But isn't everyone alone?

         It began to rain this morning. No matter how old I get, I will always
      find it astounding, and my bones chill at the sight of everything painted so    
          green. I have found that everything I write now says “I” and “you”
           and “sometimes”--I'm repeating themes and tactics and stratagem
     and “and” until there's nothing left, until I'm feeling thin. Worn. Spread over
       too much time and too much space and too much love and too much,
                                             too much, too much.

                                                           ----

                                               Are you ill yet?

             I can't really think straight these days. My head is too empty, and my    
          heart is too full. My body aches. My sad eyes still follow me everywhere.
   No matter how much I dress them up, they will never leave. I will never be able  
   to take them anywhere. 'What is she talking about her eyes like that for? Oh,
       is she trying to be abstract? Is that what that's supposed to be?' If I see   
       another piece of paper, I just may die, and if I see another kite flying in the
       breeze, my wish may come true, and maybe if I pray hard enough, God will
    strike me dead, or the wind will sweep me up, and I will feel a hell of a lot           
                                        better about this whole thing.

                                                         ----

                       But I don't want to be among mad people!
                      Oh, you can't help that--we're all mad here!

               I think I'm either less insane or more insane than I think I am.
       And probably more mysterious than I think. Someone once told me, “We're   
     always less mysterious than we think we are.” I believe it, but sometimes I
          sell myself short, and that would just be another venue for it, right?

                                                         ----

                       This isn't “art.” What the hell is she doing?

                     Maybe if I lie, I'll get where I'm going.
               Get “there” and keep moving because there is always a new “there,”
            a new destination, a new life, a new love, a new soul deep inside—and
       sometimes I just want to slow down, I just want to slow down, I just want to  
   slow the fuck down, but I can't breathe, I can't breathe, I can't breathe—Jesus, Mary, (John-Paul-George-Ringo), give me strength.

                                                        ----

              This is terrible, just terrible. What was she thinking?

                       I take and take, but what do I give? I remember
               watching my father flick cigarettes into the toilet, watching them
        burn out and soak through and poking it with a comatose finger until he  
      would look up at me and giggle and say, “I've always wanted a sailboat.” And he would laugh, and I would step behind the door and cry silently so he couldn't see me, couldn't smell the shame on my breath,
couldn't hear the   
         disgust slathered
over my dry tongue,
     swelling,

           swelling,

                 swelling.



                                                           ----

                           I took the cannonball down to the ocean.
               I watched the diesel disappear beneath the tumbling waves
                       and love is a ghost train howling on the radio
                               “Remember everything,” she said
                                 “When only memories remain.”

                  Do you remember what it was like to cry as a child? It overtook you so  
                  completely, and you'd gasp for air until you fell into a heap, and your  
                  mother would either stroke your hair or hit you depending on her day
                  at work, her loneliness, her drunkenness. What she meant to say  
                  was, “Depending on your luck.” That feeling right before the tears
                  come—you know they're coming, you can feel them in your chest, and
                  you want to hold them back but you never can. That lump in your
                  throat that creeps up into your nose, spreads through your chest as it
                  spreads through your cheeks; seeps up into the bottoms of your eyes
                  and the backs of your ears and before you know it, you can't see
                  straight. It feels as if you're looking through dirty glass, and you can't
                  even blink because, you realize dimly, you're crying. You have been
                  crying, and you wouldn't know it because you haven't cried in years, so
                  why should you cry now?

                                          That's the funniest part.

                                                         ----

                                           “How do you do?”
                               She said, “Hey—how do you do?”

                             I was never very good at introductions.
                            Is anyone really good at them anymore?
               We know less and less how to relate to people these days,
                         mostly because we're always so busy,
                      always so sad and hopeless and heartbroken,
                       and we run our bodies like our machines:
                                                  smoothly,  
                                     
                                                    quickly,

                                                  efficiently.
                             
                                                    Roughly.

                                                       ----

    You let me believe that you were someone else, 'cause only time can take  
                        you.  So let me believe that I am somewhere else.
                                       Put your arms around me.

         I like the way that books smell. Familiar. Like how the smell of gasoline, of fuel, always makes me think of the airport, or how the smell of freshly-cut grass makes me feel young again. Young again. So young. Days when my best friends were toads and boys (they became interchangeable), and I did not have to be pretty, and days when my mother would sleep most of the day, wake up and yell, then do it all over again the next. Lather, rinse, repeat as desired. But who desires that?

                                           Who desires that...

                                                        ----

She says, “It's cold—feels like Independence Day.”
and I turn the engine, but the engine doesn't turn.

We only had a one-room air conditioner when I was a kid, and I remember running from the curb and dashing through the house, heading to the back bedroom with a book with which to bunker down in the chilly air; crisp. Whole. During the winter, I would lay over a heat register on the floor, wrapped in a blanket and I would shiver. Shiver. Shiver. Shiver. Shiver. Shiver.


                                                      Shiver.

                                                         ----

                                 Where are my angels?
                                   Where's my golden one?
                                   And where is my hope
                            now that my heroes have gone?
                                 Some are being beaten,
                                   some are being born
                              and some can't tell the difference
                                           anymore.

I just wrote this to tell you that I love you, and I don't want to say goodbye.
                               
                                            You told me the word “hopeless” does not exist.

I am trying to believe you.




                                      I am just trying to believe.
                                                      --