Of Night.

Deadly night, a shroud of stars upholding
Your pretence of loveliness – do efface yourself.
My ears guard the terrified
Heart, it-BEATS! it-BEATS! but the rhythm’s all wrong.

Paranoia whispers;
Sweet nothings with a savage zest thump
The wrong side of the drum, its pink skin
Straining to hear in the dark.

Dark. You’re always dark.
Pit of black, my eyes are blinded
And barred by lids fused closed,
Clever tyrant. What care you for voodoo

When, in me, you’ve your very own marionette
Swimming the crawl beneath
The covers in a bed-bath of cold sweat
And lachrymation; someone’s left the tap on.

Teeth clench on a pillow, the mouthful of down
Stifles screams that won’t
Stop until daybreak;
Certainly, something has broken.

The New Pen

It began with fresh sheets.
The soft blue cotton smoothed over the shape of us. I had the windows open, and the breeze made the curtains roll like waves. Everything was so pefectly clichéd.

I turned the music up. The Drifters, Solomon Burke, Otis Redding. I couldn't bring myself to listen to anything else. I still can't.

You put the tea cups down on the windowsill and took my hands in yours. Twirling us into the afternoon glow.

Later, laughing, I fell into the closest chair and you handed me a pen. Blue ink, fine tip. Tiny birds scattered along the shaft. Completely tacky, incredibly lovely. I felt an itch to write with it.

To write something. Anything.

So I did.

Your simple gesture was like fixing the washer in the bathroom tap.

Suddenly there's water.

That's the luck of the draw.

We have always been a one-way street.

Red carpeted. Plush.
Just the way you wanted it.
Even so
You would hurl stones through your plate glass windows

leaving me to clean up the mess.
you blamed it on me anyway.

It's getting too hard to take you.
I don't really know how to stand anymore. Propped up against this wall. It's probably asbestos.

but then again, maybe it's you.

I'll bite my tongue. I'll bite my tongue and wait,


that's the luck of the draw right?

The True Lady Luck.

I bear no resemblance to sunrise or starlight,
nor could lamp luster hold to me a candle.
Lightning, lambent embers, a radiant match -
each blaze black unremarkably.

Nothing ever lit up as brightly as I.
You bring that out in me. The shine.
Two years ago, a word from you
lit the day like an oil-bathed wick.
It's a wonder night ever managed to fall.

Nothing has changed.

I ache...

to be able to write again.

I want to let the words spill from every conceivable place.
but they don't. They won't. I ache to know why.

I have to be the kettle today. I have no handle. On any of it.
_____

Dear Diary. Mood: Apathetic.

_____

I just recently read(for the second time) and watched (for the first time) Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist.

It made me miss New York, and I've never even been there.
The book is fantastic. I think I could read it and read it and read it and never tire of it.
The movie- was good too. Michael Cera(!!!) and Kat Dennings were the perfect Nick & Norah, but I didn't like what the writers/producers/directors/whoevers did to the screen play.

If they had translated the book to the screen exactly- It would have been creamed-honey-fan-fucking-tastic.

Oh well.
---------
'I shouldn't want the song to end. I always think of each night as a song. Or each moment as a song. But now I'm seeing we don't live in a sinle song. We move from song to song, from lyric to lyric, from chord to chord. There is no ending here. It's an infinite playlist.'

--------

Well, that's all folks.
All I have to offer. A wishy-washy non-excuse and some kind of film/book review.


Better luck next time eh?

Shut the fuck up and leave me alone.

I ache for silence; for wet stockings, dripping hair and the joy of catching cold without interruption. I ache for the hungry stomach that goes unchallenged; for sunrise bedtimes that evade comment, and for tapered cigarette smoke out of my kitchen window.

Breeze-whipped ankles and bare feet on footpaths after dark strike me with longing. I ache for solitude; for pajamas rendered useless and for candlelit blackouts at 3am. I ache for the tin rooves that sizzled in summer; for mornings heralded by 100 watt windows that venetians merely decorated, and for concrete stairs that climbed high as my pulse.

I ache for warm evenings that fell like stars; for the plants that withered under my dutiful attention, and for the jubilance of hailing a cab at first light.

I ache for the weekends that passed without words; for unplugged phone lines and for doors locked against the world. I ache for a shower with the light turned off; for hardwood floors on sticky nights, and for eating straight from the pan.

I ache for lights left lit and dripping taps; for too-loud music and silence, silence, silence in spite of the noise.

Reality Bites.

Sometimes it's better not to ask. I laugh as I think it, but the sound is short-lived and hedged with bitterness. There's nothing funny about incapacitation.

Nervously, I slip a fingernail between my teeth. It's snack time for the panicked. I've been thinking. Plotting. Trying to find a way to have things work out for the best - best for me, of course. I know your mind far too well to expect success here. You think me erratic and baleful - too volatile for the pink-tinted world that you work tirelessly to manipulate. You are your own god, and yet you believe in nothing - not even yourself. Certainly not in me.

The thought of it - of escaping with you - nothing ever sustained anybody so completely. It is all that has been keeping me going. I dine nightly on my own misery, desperate to make it disappear - but it's bad for the system and always resurfaces in the morning.

Sometimes it's better not to know. I can almost hear your answer now. Only it wouldn't be an answer, really. It would be an amused sort of incredulity, sharp and silver, the final nail in my heavy, wooden sleeping bag. A perpetual resting place. I can picture you shaking your head, just as you did last time...the last idea. The need wasn't nearly so pronounced that time - the straight-faced no, a kick to the gut, it didn't hurt so much. Not as much as this would. Not nearly as much. I caught my breath that time.

No. Sometimes it's better to pretend. If I can keep myself selfishly believing that one day, things will be just as unbearable for you...if I can keep myself clinging to the thought of you, my freshly-painted life-saver, a bright patch bobbing merrily along the surface, maybe then I'll manage to keep myself together.

But the pieces are falling fast. I only have two hands, each as inept as the other at holding onto anything at all. I never could juggle. I have to get away before I drop everything...let go...

A bird in a cage, I can't stand being here. Upon reflection, it was stupid. Coming here, wanting this. I am my own special plague, hungry to conquer; incapable of leaving anything but destruction behind. Things are different with you.

You won't want to. I know it, and I know I'll hate you for it. And I couldn't bear to hate you. So I won't ask. Not yet. Maybe never.

We'll see.