portrait

we ate that pizza, that one time, by the lake,
you with your suntan, me and my library-tan.

the traffic jam, on Vermont Ave, you saying it's ok,
apologizing for the city, while we listened
to the same radio station for 5 days play the same
5 songs.
on the 5th you realized.

me across the table shouting what now!?
and you: oh, were you reading?
and me: no, i'm just staring at the book and turning pages sporadically
and you: it's ok i worked it out.

your room, mounds of clothes and books,
where we slept on wednesdays to catchup on
television and life,
and in quiet moments you'd whisper to me
you're young don't forget
and by morning i'd wake again to argue
with you about where all the pancakes had gone.

i missed your award. i blame your dad.
this time around, you will too.
and i'll go alone. and chit chat with him and her,
without a crowd an award's just a piece of paper,

___and poems are just words -
not even sentences, just puddles in some person's head.
some random dude half-a-world away with no name.
words that make no sense because it's just the leftover this's and thats,
fingernails and tulip bulbs and 3am's he's got lying around.

i found a little heart drawn into the dust on my lamp.
in the shower there's still a star of david.
somewhere under these books
there's a scrap of yellow paper that reads smooch.

i've put them in water to see if they grow.

i stood in the kitchen that one time,
midway between the fridge and pantry
what are you doing it's been 10 minutes? you asked.
i couldn't decide to get the cereal first or the milk.
when you get like this you have to ask me for help ok?
i'll help you.

and i nodded as you handed me the cereal.

___

the shovel story.

when the ghosts of me refuse to speak,
and in my dreams i watch tv
____Braid of Voices by DM Stith












iphone by .:*ghost*:.


he had no idea why he did it. many years later when he was a middle-aged nothing, the kid next door interviewed him for a highschool assignment and he'd say that the last thing he remembered seeing was a calender with most of the day blocked out. things to do things to do. to do. to do. in any case, he'd gotten up. knowing it was likely to be an important day he bothered to brush his teeth and wash his face. but that was all. he was still in his navy pajama pants wearing a tshirt that read on the front NOT ALL MIND ALTERING SUBSTANCES ARE BAD FOR YOU and on the back THE ECONOMIST when he walked into the garage and returned with a shovel. why a shovel? the kid later asked. what'dya mean why a shovel?
- i mean, doesn't it make more sense to get an axe or something?
- cause i didn't have one kid. that's what i found, that's what i grabbed. i wasn't really thinking it through like that ya know?
walked back into his bedroom and slammed it into the face of his white desk. truth be told it didn't do too much. splintered away at the chip board, shook the thing. papers fell to the ground. so he took a swing with it, hauling it back like a heavy baseball bat (slamming the wall behind him, the jiprock broke and a framed painting of women praying in Jerusalem fell to the ground) he swung it back around slamming the table from the side. one leg bent out of shape, but it was the end of the desk, that's for sure. three four kicks and heaving, panting it was done. looking right he saw the sliding doors of his wardrobe, he thought that'll be nice because it had glass on it, couldn't offer too much resistance one swing that was done for. he stopped and stared at his books a long while. but in the moment, who knows. could have been a minute could have been an hour. interestingly, it was the only thing left in tact when they found the place. his computer having been judiciously snapped in half and then bludgeoned, papers and folders everywhere, the couch with a knife through its heart.


*___*___*

- it means you don't know what you feel.
- i know how i feel.
- do you know what the name of your feeling is?
- yes.
- what is it?
- bad.
- i was thinking you could be more specific. like... disappointment, or, regret, or anger.
- ...
- ...
- nope.
- that's what i mean. you can't communicate to me what you're feeling.
- actually, i can. i can. i have this blog on the internet, where i pretty much spend all my time telling strangers who do or don't care about my feelings. i kinda feel crap about myself for it too.
- that's probably describing your feelings. is that what you're doing?
- yes.
- describe them now.
- ...
- ...
- it's a hallway. very plain. i walk to the end, i can only turn right. walk to the end, turn right again. and again. then i'm where i started.
- is that a feeling?
- yes.
- what's it's name?
- Gerald.
- very funny.
- i'm giggling.
- i can see that.
- but what is this feeling?
- i don't know. it's a kind of stifling no-air where the why the f&ck am i still here i thought we're done with this and no we're not we're stuck on the merry-go-round don't wanna be here i hate my tshirt why didn't i shave today what's the point of reading that saying hello goddammit i don't have any money left kinda feeling.
- name?
- Claudius.
- he was the good one right?
- yes.
- who was the bad-
- Nero.
- right right.
- you feel bad. you can't understand what the feeling is, so you can't fix it. half the time, i doubt you're depressed at all. i think you're maybe stressed, or disappointed, or regretful, or ashamed, and you don't know which. and because you don't know which, you don't know what to do about it. or know if it's a 'normal' bad-feeling. so it just stays.
- yes, but it's stagnant. it's rot. it smells. i can smell it. i can smell my own skin's unhappiness. everywhere i look i find hair and particles of skin. it's overpowering me.
- well, you need to be able to communicate with the feeling. you need it to introduce itself to you.


*___*___*

as i walk past i see a blue diabetes blood-sugar test strip on the ground. about a centimeter in length and a quarter of that in width. the colour of a meaningless sky. i haven't seen those in a while. whenever you'd come over there'd be a few around afterwards. they were your flower petals. like your hairs in my bed, or an occasional hairband besides my sink. after you left, i'd vacuumed. i've left your shampoo and other things as they are in the shower. there's a framed portrait of a sad looking cat that you said resembles me when i'm reading. but, the test strips were all gone. these test strips are more intimate. a little robotic chip with a dot of your sweetened blood on it. perhaps i am a hungry vampire, perhaps, this is my mid-afternoon snack. maybe i should pick it up and lick what's left. maybe i should pick it up and bring it to you.
instead i walk past, skirting around it. i refuse to pick it up, or interact with it. it's sacrosanct. it has to stay there.


*___*___*

- yes, but isn't this what your meds are for?
- not really.
- not really?
- no.
- i don't get it.
- the pills slow my brain down. so it's not soo erratic and jerky. they smoothe it out. that way, it doesn't fixate on negative things or create problems out of nothing. it's like static, static in my head, aberrations because it has too much, or too little neuro-energy-thingees.
- so...
- so, they keep me running smoothly. running smoothly, and functional. when i'm not erratic and static-y, then i don't get sad about random-nothing. and i don't have panic attacks about random-nothing.
- right.
- but if something tips me, the pills can't fix it. it's gone.
- is it gone now?
- no.
- where is it?
- around here somewhere.


*___*___*

i sit. in the afternoon. i can't tell exactly what time it is, the sun's gone behind some clouds it's suddenly darker. i watch an episode of Mad Men which helps me feel no-better but less alone. i eat KFC and giggle thinking about that episode of southpark. i take two pills washed with an energy drink. i had a friend in Israel, he'd always say: watch out for boredom. boredom's the mother of all naughtiness. i'm fine till i'm bored... after that... i sharpen my teeth on trouble. maybe he's right.
- hey, let's get high on something.
- no.
- no?
- no.
- ok.
- settled?
- yah. you make good points, forget i said anything.
- no prob.
- ...
- ...
- ...
- what you meant was 'let's go to the movies'.
- the movies?
- yah.
- is that what i meant?
- it is.
- c'mon. i'll buy you a frozen coke, you'll feel better.
- i will?
- you will.
- ok.
- settled?
- yah.
i come home and it's dark. i read something about economists being social engineers. i read three paragraphs about the origin of fiduciary duties: fiducia, from the Roman, it means "to trust". i fall asleep and wake up with a beard. black, puffy eyes. i get a haircut. transfer some money. get some KFC and come home. watch Mad Men, and giggle thinking about southpark. i take two pills washed down with an energy drink and realise that i just turned right for the third time in my hallway.

no one knows why he did it.
why he thought that it was a good morning to get a shovel and break everything.

thoughts (fragments)

you touch me,
i hear the sound of mandolins











untitled by ohsweetnuthin


Q, i fell in love she says. i nod, smile, look away the whole time. after a little while, she adds, he's in the army. he's 'there' now. i keep nodding. or maybe, it's that love is the devil. it's all i can think to say. amen bruther. i continue to think about the film about Francis Bacon i just quoted from.


*___*___*

she's got long brown hair. i imagine her in an old house, like my dad's maybe. can't tell the colour of her skin it's too dark in the room. she wears an oversized knit. in reality maybe it's purple but the lamp's missing a shade, so everything's cast a cheap golden tinge, i can't tell, looks brownish. she's like a little hope growing out of the old couch.

a couple hours later, she's thin. her hair colour's irrelevant. she sits with her legs crossed and dangles a slip-on from her foot. takes the other one off entirely, sits there reading. teasing gravity.

a while later she's short. eyes yellow, like a cat. smiley, but not too talkative. the kind you like to have around because they're happy but not annoying. she looks up at me - a consequence of genetics, nothing metaphorical. but it's an optical illusion, feels like we're eye to eye. in this dream someone calls me over. i look up, but she keeps staring at me. i'm extracted from my reverie.

with shorter hair she's cuter, but i can't tell why. probably makes her lips look more the shape of love-hearts. or shows her face rounder. she has on a tshirt she stole from me. when she moves i see glimpses of leg and underwear. when she looks away to think her own thoughts i remember to breathe again. when we kiss she'll whisper in my ear brrreeathe and i'll exhale on her neck. and she'll hold me till the blue cloud in me subsides. then she'll bring her face close for me to kiss again.


*___*___*

at the start of every semester i remember how tired i am. how much i want to go away. be away. how tired.
i walk out of the library, having stapled, holed and/or bound about 200 pages of reading. an armfull. i dream it's a package, wrapped in brown paper of flowers. orange tulips. or those cheap white flowers. or half a dozen fresh baguettes. or Finnegan's Wake. and it's not the brick path going down to my office. it's not that room, where i face dark wood paneling, besides a raised stage with a constructed judge's panel and three ornamental chairs. it's somewhere else. a cheap Berlin studio maybe. a rented garage in Wisconsin. and my footsteps aren't this silent hushed monk act. they'd crunch under half a centimeter of snow. a little crack, each step.

it's 2:11am i realize i haven't eaten since breakfast. the feeling in my abdomen is hunger.
yes but, do you understand what alexithymia is? my therapist would ask and i'd say yesyes i know what i means, i get it. except i didn't. i worked it out a few days ago. or maybe i knew it, then forgot it, then worked it out again independently a few days ago. it's feeling 'bad' without knowing why. not knowing what the feeling is, other than it's not happiness. it's sadness or hunger or fear or paranoia or disappointment or some million other things, i can't tell. i just know it's bad. so i wait it out.

it's not 2:14am. it's breakfast. they weren't sticks of bread, turns out they were flowers afterall. i'm on the second floor of an old apartment building. i have my balcony open, sheer curtains that blow in the wind. it's Paris i think. it's bright for the morning. it feels like this morning in Tel Aviv when i went with my dad. a decade ago almost to the day. i'm sitting with a woman who smiles at me but doesn't speak. we have heavy plates set out and i our tea from a japanese pot. maybe she's not really her, it's just the flowers. or she was the flowers. or there were no flowers at all it was just a handful of late autumn/early spring. maybe it's wasn't that either, it was 2:17am which is whatever you want it to be.
except breakfast.


*___*___*

i cancel my games of scrabble. tell my regular opponents i can't rematch them because i'm moving to Libya. to learn sorcery from an ascetic ex-cowboy named Wilbur Monroe. they don't believe me. i tell the next one i can't keep playing because i've been diagnosed with a terminal illness and i need to devote my final months on earth to sleeping in perfectly clean white bedsheets everynight and taking twice as long to select music to listen to and movies to watch because every second should be sublime. the third i resign from midway through. i tell him/her, who knows, that after months at the gym, i've finally put on the final 5 kilos required of me to be accepted into a professional wrestling organization and that they're paying for me to take acting classes with view to incorporating me into the show starting next season as a badass named Ateyour Mombo.

Le Moulin is playing on the ipod at that time so i decide to dress in a blue striped tshirt and i put on the hat that sits on top of my piano and has done so for the last year. i decide to pretend it's last year, so i put on the hat and sit quietly behind the piano. last year no one would have been home so i pause the ipod and take up at the next bar, playing it myself, quietly. with the practise pedal on so it doesn't disturb anybody. the nighttime likes it and i can feel a swell of darkness gather around the outside of my window as the night presses its cheek and ear to hear. she gets lonely walking the streets, i know that much about her. sees a light on, or hears a sound wants to see who's up.
___it's last year, so i still have a few friends. i dial a girl i know for no reason. just to get a response i tell her i'm a vampire, and vampires like having coffee at 2am. she says she'll have coffee with me. i'm so shocked i'm not sure what to do. she has on a black fake-leather jacket. something blue. shirt? maybe a sweater i don't know. i tell her i'm not interested in being her friend. she has to be my girlfriend and give me smoochies from time to time, or be my victim and let me suck some nominal blood from the back of her arm. she says she'll need time to think. fair enough i say.

my phone buzzes, i check the text:
i'm home alone. i have a bottle of champagne and toys. what are you doing? ;)

a year ago i didn't end up responding to that text. so tonight i delete it. get back to whatever i've been doing. reading. reading. reading. my eyes overheat. bad radiator or something. dry as weeds i drip drops into them all day. people ask me what it is i answer narcotics, eyes are the closest thing to your brain. your optical nerve travels a few inches up your nose straight into your brain. in 12 minutes i'll be Robinson Crusoe i won't give a f*ck about you. they don't seem to believe me. (the wresting-acting classes must not be working).

a year ago i'd probably not write to you. i'd find the half-drank bottle of dark rum i had hidden somewhere. listen to New Slang by the Shins on repeat. drink until i felt sleepy enough to sleep. this is what happens when you run out of diazepam. where're my pills? mom asked. gone. long long long gone. for the record she'd stolen them out of my grandfather's medicine drawer. after he passed away, knowing the value of an 8 year old one-third full bottle of benzodiazepines, we raided his house, every cuboard, drawer, under the bed. old boxes. what have you got mom? she didn't have anything. lots of warfarin. you? nothing useful. maybe i'd change the song though. after a while. Glorybox by Portishead for a while. Slow Show by the National. Eva Cassidy singing Autumn Leaves. drink till you sleep. only way out of it. when you wake up, your eyes are red, and the ground's been pulled up on one side it's annoying as hell and the guy from across the street crashed into the back of your car on his way to work. good morning world. good to be back. (maybe Birds by Electralene).


*___*___*

- Q-zee, what can i say?, i like the guy. and let's face it, we're not getting any younger here are we?
- no we ain't.
- no we ain't. anyway, his tour finishes in like november. and i'll be back in december. so i'll see him. we actually live kinda close. and... we'll just see what happens.
- sounds... prudent.
- prudent?
- came to mind.
- it's like the least romantic, least sexy word you could have thought of.
- love is like the least romantic, least sexy thing i can think of.
- when did you get all post-modern commitment-phobe on me?
- when post-modernism caught up with me.
- ...
-...
- he has lots of tattoos. couple of 'em i don't like.
- no one's got it all [i mumble this]
- what?
[i sing for her:

it's alright it's alright it's alright it's alright,

no one's got it all.
no one's got it all.
no one's got it all.

- [laughing] what the hell are you, are you singing!

i'm the hero of this story
don't need to be saved
i'm the hero of this story
don't need to be saved

i'm the

______(no one's got it all)


*___*___*

2:43am.

what now.

aye dee dee

You're the only thing i want anymore

live on coffee and flowers
____The National










untitled, Tamara Lichtenstein


his daughter sits in a room, staring at the wall and swallowing facebook until she's swollen with jealousy and whose new what has a thing or the other. __he cranks his head to the right when he reads, his ear almost lying up against his shoulder. listening. now that he notices it, drives him crazy. like glare that tires his eyes in summer.
rain reminds him of swimming. he thinks of it when his dad cries. he stands with his shoulder (that speaks to his ear) facing him, until he notices the wet eyes. then he decides to sit and be motionless for a while. __as usual, he can't think what to say, so he just nods. his dad waits to hear something from him. he asks his eyes to speak for him, but he's not sure what they say.

after the fit subsides, he walks around his room, listening to his pajama pants drag on the floor. rubs his eyes. he decides his hands smell so he washes them. again. again. the piano keys are sticky. the computer keyboard too. the white desk. the green pen. the black pen. he washes his hands, _again. (but it's stopped raining. it's quiet. loud. nothing. too much nothing.

he thinks about reading, but he hates the way paper judges him. the way his hands feel when they touch it. the way they pile on desks and coffee tables and on the floor like dried organs of ghosts slowly growing greener grass for skin. (don't think about spring). (summer's around the corner). (spring). (what f*cking hemisphere am i in this time?)

___i'll try to be more romantic
___wanna believe in everything you believe

___but i was less than amazing
___fall asleep in your branches
___you're the only thing i want anymore

goddammit turn this song off.
it's still there. like telling someone to pull the alarm clock out the wall.

mom's out. been out for about 3 years. comes in for little spurts. leaves puddles when she walks - no one, not even the rain has such small hands. there's a trail of emails. 15 unheard messages. won't pick up the phone anymore. won't do it. won't print anything unless i can print on both sides. i'm sick of killing tulips and cherry trees. can't take the disappointment.

so he opens the windows instead. lets in air. might as well get it all in before summer dries their hides ; after which he'll breathe scales and dusty fur. better let it in when it's green.
somewhere there's a car made to drive far enough. maybe run to the beach. to the park. to the edge of something. stand on the coffee table, try it on one leg. listen to Bach. the Shins.

sleep? no no. won't work. not like this. wrong sleep. like entering through the wrong door. won't work, won't get you where you think it will. or should. just play it again. the song. the game. the afternoon, repeat it. again, again. better to be stuck with it again then have to risk the silence. the nothing. can't have that.

for a week he tries to decide whether it's better or worse sleeping in a bed alone. took him 9 days he slept in the middle of the bed. felt wrong. territorial sovereignty ought to be respected. so he looked up from the ground when he passes them and smiles. yes, yes. hello. here, here's a joke for you take that. they laugh. he nods. thought it'd work. keeps walking relieving to be observing his shoes. __write me something nice.

so he opens his notebook to a blank page and writes: NY be nice to my GF.
NY, don't f&ck w/my gf.
LETTER TO NY.

then he ignores that.
sorry, where?
it's about troubadours. and the story takes place no-where because it's no story really. just, nevermind. screw you.

drink more tea. so he does.
words are no company, not even friends. where to go, where to go. you know there's rum and credit cards for problems like these. hide it, the inside of new shirts and jackets and dried with the ink of our unbled thoughts. whatever that means.

i'll get gold teeth. and take up BDSM. everyone needs a hobby. trailer-living. i've been meaning to read George Sand. i'm quitting to play the piano. i've only made a ginger-bread house once. that's why this is happening. the frosting wasn't so good. the bus shook the thing fell down. didn't even eat it. damn earthquakes. a natural disaster ruins every holiday season. what the hell are you talking about? she wants to know. i'm sorry, i didn't realise i was speaking out loud he says. you weren't, but you had loud thoughts she responds and he just looks at her.

there's a green swing. it's around here somewhere. i didn't leave it behind too long ago. 2003 i think. until then she smoked on it, in the rain. she had blue eyes. and he sat and stared out, because he got tired of getting wet. it's not here, it should be. there's no time to lose these things.

you're dumb if you don't know how smart you are he says and he pretends not to have heard it. no nononono. shakes his head. i just read everything. but not enough. more. later. more later, not now. because right now we have to have a fit. it's the time for it. time. schedules. important.

when was the last time something was actually interesting?
i gotta get outta here.
i'm tired.

it's all i want, but i can't spell the words.
coffee and flowers. that seems about right. Denny's maybe. here, hold this spoon for me, i saw my napkin fly out the window i'm going after it.
who says the devil can't fly?

fragments

because i can't sleep. or don't.
and find myself staring , at ... my bookshelf , piano , skinny girls' long legs and large white feet

and it grows dark, then light again. someone asks well? and i stare back, no nothing yet.


*___*___*

i had bought two tickets. through luck or timing or temperament i could not locate a date. screw it i went alone. and sat besides a ghost who judged me the whole time. at first i sensed no one listening to Stravinsky, i could feel people in the stalls staring at me and the empty ocean besides me. by Jeu du Rapt i had settled into the sound and darkness of the auditorium.

a decade later, we clean a room that's to serve a serve as our office. there's forests of paper to sort and throw out before we can see enough of the carpet to vacuum. there's plastic cups and motivational quotes all over the place. i find a bundle of papers clipped together and i take them to a quiet corner and sit down smiling. Q?, where are you?, you ok?
yahyah i say back. i'm fascinated that the cover of this bundle reads:

______REPORTS OF INTERNATIONAL
______ARBITRAL AWARDS

______RECUEIL DES SENTENCES
______ARBITRALES


______S.S. I'm Alone (Canada, United States)

something about that freezes me so i can't look away.
someone sneaks up behind me,__ oh, you found the I'm Alone case. good we were looking for that!, hey guys, Q found it.

_____

poem

untitled, casimms


quiet drifts in and out of rooms,
an afterthought. __sometimes anyway.
__(like after it rains, puddles we skirt around)

leaves behind little signs, you knew it was there, you can tell -
half empty cups of tea, maybe rum,
hardened tissues,
brake-lights are on an awful long time;
the real fossils are the movements in the darkness,
__snores or sighs or the taptaps of unsatisfied men on the internet at 3am


___*___*___*

i cannot taste the taste of my own dreams,
or unbraid them (
if they even exist )
__and i'm wordless,
__i can't spare a description
__only that the autumn leaf knows perfectly well what it means to dream,
___and have dreams
___and to be a dream ,

otherwise tomorrow is just tomorrow,
an alarm clocked interlude
between flotsam and piano melodies on the radio
while we wait for white fingers or candy red sportscars to play life-raft

otherwise tomorrow is just tomorrow,
adrift.
parenthesis to footnote.


*___*___*

the sadness is
that it is what it is,
our disabled younger sisters and strange older brothers who
won't come out their rooms,
our parents' most recent divorce,
__(we, first hearing about it midway through our fourth consecutive Redbull,
__breathing so deeply someone asks if we're still trapped in the swimming pool,
__and smiling, we answer only the blue parts)

is what it is,
i walk in through the door and can't tell if i've come home or left it.
or lost it, or if i just never had it.


*___*___*

life must be soo much such a large thing.
soo large that it takes soo many of our chests, and hot-air balloons
and pacific oceans to fill it out and give it shape.

and yet, the wars we fight are for the stain of a woman's lipstick on our cheeks,
or a sleep with no dreams -
silence and some colour to dye it in.


and like all things to do with life,

as far as i can tell,

there's nothing that can be ended

this here poem being its own ghost.

and an echo of this evening's shadow cast on whichever of my tomorrow's shows up in the morning.

small stories

and there were the two girls, side by side, thin-legged, in shimmering wraps, their kitten noses pink, their eyes green and sleepy, their earrings catching and loosing the fire of the sun.

____Pale Fire













bergen light, anna morosini


we walk the windy canals by venice beach, with the quaint houses and the chic couples and their chic dogs. mom says to the owner my god they're cute!! and the owner smiles back and keeps walking. i think they're the same as ours only rich. poverty seems to change the way even dogs look.


*___*___*

you can't bring her here she says. this is not a happy place, i haven't fixed it yet... we can't, yet. i nod. i know. it's not anything. it's just a thing. we're gonna get a place. somewhere quiet i say. she nods. yes. yes, that's good. that's... good. [at times like these 10 Mile Stereo by Beach House starts playing in my head like a well choreographed scene from a teen drama. "It can't be gone, we're still right here"]
stop thinking. i don't want to see you thinking. i don't want to see you lost in thought she says to me. i'm sitting on the side of the couch, with my legs on the cushion. i look like a Florentine statue. i'm fine ("we stood so long we fell") i say. hey, did you hear the one about the photographer who took all those photos of his pregnant wife? she looks at me a while. maybe, not sure, what happened?
- that's just the thing, i don't know. no one knows.
- take your pills.
- no.
- you should.
- i know. but i'd be up all night if i did.
- ...
- don't worry. i'm going to take 15 when i wake up.
- will that make you feel better?
- yes. in paradisum.
- what?
- May the ranks of angels receive you, and with Lazarus, the poor man, may you have eternal rest.
- are you speaking to me in suicide-note? don't speak to me in suicide-note.
- [i nod] i'll take them in the morning.
- good boy.


*___*___*

... to the extent that i think if i were someone else-er or more better maybe i'd be in NY having threesomes with russian models, or at least playing the clarinet to a two-headed cobra named Wiley in the streets of Marrakesh where i'd be unappreciated, the clarinet melodies in harmonic e flat minor hanging in the air and the cobra heads slowly nodding in a quiet trance where they've forgotten their mother and their quiet nest and the warmth of their yolk and the strangers staring at them, all they see is a peaceful black, a complete silence, a sleep with no dreams.


*___*___*

it occurs to me what's happened here. some point, a year or two ago, something in me stopped working. a tolerance for life. and noise. and hassle. and the people that cause them. and i walked into my room, and listened to Bernard Glemser and the Irish National Orchestra perform Rachmaninoff's 3rd piano concerto and read the Commonwealth Law Reports and decided that was life enough for me. where people's divorces and assaults and financial mishaps could be diluted to gentle abstractions where their punch was minimized. and appeals courts are most preferable, that way you don't need to hear from the victims and the plaintiffs and defendants and complainants and respondents and all those... trouble makers.
___every holiday, every break, every weekend away, i just want to be left alone to go back into my room, and turn on my sony micro hi-fi, and check my gmail, and make a cup of tea, and get into my calvin klein pyjama pants that are lime green with white stripes, and the Harvard tshirt Eman gave me and sit on my couch and read other people's problems being resolved. not my problem. not my problems. not mine. not mine. not ones that are attached to me. not my troubles. not those ones. those ones are out there somewhere. unreported. unfiled. unexplained. there is no evidence of them. not my troubles. not those ones. not my problems. not mine not mine. i have none. i am a man in a room that is growing old as fast as i am. i have none. i am in a quiet space where i am comfortable. not mine i have none.
i have none.
not mine.
i sit in silence
and fret in my sleep (which is easily ignored)

- are you having fun?
- sure.
- what aren't you telling me?
- i wanna go home.
- ...


*___*___*

my sister's dog's been shaved down. she looks like she has cancer. she scampers around my sister wearing a pink dress. why is your dog in a dress ahSra? from the other room she shouts back the answer: she's been groomed. i have to dress her now so that everybody doesn't see her vagina. why are you laughing? followed a few moments later by ew gross! mom, the dog period-ed on me again!


*___*___*

she must be half asian, her eyes have that shape. but only half. she's fair. light brown hair. freckles. blue eyes. she sits forward on the parkbench and stares away. her two friends speak over her shoulder. i can't take my eyes off of her. so i keep my feet moving until my neck can't contort any further.


*___*___*

the dinner party looks at me waiting for an answer to isn't it about time you got married? i stare back at them a few moments, collecting my thoughts. listen guys, if you want an answer to that one i'm gonna need my meds. there's unanimous laughter, the middle-aged man seated next to me is the most enthusiastic, good answer! might as well prepare your liver for the chemical onslaught it has waiting for it post 'i do'. in my head i think of another dinner party where i met a GF's father and uncle, you don't drink, you don't do drugs, you probably drive to the speed limit, what the hell's wrong with you kid? (to which the uncle adds: he's not married yet. then we'll see how sober he arrives home every night).


*___*___*

she asked me to write. write, i like your blog. i finally worked it out, it's just... little stories. small ones. only i don't like my stories. not usually. i write what i know. i know about our parents' divorces. our siblings' disabilities. i know about money troubles and midday traffic and heatstroke and names of the different pills that take the edge off. i know stories about lonely people with lonely dogs, and cities in deserts where you hide out waiting for it to all come clambering back up to your doorstep. screw these stories. that's what i think as i walk through the venice beach canals, f&ck these stories.

ZEGNA FAIL

untitled, o superman


- it's cause i have a fat ass, nothing ever fits
- not fat. muscular.
- fine. but nothing fits.
- i can take this out. it will make better, but not perfect.
- how much can you take out?
- inch.
- how much would be the ideal amount?
- inch plus half.
- so we're still 1/3 out?
- [nod]
- but it's nice, and such a good price.
- yes, good suit. good price. but, [he touches my shoulders and pulls down the jacket a little] too muscular, if grow little bit, no longer fit.
- if get fatter?
- [he smiles] muscular, not fat.
- [i think]
- stop thinking. i not allow you buy. take off. not for you.
- but it's such a good price!
- yes, but, life is life. good suit. good price. good physique. but not for each other. take off.
- thankyou, you are very honest.
- [nods and smiles]