torrential/ragged/kindling
they say
that under every house in florida
lives at least a thousand cockroaches.
funny what you remember
when you’re so far from home.
things can really get rough, if you go it alone.
my left forearm is trapped in a medieval half-attempt at a cast, a bulky battle damage prop from game of thrones, and my elbow is fixed in place so i CAN’T. TYPE.
with both hands, at least. i’m the grandmother you’re teaching to send e-mail. strangled grunts of exasperation and polite nods.
it’s gonna carry me home.
some moments i’m feeling around, grasping for my lifelong friends, and all the google map searches and ip address backtraces and awkward, held back semi-pleading voicemails couldn’t dig them up from where i buried them.
so i do what i always do when i end up alone:
-i make something incredibly fancy to eat,
-drink a bottle of wine,
-smoke a fresh bowl,
-and play my guitar long into the night.
i was one part of a whole, once upon a time in the land of handprint clouds and bloodstained doors. a team, like superheroes masquerading as real people, serving coffee and fucking strangers and pretending like it was all the same. we’d meet in backalleys to dare to explode in paint and screaming chickenscratch sentences one big irate fuck to the plank we were walking.
now the same is true, but we’re — i’m — more like a speck of dust whirling among trillions of others. and it’s so easy now to relate, but feelings are tougher. organizing is near impossible. personal relationships are quantity over quality for everyone now, no matter how hard you try to hold on. that goddamned internet tricked us.
and then your brain dies for nine months.
or so it seems. it really was that long, though.
you start the contradictory, illogical process
of putting your thoughts into stone,
carving away with a toothpick
and your fingernails.
it’s a long process,
and i lost a good amount of blood.
luckily, i remembered to drink water.
it’s important.
i got really lost, and i think i still am, floating farther into space.
all my concrete turns to sand and gravity loses itself more and more
and the days go on and on
towards infinity.
you gain consciousness; we eat grapes
and drink tea and fuck each other
in the hopes that we’ll get the puzzle right
and if we’ve done it in the right order
we’ll come hard,
finish the dishes,
take out our year old trash and baggage
with the the bodies we once inhabited
and the next level of our lives will be unlocked
to the tune of our text message tone.
sideways in backseats — december 22, 2005
there’s a place on roads
where looking out the back window
could place you
anywhere
where trees
and a dimly lit street
and you
could be anywhere in the world.
and then the singer
on the radio
belting out a melody
about how fragile his heart is
suddenly adds,
‘and here’s what
you
can do about it
so you don’t go
and make the same mistake’.
and everybody singing along
sounds better than the recording.
|x|
finals week, part four.
so i watched this movie adaptation of this book i read when i was 15…
finals week, part three.
after proving the existence of my own willpower in a two decade long tryst, i wandered back by your little corner of the world and found words stolen from my songs.
finals week, part two.
once upon a time, i was friends with this group of writers — all pretty decent, some of us exceptional. we fell in love with each other through our writing, and we all had these wild love affairs, which in turn bled out into our poems and stories and songs in this sickly intense melting pot.
it was a wildfire, and it was a whirlwind, and in the end it left us scarred and vacant-eyed, scattered across the earth with a myriad of addictions, with hearts hacked to pieces, with brains fried to a crisp.
i don’t recommend it.
