"I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity." - Edgar Allen Poe
The windows are shut and the studio is stuffed with chocolate cake and farts.
Some waldorf is on stage thanking god for these graduates' diplomas, without any nod to the blisters and broken pencils it took these kids to get across this stage. Still, and under command, the crowd bows their heads and nods all the same. LONG LIVE THE FUTURE! HERE THEY COME!
a bastard’s opinion of you is still just a bastards opinion.
?AH, Que me puedo hacer?
Everything is burning down, forest fires to the left, bullets to the right and every time I check my phone, someone has been killed. Every time I log online someone is preaching about another recent heartbreak or loss or injustice from corruption. I turned 25 today, well in approximately 11 minutes I will be 25. My brother is dropping his girlfriend off at the bus station so she can fly south back home. My friends are scattered across the globe sending me sweet nothings. The boy I like wished me a happy birthday, and hasn’t said much before or after that, and every time he doesn’t make my heart twitch I wonder if he and all that comes with relationships is worth it and if I really do like women more than men or if I really can like anyone at all.
My dad has been scoffing at the news all morning and my mom is holding a grim smile to my confessions of limited accomplishments. I tell her I’m planning a road trip, but that I also may move to Germany in January and am just waiting on confirmation from a friend. I tell her that I also really need to find work, to make money, to move forwards; to which she tries to gently suggest that to do so, perhaps I should review what I have written on my site and tone it down slightly as to not give everything about me away at first glance, you know, to “leave a little mystery,” and I can’t even respond because that's a heartbreaking response. A really fucking heartbreaking response, because I’ve been leaving a little mystery my whole life and all that got me was my sweet little panic attacks that wrap around my throat and intestines and so on and some meds that are supposed to stop the drowning. But I'm still the one swimming, you mother fuckers, so a little mystery is going to have to take a different disguise.
Anyway, I’m mad that the fucking sun is out because it’s my birthday and I’m supposed to enjoy it but it’s already half way over and I don’t even know what to do.
Aug. 10, 2016
Yesterday I chopped all my hair off and today I’m still reminded of how little it all matters and how much fun it all is.
Aug 27, 2016
Today I think I’m having a panic attack. I just meditated and about half way through learned how to rocket up through the sky into this perfect perfect deep aqua royal blue and upon exhaling falling onto a cloud and letting it hold me and lift me until I inhaled again and flew back up through the sky.
Aug 27, 2016
New York feels sludged on and weighed on and sad. I feel so swamped here I hardly go outside. Or I could say I'm a creature of habit following in my father's footsteps. After all, he really is a lovely man, after all.
The sky has looked like morning all day. I won't begin to describe it to you beyond it really feeling like that sweet hazy kind of Sunday. But when it's not Sunday, like today, the day feels strange, not ready to come back to this world but still being squeezed out of wherever whatever was left- which leaves me smoking on edge.
dec.16, 2016
July, 2016
I have all these new pictures in my head that help calm me, that help remind me. The Bedouin stars and the blazing fire and everyone's hearts open and dancing and spilling. Nati and the bulldozers on the Gaza Strip in Sderot, filing the land away, back and forth, back and forth. The children's smiles and running and climbing, all the while, their playtime contained to a bomb shelter. The rounded room of names and stories, filled 3/4 of the way, and knowing, still, that's not enough.
The bulldozer pushing emaciated bodies into another ditch dug and the glow of Jerusalem between a matte metal triangle; the strength and love and prosperity despite the starvation and murderous gas and anonymous bullets; still, a city built for all lost to be found. Stacked, rebuilt, layering dedication one after another, after another, after another. Like the faith, like our history. Constantly beaten down, and still, every time, standing back up, fighting back, sticking out ground and beliefs because we are all brothers and we'll be damned if we let another one fall.
I can see tanned smoking skins bathing in the Jordan river, free from their guns and uniform for the day and basking in our big strong sun. The same sun that has been peeking out, rising behind mountains, finally showing itself, as the perfect little egg yolk it is, dripping across Masada, and Manhattan and even fucking Maryland, and Oslo. It seeps into irrigation, and crevices and ruins built and preserved, down into the dead sea, floating among crystals and tourists reading the news paper. Spreading across hot hot sand and mud and I think of the hilarity of the muddy commerce culture and how dirt becomes a present for home.
Staring at me are these bright beaming blue eyes, reaching further with plump plump lips. We kiss and I see this picture painting in my head of him as a beautiful boy. And when we talk I see that he's still that beautiful little boy. Later, he held me against the waves, above his waist and I wrapped around him and the water around us and he got hard for me and he kissed me and his tongue breached my mouth and Yaffa's beachy salt water ours.
The high rises and flowers and beggars and beautiful beautiful crumbling buildings and homes. The wrapped woman on the terrace hanging out today's laundry. The old couple with their wine and smoke, enjoying the same breeze, the same side street they have been since they first moved into that little apartment and during their first trimester and still until they're both buried.
Three new life long friends, consoling, remembering. All of us, crying, hugging, with not one fear or thought or craving in the world to be anywhere, anywhere at all, but right there, right here, in this beautiful fluttering now.
I like a little white blonde Connecticut boo. I wanna kiss him on his soft blonde hair after it’s all messy from tumbling and tugging. I want to pull his skin because it feels like rubber and I like that. I want to stare into his eyes and the lazy one too and make the not lazy one roll back like the lazy one might.
I seem to have blinked this year and missed all the changing falling leaves. It seems I fell in love in September, and now there is snow on the ground and a shiver through my bones - as my heater is still broken.
The view from my bedroom is very New York iconic. Even with the horrendous soul sucking bankrolling handfuls of blocks and neighborhood foreclosures at a time, my view still somehow effortlessly soothes like a sweet immaculate Sunday morning. And from it I can see the majestic skyline and birds flying to wires, and the projects and buildings for fat pockets, the sun and moon, and legs tanning on the roof across the way. I see backyards of artwork and parties and garbage and pets, and can hear children's laughter from the playground next door as I sit and watch little lives dance around behind curtains.
Directly across from me is a girl with the most tiniest window who can never decide what to wear. Slightly left of her is a man who can accomplish nearly anything while laying across his beanbag chair WITH his computer in his lap. He'll throw open his window, lean out the fire escape to smoke a cigarette and slam it down once roached. His fire escape is hardly more than decoration; there are no stairs connecting the floors creating the promised escape route, and the whole of it seems to be dangling at nails' last wit.
All the way to the right of me are three cats. I like to think that they know me now. My best friend and I coo at them to draw their little noses and paws to press against the window. At night, their owner comes home and watches garbage on a big screen TV from a lazy-boy.
In the center of this, standing at three stories high, with heavy gated windows is an unidentifiable building. I have consulted many a friend in hopes of deciphering this building's purpose. What address could it have? How can one access? Of course, what the hell is done in there? Why are the lights never on? Why are there the big heavy duty gates barring the windows? What the fuck is happening in there?!
The city feels sludged on and weighed on and sad. I feel so swamped here I hardly go outside. Or I could say I'm a creature of habit following in my father's footsteps. After all, he really is a lovely man, after all.
The sky has looked like morning all day. I won't begin to describe it to you beyond that it's really feeling like that sweet hazy kind of Sunday. But when it's not Sunday, like today, the day, though model, feels strange, not ready to come back to this world but still being squeezed out of wherever whatever was left. Which leaves me smoking on edge.
I can fall in love. I can fall in love with what is true and trying and with scum and 70 year old would have been lovers and old ladies and young boys and people hitting notes, speaking in tongues.
Before I die, I’d like to feel the burn of hot wax scald my skin. I want to feel nails tear me open and blood trickle across. I want to make you disappear so I can pounce inside you and taste your taste in my mouth. To make you grumble like a train when you play and fit inside me. I want to be a spider’s home. A web weaved and nested just for you.
What conversation between notes, instruments, to communicate beyond where words have learned to reach. Picks work like paint brushes and when you pluck their strings I can feel the bristles sweep across me. Strumming hard with the corn on your thumb, I love you. I want to press my body against you. White wine an excuse for confessions and commitments and commissary, camaraderie, constant, continuance, corruption and so forth!
"No!"
"Not here!"
"The wine is too making you-"
"Me?"
"Yes, you!"
Silhouetted water towers in a periwinkle sky, you thump tomorrows forever, and there’s nothing misty about you. You had a fantasy about me. I’ll call you tomorrow and find out. Update: Nothing with orifices, just a conversation over breakfast the next morning in the kitchen. Sunshine streaks across smoke and me so you smile and nickname me Paisley.
I feel the feelings swarm around us when you blow smoke past my face and I laugh with wine stink and stained breath into yours; not caring, because I know whatever I do, you’ll love me so. I can feel your fingers wanting to press indentations into me. I want to feel love without fear that it’s going to leave. I want to know you love me, not just because attention from youth is more than what you’re now used to.
A face young and bright, shiny still with pimples even. I know you want to kiss my grease and puss and lips and have me dilate around you. Haha! Skin sags and we write lovers off because of the publicity gap. You've got eyes like marbles I want to roll around with. Ha! Oh! If they only knew the terraces I’d sit out with them on.
I miss my best friend. I didn't think I would, because, you know, the internet, and since we're inseparable, especially due to our dwelling proximity, I thought the distance apart would give me time to focus on my writing and adulting shit I need to focus on to become the type of person that I think it might be nice to be. You know - to be able to afford rent and food and whatnot with even a little less flail.
But, again, I've had my meds altered and semi lost it again and talking to her for some time the past two days was a real slap in the face of her clear purpose of that neighborhood mama figure and some source of strange stability, through home cooked meals and baked goods, my sneezing from the cats, the apartment's smell and broken toilet parts, the garbage television programs I can't help but get sucked into while she and my "dad" laugh at the horror on my face, the hugs hello and goodbye even though we're only a short four blocks, an easy phone call, a tomorrow away.
Oh what I'd give to be back in her big warm arms sparking a fatty; but, now she's gone on an adventure in dear ole rose city.
AKA loverz r ez 2 come by
Wow oh! Wow! I want to cook you shrimp and dinner in our backyard down in Nola, a warm breeze and a howl in the air that’ll never go away. Lesson-less rainbows! Wow oh! Wow! Smush tush, loose your heart, wash your mind. Plush and taut and rockin’. Wow oh! Wow!
I'm watching bubblegum smack inside this wee girl's cheeks and imagining plucking buttons beneath you, wild as a boar, prancing with no map or agenda, sailing away in a hot air balloon. Bark and burn and boil. Dreams of calls for Paisley; ah, age is all only a number.
Now what? Dropped in a big city, all I could word was blubber; until I learned to speak like them and then it sounded like a scrap yard gargling a monsoon.
Ducks hop and frogs ribbit. Milk silk skin, and lips like fingerprints embossing nipples. Kids play house and doctor and the mailman steals your momma. Alligators smooch fishes, turtles splash bottled nets. Ah, the surfs a lazy lay. Kiss bedtime goodnight, pull open your eyes at the first glisten glimmer shine of starlight. It's sure hard to sleep when your body feels like an earthquake.
Olive is searching through the Ruski's database to find a pirated version of this film we just went to a Q&A for, under the false impression that they would be screening it. Anyway, now we're sitting in the bar window in the Starbucks in Astor Place and I've probably just watched 223- no, 227 people go by - (I don't double count the lost, pacing repeats.)
People are only as interesting as the truth in things they've done and do and say and think. This woman is aching in the corner, exhausting a tired Navy Army jacket and a pinching eye. She has rubbed up against my arm twice already and just about jumped right out of her bones when this screaming baby plopped over. She's stomping in the corner and I wanna ask her what's wrong because I've been there, stuck in that stupid revolving door, crying on the bathroom floor; but, at least I had mama trying to cradle me in her arms. Oh, who will cradle you, dear bat? Who? I suppose that's why you rock and hold yourself, with no one but you to cradle you from your scour.
I'm in love. This time it's really real; and I know it's different because I'm scared of jokes about babies and marriage because I might actually want them this time. This boy of mine, this changing man, he's a big and burly, real sweet, gap-toothed doofus. I'm watching him smoking, carrying the trash out to the dumpster in the alley behind "our" house. He's barefoot, and I can feel his big, squishy, caveman feet treading across the wet pavement and up "our" fire escape. I snap his photo because I know I'll want to look at it when I'm home in a week, alone in my cold bed.
My friends all seem to know when we're messaging and ask me how it's going and I always tell them to fuck off; but we all know my shit-eating grin doesn't camouflage me well. Oh how I can't think or focus on a damn thing long enough before he comes wandering back in. He gets more air play than commercials, this dummy.
It's hard to be happy and in love when your best friend's "loving" relationships turn out to not be so loving after all. And I feel pity when I hear the phrase "oh, you're so lucky to be in love." when, really, luck hasn't got shit to do with it at all; but I don't have the heart to crush theirs by spilling the beans that they've gone all-in on a hoax.
He cooks. He cleans. He fucks me in three languages. He rubs my belly and knows when I'm sad before I do. He laughs when I line our butts up and fart into his. Oh, I love his laugh. It's full and fat with this pure as christmas joy. He's a smart fucking bastard, with the wit to match, and still humble and charming and kind. He says I'm special, and I think he is too. Within the first hour of meeting him he painted his uncircumcised willy as Steve Jobs in a turtleneck, confessed that he's never been able to cum from a blow job, and used MY Groucho Marx line ["I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member."] that I've been using to fend off evil doers and unwanted suitors and the like for years and years now - all while buying me a whiskey. And, so, all that set off a curiosity and competition in me and now I had to have him. Well, we waited a whole day before we walked my monster and his broken bike home to fuck savagely in the shower. And, so, I still touch myself to the splashing sweat and water and how hard I came all over his donkey kong.
He has an unpronounceable last name. He likes christmas and booze and quiet mornings and good meals and nice nothings and notes and cuddling with me. He watches things like blacksmithing competition videos and learns something. I like watching him when he sings and plays guitar while taking a dump. He's the only man-boy-person I've ever been able to fall asleep on and stay asleep on. The first night he slept over without my monster, I laid between his legs, while he told me stories; and as the joke goes when one is a bore, I began to snore. When he looked down to hit the punchline, the joke doubled, as I really had fallen asleep. He said he fell for me a whole lot right then (in that little room).
Since then, I've cancelled trips and sat on trains and planes and had my bags torn apart and papers inspected, and have lost books and time, all so I can be back in his big dumb warm arms and feel his stupid belly rub against mine and touch his shoulders and kiss the back of his neck and try to wrestle him even though we both know he's much stronger than I am and can pin me down no problem. Since then, we've said I like you and I love you and I'm in love with you and popped pimples and planned holiday presents. Since then, I've left him my old panties to tear a hole and wiggle on through. We've gone on hack dates, one that ended at an end of the earth bar, called BAR. We've put cigarettes out on each other and he's pissed on my chest and belly and me on his back and face. He's recorded me sea chanties and convinced me to sing in public. I've helped him vomit and him me. We've shaved each other, poorly, and day dreamed about lunch and eloping. Once, when we were fucking he told me to say something inappropriate, so I said "I love you!" And after we both came, he licked me up until his tongue went numb. He introduces me as "his old bitch." But everyone knows I need no introduction - really only because we're repulsively in love and attached at the hip and hand and lips and weird knee caps and pumping muscles and nails and eyebrows and- need I say more?
I met him in a basement and he gave me a beer and I him a light in the alley out back and now I'm totally fucking smitten, head over heels in love with this beast of a babe and so rendered entirely useless.
My brain feels fried. Frizzled up like a hotplate in the bathtub. The heat is off again and now the gas too. It's hard to make tea when your paranoid about the radiation from the microwave, but too broke and stingy to go buy a cup. I have so many ideas racing around in my head I can't get a grip on a single one. It's like watching twenty kids in a playground and wanting them all to have a wonderful time and grow up to be bright useful beings; but I only have two eyes and two hands and one semi-functional brain and I'm hoping and trying for the best but holy shit do children run amock.
The people here are really nice. Like really nearly freaky Pleasantville nice. I keep having to remind myself not to curse someone out for smiling or saying good morning to me; see you see, where I grew up a smile hides a boner and a “good morning” invites you over.
I want to shed my skin because I don’t know where you touched me and I don’t want to have to blow a fair warning whistle every time I become intimate; waiting in fear for when I will be gasping for air, staring into tonight’s widening eyes staring into me. I want to proceed into the idiocy of falling in love naturally and without terrified ties that my panic will petrify whatever could have blossomed into a bleeding dissolve. I want to not worry about having a conversation, what has become, in my mind, the conversation. I want to trust newcomers in a whole new sense...and I do, but my faith in humanity may be distorted as it has been restored from witnessing sincere smiles and survival despite eons of terror and tyranny.
I’m still wrapped in tainted skin and, so, I’m mad and vexed and seething that you get to get away with it, that you may seriously think you’ve done nothing wrong and caused no harm, that you’ll most likely live a better life than others more kind and misfortunate, that you struck again, not once, not twice, but three more times, and again with no consequence.
I want to go back in time and report you and deal with the stipulations and accusations and trials so that the three other girls you pulled the same stunt with aren’t haunted and hateful. I want you to see me when my body shakes in riddles and I can’t figure out a damn thing to get myself to stop. I want you to see my psych notes and my weed bill and my relationships to understand the fucking security breach you imploded in me. I want you to hear the doubt filled questions after I confess what happened – why what you did is at least one of the reasons I am like I am. I want you to feel the physical weight to walk around with that fat. I want your parents and grandparents and your friends and cousins and your teachers and future girlfriends and all those you hold dear and those who hold you dear, to know what a foul disgusting horrible pig you are. That you’re a liar. A louse. A phony. You are pathetic and lacking. You are a coward.
You spooked me into falling for a cruel joke of what is supposed to be and how to achieve your any dreams and desires. You took from me the greatest resource any human has, and mutated connection into paranoia and fear and hatred and a pounding window and heartburn every time I kiss someone. - For years, and still, in angles and darkness, between twitches and lips, I feel my lungs strangle my heart until it turns to stone and falls into my belly and I can’t breathe and I can’t get away. I’ve raced to cold showers, determined to scrub panic to suds and watch it swirl down the drain, and left sweethearts lost and alone in wrestled sheets. But, they’d find me, and rub my back, and want to hold me and tell me everything was okay and mean it; but that only made me push them further away. I’d hate them. I’d hate them all so god damn much just for loving me. – After all, how could they? I was damaged, taken, laid back and wiggled around in like a dilapidated disgusting dead wet fish. And even after pulling on torn fishnets, I still didn’t report the fucking bastard out of fear of eternal revival of the flashing memory to a monetarily committed jury via my mangled and mutilated forced confession – and the piece of shit went on to rape three more girls; whom all I can hope for, are doing better than I was.
I’d like folks and dream of kissing them then and now, but once it came down to unbuckling I’d suffocate. Their once beautiful, pure features would muddle into a savage silhouette grinding into me, taking what it wanted and forgetting about the person inside. I’d imagine them above me, crushing me forever, loving me, hating me, whatever – with no escape and no time to count to ten. I ruined a lot this way. It almost became an obsession, expecting, anticipating. I’m to blame too in that way, in some way, since I couldn’t or wouldn’t get out of my own head. I’d start to believe all their sweet-talking and clever jokes were all just devices to get into me. And they were...they just may have been more than that too...but you pick up what you put down and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t putting down gold.
Then I hit shrapnel corroded deep dark mineral rotting bottom. I hit so low I didn’t even want to die because I was afraid of coming back to life again. I wanted to disappear, to be nowhere; and have no skin and no thoughts, and just a smile that could fly around kissing crying foreheads and carrying them out of whatever they were in. I wanted to splatter like road kill across the pavement and become sand in an anthill. I wanted to pluck my limbs and give them away to someone, anyone, since I found everyone more useful than I – – I hid away like a monster, protected by hard working curtains, tussling between quilts and haunted wood. I wore hats and sunglasses and smoke and stench and leather and slumped and assessed your entire intention and broke you down in two. I hated you all. I hated you all because you had nothing to say. I’d read you your story and you’d detonate in awe like I’d shared my wonderful magic trick.
But, really I’m just a jerk pulling stunts because I like to know I’m ahead of you - that I was right in the judgments I placed on you and because I enjoy watching you splintering to pin those mucky truths away. My little magic trick will get me in trouble if I forget to pretend that most people aren’t self-loathing, hateful, jealous, petrified individuals and that the only reason I can walk around with a smile on is because I know what a shitbag I am and I know I’m doing what I can to be a less of one.
And so, still, after everything, I seem to have my bedside banter down and have since regrown, like a gawd damn phoenix. Yet, when I feel the fire speeding down the rope, I wonder if I’m only impressive because they’re not, and then wonder further as to why doubt is so easy to find?
Last night, I kissed a girl, a southern Baptist bell, all night long; in the clurb, in the bathroom, at the bar, on the street, in a bus stop, in the taxi home, in this shy boy’s room and on his balcony, between smoke and theories, and goodbye, outside her taxi to take her home.
I don’t know why I didn’t invite her to stay over, but after my pixie vamoosed, I kissed that shy boy in my best friend’s hallway in my skivvies he’d found me changing into. Confessions and kisses and tickles ensued and he asked me if I’d like to sleep in a real bed instead of a couch and so, holding his hand, I followed him back to his bedroom and into his sheets.
Lying there, pressing, he got so nervous, he couldn’t get out of his own head. I told him it was okay, and really did mean it, but I could see the shame shake his head still. I curled up on him and kissed his chest and his cheeks and his freckles. “Are you always this sweet?” he asked. “Sometimes,” I lied. I kissed him again, he looked at me and smiled, with that look that’s like, ‘Oh shit! I could love you, keep cool, keep cool, keep cool.’ And, I felt my skin slip into his a little bit more and “Actually, no, not really, I don’t think I am usually this sweet” tumbled out with another kiss. And, again he smiled that smile and I felt our skin sneak deeper and felt him warm from the thought that someone might love him just a little bit.
It took a while to get there - here. To become absent-minded and fearless and intimate and trusting. But, I didn’t think of you once, of any of it. Not with him, this kind, shy boy. I didn’t think of you once, not even while he and I were touching. I wasn’t afraid and, actually, all I could think about was slithering my skin and bones into his and staying there forever. Because now, with this sweet, darling boy, I can’t feel you at all and I love my skin and it’s warm and tanned and glowing and so god damn soft and he’s running his strong fingers across me and pressing into the muscles in my belly as to tickle me. And when I laugh and crunch up, he catches my legs with his and holds me up and stares at me like he really is happy I’m there and that’s all he’s thinking of. I stare at his freckles and wonder about loving him and can’t help but squeezing him because you’re finally gone and it’s just he and I here in the dark with the fan blowing, kissing secrets.
What's the point of making movies, telling stories, especially since they've all been told before. What's the point of flying creative bubbles and balloons when i have friends who deal in actual real information that helps progress our society. We need artists to keep the insane sane, they say. But I don't see any geniuses sane. This is garbage. Stop reading now. Just STOP.
You wanna hear my ghost stories painted like tulips twisting like thorns. You wanna read my pain so you can feel some of your own. You want to read my joy so you can understand and categorize. But I feel inside out when sentiments overlap and I'm left wanting to fuck and kill them all.
Everyone is so anxiously waiting for me to overcome it all, that I too find myself pacing back stage, tapping my time. Then all too soon, I remember I'm running the hands and since I can't move them fast enough I cram my throat with smoke and do my darnedest.
Drawing up pussies and video chatting are good distractions. Shelves and makeovers and broken lights and paint jobs are too. How many rugs do you think are online? I must have seen over three-thousand and I know I haven't even breached the surface. What a fucking snore.
Oh, but I'm in love now - I could write about that. I could write about how it contrasts my past relationships and how far superior it is. I could tell you that the last suitors came in forms of cowards and liars but this one comes front and center and declares himself and his confessions with his chest barreled, waiting to be kissed and scratched. I could share with you our indiscretions in confidence and watch your mouth drop agape in repulsion and curiosity. All his friends wonder how we do it and gag and still want exactly our romance. We are two dogs in a sea of pooches and pussies.