nature played this trick on me

I had a dream in which I strangled a boy and Im hearing him struggle, Im hearing the life leave him and Im thinking ” This is the hardest this person will ever work in their entire life, trying to save their own life. ” And I know what it must be like to be god, to be the boss of this big firm where the hardest work in the entire world gets done and you didn’t even have to go to harvard to do it. And it’s so amazing to be sitting there, strangling him and be thinking ” Im going to get some Starbucks after this. ” and wondering if the cute news anchor will be on the television tonight, and knowing the person Im killing can’t very well think five seconds into the future not counting the tears streaming down his eyes because he just realized he didn’t tell his family that he only just now decided he wants to be cremated.

ii. Have you ever tried to hold on to a ghost? I asked. You glanced, clothed in nothing but dust and  moth-eaten grey blankets. It’s hard. It’s harder than you would  think because even when you have a hold it slips and slithers and burns. And oh, and oh, it burns like dry ice. And you answered “yes” and you gripped my hand as tight as you could but it passed right through.

iii. And when you trace my jawline and butterfly kisses down my wrist I want to yell stopstopstop! because I’m already taken and given and sold. But I see your  eyes and I see the love and how could I ever tell you no?

iv. Looking through the shutter of a camera I realise that you are all about contrast: pale skin and dark eyes, eyelashes as black as a girl could ever wish and ridges and bones straining against white skin. And when you tell me not to take the picture

stop looking in cabinets and under tables,

you won’t find yourself between the cushions of the couch or the sheets of your bed,

there’s nothing in the closet or the nightstand; there’s nothing in the attic or the basement,

you can’t find your soul in the backyard (or the frontyard or any other yard for that matter),

fragments of your being and your essence cannot be detected in  your purse or your wallet,

you cannot find yourself anywhere.

it seems distressing, yes, i know, but we weren’t meant to be “found” because we were not designed to ever be completely and utterly “lost,”

you will not find yourself when you travel to Germany without a translator, or when you go to Belgium not having the slightest grasp of French or Flemish:

you will create something there, and you will create something new with each day you spend moving forward to  happier days,

a new sense of life will be made, and everything you thought you lost, everything you thought you would never find again,

you will realize it’s been there, it’s been here all along.

(you will always be you, you will always be here.)

—

i just want you to  not be sad anymore.  i know it sounds stupid to me too. 

i can’t stop bleeding from other people’s wounds. 

I live in a house with orange walls and dusty windows and I forget who I am when I forget to open the curtains in the morning.

I dislocated a man’s arm once at a family reunion.

Free ice cream free ice cream the jolly olly man has gone insane more ice cream for me.

The grand excursion of Stoop Kid and his monobrow, his yellow socks.

My fingertips pressed to the the edges of a wine glass and then the pink warmth against the cool clarity of my drunkness and then that is it that is it.

Robert Zimmerman riding on my shoulders, write a hymnal to him, coo and mediate with the pasture of his church.

Hey Stoop Kid, why don’t you leave your stoop?

O tomorrow skies o the inexplicable nature of lost cosmonauts oh lost cosmonauts oh can you hear me can you hear me can you hear me.

The freckles of my fingertips.

There is a man underneath my bed there is a man underneath my bed with eyes like emeralds with elbows pointed out at the wrong angles.

I must restore the hat to your most hallowed brow my closet is more empty now.

Bruises look like hand prints on my neck I like that, nibble at my flesh if you would please and thank you.

They are always jittery.  I tap the counter in the soda shop and the table in the restaurant and the bump a lumps of the jolly olly man’s spine.

I dance. I have a thirty three on my shirt.  My arms hurt.  My wrists are sore.

Smoky flesh: prerequisite for yellow nails I’m sick I’m sick I’m sick.

Dried vanilla on skin.  Yellow eyes.  

There are monologues for free living and free loving and the backwoods of Bethel where the 

Yellow yellow yellow yellow the preferred color is blue when adult hood reaches peak everything is blue the hue of who the hue of sky left over by the dark.

Hey you!  You are my lady lay lay lay day.

Free ice cream free ice cream free fucks to give vanilla chocolate lemon cream.

Free eye rolls free concrete steps stoop kid’s afraid to leave his stoop stoop kid’s afraid to leave his stoop.

Go ahead pick it up.

Just keep away from my church I forgot that you were in there.

You know stoop kid never leaves his stoop.

I think I can I think I can.

Oh this old thing?  Cross your legs.

We live with our backs against all odds of immortality and holy gastrula symphonies.

Jazz your hips with me Mr. Tambourine Man if you please o please o please.

albinos eat the squirrels.

ourgoodbyes & onlyeverything-below

There is a hidden violence in your hand when you turn the first page of a book,

and cover everything that came before that.

See, you can never trust a story.

A story never starts at the real beginning of things,

or ends at the end.

Is there ever enough paper in a book to hold a human being?

enough paper in a therapist’s filing cabinet to answer the question, “What’s wrong?”

When I was twelve, I scarred my memory by asking a sad boy a single question - “Why can’t you just be more happy?”

Ya Allah, Are there ever enough tears in my eyes to blur that memory?

to wash me clean of it?

Nameless seventh grade boy, I am so sorry.

He showed no anger, and knew that I would not understand, but still he said, “It doesn’t work like that”

Nameless boy, If I peeked into your records, your “patient history”, would I understand depression then?

Would the official explanation start your story from the time you were four and you thought you were the reason your parents were fighting so you walked out the door in the middle of the night?

Would your story start from the time you were six and you learned about global warming and could not stop crying, and fighting back with your own salty tides the rising of the oceans?

Would your story start from the time you were ten and you learned what global warming was doing to people, when you saw pictures of farmlands turned desert, skeletons in children’s sizes, and you stopped eating?

We see bad things on the news and we change the channel, pretend the voices of happy sitcoms can drown it out. But you let it seep in, and grow into you.

What is it about your sadness that made me so uncomfortable?

We see you mourning for the earth, for people you have never met and will never meet,

and we call it a pathology, give it a name like a disease,

instead of holding your shoulders as you cry and letting your tears baptize us.

Seventh grade boy,

I do not even remember your name,

but is it too late to say,

you’re looking forward through a telescope and backward through a prism

you learn the meanings of some songs and forget how it feels to listen to others

first you get drunk to feel older and then you get drunk to feel younger

Dear pseudo intellectuals with your mundane lives,  quoting the Perks of Being a Wallflower while I added hospital bracelets to my collection, do not fall in love with my depression. 

Do not fall in love with my depression,  It was not beautiful, it was not artistic. It was year-long nights sprawled across kitchen floors, grasping at pills scattered across tiles and time. It was digging up skin and dirt and graves. It was miles of absolute nothingness without a single exit sign on the way

Do not fall in love with my depression,  do not pretend you understand hurt because you once read how Vincent van Gogh ate yellow paint, thinking it would bring him happiness, and you believed it was so interesting, you bought acrylics and booze the next day.

Do not fall in love with the fact that the most courageous thing I’ve ever done was get out of bed. Do not pretend to understand how it felt when I locked myself inside the school bathroom and cried for an entire hour because I couldn’t bear the thought of presenting a power-point in front of all my peers. 

Be grateful that the highways of your brain is constantly powered by serotonin, that any lack of it isn’t enough to take it out on your veins. Be content that when you dream of futures, it’s not of tied ropes or cars wrapped around trees. I spent years not caring enough about myself or anything else to think life was more important than ending it.  My self-destruction unfolded from the inside out.  Do not fall in love with my depression, because it’s more than just sad poetry or sleepless nights. Do not think liquor-scented binges or toilet-bowl memoirs are anything to be proud about.  There are wounds branded on me that will never heal, these scarlet wrists act like scarlet letters when I’m sitting across from clipboards and the expressionless men who write on them.

Do not fall in love with my depression,  because I will be my own success story.  My recovery is already deeper than how you felt after reading Bukowski.  There will be nothing inspirational about any relapse  I may encounter, but the track I jump back to is already more meaningful than the Chuck Palahniuk book you reference in your blog when you’re drinking a latte at your local Starbucks.  

how to become a mystery on Flickr.

gotten too big for my head,  haven’t i?

listened to fake praise and empty words, didn’t give a damn about lady lazarus and her sharp, monotone voice,

pretending i’m better than anything i could possible convey,

but my hair’s still made of ash.

                                                                i must remember i’m a monster                                                           pulling fabric from the netherworld                                                           and weaving poetry with my claws,

                                                          there is nothing more,

and this big head of mine can’t take the static, can’t bear the building pressure,

too many thoughts for my head, aren’t there?

the scenery is screaming, i can’t keep above the surface,

i’m not a hero, i’m a girl in a bird cage of my own imagination and i love you but i’ll wreck you,

When you are raised as a boy you are taught that you owe the world nothing. The time comes for you to take what is yours, when your father reaches across the table and says, “a man bruises his knuckles against the world.”

The ground opens up under every footprint. She sings songs in the voice you dream about becoming every night. God help you.

You’ll be twenty-something if you’re lucky before you’ll realize that the wounds you’ve sustained come from the bigger wounds you’ve created. Nothing really rests on your shoulders.