been dreaming of a lover.
they plucked out all your eyelashes
and drank your pretty tears
they laughed when you said you loved them
and had loved them for years.
Dearest ———-,
I’m reading some Bukowski for the first time and the raw decrepit bare story-telling of his prose in “Notes of a dirty Old Man” is really invigorating to me so far. Makes me able to imagine myself in those moods where I am just hothothot with awakeness and a mirthful sort of excited interest and desire for anything. Some days I am so thrilled alive and desperately would like someone to be interested in me enough to want to be pulled along with me as I dart and delve into every interesting nook and cranny of life, I want someone to be excited and enamored with it all as I am, and importantly, excited and enamored with me.
I think I really do thrive with people’s attention. Makes me eager and warm. But I’m fine on my own too, I can occupy myself for days on end with reading and music and art and tidying my 1/3 of a room. I settle into a different sort of self for that.
I’ve come to thinking (believed before and do still believe now) that I could only ever truly love someone greater than me. Someone smarter, bigger, more interesting and more knowledgable and worldly and talented, but then of course, still interested in and thrilled with me. It’d be an admiring, reciprocated love. I wouldn’t have to be scared of them, or pretend to be less than I am in order to be easier for them. They’d understand me, but would still be preoccupied with a vast many things
///unfinished.
summerkids
Your fingers orange-sticky and cheeks all strawberry sunburnt,
you offered me the watermelon slice.
there were grains of sand on the edges,
and possibly a smudge of residual sunscreen right where you were holding it, all creased between your fingers,
and I look at you, examining you hard as I accepted it.
There was nothing sweeter than you, rosy sunchild.
Nothing sandier, pool-chlorinated and sunburnt, salty like the tortilla chips your mother sent along instead of potato chips and mildly spicy like the salsa she packed you as well.
and with the tang of lemonade and orange slices, the fruity kiss of red popsicle on your lips and the dewy shine of watermelon juice on your chin, there was nothing sweeter.
She didn’t know how else to go about seeking attention but blatantly. Rehearsed words and learned mannerisms aside, something in her naturally called for it, asked, demanded it.
She needed love, and was still learning to distinguish between empty declarations of it and the real thing, but both were welcomed with a tearful sort of exuberant gratitude.
More than once, she’d end a night stumbling around and calling people she missed, e-mailing former teachers and school counselours, wandering over to a friend’s house in the middle of the night to have a mug of tea with their parents. She just wanted them to know how deeply and sincerely and desperately she appreciated them, she wanted them to know what she’d been up to lately, she craved responses of approval and encouragement.
If I found some kid who just loved to laugh and had a great time with all he did and was happy… maybe I’d marry him and we’d settle down and things would be alright for me.
But what if I’d rather attach myself to a number of people, complicated and intelligent and moody and strange and interesting and funny as well? I’m already in the midst of that, goodness.
I think I’d end up scaring off the nice happy kid. But really, I so like the idea of someone easygoing, who sincerely enjoys everything, laughing all the time.
Dear ——,
I feel such tenderness for you. I don’t know why I love you, I only wish to wrap you up in my feelings for you and soften all edges of the world so that no harm reaches you or those you love, ever.
I learned to disconnect for you. I learned to not have feelings when sexual in order to protect you from the force of my love, the weight and guilt and burden. I learned to be dead to our interactions while you, you were brought to life.
Dear ——-,
Something gorgeous and new, fucked up, gritty and graffitied, but by some gap-toothed grinning fourteen year old kid, his very first spray can. Raw and novel, but been done a hundred times before. Like a totally charming, unabashed, freckled 16 year old prostitute, she’s been in some nasty scenes, been ‘round the bend countless times, dropped out of school, but she’s fierce and she’s free and she laughs like nothing else you’ve ever heard. Every time its comes through her chest, you’re bathed with it, that stupid sunshiney, warm afternoon beer on the porch feeling. It’s stupid and aching familiar, burnt out so many times before, but it’s nice, sort of unexpected (“you’re still standing?”) when it wheels- however unsteadily- around again. I think i’s the reason people still fall for California.
Maybe I’d name my daughter California.
I used to think Liberty, ‘cause we could call her Libby and freedom is such a lovely notion.
———, I need a goddamn BAND. M and I saw Green Day two weeks ago. We took buses and trains and I caught a ride with an online friend I finally knew in person, and we got in the pit at the venue and I kept a hold on her and got us up front. Honestly, I felt like a dominant girlfriend, maybe ‘cause I’m a big sister, just keeping M with me, making sure she was okay, and getting us up to the front- I had my arm over the rail! The security guy up front gave me water when I needed it, they pulled kids out whenever/if ever we needed it (M and I didn’t) and we had such a BLAST!!! We have been re-inspired to get a band together. I gotta rock it, man, I gotta.
Remember when Roger Waters spit on a member of their audience? Those were the days, man…
No, really though, I was thinking while we were in line that rock and roll culture is not what it used to be. Groupie culture is not what it used to be.
Green Day and Pink Floyd and this book “Valley of the Dolls” and of course my sweet sister have been my inspirations lately. What are yours?
Fondly,
me
Tough bitch
junkie bitch
can’t get rid of this aching itch
Scabby mouth
scabby south
glimpses of glistening gums
Need a poke
not a joke
stick me with something fast.
All I wanted was a rock and roll boyfriend and I got one.
He has full lips and wide cheekbones and curly longish hair. His eyes are rimmed red mostly, and he kisses like nothing you’ve ever felt before, and he mumbles all low and wanting against my neck sometimes, want him sobad so bad and has a leather motorcycle jacket that looks like it has survived a hundred crashes, the skin against the road, slamming scraping dragged against the road, black leather on blacktop all spun out, outta control.
He tries not to, but sometimes my boyfriend loses control with me. Usually when he drinks. I love it when he does, that’s about the only time I can ask him to pull my hair when we screw, when I let myself be as loud as I want and when I’m not embarrassed to be pushy and feel him up and suck his ears and bite his neck and whine like I really mean it, really fuckin mean it. He says he feels guilty when he sees me with bruises the next day but what I think he really feels guilty about it how he likes seeing me with bruises. I like seeing me with bruises.
He has an uncle who’s like thirty and who owns a record store. We hang out there a lot, get a turntable spinning and play whatever we want really loud. We usually feel like the same music and his uncle doesn’t mind, lets us do whatever, but this one time my boyfriend and I got in a huge fight and it ended with me shaking so bad, angry and scared and I smashed a few records and he’d grabbed me, hard, against a wall and I was making these stupid harsh JAGGED sounds, couldn’t stop. He knocked things over when he left, slammed the door and it’s bells behind him and I couldn’t move from where I was for a minute and when I could I was trying to pick up the pieces of the records I smashed- The Doors, Heart, Jefferson Starship- and then his uncle came down from his apartment upstairs what the fuck was that about Christ are you okay? And I started to tell him his nephew was a fucking prick but I started crying and apologizing for the mess when he knelt in front of me and took my shaking hands and he was telling me it was okay it wasn’t my fault, beautiful and he kissed me.
It was really gentle and I wasn’t frightened. If anything I was relieved because I felt so safe and it was so comfortable with him. He’d told me so many stories about bands that he’d seen, people he’d met and stories he’d never written down, and I liked being around him. He was nice and stopped after a moment to ask if I was okay. I said yeah, but I couldn’t stop trembling so he asked if I wanted something to drink and I said no and asked if I could smoke some of his weed to calm me down instead. He laughed and I was looking up at him and he said sure, and kissed me again before we went upstairs.
We’d smoked together before so that wasn’t a big deal. And I don’t know how it happened but my boyfriend and I sort of fell apart in that we didn’t talk as much as we did before about stuff like our future house and barefoot wedding, but we would still go to his uncle’s place almost every day and we’d get high all the time, mellowing out and listening to music upstairs with the curtains closed. I guess neither one of them gave a fuck if I was making out with the other one too.
One time his uncle brought another girl upstairs. She was a few years older than me and brought acid and had a scar on her face from where a frontman’s wife had backhanded her, the weddingring’s diamond tore through her. We all took the sugar cubes straight, her fingers traced my lips after and I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She opened the window and lined up a row of flower petals on the sill and was crawling around, doing army guy positions and muttering to herself. She caught me staring at her and smiled and asked me why, what I liked. I just wanted to touch the cross around her neck and when she came closer I saw that it was a pregnant woman wrought and wound around the tight metal crucifix. Her hand went to cradle the back of my neck and I bowed my head against her chest, the safe cavity between breasts. Her fingertips were cool pebbled touches over the back of my neck and I knew then I wanted her to shave my head so I could feel more of that, and when I lifted myself, my eyes to see her face, my lips brushed against the cross and I opened my mouth for it, taking the smooth metal in and swallowing around it.
She only stayed a few days but she’ll come through again and again. The guys and her and I are all comfortable with each other. That’s pretty much all who I’m in love with right now, I like all of them.
You are so lucky
they want you
(in a thousand bloody pieces)
we all need one we all want one we all need one to hold onto remember cherish and keep
(you don’t know how bad)
they want you
You are so lucky
to be so wanted
(give it up or else)
it’s because we love you we want you want to be you give it to us we’ll take take away tear away
(they’ll take they’ll tear)
so wanted and loved
You are so lucky
they love you
(every piece they want every)
we love you will kill die for you so die for us love us too give it all give it all we want we need
(piece they will take from you)
they love all of you
But how can they love you without possessing every bit of you and
how, how will you survive it?
No complaints, though.
You are lucky.
Alcohol curls down her back- like golden champagne, sodden down her shoulders and over her ivory gown, the vintage or maybe just old, just threadbare, just carefully home sewn and passed down ivory gown, and her wet brown eyes lifted to the skies from beneath her tweezed-too-thin eyebrows.
“I’m in love, I’m in love with the stars up above.” It was a mumbling, twisty song and she brought each hip forward, pushing to make her heavy skirt turn and move, swirl with each step she took. Brown bottle beer glass, broken brown rain stains embedded in her hands above her head, rusty orange drips wound down her arms from the split skin. Her chapped lips smiled, and she could believe she was carefree.
“I’m in love, I’m in love with the stars up above.” Her mother used to sing, and that was what she chose to remember. The skirts her mother made for her, those strong small hands braiding her hair, and a voice that stayed even when the woman it belonged to left, those were what she chose to keep.
“And they all wink, pretty things, when I tell them.
And then I think wishful things and regret them.”
Dirty brown feet, she wants to walk forever down these roads, disappear into the fields and go farther than she’s ever gone. She wants to disappear into the song, into comfortable memories, into the stained glass skies.
“They’re up in the heavens and I’m stuck here below.
They shoot ‘cross the sky into places I cannot go.
All I can do is tell them, sing to them so they will know,
That I’m in love, I’m in love, I’m in love..”
Wanting earthy sweet liquorliquorlicorice
and wine nestled in the bottom of its glass,
swirling sediments and poetic mumblings over
the beauty and futility of humanity,
and the lovability and unwitting pretension and laughingly apologetic morning eyes, the remembering to be self-conscious again.
