in the days and nightcaps before i needed more that resembled myself as i wish you could see past the facts and the flaws incurred with losses and little things that sleep was no match for and nights tossed under insomniac bus wheel wells of why bother with what amounts to whatever won't work out and will wind up wiped clear of dust and taken down from shelves above eye level i drilled and built to withstand many more bookends and paperweights that i want to see less of but slept through store hours and voicemails have piled up too fast this week i wonder less than i ought to but this ship would sink straight through the ocean floor if i poked holes with the kinds of concerns and furious worrysome mental landmines even think about hitting the deck there is no way to stop floodgates i've seen enough wreckage carnage by now to know how to just seal off the whole thing from what i cannot find proof of like unicorns and universes parallel to this one that mirror my own awareness powered by experiences and iceberg crashed into this mast of past tries i made at compromise and moderation attempts to self-regulate something left unchecked for long enough to build up whole land masses with what i let slide topographically sound islands drifting downstream towards vast seas dead inside trenches of my guts and preconscious perhaps less developed than most people of age but at least i can cut my losses and shrug honesty off in lieu of what i cannot make swells of tsunamis seem under control and reduced down to just droplets of salt and organic parts of carbon all of which is splashing in swells rising despite what might sound like seagulls and no big deal things windchimes tinkling i think of sometimes and how they hung just right from the balcony overhang up in treehouse my first real address of any independence and paid for in dollar signs i learned how to insert right in front of my name and body parts i knew would fetch my rent and bones belonging to dogs and somebody's dad i remember well listening to stories of his worst nightmare case scenario of his little girl turning out like me to support herself in spite of her face and how it will seem fake under the red lights sometimes there is no tackle and bait box big enough to cast myself as confident and comfortable in this skin back then at least where i jumped off from was not so far flung from ground zero my ideals and fresh faced naiive views of what is worth no sum of cash or else having to play nice with what gives rise to bile behind my lips that seem to know better about sealing off leaks that could spring at any moment weakspots like wrists cut years ago sitting on a floor i made use of for rugburn and urgent attempts at seeming sexy while my parents were sleeping in a bed spitting distance from my flimsy push up bra and door that refused to stay locked ever since i threw my shoulder into it and out of sockets for the sake of shock value even then i paid top dollar for prices inflated with stage rotations and floated like viruses airborne opportunistic i poured my heart into authentic encounters i lost count of how much it cost in makeup and feather boas combination locks tips for the bartenders and cigarettes packed with precious cargo loaded up ahead of role call and one call could yield whole rent checks worth the same bottom line in one night snorted into numbing abnormal feeling right out like drinks poured knowingly for free of course courtesy of bartenders and management making up for what the place may have lacked in customer satisfaction and couth. this was my excuse whether i realized it yet i can't remember but really do laugh sometimes when the brevity of the cliche hits me wrecking ball style swings into guts i developed in this aftermath runoff mascara mornings streaked painted black reminders of what i cannot speak of and still keep so far hidden and up beyond squinting through binoculars telescopes barely let shapes of shelves show themselves in spite of my honesty policy i adhere to in theory but practice of acting unaffected makes perfect sense of absurd events and drug habits that kick me down paths i would be just fine without any memory of since i made nonsense up spun gold with split ends of my extensions and fake hair i twirl on my fingers pretend to seduce but might have been seen through for nervous and strung out called out sometimes when i had less patience and took less pains to play nice with others and took little pride in what money i could find with little effort when i had much too much drugs up my nose and smoked chains down to nothing like paper daisies i decked the walls with in childhood bedrooms i used to be sent to when i said bad words like fuck you all meant punishment instead of now when it gets flung right back at me how little i knew of things that seem like they go on forever and always have been this way for the natural casual way we speak of things these days around the dinner table where curse words don't bother anyone but please don't interrupt my father or forget to clear your place afterwards always use big noisy announcements for plates and silverware besides the fact that we wasted the cardboard containers already and styrofoam unforgiven lies unable to return in future lifeforms as anything else but a cup i poured taken out something from so as not to offend my mom and sensibilities i see as they stand out here in the desert beyond where i felt like anything close to adult and taken out of context displaced i can't help but wonder lately if the family dynamics that fill sticks of dynamite and landmines booby trapped rock gardens less zen and more mindfuck i don't try to unwind and make rhymes of just watch the landscape from the vantage point i know better now interesting view of the world and what i bring to the table i wish i knew then back when little was said of my tendencies toward self fulfilling harm and overkill understatements of humor at my expense i learned how to bend the paperclips staples of stacks paper back into undoing collating job reduced to what amounts to one thing at a time single-spaced and in line with what came earlier and whatever follows after evidence of meaning finds me stuck between looking back at what i must have read outloud a hundred times but still can't buy into to lead me to form an opinion of what became of me and my dna donors all two of them just human afterall and why is not answered still years since i memorized the ending i peeked ahead to prematurely and in vain i only wish i could take this new viewpoint and stuff it sealed up a coke bottle full of what is coming up and how it feels worse than i played off things but could not stand hearing my voice screaming into the wind for the sake of a good story maybe still a drama queen brooding for no good reason except just that in itself a reason the validation of razors i scraped back and forth just for fun and the pain of things i paid for in blood for lack of better words i learned much later on from nothing that was said but more in the deafening roar of no one caring. soon enough i would scrub this out in a manic fit of springtime still at the top of things like my game and your to-do list