here lies the words of a life
stripped of the lies,
my truth
in the lines.
and the best
and the what
and the rest
of what’s left
of myself, and
in spite
of myself,
are the Words!
they still work
and i still wake up
burning through everything
and panting and blinking
and saying i’m sorry
and not meaning it
and still,
i keep writing and writing
still.
always too far gone
to turn back
now
and still
sore and through the fuzz
of static and snow
and background noise
and sheep and boys
and fog in my brain
clouding my eyes
sandstorm swirling
impossible to see
up ahead and up that hill
and through this fire
my eyelashes bat the breeze
and fan the blaze
and as i fumble
for this pretty pink pill
from the bottle
of all the best
and all the rest of my mess
of memories and days
spent and drawn
and quartered
like prey and the hunted
and all of us who lost
the chase
and pretend to have air
instead of the gaseous
virile madness
that puffs up my lungs
and rots me and taints all
of my insides until i am filled
and shapeless existence
overcome by a weakness
and wanting for bleakness
and numbness
pink pills
provide and still.
the pen
or the keys
both real and
more alive than i
though it’s me who needs blood
and blood-letting and weeping
to gauge and realize
its not all dead yet
inside
of me and my lungs
blowing smoke
in the years between
that curb so dirty but more
friendly
than you are, still
even now and then
on my drug-laden journey
i think of your fingers
like cones or pyramids
lovely
and healing
and keepers
of matters of heart and the like
and my eyes and my hands left
shaking
inside and still
reeling
from sleeping outside in
madness
and crumbs like pills on your t-shirt
i hated it then
but that hits too close to home
as it were
so i remember the curb
instead
and now closing
and hiding
my heart
and my pills
in a bottle
in time
in a battle uphill
to be battled and documented and mottled
in time
like conical spherical triangle hands
you had that were shaped as if made
to effectively clutch my
heart
and my lungs
and my pills and then rip all them
neatly to bits
and pieces
and fragments and atoms
and lazily tossed with those
prism-shaped fingertips
out of your sight along with
my jokes
about said digits
not so funny on the way down
to the curb i remember with color
in light of the night
you kicked me to it
and i bothered
to jot it down
unlined
mental paper
for later
for battle
uphill
i am now ready
armed and airless
but filled and breathless
with stories and
pills
and here i go
as you went and go and come back
every time i think of you
in the shapeless way i need to do
every so often and now and then
and more often than not
in truth and pretending
in make believe and hopes and dreams
where air is obvious and free and you
and you
and i
make sense again
and share the world again
and save my soul again
and i feel certain of you
and you
and you
and i make we again
and at the end of the day
and the truth of the line
is that its all uphill
and the battle is all mine
to fight alone and alive
thanks for that curb
the pavement cement
poured my heart out
into the gutter and sewers the rats really liked it
or so i would think in light of the evidence
i’ve had since you
and although you
and the avoidance
you chose to take at the fork in the road of my life
of my learned aversion to
the unnatural breeze
of a mechanical
fan
blowing my hair and the truth
and my eyelids
shut and drying my pores out
my tear ducts
must have been tipped off
that they were on the verge
of usefulness
or borderline over-the-top
type of abuse
and were better off
laying low
under the cover
of darkness
and droopy eyelids
and too much makeup from
trying too hard to
cover it all up
in the face
of the fan
you would blast
on your face
in the middle
of the night
when you must have thought
i was asleep beside you
and not counting
sheep and shitstorms and fans they would hit
behind my trembling eyelashes
and lids and your smell on my flesh
used to keep me awake
and can still
make me wretch and just thinking
and sniffing you
is rolling my insides around
and making me lose my upward gaze
on this treacherous hill
i’m on
and now i forget where i’ve gone and misplaced
my bottle of bitter
those shards of old
musty memories
youth
my bottle of pink
poisonous thrills
all wrapped up in sweetness and co-pays
unassuming undulating inside me now
dancing
ironic and outlawed little pills of mine.
so i write some bits of me out of me
and down
lifting my head only sometimes
not really sure if the view is worth the
pins in my needles and blue hue of limbs
i’ve neglected so long now
writing and typing and trying prolonged somehow
till all the world and weak and want for you in spite of
the curb and the night and what i can barely make out
in the distance now
if i squint hard enough it gets easier to rub you out of my line
of vision and out of my life and keep going
eyes down
and head itchy and bowed
and nails with the dirt and the proof of
the curb and of me
and of you
and of where it took us both to
even though i still can imagine
some semblance of something
inside me somehow
surviving the brutal in you and alive now
resembling pride inside me
or its bastard child perhaps or what remains
of its lineage and kingdom all but a myth now
my pride
and it sweeps clean the corners
neatly arranging and arraigning you
into dustpiles
and dirt and bug carcasses
all out in the open
for me to see and for you to refuse to acknowledge
as you tend to enjoy more as time and fingertips
flick off the days
on the calendar
i gave to you
and you probably threw out or threw up
screaming, i’m sure
years before
you kicked me and my pride to the curb
left for dead not even worth
the effort and eyesore
a trashbag tied up
could have provided…
you left me like litter
to blow away with the wind
someone else will solve me
you imagined, and as it happened?
that someone never did.
but the film on my teeth has more truth
and more heart
in just one fungal spore
than all of your words and all of your thoughts
unexpressed
and all of your intentions for no one else but yourself
and tonight i know one thing for certain
and its more of the stuffing i can use to pad inside
the wobbly knobs
of joints and missed connections
of connective tissues
ripped apart by the black hole you left here
in time and outer space and all the
fuck you
between them
the fact of my face and its scar tissue burning true
and timber goes trees in emptiness
and forests too still
and quiet and curbs and
crumbs
of you and how i can almost smell
the sweat and breath of your life on
my pillow now
still
after years and
still
your fingertips and eyelashes and
all the other pointed corners
of you
still visible and tangible
too often i reach out to touch and once again i remember
with a flash flood unleashed and a spot of fresh blood where it stings
from touching and trying to take the edge off the mess
that you left of me then
by talking or laughing or just often dialing
your digits and sometimes i can literally see
your own digits all pointy like witches’ hats and pyramids and cones of candy i would be
delighted
to find in my bag of tricks or your pillowcase
take off the mask
and still
i find nothing more real than tricks
and i can’t fit more of those in me now
my cup and my feet and this hill and my bottle of pills
each and all of equal measure
completely spent and teeming like
cake batter
in the oven
you spilled once
and licked it off in the afterglow
or aftermath as it might have been otherwise
from behind your pretty green eyes
masked and masquerading as lovers
but lying in wait like liars without thought
to karma or me
or the fate of those who’ve fallen
for your tricks and the treats
that were promised and left me stripped raw and bare
on a sidewalk in
summer
but freezing in me
my bones would not believe
the calendar
causing scars and hobnobs holes in my joints
and missing connections
in tissues meant for
connecting
like flights from austin
to atlanta
and back again
and you ran and i remember
you running away from me way back when
in the airport
how airborne and light-headed you left me
when you left me behind
with less of my will
and less of my sense
of my space and of time and of where i should stand and
less patience for waiting and wanting
in line
but you were not all bad things and boogie monster myth
in my mind even now
in the years since you left
me behind as you fled in the airport
as we touched down and fell back
to earth and i looked and squinted hard till it spun me
around in the sunlight
in georgia
in texas
your silhouette i can see
still…even now
running and dodging your better judgment
and judging me somehow
as the people in between the here and now
and the time that’s elapsed between then and the we and the talk of the town
and the taxi that took you away and the ground
that rose up to meet me
instead of your hand
in my bleary-eyed haze instead of your face
i squinted and sobbed as you launched your ship of fools into space and i take stock of
what remains
and the dust
and the piles of unspoken and regretful lust and prayers for myself amidst the rubble
when all the rest settled upon the curb and under the rug in my mind and in our place
in gramercy
i clung to the remainder
the quotient was not so easily severed
as you may have thought and probably think of me as drug-addled and mentally-ill
and ill-equipped to battle this hill
where you left me alone
in the gutter and on
the curb of your story when here i lay baffled
you wrote the author right out of the story she started
years ago in the freon-thick of things
the air unnatural as your legs as they moved one another on and into a sort-of run and away
away
away
from me
and atlanta
behind you
but even though you always were so
pencil and eraser
and index cards
all organized for everything
and me
you still managed to forget me
and regret me
and when you met me
you knew
i would be a proverbial baggage claim
where you could check in and out and then just hop on some plane
when my life and my mind and my pride and my lust
for anything that wasn’t you
was too much for your unclaimed and over-the-weight-limit baggage to take
and so you left it tied to me and tattooed all over me plain for all to see
but the only one who wasn’t looking
was you
with your back to me.
more than i did yesterday and even without a road map or a dime or even a fucking plan;
and sometimes i reach for you in my half-sleep
and your absence is absolute and where you should be is not killing me now, it's overkill and roadkill in my vacant motel off the highway unreachable and unthinkable for you now and still covered by scars and footprints and unexpected sorrow so sharp on my tongue now
i doubt you would understand anyhow.
like pickles on parade in new york city like you so fickle in the moment of mayhem and truth and when i woke up from you it was christmas already and ice trickled down from eyes that had yet to see you for yawns afternoons after dawn so far gone and its almost dinner time and all the hands of the clocks from here to key west are flying in sync and i am stuck in bed and still
you
will have posted another day to your life's bedpost in notches or brastraps perhaps i could guess, but your days are infinite and strung together like popcorn on a charlie-brown-christmas-tree thing that i would have loved to see today in my living room alone where dreidyls and tables sit empty and tired of spinning alone and futile and full of consequence and never worth the gamble it was.
your days and your kernels orderly and predictable on a thread of commanality and comfortable with like company
each day is exactly new and old and yesterday smacks of the underbelly of me not living in your most secret panic room in the back alley of your mind, let alone in your living room or you missing my stringing of popcorn and of you along and along and of lyrics you butchered to songs you belted out then only for me...
and does it strike you as ironic perhaps, that your days now link together by outlawing any reminder of things that serve as leftovers and remainders of the love and the stringing along that i did and you learned from me and all of the gunk in between the gaps of the teeth making up for making out with me and the ruins of an ancient civilization now ripe for the history channel no doubt you have your eyes peeled for that one to air, even though years and lightbulbs have burned up inside of me since we was a word, and the see-saw of us was still tipped towards what was 'fair' even though you don't admit that now, as it were way back then-
in pre-history, in melancholy, in fossilized ruins and dusty old scrolls i throw at you now- as if they could attest to the pain and the rest of what cracked in the plates in the earth and what was left on the crust just below the surface molten rage...
a historical blip in your timeline of tempered little lies where there lives a gap in the lines between yours and whats mine, and consequences of climactic disaster and theories like this will get tossed like pawns on a chess board with epileptic fits and lost languages like latin and sanskrit make more sense than all that i'm left with
but still i try to arrange things so they don't offend the neighbors and make a pleasant picture out of what could be told in an urban legend mythbook of the story that was so sorry for not stopping the carnage between you and me.
i arrange the pictures not the ones in color now, the artists' rendering perhaps, it makes more sense and draws the best of the imagination out and connects the dots or paints by numbers all by itself to create a hellacious jigsaw masterpiece all scattered and missing pieces ...
still i wait with a roll of scotch-tape and the scissors you'll need someday to sever the string that ties together your days and your nights and your lies of how happy you may be now, living without me and we and the mess of us buried and lied about somehow.
the puzzle and me and tools i dust off too often to consider now as more falls to the floor and i realize my words and these pictures and you are all strung together by this lone fact up on my windowsill now:
you are all out of me now and i've used you all up and wrung you all out and now you are left to shrivel and harden and waste away like dinner rolls now on a table with only one place being set night after night and thank god for the words i can write now, making noise in the quiet and the still.
and lighter by word count, i rise and can fill my lungs with fresh air now
and open
i spill.
more than i did yesterday and even without a road map or a dime or even a fucking plan;
and sometimes i reach for you in my half-sleep
and your absence is absolute and where you should be is not killing me now, it's overkill and roadkill in my vacant motel off the highway unreachable and unthinkable for you now and still covered by scars and footprints and unexpected sorrow so sharp on my tongue now
i doubt you would understand anyhow.
like pickles on parade in new york city like you so fickle in the moment of mayhem and truth and when i woke up from you it was christmas already and ice trickled down from eyes that had yet to see you for yawns afternoons after dawn so far gone and its almost dinner time and all the hands of the clocks from here to key west are flying in sync and i am stuck in bed and still
you
will have posted another day to your life's bedpost in notches or brastraps perhaps i could guess, but your days are infinite and strung together like popcorn on a charlie-brown-christmas-tree thing that i would have loved to see today in my living room alone where dreidyls and tables sit empty and tired of spinning alone and futile and full of consequence and never worth the gamble it was.
your days and your kernels orderly and predictable on a thread of commanality and comfortable with like company
each day is exactly new and old and yesterday smacks of the underbelly of me not living in your most secret panic room in the back alley of your mind, let alone in your living room or you missing my stringing of popcorn and of you along and along and of lyrics you butchered to songs you belted out then only for me...
and does it strike you as ironic perhaps, that your days now link together by outlawing any reminder of things that serve as leftovers and remainders of the love and the stringing along that i did and you learned from me and all of the gunk in between the gaps of the teeth making up for making out with me and the ruins of an ancient civilization now ripe for the history channel no doubt you have your eyes peeled for that one to air, even though years and lightbulbs have burned up inside of me since we was a word, and the see-saw of us was still tipped towards what was 'fair' even though you don't admit that now, as it were way back then-
in pre-history, in melancholy, in fossilized ruins and dusty old scrolls i throw at you now- as if they could attest to the pain and the rest of what cracked in the plates in the earth and what was left on the crust just below the surface molten rage...
a historical blip in your timeline of tempered little lies where there lives a gap in the lines between yours and whats mine, and consequences of climactic disaster and theories like this will get tossed like pawns on a chess board with epileptic fits and lost languages like latin and sanskrit make more sense than all that i'm left with
but still i try to arrange things so they don't offend the neighbors and make a pleasant picture out of what could be told in an urban legend mythbook of the story that was so sorry for not stopping the carnage between you and me.
i arrange the pictures not the ones in color now, the artists' rendering perhaps, it makes more sense and draws the best of the imagination out and connects the dots or paints by numbers all by itself to create a hellacious jigsaw masterpiece all scattered and missing pieces ...
still i wait with a roll of scotch-tape and the scissors you'll need someday to sever the string that ties together your days and your nights and your lies of how happy you may be now, living without me and we and the mess of us buried and lied about somehow.
the puzzle and me and tools i dust off too often to consider now as more falls to the floor and i realize my words and these pictures and you are all strung together by this lone fact up on my windowsill now:
you are all out of me now and i've used you all up and wrung you all out and now you are left to shrivel and harden and waste away like dinner rolls now on a table with only one place being set night after night and thank god for the words i can write now, making noise in the quiet and the still.
and lighter by word count, i rise and can fill my lungs with fresh air now
and open
i spill.
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