ducks

Would I be ashamed to let you in?
I ask myself this odd
needling
hypothetical question while looking around the room.

The answer is invariably, yes.
I would be ashamed to let anyone see how I live.
The question in my head has become phrased in a specific way
that I find frustrating more than I might otherwise find it.

I’m quite certain I’ll never see you again.

So the shame?
I would invite you in anyway.
That’s the oddest aspect of the room…and my life in general.

It’s past time to organize the chaos into neat little rows.
There are no ducks to feed here that I’ve found.
Only skinks and cockroaches that don’t need me, want me, notice me
or quack
to comfort my stale bread crumb stuffed insides that I’ve emptied out into cold water.

i don’t know anything

My intellect, they always told me
in hushed up voices and indirect whispers
this gift of aptitude
talent
the allure of an atypical mind…that never struggles and rarely tries.

Appearance.

Guilt.

Crawl inside poking and prodding the lacy edges
punctured and plastered over with names
for
the condemned and diseased.

You’re right; always right.
It’s not so hard to understand the transparency known as me.
You know me.
Keep me in my place, wherever that place may seem to be in an escapist society.

Steady now. Steady.

You wait for a revolt. You would revolt. You know you’re special.
Even if you’re common; so average that it hurts…something makes you special.
The great elaborations of the underdog mentality.
You want me to disagree, but I don’t.
I can’t.

You have something I’m afraid I’ll never find.
A system? A cause?
So many think that I…
Maybe we envy each other unnecessarily.

—

A conversation unfolded in front of me as I walked among strangers.
A boy made polite conversation, and the girl indulged.

I remember wondering if it was real.
Were they there?
Were they having this conversation?
Was it a standard conversation to be had?
Is this the way that people interact?

It fell away from me.
I interpret the world around me differently.
I don’t mean to.

I wanted you to talk to me.
You spoke so frequently.
It seemed…to everybody.

I fuck up most verbal exchanges.
I fuck them up all the time.
The lighter and more casual, the quicker and more completely fucked.
People seem to think it’s intentional.

I ask myself again and again
but there’s no answer.

There’s nothing to revolt against. The connection is intermittent
garbled
distant
and predominately…dead.

hammer and nails

Somebody knocked down my mailbox when it snowed.
I think I already mentioned this, but in case I didn’t, that is the context of this story.
Somebody knocked down my mailbox when it snowed.
I tinkered with the pieces for a while yesterday and gave up, got side tracked, or fell asleep on the kitchen floor.
I’m not sure what happened, but the point is that I didn’t put the pieces back together.
Rather, I left them strewn about the porch.

Today, I locked my housemate out of the house, and she called me where I work, and…that is a different story.
Needless to say, I was not happy.

She asked me what happened to the mailbox.
I proceeded to go about tinkering with the pieces again and her muskrat type male companion asked me if I wanted him to fix it for me.
He looks like that guy in the first Matrix movie. Not that dipshit from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventures, but that muskratty looking…Joe. Joe Pantoliano.
Joe Pantoliano asked me if I wanted him to fix the mailbox for me after I’d already taken it all apart and ascertained that I needed two new six inch nails.
He asked me twice.

The second time, I was not polite.
What are you going to do, Joe? Stick it back up with a wad of bubble gum? I already had all the tools out.
My tools.
I clearly know what I’m doing.
This isn’t particularly difficult work. It’s just annoying.
Why don’t you run along and play house somewhere where you actually…pay rent or something?

I went up the road to my local Lowes and found two galvanized six inch nails for .16 a piece. I went to a line wondering if it would be a problem with Sir Douchey McDoucherton hunched over his register.

It was a problem.

He insisted that my nails were not in the system for the price I told him they were. I offered to go get the item number for him, and he continued scanning random barcodes out of his little book. The old man in line behind me started condescending to Sir Douchey, and I found myself amused to smirks and giggles.

To save himself some face, he took this out on me, “What do you want to do, lady?” He dripped with disdain. I’d told him about five minutes ago that I’d like to go get the item number for him, but instead he kept us all waiting.

I toddled off and committed the long string of numbers to the mush in my head. When I walked back up to his line less than a minute later, he looked at me like I was retarded. I looked at him like he was a lazy worthless Master Doucher from Hairybottom Long Island, and rattled off the number for him. He punched it in wrong. I slowed it down for him.

Low and behold, Lowes sells the nails I picked up at Lowes for the amount advertised by Lowes with a call number that’s in the Lowes computer system.

Weird. I never would have guessed.

I pounded them through two pieces of half rotten wood and screwed my mailbox back to its post in the dark. A fat old neighbor man across the street came out to watch me do this in a teeshirt, in the dark, and in the snow. Did you enjoy the show?

I might be a girl. Yes, I might wear a bright pink coat and talk with an odd accent, but I can handle nailing two pieces of wood together and screwing a metal box on top. Promise.

What do you think was the last productive thing McDouchey did? Or…the Muskrat for that matter? Please, boys. It’s not that goddamned odd for someone to put their mailbox back up after some asshole runs it down in the snow.

My mailman is a big black woman that hardly fits into her truck. I hope she understands. I hope she leaves me mail tomorrow. I hope it isn’t all bills and stupid student loan letters about misapplied funds from Wells Fargo…but even if it is…I’d like to get my mail in the box I put back up.

I thought I saw something once.

You meet someone, and you know that they’re…

No.

I meet people, and I think I see things. I watch things; not so much as the passive spectator or one of those popularized underdog outsiders…

Fuck you.

I…Sometimes, shit happens, and it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, or if it does, I fail to understand.

I used to think actors like Anthony Hopkins and Robert DeNiro were attractive. This was back in those awkward years that are represented by awkward numbers like…eleven and twelve. Ten makes sense and then the numbers get muddled for a while.

14 is really fucked up in Spanish.

I would say that Hopkins and DeNiro are the closest I ever came to having any sort of celebrity crush…that fantastical sort of fluffy crushing that has no basis in reality but in the character typecasting…

Yeah.

My peers were off getting drunk and leaving socks on in the dark, and I was…watching shit like Cape Fear.

Less than halfway through college I snapped. I try to look back on it, but most of it’s gone; eaten away by the rotating blades of a dirty ceiling fan and wet concrete.

Sometimes, I meet people, and I think I see things…but they tell me I’m wrong, so while my peers are out getting married and raising families, I’m watching shit like Cape Fear

but the allure is gone.

Katie

Her name is Katie
and I know it’s just a dull coincidence
considering
it’s such a common name.

Sigh…

She’s gorgeous and quiet; humble and smart. Sometimes, I look after her while she’s not paying attention. I steal appreciative glances and wonder what it’s like to be her.

She’s not like…
No, she’s not like that.
She’s not, and it’s not that I want to be her

even temporarily.

No, I just look after her wondering sometimes
who she is
what it’s like.

She invited me to her family’s Christmas dinner
and I didn’t know how to turn her down.

I’m not Christian.
I don’t eat ham…or turkey.
Social gatherings make me uncomfortable.

She invited me, because I’m not going home.
They think I don’t like my family, and that’s just not true.
Hell, they think I’m secretly a millionaire.

“You just don’t like people very much, do you?”
Well…
No.

No, I suppose I don’t but…
it’s not usually an active disliking.
Sometimes it is.
Confrontations in parking lots.
Unflushed toilets.
Insipid remarks jotted with unforgiving pen in the pages of old, used books.

I don’t dislike Katie.
I certainly don’t dislike my family.

I don’t know how to turn her down…because I don’t dislike her.
It’s actually quite the opposite.

Katie…

Black Swan

white bitch

I was about to be late

with the puppies

because I was trying to help the new girl
that wasn’t feeling well.
I don’t like her, but…that’s irrelevant.

There were four lanes, and the car in front of me in the far left was going too slow.
Anybody recall those signs that state “Slower Traffic Keep Right”?
The car in front of me must have been exempt and also apparently didn’t want to get passed by a little blue Toyota.
Tough shit.
I cut it off.

Yes, I did. Unapologetically.

I have become an aggressive, downright ruthless driver.
It’s necessary here.
Grow up.
Learn how to drive.

I get cut off every fucking day.
I grumble for five seconds, and then I carry on…because it happens
every
fucking
day.
I have more important things to care about than whether I just got cut off or not.

Don’t drive city traffic if you live in a goddamned happy bubble.

I cut this car off, and the driver decided to follow me for a full five minutes
right into the parking lot of my final destination.

I got out of my car and continued with my day as best I could
while she verbally accosted me with needlessly racist remarks
threatened me
and retreated to the safety of her car like the whiny little girl she was when I turned and faced her
with kennels in my hands

because I can hold my own.

I can win a battle of wits
can flounder my way through most legalities
and I have a running chance with most physical confrontations.

Yes, I cut you off.
What would you like me to do about it?
Her answer came in threats.
Great.
Yes.
Fine.
This is accomplishing a lot.
Do you feel better now?
You were driving like an asshole, and so was I.
You can’t…What’s the matter with you?
How many people did you cut off to spit your little fire while running back into your car when I didn’t even hesitate to get out?
Is that showing the kind of concern I’m supposed to have for your baby in the car?
Grow the fuck up.
I’m not fucking afraid of you.
Next time, bring your gun and your husband and your baby and we’ll put on an improvisational musical drama in the streets, so that everyone can see how amazing your are…but right now…

“You need to get out of my way,” was my response.

I was about to be late, you see. Late with the puppies.

petty little things

Stop smoking in your room and pretending that I don’t know. You’re not that clever, I just don’t care.
As a related issue, clean up after you dogs. The smell coming from your room of stale smoke and piss is one of the main reasons I don’t smoke. That soiled, whitetrash smell has always bothered me, and I don’t like it wafting up to greet me at the end of the hall in my own residence.

Flush the toilet. Please. I know it’s you. For one, the problem didn’t crop up until you moved in, and for another…shit, piss? Sure. It could be anyone. Period blood? Well, it’s not me. Fucking flush.
As a related qualm, quit eating the toilet paper…or whatever the fuck you’re doing with it…please, stop. We’re going through over double what we used to based on one more butt, and I’m nice enough to keep us stocked, but…don’t think I won’t stop just to spite you for wasting things.

Quit stealing my chef’s knife. I will find it. I will stab you with it if you keep taking it. Yes. I will. You’re not even using it. You’re just claiming it and taking it. No. It is not yours. I know these things. I’m downright neurotic.
As a related pet peeve, if you’re going to use my dishes to cook and bake, don’t leave your food in those dishes for weeks. I need them back. I’m set up as a one man band in the kitchen. If you keep your food in my dishes, I can’t wash them. If I can’t use my dishes, I can’t eat.

Don’t feed my bird. She has two bowls of seed and cereal mix. She does not need a third bowl. That bowl is for treats, and I can’t give her treats if her bowl is full of seed. I’m sick of emptying it out everyday when I come home from work, because you’re an idiot. That food is expensive. She’s not starving. Leave her alone.
On a related note, she does not need to learn how to say your dog’s name. You did not teach her to say the things she says. She is smarter than you. She is smarter than me.
In addition to that, shut the fucking door when you go out. She can’t be in a draft all the fucking time.

Quit bumping the mirror on my car. What the fuck are you doing? Stay away from my car altogether. You don’t even drive.

That USB internet receptor is mine. Don’t forget that.

Learn how to recycle. It’s not that hard. The city sends out a letter every holiday that states exactly what can and cannot be accepted. Pizza boxes are not accepted. For that last time, PIZZA BOXES ARE NOT RECYCLABLE HERE. I’m sick of digging through the trash to take out recyclable things, and digging in the recycling to pull out the trash. Just do it right.

Why do you insist on using the bathroom during the ten minute window when you know that I have habitually used it every single day…even on my days off. Why? Why do you need the bathroom for close to an hour anyway? What do you do in there, because you’re obviously not flushing the toilet? I bet it involves toilet paper. Whatever you’re doing, go easy on that toilet paper, and give me my ten minutes. Is that asking too much? You don’t even work half the time, and when you do…Ten minutes. I’m asking for ten minutes.

That’s all for now, but keep in mind that while I’m quiet and considerate, one of these little things is going to send me straight over the edge. Quit being stupid.

Blindness

I pulled the spine from the shelves that had yet to be sifted and organized by genre, and the pages fell open in my left palm to a stilted, unfocused scene of forced fellatio. I thought about the previous owner of the book who had creased the binding to this position in the text while reading the obnoxiously written lines mired in gimmick…or is it a genuine creative writing mechanism?

Writers…

Gimmick. I sighed, and I closed the book replacing it on the unfiltered shelves for someone else’s masturbatory enjoyment. I bet they bought it after the movie adaptation came out, too. When did I read it? Why did my hand fall to it on the shelf of new arrivals?

Because I recognized something familiar; familiar in recession with the ebb of the unknown and forgotten.

It’s been a long night.

a prayer?
from the agnostic?

if i should ever feel the warmth of another body next to mine
cradled in the convention of a bed
that’s not for rent
for hire
for strangers set on fire by darkness and cold intentions
let me look up to find the red sky
muted pink
by the quiet falling snow

sleep

bed linens – white

After tucking Sammy in for the night, I looked at my math
my chemistry
two books and a play
all stacked up and patiently waiting.

I tapped through the inputs on my monitor.
Fuck it, I’ll just go to sleep…
so I did.

Sleep.

I could taste the bourbon.

Two years ago and three years back
I met you on a morning like this
when you were in love
(maybe you still are)
and I fell out of balance with solitude.

22 and 33 later
I’d fucked myself completely.

Now what?
You drink scotch, and I…well, I only dream up the memory of bourbon.

well

“such an angry face.”

You did nothing while I was gone today.
Nothing.
Do you understand?
I reminded you several times
and asked you with a simple yes or no setup
and you stood there
and fucking lied to me.

No, I don’t like you.
I don’t care about what you saw on TV last night.
I don’t care about your boyfriend
or your dog…

although, your dog is cute.

I’m upset, because you slow me down
and get in my way
and you don’t listen
and you have the audacity to try to tell me
what to do.

No, honey.

I cover your ass, and if I don’t
you’re out.

It’s that simple.

I cover your ass, so stop being such a pain.
I’m not nice.
We’re not friends.
No one in daylight has ever even seen my fucking angry face.

I gotta say, you’re good at lookin’ like you know what you’re doin’…but you’re not doin’ a whole hell of a lot, are you?

Don’t worry about it. Everyone agrees.

You’re better than me.

do you have any idea how ignorant you sound?

Earlier, he spoke of artists
critiquing the look of an older woman on his TV
sans makeup.

He said she was “fucked up” on something.
Definitely.
I didn’t know who she was
some vague figurehead for a world
I despise
where transferred signatures on silk
are worth more than my entire existence.

He said he preferred his artists a little off.
I thought about how I’m…a little off.
All good artists, he said, are a little off.
I stirred my cup of hot water quietly.
I am not an artist today.

He cited Van Gogh, and I stopped listening.

Later, I came down where they sat in the same places
in front of the TV
this time, I heard Hitler giving a speech
and felt dizzy
sick
and ready to pass out.

This is because I’m working full shifts with a fever
but I also felt like I’d stepped back a decade in my own life
when curiosity assuaged revulsion to some extent.

I stirred my cup of hot water
while I listened to them critique.
“That wasn’t even a good speech.”

I padded quietly back up to my little sick bed
that is nothing more than a huddle of blankets on the floor near the vent
forced air heat
wondering

Do you have any idea how ignorant you sound
all the goddamned time?

clarity

I’m extremely sick with some sort of familiar upper respiratory infection.
Surprise, surprise.
It will either go away on its own after a few sluggish and aching days
or it will get worse.
Considering that my diet is…poor, and I’m wide awake at two in the morning
listening to soul trumpets after reading a wonderfully crafted play
knowing full well that I have to train somebody at work in a few hours…

It will either go away on its own or get worse.

This weekend, I was invited out and felt no pangs of interest or guilt
in turning down the invitation.
Had it come four months ago, I would have gone
and had a terrible time
pretending that I’m…normal.
I don’t need to feign interest or play these games.

I won’t.

Today, about midway through the morning, I decided what I’m going to try to do with the rest of my life. A myriad of circumstances are welcome to come along and change my mind, but as of this moment…the vague notions I’ve been regarding with confused action have extended beyond the ten year mark

into the question mark.

Hello, life. It’s been a long time, but as an amazing creature once told me; time is irrelevant.

I’m just going to set this here, too.

I’ve been looking for this place since the year after I was the light pink splotch in the middle of this slide.  That I found an image means quite a lot…It had just rained, and there was a lightly used footpath off to the right choked with touch-me-nots.  I’ll never find the place that once was, but…I would like to find where it used to be.

Have you found the stone; the great, smooth stone sunken into the marshy island lost with the dead channel of the river?  Have you looked past the carp beating against your ankles?  I still hold it in my memories with the sounds of the cranes flying overhead to a nearby, prehistoric land across the water.  When do you think they’ll grind my dreams into gravel for the shoulders of flat, straight, empty roads that callous over dead zones?

Skip pebbles across the surface of my consciousness.  Break.  Sink.

respectfully

I tell myself that if you really wanted anything to do with me, you would know where to find me.
You would look.
You would try.
I tell myself that you don’t want anything to do with me at all, because you don’t say as much.
It’s not a game.
It’s not a test.
I tell myself it’s just the simple facts presented through simple actions, and I tell myself to heed your wishes.

not anymore

I looked down into my bowl of rice balanced in one hand. My arm stretched across the pages of a book holding the world from curling in and collapsing into…a bowl of rice.

I don’t know what to do.

More importantly, I don’t understand what you’re doing.

I felt it and ignored it, the way you told me to. Don’t trust unfounded feelings. It’s dangerous to assume things about people you don’t know. I opened my door and saw your home instead of mine.

I want to be…

A week ago, I was going to make the trip. I was going to send word…but you told me that my words are hollow, and falling, falling. I’ve fallen so hard that a trip is out of the question.

I see you when I close my eyes.

I always thought I felt a connection that defied logic…until you wore me down to that objective edge. What I feel must be ignored now.

I’m so sorry.

rabbits

I rationalize that it’s not hurting anyone.

Myself
Myself
Myself

Well, no one I care about anyway…or think is important.

Shut up
Shut up

I tell myself I want to know the truth behind the mask, and I make quick and frequent stabs in the dark where I think something malignant and soft might lie. Sometimes, I find resistance that twists the blade, and I tell myself that these habits; bad habits that breed in the flesh like…

It’s not okay.

paper cranes

Addiction is a strange thing. Maybe the mentality is always there like any other “brain disease.” I don’t really care one way or another. There are plenty of assholes trying to pound that one out for recognition and fame. I care about living. I’ve found that once it’s been acknowledged, it never really goes away.

I used to know dozens of constellations sparkling in our sky. I went to “college” for it during the interim between fourth and fifth grade. I’ve tried for years to unlearn the charts delineating patterns to the northern hemisphere’s view. When I look up now…

I’m sixty days short of one thousand days sober.

When I was a little girl I spent a great deal of time alone…in my head. I caught bugs and played in the mud and entertained myself rather successfully without TV and video games or the friends I was supposed to have that liked these other things. Inside, I would build things and draw, put together countless puzzles and fold paper. I did “homework” over my summers and they knew my family well at the local library.

Before my third grade teacher soured me on the educational system…and people in general…someone read me the story about Sadako Sasaki. The legend of the thousand paper cranes is much older, but this was the story I heard. Afterward, I started to fold flapping birds, not knowing the difference between them and cranes at the time. I think…I was seeking to find hope where the little girl in the story had none. I, of course, failed.

I eventually gave up, put all the little birds aside and carried on with life. I kept the birds without adding to them for years, and it was only after my fiance went to prison that I remembered them…but couldn’t find them.

I cut his letters. I didn’t save any of them beyond fragments folded into wings. It took me years to let go without forgetting. It never really goes away. It won’t be gone in 60 days, and even though I started folding the birds again to distance myself from drowning, I don’t need to wish on birds.

Still, I can’t help feeling like I’m going to miss them. When I look up into the night sky, I see beyond arbitrary constellations where the darkness is not dismal or foreboding anymore. This is not allegorical. When I look up now…I see the ceiling.

the engagement

Your hands were warm and dry whenever they reached for mine.
Mine were clammy at best and more often ice cold.
I asked you if you remembered the night we met, how you’d reached for my hands to warm them, and I withdrew.
You said you did and then reflected that you never understood.

I’d never let anybody touch me.

You’d told me that you were looking for “the one” but that she wasn’t going to be me.
You told me on the bridge the night we met and I meant to slip away, but you wouldn’t let me.
You called…or did I?

I think I might have, but that seems so unlikely.
You must have called.

You must have.

The first time I invited you in, you followed me through the vacant streets until I reached my shortcut into the dark between two buildings.
“This is where you live?” you asked reproachfully.
“No.”

You didn’t trust the darkness leading to my back alley, but I knew every shadow for blocks.
I told you I was leaving the city for good and wouldn’t be able to meet you anymore.
If you wanted to come, you should…and it was odd for me to see a grown man afraid to accept my invitation.

You didn’t come in, and I left.

I remember working for a few weeks in the country.
I started working full time and hated myself and my life.
We spoke over the phone a few times, but it was at work that I decided.

It’s going to be me.

Three years later, your hands were still warm and dry, but the touch was cold.
I locked the door behind you
heartless.

I’d changed my mind.

impulse control

You have been blacklisted for the next two months.

Have you ever noticed…

You regurgitate each other’s ideas all the time. You pick up on something and claim it’s inspiring thought, but you move in this frothy mass of your own vomit and rarely slosh off into something “fresh”…freshly thrown up again, unless you know that there are enough nauseous people gagging right next to you. You and your “friends” all thinking the same thing and spitting it up in clever ways, massaging it into each other’s sense of purpose to feel good and comfortable and accepted and understood. Clean yourself up for fuckssake. Clean yourself up before you talk to me.

I live on the other side of the shit stream where nothing I think to say matters. This is where I’ve been told to stay. Shit. Fine.

Shit.

At least I know my place regarding the shit stream.

first doodle in over two years

First unforced scratching of any kind since graduating.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inspired by birdshit dropped onto a student loan envelope by my best friend.