wish you were here

For some reason, this came out earlier today, since I couldn’t get online all day.

Trust me, I don’t feel sad. I just felt a little angry for about 5 minutes.

(for the pretty girls who complain)

all these girls complain
about finding a good man
they make out
and fake out feeling good
and then they’re bored
boys never being the men
they keep talking about

we might as well
all be actors
except my life
ain’t like Sex & the City

it assumes me
to be
what every girl
destroys herself to be

it’s easy to spread your legs
when you’re pretty
when you don’t
even have to smile

but I have to run
so many more miles
than you
just to give
myself a chance

it’s a fact
that if you and I
walk into a bar
you will get strangers
saying hi
and they’ll pretend
I’m not there

it’s like being picked last
for kickball
except they kick
your head in
before the game starts

don’t say
“don’t say that”
because
you get more opportunity
and I get told
how funny I am

I thought people
could see through shit
but it only
makes me invisible

maybe genetics
dealt me a bad hand
(she’s cute and all) …
but my words
have to be bigger
than my will
to overtly hate men
and hate society
and hate the fact
that I have to assume
no-one
will give me a chance

because
when you cry at night
because you got dumped
I cry
because
I have learned
how to be alone

so fix your makeup
and move ahead
I hope the sex is good

there are more of us
than you

So, for some reason, my modem’s been out all day, and simply unplugging it and then plugging it back in has solved it all. I wish that could be more metaphorical, but you’re just going to have to live with it.

I’m gathering poems for another chapbook. If I approach you with a packet of page poems to look at, don’t be frightened. Please. That may not be for another week or so.

I’ve been trying to write lately, and I’m abandoning a lot of poems about 4-5 lines into them. It’s frustrating because I want to write some new slam pieces, but I’m realizing that writing poetry in general is usually a more “I don’t know where the hell that came from” event than the actual hours of work I put in writing novels. I can’t really force poems; I can write on an idea I’ve had and see what happens, but it’s usually disasterous. I’m hoping that going to a lot of readings and getting back to workshopping will create more serendipitous moments with my poetry muse.

Nakachi had this poem tonight that I want to remember and cover. I want to ask her for a copy of it tomorrow.

I want to have a mass gathering at my house soon. Maybe a slam team party/barbeque?

This is getting too scattered. I should be in bed.

The copy and paste beast strikes again.

The radio show last night went fabulously. Had a blast. But this weekend’s going to be busy with readings and a workshop…

Hmmmm. Been thinking about things lately, especially after feeling how I felt over the weekend. I got all bratty and pouty because everyone was gone or busy, and I was home alone all weekend, and it spilled over into being melodramatically depressed on Sunday. And I realized Monday that I was just being dumb because it wasn’t like I was trying to draw attention to myself. Nobody was around to give a shit.

You know, alcoholics are top notch at this. My grandma used to do it by leaving drunken, rambling messages on my machine. My parents did it first by not coming home at night, then by fighting about my dad’s infidelity during the late nights of my senior year of high school, when my brother was already moved out of the house. My brother does it by partying all night and failing to call me and let me know he’s incapacitated, usually leaving a mess at work (like he did last night before I went to the Coffee Bean.)

The best part is, none of these people want to talk about it once you can get them to sit down. You have my attention, now what? What the fuck could you possibly want me to do that could make it all better?

I mean, I have plenty of opportunity to just drink myself into oblivion. But sometimes I feel like that’s the lowest I could go and why the fuck would I jack up the rest of my internal organs? Heart’s already broken, I can live with the scars; trying to improve my digestive habits, pretty much figured out what really doesn’t go down well; I’ve become friends with my ovaries, when they rebel I tell my body it’s okay.

My body tells me when I’ve had enough alcohol, and sometimes I feel like I’m the only person who listens to that mechanism. I’m not saying that I don’t have the urge just to get shnockered every so often– but that’s really rare for me, and usually when I start I can’t seem to get very far.

I could drink to forget my parents. But I’ll remember them again regardless, so there’s really no point in putting my liver through all that bullshit when I could accept the memories, tell myself I’m being sad, and let it pass.

I guess I’ve just lived with it for so long that I’m at the point where I really don’t give a fuck. Yes, I know you’re drunk, you’re barely going to remember this tomorrow. And I just fucking don’t want to deal with you. I don’t care what you have to say, if it’s really the truth or whether you’re just trying to open up. If you can’t do it when you’re sober there’s really no point in making progress, is there?

Maybe I’m just being self-righteous. I don’t know what I’m being. I’m just being.

And I have this fragment, that I have no idea where it goes:

I want them to wrap us
in linen, as we used
to lie in bed together,
arms indistinguishable in the din;
I want to make them bury us
in finery shining like the wet
scales of a snake;
our story will be told
on our tomb, carved out
by the gods, so impossible
it could be nothing but myth.

I’ve been having Cox problems all day, so I’m a little late in posting this.

(And you can take that last statement any way you like, for it’s probably true in all senses of the word. And I’m not talking about the word “problems.”):

Tonight I’ll be on the radio, doing a mini-feature and talking about slam and the slam team here in town. At ten o’clock tonight, you can either tune in locally on AM 1230, and if you’re online go to rebelpoetry.com and you can listen on the internet.

I haven’t felt like writing anything at all. Maybe I just don’t feel like talking.

This weekend’s been very boring. And very lonely. Everyone’s been out of town or busy. Tonight, especially, has been one of those Suicidal Love Song nights. Maybe it was because I ended up watching the finale of Sex and the City, though it’s not a show I normally go out of my way to watch. And it wasn’t even particularly sad.

Should be feeling good, but I just don’t. I really want it to go away.

I still have to post about Monday night’s (very) long (but interesting) conversation at Cheer’s, and tonight at the Iowa.

Hopefully, I will, that is, if Cox’s cable lines will comply with me for once.

Um. I should post this, too:

I

am

going

on

tour!

(Yeah baby!)

G’night.

For my dawg Luke:

Google bomb registry

You don’t necessarily have to go to the link, unless you’re curious about his site. It’s a nice little site.

How come more of you guys don’t have your own sites?

I’ll actually post something later, both to appease some people and because my modem’s back to normal now.

Randy, here’s your name.

Now quit.

I’ve been having cable modem hiccups for the past couple of days, so if I’m silent, that’s why. Cox’s fault. Again.

Just know that I’m thinking of you.

Cut and paste stuff:

So I wanted to give myself a day to recover from yesterday.

Yesterday being one of the worst days I’ve had in the past couple of years, and it had nothing to do with Flying Baby With Arsenal Day.

Did a little recording at Bakeem’s– busted out about 6 poems for the possible CD– and got paged from work. They’d meant to page my brother but paged me instead.

No. Sean, after telling me all week that he’d call me about the drop on Saturday morning, decided that he was going to be so inebriated on Friday that he’d somehow utterly fail to call me, leaving me the only one to take care of the drop (where we take money out of the slot machines so that we can pay out jackpots and cash checks during the week) on a Saturday afternoon at 4 o’clock, where the bartenders change shifts. And the bar is packed with people.

After slamming the office door once, I just sat in the office, had my little cry, calmed down, and did the drop, which took me all in all about 4 hours to do.

This is what makes me afraid. My brother is going to fuck this up so goddamm royally that I can’t do anything but fucking take charge. You know the rest of that story.

I could swear I could my father’s ashes churning in his urn.

I was doing just fine until then. I kept a good face for the customers, who were gracious enough to let me interrupt them a little. I felt so fucking embarassed.

It’s a fucking established bar. It shouldn’t have to be this goddamn hard.