neon

music city, neon
lights and
dirt in the cracks,
so many habits in
my hands, oak
illuminated by this
tin can sky.
my amber and gold
sit quiet and sweet
next to tap tap
tapping fingernails,
as the lights
glow soft and
swing slight,
like breath, in
and out.
theres smoke
and ferment and
conversation to my left
about hair, and
me, in my bar stool,
thinking about neon
tonight, and loud,
and alone.
thinking about how
right now is one
last step before i'm alone
and moving, alive
in a place i may
grow to hate, but
i could always
look back to the
music city bar,
weathered in whiskey,
burnt in neon,
draped in tired.

i thought i'd be out of here by now. i feel like a hooker, or a recovering alcoholic. driving back to the hand that feeds you.
i'm here as a spectacle, a fairy tale, cloaked in cheap white vinyl mod boots and a polyester blond stripper wig. i stand on a box and get stared at, which has moved from exciting to mundane. it's for the paycheck, and i'm growing weary of the dollar signs in contempt for the hours.
except it's all about the money, of which after this weekend (ironically enough) i will have none. i have spent it all on this weekend, despite my gregarious efforts to save it for said move to boston. and it's all i can think about.
after telling my mother the account of picking up the car from the mountains, getting almost all the way home before getting a ticket for expired tags, having to pay twice the renewal fee on the registration plus a georgia law mandated emissions test, and spending the money on gas and hotel room to work at the beautiful but horribly concepted club at opryland in nashville, she asked me, "well, how do you suppose you're going to make it to Boston, sweetheart?"
i'll figure it out.
i have no idea, but it's going to happen.
don't worry.
those three phrases have been my explanations for a little over six months now, since quitting my jobs in atlanta and going on tour go go dancing with a well known liquor company. i really don't know how it's going to happen. i know this is what i want. i know this is what i feel is best. i'm just wondering what i have to sell in order to get there?
literally. after spending the forwarded paycheck for this weekend and coming to work it off, i have been driving and thinking to myself, what do i have that could be of good use to people on ebay? i mean, there must be some assets i have that can be auctioned off as a supplement to my (lack of) income.
let's see here.
time lapse between this sentence and last: 5 minutes, 13 seconds.
and i have come up with - a lamp.
a lamp?
that's it?
i gave everything i had to salvation army. my beautiful white and black wooden dining set, my tv, my futon, my rolling kitchen island, the lovely mirror i painted myself...
all in an effort to get me here. back to nashville. wondering again how i'm going to get out.
about a year and a half ago, i was in san francisco. i was studying with a ballet company, i was alone in a city i knew nothing of, and i was dealing with the shock of my father's cancer and the fact that this city i was supposed to move to, had now been filed under: temporary.
i remember walking after that first week, down through the city street fair, dodging the men in their ties on those people mover scooter things, ridiculous in all their glorious environment saving construction; reading the signs of the homeless and laughing (best one: i'm not gonna lie - i need money for a dime bag); buying spoons turned into necklaces; watching the fog roll in over alcatraz; and meeting the transvestite hookers that walk the beat in the tenderloin... and thinking to myself, "i am so upset i turned around. i am so upset i turned around."
i dont want to turn around again, just because i'm scared of my inconsistency with luck. okay, maybe not so much luck. but just the natural order of things. i'm a klutz. i trip over things and run into things and laugh at socially inappropriate moments... why wouldn't i think my awkwardness with everyday situations wouldn't traverse to tripping over important decisions and trusting the right guy with my heart? this will not be another san francisco, and i will follow this through with everything that i have, like the girls in asian massage parlors. yes, i would like my happy ending, thank you.
the truth is, if i would have stuck it out across the country, it would have been okay. i would have been okay after i calmed down, and realized there's nothing that i can control in this world. nothing, besides my own death, but i'm not there. yet.
nashville isn't so bad. it's kind of romantic, here, draped in amber, muddled smiles and shoulder talking to my left. at least i know this is just right now, temporary, like shedding a skin after the winter.
music city. neon ain't so bad.

k.

clocks and cynics: one can't survive without the other...

"If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life."

what famous words
from such famous lips,
giving me only the advice
to dwell in our
tempestuousness,
to bide my time
(and nail beds, no doubt!)
and watch
and sit
and wait it out,
for all the rhymes,
lest reason,
expunged, wrung
out, released
on tiles bruised
from past years' time;
my veins run dry
with your elegy,
parched in all
monotony,
but yet i wait,
dear oscar wilde,
to prove this
syllabic symphony
i'm laughed at
spat at
called a fool,
patience binding,
waiting for you,
though time is running
catch up while you can!
your poison slowly
swells the sting.


you have to love mr. wilde. for as much as i can despise poetry written in prose, he inspires me to do it best i can. i haven't written anything rhyming for a minute, so i thought i'd write a little sonnet like contraption, which is easy to read and understand. i may always be vague but at least this has a direct object.
love will most likely always be elusive for me. i have friends getting married left and right and having babies and buying houses... when did i miss the memo, and the bus? this will always make up the most emo part of my existence, the most substantial heart of my writing, and the central core to my choreography.
can one person make this right? and even if they could, would i ever let them?
i don't know if i would know how to open myself to that again.
read some oscar wilde. it brings your most unjaded cynicism out, and it's so bitter it can only be described as lovely.

k.

upon my return

two weeks, seventeen hours, ten minutes, five states... and i'm right back where i started from. technically.

i began this trip going to new orleans to teach, then up to manhattan, to jersey, back down to mobile, then up to boston, back to new york, and traveled the plethora of states to return to the atl. by train, overnight, trying to drown out the three children under the age of two, who happened to sit directly in front of me, who all sounded like they had been affected by cholera.
i reconnected with friends from elementary school, high school, and college. i made a snow angel in a little courtyard in jersey. i took class with principals from american ballet theatre, and got offered potential jobs in a town i thought wouldn't offer me anything but an overwhelming feeling of absence.
it has been an amazing trip.

but then again, they always are. that's why i call them adventures.

it's time to call another place home, and look for things that will make me a better artist and 360 degree person.

and it's here (well, actually, everywhere) i am powerless to a disease that happens to be the only thing that repaired my relationship with the man that it's destroying. which is, i should say, one of the most confusing things i have ever had to deal with.

it's the first time in a long time that i have opened my eyes to everything in my life, everything that i am not, and everything that i can be. And it stretches past just me. we put blinders on with so many things that we love, cause we love them so much we don't want them to have faults. even when we can see them. even when they are so evident the hand will strike our cheek and as we fall to the floor we think, it's not their fault.

i have hit the linoleum more times than i can count, sometimes blindsided but mostly, because i asked to be hit. i don't think i took responsibility for it. but i'm not a victim, because i allow it to happen. so rather, i am a masochist. but now, i want to be a masochist of reason. like the terminator of masochists. i want to get up after i'm hit and spit in their face. just as a test.

so life, here's the thing: you want to beat me, it's fine. i don't mind being slapped around a little. as long as i can hit you back, we'll be all good.

k.

the thing about your absence

i have no words to describe how you continuously let me down, and how you don't think twice about it. i have never been able to look at someone in obvious pain and tell them they look like shit from it.

you should give me some pointers, toots.

k.

queen anne

i was queen,
last night, wrapped
in covers and
dreams,
with hot tears
rolling off
my skin, this
sentence of death
hanging over my head
before no longer
having one at all.
and
pitch black,
then,
alone and shaking
still, from
fear and death and
prospect.
i have the option
of waking, as
she never did,
and the option
of leaving things,
the same,
as is,
and i wonder now
like i did
last night
do i run from her death,
not mine,
gasping with breath
i've never known?

k.