I love life and sometimes it's just too much
I'm not being negative
I just need to say fuck
I'm in here now
The guy behind me is humming
One square inch
Can I have one square inch to call my own
I observe myself eating my fingers
Chewing my cuticles
Don't let that stop you, keep going
Need pain to feel
Shell so thick around me
Nothing gets through
No ordinary soft feelings
Like love or joy or the sunset
Localizing my pain helps
I think it's funny and that's another lie
Don't have time to eavesdrop on your world
It is hilarious that you think I do
I saw a movie last night
The guy reminded me of you
The shame I had over loving you
Must still be with me
You came to mind
I don't miss you don't want you
Just need to make myself feel bad
I think I'll rip away at my cuticles
For awhile instead
Localizing my pain helps
Sometimes my pain looks like you
Sometimes it looks like a bloody hand
Dangling from my arm
All the same old, rooted in my gut pain
All you did was interfere, get in my way
Interrupt my self hatred
And wear it like a princely robe with powers
to destroy or grant reprieves
Without my pain you were nothing
Do you feel your powers start to slide away
Slower, fast, faster, rapidly declining
Hanging on by a thin bare thread
Now the tiniest of microscopic filaments
That's right
Relish this final moment
For you are about
To Disappear.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
FRIEDOM
"You drink your coffee like there's bourbon in it."
Friedom (Danish and pronounced "freedom"), his
voice hisses through my open window and me
thinking the horizontal blinds keeping out the world.
I smile back, "I never sipped my bourbon." He laughs.
It's fun to make this homeless man laugh. Had the
Homestead Act still been in place he would own the
garage behind my five unit one-story apartment building,
having squatted rent free for the past three years.
Sleeping on blankets his box of possessions at his side.
This week had produced a new friedom. In his homeless,
carless, moneyless world he somehow received a
Mastercard and promptly got a full set of new teeth. I had
grown used to his brown broken stubs he hid behind a
tight smile. "These temps are a bit yellow, the real fakes
are whiter." Yet I shaded my eyes against the glare. They
looked perfect. Out of place, almost horse-like compared
to the winter forest of before. He said they cost too much
and that the dentist worked on his teeth from 3:30 pm to
3:30 am. "Now I can have sex and die from aids like everyone
else." Yes, you can. Having met someone on a gay chat board
he was looking forward to a new life. I only somewhat
understood his predicament, having broken my own right front
tooth on a Skittle weakened by an old root canal. The crack ran
diagonally across and up to the point that the entire tooth had
to be extracted. At the time it seemed exciting, having a blank
spot in my smile. Sporting a "flipper" they called it, a retainer
with one fake tooth until the gum healed and a real fake one
could be implanted. That I would talk with a lisp and have
something removable in my mouth seemed pleasingly different.
Something new. Always intrigued by something new had gotten
me into a lot of trouble during my life but this seemed like a
reasonable thrill. It wasn't so much the intrigue of something
new getting me in trouble but my denial of that fact and
staunch refusal to do anything about it. However the thrill
of being called Elmer Fudd by my boss, and "once that tooth
is in we can take her out." was getting old
although I did like the attention. And the added burden of
brushing another tooth separately each night, of not biting into
my food like I used to, of never chewing gum again at least
for a while. This being California, I kept my Bubba tooth, yes we
named it, in a plastic round container by the front door
long with a banana and my shoes. The threat of earthquakes
keeps one prepared for the worst and what would be worse
than to escape a falling building only to survive and be
interviewed on TV without a front tooth?
Friedom (Danish and pronounced "freedom"), his
voice hisses through my open window and me
thinking the horizontal blinds keeping out the world.
I smile back, "I never sipped my bourbon." He laughs.
It's fun to make this homeless man laugh. Had the
Homestead Act still been in place he would own the
garage behind my five unit one-story apartment building,
having squatted rent free for the past three years.
Sleeping on blankets his box of possessions at his side.
This week had produced a new friedom. In his homeless,
carless, moneyless world he somehow received a
Mastercard and promptly got a full set of new teeth. I had
grown used to his brown broken stubs he hid behind a
tight smile. "These temps are a bit yellow, the real fakes
are whiter." Yet I shaded my eyes against the glare. They
looked perfect. Out of place, almost horse-like compared
to the winter forest of before. He said they cost too much
and that the dentist worked on his teeth from 3:30 pm to
3:30 am. "Now I can have sex and die from aids like everyone
else." Yes, you can. Having met someone on a gay chat board
he was looking forward to a new life. I only somewhat
understood his predicament, having broken my own right front
tooth on a Skittle weakened by an old root canal. The crack ran
diagonally across and up to the point that the entire tooth had
to be extracted. At the time it seemed exciting, having a blank
spot in my smile. Sporting a "flipper" they called it, a retainer
with one fake tooth until the gum healed and a real fake one
could be implanted. That I would talk with a lisp and have
something removable in my mouth seemed pleasingly different.
Something new. Always intrigued by something new had gotten
me into a lot of trouble during my life but this seemed like a
reasonable thrill. It wasn't so much the intrigue of something
new getting me in trouble but my denial of that fact and
staunch refusal to do anything about it. However the thrill
of being called Elmer Fudd by my boss, and "once that tooth
is in we can take her out." was getting old
although I did like the attention. And the added burden of
brushing another tooth separately each night, of not biting into
my food like I used to, of never chewing gum again at least
for a while. This being California, I kept my Bubba tooth, yes we
named it, in a plastic round container by the front door
long with a banana and my shoes. The threat of earthquakes
keeps one prepared for the worst and what would be worse
than to escape a falling building only to survive and be
interviewed on TV without a front tooth?
Sunday, January 11, 2009
ONE TIME DAVE
The holiday lights and sounds wafting up from thirty stories
below lapped at his bare toes. From his rooftop terrace view
the edges of intruding lower arches prohibited full exposure
of the city's New Years Eve revelers, yet their cheers cloaked
Dave in loneliness. The humid air hung thick, he thought,
thick enough on which to float. He tested the ephemeral
cushion with his feet. The blue neon clock tower at the beach
glowed 11:59:00 PM, 11:59:01, 11:59:02. His thoughts
stretched, thinning like the last passing moments of the year.
And then this idea of a new year. Of starting over. Erase the
past like a bad dream never remembered is what he wanted.
His mother labeled him the late bloomer though eldest of her
twelve children, but he felt like a loser. Until she happened
along. She with the home-wrecker breasts between which he
slept and dreamed. She with the heart and mind that sucked
him in, captive along with his eight brothers, even the three
sisters had been drawn to her essence when she entered the
room.
Then gone, as mysteriously as she had appeared, her memory
a cancer entwined around his bones as he watched the others
go back to their own lives and forget.
Over the ledge of the brick terrace wall, legs dangling in the
full bodied air, he wiggled his toes. On the loneliest night of
the year he pushed off from the wall onto the thick billow of air
and floated at first, his shirt inflating then ripping away from
his thin body.
With increasing speed he dropped feet first past a swirl of
twinkling red and green until midway down he turned and
contorted his body into a beautiful majestic swan dive, so
was his need to be seen, to prove he had not disappeared
though he knew that he had.
Faces in the crowd rush at him, the thick air enfolding him,
protecting him, and with his last thought he wondered why
no one had told him it would feel this good to be rid of it all,
such was the effect of the massaging pressure against him
as he plummeted downward.
In the crowd stood a young woman he had never before seen,
strands of her long red hair sticking to the stem of her
champagne glass. His eyes locked onto the glistening bubbles
in her fluted crystal and at 11:59:59 PM he disappeared into the
sparkling brew amidst welcoming cheers.
Rising, he broke through the liquid surface as the blue neon
clock tower glowed 12:00:00 midnight. Suddenly the lights
were too bright, the sounds too harsh and he cried as firm hands
wrapped him in a soft blue towel. Without the burdens of the
past he was much lighter. Small and newborn.
Surrounding faces shed tears as those same large hands lay
him on the breast of that beautiful redhead and she cradled him
gently, firmly against her and he only able to accept that feeling
of a requited longing stemming from a desire he understood not.
below lapped at his bare toes. From his rooftop terrace view
the edges of intruding lower arches prohibited full exposure
of the city's New Years Eve revelers, yet their cheers cloaked
Dave in loneliness. The humid air hung thick, he thought,
thick enough on which to float. He tested the ephemeral
cushion with his feet. The blue neon clock tower at the beach
glowed 11:59:00 PM, 11:59:01, 11:59:02. His thoughts
stretched, thinning like the last passing moments of the year.
And then this idea of a new year. Of starting over. Erase the
past like a bad dream never remembered is what he wanted.
His mother labeled him the late bloomer though eldest of her
twelve children, but he felt like a loser. Until she happened
along. She with the home-wrecker breasts between which he
slept and dreamed. She with the heart and mind that sucked
him in, captive along with his eight brothers, even the three
sisters had been drawn to her essence when she entered the
room.
Then gone, as mysteriously as she had appeared, her memory
a cancer entwined around his bones as he watched the others
go back to their own lives and forget.
Over the ledge of the brick terrace wall, legs dangling in the
full bodied air, he wiggled his toes. On the loneliest night of
the year he pushed off from the wall onto the thick billow of air
and floated at first, his shirt inflating then ripping away from
his thin body.
With increasing speed he dropped feet first past a swirl of
twinkling red and green until midway down he turned and
contorted his body into a beautiful majestic swan dive, so
was his need to be seen, to prove he had not disappeared
though he knew that he had.
Faces in the crowd rush at him, the thick air enfolding him,
protecting him, and with his last thought he wondered why
no one had told him it would feel this good to be rid of it all,
such was the effect of the massaging pressure against him
as he plummeted downward.
In the crowd stood a young woman he had never before seen,
strands of her long red hair sticking to the stem of her
champagne glass. His eyes locked onto the glistening bubbles
in her fluted crystal and at 11:59:59 PM he disappeared into the
sparkling brew amidst welcoming cheers.
Rising, he broke through the liquid surface as the blue neon
clock tower glowed 12:00:00 midnight. Suddenly the lights
were too bright, the sounds too harsh and he cried as firm hands
wrapped him in a soft blue towel. Without the burdens of the
past he was much lighter. Small and newborn.
Surrounding faces shed tears as those same large hands lay
him on the breast of that beautiful redhead and she cradled him
gently, firmly against her and he only able to accept that feeling
of a requited longing stemming from a desire he understood not.
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