safe and sound

several years, cannibalism (redux)

"But on a night of water I went under, and saw your break again—the tide to a lung, the moon she wrote down, quickly to courage."

Ian William L.

microwaved angels (redux)

"I just need to see the light through my own tightly bruising eyes, what are microwaved angels, and the neon rattling spittle of want and death and beast."

Ian William L.

the dance

"Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free.”

Rumi

happy cows

love alone is worth the fight

holding something

"Holding Eleanor's hand was like holding a butterfly. Or a heartbeat. Like holding something complete, and completely alive."

Eleanor & Park; Rainbow Rowell

keep your head up

"Keep your head up, keep your heart strong."

the breach

In the meantime, escape the Sunday heat, with this song of heavy water.

"But did I show you love, in the author on my face."

our finding kind of hope

All things change—move nearer, further from. I am 26. It is time to stop hiding from what I want. I want to be a writer. I want to write. I have always wanted to write. I see words. I feel words. I throw those words. They are ugly and jarring. They're in whimsy and kind. They are slow, and they are guilty, and they won't ever not fall.

And what I want to write is a blog, a book, a flock, a vignette. The story between Chelsea and I. The story between me, and you, and spinning. All things fleeting and made of gods.

And the death of a typewriter was only always going to be a chapter, somewhere halfway between the hiding and the hurting—the hope in both of those moments. But it is not the story.

My name is Ian William L., and this is Our Finding Kind Of Hope. New bravery. New strangeness. New too much. New pictures. New music. New words. New hope. New love. New place. New now.

Stay tuned.

(Still ironing out some name change issues.)

film of morning

"Dappled beauty, lit by the warmth of breathing what feels just below a water, dancing light set unveiling for us the day, of all our curious goings—the film of morning an anthem."

Ian William L.

hope is what we crave

all our words, all our hearts

"I wish we could gather up all our words, and keep them safe, somewhere. A decade in letters, tightly bound, and carried close to my heart always, not just in my mind. But sometimes, just the thought is enough." 

Chelsea Lynn Kirtley

to repair with gold

kintsukuroi

(n.) (v. phr.) "to repair with gold"; the art of repairing pottery with gold or silver lacquer, and understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken.

us the breaker

"Permit yourself to flow and overflow, allow for the rise in temperature, all the expansions and intensifications. Something is always born of excess—great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them." 

Anaïs Nin

feelingspines

"I am the conch that hears you, burying hard against an earth."

Ian William L.

helix/noticings

a word gossamer

walking hard into the bell light

two butterflies swept together

dust across the beautiful

small of their flight.

torch song

"There goes my life, at the speed of light, I'll spend it with you."

unlimited kissing

I think you've still got lightning in you. 

Moonrise Kingdom; Wes Anderson

III: love, scrawl these skies

"A quiet electricity makes you shiver. Tears in your eyes pool from every colour."

Ian William L.

II: love, scrawl these skies

"I am so filled with love and taxes—with this smokescreen of grace. I am these warm hands and throwing curses."

Ian William L.

I: love, scrawl these skies

Reading boy meets boy, thinking of the Doctor and his Grumpy Cat pages, breathing in graffiti—pale—whimsy, collecting hours until I feel Yellowcard in the furthest light, feeling like my favourite kind of ocean.

turn it around

something in this video breaks my heart.

If you're looking for devotion look no further.

white heron rises over blackwater

I wonder what it is that I will accomplish today
If anything can be called that marvelous word. 

It won't be
My kind of work, which is only putting words on a page,
The pencil
Haltingly calling up
The light of the world,
Yet nothing appearing on paper half as bright
As the mockingbird's verbal hilarity
In the still unleafed shrub in the churchyard—
Or the white heron rising over the swamp and the darkness,
His yellow eyes and broad wings wearing
The light of the world in the light of the world—
Ah yes, I see him.
He is exactly the poem I wanted to write. 

Mary Oliver

microwaved angels

I CAN NOT SPEAK. I CAN NOT. I CAN NOT USE LOWERCASE, OR NOT USE APOSTROPHES. [HELLO, HOW CAN WE COMMUNICATE?] I WILL INVITE NEW RULES TONIGHT, BECAUSE I NEED TO SAY OUT: CLOSE MY EYES NAND WISH IN NUMBERS. I WILL FIX MY—CORRECT MY FINGERTIPS LATER. I JUST NEED TO SEE THE LIGHT THROUGH MY TIGHTLY BRUISED EYES. LIKE MICROWAVED ANGELS, AND NEON, FUCKING DEATH, ITS COLD MUSHROOMING STUBBORN SPITTING BEAST, A WANT.

I AM AFRSI AFRAID FOR ME. ONLY B BECAUSE I WON'T BE ABLE TO TURN THIS THESE INTO BANK NOTES. THIS IS AFFLICTION WTIHOUT WITHOUT YOU—YOU NEEED NEED TO BE SEEN OR ELSE.

MILKY VISION STAINS ME EVEN NOW.

I can hear: I love you in the water.

maybe i am hearing you.

I will never write the book and have always dreamed.

I just need to see the light through my own tightly bruising eyes, what are microwaved angels, and the neon spittle of want and death and beast.

the astonishing light

I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being 

Hafiz

 

that sea, the gambler.../bruising calm

a surrendering

You surrender to a lot of things which are not worthy of you. I wish you would surrender to your radiance—your integrity—your beautiful human grace. 

Yogi Bhajan

tuesday, the branches

Tuesday morning filtering through the garden state soundtrack—new light I am in love for.

Ian William L.

for you are

Be humble for you are made of earth, be noble for you are made of stars. 

a Serbian proverb

I am these images

"After a weekend of always dreams, this moment is so calming. The cooled warmth in the breath of morning that takes me places—childhood summers, of infinite dusks set across the barbecue, the zinc smiles, the stinging eyes, the sky swam green in first dragonflies, the swimming pool; the tomato sauce dribbling through a sausage in bread, dribbling through the night steam, burning shivering hands, drowned towels clinging to bloodied scrapes, some song clumsy in my static."

Ian William L.

several years, cannibalism

Glassy way, of skeleton eyes and hands and hearts, the subservient would be dead, of time and signals riddled from every mud, and swamp of skin, beckons a trap, let beneath their dayed march, and only serve / I stand inside this box, a flickering light, switch of, madness and simple, in night know no timelines. But you were a key, a cord, and selling liars made eyes—you come to know yourself, in bloating me, to grow the tree, that eats and eats, and withers as a forest, that grows out the murder to skies, that fears the fall / Sometimes when I stare at walls, I expect to find myself staring, slowly there, and it's in these moments what lose control, lose a little more to once mirrors. Something you can't wish back, something that wants be found the night: the world you want, to have some ghosts / But change is, snowmen turned to strangers, the path of secret, metal sky, friends cast from the typeset / But no beauty bore, only an alchemic safety, of bodies constant and contained, once Midas lost his mind / Hanging if it were that rope, then ends could lead to hands, what helps, not a gunman, the fate of graves, if only the dead bird could show its song / All that comes is sleep: he makes for a wounded flight / Please keep, gladiator, good friend / The weight of balance is, to strike then and collapse, but or slowly, you know me like paths, my broken puppet bones—It's time! So stage show precisely, call malice from hope, a sword that does not miss, boxes of your breathing, I will find / He makes for a silent walk, but on a night of water I, went under, and saw—your—break again, the tide to a lung, the moon she wrote down, quickly to courage / We are ant eaters, we are catalysts—the knowledge ends and ends, and brings the light to her / Rain came blue again, lets us steam to eyes: the seasons change, and they are the first pieces thrown / Shuffling hair, and, creases, waiting: You cannot hope your life away! he folds that under the others, dusting his feet off, and listens for:

the fur

Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place. 

Iain S. Thomas

hearts like ours

let the night crash, let the night glow.

wonderlights

[via faith is torment]

macro fear maker (captura)

All my memories lance, come bee sting: spitting warm cider into stony hands, and holiday muscle, a cigarette dusk. That cold circus of dizzy suns, cloud of fists, under awesome flight the newspaper greens. In one summering bell, the warm fusillade, burnt our eyes on the insides.

yourbestchanceliesoutsideyourhead

You are beautiful. You are kind. You are worthy of love. And you always have been.

Nora Logue

pond

When you have swam in the sea
a lake will no longer do;
everyone else has been a pond
but the ocean was always you. 

Tyler Knott Gregson

two simple little

Melted chocolate hearts dribbling all, fingertips tracing t.v. static. Flowers roar, in burst and bloom. Foam in my mouth, and in my hair, cold jets to clean a car. Pavement shadows chase the cat, warm trees watching, the rocket summer, of our hummingbird days.

the greatest risk

You—vulnerable, honest, and present—are a gift to those around you. 

Roxanne Wieman

a letter from fred

our kind of hope, pt. I

There is so much pain, and so much beauty.

And the half of my day that is not loving you, is cut up shards of you.

And I am afraid of losing, and so afraid of keeping.

And I am not poster art. I am not well rehearsed. I am yellowed, all hungry barbs. I am the words without the story, or every line eaten, shat, and guts, and glue.

And I don't hate him/her/them/you for every gold star you collect. I want you to be happy, or else I am seeing you, and:

1. the one day lived was in an airplane, and maybe the earth has bruises for him.

2. her body forgets her.

3. he will always be broken in the mirror of us.

4. she has an old dog, in her eyes, in happiness.

5. she is crying, and no one saved her, and I couldn't save her.

You have to be happy, because you hurt me when you don't know hope.

(my guts swell with soapy memories. i taste the moon come crashing, burn my lips on this car heater.)

poultice

Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. 

Buddha

on top of the world

a cheap novel

In the face of the obscene, explicit malice of the jungle, which lacks only dinosaurs as punctuation, I feel like a half-finished, poorly expressed sentence in a cheap novel. 

Werner Herzog

twoheaded and slayer

DRAWN OUT ALL THIS, THE

STRINGS I am creation without courage THAT

TAKE I am loving without look

liar to FOR MY LOVE STILL

others MUST

STAY bitter from all seeing

an ideal.../newspapercuts

It takes great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it. 

An Ideal Husband; Oscar Wilde

feeling hammers

mosquito hum past—smash of memory—
our massive noise—tangles breathing—

all of these words are apple cores, my happiness depths.

feeling stills

there is a certainty in rust

of the night drug

to hear it loudest above vanilla light

one friend of myself.

scared sound (happiness)

"This is just such a calm, ocean happiness, that starts with a song, and then ends in thoughts of you all strange, bright, cannonball friends."

Ian William L.

a streetlight wind—jagged—kind

I am starting now, at (THE BLACK SUN SPITS, ECHOES HOWL), because I am happy, and I don't bleed enough money, as I should, to feel adult, and okay. And I care about my mother to a point, that will never be healthy, for someone who is me and cannot bruise time, and I am going to shit myself for seeing a good friend, and throwing up/ourselves into the future. Which is (SOME KIND OF WAX AND BLOOD AND BEE STING), which reflects something (I remain). I have a name tag, with some skin, that says (I SEE YOUR HANDS WANT). I have never. I really like the futureIHATETHEFUTURE.

Everything—is—still—not—bruising——next to me—the warmest———the writer.

I am not good at telling. I was—now—clamming up, closing up, hearing gunshots pretending to be sound, that is just———any fear becomes: Gunshotted. Unbruising. Fearer. That time.

I am going to (I will) sleep, at (ROCK FACES). I am going to dream of golden not spiders crawling into my mouth or existing.

(these global tenses rob us.)

time piece

"Ever you are, ever us brightly."

Ian William L.

anotherwinter

"This life is amazing, the morning against the songs of our skin, everything what shiver."

Ian William L.

what swallow the writer the city

"To step out against our song, the friday night all staticky with rain, dizzying flash-spots, the city to be ours. Here I am animated—swam under—pale—artifice—ticking—made drumming—all grinning—now."

Ian William L.

the long train

Every day threads and fates, strings and stars, weave new light across a life, and so beautiful that I can watch birds in the quiet sky, this love play acoustic inside old storms, lit violent across kissing bones.

shadow, shadow

You are moving through the last dusky snarl of the sunset, to where your friends surely wait.

rain, rain

Another beautiful day, if you just appreciate the othered half—cold skies starry with rain, toothpaste and jackets, smeared jam on gloves, warm chocolate and burnt kisses.

my breath in colour

The frozen morning set spinning, some cold kaleidoscope, for thought.

a quick little life

thick purple skies, swam crushed stag beetle

that makes me feel like the night hours on flight

some arc of clouds are the ghosts of lightning across

orange-gold-grey light, cold hair smoke

my blood's birthday, the melted fast of candles

warm gloves, or that is how it felt.

—Ian William L.

northern lights

"You show northern lights across my coldest days."

—Ian William L.

thoughts of/on a thousand paths, they could be screaming

The dusk is still a flare we set off.

The dusk is still a flare we hold between us.

fools

1.
Please don't let the world be in your body now.

2.
The words do not matter. I can disguise them, how the mind is crippled. I hear the song more. I feel my cold stomach throwing. I find you. I find you amongst them, in great mistakes of faith, ragged all.

3.
I want to lay out wood carvings, metal thunderheads, twin glasses halving with infinities. I don't want to speak much.

4.
So much hinges on this, what was thought safe—the book grows hands.

5.
I cannot type. I am picking gingerly at static honeycomb.

I am licking the screen, slumped. I am only "I am".

breathe out—heat strings, chemical jars, asphalt beaches.

this is a piece of scrap paper with the secret of everything.

this is mona lisa grimacing.

cold headaches.

the midnight stare.

trying to conjure a dead rabbit.

this is advertisement space. this is meat.

wrong whoreish bell.

pale contraception.

an engine of colours to smear along your palms.

gap tooth wonderland.

appendices not correctly attached.

ugly math.

this is something. this is nothing.

this is a feeling. this is not a word.

a paper aeroplane, bowel cancer, apocryphal, home.

6.
Carry your passions, no matter their ugly glow. hold them for stars.

7.
And still no way (to make a voice so loud.)

But always a new hello. maybe this time with a nice shirt, the pressed buttons.

[some abstraction. some missing pages.]

8.
I am toothache, and pirate ship. I am old and unwise.

starry glassy

These are the beautiful thoughts that warm my hands while I wait.

storyskin

"It is all the language of the train carriage—dusty, woodsmoke, warm little cross-murmurs of song."

—Ian William L.

remember me to you

"Remember us, now for the morning plays golden."

—Ian William L.

I am with you. I am loudly

See beautiful things, and know beautiful people, that all demons blunt, all days to hold you bright.

want/fear/line/address

Translate:

She stands on the lawn, in her sweat, and in her night, and ends her life.

myimpossibleandyouacross

I read books, and slowly lose words, more and more. Then a red bird across my throat. Then my blood, and a child standing in the doorway. Then the night sky is thundering. Then there is a song for this sweat. Then there is stolen.

I love you innumerous. I love you gallant.

I am not writing. I am break out of an earth. Help me, champion—cavalier—wretch—god—wound.

I can't (clockwork) express (discomfit) what (the lambs) holds me.

What is not experimental, this cardboard, and skulking, over long, cold arms.

The only thing I ever wanted was a head full of daylight.

I was in the sky, I took measurements

Loathsome to steal from myself—twice, and I am clubbed, till thrice, I let out.

(and then ratnest—skittering endless places.)

I am best when staring into a chair, and think it honeycomb and bee sting.

Still, these flashes of a great dog, before my world spinning upon.

I am borrowing, and must do to its time.

Then I think of the deep midnight of the ocean, and lightning that plays across the sky.

(but I feel a toothache, and wrenching eyes, and postcards, and death, and the sunlight/bruised elbows/world.)

I can only think it the tide without a moon inside my mind.

I am awed upon a vast empress.

I have no path of use.

five

We become our greatest memories.

with quiet hands

"The world is a much richer place when you take every person alien to you for their greatnesses, not break them down with your faults. See them go all with quiet hands."

—Ian William L.

yet tempests still see

"Love out loud. There are people all around you who need it, and you do not realise—their night, their sweat. Really, painfully, crash-into-goddamn love them. Louder than life can bruise them. Further than thought can force them. Love out-lasting."

—Ian William L.

the morning of the day inside of me

"How strange I feel, if as a lit match soaked in sweat, the bird of prey run through an ocean."

—Ian William L.

to this day

seconds—thirds

Those hash tags are nooses, hang my eyes upon you.

cutting the after

You don't see broken glass. You can't fix robot people. You won't love easy.

what do you want

postcards from a space before

Though I signed the card "xoxo" that is not the end.

Though night falls over the city that is not the end.

Though the holiday is over that is not the end.

We are not at end.

We are only beginning.

All my love.

And months pass, in this love. I don't imagine every little evil now. I could read newspapers. I make a mess on the spaces. Some things fill my head—teeth, bones, sparks.

1. I can't see you because you are from a country that is soaring away, you gently with all your soils.

2. do you believe, and still pretend, the mid-conversation, the blood and limbs of it.

3. too bright, but it does not all depend on this coming to life here.

4. I leave for some raking.

5. the structure is long gone.

6. read a book.

7. lucky.

I saw a dog. I saw a lion. I saw a sun. I saw a place.

I have a headache and lunch money.

but the night clubs you.

you would call this madness, called kindness.

a serpent you don't seek.