Proof.

Who knows? Maybe it was a misprint.Stranger things have been known to happen. Maybe its the “Proof” that sets you free…..

Free? Not quite but I will settle for parole at this point.

Do I have to grow up? This suspended state of adolescence is doing me no favors.No.I think I will harden up.Trim the fat….Yes.That sounds like the right plan of action to take.Best that I begin right away.Here’s the deal.I will grow on…

If I don’t? I am going to fucking die and seeing that would make a few people a tad too happy best I get it right and get good.

One moves faster.Alone.I have to learn how do do what I do all over again.Smarter and faster.

I feel like I have been adrift on a churning ocean of pain and discarded tubes of baby food for days.Woe.I slept fitfully right though the sun dappled hours dreaming that I had a chow dog called Iggy.Magnificent creature. Noble.He was henna red and had an utterly charming disposition.We frolicked.We rambled.We were best friends.I came to with my head wedged inside a sweaty pillow case,my mouth caked in rancid blood and my period kicking the bejesus out of my neither regions.Uncool on every conceivable level.My jaw still thinks that its playing bass for a mariachi band and I am over it.I have been in bed forever.

It’s depressing.

I lament all the miles I am unable to run.Bah.

May I also give a resounding thanks and a robust cheerio to Panadeine forte,Mersyndol and Clamoxyl duo forte875/125 for absolving me from pain and infection and  for giving me the most explosive diarrhea I have had since I ate  fish tacos from a street vendor in  Tijuana.

The baby food does not help much either I am so sure but past all the pain and so on? I have lost a foxy total of 7 pounds this week.Got to look on the bright side right? *snort* …So there is a happy side effect for your favorite self loathing body dysmorphic shut in. Laugh or you will cry…its that simple….

But the letters.

May I?

Why, thank you!

I have to tell you about the letters. Being your average amazonian homicidal shut in I tend to stick to myself.To keep my head low.Being the tragic romantic Luddite that I am,I would dig on carrier pigeons and the pony express but in lieu of that let us all give triumphant thanks for the Internet.

(crowd goes wild)

Because God only knows, ( Best Beach boys song ever! ) I ain’t going out there.

And cool people. Rare as rocking horse shit,original Black Flag 7″ pressings without the bar-code and multiple orgasms,(well in my case,any orgasms at all) Yes,cool people .Take a bow. Stellar beings who for some unbeknown and strange reason have followed my spluttering career and most abundant ramblings thus far. May Elvis bless each and every one of you for giving a shit about my maladjusted,badly educated broken hearted self. I don’t care why you read me or how you found me but I want you to call up your mothers right this second and thank them.

“Hey Ma,Ma! It’s me,yeah,yeah….you too….I’m fine,listen….no, I haven’t spoken to him….really? He said that?…no!….listen!….Michele Madden said…no,not that Michele..Ma! Pay attention! ….it’s not important….she said…what? no?!!! ….shut up!….she said to tell you that you did a magnificent job raising me and that because she is broke I should send you flowers to say thank you…..what do you mean for what? I just told you! For doing such a …what?….yeah….I will call you then…love you too….bye.”

Yes.I believe that is exactly what you should do.

You write to me and tell me stuff. You tell me how you feel and how what I write makes you feel.Do you know what an honor it is to receive such missives? It’s like holding someones heart in your hand. It’s fucking sacred.You do know that I only have an 8th grade education right? That I am not really,and by “really” I mean “at all“, qualified for such delicate maneuvers? Yes! Yes you do, you reckless, brave and foolhardy darlings but onward you forge and still write! I salute you! I burn paper mache effigies in your honor under the new moon.It’s not the sole reason I do what I do by any stretch of the imagination but I am not going to lie here wrapped in my Charles Manson tee shirt and filthy multi- layered headache and deny that it is definitely the sweetest bonus.

I’m out on the point out here.

Picture a 7-11 worker at 3 am stacking endless cans of dented marked down Red-bull wondering how in the hell he is going to ever pay off his student loans for a useless degree he will never use,a lighthouse keeper with a gamy leg with a blind Pomeranian called Joanie and  crippling psoriasis,an overweight Korean security guard on night-shift at the mall who moonlights as a model in art school. Or not.You don’t have to think of any of those clowns.I was trying,unsuccessfully, to illustrate “Solitude”,got carried away and ended up with “Sad.” My bad.Both start with the letter “S” .Could have happened to anyone.Nothing to see here,move along,move along….

Me ,it’s me and myself out here,that’s all I was trying to get at. Wild eyed loner,Asbestos shack,many knives…blah,blah,blah….And all I do is craft this crap and try to remember scales,when rent is due and other such minute pursuits but you indulge me so rampantly by showing up to the party that never was.You foxy bastards! You minxes! I feel like a Roman emperor!I feel special.Catch a different bus to school special but special none the less.Makes me wanna dance like Josephine Baker.I feel gifted and majestic,even if only for a moment.I am as jaded as a Chinese empresses crown but you amaze and delight me..You. And you and yes, even you at the back there,it’s ok,don’t be shy,stand up and wave! C’mon! Its like Hanuka and Xmas rolled into one and Fleetwood mac are playing in my room after lunch! Your attention is the gift that keeps the Ritalin staved 7 year old in me doing screaming cartwheels down the hall.( Thump!)

What I am trying to say is thank you. Thank you for honestly telling me to pull my head out of my ass or asking me to please get my ass on stage again. You have read and seen me at my least and most diminished and dismal and never judged. This is why you should that your parents for me.You are a rare bunch.You may need medication.And that’s ok.

So,Thank you.

Now,go and listen to the Led Zeppelin tune of the same name. Majestic.Finest use of a church organ in a song outside of “Sleeping Beauty” by The Divinyls and “Whiter shade of pale” By Procul Harum but they nicked that from Bach anyway….where was I?

Ah. The phone. My enemy.

Even after changing my number I still can’t turn the ringer up.It still makes me fucking sick.Can you believe that?

My dear friend Mo Mayhem called me last night. All is pointing to his genius self producing and recording  my solo album.I thought that he was calling me about that, but alas, no. Can I just tell you that this growing up rubbish takes a certain amount of courage that some days I don’t think I am in possession of. Another friend gone.Dear,dear Clarky.Cant we ask “Why?” .Can we sceam “No!” .My knees went out from under me.Not fair,not fair, not fucking fair.Why do the sweethearts go and the motherfucker’s remain?

Do tell because I will never be able to work that one out.

So Mo is going to come and waste time on my porch and listen to my shit next week end. I am lucky.I am not above begging him to play on the aforementioned magnum opus as well.Me and Him both wanted to be Izzy Stradlin growing up.He brings out the best in me.A true friend and a great musician.Want Blackie to do a solo or two as well.I will have to get him after he gets back from Europe.Its good to work with people that you trust. I can’t get my head around the fact that I have written all this crap. That people want to play on it? Astounding.My life has been so joyless for so long.Now I sing. Just because I can.I got busted by the cleaner at the gym singing “Come together” by the Beatles at the top of my lungs while flogging my self stupid on the stationary bike for another endless sixty minutes.He gave me a watery smile and a thumbs up scaring the shit out of me as he came into view.Almost soiled myself. I returned the salute and pushed the screen up another 5 levels to pay for my embarrassment. So I sing.Then I usually cry but it can’t be all roses,right rabbit? Right.

Letters right? Well………

Guess what?

I saw me a photograph today.

I thought that it would be the last thing that I would ever want to see but sometimes its all a mix of Pandora’s box and Blue-beards room at the end of the hall isn’t it?  Sometimes you just gotta look.So yes,I guess that I needed and more perversely,shame on my dammed soul,  wanted to see it.To see what it would make me feel.Can I tell you that it was almost surreal? That it was everything that I expected and how utterly,shall we say, underwhelming it was? Yes.Yes,lets say that.Once more for luck.Underwhelming. And to think that I was starting to let my tattered guard down a fraction.To think that the one I loved still felt the same.To believe in letters……

Now I’m not going to say that on some level it doesn’t tear me apart.Seeing some clapped out hooker sinuously wound around the love of your life tends to do that to  a girl.It blows hounds.What do you want me to tell ya? I’m not that big and fuck only knows I’m not tough. It’s just sad.It makes me sad that the one that I treasured above all has settled for scum.That stings.That’s lemon juice in the cut for sure.

I have to remember.It was my teen-aged heart that was the fool.And for that act of treason? I am glad that it is dead.Fool me once? Shame on you. Fool me twice?…..

Now,if y’all would be so kind, riddle me this…..

“How” I ponder out loud to my foot tall statue of Jesus looking rather fetching with his sacred heart all blinged out and luxuriant red robes flowing round his bare feet,the dirty great hippy “How can one still claim to feel the same when one has a new girlfriend?” Our lord and savior,alas, did not answer, but still….. Hmmmmm? That’s a good one ain’t it? The mind fair boggles. Love letters no less. Declarations that I wanted so badly to believe because ,well, gosh! Everyone loves redemption with a nice big shot of happily ever after,right?

Just look and Sharon and Ozzy.June and Johnny!

And this is where I lament the digital age. For one cannot burn the missives sent over a black candle….well I guess if I had a printer..short of setting fire to one’s monitor……but that’s not the point.

I wonder when she sleeps beside him,come drying on her scrawny back that (supposedly,allegedly) he squints though the cigarette smoke and pines for me. Does she know this? I marvel at her absolute absence of self respect in staying if this is the case. I wonder if she was worried when he came to my country? What she thinks of my mark carved into his skin for all time?

And here was me….almost weak enough to answer,the letters making my heart flutter,the promises within.His words chipping away at the hard shell I had built around myself…….

And then I saw the picture.

(The bloody,buggery,shit,cunt,tit,fuck,wank picture….)

Is this his type now? I thought that he had better taste but I was wrong. Obviously. The self portrait,the kiss shot.Aw,How Cute. I wonder how she fucks? If she makes him happy with her beef jerky thin corpse? See,the gift is that there are no pictures such as this of me to be found. No new fuck for Miss M. The crap that used to send me skidding across the floor on my knees to barf in my green bucket occur less and less now. So Now when I remember shit like that and other such gems as him accusing me of fucking all three members of my band no less,two of whom are in a relationship with each other and the other in a long term of his own,makes my bitter bitten  lips turn in a tight smile and I swallow the vomit that rises and I solider on.

He belongs to her now. I saw the picture.I saw the proof.

She only owns you.

Your Honor? The defence rests.