all too frequently
there are days
you could spew the most blatant lies
“George Washington never existed”
“Two plus two is twelve”
“I love you for you”
“There’s no reason to rebel”
and I’d believe you
It’s not that I’m gullible
it’s that I’m stubborn.
I have to be right
but I’m full of self doubt.
So when I can’t believe my thoughts
and I think I’ve forgotten my name
you can tell me I’m bad
and I’ll take all the blame.
I know nothing.
I believe not at all.
I could recite you
all the qualifying characteristics
in the diagnostic statistical manual volume five
for depression
and narcissistic personality disorder
I can explain clinically
chemical dependency
and I can recite the twelve steps from memory.
Hell, I remember some math formulas
and my teacher’s name from fourth grade
but say “tell me about yourself”
and all certainty will decay.
I know nothing.
I believe not at all.
Karl Marx said religion is the ***** of the people
I never believed in god
maybe that’s why I turned to the needle.
You’ll say everything happens for a reason
which in my proper mindset I won’t believe in
but blaming my overt destruction
on third party destiny
I know deep down is false,
but so comforting to believe.
I know nothing.
I believe not at all.
Did I love you?
Did I even feel at all?
It doesn’t even matter
it was still me that took the fall.
I still have no self-assurance
or any concept of who I want to be
no god, no friends, I beg no lover
will figure this out for me.
Maybe this is who I am,
metamorphosing ghost
with a crooked smile
shaping who I am today
knowing it'll all be gone
before I can say
I know
I believe
what my brain is telling me
not so desperate to please
no longer begging on my knees
for the false ideal of certainty
because I’ll know
I know with confidence
the simple facts;
I know nothing.
I believe not at all.
Feb 19, 2018
Feb 19, 2018 at 11:09 PM UTC
To adolescent girls
We know infatuation as love.
A cute boy, paying attention and being kind
Unlike our mothers and fathers.
Or a handsome young man
Showing just enough distance, and disinterest,
That it is familiar, but we do not yet know why…
So the starving soul craves more, more, more.
So our stupid hearts say love, love, love.
I do not know about you,
But in retrospect I do not think that I loved these boys.
I would sit up late, plagued with an insomniac’s depression.
Thinking of these boys that had left me in the dust,
Commercials playing loudly over an old box television.
My impressionable brain unaware of the absorption of utter ********
But the logical fallacies of consumerism and capital leaked into my psyche,
As I begged to be noticed.
Rebranding myself every so often
Once even under a different name. Always new labels;
A cheerleader, an emo, a stoner, a scholar
Trying to find some sense of self,
Trying to sell my soul (subconsciously) for acceptance.
No one ever understood me like you,
And I dare to say, perhaps out of ego, that no one has ever understood you like me.
You've had friends for longer than me now,
You are happy, without me, clinging to your side.
Maybe you are understood once again
Maybe you are the chameleon that I once was.
Either way, I want you to be happy, do as you do.
Although I can no longer be the chameleon,
I cannot change my colors as life goes on around me, fitting in whatever life throws at me.
I feel old, I am deeply tired.
I know that I am young, but I have seen too much.
I threw my life away for a self-titled happiness extract,
Isolation and degradation became all I knew.
Cynicism rose up inside of me, and when I heard the commercials I once fell asleep to
I decided that not only the advertisements,
But the world was ********
I remember young adolescence,
I recall kisses and uncomfortable fondling in basement bathrooms and crawlspaces with these boys in which I thought that I loved,
That never cared for me like I cared for them,
Even so it was infatuation and not love.
I remember a kiss in your bed.
I remember the absolute terror when it occurred to me, years later.
I never loved anyone softly,
I loved viciously, desperately, and even loved just to cling on for life.
I loved you softly, I loved you dearly, I loved you deeply.
I always told myself it was platonic, but it was neither platonic or romantic.
I just loved you, like I had never loved anyone else. Without fear, without sacrifice, without dereliction.
I did not realize this
Until a state-assigned therapist pointed out in the basement of the facility I resided
“When you speak of her, I see love in your eyes that I don't ever see.”
I hated her for that,
“Dumb ***** I love writing, I love music, I loved Xander, I love my family!”
“But Caidyn,” she said
“I have not ever seen this kind of love in your eyes.”
It occurred to me then, and not until then
That when I held you, as you slept
In a hotel room after a concert
As infomercials bellowed violently into my soul
That I will never feel that sense of warmth, happiness and belonging ever again.
Not to say I won't find love,
But the innocence and naïveté
The faith I had, that we would escape side by side
And always remain side by side.
I know now,
That your first love
Never works out like that.
I dream of days where ridiculous advertisements filled my sleepy brain without judgement,
Because for any glimpse of hope I get
I am devoured by longing.
I remember how “everything is ********
And feel guilty for my bitterness.
I realize I am no longer young in spirit
I am not the demographic for any meaningless advert.
I am a forgotten human, not an outcast, but a memory to those I cared for.
I can no longer avoid it.
I think of when I held you,
and didn't even think anything of it.
Jan 25, 2018
Jan 25, 2018 at 9:42 PM UTC
My business is words. Words are like labels,
or coins, or better, like swarming bees.
I confess I am only broken by the sources of things;
as if words were counted like dead bees in the attic,
unbuckled from their yellow eyes and their dry wings.
I must always forget how one word is able to pick
out another, to manner another, until I have got
something I might have said...
but did not.
Your business is watching my words. But I
admit nothing. I work with my best, for instances,
when I can write my praise for a nickel machine,
that one night in Nevada: telling how the magic jackpot
came clacking three bells out, over the lucky screen.
But if you should say this is something it is not,
then I grow weak, remembering how my hands felt funny
and ridiculous and crowded with all
the believing money.
Jan 2, 2018
Jan 2, 2018 at 3:22 PM UTC
I used to chase needles without thread
Perhaps lace, laced strongly and surely
No doilies for spoiling souls
My mouth an overflowing ashtray
Arms a fracking site deeply polluted
But today I had a taste of freedom
Not full liberation
But unrestraint in the chill of the night air
Immunity in the damp grass
Elbowroom in the dimmed night sky
My brains puppeteer must have taken lunch
Now that I’m not being dragged and pulled
In every which way at full strength
I hope he never comes back
This limpness leaves behind my limitations.
Dec 27, 2017
Dec 27, 2017 at 8:19 PM UTC
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful --
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
Dec 27, 2017
Dec 27, 2017 at 5:39 PM UTC
Once a lover said to me “I’d like to pick your brain,”
“You’re a beauty darling, but I think you’re quite insane.”
I did not doubt a word he said so I opened up my mind
I think he got a little scared when he realized what he’d find.
Empty bourbon bottles, littered in my head
Crumpled up old ***** notes, wishing I was dead.
Then one of the voices that once belonged only to me
Snuck into his consciousness out of curiosity
It whispered scary sayings right into his ear
He clutched my hand tightly, said “Never leave me, dear.”
I looked into terrified eyes with sincere empathy
But felt nothing but relief that the terror had left me.
Before it could crawl back to me I shut my mind quickly,
I will be ****** if I’m the one living life sickly.
Dec 27, 2017
Dec 27, 2017 at 5:28 PM UTC
during my worst times
on the park benches
in the jails
or living with
******
I always had this certain
contentment-
I wouldn't call it
happiness-
it was more of an inner
balance
that settled for
whatever was occuring
and it helped in the
factories
and when relationships
went wrong
with the
girls.
it helped
through the
wars and the
hangovers
the backalley fights
the
hospitals.
to awaken in a cheap room
in a strange city and
pull up the shade-
this was the craziest kind of
contentment
and to walk across the floor
to an old dresser with a
cracked mirror-
see myself, ugly,
grinning at it all.
what matters most is
how well you
walk through the
fire.
Dec 26, 2017
Dec 26, 2017 at 11:28 PM UTC
the lady has me temporarily off the bottle
and now the pecker stands up
better.
however, things change overnight--
instead of listening to Shostakovich and
Mozart through a smeared haze of smoke
the nights change, new
complexities:
we drive to Baskin-Robbins,
31 flavors:
Rocky Road, Bubble Gum, Apricot Ice, Strawberry
Cheesecake, Chocolate Mint...
we park outside and look at icecream
people
a very healthy and satisfied people,
nary a potential suicide in sight
(they probably even vote)
and I tell her
"what if the boys saw me go in there? suppose they
find out I'm going in for a walnut peach sundae?"
"come on, chicken," she laughs and we go in
and stand with the icecream people.
none of them are cursing or threatening
the clerks.
there seem to be no hangovers or
grievances.
I am alarmed at the placid and calm wave
that flows about. I feel like a ***** in a
beauty contest. we finally get our sundaes and
sit in the car and eat them.
I must admit they are quite good. a curious new
world. (all my friends tell me I am looking
better. "you're looking good, man, we thought you
were going to die there for a while...")
--those 4,500 dark nights, the jails, the
hospitals...
and later that night
there is use for the pecker, use for
love, and it is glorious,
long and true,
and afterwards we speak of easy things;
our heads by the open window with the moonlight
looking through, we sleep in each other's
arms.
the icecream people make me feel good,
inside and out.
Dec 26, 2017
Dec 26, 2017 at 10:53 PM UTC