photo by Angelhead
A few years back, i let someone gain access to my online journal that i didn’t know very well. At the time, it was locked to only friends, and this person let something slip when interacting with me.
“Mary — were you high when you wrote that prose?”
For those of you who aren’t tremendously familiar with my extracurricular activities, i’ll mention that i’m generally sober. I don’t need alcohol or other unnamed substances to enter a state that will allow me to access something joyous, something strange, something feathered & palpable to… do something different.
I had a visual feast earlier, spending time on my own, staring at images that evoked a sort of understanding of material driven-ness to the current state of affairs. As i walked to my car on my own, stairs up to the moon, i fingered a thought:
“As we keep getting bigger, so do our disasters.”
I drove home, weaving together those black sheep, the thoughts that don’t fall into a defined paradigm,
and as i was leaving the desert, my back was slightly turned to a friend,
who said:
“All those really good writers, i’ve met them, and they’re just weird.”
Here’s a few thoughts; damaged, probably not what you think i mean, or what i meant to say, but because i can. I’ve spent too long hesitating, being afraid of my art — of being too much, of an answer i don’t want to gain, of generic metaphors or words that will return to me, at moments where i’m unprepared for the repetition in someone else’s mouth.
But now, here’s to letting go. To engorging more words, with spontaneous moments, to more life like this one i’m here for.
Still life, waiting for the tune to begin. As elusively as a glance upward, toward the moon – an indication of the disasters growing bigger or smaller, in our hearts, in our minds, in our water –
in the water.
in the water.
So, objects remind us of those moments. Those moments we had & cannot return, a still life fixated on what was once, what passed, what was meant to be.
Blood on our chins, roses in our mouth, sunset in our thoughts, scraped & bruised from the merry go-round, stripes & pies pulled together for what, a moment alone to reflect?
this is the sound of — the what?
A girl, manifested on the cliffs, a pagoda filled with, illuminated with, all alone & glowing red, bushes & trees stumbling nearby exclaiming –
on a mountain road, swinging the moon, like bees, the lines & the telephones, shadows poking at coyotes & glowing like porn through the windows –
two am, a swirl of red & white twirling, wrapped up around the shoulder, or should it be hot pink? marie antoinette wigs? white? a curl, the juxtaposition of witchcraft,
and she wanted to choose the scent spellbound, for all those teenaged years she midst, in the arms or hands of the winding, the almond glow & tang, bottles lined on windowsills underhanded by the dogged moon.
Ripping the net, open to little stones flashing in photoshop in each diagram, leaning back in a green sequinned dress or an orange ruffle, fluff, flurry of glass boys & boys.
oh, that diamond of late night thoughts & feather butterflies, to the luxury of alone, to the quiet murmur of just you, and thoughts, and high heeled shoes, and knowing that the sentimental & the shallow & the meaning & the beastliness of existence is all tied to those fucking objects, that will propel us to the answer of untimeliness.
Twisting & crawling & being a golden damask & a fallen fringe & a haunted eye & a corner array of rainbows & the biggest, gaudiest richest, heartburn for the brain that you can possibly fathom, sliding down your throat like an accidental belch on alcohol, the acid strumming in throat, a harpist fucking off purposely.
Your brain caught up to smoking lilies. Your eyes caught up to the sound, waving purple & luminescent, guilty scent of lavender, you say what is in your heart & mind, but you don’t call, because we’re communication on the keys of my typewriter, just the words black & solid, just the sounds echoing, barking late into the night, because no one else is awake to hear it, night all, we feel solidarity in our alone because allegedly the whole world is awake, just not where we can see it.
SEE IT. GOLD. AFRICAN SAHARA. YOUR BURNING TRICK to your GLAZED MIND. We’re awake. We’re awake. Those fucking metaphors are awake, tricking you into thinking your mind. Those fucking minds. Those nuisances. Those minds. Those disparate thoughts. Those minds. Smoking. Being. Flowering. Opiates. NO MORE, SAY the sober,
but the drugs think about it, even in the sober, those crystals & those beds & those animated melatonin & the vitamins & the herbs & the fantastic moments where everything is so sharp it stabs you in the eye with a thousand midgets dancing under a burning tree, a baseball bat pyramid with the laser in a corner, where each solid wood core meets,
where did we get to all these materials mashed down, so far from the source? The distance from the source measures how much we feel that apocalypse is nigh. THAT IS NIGH. THE BEST is NIGH. FORTNIGHT OF WAVERING IS NICE. We’re all perfected, in our insecurities about dying alone, but let us be human, let us
in the water.
It’s interesting how you mentioned about dieing alone. Even if we are surrounded by the people that love us when we die, we still die alone. I am not afraid of dieing, there has to be a reason why we have to leave this earth. I don’t believe that this is the end, that once we die, that’s it.
Because if so, honestly what’s the point in this life?