ego destruction

2011-01-26T01:00:00.002-05:00

the person to whom i have been writing is a person who rejected me. i have written to somebody's back. i am in the living room of my new apartment. he is sleeping on the couch. baby is in the bed. i do not want sexuality to be a thing that i write about. sexuality is a girl giving parts of herself to the public. i do not want to write about that. i do not know to whom i want to write.

he is sleeping on the couch. he is the person i met out there. we went inside each other and into the locked rooms and underground rooms. our apartment is not like that, it is not a big mansion with cold wings and its windows, if broken by a neighborhood boy, would be repaired by the maintenance man. i know that there isn't any writing without anger, and yet, i do not balance the laptop onto my knees because i am mad.

i do not understand what it means to be far from a place that is immediately before you, the streets and neighborhoods could be outside my window with a splicing away of 3,000 miles, two months, and a few unforgivable statements. i loved you, and i was clumsy. you pretended to love me, and you were poised.

he took me to each room and showed me what was in it. there were dogs, there was a shovel, there were teenage thighs. there was an abandonment that rippled through each love affair. (you can not pretend that a sin sins only once.)

we should have been alone for that.

i have heard you call my friends weird. it is something you learned in school, red lipstick, a snarl. you say that my life isn't special. it is like the girl who said i would never be happy, having learned this, i suppose, from making me cry. you are not the original abandonment. you are not even a love affair.

don't care how you die, so long as you die thin. to be free, to never work, to smoke cigarettes in the park and drink like teenage hemingways, before the war, yet certain that we already understood it. you tell me to open my eyes to the ones i have hurt. i do not understand it. i needed to get out of there. my belongings are in the dump. i do not even have a picture of you.

postpartum

2010-11-21T17:50:00.003-05:00

i am sitting on the bed and looking out the window and listening to sad music like a teenager. my mother keeps finding sneaky ways to shame me for drinking beer since i'm breastfeeding. i need to move out but am terrified of the darkness and emptiness of the big house i applied for, its ancient fireplaces and hardwood floors. i have been googling articles about postpartum depression in hope of some insightful sentence that will lift me out of my shit and instead get about.com articles that publish sentences like, "support from your family and friends can help," and "you may have a higher chance of postpartum depression if you have a poor relationship with your husband, boyfriend, or significant other or are unmarried." dicks. these articles are written by hack writers for $15/pop and help no one. when i was pregnant, i worried that my sadness leaked into her through the umbilical cord along with pesticides and preservatives and the wine that i drank then regretted and felt like an asshole for drinking. david would come home and smoke pot obsessively and play his guitar in the kitchen with woody, and i would lie in the bed like a marooned whale watching forensic files and law and order. katie would come over, i would glare at her and her beauty and fashion and the way that she laughed all the time, she was my best friend but i didn't realize it and now i'm here in atlanta without her. i guess that this blog is my sewage drain, because i don't have another outlet other than to send creepy emails about how sad i am to the friends i alienated. i know that someone will read this who shouldn't, a concerned family member or something, where are all the girls with new babies, and how do they deal with this.

"i am not a fun person" yields 5,120 google search results.

2010-06-25T13:11:00.002-05:00

it is a bruised but thinking
a wail from inside body
or whale, swallowed
still not sure
when there were garbage cans
the lids would splatter
metal sounds
flashing and jarring
we use plastic now,
soundless and deathless

**

2010-01-20T15:23:00.003-05:00

Can’t convulse it into being/ forgot its smell and its teeth
Have taken my tongue from the guts
And have nullified my grief
I am waiting for it though
And am thick in the duty of my nothingness, my forgetting.

i want to be

2009-12-07T15:48:00.005-05:00

sick in new fashions,
want amputation. obscure beating pulses.
trash accumulates in the compost,
soiling plants. ennui spreads,
a swollen culture,
disease eats well in hot places

hand gun

2009-11-16T19:35:00.002-05:00

i think about myself like a raft and i think about water
panic is a rash, it is order confirmations and quiet vomit
in the company bathroom. she says that yoga
is an escape from sorrow
which is an escape from everything other than itself

i might be finished writing poems.

2009-11-09T20:52:00.012-05:00

which sux.
drawing though.

s&m

2009-11-03T20:22:00.004-05:00

the death-wish is a wish. the death-wish affirms life. the life is the death. being and going. sweat on a cardigan. sirens call from the edges of cliffs that hedge against the water like water of memory, the beach you would run on in the morning and the holy broadening or breaking. impulse control, shattered lamp, blood and fingers, holy, what is bared, control, abuse and fatalism.

google results

2009-10-21T18:43:00.002-05:00

Results 1 - 10 of about 6,710,000,000 for no
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,450,000,000 for love
Results 1 - 10 of about 664,000,000 for yes
Results 1 - 10 of about 612,000,000 for sex
Results 1 - 10 of about 476,000,000 for death
Results 1 - 10 of about 463,000,000 for god
Results 1 - 10 of about 226,000,000 for television
Results 1 - 10 of about 226,000,000 for gay
Results 1 - 10 of about 75,300,000 for happiness
Results 1 - 10 of about 37,700,000 for enthusiasm
Results 1 - 10 of about 18,400,000 for sadness
Results 1 - 10 of about 10,100,000 for boredom

hell-themed

2009-10-06T14:35:00.008-05:00

there were birds in the trees at the airport
i noticed them
you noticed them
i touched your hair
small-bone creature

too much coffee

2009-09-30T15:11:00.005-05:00

i am shivering and sweating and my heart is beating too fast.

my face went numb and my neck went numb.

now only one side of my neck is numb and i am eating a salad very slowly and reading about the enneagram.

*
*

an update:

one month later.

my neck is still numb.

po@-0i9ghotpink.

2009-09-11T18:30:00.002-05:00

2009-09-11T15:06:00.002-05:00

no longer sadly
no longer seeing ghosts

2009-08-21T14:38:00.004-05:00

forfeiting security for something i remember to be valuable though i have forgotten what it is.

2009-08-17T18:41:00.007-05:00

i received a bill in the mail this weekend for $17,400. this is for a 2007 hospital visit that lasted three days. mostly: the pulling of blood, monitoring of levels, dripping of IV's.

charcoal vomit.

i am not going to pay this bill. i may frame it.

2009-08-06T18:19:00.004-05:00

do not need to see.

the question of terror.

your sins are the sins of the world.

you are in them and of them.

private words in a private book on the very softest paper i have

***

2009-08-06T18:11:00.005-05:00

intimacy detached from libido:

the toddler kiss

***

ennui: bordem of the soul.

***

rx gobble

projection screen

the audience knows

we can have it all

***

twilight pleases

nothing hours

***

refrigerator garden:

limp funks and magnets, the garfields,

the dangerous grass

***

i can trace your departure in ink

i can get away fast

2009-07-23T11:06:00.003-05:00

rhetoric and music beyond meaning

2009-07-22T12:25:00.003-05:00

"life has to be given meaning because of the obvious fact that is has no meaning." -henry miller

"everything is meaningless." -king solomon

what exists beyond meaning?

is it possible to examine beyond meaning?

options:

talk about what it does. (the scissors cut.)
talk about how it appears. ("scissors appear in classrooms. lesbian scissoring on southpark is a way to demean lesbians. a subaltern community in a developing country may be confused by scissors.")
talk about how it looks, how it feels, the sound it makes. ("the scissors have a black handle and tape crud at the end of them.")
talk about what abstract constructs it implies. ("scissors cut, which could make them useful, violent or both.")
assign value. ("these scissors cut well." "these scissors are shite.")

but are any of these methods rhetorical?

what is rhetoric?

mucklebauer:

"the search for meaning, without actually expecting to find it."

what separates rhetoric from discourse?

is that a meaning question?

discourse:
1. To speak or write formally and at length. See Synonyms at speak.
2. To engage in conversation or discussion; converse

rhetoric:

1.
a. The art or study of using language effectively and persuasively.
b. A treatise or book discussing this art.
2. Skill in using language effectively and persuasively.
3.
a. A style of speaking or writing, especially the language of a particular subject: fiery political rhetoric.
b. Language that is elaborate, pretentious, insincere, or intellectually vacuous: His offers of compromise were mere rhetoric.
4. Verbal communication; discourse.

rhetoric can be discussed outside of what it is:

talk about what it does. (elucidate [locke]. persuade [socrates]. seduce [baudrillard]. perform [derrida].)
talk about how it appears. ("it appeared in greece among sophists." "it is pernicious--in the courtroom and on the bus.")
talk about how it looks, how it feels, the sound it makes. ("effective rhetoric can be invisible." "hemingway uses simple words the way that bullets are simple." )
talk about what abstract constructs it implies. ("many people think of rhetoric in terms of lawyers being evil. or they use it to talk about satan, like how he wants to convince you of things."
assign value. ("nietzsche's deconstruction of good and evil is persuasive.")

music can be discussed outside of what it is as well--i would also be personally compelled to strike value assignment as well.

talk about what it does. ("justice gives people the desire to party/be wild/take drugs/have sex.")
talk about how it appears. ("justice was relevant to core music followers and trendsetters a few years ago, and is now relevant to the mainstream but trite to core music followers and trendsetters.")
talk about how it looks, how it feels, the sound it makes. ("slide guitar has bell-like quality." )
talk about what abstract constructs it implies. ("garage sound and lo-fi production imply a diy value, which responds to the grind and falseness of capitalist culture."
assign value. ("pitchfork gives music a 6.8")

in order to make rhetoric about music effective, one must decide why it matters. where the nerves are and how to reach them. nervy. short. passionate.

find its pain and find its relevance are good strategies.

don't define it.
to define music is to play justice at a party.
definition is played.

all of it

2009-06-19T17:43:00.005-05:00

it's friday but i do not feel the sun from the weekend, i feel the gap from the weekend, weekend widens into a zombie eclipse,

i want my lips to be kissed because it is a habit to want it
all passion dies
but death is not always passionate

the flourescent sitting journey,
open mouth,
eating spiders as we sleep
on a mattress with the cover unfolded,
padding exposed,
that corner could be all of it.

WE WANTED TO SAY SOMETHING BUT THERE WASN'T ANYTHING.

this is how i want to put myself onto you

2009-06-14T13:56:00.006-05:00

i am sore with desire
in a filthy kitchen
cat piss on the couch
these elliott smith songs aren't working anymore
i do not want to be a woman
i do not want to be a boy
i want to kiss the champagne in the kitchen
i want dull promises
i was in a nonsexual relationship
with a woman who loves mariah carey
and the boyfriend i helped her get
now i am in a nonsexual relationship
with a woman who collects pigeon parts
she could mop the floor with my face
i am profoundly dysfunctional
but have nice penmanship
i am tame in a cage
i want electrocution or at least to be adopted
i could be the part of a mangled bird,
you could collect me.

26

2009-04-27T19:53:00.003-05:00

there is no one to share two am with you
two am will not even be among
your own memories
memory--failed word
nothing-having--exasperated success
the illness could push through you
until you are 35
and then throw you back to now
in the crook of two hours
two am
here is a tedious landscape of malaise
within the small room you did not paint
barely chose
you are alive and happy to be
but there is no one to share 26 with
you do not understand how others
can work and stay together
you have only been swimming through the murk
on which others position their water skis
what do you think of brazil
belize
do you travel
you do
at two am
you fly through your own moonlit warehouse
bay windows, scrawling roots
insect bite
tinnitus like cicadas hums
chorus of cricket legs
ambulance chorus
plastic braceletes
blow jobs
scarves
the broken lamp
cavities and bills
a 26-year-old fruit fly on your lip.

2009-04-03T10:31:00.001-05:00

i am a miner
my city is cold
i am digging blind
i am sleeping with pens
in my hand
in my jacket sometimes
wake up
and brian eno is playing
it could be one am
or five am
i could have died already
but missed it
because i was stoned
and curled up by the
space heater.

2009-03-24T04:13:00.010-05:00

it is 2:14 am.
i want a drink.
we got nuthin in the house
ive been sober, i don't want to be
you call me on the phone

i want you to talk to me
you say
were you sleeping
when you call you are three shots in
i need something
it is heavy on me
i am 26 and have nothing
i will be 36 and have nothing
i want sweaty hair and no fat,
coddled, harsh a so close hold
it is 2:19 you are sleeping
you are really far away
to say i would throw away everything when i already have
isn't much
but is what i have,
i will
i want to be a farmer
i want liquid colors, sun and small bugs in my clothing
you can only play jazz when it is quiet enough
i want one hot shot of whiskey in my throat
to go down into my stomach and remind me of
what it is like
to sleep beside someone who mixes up into dreams
splattered sepia tones
to be like that so hard tones
here is how: sleep until you can't anymore and then,
when you wake up, get high go back to sleep and then then,
when you wake up that time, lift your pen,
it might be ready,
it probably won't.

my nest is shallow.

2009-02-08T21:06:00.008-05:00

i have a shallow nest on a few dead branches on a dirty moor and you are trying to land, you are going to break this thing down.

"you don't care about school or work or what i do..."

we are in the car, "no, i don't care what you do for money. i don't care what money you make ...

"no, i know you don't. it isn't that. i can't explain it."

i understand the compliment you are trying to give me but i also get a suspicion that you are using me to learn how to be a dropout.

i don't know, it isn't a choice.

if it is, it is a bad choice.
maybe, i don't know.

a holistic body healer woman told me in whole foods that i should stop saying i am sorry and should get rid of my insecurity because it is causing me digestive problems and i said ok i will im sorry and she recommended a 27-dollar bottle of powdered enzymes and i bought it.

what the fuck?

i have been keeping a calendar for signs that I Am Alive that include such activities as

i wrote that bio, i did my laundry.
i talked to david on the porch like forever

6:39pm. "if u feel like tryin a day this week, i will match you. sober to sober. dont kill yourself i need you, sorry if that is creepy and selfish. love is stupid but loneliness is impossible."

2009-02-02T14:40:00.004-05:00

i am in this cubicle
i just threw up
i don't understand physics
or how to be a responsible person

stoli, needles

2009-01-26T11:58:00.002-05:00

8:23pm. why am i so totally obsessed with you? Not like that or anything. But seriously, you stay really active in my imagination. It kinda makes me feel crazy. Maybe i just need to write a novel about you. I dunno j.

8:38pm. im sitting in a dyke bar by myself. i dream about cola every night, im still there. strange.

8:51pm. lets trade. U can become selfobsessed and i can love living in cola. Wait, thats the way it is. Syke. I dont love cola. Just kidding. im reading stevenson for class and drinkin alone listnin to jay reatard and thinking about u every 15 mintues. Is this normal 4 u to always b on my mind and stuff. What am i willie nelson? Have fun at the bar.

10:02pm. the bar sukt im going home wiht stoli, otherwise alone.

11:16pm. stoli and strawberry. my hair is stringy in the window reflection. i invent intimacy in my dreams, my dreams are the closest i come to not being alone. you are that summer feeling.

11:49pm. he opened w a version of that in charlotte id never heard b4. Ur message made me cry 4 a minute. I guess im kinda drunk. I wish we could all live in some lush fantasy with a real god and real love and no more offices. down down. Gonna die for my fantasies.

12:12am. xanax abuse just put needle pricks in my arm to make blood. saw two men in the alley smoking something that made them feel goood they looked happy, maybe they are.

7:07am. maybe they were happy. Smoking cocaine makes me sad. Wasted money on a ball and a half last week. Xanax is better-cheaper and it wont kill u as easily. Fuck drugs and they withdraw and shoot cum at you. Do u know that baraka poem that starts with the same line, just sub poems for for drugs. When u tell me about cutting yourself it makes me wanna hold u and tell u lies like itll be ok. Its never gonna b ok and this is one reason i suck at love in any form. My parents made me wanna b jesus but i ended up like a poorly written kafkan christ-invert character. Then i remember early death and hospitals and death without money for hospitals-the murkiest corners of faulkner and mccarthy and df wallace and i prematurely shroud the hunger artist's display cage. This is one way i alays fail at life and loves. And im probably wrong about it. Wrap your wounds in whatever cloth-its all made in sweatshops in miller's china.

9:48am. my stomach hurts. my body hurts. i want to live in a place without body parts.

my crime against community

2009-01-14T02:22:00.003-05:00

it is a word like love
or an idea like love
or a word like idea
i'm not sure
i go with jc to the lesbian bar
spend some more money on vodka and i go home by myself.

2009-01-09T22:04:00.005-05:00

i will work on the interview and go home at eight or nine and ignore
neil young says love is the question, love is the answer
i question his circular logic
it is that i work where others buy houses and make families
it is that i picked truth over beauty and that i believe in
neither of these things.

bravery

2009-01-06T07:14:00.004-05:00

i know that i am stressed out because i am having dreams about catching planes and losing keys and abusive relationships and trying to mask morbid ideas. i only have one reader, and he might not even be a reader, and this blog could already be corrupt. i am trying to learn how to be brave.

i sent a pitch to an editor out of my league yesterday and am anxious like most people get about dates. i hate the sick flourescent noise of the place i work. i hate that i am too poor and busy for comfort and that comfort would destroy what i want to do. i hate that i am not sure whether that is true or i am just saying that so that i can justify being a fuckup.

the night that i broke up with andy, i was sitting outside and some woman i barely knew had a Big Talk with me about my drinking and self-worth. she had been a prostitute and drug addict but now she was a sitting-pretty queen sort of woman with long juliette hair and a big round body. i think that i am always thirsty in a chronic kind of way. i keep waking up in the middle of the night to examine my flaws. i didn't know how to explain to the woman that i am co-dependent on alcohol at this point because the wild and toxic next-day feeling is the way that i am brave and it is how i tear open the voice and that it is impossible to access or if not, hard enough that i do not know how else to look, it is like asking someone to kayak sober off of a waterfall. i don't know whether i will be able to do this but have bet or spent everything. maybe i will be able to do this but i am not sure.

2009-01-05T02:44:00.000-05:00

borderline

2009-01-05T01:49:00.007-05:00

i hyperventilated and pleasure shot through me like caffeine
we watched a movie and held each other A kissed me took me home i am still cold with panic i am in my room alone with nick drake and my hunger.