tell me you had bad dreams last night

so its 8pm and he’s thinking of you: let it go onto the
patio, smoke your skinny cigarettes, let it run-off
like the streams of pollen--and in that small
town-Ohio, the dog howls and someone calls him Moses,
right under the apple tree--right away,
hurrah//
someone calls her Penelope and she falls to sleep onto
him, not even strange in the least, she wants to live
inside of him, closer still and shining--so the
strings go over and sit by her, play their sad
histories, make her more--

======================

What Time Were You Thinking (Rick Moody remix)

he should have driven over there sooner, for the view,
and jumped: in the dark he makes out a flash of
sterile hospitals and levitation. he tries to ignore
any insight he could be having standing there--mostly
parlor tricks and anagrams, blurring into something he
heard once on Nova about tin poisoning:

goes back to buy a diet coke
a shitty bottle opener
and a beer
a Rogue, the big one--
takes out the little paper filled with vicodin
washes it down with the beer--
and flies up to the bridge:

"mostly there’s a lot of chocolate in the surgery room"
and smoking menthols outside the trucks. "don’t think i
can make it tonight" (number 1)

well turned, can you bring her out? over/ up/ on top
of me? "double shift, come over tomorrow for a couple
hours" (number 2)

///listen to the trumpets, way over there. concentrate
on them///

he stands there for a while dressed up like a whore,
why wear shoes like that, whoareyoukidding? remembers
the grand affair whipped up for her and splits

=============================

"forgive me for not answering your eyes"

forgive me for all the things, even the
rumors--especially the ones that aren’t true--forgive
me for knowing you so well and you were empty for
something but i didn’t know what

i want to crawl into the sea with you and i wanna be
adored. i think easter is coming soon (my mother says:
"i'm going to see melissa over easter," like i know
exactly when that is) and in little clumps the spring
flowers push towards my fingertips and hush now:
everything is coming up with yearning and confusion
and a timid-kind of bliss...and just over there, on
the edges, its settling like smoke and aren’t you a
pretty little thing?

=======================

(This is about a girl.)

#1

She played "Hallelujah" several times,
really loudly on her worn-out piano:
I thought my heart would break just from that--
it wasn’t much, that little sound,
it was what she had left, shattered

And the baffled king composing mantras
and the percoset only blurs her edges
and when she’s far into a binge I find her the most
beautiful--
fucking *look* at her--she's lit from inside

And it goes like this:
when I was 32 I lost my father
and all I could think was (beyond forgetting to pay
rent, beyond school buses blowing me kisses, past
whirligigs and rolls of certs, standing alone in the
ice cream aisles, and)
all I could think was:

What are you doing with yourself Shining Star?
Won't you come settle down inside of me until the
rabbits come home
and don't you worry pretty softened-girly,
the poets know matters of pastimes and clockworks and
calamity
just like you and me.

#2

Dear Edward--

My bowels aren’t happy with me today. I haven't eaten
much of substance, I try to get even skinnier, I want
to drop the weight down to a significant level, one
where people look at me and say: "Hey you look like a
model. You’re so beautiful." And we all know that
means skinny.

And I don't need any of your fucking judgment. He's
gotten my attention and now I think we belong together
and it even makes it ok that he's ignoring me.

"The liquid diet, of course."

Once I ate nothing but ice cream and hot fudge for
weeks and dropped 15 pounds. My sister called hers
"the White Rice/White Wine Diet." Whatever it is that
you do can't be worse than vanity:

Porn, late nights at the office, obsessively going to
the gym, food, or television, or lies, or
apathy

Angel dust is one of those things that you can't
really hide. Medically it's often described as a
deliriant or a dissociative anesthetic (which means it
causes psychological detachment and blocks pain).
Which, really, is all any of us are trying to
attain... it sounds pretty anyway/
some day there will be someone to develop a
pharmaceutical that will have no side effects and make
the edges blur. Soma. Huxley. Pop, protest and pills.

Don't worry, today I'm only fasting and drinking a
beer. I washed down a muscle relaxant about an hour
ago, since my neck is all pinched again.
Massive Attack isn't the record I remember but it
brings me back to the same place. I bliss out on this
for a while: www.drukqs.net

And figure I should go back to watching "The
Apartment"

I hope you're well--

Julia

#3

You're gonna get over it and then you’re gonna drink a lot"
Sleepless, lock-less
confused, sugar-bumps,\
tabs, pills, potions
Sharpie tattoos, venues I float through
reality (what's that?)
misnomers, miscreants, mistrials, Miss Trainwreck
mystery

I'm not going to chase anyone
I'll let you come to me
I'm going to run full speed into the Atlantic Ocean,
right around the New Jersey shoreline part
hope she'll take me back
hold my breath if she doesn't
stuck
slam
*poof*

love, obvious
fuck everything
swallow words and pussy willows as bouquets
smiles?
don’t know
and you
/gone/