things that haven't worked, a list:

+ hiphop.

+ having sex.

+ having more sex.

+ not taking pills.

+ taking pills.

+ taking more pills.

+ not taking pills.

+ reading Dickens.

+ taking a walk to get some air.

+ buying things i don't need with money i don't have.

+ buying more things i don't need with money i don't have.

+ running till my legs shake.

+ lying on my couch and staring at the ceiling.

+ lying on the floor and staring at the ceiling.

+ listening to on the line on repeat.

+ texting you, knowing that you don't want to hear from me anymore, because last week you gave me one last chance and i didn't know what to say because i don't know what to say because i don't know what to do think be - but i don't think i have any friends and even if i did i miss compiling end of year lists with you and now i don't know who to do that with and i'm not sure what this the all is was f&ckf&ckf&ck ___f  &   c  k_________.

+ masturbating.

+ working out. (heavier. heavier. make it hurt. it doesn't hurt enough. make it hurt more. ok, you can't physically lift that. fine. fine. you know what, half the weight. lift it 40 times. that'll show you. again. no? no? ok. run till your legs shake. oh. you know what, that's not an excuse. rowing machine. another 5 minutes. another 5. another 3. your arms are cramping? fine. walk home. but you're not allowed to eat for 5 hours. that's what you deserve. lick that.  ___who are you? ___)

+ writing variations on neruda's first lines (it so happens i'm tired of being a man).

+ not texting you. texting other people. making them laugh. undressing them. being confused about why it didn't work. doesn't work. can't work.

+ not having memories.

+ staring at my bookshelf.

+ waiting for it to rain.

+ opening my piano lid, sitting silently with my hands in my lap for 7 minutes. getting up. closing the lid. walking away. (___what a sad song that was___)

+ taking a shower.

+ washing all my sneakers.

+ icecream.

+ cinema.

+ movies at home.

+ aimless internetting.

+ iphone games.

+ texting you.

+ not texting you.

+ calling my mom. (and not saying anything)

+ scrolling through my contacts list thinking who i can call, knowing full well i won't call anyone because i wouldn't know what to say because because because. (___because is an open parenthesis that has no close. it's the ledge. just... is. and we all sit and stare, waiting to see what happens. but nothing. just silence. because is a word that has stood us up our whole lives. you know why? ___(

+ not drinking whiskey.

+ opening my windows for air.

+ showering again.

+ working on apps.

+ Southpark.

+ Community.

+ starting a conversation with the old lady sitting besides me at the cinema. ( wishing i knew her better. she was sweet. she made me feel happy. i wanted to be near her. i wished she were somebody in my life that i could visit. and change her lightbulbs for her. maybe once a week, i could time it for garbage day, so she wouldn't have to take the trash out.  i hope she doesn't have to take her own trash out // i hope i'm not sitting here writing this. )

+ going to mom's house.

+ having an amphetamine-comedown panic-attack and demanding to be dropped off at the train station at 11pm Christmas eve. ( // being disappointed when they didn't know you can't listen to anything i say when i'm like that )

+ not writing because i refuse to be a mopey sad internet blogger.

+ writing mopey sad internet bloggerisms.

+ listening to the rest of Cupid Deluxe. 5 times. each time in reverse order, last song to first.

___*___*___*

i give up. 

done:doing / things / stoppage time

___nocturne.

all day i've worried.
measured myself in bathroom mirrors:
__waistline and grade point average,
reputation and shades of dark under my eyes.
__it bothers me that i respect my exhaustion so much.

i'm under every bed,
whimpering and scribbling ideas for personal statements:
__ways to hide the shadows of self-unactualised me,
unsure what it would mean to fail at this one.
__or succeed. i can't find any meaning in it, beyond: do.


___*___*___*

___Oct-Nov-Dec.

i've given up trying to understand years. time used to mean something. maybe somewhere it still does, not here. ___i've stopped understanding myself. for one thing, i can't tell the difference between what i'm doing and what's being done to me. i see sun, i lay in it. someone suggests a book and the title stays with me, i read it. no idea why. i wake up, i walk. i walk. 50 minutes each way. every day. i hate waiting for the bus one morning it must have been pleasant and i took off walking. never stopped. ___sitting, waiting for my coffee she hands me her number. this has never happened to me before. i call it, no idea why. i can't think why i would. but then, i can't think why i wouldn't. seven days later she's half-naked on my couch. i'm kissing her chest and smelling her neck, but the whole time i'm thinking who did this? did you do this? do i? do we? how did this thing happen, i wasn't driving. (what is done, and what is doing - gone).

- q-dear, are you alright?
- ... [i can never say 'no'. silence or a grunt of some form is code for 'no', but then i surprise myself:] no.
- ... [now she's speechless, i never say no] what's happening, what's going on?
___what can i tell her? i fall asleep drunk more often than not, i'm maxing out on every pill in my cabinet, my gums bleed all day i can taste myself rotting, all day i chew gum to hide the taste and smell, and to distract people from noticing my decay, it's noisy in my head i can't tell sunday from thursday my internet stopped working weeks ago i can't remember if i have friends or not  i just move - i have a pattern of movement i just repeat it.
- i don't know. nothing. i'm worried. i missed the cambridge deadline.

that was before. it's better now. 

all night there are footsteps outside. it used to scare me. now i know: possums. bush-turkeys. lizards. snakes. bats. they're so loud - when i first moved here i was keeping a wooden post besides my bed to attack the marauders running laps in my backyard all night. sometimes now they comfort me...

it's 3am. i've been working on this since 8am. i took the day off work to finish it. i've been hopped up on speed and green-tea for weeks i can't feel my tongue and i've been chewing the same piece of gum since after lunch. the windows are all still open and a paper-thin moth knocks itself against a lighbulb. i ignore it. then five. then twenty. my entire ceiling, my desk, my lamp is quivering with them. i only notice because i tap my laptop screen to move one aside. i look up, and smile, and keep working. i pick up a paper, put it back down. pick up another bundle, shuffle through, find what i'm looking for, throw them all back. all the while the moths flutter about. now their wings occasionally become detached when they pick the wrong stack of paper to land on. i'm usually saddened when i kill something. but this seems... different. i feel like they are being absorbed into a dreamscape. they are part of a magic sequence and are entombed in it. in a year, it's the first time i've ever seen them, so i figure they are a distinct feature, part of the quality, of this particular, unique moment.  i keep working. when i look up again - at 3:47am - there are no moths left. not on the ceiling, not on the table. no where. i don't understand where they came from, or where they went. or how. (what is done, what is doing). i just move, i keep moving. to the couch. where i read the newest draft.

december is always the heaviest month. i hide from everything. avoid people. avoid my liquor cabinet. avoid thinking, no thinking. move. just the pattern, just the steps. wake. walk. work. walk. gym. walk. sleep.

___in a way, this is it. i didn't know it was, or would be, but it is. when i started, i thought, well, if it doesn't work out this year, we'll try again next year. but actually, we won't. either i'm good enough, or i'm not. either it happens, or it doesn't. i've done all i can to prepare. my 5-year plan has run its course. now i write my statements, and i hide my blemishes, and i sing my songs, and


___*___*___*

i don't know what to write about anymore. i know that i miss writing. i used to need to do this. it used to remind me who i was, and who i wasn't. it was a way of looking at things, and seeing adventure and erotica and tragedy and romance in little tuesdays and dented afternoons. now it's just haze. a unified mass of what else could it be? a self-fulfilled proposition that takes me for granted in its design. my days just are. they are a fact, a truth. but they don't really mean anything to me anymore. they just go. like a river. i float. i paddle. i don't know why - instinct? habit? i don't know. but i just proceed through it. edging on. 
___and it's noisy. and sometimes it goes from thursday morning to sunday night and i don't know what happened. how. whether it was something i said or did, or whether it just happened to me. whether it requires any input from me at all. whether i'm a passenger or not. who are you? why are we undressing? are you doing this? i thought you were numbers on a piece of paper, how did you come to be here?

she leaves.

i walk to my bed.

and start shaking my sheets to find her detached wings.