Poolside Reflections

Reflecting on the empty poetry book And the empty poems  Hugging its solitude; The solid figure rectangle  Created to carry exaggerated sensations Within its roomy, suitcase-like compartments— It is, sort of, like an empty womb

CREATE GODDAMNIT

Can’t sleep or eat until I fill its pages

Can’t laugh until I muster “something”.

Not until I put all this life and menstruation

virginity, stressed father

lunatic mother, 

detached sister,

faded sweatshirt,

and the anti-climactic overture 

to receiving a doctorate down on paper

and impress the pants off everyone I know,

I will not rest.

I must create and revise and edit and obsess.

List of things that will happen if I don’t:

Rejection from jobs

Disinterest from companies

Overdramatized plunge into the realm of self-abasement, wherein I gratuitously refer to my life as a “mire of shit”

List of things that will happen if I do:

Boyfriend’s praise

Parents’ glorification

False sense of self-importance

So you see, it must happen because everyone is expecting it.

Does the Poet Laureate feel this way, or does he write because he wants to?  Does he even enjoy it anymore?  

Can a woman be Poet Laureate?  

Maybe I should try. 

That is all I need, a professor told me:

A project.  

My new project: To be the best poet in America.

Finally
Something to tone down my expectations.

Book Review: Sexus

Sexus by Henry Miller
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

So, in the 1920s Henry Miller documented all the sex he was having through graphic and detailed play-by-plays. Sometimes he meets up with people in NYC, usually a house or an apartment--irrelevant since he is incapable of creating even a modicum of a setting--while drinks and judgment spew in and out of him. Dear Mr. Miller: When you write in stream-of-consciousness, I read in stream-of-consciousness. I ripped through this 600 page nightmare in a week. Tighten it up. You're not Joyce. Hell, Joyce wasn't even Joyce.

Miller has managed to write a whole loose, baggy monster articulating my pet peeve: people you don't care about telling you boring stories about other people you don't know. That's what this felt like: a long-winded anecdote saturated in New Yorkaphilia rubbish.

Here is a crap excerpt suggesting the crappiness of this piece of crap: "she would smile that melancholy, wistful smile of the hypochondriac". I am not familiar with this smile. In fact, this seems like a technique which desperately attaches a descriptor to an otherwise innocuous object in an effort to create an edgy perspective. I've never known a hypochondriac to have any wistfulness cloaked in a smile. Failed metaphor.

Despite this, but without evoking enough pleasure to give more than a two-star rating, I enjoyed some sentences. These barely shining gems cannot save this stagnant quagmire of pedantic and inorganic shock-for-shock's sake 'literature':

"Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty."

"In ten years of sporadic efforts I had managed to write a million words or so. You might as well say--a million blades of grass. To call attention to this ragged lawn was humiliating."

On the Tao Te Ching: "If I had read it I wouldn't need to ask him any questions--nor in all probability would be sitting in his garden waiting for a woman named Mara. Had I been intelligent enough to have read that most illustrious and most elliptical piece of ancient wisdom I would have been spared a great many woes that befell me and which I am now about to relate"

View all my reviews

Cruel Boy

                                

Cruel boy spitting,

Come on, cruel boy,

Don’t stop hitting.

Enter me through slitting,

slitting.

A winter later I’m still bleeding,

Off my soul,

Off my sanity

You’re still feeding.

Really, cruel boy,

Did I deserve my beating?

I almost lose the will to breathe,

And my mouth can neither smoke nor chew,

But finally this breathless girl,

Has gripped the strength needed to exhale you.

Yes, I faintly catch the glimmer

Of Revolution in my eyes;

The urgent purge,

And overturning of your lies.

These lies you told so well,

And how quick my eyes would swell;

Cruel boy, I’m still choking on my faults,

Which your leering lips revealed;

So, finally, this ugly girl,

The girl so hard to kiss,

The one I swore you’d miss

Is tired…tired…tired.

You fucking liar get out

Because I’m tired.

Sunshine Punches

*Pregnant with yesterdays, Aborted all tomorrows

Inchoate plans for the future taunt our protagonist.
But she is fixated on the past 

Is "plans for the future" redundant? Who cares. 
Another question: Would I be the protagonist in the story of my life, when I constantly saturate myself in misery? 

I want to be the nice guy in the movie that is my life, but end up with an underdeveloped plot mixed-up with bad dialogue and devoid of innate drive. Mine is a simulacrum of carpe diem. Mine is “seize the other day”.

The sunsets of all the past years disappeared somewhere, but I relentlessly search for meaning and life within them. 
The murky waters of my past have made my fingers pruney. I'm all shrivelled up.

I suddenly take on a vampire-like role in the movie of my life and hide from the sunrise of new years. I'll live in the sunset. 

It's Safer under the Bed

One day: one crippling decision. Two offers, both feasible: love or sex? It can’t be both. Not with these two. 

One offers a pleasing and sultry look in his countenance, exhibiting their beautiful graces best in hotel rooms up and down the coast. Up and down he went while claiming that I am and always will be the best lay in the bar. The best he ever had. He delivers more than orgasms…a shred of self-esteem in a hurricane of ego. I cease ruminating on this man any further and instead obsess over my fingernails. But can I, maybe, be that girl who can separate love from sex? Shackle-less and free?

The other is the one who offers poetry and authentic praise. Not about my bedroom abilities, but my smile and uncanny ability to recite Yeats at any moment…at the perfect moment, as he put it. He brings back all the dreams I had as a college freshman. The virgin who just wanted to hold hands and laugh under trees. I find this childish and boring now.

So, both offered their best, but that wasn't good enough.  Why must they be separated into two different people? Is this what dating is? An eternal compromise of the least possible things you are willing to go without? It’s nauseating. Both of them are. 

We Agnostics

Coco Chanel once said “friends, there are no friends.” 
The people surrounding me may be right up this French alley. 

These pages have housed such thoughts before. 
Now it seems fitting to question personal development.  

It is well known that the the hurt someone inflicts on you is directly proportional to how much you love  them. 
I’d like to believe in a drive away from this, I’d like to take this power from them by enervating my love. 
I’d like to believe in a coat of armor, and then I’d like to put one on. 
More than anything I’d like to believe in friends
Yet, constant disappointing  advocate atheism in the religion of friendship. 
Maybe I’m agnostic. Maybe I need to find a cult.

Living the Nightmare...Like a Boss

*Romance has no survival value. It merely gives value to survival

Relationships are created, or should I say intended, to make life’s stagnation fade—to give ardor to the day. Their comes the day in the little girl’s life when she stops looking for shapes in the clouds. 

No little one, with your maidenhead obliterated. You now have a man for that feeling of exquisite bliss and caprice. Stare and glare into him for hours upon hours. He is what you worship now. He has taken over the role of God.

But she is not at ease with his reflexive glare. She obsesses as to whether or not he notices her uneven edges and dark circles…the ones all over. The war is over. Perhaps she can rest.

She worries the beauty and splendor of his scenery doesn’t match hers. He doesn’t get to have the august majesty of the great sky, but the dowdy ash-covered lump taking up room in his pupils. The clouds never judged this much. She wishes, though futilely, to put her head in them once again. 

Fixtures

There is no greater painThan to remember in our present grief,Past happiness.-Dante’s Inferno, Second Circle of Hell: Lust

There was a man. He’s gone now. With respect to my heartache I recall that these pages once housed such statements regarding other men. So, maybe that’s all this one is: another. Maybe he doesn’t deserve all this misery. Maybe all the others are the same as another’s. 

So, he is now recognized in the past tense. He has chosen to live in my memory because he fears living in my future. But, I believed in an ‘us’. What now? I had intermingled him into my future; career, kids, education, vacation, family, self-discovery…but he wishes to detach himself from these fixtures of the future while I remain fixated and affixed.

He has asked me for time. The same time for which he once asked and I wouldn’t give him. 

I await this man to call and tell me he chooses not me. Perhaps I should choose me for the future...ah yes, the familiar shadows of feminism slither in to massage her desperation. I remember this routine. Now it's time to forget it. Perhaps vodka will help with that. 

SJ SVU

As I hear my sister’s TV—most likely streaming an episode of CSI _____[insert shitty city], I focus on my very cold and empty room. It’s not important that it’s a bedroom so much as it is an empty room within the chamber in which I reside.

I must, once again, exist alone. No buddy to drink with, no man to fuck and no friend to take up room and share space. I am, and feel, alone. It’s not lonely, just different and—despite or because of the CSI echo, very quiet. I find myself regressing into that pathetic misanthrope from high school:

So be it. If that’s who I am, then I’ll take it…but I have to wonder, in the face of all this misanthropy, have I not developed at all in the last 21 years?

You Smell Like the Internet

My dinner of vodka and potato chips is best explained by the following: the agency failed to provide a sufficient spread at the hotel. 

Maybe tonight is the night I learned that not only do covert agencies offer a lousy snack bar, I am not the one to engage in clandestine activity. San Jose State is an option...but a tough one to be successful in. 

Actually, I look forward to the challenge; continuing the mode of my current lifestyle will either lead to insanity or the complete unwillingness to live. Maybe both. I look forward to making better decisions. Starting tonight. I bought the good vodka...it is in a glass bottle tonight. and will be in another, softer, yet harder container as the evening goes on. 

Hunting

“I quit smoking one month ago,” I would be writing had I actually not smoked in the past month. Maybe next month with a bit more willpower and less submission to temptation it will be a reality.

I’ve begun my infamous idle-cycle. Instead of books there is television, poetry revision is replaced with cigarettes and job searching has merely become an exercise in focusing on what a terrible person I am. Ideally, I want to be good to myself and live life in accordance with my priorities.

I must be honest about what joblessness does to my self-concept: makes it ugly. I’d like to have some fun. Fun saves all. Must allow and savor fun—but not as a guest at the lustful, gluttonous and drunk  party that has become my life of late. Moderation is key. In all of this. 

Flints

I realized that in adolescence my depression emanated from the fact that I was not who I wanted to be. Later, it was because of boys not liking me back. Now it’s both.

I might not be cut out for dating. That’s why I decided to be single for a while. I’m not a fun girlfriend. I don’t like myself as someone’s girlfriend. I like Farrah though. That’s what I need to reassess. 

Dumbo’s Feather

I have quit drinking during the week, and last weekend I drank like a normal person. 

I am a slave to my desires and ignore intelligent forces within. 

Basically, I can do this. This antabuse which is supposed to make me violently ill should it mix with any alcohol in my body doesn't work. This doesn't matter anyway; I never needed Dumbo’s feather. It’s within me. 

Note: this went on to become a major bout of alcoholism

Eating Steak Tartare

Fatigue arises viciously when one assumes the role of both clown and companion. It all feels so forced. This feels so forced. And mother. The one who can deliver such elation and, to the same degree, knock me the fuck down. I feel her in my blood, and often want to affix a leech to my thigh to suck her out. She’s like art: makes me sad while suggesting the sublime. 

She…and my friends make me want to run and run and run away. But, I can’t allow people too much power over me or my actions. I am fit to make my own decisions even if the portrait of my invincibility, humor, and beauty, keeps me suspended in the gallery of everyone’s minds. 

Lady Macbeth's Hands

My, but I am amazing. With mother gone (again), and poems to be written (again) and boy yet to call (again) I pick up some vodka and The Great Gatsby in order to drown these worries in old friends. NOT Fitzgerald, but his creation. Words of another. Someone else’s. Anyone’s but mine. 

Imps

The apple of my friend’s eye has taken a liking to my forbidden fruit. I know not what evil or good may arise upon the unveiling of this knowledge.

Edenic metaphors aside, the femme fatale chapter of my life has begun; when competition spins throughout the dynamic of me and friend. 

I begin embracing Byronic[?] notions of that individual moral code…the one I am to abide no matter what. The one suggesting some fucking universal truth I never agreed to. 

Perhaps this is adulthood.  Farewell, nymph of my loins. 

Groundhog's Day

Because he loves as man only, not as human being, for this reason there is in his sexual feeling something narrow, seeming wild, spiteful, time-bound, uneternal, that diminishes his art and makes it ambiguous and doubtful. It is not immaculate, it is marked by time and by passion and little of it will survive and endure. 

--Rilke on the human relationship patterns

Players only love you when they’re playing. I struck out, yet I continue to develop a game plan. When does all the strategizing end? Must it end with a broken heart, or does experience actually count for something? Can I apply anything from my past or will I simply muster up some bravado and champion the newness of it all.

My interest is determined by two things: (1) pain (when they no longer want me) or (2) boredom (when they want me too much). And every situation has fallen into one of these two deal breakers. I either obsess or fucking hate him. Is this my problem? Do I actually keep dating the same guy or is it that I go into every new guy as the same Farrah? Ghazal potential there. 

Surreality in the Dumps

I’m completely numb inside. My words in previous entries delivered a fervor I can’t maintain any longer—a passion too burdensome to bear.

There is a player of the week. This is how I got on the subject of passion. My previous entries suggested an emotional connection to the player—no matter how lame he was, or at least his case delivered a slight hint of yearning. 

I used to care about these guys as people….no. That was never the case. They were always ideals and remain so.

Indeed, I fall in love with ideas all the time, and this time it’s the most mediocre of all ideas: a heroin addict bearing my father’s name.

I mean, growing up? Making good decisions? Me? Why bother? 

I used to write about precedence a lot. It’s different now. I continue to prioritize men, but now they occupy the slot of ‘he who will break your heart’ instead of its former ‘there might be hope with this one’. 

Today’s melancholy can be explained through boredom, unknowing, fear, and idleness. I used to have so much hope. For his call (the royal his) (royalty in my world changes on a weekly basis), and now I just hope to be let down easy from the inevitable heartbreaker who's probably tying off in the back of his car right now. Just kidding, he doesn't have a car. They never do.

He Liked My Hair Long

Today I wrote a poem about a heart-shaped stain in front of my bedroom door. It formed when I spilled the wine he brought. When he was here...in the desert...in me...with me. Just a memory ago. 

Truthfully, I’ve known many stain-causing men, but never one to imprint the floor. And never in this shape. The others left different marks—most of them gruesome images saturated in disappointment and neglect.

And so I wonder, this new stain mocking me with its stench of irony and acidic bouquets-- what is to be done now? Erase the little fucker? Impossible. At best, another must replace it. Off to find the next stain. But first, I need the wine. 

Glenrock

I’m not perfect. I fuck up. I’m allowed to make mistakes. This is horribly reasonable, but I need to write it down. Sensibilities are not the easiest for me to process. My mental breakdown (input/output) of anything is morphed.

The answers are not always apparent and they will not appear through intensive introspection. The point is to believe in the ‘analysis is paralysis’ catchphrase enough to abandon its practice. But how do I do that? Should I ultimately stop thinking altogether? Is that how people successfully feel? Or am I confused and yet, I think more about being confused that I spend actually feeling it.

I would like to actually feel with my heart (neck down) and leave the neck up for thinking. But I reverse the function of mind and heart. That’s what some guy on the other end of a suicide hotline told me. I called him from the bathroom of my college dorm 20 years ago. I wonder if he’s still around. 

Running Riot

This guy came off so strong at the beginning, that I thought I loved him. Just another unworthy obsession to distract me from what’s important. 

Nothing was lost, really, but a bit of solace and peace…maybe well-being. Players only love you when they’re playing and in addition. If this heart is gonna break, I sure as hell will make sure that I’m the one to break it. That's called self-will. I'm in control of my own misery, goddamnit. 

Always

Do rites of passage through the years mean the right to cry? 
Have I grown more human through the trying years from which I was meant to learn the most or am I just more jaded?
Have wisdom and fortitude maintained their good reputation, or do I just turn numb? Shrug off the tears, perfect the perfunctory grins and live. And live....

The dizzying effects of adulthood rekindle a similar confusion of the 12 year-old version of myself—when I wasn’t sure how to feel after all of that intrusive blood imposed itself all over me. Perhaps the half that stayed young and childish has finally matured to meet that half-woman I became decades ago. Pleased to meet me? 

Keyser Soze

It all came crashing down

I believe that in a matter of seconds, your life can turn upside-down. It’s strange that after the utterance of just a few words, the presence of a man…the constancy of his presence becomes a permanent absence. 

This control-obsessed girl will now attempt to do the unimaginable: sum it up to destiny [that I rigidly control] and the connection of things.

I choose to celebrate [:/] these just a few words that streamed from my lips…perhaps to create a sense of fortitude…most likely, however, self-righteousness will put a nasty little noxious fuck of a reflection in my mirror. Maybe fate will deliver a more accepting one. That's for the weak-minded, and given my current state, I'll take it. 

Advanced Shakespeare

To cheat and deceive oneself—to lie...and suddenly wonder about the dissension of things? Insanity. Keep doing it over and over and expecting different results. Elements that make me believe in my insanity are repeated, incessant, noxious, and maintain complacence.

Polonius advised ‘to thine own self be true’ but he didn’t say how. He expressed wisdom, but the most difficult act imaginable. To respect oneself enough to listen: perhaps the most beautiful and difficult thing in existence. 

Mitochondria

The pen with which I write has been serving these mediocre purposes for many years. As for other attempts at connecting past to present, I fail. I should know better. I’m supposed to know better after all these years and heartbreaks.

There is a boy I like so much, he makes me laugh…twice he made me cry, but blaming him for those would be a lie. I am making myself cry. Making myself crazy with expectations which contribute to my sadness or insanity.

Since I can remember liking boys I can remember feeling disappointment. And I now know that 90% of it was self-induced. So instead of some kind of Rosie the Riveter-esque ‘I don’t need him to be happy— fuck men’, it’s more accurate to say ‘fuck me’ since I’m the one breaking my own heart.

This one is busy all the time with his music career. As a consequence of dating musicians, I have come to judge this ‘career’ as more of a hobby…an incredibly emasculating and unfair perspective to have with this one.

It is for these reasons I mourn the death of our relationship, which ironically thrived in its zygote stage and slowly diminishes to unidentifiable tissue. This and other misconceptions and losses of perspective have made me lose myself. Again. In a man.

Girl Gone

I’ve totally lost myself in a man. Again. Not with a man, which would entail a symbiotic dynamic; not to a man meaning complete submission to his powers—the ones he would in this case willingly have over me. No. I have lost myself in a man. Meaning I have confusedly surrendered my whole being in this chasm of ‘him’ regardless of his knowledge or desire. It is lonely here. And cold. He has no idea I’m here. He has no idea about any of it.

Today, he’s a 35 year-old guitarist. While his age may be atypical of my usual conquests, his craft is not. But maybe, just maybe this boy who makes me laugh—the first to do so in so long—isn’t real. Maybe it was just sex. Maybe he never thinks about me, I’m scared of the pain that will inevitably be a result of his presence in my life. Where do I go?

Should Have Had My V-8

Let us always be mindful of what we wish for; let us be wary to live. And is this fair? I wished and hoped without realizing the great severity of extremes. And my wish became reality to the degree that I wanted—a very great degree…and by great I mean slanted. It’s off balance. Not right.

So, now I wish the opposite—it isn’t about all of this though. The extremes or the stupid happy-medium and scramble to categorize and intellectualize. I just need to be happy with what I have. It’s comedic, really. 

May is Stupid

To avoid wondering: where do I go when he comes?

1-don’t make yourself too easy

2-maintain aloofness

3-be a challenge and a treat 

Daggered Smiles

I’m involved with a man who brings more tension than serenity. Like a giant bomb annoyingly and loudly ticking inside of me—and not the kind that ends in ecstasy.  

This man loves my breasts and my perfect complexion. I would say that equally shallow factors bind me to him as well. He is nothing more than a man who enters, because that’s all I want him to be. 

My soul, unlike my body, is uninhabited by his person. There is no connection—no real dynamic, just the “heat of a luxurious bed”. It is this Shakespeare which contributes to his demise…this ridiculous man and that sweet Bard mean nothing to each other.

But, I wonder--must a companion know the great Scottish play or espy duplicity in the winter’s Tale to win me over? Must he master Dickinsonian metaphors and Yeatsian lyricism? Could he tell Plath from Sexton? Well, that last one might not be fair. I couldn’t even do that…which begs the question…where do I draw the line? 

Are my expectations of a romantic partner fairly defined? Is this fair? I can’t answer it, but I know that I find him incredibly boring, and would probably continue to do so had he known the Coleridge I quoted. So, I’m left with excuses…to talk myself out of the fact that I don't like him on the fundamental level of his person. But I want to fuck him anyway. Is that OK?

What's in a Number?

My friend C* married the first guy she ever fucked. And my number just reached a number too high to admit. I wasn’t really awake, still drunk and unaware of his last name. He was a break-dancer from Maryland. I didn’t really even take a shine to him, but rejection and loneliness were dying to be invited into my house that night and so I invited another so as to scare them off.

My desperate need to feel desired has doubled my number of escapades. There is only slight gratification in the act but great pleasure. Hedonism is prevalent. I’ve returned to my throne in that old castle of control and the cushions, fortunately or not, still fit my bottom perfectly. Maybe I was never meant to leave. 

Bottle Rocket

There is a very handsome man very far away who is very intent on marrying me. This handsome man wants me to cook his meals and wash his dishes while believing enough in my moral fiber to both bear and raise his children.

There is a very handsome man willing to bear fucking only me until he dies—and waking next to me for a lifetime later. There is a man so very far away that he remains ignorant of my mood swings. This man is so far away from any real dynamic in my reality that he does not know the obsessions I have with my skin, sandwiches, or David Bowie. He has no way of being made aware of these things.

This man is too far away to know why I may get up from a seemingly innocuous dinner table in tears, or why I eat chocolate and yell only at the beginning of each month. Yet, this man wishes that our sable hairs turn to white alongside one another. He believes in an ‘us’. I envy his idealism and his belief in us. I couldn’t want any of the things  he wants—not even with someone I loved, whoever he may be. 

Boys Don't Make Passes at Girls Who Wear Glasses

I don’t know how to escape the torturing pinch of men. 
I feel things, unsure as to the validity of the feelings. 
Obsessions mingle and muddle
Boundariless with true interest 
To the point where I can’t see where one starts and the other ends

I have no true feelings for any boy in DC. I just want to win. Win one of these boys. 
But my need, my desire, my intensity deters any healthy competition, for it deters him from even playing. 

If I win, am i winning?
Is this a victory? 

But there's no competition. Because men flee from sarcasm, acidic wit, and intelligence....and misanthropy....and low self-esteem. 

Who's the one to take these as parts of the whole? 
Is this one of those post-structuralist debates where binaries explode and implode only to make a whole new thing? A scared new-me. 

Maybe some more vodka will clear this up. It certainly made it murky--
It's the classic case of adding a little of the virus to the vaccine
Except in this analogy I'm just going to get more drunk 

Potomac

Raindrops fall—are you listening? In the nation’s capitol snow is glistening. There are people in this town by whom I feel almost feel ‘found’. But I think of the boys. I can’t focus on my books or friends because obsessions develop and usurp and other words relating to hegemony. I can’t rationalize loving boys I don’t know, who treat me poorly, ignore me and make me feel to be a burden while I ignore my friends.

I make myself so easy to free them of any burden they may possibly stumble into while knowing me. Getting to know me. They’ll never have to fight for it. I’ll never make that fight necessary. I’m available whenever they need me. Waiting around to be ignored. 

And You Say He’s Just a Friend

E* plays an undefined, and therefore frustrating role in my life. I think he’s fantastic and see with myself with him, yet he won’t/can’t/refuses to fit into any of the available open slots in my life. And this may be because he doesn’t want to. His incessant insistence on self-preservation exhausts my mind and make my heart doubtful of any fruition or concreteness this relationship may possibly have. 

I am constantly cast aside in an effort to provide assurance of his not being in love. He’s so scared of my potential. I told a friend that this whole thing will soon combust without either of us ever knowing how the other one felt. She called it tragic. It is. 

Companions

Cigarettes lack the answers I seek—and self-diagnosed insanity ceases to fulfill me. Poetry is without and ‘Dear Diary’ is another fail among the many.

Notwithstanding the absence of old friends who notoriously comfort and numb—begetting me a complacent place at a comforting pact, I've met new companions to give solace--two, in fact: a boy and idleness. These keep me company and obviate loneliness—showing that friends rarely come in forms that are expected. 

The Truth about Cats and Cats

The bar is busy now. Men in small clothes crouch around tables and recount the last record they heard. They pretend to be numb; interestingly, some pretend to feel everything. Sometimes these men make themselves cry.

I don’t know what the women do because we don’t talk. There is nothing to gain from them. Perhaps a friendship would burgeon, but that requires time and energy—things better spent on boys who ignore me after we’ve fucked. 

Bourbon St.

You remind me of the Unwound 7” I left at your house:
Unpredictable, heartbreaking and nowhere in sight.

I wouldn’t have listened to it anyway,
I lied about having a record player.
I just wanted you to give me something,
and I wanted you to like me.
So do you? Like me?

So waits this educated and …showered girl,
on the boy who sleeps with
blankets he found on the streets of New Orleans.

And I see him at the bar,
and remind him to call me
and his response: “I know, and I did tell you to take a chance,
but I can’t. I told you. I drink too much.”

I got dumped by the drunk, balding guy in girl pants who I wasn’t even dating.
I must find a way to quell these obsessions, as they have clearly steered me incorrectly. 

Unwound

Tonight a man I brought home from the bar came on my leg. He apologized. I said it was OK, while laughing on the inside.

It started out by him asking to kiss me. I asked why (because I mistakenly think things like this make me appear coy) and he attributed his inclinations to my smile and intelligence. I agreed. The night turned into mid-morning. He’s makes sandwiches for a living, and I think about him more than the wonderful man who actually has drive and focus. Who doesn’t want to open an art gallery in NYC.

Yet, I await the stranger’s call—the comes-on-your-leg boy. And I blame myself if it doesn’t happen. I am fatigued from this game, but I find myself putting on my shin-guards to play once more. 

The Warm and Intangible Colors of Spain

I’m tired of thinking about the future. Perhaps commitment to a man, procreation with a little one is a destined path which I am actively deviating.  It’s easy enough to cease motion and devote all of this energy to the ‘other’—Frost’s haunting road less traveled. But I hate that guy’s poetry, so I hate his stupid unchosen path. 

I can’t take part in a wedding procession. I want the 85 year-old me to navigate my next move. Perhaps she would tell me to stop thinking so much, and quote the classic ‘analysis is paralysis’ wisdom of her youth, and use the time to masturbate. She is a kooky old bird. 

The Daily

I met a boy I really liked who made me laugh. With my teeth. The humorous tone of our dynamic turned quite serious and a little romantic. Two hours later we decided to meet the following night. That was last week. And he rejected me.

After a bout of depression and a lot of analysis, I decided to hate him. Concluding that it is his loss…and all other cliché statements women make…but these statements have become worn out and futile, and I found myself at back to normal. And normal for me always means depressed.

Laura and I decided to call him again to find out what happened. He said I was too intense. That when he was sitting with me at the bar he felt in the center of chaos. It’s probably the best rejection I’ve ever gotten. I actually found someone I’m literally incompatible with. As if we’re different species. I mean, there would be no way to have worked around it. I can’t say I did anything wrong. Had I been calm and collected that night at the bar, the intensity would inevitable creep out. This is fabulous news. I’m helpless in this. This guy has no idea the favor he did for me in revealing my ability to be free of controlling tendencies and what it’s like to be incompatible with someone. 

Won't You Give Me Number 9?

Sleep has become a suggestion. My therapist says I’m manic-bipolar II. Maybe I am. I don’t really care either way…is that indicative that I am bipolar?

I’m hungry all the time and 20 lbs heavier than I was last year. I have nothing and everything to do. I’m in love with each and every and no boys.

So, after a night of work, coffee, and friends, I closed my eyes to the silence of my ringer. Because these boys I love so much never call. And despite my full life of full friends, I find the silence of the phone the most prominent part of my present tense. Now the lights are on.

This pattern won’t stop, I make men everything. They create me for the day. I give them the highest priority in determining my mood, they control this THIS ice queen. So again, I ask: where do I go?

Backwash

Something strange has taken over. I can be honest about the pervasive loneliness of my days and nights—but honestly it makes me feel defeated. As a single, successful 37 year-old woman I’m supposed to bask in my achievements, or so the magazines tell me, but instead I relive moments with men who eventually chose anything but to have me in their lives.

It’s easy to feel sorry for myself, but it’s just as easy to declare a change. Either effort is wasted, and so I will search for the contents at the bottom of this bottle. They’ll surely help me figure something out. 

One-Woman USO

I met some balding loser last night in Georgetown. Add him to the Tomcat whom I think is ok, but I’m not sure. I told him to ask for my number when I met him at Che’s. Very Good Will Hunting. Then there’s Marty who has an awesome voice and demeanor, but the sex is robotic. Then Erik who’s been acting weird lately, then Saliba who’s old. So, I guess Tom is the guy for today. I’m sure I’ll be reporting on a new one tomorrow. 

Unheimlich

I have attempted to develop a normal sleeping pattern for the last 18 years, and I fail every night. 18 years worth of nights. I used to lose sleep because of nightmares, and now I waste waking moments on the same notions. Yet, now the nightmares are personal. I actually know these monsters. They are Freudian, and according to Freud, I am shit.

Sleep has occupied so many of my waking moments that I may as well be dating it. I claim to have no time for a boyfriend, but I am married to this sick obsession with my slumber. Since these thoughts, therefore, will probably be the only things to stay with me forever and into my twilight years, I should be fairer to them. They don’t betray me, after all, as a boyfriend would. They are reliable, as a boyfriend may not be. So, now I turn to this nasty companion. I’m sure we’re in for another terrible and eventless evening. 

It Smells Like Suicide in Here

Time to stop thinking of the boy who loves—stop assuming that he does. 

It is time for the daydream to die. One sits perplexed, wondering what to do with all those notions of ‘forever’ from childhood. 

Who knew the fresh air of ‘forever’ would turn so noxious? Who knew that little girls grew into bitter old women? 

The Dummies Guide

I dated incorrectly. Sometimes I live incorrectly, too. At one point, the handbook dictating the effective, moral and just life was in my possession, and now I’m illiterate. Maybe I’m holding it upside-down…or mistaking it for another book completely. 

No matter; I set down this useless book and search for something more beneficial: a survival guide. In this I want to learn or remind myself of what I’ve forgotten: how to live my damn life. The scariest part is the loneliness that goes with that…and the cigarettes. Both may aid in the creation of bad poetry, I hope, because I know they aren’t helping with anything else. 

Players only Love you When...

I took a boy home last night. He didn’t stay. So, in turn I am wondering and waiting, expecting and aching. And all the other stuff we call ‘life’? Forgotten. All thrown by the wayside for this very unlikable boy. Do I decide for these men to always take precedence? I remember fixations on boys—obsessions. And then I remember not caring a month later. Perspective is, once again, lost. 

We Got Annie

My mother’s birthday looms in the future, as do her faint cries of dissatisfaction and disappointment. This is how being away from her is ideal: freedom from things like my mother’s birthday.

So, for now, and especially in this instance, my present tense (literally and figuratively) is not just a bathroom break during the road trip of my life—or better yet, the starter bar, where plans are organized and people’s roles and presences are determined. It’s real time. The night. Tonight. The event for which I’ve lived all this time to experience. This, DC right now is not rehearsal.

But, despite knowing this, the temporality of my surroundings flash like neon signs. I’m knocked in the face with this realization. That it’s fleeting. That there’s more. That I’m waiting for something to happen. If this is it, fine.  But if it is a rehearsal, then I hope I’m prepared. 

Phoenician

I.               I think my body is getting sick. I know my mind is already infested with something, at least lately. Love is looking fairly bleak and my tendencies towards the dramatic heavily contribute to this conclusion. I envy the Phoenix’s rise—where did it find the courage? To burn in your own fire and in those ashes sounds comforting. Self-pity has comfortably and marvelously settled upon, instead of the ashes of my rebirth. It triggers no reaction. I fail to rise.

II.              That was the coward’s half. This half I will give to the heroes. Their rise. Surviving and strengthening from their own wounds. They grow from the ability to stretch it out, cleanse it off and discuss this warrior’s rise in all its stages. This is the introduction to their story, and I now depart to set fire to this first half, so as to rise at the end with the other warriors.