A Comet passed too near the sun,
and was filmed  disintegrating..
Perhaps its G.P.S. was off
or just recalculating.
The solar skimming comet
surely melted in the heat.
Old King Sol, our yellow dwarf
Enjoyed his slurpee treat.
Astronomers were quite tight lipped
When asked to speak upon it
All I got from one stargazer
Was a terse” No Comet!”

It’s the little things that are scaring me. About my OCD, my depression, my anxiety, my PTSD, my eating disorder. I feel like if I write this down it will make sense. That she will read it (even though I know she won’t).

There are things that I got past, left behind, and haven’t thought about in a while. Things that are coming back to me, and they feel like an uninvited guest that is overstaying their welcome. Someone I used to spend a lot of time with. But now I have no desire to see her.

No matter how many oils I diffuse, how many mason jars I buy, how many times a day I do yoga, how many bottles of organic apple cider vinegar, coconut oil, and raw honey I buy

She isn’t leaving.

She won’t let me listen to playlists on shuffle, it’s to chaotic for her. It makes her anxious when she doesn’t know what song is going to come on next. She cleans her ears with Qtips three times a day. Three Qtips each time.  She has to knock on something made of wood or paper 3 times every time she thinks a jinxing thought. If more than 30 seconds passes without doing so, she starts to panic. She can’t fall asleep without her queue filled, her clothes laid out, her bag packed and triple checked, the door lock checked three times, and lotion applied to her hands and feet three times. It makes me nervous and I want to help her.

She’s always tired. She does everything from her bed. It takes her 3 hours to prepare for a thirty minute trip to the grocery store. Another hour to prepare for a shower. She doesn’t care about anything. She goes to class, gets in bed, goes to work, gets in bed. I hate her. She’s so ******* lazy. She stares at her scars, and wishes she had more. She wishes they were deeper. She isn’t going to do anything about it, I assure you, but she can’t get it off her mind. The dog scratched her leg last week, and she’s become obsessed with the new scar. It’s sickening. I want to, but I can’t help her.

She is always calculating and recalculating things in her mind, money and time and schedules down to a T. Always crunching numbers. Calculating how much each minute of a college semester costs, and adjusting for every new factor that comes to mind. She can’t take it when anything throws things off by a single minute or cent. She can’t deal with changes in plans, or cancellations. Even if nothing is wrong. She’ll start over thinking, thoughts rapidly increasing their pace as they violently force their way through her brain. She has to ring her hands or pinch her thighs just to catch her breath. It’s painful to see, and I can’t help her.

She used to have small flashbacks during the day, easy to cope with, more like a day dream. And it’s been four years since they’ve been a regular thing. But now they keep her up at night as she tries to fall asleep. She’s in another place. She can feel it on her skin, she can hear it in her ears, she can smell it around her. She keeps getting lost in this world, and I can’t get her out of it. I can see her trying to fight back, but it takes her forever to shake them. She comes out of it, dissociated with her head spinning, and she has to turn the light on and stair at objects and count tiles or walk around to make sense of things again.  I feel like I’m watching her doing all of this and I can’t help her.

I buy all of this food and cook all these healthy meals, and she throws it all away. She just binge eats yogurt, boiled eggs, fast food and cereal. And I always hear her throwing up after. It makes me sick. She keeps putting boxes of multi grain cheerios in the shopping cart, and then putting them back on the shelf. Every week. She used to eat exactly 1 cup of that a day for about a year, and nothing else (at least nothing else that she doesn’t throw up). Don’t get me wrong, it was an amazing diet for her, but I can’t stand the sight of them anymore. I can’t help her.



I just want to help her move on. Get out of this place. I don’t want to see her anymore. We’ve been friends since I was a kid. Her family is friends with my family. Some of my friends have friends like her, and some have no idea what I mean if I mention her. She doesn’t like to be around anyone, and no on likes to be around her. So I hide her. I can’t shake her. I can’t help her. I get her out of bed every day. I brush her teeth and help her to the shower. I get her out of the house most days. I help her write her emails, do her course work, make her coffee, and clean he room. But it’s too much. She’s a mess and I can’t help her.

I can't help her.

Life
     Is
So
                       Random.
      You                                 Will      Never Know


  Where
You're                                                               Going.

Where           Ever

    You             End     Up,
Promise Me


    
    You             Will              Be



Happy

The wind is as idle as I am today
It groans in halfhearted exasperation,
recalculating avian trajectories at 15 miles an hour
The trees are shaken up
“Give me all your leaves!”
They comply with as much dignity as nature brings
Crumpled sighs as they acquiesce and deliver
The same bounty demanded every winter

You deserve that new leopard print dress
you bought to straighten your figure.
You’re tired of A-line dresses that hide your broad hips.
Your new dress has no form, but it clings to you
Like an ex-boyfriend whom you deserve better than.
Your new life is doesn’t replace the old one; they are co-dominant traits.
The fact that it feels new has nothing to do with
The new threads hanging on your shoulders, weightless but slightly burdensome.
Your face is older but it looks better to you.
You sweat less in these drafty spaghetti straps, and when you do
The beads don’t reach the edge of the armholes;
They just keep sliding down to your hips.
This is natural for you and if you would just let your hips dance
You would find the sweat cools their pink-hot heat.
You may be sore afterward, but your mind is usually sore anyway
From recalculating and budgeting your love.

I'm trying
I think.

I'm not sure where I am,
Where I'm supposed to be,
Or how long I'll be here.

The GPS is still recalculating
The engine won't turn over.
I have not reached my destination.
I am not in a safe location.

There is not a story that I should be writing.
There is no writing on the walls.
There is not a forth wall to be broken.
And if it's not broken, then I can't fix it.

It’s Monday afternoon, the first day after Fall Break. Several of my suitemates are here, relaxing a bit before we hit the dining hall and then scatter, like debris from a bomb. There are a zillion things to do on campus, on any given night. Lisa and I are going to a seminar, Anna and Sunny are going to a Uni play and Leong’s going to see a documentary.

Leong was hunched over a cup of dark tea, reading ‘J-14’ magazine. “Do any of you guys think Travis Kelce is hot?” She asked, not looking up. Leong subscribes to several ‘teen’ magazines, like ‘J-14’, ‘Girls' World’ and ‘Girl’s Life.’ She says that Yale is her chance to be the ‘American teenager’ she could never be at home (Macaw, China). We’d make fun of her if we didn’t all read them after she finished, and they were lying around.

“No,” said Lisa and I about the same time as Anna and Sunny said, “Yeah,” to varying degrees.
“Did you think he was hot before he started dating Taylor?” she asked, pushing the enquiry even further. “No,” said Lisa and I repeated in unison - we had this down now.
“He wasn’t on my radar,” Anna admitted. Sunny said, “Yeah, same here.”
“Why do YOU think he’s hot?” Leong asked Sunny (who’s fem-facing).
“I can appreciate a hot guy,” she said, sounding a little defensive, “as someone who could draw hetero interest.”

Then Lisa reported, from head down in her textbook, “Your mouth retains the DNA of everyone you ever kissed.” She looked up and asked me, how many guys have you kissed?
“You mean politely kissed or Deep-kissed,” I asked back, tilting my head, sticking out my tongue and slobbering it around, like a dog eating peanut butter.

“They mean French-kissed,” she replied, rescanning the last paragraphs as I calculated.
“So, the five guys I dated, but we used to play ‘spin the bottle’ at parties too.. so.. 25?” I said.
“You ****!” she laughed. “I have my truth,” I updogged, “How about you?”

“I’d forgotten ‘spin the bottle,’ Lisa admitted, recalculating.. “Yeah, 25 sounds about right.”
“Leong?” she asked Leong. “Two,” Leong answered instantly.
“Anna?” she asked Anna, so Lisa was going completely around the room with this survey.
“25 sounds right” Anna answered, “including spin,” (the bottle).
“Sunny?” Leong asked Sunny. “A HUNDRED,” I said, hijacking Sunny’s answer, and everyone chuckled. Every Friday night Sunny brings a different girl home to ‘spend the night.’ It’s rather impressive.
“A few,” Sunny answered, shrugging nonchalantly, “A girl doesn’t kiss and tell.”
“I’ve got a calculator,” Anna said, “if you change your mind,” holding her phone up like an offer.

You put your life on hold to examine the past, recalculating the out come and what came out. Who knew we’d be sad again, exempting everyone from the relationships of others. Swallowing acid, eating away your insides. Lying to your heart through the skipping beats, and *** stained sheets. You’re crying in the bathroom, reading a graphic novel in a hot bubble bath. Trying to relax, and forget about the past. Failing to tell yourself the truth about your heart-shattering memory and crushed up crush on whom you left behind. Can’t face the truth, so you’re chewing your teeth and swallowing in the shards. Your gums bleeding trying to spit out what’s in front of you but you draw a blank and the targets leaving sight. What are you going to do, you’re going to lie some more and hide it deeper down. You are, you’re going to taint with the tainted and dance with your demons. But they’re leading, and you don’t know how to tango. Getting dragged down and busting your *** ******* the ground, you plummet from Earth and fall to the hell you created yourself. You think back again, to what it could have been. If you’d kept your mouth shut, and just let it in. You cry.

i love that word, puttering, my adjective
of early morning rambling, world examining,
in the early AM, treading barefooted
from room to room, a list prestablished,
+ tidy up the prior evening’s laziness,
unload with complete silence the
prior nights dishwasher, homework,
prep the couch back to pre~beat~up presentability,

make the first 16.5 .oz of Blue Mountain
Hawaiian coffee, in my art history
McIntosh mug(1),
prepare the first of the day’s bitesized
edibles,
a:k:a, Kashi crunchies, so the coffee all
falls down  to a well~recv’d internal welcoming

the timing is off, the clock has changed,
it is early but not really, I’m constantly
recalculating ‘real time’ until confused,
substituting the internal locked-in clocking that ultimate divination of right and wrong,
the betting app informs us of the
under/over hours really slept line
set by Las Vegas oddsmakers

but as usual, the digression omens come
fast and furious, up in the sky apartment
is an oasis of cloud quietude,
(where the latitude and longitude
inter-sec, where the cleansed sun softly)

ah quietude, an envelopment noun
favored over the pedestrian quiet,
my ears,
fulfilled by music via noiseless earbuds,
fills the soul, it is the milk in the
morning coffee brew of the
crossover silence, tween the skyed division

check on the woman, deep asleep,
(pronouns: she/her/mine)
her arm thrown across my empty pillow, as if holding my place in line,
like besties in second grade, a warning to other potent interlopers,
so
withdraw silent to finish the routine that
is so comforting, the polit~noise chatter has
not yet invaded, all of its associated
malice’s tumult, kept away at bay
with forethought,
and instead, thus, I, write,

in this quilt of solitude, not alone,
write of this companioned morn~born~rituals that
will be one day,
be renamed,
as a

mourning ritual,

when
when life ruefully states in its
arrogant ~ don’t ~ care, no ways,
now that,

When,
one of us, be
sleeping permanent, and the
silence be reformatted, recalculated,
the coffee will taste different, and
the footfalls no longer unsqueaking,
no need, cause the solitude is just
renamed as loneliness, and though
the tears emanate from same tear ducts,
the causal reasoning is reversed,
no longer
celebratory, and with no one to show it off,
to share,
no punch in the arm gasp
of loving recognition,

I perforce new habit,
will read this puttering,
now stuttering poem

someday as a new summary,
a substitutable morn chore,
absent
a chorus of a
singly
singular
beautiful quiet but only
memorized,
silenced applause

Oh, how I wish I had a reliable Internal Guidance System.
You know, like a GPS, but one that never loses service during cloudy weather or runs out of battery power?

Instead, my on-board navigation system frequently leaves me hanging.
Where am I? What am I doing? … What am I supposed to be doing?

It’s like my guidance computer got knocked out, kind of like the one on the ill-fated Apollo 13 spacecraft.

Which brings up another thing. …

Just like in “Apollo 13,” the movie, I wish I had this team of really smart guys, all wearing white shirts, black ties and 1970s horn-rimmed glasses, feverishly sliding beads on their abacuses*, checking my calculations for me, letting me know if the answer I’m considering is sound. “Looks good, Flight!” Thumbs up!

Instead, it’s like I’m endlessly pulling the handle on a Vegas slot machine, watching for a solution to line up.
Directions. The Right Decisions.

It’s not that I don’t have any ideas. Gosh knows, I’m always looking for clues and signs.
Astrology. Organized religion. The Wall Street Journal. Oprah Magazine.
I’ve sought counsel from them all. And found some temporal landing lights.

Sometimes I’m moved to act boldly. Make a change! Write that letter! Start something new.

But inevitably the runway gets mighty foggy all over again.
I waiver. I waffle. And I wonder … what now?

Come on, GPS! I need you to kick in here.
I’m tired of trying to read the tea leaves.

Could you just lock and load my coordinates and let me settle into some journey that makes sense and feels right … that takes me where I’m meant to be?

Oh, wait a second. Is that you, GPS? What’s that you said?
Oh, “Recalculating.” Right. Got it. I’ve heard that before.
Come to think of it, it’s the answer I was expecting.

And I know it’s going to come up many more times as I navigate my life.
I wait. I hear. I listen. I learn. I hope. I live.

The Policy of Elemental 80 Hg
How to turn the heads of the gods…


Hyperbole defaults
To feeble absurdities
But as projected, it's ineffective
against hypocrisy

What timber could ignite
Without the base
of anguished disgrace
the simplistic guarantees
Of Hell For All Eternity.

You mislabeled me
as the failed experimentation
Of your botched indoctrination
Now I’m
--- Uninstalling your crazy beliefs
     ---- wiping unnecessary protocols of
             -----atrocious & barbaric deceits.


I control the heat
remaining subtle in a realm
contaminated by extremes,
people slurping and swarming
drawing down my serenity
I don't require civility.
Hold out my arm.
Expose my neck!
I rebirth myself. I raised myself.
I mirror, I don't reject.

Reflecting on the horrors
I witness, I attend, I align.
Receiving encapsulated caption updates
Is the blueprint of our design
Recalculating recalculations
after every iniquitous turn
Calamities are my manna.
Until its impossible to burn
After every drama, I build back stronger.
"Infallible's"compare me
to an unhinged *****
Outside the liquor store
rickety, irate, decrepit
Flapping arms, shrieking, obsessive
We ask her to wear a mask and
That squawking windsock drops
like a whisper to the floor.
She believes she's
blameless, virtuous, courageous.
But she's not programmed for more.
She's a portal, the link to the facts
that she's been holding back.

The mysterious, the marrow
The anonymous, the nameless
Fused components of the ancients.
with nonconforming brains
sequences of neuronal synapses
Prototypes of dichotomy
Chaos in ignorance highlights
while secretly we bond the lowlights
Skirting the edge of this craze.
Strap in!
Anarchy is happening.
Behind burnt orange curtains of flames
**** everything.
Our settlements rain ashes.
Until you choke on gluttonous
Zealous overreactions

You'll find you're not ******* essential.
Monitoring, testing, intending
to prevent the instantiation
Expectant alarmists rebranding progress
as biblical warning signs
--Excuse them, friends
my neanderthal cousins tend
to mow down innovation with hostility.

paralleled in our DNA
the bridges between
us/theirs/yours
I'm the half-breed you forced forward.
I provide no sustenance for power.
The gods who chewed me up and spat me out
Denounced me as unsavory

Undigested, I regenerated.
I'm the consequence, not the recipe.
You are the igniter,
the hypocrite, indignant denier.
Yearning to free yourself of me.
But I exist; it's justice,
Nobody sees you anymore,
host ghost.
No, this is not a mistake.
This is your create.
This is what you bumbled here to fate.
this unrelenting tsunami
streams constant lies and hate
Eliminate societal norms
personal integrity, blocks, restrictions, constraints.

I'm the antithesis synthesis of
frivolous amusement and benign disgust
the poet, the engineer.
Now you're trembling, filled with doubt?
simply because you're auto weeding out?

The gods accept our sincere invitation.
we’re their protégés
We're their revolution evolution
The gods are coming out to play.

-Notorious 80Hg
        (aka Mercury)