I am a serious person,

Like the sounds of feet scrapping together

Or the quietly moaned stifling my words.

If we all grew up in nice neighborhoods,

The world would be a more productive globe.

We would discover how to destroy what we see,

How to paint impressionably by the left side of a tree at night,

Inhabiting the lamp posts bulbs.

I am not negative,

Just creation

In its dirtiest mud filled piles of forms,

Addicted to masturbation,

To hitting the send button,

To cancelling accidental texts.

I am your cum stained panties,

Your peers self respect.

I am your grabbing hands and

The language between your toes.

I am your afternoon whiskey water pick me up,

The hardened specks of rodent digestion.

I am your Friday night girl and Saturday’s rejection.

I am my father’s daughter,

My sister’s friend,

My dog’s human mother.

I am, I am

The sorry sap who wrote one too many

Love letters.

I am the projection of your questions about life

 like the bird seed you throw on your

Million dollar homes at night.

The vomited mass of nutrients you wish you hadn’t eaten

Or the booze I consumed that you wish you had.

You are what I am

In my wildest dreams,

Where ex-lovers send you unopened letters

You’ve been waiting to receive.

They tell you it’s not you it’s only

What you perceive.

I am the harrowing avoidance of phone calls,

Of planned visits,

Of 1am sex.

I am the persistent itch of biting bugs

And the temporary scratch.

I am, what you are,

What you are not.

I am, what I am,

What I am.

Is someone else’s poem,

Is a drug fiend’s autobiography,

Is my sleepy eyes at night when the nostrils burn off their arc like dance to the fires.

 What I am,

Is this. 

Is the only thing no one else can know how,

Of locking what you couldn’t chain,

Finding the end someway in the somehow.

I just legitimately don't care about the internet.
I don't care about what someone’s presence is,
but I care cuz it makes me anxious.
I used to think the internet made me anxious because
I was jealous,
or confused about me
on the internet,
but now i'm thinking that i get anxious because it terrifies me.
it terrifies me in the same way that dj's are no longer called dj's, but performers,
and that i should inherently know this.
the same way that people make funny pictures out of lines and solid colors
and add words
or an ironic (i'm sorry , just old)
image

Or don’t use capital letters (like now)
and think it's funny.
I don't understand,
i didn't grow up in a pack of wolves,
or in complete isolation
(but maybe that’s why-an outlier)
but i don't want to live in a world where
my peers care more about the incredible SHIT PILE of nothing and it’s irrelevance to breathing,
or loving.
I didn't grow up on 4chan, i just learned what reddit was a few months ago,
and I get it,
it's useful, it's good
But there is BETTER.

Haven’t we all felt better?

I want to know, how much time is spent monitoring what photos of self go up on facecrack?
were you born "cool" or did you spend a lot of time wiki'ing useful references and associations to life situations you haven't ever lived through?
Does anyone even know what they actually like anymore?

Does anyone actually like themselves anymore?

I'll forget your name as you're telling it to me
so I sure as shit won't quote trotsky
and then talk about lenin like they ever personally gave me any wisdom.

my mother is constantly calling my name out
and showing me slews of men on match.com and lesbian women she's turning down on okcupid

"you're not interested, are you? 31, gay, cute"

my mother lives an online life more similar to you, my peer, than to me.

and instead of  her being around making me feel like a 23 year-aged 5 year old,
I am really glad,

really really glad
that it is a human annoyance,
a voice,
that i am home right now
reading treasure island,
wishing i was reading something better
but not really wishing that at all
behind a door propped open a little
and my dogs whining
and my mother whining,
instead of being in an entire room of
people like you

 trapped inside a

living
fucking
chatroom.

I will always be a sad woman, or a good woman,
or nothing in between.  I am always tired,
always doing the wrong things to make right.  I am redundant.
I am unaware of how to not be so, when sight only has blips of relevance.
I think,
this is all OK.
I think, this is all I know, and have developed.
I suppose so.
I suppose it is OK to be wrecked,
not forever,
but maybe.
OK to be distrustful, of disgusting consistencies,
which make us human
in the most furious ways.
We can take comfort, that we know the ways
to procreate,
and decide against or for it.
Choice.

Sterile fountains,
drain easily from faucets to suburban mouths.
The judgements we raise,
with advil and fish food to grow over pains.
I write an empty check, fill in my mother's premature death,
all just to speak with you.
I cannot write words to cover my open wounds.
An asshole rips,
my vaginal walls gaping.
All these little things,
we participate in.
Wipe from front to back,
stare at my shit.
Some man stops to inform me he served his time in the navy,
that his wife still smells good to him after all these years.
I fall in love with my city again,
and will want to blow it up by next week.
I smoke my 10 cigarettes at night
and think how I'll be dead by 30 if I'm lucky.
Maybe reverse my age, shave my head,
and watch the security guard flirt with her perimeter.

Low Tide


I walked over there knowing he would try and penetrate me.  Every time I've seen him over the past few years, he gives a longing stare at some piece of my body, making it feel inanimate.  I got the largest bottle of wine I could, the liquor store troll tries to force mint oreos on me, again.  It's a joke that's lost its funny.  My shorts feel silly, like my thighs are merging together, begging to feel.  I try to figure out how to use the call system to get inside.  Wonder why I can never figure out technology, even old, simple machines.  Call him to let me in, finding myself laughing that he'd know why I was there after seeing a wine bottle the size of my left leg. 

"Be right out"

he said.

I think about maybe just going home, maybe I should stop trying to get fucked just to see the other person's reactions, if they look alive, experiencing something I just can't right now.

He is so small still,
in the elevator, I try not to stare.
The first few minutes I'm with someone
(anyone)
I need some time to adjust.  The first few sentences are always half said, mildly unintelligible animal sounds.
"They-
get- you get papers delivered here?"  My mouth doesn't move the way I want it too.
He tries to look me in the eyes and I nervously turn my head to stare at the elevator's left side wall.

"Yeah, guess I do."

I don't know what to talk about, so I babble
-almost manic.

I tell him I was almost fired, curse every other word.

I have been in his spacious apartment for 10 minutes and have already finished a generous glass.

He tells me he's sorry dinner's not ready, but I don't care.  I hadn't expected it to be.
I sit by his kitchen window and comment on the things I see outside. 

A train goes by that looks like cargo.  I have always been fascinated by forms of transportation.  I've often driven to the airport just to sit inside it. 

I try not to think about what that may mean about me.  But then I think about it a lot anyway.

We sit on the floor and eat, he's on some special diet because he cares what his body feels like.
I tease him about that because I've never had that concern.

"Sorry.  I think I spilled some tomato sauce on your rug..."

He hardly speaks, stares at my lips, and agrees with me about how depressing it is to have gotten ourselves in the position of having full-time jobs and his being in debt from school.

"Are my lips purple or something?  You keep glancing at them."

He laughs, "Well, yeah.  They are." and his eyes droop,
-is he trying to be sexy?  "But that's not why I'm staring at them."

"Oh."

I don't care.

I haven't eaten anything all day and the sudden protrusion my stomach's feeling makes me want to explode a little, then I wonder if I could.

"I'm gonna smoke again, is that OK?"

"Let me open the screen for you.  Want more wine?"

I smoke and have another full glass in my hand.
He stands by me, almost hovering.

I end up talking a lot about fucking, while simultaneously realizing how disgusted I am by it and not sure why I do this trick with people I may want to sleep with.

It doesn't actually matter what you are trying to express to someone about sex, because once you mention to word, some immediate desire is realized in the frontal lobe.

This both is, and is not, my intention.  This is a test of other people's stupidity.  A prediction can be easily made.

"I don't know what I'm talking about.  I just think...I mean, you just always wanted to have sex.  And I honestly just get sick of it.  It's nice to be alone, to fuck when you want."

"Yeah, I actually wanna fuck right now."
"What?"
"I mean, I wanna fuck right now.  I think we're good enough friends to be able to just do that."
We are not friends.
I almost cry right there.
I almost say no and then realize there's no point.
How can this man who was so in love with  me for so long, unrequited for the past 2 years, be so willing in his emotional psyche to not care how he'll feel after not fucking me in 2 years. 
We are all the container.

"OK, yeah.  Let's do it."

His roommates door is open and the lights are on.  I think again, how it doesn't matter and I probably won't make noise because he used to love how loud I was.
Music is on, I don't know what it is but I'm glad.

He kisses me, and I push him away.

"Hi."

I say, trying to make him realize how we used to do this out of love.

He doesn't seem to get or care about the connection and puts my legs around him.

Once, a long time ago, I had wrapped my legs so tight around him and he has screamed out,
"Those leggssssss!'".  Now, he had placed them there.

It was quick, and I wanted it from behind.

After, I put my head on his chest, but hovered, I knew I would cry.

He got up and pissed and I went in after and shut the door,
pressed on my cheeks hard.
Squeeze out my little pain.

When I came back out the light was on and I searched for my clothes.
He started talking about liking sex better without a condom.
I dressed and said I wanted to smoke.

He followed me to the window and we talked more about nothing.
It felt like nothing had happened and I guess it really hadn't.

I had to get out of there.

"Hmm, I gotta head out.  Thanks for the food...and the fuck."

He laughs and hugs me.

"Love ya.  This was fun."
"Yeah. Walk me out."

At the door, he mumbles something I can't remember and I feel like screaming.
Everything is so stupid.

Walking home, I take the alleys and cry. 

I write a letter in my head to a friend I used to sleep with who was sort of sad like me,

"Do you ever feel that everything is so sick and masochistic?  I think we live for mischief.  We live and then we get bored and get ourselves into trouble just to do the same shit over again."

I get home and don't feel like crying anymore.

I pour a glass of whiskey,
sit on my window sill,
and watch cars go by.

you pulled, you pulled
the tide that puts fear in my toes.
my ocean
it laughs at me
the same way you do,
your face squinched back
letting me lose you
what i never had in me.

"and I laugh, I can still laugh, who can't laugh when the


whole thing

is so ridiculous

that only the insane, the clowns, the half-wits,

the cheaters, the whores, the horseplayers, the bankrobbers, the

poets...are interesting?"
..............................
..............................
................................
"a quarter rolls across the floor, and I remember all the faces


and

the football heroes, and everything has meaning, and an editor

writes me, you are good

but

you are too emotional

the way to whip life is to quietly frame the agony,

study it and put it to sleep in the abstract.

is there anything less abstract

than dying day by day?"




Empire of Coins-Buke

*Thanks professor.