Pounding all around me...

The walls shriek and shrink. I need to get out of here tonight.

A Tightening In My Chest.

I am going to explode out of my body. I keep pacing, my nerves pinging and snapping. I need to let this go. I have to stop lying to myself.

Everything doesn't work out in the end. No storybook ending, no tidily wrapped destinies exist here. I can only see blankness in my mind's eye when I think of my future. I don't know how to make this feeling stop. This horrible storm in my stomach, so tight it feels like I swallowed a squall.

One week. Breathe. Stop looking at the calender every half an hour. Stop checking the time obsessively, frantically texting friends but not knowing what to ask for.

What do I need? I feel like there is one piece missing, that one insanely shaped puzzle piece that is always clicked into place at the end with understanding and triumph.

But I don't know what that puzzle piece is. Do I really have to wait until the end?

Rotten Rotten Little Thing

Despite the mass of my body I still feel tiny. In the scheme of things I suppose I am, in this screaming universe.

I can't wait around to be bitten into, like a worm in a dusty orchard apple. I feel strong. But less needful of human contact.

I like the snatches of intimacy I have with my lover, all tender and true but without burden of tether or label. I love the letters I get from my cousins, penned in a language that I am rapidly losing. I love the moments when my mother doesn't slur when we speak, when that perfect connection can be made.

I suppose I have realized that the only thing holding me back all this time was me...my fear. I press my hand against my chest, feeling my heart pump with longing and sped up from cheap champagne. And I am content.

I feel like now I live how I want. My terms. It feels like a guitar smashing victory motherfuckers.

The Sky is Falling.

I saw gulls circling and screaming just a few moments ago as I walked to the friendly franchised service station and store a block away to buy rocket fuel and stinking cat food.

The wind rushed by me, and the sky hangs heavy and lower. It looks bloated, gravid with snow.

Snow used to make me feel so dirty. The pristine whiteness of it against the grey specter of my soul did nothing but stir discord in my breast; my stomach churning with hollow insecurity.

Now everything in me, everything I am stretches out for it.

It gets colder...arms and shoulders...like the song says. Make it hot. Take me over and over and over.

The sounds grind in

Like peeling back the skin of an old blister, the sounds have turned hard.

It's only when I'm singing or having sex that it stops. When I hit that perfect note, everything turns white and sparkling, like being on the inside of a snow globe.

I need to move from this place, this palace of co-dependency. Make my own walls, shape my own pattern so that when I hear/see everything won't be tinged with this brownish red old blood color, this offensive lathe to my mind.

Melting intention..

Her smile drips down her face, meaningless and melting. I see the subterfuge behind it, her mouth stretched so tight, her hands tightening.

Her very being is repulsed by me.

And I can only find it interesting. Is is my mind? My eye/brain constantly distracting me? What a cold bland space the rest must live in. Even as I type the clicking of my ridiculously zebra striped acrylic nails makes tiny bluish dust motes float out, all soft and dis-solvable.

Maybe it is the eschewment of tradition that plagues her, turns her stomach and narrows her eyes. I can only wonder. And not really bring myself to care anymore.

Soon I can be alone. In my own space. It will be crystalline and acoustic, things arranged to make pleasing sounds. Portraits and silly keepsakes. Tiny boxes, hidden and cherished and filled with secret strange things.

This is what I hold onto in my heart, this promised land of solitude and silence.

But there is never truly silence.

I'll find a crown and somewhere to lay my head...

Clicking, sorting, narrowing down things. What I *don't* want.

How I would have laughed at myself 15 years ago. I realized how free I am...when I got the news. The news of marrow and blood. The tidings of a hope of a real life.

It was like someone lifted an anvil off of my shoulders that I hadn't realized I'd been carrying.

But where to build? Do I find a new city to explore, tapping cracks into sidewalks and creeping through neighborhoods? No.

But I will fly away. Make myself a new place all my own. Nooks and crannies, filled with items just for me.

Leaking into my thoughts...

I still remember the brown white creases in your hands. How I would turn them over in mine, marveling at the difference in our skin tones but reveling in how well we fit into each other. Hands, lips, your brilliant teeth with that fucking gold front flashing out from your dark face. Your eyes were like amber, melting and kind.

All hard and street outside, your exoskeleton. How soft you were, your giant hands resting gently on my shoulders as you whispered how much you loved me on that night when the thunder was cracking and we had mattresses over the windows. Your chin was gently on my head.

How I loved you. Sometimes when I'm so terribly lonely I think I'll break I whisper your name. The levies broke. They washed you away. Away from me, into the warm sea. I hope you weren't afraid.

I hope you know I felt it, like a bone breaking in my side when you went. When I called your mother's house, your phone, your sister's cousin's cell phone and just got an all circuits are busy message. I felt you slip away.

I'll go back someday my love. Place my hand on the stone that I know you don't rest under. I miss your strength, your piss. You always stood so tall. Me and my tattoos and studs and hair; you and your gold chains and cornrows. How odd we must have looked. Your jaw was locked so tight as you said my name aloud in the room, me gripping your arm so hard it had to hurt. My heart was pounding from the look of dismay on your Mother's face.

But I had to go back. That city was slowly killing me, sucking me dry with liquor and powders and the soft luxuries you covered me with.

How hard I cried when you couldn't come with me. And one month later, the levies broke.

A Dreamscape of Real Happenings.

Am I just to accept that it is my mind, pumping chemicals and hormones into my defenseless body?

Is it just that, this tearing longing?

I have never experienced love without pain. Never.

I know I must pull back. But I've already stepped out, it's too late. My love will come to it's eventual conclusion. There is harmony, yes. But not in reality. Harmony for one, discord for the other. My choice is already tattooed into my flesh.

How I should have thought, when I was young. Pricking and branding these meanings into myself. At least I shall always know truth.

Now I bear witness.

ENTROPY is our god. I shall patiently wait. All soft comfort and denial. I shall soothe, all in nurturing and softness. I shall assist in chrysalis, and pupation.

And then I shall be cast off, as training wheels on an old bike were. The kind with streamers and all of the childish good intentions therein. I know it. I fight it, shaking my head and grinding my fingers into the divets of my thighs.

Remember my girl, the curse you bear. Borne upon me through centuries of blood, and sadness, and toil. No hearthsong, no poppet could shield me.

I give it up.

Like you would put a baby bird in cotton balls, hoping it's mother would smell and save it.

The snow fell. Not clean, but grey and numbing.

I remember the bite. My foot crushing bone. My will defying tradition.

Traitorous, I was called. Shunned and shamed. Until I came to a new land. A place where my hands could find nothing old imprinted, not a scream or curse or even joy.

A newness surrounded me. And my Mother rejoiced.

I wasn't supposed to, but I did. I fought. And bear the scars as my burden.

What right does a sacrifice have to live? Born of this purpose, only to defy it. The one bite.

And then nothing. I am not to speak of it.

Warned. Threatened. Cajoled.

The calling...the lokk. It clangs in my head, beats through my breast. RUN. HOWL. But most of all, RUN.

But my fingers do not speak, they only click. With....finality.

Don't You Feel Them?

These chains that round our wrists, the gossamer shackles binding our ankles to the ravenous past.

Years run through fingers like sand, rubbing our skin to wrinkles and our hands to rheumy knobs. A fire burns inside my chest. A need, a compulsion.

To leave my mark, to make something, be a part of something larger than myself. But this is the year when pontification will flow like a broken tap; the feeling of forced transition.

FUCK.

One Pill, Two Pills, Three Pills Four.

Every day I feel pulled farther and farther away. Away from myself, my loves, my circle.

My dreams are vivid and wrenching, all ice and snow and keen-edged tall bars. A slope of ice to be climbed.

My hands were cut and bleeding, knees raw. I could feel them throbbing through my sleep. I kept sliding, slipping, cursing, and begging.

I never made it. The dream morphed into something mundane, I was grocery shopping. But I still feel the taste of pain and rage in my mouth. My hands clench, and I am shocked to see them unscathed; clean and lacquered.

My hands are soft. Once they were rough with work and will, strong with an iron grasp. They are the hands of a child now, not a warrior. The wolf inside me paces, teeth showing.

One callus, on my right thumb from plucking strings and warbling in time. I will find it. Somehow I will throw a grappling hook into the well of my subconscious and I shall go back there, to that frozen place, that cutting wall.

And I will win.

Cracking and Crying, Skipping all the Way.

Fight the sighing echos of ghosts that whisper in my ear. I'll slide across the wormy and leaf-rotted sidewalk into a bright place, luminous and distracting.

A loud mechanical voice will boom in my ear, causing what I imagine cascade failure looks like to a machine as the color explodes and drips down my eye/brain.

Once again to the sidewalk. Hop over that syringe, it'll sting you. Swerve past that refuse, it'll stain you.

Walk again. Press buttons. Get confused. Press more buttons. Finally give up and dial the number on your phone.

Is this the stairway to heaven? Or just another elevator shaft to fall down, perhaps. But I feel so unencumbered and unbound. How new.

This Strange Eon.

So many choices loom. But the problem isn't the choosing, it's the chooser. You cannot be chosen if a person cannot choose.

I'll relax into it. I trust this time, and have no expectations, no fears really. It is strange the ease of it though, I had not marked it's passing and was stunned upon examination of time. Time is a tether, a silken rope.

The unbreakable coded chain elongates and bridges before me. Walk in a beat close to my heart beat. And be silent.

At Least the Trap had an Escape Latch.

I didn't have to chew off my leg. The trap was gently released, which maybe hurts more. Watch that relationship status like a hawk child, it'll change fast and leave me spinning.

Once again against my better judgement I opened it. I let a new voice in, a new color to wrap my brain and heart in knots.

HOWL at the moon baby, because I'm a lone wolf. And when you go against your blood, nature punishes you. Yearn for a hearth, but sleep in twigs and snow.

Yearn for an embrace, but only my own arms will hold me.

My Own Fingers Betray.

I read back on these self-pitying blatherings, and I am vaguely disgusted with myself.

To allow oneself to wallow in self deprecation and self flagellation is pointless. Why use my words to fight? Why use them to fight myself? I'm indulging my inner teenager. If I don't stop I'll be locked in my room painting suitcases and saying things that only make sense to me. But I won't. Not ever again. The human condition and the battle against it cannot be given sanctuary, for to do so sanctifies it in my heart. And I do play the martyr so well.

This melancholy cannot be allowed or granted dominion. I internalize all of it, sucking my tongue and tapping my feet. Like the song says, along with my heartbeat hammering in my chest. It feels like a bell, ringing and ominous. The sound of my own heartbeat produces colors in my mind that are sickly and unpleasant. A surging churn of oxblood faded in fear.

I'll stoke the lines of my throat where it is softest, and feel my beauty. I'll sing my songs until my voice breaks, and I shall feel the freedom. And I will love. Regardless of outcome. I will not be Ophelia, drowning in sorrow and madness.

The golden apple has been thrown. I've decided not to pick it up this time. Let the other girls play, and Eris have her due from them. I have chosen. And my due has already been paid.

Paid in blood, paid in pain. Paid in small casual cruelties. Paid in my own avarice and preening.

I am not tragic. Nor will I let myself become so. I have the tools. I'm no Sylvia Plath, trapped in a world not ready. The world stretches before me. The cosmos stretch before me.

And all I must do is reach out my hand, close my eyes, and let myself fall.

Maybe I'll hit the ground. Perhaps someone will catch me. Or, fate permitting I shall break my own fall.

Psyche? Are you ready to tuck and roll? Let's go.

So Many Notions, Potions, And Stories...

How do I explain it all? The illness, the trauma, my losing the genetic lottery.

I'm willing to expose myself this time. Willing to lay bare and under scrutiny. But I fear that once everything is stripped away I'll be more trouble than I'm worth. Not a sound investment.

Are your eyes grey or blue? I still haven't figured it out.

My heart palpates in my chest and I cover it as a cough. My tremors come and I shrug them off. I turn in ways to hide the scars of what was done to me, all screaming and tearing and blood.

Who could want such a thing?

It Sucked Me Dry

I had so many words and images knocking around in my head. I was filled with inspiration and with one look out the window into the cold grey rain...My fingers froze over the keyboard. My fingers stuttered.

It was washed out of me like a gum wrapper floating towards a gutter.

How The Mighty Crumble.

I see you. I see though the masks you have up, the veils you have drawn. You think you are sly and subtle, but you are like a rough brick smashing though the emotions of others. Selfishness. I see it in so many, but am shocked to see it in you. You would be shocked as well, but cannot shake the binding of resentment and jadedness. Why can't you see a sparkle, instead of a blemish? Or rather, why wont you?

At least this time I won't be the one responsible for the fallout.

Nobody Knows Me At All...

I was asked so often as a child what I wanted to be when I grew up. I would always bare my teeth in a fake stretched smile and give the answer all adults like from a small girl child. "I want to be a horse trainer! I want to be a doctor. I want to save people like fireman do!"

But I was lying through my teeth. I want to be nothing to most. I want to be something to some. And I want to be everything to one.

Because in the end, it's really all that matters. I've never been driven by career. I am completely unambitious. As long as I have my books and instruments I'll twirl alone on my slick bedroom floor.

It has always been love. My ceaseless obsession with it. It's complexities, how it's the most powerful force driving humanity; this ultimate evolutionary fail-safe.

Nobody wants the sick girl. I see it in their eyes...the wondering. When will it happen again? For it will. It's a factual and eventual reality. How could I ever ask someone to stand by me through it, to share the pain?

I couldn't ever.

I am not afforded the luxury of a different path.

Pressed by These Souls

I crave solitude, or some semblance of it. I hear and feel the breathing in other rooms. Tapping sounds creep into me, a cough, a laugh, a sigh.

I wish I could go to an ice hotel.