I'm sorry we've been so irresponsible about posting. I think, at this point, we'd like to post something, but have little motivation to do it, honestly.

so let's say you guys provide a topic that you'd like to see explored in a piece of writing. anything is welcome. we'll take our turns providing our interpretations; try to make it something relatively literary.

thanks in advance.

sorry everyone. we'll update as soon as possible. school has picked up and we're all busy. but i'm sure there will be something coming up in the next week. thanks for being patient.

I close my eyes and gasp. The heat is beating down on my back, thawing my body, raging through my flesh. It almost burns. The scratches on your shoulderblades are raw. "The color red," you say, "cannot be described in words. The color red is passion, the color red is intensity, the color red is described by a pumping of the hips and the electric connection of lips."

I can't begin to tell you what it feels like. My heart pounds and crashes into my cage, I can imagine it being beaten and bruised and still screaming for more. I can imagine this rush of anger that comes like adrenaline surging through it, and I can hear you say, "Anger is red."

"I think I realize," I tell you, "what you are saying. Red is an emotion, red is a taste, red is a ripe fruit, plush and fleshy, overflowing with staccato bursts of warm taste from the moment I break its skin to the moment I lick clean its pit and throw it into the garden, hoping it will grow back in dozens. Red is when your hips chafe mine from the heat of the night, the heat of the night is red and our bodies are vessels sailing down waters stained crimson from the setting of the sun." This makes you smile. This makes me smile.

When we turn up the lights they blind me for a second, then my pupils hide away and you hover above me. I can feel your breath warm against my skin, I can feel my pores expanding to capture every essence of you that they can. Breathe out, so I can breathe you in. For a second I want to paint the town red for, though I cannot see it, I can feel it.

"Red is not to be seen, it is to be felt. Red is not a color, it is an emotion, it is a passion, it is a fire pummelling through you. It is an ignition of the senses."

And, god, it feels so good.

you tell me that you've never seen red, or fallen in love, or been to thailand. i say i can do all three.

we will pile into my car, a heavy chocolate crush of your body twisting into mine. your skin will blush as i trace paris into your neck, again, again, until you feel the soft electric drip against your back. you will say i smell like warm laundry and french cologne and i will say we're flirting with color. you will bend and tattoo my arm with your hair, and we will listen to to the samba of the engine.

when we get there, i will overshoot the curb and you will wake; she will purr into slumber and we will feel her weight in our chests. ping will welcome us to Thai Palace. one. he will stutter over his words as if overflowing with strong tea and we will sit near the door to the kitchen so we can smell the peppers and the bok choy and the heat. my eyes will press against your collarbones as i map the way your neck extends into an l. you will feel morocco in your stomach and smile and it will crash into me. your masaman curry will come, and you will eat slowly, tasting the broth, letting it search your mouth with hot hands. you will swallow and lose a drop to your chin, letting a warm trail reach your adam's apple. your grin will slip through swollen lips and then you will dab the river with a napkin, your hands a tender chiarascuro in this light.

then i will take them. let your fingers touch my lips. you will feel my breath and it will be moist with words.

and then i will guide your hand to my heart, and you will feel my chest rise and fall like an ocean, and it will be a quick beat, a tango. and i will think,
two. three.

for the third time.

friends and i saw the independant surf documentary step into liquid a few nights ago. at some point in the voice-over the narrator described a trip to rapa nui he had taken with some boys that he surfed with. monolithic moai towered in single-file lines from shore to shore, threatening the setting sun with stone jaws and sunken eyes. he said, in retrospect, that describing the feeling that the island gave a man was unlike anything else in the world. that portaying it in words seemed inadequate. that it was like telling someone who had never experienced sight about colors and their inherent qualities. that it was nearly impossible.

disinterested in surfing in general, i left the theater with one impression: that it would be a unique endeavor to write about a color without betraying my purpose with subective descriptions like, "apples are red. sometimes." i'm entertaining the idea that i'm not an inept english teacher and that this is a brilliant thing.

corazon

flashing electricity between our open mouths.
something unique about the sense of comfort in your poised lips.
torn. abashed. bleeding.
staunch report with jagged comic-book fringe.
vocal chords in a stacatto allegro.
gunshot wound from your probing tongue.
bang!

this is the end of the world in your arms.

i'm afraid it's not good enough. always apprehensive of my inability to make something worthwhile. but it's just muscle memory. a reflex that i learned somewhere to apologize for something that wasn't a mistake to begin with. i just tend to make it out to be.

no more apologies. ever.

i've never been able to write effectively on loose leaf paper. its impermanent and awkward. i hate my handwriting. it's messy and often illegible. so this is clearly an intelligent alternative to not writing at all. some of it will be self-centered. the poet's poet. writing for an audience of one. some of it will be incoherent. euphonic prose that means absolutely nothing under analysis. some of it will be accidental. you can find meaning in nothing. and i write a lot of nothing.

all of it will be inebriating. that's my aim. inebriation.

because that's the way i feel now. all the time. and i want you to feel it, too.

i love andy. and i love stina. and you do too. effing admit it.

and. you all effing love this journal. or you will.


the end.

i think the worst thing to do is call yourself a poet without knowing yourself.

i'm not inspired, and i hate the word inspiration. i will not pretend to be mercury or some tragic figure slowly dying between shreds of paper or any shit like that. i am nothing ironically beautiful; i would be all too bold to say that i could find incredible melancholy in an upper middle class suburban town, going to a small private school and aspiring to attend columbia university next fall. fuck it, i don't write because i'm tortured, i write because i'm good at it. something about writing is incredibly self-indulgent; sometimes i put words together just because i like to hear them wrap around my tongue, rub against my skin, clap as they strike a board. in some way, it is the most pretentious form of exhibitionism; no, i don't want to show off my breasts or my arms or my face, i'm smarter than that. so read my shit, because it's personal and so fucking beautiful. mmhmm.

in a less cynical light, i write because it immerses me in a world where i am forced to look at other people, i am forced to judge them, and i am forced to judge myself. a writing teacher once told me that the best way to write dialogue is to interlace two separate conversations, seemingly unrelated, because that is truly how we speak. by writing, we are forced to learn more about how we view the world and how other people act than in any other form. that's all i'm trying to do, really. grow up. i think writing is a useful tool for that. and i encourage everyone to tear off a napkin and write a hurried little poem. and then buy a piece of cake, beacuse damn it. you earned it.

stina and scott are my babies. i'm no good at introducing myself, so if you have any questions, you can ask me.

eff it. go write.

It's cold, but inside I am heating up from concentration. My bottom lip is furled up into my mouth in thought, and I don't know what to write.

I'm Stina. I'm at that point in life where I don't mind if I never change again, and I don't mind if I wake up one day and suddenly find that I am someone else. I'm just very comfortable and I've secured myself with the fact that I will come to terms with being whoever I am, at all times, whoever that may be.

You can never really be happy, but I think that's the trick to getting as close as you can to complete satisfaction.

I write selfishly. Every word is for myself. Every word is a part of myself that I'd like to remember I had, a documentation of something I once was to read when I grow and it becomes a part of something that I am not. I write to shift memories from me into paragraphs and organized sentences, I write because this pressure is crushing and I just want to let it go.

I really love Andy and Scott.

The end.