You pace anxiously as you wait for someone else to give the go-ahead. You hate to be kept waiting like this, especially at such a crucial point in the project. No matter how much you prod them to make a decision, someone close to you still has difficulty making up his or her mind. If you have personal business to occupy you today, so much the better. You can count on group activity to be slow — if it happens at all, that is.
Work. Good.
Blargh. Yeah.
Got a good couple of pages of the novel in. I fucking rule. Tomorrow it’s more working on it, and I’m looking forward to being productive. Dammit.
And I think I figured out one of the little joys in life. When you’ve sat there writing, and you look up and it’s an hour later, and you do that first stretch or get up to go to the bathroom. You can’t describe that feeling.
20 August.
your story
Now you’re just an excuse
for me to mark up pages
in my notebooks,
journals,
places holier than you’ll ever know,
in my head.
You’re now the lines I’ve contrived
right on the edge of sleep
when it’s so easy to forget
in the morning,
forgotten revelations
and epiphanies
under eyelids and REM.
I’ve placed your face somewhere
that used to be a clean slate
but now just makes its own space
for new disappointments
and half regrets
that become stories for the fire.
I tell myself stories,
even if they’re true, you know.
You’re just a minor character,
made of pen-strokes
on blank pages.
You look familiar
even though
I feel like I made you up
somewhere in half-regret,
and all I do
is write you down
in similar words
on familiar lines,
the same strokes invoking you
all over again.
Whatever is left
lies between
your memory
and the next blank page.
This one’s way old. It doesn’t have a date.
been on autopilot since I can remember.
even the times I kissed you
seemed way out of my league
and I should’ve been fleeing for the hills.
should’ve known better
than to veer off course,
pound the gas into the clouds
where it was quiet, and safe, and good.
and I should’ve been dead by now,
but then I would’ve missed you
under the stars just then,
making sense for five seconds.
but now
we’re all on vastly parallel journeys,
where the end is uncertain
except with a smile
and a cup of warm wisdom.
I was supposed to be a miscarriage, you know,
but I made it here
and why should I regret you
when there’s a smile on my face
like the joy of the death
of a past life.
I won twenty bucks last night.
Actually, no. That’s not really true. All in all I won about fifty bucks. But I ended up breaking even in the end anyway.
This is how over twenty-ones who are siblings bond in Las Vegas: they play Let It Ride together. I’d only played a couple of times, won 5 dollars once and didn’t even know it, Sean took it upon himself to teach me how to play this game up at Green Valley Ranch last night. This is how it works: it’s like poker, except you get three cards and the dealer gets the other 2, so your objective is to make something out of the cards, unless you’re dealt something, of course. And you get three bets, minimum 5 dollars, so you have two chances to get your money back– all 5 bucks, plus a 1 dollar bonus bet. So in the end, if you’re dealt a bad hand all you lose is 6 dollars.
A typical game, if you win, would be like this: Each of us puts down $15 plus a $1 bonus bet. I get dealt a King of Spades, and say 5 and 6 of Hearts. Sean gets dealt two 10s and a 2. Since you automatically win with 10s or better (as opposed to Jacks or Better in slot poker), Sean puts his cards down and I get my first 5 back. The second hand is a 2, so Sean has 2 pair already. I get my other 5 back. The dealer’s other card is a King, which falls under the “10s or Better” category and I win 5 dollars, while my brother would win $15 for each $5 chip he put down (because of that $1 bonus bet), which means he wins $45. If the cards are working for you, you could easily win $200 pretty quickly, like my cousin Rich did when he was here– ‘course he put $10 down on each bet, so he only looked really cool. But in two hours, my brother and I had almost lost $300 between the two of us, but he won most of it back, and I won us $50 over, and we ended up spending some of it on slots afterwards, so I only got $20 out of my $50 to keep, plus the $100 I’d put in earlier.
“Don’t make this a regular habit,” he said. I don’t plan on it, since we’ve got the whole, I dunno, alcoholism thing running on both sides of the family. But if I’ve got some pocket money, I might put something down. It’s actually a fun game that’s really low stress and you can’t beat the chance of getting some of your money back. That’s always a Good Thing.
I even got carded, which hasn’t happened in quite a while– maybe because I’ve been familiar with the places I’ve been to and they card everybody at the door, regardless. I was almost ready to bust out my Sheriff’s Card just in case.
Okay everybody, the emo revolution is here. Dashboard’s playing on MTV. All I know is that if I see that dammed Saves The Day video I’m flying to New York to personally kill whoever’s in charge over there.
(If you’re reading this right now and don’t know where I am, I’m probably in bed.)
So. Getting away from drama (in my own head and otherwise) just creates more drama. I never thought I could feel that special. But I got some work done, so that’s a good thing. And even read at poetry night, which is even better.
And I’m finding old stuff, like this dated 5 April of last year.
As he sat in my rocking chair,
he told me I was too good for him.
His best friend had just died,
an even though they hadn’t bonded
in a couple of weeks,
his mouth was agape like a cave
waiting for the bats to enter
and nest their inverted perspective.
Death turns you upside down like that:
like when someone you love dies
unexpectedly, as if your wings were cut off.
Everyone is a stranger,
even my own mother
who left for a place much better
than the house she built with my father.
Those people that know you
just flit through the turnstiles
their words a blur like a face of the dead
in dreams where they say goodbye.
I was lying there on my bed,
the bed I’d watch him sleep in,
the bed I’d cried in
when he left. A part of me had died
just then, when my bedroom was silent
as a coffin’s space,
I felt like I was late for something,
my diconnection from him had finally arrived
and there would be no service.
I would throw no flowers
for our death
since I had killed it within myself.
Good enough.
