words

throw voice to the wind

through shoreline breaking sand.

The glass curtain flutters,

the crystal coast unbroken.

The waves, not the gulls, I say, carry

a reply from the sea, late

like an afterthought, white foam

shuffling on sand then

hurrying away, dropping off on the

porch this

seal skin, belly taut.

To be heard and unheard.

Can I order a

window without

asymmetry of that

transparency (you know, since

windows are made

not for you

to look inside)? No? Well, not

to say I can’t live without windows per se, but they do make

the blank wall look a little less intimidating, less stoic, less

alluring, since they deter

murals, graffiti (no space

for you) (they pin you

with suspicious gaze

I. "There's not gonna be any editing, any intros - basically any factitious efforts. I just want to portray everything as is, unprocessed, raw. Real. But that is not to mean that this is some documentary, some retelling of the reality. That would be pointless, I think. Yes I know it sounds contradictory, but I suppose what I mean is that I want to, by unobtrusively capturing moments of my life, by framing moments of my life within some subtle narrative, tell something," I said earnestly, in front of my phone, in some shabby motel room, in front of a window overlooking the dawn of some small mid-west town. Dust on the window sill, grains of sand over the gravel road outside. It would be my first YouTube video I suppose, when I am at that point in life when I am still young but have saved up enough and found a job flexible enough to support a year or two of travel across the States.

I took a sip of coffee, brewed from my portable coffee maker just earlier, when I woke up and rolled out of bed to greet the day. The cheap alarm clock on the nightstand spelled 8:32am with its faint red digits. The curtains were parted slightly, allowing light to fall through the narrow gap and throw a slender pattern across the dirty carpet. The town had not yet stirred to life, its streets empty as last evening, but within the motel there were now telltale sounds of activity - a soft thump from the ceiling, the steady trickle of water through the pipes, the loud crack as the wall stretched and popped its metal joints. I climbed on top of the sheets, tucking my feet under my thighs snugly, then grabbed my laptop from my backpack and waited for it to start up. I thought of blueberry muffin as breakfast, imagining peeling off the cupcake liner and sinking my teeth into the sweet and sour patch of purple. I could look for it later, see if this motel offered a complimentary breakfast, or walk along the main street and find a bakery. But that would be for later. The short clip I took on my phone sat heavy in my pocket. I had been looking up how to make videos on my laptop for the past week, in the spare moments between frantically stuffing things into the trunk of my car and meeting up with friends for lunch and dinner before I left. I had opened a YouTube account, and had spent a couple hours picking out a profile picture and writing an 'about' that would look pretty introspective and sophisticated without being entirely pretentious.

Godsend, piece of

curtain, declare

Independence

against neighbor-

 street, emptied, of

brigands, unseen,

protesting what-?

Holy mirage

 on the road, ghosts

at the windows,

dancing porches

Chop-chop, shut

the windows, dice

tomatoes, keep

out mosquitos–

 Killed those insect

chatters, peaceful-

ness pressed against

the window blade

 and mouthed hello

to the chopsticks–

Quick-quick, before

summer gets cold–

 Silencio night

ricochets past

noise. Press forehead

Staring out of the window

framed

by longings,

aluminum blades

cutting into the white wall -

 like the coconut in summer,

when calloused hands hold still a knife

and stab - twist -

impatiently skylight floods through the new atrium

reflecting upon the clear water

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass