i wake from a dream
about your body
hotter than lit matches,
you, deeper than the ocean,
and under me
i don’t want to think about that
little black dress
and the room is cold
so i go to the wall
adjust the thermostat
and i think about
clean white snow
i stared hard at the stack of motley crue cassettes behind the counter as we listened to neil young, live in winnipeg - and i live there now, oh, i live here - recorded three days ago, and my eyes welled up with tears for my dead and dying friends.
‘i have got to get out of here.’
i’m staring at a campfire, out in this thicket in the middle of some obscure suburb-of-a-suburb. the half-built cottage, cabin, whatever it is - now it’s empty. in the morning, the only mark of our being here will be the words “BAT COUNTRY”, and the bats that we stenciled on the walls. we can’t bear the thought of a single place erasing us. not us, not we few drug-addicted star-crossed fighters.
someone laughs and it sounds distant. someone brought a laptop to the party - how asinine, i think, until i remember that it’s what played the shit music we danced to all night. fifty people had shown up to this little clearing, fifty or so. i remember it like fifty, anyway - maybe it was less, but i’m the narrator so shut up and follow along.
in the little abandoned cabin, the music had been pendulum, aphex twin, and other rave music i didn’t know too well. but now there’s less people here, maybe twelve or fourteen. some even number so we can all be anti-couples. music that’s markedly less shitty comes from the laptop, and i raise my eyes up from the fire when i hear familiar piano notes.
all of a sudden, half of us are glaring at each other over the fire. all of us who have fucked each other and fucked each other over, too. and when the words start up, we sing along. we pray the lyrics out over the flames, to the gods of hate and friendship and love.
this is us loving each other. this is the burden we’ll carry- they will be weights in my heart for the rest of my life, and i’ll never be able to change that. i hope that it was worth it, for the few months of happiness we had. around the fire, my ex-fiancee, her boyfriend. my best friend who i fucked to make someone else stop loving me, that someone else. an ex-best-friend who toyed with the emotions of another friend. so many friends. so much love gone sour.
i hope that our few remaining friends
give up on trying to save us
i hope we come up with a failsafe plot
to piss off the dumb few that forgave us
i hope the fences we mended
fall down beneath their own weight
and i hope we hang on past the last exit
i hope it’s already too late
and i hope the junkyard a few blocks from here
someday burns down
and i hope the rising black smoke carries me far away
and i never come back to this town
and that boy, he will overdose - a few times, but he won’t die, not yet. another one, he will empty inside. that girl will lose herself completely and ruin all her veins. him, his teeth turn to dust. she will live in my mother’s basement and every time she gets stronger, that guy will hold her back.
and me, me.
i’ll just flee. i’ll fly away somewhere else. the consequences will not catch up to me, not so long as i can run faster than the light can.
on my way home from work, i watched the fireworks from the bus. they lit the whole sky red and i wanted to be a part of that. instead, i made food for strangers, plastered on a smile like bandaids. i cut my right index finger a few days ago. it’s cut from the tip of it to the edge of the nail i’d cut too short a few days before that.
there are ambulances everywhere, on the bus ride. they look a little like fireworks.
my horoscope says this:
Even if you want to be helpful today, you could easily misread someone’s intentions. You might have strong suspicions that others aren’t being very supportive of your efforts and it may even seem that they are working against you. But you could also be afraid of being abandoned. Managing your own emotional insecurities now is more crucial than worrying about anyone else.
who here thinks i am not lonely? i want a shoulder to press my face into. i want someone who knows the bands i know, i want someone to understand “i have dreams that bring me sadness” or my excitement over a local group called Alpha Couple. i want to slide under familiar sheets, my sheets, i want my own bed.
not my own bed back home, i just want a bed of my own. i am constantly on the couch, this brown beast we found in the alleyway. i am so much myself in this city. how did that happen?
i feel like i’m a caricature again, like always. what’s a little loneliness in the face of my own place? i try to convince myself to make some food. i fail, of course.
a cat’s taken up most of my ‘bed’ - the couch - and these animals, the two pets, they’re not mine. i think about how much is left in my bank account. i want to buy a nice dress. i want to impress the cute waiter at a local diner. i want him to want me, etc, etc.
same old story, same old girl, just a new city. whatever. a little more wine, a couple more smokes and it will all look the same.
it’s the same old story, after all.
she curls up in the windowsill
lets her foot dangle out
and she imagines falling
it’s like lifting skinny hips
i can taste yr bones
yr bony
breathing,
ocean song,
the siren song,
the siren song,
the lonely ocean
filled with siren songs
1. i smear my war paint on
like i can fight the
wars back home
2. friendships, fires
open hearts
unzipped tents
3. we howl at the moon, this
cleansing blue light, oh
the stars
4. i have no voice anymore and i used up all my words
on skin,
on feeling,
feeling
5. i wash my face but
i will keep fighting
the good fight
(via killmetheking)
the day the blinds shook, the day the rains came, and you were sitting in the kitchen staring out the window. i told you to close it, the rain slanting inside propelled by what seemed like gale force winds. you said no, you wanted to watch.i live inside a
safety glass house
i built into a
geodesic dome
i could stand in here and
throw these rocks all day
i stood at 8th and
my thirty-third
chance
i thought i’d puke
all my sins
onto the pavement
but maybe that was the cigarettes,
half a pack right there
waiting on yr late train
but you came up,
you came out
looking like an angel
and me, my halo
was smoke and
it dissipated
as soon as i made my move
