Sunday, January 31, 2010

He’d only been gone for a few days once the nostalgia crept in and began to rape and murder me alive. I didn’t even know what I was nostalgic for, another pet project maybe. A muse that was more committed to me and the completion of my story than himself or his money. But I’d never found such a person, not here anyway. The creative surges were more agonizing than the unrelenting lovesickness. Did I really know him well enough to truly miss him? Or did I just have some kind of compulsion to write about every smidge of emotion he evoked? Where we would have gone or lived together were questions I didn’t want to contemplate. Leaving those question unasked and unanswered made way more sense. The detachment made sense, after he was gone anyway.

Gravitating to him had been an involuntary reflex, much like dreaming. One minute you're ebbed in blackness and the next, a warm face is shining a light in your soul. Opening the door to his light was instinctual somehow. I never let anyone come through that door, hell I rarely tell anyone where I live, let alone encourage them to stay. He roamed here and here I let him make a home next to me for a time. I felt more at home when he was here than I ever had in this damn house alone. Yet, in spite of the romantic wholeness, I wasn’t worried about letting him go. Even if he went for good, he could never take the wholeness with him. So the letting go part came all too easy, it was familiar turf. It was letting him stay and become a touchstone in my life that made me feel ill. Ill and longing for my unpardonable aloof and distant nature. Apart from a nice pair of boobs and free room and board, I had nothing of relevance to offer him. We weren’t necessarily at different places in our lives, but just different enough to make me apprehensive, to exercise passive caution. Meeting him closer to his place on the path would have involved recycling some old beat up lessons that I had no desire to drag out of that plastic blue bin again.
He left on a Monday. The recycling truck came by about an hour later and hauled the rest away. I haven’t seen or spoken to him since.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Betrothed to blackness
A striking face
Blended in a subtle sky
Distance comes with age
Married to emptiness
The color of her cries
Caper Groom, average fish
Swims only to be released
A simple man with unquenchable dreams

As the ink dries
The tattoo finally fades
rotting February night
promises made with grenades
Forever never meant to persist
The children go on strike
Hostages to bitterness
The lights turn off in their eyes

Homes come and go
Cloaked in paternal posh
Still a plan, i know
Flayed out and gutted in sobs
Accessory to falseness
Mommy's obsessed with money and loss
A bride turned stiff
aging only for her own
Fretting in engendered fear
She’d end up all alone

Any day he will leave
Fourteen hours from now
Control will seem free
Daddy’s moving out
Say farewell to solidarity
The split rail rain
Forsaking all clarity
Untaken book of last names
Changeable destiny
On a river of saints
He is floundering
Unlived and unused
8 bedroom house
Held a picture or two
But never a real vow

(c) 2010 Jessica Robbins
 
My latest oil piece in progress...
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Sunday, January 24, 2010

 
Sketch of my Jeshua. Doesn't do him close to justice!
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Saturday, January 23, 2010

 

Saturday, January 16, 2010

“I want to move down to Jacksonville,” he swallowed and smiled over confidently, “to be with you.”
I stared at him with distrust darting from my eyes. “Why would you want to be with me? You can’t even tell me how you feel, so you must feel nothing. If you feel nothing, there is no sense in moving so far just to engage in local sex or local whatever this is with us. I imagine you have no trouble at all attracting all sorts of strange, somatic types in Atlanta.” I dug my left fist into my hip bone and elongated my posture, trying to make myself appear taller. His overshadowing height wasn’t going to bully me into feeling like such a meek ninny anymore.
“I don’t want those types. I want you type. Type Jessi.” He whimpered and fluttered big blue doll eyes. His eyes were like some kind of memory box or one of those living pictures you can plug into an outlet and watch a waterfall come to life.
I was momentarily weakened by the way he kept looking at me, but then I became fumed. “Oh no, don’t you dare try to fool me with your cad lines and swollen blue eyes. I know who you are, and who you are isn’t the sort of man who’s truly attracted to a pale redhead like me. You like those swarthy, fake girls; the girls with so much gloss on their lips and raven blackness flowing through their hair that they shimmer in the sun like shiny bumper stickers from Hawaii that read 'I got laid.' I couldn’t be your type if I baked myself in an easy bake oven for a year and tried to dye my skin that dark. I swear I’d do it in a heartbeat though, if you’d only try to love the value of the interior of the tiny red car that I am, rather than comparing me to all those damn black Escalades that look really nice on the outside, but have likely been robbed and gutted spiritually on the inside...because they're all so fixated on the physical and their damn popularity rather than the higher love and soul intention that motivates it to take form at all.”
“Maybe I have dated girls like that in the past Jessi, but none of them are here now. You once told me you believe that nothing happens by coincidence, that divine reason drives every action and gesture of nature and humanity…”
“Joshua, just stop. You can't hurl that back in my face after all of your arguments about being a self-proclaimed 'healthy skeptic.' Skepticism is a disease I tell you! It's a disease that's been trying to kill God and Angels and the metaphysical art of life since the dawn of mortal intelligence! Skepticism even kills love when men like you become skeptical of their own damn emotions!" My eyebrows pinched in pertinacity and I glared at him. All that fucking blond hair draping down his cheeks, I couldn't take my eyes off the glow of his fucking head. Why I outta rip out a lock of his hair, then rip out some of my own, twist the strands together and set them on fire, straight up, old fashioned baptism of fire. Jesus and Gabriel showed me how to do it,Jesus twisted his entire head of hair in with mine once. But if I tried to do something like that with Joshua, he'd just call me "weird" again. All of my celestial shit is just weird to people who haven't bothered to dream or research it. I am a hybrid merangel, I can't help it if I don't fit in with trendy humanity.

I thought Joshua was an angel too. For a while I wondered if I was supposed to help him be at peace with certain things. He diverted his eyes from my green line of sight and retreated into his thoughts for a careful moment. He softly cleared his throat before he began speaking again.
"I know. I know OK, I know how I am." He confessed. "That's what I needed time to think about. I haven't felt like this since I was in love with my last girlfriend. Honestly, I didn't plan on letting this, I mean us, develop into anything beyond a few nice visits. But finding chemistry like this is contemptuously rare Jessi, it's so rare, and I can't fool myself or ignore it just because I live six hours away."
The veracity of proclamation on his face consumed me until there wasn't much of me left. There were only pleas to love him, to love his reluctant honesty. In that plea I also felt an ember of soul assertion. I could have kept my mouth sealed, went with the really flashy girly impulse to simply collapse in his arms, and let him scoop me up and kiss me again. But the kissing is what lead to this damn conversation at all. Where more kissing would lead, I really didn't want to know. Usually he's all here when we're kissing, but other times, it's like he's already back in Atlanta---because that's where a part of his head dwells, that's the final destination for him. I could give him the green light to move to Jacksonville, but I was never going to be his final point of residence.

"Just listen to me before you ramble on and blow more smoke up my ass." I began firmly. "When you last left here, I let myself fall happily under the impression that you truly loved me for who I am. You have no idea how long it’s been since I was able to believe that was even a reasonable possibility. But then, you vanished again and I did not hear a peep from you for weeks. You didn't even make the effort to place a lousy two minute phone call on New Years. How is that supposed to make me feel? It’s really early into this to be disdainfully neglectful of each other. And now you want to move here? I already threw my arms up in the air and figured you went home to Atlanta and combed over every detail of me in your head and came up with reasons not to accept me or be attracted to me. I shouldn’t have to think or care about other people’s superficial critiques, especially not yours. Yet, from day one, psychically, that is all I’ve fucking heard from you----constant evaluation. Comparing the way I look to certain people, people the world may not consider gorgeous. When you expend time over-evaluating people, how can you possibly coordinate your heart with theirs? I know I’m not the most beautiful woman Joshua, but I promise you that anything I lack on the outside, I more than make up for on the inside.”

“Jessi, I read the blog.” He blurted out and shot me a look of slick pity. Even with that dopey, puppy look etched onto his ivory face, he still looked like something that would make Michelangelo cream in his pants.
“You what?” My throat secretly trembled as a weak, embattled voice bounced beyond my stunned body. The redness on my cheeks began to burn all over. That stupid feeling I used to get when my old school teachers forced me to stand up in front of the class and present some gay project, returned like the flushed high school horror that it is.
“I read most of it and I love it.” He continued and smiled warmly. I shook my head and frowned. He tried to stretch out and grab at my hips, but I coldly smacked his hand in appall.
“So that’s what this is about. You read my goddamn Harlequin romance novel and it juiced up your pretentious head. How did you even find it? I never offered that information to you. I don't know how you can stand here and tell me you love it after you acted like such a grumpy, serious ass when I told you I was writing about you.” I reminded.
“Relax all ready! The last time I was over, you had the window open on your computer and I remembered the Mermaid Music Box. So I pulled it up once I got home.” He had a calm face. I couldn't understand how he could be so calm all the time. I was so accustomed to men who love being rebelliously dramatic in their immature self-importance. Joshua's tranquil, salted, sacerdotal persona--- made me lose sleep at night.
“You fucking sneak, you weren’t supposed to pry into that part of my life, that’s like my online diary.” I played angry, but secretly, I was thrilled. I gave away a swift smile. He doesn't react to my smile the way some men do. It makes me feel defective when he doesn't budge after I smile at him like that.
“A word to the wise---cyber space isn’t the most ideal place to keep your inner most thoughts. Anything you publish online is fair game. It’s out there for anybody to see.” He must have seen right through me. I love having these fights that aren't really fights, but major flirting and foreplay.
“I know I know, don’t pester me with that lecture now.” I waved him off, theatrically annoyed.
“Why are you embarrassed?” His expression sprayed superiority all over me like a horny male cat.
“Who said anything about being embarrassed? You’ve seen me too naked for lights. Why would a few words in a blog mortify me?”
“It would mortify you fast enough if I told you I thought you were an unstable lunatic and needed to get your head out all those dreams and focus on what’s in front of you.” He said half sternly and half teasingly. I love it when he tries to act like he's older than me, like he wants to have a tiny bit of authority over me.
“The landscape of now always changes. Men in front of me usually become little more than old, dusty files of the past. The dreams are supernal consistency. Connecting with the higher selves of the men I dream about is what brings the most resonating satisfaction. I've worked too hard with Gabriel, developing and rising to the level we're at together, just to turn my back on the clairvoyance and importance in the dreaming now. The dreams lead me to you in the first place, Joshua. I only knew to keep an eye out for you because Layne said you were coming, two months before you arrived in my life, Layne told me you would show up. It's more than simple precognition." I paused and waited for him to saying something, but he thumbed his goatee and shot me bleating blue eyes once more. I pressed on. I wanted to murder the soul kissing silence with more words.
"And apart from that, beyond the dreams, I am sure there is nothing you could ever say that would make me feel ashamed of myself." He nodded and began chewing on his lips. I knew why he was getting nervous.
"By the way, I heard all those horrible things you and your friends were saying about me. I heard you call me a turtle or whatever rude remark you felt the need to have a spiteful laugh at when you thought I couldn’t hear you.” I folded my arms and allowed totally neutrality fall over me so I wouldn’t well up. He instantly appeared to be slapped with guilt, mortified even, but hid it rather well. I’d already cried about it when I first heard, I wasn’t going to dignify the petty, crude insults with emotion now.
“They weren’t talking about you, they were talking about me.” He claimed uneasily.
Perturbed, I hissed, “That’s easy to say to my face. It’s not even worth talking about, I was just amazed and disheartened that you aren’t as loyal and protective and sincere as I’d originally thought.”
I let my mind swim in every memory that’d formed since the first moment I saw him. Destiny. I recalled. What a frivolous word.
“The first night we met Joshua, you asked me if I believed in destiny. At the time I said yes... but that yes came before I heard you pose the exact same question to other women who came after me... as a very crafty opening pick up line, I am assuming. I felt special that you had phrased it to me so effortlessly and supple, but there was nothing sacred or unique about that line at all. You affinitize with any woman who looks remotely appealing. You're just like some kind of humming bird. I'm surprised I even saw you given how fast you were trying to make your rounds from girl to girl. Why you wouldn't have even noticed me if I hadn't come up to talk to you. I almost walked past you and you would have been none the wiser to this chemistry you suddenly seemed so enamored with. For what it's worth, I really hadn't spoken to anyone else that night, and there were 40,000 people there. Once I found you, you couldn't have peeled me from your side with a paint scraper.” My voice faded gradually until I thought it would become one with the air. His face turned a stale shade of white. Men never over analyze the tiny specifics of first meetings the way women do. It was funny to watch him let it all the pieces of events sink in. I tried not to smirk in validation.
“Destiny is a capricious and tricky lady, especially when self-seeking men use her name in vain to steal a woman’s trust and affections.”

I heard curses fly through his brain, scolding his stupidity more than me. I didn’t say anything for a solid minute. I just stood stoically and absorbed his reactions and objectively overhead him wrestling with his own conscious. He was made more vulnerable by his own boyish games than anything he did or didn't feel for me. I felt so sorry that I wasn’t exactly what he wanted in a woman. Maybe because I wasn’t the type of woman who was obsessed with being shallow and making the exterior more physically perfect. I am healthy, I work out and take great care of myself. I've always been really skinny and toned. What more do these men expect? I will be damned if I go to a plastic surgeon and take a hack saw to my natural beauty, just because society is a shallow bitch. I am totally at peaceful contentment in being an awkward looking, little turtle of a girl. The angels have told me I’m the Megan Fox of the soul realm and that’s really more important in the long run, no matter how cliché or lame that may sound, now, coming from this shell of a homely appearing outcast that I am. My ex boyfriend used to remind me constantly of how flawed I am. That relationship finally broke on the point of resolving that it was better to be respectfully beautiful and self-appreciative alone than be made to feel ugly or unworthy of love at the hands of a judgmental person. In many times of heated insanity, I remember screaming at him, "If I am so hideously unacceptable, then why are you even with me? I am not keeping you here, but you are making me a prisoner to your perception of my appearance." Which of course, is based on low negative energies that are bred in falseness, and falseness isn't healthy for anyone until you have defeated it with the truth.

I flashback or forward or present or where ever flashes of thought can take a person intent on trying to dodge love. I flashed to the woman I have grown into. The woman who doesn't doubt herself because of the opinionated eyes of other people. I denied the inner hopeless sap and revved up the righteous Aquarius act.

“Joshua, I don’t think you should move here. I don’t want to be responsible for your unhappiness, should you rearrange your life and then decide you’re too much of a rabbit to keep patience with the pace of a turtle.”

Monday, January 4, 2010

It was a blurred night of drunken insanity, a Thursday nearly year ago at the end of March. The air was no longer frigid, and the new spring rain had momentarily subsided, but the streets were still wet and slicker than a seal. That’s where I met him—on the street. Moments before the sight of his uniquely fair face galloped into my eyes, I’d been inside of a car with a different guy---a tall guy with long brown hair, reddish almonds for eyes, and rough, unshaven skin. As the car began to accelerate further away from civilization, it hit me like a train wreck that I had no idea who I was in the car with; I only knew I was slurred and incapable of making coherent choices. Seconds after coming to this drastic wisdom that I should not make any more choices, I made the moronic choice to leap from the moving vehicle. I landed on my feet and didn’t hesitate to start sprinting. Startled in astonishment, the man driving hit the brakes, threw the tan truck in park, and flung open his door to holler at me.
“Hey! Where are you going?” He stretched his neck above the top of the cab and bellowed into the roadway. “Are you okay? Did I do something wrong?” His voiced drizzled with nervousness, probably a fear that I was fleeing to find the nearest cop and report his ass for the weed he was trying to sell me. I wasn’t. I just knew I couldn’t be alone in a strange car with a strange man and leave my friends. I couldn’t see my friends. I only contained an invisible sense that it was dumb to leave the group to go smoke grass with someone I’d known for all of 10 minutes.
“I just have to go find my friends! I really shouldn’t have left them! You didn’t do anything wrong.” I assured him as I continued to run further away from the humming pickup. I didn’t look back. As the truck slowly pulled away and turned down a dim lit alley, I was left to wander the humid streets of Riverside alone. Not a bad neighborhood. The artsy district, smoke shops and tattoo parlors were lining the path before me so it wasn’t a hideously unsafe or threatening stretch of land to stroll. Still, I was alone and somewhat stunned by myself.
Not for very long though. Eventually I staggered up the sidewalk to one of those indoor/outdoor bars. My red hair that had formerly been neatly up swept, was quickly succumbing to the tempest weather, becoming more stringy and messy by the moment. I began trying to finger comb the mindless tendrils away from my face. Peeking beyond a few sloppy strands, my hazel eyes drifted upward. Unexpectedly I locked pupils with a blond haired boy who was seated under a canopy of tiny Irish flags. My eyes were the only body part that stopped spinning. I didn’t know if I should gasp like a girl or continue engaging in the other loathsome, girlish mannerism of finger tugging my hair as though I hadn’t noticed him. It was too late. He saw me looking back. Through the opaque stupor, I wondered sensibly if I’d ever seen a guy stare at me in quite the same hounding way. He watched me like he wasn’t the least bit intimidated, like he knew me even. With unrestrained lust streaking out of his blue eyes, I was certain he knew the shape of my body well enough to know me for now. The glance had a near paralyzing effect, it was one of those haunting glances that never seems to wash from the mind, no matter how much one attempts to bleach or sanitize the smoke stained memories. I suppose I had little business attempting to remember anything from this particular evening, given how sleazily intoxicated I was. But there he was, contently eyeing me and on the borderline of breaking a smile. Portions of the night in question were murky, but the way this boy looked at me remains amplified to a divine level of clarity. The look would linger with me for months.
My breathing gradually steadied after the breathless dash from the truck. I managed to stay still, except for inexplicably rubbing my palms together like I was trying to generate some kind of energy besides the overpowering energy beaming out of the eyes of the boy. I didn’t care how my hair looked anymore, but I wasn’t thrilled that I was wearing my thick-rimmed librarian glasses. Those damn glasses are likely the most potent kind of guy repellent a girl can wear. They distort my entire face into some kind of sour fruit. Men either have a twisted fantasy about a redheaded dork in glasses or they simply dismiss her as a sexless prude. Nothing could be further from the truth. The guy seated before me didn’t seem to be dismissing me at all, his damningly persistent flirty eyes were telling enough. I could have said a million things to him, but there was only a single ice breaking question singing in my bones. I scooted over to him, bent down slightly so my eyes were aligned with his and whispered, “Do you know who you look like?”
His eyes finally unlocked from mine and scoured back into his head as he cried, “I don’t look like Layne!”
I laughed a little and then plopped down on his lap without so much as an inviting gesture from his pale, skinny arms. Obsequiously impressed he’d either read my mind or heard the Staley comparison before, I tossed an arm around his shoulder and put my other spare hand on his chest as through we were young lovers who’d been torn apart by some kind of natural disaster.
“But it’s a good thing you look like Layne! I love Layne. He’s unbelievably sexy!” I rambled blithely. I gave him the condensed rundown of my work with the troubled and unsettlingly disturbed deceased. I didn’t have to say anything to him really. I had no reason to initiate a conversation. He’d been the one eye fucking me to fantasy hell. I could have just as easily wandered inside and been a snotty bitch to his existence. But I wanted an excuse to talk to him, so badly I wanted a reason to fill his stare with some kind of story.
So I talked on, explaining my forwardness, apologizing for my state of mind, and soaking up his telluric, fairytale-like smile all the while. He simmered up to me and almost began to display a slight shyness as I continued to shift around on his bony legs and yanked at his hair like it was a good luck charm I wanted to tuck in my pocket. I dug into my purse, pulled out my camera, and began snapping candid pictures of my new friend. Half of my head made it into a few of the photos, but I was more concerned with getting a clear image of his wildly different face. It was in perfect proportion. He had nimble cheek bones and this cool jut of a nose that was rather alluring in its own individuality. He was laughing the entire time, his entire face lit up like the moon when he smiled, he was so happy. I’d had a pretty insane night already, but this boy just sent it spilling over the top of genial insanity.
Because I hadn’t gone to hunt down my friends, they managed to track me down. Never fails. I finally connect with fun in the form of a fine man and someone has to interfere and cut the enjoyment short. I’m not sure if they followed the stench of beer or the generic perfume or the sound of my sensational hysterics, but they finally located me, still carelessly engrossed in the blond guy’s laughter, and now nearly hog tied by my hair to his warm lap.
“Jessi it’s time to leave, we have to go.” Kelly informed me as she marched up. She always sounds so motherly, like I don’t have a choice but to obey. I suppose I’m obligated to follow her instruction because she’s my most responsible friend. She was the designated driver so I didn’t have much say in the matter. I didn’t want to leave the blond though. I milked Kelly’s patience for another hard five minutes. She shot me expressions of annoyance and irritation the whole time. I didn’t care. The blond was like some kind of baby bird I’d nearly tripped on. He didn’t know why he’d gotten knocked from the nest or why he was still learning how to fly, he just kept hopping around with a drunkard chick on his lap like he was determined to take off eventually. I pet him one last time, grabbed at his chin and teasingly shook his face a few times. Then I sighed in sudden closure, clumsily stood up, and waved a forced goodbye as Kelly grabbed my hand and dragged me away to the car. I was gone as spontaneously as I had appeared.
Once we were climbing up the bridge and heading towards the south side of town, it occurred to me I might have neglected to offer the blond guy my phone number. The imbroglio mixture of power in the alcohol and his blinding charms must have murdered my mental checklist of proper dating procedure. (Like that list has ever worked for me, I should just burn it and chant “death to dating” anyway.) It all happened so fast, I was way more focused on playing with him in the moment than scheming to see him naked and gagged in the future. All in kinky time.
I woke up the following morning with a screaming screwdriver of a headache. The blond was the first person I thought of. My next thought was that I had no way of ever communicating with him again. This made me immediately sad, bloated with regret, and choking on the fucking “what ifs?” What if what Jessica? What if you had given him your number and he’d become just another dude to try to sleep with you only to lose interest and vanish from your life two months later? I thought harshly, but reasonably. That thought was more of a probable certainty than the conclusive uncertainty over whether I would ever see him again.
As the months flew by, I began to believe the mystery blond was nothing more than a tipsy mirage. Maybe life is just a tipsy mirage.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Behold I have seen the Christ
his dearest servants come unto me
one by mind and two bibulous dream spice
we wrote and read labors of birth
readily denounced the earth
wished on shiny pennies
thoughts of back and fourth
finding abounding sense in the name of the Lord
I pray before I purge, i pray before I purge

never seeking sustenance
in the shadows of the birds
lest I never eat
only feeding on His word
the mystery of mustard seeds
planted in fables of the meek
hidden deep in darkness, low
germination galore, let the spirit grow
hidden by winter weeks
until the light summons the leaves
roots reminding of above and beneath
the same soil, different feet

I heard the master condemn carnal greed
the desire that tempts hate to breed
we knew not this hate, not we
but promoted the joyfulness of all good deeds
spilling our sorrows
no more promises of life to borrow
for all has been fulfilled
like a wand of waving truth
May the peace be entirely unto you

I see not what the world would see
dancing around a dying Christmas tree
a faithful servant come to serve
as He
offering no more than a single dance to me
by and by we sailed the dream

bid hello to the magical elf
who whispered before he flew from the shelf
we can offer no more than self
for self is sin
let all be lifted unto Him
Leader of peace, Children of Men
the wonders never cease
when you become a protector of peace

(C) 2010 Jessica Robbins Happy New Year!!!!!