Coffeehouse-May 2013

Ask any kid who knows how to work a crowd what they want to be when they get older, and they’ll say, “I want to be happy.”

Well, didn’t we all! Except, if you’re searching for it, you’ll never find it, it’s nameless and faceless but supposedly impossible to mistake and if you think that you are, you probably aren’t. Happy.

Forgive the cynic in me for being wary of contradictions but I think we’ve all spent a little too much time chasing after ghosts.

They teach you early on that nature has a way of balancing itself out, there’s no reason to fear tipping scales or capsized ships if you follow all the laws and obey your equal sign. I was the type of kid who liked getting it right and keeping my feet off the cracks looking left right left across the street and feeling the edges of the gold star on the paper like the stars in my eyes I saw them in yours too.

There’s nothing to be afraid of because I never once thought about God without conviction...well I have a knack for numbers at least.

When you were young all you needed was the promise of tomorrow to propel you through the shortcomings of yesterday and saying your prayers guaranteed you a decent ever after, but what they forgot to mention was the “in between” of decisions, damage and no do overs. Little girl isn’t spinning around in mother’s best perfume and jewelry anymore, now when she opens the box it’s too dirty to stay pure and when she digs around her hands get caught on the rough edges, leaving scars matching all the other sould who deserve it the least, crumbling under the weight of their own anticipation, glassy eyed from dry swallowing too many setbacks shedding dignity on bathroom floors in place of tears, or whispering “I want to be happy” in a smudged mirror, whose house is this, it’s two am, and I was always the level headed one.

I spent many an hour this year stooped before a throne and pounding on perfection’s doorstep, salvaging the memory of a childhood long gone that was the first mistake, when you’re always on your hands and knees looking in every corner for fables and idealizations your bound to fall through a crack eventually. Falling. You fall over on or down it might break a bone every time, you are the one on the floor wanting to blend into the tiles just like the lines blurred together, but now you brace yourself, instead of relying on good intentions or a feeble cry for the impeccable, the recognition of all this is half the battle.  

When no one is looking, put your hand up to your neck and feel around for the fibers of a noose woven from your own expectations, the one that’s always getting caught on all the jagged edges, the one that calls for perfection as it pulls on your windpipe. To the kids in the classroom who deserve to save themselves a few scraped knees, take it off every now and again because it’s just not worth tripping over anymore. I guess you can call it cynicism, but I still make my dandelion wishes, this time just a little differently.

Coffeehouse-December 2012

On my sixteenth birthday, I may have mixed it all up.

I say this because I went against every inspirationalist’s motto, when I spent the first quarter of it smiling because it happened, and the rest crying because it was over.

You could say I’m a bit pessimistic, but I like to think of it as a greater appreciation for the 365.

Three years and ten days ago exactly I wrote a poem about how someone had missed the play button when they set the tape up for my life

That’s easy to say when you’re a lonely eighth grader spending your Friday nights hoping for a boy to hold your hand, but really now I would give anything to be staring at those Christmas lights again. Because having so many Friday nights in your basket spent otherwise starts to get heavy, but not in a way that I cant carry them, only dripping with nostalgia, glaring headlights on foreign roads with foreign voices, laugh too loud and hush don’t go, crossing boundaries like the ts we used to try and tell exactly how we fit into this, this wide expanse of existence that just seems too damn small.

I put my palm against the glass and let it sit there, but it wasn’t quite winter and it wasn’t quite rain, so when the union was lost there was no sign I had ever tried to push right through I ended up with my fingers in my pockets, and that’s how we all end up. Thumb around for a while between the receipts and the loose change, maybe you’ll find what you’re looking for, but if what you’re looking for is time, then you won’t, because I’ve tried that too.

What I have found is that you can dig your heals in, swallow the last mouthful of liquor cabinet liquid courage lay your head on his shoulder while he takes you for one more circle around the bend it’s okay. 5 minutes won’t kill us, hit replay on that soundtrack one last time, at least we can count on this ticking clock. This clock is the only constant, I have watched the hands moving for three years and ten days and countless hours before that too, it’s mocking me baby, it knows it will always be around when you and you and you can’t be.  I’m not asking for that magic mirror on the wall, if forever is the fable that has always been stuck between the pages then let it be, if only for just one more season to blanket me on the coldest of nights. I think I might need it because I’ve always been more of a watch from the driveway type, why sit in the passenger seat if you only have eyes for the rearview mirror.

If you see me in three years, I hope you know I put the birthday candles away, I hope you see me setting back clocks on damp, poorly lit pavement with strangers.

I hope you know that we lost.

So for now,

Rolling credits cut copy and paste

If we don’t believe in reality then it will hit a little harder

I have the now to carry me over to the next life,

The then weighs heavy, I can’t hold it forever even so.

There will always be slow acoustic on a rainy day

I’ll never escape it, not with those clouds and this truth

For those who see the most beauty in hindsight

Well, it’s just the only way to feel.

The way she was

I bought a pair of shoes yesterday and it was so fucking exciting that I cleaned out a new space in my shoe rack for them. And a real nice button down shirt because I look so fucking sophisticated and wow. Things are just going great. I can make things be great in a 5 second span of time. All I need is something superficial to focus on, always tangible enough to know it's really there, and boy am I set.
Over the summer it was fishing. I just really wanted to and I didn't know why. So I had my dad take me out to a stream and threw out the line or whatnot and bam, I was a god damn fisherwomen. I didn't catch a thing besides a minnow in a net. I physically had to bend down and scoop up the squirmy fucker with a net against his will, and then I let him back into the water. But all in all it was a good day, because I was out there fishing for no apparent reason other than I wanted a fucking rod in my hand and some bug bites on my ass, doing something for no reason.
Now it's basically a majority ideal rather than a fleeting whim. Play cards? Sure. Try some yoga? I guess so. "Things could always be worse, cathadoo". Yeah, I fucking know. I didn't always know.
I hated myself for the first time at 15 years of age. I did it because boys didn't like me. They still don't like me. There has never been a time when I have thought to myself "wow I am really racking up the men!!!" Not that anyone would probably ever say that. Har har I laughed out loud. But the point is I wish that's all that ever happened to anyone. It's very easy to say "ah hell, i'm lonely" and listen to some taylor swift and eat a popsicle and sit the fuck down and be okay. Not really ok but okay in comparison. I remember a couple months ago I was standing in front of a mirror fucked out of my mind. I was bobbing my head fast and it looked so cool because I was blanking out for like a millisecond between each movement so it was kind of like a strobe light. In reality I was bracing a sink and staring straight ahead and moving my head like a moron. Just alone. Probably came in to piss and got distracted. And that image from that night makes me so sad all the time. All the time. I can hate me then. Because it's the epitome of purgatory, and me scraping along the bottom of the barrel. Waiting for hell, hoping for heaven, doing nothing purposeful, just wasting the time. I think that might be the closest definition for life that I can come up with right now. Sharpening my pencils, ordering clothes, fishing in a stream, harping on social media interactions, hitting a ball with a stick attached to a circle head, it's all I can allow myself to be anymore. I can't trust myself to be anything more. It didn't work out so well the last time.
Directly after the bathroom incident I sat outside one night and swore that I couldn't associate with anyone who wasn't at least 2% less fucked up as I was. I didn't really know how I would discern if they qualified exactly with the 2% but I decided that I would just know. I waded through some cuts that I would probably have to make and never ended up making because one of them told me he was going to make it past my weeding process. And I thought, fuck no, you couldn't possibly fit under my 2% rule. And he saw the wheels turning and assured me that I had nothing to worry about, he knew he made the cut. My wheels were turning too, and I knew that they all knew, and it was time for a change.

Back to bed

The winter was a little colder that year, so everyone thought that the summer would be a little hotter too. But it wasn't. We were all just sitting in our rooms and visualizing sticking mellon ballers down our throats and into our stomachs to scoop out all the misgiving, just like a cantaloupe. But I don't hang off of vines, I hang off of words. I hang on to hourglasses, I hang out to soak and mostly, I hang myself with indifference

Yield

I saw you on a train the other day 

Brushing over with your habits, yes dear, I still like sleeping on my side and I think you like it on your stomach, some things never changed

I hope my eyes said that out loud because my mouth can't say those things out loud anymore, I can't think those things, out loud, anymore, any more.

I saw through you on the train the other day 

The other side said "these few years will be for the better" and I said, "okay"

Purgatory

Dry swallow the day, wash it down with something else later 
Press down a little harder and rub up against a stranger 
Living an existence of fallen in the lap
Heaps and mounds I'm sifting through for the sake of busy hands
I'd rather be boring
I like those soft sciences 
Now sometimes I get high
Off the day and from scratch starting 
But when I crawl into bed I pull the shades down much too far
I can't see the dusk but the same goes for dawn
Here's the laughter and the smiles
They never had the sense to leave me 
Following that leader
Reading that script I didn't write 
I've become too indifferent 
Towards a taste I shied away from 
Except a numb tongue tastes nothing
And so on I keep this shit up   

I used to be a realist I swear

You are not standing

On solid ground that you banked on being there haven't you learned anything you never make the deposit before you have the cash to back it up that's the first rule of basic survival.

Surviving on manipulation disguised with clever quips won't hold you over

Surviving on an ego no one wants to fluff anymore won't hold you over 

I only see these things now that I'm standing fifteen feet away at all times

And I am so sorry.
Because this is all only compensation.
For the fate that I banked on
A little too wholeheartedly
One time too many

Another empty reach for a rescue
That I never had a chance of.