my face feels long
but i realize it's as round as a moon melon
i like to walk home in the wretched cold weather
while the wind beats my face into burning
everyone is too hung up on the heat
but feeling the cold against me
makes for far too much goodness
i dance down the sidewalk listening to something bells
and almost wishing i had someone to share any sort
of stupid moment with
ain't no thing
has no meaning
it's just a life i'm living alone
while the rest watches sometimes
most times they don't even bother to look
which is fine
everyone i work with thinks i'm half dumb
i say things that only make the sense to me
i get drunk in the tub and talk to myself
i pick up trash and eat from dumpsters
and am okay with all these things
but the moments where my brains goes eighteen different places i wish i had someone to just distract me for a bit
so i could collect myself
and not be so congested with unreal notions of nothing
or write stupid things for people to read
and wish they hadn't wasted so much time on words
not like they had anything better to do
believe me, i know
i'd like to not be so distracted
by my desire for a physical distraction
i can't turn myself off
and escape into my thoughts
so as not to deal with the world as it is
i'd like to make my own, thank you
and out of desperation
for something i can't quite wrap my knuckles around
i bake blueberry muffins
and eat them all at once
wishing i had more than powdered milk
which i'm developing a taste for gradually
when you're broke you'll eat just about anything
when you're alone, you'll take long walks
just the exhaust yourself into the absence of thought
you will take too many baths so that you feel warm
on the outside and not on account of your own heat
you'll lay on the carpet and stare out windows
or into space and question the cosmos
because clearly, things aren't working out for you
ask me how i know
you'll drink too much and ramble confusing topics
into stranger's faces
until they walk away
or threaten to call the police
it only meant something to you anyway
i'm really just talking to hear my own thoughts
because there are so many of them
i can't seem to make any coherent sense anywhere
within my own life
and like i've said so many times over
everyone is trying so hard
and sometimes they aren't even striving
towards a particular end
they are simply in a vicious loop
of their own creation
telling themselves that they are trying
and they don't know where the end is
because they aren't making it for themselves
just waiting on something that doesn't exist
until you breath your own life into it

i miss them more when they leave first
an upper hand against me
never
even the ones i don't know
they hold the heaviest longing
i feel like i could be alive again
or at least myself, who i had never thought of losing

back to the fickleness of nights
everything will die down outside
and within me be so terrifying
changing bad habits
into worse ones
letting the days go
and giving up
my sidewalk on the face, just staring
i'm tired of the baths and thebooze
cigarettes because even if i lost myself
at least that would be something

i don't know you. i don't know what's going on. i only recognize my own familiar ache that has lost its original contact. and the empty, confused nights of substance abuse. i have no idea where i am. idontknowwhatsgoingon.

misplaced inhibitions
a milky muttering fills the space behind
my head, so lost and soft
secretly stark naked in the dark
drinking quickly on accident
eating vertebra
like so many moments
always out of place and shrill
i am getting to the point where
i cannot stand my own processes
or anyone else's
while the flashing lights
make memories i feel are already dead.
can't help it
still shots for wild animals
don't mean much to me
when are we not so wild
it seems everyone is aching to live
prey and capture
i'm not sure what that means actually
for me either, unmemorable
but always aching too
it makes me want god so badly
something to take me
out of dissatisfaction and substance
or to have strip mall babies
or a forest to live in
the dirt will eat me up
all the books will end somewhere
the sounds will stop
and breath forgotten

the differences between this day and that day aren't at all substantial. with the oncoming winter i am slowly saying goodbye to most everyone. but it's always my secret. i watch them from car windows and empty lots as they pass by oblivious. being sick of constantly questioning what the fuck is with you. makes me question myself, and i don't care to do that. not at all. i'll only keep the ones who sit around my table gladly laughing enjoyably eating when i've made a meal for them. we put on french records. and i resent your distaste for eggs. i'm finished. done. i don't have the tolerance within me. quiet stormy eyed sleepiest of sleepers. i'm in it for the long haul. i've got no one to keep well. no one to fill me full of semen. or spill it on someone else's sheets. i don't like the smell of it. a hard head. be quiet, i'm thinking.

at almost three in the morning we are eating turkey with white wine and watching movies. i can see my breath in the room. but we won't turn the heat on. it's a test. and poverty. i like to be challenged, which is why i plan on becoming a farmer next summer. i want to work the land. wake up at five. in the morning. and watch the sun rise. plow and sew seeds. bake bread and eat eggs. become taught and tanned. glisten. that is exactly what i want. in the northeast by the ocean.

you are never forgotten in the night time
as i dizzily drink up the tomatoes
the night is beastly and as much as i
try so very hard to subject myself to drunkenness
it remains night
just as day is day and always inevitably so

i fall asleep to the realities that aren't my own
i take myself somewhere else during consciousness
only to be abruptly brought back by the belligerent bellows
of people i only know for now
and will soon forget these instances in which we corresponded
too bad or something

the fact that everyone is trying too hard
make me want to break my skin
and bones away
from everything that is the world
but where
does one go
to do such things i wonder most times

there is here and now
the pointless ramblings
the handsome men
there is here and now
but these two things are overlooked by all
the fanciful ideas of whatever might be

so everything is irrelevant in the end.
always and forever negating itself
and we're always only trying

the inevitability of my own wet feet. each day molests me secretly. and this world i care nothing for. there is a fine line to live in. between where i am. and the world, but i can't seem to get there. the unimportance of myself. and the vastness too, which only escapes itself, becoming an unsurpassable aloofness. i often wonder why death won't take me now. not to sound so dramatic. but what has man to offer me. what does the earth give. i expect nothing from the world. and desperately try to amputate myself from it. but when that starts to work, i feel a failure. there is no place for me in this world.

it was half and quiet light through the kitchen window. and i sat basking in all the silence life had to offer, while straddling your lap. as we sat on a wooden chair, in our underclothes. the room sparse and dim with the oncoming morning. my head on your left shoulder. absorbing pleasantries, and dark hair. and thoughts of absolutely nothing.

you will grow a man's face. and i will live in the woods delightfully alone. secreting little ditties about nothing in particular. out in the woods with old oaks and maybe some birch too. i always loved birch especially. and willows will surround me, because i have to tell them it's all going to work out just fine. i like the way they mope lazy like, very sad in the wind. with their heads down. and maybe cedar can join us, to make the air smell nice. in a forest for myself. with an accordion, and some assorted amount of other things, all very useful. a year maybe? i don't know how long. some sort of eternity out there. a completely different loving life, to nurture and be nurtured by the sky and cotton ball clouds. i'd like to see a river, or creek, spring. the summer prime, with red sun dresses. always and only red. everyday. a washcloth and some wine. i ride my blue bike into town for cigarettes and oats. perhaps a kitten named kleine fräulien. or "touchknife." olin slaughter will be there. along with rhonda metroux. we will avoid corn at all cost, as it may be a lot smarter than initially given credit. let us see. now. we have the oak, the birch, the willow, the cedar, the creek, the cat, and the accordion. and the assortment of other useful things. very sparse, you have to understand. minimal and pleasant. the birds will be there anyway, so there's no need to invite them. but i do hope that the red-winged black birds get wind of this. and show their pretty faces.

she had to stop. to cleanse herself she soaked in silence. if life were to be made into a math equation. stripped down into theorems and logic.

there really isn't a whole lot to be said. in fact. i don't think i have to say anything at all. i'm very afraid that any audible noise might adulterate my affection. it's a careful stupid game no one knows about. and the idea that there are a vast number of thoughts i keep to myself delights me, and at the same time, makes me wonder what exactly is the point of thinking them. how are these profitable. what is the value in them. when one has thoughts that seem so affectionate, and tender because they are truthful, precious because they are secretive, and worthless because they are irrelevant. i would like to say that nothing bothers me. but what does is my inability to avoid my fruitless thoughts. the daydreams that go nowhere. just fanciful stories i make for myself to keep me wanting more of life. so they are fruitful? where exactly would i be if i didn't have them. probably saved from the world, which i do not like. which, for the most part, i cannot stand. the way it moves around, and the other half that stagnates. please don't stagnate. all my loves are sparrows, and nightingales, mockingbirds and chickadees. all very aloof. paying no real attention to my hands or my eyes. no more than they pay to their own. i'm being arrogant. but i'm frustrated. because i've always had the greatest in mind for the ones i care about. and it doesn't even matter. you get lonely. sometimes you feel better, and other times you don't. i guess it's all a matter of how you look at it.

i made my own bed today. for the first time in years. normally, i make my bed right before i disappear for a while. but today i simply made my bed.

i'm not afraid of death. that is to say, i'm not necessarily concerned about the non-existence of myself. but as of late, the act of dying is consuming me. my body deteriorating, while simultaneously developing lumps and boils. my hair falls out. my teeth come loose. and gradually my breathing ceases to be. i'm everyday eaten away by a sense of impending doom. which sounds so simple. sounds like something someone stupid would fear. but most nights i spend some odd amount of hours reading all i can about disease. about my body. when i walk around i imagine coughing up my own epiglottis. my breasts may be small but that doesn't me they won't rot off. it stresses me to such a degree i end up smoking endlessly. wondering where the cancer will begin. maybe it would take months. or years. to die. i'm not afraid of any plane crash. but cervical cancer sounds so terrifying. i feel myself fighting the world, the flesh and the devil. and i do believe in the last especially because i hear him. right behind my left ear he's always talking. i know that all the horrible notions i have about myself are all seeded in his influence. he's figured out the things that cripple and everything that makes me fall down. he uses them against me. everyday, everyday he does this. and i want to cast out all these thoughts like demons into a fire. be rid of them and watch the trees instead. sometimes i remember that deep within my body is myself. and i feel safe. the solace always comes from singing.

maybe the second time around is better. but everyone tends to forget the important parts. equally, they forget the most simple. i don't recall asking for this. actually. i don't remember asking for anything at all. it was just given to me. hand fed. for whatever reason. we didn't think to use spoons at the time. which i am very grateful for. had we thought of it then, i don't think i would be as delighted by that presence of being as i am now.

during that time i would drive ten miles to a specific cemetery surrounded by nothing but agriculture, trees and a questionable creek that came and went as it pleased. the creek fed a moderately sized chocolate lake. at least it looked like chocolate to me. and several times while living there, i contemplated drinking that water. but it was mostly stagnant, and i couldn't look past that aspect of it. one should never drink from anything that is stagnating. instead i would sit under a strong tree and read william carlos williams, while drinking a forty. i would get drunk and cry over words and thoughts that weren't mine, along with the ones that were. why did william carlos williams have to be dead now. and why weren't the words he'd left me enough to satisfy. i wondered if i too would leave words to someone who would live much later than myself. and i would dread the eventual time that would come in a few hours. when i had to enter the world again. eventually, i would fall asleep. sleep was solid state around that time, but still no solution. and i would wake to the same day, that bore the same quandaries. my mouth dry and sticky.

when i was a child i lived out in the country. about five miles north of town. close enough that at night i could see the dome of light encasing the city. and the myriad of lights, varying in size, shape and colour, that were tossed on the horizon line. seemingly as casually placed as the location of the city itself. i would stare at the town and imagine all the tiny people milling about inside its supposed borders. there had to be thousands of little souls in that tiny place. just living lives. and i wondered what they were thinking. and what they were doing. kind of like when you are lying in the grass, and happen to notice a plane gliding dreamily overhead. for as long as i can remember, i have watched these planes fly by and imagined all the tiny people inside that tiny cylinder. but they aren't tiny at all, just distant. headed somewhere for some reason. and when i'm alone, and it is quiet outside except for the faint sound of jet engines, and this fragile looking ship trailing white smoke is passing me by, i find myself weeping. the notion of it, the sight of it, stirs up some vast and incomprehensible perspective of life. i am a slight speck of time. so tiny. and very very small. i can't help but cry happy tears. over the beautifully and infinitely temporary instances i don't understand.

but because i lived so far from town, and had no neighbors within my age, i formed a deep trust in my imagination, as most children placed in a similar circumstance are forced to do. i played with my brothers. but when i wanted to be alone, i would ride my bike to the cemetery. it was one of the oldest in ohio, i may have just made that up, but it was really old. it was across the cornfield from our house. and after the harvest, one could see portions of it in the distance. i rode my bicycle down the rocky road, where i always assumed older kids would go to have sex and do drugs. i did both of these things in that place later in life. maybe namely because of this childhood assumption. but there were two parts to the cemetery. a hill and a "forest." at least i liked to think it was a forest. and along the southern edge was a slummy trailer park. i was partial to the hill. it was the older portion. and i would sit. and speak with the dead people who lived there. we would watch the sun go down. and despite how dreary the day had been, the sunsets were always wonderful. the sort of beauty one mourns over. as it passes. in fact, the gloomiest days brought about the most luminous sunsets. so the dead and i would sit. and talk. because i felt, they were just as lonely as i was. we would watch the sun go down. and from time to time, the trailer park kids would come around and knock down the tombstones. my mother and i would do our best to restore the damage done. it always made me so sad. that they would do this to my friends. but they didn't know. that we were friends.

knock it off, cut to the quick
all washed up, makes me feel like clean
breaks don't exist
there's no nurse without a patient
that passes understanding
and we write our own prescriptions
for the ailments
whether or not they exist
at this point it doesn't really matter
and no one works the same
so don't be disappointed
or expect correct salvation
it doesn't exist
everyone's a misunderstood liar
a liar nonetheless
misunderstood nonetheless
preoccupied by justification
the oldest fucking joke
next to love

i ate a can of beans, only to realize later that they had expired exactly four years ago this month. but what does that even mean, really. i stared at the empty bowl for a time. then decided not to think anything of it. tonight i work. it's my second day. as we closed up on the first day of my employment i asked another worker if we were permitted to buy a beer from the restaurant and drink it as we cleaned the place up. she paused and eyeballed me. and after a few seconds flatly said, "no." it seemed like a pretty reasonable question to me, but the judgments had poured from her eyes, and i knew that she thought i was a lush. well shit. i can't seem to remember how to make friends anymore.

apologies for all the shitty writing. i've been drinking a bit less, so it might improve. in the sense that i won't drunkenly plop down in front of this computer and start typing. it always seems like such a good idea at the time. i guess i have more to think about than write about. to compensate for this i've been making lots of collages. many nude ladies from the 50's. which strikes me as pretty scandalous for the time. i've started making story boards instead of lists, for the things i have to do. today i felt french. i have no money for cigarettes. i like neutral milk hotel a lot. my job is a terror. the amount i talk to myself is at a record high. i don't know what i expected. well, actually i think i did expect this. fancy that. wow, i can't believe you just read that.

it never feels as good as it did when i made it up in my head.
what feeds me now?
there's a worm on the ground
but i'm out of cigarettes
and i can't have one without the other
i can't drink stably without you

there's a run in my tights
and i can't drink courageously without you
it's all haunted and pitiful
it's the one without the other
and pointless taxing tribulations
i can't drink righteously without

all the daydreamed thoughts
about wantings and being wanted
and wanton thoughts about
someone who might care for me so much

and this is the body you dress in the daytime
taking showers and cleansing
i take so much delight in
a communion
jesus said it once
a feast of the assumption
that i might not have to wake up on the floor
alone and despondently careless
about everything i ever thought might take delight in me
i think about these things
more than i'd like to let on
i'm nothing new under the sun
i'm the sad drunken chain smoker
who dreams more often than she lives

from what i can tell
the rain can't even take delight in me
and the snow tries its hardest
to pull me under

i used to like to be reminded.

the epsom salts late night soaking now
and nostalgia paves over pastways
the old cobblestones treks
of these poor burnt out synapses
their buggies and rickshaws
their familiar and deceptive scenery
i don't remember what anything was really like
this is an ingrained path
sometimes seems too hard to tear it all up
cave into the up coming times
these poor burnt out synapses
i forget your all closed off
with your muddy streets
because it's always raining down there.
let's have a bypass
a four lane major highway
serious rerouting
i could cut the red ribbon
with novelty sized gold scissors
raise a toast to the new age
a new found raison d'etre
build a monument
over the tyrannical ways of was


+++


the neighbors
eating meat everyday paunched naked bellies
with their big dog barking named buster
daily spats through run down
artificially brick
walls
someone to slap around
he probably makes her feel like a woman
she probably makes him feel a man
they laugh at chinese babies
together. they live
they are together, know eachother
as much as.

i like to listen to them
from the other side of the chain-linked fence
ten yards
in my red shoes
my nails are red
my tongue is red
my throat and stomach red.
i smoke and listen to the neighbors
as they live
together.


+++


just a warning

if life is progression
the next one will be better
four walls for me and hardwood floors
a tiny bed, a long bath, deep tub
i'll bake bread for me, beat eggs
and eat them
i won't feel so guilty
over laying under windows
and watching breezes blow the blinds

gently
drinking too much alone
in one room for hours
and who's to say
you couldn't come and visit in the summer
not my finest season
after autumn winter and spring
have left me so alone for longer hours
i'll need the company
but won't ask for it.
just a warning
my control sleeps with my solitude
like worms hide in the dirt
i'm not a seeker anymore
it's too dangerous
if you can be good to me

who said that i was kidding? i don't kid. more on that later..

under eye bags begin and multiply
sleep deprived documentaries about
the sister wives of polygamy sleeping
while their husbands touch their children
yeah your a murderer
plugging away
it's a wicked world i don't want
a middle class bitch making
problems for myself
so life is more interesting
am i really? you don't even know anymore.

dream i'm driving through floods
with lanky black men
maybe you'll make me happy
but remembering truth isn't nearly as exciting
as initially discovering it
so easily displaced
snubbed

that reflection makes me sad
those words aren't mine
and i miss to be nowhere
good has come from company
but when we're there i'm not really
now really losing
not excited
no dreams
i want nothing
the question now is
what has really happened here
where has life gone to
it's a cold world and i hate it here
i need something to cling to
keep me warmer

pray for me today. even if you don't, just try and fake it. a senseless state of self hate is solidifying inside of me. and i don't want to talk anymore. it's not my fault it's all my fault. at night the kids come in to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes. with them they bring their sense of infallibility. and they act so infinite. i sit and watch, smoking endlessly and silently beseeching any higher cause to let me feel that way again. but it's true i've been dying for years, and more so now than ever i believe it. and i'm not really living. it seems that what i see in myself isn't there at all and every cell and fiber is simply stagnating. congealing slowly into the thick milky blemish that has come to be recognized as me. and i don't even see anymore, correctly. i don't remember visions. my breasts are rotting off, and i sit in the tub feeling for the tumors. there are lumps that won't go away like i've so kindly asked them to. i think of eating healthier foods, which turns into simply just not eating. the veins develop on my legs, and remind me of my mother. it doesn't matter how much your parents love you, they can't cure your lungs of cancer. or your epiglottis. and they'll tell you that you're fine. there's no hope. it's a vicious cycle of fear and antifear. they ending result of any self diagnosis is that i'm going to die soon, so i'd better just enjoy myself. everyone dies. i don't fear death. i'm terrified. the worst disease i've ever had is own mind. and i pray to god to help me be better than i am. to fix me. to save me from myself. i'd like to be so sturdy. but i'm not. and now i keep my fears and hatred silent and only to myself. because no one wants to hear anymore sad stories. and i don't want to tell them. and no one can cure you of yourself.

just give me a second. i swear this won't take forever.