Turn on the amp and play me a song (by Rebecca Chasteen) Friday, Dec 18 2009

All the roads seem long
when you’re already home
and you can’t stay.

Listening to you play,
I’m afraid to move
and break this bubble-
your skin on mine
almost makes me cry
dreading the minute you move,
put on your shoes…

I don’t know if it’s worse to see you
or to pretend
it’s all pretend

I can’t catch my breath
when the moment ends
I wait quiet, letting it settle in me
letting it carve out a place
letting it
be

I just want
I just
I
know,
I know

We’re still
just people
managing
only briefly
to be in the same place
at the same time

I watch the branches out the window
I watch you
I watch myself…
this
has to stay here-
beautiful thing that it is-
won’t make it out there yet,

(if it ever will)

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I don’t need (by Rebecca Chasteen) Thursday, Dec 10 2009

(I may change this title…)

There are all these lies, taking up my space, all my time-
I can’t breathe like this

I find your voice,
right beside mine,
and there is something so so right

everything slides into the sun,
the doors just opened baby

I don’t need, I promise, I don’t need

something about this is good enough
to fight the urge to ask anything of you-

isn’t that love?

(I feel like there’s going to be a part two to this…it’s missing the rest of the thought…I’m just not there yet…)

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Making (by Rebecca Chasteen) Friday, Dec 4 2009

(I’m still not sure that I’m happy with this yet…)

I know
I
can’t be quiet,
can’t doze in nothing

because it’s suffocating quicksand
it’s poison
I’ve been there
before

I can’t do
mute
or numb-
I would rather feel too much
than not enough

I can’t
do complacent

or compliant

I can’t be conformist

I can’t
just take it
without making it mine

I’m fighting this slumber,
this wave of warm lies
that it’s fine,
it’s fine to sleep
to let someone else do for me-
because I know it’s not

I know it’s one step away
from losing everything

I feel so lost-
something shifted and silence rolled in;
unsettling quiet,
a muting-
without my words

I have to move
I have to make
something
I can’t wait
there are already cobwebs
setting up shop

I.
can’t.
sleep.

I.
can’t.
stop.

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I barely found these words (by Rebecca Chasteen) Thursday, Dec 3 2009

I can’t find the title
to go with this,
I can’t register
I can’t

tell you anything-
I know that now,
so I don’t try.
(okay, I’m trying not to try)

I
dug in, out, away
when you drove on past me sitting there
holding on to
what I took that morning
(I take everything I can)

knowing it had to be handled just right
for me to keep it
for me to bring it with me

I wonder if you leave me crumbs
or if I make them up

I looked at my stomach’s skin, my thighs
the next time I was alone
and couldn’t believe
how easy it is to let you see
what disgusts me
and I wonder
if you see it too?

all I see of you
is love (and sex)

you know
I can’t not love you (touch you)

right?

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Waste Not, Want Not (by Rebecca Chasteen) Monday, Oct 12 2009

Sex
is so tricky;

It’s so easy
to get someone to love
how you look in their bed.

It’s so easy to
be wanted
and ride that high
unaware
there’s no where to land
unaware
what changed while you were up there.

It’s so hard to tell
when words are as real as they can be
and when they’re bargains for heavy breaths
(or the heavy breaths, bargains for words- we all know how that works).

It’s hard to tell
when everyone’s on the same page
and when
by some slight of hand
the page turns-
burns
love and lust
separate
instead of having them become one
movement
all in the same.

People lie and say
it doesn’t matter, no strings attached.
Never believe that.
Sex has never been
clean cut.
There has never been
“just a fuck”.

Bodies are driven, have motives, have spirits-
everything means something.
So
it should be a rule-
we have to love the ones we fuck,
no matter what.

And we have to trust the ones we love-
Isn’t that equation clear enough?
Take the guess work out of it.
Make it count.

We should demand to refuse
those
so bent on wreckage-
so concerned only with
their moment.

Sex should be fun
as much as is it should be love.

Make it matter (because it already does).

Waste no
body’s
offering.

Minimize nothing
with manipulation or make believe.
We owe our lovers all the honesty we’ve got
(and we should love the ones we fuck).

Waste no
heart’s efforts
with tricks and games
(where not everyone’s a player, but everyone gets played).

Waste not-
bodies or hearts
or want not-
right from the start.

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pour the waves (by Rebecca Chasteen) Monday, Oct 12 2009

Some days,
the music just has to be loud
loud enough
to drive out all temptation to believe in lies
to drive out the numb that doesn’t try

The music just has to be moving enough
to keep me moving
has to remind me of
everything that matters
everything that moves
there is never
nothing
I can do

I can do
something with this
even if it’s
just feel it
even if it’s
just be here

be here
and don’t leave
don’t obliterate myself
on rocky shores
don’t release my grasp
don’t follow their lead
this is what there is to believe-
this is all there is
and this is all that matters

some days
the music just has to be loud
loud enough
to remind me

I just have to be needy enough
to pull it in
anxious
angry
enough
to demand more

pour the waves
pour the waves
pour the waves

my skin is bare
my throat is dry
my stomach waits
my heart aches

pour the waves
pour the waves
pour the waves

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I hope this counts (by Rebecca Chasteen) Saturday, Oct 10 2009

I want to apologize
every time he touches me
because I’m so sorry
it’s not you.

You know I tried,
right?

Or doesn’t it count-
so long ago?
Or doesn’t it matter
at all?

I hold tight to hope
while shadows push their way
as far as they can go,
take everything they can…

They can’t
take this-
this part that’s been waiting.

You know
I always wanted YOU-
right?

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It’s a happy madness (by Rebecca Chasteen) Saturday, Oct 10 2009

It’s a happy madness.

I wish you understood
the clothes on the floor,
the books and papers and pens-
the movement.

I wish you saw how pretty
the movement
is;
the moments when
nothing matters.

I could never trust you with that,
with something
as precious as that;

of course I tried,
only to find
.every.
.time.
you marked it wrong,
told me so
and grabbed me to come along.

But I’m happy
in the madness, the movement
I am happy

in,

on,

my own

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bury (by Rebecca Chasteen) Tuesday, Oct 6 2009

if i could bury myself in this, i would. i would suffocate myself with this. i would place it over my mouth, my nose, my eyes. i
would just let it be the last thing i breathe, the last thing i see, the last thing i think. i
would leave it
just like that. so i would never have to wake up without it one more day. so i
would never
have to look at it from a distance, from an unimaginable distance. i
wouldn’t have to
yell into the void between, the place where my voice never reaches, my words
never matter enough.
i wouldn’t question again why i stand on the fringe of it all, why i
assume
my bridges are too shaky, or my roots too heavy, my intensity too much or
of course, not enough, whatever the argument may be. or that i
am too much or
too little
never again a concern because,entombed in this, i couldn’t be
anything else
but the one who carried this so close it took over and
took my place, couraged me enough to
let go and just
be this
and nothing else, since
i
never really was the rest. i never really was anything else anyway.

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Field Work- documentation is so important (by Rebecca Chasteen) Saturday, Oct 3 2009

There is a psychology to everything.

You’ve got to know
I gather my field observations
and slide them under my microscope…

you’re still driving me crazy
your hands are still warm
warm
on my skin

they are still
the only hands I ever really want

we don’t even have to talk
I can hear your thoughts
we could go forever
we could sit in silence
it’s really all the same

That’s what I already told you

That’s just the truth of us

there’s not a stitch
wrong with what we sew

we hold our borders well
until-
for just a while there
I thought we were mindless
we were
shaking everything down
we were
going to lose all our senses-
drive away,
never come back

I get it
I’m right there with you

I’m placing your hand in mine-
it fell into me this time;

you
aren’t ice
you don’t just shimmer past

what would you have done
if your name rolled off my tongue?

That has me drinking
That has me holding on

my god,
you are
exactly…

you need more time, so do I

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