How I Turned Into Schrodinger's Cat

I cough and spit into a paper napkin – the last one. I
imagine my insides corrugated corrupted flaking off and
floating out. The thought is not displeasing. I
imagine turning off all the lights, black-out
curtaining the windows, barricading all the doors. I
imagine floating from one dark room to the
next through halls of fluffing, rust-ruffled
shadows of smashed mirrors and blank-faced
clocks. Eventually the food would all run out.
I wonder who would eat whom first – me or the
cats. I imagine all this taking place in a day,
in the few and fleeting hours of an afternoon,
so that by nightfall I could drift out,
reborn. This is why I do not live alone. This is
why I need counseling. But the only therapist
who called me back does not want to see me,
does not want her Catholic sanctuary
shadowpoxed by me. She said I sounded too
hesitant. If I was not too hesitant I would
not need therapy. If I was not so
hesitant about my life, about being happy,
about unfurling my pigeontoe clutch on
all my dark and glittering trashy secrets. I
imagine drawing fear, small and winking
bright. I imagine a warm bed free
of nightmares. I imagine images in grainy
flashcards. I imagine needing someone to
imagine me.

Still Life with Blood and Clay

01.19.01
11.23.03

[ ]

I feel cold, sluggish and anti-social and decide to pretend I’m stoned. Hate group work. Blink. Blink. Swallow. Sniff. Eye-grains. Chipped, paint-crusted nail polish. I don’t think I like listening to smart kids talk. Breast-heavy, sweater lint. I forgot to take my meds this morning. Wish class would dissolve, people breaking up into fluttering bits of colored paper. Some days I feel like turning into a turtle, hoisting myself onto a flat, warm rock and waiting drowsily for schizophrenia to strike. In my dream was a
bathtub, filled with blood again. Blood and clay. Lee disappeared and all I could find was people telling me what a terrible person I am. I think about the warm, resiny smoke of a mouthful of hash. About rolling naked across the class floor, faking seizures. About just getting my stuff and walking out. About selling my car and spending all the money on gumballs. I’ll fill a huge aquarium with gumballs. I’ll paint the white walls in wet Jell-O and watch it dry. I’ll poke out my eyes, change my name to Tierisius.

None of This Is Ever Going to Happen

My sparkly fuchsia notebook is lost. I imagine
running off with Shane to live in a cave somewhere
long ago and far away. Somewhere all we’d have to
do would be find food and climb trees and play
in creeks and get wet and dirty and have fun and
sleep. Like memories distilled from old movies. But
thee are always ticks and bats (rabid) and
malnutrition. Still, there is something very satisfying
the idea of just growing things or fishing or hunting
for food, rather than standing all day in an
airless office and not doing anything to get it. I
would love to go hunting sometime. Wouldn’t
mind going fishing again either, actually. Been a while.
Not in that nasty cement lake the parents live in
though. That’s why I want to move to Virginia
someday; I love the idea of me living in a
little tiny house with a huge garden – vegetable
and herb and hemp. Trees growing crab-apples
and peaches and hazelnuts and walnuts. A few
sheep (for the wool) and a cow or two. No
chickens – they’re dirty and I’m sure I can always
trade something for a few eggs. I could
hunt deer, I think. Not that I’ve ever tasted
venison or held a rifle. I could bake bread
(but where would the flour come from?) I could
make fruit jams, but whence the jars to keep
them? Well, if I grew enough sinsemilla I
could surely trade for what I wanted.
None of this is ever going to happen.


02.08.01
12.22.03

Chewing Magic Words

I have spent the last week studiously avoiding
fantasizing about you
and the chewing moving muscles beneathe your skin
and your long palms cupping my shoulders,
your teeth in the nape of my neck.
I sleep with the phone at fumbling length;
I am waiting for you to call with magic words.

Streak

masterless
frustrated by my unabraided skin
bored listless by beginner’s luck,
small time small hands and unpillaged pots--
I’m not playing if I’m not afraid

felt-snap me you,
peek-sneak my sleeves while
rough-shuffling decks

real me
deal me in
my penny-ante secrets
tease, you: pursue
me over slo-mo calculated naked rounds
wait me out
relish wet my flirting for a fall
going hell-bent swell-head for broke
fold limp me
achingly
indebted and card-licked
beat me someone you—
21 and I’m always playing to lose.

Fantasies: Ghosts Without Gender

I fantasize about people without gender, or people who have somehow overcome gender. And I'm not going to separate this out because all my fantasies have been lifestyle fantasies. The people in them are always older and significantly more knowledgeable and experienced than me.
The first things I can remember as fantasies were derived from nursery rhymes, my favorite, which I'm sure is incredibly clichéd was "There was an old woman who lived in a shoe...." I found it incredibly pornographic. I would lie in bed at night and think about being led around and spanked....I've never even written this before....
The first sexual fantasy I can remember having was that it was my wedding night and I was lying in bed-- the groom was somewhere, I rarely thought about him-- and his beautiful sister would come in to tell me goodnight or something. She would notice how nervous I looked and ask me what was wrong, and I would explain to her how afraid I was because I didn't know what to do or how this was supposed to work....in these fantasies I was always a virgin. I would be all upset and almost crying and she would sit next to me on the bed and give me a hug to comfort me and start talking to me and kissing me, we'd end up having sex though I was so little I wasn't at all sure how that worked [sometimes I'm still not so sure]. Often these would end with me being tied to the bed somehow.
When I was nine I had an imaginary sexual friend, a tall Victorian French woman (a lot of this probably was influenced by my ghosts) that went to boring places with me, adding to everything an incredible vibrancy by the strange dynamics between us. I had never read any porn or heard of protocol or anything like it but now thinking about it I realize my imagined behavior with her closely echoed that kind of thing. She would bathe me and spank me and touch me, dress me up like a girl from a picture book, subtly showing me off to her imaginary Victorian friends ( I had a really wild imagination) but interestingly enough I don't think I ever actually thought about having sex with her. I stopped imagining her when I was about 12.

Ex Machina

Evolution is my God and I’ll try not to care about how cheesy that sounds—somedays I seem to erase everything I think. I want words worth being indelible. I want an anti-suicide manifesto—Godamn, I want a theory that works. I want rage that’s good for something besides turning against myself, and sometimes yes I admit I just want to feel.

Someone else has already written all my songs—I’m always losing my train of voice. I’m nearly always unsure if I’m off-beat; I always forget to ask if I’m normal again. I always forget how much I’m going to care.

I don’t have a way with words. I get lost in my thoughts, I can’t cast spells for shit, and language is always having its foul way with me. This past year I’ve lived in a Cliff’s Notes world.

I just want music that beats against my chest; I want to feel my sternum vibrate to your words. I like being moved to a potentially shared rage, why else does anyone go to a concert, a demonstration, or a pentacostal church? In synogogue we beat our chests just once year—I want a religion that offers confession while pounding the floor.

All I ever wanted was absolute fungibility. To be the replacement cog in some machine where I could not err, I could not long for guilt. I fantasize achieving industrial Tao, my purpose defined by my motion within the motion around me and it would be forever perfect, ‘til time’s lovely end. I want to be reincarnated as machine. I want—I insist—I demand to exist within that orderly universe. Beyond a fetish it’s a destination-goal. Does machinery ever dream of being me?

Burning Man

I dreampt I used to know many years ago a beautiful pink-haired boy who needed a name. I thought ‘Puck’ and ‘Mustardseed’ but those were already taken. His hair was pink but for some reason I called him Verdi. In retrospect it could not have been the right name for him. It was perhaps the right name for the deem, which I remember in mud-on-steel greys and leathery blacks with bright deep splotches of alcoholic green, glimmering in unsuspected places. Sometimes in my dreams I am almost caught up with him again. Sometimes I hear someone call my name. More fool I, to fall in love with a specter, I never dream the same people twice. And then I remember as immediate as bloodcramps the web of playa dust on his ears in the sunlight, or catching the loop of his earrings between my teeth. I remember kissing the taste of purple everclear in his mouth and screwdriver under his tongue and his hands grabbing at my denimed crotch as we hugged in front of God and everyone. None of it, of course, ever happened. Friday night, jealous, resentful, dizzy from lack of food and sleep and wanting a cigarette I wandered away from the tents to fall asleep by a bonfire burning in the middle of the playa. And I dreampt of the most enchanted children. I dreampt the dream I always have, of the world removed from everything and flooding under constant dust and rain. There, as always, was the mud. And as always in my dreams of after the world ends there were three boys with whom I felt an immediate companionship, kinship, connection, and why not. I’d been dreaming them for years. There was, as always, the violence, the inability to speak and all its frustration, or even when speaking to communicate. I was slapping and striking the prettiest boy as hard as I could, enraged by his looks, but as in all my dreams there was no force to my blows, or I could not feel them at least, though the marks appeared by magic on his face. And there were muddle conversations of great significance and no sense. And of course there was sex, but, as in all my dreams, I can only remember a few stray scanty details. I dreampt the most beautiful boy I’d ever struck or kissed pushed me down and fucked me, whispering in my ear “I know you, too. I’m you. I’m you.” I dreampt of things that are never going to happen. I dreampt of two dis-houred days with a boy I fell in love with because I would never see him again. The sex is always less important than you’d think. In dreams the sex is always secondary. In the desert I saw a new race of creatures evolve, with crystal skulls, the insides tattooed with incredible scenes to hide their brains from prying eyes. Boots and raincoats and cigarettes. A sleeping bag of heavy canvas and a tent too cold to sleep in. Strange drugs. People who wandered in and out, intersecting on their own dream missions. Sometimes I hear someone call my name, and grow confused; am I awake or asleep.

Career Goal #90059

When I grow up I shall be the threat too
awful to speak to your children they will
dream of me anyways I will displace the
monster beneath the bed the ghost in the
closet the bogeyman in the hall and without
drawing a second breath I will dispel every
nightmare creature there will be no room
left for any kind of fear but that of
me the Grim Reaper will take a holiday
and no one will dare name me let alone touch.