Foot By Foot

My journal tells me secrets.

At the strike of midnight, by a rare kind of cosmic intervention, I surrendered all my complaints and grievances towards this existence.  For the last two days, no, it was these last three weeks; actually the past… four years that I have been dead inside. I have believed in nothing the entire time. Under a banner of rejecting rejection, I swallowed that huge atheism horse-pill without water, and let everything lose its magic. I threw every scrap of faith I had into the fire of dissatisfaction and loneliness; everything from seatbelts to Santa Clause. In dealing only with the known, only with the predictable, the provable, I tail-spin’d into dispair. Funny, how it takes being lost at sea, to understand why we shouldn’t burn down the lighthouses. then my soul became mechanical, my thoughts more concrete, and my hope gathered a blanket of dust. Locked away in an absolutist’s prison; a dire state of utter disbelief. Ovoid thoughts orbiting in a constant, manic pendulum, wobbled me right off the edge.  All that trudging, all that tromping knee-deep in heaps of hopes-crushed, was worth this day.

Yesterday felt bleak. Like kicking heroin in a mildewed basement, as a warped Nirvana cassette slurs in slow motion the depressions of “heart-shaped box,” the day after your high school sweat-heart breaks up with you at a funeral for your only friend.

Today feels surreal. Like backpacking butt-naked on a mountain made out of Easter candy and sex toys, with a marching band in tow, waving my self-acceptance pom-poms in the air; with each smile-driven, proud toddler-step taken, I feel stronger than the strength I have.

Note to self. This time, when you find your center, don’t be so quick to give it away for someone else’s. As a king of your own singledom, you are gifted with finally knowing where the center of the universe. Start by staying loyal to loving yourself. Now that I think about it, when was the last time masturbation came with foreplay? I will seek to expand my definition of self-love. Surely, I will need to crawl, before I can walk. But I know which way I’m going now. Ascend.

I am done acting out this characterization of myself that only exudes a false narrative of a life wasted, failing my way from one rejection to another.

I am more than what I allow myself to be. When I deny my potential, I also deny the call to accepting my own greatness, and the long-standing invitation to inner serenity. Yes, it is true, that some things take time and practice to become enjoyable, like traits and habits. But I am fairly certain that I was born good enough to enjoy this life. I can’t fail, or get rejected, if I worship my existence through performance, observation and writing.   There are no irrelevant details. You are relevant, and it’s you that remembers the abandoned teddy-bear on the airplane to New York. Which arm, specifically, had the tear, matters when you tell the story thirty years later. How sad you thought he must’ve been, lost, alone in the world, without a lighthouse or a friend to believe in. Relevant. I believe in it. And become relevant myself. 

Ain't No Sunshine

I once loved a woman

like she was the sunshine

you know that

early spring sunshine

where you roll your face around in it

like a shower of life

the world felt dark when she left

I once loved a woman

like I was still in love with someone else

like I never knew her

it should’ve been a clue

that first night she slept in my bed

after an evening washed away

with a bottle of sauvignon

that first night she slept in my bed

I don’t remember this but

she said that she caressed my sleeping back

that I turned mouth over shoulder and said

“touch me again and I’ll fucking kill you”

and just rolled over 

and went back  to sleep

I once loved a woman

like I could never love myself again

dead to the touch

unable to sing the song

of spring

and

sunshine

ever again

Monosyllabic

I feel uneasy around pillows without pillowcases. The only time I ever rebated, those bustards denied my receipt of purchase. I failed to leave my body the last eleven nights. I think I may have the wrong Enya album, this one just puts me to death. There are three glue-guns in my art supply drawer, and not one glue stick. My mother's idea of a crisis: waking up accidentally pregnant again. If I lose anymore teeth, I'll just dye my hair sunburst and tattoo "pumpkin" across my chest. I find it funny that writing essays about people that killed themselves makes me want to live. I was five the first time I ate mayonnaise from the jar with a spoon in my underwear. Some habits will never die.      

Save Some For You

save some _____ for you

when you write about what you  ______,

save some for you

hold out on the how you walked, cringing, down the promenades of hell,

how you dug around in the dumpsters of heaven just to get little crumbs of   “_______”

hold out on how sad it was that you never once got  ________

don’t tell them everything about the bruises,

let the bruises speak of the harsh _____ with a smokers cough,

let them speak and let you be silent of _____

sure, you can tell them how it feels to not have  ________

clammy and pathetic like a lonely _______ that goes home every night

to make love to a TV dinner in the soft glow of a sitcom laugh-tracking at the misery,

            you can tell them about the ocean behind your forehead,

how you have sailed across its surfaces,

chasing sky painted horizons,

meeting parts of yourself along the way,

but you should probably save those forbidden _______,  

the ones dwelling deep in those unbeknownst places of your abyss,

for yourself.

You may _____ them someday.

Giving too much

The what-went-before

 gone finally let me go, 

or I let go of it

                  and just fell 

right on by the now

    the just-Be-moment

                 and drifted like a red balloon               high on the winds of the future

Escaped from my burden 

  to only gad about

  painting the frown red

        digging endless trenches 

        looking for meaning and Identity

 I cracked up a bit

    when I saw that sacred 

         yolk running 

                 down my leg

 you’d feel gross too

 if it was you 

                      doing the leaking

 I leaked it all

                       walking, 

                      standing, 

                      talking, 

                    running from the pain of being me

 I showed up wounded

                              and you clapped at my disfigurement

 Let you run fingers over 

        all the stories in my scars

I told you everything.

                                                 and then

                                                                       I had nothing private left 

                                                                                    All this touching

                                                                                all this poetry on

                                                               my private spaces

                                                                       lost to crowds with hungry faces

                                                               pleading peaceably

for some of my pieces back

                                                                                        Maybe I did

                                    stop collecting souvenirs when mom died 

                                                                  but

                                                 telling the whole world 

                                               where I wash my clothes

                                     won’t raise the dead-ends to overpasses

       I shouldn’t have 

                                  let you all voyeur in on me so often

       I shouldn’t have

                                  invited you all to watch me skinny dip

                                                                                  in a pool of my own fears

you were there in goggles 

for my last rectal exam

                                       but we went deeper than that though, didn’t we?

                                                                                maybe I took it too far

                                         when I said you could fuck me with a strap-on

maybe I said it 

just to make you love me                                                  more, or enough

       I should have taken better care of myself

            and thought a little less

                     about 

                   what you thought of  me

                                              that’s why I stopped shaving a face I can’t see

a little step 

in a hard-long-walk out

                               the suicides and slaveries are left behind

I'm not asking for permission

to be me 

                anymore.

for now,  

          sit tight

watch this meteor shower with me

                            like the world is ending 

                                                               all over again

Ever-Greener-Pastures

In the safe zone now
but you can't handle this
dangerouslessness
childhood-inflicted survivor-tude
yet another tin prison
holding your falling parts hostage
holding your hand bent at the wrist
pinching off the tube to your colostomy bag
picnicking so pretty on the other side of this fence
where deer eat from your palm like starving children
and you remember hunger like silence
when no one answered into the night
you still finger the divot-scars
from your skull-staples at the dinner table
still so rampant it is
this uneasiness for selling seats
to a sell-out, suffering, sideshow
now you wear-tight your seat-belt
bedded down and helmeted around
you bore the boring, waiting for crosswalks
and now you even pay for the things taken store to home
you ride a bike that no one is looking for
you have friends you can trust now
lovers that love you
neighbors that neighbor
funny little luxuries of three meals a day
your guitars don't belong to hockshops
you chat weather to uniforms in 711s
as if your not a dangerous criminal
smiling down the strangers you encounter
whistling zippity-fucking-doo-dah
and yet you risk nothing
 
and yet you feel all dead-tree-rotted inside
hear it now gurgling indigestion
and you start to think this
thrilllessness
an illness in us
isn't it killing us
foam-coating this
fabricated phantasm
cardboard cut-outs of the truth
fun-house safe-zone
they're pickling parts of you
in this predictable-stagnation