The mere fact:
that I cry when something you say
hurts
or
makes me feel. sad.
doesn't mean you are wrong for me.
In fact.
It means that you
are one of the few people I feel
safe
around.
If I didn't feel safe with you,
you would never know anything was
wrong
until. I snapped.

We Used To Talk

We used to talk
until the sun rose pink and golden on both sides of the continent
Me praying that my parents didn’t wake up
You taking the occasional smoke break
We cursed our phones and opened our hearts
Because one dropped call
Could be the difference between unveiling the answers to the mysteries of the world
Or falling asleep while wishing I was in your arms
I can still hear Nick Cave turned down really low on my computer
And you sent me links of stuff I’d never listen to otherwise
Sometimes the sexual frustrations bled through
Sometimes you and I were practically one being curled up on a couch having a conversation without the midwest and texas in between us
It’s after midnight now and it feels like I should be talking to you
But I can’t.  I screwed that up. 
Now I watch the sun rise while fighting the thoughts that tempt me seductively down dark roads
I watch Sid & Nancy
I can’t believe that was Gary Oldman and the movie makes me even more depressed
Facebook flickers on a closed tab, taunting me with the possibility that you might respond to my pathetic attempt at a failed apology that wouldn’t do shit anyways
I see you added her
She’s pretty and blond and skinny and happy; everything I am not, at the moment
Here I am, a lead weight hovering at the edge of your conscious mind, forever offering my services
The ghost, my memories of you
They haunt me when everyone else goes to sleep and I run out of things to google or write or read or hear or do
We used to talk
Now I carry on conversations with the psyches in my head
Sure they’re interesting, but they have a flair for the dramatic
And they sure as hell can’t replace you

Observation: Fall 2009

Three kids.  Kids.  None of them have been kids for quite some time.  Two are smoking cigarettes.  One has a forty of Mickey’s.  The only girl in the bunch is curled up in a plastic garden chair with a plastic “glass” of vodka and cherry coke, innocent and yet completely sad.  She is the only one not from a broken home, but she does not discuss why she is here.  Not often, at least.  The boys have reasons.  Broken homes, escapism, etc.  One doesn’t even know how old he really is.  Paperwork, damn it.  They have set images, paths, pre-made decisions.  What is she? Goth, punk, raver, grunge, lazy bum, whatever!  She is a human female, still in the larval stage, still mutating into the final form.  A mutation, or mutated situation, has resulted in her reproducing before full adulthood is reached.  Thinking of it makes her miserable.  Still.  So she doesn’t.  Think about it, that is.  It’s easy not to think about it when she’s trying so hard just to remember what she did the night before and who she has to apologize to this time.  Who she has to hide what from.  The backyard smells of human and cat piss.  The boys find it freeing to drop their pants and mark their territory.  So does the cat.  How is it that with these people who love and accept her no matter what she does, she still manages to feel insecure, stupid, out of place?  She feels these things around everyone.  Well.  Almost everyone.  Refill.  Top me off.  The questions fade with her special awareness.  Instant gratification.  Want.  Get.  Want again.  Starve herself beautiful.  Drink herself lovable.  Screw herself wantable.  Talk herself out of it.  Or into it.  Depending.  She is over-dramatic.  Fact.  Contrary to her belief, it doesn’t make her anymore interesting.  She’d be interesting anyway.  A person doesn’t have to be loud to have a presence.  Don’t try telling her any of this.  She won’t believe you.  Half the time she doesn’t believe herself.  Ok.  More than half the time.  Continue rambling.  She’s still sitting in the plastic chair.  As the night rolls on the vodka to cherry coke ratio becomes more and more disproportionate.  She is, as we say, sloshed.  Let’s roll, they say.  Yah!  Now she is sloshed and warped.  What is wrong with this situation?  Simple.  How can she make decisions without knowing who she is?  Or what she is?  She feels trapped in a gelatinous, squishy, ugly mass of skin and fat and bones.  Like a brain and a heart suspended in pink gelatin.  With pineapple chunks.  Ugh.  Jell-O?  Jell-O shots!  Frozen heart rolling in a snowball.  Snowballing down the giant hill from her house right off the cliff at the barracks.  She bleeds herself, letting what is good in her drain out of the fatty corpse it is trapped in.  Goddess!  What an emo child!  Disgusting.  More judgments.  More drinks.  She’s gone.  Way, way, gone. 

How Does A Person Go About Replacing a Muse?

How does a person go about replacing a muse?
Can a muse quit? Or can they still inspire you without their permission?
Should you stage casting calls?
Wander the streets looking for someone with the same ratio of sexy to intelligent to weird to perfect to asshole?
Impossible? Yah, probably.
It is difficult to find someone who makes you want to tell them “freeze! I have to write this down!”
Or scribble down a bleeding heart in the wee hours of a sleepless night
Can you replace a muse at all?
Once they fade, do we wisp away with them? Or do we wallow until a new not-quite-good-enough-
replacement occupies the mind for a while?

We Write What We Know

We write what we know.  Be it the dark sheen of grime coated walls in squat houses, the drop of lead in the lower intestine when you know you’ve just made a choice that’s gonna screw you over, or the wail of the drunk lady who won’t tell you why she’s drinking.  These things are known.  No one ever writes about … never mind.  Some idiots will write about anything; even knitting sweaters for feral cats.  I had a ghost cat end up in the guacamole once.  Long story, you wouldn’t get it.  Maybe you would, but not unless you knew what I know, which you don’t.  There used to be an abandoned hospital near my house.  I would go there with my friends to break stuff and ‘tempt the supernatural.’  We were really good at convincing ourselves that we believed; that we weren’t scared.  The shit we told each other, that the other person then had to pretend to believe, was incredible.  Anyway, I stopped going there after my then-boyfriend took some thirteen year old girl down there and screwed her in the old exam room.  Sleaze ball.  Being human, I stick to what I’m comfortable with, what I know.  In this case, it’s sleaze balls and certain brands of vodka.  I’m very good at locating both.  I’ve been in a black hole for a while.  Call it treatment, therapy, what have you.  It was time.  Everything outside my mental terrarium is different, but ultimately the same.  People are gone.  People are dead.  People are serving time because they were too permafried to realize that flashing lights and sirens mean ‘run, you idiot, run.’  Something in me has changed.  I’m older, less impulsive, less inclined to hold everything in and then drink until I puked everything out.  My hair is longer and a color I hadn’t seen since middle school.  I’m not too happy with the way I look, but then, no one ever is.  I’m streaming my consciousness, out of control.  Just draining it all out to make room for something, anything new.  It’s not desperation, it’s exasperation.  It’s the apocalypse.  I am Famine.  And I am sucking the last bit of life out.  Like Bunnicula.  Except not quite as furry.  Postmodernism has destroyed the narrative.  Or maybe that was 4chan, but still.  My brain, it leaks. This can’t be healthy.  I’m remembering remembrances.  Maybe it’s vertigo, but I think I’m actually sideways, because I know that’s a rug.  I know a rug when I see one.  I’ve seen The Big Lebowski enough times to know a rug.  Just like I’ve seen this rug enough times to know that I’m not using all my brain cells right now.  But what kind of excuse it that?  Is anyone every using all their brain cells?  Still.  I know I’m in the process of remembering what I did. Whatever that was.  Sometimes when people are smashed they drool and smile a lot.  I discuss literary theory in my head.  Very productive.