flirting by rote.

When I am with you

I should be butterflies

I should be ethereal

I should be sitting on the edge of my seat with excitement,

Breathless

Wanting

Waiting.

When I am with you,

I should look into your eyes and feel my chest constrict tight,

Tight,

Like a ribbon suddenly pulled into a bow.

When I am with you I am faking.

I am saying the right things in all the right places.

I am working the eyes and working the faces.

I am flirting and playing and making the grade.

But when I am with you I’m faking.

I know in my heart what I’m doing is wrong,

Could fuck up your world, your ideas, your thoughts

Of how women are.  Your trust in the process.

But when I’m with you I’m faking.

Like a compulsion, like drinking or eating

It’s gaming.  It’s expected

For me to be charming and try and want you…

To want you to want me.

Attention whore, or just wanting to be wanted,

The most human of all emotions.

Unfair and unbroken and totally heartless

Totally selfish.  Totally bad.

Even for a fleeting moment of thinking,

In my head,

YES this is a good idea.

Or even doubts about YES I WANT THAT.

It’s true,

When I’m with you I’m faking.

In my heart of hearts I hope you’ll know

Better next time, pick someone who cares a little bit more

About what could happen,

Rather than needing something right now

Consequences be damned.

But today you’re shit out of luck,

Because when I’m with you I’m faking.

Seams

-->

I have found as I have aged and gotten older that the words appealing to me about life have shifted.  As a teenager growing up I was focused on words inspiring my passing and heart, things like strength and power and courage.  To not give up the fight.  To overcome my obstacles.  To be built on struggle.

It’s commonly held that people slow down with age, especially those who are involved in youth culture.  The music that appeals to youth, especially adolescent boys, is filled with aggression, screaming lyrics appealing and giving voice to that deep angst and anger fostered in white suburbia.  It takes energy and commitment and a huge passion for throwing body and mind onstage each night in front of whoever happens to be watching.

Not only youth focused culture but Americans in general focus frantically on youth and being able to hold on the vestige of rebelliousness and stupidity and energy entwined in the early days of life.  We lose sight of the beauty and earnest joy in acceptance and in the gentle softness that comes as we all get older and begin to lose our tension.

Certain phrases hold appeal in truth and in the ability to age intentionally.  To admire the seams in a weathered face of a wise man.  For your face to crease in a smile.   To be pillowed in the kindness and warmth of one you love.  These are words to calm and soothe.  Language so different from the terms of death and decline used with impunity in discussion on the subject.

Aging intentionally is to embrace these changes and move slowly toward a softer strength, to move from tawny skin and smoothly bunching muscles to fragile hands and slow walks.  Though we focus on the aches and pains, we lose sight of a solid sense of self and easy confidence that comes with age, if we’re lucky.

So, in the end, to trade vigor for calm, strength for acceptance, that inevitable choice, is all a matter of the words we choose.

fucking racist maggots ate the world

169

to depression, to despair

the end of hope

unacceptable, this is unacceptable

to scream and cry

body wrung out exhausted

from failure, your failure

169.

my commodities are rotten shelving

beat up and bloodied, alone in a sick twisted perversion of riot girrrl feminism

believing and dying and two sided coins,

squeezing the flesh on my arms into red peaks

169.

were we committed, clearly these problems

would find purchase in some other town or tier,

worming into my ears and my brains, or from my brains?

Can you make yourself crazy?

169.

it’s here to decide the fate of your mental threat(health)

drugs and pills and therapy and knives

liposuction’s on sale this year,

where feet grow out of faces’ holes plugged with fat from your abdomen,

169.

relentless and wild there is no hope of escape

from issues haunting each step I take,

it’s not anything you kill or create

but a redheaded stepchild society hates,

169.

prose and poetry and fucking shit sprayed into bathroom stalls

do nothing to address the goddamn weight

pressing down on my head,

heavy enough to crush my lungs with the small vacation of one deep breath,

169.

to lie to yourself is supposed to be the lowest form of expression,

reality, my friends, is the key to changing our thinking –

yes, we must accept things as they are,

lest we discover reality is only your own brain fucking with you.

169.

mistakes

You are

The wound

In my side

Leaking tequila and blood and shame,

The flush on your mother’s face

When she saw me

In the morning.

city/nature

the city moves in its own rhythm -
like the earth
(parody)

(god is laughing)

walls

we spend all our time
building up walls
(defenses)
(from who?)
and wonder why we are lonely.

camera closeups on faces
turned away from the crowd

shrine

locked within these four walls
i cry out -
still alone,
not alone. lonely.
i need a partner in crime...

help me build a shrine to my demons.
therapy,
dissect my problems
bloodless, opened on the table
by a scalpel i can no longer use.

why is my soul so unsatisfied
in the warmth of the summer sun?