anticipation...

as much as i wish to be a stellar buddhist who only pays attention to this..and this...and this...I am not. I look forward frequently, to a time when i can rest like a musty fall leaf floating off the branch a shining star on a fall evening, glorious in my imminent death & renewal, death & renewal...I look forward to a time when my significant other returns herself to me, as she did the first year we met. Glorious in her belief that i was the perfect, the one, the only one who understands, understood. Better than mother father friend. exploding like a ripe berry with love & desire, wild free uninhibited.

I wrote over Myself

Danielle D. Billington

I wrote over myself

This is not common, one only and shy on the page. This is really disorienting. I don’t know how much longer I can do this. I don’t know how much longer. Not sure who I am anymore. Nothing to say that hasn’t been said before. I can feel the end page wave at the cat and the owl, the cat and the owl, too shy to see the page, proper and the beginning. Got to go great tree owl god God got time old grace Gift today only grim great tree owl god grace time occult goddess graft together our grace grin towards Osiris grin great tree owl god our time has come give time opulent grace scream your alcoholic nightmares. Freeing restriction. Black hole burns consumes spits out breaking, shattering times construct beautiful docile wisps of space time brought on trails of smoking ethereal wings beseeching god to rip the space open in-between both of us. But…in the end, time always wins. Entranced by slow curves muse at my pen into the cosmic space times cosmic grace true pain stings like fire into the wounds of loves disgrace. Murder emotion. Distract me from disappointments, unconscious conscious expectations my eyes are bigger than time. I remember when I was excited about philosophy, when I had time. Time ruins everything. Things will flow whether you want them to or not. You are infinitely mine and always will be.

still haven’t gotten anywhere
don’t want to make any plans.
I wish I wasn’t so crazy and
it wasn’t so tough
For both of us
Looking forward
find/fall into ways

I wouldn’t have been able to
Without you
If it’s too late tonight,
maybe tomorrow
To exist as if You did not. I respond to your ghostly controls Constellated archetypal stellar positions of synchronicity Ghost owl cat bird eye tree Steal time waste time erasing me Relativization Dark matter explodes thoughts The world we made is falling apart bridge by bridge brick by brick A strange humidity refuses to dissipate Falling through sidewalks into nothingness Make me invisible Disconnection happens because there is no time You exist in a black hole that consumes, rips apart Spits out remnants to float dead and alone Amongst burnt out stars and cosmic dust waiting for the hand of God What’s the use of Sanskrit now? Your kiss like sulfur My heart a chemical puddle So tired my face aches, skin tight around my eyes Like taut canvas waiting for the application of something grand.
In the End people play games for reassurance it's easier than asking 10,000 green trees exhale our sadness
a dragonfly stops for a moment contemplates me, while I contemplate him the trees love in the breeze
I sip my coffee, squint at the sun and wish someone understood sweat trickles down my face the breeze cools it, birds sing, squirrels chirp, water flows, wind blows, time passes I expose my shoulders to the sun
and return to reading what is left behind and done love is so much ephemera a dry cleaning ticket traveling towards a sewer grate playing underneath modern art cat batting at a curtain cord you, with my heart Venus flytrap, sticky sweet glue I want to be trapped, consumed her silver hammered words like lightning strikes blinding me, burning me shocking me I'll put it in-between these two books the beautiful thing these beautiful things you made me.
We are all contradictions One day I accept all The next, nothing. I can’t maintain the silver lining
The pure moment, The letting go… Can’t Leave the luggage of pain and longing Nothing to be excavated, but buried as deep As deep goes Below the earth’s molten core Burning through to the Vastness of space to float away On the wings of cosmic dust What goes around Comes around And I want to be what I was
What you want me to be, who I really am, but…I’ll keep protecting myself. I have to. The judgment is A hard outer shell to save me From the worlds hurt I wish I could flash freeze the pain The fear, shatter it into a million tiny pieces With silver hammered words, Step outside and become pure… Don’t ask me to break, I offer to chisel delicately, safely Exposing enough, but you would not let me.
Silently softly flakes fell below light while
Alone the moon emptied nothing sudden
Beside the silence
When disturbed I felt cold
Upon the new ground
It’s like I’m in this horror movie but it’s my life. It’s my life. It passes from sun to rain and I am still in love in a cafe thinking of you and THE SONG KEEPS REPEATING. I JUST CANT MAKE IT ALONE...OH NO NO...WE HAVE Existence and it’s all we share. Sometimes I have fantasies...how many things have I not seen, how many stores have I not gone into, places I have not gone, because I am afraid to be seen. blueberries. I have arthritis, bears eat them, you wouldn’t know it to look at me, wide rump, talking about the sun. Even after a good sleep, I got home yesterday, I was exhausted, so tired I couldn’t study. there’s been a little bit of vibrating, a little bit of pain at night. I hope my body isn’t becoming resistant to the drug. There is something seriously sinister about the world. There is something very wrong about the way it works, about the way people are.

"The poets room has nothing in it. no comfortable furniture, no tv's, voices, clocks ticking, nothing. you take a clean breath and quietness comes in." cut it up, tape it together. It’s like communion when like writers find each other, putting words on each other’s tongues, offering blessings. The removal of sins, silent understanding of similarities. Slip in the words, expansion. a past love who refuses to exit the present.”
I need a Universe where people motherfucking miss me. I would do anything for you, you son of a bitch, and you don’t even care. Yes, I’m still fucking Holden Caulfield, so what?
And you all wonder why I hate people?
Bet you got it all planned right
Bet you never worry
never even feel a fright
Bet you got it all planned right
Never fit to worry
never even feel a fright. –Spoon
Life demands sacrifice from most of us.
People who ‘choose’ to focus on the positive are only ignoring the negative. It’s not like I don’t fucking know good things happen sometimes. I fucking do.
“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love. -NG
"People think dreams aren't real just because they aren't made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes."-NG
I could make up a whole story using snippets of other people’s words. In fact, I sort of am. So what?
Do not fucking try to tell me what a story is, or should be. Don’t do it.
No fucking attempts at some grand literary hijinx here.
What do I want to be when I grow up? Someone who writes when she feels like it, makes love when she feels like it, never works another day in her life, hangs out with her furry babies, her friends, someone who acquires magical powers and stops all this madness and pain. I can do that in my dreams. That’s why I try not to wake up, and when I do, I insist on going back to sleep.
Jesus, why do you want details? Can’t you fill in the fucking blanks yourself, don’t you have any imagination?
I work in an office. I am a bureaucrat. When I was five, I said, I want to be a bureaucrat when I grow up. No, I sure as hell didn’t, in fact, when I was 7, with my rolled up white t-shirt, slicked back hair and plastic Fonz motorcycle, I said, I NEVER want to work in an office. You know what happens? Life, circumstance, bullshit...the weight crushes you. It really does.
I recently realized my life probably would have been much better if no woman had ever fallen in love with me and I had gone on believing no woman ever would.
I need to stop obsessively checking my facebook page for updates or comments. I am always disappointed.
"Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe."-NG
I should be issuing subcontracts right now, but instead I am writing. This is what I would rather be doing. I used to have a job where I could do this most of the day, but it didn’t pay the bills.
She just called. She was talking to me about practical things. I told her I really liked her voice. She got all shy, and asked, really? I said yes. I really do, it kills me. When I really stop to listen, it reminds me of all the reasons I love her, that I can’t articulate.
You think I am egomaniacal, but you don’t understand when you are a writer, you have to have swagger and confidence in what you do. My writing and my lovin’ are the 2 things I have swagger about.
I wish I still had the time and patience to make excellent mix tapes.
We used to be friends, Dandy Warhols
How to Fit In, Pale Pacific
Don’t You Evah, Spoon
Erase/Rewind, Cardigans
Come Around, Rhett Miller
Waltz #1, Elliott Smith
Shit, a story with its own mix tape!
If I had time, patience, money, I’d buy a drum set, a four track and a guitar and I’d make my own soundtrack.
It’s about how shit makes me feel, not about what it REALLY means. It’s about what I decide it means, what feelings, images, memories it conjures.
People really like it when you say nice things about them, or show you appreciate them.
Liberate art from form. Shifting pronouns existing outside inside of time. there is no narration, no plot, no intention, no memories and poetic phrases bring some semblance of story together. memories exist outside time in shift and rhyme. it is extravagant prose that tries to be pretty. puff of seedling rolls across the table like a spider hiding clues poorly. visceral, like breaking glass pieces scattered, evoke, evocative like the almost silent chimes. Chimes in a song, an assault of images mimicking the internal monologue. loose yourself into the stream, do not demand anything from beauty but to be pretty words in a vortex. contrived is structure structure the plot engine temporal frame narrative drive why, why metafiction. if you have this, you must have that, but why? 6 billion of us to hell, hard to believe. body breaks, velvet underground if sleep ever comes.
You want me to tell you about my feelings when I can’t even explain them to myself. I have them. I have a lot of them. I love you. I can’t really put that into words either. I am only adept at putting down words on lost love.

Yes, this poem was about her

Monday, September 20, 2010
To exist as if You did not
Danielle D. Billington

To exist as if You did not

I respond to your ghostly controls
Constellated archetypal stellar positions of synchronicity
Ghost owl cat bird eye tree
Steal time waste time
erasing me
Relativization
Dark matter explodes thoughts
The world we made is falling apart bridge by bridge
brick by brick
A strange humidity refuses to dissipate
Falling through sidewalks into nothingness
Make me invisible
Disconnection happens because there is no time
You exist in a black hole that consumes, rips apart
Spits out remnants to float dead and alone
Amongst burnt out stars and cosmic dust waiting for
the hand of God
What’s the use of Sanskrit now?
Your kiss like sulphur
My heart a chemical puddle
So tired my face aches, skin tight around my eyes
Like taut canvas waiting for the application of something grand.

Avant Garde writer with no story, no plot. (Czyzm)

(No, just the real inner world actuality) “In inner plot prose…the critic says, the experiment doesn’t quite succeed. Without characters or something resembling a story, there is nothing for the voice-intriguing as it gets to stick to; it becomes disembodied. Thus Passes Through, is not so much a novel as a 206 page poem. ..the question is, how long can you listen to a mind…I can’t help but feel despite its well wrought prose, Passes Through would have achieved much more if it had engaged the outside world once in awhile…”

That man in a suit is worlds away from. Man, suit, newspaper, laptop, testosterone, social construct, Tell us your dreams sports illustrated swimsuit edition, save the world quantum leap, fingers to forehead a stressful day in the world you created and help maintain. Two splenda in your coffee, got them yourself instead of making the tattooed barista do it for you. Progress, progress. I guess. Take off your glasses, not your eyes. Put your eyes up on your dominance. It establishes the relationship between things. Each of us our own world, our own world. We can take a trip to you, travel, unpack, visit, for awhile, but can never live within you. This is the end, this is what destroyed you most, why you’re so desperate to get inside, but you can never see. As if you or I or anyone needed another reminder of our mortality.

Bits of prose and poem

Liberate art from form. Shifting pronouns existing outside inside of time. there is no narration, no plot, no intention, no memories and poetic phrases bring some semblance of story together. memories exist outside time in shift and rhyme. it is extravagant prose that tries to be pretty. puff of seedling rolls across the table like a spider hiding clues poorly. visceral, like breaking glass pieces scattered, evoke, evocative like the almost silent chimes. Chimes in a song, an assault of images mimicking the internal monologue. loose yourself into the stream, do not demand anything from beauty but to be pretty words in a vortex. contrived is structure structure the plot engine temporal frame narrative drive why, why metafiction. if you have this, you must have that, but why? 6 billion of us to hell, hard to believe. body breaks, velvet underground if sleep ever comes.

In the End

people play games for reassurance
it's easier than asking
10,000 green trees
exhale our sadness
a dragonfly stops for a moment
contemplates me, while I contemplate
him
the trees love in the breeze
I sip my coffee, squint at
the sun and wish someone
understood
sweat trickles down my face
the breeze cools it
birds sing, squirrels chirp, water
flows, wind blows, time passes
I expose my shoulders to the sun
and return to reading
what is left behind and done

love is so much ephemera
a dry cleaning ticket traveling
towards a sewer grate
playing underneath
modern art
cat batting at a curtain cord
you, with my heart
Venus flytrap,
sticky sweet glue
I want to be trapped, consumed
her silver hammered words
like lightening strikes
blinding me, burning me
shocking me
I'll put it inbetween these two books
the beautiful thing
these beautiful things
you made me

Academia and Experimental Writing

I'm terrible at formal writing, so forgive me. This will be very casual. For my senior seminar, I applied with manuscript, to the creative writing section here at the U. I was accepted, by Julie Schumacher, who
is now the head of the creative writing program. She contantly commented on how wonderful my work was. The other students in class scoffed at my work, not considering it fiction because it did not follow the norm. Plot, character etc... No one wanted to be challenged, or discuss alternatives to traditional writing. The class was beneficial because I wrote, and received postive feedback & encouragement from the Professor, enough that I thought I might be able to get into the MFA program here, as she really seemed to like my work. She told me I should be very proud of what I had accomplished (perhaps I will post that short story here) etc...etc...I applied to the U, with her letter of recommendation, and did not get in. Did not even receive a private note. I submitted a manuscript to a Grad level fiction class, following my rejection and was chosen out of numerous applicants. Again, my work is very experimental, non-traditional, it's not as if these Prof's received standard work and were surprised once class started. I called this class the stab myself in the eye class, because that is what I wanted to do to
myself every class period. I thought MFA students would be excited about writing, want to discuss and exchange ideas, but instead they talked about their personal lives and how my work was nothing... maybe it was pretty words, but that was all (to this day I would like to see them come up with words as pretty as mine). I became silent, tired of trying to explain the validity of what I was doing, tired of being attacked, instead of having my work and viewpoint explored. And I am not just saying this, the majority of work in that class was mediocre at best. Things I was writing years ago, things people have written a hundred times before. I went to the Professor's office one day, and without uttering a word, he said, I know, I know, the class is disorganized, unfocused, out of control. He asked ME to help him get it back on track! I was the undergrad...he was the Prof. He wasn't defending me, I sure as hell was not going to do his job for him. He gave me a B+, claimed I had not turned in all my work (which I had and could prove) and told me I didn't participate in discussion enough. I stopped writing for 2 years. I questioned my desire to ever apply to another MFA program. If this was what it was going to be like, I wanted no part of it. The 'workshopping' of my pieces by other students was half hearted and completely unhelpful, as they had no desire to expand their horizons and understand what I was doing. There is no room for anything, other than the norm. I did not hold a high opinion of the loft, but knew I never wanted to take another writing course at the U of MN. I reviewed their offerings and noticed a class called Intuitive Writing. I was skeptical, but have been very pleased so far. The environment is welcoming to all styles of writing. People are there because they want to write, not because they need to feel superior to others, or be unquestioning. It is a supportive environment. I understand not everyone is a 'good' writer, but if you want to, need to write, this class is just the ticket. The teacher opens with physical exercises, making noises, stretching, word generation, etc...then she gives us an exercise. Pick one of these words and start writing without thinking or stopping. Perfect! I understand the need to craft sometimes, but I don't believe it is always required. Though I feel what I am doing is over most of their heads, I do not feel judged. This class has me writing and thinking and talking about my viewpoint on writing. Granted, most people are beginners and don't have much to say, but I still feel supported.
After this class finished, the teacher asked if I had thought about applying to the U's MFA program? Ironic? I'm sorry this is such a mess. I don't really have time to pause and craft at work.
I hope to post something about what my writing is about (though I don't
even understand it fully).

Covered

Silently softly flakes fell below light while
Alone the moon emptied nothing sudden
Beside the silence
When disturbed I felt cold
Upon the new ground

Excerpt from a new piece

There were messages in the morphine, lethargy at the edge. The pleasure of doing math escapes me and I’m not a sensitive am I? Eternal intellectual pitfalls, what madness is this? No logic or material evidence, love transparent, ephemeral, translucent like a spirit mist. I caught a glimpse of it once and like a ghost hunter I keep trying to capture proof. And what I want is to not have to return to work, to make God’s acquaintance, to be what you thought I was, to disappear. This is a specific neurophysiological state, connections. Writing a complicated infection and the only treatment is persistence. You talk about characters but there is no such thing. What will come of this, when things go too fast. You need time to make time. More likely to forget dreams, hallucinate, limited precise time, maybe around…happiness and glory awaits you. Subconscious communication someone will appoint your thoughts. Practice sitting. Massive steady small perspiring spirit power light and dark knowledge of immortality, unclear end of time, no neat and orderly tight red fleshy drawers. The details are already there. Your world is so small and specific. Shadows everywhere, the intent to murder is there, from the moment everything diverges. A curiosity. I suppose you would say I was dark. Unkind molecules congeal, tick tock, tick tock. The climate of my mind, drastic overcast and stormy. I never really lived in the world. It was always in my mind, the life I created out of difference. The world I created to be allowed to exist, or did I? The assignment is to be what you are not. Wind fire time and place, exit and no exit. I leave no memories. I am not finished. I was always trying to impress the girls. People want what they know. I am nothing like that. Can there be no knowledge without proof? Beyond physical reality outside of time and I like it that way. A little off, just like everything else. I remember when the world ended, I let out a pained howl and closed the door…then it kept happening over and over. The day I realized that people and love was nothing but lies. I know I keep mentioning it, but it’s the truth that everyone is afraid of. Everyone has their obsessions, this is mine. One more thing to tell you. Despite my best efforts (and I am still trying), despite time and distance, most days I still wish you unhappiness. I hope I gnaw at the part of you that knows what you did. Bricks and electric turn cold in an instant for no apparent reason. Yet somehow I can still sometimes make it sound so beautiful I even fool myself. And just like always when I show, no one understands and the inevitable, I become silent.
Sitting on the fence. I am a vague landscape formed out of the silence and so I sit and observe the crows in repose. This is my undoing. Sitting in silence relating to birds more than to people. Participating in melodies and realizing the barrenness. Stark, sparse, the exact exchange unknown. A burrowing slow aimless river through my mind. Brooding and angry. Esoteric cool. Full of wonder and fear. She possesses secret talents.
My only assignment is love.

Simple Signs and Wonders

Simple Signs and Wonders
copyright 2008 Danielle D. Billington



The building, a concrete monolith, the concrete cold seeping into the skin, stealing the soul and breath of almost all who enter within. Inside, it could have been anyone’s office. A typically tiny sterile colorless box, but…A framed map of South America, an embroidered hummingbird on linen, books on any and every subject from haiku to fractals, though it was perhaps a tad more disorganized, as if a tornado whipped through and deposited things randomly into every available space. Books, papers, pictures, pens…she was always loosing her keys underneath things. She is the setting, the setting is her. I told someone once; the office woman, she is beautiful and clumsy, with soft skin the color of Maxfield Parish women and eyes, sleepy brown eyes which I am certain gaze into the infinite, and she has wavy brown hair with hidden breaths of gray, which make her adored even more on the days she has not hidden them with store bought dye. She is under the same thundering skies as I. It rains in her office. She says the rain never touches her. Imagine the flurry of falling drops parting in waves around her. Birds sing liquid songs and ants march in neat lines across the floor.
I am full of trepidation upon entering, it is like stepping across the invisible threshold at the louvre, setting off the alarm, stealing the Mona Lisa’s smile, carrying it in the palm of your hand running through the halls while security guards chase after shouting in French symbolist poetry. As always, I spent too much time there, in the woman’s office, interpreting signs and wonders. I couldn’t help it, and being neurotic, I analyzed it. Yet still, the office was a vast portal taking me away from the mundane. It spit out ideas, thoughts, poetry, stories at the speed and force of a thundering train, despite its hideous bland beige carpeting. Can fractals be used to determine human beauty? Are mathematical patterns embedded in Aztec embroidery? Would you read someone’s journal if they left it behind? I knew it was a swirling mesmerizing vortex of enticement. It was the anticipation of a lap dance waiting to happen, the twenty-dollar bill dangling. I want to place my hands on it, divine its secrets, moving its dark blue electrical energies around at the tips of my fingers as if it were a crystal ball.
For someone, such as I, who could, and did easily sleepwalk and daydream through every moment of mundane daily existence, this space, this simple space made time pass unnoticed, improbable, and what it contained shocked me awake like a not murderous lightening strike. The gift of rain, the burst of awake, like citrus sprayed in your face without the sting. So good, too good, it must be a dream from which you never want to wake.

“Do you understand?” She always asks me, looking into my eyes intently.
“I understand nothing but beauty…as clear and as crystalline as ice.” I reply.
But nothing ever happens.

Time stops, stars start, turn, and drop, and as always the spell breaks as I cross back through the heavy and scarred thick wooden door. Entering the everyday, falling asleep so fast as if sandman, moon stars and all, were sprouting in my consciousness, rooting there, spreading drowsy inducing tendrils. I must leave, returning to the continuous motion-- the velocity of unrest.


(My writing Prof told me it was too philosophical. I like to tell and sometimes show.)

Ego

"'I' is merely one of the world's instantaneous spasms."
— Clarice Lispector (The Passion According to G.H.)

Remebrance of things past

Sonnet 30: When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

by William Shakespeare

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear times' waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor'd and sorrows end.

A little something

Love Poem in Gibberish?
_____________________________
I tried, but nothing came...
She said to write you a love poem in gibberish
But I can't because you make sense to me
your lips and hips
the sunken curves of you
your face the golden ratio
your mind the black sea heavy with storms