but i'm glad you arrived regardless

12.28

maybe if i create enough, i'll finally understand what this is all for.

12.10

i'm planning on painting more in the near future, mostly because i intend to finally begin submitting to fine art shows and exhibitions. considering my current year of rest and relaxation that's waging war on my psyche, i've been looking for more oppurtunities to feel something other than stifling isolation. i've turned to art, and to writing, to doing absolutely nothing of value, and to contemplating pessimism until my brain seeps out my ears. it's hard to feel purposeful without people to meet at shows and friends to smoke with. i'm trying so desperately to ignore the temptation of nihilism, to entirely give in to my apathy and let my body melt into my mattress like a death stain. i have no job, and though i know it's expected that i search for one, every time i stare meaninglessly at the blindingly white background of that awful job board, i want to scream. i am not built for this! i am not made to die like this! none of us are, but still so many others seem more equipped to quell their cognitive dissonance than i. not to mention, i look so much like an enigma that i fear the prospect of job searching at all. the soundtrack of every job i've had is rife with questioning stares, ignored words, teenage customers whispering horrible things that they've deluded themsleves into believing i cannot hear. i've been attempting deperately for a tattoo apprenticeship since i was nineteen, and yet there's nothing, nothing, nothing. i have nothing, i am given nothing, i earn nothing. but how do i convince my mother that i'm not just another member of our family turned into a twenty-something freeloader? especially when i seemed to do it so well before. what could i ever say? that i'm too much of a faggot to get a job? that i'm too lonely, too tired, too strange to be taken seriously in a place like this? i have no friends in this town. they are all three and a half hours away, living and laughing, and i am here. just simply sitting in my childhood bedroom. what excuse is there for me? this time last year i had a job, an apartment, i went out with friends at least twice a week. i don't know if i was happy but i was a person. i'm barely a person at all anymore. i am only a set of hands and an overdue credit card bill and a vessel for self indulgent words that mean nothing. my veins are wired to this laptop, fingertips welded by blood and arteries to these keys. i don't want to be a successful artist, because it means even after i die, i'll live here until the fall of civilization. but what does that matter? what if it happens now? it could. the world is ending, and i am here. the world is bleeding like a stuck pig and i am only a single frayed hair on it's back. i wish i could believe in god, in a second coming. i wish i wasn't just another sally bowles, another clifford bradshaw. i am just a camera, i plead. i am just a camera! but what good is a camera when the rest of us are people? i am only overexposed film and rusted metal, the breaking of a flash bulb. i am only a camera! and i am afraid that is all i can be!

11.29

i wish i could think of something for you to read. something beautiful or poignant. instead i have nothing. all the poets i know an only pen insipid tragedies, they scrawl retellings of lovers who looked behind at the doorway of hell in sickeningly sincere leatherboud notebooks. they sit in their rooms screaming about prophecies and heartbreak. they open their eyes to dread and turn their backs on reality. how noble their pursuit. how shameful their inaction. and yet you look back at me, with empty eyes, black and far too shiny like a doll. your gaze pleads for me to speak, to touch pen to paper, fingers to keys, but there is nothing nothing nothing. i am no different than those poets. the only difference is that they have at least tried to write, and i have not.

INPATIENT

I hope she made it to January. I hope she's free. I hope she reads this and knows what I mean. I hope they all believe her. I hope she lives another day. I hope she is vindicated. I hope she is no longer sixteen. I hope she is somewhere out there. I hope she knows I think of her. I hope it's all over for her. I hope she got that tattoo. I hope she's lived and learned and smiled. I hope her tears were not for nothing. I hope tragedy was only temporary. I hope they were not so cruel as to send her back. I hope she packed a bag. I hope she still likes that song. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope. I hope we were not the last people to see her alive.

TIMETOWORK

The fourth horseman left me here God keeps asking me Where is your rider? Pale horse, you wretched thing, Where is the spirit I sent to tame you? What have you done with your master? God should know better than to ask these questions I do not have the language to answer him If I did perhaps I may respond with a truth I have many within my ribs I may tell God that my master has abandoned me Left me in the halls of a factory, My flesh dessicated and my bones ground to paste School Children slather my innards on construction paper Making something colorful and lively Out of these parts only meant to bring mourning I may tell God that my rider was taken from me The pure simplicity of my being corrupted once he was no longer their to ensure my ignorance Or perhaps I tell God a lie For that is the only thing within my gut I may tell God my tales of woe He will think them foolish, But it was he who made me mortal And what of my rider? He never loved me For him I was only a vessel A means to an end that humanity didn't even need him for He was just as useless as I am The only difference is that God saw fit to grant him the language to deny it. That leaves me here, Without a brother to be my keeper No death to be my rider No purpose but to work The glue factory is open The glue factory is open It is open, after all And it always needs another corpse.

APOLOGIES

Have you ever seen that photo? The one of that woman Bones broken, lifeless eyes Lying on a hood of a car Her name was Evelyn. Did you know that? Her feet are bare. Why did he take the photo. Why did he not cry for help. Or check her pulse. Why did he submit it to Time Magazine. Why did we publish it. They found her note. “I don't want anyone in or out of my family to see any part of me. Could you destroy my body by cremation? I beg of you and my family – don't have any service for me or remembrance for me.” The next part was crossed out. “My fiance asked me to marry him in June. I don't think I would make a good wife for anybody. He is much better off without me.” “Tell my father, I have too many of my mother's tendencies.” I am so sorry we all looked at you, Evelyn.

HOWTOKILLAGIRL

It's easy to kill a girl First, you let her breathe in the sweet perfume of freedom The scent will be so thick she'll taste it, the rich salt of humanity curling on her soft palate She'll start staring at her reflection And in barely anytime at all she'll be staring at you instead Second, you call her by a new name Those around her think the name is ugly Too many consonants, the vowels too scarce The shape of it in their mouth unpleasant to swallow around You must keep calling her that regardless Thirdly, you execute her via lethal injection It's all that easy Killing a girl is not much different from keeping her healthy. You give her medicine, brush her hair Smear kohl upon her eyelids and crush her bird bones, squeeze lipstick from her veins, And paint your mouth with her memory Keep her voice in your throat, And her agony within clenched fists An IV of what you once were Before you mutilated her. Doesn't matter if it's what she wanted, If she turned pleading eyes upon yours in the fog of a bathroom mirror and begged you to take her burden To reshape her tissue into something worthwhile, no matter the blood it may spill It doesn't matter if she dug overgrown nails into your arms, shaking, quivering, tears burning on your face as if they were yours For you killed her, in cold blood. And though she sighed in relief as you executed her they will only see the corpse left behind in photographs Because killing a girl? It's easy. You scrub her skin pink and newborn, and watch as the misery bleeds from her eyes with every milliliter of poison For the misery was her life, and when you killed the misery you killed her The last step, when you kill a girl is the most important Finally, you wear her skin because it was really yours all along