SHIT POET

repent

 it’s easy, now that we are out, making new friends, carving new paths, and selling ourselves, to feel alone. to be beaten by rejection, miscommunication, and the cost of living. become nostalgic for the missing people we care for. to feel lost and unloved, unlovable. in these moments i hope you will, on occasion, remember me. remember that you are loved for so many different reasons. by some distant person.

this is an apology. for not knowing how to give and for the guilt that plagued me. for resenting you, how good you were. for hating how bad i was. for blaming you. for being selfish.

and i repent. for always claiming innocence for justifying every transgression. for convincing you. for letting you be convinced. for not taking a risk and facing punishment. for not admitting that i was wrong, and sorry, and undeserving. for lying and suppressing too many times to count. for keeping us divided. for driving you away.

i can see that you were best and i was worst, i’ve always seen that.

because you were already the center of my life but i was afraid to make you the center of my self.

i was at the center of you though, wasn’t i?

i think this has something to do with vulnerability and emotional intimacy. being open, letting go. letting you in. but i did love you. and i do love you.

it’s nice actually, my love for you now. bittersweet. but happy. i love everything about you. i always have. but i don’t feel shame anymore. there isn’t any pressure to be someone or something. to be yours. so i can just love you any way i want. i can worry about you without the context of me and i don’t have to mind how i fit in the context of you; you’re just you within yourself. we tried to pull each other towards our centers. at times we were fit together, but often there were rough edges and gaps that i could neither sand nor seal. i don’t think i worked hard enough. i’d like to have the chance to try again, with you, or with some other matching piece.

Sucio

Back in the day I was in a group of friends with a boy we called Gato Sucio.  He never liked the tag, preferring instead to think of himself as a lone wolf, an aficionado of all things morose and unfortunate but without the benefit of style.  

It is generally accepted that he is a lover of petty social games, though I’m sure he would define himself a manipulator of minds.  He enjoys asking uncomfortable questions at inopportune times.  Invading your space.  He wants to force a stutter, to shock you with his audacity and seeming disregard for the simpler things in life, like friendship and respect.  He traps you between your desire to respond and your inability to do so given the context of his question.  You’ll either embarrass yourself or the person standing next to you.  The best recourse in this situation is to answer honestly, unaffected, or tell him he’s being a fucking prick.  

He’s not a strong person but in these moments his eyes alight with some misappropriated power.  He likes to think that for a few seconds he’s brought you down to his own level, performed some magical transference wherein he is self-actualized and you are filled with the self-loathing insecurity that plagues his daily life.  The trick is to never give him the benefit of the doubt.  To assume that he will always be both a dirty cat and a lone wolf.  To pass him a beer and excuse yourself in search of better company.  

LONER

I wonder why it is I am the way I am.  

I sit around watching movies all the time.  Just sit around sewing and watching and listening until I can’t take it anymore.  Walk around.  Buy, smoke, and litter cigarettes.  Short and Lonely but Effective.  Then back to the daily grind of whatever it is that I waste my life doing.  

Do you get what I mean? That I don’t enjoy the journey.  I want something, am missing something.  I figure that I’ll always feel that way, even if my dreams do come true.  I’ll be sitting backstage at my own show.  Thinking about how close I came and yet how far I feel from some unnamed and as of yet unattainable object, emotion, or validation.  

So I read and I watch and I think about what it is that makes me feel like this.  Discontent.  

My Parents are the same way.  Though they’d never admit it, that’s probably why they had me.  To give their lives purpose.  So that they could worry about someone else’s success rather than their own.  Who knows.  Thank god you can hire PR.  If I had money I would do that.  

I can’t help but feel that some unfortunate disposition informs us.  A genetic malady affecting desire.  A blockade between our conscious minds and the world around us.  Or maybe that’s just what it is to be a fucking loner.  

DreamLog: Cheat

You’re still three thousand miles away.  Nothing that happens here touches you there.  

I’m a voice, a profile, lacking in substance or relativity. 

So when I say “the girl you cheated on me with has moved to LA” 

you don’t really understand what that means, at least not physically speaking.  

It means that Kunty and I are in the same city.  

It means that, because we graduated from the same small art-school, we have friends in common.    

It means that she and I will inevitably have to endure each others presence. In Person.    

I blame you for this.  Naturally.  This is pretty much all your fault.  

Not the fact of her moving but rather the fact that it’s an issue.  

That she is an issue.  

That I even know her name at all.  

That I hate her, without ever having spent time with her.  

Last night the fates aligned and by some miraculous misfortune Kunty’s and my respective friends combined forces at the same bar in Silverlake.  She and I avoided each other initially, sought refuge at separate tables, ordered doubles.  Eventually we came together.  She asked if I knew where she could pick up weed in the city.  I told her that in the future she should go to a doctor, tell him about her anorexia, get a card, and not have to worry about it anymore.   I think the fact that she was entirely non-threatening if not borderline idiotic allowed me to keep my cool.  

I did however text you that she “is so fucking lame.” 

You haven’t responded.  I’m not surprised.  

You and I still talk, about once a week these days, and send each other birthday gifts post-breakup so I can assume that the texting in and of itself was not problematic.  I think you would like to avoid the reality of ‘what is here is true is something that concerns you’ so you don’t have to feel sorry.  Guilty.  Don’t worry, you haven’t done anything wrong.  

The truth is that you have never apologized and I don’t forgive you.   I’m honestly not sure why we’re still friends.  Except that I’m clearly still obsessed with you.  I have a theory about the reciprocity of that sentiment.  

The point is I had a dream.  

I dreamt that you and Kunty were getting married and I was your best man.  Sort of like “my best friend’s wedding” meets “melancholia” wherein you were being dissociative, escaping the festivities to sit by the nearby creek and whatnot,  and I used every opportunity at my disposal to publicly degrade and demean your future bride over the course of the wedding weekend.  I woke up before the service and so do not have a definitive answer regarding your final decision matrimony-wise.  I’d like to think that you took me up on my offer when I said “marry me instead,” but I have a feeling that your inertia overran any doubts that may or may not have been plaguing you.  

DreamLog

I was in love with a girl in highschool, the First.  She looked a little like a trailer park incest baby type.  She wore light blue jeans and tight sports shirts.  had shoulder length blond hair.  I thought she was divine.  

Since then I’ve had many liaisons, with boyish girls, girlish boys, boys with beards and a three year marriage-like set up with “the one” a perfectly androgynous lady love with a rakish smile and wild black hair.  

Despite the time and people that came after this first foray into obsession, I still dream of her.  

It used to bother me. especially when i was with the one.  it’s wasn’t fun waking up in bed with my committed having had a rather lovely bit of dream-time with an old flame.  i don’t think it would bother me now.  

I’ve realized that it’s not so much about Her, the First, but rather the way she made me feel.  The way that i was.  

We never kiss

We never touch

My dream self simply delights in being outrageous.  Smiling and winking, and tricking her First into sitting beside her on a rock in the desert.  She gets butterflies and feels nervous thinks about all of the wonderful kissingtouching that she knows will never come to pass. 

I don’t dream about her often but when i do, we dance, and float, and swim, and dress up.   Innocent and fun and flirtatious.  

We sit on cars and meet on hillsides.  the sun is always high.  and i am always content in the knowledge that the game we play is not an exposition.  leading us somewhere tawdry.  it’s a moment in time everlasting.  a reminder of a courtship pared down to its most simple components without the threat of heartbreak or real loss.  the longing is tempered.  the future non-existent.  

I used to feel that my enjoyment of these dreams meant that i had not grown.  let go.  but now i think it’s something else.  perspective maybe.  The First now represents only an idea.  a way to be.  a way to feel.  

DreamLog

It’s funny, the way our sleepy minds interpret the people of our pasts.  

with places and emotions.  with agendas.  in dreams.  

I find that particular people recur in roles.  

that I feel a certain way with them and a certain way when i wake up.  

positive and negative.  

You are the worst one, dream-friend.    

Sometimes we kiss and I feel safe.  

but only for a moment for we are always running.  evading.  trying to stop an unstoppable catastrophe. 

approaching battle.  

You kiss me and I feel sick, sick in need and sick in knowledge of our imminent separation.  

There’s no way both of us will escape unscathed.  I have a feeling I will.  

Sometimes we sit and talk as friends.  and then you leave me.  walk away.  

always unattainable.  

Usually I’m looking for you.  Everywhere.  Asking after you. 

I scheme and lie and search.  sometimes there are babies involved.  recently.  mine or yours.  never ours.  

Sometimes I want you to want mine.  you don’t.  

I have this theory about babies and how they alienate people.  build walls.  create distance.  

Sometimes I find you.  not always.  you never care one way or the other.  found or not found.  

Sometimes I wake up crying.  

I suppose you could say that I have anxiety dreams about you.  

desperate haunting scenarios that would destroy me should they ever come true.  

but then you did that already.  maybe that’s the whole point.