seep.

dear girl,

i can’t sleep if i am wearing socks. concupiscence is a long word for something with such a short life.

i like opening my eyes and seeing darkness. i like holding my breath so i can hear my heartbeat, because it seems like it must belong to someone else. it pumps too regularly, and does not carry the sluggish train of regret that mine must. mine pumps my body full of clichés and forgets to let the blood make it to my feet and my hands.

last night was spent figuring out how much my body braces itself when i fall onto my driveway.



dear girl,

there is always one day a month that i can count on leaving it settled. no blood comes from my throat. a godsend and a hindrance. but just one. one too many. more. my mother always says i overdo everything. moremoremore.

evidently not enough.

yet i am so much a person of habit habit addiction. did this old friend turn you on to new habits? whatever i had, baby, you were buying. the best dealers are high.

but i’m left thinking now. it twangs the blues while smashing glass bottles in its shoegazing face, contorted in a last wisps slipping down the drain scream.



dear girl,

i realize that’s all there is during the day, too. maybe that’s why my eyes stay peeled. if it smiles it needs stitches. there’s no differentiation. i can’t see the colours. i'm wrapped up in these selfish vain thoughts and i feel i have no way to break them, i have no room in these constraints to expand like i always want to. i just want to leave. and walk away and just go.

they seem so real.

darling. would you let me drift around outside in the lazy rain, peeling this semblance of lucidity as the rain soaks through and in dilution, the blotches fan out like little poppies. stand on a clear beach in our pellucid forms and look every person in the eye whose gaze lingered on these worms that i have laboriously implanted under my skin without heed to the consequences. find that place where there is a no gaze that falls on duplicitous girls who giggle over hypocrites. repugnance for the self interlaced with avaricious hunger.



dear girl,

i feel like my throat just went through a nuclear winter, and the bombs were, naturally, my own doing. and in the fallout i can't talk. i walk around all damn day feeling that constricting falling feeling in the back of my throat. egg drop, shell moving but yolk braced against the farthest highest wall wanting not to budge.

and i am so so good at being charming. oh what a lovely girl.

but your secret is safe, cross my fingers, stick one in the wound, ensnare seep writhe, palpitate and prod. hush hush disgorge hush subdue hush.  

relieve the pressure the burden pressing on from behind. debase this tumidity.



dear girl,

god, would you please damn this business already. i’m sick of wishing for goddamn, too.

these memories. f*****g bittersweet. as in dripping in corrosive acid.

i need a simple template to follow. i'll trace just this once. why did you pick me to trace, darling? i was the wrong choice. but this already feels so much reduced to the bare minimum, that if i sloughed off anymore.



dear girl,

i don't want to hide. but where the hell do i go. i'll satiate myself by talking to the black air around me. i don't want out. this is mine. mine. mine. moremoremore. just f*****g go.



dear girl

press palms to eyes and study memorize fading too soon don’t leave spots see bursts a gun shot. bang howl clasp cold hands like prayer

drown out. if you give me socks i'll wear em

please leave.

Author's Note

invalidate sedate eradicate. vitiate. words, please.

"we're all mad here."

[08.31.09]

Reviews

[Brett Hernan]

'drown out. if you give me socks I'll wear em'
I like the way you bring the poem back round to it's logical but circular conclusion, starting again at the beginning.
The perfect second last line before an ending.