keepin on

after getting caught hanging dark sheets over windows, i was caught scribbling papers black. when questioned at length about my mental health, i said only that this was my response to writer’s block. and i am, at the moment. blocked. (i don’t understand why bad things keep happening to me when i’m only mildly vile. i don’t deserve all of this atrocious weather and horrifying blanks of mind. which, if there’s poetry present in my life, correlate satisfyingly well. the sun has obviously melted my brain; i can actually feel the faux hydration trickling down behind my ears. mocking me. mocking us all. as we slip away into histrionics, never to employ logic again.)

i babysat unexpectedly today, which was a pleasant enough surprise. we made biscuits and gravy for breakfast, sullying the recipe with english muffins, soy milk and imitation meat. then bibimbap for lunch. in between, we made popsicles, played piano and colored. interesting compositions, all. i asked if they wanted to go to the park, but they looked at me in twin portraits of alarm. my kinds of kids, those.

forever is composed of nows

i’m finding it hard to smile these days, but i’m drunk most nights and spend mornings in books to steer my mind out of my life. i got another library card, so you can imagine the damage i’ve been doing.

in between drunk and drowned, i broaden my political lexicon. i, for one, would have loved to see such vulgar impudence in a first minister. the quality of the article is flagrantly low, but i guess that’s not mine to decide. suddenly this reminds me that it’s the fourth, the popping torch of july.

happy birthday, dad.

somehow i’m best at boggle when drunk. i discovered this while playing boggle drunk. and also crippled. so perhaps it’s disability that unleashes my word wit. although that makes little sense. somewhere in the middle of this, i got really, really high.

i’m thinking of going back on medication. andrew, whose bride-to-be called me a whore, asked, “is it really that bad?” it’s bad, i thought. it’s getting worse. i’m crazier than i’ve been in a while.

people are strange

well, shit if i hadn’t been aching to dance. shit if i didn’t let loose.

and fuckshitdamn if i didn’t done had myself a jolly fucking damn good time.

to summarize my life atm (and i don’t mean ass-to-mouth), any wrinkles that show within ten years from now, i’ll be blaming on this week. and it’s only fucking wednesday. it’s only shitsucking wednesday, fools. and where’s my phone godDAMMIT.

i should really stop losing that shit.

life is a shitstorm of petty disappointments, which leave in their wakes a disillusionment that spans generations long. with piddling highs, and lengthened lows, and bruises to be found mornings after.

piss piss i cut myself some hot pants tonight. i am not really sure why. but they’re awfully cute; i checked myself out for like five minutes* in the mirror when i tried them on.

*this does not seem like very long, but i avoid mirrors like they’re the fascisti.

my hair is so goddamn long.

what mutual affection looks like

what mutual affection looks like, originally uploaded by treesick.

counting clouds

my cousin failed high school chemistry. his father–my uncle–asked me what he should do. i drew my knees to my chest, flat on my back on my bed, and extended them again, spread into floating v formation. when my stomach started to burn, i turned my head away from the ceiling and said, “it’s not a big deal. what’s he like these days?”

“he wants a car.”

“that’s all?”

“that’s all he wants.”

i got fingerprints on my ex’s car a lot, before he was my ex. once, he got mad and yelled at me, so i licked my hand and smeared it on his windshield. that was all i could think of when he finally said, “this isn’t going anywhere good.”

“i guess that’s all i need to hear,” i said. craning my neck for the ceiling. but all i could see was his face through the glass, his blurry frown through my finger gaps. i was afraid, at the time, to lift my hand away. to see his reaction to the rape of his car. to see someone smudging my prints from his skin, with flesh slicked in warm saliva.

“it’s ok,” i said, “it’s not a big deal. anymore.” when he apologized long months later. my voice was strained from my upturned face, my eyes and mouth dry from staying open.

“that’s all i wanted to say,” he said.

“that’s all?” i asked.

“that’s it.”

so i stared up at the white ceiling.

of mace and men

trust, friends, i am not all that. but i’d still need all fingers and more than my toes to count every time that it’s happened. all the times i was walking someplace or nowhere, had some asshole drive by, on occasion backtracking for extended abuse, slowing speed to articulate how we could get down. or spent waiting at a stoplight and had a car pull right up, brainless face spouting red light poetry out the window. time was when i wanted to disintegrate into, “how dare you, you fuck! i am a lady, with lady sensibilities. you don’t talk to my lady face like that!” now, after years of bus rides filled with leering men, i’m no longer fazed by any but the absolute creepiest of overtures.

so color me surprised when i left the house this morning. when i crawled, wrecked and sleepless into my borrowed car. pulled into the 7-11 parking lot, encountered a group of men sitting outside eating, one of whom tried desperately to catch my eye. i smiled grimly in his general direction and put my weight into opening the heavy glass door.

when i came out again, cigarettes in hand, one of the men was sitting in the car that i borrowed. i hadn’t locked it, because i thought i was going to be quick like a bunny. but there’s always that stupid question about age, and this cashier wanted to hold my hand in his until i promised i’d still look the same ten years later. which is when i assume he’ll be hunting me down to make a snuff film of me with slurpee straws up my nose. digging out my brains. with broken nacho chips jutting out of my throat. i digress. so that fucker was sitting all fucklike in my car. well, not my car, but you know what i mean.

opening the door to the seat he was in, i looked through my grimy morning eyes and said in my gravelly haven’t-slept voice, “get out of my car. now.”

“oh, this your car?” no, but still. “can you give me a ride?”

“are you kidding me? let me see your i.d.”

“what? you crazy? what you need that for?”

“i’m gonna post your information on the internet. along with the mugshot i’m about to take.”

“shit, imma be famous.”

“yes; it will be very special. the cashier’s looking at us. get out now.”

he exited the vehicle. and i felt very, very tired of being treated the way women are sometimes.

not worth the trouble

listless. bored. after drinking last night, and the night before that, and the night before that, and the night before that, i decided to give my liver a rest. with my voice being what it is these days, scratchy and low and mildly man-ish, smoking is also out of the question.

fuck it.

hello, maker’s mark.
your halo drips red down my
faces of failure.

i’ve been sleeping badly, i think. i wake up, face puffy and eyes dragging downward, with throbbing jaws and knives poised and pressed into both goddamned temples. the worse i get at sleeping, the more my body wants to practice. i’ve caught it powering down, always at wrong times in wrong places, trying to rehearse and polish up for the show still-to-come. after twenty-four years’ worth of mostly nightly performances, i still give it mediocre to abysmal reviews.

dizzy with drink and the need to sleep, i reached for my phone only to realize i’d forgotten it at work today. it’s somewhat distressing, but–childishly–i find the excuse relieving. i’m supposed to liaise with someone in my writer’s group tonight. someone who’s commented that all that i write is too soft to land hits, too pale to show life, and that its clement nature could appeal only to women. i’ve paraphrased, because he doesn’t choose his words wisely. which is, up ’till the point when i lose my temper, the most cutting remark i’ll offer him.

i know sometimes i can be too subtle, i can drown significance in floods of muted meaning. i don’t know why i write “i can” when it’s more that i end up doing, to counter the depth with which i end up feeling. it’s surprisingly hard to find eyes that can see past the superficial films they’re presented with. it’s harder still to expose.. anything. with all that’s been built up around us.

i’ve taken to watching scary movies at strange hours– mostly when it’s dark and i’m appropriately alone. they never fail to get trapped in my head as endless loops of what-could-happen, in clusterfucks of more-things-to-fear, but still they’re better than why i need a distraction to begin with. grammar, grammar. to hell and back.

there’s a bug bite beneath my bra strap

when i asked why he treats me the way that he does, he said, “because you treat me the way that you do. you’re nice to everyone. you can afford to be. you’re good to me like you’re good to everyone.”

i had such a hard day at work today. my patrons were nice, but they were also so many. then my mom was upset, and my dad was unforgiving, and i wanted to be vindictive, i wanted to be cruel, but nothing could loosen the brick with graffiti, with paint spraying over the planes of my face, “it was all your fault to begin with.”

i covered my eyes with the palms of my hands and i stifled my mouth with the force of my will and i laughed, and i laughed, and i laughed. in the way that you do when you have nothing else, with eyes on your face armed with spies, covered eyes, cover eyes ‘fore they melt.

you shouldn’t treat me the way that you do. i’m nice to everyone because that’s my job, and being good to you comes just that easy to me. you shouldn’t treat me the way that you do. you should know me better than that by now. i’ve shown you that much of myself by now. you should know not to take me for granted.

on various pains

my fingers are curling into themselves and it’s quite literally a pain. they’re a reminder of the recurring battles i fought to practice the piano an hour a day and the flute for another two, all the while typing deep into the night to finish essays with varying degrees of bullshit. F-minus for reminding me of high school.

i sat across from him, sniffling, dying for a glass of water, fingers running absently over the hard lines of my book inside the eco-friendly canvas tote i recycled, cut and sewed myself. i stopped getting up to blow my nose, sensing the bother it caused him, and instead centralized my attention on wiping my nose discreetly with napkin flutters and slights of hand. my efforts proved ineffective at best, and my mind glanced furtively between the discomfort of not being able to dispel my snot, the book i wished i was reading, and my incredible as-yet-unquenched thirst. speaking of high school.

i told myself to speak up, to not be cowed into silliness, but i was frozen by the palpable anger reaching out to me as he exhaled, withdrawing as he breathed in only to creep toward me again when i took the chance for a breath of my own. “why are you mad?” i wanted to ask, but i was caught in a defense mechanism that involved unwavering immobility. because he can’t see me if i don’t move, and if he can’t see me, then he can’t target me with his anger. some parts of you never grow up.

when the water finally came, i ordered with the finesse of a diplomat, then resigned myself to silent, futile sips that barely wet my tongue. i saw myself from above, my face devoid of color, my skin a husk to be reaped when my organs dried up completely for the use of deathbound elderly with lives left to live.

after i was released, i chain-smoked for twenty minutes and made plans with myself to go to the ocean. to read my book, and to forget that i’m alive. i promised myself the shock of cold water on a warm day, the cultivation of salt drying on bare skin, and toes clumped with fine, hot, water-darkened grains of sand.

luckily softened by drink and toke

my anger is back, and it brought friends. i have a to-kill list about a mile long, but only one priority. if you make her cry one more goddamn time, i will tear nails from your fingers and dip you in lye.

your downfall was thinking i’d be sympathetic to your situation. i can understand how you, dumb fuck that you are, would find a girl who wants nothing more than to spend time with you a burden. let me state in no uncertain terms that this is because you are stupid. i know this girl, and i love this girl, and if i love her, then you better fucking believe that she’s special. i was friendly to you because you meant something to her, not because i liked you, sad man, and most definitely not because i wanted to commiserate on what a dumb bitch she is. if you have any balls left after saying what you did, then i will have to reconsider my response once i am less drunk and not high.

i hate you for making her sad, and i hate you more for making me an accomplice. before this, i hated you for calling me “TenderHeart Bear.” you are fucked up and i hate you. i wish i could douse it in eloquence, but all that runs through your line in my head is, “hate. hate. hate. hate.” i take pleasure in not having to be nice to you anymore, because no one is kind to extinguishable memories.