randomness

i'm only partially employed, and so i spend days in bed with a book, smoking pot out of apples, talking to my friends at their shitty desk jobs via gmail, which everyone has now. i openly disdain people who don't use it. minus fifteen with-it points. whatevs. i sport a little old lady hat i adopted from brown elephant and cheap knit gloves with the fingers cut off.

i am starting to accept that my current employment has rendered me temporarily if not permanently unboyfriendable. there were myriad factors already and i believe the mousetrap on the scrotum for the internets as a means of making money is just a final straw. the snowball. etc.

there's being sick, being an ex-crazy, being far tooo well-read, being hypersexual, being a comic book nerd, sci-fi reader, lover of vampire slayers, owner of multiple well-designed sex toys.

ghostface killah, lucero, magnetic fields. xena in bed. once a week i coach and costume primadonna amateur dominatrices thru a couple hours of dick torture. i make damn good cornbread. i have tattoos in elvish. i am a cultbanger.

the sads (how to fight loneliness)

After the equinox I have to take special care not to plunge into the depths of the black dog; doing this while detoxing from Lyrica is particularly obnoxious. I have to force myself to listen to the Arcade Fire instead of Otis Redding, I have to bore myself into cleaning my room, and I have to keep all the lights on full-blast as soon as dusk even hints at erasing shadows.

and then there's the weed maintenance program. Zak used to joke about it back when I was on Depakote and Risperdal and Effexor and all that other ridiculous shit.

-All you need is meditation and marijuana. And Doral menthol lights.

When he broke up with me, I burned myself numb for months. And then I started smoking pot again and things got a little bit easier to handle. He died three years ago right when I lost my shit. Sometimes I envy him. I'd never leave a mess for someone else to clean up like that, at least I'd like to think I wouldn't. I fantasize about just disappearing off to Canada to sit on a cushion and hum, but when the black dog starts howling I've started to look down at my arms and think about blistering heat and knife blades. I am only lucky not to be back home with the drinking and the pills.

Until things get better, or until they get worse, I'm going to only do things that make me feel better. I have to. this masochism is killing me.

I have a winter full of stoned evenings lying in bed listening to a blissed-out shoegazer mix ahead of me. That or red nights prodding at old scars.

scurvy

my teeth have grown unaccountably sharp.
I chew through my cheeks when I sleep.
I cannot stop prodding at the sore place with my tongue.

Poem for Monday, October 8, २००७

The Fall




by Heather McHugh






Gold leaf fell

to the rake and the fire.
Leaping headlong into those
upholstered yards, we couldn’t tell


rags from riches, loving a little
trash by nature, having
an orange crush. But love
becomes a set of pet


names, all diminutive,

and as for God,
we saw it was the dark
that made the stars. As time


went by,
the jeweled movement
of the loan shark’s car
would utterly impoverish the sky.








Burke's Book Store
936 South Cooper
Memphis, TN 38104
(901) 278-7484
www.burkesbooks.com

too heavy

I'd love to detox off Lyrica. I can't tell if it's helping or not anymore. the weight gain has been around 10-15 lbs, just enough to make me hate my body palpably, bulimically, once again. at this point I'm not sure which is worse, the all-invading ache or the head-bashing mirror hatred. but when I read about cerebral edema and hallucinations it just makes me feel that much more helpless.

the worst part about being chronically ill is the complete disenfranchisement. i have no say in this. I am lucky if I can sucker my np for some codeine sizzurp when I am coughing up green shit. part of me thinks it's cos of the tattoos and the yard-long medical record with the state hospitalization and the crazy meds. I'm still in pain, y'know.

i mean, I stopped driving after I totalled my car stone sober in the middle of the day. I just didn't care how fast I was going or what I hit anymore. that sort of recklessness means I am either a total asshole or on the verge of suicidal, right?

i bought a whole bunch of fancy chinese diet tea. gonna try to eat nothing but brown rice and kimchi for a few days. meanwhile the hunger is as bad as it was with Effexor. i have to get off this shit. i dont care at this point if it helps or not. i have found that fibro pain plus self hatred are unbeatable. i give in.

my third rail.