forty-three

things i hate:

the way forty is spelled without a u
people giving me shit about being young
restaurants
old people
little kids
my mom
you
old men that hit on me and i have to be nice because they're paying me
feeling lazy
working
skim milk
pictures that don't come out
sharing a car with my brother
not having good food to eat
mirrors
gaining weight
cleaning
hispanics that make fun of me because i can't speak spanish
people who have no authority over me bossing me around
having to work all the god damned time
my dad being out of town
not having any fucking money
not being where i want to be
heat
summer
atlanta
everything

that i complain all the time
that i'm never satisfied
that i'm fucking bipolar

and especially
being in a bad
bad
bad
mood

forty-two

sometimes
this whole world seems
very dark
and cold

i hate everything
and everything
hates me

i just want to scream at them
I DON'T GIVE A FUCK
and they'd all just leave me alone

why does everyone feel like
it's their moral imperative
to tell me what i'm doing wrong?

and all of me
every inch
wants to say that
it's everyone else's fault
and it makes it so much worse
to know
that it's mine

(but you,
you could have at least
been a little bit sensitive
because the last thing i needed
was your apathy)

forty-one

i can't write this
because i don't want to even try
everything i say will fall
desperately short
my words are pale, lifeless
in the face of my beating heart

yes, my beating heart
red with life and life and life!
and every vein and artery pushing
pumping song through my limbs
right to my fingertips
and out through my smile
up through my tears
my heart has become a happiness machine
and sometimes
i pull on my hair
push down on my head
to keep myself from floating away

because i want to stay
right here
with you
because you're here now
YOU'RE HERE NOW
and those are the words i didn't think
i'd be saying anytime
anytime soon

my world went
from black and white
to technicolor
the moment
you walked
through that door

and i never want to close my eyes again

forty

my aunt calls me her "life lover"
and sometimes i know that she's right
because this world is so beautiful
and all mine

and sometimes, i want to cry out to her
that i am not worthy of anything she says
that every day passes me by
that every moment i'm thinking of another
life
another life
another life

i
feel
so
alone

thirty-nine

what the hell does
"i miss you"
mean anyway?
it does not do justice
to anything i'm experiencing.

"i miss you"
does not capture those lightning glimpses
eyes and hair and you
and every time my hand flutters out
to touch you
to realize you aren't here
it doesn't capture every minute
droning, tugging, dragging itself along
and the weight i feel when i think
of all the time
between then
and now
and then again

"i miss you"
does not count the times
i remember everything
digging deep to capture
your voice and your laugh and
it does not explain this growing depth
and void of absence

and still
every time i want to tell you
any of these things
it's only

"i miss you"

thirty-eight

she is still everything to me.
i want to just package it up and hand it to her
so she can open it up in 20 years and remember
just what it was like when she was in college
and life was simple and
so
fucking
beautiful.
i want to give her the most beautiful day she has ever known
perfect in an idealistic, unrealistic sort of way
but it is real
and tangible
and happening right then
and will happen over again in her memories
and i want to take the pain of memories away from her
that pang of sadness you get when things have lost their beauty
and you remember things as they were
that day as it was
in all of its glory.

A good day is
good friends
good weather
good food
good fuckin' times
i’m pained just to think of it
all the beauty there will be for me
that i don’t want to leave behind

19
i want it to be her best yet
i haven’t done enough lately for her
i want to give her everything
still
i want to show her that she is the only one i am comfortable enough around
to act independent of thought
to never be conscious of what she thinks of me
and to still care about her

i want to sing her a song
a perfect song
that tells her everything
that i can never say


(from spring '05)

thirty-seven

my creativity is dying
right now
it sits inside of me as it has since i was very young and yet it hides
scared of all these people that use words i don’t understand
what if i’m not what i thought i was?
what if they know it?
and i think they do

i’ve felt the pull of intelligence
felt the small truths that i’ve let go of
and all along i’ve wondered what it was that i was missing
i can’t find myself anymore
because they say there is no self
and i become nothing
what if i’m not a fucking hippie
what if i want my clothes to match
and i hate phrases like “deconstruction of reality processes”
“nonconceptualization of nothingness”
“absolute nonabsolutism”
and all of the rest of this spurting confusion

i want to be simple
in the midst of all of this complexity
i want to be devoid of words and only use pictures to say what i want to say
and i don’t have the pictures because i don’t have anything to say
this place has stripped me of meaning and message because there is too much of it everywhere
i have nothing to offer these people
i am all they have left behind
i want to look at the sunset and not think of where god is right at that moment
i want to wake up and not ask what my purpose is here
i want to go away from here and find the self that i have lost
because i want to be just like everyone else here
and i want to tell myself that i think like them
but i don’t
and i’ve lost the way that i think
I I I I
there is something there in that I
there is no one else
is it growing if you’re morphing into other people?
in my independence i have lost what it was that made me an island
entire of myself
because i was
and now i’m not

FUCK THIS PLACE
FUCK THIS PLACE TAKING ME AWAY FROM ME
I AM NOT WHAT I’VE BECOME

these are the things i have been looking for

(from spring '05)

thirty-six

i cannot bear to leave my words
i want to get up
walk away
find the sleep stillness that my body aches for
the closing eyes and deepest dark
sinking all into myself
those fading dreams back into dreams
all amidst long spells of comfort black
the voices that aren’t
the things that never happen
and the meaning is still there
among this baffling nonsense that spills into my wakening
they are things i cannot tell myself
that my mind must shape and form and hope that i remember
my mind hopes alone
apart from me
it has it’s own motives and drives and justifications and explanations
my mind is my supernatural
the unexplained unconscious
that always seems to know what’s best
and relay the information in untranslatable messages
sometimes when i listen
i don’t hear anything
silence is god

god
god
god
god
i don’t know who god is anymore
god doesn’t even get a capital letter now
i used to think that HE would care
this one being that is defined by
me.
(and my understanding of the world)
god always felt what i was feeling
because i knew nothing else
and i didn’t think that he did either.
my world was god’s world
god’s world!
he was concerned about my science tests and newest loves
he
the one being
defined by a patriarchal society
and even in complete uncynicism
(which I try and hold on to)
i know that god is more than that
god is the undefined
the three letters that mean absolutely everything
and at the same time
anything
and nothing
all at once.

and i believe in that.
i believe in the coexistence of everything and nothing
and whatever.
judaism says that god said once:
“if you say i am god
then i am god
if you don’t
then i am not.”
And i don’t like to think of god as being defined by me
that his existence
is based on my acknowledgment.

sometimes I wonder:
who the fuck do we think we are
to say that we know what god is?
Even in saying that he is undefinable
expresses this confidence that we really know
what the hell we’re talking about.
So i’ll just leave god right where he is
wherever that may be
and in the meantime
I can find my own
damn
fulfillment
and explanations
and believe that there’s a lot more than me out there
but that I don’t need to find it
maybe it will find me
maybe I am already found
already
fucking
found.

(from spring '05)

thirty-five

i have found that i
cannot
write
anymore.

there was a time when i found myself in these words on paper
in these words on words that formed something beautiful
and there was a time when i was satisfied in sounds of softness voices
telling me what i have said
sing
sing it back to me
nice and slow
and i will hear my thoughts as they have never been said
hear the things that i couldn’t keep inside
bursting out of me like rain from darkened storm clouds
and when the first droplet falls
it follows
just follows

i have silenced myself with others
other loves that i called
expression
loves that have filled me externally
and somehow cannot convey everything that i’ve wanted to say
because i cannot find the words for them
i wish that they didn’t need words
words that cut apart and desecrate the shrine of illiteracy
words that cut apart pictures
i wanted my pictures to be enough
and somehow i find myself
wanting to find them again
to pull inside and suck out the thoughts that have needed names


(from spring '05)

thirty-four

i sat in a concert hall
spotlight on music
i thought of the notes on the page
that are symbols of nothing,
symbols that cannot be translated into words or thoughts but simply
MUSIC
and i knew then that there were things that my words could not touch
unreachable distances
like “fading stars”
like “highest heights”
of minds and tongues and consciousness
i do not profess to know any of that.
i sat and listened and experienced the wandering of the words in my head
and i knew that they were not words
but confined to word form
why can’t i think in pictures
or in music?
my thoughts a long trill of a flute
the shrill shriek of a violin
the deep bellow of a bass
the walking simple clarinet
the call of a horn or
the cry of a cello
why can’t i list my anger in violent pictures of human emotion
describe my love in the purest of scenes
where eyelashes meet softest skin and all is white and fading
white and fading
nothingness


(from spring '05)

thirty-three

there is
nothing
that i could do
to make you understand
how i feel.

but i'll put it like this:
my fears about the whole thing include
exploding from intense euphoria
and the possibility that this could maybe
(im)possibly
stay this good
or even
get better

you are
so
amazing
it hurts

thirty-two

street lights form macdonald's arches
billboards with the latest craze
i went to the mall today

and all of these cars ride into blackness
none of us are going anywhere

sometimes
i want to go far far away
displace myself to space
step out into the cold
emptiness

i stretch out my arms and only feel
this stale heat
this progressive uselessness
there is nothing here for me

i am nothing


and don't you even try to say that i'm buying into this
post modern post structuralism bullshit
i just know that i will die and you will too
and none of it means anything

so fuck you