Archive for March, 2012
Sitting Back, Crushing Maggie, My Farm Spider
Guilty gooey pleasures for hours
on a Wednesday morning
while crunching numbers until
they told me the sickest
tales with large red balloons
bouncing off of elephants,
and I wonder, why is the music
so good to me, and why is this
raggedy random set of tunes
sending charges of blue love
through my bones and making
my soul vibrate, making my
eyes long for all of the deepest
grays from the rain and laying
me to rest in the puffy remains
of a victorious parade celebrating
the temporary manic goodness
of a man who yesterday was
meant for jumping or crying or
hiding, but here he is and
by Wednesday afternoon,
there is a new trigger and she
may not have known how her small
action might play a large part
in deflating a balloon and cutting
off the elephant’s trunk, so please,
please bring back the music.
It was gone on Thursday,
too, but bring it back,
and set it in me.
On a Day When I Don’t Know Who I Am
Expectations come through in yellows.
Blaming my medicine, I have strong pulses,
wanting to throw things and what does it feel like
to grip your hair, even short hair, and pull
and pull and pull until it hurts and mechanical
tears are sifting through an ugly landscape?
I believe and I try to know who I am, and I work
to create, never asking about the futility, and then
there are these diligent blasts to my psyche because
I “make the reader work” and that sucks and
the reader doesn’t know what’s real and it’s
“hard to write about mental illness,” so why
don’t I write about the day a woman killed the man
in the basement of a small apartment in Kansas
City, so I can guide my gentle reader along; Oh,
but do you know how deeply I hate myself right
now, and now is when I understand that I am not made
for this world, but tomorrow, I will go to work
and play with numbers and systems and stop
bad guys and for moments I will feel good about
that part of my life until I remember the meaninglessness.
I want all of the emptiness to go away, but it stands
there telling me what a terrible nut I am, and
meanwhile there is this terrible yearning coming
through with screams of terror, wanting to do
something well, and I scream back, Shut up,
Shut up, Shut up; I will kill you myself and leave
you in a basement in Kansas City.
The Heavy Flow of Minor Disturbances – #2
Check, check, check. Should I feel brushes of gray guilt from going to work late? Late is 8:30 and though there is a grind to the rush hour, there is certain pleasure from sharing the miserable pathway with so many other difficult humans.
The bright lines from a blurred sun cut through a foggy surface covering not only my eyes but also my sense of what in the world around me might be real. The beautiful shine from the tingly knives which appear to be carving man’s creation delicately enough to leave it there, they brighten my outlook and for several moments I feel an impending chance at success.
Does she say anything good about my frantic efforts? No, but why do I need her encouragement? Why am I so bereft of self-esteem, especially when I am on a long streak of diligently working to do estimable deeds?
She’d be better to leave me alone in my stuffy chocolate pudding, but instead, she pounces on my distracted nature and fries my burnt ends for leaving a confidential paper that is really lacking anything to be confidential about on a robotic, mostly-broken printer in a common workspace where our comrades might read that paper. I need these course corrections. I need a hot flame that curls the edges of my foggy awareness, but despite my fully-developed load of guilt about these defects of mine, something demoralizes me and no matter how rational I am, the day goes straight to the pot of shit sitting outside the building doors where the smokers go for a bit of sanity.
It’s this yellow Tonka toy dump truck that I drive around for most of my living moments and it is heaped with the load of all of my defects. The load is heavy, but I strive to carry it and push and push and push to shove these things out the back of the truck as I travel in a slow lane, not concerned too greatly about the pollution of my defects, for they go to rest with McDonald’s wrappers and all of the other detritus of our blown-out society, but when one person who perhaps justifiably withholds compliments adds a little fly paper on to the back of my truck, it is as if Godzilla himself reached out and smacked me and my shit straight into the ditch.
I try and I beg but the day won’t start over and I come to believe that it is better for me to come to work when it is too dark to identify any of the various objects in my world and when the others are resting comfortably in their achievements.
The Heavy Flow of Minor Disturbances – #1
The morning shadows have a new shape, and the cacophony of the birds has started again. Foreshadows of hope, it’s on the way, and I refuse to stop, to ask why because I know this little buzz, this hope-thing being on the way is a silly artifice made of tissues.
The winter sun has frightened me for so many countless months, causing guilty pleasure and pride with the trinkets from my endurance, still wondering what kind of animal I might be. Not all of the people see the monsters in the shadows, crawling longingly on the bright winter days. The monsters are ghosts, or spirits, and they’re not interested in being seen as they are far too busy singeing the raw nerves of the fragile psyches (ones such as mine), which make us little, gangly, spider-like animals too timid to go out, lest we be smashed by the semi-trailer which has been dislodged and has flown perfectly to land centered on our little plastic cars.
But today, I’ll drive slowly in the little residential neighborhoods, not for fear of being trashed by the trailer but for fear of smashing any heavy wall, smoothly and head-on. My car window is down by about 2 inches and confidence in my spirit grows with the crisply testy, cool breeze. I will feel comfortable for I will be familiar with almost all of the people, and some of them are as nice as a human can be. I need my meeting, my medicine.
It’s this backdrop that causes surprise upon reflection. What is it buried so deeply that made me break down in complete despair, sobbing like an uncontrollable fruit fly?
Willingness – Part VI
And then the squares disgusted me.
Something so wrong, turning the stomach.
Mostly white coverings
working to prevent torment
but not doing well.
One-hundred, twenty-eight,
bending and flexing,
sending me into
the deeper parts of my guts.
Willingness – Part V
Smaller squares tell me who I am.
Organizational torture within chaos,
innumerable shades of brown and gray,
fighting through the human blast furnace
with intricate snakes of flame
preventing peace or solace in okay.
And there are so many fucking cheaters.
stillfugue 