It’s Time…

you’re pretty good
at a lot of things
like charming snakes
or ignoring what stings
avoiding things is
your forte
you just laugh it off
in your strangely
charming
fucked up way
if it isn’t today
and it won’t be tomorrow
why does it matter
it’s just a waste of sorrow

you just shrug it off
you know that someday
some things will happen
but it isn’t real
until its here
and you don’t feel

until you feel
it’s getting near

so maybe running away
is the right way
just run away from
the day it comes true
maybe if you keep yourself
aware enough
and alone enough
you will be all you need
and will end up
with nothing but you
I know you don’t know
what the hell to do
with yourself
some of the time
how do we handle
what isn’t yours
and isn’t really mine?
we simply don’t
because we just won’t
boundaries that become
too unclear
make it too uncomfortable
for us to stay here

so we’re out
yeah, we’re gone
I know I never
seem to stay for
very long
but I’m not wrong
to use my freedom
as my own
whether you like it
or not
if I don’t like it
I’ll find my way home
to somewhere else
by myself

because I know me
better than you do
inside
and out
can’t show you
what the big picture
looks like through
my eyes
and what I think it’s
all about
we could speak
we could not speak
we could cry
hysterically
or scream and shout
and it won’t ever
amount
to anything more
than a disagreement
the same one
we had before
so skip the intensity
of stupidly chosen
emotions
save it for something
that can be changed
I can’t be changed
any more or less than you

It’s just time
time to let go of
what is over
and must be
left behind
time to find
my place in now
and who I am
to say goodbye
to who I was back then
I question everything
and trust nothing,

therefore I am……….

just a little sparkling gem
amid the cesspool
in orbit around
a mortal heat
that gives the
mortal heart its beat

just another start
of something else
that won’t last forever
victims of the never sever

the end of the world
chaos and catastrophe
time and atrophy
are somewhere next to the
apocalyptic thoughts
that have been
known to haunt
the darker alleyways
in the dazed maze of
my mind
the same mind I lost
the same one that needs
to find
its place in time
wherever it is
it’s still mine

Get Over it…

how do you get over
something?
you don’t
maybe just knowing
that you won’t
is freedom in
some way
all that really
happens
is the tedious
work of Time
as it takes it away
dulling it out
day by day
making smaller
the pain
it’s still there
like a scar
part of who you are
can’t escape
the parts of you
that you don’t like
can’t take any
of the wrongs
and make them right
and it’s right
beneath the surface
just gets buried deeper
as time goes by
like a corpse of something
left to dig the rest
of its own grave

Five hours to go…

Well, here we are at last. It’s Monday morning, about 3:20am. Have to appear in court at 9:00am. Can’t fucking wait. It’ll be like a field trip. You know, like in the third grade when my class went on a trip to the Tillamook Cheese Factory! But way cooler, and without the cheese! Anyways…

Yeah, so I’ll probably be locked up for a little while. Who knows how long…probably as long as that asshole judge can get away with keeping me in there for. I wish he would just happen to die before 9am this morning. Maybe have a heart attack or get run over or something from the sky could just fall on him and smash him like a bug. That would be fine with me. But I don’t see that happening. He’s going to crucify me in a few hours. Jail will suck. I will sleep for most of it. But it will still suck. I will miss little Bubby more than I have ever missed anyone before in my life. I know he won’t forget who I am, but I have an awful fear that somehow he will. I hope he won’t think I am abandoning him. That would break my heart, or whatever I have where a heart should be. He’s the last of it.

Rick is going to stay and take care of him over at Jim’s. Cunt-face is there, but I don’t really give a shit.

It won’t be that big of a deal. It will be a relatively short period of time, and it will only be good for me. I figured that out completely in the last twenty-four hours. Sometimes we fall into a steady and constant stream of indulgences and doing whatever we want, and you can continue down it undisturbed for a long time, in some cases. But once you get used to being carried down a stream of that sort, you don’t realize that whenever the inevitable interruption of it comes along, it is going to kick you in the balls. Hard. It’s a reality check. Going to jail for a little bit, I me an. I have managed to get out of taking much responsibility for much of anything for quite some time now, knowing all along that eventually it would come back to bite me in the ass, and I was okay with that and kept on moving towards today. So here I am. It will feel good to test my will, my strength, my everything by depriving myself of what I am used to indulging in for a little while. I have always gotten a satisfaction from proving myself to my self.

My mom is supposed to go with me. Hope she shows up on time. I was kind of surprised that she offered to go with, wasn’t planning on inviting anyone from my “social circle” (I never thought there would come a day when I would have one of those…not sure if that’s something I say with a totally positive tone…so hear the sarcasm) since that seemed stupid. But it would be nice if she was there. It’s kind of like when I had my abortions. She was the only one in the world I felt okay having there in the room with me. I don’t know why. I guess because even though sometimes I think she deserves to burn for all eternity for ever becoming a mother, she is still, my mother. There isn’t much that needs to be said or made real, the unspokens that we share and know are strong. Perhaps even stronger than all the wrongdoings and stabs at each other. All the hurt and all the pain.

I remember watching the Disney version of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ when I was a kid. Talk about a movie that’s on drugs. But I remember towards the end, when Alice is lost in the dark and that weird little creature that looks kind of like a dog, with the body made mostly of brooms or something, was sweeping the path away in front of her, until she was left on the last little square with the darkness all around her, she sat down and started to sing, saying:

“I give myself very good advice…but I very seldom follow it…”

Well I’m going to get off here for now. I’m not ready for any of this, but I want to get it over with.
So goodbye for now. If you put your ear up to the electronic ether and I seem silent for a while, you know why.
-Mona

interrupted somewhere in mid-bloom…

I know I’ve said this a million times before, but it’s really over this time. I don’t love Kevin anymore. At least not in the sense that I used to. I said I would love him forever, and I meant that. I will. But I don’t love him like I did at all anymore. I have let go. There is nothing he could do or say to me that would affect me adversely. I am free of the vulnerability that comes with loving someone as much as I did him. I’m not even sure why I decided to fall right back into the same disaster with him, after being separated for several months. As much as I may have wanted things to work with him, I had a hard time convincing myself that it would become a reality. He sure likes to talk about things and never do them. I was very patient about almost everything when it came to us. But after so long, you just start to see where something is going and where it isn’t going.

I feel like I’ve wasted a couple years of my life that I can’t have back. I spent them trying to “get somewhere” with Kevin, because I wanted to be with him for the rest of my life. That reminds me…the last time I saw him, he started talking about how lonely and bleak things were for him around the time that we met, and at other points since then. He started to cry a little even, as he told me that I had saved his life. It was precious. I loved him more at that moment than I could have felt love for anything else. So I said: “I think I saved it so you could spend the rest of it with me.” He was quiet for a second, then he repeated my words very softly and just said “wow” afterwards. I am looking for that moment right now. I’m holding onto it as tightly as I held on to him that night, the last time we saw each other. It meant something then, even if it doesn’t now.

I guess that I had hoped for progress by now. It’s been two and half years since we met and got together, or sort of got together. It was almost that long ago that he asked me to marry him, and I said yes. Obviously that never happened. I guess he didn’t take the question very seriously. Or didn’t think I would say yes. Either way, I think it was wrong of him to throw it around so carelessly. Anyhow. I didn’t have any unrealistic goals for 2 1/2 years into a relationship. I just wanted some sort of progress, whatever that would have been. Instead I have nothing.

That’s not true, actually. I have something even greater than all of that was. Something that was strong and good, and which served me well long before I ever met Kevin or anyone else. Something that will reopen like a flower now that he’s gone, starting right back up blooming like it was when it was interrupted. Me.

I remember being happy right before meeting him. Then there was a brief period of head-over-heels infatuation in which everything was ridiculously good (or seemed to be), you know the kind I mean. Then all the shit started. That’s when the ugliness and pain come into play. They sure can fuck a person’s world up, can’t they? MmmHmmm. So then there’s this long stretch that covers most of the time we spent together, where we are both more or less miserable for most of the time, getting into arguments too frequently to forgive anything before one of us took the next stab and started all over again with it. Then whatever the fuck you want to call this last little pipe-dream delusion that I allowed myself to indulge in for a little while, deciding for some fucking stupid reason that it would be a good idea for me to pour everything I have into being with him and finding a way to stay together forever. Don’t ask me why the fuck I thought that after all the moving in and moving back out, all the fighting, all the cruel words, all the carelessness with one another, I thought it was smart to give anything and everything to him, just so he would know beyond the shadow of a doubt that I love him and that it is unconditional and without end. It didn’t work. But I know it’s not me. It wasn’t because I did something wrong, or didn’t do something that I should have. I know that in my heart, and my mind agrees with it. It is something to do with him. I don’t know what it is, but it doesn’t really matter. For some reason he either doesn’t want what he claimed to want with me, or can’t deal with something necessary in order for that to happen, or maybe he’s just a fucking complete liar that really fucking got the better of me. I don’t like the possibility of that last option. I swear to fucking god, if he was another Chad or David I will hate myself for a little while for letting that happen again. It’s hard for me to believe that I could fall for something like that again. Fuck all three of them.

-Mona

questions…

What will I be like in a few years? How will I make the transition from who I am now to who I will be? How old will I live to be? How am I going to die? Will my life end when it is “supposed” to, or will my death be untimely?

I never wondered about the answer to those questions until recently. And those are just a few of them. There are a dozen others, but they’re all in the same vein (no pun intended). All of a sudden I find myself thinking about that kind of shit quite a bit, and in a way that’s slightly obsessive. I guess when I think about anything that I find interesting or worth knowing, I get a little obsessive about it. It’s always been that way, since I was a kid. Not sure why.

So, while it’s on my mind I have to mention that Jim sent me a text this morning telling me that he had finally kicked Isabelle out, along with the 5 other people she had brought with her. I was so glad to hear that. Thank god. I really don’t like her at all. I never have. I kept my mouth shut about it for a long time, because I know that Jim really liked her and I didn’t want to be rude. But I finally told him what I thought of her. He just bought his first house, and was really excited about moving into it. I was really happy for him. Then he told me that SHE was going to live with him there. Ugh. So anyhow, since they moved in he has been texting me a lot, confiding in me about how uncomfortable he has felt living with her, and with good reasons too. Apparently she had the nerve to more or less move some guy “friend” of hers into Jim’s house, which is fucking hideous of her. She knows how much Jim cares about her, and how much he wanted to be with her. I can’t even believe she would do something like that. It was fucking cruelly inconsiderate and I think it’s safe to assume she was never taught any manners at all. It’s no wonder she isn’t able to have custody of her own 3 children, she clearly is not the type of person who should be responsible for the well-being of others. She makes me sick to my stomach. And then, as if it wasn’t bad enough to have some strange dude in the house who was not only living there without contributing anything but was also helping himself to groceries that he hadn’t bought, soon after that an entire family of four fucking people just “showed up” there claiming to be friends of hers, and just sort of seemed to think that they were welcome to stay as well! Unbelievable. I felt really bad for Jim. She was so obviously taking advantage of what a good person he is. I can’t believe how much bull shit he has put up with from her. He shouldn’t have tolerated half of all she has put him through, in my opinion. It actually made me really sad a couple nights ago, when he texted me saying that he sort of wished that she was out of his life, so he could forget about her because she doesn’t want to be with him. I strongly supported that sentiment, assuring him that she didn’t deserve him at all. He deserves someone so much better than that. He truly does. He’s such a beautiful person. I don’t think I’ve ever known someone as patient, sympathetic and kind as Jim is. He is one of the best friends I have had in my life so far. Even though we are parts of very different “worlds” and lead very different kinds of lifestyles, we made a connection that was really fucking profound, and it transcended that gap between who we are. He told me a while back that I was family now. He’s mine too. I’ve definitely got his back, always. So Isahell and all her little friends were asked to be out of his place by this morning, after he found that she and her guy friend had snuck out of the bedroom window during the night. I guess she had been sneaking out through the garage before that, pretty regularly. She wasn’t even showing the courtesy of being pleasant, or making conversation with Jim. He said she usually text messaged him from the other room. Can you fucking imagine? So he asked me if I would help him watch his house for a while, now that they are going to be gone. I said that I would of course help him keep an eye on the place, and that I would pay him some rent for the time I stayed there. He could use the help, I know that a house payment is significantly greater than rent at an apartment. And I would love nothing more than to be able to help him out somehow, after all he has done for me. So Rick and I, and little Bub are going to go over there tomorrow I think. We were going to go today, but had too much time to kill and decided to stay one more night at the motel 6 here in Troutdale. Oh yeah…..which brings me to my next little story…which is also a shitty one…

Like two days go, I got pulled over getting onto the freeway. The fucked up part is that since I was stopped in Troutdale, I will be going before the same judge that put me on bench probation. Basically what that all equals, is me spending some time in jail very soon. Court date is March 24^th at 9:00am. Can’t fucking wait! That judge fucking hated me. He told me if he could court-order me to not have children, he would. Pretty harsh, huh? Asshole. Oh well. The only positive thing I can find about that whole matter, is that if I’m locked up for a while (I do believe he sentenced me to 20 days in jail, if I was caught driving again while on probation) then that will mean I’m forced to take a break from the dope. And we all know what that means…? It means when I get out and get high again, I’ll really get high instead of this stupid bull shit I’ve been doing lately where I do an entire half T in one hit, and then fall asleep an hour later after eating some cupcakes. Fuck that shit. Seriously. But the really awful part will be missing and worrying about Bub every moment I’m in there. I don’t know where he will go yet. I’ve been thinking about it a lot in the last couple days, since this happened. There are only a few people I trust enough to leave him with, especially for that long. Ideally I would have Rick stay with him, I trust him & Jim with Bub the most. But he will probably not be here by the time I go to court, and if he is then I don’t know where he will stay while I’m in jail. I think Jim would take him if I asked him, because he knows how important Bub is to me and how much I love him, and I think he would understand why I couldn’t just let anyone take care of him while I’m gone. But that’s only if what’s-her-face and her friends don’t end up coming back, and none of them have keys or could just come in there at any time. I would be too worried that he could be accidentally let out or something like that. My third choice would be Kevin, but he isn’t supposed to have Bub over at his place, since the landlord received a couple complaints about his barking when we were staying there before. But that won’t keep me from missing him more than any other creature I have ever loved, or from being a nervous wreck worrying about him every second in between phone calls to check on him. Ugh…not pleasant thoughts at all. But it will sort itself out somehow. We’ll see.

I don’t want to write anymore right now. Kind of tired after telling all of that, and didn’t realize that all I had to write about was depressing shit, until I was finished writing it.

One sort of good thing….I did get the Cadillac back today. J

-Mona

writing under the influence

sometimes when I do a hit, I get a strong urge to write. usually when that happens, I do my best to resist it. I guess I’ll never forget my very 1st experience writing something when I was higher than a fucking kite. I remember writing it…I filled page after page because I was trying to quickly handwrite my oh so “profound” observations and their subsequently revolutionary philosophy. Ha, ha, ha. I recall how fast my hand was moving, it was trying to keep up with my brain. The only problem was that it was moving really rapidly in reverse. I just kept expanding on this thought-provoking concept and hoping that I wouldn’t forget any of the details before getting them onto the paper. Well…so I finished, or thought that I had finished…at that point, I had been awake for somewhere around 5 days or so. That was really typical during that period of time. I pretty much passed out once every fucking five days, and slept like a corpse for a fuckload of hours, then woke up and did it all over again. And again. And again…so I come to some sort of conclusion or closing thought, then shortly afterwards I fade out and don’t wake again until several hours later. Not surprisingly, it wasn’t until I’d been awake for quite a while that I all of a sudden remembered that I had filled all those pages right before fallilng asleep. Upon remembering, I got all excited when I remembered how brilliant it had been, and felt really glad that I had preserved it by getting it all written down. But what’s funny is that I had no idea at all what the topic had been. Not a fucking clue. I guess that’s how goddamn tired I had been when I had written it. So I wasn’t sure what the subject of it was, but I think that made the anticipation of reading it even greater because I was so confident that regardless of what it was, it had been pure genius. I believe I was smiling in a sort of gloating sort of way, when I opened up to the first page and set out to re-visit the whole thing.

Okay…first of all, my handwriting started out as legible letters that I seemed to have put together in patterns that would be recognized as words. However, that was only true for about half of the first page. I wish that was an exaggeration or a joke. It’s not. After that, it all continued to go downhill. Oh yeah, and even the first few sentences that were actual english, they made almost no sense at all in the arrangement I had put them. So I’m not sure if that even counts as anything good. It might as well have been total gibberish. It was. But it went from that to being sloppier more slanted attempts at the letters of the alphabet (I seem to have blanked out what those were at the time, though…) that were shrinking in size. In perfect timing with the shrinking of my brain, apparently. ha.

I was shocked by the time I got to the end of the last page. And yes, my pride got its ass kicked. bad. it sucked. I was just glad I was the only person who had seen it and known that I was the one who’d written this big bunch of nothing, thinking it was worthy of an intellectual erection. It was actually really depressing in a rather significant way though, all joking aside. I mean, it totally discouraged me from ever writing anything swimming around inside my skull when I was rushing or when I was anywhere else along the long stretch of consciousness leading to delirium and ending in very deep sleep that had no room for dreams. and that was kind of gay. having discovered my pathetic scribbles, I was convinced that writing was never a good idea when my brain was a sponge soaked in a caustic chemical cocktail. seemed logical enough. Knowing that I had been really fucking high at the time, I attributed the failure of the little experiment to the ways in which I’d been altered by the drug. It was the reason that my thoughts were empty and senseless. And it definitely explaiend why I had thought something empty and senseless was worthy of making its way into textbooks around the world. hey, you’ve heard of those people that get all fucked up on hallucinogens and end up on the news for jumping off the top of a skyscraper, thinking they had superhero powers. you know the ones I’m talking about. the ones that set the fucking standard for everyone that “uses.” “Textbook Tweaker” may be a bit politically incorrect, but you get the idea. I remember in high school, our fucking health textbooks were hilarious. The stupid and completely unnecessary pictures that public school textbooks come complete with, all featured people with hair styles and fashion trends that were older than everyone in my class who was being forced to read it. Upon referring to the copyright date, the useless wastes of paper and time were in fact somewhere close to thirty years old. So…it was at least good to know that the information we were being force-fed was accurate, current, and was effective in its presentation. fucking please. It might as well have informed us that the world is in fact flatter than a fucking pancake. Most of it was too retarded to even remember anything specific, the only two examples that stick out in my memory as being particularly hilarious were the short paragraphs on the topics of homosexuality and hallucinogenic drugs. The homo paragraph, which was actually only 2-3 sentences, was rather insightful and informed its readers that the cause of homosexuality was unknown and it was uncelear why some people seemed affected by it rather than the majority of ‘normal’ people. And over in the substance abuse section of the book, we find an equally well-researched collection of about 4-5 sentences explaining that those who engage in substance abuse of hallucinogenic drugs typically experience an array of horrible and highly exaggerated symptoms, including the delusion of possessing superhuman powers, attempting dangerous and oftentimes deadly stunts believing themselves capable of supernatural things, or othewise behaving in ways which are humiliating and shameful as a result of a ‘bad trip’.

I mean…I’ve never written a high school level health education textbook before, but I HAVE done a lot of fucking drugs that would fall into their ‘hallucinogenic’ category. And I’ll just say that in the years I have spent using and around others who use as well, I consider msyelf pretty familiar with the whole environment surrounding that sort of sub-culture, if you think it could be called one. And I haven’t ever actually witnessed anyone on a ‘bad trip’ that was bad enough to think you turned into the hulk and jump off the empire state building. You know? C’mon. I know a lot of people who have tripped out real fucking bad, because I’ve heard stories from many of them about their embarassing tweaker trip. everyone has had theirs. Hell, I used to trip out pretty fucking bad…not just once either, it used to happen fairly often. That is common among anyone that clouds their cranium with speed. Duh. But anyways, even those that have been on a really bad one tend to sort of even out over time, as a result of developing a tolerance. That has been my experience. I don’t get fucked up anymore like I did back when I was new to it. I just can’t. believe me, sometimes I really want to. Heh. But over the course of a couple years during which I am using on a regular basis, my body at some point adjusts to the speed no differently than it would to an antibiotic prescribed for long-term use. Makes sense. My point was that even at my most pathetic and fucked up moment during my worst trip, I have never been found anywhere near the edge of insanity, or the roof of a building that I’m fixing to jump from, since I am spider-man. Nor do I know anyone, or know OF anyone who has been near the edge of either of those things. Oops, wait. Yes, I do. Just one person. But they suffered from a mental illness prior to ever using drugs, so that would probably amplify the mania resulting from both. Not applicable.

How the hell did I stray so far from whatever I was originally trying to say? I do that sometimes. Tangent trailing…

Oh, right. My entire reason for giving that whole weird little background info was to give a good example of the attitude I had towards the idea of tweaking and then trying to write anything with intellectual significance. I guess after my botched brilliance that was less than nothing, I sort of laughed at the idea of writing under the influence. So following this whole stupid little mistake, I didn’t write anything at all for right around a year. I think it was supposed to happen the way it all played out, actually. Because during that year I avoided pen and paper, I probably really had no business trying to do anything with either. Again, that was back when I was new to it. It was new to me too. Its effect on me was quite simply too intense for me to control at the time. The sequence of events was in some sort of harmony with my creativity that I had sort of temporarily given up on, and not bothered to go looking for. So after a year, I’m at a much different phase in my “addiction.” I have become far more functional and the effect of the drug on my mind is no longer the uncontrollable flickering of thoughts one after another as fast as you can bat your eyes. It has slowed down enough by now to finish one train of thought, and to evaluate it from the spot you’re in as you look in on it, from start to finish, not like before when I was seeing something one way and then looking at the same thing as I hung upside down over it, like riding a rollercoaster through perception.

Trying to write again hadn’t really ever crossed my mind. Since it had been so long since I had written, I suppose I had become used to doing other things. And that’s around the time when I met Kevin. Very shortly after we first met, he wrote me something really amazing that surprised me in a way I had not expected anyone would or could. That first piece made two things really obvious. He knew how to write, and rather well. That would have been apparent to anyone who knew good writing. And then there was his style, which was one that I understood and felt connected to. I didn’t just know he could write, I actually really liked what he wrote.

That’s where I trailed off…think I faded and had to go to sleep. Anyways, I usually don’t return to something I left unfinished. But I guess I was really close to being done with this, so I’ll just go ahead and say what was left unsaid, since it is all worth saying. I really loved what Kevin had written, it was not only excellent writing but it was his style that really appealed to me. I felt that I absolutely had to sit down and put something into words as a gift for him in return. I needed to, I knew I had to, and I wanted to more than anything. So I did. And the rest is history. It became a sort of ongoing exchange of writings for one another over the course of our relationship, and even up until present day it is something that we do from time to time. I believe that credit should be given where credit is due, and Kev gets pretty much all of the credit for resurrecting my flame of creativity, as well as awakening my sleeping heart and for so many other things. I love him for all of that and so much more. I love him because he is Kevin Quirke. I have loved him since I read his first email written to me, before we ever met or even spoke on the phone. I remember reading it at Brian’s desk at his apartment in Wilsonville and getting a sense of significance from what he wrote. I knew he meant something then, and it has turned out to be so much more than I could ever have imagined. Thank you, Kevin. I love you forever.

-Attro

here I am…

here I am… it’s winter now
I don’t know how
I survived another
fucking summer
but I did
and here I am
breathing
and speaking
and moving
and thinking
doesn’t really
mean I have
survived at all
maybe that’s a

stupid thing
to think


it’s always
almost autumn
down here
at rock bottom
but we’re used
to that
it’s just a
matter of an
unfair fact
we maybe used
to be just a little
bitter about it
but we’ve been
over it for a
while now
can’t explain how
but believe it
we know
what we’re
talking about
and besides,
no one really
gives a shit
anyways…

mirror, mirror
on this wall
who do you see
like a fly on the wall
you probably
see it all
should I ask?
try to grasp
whatever it says

maybe I have to know…
Mirror, Mirror
On the wall
Who is the one
I would love to see fall?

Like the leaves off
the trees
amber colored
just like these
dying in piles
that grow and grow
as they please
like defeat
as you drop
to your knees

I have just as much
of a right
to pick a fight
with any group
or person
that I reserve the
right to judge
as anyone else
on this fiery
function backwards
backyard
of hell
but I can’t
I just know what
I am
I’m just one
of them
I may be as
wrong about them
as they are
about me
but since there is
no way to see
laughter is my
lantern
I move in the
delight
it sheds on
all the nothing
in front of me
I hope no one cries
because of me

hey
so just because
you’re a beauty sleeping
doesn’t mean you’re
sleeping beauty
because goddamnit
I can’t wake you up
no little earthquakes
could shake you up

I want to go home

There’s no place
like home
There’s no place
like home
and I left there
long ago

time travels
around me
at the speed
of light
while it still
somehow
creeps by
at a snail’s pace
leaving behind it
a slimy trail
of regret
to remember

time travels
and I wonder why
I can’t travel
back in time
all I wanted
was to walk away
from it
when it was mine
then again
I can’t say I’m
really sorry
for how the
story went
in fact
I think it’s
gone beautifully
as far as
it’s been told
but still looking
for home
is exhausting
and old

so when I go there
by myself
to the most painful
lonliness that
my soul has
ever known
I might scream
or yell
or curse
or cry
“I want to go home’
and when I do
I mean it
in the way I did
when I got hurt
or was tired
as a kid
when I’d cry
exasperated
and give up
look to either
mom or dad
and ask
‘can we go home?’
the answer
was always yes
even if it wasn’t
always right away
I knew every time
I asked it
it would be there
and at the end
of every day
guess I can’t
really better explain
the comfort
I gained
from just knowing
we were going
back home

thought I was
ready
thought I was
done
overlooked
understood
thought my
adventure
would replace it
and believed
that it could

so when I cry
what does
the word home
mean when I cry it?
it is that same
little haven
in my head
but I’m remembering it
like something lost
or someone dead
don’t really
want to go back
there now
it won’t be what it was
anymore
and it never will

home it seems
hopes and dreams
wasn’t a place
but a memory
a little still-frame
taking place in the past
that ended when I left
but ended way too fast
it was perfect
I was me
but back then
I couldn’t see
how being that close
was better than
being completely free

Nautical Slaughter

I wish I could
look away
like at the doctor’s
when you’re a kid
Sure, it’s what
I asked for
but look at
what you did

It’s the lonliest place
I have ever been
and sometimes
I get stuck there
for so long
I’m just a different
kind of strong
because of the time
I spend there
you can watch me
while I’m in it
but you’ve never
been there

there is no glory
there is no pride
it’s all seek
so I can be denied
and find that
the chaos inside
my mind
leaves no room
for me to hide
even though I know
what I’m walking into
is burning down
around me
I am always right
there in the middle
of the same flames
It never gets better
the pain doesn’t change
it only gets worse
running on these
same old veins
sometimes I’m just
what remains
of a person
still haunting
their own lost life

so here I am
and I’ll spend
the rest of my forever
passing in between
reality and my reality
or I might find a way
to keep at bay
the temptation
to do it all again
you were there before
so you remember when
I didn’t know
this darkness
not forgetting
you don’t know
how dark it’s really been

there is nothing you can say
there is nothing you could do


if there’s no cure
there is no chance
hoping and caring
and bleeding and bearing
trying is lying
and screaming
and swearing
believe at least
in only what
you see
and when I tell you
there are no words
for what it feels like
feels a little like
light at night
that just won’t go away
it’s something that
you either know
or don’t
no matter what I say
the pain
in sheets
of acid rain
gives it a much
better name
than I could ever
pin down
into sounds
it’s wild
and it stays that way
I’m the ground it
tramples over
I’ve existed
under its weight
and when I think
I know it well enough
to put it into words
it leaks out of
language
and it leaves
only a lousey
hint that it
was there

I cry for me
because I’ve
watched myself
along the way
become the me
that hurts this way
and only I know
how much of it
was out of my hands
and how much
was in my own
that shouldn’t have been
even if I did it over
the same things
would happen again
it’s really hard
to make amends
with the present
even with a past
full of good reasons
to explain it
I understand
why the wrong turns
were taken
so much later
after the damage
the draining
the distress
of standing back
to behold
that kind of mess
to be told
what fault you’d had
even when you hadn’t

that attrocity
has cost you me
but I promise you
that it has cost me
much more
my heart is a shipwreck
somewhere
I’m just what
washed up on the shore
somewhere deep
under the water
you can still find
the nautical slaughter
all the pieces of my
heart are down there
sunken into whatever place
each one of them landed
not sure what anyone
would do with all of this

I know sometimes the
smaller splinters of it
have been found
sticking just barely
out of the ground
spotted by a
quick little shine
when they catch
the sunlight for
just a second
that borrowed light
used to be mine
I’ve heard stories
from those who’ve
found one along
this shore
I hear they’re
rather amazing
some say better than
the seashells found
in the ocean’s sand
I guess it would have
to be right here
in my hand
for me to say
either way
certain seashells
will forever hold
inside them the
sound of those ocean
waves rolling
crashing
and roraring
if it looks deep enough
to hold the sound
then hold it to your ear
do the same with my heart
that shattering is a echo
of it’s breaking that you hear

Somewhere deep under the water
you can still find the nautical slaughter

jaded

the date today is July 27th, 2006. everything blows today. that really doesn’t distinguish it from most other days for me. and you know what? I hate it that I always say that sort of thing. it is true, but it’s too true too often for me to read it again and not think it makes me sound like a dreadfully cynical angsty goth kid, which just isn’t my thing. anyhow…where do I start on my bitch-about-it-list for today? (in no particular order) I am just fucking sick of everything I have ever experienced. well, almost everything. there are a lot of things I have never done, or tried to do, or have had the oppportunity to do, or even considered doing…and there has to be a multitude of things that I have yet to experience as well. but I need for some of that to start happening now, or I am afraid it might never happen. I don’t know if this is making sense to anyone reading this, or if it would make a whole lot of sense to me if I were reading it without being inside my head. I am just totally burnt out on everything I have ever really done, even those things which I used to enjoy most. I’m bored. I’m restless. I don’t know what I want to do. I only know that it’s killing me. I don’t find enjoyment in any of the things I used to anymore. none at all. it’s kind of depressing. okay, it’s really depressing. it’s defeating. the things I have always enjoyed most were the things I felt most passionately about and believed in most. they were my reasons for living and my reasons for everything I did. I guess what I’m trying to say is that they really defined who I was. all of them together were my identity. sure, it was never static for any real length of time. it was constantly shifting, sometimes in subtle little changes and other times huge chunks of it were broken by certain events in my life that crumbled completely, either leaving an unresolved void in its place, or making way for a reconstructed and newer version of that part to form itself in the ruins of the one before it. but it was always me. the fundamentals were always present. they never changed much, once they were established. and in the bigger picture, all the changing that occurred within it was actually the blooming of someone. I thought it was me. but I don’t think it is anymore.

I have liked writing since i was pretty young. I guess I still do, but not in the same way because for the longest time now I have had almost nothing to write about. I have been patient since my inspiration went on vacation, but I have been waiting so long now that it has passed the point of being frustrated that I’m not finding it. every once in a great while something will come to me, the way that it used to and I will write it down. I am pretty sure that I’ve had no words because I have had no strong feelings about or for much of anything in a while. that’s kind of depressing too. okay, so it’s more than kind of fucking depressing. I catch myself putting off trying to write anything at all anymore, since most of the time when I do try, I just end up angry at my failure to create anything.

I haven’t read a book in at least two years. I haven’t read much of anything in the last couple of years, actually. when do I read? I read…almost nothing. I have never liked newspapers. Never liked magazines. The only time I can read articles, is when their topic is something that really interests me, and it’s rare that I run into one. I have always hated non-fiction material. I used to like fiction novels of all sorts. from fifteen to sixteen, I think I did more reading than any other time in my life thus far. but even when I read something that I really thought was good, the actual reading almost always felt to me like a chore. I had to sort of push myself to do it. I have always had a problem with my visual imagination, I guess you could call it. I was never able to read a description of something and use it to envision that thing in my mind. for some reason, I couldn’t illustrate the things I read about. my mind’s canvas is for the most part, an indistinct blur of very strained and half-formed attempts at seeing what I have never actually seen. my other little problem was retaining things I read. I would oftentimes read a paragraph and realize right afterwards that even though I read every word, and was paying attention to each of them,

that once I looked up from my book, if someone were to ask me what it had said, I wouldn’t have any idea what to say. so I was constantly re-reading the same paragraph over and over again, until I either finally managed to embed it in my brain or gave up in frustration, and came back to it later. I think that those two things were related. I think it was difficult to retain because it was difficult to see in my mind. no matter what I was reading, it was only a bunch of words. I knew what each meant individually, but to string them together into a solid idea of what they were saying was sometimes impossible for me to do. so that probably explains why it usually felt like a chore. but I don’t really have to worry about that anymore I guess, since I don’t ever read anything now.

I used to like getting high. I guess I still like it, since I don’t think drug addicts ever stop enjoying the actual sensation of their high. but other than that aspect of it, the actual rush and the way that it physically feels to me, drugs have lost all the rest of their appeal to me. even the rush itself, although I still love the way it feels for a lousy 60 to 90 seconds or so, is kind of boring now too. I always compare it to masturbating. when I first discovered that, I liked how good it felt to cum. well of course I did. so I did it all the fucking time, for quite a while. after that, I still did it but just not as often. as I did it less and less frequently, I didn’t like the sensation of cumming any less. it didn’t become a different feeling, so why should I feel anything different about doing it? as time went on, masturbation gradually became less and less exciting even though the end result was still identical to what it was the first time I had ever done it. So why would I want do do it less, if I was still experiencing the sensation that had originally driven me to indulging in it all the fucking time? because I burnt myself out in it. I liked it so much, that I did it too often for too long and it became boring. just because it felt good every time, didn’t mean that I still liked it as much as I used to. isn’t that kind of weird how that works? I guess on the one hand, it isn’t strange at all and it makes perfect sense. it’s totally logical. but on the other hand, when you dissect it piece by piece and try to put it back together backwards, it really is a kind of phenomenon. I understand it, in a very baic way. but why that process unfolds the way that it does, is also puzzling to me and there are gaps in places of it that I don’t understand at all. well, so the end of my masturbation story goes something like this. it got to the point where I only even thought of doing it every once in a while, compared to the rate at which I had done it before. and when the thought of doing it did enter into my mind, more often than not it was a passing thought that I considered for a moment and then realized wasn’t really worth doing the act just to reclaim the same old unchanging prize. it was just another ice cream cone. still my favorite flavor, but the more times I enjoyed it, the less I was able to enjoy each one. and that brings us up to present day. now I never masturbate at all. never. thought doesn’t even cross my mind anymore. when something makes me think of it, whether it was something that I heard someone else say or it is a topic of conversation brought up by anyone else, it trips me out because I realize right away how I had pretty much forgotten all about it even existing up until that point. It’s like a one-hit-wonder band from years ago that I wouldn’t have ever thought about or remembered if they’d gone unmentioned for the rest of my life, but that I would have been able to recall if I was reminded of them by someone else. yeah…that’s exactly what it’s like. I don’t do it now, and haven’t for quite a while now because I really don’t enjoy it anymore. but its weird to me. I still get hung up on the undeniable facts of the matter that seem strange to me. mainly that it is the same feeling that it started out as, so it doesn’t seem logical to become totally disinterested in doing it and to feel almost no enjoyment from it now, when the opposite was what I started out with. I have had a theory for a while now about this sort of thing. I guess that this all just proves that it is true. In the last year or so, I came to the realization that it is possible to burn yourself out on anything, regardless of how much you like it to beign with. that even those things which you enjoy the most can become totally uninteresting and lose their appeal, if taken to a certain extreme and overindulged in enough. it’s true. or at least I believe that it is true. the piece of my experience seems to fit perfectly with the piece of the observations I have made, and once those have been put together, they form a subsequent space in which I find a perfect fit for the piece of logic and reason that goes along with it.

so what I was trying to tie that into was the drug thing. it has reached a very similar point. I imagine that it will only become more and more boring the more I continue to keep doing it. hell, I’ve been on a non-stop run for the last two years or so. you would think that even when addiction is involved in something, it has to become sort of dull after that long…

[and this is about where I began to trail off...]