there is the easy love of
sixteen
pink chalk hearts on
the sidewalk, lazy
like the spring afternoon
they were drawn

and then

there is this love;
uneasy, unwieldy--
heavy like grocery bags
stuffed with necessities
that smears

the easy love of sixteen
pink chalk hearts underfoot,
too busy to care anymore.

are you living

your life like
i am living mine, moving
slowly like blood from a pinprick
squeezed

in sick delight,

plodding revolutions
along the periphery of everything
you ever believed
about How Things Really Are.

never daring the radius inward
to touch any of it.

it's a loneliness that penetrates.  dissolves flesh, pits bone.

i was so lonely that i forgot i was walking and fell off the edge of the earth.

1. Do you like cheese?
- i like *good* cheese.  which i feel is a distinction that needs to be made.

2. Have you ever smoked heroin?
- heroin?  no.  opium, yes.  and guess what?  it's amazing.

3. Do you own a gun?
- i don't trust myself anymore.

5. Do you get nervous before doctor appointments?
- no, i get angry. 

6. What do you think of hot dogs?
- kosher only.

7. What's your favorite Christmas song?
- "carol of The Bells"

8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning?
- water with ice chips.

9. Can you do push ups?
- can, yes.  will?  fuck no.

10. Is your bathroom clean?
- i just cleaned it.

11. What's your favorite piece of jewelry?
- my blue-moonstone ring.

13. What is your secret weapon to lure in the opposite sex?
- i willfully repel the opposite sex. 

14. Do you have A.D.D.?
- i have the opposite of A.D.D.---i get obsessive and freakishly focused on things.

16. Middle Name?
- Dael

17. Name 3 thoughts at this exact moment?
1) fuck you
2) i'm really frighteningly good with my virtual bow and arrows---they'll never see me coming!
3) why the hell can't i finish a can of soda...ever?

18. Name the last 3 things you have bought?
1) Harbingers Wrath bow with six arrow varieties including "explosion arrows" which blow you to bits.
2) bottled water
3) a latex catsuit

19. Name 3 drinks you regularly drink:
1) Coke Zero
2) Black tea
3) Water

20. Current worry?
- actually...i'm not worried about anything right now, really.  what luxury!

21. Current hate?
- people with minds so small they could get stuck in your eye and scratch your cornea up something frightful.

22. Favorite place to be?
- unconscious.

23. How did you bring in the New Year?
- with friends i sorely miss.

24. Where would you like to go?
- back in time.

27. Do you own slippers?
- yeah.  they're bear feet with leather claws.

28. What are you wearing?
- black slacks, black shirt, black bra...you get the idea.

29. Do you burn or tan?
- i avoid the sun at all costs.

30. Favorite color?
- black.  i have a deep, serious love affair with black.  particularly that gasping, soft black that looks darker than the darkest darkness...the kind of darkness that doesn't need light to define itself.  yeah.  THAT black.

31. Would you be a pirate?
- hell fucking NO.  ninja.

32. What songs do you sing in the shower?
- "I Don't Like Mondays" by The Boomtown Rats and "Dead Puppies" by Ogden Edsl.  you should sing them too.  go to my MySpace and learn them!  Dead puppies aren't much fun...they don't come when you call...they don't chase squirrels at all...

35. What's in your pocket right now?
- my detachable penis.

36. Last thing that made you laugh?
- Man-boobs.

37. Best bed sheets as a child?
- these super soft ones that had been washed so many times that the fabric was thin and rubbed smooth.  those were awesome.

38. Worst injury you've ever had?
- i still have flashbacks.  my knee.  it was horrifying.  i can't even tell you.

40. How many TVs do you have in your house?
- oh jesus...three?  i don't know..i don't watch any of them.

41. Who is your loudest friend?
- Sunshine.

42. Who is your most silent friend?
- Hello, Darkness, my old friend.

43. Does someone have a crush on you?
- i doubt it.

45. What is your favorite book?
- "The God Delusion"...i don't know.  i only have about a hundred favorite books.

46. What is your favorite candy?
- Godiva chocolate and hazelnut truffles

47. What song do/did you want played at your wedding?
- 'Wicked Game'- Chris Isaak

48. What song do you want played at your funeral?
- "Joyful Girl"- ani difranco

49. What were you doing 12 AM last night?
- blowing things up

50. What was the first thing you thought of when you woke up?
- blowing things up

nude bodies remind me of death.  maggots, liquefaction.  bloat.  seepage.  i know too much about the mechanics of decay.  couple vivid knowledge with an obsessive, whirlpool consciousness like mine and you get the weirdest, most difficult sex life this side of the law. 

at least, if you're in my head. 

if you're naked on top of me, you're probably having a great time and, decidedly, not being attacked by thoughts of the actual noise maggots make when feeding on decaying flesh. 

meanwhile, the rest of normal human women writers are busy with seduction, romance, adventure. 

my throat is a piano, but my fingertips are all stringed instruments.  my inner thighs are tribal drums and my eyes are my voice. 

when i cry, my forearms ache along the inside all the way to the ends of my thumbs and forefingers.  have you ever wanted someone so bad your teeth itched?  i have. 

red is male, but not a man like green is.  seven is a woman in heels.  blue is a woman, too, a deaf-mute with thin hands.  eight is male, and nine too.  but two is female.  october tastes like cinammon, december like juniper berries.  summer tastes like salt.  spring tastes like dirt, except for the last part of may, which doesn't taste like anything but feels like the stuffing inside teddy bears and makes me feel sick.

circles hum and triangles shriek.  squares giggle.

so there you have it.  a starter list of why i can't talk to anyone.

my Babyrat has a tumor.  matter of time and all.  it's funny---intellectually, i can accept the fact of a rat's short life.  i've been a rat mommy since i was a little girl.  lots of Babyrats over the years.  but it's still hard.  she's my Babyrat.  she's furry and sweet.  and her lifetime is almost spent.

from now on she gets all the damned cookies she wants.

Rotten Crabmeat Smell in Cabinet

help: I need some
advice
about getting the rotten fish juice

out of my car seat ...
out of the nooks
and crannies with a tooth brush,

dipped
in baking soda

so, at work, i find out that one of my baristas is good friends with an old friend from junior high school who i actually have a long history with and haven't talked to since, well, about 1993.  which is kind of sad because he was my best friend in junior high and we spent a lot of time together back then.  i actually ran into Friend a few days ago but didn't recognize him.  he's changed quite a bit.  anyway, i managed, (really wasn't a struggle,) to talk Barista into setting up a small-stakes poker game for which Friend will be present.  it's going to be weird seeing him again.  good weird, though.  he was a nice guy back in The Day.  a nice jewish boy, to exercise a cliche.  hopefully will be pleasant to catch up. 

when i moved here, (why oh why i'll never truly understand,) i swore to myself that i'd avoid my past like one might wish to avoid an angry wombat.  (there is surprisingly little difference between my past and an angry wombat, actually.  or, for that matter, any smallish marsupial.)  but the past, as Utah Phillips wisely said, doesn't go anywhere.  and it didn't.  i started running into people, literally, the day i arrived here.  and it hasn't stopped.  i'm still trying to figure out how to be comfortable with it.

on a somewhat different note, i tried taking Celexa again.  and was, once again, reminded why i stopped taking Celexa in the first place:  i am a poster child for the side effects of this drug.  i experience them all.  nausea, headache, trembling, palpitations, vertigo, dizziness, intrusive (an extremely disturbing) thoughts, violent and generally bizarre dreams, anorgasmia, appetite disturbances, memory problems, difficulty concentrating, insomnia, restlessness, anxiety, panic attacks, bruxism/teeth-grinding, sweating...the list, impossible as it may seem, goes on.  this drug is HELL on me.  i don't know why i took it for as long as i did or even how i managed to.  the side effects vastly outweigh the intended effect of the drug.  it's kind of fucked up when you can honestly say that, given the choice between indescribable sadness, on the one hand, and taking a certain drug, (that doesn't, by the way, so much "lift" the depression as make you an emotionless robot,) to NOT feel said indescribable sadness, you'd pass on the drug.  and, if any of you know me, you know that there are very few psychoactive pharmaceuticals i will not use, for whatever reason.  so to have a full bottle of Celexa sitting on my desk and knowing i'll never take it again is saying a lot for how shitty those pills make me feel.

what else is new...

oh yes.  the agency that is handling my claim sent me a letter a few days ago informing me that they're offering me a lump-sum settlement to close my case.  i'm taking it.

and other stuff is new, too.  but nothing anyone but me would care to read about.

i got invited to a party this weekend (me?  invited to a party?  do they know that i play bridge and read books?  without pictures in them?  for FUN?)  and i'm trying to decide whether or not to go.  i haven't been invited to a real party since, um, yeah i can't remember when.  get-togethers, sure---where the alcohol is fine wines, the company is in their late thirties/early forties, the conversation is a mix of battle-strategics and knitting (they CAN go together,) and everyone is sleepy by midnight.  those are the "parties" i love.  those are the ones i feel comfortable at.  this is, decidedly, not going to be one of those parties.  this party is going to be vodka, tequila, a bunch of people from work, a bunch of people who are friends of people from work, (many of whom are under the age of 20, which is problematic in itself,) pizza and chips, and, surely, someone getting naked.  yeah, THAT kind of party.  i know they won't miss me if i don't show up---on the other hand, if i don't show up, i'll be the ONE person from work who got invited and didn't show.  maybe i can make a really, really brief appearance?  or maybe i can just BE that loser who would rather stay home and play with her rats and read her National Geographic.

i AM that loser, damnit.

hmm.

i'm going to bed.

i want to be sucked backward through my life to the dark floor of your beach-house where we made a kind of love like moonlight makes to all those words that never graduate from the factory line but hover, a tense vapor of erotic fear leaching from the fissure between my body and yours.