"screaming lovewords at a cement sky"

well. a crazy busy week. a lot of alcohol and silliness & strange twists & turns. i am trying to take a new approach to life -- more spontaneity, more acting on that voice in my head that urges me to take the plunge.

music is the best thing. where would i be in my misery without elliot smith? how could I feel expansive and timeless without neutral milk hotel? How could I feel vulnerable & kaleidescopic without coco rosie? where would past relationships have been without the velvet underground and kind of like spitting? how could I ever remember my highschool boyfriend without rancid, the casualties, & leftover crack? drinking's not much fun without murder by death; could i ever have deep feelings for someone who didn't find the fruit bats or regina spektor as pleasant? and if ever i need to feel as if i'm being resurrected, the appleseed cast is there for me. could i remember the dirty thrill of my first trip to camden without ike's horrendous gangsta rap mixtape? and i certainly cannot conceive of god without xiu xiu and the decemberists.

 I know what it's like to anoint my inner tides with synthetic sweetness. I know Valentines Day is a popular day to visit the graveyard. I know what it is like to sleep on my feet, while talking, or even while loving. I know how sleep abandons you after you abuse it, and I know I will never wake up the way I once did as a child, when I was on intimate terms with the sunlight and the natural good and slowly golden rhythms of desire. Instead now I drink my weepy strawberry wine, in the graveyard or the parking lot of a chain grocery store, with boys who rise with the sun and disappear with the dew.

      They say write what you know, but they don’t mean it – they mean write what they know. What do I know, anyways?    I know how to steal. I know how to slip down aisles in Walmarts, malls, and supermarkets, absorbing razorblades and Nicorette gum into my sleeves, I know how to line a bag in tinfoil so as not to set off alarms, I know the exits, I know not to run to the getaway car if I am chased. I know if I am chased, I'm on my own. I know if I'm caught when they chase me they will not be gentle, and they will mock me, and I will suffer all the myriad torments of withdrawal and incarceration. I know if I am thrown in the clink, I will lay there musing upon the beauty of the word “bail,” the bail no one will bother to post for me. I know where to bring the goods I risk my freedom for, the bodegas run by Domincans, Columbians, Mexicans, most of them have killed fiends who tried to rob them, and are very proud of it.

I know I will never again pass a prison without choking on my grief-bloated heart, and tasting the rusty water I sustained myself upon, feeling how I felt when there was nothing to see but suffering walls. I know how to sleep on a rubber mattress on a steel slab, I have known nights endless and bleak my God, nights that stuck in my stomach and lined my throat with bile and stuffed my veins with concrete I will never extricate.

    I mean, Jesus, you see my point? Who the hell wants to know things like that? Such things stumble through my memory galleries, these crippled images, all night long, while the trains sob and the trees wave their arms, in ecstasy or horror, who can tell? My skull is filled to the brim with these orphaned images, so they get into my blood and circulate through my entire being and somehow escape in torrents from my fingertips. So here it is and I’m sorry that there’s so many battered and broken children in this story, but I’d rather you focus on the light that leaks from them instead of their bruises.

        It’s scary and there’s a threatening scent, but I am acquainted with the land of Nod, the land of whirlwinds where criminals and maniacs dwell, the shadowland of beggars and thieves. I will take your hand, and show you where to step -- the boards are dry-rotten in places, you could break through the roach-eaten wood and plunge down into whatever depths dream beneath the foundations of this “city of endless night.” We don't want that. I have something to show you -- I want you to notice what they never did, and what I never did either. I want to show you how I became a ghost who haunted supermarkets and disreputable neighborhoods.

Once I thought I could just take off, but then the morning would be carried up with the birdsongs and hit me like broken glass and flat beer, I’d hear some voice from the previous night: “We can share blood like cigarettes, all shot out, those whom the gods love, die young, there’s nothing here but air to breathe,” etc, etc, etc, and I knew that change was just another delusion. I was spending my youth with the kind of cut-up kids who could find God in a dose of acid, and sustenance within the contents of a shorted Newport and an Olivia Tremor Control song. I’d changed a lot from when I was little but I still took the time to pick up the drowning worms out of the water when the sky got gray and gushed lukewarm holy water.

       Only very recently has it occurred to me that these four years, which have passed in a chemical haze of brutes and bricks and blissless blankings, interrupted by the ugly snarl of sirens and the patient presence of institutional walls, must have had terrible beauty inlaid through it that I, the removed observer of this reality that existed just for me, failed to notice. Now that I've removed the silver layer of charmed sleep from it all, I sense faces rising up through the primordial muck of my mind, through the silt that lines my blood.

Goind through a rough time, reading of course is my relief. The following are passages from "Candy" by Luke Davies, a book introduced to me by the incomparably screwy Amy Renz, in a cinderblock box. I relate to so much of the narrator's lack of sense of self and feelings of extraordinary empathy for the trap we're all stuck in. Here's some that are particularly intense to me, in case you care to bring yourself down. (This is probably one of the most depressing books written, ever. And as a conneiseur of depressing books, you can trust my judgement on this matter.

"In the end, life can be seen to be inconsequential, in the way that nothing matters on some vast evolutionary scale. But everything matters, and we know that most when life seems most horrific, when at each instant of time, all the space around us is everything there is.
    Suppose this, Candy. Suppose all time was not the way it is with us. Suppose its mellifluous curves and parabolas, its contractions and contortions, the furious or sedate blood of its pulse, were of a different mathematics altogether. Or say the eye that views could view with the remoteness and the slowness of rocks growing, continents being born, galaxies roller-coasting through the universe. Imagine if we could stand above the flow of time and look down on it just as we stood on Mount Danenong and looked down on the dots of traffic ten miles away and below.
   But there is a blackness all around. We can't imagine anything. We can't suppose. We are trapped inside the thickest of boundaries.

But it's best not to trust clarity. Better to welcome and accept the mist that seeps into our life, that clings to our clothes, that soaks us to the bone in the scrapyard we are lost in. The mist. Absence looms like a mountain, I tell you.

There is only the relentlessness of coping, punctuated by naked singularities of bliss. In the middle of such moments contentment is absolute; there is only h, there is only Candy, the three of us adrift on the endless sea of love. We carry the ocean within us and with us wherever we go. Suicide is therefore not so much ridiculous as impractical, since Candy and I are immortal. 

Waking up with leg cramps, it is possible to envision a plane of such endless proportions that every atom contains specific scenes of interest. Stone pillars crumble. This takes place over centuries. You have that much time. Follow the path of an eagly, wings spread widw, as it traces in an infinitesimal rate of curvature a swoop of beauty so painful it takes your breath away.
   It is possible to follow this thought through to others (emulating, with some grace, the path of the eagle), even when stomach cramps come on. For a while, in the gray bewtween sleeping and waking, for seconds, or even a minute, it can feel okay to be alive. And then you wake properly.
   And it all comes rushing back. You ask the question, Who am I? And the answer is always the same. I am nothing butn eed. I will hate today like every other day. It's so hard to experience beauty when it all stands in contrast to a great unbeauty.
    Candy is beside me, drenched in sweat. She's breathing gently, long slow breaths. I imagine her soul going in and out:  wanting to leave, wanting to come back, wanting to leave, wanting to come back. The day will soon harden into what we need to do. But for now we have each other.
    We run a bath. In the faint phosphorescent light of the storm, we submerge ourselves to our necks and our legs intertwine. Nothing could ever be this close. Everything is the best, or else, "I can't go on living like this. Oh, God, it's all such a mess." We stroke each other softly and feel entirely dislocated from the earth, which has never existed.

But I think in the end, with all those holes, you kind of do something. It's like you have a container to hold your soul, and you turn it into a colander. So much of you leaks out, until there' barely anything left. And you just keep lowering your standards, to deal with the barely anything.
   You just leak away. And if you're lucky, then one night in the silence ,in the deep heart of the dark, you'll hear the distant trickling of the blood in your veins. A weary world of rivers, hauling their pain through the dark heat. The heart like a tom-tom, beating the message that time is runing out. You'll lie there strangely alert. You'll actually feel the inside of your body, which is your soul, or where your soul is, and a great sadness will engulf you. And from the sadness an itch might begin, the itch of a desire for change."

I got 2 A's and 2 B's for my last semester, my next semester starts September, I have a lot of interesting classes like Hatha Yoga, Intro to Addictions, PsyStress & Time Management, Intro to Human Services, etc, which I can't wait to get lost in. I really wish I had school right now to distract my mind. I'm going to Deleware for the weekend, I hope it won't be too mournful. I'm reading Bukowski, Candy, and Harry Potter all day which is a ridiculous mix. My cousin came over, his summer semester ended well too, so we had a few beers and games of pool with a pretty decent mood. Again, a welcome distraction. The morning's always the roughest for me, I'm always the most vulnerable and raw after waking, so I'm especially careful to do something immediately to divert my thoughts from a downward spiral.  I spend a lot of time writing in my journal, letting all the vitriol just flow out through my fingertips, and I feel cleaner afterwards. A hole in my gut the size of a harbor. Adrift. I wish I knew how to reach the kingdom of invincibility. Clocks run in one direction only. Luke Davies has invaded my mind, summing up all this angst in words far more loaded than my own.

I had a copy of Candy with me at Hampton House (or Hotel Hampton, as disillusioned patients refer to it sometimes) and a girl named Christie took a real liking to it. Everyone was terrified of her and kept their distance because she was a walking skeleton. She was obviously dying of AIDS. I spent a lot of time talking to her on smokebreaks. She was infected by a boyfriend years ago, has a house, wishes her parents would leave her alone. She was not angry at all. I was quite impressed by her composure and strength and wanted to give her the copy of the book, but she refused vehemenently. She said she could do that one thing, buy a book she wanted. She said she hadn't liked a book enough to buy it in a long time and I think it was important for her to do it herself. She resented the gift of the book because it implied that I thought it unlikely she would buy it for herself. I had a copy at a 1/2way house in Lakewood, I gave it to some girl who relapsed and never got it back. I had my jail copy, the absolute most sacred copy I had because it was the old cover, before the movie came out and all you could get were movie tie-in versions of the book. Also it was the book Amy had underlined her favorite passages, flipping to them from memory and dictating them to me with furtive, excited  glances to see how the words were affecting me. That copy got loaned to a young mentally ill girl, who was 17 and 2 months clean at the time. She had the book maybe a few days before she died in her sleep from a heroin overdose. I never got that copy back. It would have meant the world to me and I asked her sister for it but it never found its way back to me. 

Joe's been really nice to me, it's good to have him around for support, he's turning 21 really soon so we'll be able to go out together, which is cool since I have so few friends.

2am my head vibrates, buzzes, spins slowly around in sad circles. my past attached to my guts by a frayed string and all the lights and life draining out of my veins. heat and love burning on a stagnant bonfire & still within my chest this buried thirst for poison. the fury of flesh attached to bones that will outlast all the smiles and surely, surely, there is a whirlpool opening at my feet, freezing and numb in the green heart of summer I extend my fingerbones to the sky, it's sullen, indifferent, the sky gives me the cold shoulder and the premonition of doom is ripe. the mystery of meat and the electrical spark of life glurting through arteries repels me. I wanted to live beneath the seas in a castle carved from bone away from all explosions where my thoughts burn up the air, smooth and supple as a razorblade slicing through saltwater. Rimbaud dreamed of seas composed of an eternity of children's tears, I dream of a silence without doubt and a night without end or entrails. I want to sleep the sound sleep of a dead poet, beyond the triviality of words and wants, but the tide thaws my heart and my thoughts hover like heatwaves over sunbaked asphalt, a theme of catharsis and cocoons cracking my skull until fragments rain down upon my exoskeleton like a magic rain of bliss, absolving absolutes, dissolving discontent. Birds bathe in rainwater despite the contaminants of our sickish pollution and all slides off them, falling down upon our aching ventricles and we cry Mercy, mercy, while the flame heats the flesh without end, a gasjet beneath blood, boiling over into the hole God left in my sordid little soul, shattered and breathing thickly through gristle and sanctity.

I have too much going on in my head. I have to channel this energy somehow, then maybe I'd feel like walking to Pennsauken. I'm sure if I could snuggle with Sammy, I'd feel much better. Though I used to be pretty wary of this comfort derived from contact with a beloved person, I've learned to value it openly. I miss Sammy and some nights are only tolerable if I can listen to her breathing and feel her warmth.

I am a lesbian who is all about Charles Bukowski. I am someone who, as an 18 year old stripper, was exposed to the beastliness of masculinity, and never forgot it. I avoid nearly all manifestations of masculinity, yet I am hooked on the words of Charles Bukowski.

I love words. I am always reading passages from books to myself, wishing I had someone to share it with. Typing up great excerpts makes me feel closer to the writer -- to feel their words flowing through my fingers, it feels as if I can create great literature as well. So, here is something from "Notes of a Dirty Old Man," which is so repulsive in places I have to skip ahead a few pages. Yet there are these certain parts that are so raw, you can feel the nerves still twitching beneath the bloody words. Here is one such selection:

"we move in. sit down. there's the bookcase. I lay my eyes across it. there doesn't seem to be a dull book in there. I catch all the books I've admired in there. what the hell? is it a dream? the kid's face is so beautfiul that everytime I look I feel good, like you know, chili and beans, hot, after coming off a bad one, the first food in weeks, well, fuck, I am always on guard.
   the Bird. and the ocean down there. and bad battery. a lemon. the cops patrolling their stupid dry streets. what a bad war it is. and what an idiot nightmare, only this momentary cool space between us, we are all going to be smashed, very quickly into broken children's toys, into those highheels that ran so gaily down the stairway to be fucked out of it forever, forever, dunces and fools, dunces and tools, god damn our weak bravery.
   we sit down. a quart of scotch appears. I pour a quarter of a pint down without pause. Jack likes me coming on. he's been carrying my soul and he's tired. he grins the grin. he's ok. once in a rare lifetime have you ever been in a roomful of people who only helped you when you looked at them, listened to them. this w as one of those magic times. i knew it. i glowed like a fucking hot tamale. it didn't matter. ok.
   I smacked down another quarter pint out of embarassment. I realized taht I was the weaker of 4 people and I did not want to harm, I only wanted to realize their easy holiness. 
    "baby," they start saying to me, "you are drunk."
    and I am. and I am. and I am.
   there's nothing now but to be turned inot the heat or sleep. 
   they make a place for me.
   I drink too fast. They talk on. I hear them, gently.
    I sleep. I sleep in comradeship. the sea will not drown me and neither will they. they love my sleeping body. I am an asshole, they love my sleeping body. may all God's children come to this. 



I began to go crazy. I was sweating, stinking; little circles whirling whirling whirling, light flanks and flashes of light in my dome. I really felt like I was going to go screwy. I walked over and got the suitcase. it was easy to carry. rags. then i took the typewriter, a steel portable. it had a good solid feel:  gray, flat, heavy, leery, banal. the eyes whirled to the rear of my head and the chain was off the door, and one hand with suitcase and one hand with stolen typewriter I charged into machinegun fire, the mourning morning sunrise, the end of all.
   HEY! WHERE YOU GO?
   He raised the hammer, and that's all I needed -- the flash of electric light on hammer -- I had the suitcase in the left hand, the portable steel typer in the right, he was in perfect position, down by my knees and I swung with reat accuracy and some anger, I gave him the flat and heavy and hard side, greatly, along the side of his head, his skull, his temple, his being.
    there was almost a shock of light like everywhere was crying, then it was still.  I was outside, suddenly, sidewalk, down all those steps without realization, like luck, there was a yellow cab.
    CABBY!
    I was inside. UNION STATION.
  it was good, the quiet sound of tires in the morning air. NO, WAIT, I said. MAKE IT THE BUS DEPOT.
    WHATZ MATTA, MAN? the cabby asked.
    I JUST KILLED MY FATHER.
     YO KILLED YA FATHA?
   YOU EVER HEAR OF JESUS CHRIST?
    SHORE.
    THEN MAKE IT: BUS DEPOT. 



never mix pills with whiskey. boy, they weren't kidding.
    he could feel his soul foating out from under his body. he could feel it hang upside down there like a cat, its feet gripping the springs. 
     motherfucker, come back! he said to his soul.
    his soul laughed, you've treated me too bad too long, baby. you're getting what you need.
    with him it wasn't dying that mattered. with him it was the unsolved loose parts left behind -- parts of him left in empty lots, Catholic Church Communion classes, jail cells, boats; parts of him left in band-aids and dow nsewers; parts of him left in thrown-away alarm clocks, thrown away shoes, thrown away women, thrown away friends.
   it was so sad, so very sad. who could blow the blues the way they  really were? nobody could. that's it. nobody could or ever did. they could only try and get bluer than blue because there was no way home.
   he'd reached the end of cures. and Jesus, he was soft. all the hard poems; he'd played hard-man all his life but he ws soft. everybody was soft, really -- the hard was only there to protect the soft. what a ridiculous asshole trap. 
    who'd ever invented the game had worked up a neat little masterwork. call him God, He had a shot over the eye coming. but He never showed so you couldn't get Him in the sights. the Age of the Assassins had missed the BIggest One of all. earlier they'd almost got the Son, but He'd slipped on out and we still had to go on staggering over slippery bathroom floors."



    

I walk outside, still in boxers and a tee, at 6:45 pm, to smoke the first cigarette of the evening, which is really the first cigarette of the morning for me. There's this feral calico cat sitting where I intend to smoke, on a little cinderblock bench I made in the middle of my mother's garden. Reluctant to disturb the creature (which my mother actually called the police about, thinking it was dead, but that's another disturbing story, that of my mother's impending mental illness) I sat on my porch. I was pleased it liked my bench, and thought it looked very serene sitting there amongst the flowers. 
      Then my father pulls in the driveway, home from work. He glares at the cat:  "What's that cat doing there?" "I guess it likes my bench." As if it understood English, the cat suddenly dashed away into the woods. "It's scared of you, though," I said, hoping maybe my father would be sad that nice cats are scared of him. "Good," he replied. "Have you been feeding it?" I answer no, and he goes inside.

"my continent, I mean to speak of the radical
effect of light in broad daylight
today, I held you close
beloved of all civilization, all
texture, all geometry, and glowing
embers
delirious, the way we write: and
my body is enraptured.

so transform me, she said
into a watercolor in your bed
like a recent orbit
the curtains, the emotion
tonight we are going to the Sahara

she now has
all my saliva, since, at yr place, i've
forgotten the text I wanted before your
reading eyes which have watched centuries
of hallucinations, of skin, pass the noise
detonation. because each shiver aims
at the emergence. an intuition
of reciprocal knowledge
women with curves of fire 
& eiderdown, fresh-skinned -- essential surface
(you float within my page)"


-- Nicole Brossard.

Thank God someone has written of the synchronous erotics of literary lesbians. To Brossard, sex, writing, and reading are endlessly intertwined. They are all pursuits of the same passion and intuition, and the more adept one becomes at one, the more adept they are at the other. I've always spoken/written of writing sacred cantos on my lover's skin with my fingertips, reading stories written in scars with my fingertips, and reading has always been much deeper an action than simply digesting words. Reading is important to me because it's akin to a program of alchemy for your mind. The more words you absorb, the greater your capacity for language is. Language is a divine, burning, golden key to comprehending reality. Without language we are impotent in the most important sense. We are lost in a forest of symbols we cannot decipher. 

I found early on that reading changed my dreams and temperment. I was teaching myself how to think when I read, how to build a memory palace. I learned that preserving experiences with journals was the most important thing to me. Someday I'll have a library of journals, a catalogue of specific details to walk endlessly through. I have every letter and scrap of note Amy wrote me in jail saved in one such journal, as well as every poem we read together while we were there, the two letters she bothered to send me, art that reminds me of her. In some way, keeping a book of that agonizing period of my life is comforting. And it's all right there when I'm ready to write my book about that time. I feel I have to grow and expand much more before I'm ready to write the book that will let me understand the Amy experience. It still has a tinge of pain mixed in with it, so there's no way to be objective.