The Second Time Around
I hope god loves me more the second time around
I hope the grudges shrug off upon completion
And if it’s alright, I’ll just say good night
And none of you people will ever see me again
I hope god gets kinder the second time around
And I hope his explanations make a bit more sense
Because truth be told, I don’t have a hold
On any sorta explanation with my finite intelligence
I hope you’re happier the second time around
And maybe the news of my passing will never hit you
I mean, with two smiling kids, that look just like him
Why would you ever bother dwelling on your past
And there are no clever reasons
No “as-yet-to-be-revealed” revelations
There’s just explanations, and justifications
And a whole lot of shit
That will never leave you satisfied
Aging is Natural
I think the worst thing about getting older isn’t necessarily being lonely, or being depressed, or even being suicidally alone and depressed.
The point where you know you’re all grown up…
Is when you’re scared.
Is when you’re afraid.
And you can’t control why, and you can’t stop.
You’re just terrified of the past… and present, and the future.
And all those things you used to think were horrible
Are the things you wish you could feel again.
New Year’s Resolution
I’ll pretend we’re alright while you fix the house up with amenities
Every mirror makes me think god got lazy putting me together
Midwestern Winter Fog
Patton Oswalt telling me jokes via iPod
And then there’s me
Always being me
Always being difficult
Self deprecating to a fault
And then there’s the kiss
That altars the kiss
That never should have happened
At least
Not
In
This
Light
The life of Pablo Neruda retold in a few short paragraphs
I long for the coast
For cold showers, day old bottles of Guinness gone flat, and a migraine that is my single biggest concern.
I long for toothaches, stick-ups, and long distance fights with my parents about how I don’t nearly call them enough.
And I long for looking for true love on the streets of Portland.
For back issues of European porno mags, and for second chances with girls that should’ve been better off staying where they were.
I long to be at peace
With paranoia taking a back seat to good company, to pleasant conversations, to the constant offering of polite favors as we pass in and out of kitchens and refrigerators and bathrooms
But most of all
I long
For walls that aren’t concrete, and for the constant sounds of footfalls above me.
The Gospel of John
I read the gospel of John
As the story of a son
Literally killing himself
To live up to his father’s expectations
I saw Return of the Jedi
As a story of a boy
Becoming a man
By kicking the shit out of his evil father
And anyway you spin it
No dad is better than an awful dad
Because the only thing I learned from mine
Was how to take a punch
I saw the film Iron Eagle
As more pointless Hollywood drivel
And I saw Christopher Titus
As someone telling jokes just for me
I heard the Mountain Goats
As someone who’s been there
And as someone who wouldn’t raise a hand
Against anyone, no matter how much they deserved it
No dad is better than an awful dad
And Friday nights are meant for saying in
Because now, I’m old enough to appreciate
The safety deadbolt locks allow me
pilot light
People like you are the reason I’m going to become a millionaire once I invent a device that allows me to give people hugs over the internet.
clairmonster:
i keep reminding myself that i came out here again for something more than crossword puzzles and afternoon tea. i keep reminding myself that there was something desperately romantic about wandering off into the white noise.
this is me, holding on to the gypsy curse.
i’m so starved for excitement that i’d fall apart just to see the fireworks.
thing is, i’ve never claimed to be anything other than juvenile. i’ve never claimed to be anything other than an explosion, a trainwreck.
i can’t be blamed if you mistook the afterglow for a halo.
can’t be held accountable for how the aftershocks decided to move you.
thing is, i might have fooled myself into thinking this was about calming down and growing up… but the truth is i don’t know how the hell to do that. the truth is i’ve still got the scared, little drama-fueled mentality that growing up means being bored to death.
and i find it really tiresome to look for answers so i end up wallowing in familiar mistakes.
this is not how i want to end up, really. it’s just what i feel myself gravitating toward. a quarter-life crisis that just yawns on past where my midlife should be.
thing is, i’d much rather find something that excites me in a postive way. i’d much rather be productive, really. really.
so i keep reminding myself that it isn’t about desperate romance, just something romantic in general. something soft with a good sound track.
i keep telling myself that something’s gonna happen. and some day, some person, some thing, anything… is gonna turn me on again.
and i’m gonna light up like sunrise after a bomb went off.
At the Movies
Growing up, Celluloid was my best friend.
Sure, I had vinyl, and I had compact discs, and I had magnetic tape.
But Celluloid was my best friend.
Growing up in Gaza (not literally, it’s of course, a metaphor), when my father would terrorize me and my mother, sneaking out to the movies was really the closest I ever felt to having a genuine home. And while, honestly, the technology has changed, and fairly, I barely remember what the movies actually were, they still held a pretty special place in my heart.
By the time that credits rolled, I felt like a friend or a love had just spent the better part of two hours with their arms wrapped around me, telling me they understood how I felt. Telling me silly little jokes that made me laugh and momentarily forget my home life, and for two hours, I felt like I had someone or something that loved me enough to help me forget.
But movies would end… I would always sit through the end credits, and I would always get shooed away by the staff telling me that they had to clean up for the next showing.
Then it would always be back to my life again.
And while there were pitfalls to living my life this way; from believing that love conquers all for happily ever after and that in real life morals matter and if you stood up for yourself, you’d feel better… they were still mostly a positive. (Except when I thought that telling my dad that I don’t deserve to be treated that way turned into a rather violent exchange… I know, I know my mistake)
I still go to the movies at least once a week, sometimes more, depending on how unhappy I am. The ritual of those cushioned seats… and from the first previews green screened disclaimer, to the final studio logo, I feel a little better about myself, about my life. I feel like I’m not alone, because those adventures and those lives have one very big thing in common that I love them with all of my heart for:
Those lives aren’t mine.
And that’s what I really want.
but if you wanted to, i’d let you. talk me to sleep i mean.
You’re tougher than me kid, you should show it.
clairmonster:
my first winter in this open space and we’re trapped inside of our houses.
i find it funny that there is so much flat land, so much nothingness, and suddenly it’s filled to the brim with piles and piles of white. it’s like everything has been erased. i can hardly see the contours of our fence, of the neighbor’s garage. it puts real nothingness into perspective.
i thought we were alone before but now everything around me is frozen blank.
and i’m trapped inside of it.
there are three evenly spaced holes outside the backdoor, stomp stomp stomp from a shoe size seven. evidence that i haven’t quit smoking.
evidence that even the cold can’t help me.
meanwhile i get phone calls from boys i knew inside the space of faded photographs. we smile at each other from between the white borders of unfocused poloroids. their ghosts dial my number from the yellowed pages of my high school notebooks.
they’re so in love with me now, they’ll say.
i giggle and encourage them because i find it all so fucking hilarious. i, monster, have become a pastime. i, monster, have evolved—through clever disappearances—into the girl who got away.
i find it all the more hilarious because of all the nights i said, “i’m here.”
all the nights i answered the phone, the nights i’ve answered the door, the nights i petted your poor little hand and said, “i’m here.”
i find you no more interesting now than i did then, honey, but suddenly you can’t look away. i find you no more complicated, but you’re telling me you caught yourself in love. is it the distance that comforts you? the miles and miles of white between us that makes you feel safe?
you know that i could never let you down.
and don’t go getting embarrassed about it, darling, i do the same.
i write my responses to your pathetic text messages on a computer screen. i post my true feelings where you will never see.
and honestly, if a thousand extraneous variables were adjusted,
maybe we would’ve ended up together.
and maybe i’d look out my window one day and see another kind of something.
.
but chances are—i mean, the constant is—i’d still be snowed in.
An Alternative to Violence
I write like a psychopath. Someone completely disconnected from his fellow man. This, I would imagine, would be something absolutely obvious to anyone who’s ever read my writings or my blogs. Sadly, I haven’t begun to notice this until recently.
There’s no narrative, no sense of purpose. Its visceral. I spit out words the way a bad alcoholic dad just starts swinging at his kid. (Again, something I have a pretty good frame of reference for) And maybe that’s what these words are for me. An alternative to violence. A way I can make my days feel a little better, and my sense of a future a little more hopeful.
But, it gets lonely… because it’s no way to make friends, to reach out to my fellow man, to lie down roots. It becomes a passive curiosity where I seem to attract women who are at first impressed with my talents, and then build up a desire to reform me, to make me happier, to invest in me a way where love can bloom.
And yes, I’m over simplifying, and yes, I’m reducing. But it’s my experience.
It’s just… I’m getting older, and those days when I look up into the mirror and stare at myself in the face that I feel like everything and nothing has changed. I feel like I am older… that the sum of my experiences have changed. The mirror has changed. I’ve put on weight. But I still feel like me, like I’m that same little kid who’s looking to get away from their own childhood.
I avoid commitment because I’m afraid of leaping from one social prison to another.
I avoid conflict because I feel like it has no place in my life.
I want to affect change, but I don’t know where to begin.
And maybe, just maybe, the evenings great realization is that it’s all my fault. It’s -my- fear and anxiety that keeps me from moving out of this place.
I’m genuinely afraid that once I take that chance and cross that threshold from “Alone by choice” to “Alone by circumstance” that everything I’ve ever felt negatively towards myself would be justified.
And I can’t take that. I’m holding on by a thread as it is.
