped in a world I wish I was actually a part of. But no, I'll just be passing through. Like the rest of my life. Just passing by, just visiting. Never really home.

But that book, it's bound to be good - if not better. They always get like that. And the sound of his voice, reading things in Portuguese; saying things like that Wiggin says. The inflections when they're shouting. Sometimes forgetting to go back and correct after someone whispers. How, just to prove your human too, you stumble once or twice every five hours, and then sigh and make some passing comment about how you suck - and go on in spite of yourself.

I have to confess, I've been doing my share of dreaming. Thinking. Wondering and pondering and hoping. It's bound to feel like a dream by the time its over. Bound to look like a memory in moments, bound to feel like history in the next few months after it's close. It's bound to have a leather back and thin, yellowy pages that crackle from dust and what feels like old age. It's bound to sit on the highest shelf, and whenever its drug down its bound to have notes and scratches and memoirs scribbled all over it.

It's bound to be beautiful, like old age ought to be. It's bound to be old, to seem ancient, to feel distant - unreachable, untouchable, untaintable. And it's bound to seem perfect in the limelight, bound to feel like a legend as it fades. But we'll know that for a few snatches of time once long ago, it was real.

And that, if nothing else, will be enough.

-RK

Why am I still here?

Sitting silently still, with my legs crossed in bright pink pants - cut off gloves that I bet a million to one are not 'baby alpaca' - a sweater that isn't either - and tennis shoes that, heh, I bet two thousand to one don't match. And I've been thinking all afternoon, all day, all week: I just want to go home.

Y'see, I came here - to Peru - with a purpose. I came with a plan, but one that would only carry me through until wednesday. After that, I not only checked out, but I changed gears. I stepped out of being who I want to be and became, for the next four days, who I was used to being. I became a tourist - even a traveler if you will. A shopper, a buyer, a consumer.

Suddenly, nothing I did was about them. It was about me. About us. About 'seeing' places and things and customs. But not people. No longer seeing them, their needs, their souls. I became the same selfish, self-centered American prat that I've been all my life. And after six days of just getting it, just understanding, just skimming the surface of all that I wanted it in the world...

It made me angry. Unrelentlessly angry. At myself. At my inability to qwell it. At my own failure to be what I said I was going to put all of my last energies, all of my heart, all of my life into. And all for a few gloves and a few nice things and to make myself feel better - I went back on it.

It's harder than it seems. To really change that sort of thing. To really see people and stop seeing the world the way you're used to. And I think at the end, we all felt a bit of it. We all saw it around the corners of what we were doing, what we were investing in, what it was meaning to us. But it's hard to stop, hard to change, hard to really do it.

But there's some comfort in the fact that we all felt it, all saw it, all knew it right under the surface. That we weren't doing it anymore. Weren't being what we were really supposed to be. Weren't touching people anymore.

And so, I think. That's all I can do at this point - think. Think about how I'll change that, change my ways, change me. What sorts of changes of mind, of heart, of spirit do I need to have before I can do it - can live that way? Can really, honestly live what I believe in?

I don't really know yet. But as I continue to see it, continue to think -- I know I'll get it. Sooner or later. God willing.

-RK