festival.

i'm slipping farther away from what i had once cherished to be the most important thing in my life. i'm grasping and leaping from moment to moment and not looking ahead. it makes sense as to why i feel unstable, empty even.

(like i said today, i've always felt alone, but this just proves it.)

and i'm not upset about it

or angry

or jealous

because i know that i'm surrounded by love

every hour

every day.

i said to them today to think about the fact that one day we will be without one another.

one day, i will be without u, and u without me.

but to sit in our rooms

isolated

and awaiting that day-

fear. our hands clenched around our covers,

our eyes staring out towards the maples

with their wide, veined palms offering themselves up to someone, something

but not impatient.

omniscient in their beliefs

confident in what's to come.

so please don't fret

and just let me know that you love me

and i promise that i'll do the same. 

i'm praying for you. wherever you may be, whoever you may be

because i'm unsure of anything.

and for the first time,

it doesn't really bother me.

it's all coming at us

regardless of whether or not we have prepared for it

with meticulous charts

and circled dates on calendars

because nothing is certain other than this:

we are here and soon we won't be.

so let's get all dressed up

and apply the unnecessary cakey blush

smiling at ourselves in the mirror,

ultimately preparing ourselves for disappointment

because over-analysis

and any expectations

always result in something much different than disappointment, and yet we still continue to use the term. i believe it's more shock that reality is different than our own imaginations.

but don't you know flightless bird, that everyone has thoughts too?

this is what reality is- the culmination of yearning imaginations to create action.

so i'm staring wide-eyed and breathless at the white washed ceiling,

draining myself of the excess.

use me, please.

i have so much to give

and it's being wasted within me.

take my hands and make them bleed,

take my eyes and make them tear for your pain, your struggles.

i've done enough for my own. 

a supermarket in california

by allen ginsberg

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon. In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations! What peaches and what penumbras!  Whole families shopping at night!  Aisles full of husbands!  Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?  I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys. I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops?  What price bananas?  Are you my Angel? I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and followed in my imagination by the store detective. We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.  Where are we going, Walt Whitman?  The doors close in an hour.  Which way does your beard point tonight?

(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the

supermarket and feel absurd.) Will we walk all night through solitary streets?  The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.  Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage? Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?