can_not con_troll, must_can't_stoppp ... wallowing. [run]

it rains without warning. i'm already shaky on my bike, now my glasses are covered in droplets and i have to tip my head to see anything. i'm soaked in seconds and suddenly the wind as i propel myself forward hurts, stings even. cars spray hello to me with their tires as they pass. it's immediately darker.

i crack open a smile on my face. hello life. i've missed you.


___*___*___*

it's a strange feeling to know, had i not taken my pills this morning, i'd have spent the day in my room measuring the contours of a sadness i couldn't explain, understand or fathom. since i missed my afternoon dose, i can feel it climbing out of its well now. it's such an odd feeling. i can sense my brain's chemicals ebb and flow, a little this way, then back that way. a neuron war.

finally, as i walk into my house (it being too late to take my dose now) i ... actually screw it i'll take half. (i don't like where tonight's going)


___[goes] ___--> ___[returns]


___*___*___*

FEARS I AM TOO TERRIFIED TO SPEAK OUT LOUD, A LIST:

- i am too far gone to be lovable, or loved.

- i am not too far gone to be lovable, or loved - but i will feel like i am and therefore sabotage all opportunities to love and be loved

- i will spend the rest of my life wrestling with my sadnesses that i might as well name since they visit for tea so often

- mediocre. mediocre. mediocre. mediocre.

- i am not growing old. i am old.


___*___*___*

one day we'll all tire of this.


___*___*___*

i'm not allowed to think about you. i decided that was a good mechanism to handle myself. to keep me locked onto the train tracks so i could stay the course.

somewhere inside me there's a room full of origami swans where i've hidden you. and the whole of Vietnam. and two weeks worth of Adelaide. and our first coffee at 2am. and whatever i might think,

your eyes
the sky
half the blood in my heart -

is all the same colour. blue.

and the sky here is perfectly grey, which means every tree-branch and church spire and electric line is the black of your hair.

and my pills eat my loneliness like cookies. insatiable for it. but every now and then, when there's a crack of clarity in the otherwise drugged haze i keep myself in, when warmth creeps into my fingers (the pills make me cold. peripheral-vasoconstriction) ...

i'm not sure what the word is for emotions anymore. for wanting things. i've been excluding myself from those things. from wanting. from emoting. it's... a mechanism. to handle myself. that's why it's difficult to write. to describe. i could never understand, but i used to be able to describe things pretty well. i can't do that anymore either.

foggy glass.
another shadowed sunday,
with wet trees
and when the streetlights come on
everything will be toxic yellow outside my window.

and i'll consider the silence.
count the words i said today, or remember saying.


___*___*___*

one day i'll have to pay for all this.
the skin i've borrowed and the eyes that were loaned to me.
these hours i've amassed or squandered.
i'll return with pockets empty but for lint, a few receipts, chips of paint off a red
heart i've banged up a few times and

who knows what the total'll come to.


___*___*___*

dear god,
remember i have tried to be a man.
and have tried to divine what that means.

but again i have been defeated by sunday. by love. (once every 4 years). by the rain and the colour blue.

by distance and time. and the distance between time(s) which i cannot count.

and by my hair which i cannot save. and my skin which sags now.

next spring they'll come looking for me in my silence, and find me frozen.

remember, dear god.
you can't fail if you didn't try.