Sunday, March 28, 2010

chalk one up to apathy

I'd like to think
Tomorrow will happen, but
I keep forgetting
Today is tomorrow
And its only eighteen
Hours until it
Never gets there, enough
To worry about the
Outcome, not so much
That it feels too
Far away. And
As much as I will
The part that hopes and
Beats and
Breathes-
I know what my face
Looks like fallen
Better than you, and
It will remain that way
19 hours from now.
Oh well.
Bedside notches, you're
Winning.

K.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

eternal sunshine of our spotless hearts

i've done a lot of stupid things in my lifetime.

when i was three i thought i could prop a framed winnie-the-pooh picture up longways and stand on it so i could reach a picninc basket at the top of my closet. five hours and twenty three stitches later, i understood that just because something is tall doesn't mean i can use it as a footstool.

later that year, i was underneath the kitchen table rolling a glass thermometer around in my mouth because i liked the sound it made against my teeth, and bit into it, the mercury and glass and blood forming a monet watercolor on my chin. an e.r. trip and stomach pump later, i realized that maybe i shouldn't put glass in my mouth, even if it does sound nice against my teeth.

when i was ten, i took an exuberant dive into the pool, smiling all the way down, and smashed my face against the concrete so hard i chipped my front tooth. even though i got it fixed later that day, i spent the majority of the time waiting to go to the dentist's office underneath my mother's table at the pool crying about how i was going to be ugly for the rest of my life. that was the first of seven times i have broken it out. now it's just an expensive pain in my ass.

i have taken a running leap into a closed sliding glass door, sliced my finger to the bone trying to open up a box of cookies with a knife, gotten my leg caught in the spokes of a bicycle, run into a brick mailbox full-speed on a scooter, and gotten a chunk bitten out of my pointer finger feeding squirrels in central park. i have stepped on a rusty nail that went all the way through my foot while i was barefoot in a construction site, closed my fingers in the trunk of a rental car, broken my wrist in an attempt to do a back handspring, and broken my pinkie toe by misjudging where a doorframe to a classroom was.

sadly enough, this is just the beginning of the list of things i've done to myself while sober. i don't have enough room on the internet to write about shit i've done liquored up.

above all of the stupid shit i've done, above the trips to the orthopedic and the e.r., above the ace bandages and butterfly closures and thread in my skin... i still think the stupidest thing i've ever done is love.

sparing all the melodramatic bullshit i write about in my poetry, i have formed a cynical and thick skin towards finding someone i trust enough to let down my walls. the graves of those who have perished in a relationship with me could fill ground zero and more... some by my own hand but most ruined by others.

our ability to love and love again is unlike any other resilience in this universe. being broken to a point of being jaded is not exactly a great starting point to try again, and yet, each time, we dust ourselves off and try to open up. i have notes and letters and cards and gifts and whatever else in the wake of my break-ups, all of which remind me when it's over why it never should have started in the first place.

a friend at work yesterday came in to talk to me about his girlfriend, whom he's been dating on and off for the last four years. he said he loves her and she's great for him, but she's starting to push the heat on marriage and he knows she's not the one he wants to spend his life with. i told him as difficult as it is, he needs to cut ties and let her move on to find someone that can give her those things, because two years down the road when she's really salivating for those eternal vows it's gonna be a cacophonious clusterfuck of "i told you i didn't want to get married"'s and "why did you waste my time"'s.

i know. i've been there, just recently. almost the exact same situation, and it was really fucking hard. but it has turned out for the best in the end, albeit allowing me to begin other relationships to fail at.

love is what it is. you know when you want to and when you don't, and it bounces back and reshapes itself shiny and new each time. and, each time, it begins with the promise that it will be better than the last, and the time before that, and so on, and so forth.

but there's one thing i know for sure about it... for as smart of creatures as we humans are, we are dumbstruck about matters of the heart. i think the other animals have it right... fuck, build a nest, lay eggs, and get the fuck out of there.

i'm sure it will happen again, and i'm sure it will fail again. but i'm sick of being dumb about it. fuck breaking down walls. i'm just gonna sit back and figure it out as it comes.

why we never have created an e.r. for our love lives i will never figure it out. expensive, yes. but absolutely necessary.

Friday, March 19, 2010

jellyfish skies


the blue skies, today,
were the lakes
i swam in years ago, the
water rushing between my toes,
and the gaps of my fingers
laying on my back
and feeling the weightless
glory of nothing
below me, wading in the
waters of uncertainty,
swimming in a cess pool
of nothingness.
and here i lay, again,
the hollow skies
echoing inside
these vast unending waters,
the wake so far behind
it's mere tremors
to the stones that were thrown;
i'm weightless,
i'm floating,
i'm drifting like a jellyfish
in the current, hands
behind my head,
staring at a sky with
possibility, instead...
and breath by breath,
beat by beat, in
the silence of the water
between my ears,
this moment gives me leave
from all these
rigid years.


today was painted on. and i couldn't be happier about it. thanks.

k.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

i hope you never have to say, she's the one that got away

ahhh, the sweet touch of the keyboard underneath my fingers, the lovely sound of the internet working inside my pretty little mac's brain, the nostalgia of being able to waste an otherwise productive and beautiful day by watching re-runs of saturday night live on hulu...

we finally paid our comcast bill, which was a pretty penny considering it hadn't been looked at since the twelfth of december. and after the 24-hour grace period from paying it, it is in working condition and i am so ecstatic about it.

i missed you, intraweb... i missed being able to google a location and you knowing exactly where i live so i don't even have to type it in; i missed the warm embrace of streaming television shows when i get home from work in the evening; i missed your quiet convience, your humble headline of my bookmarked tabs which you know i favor so greatly...

after spending the last three weeks checking my facebook and writing very short blogs from my phone, i am back in business. having internet on your computer is a necessity. why else would you need a computer? to write shit on? please, i don't even have a writing program on mine. it was too expensive. that's why i have a blogspot, right? i understand my penchant for the world wide web.. i have never taken it for granted and missed it greatly when it is unavailable, like when i'm in the mountains or i cant pay my bills for a couple months.

the last couple of months have been insane, in this very strange, expected way. confused? i digress... the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting it to yield different results. i find myself going back to this often in my life, because i have a tendency to believe the outcome will change if i can just get through to the other person. that i have the worth and strength inside me to help someone else pull themselves from their demons and recognize that i saved them.

pretty narcissistic, i know. but i call it the broken wing syndrome, and i have a close relationship with it, because sometimes, i am that flailing bird. sometimes, i want someone to come along and reset my wing, so that i can find that hero in someone else. after all, the person that can save me deserves some sort of international award. for sure. i'm a fucking mess.

so, anyway... i have been dating this guy for the past four months, on and off. mostly off, cause every couple of weeks a fuse would blow in his irrational lightboard of a mind and he would say something like, "you're a disrespectful giant bag of douche" by the way, he's thirty-two, "and you need to give me back all the presents i made for you because you don't deserve anything that beautiful and precious" and blah, blah, blah. it was a little different each time but it all meant the same thing; that he is completely and 100% bat-shit bipolar manic crazy.

yeah, i know. i was the one who stuck around. listen, don't think i'm complaining. i got some pretty cool shit out of the four months... an art instillation above my bed, a belt, a scarf, soaps, and the infamous necklace he made me return to him three times, and a couple days afterward return to me and ask for me back. i think i swept up in that situation, for real.

so after breaking up with me a couple weeks ago over an incident involving my best friend, jack daniels, snow banks, and an hour request to push back dinner, i was done. i genuinely thought (and still think) he was an amazing artist and a brilliantly creative mind... but the ups and downs and backs and forths were all too much. i couldn't do it anymore. so i returned to him his necklace and picked up a back of my stuff he had at his house. he tried to convince me that i was once again wrong in the situation, but i wouldn't budge, and ended up walking off and not answering the phone when he called or texted. cause i knew... it would be just a couple days before he was back, telling me that he needed me in his life and that he loved me.

love. it's ludicrous to even mutter the words to me from him. i can't imagine the kind of love where it's acceptable to call someone a "giant bag of douche" or say they're acting "cunty" and expect to be forgiven in the morning. not on my watch, that's for sure.

a couple days later, he walks into my bar and hands me back the necklace. he asks me to come over that night to get some things he found. when i tell him no, he begins the process of a temper tantrum. a couple days go by. he stops by work again, tells me he can't stand my absence in his life. texting intermittently between. flips out on me one night when i stop answering his 30 text messages and constant phone calls. get's his hands tattooed in my "honor". stops by my work again. tells me he loves me, he wants me back. he was so sorry for acting the way he did, that he didn't appreciate me enough until i was gone and he was angry at himself cause he knows it's his actions that pushed me away and made me distrust him. blah. blah blah blah blah.

finally he told me that he wanted to show me that he wanted to change for me, under the condition and promise that i wouldn't go out on any other dates with any other guys. "you mean like us being in a relationship?" i said to him over the phone.
"no, no, see, it's not a relationship. i just want to be able to know that you won't be seeing anyone else while i try to show you how i want to change so we can get back together. we'll be dating, but you just won't see anyone else while we are working things out."
oh. so seeing eachother in a mutually-exclusive setting is no longer considered as a relationship. silly me. that's exactly the definition i would have slapped on relationship but i guess, haha, i was wrong. AGAIN.

i told him i wouldn't promise him anything, and if he wanted to show me, then he could, full well knowing that he was going to turn it around, which he did. he refused, and by some grace of whoever is planning this crazy future of mine, he hasn't texted me for a whole day. the silence is nice.

so this is the thing. recognize what's there while it's there. don't wait for the bills to pile up or the necklace to be given back... there is so much value and worth for everything in our lives, and when it's gone is when the memory hits us the hardest. with certain things, it's as easy as sucking it up and paying the $314.98 bill to comcast, a subsidiary company of lucifer's son's best friend's cousin from deep south hell.

with other things, you may be stuck looking at a beautiful necklace on your dresser, wondering where the girl was that was in it not three days before, and trying to convince yourself that she wasn't worth your time.

it's not the loss itself that proves to be the most difficult sometimes. it's the memories that linger afterwards that haunt the mind and second-guess our judgments.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

clock out

Your little ghosts
Are still hanging out.
Would you please tell them,
I'm no longer open
For business.

Thanks.

V.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

weekly psa

I would just like to confirm what the six of you who actually read this blog already probably know:

I, my friends, am an idiot.

Thank you, and goodday.

K.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

words that make the world go round

it is early in the morning...

too early to write anything productive.

but i would like to say, i have successfully gone a day, ONE DAY, without thinking of a cowboy who has the ability to stop time. that's right, a futuristic time stopping cowboy. that's shit that sequels are made out of.

the birds are chirping. i have to work very soon, and i don't care.

vena, these grains are slipping through your fingers like squirrels on the side of a birdfeeder. go. gogogogogo.... life is waiting.

k.