Your tongue was cold from letting ice cubes melt inside your mouth. I tasted the remnants of Coca-Cola when we kissed. You’d been pool-side, bathing in sunlight, and your bikini was still wet when you pressed against me. It left a damp smiling face on my shirt. You undressed in the locker room, and we laughed together at your tan-lines. The smell of Coppertone ran up my nose as I closed in on your skin.
And now my neighbor, the young Mexican girl, is trying to call her little dog out of my backyard. The rhythm of her language thumping like a drum, reminding me of the chanting of family spirits trying to get me out of the house. Mom would call from my bedroom door, “Sweetie, it’s so beautiful today. Why don’t you go outside?” I guess I’m overwhelmed at the loss of that summer with you, when I was full of promise in my youth. The fear of leaving this couch mounting up with all those wasps building their nests around the doors of my house. A pile of excuses that sound right to me.
Anna got out of my car and walked into the desert. I was too mad to go after her. I waited in that leather car seat and sweated into my shirt until my concern outweighed the anger. I followed her tracks, but I was at least 20 minutes behind already. Then her steps ended in the middle of that hot nothingness. Her last two footprints were side-by-side, and the air had a fever where she had stopped to stand. God had reached down, between the clouds, and picked Anna up out of the sandbox. I wept and stars opened their eyes across the blue sky to watch me. I felt vulnerable beneath their gazes,
so I searched for a cave to wallow in. Then I found a cave, and at the back of the cave was a family of coyotes. They jumped on me, and I let them have me easy. Their teeth tried to break into my head. My squishy brain cowered at the bottom of my skull. My blood broke free from its skin-trap and leaked about on the cave floor. The coyotes saw this and stopped gnawing at me and started dipping their paws into my blood. They grinned and yipped ecstatically as they ran and painted all along the den walls. I laid down and Death made something beautiful out of me. That goodness I couldn’t remember how to make. That flower I could not make spring.
My family’s farm has become acres of dead grass. I watch the mosquitoes prick my skin but remain unfazed while I rock back and forth on the front porch swing. Bianca was my little sister, but now Bianca is a witch. Mom caught her summoning spirits after church today. She said Bianca was locked up in her bedroom, knocking on the floor, and whispering for The Devil to come up. Daddy prayed about it for a real long time,
then he chained her tiny wrists to a stake out in the front yard. Now my sister is yelling frantically from the middle of a giant bonfire. I’m trying to convince myself that she’s just singing. The flames lap their tongues in the air as they eat all the oxygen. Soon little sister’s lips will turn blue, and she’ll be devoured too. My father and uncle pour their jugs of backwoods-whiskey into the fire. The angels watch them from balconies in the clouds, and twist uncomfortably in disgust. Uncertainty is plaguing my brain like tiny tumors. My nose has started to bleed. There are little red dots beneath my dangling feet. Mom’s always got a handkerchief waiting for me, but I don’t feel okay with running into her arms anymore. Bianca isn’t screaming any longer, and the heat isn’t pressed on my cheeks like it was. Off in the distance, I see huge gusts of wind sweeping along these flat lands. The roar of that brown chaos is coming closer. Dust gets kicked into my wet eyes, and my family scatters for shelter. A crooked tower of smoke soils the white sky gray, and droplets of rain begin to streak the house windowpanes.
It has been storming for hours now. My mother is eyeing the bathroom mirror carefully to apply lipstick to her puckered lips as she prepares for Sunday night service. The noise of heavy thunderstorms will cover up any sounds I make as I sneak out of my window later tonight. The dogs won’t bark; they’ll be asleep in their house beneath the porch. My parents will be resting easy as their minds keep them believing they’ve done what was necessary. Back in town, floodwaters will raise caskets of bones to the surface from the cemeteries. Each wooden death-vessel will float along the rivers that were our downtown streets. By morning, all the town’s people will have ghosts waiting beside their beds.
But I think you got too into the things you find interesting when they locked you up in your house, or the way you locked yourself up in that house with the way you make mistakes and get caught because of minor details. like a taillight being out. and now i come over to visit and drink a six pack as fast as i can and go to the corner store and buy you cigarettes because you always tell sad stories in an exciting way. and we sit at your mother’s kitchen table and you blow smoke in a way that’s not in my face and you tell me how your boss probably touches the waitresses inappropriately. and now i won’t touch my beer, but i’m drinking from a new whiskey bottle and petting your dog’s head: feeling slobber and thinking how your mother’s place is a complete disaster. a pig sty. and i feel at home because of it. with the ants crawling along the kitchen counter. and the bacteria colonizing in the dirty dishes and sink water. i feel fine.
trailer trash. poor and free.
when you find yourself not saying anything to stop something bad from happening. growing apart from all the people that connected you to life in a way that felt right. the way you walk into that feeling of being on your own again just like you walk into spiderwebs in the summer’s sweat. your fate won’t come off. invisible threads cling to you.
it’s been an hour since i ate, but still there’s this tiny piece of meat stuck at the back of my mouth, between teeth. it’s making me feel sick, the way it gives and pops when i gnaw on it. i tongue it to try and push it out. but i keep thinking about dead things. little pets. or animals living wild, that could have been pets, that are now dead. and pieces of their bodies are swimming and sticking through and to the inside of my mouth. and they are making me sick. i want to throw up all this life inside me.
there’s a city i’ve made up in my head for when i let my body sleep. apartment buildings with just a few junkies left for tenants. i search through the rooms full of sex and porns being made, watch the dead fish float downstream with their addictions. eventually we all find ourselves with our parents’ values. oh, and i want to penetrate. to be something in this underworld. to join in on something my desire has lead me to. to leave behind my concern on an interstate as i start my journey towards the city. oh, memphis. i’ve loved you since my first medical emergency. a child being put under in the gift room of Lebonheur hospital. breathing in on sweet tasting gases. the touch of the nurses, keeping me alive with their soft hands. pads of flesh and cold rags on my forehead. focusing on these unfaced pleasures.
Well, today was the day I found out that I didn’t get to join the 27 Club. I’m both disappointed and slightly relieved. Just sucks to find out I wasn’t as interesting and infinite as Kurt Cobain was by that age. Still, it’s kinda good considering I haven’t done anything particularly great in my life yet. I did think of a television plot-start today, though (think something similar to Seinfeld or Louie):
A famous comdedian has an audience member sitting at a back table who heckles and ruins the funnyman’s show by suiciding, via gun to the head, all over the club floor.
It’s a start. Anyways, miss you, Robert Johnson, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse. Chill with y’all soon!
Are there any chill ppl in the 28 club?
PS - If “On Not Getting into the 27 Club” is my title, should the ‘i’ in “into” be capitalized? I can’t remember school, y’all, and it’s bothering me. Oh well, I’m sure I’ve made worse mistakes in the actual body.
i watched five episodes of Cold Case Files. i wanted something a little lighter after all that. ultimately decided to start watching a doc about the salem witch trials.
I’ve started sleepwalking again. I’m interested to see if I’ll do it again tonight. It’s always fun to guess what objects I’ll wake up with in my bed and what things I’ve rearranged in my room.
I woke up at 4am this morning with several things out of order in my room, and it really freaked me out because I didn’t realize I had started sleepwalking again. I had the eerie feeling that something had been in my house while I was sleeping. Demons, ya’ll!
- Pink Floyd (Band)
- Moonrise Kingdom (Film)
- X-Men (Movies, Comics, Cartoons)
- Coconut (Food)
- Songs by Bon Iver besides “Skinny Love” (Musician)
- Mustard (Condiment)
- Friends (TV Series)
- Andy Warhol Art (Artwork)
- Fish (Food)
- Babies (Creatures)
animals get their winter coats. do people get different mindsets for winter? if i kept my summer mindset, would i not make it?
dumping vodka and milk down my throat, waiting for warmth and a numb-faced feeling. slapping myself while i pee. not flushing feels careless and better than flushing. climbing back into bed trying not to disturb the sleeping cat at the foot of the bed. listening to violins in the song and not feeling sad. not feeling anything really. only drinking to exaggerate emotions, but they won’t come. knowing that i need to be at work in the morning, and drinking in moderation. cutting myself off. last call. and i want to be touched by anyone concerned enough to say hello.
In the past few years, I’ve developed a fear of being sucked up into the sky. I can’t look straight up into the sky without getting weak at the knees and feeling like I’m having a mini anxiety attack. For some reason, I can still look across the horizon and be fine. It’s just looking directly above me that does it. I’m afraid gravity will suddenly stop and everything, including me, will shoot up into the sky. That we will all burn up in the atmosphere. And if not that, we will lose our breath in the black of space.
Someone on Yahoo! Answers described it pretty well here.
I also lose my breath, in the bad way, when looking at enlarged photographs of space. My life.
jacking off until i come onto this morning’s bath towel. feeling lonelier for it. feeling guilt. dirty, old-man guilt. always wanting to get back into that first pure light while walking further into the darker parts of the forest. wanting flesh. to grab flesh. to take in flesh. hold it in me. hot milk dripping onto my stomach as my body shudders and feet twirl to keep the quick, fleeting high alive inside my body longer.
and now, in my mind’s blankness, i want nothing. i need nothing. no desire. and it is so good to not want. relaxed, but within minutes, my muscles are tightening again. my thoughts leading me away from the searchlights and further into the wilderness of night with some catastrophe that i’m making up for myself.
being scared of spontaneity led to laying in my own bed, letting myself be sad about nothingness while interstates and highways sprawl their way to you. they make you tangible. i know if i drove long enough, you’d be at the other end of the pavement. and i need that sort of certainty. and i need to be crushed beneath nighttime skies. beneath roaring jets. fleeting love. a can of caffeine on the shoulder of the road. could you keep me steady through winter? a sick soldier that’s full of bullets. it’s never as bad as i can make it sound. i just want to come alive again. like when the warmth of liquor first hits the top of your stomach. i’ve given myself over to companies just to keep myself alive. i give them my time, and they give me the money to spend in their stores to feed this body. put their waste down my throat. keep me on the earth. in this life. i guess i do exist. or when i move people react. and if i’ll ever scream, you will know me. and i want to scream. in front of everyone. to cause a scene to see if anyone is here, too. to get it all out. purge. throw up. these emotions that shake me down. i want to hurt others. i want to know, do the people i see around me feel things? i see them making small talk with anything with ears, but do they exist? are they real? can i make you alive to me? can i see suffering in front of me? will it make me cry? i want to know the reasons for having a soul. being here, what do i mean? what does my life mean? these things i think, what do they amount to? do they go down in someone’s book? is someone keeping up with me? do i matter?
in your cities i am small and naive. in your department stores i am dumb to customs, but you built it up, and i was born into it. and i fear Death like a stranger reaching to grab my shoulders. rounding corners with intent focus on my beat. a dog on my trail. its muscles rolling small waves of black hair down the sidewalk. that dark wave coming towards me. teeth showing like bones, like knives.
