west london fire stories
stories i can't finish
you are in this story

what's the problem called
when the sun is coming up
and you've been awake all night because
ugly sleep sleeps all day,
and the groom's ******* are
too large for his beard

someone said no to reality
someone put the greed in poverty
but what can i say, what can i say
forgot who i was long ago
don't like who i am today

my back was turned
when the rainproof cladding of grenfell tower fell
while the london fire burned

cheap, chinese, and rainproof
that's how
the rainproof cladding of grenfell tower fell

sixto rodriguez
isn't good enough for you

her faded name makes do
she has an inner wrist tattoo

someone said,
"there are a lot of uncreative people out there who have a need to express themselves"

how true
how true

west london fire stories
burning up the day,
london fires burning down and out
before they burn away

daily all day robes
and a story i can't finish
i won't make it out, there's too much
i don't want to say

so late in the day
wasting life away
unheard singing
should probably count for something
maybe today, maybe today, maybe today
so late in the day

instant coffee,
INFP, unfinished story
cheap chinese burning debris
blazing away on the bbc
so late in the day, so late in the day, so late in the day
& the day becomes another day

must be so nice to be you
always voting for justin trudeau
all your better things to do,
all the better looking women you were born to pursue

london fires burn down and out
before they burn away
& the day becomes another day
maybe today, maybe today, maybe today

i planned for the worst
and got priced out and let down
when it didn't happen

i waited for david stockman's predictions
to come true
i don't get turned on by doom ****
but it's my only chance at buying low and selling high

real estate prices keep on rising

the smiling all-cash chinese buyers at the open house
pointed their fingers at the water view of puget sound,
said something in chinese,
then laughed

it was sunny out that day, so the water was brightly lit
giving off the impression it would always be like that
or would always end up returning to that

the approximate time frame for the upcoming financial crisis always gets pushed back
so i'm still waiting

celine wrote some thick books
'Death On The Installment Plan'
'Journey To The End Of Night'
my plan was to read them but i never did

i got as far as the titles
then got stuck

they've been packed away in boxes
for the past 5 years,
i had no need to unpack them

maybe if they had been  thinner

what can i do
what can i do
i just don't want to
i just don't want to

everyday i feel so unheld
together

life after life

it was almost two months ago
my new job was going terribly

i had two managers
one was either a compulsive liar or losing her memory
to dementia or early alzheimers
the other one was a typical single, white, overweight woman
who enjoyed flying into fits of rage and preaching about white privilege
when she wasn’t giving angry lectures about how howard schulz’s wife
had nannies to help her raise her children

she didn’t like me
so i just quit, with no notice other than an email
saying i was resigning effective the time stamp of that email

two weeks before i quit, i had the saddest dream
about some guy i had a mental breakdown over ten years ago
i haven’t talked to him since some sad
emails in 2010, he never responded to my last email
i’de been looking him up online lately but retrieving no matches
because his name is so common and it’s been so long

in my dream he texted me or emailed me
magically, he had gotten my phone number
or one of the email addresses i use now
he wrote that he would be in my town
and asked if we could meet

i was really looking forward to it in the dream
i was getting ready, hair, make-up, clothes
i realized my dress had a ketchup stain on it
towards the end of that part of the dream

i don’t think my hair or makeup or face or body looked good
i looked like i look
ten years older and haven’t kept up or maintained anything
not that i looked good ten years ago, but i look a lot worse now
i sort of realized that when i saw the ketchup stain

then it occured to me that he never responded when
i either emailed or texted him back:
“yes, yes, let’s meet again”
there i was, excited, getting ready,
vacuuming a car I haven’t driven in years
i just wanted everything i wanted back

i thought we were going to meet that weekend
but then he emailed me saying
no, he wouldn’t be in town until the 22nd

march 22nd was on a wednesday this year
so i would have just been working late
and getting a bad review for anything i did

i quit my job on tuesday, march 21st, after a hard day of doing nothing
since then, i’ve drank a lot of wine, gotten ******, and smoked cigarettes.

i also found his mom’s facebook page
and his.

his is set to mostly private, but his mom had posted
some recent pictures of him and his girlfriend

he looked weak and unhappy in the eyes.

there's a man inside of me
that forgets he isn't a girl
he cusses when he
wants the touch
and not the blow

he writes letters
to invisible people
in disappearing ink

here but not here
there but not there
you are going through something
like the atmosphere

i dress him up sometimes
in sunless tanners and jangling bracelets
i pierced his ears, not to hide him, not to doctor him up
but to make him more audible
because if he is going to keep on talking
he might as well be understood

there are problems
he probably likes the sweatstains
more than the bathrobes
(but no one else likes either one)
he is too concerned, but he cusses through it
as if no one will ever be on to him

i talk in his voice sometimes
just because it sticks around
sort of like how you can't shower off
the smell of last nights *****
come morning

not that i drink very often
but i talk just like him
i stink just like him
according to those
who are long ago and far away
and remembered as if they were ever close
because my other voice
just sounds fat and lazy and useless