Not Disappearing

for Charles Bukowski

Sometimes
I think about offing myself;
coming down with the hammer, or the razor;
or maybe not, and just wishing to disappear.

I’d no longer be able to flip
through the pages
of Bukowski’s poetry,
ravenously consuming each one
to get that feeling I get at the end
of the Bluebird, the Aliens, Alone with Everybody.

Bukowski is dead,
yet I feel communion with what he
left behind.
So I have to live,
or it’ll all disappear.

In a Ditch Along IN-31

The dead
are the whole sky
shining and raining
down upon us.

That poor lady
her two kids got hit
by a car on this road
so she put up these two dolls
and changes their clothes daily.

Some of the cows
at the feeding trough are babies
and I wonder what They’ll do with them.

This bitter Earth
how sweet the sound
that saved a Wreck like me.

The church has a smokestack,
a Mexican is staring
I’d be better off knee-deep, on my back;
my pulchritude is tearing.

The Vacuity, The Rage

Four pink lesions, like track marks, where they took my blood…and shot me up with drugs slowly, then raped me, a Robot; with forceps and tubes they tore out The Living Tissue.

Wandering eyes,
Fuck You:
and your standards,
complex, dolled-up, made-up
“Beauty”,
a sham of illusions…
fuck all of that.

Sometimes I’m shivering,
disillusionment, lies quashed.
The dumbest & most painful thing
I ever did was dream.
It’s a cool relief,
the sweat dries on my
forehead, face, and mouth
clean forested air drifts
all over my limbs.

Ride harder,
Happy Wanderer.
Not my eyes ears senses mind or heart
but ME.
The coherent whole that always
has [or could’ve been] FREE.
I’ll wander Forever in the Depths
to wherever I please.

MY DREAM WILL COME TRUE

We met in a dream,
or was it reality?
Some sweet hallucination
underwent gradual solidification. At times it seemed like a nightmare, still wouldn’t take it back for the world and not for perfection, no TIME machine to fix the ways
I fucked up.
Selfishness, shortsightedness, unwilling or unable to understand…

My mind still daydreams,
trying to make the future
some sweet hallucination
according to empirical rationality—Lets run away to somewhere else, somewhere empty, free, just you and me, an abandoned beach, blank sea, or anywhere… hand-in-hand…dance on the sand…

Young & still idealistic girl’s dream
and she’s closer to Heaven,
since she just came from there
has never had a nightmare.
In her mind, dreams
are always perfect
& perfectly capable of coming true.

Summer Thunderstorm

“Two worlds collided, and they could never, ever tear us apart…” – INXS

It tore us apart--
gluttony for my time with you.
You gave me your heart,
I wanted your soul too.
Never quite enough
I felt, deep inside.
You inside must have felt the same,
like every effort was in vain.
Our two spirits collided,
stirred up
an intensity that never subsided,
tipped the cup,
too full and bubbling over.
Then, as protection from a detonation,
it took time, distance, and shielding
to reconnect to the intonations in your voice
and subtle eye conversations, yielding
the same questions I asked myself before:
Is it something deeper inside us?
Is it something more?

רֵיק

A new “miracle” for you.
I could’ve had one too
if not for the two:
one that December
and one soon.
I don’t deserve to have a
single word
heard
by you.
All I could hope is that you’ve
forgotten about me,
that your heart is genuinely happy.

Why do I feel so deeply sad?
It just hurts and hurts and hurts.

On a High Wire

Sixteen, wiping up the dirt of the streets
like a sponge, who becomes it.
Nineteen, wiping up the spills on the coffee counter,
with a sponge and a bleach bucket.
Twenty-one, wiping up the dirtbags from the bar,
with a spongey tongue and an attitude.
Twenty-four, washing hands of the chemicals,
sponge mind, springs back through fortitude…
Can’t or won’t absorb too much,
in standing water, knee high in the muck.
Running away leaves you stuck in place;
the angst will stay there waiting.
Without pain, we’d learn nothing,
at field capacity, only few are growing.

Hermit

Hot, hot enthusiasm…
Early morning, it’s still dark.
Alone she dances,
ready to face the day,
ready to tear apart
the vultures and leaches of the world
with diamond-sharp claws
(A light-saber of truth,
in her chelipeds).
She’s seen blue skies, and a thousand stormy sea nights,
relentlessly pounding cracks in her shell
too hurt, too shattered, too broken, self-made Hell.
Now those experiences form a viscous gold,
seals the cracks,
solidly, with remarkable and versatile
Wisdom and Courage.
At 6 am, I’ll dance alone,
not lonely,
at Home
In my niche of the world,
I’ve burrowed in the sand.

Iron Fist

Over & over again
my heart has been broken,
busted, smashed in two
by me (not you)
then tens and thousands and a million pieces.

I’ve said & I’ve said
I won’t let it be taken again,
trusted, trashed
by me (from you)
Oh the lessons & the pain are such hot diseases!

“This time it’s different,” she said,
and now instead of plodding off with
crushed spirit, reminiscing of soft hands
I’ll run as fiercely as I can,
surrender my heart
to the Iron Fist.

Drawer of Resentments

You died.
Then I became exactly
what you always wanted
me to be,
Or what I thought you wanted me to be.

Buzz flies.
Buzz around my weary head
in the wee hours
like the dead grey flower
that I feel like in my haunted mind.

I'm glad
I left you with your dick
in your hand,
never quite a man,
content, with mouth ogaped,
eyes widened at a plastic woman with lips of sin.

Despise,
while walking on the sidewalk
of my internal hell
staring out at each blonde bombshell.
His eyes. Again.
I see her and myself through his eyes
(and through my own lies) criticize her
and die more.

Loose ends.
I'm glad you fucked
my best friend,
because she liked it more than I did.

The end
of the poem of sorts
bloodstained thong on
the (living room) floor,
You people go through my panty drawer
with judging fingers, and sense the doom.

Written 03 July 2011

Souls: Water

All raindrops fall from the Sky--
some into puddles, some into Earth,
some onto mountaintops,
some are frozen into ice,
locked there for millenia.

All have a journey and they travel it
together, bonded, bonds breaking.
Some changing forms, from
H20 to HO or H2 or
thousands of other combinations
with other elements... H2CO3.
(Can we really stop it?)

Sometimes they end up back in the Sky,
and in some Time
all the raindrops and Everything
will again
fuse together.
All the Universe will fuse together
and it'll take the Force of God
to combust it
again.

Written 10 August 2011

Except Bones

I am just a body bag, soulless hag,
and they try to exploit the spirit
floating over the body
by using the body
and trying to coax it nearer
but it sees the predators
and hides further and further away.

Behind the bushes
it waits for them to leave
to go back and unloose
the knots of the ropes
the body is caught in
the smell of the flesh
keeps the vultures coming back.

And fighting for the body
to be their territory
they're battling eachother
big chunks of carcass disappearing.

Every time the spirit goes back
there's less for it to return to.

Soon there'll be nothing.

Nothing at all
except
bones
to go back to
and the spirit will go
and collect them and make a sculpture out of them.

Good Girl

My spirit protected my body through the depths of Hell. The body was drawn back to heroine of sex for money, nearly obliterated in the process
By consequences, now more than theoretical:
Razor-sharp rocks in a deep, grey, sulfuric, cold, urban river. A nightmare I was drowning in, tethered to the bottom, paralyzed by the fear of death, Catch-22:
I’ll die if I don’t do this.
If I do this I’ll die.

Men.
Testosterone, hard muscle mass, ego, arrogance, bread-winning. Desperation.
Craigslist.
Distant, internet. Sales and services. The impoverished. The lonely, in Desperation. Lies, corruption, and sin.
Women.
Submissive, tits and vaginas. Are you hot? Sexy? Haircolor. Weight. Slim/slender, average, more to love. Distorted body image. Desperation.
And how far are you willing to go
to pay your rent,
utilities,
credit cards,
student loans,
for transportation, food, and clothes?
And do you suck dick?
And do you swallow?
Swallow it back down,
your sense of self, self-respect, and integrity?
And do you do anal?
Can I test-ride you?
And will you open your (dented car) door
wide to the parasites, like red-eyed rhinoceros, they’ll infect you with,
as you’re red-eyed, pound the fucking walls with your bloody fist,
while all you can do is cry
for the Sin of this world
and how lost everyone’s become
when you’re a little wide-eyed innocent girl
with a fifty-year-old man’s hard dick in your baby, tiny (hairless vagina, budding nipples) pretty little mouth, spurting fast its cum into your weeping
pleading
helpless
terrified
trashed and filthy soul?

Numb.

Cool wind on her tiny sweating body, arms swerving to balance on rollerblades, over sidewalk chalk, mudpies, 90s beatbox, a lemonade stand, 25 cents for an ice cold cup.
“Lemonade, twenty-five cents!”
“Lemonade, twenty-five cents!”
“Twenty-five cents for ice-cold lemonade, get it here, now!” They hope to make two dollars. Laughter echoes, children holler.

She opens her eyes, throbbing temples, bruised wrists, bloody knuckles. Tied down. Coloring books, Princess Barbies, and macaroni necklaces strewn about.
The violent screaming coming from the other room
is deafeningly loud. The man stands nearly 6 feet tall; silver hair, crown of bald; fat round face and red fingers; brown, muddled eyes that linger. In his shadow, she’s cold.
His face, whitely glared by light, she can see is old with sagging cheeks. He licks his small, cracked lips and she closes her eyes again.

Wanna play house? I be Daddy. You be Mommy.
A cardboard box, big as a doghouse, with windows and a door cut out.
The lemons, overripened, have fallen to the ground and the 90s beatbox sings,
“I think she likes me
And I know I like her,
it’s kind of frightening,
‘cause it’s too soon to be sure…”
Further off a tune (which stops at every corner for the excited, screaming hordes of kids) of a song, which goes:
“Half a pound of tuppenny rice,
Half a pound of treacle,
That’s the way the money goes,
Pop! Goes the weasel!”
Blue sky. Bologna and ketchup. Dirty little hands and feet.
Get home by sunset if you want to eat.
“IT.
EAT IT.
SWALLOW IT GOOD GIRL BE A GOOD GIRL AND SWALLOW IT FROM DADDY’S FUNSTICK.”

“Fear Not!” a deep, feminine, maternal voice interrupts, saying,
“child of mine, fear not the darkness. My light shall guide you through.”
The child cannot see anything now and all she hears is the woman’s voice, and then, a resonating harp. The strings vibrate like the silk of a spider’s web, gently moved by the gentle breeze and golden specks are glistening all around the baby girl’s head. The woman, though silent now, is whispering,
in mind
a prayer.
Something’s happening. The little girl, now an apparition, is floating, transcending the beaten, blistered, bruised, battered, annihilated corpse-body.
Re-embodied among clouds, she’s riding on a graceful, swift wild horse, across the sky’s grassy hills.
Chills. A fever.
A mother slowly and spoonfeeds her swaddled, little baby
warm chicken broth,
she sweetly hums a tune
and sings,
“Could you be the most beautiful girl in the world?
Could you be?
It’s plain to see you’re the reason that God made a girl,
Oh, yes, you are.”
She lies her hand on her daughter’s tear-stained, steamy cheek, and in that moment, the baby girl smiles
and so,
the Mother smiles.

Human Hatpin II

A childhood of Nickelodeon and processed food,

But somehow, at Some Point,
I saw that it wasn't the light or the right thing.

An angry adrenaline junkie, sexual promiscuity, sought excitement and spontaneous experiences: trainhop, self-mutilation, scarification, to “fight the norms”, and liberate Self from the TV coma.

All the while withdrawling into my mind,
I’d feel the other side
Sharp sting from the lashback of flashbacks…

I'd pull it back in.

At Some (later) Point,

I stopped believing their lies: that I am just a sinner full of sin, a consumer, and a human hatpin.

I can no longer get angry at you for the inequality, hypocrisy, flat and domineering bigotry of the endless time clock, grey cubicle with a brainwash box,
All growing like cancer on a clear cut, laminated cornfield that was Made in China, gets 18 miles to the gallon, thinks its social issues are the end all, be all for the white man on a white plastic Disney stallion in the ever-unattainable heaven Where God Lives.
Can no longer get angry at you, Paper Monster, for leaving a paper, invasive snail trail through the shallow end of a eutrophic river run dry from being dammed by the same Good Christian man who thinks he is going to design The Cure for global warming,
so that he can save the economy,
and better regulate
fantasies about sodomy and any question about the paper-plastic dichotomy.

I can't get pissed at you and pull it back in,
then take it out on myself anymore,
or ponder killing myself to save my soul from being a minimum wage whore.

Your blue blood is already flowing down your Internet wrists.

YOU'RE ALREADY DEAD.

I can no longer let you live inside my head.

From the Flesh

High, spacy, and hot,
wanting to write, but
not.
Too free floating, the thoughts
free will has brought.
Now, the paper is too torn in two;
Free will has wrought--
painfully pleasing…
destructive desire…
Gas City (one mile away)-- hard-on-for you.
Free will, so I see (on streets):
Some dance alone with hands raised to the sky,
some smoke Fentanyl patches,
with raccoon-like, dark, saggy eyes.
Free will, so
we’re vain, looking for ourselves in everything.
My own interest.
Free will, but
it’s weird seeing you
after not seeing you for so long.
After
it spoiled
my hands were soiled
from the flesh of another human being.

In Response to Your Suicide Note

Speaking to a lover of the past in dreams;
his expression is flat, he doesn’t hear me.
I'm invoking a blank wall
textured, painted cream cinder blocks of a prison
strapped to babies’ chests in a boiling bath,
summoning across the whole, wide world.
He doesn’t respond--
not to pins and needles
stabbing him full of steroids,
not to my dearest caresses
and loving gestures.

He won't even spit It back out at me.
Null.
Did my bleeding roses lie untouched
upon the shadowy, now empty stage?

No. No. No.
I am the puppet master not the puppet,
you see.
If I so desire, you'll respond to me.

“I’ll show you,” I said,
but instead
I showed myself:
being true to me means knowing what I need
and choosing who I am and am going to be.
Not your baby doll, or your desperate whore,
or par for the course in low self-esteem.

You showed me.

You are the puppet master not the puppet,
I’d see.
If you so desire, I will respond to you.

You died that day.
Put a noose around your fucking neck,
the whole world melted away.

They won’t even let me read your suicide note.
I’m just your ex-girlfriend.
Now here I dance, in pink, with other men,
planning my own permanent solution.

Dear World; I wonder if you’ve been okay without me.
Wonder if I’ll ever see you again.

Who was I when I thought I lost myself?
Not dancing, but... but... being pulled by
the puppet strings, attached to my limbs from yours,
covered myself with a thick layer of oil paint and glitter,
exposed myself to loud incessant rhythm of suicide bombers
always always trying to be free but never being free,
with whiskey blades and the chiming buzzing insistent
radio tv, linoleum electric turntables dreams and visions,

but there’s this love in me that keeps me stable, drifting,
afloat in the ocean, sinking, lifting, hurricanes & strife,
along in the River of Life.

You showed it to me when I had all those questions,
that could only be answered at the End of your life:

I really don’t know exactly who I am and am going to be,
but I’m One with the Universe and it’s
here on these pages
everyone I meet
forming One True Big Picture.

I’m learning how to live, even when in the corner of my eye,
shape shifters slide by; proceed with precaution to
the light and movement of the safe sanctuary,
quiet and serene spaces each sacred feeling
graduates, gently sloping, carrying me
along and that might make me a puppet on a string,
but my life isn’t over yet, I’ll never know what (if not null) it truly meant.

2009-2010




Aside: This poem was started 10 November 2009. RIP Sgt. D.J. Kirkland 20 March 2010. Somehow, I must have already known what was coming.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

The friction of Just Being Alive
dissolves when I'm with you.
The jazz slides into me smoothly,
like milk-- cooly encapsulating the raging stomach.
Everything disappears--
pretzelled, entwined in your arms,
my Cave,
we're both safe from the elements.

My guts rebel at the realization that
THE TIMING MIGHT BE WRONG,
or, quite frankly,
THERE MIGHT BE SOMETHING
REALLY WRONG WITH ME.
And you'll eventually see.
For you, happiness comes so naturally,
slinking back is easy,
your music is all you really need.
Inside me, the clock of inner dialogue ticks,
never satisfied.

Your answers to my questions, repeated, are so ambiguous.
I dug myself into a pit extemporaneously.
Now expectations, also known as hopes and dreams,
float free from me not freeing me,
I'm just trying to be too controlling.
The waves (sound, light, sea) are rolling over me,
trying to flood my raft
in a sea of men, but you, my dear,
are the one I want--
to guide me on our misguided trip through
a jungle of possibilities.

Would any amount of love
be enough for you to want to hold onto it?
You're wearing a question mark
on the deep and empty mirror, your face,
grab on to strangle you, strangle my
fear of being replaced.
Why would I become exactly what I hate?
I wouldn't have done this at 8 years old,
but now I'm caving
in under the pressure of your strangle-hold arms.

I can't heal you,
or even my own big old bruise.
My world used to begin and end with you,
the ultimate Muse,
now that phantasm disappeared, I'm alone
(even in this city, I have no real home).
Rain drips from the roof,
tapping me on the shoulder,
reminds me just because I'm older
doesn't mean I became any tougher.
What would hurt me then
STILL WILL HURT ME NOW.

I wonder if what you say isn't what you mean,
but a backhanded, lame ass attempt at comforting
and shutting up
the growls coming guttural out of my gut,
to bathe in the juices of my hungry, hungry cunt.
The only thing I knew to say was, "I love you."
I told you that I did, trying to kid myself
into believing (the man-perfected, all pervasive)
"your hard cock means you love me,
if not then I'm ugly."

The whole fucking thing was a sham,
product of a bored imagination.
You are: a hot shell of aesthetic proportions;
I projected Prince Charming, a vivid, stunning
DISTORTION.
But now, that's over, this story has been told.

I never got your love.

Go back to the beginning and repeat,
when the music that you feed me
with rough, soft (piano) hands
comes to its last, limp beat,
I'll have to take another seat.

May-July 2010

A Year's TIME

Poems that I did not previously post for one reason or another. I am currently working on a play, so I may not post anything for awhile.


Untitled

Female climax
is not required
for procreation.

Will you say I’m beautiful if I let you breathe the cunt juices of yellow woman
down my neck?

Will you match my gaze if I am:
on my knees
with lips around your cock
swallowing deep & begging with my eyes?

Will you bring me pleasure if I lie by saying it feels good?

Will you Love Me Forever if my continual gratification
of your sexual desires
(without any myself)
is unspoken, understood?

January 2010



Hazy Frame of Reference

In the dirty, black broken glass back alley deserted in the vacuum that is my mind,
why are you there? what have you gotten into? Why do these glutton, mindfuck, greedy not Buddha—and is Buddha—sanctuary of smutty words and unwarranted tits in your face fingers in your hair play, rewinding spindly Nature, spooling through my subconscious mind all night?
Whether to kill you or send you a love letter, I don’t know, no Knowledge, weren’t we here once!
Packed in pork hides with our hot flesh and rough hands—eyeing eachother madly on the Banks of Eternity,
ready to cash in our shells,
drive away, or else be driven away,
Song parade of imagination, Batman of fatalist thoughts, shaking down to the bones, like twilight,
like grey, dim, pinking Indianapolis sunrises and sunsets, over & over in some warehouse, abandoned, powerlines of mind bouncing SHOCK THE LIFE OUT OF ME
whole world grey, grey hazing over, there is nothing left, Slanted Eyebrows, where did you go no way of telling where I am now without the Light, or if I am, or how to go over there from here, there’s no perspective, no street signs to speak of the Antichrist. You, yourself distorted image of god, Serial Killers, on antipsychotics—sociopaths, sinking into 10 feet of snow outside—This is a myth of my own creation.
Close encounters keeping us hard, fast from seeing & being the ultimate truth that lies in the back-lack of my skull, sitting in a hipstercafe (downtown), legs spread with a fat dildo, I’m not going, to try to, Push, Clogging up my Canal, You. Keep…keep…keep trying to push It out in the warm, crowded coffeehouse with a snowfort of Indians out front, I dream about you, lost, every night. for one week now (but not tomorrow since I’m writing this) The person inside me, living there: am I you am I afraid you’re in my soul??

Winter 2009

Arbitrarily Chosen Title

All of our dreams were just
the refuse of thought.
Random selections from experience
sloppily copied and pasted,
to form a beast to overcome, or ignore.
Not only Dreams of Sleep
but all we aspired to do:
arbitrary pursuit of happiness;
pursuing misery is just as deep and worthwhile.
Self-centered, shallow,
everything we do is hollow,
shake the Present to guess what’s inside--
some mystery
rattling around in empty space.

America’s saga of war, laminated paper-torn
brutality: WMD’S to temporarily deter PRP’S.
Black backdrop.
SHE is bound and hogtied on a stage
he’s aiming a sleek and miniature handheld Stryker, debating whether or not to strike her with it,
and spontaneously shoots.

JORGE I love you….
It’s moving and
goes through her.

SHE I never asked for a second hand, but you gave me one anyway.
Waiting for the part where she loses consciousness, and she is almost to the point where everything goes away for good... Then she realizes she is not going to, composes herself. The backdrop changes from black to white.

JORGE I’m glad you didn’t die. I love you.


SHE, like a selfish little girl--pink cheeks, bloodshot eyes—was criticizing her corporal suit,
in the reflection on the microwave door,
hypocrite, her hypothetically insane
(see disabled: crazy and lazy)
mind
(all the thoughts leading up to now)
of memory foam
springing from its pores, decompressing in random rambling,
isolated tirade;
the clock, digital
THESE are the numbers: you don’t have to count (for your whole life, they’ll be counting down anyway),
struck midnight
(open late for owls and bats)
and the day begun.

SHE Rotender, Rotender,
Wherefore is my Rotender?

Opening up cupboards, swimming through dishes, scraping the roof of the microwave; flakes of packaged food, exploded.

SYLVIA Oh stupid, don’t you see
you have not fed me. Also I would
like to be pet. Why are you so stupid?
Why so human?

SHE Are you always awake this late?
Distorted creature of the darkness
you are,
yet so enlightened,
why ever do I feed you
when I should just drown you?
And, where the fore is my Rotender?

SYLVIA All things end that began,
but do all things that
have ended
eventually begin again?
Your Rotender is gone,
so you should stop questioning why
and waste your time more wisely.
By feeding me.

SHE slides on socks, stoned, to the cat food cupboard; a stingy, plastic, pizza joint cupful of kibble is produced and poured for the cat to casually nibble—by smacking it out of the dish and eating it off the floor.

SHE (Reluctantly) The best replacement for flesh is food.
(Melodramatically) Delightful Animal Biscuits,
where are you?

DELIGHTFUL ANIMAL BISCUITS appear.

DELIGHTFUL ANIMAL BISCUITS Pick me, pick me!

SHE grabs them, slams the cupboard door and, like a karate superhero, traverses the stairs 2, 3, 4 at a time. Instantly, in the long, dark, winding staircase SHE arrives at a door, opens it, and steps into a room.

In the small cramped, Eastern decorated room—walls covered with pictures of goddesses, mirrors, little plaques with inspirational words, plants and books covering the tops of the antique tables—a small, thin bearded man with icy blue, tired eyes is telling a story.

TIRED MAN I was camping up in the mountains in Wyoming back in ’72 for a couple of weeks. I got myself turned around, lost, and ran outta food. In those woods with no one else around, I walked and walked for a day and a half, cold and lost with no sense of direction.

It was so dark you couldn’t see anything, far from the light pollution of the cities. My boots soaked through from the rain. By the time I found a road, I didn’t know whether I was in Montana or Wyoming. Highway 16 runs east and west.

I hitchhiked down that road for hours and no one would pick me up, so when one stopped for me I tried to figure if he was a preacher or a fag.

When I got in, he says, “I’m just going to tell you straightforward that I’ve got a revolver on the back seat.” And so I says, “ Well I ain’t got no weapons, so don’t worry.”

I started to take off my boots right away. It hurt more with them off than on, all that water compressing your skin, so you end up with these sores. I’ll tell ya, that felt like giving birth. Giving birth through your foot.

I realized once I had those boots off and was a bit warmed up that the guy was shifting his car all funny. I looked over to see that he didn’t have any legs: he had to do the breaks and gas with his hands.

I just broke down. I started bawling. We were going 70 miles an hour down a mountain highway where it was pouring so hard you couldn’t see 10 feet in front of you and this guy was watchin’ me like it was a soap opera. I looked up at him and said, “Man, I was just stranded in those mountains for 2 days and my feet hurt so bad. I had wondered if there was anyone else who had it worse than me. But I get a ride from a stranger in a gold Cadillac with no legs.”

The stranger looked me in the eyes, said, “I would give everything I have to be stranded in the mountains with my boots soaked through.”

JORGE My boots soaked through in the War on Terror,
when I was alone for seven nights in the woods,
trailing before my eyes,
nightmares
seven nights in a row:
America itself rejected me.
I saw some distortion of your new reality.
Guilty.
Anxiety.
Goddamn was I stubborn to protect what was mine and the fact that it was mine, the possessiveness of an animal and with claws to tear off the face of the Threat
A photograph of America (these “United” States),
thinks it’s sovereign,
why don’t you try to step off the edge of the USA
into blank, white, laminated emptiness:
Beyond this,
there is nothing.
Gotta be okay that I just can’t know how this will end:
I am the threat.
I’m looking in the mirror and I have no identity now.
This isn’t me.

SHE How I long for disillusionment
from this hell, society shit of globalization,
warming,
every inch and second saturated with ants swarming…

SHE Opens the screenless window, bends her whole body over the sill, looks down to the pavement.

SHE The choice we make
for eupathy
to live, die, adopt apathy,
is arbitrary—
If this is all there is of me,
how can I ever truly be free?


St. Valentine's Day 2010

ἀνωνυμία

In an effort to increase input of your opinions and thoughts, the Author now allows anonymous comments.

Echo-Afterglow

Arms of torrential rain pour down in winter,
oh what we’ve done for warmth!

My blood circulates fast to fists, ultradian Cycling-- I am, instantly, tumultuously a god with superhero powers of invincibility, Flight, for the vapid rapid Fight.

A couple of degrees melt glaciers,
dissolves my integrity—
Who did I become for a moment?

Could I have been someone else or chosen different actions?

Unmethodical, impulsive in that moment, led only by the tick of the minute hand, clarified the speed of time passing, every second forgotten by the last.

I made the choice and, in doing so,
interpreted how I heard mankind’s voice.

What I heard him saying was far away from me, echoing through a disappearing forest that I could not see for its Trees.

I read deeper—
too deep, took it more seriously than it is from retrospect, panoramically ignored the ultimate context of introspect.

Should a Doctor prescribe glasses to help me see Right?

Do I need a Doctor to "convince me otherwise"?

Chemical reactions in the brain,
define what we know as pain.

Insignificant on the Out,
but I’m flying now—High above and faster and swimming drowning violently overhead,
a living ghost who haunts the Dead.

I peruse their bones for remnants of Value, dying gems may be buried among the maggots and skeletons, to be extracted and polished, vows renewed.

Ha!

I unfold wings and soar,
sun through the downpour
knowing all too well that the light will be matched by its opposite shadow—
for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Deep canyons are beveled out of flatlands,
which elevate gradually into the apex of a mount:
from the top I can only look down;
my vantage point
is the culmination of every action taken or not.

This place will keep getting hot.

Cold rain drops indiscriminately to the surface, flows down my face, foreign tears. I regret and am shameful of all I’ve done through fears.

Society drones outside my mind but (“The bane of gods and kings. The bitterness of knowing men are free.”) I am inside, lead-heavy. Asphyxiation. It is unaffected by what I choose to do.

My lungs are exploding,
and all red arrows point to You.

I was Wrong and am tainted forever by the (persistent) memory inside me, the afterglow of sin.

Cells respire “in the context” of this oil soaked ant hill, where I was born, will die. The oil and regret constitute my cells, me. We can’t overcome the species and medium we were born as, the TIME.

Who we are or ever could be is defined by the boundaries at TIME of origination:
117 elements in the periodic table,
X years elapsed before birth,
M minutes until death.

The walls of the box closed in
tighter from the pressure of innumerable forces.

We can’t even comprehend love or sin,
much less the effect of our choices.

The rope will pinch tightly
around my throat
only then I’ll be free
from the actions I chose.

Human Hatpin

for Franny

Trees thrive like eyes on potatoes,
growths,
natural driller rigs sucking out energy and nutrients,
but, somehow, living harmoniously.

Ultimately, we are all parasites.

Am I growing?

Am I changing?

Getting better or worse?

Wiser, stronger?

The critic in my head skews my perspective,
takes away from reality (as that which is),
changes me into this thing that wants something
separate from reality.

The critic wants.

It wants to do something, to be someone
to be somewhere different all the time.

It wants to have an intense epiphany.

Doesn’t know what to say to you when we’re sitting in a diner, drinking coffee at 2 a.m. or 11 a.m.

The critic has many jokes.

I, its vehicle, am empty of words to say them to you.

The parasite sucks life from life, is life.

Emptiness is freedom.



03 Jan 2010





The Dialogue of Our Wandering Minds

Lying,
her hands clasped
nude in the fetal position,
with a countenance apathetic
and heart resigned,
to the man
hurriedly
slipping back
into his soiled peel,
his hair disheveled,
cock still half erect,
heart concealed,
so he does not detect
dissatisfaction, and feels
oblivious
distracted
by prospect of food in the cupboard.

Lightning,
drool oozes into her hair.
On the climax of a steep cliff,
not the first time she’s been there,
but fear is her reason for
and impediment from
the obvious solution.



06 Jan 2010

End of an Era

Maybe nothing ever completely ends, but this is close enough.

R.I.P. it up and Start Again

X

Ex: preposition (from latin) out of, from.

“I want you to notice,
when I’m not around,
but you never did or will.”
Fell and Crashed into the myriad, labyrinth, matrix
of fantasies, idealizations, dreams, thoughts about you.

“Here it is,” and she presents it, cold and self-conscious, naked in front of an inattentive audience who all recognize her:

I.
My lips wrapped around
your cock,
fingers graze your
buzz cut,
and then the volcano erupting
salty, slimy swamp water.

II.
Found and am Following this treasure map,
to find where (“X” marks spot) I went wrong,
why I won’t ever be good enough.
I keep Following it because I AM STUBBORN,
can’t give up trying like you did.

III.
Something inside compels me to live, eat, breathe, and want you;
an Invisible Force heats the water that turns to water vapor
that moves a turbine causing mouth to incessantly chatter about
some reason to live
someone to grieve.

IIII.
My heart pounding opens my lungs,
the anger smashes open an adrenaline treasure chest.

I might never give up.

If I let go of these bricks of gold on my ankles,
I’ll be floating in space,
where the tedium of freedom rapes me of my
fear of a hungry shark (he then eats me, I die).
Nothing to solve.
Nothing to lose.
Nothing at all.
My body keeps me weighed down,
(Can’t disregard my heart remembering and my cunt craving)
to Earth and also brings
PROBLEMS.
PLEASURE.
EXCITEMENT FOR THE IMPOSSIBLE ENDEAVOR.

V-IX.

Some faceless ghost unwarrantedly replies,
and whether truth or fallacy you can judge with your own eyes:

X.
Don’t you get it yet, Jess?
If he acknowledged your existence in any way
it would cut you off from the
IMPOSSIBILITY OF THE ENDEAVOR,
the impossible would transform to potential,
everything would SHUT UP and slow down,
with possibility to move, but no movement
until something else made it move,
like trying to watch a flower grow.

Be patient.
Let it be.

12 November 2009

Kindling for the Flame

Mother, wrap me in a cool quilt patched of mostly Truth with some Lies, to keep me from freezing in the Arctic where we are all 10 cents per dozen and nothing is good or right or perfect, fighting and flying in circles, a leaking tarp to shield me from the Rain of God, the rain of my weeping eyes and soul, let me sleep forever to the sound of your beating heart.

I squeeze out oxytocin-rich tears to release the pain, stress, disappointment
from the billowing, relentless fire in my head.
How am I going to live in this world knowing what I know,
being who I am?
Whatever “Plan” they were talking about
won’t stitch its pattern on the cloth of my life.
They were all a bunch of liars
They told me that it would
(all they ever do is tell, say, proclaim on the slippery soap-Box).

I disassemble the premade pattern,
pull threads from the warm blanket of lies that they gave me
and see them disappear into the flames of the fire,
piece by piece, layer by layer,
disentangling myself from poorly tied knots,
find myself naked and freezing after they’re all burned up,
the fire has gone out,
looking for some quick fix,
warmth to stave off frostbite
and stop my lungs from crystallizing…
I must move to circulate my blood and produce heat…
I run.

No one is chasing me this Time.
Motivation dwindling as my weak muscles cramp up,
but I’ve gotta keep running as fast as I can through feet of snow, littered with the corpses that failed,
stars in black night are the light at the End.
…frantically, through tangled branches in the thicket, searching.
Searching blind for the Cabin of Henry David, but:
the Little Light Inside is now TeeVee,
and its new occupants expanded it with add-ons, a four-car garage
triumphantly proclaiming, “Progress!”

No one is going to Save Me now, I’ve got to Save Myself.

This was never for me: No Room of My Own in their blueprints.
Keep running,
releasing Dopamine and Seretonin and as I stop at the river to drink,
I see the reflection of another that isn’t me
and realize that no realization is going to
Save Me.

If I don’t want to die (which is up for debate),
I’ll start weaving
the strands of all the realizations,
twisted into threads, intricately
one at a time.
The warmth from This Quilt is all I’ll ever need,
gladly, because in the End,
I have no one but Me.

Lies and Liars

I’m going to give up this time. I think I found the…answer, or closure, or whatever I was waiting for. But every time I found it before, I wanted to pretend that it wasn’t what it was and wanted to pretend that I could somehow bargain my way to what I wanted: that love, that truth. The Truth might have been a really nihilistic one. Misery is all that is Real. Misery is life. Fuck you and your misery is life, life misery. Fuck you and all the times you said you loved me. All the words you SAY but fail to really ACT. Fucking lies. Lies, lies, lies. It’s all just a bunch of fucking lies. How do I let go of lies?
I started to believe them, the words.
I keep going back and forth, in my mind. Between trying to hold on and trying to let go.
I started to believe they were really coming from him when he was trying to tell me all along (through a lack of action) but I didn’t want to know and even now I don’t want to know, but this time I HAVE to know.
And the whole goddamn mess could have been avoided, but the sound of his voice sent me back there, to that place full of false hopes, giant trees that look real and smell real and then you go up and try to pick an apple and the whole façade falls and its 2-dimensionality is revealed.
Time has nothing else to do but pass. The only thing it is capable of doing is passing. And if this, me, human, mortal, limited in perspective and existence, is limited by time, bound up forever in the fact that I am going to die and that every single second is a second that will pass, then this will pass, my life is going to go by, and somehow I’ll be able to accept the truth.
But that knowledge only goes so far in my brain. It can only do so much to halt the fantasies. Fantasies don’t give a shit about any rational explanation for their death. Fantasies think they are God, they really think they can just manifest themselves, they really think they have a chance and that “Chance” (read: intuition, some divine ultimate prophecy) is the mechanism through which they will be lived.
It’s going to take some major Buddhism here to get these thoughts out of my brain. They lived dormant for years, growing all along without my knowledge of it, and just exploded like invasive species, sucking up all of the space where necessary thoughts lived. It’s going to take will-power.
The whole reason this is dragging on so goddamn long is the lack of directness. Just a bunch of causal little lies slipping through, nothing blatant or obvious or DIRECTED at me. I would kill (at least these thoughts) for just one direct statement of the truth, the obvious.
For so long, even now, I would do anything for love, for his love, to make him love me or to love at all. I did so much, tried to change who I am completely, to cover it up, “edit” it to suit what my distorted mind thought may have been his tastes.
I mean: I would have literally done ANYTHING. You name it, I’m there in a fucking heartbeat. And I mean, now, I would literally do ANYTHING. I see how flawed this is. It’s really fucked up. But it’s the truth. I really would.
There are at least 2 Selves living inside me and right now they are beating the crap out of eachother. I really hope that one of them gets a gun.
But, at the same time, I’m a fucking hypocrite. Because I would have done anything, but I obviously didn’t do enough, could never do enough, and I failed. I guess I did what I said I was going to do just about every time, but it still wasn’t enough.
I never was enough. Never will be enough. Could not possibly be satis. Let go.
When is it going to end? I know it’s going to end: Everything that lives dies.
I just don’t know how to kill it. All the resolutions, conclusions, epiphanies, trying, slowly killing myself, changes in thoughts, words, actions, rationalizing, promising (to myself, to him)….never end up leading to the ultimate death of this very fucked up attachment. I gave up some of the best things in my world, it’s all changing, I gave it up really for that ultimate Desire, all in vain, and now I will be alone because I am fucking stupid and should have never done it in the first place.
Maybe that’s when it ends. But I am skeptical.
At least Meatloaf had a limit. He would do anything for love, but he wouldn’t do that.
He’s fucking dead.
I can see how he got there. If I didn’t have a neatly rational Other Self, then I would be also.
Hopefully The End is soon.

Karma

The world is full of givers and takers. As animals, consumers, we are all really takers, but in society there is an emotional/spiritual give and take which all of us take part in by interacting with one another. No one is fully a giver or a taker. We all fall somewhere on the spectrum.

I listen to what people have to say, share what I have, and have provided emotional support for so many people. But, lately, it has come to my attention that it isn't helping me to give to people who never or rarely give back. It isn't about stuff; it's about the stuff of the mind. I may be a "giver", but like everyone else, I have needs.

By being there for people who really don't care about me as a person, I make myself a doormat, let others think that's okay, and only contribute to their self-centeredness. By being there for people who don't have anything to give back I let them suck out all of my energy and become a shrivelled skin of a once vibrant being, leaving nothing-- no happiness-- for myself. This stifles my growth, is distracting, is a waste of my time, fills me with negative energy (listening to anyone's emotional trash does that), and makes it impossible for me to make firm decisions in my life. I don't do what I want to do: I listen to tons of shit patiently and become uncomfortable.

So, I'm giving that up. The difficult part in such a resolution is that people EXPECT for me to be their emotional barf bag. FUCK THAT. I'm at a place in my life where I can reasonably deal with my own depression and anxiety, so I, for a few weeks now, can see through the clouds of emotional chaos.

I see an end to this shit in sight.

I may have to be harsh and brutally honest. I may have to be uncomfortable in being brutally honest, but what is this? Uncomfortable. Nauseating.

I am a person. Being a human person does not give me any entitlement to anything of this Earth. But at a more micro-level, on the level of people and the Hive, I'm no longer going to give of myself to those who don't see any value/importance in me as a sentient being, and who don't appreciate it, and who only have negativity to doll out (which is not really giving, but taking: my peace of mind) but nothing positive to give back.

Here comes Karma, and I won't stand in Her way.

Decision Day

D-Day. Decision Day.

I was writing in my journal today and I finally gained some clarity about my living situation. I have been struggling with the decision to A.) stay in Bloomington and get my own place, even though I have no friends or support system or B.) move back to Ft. Wayne and finish my degree at IPFW.
I came to the realization today that maybe the reason I don't have any friends and haven't been able to make any connections for a long time is that I need to focus on myself and on learning to be independent.
I moved in with Dan in October of 2007, during my first semester of school when I was 19. I have never lived alone, except for a couple months when I was sharing a house with a TV-addicted 47 year old and a couple of months when I was sharing a place with a materialistic, scared little boy (Thomas).

I need to live alone and I need to be alone. Moving back to Ft. Wayne would simply give me a network of people to depend on for acceptance and approval. I need to learn to accept and approve of myself. So, I'm going to stay in Bloomington. I decided to come here for some reason, and it will be a real action of self-trust to stick to that decision. It may be hard, but anything worth doing is hard.

I've made it through a lot of crazy shit in my life: through the chaos that was most of my childhood, through many sick relationships and friendships, through very intense depression, suicidal thoughts and desires that lasted sometimes months on end, through extreme feelings of social isolation and rejection, and through many, many decisions that compromised my integrity and the Truth.

So, I am strong and can make it through this and I think that I'll be a better, more well-adjusted, and comfortable person in the end. Maybe I'll even like it.

The Way Up

Sequel to The Way Out

You’ve chased your tail,

now you’re at a stalemate,

running down every dead-end corridor

psychotically beating on every door.

The only way out of this maze is

Up.

The blue, buzzing ceiling lights are unpromising,

so I must face the lies within myself and rise above them.

Gazing up, up into the heavens of my mind,

my eyes detach from my head.

These dreams of you are bricks on my ankles,

keep repeating,

but I never thought I’d let you defeat me.

You are just a part of me.

I’m still here.

I wake up suicidal with the dreamsicle sunrise,

though the light behind my eyes burns on

and compels me to live.

To live, I must overcome;

crawl out of the comfortable cocoon I’ve trapped myself in

and fly up, away.

I’ll still be me and I am the problem,

it’s no man, no city, not my mother, nor society—

I must transform my head,

stop choking myself to death.

Gazing up, up into the heavens of my mind,

my eyes and ears detach from my head,

no longer can I be led:

astray by the illusions I hear and see;

into the black, stormy ocean with bricks on my ankles—

I can’t swim.

I’ve gotta face that, stop following you or I’ll drown.

If I chain my ankles to the hollow ground

I’ll be dead and buried before I learn to live.

I tried giving this world all I had to give

and it smeared shit in my face,

I became a dog.

All it took was three words and an expression,

my life was undermined,

compromised as a building sinking into sandy soil,

should I throw fireballs back?

The only way out of this maze is

Up.

Gazing into the heavens of my mind,

my eyes, ears, and mouth detach from my head.

I inhale a crisp, autumnal breath,

remember:

each time in the past the leaves fell, Everything died, winter came,

and It was reborn.

05 September 2009

17 Aug 2009

All the world spread thin before me

is bleeding out of my anemic veins.

Everything you thought you took from me

turned out it kept me from pain.

She told me that you don’t have to be lonely when you’re alone,

you don’t have to be homesick when you’re not at home,

you don’t have to be anything you don’t want to be,

but when I see everything I took from me

all the world bleeding thin and bald

I don’t want to be anything at all.

I come round and back again to this thing I’ve learned:

when I look at you and when you look at me

everything else seems to disappear

all the lies, pain, and fear melt into your smile,

so disconnect a million miles.

There are miles and miles of vacant space

where I could belong,

but when I look at you and you smile and I smile back,

I know that it just couldn’t be wrong.