hello 4:21am

IMG_1718 by Andrew J Keep <--- awesome person


sometimes you write to create the world you wish you had. beautiful women. restful nights. large Southern houses with white bay windows. two parents. that kinda thing. sometimes you write to vent what you actually got in your pocket. (rather, what you don't got). most of the time comes right down the middle. fragments of wishfulness and autobiography. meaning, i transmogrify myself into limbs and outbursts and chorus chants and dreamscapes and paranoia and end up right back in my bedroom at 4:24am still writing the same blahblah still thinking the same blahblah and still satisfied enough to try again.

(sidenote: i have green knight by the memory tapes stuck in my head i'm listening to it for the 10th time today).


*___*___*

___'he's a force of nature'
___'you're a force of nature'
___'na-uh. he's a force of nature'
___'fine. he's a force of nature'
___'see. now you get it'
___'yah. i get it. he's a force of nature. and you're a chump'


*___*___*

maybe i just always like to be up at this time because it's my own little private uninhabited world where no one calls or emails or texts and there's absolutely nothing useful that can be done at 4:32am so you drift off and spend some time embodying inanimate objects and another hour as a shade of slightly not soo dark shadow under the coffee table and read a little and listen to something or another and sunrise is always worth the 99c magic show and for a little while it's the quiet place you always wished it was and for a little while it's all yours and no one elses and for a little while it can be anything you want it to be the perfect life-sized playground made of libraries and concert halls and perfect black pens and when i'm lucky (sometimes) from time to time she sleeps in my bed and makes a soft purring sound and i look over from my desk every now and then to see the contours of her body and the silhouette of her skin and her little feet and her this and that under briefs and a singlet.


*___*___*

when it is fall and i am in chicago i will drink hot chocolate in the law library and walk with my hands in my black pea-coat pockets and keep to myself and share my thoughts with the Balthus'es hanging in the Art Institute and when people ask me questions i'll just smile and say i have no idea.


*___*___*

___'i don't know if you're aware or not, but you did that entire moot without looking at any notes'
___'uhm'
___'you were quoting judgments, like, reciting passages. but you never looked at your notes'
___'uhm, thankyou?'
___'it was incredible'
___she leans over from the left and takes her pen and scribbles on the paper between us:

_________ssooperr epic BIG nerd ---->
_________(you ar)e

and i just nod. take the pen. write beneath hers

_________Thou art chumpest of them all
_________<---- to which she makes a face.


*___*___*

so why do i repel when people try to touch me? i keep turning away so by morning i'm on the edge of the bed. she won't let me get out so she holds her entire hand around my index finger. i sit on the edge of the bed feeling sick to my stomach from amphetamine come-downs or caffeine withdrawals or morning sickness or loneliness or future-fear or self-loathing or hunger or a pure unadulterated happiness i'm not sure how else to respond to. meanwhile she falls asleep still holding my index finger. for whatever reason i just sit there for a half hour or so. staring at the black of my piano and noting the gradated changes in light as the sun comes upper and upper. eventually i slide my finger away from her hand because it was going numb. but i keep sitting there. another 10, maybe 15 minutes. i hear her stir behind me what are you doing? ___to which i have no good answer. so just stare at her oddly i feel soo ill i say. why? i don't know. because. because i say.

when she leaves, in a hurry. i take two pills washed down with redbull and i sit at my white desk and stare at the painting on my wall and it reminds me of autumn. and i stare at my books. and i find it difficult to form thoughts, and i find it difficult to transcribe my emotions into...


*___*___*

i'm not hibernating Ash. but i'm not really here either. one day i'll look up and it'll be another year or another life and we'll be drinking lemonade on the moon and we'll say to each other how'd that happen kiddo? and we'll shake our heads in amazement and say something like hey text Mona, see if she wants to meet us on the westside for a movie or something. and when she gets there i'll mouth into her ear completely inaudible, just the heat of my lips moving the words _how_strange_the_sound and she'll be the only person on whatever planet we're on to know what i mean by it. and she'll look back and say how strange the sound as if answering a question i had asked (which maybe i had) and it'll feel like...


*___*___*

i'm listening to Lionel Richie at 5am.
try not to tell anyone.
it can be our little secret.
like a penpal thing.
or a pregnancy.
something like that.

___(guess i'm on my way.


*___*___*

On my tombstone it will say... (one of the following:

it's too late to die young.
in any case, he tried.
Thy Trust hath been returned to Thee.
stillness, at last.
save the last chance for me.

how strange the sound