http://wemightbereal.tumblr.com/

Let go of Love’s hand because this is a task
where undivided attention is imperative.

Disregard the rabbit and the fox because you’re a pacifist.
That chase, that struggle
makes you anxious
and you end up crying over the
frayed laces of the animals instead of making a bow.

For the same reason,
Don’t twist and mutilate the ears of the same rabbit.

Hold the laces
In each of your hands
And unravel your shoes like
The old sweater that your old grandmother
Knit for you three Christmas’ ago.
(If she didn’t have Alzheimer’s, you could ask her how to tie shoes,
But she does, so save your breath)

Once the laces are unraveled,
Tape them together to make one long string
That you could use for fishing
or jump rope
or both.

After the laces are soaked with water,
Cut them into confetti for your birthday party.
(The party that your mother got you new boots.)

Even though the zippers on those boots are as tall as mountains,
Don’t be afraid because you won’t fall far.
Zip them up your calves, shit, feet, and toes
and start walking to the tall mountain
to find foxes and rabbits that chase each other like a pendulum.


Then use the laces to lace fingers together like love again because that’s more important.

  10:54 pm  |   June 26 2011   |  1 note  

by: Matthew Roskowski

www.dirtyprojections.tumblr.com

little longings;
the ants are trapped in
my mustache forever-
they do not try to escape,
i would let them go if they
wished,
as i let you go,
when you wished-
but, 
they remain silent, content,
at ease, etc.

longings like,
sitting in the treetops
trying to catch birds as they 
fly past-
i’m never quick enough,
but i get a good glimpse
of the sky and
i always pack a lunch,
so really,
it’s not all that bad.

don’t feel sorry for me,
but do, i miss your pity,
i gave up drinking tea and
smoking cigarettes and
blue moon and
writing poetry and
blue whales and
other things-

when you came over last time,
M.,
you barely said a word, but one
you said was “aware” and I only
remember that because I thought
you said Delaware and I wondered
why you were going to Delaware or
why you were talking about
Delaware at all-

what’s wrong, I said, 
to the hairs on my head,
they sat and said nothing at all,
they’re just hairs,
after all-

I wrote you in Delaware,
I met someone else,
she hates my body but lets me
talk about philosophy and death-

that’s all I ask,
little longings,
happiness i don’t deserve,
or didn’t earn-
its all the same when you don’t
think too hard about it.

  10:48 pm  |   June 26 2011   |  2 notes  

by Sam Vogel

It’s healthy, escaping.
From Twin Cities Trashmen
to temping skyscrapers,
subway scamps, busking for baggies
and meandering home unable to locate
neither Goggle Box, nor
Georgia’s eternal soul(which were
last seen one in front of,
neither paying attention to the other).
It’s a scene American as
Ray-Bans, Tom Cruise,
and the good sick coming onto her
in this Post-Reagan Porn era.

Corr was no Sgt. Smack,
an immoral sleepwalker, tapping
like VT sappers to placate the reaper
out of his Harlem Renaissance for a bit of
Deck-Shit Mortal Combatant.
Predator drones circling with “pilots”
living vicariously through robots,
and Corr would only mutter, “GeeCeeTee”
before accompanying poison people to a matinee.

Nearness comes in varying degrees,
and in this 5:30 blue line to the, “Take Charge, Take Care”
terminal, every one explored everyone.
With external influence, even tattoos resembling Morrissey become
unforgettable visible eccentricities, but never
talking points on 116th street until this
temple of treasure troves, trash,
bio-diesel jazz and the Lucas empire
comes into view.

Set design is apparently everything to The Fitz,
but he shows no remorse
portraying Georgia the good seed
caught with red rum, flexing carpals,
corporeal and adorable, and mumbling
something about how sharks keep moving
even while asleep.
All the while those Red River kids are sandbagging again,
threaded together with an ebbing temp’s temper
and the thought of a possible trip to Hazleden to
reinsert the golden apple girl with the green meanies, hoodrats
and the possibility of a Hallelujah friend.

Maybe the TV will just have to wait a few paychecks.

  5:36 pm  |   May 18 2011   |  3 notes  

Sometimes,

a poem is as simple

as being sad.

  12:43 am  |   May 10 2011   |  8 notes  

by: Jason Ford

oh, what a calamity
we’ll look inside and out
what will we find
that we can’t see now?

where did you come from?
where will you end?

we’ll drift far away
abandoning the embellished afterthoughts
of a bland, bald-faced life
don’t you think this is all so fleeting?
we’re only strays

we have names
but they’re nothing without a face
you and me, we’re just bodies roaming streets
bones under flesh under skin
clothed in paper thin
formalities

  12:39 am  |   May 10 2011   |  3 notes  

Hold me up with strings so I’ll always

know that you’re taller than me.

It can be derived from the fact that

your fore-arms are three inches longer than mine, or that your

knee-caps are about an inch and a

half longer than mine, but it’s

nicer to tell by

the feathered hair of yours

that sweeps just above my eyes

and works like extra eyelashes

when we hug but not when we kiss

because when we kiss I forget that you’re bigger and I remember your warmth

and your tricky games of

bet flirt argue thrill

dance sleep, repeat.

I am still grateful though

that I know ballet so I can

stand up on my toes

and try to look at the moon

and hopefully be intercepted by your sweet lips

reassuring me that it’s quite alright

to be small as long as

I can still see with 20/20 vision

since you can’t.

Elsewise, who will tell you about the

magpies hiding in the shadowed branches?

Should I be sad?

Should you be sad?

That sticky ink holds more of our history

than photo albums—

History that holds me close and

knows exactly how I got to be so

tall.

  1:27 am  |   February 17 2011   |  6 notes  

the unmentionable 

echoes through a rotten barrier.

beneath her, or through her, 

reveals the faint scent of rosewood

unmasked from the stillness of an 

Indian summer.

both senses intertwine 

within a harmonious suppression.

in an unwavering balance, she is lifted.

musk on her hands,

musk to mask,

musk kept alive by the composure

of two unwavering elements:

identical flesh,

bred from flesh,

and stirred by flesh’s form.

behind one, behind all,

we faintly detect the murmur 

of a scornful soul. 

blushing children observe their naked god:

as the song goes, he is dappled and gray. 

  1:27 am  |   February 17 2011   |  3 notes  

by Saadia Rais

i flung out a line for you

and quickly reeled you back, hoping to dodge you through
the flak leftover from the days i lost my breath -
water rising like my chest and falling with the nets
that tangled up my innocence in countless cigarettes
- and the bright eyes in the water peep to see where you may go
eyelids falter like my mother’s clothes lined up in the breeze at home
my childhood swingset where i’d push out the stones from necklaces
and wondered where they’d go -
as my imagination sits here trying to shake me from inside
shrieking with a broken voice that’s been beaten from the fire,
you lit me once with your skin and again with your tongue
embers pinching at the little girl asking who i have become
- still i can’t maneuver you around my shower musings
and the contempt i have developed in the gritty layer of film,
disenchantment floating freely like oil above the ocean
and the line, slick and brown, pulling you through to be stained.

something is constantly chewing at the threads before you get here
and i get frantic at the sight of you covered in my filth,
my hands race to pull you in quicker and quicker
as my heart thumps a war song muffled under my young breasts
but soon i will get tired
and your image will be blurred
by the qualms i have with living
avoided only by the birds,
and whenever i feel we’re flying
i’m only just free falling
coming quicker and quicker to the slap that lies below -
i can see it when i look down
so i always try to look up!

but even birds must feed sometimes on the fish of the sea
and they swoop down in long dresses, snatching at them with soft feet.
i’ve reeled you in finally, but you’re covered in my blood
so i snip the line, drop you back in, and wonder what it was -
was it love? was it wrong? was it crud?
- as i pick the threads out from between my teeth
and wished my gums weren’t so likely to bleed.

  9:26 pm  |   January 30 2011   |  8 notes  

Once, a leaf fell on my head and
it startled me,
so I blinked twice.

Last year went straight
from winter
to spring.

He found an oyster
and I frowned
at the lack of pearl.

I lost an earring
that the sparrow mistook for
birdseed.

At the museum,
we learned that mammoths were extinct
so we cried.

I couldn’t find recognition on
his featureless face
so I blinked twice.

  12:55 am  |   January 27 2011   |  11 notes  

www.dirtyprojections.tumblr.com

Affable, amiable, under railways we cultivate presentiments to
adorn our loneliness with-Smile, we will, awaiting a moment filled with
other new moments, the ephemeral joys of now and always, filled with
a memory conjured in tents as children, swinging lanterns pallid in the
moonlight lit with laughable dispositions to keep the future at bay,
projecting ourselves seaward as we swam in sleep, hands outstretched 
trying to grab at dreams to examine them and stitch their seams to our
joints and teeth, our limbs and memories laden with picturesque pieces of
everyone we’ve (n)ever met, to fill our existence with trinkets of ineffable
perceptions that we stuff our pillows, insulate our skin and pave our
futures with; Lest lightening split us asunder, lest the weather turn from
best to better, lest the night we split in senseless wonder be the night I
lose my thoughts to thunder, together or alone we’ll rest, you rosy-cheeked, 
me pale pressed, sharing thoughts like cigarettes outside libraries in pitched tents,
lantern still swinging, you still humming in the alcove near the living room,
hedges outside the window look like well-trimmed beards, my eyes the size of
clementines as you smile a toothy smile that reflects off the mirror and lands
In the pocket nearest my breast-We still exist, momentarily, along all of this, 
our ears still chase our mouths and noses as we walk, our tears still stir in
tepid ducts, only until provoked by bee stings or bloodied noses do they
course through rivulets to flood out our blue or white eyes and water the
foliage of which our breaths depend-The acacias and geraniums, the honey-
suckle and the camellias, the dogwoods and the wollemis, the amsonias,
the white pines, the maples whose sap weaves everything we touch into
lattice fences that we continually climb upon and attempt to fill the widening 
interstices with sighs and wrought gestures, wry grins and abject revelations-
Never to reach the precipice, never to capsulate the whimsy wishes into
grandeur existence, into ceaseless abandonment of prior dispositions-
Hems of past events, such as kisses or thoughts or the naïve, ephemeral joys of
prior days haunt us in the present condition, tie us to the wells in which
we’d been wishing-A projection on a wrinkled screen continually skews the image,
never as it seems, never as its been, rejuvenated moments pass onto the next;
Lantern pallid still swinging in tents, dreams still stitched to joints and teeth,
hair and sleep, limbs and our florid cheeks-Exist, we know, we are, we have-
Exist in hammocks, cassocks, apartment complexes, park benches, alcoves,
flower beds, cars in traffic, tree forts, mattresses, mason jars, kitchen drawers,
attics, bedrooms, stairwells, auditoriums, arms, meadows, space, bus stops,
libraries, gymnasiums, books, drawings, words, forests, flesh, garments-
Exist. Exist. Exist. Exist. Exist. Exist. Exist. Exist. Exist. Exist. Exist. Exist. Exist;
Climb atop me in the flower bed, in the foliage-You breathe, I too-Exhale;
Existence is here and everywhere-Open your eyes, I open mine, 
everything happens at the same time.

  7:19 pm  |   January 13 2011   |  4 notes