THE LAST TIME

it wasn't makeup sex, cuz we didn't make anything, nor did we get anywhere, and if we had it wouldn't have been up. it would have been down down down, the only direction our love ever went. it wasn't gentle or nostalgic. it wasn't quick or fleeting, not sad nor finished with a kiss. it wasn't anything i needed or wanted it to be. which is why it was the last time.

HE HATED IT

by the time he called i had already had three phone conversations that day and a real live one complete with alcohol and tears, and had written two poems start to finish without stopping. thats when the phone rang. so i think i was pretty tough on him and i think i was pretty truthful, and i think he hated it.

SUCKY DREAMS

i am waiting for my chance to speak and am becoming aggrevated when suddenly i have deja-vu. and i think, i had a dream about THIS moment? man do i have sucky dreams.

NOT WAITING

i was putting off going through some serious changes that i really needed to go through and when i ran out of drugs and money i went through those changes and it was terrifying and horrible and i hated it. i screamed and cried like the little baby being born that i was, and waited for someone to hold me and comfort me which somebody did, and it was not enough which i had expected, and i got over it so basically i suggest not waiting.

ROBBIE TIMMONS

now that he took the bigger screen away our screen looks so much littler. antiques look better on the big screen. i loved it. until i saw robbie timmons! ugh god! the poor thing! i always knew she had wrinkles but they didnt show up on the crappy small screen.

they might give her the boot now that digital tv's on the rise. thats what they did to aggie usedley...

you cant get rid of women for being ugly!

yes you can.

well the stations i watch don't do that.

too bad.

i know.

PERFECT FACE

she had cushiony bubble cheeks and a button nose that both led boys to think of her cleavage and other curves. he had a powerful fat brow, lined with sexy dark hairs, and a distinct nose that caused women to visualize his hard penis. they each had the perfect face for their gender. it seemed natural that they might begin a relationship.

A NIKE COMMERCIAL

as you watch your thought train bumble by, you see your ideas starting to become harder and harder for other people to understand. you wonder if this should worry you. you feel like you're on willy wonka's boat going through that dark tunnel. such are your dreams. the contrast is always LSD high. the shadows are always professional-film-lab-dark. you see every color in the blackness- you feel all of your joys in every pang of fear that strikes your heart like striking a gong- you resonate dim & low in the aftermath. you've been sleeping since you learned the powerpoint program and stopped using books in school. you refused learning MLA-standard internet source bibliography listing style and continue to credit oral history from your father for each paper that you turn in. your grades get worse. your heart gets heavier. you don't agree with your new lifestyle but you push on. you hope a nike commercial will be made about you one day.

I WANT

i want everyone to go away
i want more drugs
i want jacqui back
i want an earlier flight
i want my drawing to be taken seriously
i want my ex to talk to me
i want to jump from a rope swing into a river
right about now
i want everyone to forgive me
and leave me alone
i want a shoulder massage
i want my own place
i want to be a pirate
i want more comfortable socks
i want to be a gender chameleon
i want to be a good beat boxer
i want more business cards
for free
and fresh flowers everyday
and someone to take my digestive track out,
i want to run on hydrogen.

REALLY SELFISH

you brake as you see yourself bumbling down the path so many have already taken, killing themselves to stay close to certain individuals, in order to survive the critisism, the taking, the misunderstandings, the suffocating closeness, the lack of real honesty. the medicated lovers of medicated others limp to their cars with offspring in tow.

AN ENTIRE MINUTE

ATTENTION BORDERS CUSTOMERS! ITS THE EVENT YOU'VE BEEN WAITING FOR ALL WEEK! his enthusiasm is up from last hour, he's ad-libbing intensely, manipulating the melody of his voice to be as pleasant and sure-sell as possible. plus, while he's talking, the make-you-puke-pop-music is not playing, and you are thankful for this. as you watch the untouched muted melancholy of his audience's bored faces, you realize there is not one person in the store about to take him up on his offer. an elderly lady in a red sweater is infact visibly perturbed. he will make the announcement again next hour, but it will probably not be as good. you realize you are witnessing someone reaching their full potential, and what a rarity. the fact that he can say "our new summer roasts such as the panama blend" without laughing is definitely worth something. he hangs up the telephone pleased with his announcement. nobody budges. nobody buys anything for an entire minute. pop music switches back on. you walk up to the counter and empty your change purse into the tip jar with a loud CRASH.

HOUSES

as i watch the water creep towards me across the floor like something out of a horror film, i wonder if many people would take this as lightly as i do. i'm sure people have evacuated their houses for becoming too similar to mine.

OFFENSIVE

when someone says something offensive, say WHAT? IT SOUNDS LIKE YOURE SAYING-- and then repeat it back the way they said it to you. they will quickly excuse themselves, if not by apologizing then by smiling and shyly making up. almost no one has the confidence to be openly offensive.

THE SITUATION

just stop.
just stop spending money.
stash your last hundred away in a sock and lay down in your bed and feel broke and just lay there and stare at the ceiling until you feel an affinity to it, this will be good for you later.
(make sure you get enough water and call people that love you.)

you wonder when you should break your fast. you are sure that your body will tell you but you fear someone else will tell you first.

you have summoned the courage to change the situation and suddenly you have no appetite and no patience for bullshit and you know that its go go go time.

PLASTIC PILL ORGANIZERS

she was a true pothead. she grew it herself and had her friends look after her plants while she was away. she asked other growers for tips & tricks, even labeled her seeds and experimented with cross-breeding. she rationed out her year in order to be self sufficient, had daily portions seperated out into day-of-the-week plastic pill organizers. any not hit could be rolled over to the next day or saved for the second half of the year, or given as gifts. her boyfriend's sister watered her plants when she was at her parents' in return for stash. they all thought this a clever trade and completed the tasks with an exaggerated and unnecessary: ZEAL!

she figured it natural to be obsessed with something, preferably not a person, those kinds of attachments made her puke. the experience of actually being in such a relationship with a person had more than once sent her over the edge. she had infact many times been diagnosed with clinical depression when in secret she knew it was only heartbreak. no more of that, she thinks as she tokes up. thus she had been medicated her entire life, as a child on pharmaceuticals, as an adult on her own garden specialty.

do you realize? asked a friend of hers one time
that we are the first generation to be raised on pharmaceuticals? i mean, who knows what the future holds for us.

at the time she thought he had specifically meant in terms of health, as in, who knows what the future holds for us and our neurological systems? but in hindsight the statement was much broader than that, and she wondered, what does the future hold for us? as she slipped slowly into a hazey oblivion.

TIP

launch yourself somewhere where the payoffs are larger than in your hometown, with all of your might, as soon as you've crossed over into adulthood, give it all and whatever you've got and then savor the self-sufficiency, cuz you'll have ruined lots of other things in the process of winning that.

"THOSE SUPPOSED COUNTRY SONGS"

i miss that chicken
like mama used to cook
we'd go fishin'
catch the chicken in the brook.
cuz im a country gal

dad sings his heart out
in the space between
where they take your order
and where they take your money
at KFC.

OLD ENEMIES

sometimes, in your dreams, you go back there where you came from and you feel refreshed and renewed and recycled and you make friends with all your old enemies and you feel at home there where you never felt at home before and in this dream you tell glorious stories of the trip youre now on and the way that it changed you and the things that it made you see, but in reality, you die in the plane on the way back and never arrive.

EASY TO BEFRIEND PEOPLE

some easy-to-befriend-people answer, when asked why they have so much immediate faith in all their easy-made-friends, beautiful beautiful beautiful words, and tell stunning stories of things they noticed the first time they saw you, and about how you are when you think no one is looking, and their storytelling style is evolved such that you almost believe them, but actually you are quite aware of yourself in the moments where you think no one is looking, infact these are the moments, when you feel most alone, when you feel surest of yourself. after some deliberating, you banish such people from your life, 100% sure that they were wrong about you.

PIECES OF DREAMS

you feel shakey.
you feel another headache coming on,
ontop of the one you already have.
you take two asprin,
ontop of the one you already have.
you feel shakey you feel unstable,
but then you let yourself float to a space
beneath hunger pangs
where a clear river of knowledge
runs deep
you remember this place
you had forgotten the way
he had whispered into the phone once,
theres a calm place inside you
you have to find it.
you wonder how the doctor appointment will go tomorrow,
if you can sleep through another year
without anyone noticing,
if everyone else feels as bad as you do,
and if they do why dont you all band together
and do something about it?

they tell you theyre depressed & bored on myspace
they tell you theyre fine on the phone
or they dont pick up
or theyre happier than can be
with a beer in their hand
you feel that the world is spinning out of control.
welcome to this part of your life.
your 20s.
where, like every part of your life that came before,
everyone seems to have a very specific idea
of how theyre sposed to act and what theyre sposed to be,
and you have the funnily familiar feeling
that you didnt sign up for any of this
and while theyre busy acting and being
that certain way,
you feel alone.
and you feel you driven to participate,
though it would be against all your values.
you almost lose yourself completely when
you tear up on the phone,
snot runs into your mouth as he says,
cheer up i gotta go
and you decide
not even i can love me this way.

you click your heels and say hello
to another year of anguish and hardwork
another year of building character and cleaning up
pieces of dreams
another year
of integrity.

WAY TOO LATE

wake up and crawl out of that space
only to realize some of your friends hybernate more often & longer
than you do-
that icy lonliness climbs your spine
the one you felt married
in bed with him
waking up and hes still sleeping
marrige being your cure for being alone
not fully functioning in these moments
falling flat
falling short
feeling like a loser
for not feeling like enough for yourself
watching beautiful nostrils wave
in the winds of a beautiful breath
fueling beautiful dreams-
having that not be beautiful enough,
you develop a habit of making coffee for people
which you dont need or like
and of drinking it
more of the same
by heartbroken you mean really broken,
in terms of its not doing its job anymore
your eyes go with it you become blind
your self respect follows suit
you feel like a complete idiot
you apologize to all your friends
for necessary phases you had to go through
which you know is unnecessary
the question looms-
go back to sleep?
the question looms all day until
it scares you shitless and you stay up
way too late.

OUT

because he would be out from wednesday on, working saturday nights and generally drinking and sleeping all day sunday, monday was their official day together. at some point he became offended that she sometimes wanted to do things with groups of other people, together with him, on monday. he felt she controlled the monday activities, which was true. she tried her best to make it the funnest day it could be in order to compensate for the suffering and lonliness she endured the rest of the week. he seemed to be unaware of this part of her life. she chalked his ignorance up to his lack of confidence, he didn't believe he could have any effect on her. furthermore, he doubted her loyalty every second of every day and was so disgusted by his own inability to control her that his desire to see her dwindled down to almost nothing. she saw him, in ten years, being the kind of married guy that is constantly telling his friends how much he hates his wife. married with children style. and just the thought of having children with him in this state made her heartbreak, for the future children and the job she would have to do, and thinking about this and wishing he'd sober up eventually completely killed her libido, which he took as a sign of his total inadequecy and her lack of love for him. he became more removed and tyrannical. she packed up and left.

THE LONG HARD ROAD OUT OF HELL!

this is my first blog. this blog is for everyone i lost contact with through my seperation from my husband, including myself. it has been over a year since i gave him an ultimatum and walked out, still i have had surprisingly few conversations about it. this may be due, in part, to the fact that i have had surprisingly few conversations in the last year. i admire very much what seems to be couragous self-improvement on the part of my friend fred, who led me to blogspot, and many others who i have visited recently and who may or may not read this. in the end im doing it for me and in order to make myself a better friend to these people because at the moment i am centered around my own pain in the kind of unhealthy way that makes even the people who love you dearest wish you werent around. at least thats how i feel and thats why im opening myself up in this way, and in other ways, including two exhibitions planned for this year and two in planning for next year. my drawing is my therapy, only when drawing do i feel like i truely understand anything at all. i desire to bring this feeling of belonging that i have at those moments, usually alone in the studio, out into the light and out into the world, and into language. ive started writing short stories about my experiences in coping with this deep pain that is upon me which i hope to publish in book form one day. for now it can be found here, on blogspot.