so says the straw hat

I have been seeing a lot of ghosts lately. Shadows slinking into places that are not hallways. Or people sitting in rooms when I first enter them. There must be an explanation: 1. I am nearing my own death, but I will die unexpectedly, so how could I expect it? 2. I have chemical slips occurring in my brain. There are recipes for how brains function, and sometimes those recipes go awry. Is it possible for there to be a disease of ghost seeing? 3. There is a natural gas leak. It is covering the entire town of Austin. I am the only one that is affected by it. 4. There are ghosts. They have something they wish to tell me. 5. Crazy. (see 2).

At the Stop Sign between Two Steep Uphills Bitch, you look like some girl my ex-booty-call fucked before me. I'm on my bicycle. I suggest you get out of my way. Near the Cemetery Where the Giant Flag Flies This air is scoopable. I opened all my pores to be bowls. On the ride home, the air, so soft and warm, it sank into these bowls. Later, when you are just about to drift to sleep I will carry them into your room. I have filled these bowls full of the southern dusk air for you. It will taste like favorite soup.

The earth was a blanket. No, the earth was just a segment; just a pile of dirt, and rocks that were waiting to be dirt, and some trash sometimes and bugs. But it could have looked like a blanket in this darkness. The way the ocean can look like a blanket if you are out far enough from the shores so that it will smooth like glass or like, well, a blanket. The earth was not a blanket. I have caught all the fireflies that I have ever seen. I called the ones from Costa Rica to come out of my memory and burn lightbulb real so I could put them in a jar. Then when the earth was busy being a not-blanket I took shearing scissors for a sheep I wish to own later in life, one that I will call Ralph or Evelynn, and I took to the blanket like train whistles piercing the shoreline. Violently. This blanket earth has holes. I have ripped scars in my own backyard. I took the whole jar of all my memory's fireflies. The ones from Maryland came willingly, remembering how I lay flat on my back reading t...

1. I did not want to sleep in the trailer tonight, mostly because these manuscripts I have to read are sitting heavily on my heart and going to the trailer seemed such a far-away place. But to add to that, I remembered that in the trailer my alarm is set to NPR and the for the last (holy shit) MONTH there has been constant escalations in bad news about the oil spill. Waking up in the morning with such a blatant reminder that we, as humans, self-dubbed as the "intelligent" creatures of this earth, seem to be only extremely efficient at destroying it. What a heavy heavy heart I carry for this earth of ours. 2. Earlier today I saw a mattress flopped on the asphalt outside a cemetery gate. this prompted ant trails of thoughts. What if it belonged to someone whose bloodstains were what made it so dirty and dingy? What if that person was now buried in the cemetery, and a lover had decided it was high time said person got their mattress back? What if instead of spending money on cof...

I haven't been posting because my computer (poor Gregory) is very sick. He won't even open his eyes. The word I could not remember last time, it was "Twenty-Six." Today, a small and rather annoying little bullet of a dog ran directly under my tires as I was trying to ride to work at 8 in the AM. I thought, if I hit this tiny dog, I do not think I will even feel bad. I also yelled "Fuck" really loud at it, hoping to compete with all of its tiny yapping and jumping. Really, I bet we would have both gotten hurt pretty badly, for what it is worth.

Today I heard this word and thought about how it was strange that when I was young it meant one thing, and now that I am old, it means something completely different. I can't remember what the word was.

My mama is here. Her name is Sierra. Like the mountains. Or the truck. Or the jeans. Or my middle name. It is a lovely name. She is just like me. I was born on her birthday. She was turning 26--which is how old I am now--and instead of being in Austin, she was being in labor. Apparently, I cried a lot. My middle name is Sierra. Her middle name is not Alexis, it is Dee. Her last name once was Winn, then it was Davis, now it is Shield. Davis is the only last name that is not a verb. She is not just like me, I am just like her.

tiny tiny hands the air in texas is this thick blanket the lightening is more silent the thunder is more loud i have tiny hand gloves. I put them on my regular hands to make my hands small like erasers. the rain on the canopy sounds like a giant peeing.

City Museum (St. Louis, Missouri) Holy Shit, this is Wonka Land. I am one kaleidescope. You are another. When we crash, there is this eruption of mirrors, fragments of colors, and we are both rendered useless. I am riding a ferris wheel on a rooftop. I am climbing in the mouth of a beluga whale. I am lost in a rabbit hole. The rope swing that Derrick pushes me on is not safe. I do not care one bit. Nope. This is not what I want to write about. But I think a list of places I have been since I moved to Texas would be cool. I hate how prevalent Wikipedia is. Did you know that Texas has flown six different flags? Not in historical order they are: Spanish French Mexican Republic of Texas Confederate US Woah.

Nobody badgered me about not posting yesterday. that means that nobody is paying attention to these. this could be good or bad. Yesterday would have read something like this. Baby. Stop this crying. My head, it is a hurting. Wind. Stop this blowing. My trailer, it is a'swayin. Anger. Stop this building. My heart, it wants to learn to kick-box. My heart, it is using its coronaries for arms. They swing blindly just like two helicopter blades in motion. My heart, it is using those vena cava's like legs. My heart, it is doing a high kick. Today...hmmm. Today, I am not sure what today would read like. When my puppy and I step outside it is July and I am in the year when I was 25. And I am in a State for the first time where Home is not where I left it when I was a child. Here, the night puts itself down on me like a thick blanket. My puppy loves to run in the field. It is dark, this thick blanket, it hides my puppy so well. Also: I am so afraid of similarities. Also: Dear Brain, Sto...

i got lost in this grocery store. mom was right here just one second ago, i swear. or she was right there. or she was somewhere. uhm. now there are just all these jars of pickles. which is pretty ok because i like pickles. well i like some pickles. not those sweet ones, or the ones that are cut like potato chips. mostly i do not like them cut. oh, my grandma makes pickles! my grandma is my mom's mom. and right now i cannot find my mom and so i am going to just stand right here and count all the jars on all these shelves. in school they told me to stay in one spot if you are lost. and also to not talk to strangers. and also to stop drop and roll. and to have a fire safety plan. i have a fire safety plan. me and my sister are going to drop our pillows out the window first and then i'll lower her down far because she is the younger one and then i'll hang onto the sill and drop down after her. but there isn't a fire right now. no pillows, just pickles, so i am going to coun...

i am growing up. this is how i know: today i decided to paint the room where i store my piano. i bought the paint, brought it home, and painted half of the room before i realized that i had managed to paint the room a toothpaste mint. i sort of like it. i must be old.

The jackhammer is close enough that when it first breaks ground I can feel my trailer shake with the earth. This poor earth. This poor poor earth. It burps once, sends its fumes up tubes we have stuck straight down this delicate throat, and we blame the President. And underneath this concrete I believe there once used to be soil. I believe this soil once took seed. I understand that once, flowers may have grown there. My trailer shakes a jackhammer shimmy. It is 7:30 on a Saturday morning, and I know that when the asphalt cracks the flowers on the hillside bow down their petals to see the graves of their loved ones so violently shaken. They raise up their petals, sending seed back to the long strangled soil. There is a machine that follows the jackhammer, scooping aside chunks of asphalt in great elephantine scoops. I cannot see it, but the scrape of its beak against the ground sounds just like the chain-link loops against metal from when I was a child on the playground swing. ccccrrrr...

07 May 2010. 96 degrees today. mosquitoes ate my legs. cactus for dinner. there is never silence here. birds and crickets, cicadas and toads. they all make such beautiful noise. I hear them in the green leaves. I hear them in this heat, slow and sticky, this heat. christmas lights look pretty year round. the trees send vines down from their branches, wear them both like jewels.

I am going to write a ballad. As soon as I can get through these piles of books on my bookshelf and find the stupid textbook that tells me all the rules of ballad writing. I do not trust the internet. Ehow just doesn't seem like a reliable source to me. So. I am going to write a ballad about the crazy life of the lady I work for and all her exhusbands and luckily, she was born and raised in the south so she has a perfect ballad name and I will call it The Ballad of Stacey Lyn. But I do not know the rules of a ballad. So. Today on the bike ride home from work it was late. I stayed late and ate free pizza. And listened to Stacey's crazy life story. On the bike ride home there were a lot of bugs out and I thought about the consequences of swallowing a firefly. I have decided that they are the cause of spontaneous combustion. I have solved the mystery. Stacey married young once, and was not sure she ever loved him. He loved her and loved someone else who had clamidia. She married ...

when the old man lit fire to his hairpiece we all just stood round in awe. 'specially cos he was so good at tap-dancing those flames right out. 'specially cos when he put it back on, it looked just fine with those tips singed charcoal in the sun. my bet is he used to go out friday nights, go out dancing to the big bands. my bet is he could really cut-a-rug. I heard he met a purdy girl too. Says it didn't even matter she was married. 'specially when they did the Charleston.

i am never going to be big. never big enough. this shadow is always bigger. also, this is funny: I was talking on the telephone with my sister and explaining a situation that could not be remedied because the shit had already hit the fan. The mess had exploded. And I thought this was a good way to explain my inability to pack it all away, clean it all up. I will be finding remnants of this shit/fan explosion in the most unexpected of places for the longest time. That is just how it is. And still, I am not bigger.

Fireflies, lightening bugs, whatever it is you want to call them. They are here! They are glowing their little butt glows like leftover camera flashes or neon or something so much more magical because it is not technology. Like when the phosphorus of the ocean glows on the sea turtles back, dragging your fingers across it. Like maybe these fireflies were born of the ocean, fucked love with a sea turtle, kept the magic inside. I wonder how long they live for. I think it is forever. They are singing out summer summer summer! Also, the mosquitoes are back. Fucking mosquitoes.

There is salt and dust on my skin. come lick it off. come lick all the parts of my body till I aint salty no more. I spilled a little shaved ice down the front of my shirt yesterday. I got sticky there, all down my sternum to my belly button. come lick it off. Stop being so far away. I got all this salty and sticky for you. The fan is on. The lightbulb, it has burnt out. There is a soft and warm breeze.

on accident I had a superfunday. first, I went to get some coffee and go to the bank. Anlo and I split a cinnamon roll and we got down to the last bite and Zeno's paradoxed it--cutting it in half so many times it became ridiculous, just a crumb smaller than other crumbs left on the plate--every time insisting the other person take the last bite. then, we went to a poolside cookout. I played with my friends kid and ate a steak taco. yum. after that, Anlo had to run his projector downtown for a friend, but we forgot the power chord. we got stuck in traffic. There was traffic for the Pecan Street Festival and for the Immigration Rally. We should have gone to the Rally. and decided it would be faster to ride bikes back. Which meant we had an excuse to go to the Pecan Street Festival. So we did. At the festival there was this petting zoo, which was just a small pen with all these animals in it. There were big goats, and little goats, and miniature goats and one HUGE goat. There were big...