Question.

When my phone goes off at 4am I surf a point break of nausea,a tube of froth tipped fear.

Hang-ten indeed.

You know that itchy feeling you get when you see people rack up a line?  (..tap,tap,tap…scrrrrrrape…scrrrrrape…) That furtive need to shit? Well that’s what Alexander Graham Bell’s lifeline legacy of  an invention does to me when it decides to go off like an air-strike at ungodly hours. So,it was a name that I hadn’t seen in a while.A painfully shy rubenesque artist friend of mine.Heavily medicated,somewhere in the pupil dilating region of 3oomg’s a day, somewhat manic but never the less very,very sweet. It read,and I quote…

“If I am so beautiful why can’t I find my love?”.

Honey,if you can tell me then we will both know.Not so much on the beauty front for me.All this dental work has left me with a head that looks like a twisted sandshoe.

Alexander Pope once said something along the lines of even a little knowledge being dangerous.Feel free to color me the mental equivalent of the Tet offensive in that case.

Ahhhh kid,I feel for you,really I do,but if I had the answer to that particular zinger the world would be my 2 for 1 Tuesday at the banquet of life with a no drink minimum,But since I was asked I will attempt to answer although, with my fatally injured if not dead heart and cataclysmic track record of failure ,why anyone would shake my tree for fruit is beyond me….

Must be the medication but I am flattered.

She had been holed up with her latest hungry forever which is why she had fallen off my radar.Not that my radar is really working per say.My radar was  salvaged  from the Mir space station from what I can gather because like everything in my life that is not my genitals,it is totally rooted.My emotional bearings have been novocaine numb for the longest time and most correspondence remains unanswered but those eleven words struck quite the chill through me.Now,what do I say? Do I ask what happened and be a shoulder to cry on or do I tell her the truth? The truth being, in my rather hefty book , is that love does not linger for the likes of us because it sees that we fail to apply its bounty to ourselves.

(Crowd goes wild!!##%$#%@!!!)

“Thank you!  Yove been a great audience! Try the streak! Your Beautiful!!!”

Now you tell me and be honest,who in the Sam hill wants to hear that kind of honesty malarkey while holed up on the bathroom floor at 2am on a Friday night with a bottle of six dollar bottle of Lambrusco,Nick Cave doing the maudlin soundtrack and a  blunt bladed daisy lady-shaver?

Exactly.

It’s late so I will cut the floral crap.We hate ourselves and this is what you get.

She later sent me confirmation that she is ok,not to worry and that an apprehended violence order had been taken out.Oh brother.

This is what you get alright….

And it sucks the high hard one.

And you know that I know this is true.I may as well have sent that message to myself. While mired in my weatherboard palace of a brain this evening (Read-avoiding housework) ,complete with tire swans by the bevel glass double front doors and a jacuzzi made from a giant refurbished Kentucky fried chicken bucket ( A lifelong fantasy.Don’t ask ) and a complete set of Franklin Mint Elvis Presley collectors plates rimmed in genuine 24 carat gold ,I was blissfully tallying up how I was going to spent my yet to be won but pending,one hopes and prays,lottery jackpot .Shame that all the shady surgery(“My kingdom for a gastric band!”) I desire so vehemently takes place by and large in South America.Imagine,if you will, the complete disorientation coming out of anesthesia and not understanding a word that anyone is saying .

Wait a minuite.

That’s waking up every day.

(“Good evening! Howya all feelin’ tonight? We are The Gastric Band from Los felitz! This one is called “Crohn’s disease blues! Tew-fee-four!…”)

Anyhow.It’s the endless pursuit of beauty.Look at how that message was worded. She knows she is good looking.She is always immaculately coiffed and groomed and has a certain 1940’s murder victim style about her…

So how does it all go so fucking pear-shaped hear you ask? .

Grease.

Yup.You read that right.Grease.

Fuck that fucking movie.It buggered up an entire generation of women ,my wretched self included.To whit….

You futz around being together and nice and the object of your desire doesn’t give a rats ass. So you sing some songs and everyone gives you a raft of shit after they try and pierce you ears so you go and lament by a wading pool looking virginal then a maligned cool chick with pink hair takes pity on your dumb self, gives you a make over,teaches you how to smoke,you go to the fair in spray on jeans,a perm and really cute cork heals and voila! A happy ending.

And for the record? Danny Zucko? Whatever. All the smart girls know that the truth of the matter was that Rizzo had the goods.She knew the real thing.A hickey from Kenickie is like a hallmark card. I rest my case.

Fucked non?

Beauty is bunk.I am a failure on the inside and that’s what lets ya down kids. Life gets in my way and I primp for a prom that will never come.I thought that if my outsides were a pageant then my insides would fall into place.What a fucking conundrum.All it does is illicit jealousy from the one you love the most.But wait,don’t call yet! It get’s even fucking better! Then when you ease up on getting of hotness,the unbelievable lightness of meow (…Ok, Think Eartha Kitt,Ursula Andress in “Dr No”,Iggy Pop’s knob,The Runaways,thigh high boots,Mexico,long hair,Hello Kitty,Dee Dee Ramone,The bass line from “Dirt” by The Stooges,fishnet’s with the crotch ripped out…you know…all the really undeniably sexy shit….),you stand accused of the numero uno sin that every body dysmorphic worth their eating disorders dreads

“You have given up”  sneers the object of your affection and moves on to, for all I know,fatter and uglier and more drug addled  pastures which, in my narrow heart hurt experience, is usually the case.

What a week,what a week….My guitar player is missing in action.Somewhere up north I think….This does not lead to fast approaching show confidence on my behalf.I have left him more desperate voice mail messages than Chad Michael Michael’s (“This is a diaper bag I made for Faith Hill”) So I have spent the cold night nattering to Miss Emma on the phone and re-doing my whole set.Being that I am a fiscal disaster I will have to mike up my guitar. Shit. My kingdom for a Maton.

Beware (“Woooooo!”) the people who are only interested in you when you name is on a poster again.Just sayin’ is all.Falling as low as I did really showed me who was and is for real in my life….As her highness Miss Stevie Nicks would warble “Players only love you when their playing”.

And fair weathered friends are just that.

It’s raining. Again. July.( “Saigon.Shit…still in Saigon”) I still have about a million months of winter to struggle though. My Whitetrash ass is also booked in to get my new teeth on the government’s dime in two weeks.Yee-ha! The only pay off for being insane.Thank you mental health act.Five arduous bridges .Kill me now.At least nothing else is coming out tooth wise so once this bastard rain stops Lardass Mac Gee here will be running again.Thank Elvis.I hate being a fat cunt.

I look to the lower right hand side of my screen and wouldnt you just know it but its 3 in the am yet again……..

Whine.

Why is it, that in the cold everything,anything,is too much trouble?

My right knee swollen with fluid.My corpse throwing up roadblocks to what I would like to be believe is my eventual resurrection.Pft! Who scores the happily ever afters? My grid is shutting down when I need to be cognisant and promoting my mediocre talent.Thank fuck I have amazing people playing with me is all I am gonna say.

I am so hard on myself.Received a barrage of kindness last night from an esteemed musician that I think highly of and I felt like asking the bearer of such gifts if they were really sure if they had the right reciprocant. The Syrian dude at the 7-11 is also kind to me when I go in for my nightly diet Dr Pepper that I shouldn’t be having anyway. “Why is you so nice?” he says in a voice tinged with sand and mortar attacks,blinding white teeth and curiosity. I turn to see who he is talking to,making a great pantomime out of it,wide Clara Bow eyes and a hand up to my mouth.

“Me?” I mouth incredulous.He claps his hand with delight and huffs a great expansive laugh so full of joy that it makes me wonder if I am ever going to feel anything similar ever again.He gives me my gum for free.I mooch out into the night,goodwill rapidly deflating, with a head full of storm clouds and a busted toothed gob full of mint.

I am watching myself fail and I am not stopping it.Every night I pass out with the best intentions,lists written,steely resolve.I was saying to a stoic friend last night that I no longer know what I am aiming for,what may make me happy.( and the word was made flesh…) The moon slung low in sparse cloud, malevolent and orange shone down over my proclamation and sneered.My knee throbbing like a misplaced heart,my midsection looking like a shar pei’s back beneath my layers of manky winter clothing ,my hair lank,my skin pizza.Not ugly enough to make it interesting.Oh no! No such luck mama. Just your average fat generic white trash burnout.

But in dreams I find flowers and the soles of my feet are soft.My mind aligned clean and unharmed with my machine and then I wake up to my mountain of mediocrity.No matter where I go there I am.

Can I tell you how hard I tried and how far I went and that I feel like a failure because my best,and back then I thought my best was pretty damn spanky,was not enough? Loveless Madden. That could be my handle if I was a cowboy I reckon. (“Who’s that yonder by the hitchin’ post?” ) Sounds like it should be accompanied by a thin harmonica wailing over the canyons and buttes.Today I wish was a drunk.Yeah,that would be just the ticket.Or how about a card punching methadone drone chained to the bureaucratic wheel maybe? A manic tweaker wrapped in paranoia and scant sinew? I don’t know,anything. Anything to not be here.

These light-less eyes peering out of a skull that I don’t know .This head ,this face that I don’t recognize. Giving too much will cripple you,strap callipers to your caring spirit causing it to pitifully limp and drag its good intentions a beat behind the band. (“Ohhh baby,you is going to hell.”) Turn you into one of Jerry’s kids.No march of dimes for my broken ass. And I consume and consume to fill the place that love once filled.Then I starve and starve to punish my base instincts and glaring humanity.I eat or fast, I shop or steal things that I don’t need,clothes that I wont wear because it all feels like a fucking lie without him.I wanted him to want me forever to find some beauty in me so that I could see it in myself.No such luck.( Who is she? Is she hot? or did you go back to your last port of call?.) I cant believe that I get so jealous.I never have been before but the thought of it makes me fucking crazy.

This looks like nothing but a bad whiny journal entry. I don’t seem to have the right set of skills on hand today.I am blaming the moon (“Sorry ma’am”) where I should be blaming my glaring lack of talent.

Bit all my nails down to play guitar today and grew wildly frustrated with tunings.Could not find my feet.The whole world has the same lingering cough at the moment and I spit soft green.I should not have dared myself into playing again but it’s too late now. My guitarist canceled on me due to a migraine and heavy painkillers so now I have a whole week of not jamming ahead of me yet again.The stress. I have more invested on the decor of the evening than I do in my ability to deliver anything worthwhile.

I focus on the wrong things,the dead things,the shit that I failed at.I am sick with it.I thought that I was bigger,more singular.I am no such thing.

They shoot horses don’t they?

Zero.

Artists,heavy on the irony because I am throwing myself in here,are so fucked up.

There is not one single day that goes by that I don’t roll my eyes at myself in the least or make myself physically ill at the most. I wonder if we seek mayhem and heart ache? Do we court this agony? Do we hurt to produce? Is that it? Jesus fuckin’ please us.Ugh.It’s late and I am over thinking everything yet again.

Nightmares of one way streets, broken keys in the ignition and walking in on carnal carnage in a large bathroom only to have all the participants laugh at my blatant distress at the proceedings.Utterly horrible.

I turn and look at the framed photo of  my beloved Fleetwood Mac to my right and my neck cracks .Not a real photo mind,just one that I cut out of Mojo magazine.I know,I know….but if not the God’s that you know ,well then, who? I have never quite managed to grow up.Don’t think that there is much I can do about it at this point.Spend a sad afternoon crying to The Ramones more poignant songs.How you gonna act baby?

I am jamming tomorrow and I feel woefully under prepared as always.Every time I pick up my guitar, over the last year especially,I feel like some one is going to jump up and scream “FAKE!!!!!” and throw something heavy and made of glass at my head. That I will be unmasked as some kind of aural pretender to the throne. Look, I have written the most raw music of my career and I am absolutely petrified.

Brutal. This may take some explaining as it is just me and my guitar up there now…Nothing hard about that right? Ok ,so I have thrown down some metal in my time.Hell! ,for half my time up there, if not more ,no one could work out if I was a boy or a girl it was so intense and that was what I wanted,that was what I was hiding behind and I don’t regret it for a second.But for all the blood and mosh? I call bullshit.Fucking child’s play.  I gotta tell you,it doesn’t even touch the sides of what I am about to do.For once I didn’t try to be a smart ass,didn’t go for the lexicon devil triple scores. I have laid myself bare.

Just like I did with my 1st and now final love.

I am so tightly wrapped,a control freak. If y’all have read me for as long as I have been pumping this crap out,you know I ain’t lying.Beyond that?…. the one time I let go? I bloomed to the point of obscenity.I was magnificent. And this music is all I could sift out of the rubble.This is the open casket viewing. This is all that remains and it’s time to set it off.I never wanted to be this hurt or broken,somehow I never thought it could never happen to me which just goes to show you just how wrong you can be.I’m not 17 anymore, no matter what my internal clock tells me unfortunately.When you get to my age you don’t court disaster because unlike a teenager you don’t bounce and the scars don’t fade.I have dried the roses and they are in a silver dish by my bed by a picture of you.I still recall the beauty and it just may just see me right.

Doing my Andy Warhol/ Howard Hughes shut in hybrid, I natter to Miss Emma of the ethereal heart in her cave by the ocean. We lament and laugh over nutella and disarray.By small measure and great kindness she patches me up with her wisdom and sends me off to war once again. I am lucky to know such stellar people.. So onwards I strike surrounded by ratty notebooks and sing…..

I didn’t want to sing or write again.I wanted to starve myself to death.I wanted to fade.It was horrendous.I have never held down a real job ,all I have ever done is what I am.I have no idea how to be anything else and for the 1st time in my life I wanted to abandon myself fully but to do what?? You have no idea how totally done I was when I arrived back here almost a year ago,my life and accompanying dreams in tatters. Making deals with dead deities ,bawling my eyes out on a transatlantic flight.When it was good? Love? Well,it drove me to be the best that I could be but what I didn’t realize was how much shit I had smeared over my psyche and my abilities during the life long lead up so to speak..I’ve gotta tell you,you get to  building up some mighty fine walls when you have taken the paths and made the choices that I have chosen in life.It’s not a boast and I would never wear it as a badge.It just is what it is. I didn’t realize how big the callus was ,so to speak.How much the cataract was keeping me from truly seeing.

All self created from a very young age to protect myself from the wolves’s both real and imagined and I take full responsibility. I did what I had to do.Don’t we all?

But what to you do when its no longer serving the function that it once did? Remnants of teenage rebellion grown threadbare over time and no longer look all that imposing snapping tattered over battlements no longer worth defending,the bones of my misspent youth.

I got nailed and it almost destroyed me. There are pieces of my mind that are lost for good.I try to make myself feel better by telling myself that they were tertiary.I don’t believe a word of it. But me and him? We are tied in an an endless knot.I used to say that we were the same animal and I meant it.Away from lust and the deepest love I have ever know ,we were almost siblings.I know that it sounds perverse but it was true.The parallel lines were chilling to me. Picture it if you will,two super damaged angry alpha’s wanting love and acceptance so bad,full to the brim of shit and scars.Finally getting our hearts desire and ruining it with our past patterns and distrust that anything so good would last for the likes of us.I weep for us both.The people pleasers,the organ grinders monkeys,the bound foot geisha and the king of the world. I mourn for the discarded children we were, the sucking black holes inside that we filled with miles run or gallons drunk. I see it in us still.Maybe it will never go away but the point is that I see it at last.Know thy enemy.My enemy was,is, me.

And I am no longer afraid.Wary? Cautious? Sure. But afraid? No.

I wouldn’t wish the last year on anyone.I still am still terrorised by nightmares and crippling panic attacks and deal with a whole new jumbo pack of issues daily but I don’t bullshit myself any more.Loosing the self lie,the buffer? It makes life a lot harder day to day but it is a lesson that I sorely need to be taught and no matter or diminished I feel and how minute and pathetic on a bad day, it’s me.Its all me.I am no prize but it’s all I have got.No smoke and mirrors.I am back to zero and no one or nothing can take that from me.

Zero doesn’t sound like allot to be grateful for but on the day’s I don’t wish I was dead, I am.I don’t know if I am explaining it very well but just lying here in the cold at two in the morning I feel the calmest I have felt in a long time.I am coming from a place imbibed in a cauterizing white light and I feel that I have lost it all.My mind,my heart,all gone.I don’t horde the useless shit anymore.I move sure footed and fast. I still get brought to my knees but I understand why and I am trying so fucking hard to work with what life is dealing me….

And then its the music.These traitorous songs.No veiled references.The few gigs I have done alone were not as honest as I know I have to be to do theses fuckers justice.I wrote them about the one person and situation that has touched and affected me above all others so it is imperative that I give them the delivery and respect they deserve.I am absolutely petrified.I have never exposed myself like this in my life.Being in bands? All balls and bluster compared to this.A walk in the park.My voice has changed and it scares me.I can hear and feel color and texture in it.It tastes different.Sits heavy and poison on my tongue till I spit it out.I find myself crying without realising it.I hear the animal pain in it,it has surpassed my realm of control and I answer to it.It owns me.

I feel it so much that it makes me question the integrity of everything that I have done until now.

This show.I don’t know if I will be able to pull this off.Its total exposure.It will finally liberate or kill me. And I think that’s what I want and need no matter which way it goes.I feel like I am inviting people to a funeral but I wont say sorry any more.He taught me that and that’s why he is and remains a world beater.Me? I’m a late bloomer with atrocious teeth and a weight problem but I know that I have to do this.Its suicide,my heart is going to go off like a Muslim back pack and us creative types,well,pack of fucking wankers we are,I am gonna do it and make y’all pay for a ticket.

Some days I wish I was a chartered accountant.

Lover

I would just lie on our bed and look at him.

I could not get enough.

Nestled into a nest of pillows that yet another one of his crazy ex-girlfriends had made from a heap of his tee-shirts,I would lie there constantly naked,toga’ed in a soft black sheet,half reading a book but mostly just staring at him.We always had music playing and we tended to never leave the house.Eat every few days? Whatever. I didn’t care if I never left the bed. The days,manhandled by time ,lost all meaning.

We had nowhere to be and no one to consider but each other.It was so sublimely selfish.It was the most perfect time of my life.

The same animal.My completion.My full stop.The  love of my life.

Secret language that gleefully excluded the rest of the world.I thought that I would die in his arms in about half a centuries time.One of those old couples that when one expires the other follows within hours unable to survive with out their mate.I believed this.

That if I could bear a child and it would be a son,it would be his.I believed this.

That we would protect each other and thrive.I believed this.

Not only handsome but beautiful.Do you know what I mean? Bones that spoke of kings and soldiers.Fallen royalty.I was intoxicated.I got drunk on the sight and shape of him.I got high on his touch.Ribbons of words that tethered me to him as surely as a leash or handcuffs.

We would fall asleep still making love so slow and languid.Wake and pick up where we left off without missing a beat.Every pore and follicle straining towards each other.Every fiber and fantasy.

And now I burn candles and wait for visions.Now I don’t know how to begin again,what to say.Fear is a cruel and strangely silent master.I compile letters and cards that I do not send.A conversation that has never paused for a second.Strange prayers to invented gods.

A heart shaped box.

It drove me mad and I have never found my way back…….

Her heart was softer and warmer than he had imagined.It came away from its moorings easier than he had thought.Naturally,like all things that had to do with love,this aroused suspicion in his tight mind.He ran his left hand softly down the length of her sleeping form and grinned at the smile that tickled the corner of her full over kissed lips.She sighed luxuriantly and slept on.The wound on her left side,from which the aforementioned heart had been plucked,lolled drunkenly open,strangely bloodless and somewhat obscene.The heart shifted and cooed,a living thing, in the center of his giant hand..

He walked across the room and sat deep back into his black leather chair contemplating what this turn of events could mean.She loved him.He knew it ,was sure of it as he had never been sure of anything in his long disreputable life. He ran his fingers over the white feathers that cupped protectively around the heart in his palm.The wings she claimed that he had given it while jumping around in front of him,making him laugh as only she could,bunny faces and fingers up like ears.Folded like the leaves of an artichoke,soft,protecting the the core of all she was,all she had entrusted him with .

She had given him the jewel.The one thing that she had never given away before.

He looked at the heart and then to the lean shape of her on the bed.

Everything breaks in time…..

tell me more,talk to me,i’m listening…..

Toxic.

What a fucking week.

Remains.Use a hazmat suit.Wash your hands.Disinfect.Do not pass go.Do not collect two hundred dollars.

(no one ever made me hate myself more…)

My brain has been tear-assing after itself on quite the merry little abortive chase.( You are supposedly a writer woman,recall the feelings,remember the details,the hell that lead you here,paint a picture you talentless hack….) I had my last wisdom tooth ripped out on Friday.It is now residing in the satin heart shaped box on my cluttered bedside table, keeping it’s hook rooted company with my ticket from The Dead Weather at the Hollywood Palladium,a few photos,a business card from El Compadre and a fist full of sobbed over mash notes.The hole in my jaw is rancid,filled with a plug of rotting copper flavoured blood the size of a Honda hatchback.At least when it heals and Elvis only knows,I am taking enough vitamins to make that process happen faster,I will be able to run again and right now that is all that I am craving.

Well,that and sleep.

These days? Four hours sleep if I am lucky.Twenty hours of tearing myself apart.My brain sounds and for all I know,looks like the monkey house at the zoo,complete with flying crap and green bananas.I lie here twitching under the covers (“C’mon kids! Do the Epileptic! It’s the latest craze!”) ,tears steadily leaking from behind my mascara stained Hello Kitty pink sleep mask because I just can’t tip over into the ether.I try so hard but I can’t drift off.Memories projected in my mind like the summer shows on the crypt wall at the Hollywood forever cemetery.If I win the lottery I am going to hire an  full time anesthetist to put me into an assisted coma.Twilight sedation,whatever,I will take what I can get. You know,I used to get such great joy out of imagining my happily ever after out in California.Now my fantasy life involves IV’s pumping vat’s of Demerol and Valium into my unconscious corpse via a bruised vein on the back of my hand in a small temperature controlled white room.

If it’s not flashbacks melting my bones and my will, it’s stress.My sweat smells like fear.Like I am hunted.Prey.I would set fire to a station wagon full of born again Christian’s for ten hours sleep unbroken.Prior to writing this I lay in bed pretending to be in asleep for nine hours.It’s hopeless and sending me over the edge once again.(“Barkeep! A round of panic attacks for me and my friends!”)

My therapist was talking me through my seething terror of  physical intimacy recently.Asking me questions,gently lifting the scab so to speak.I looked down at my hands twisting in my lap,my dead grandmothers ring where my engagement ring once was,the nails chipped,bitten and ugly and I noticed patches of pale pink erupting beneath my tattoo’s,hot and itchy.

I held my arms out and yelped “Stop!”

Hives?

Hives.

All over my stomach and face too.As if I didn’t already feel ugly and mental enough.

Took about 3 hours for them to go away and all because she was probing me about sex.No pun intended.There’s nothing funny about it.Just pathetic.Do you know how it feels to be driven so crazy that you know you will never fuck again? Do you? That something that was once so beautiful with your one and only is dead to you forever? That in front of you there is nothing but an empty road that swan dives into the horizon…

(….crumb donuts,fish tacos,Reese’s pieces,meatless cheeseburgers,El Compadre,icy poles,caramel drenched parades drinks with extra whipped cream,Mr Pibb’s,two eggs over easy,root beer float,re-fried beans,omelette’s,Starbucks ,Denny’s,soft marshmallow peeps in the shape of ghosts round Halloween,tea with milk and sugar,lemon wedges on white napkins,waffle house,Mexican beer,passion fruit ice tea,shrimp cup of noodles….)

I guess erupting in a non communicable rash was a step up from vomiting all over her floor. I am so completely devastated. I feel like a CNN crack team should be covering me,the disaster zone.I shuffled home weeping again.Back into my asbestos cave.The only thoughts that I have that bring me any kind of vague sensual pleasure involve long drawn out sessions of torture and carnage.To the brink of death in complete agony.Stop,pause,start over.That wins my crooked chipped  smile.

I think that you tend to scoff at a phrase until it is applicable to you.

Such as?

How about we start with “The damage is done” .The old me? She would have shaped up to a phrase like that, knocked over it’s pint and smashed it’s face in.This me? This me has it wired in flashing purple neon over her ribcage framing her dead heart.

Right next to “Too little,too late”

I hate this.

My heart just skipped a beat.Stories or murdering myself. I like that people say “Commit ” suicide.Like its a diet or a fun run.That you have to be in 100%. You have to be committed to the end result.The English language.You gotta love it.

I am running on pure stress again.My weight is up and down usually but right now its plummeting again.I can’t eat .Not a bad thing but it tears my skin apart.Makes me look sick.I drink gallons of soda water and burp like a drunk.I guess its mostly because of the dental apocalypse.I gave up trying to masticate solid food weeks ago.Too arduous and painful by far.Baby food has come a long way it must be said.

My pee is fluorescent yellow.I am the supplement queen. Magnesium,B+,fish oil….oh tell me why I bother and then we will both know.Valerian does not work though,doesn’t do sweet fuck all for my sleeplessness, just though I would let you know.Doctors don’t want to hand out the Valley of The Dolls pick-n-mix willy nilly so they advise you to go the herbal route,the sadistic clowns.I have been trying to meditate but as soon as I get close to relaxing it brings on flashbacks that send me howling back under the covers for hours shaking like a shitting dog.I do my breathing exercises ,well, sometimes and I stretch alot.But it will be the running that saves what little sanity I have left.

I think too much. I think about how I keep the entire world at an arms distance now,including my mother and my brothers. How they can sense the distance but I can’t stop it.They go to hug me and I flinch.I let my phone ring out for days at a time because I don’t want them to ask me how I am because I am just too tired to lie most days. Much of the same with my friends.I am turning into Andy Warhol.He used to live on the phone apparently.I do when I am able and have credit.I can’t go and see people,engage,I was doing ok-ish there for a while but its all fallen away.I turn down all attempts at kindness.

I have no trust. None.

It saddens me to see those words in front of me.”No more candy coatings” I tell myself.My journal is mortifying in its brutality.Seething with hatred and homicide.(How many ways can you kill a blonde?) Maybe I should publish some of my darker fables.That would be a surefire way to have readership fall to an all time low.

(Now I have “Ashes to ashes” By David Bowie on my internal I-pod )

So much death and mayhem,I murder myself on average ten times a day.What happens when you don’t want to stay behind the yellow line? When you don’t give a fuck about minding the gap?

Numb.

July 4th and I am not in California.How strange.This winter is laying me low.I miss my west coast summer.I miss my life before it went rank.Lying in my yard at the start of it all,surrounded by the hounds soaking up the sun.Being in love,thinking that it would never end…that my life was finally beginning,that my love was the swiss army knife of emotions,it could do everything! That I could have,that we could have had it all….

So why is it,I ponder on this crisp cold night,that no ring was entered to defend me? Was I really that worthless?

That when I wrote ,sang,toured I was belittled and torn apart.Eventually I wanted to do nothing because nothing I did was ok.That’s why I wanted to quit .I thought it would make everything ok.You stupid bitch Michele,like anything you did was right…..That it would be ok? You are joking right?  Fun-neeeee.

Ha.Ha.Ha.

Such a fool Madden.What a kidder! I am haunted by ill winds tonight.Writing horrific stories of revenge. No one wants the alpha female.I will stand by that . I know that I’m not great but I never thought that I was as bad as I feel now that’s for fucking sure. Have to do rounds of Doctors assessments again this week.It’s the equivalent your sanity going before the parole board. Mine is currently serving 25 to life.It’s harrowing to find out,on paper,how hopeless you really are.

On my shattered life’s rap sheet are all the five dollar words that could win you a game of scrabble but you don’t really desire attached to your name.

Chronic Depression,Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,Body Dysmorphia,Mid-range OCD,Chronic stress related Insomnia,mid range agoraphobia,anger management issues.

A bloody ribbon of wreck and ruin winding its way around my life,ending up in a big bow on the pustule of shit that my existence has become.Maybe that is why I love to run.Because just for a little while,a few glorious miles, I feel like I have wings,that I can leave it all behind….

I remember reading years ago that Graham Greene said that every writer has a shred of ice in their heart. We must.My heart feels positively arctic.Everyone is a story to us and we tend to write ourselves into existence.That’s why we have such small circles of friends,well at least I do.I think is because no one wants to be grist for our mills.Fair enough. But to be in a situation where I could not create freely without being questioned or accused?

I would never ask anyone not to be what they are or do what they do and I expect the same in return.Standing in someones way when it comes to the creative process? One never does that…

There are gaps that can never be filled.Spaces that remain infertile and inhospitable.And its such a low down crying shame.The earth has been poisoned and from it nothing can grow.

I am exhausted.How fucking moronic of me to think that I could ever be ok for anyone just the way that I am.Me? Me?? Ha.

I never thought in a million years that I would be so severely broken.That I would beg medical types for assistance.It’s mortifying.That the ringing of the phone would cause me to vomit.This is me and I wish that I had the guts to stop breathing because it’s exhausting .

Independence day my fat ass.

Roses.

Chippy put me on the door for Helmet.What can I tell you? I am a spoiled snot.He gleefully texted me from sound-check to inform  me that it was going to be super loud. With him on the desk? I would expect no less.

Did I go?

One of my oldest and best friends is in town tonight with her new amazing, by all accounts, boyfriend that she wants me to meet.They have invited me for a charming vegan dinner.Did I accept only to be felled by a massive panic attack which lead to declining?

What do you think?

Being the star that she is she understood and forgave me.I wish that I could understand and forgive myself.

But I don’t and I can’t.

A Zombie? No,a ghost.

Still all over my life darling and you know it….all you have to do is read what I bleed…..

(No one had ever loved me better….)

If anyone thinks that I don’t still care then they are a fucking moron.I loved and backed the biggest winner I had ever met and for that I am proud.Shame it cost me everything.My silence costs me more than anyone will ever know.I wish that I could like myself too.The damage is so great that I sit with my head in my hands and weep for what should have been.Bad timing? I don’t know where to start.My brain is so fried.I want so badly to explain myself but I have tried all that before.

It scares me because it was the only time I ever gave myself totally.

I keep an eye out.I know what’s going on.I knew that he would rise to the top once again.I always knew and I am proud like a mama lioness.I got in the ring time and time again because under all the shit and pain, I saw the love of my life and that man was and is a star.I have never seen anyone burn brighter.I am glad that he can see that now and is where he is ment to be.He deserves this.To be happy,calm,busy and free of demons.A talent like that is too true,rare and mercurial to lay dormant.

My heart,what’s left of it ,has only ever belonged to one blue eyed boy and that is the way it shall remain for the rest of my life.

I don’t know how to get back up.And I miss my best friend……

Meanwhile life rolls on and over me like a jailhouse snitch. I love the idea that people have of me.My huge life. Anything but.I think I deserve a reward if I shower and train.If I remember to eat,to pull my manky hair out of the braid that it exists in.If I do laundry. I behave like a fear struck stroke survivor. A gold star for Fat ass mc shut in! Yeah team! I disgust myself.

The last time I smiled I was reading an article on genital mutilation.

No that’s a lie.

I had a nice daydream on the train of taking a cattle prod into the middle of the dance-floor at a rave and going to town.Think about it…No one would hear them scream over that shit house music.Its a cinch.

I almost missed my stop.

I don’t know why people feel the need to abbreviate my name.To make it sound cute? To foster a sense of familiarity? Approachability? Whatever,it makes me want to peel my forearms with a linoleum knife.I guess that’s what people do. Make my skin crawl and try to act cute.Bless ’em.I got a nice letter the other day asking why I don’t desire “Sunshine” in my life.Where I come from there is no ozone layer.Sunshine brings premature aging and  cancer.In the end you pay for a tan just like you pay for being happy.Is this fatalistic? Potato-potato if you catch my drift.This is my personal experience.This is what happened to me.This is what I know.I am not into risking the scant sanity that is left at me to be a slogan on a Prozac paperweight on some shrinks desk.

I like my walls and I like my weapons.You get no brownie points for swaying my opinion,not that you ever could,trust me on that front .

Life is not “The Breakfast Club” no matter what John Hughes or a bunch of bitter members of Generation X would have you believe.You are not Bender.For that matter,nor am I.

Dig?

Thank you for your sweet misguided concern.I mean that.Now get off my lawn.

My Tattooist Luke “Bones” Downey  is back from his much needed vacation in Hawaii.Time to bother him anew about my back piece.Imagine if there was invisible ink? I would get a whole body suit and be erased by the mercy of the needle. Laz Gein is working on my ribs.I am lucky to be surrounded by such talent.I decided that I needed a tattoo on my left side.Over the dead heart that I wish would break down like fat cells and let me crap it out.He hasn’t said anything but I know that he thinks it’s a sad thing to have etched into ones side forever.This coming from a guy with”Murder” written in reverse across his neck in dripping red ink.He just gives me that look.

Who cares? I don’t.I am going to completely desecrate my corpse.

In a rare moment of clarity I added up all my dream procedures that would successfully turn me into someone else. So if anyone has a spare fifty grand  give or take,mouldering away beneath their mattress and finds that they wish to embody the living spirit of generosity look no further for your charity case.Here I am Daddy Warbucks!

(“Toooo-morrow,Tomorrow,I love you tommrow,your only a daaaaayyyy a-wayyyyyy!”)

Then comes the lobotomy and I am home and hosed.

There is a terrible finality,I am sadly working out,that comes with true love.You find yourself fiercely guarding remnants.Standing watch over the remains.As I type this there are two cats tap dancing on my roof.(“No stupid! Its two,two three four! How many fucking times do we have to go over this?….”) And I find that I am listing to classical music non stop. No memory laden lyrics to blow up in my fat face you see. Amber from Bug girl once asked me a long-assed time ago when I was living in Hamburg at “The Hospital of Death” as our domicile was fondly known, why the Cold War era radio in my room was constantly tuned to the classical station beaming out of Berlin.

“It makes me feel like I could be better than I am” I replied to her dumbstruck face.

I blushed at the weight of my disclosure and rapidly rambled down the hall to make another cup of peppermint tea.We later kept everyone awake singing Heart and Alice in Chains songs at the top of our  formidable lungs, jamming late into the kraut night.

I wonder what happened to the woman that I was. The gypsy.

Well,today she is lying in her womb of a bed munching chia seeds clad in a once white Black Flag thermal that I got on Hollywood Blvd back in 05′ when I was living on Romaine and Santa Monica with the amazing Sin Fisted and her then Husband who went by the name of Three and two dogs, one of whom was a pug which led to my ongoing love affair with the breed,my ex’s navy blue track pants that I plan on being buried in and red thigh high socks crowned with 3 white bands biting into my lumpy thighs. Magnifique non? What a prize.

Miss Bliss wrote to me today with tales of love,summer,fromage and France.I wish that I could be there to see her walk down the isle.

Ah weddings.

I dragged myself from the mire last weekend to celebrate my brilliant step-fathers birthday at a Greek taverna in the city. My dress sense obviously tainted by the lashings of Stevie Nicks that I had been listening to that day.Just like the white winged dove indeed. Resplendent in three different shades,no less, of velvet ranging from my slouchy brown pirate boots to a deep jewel green jacket and my ancient 2 foot long well traveled Armani scarf,I looked like I should have been reading the tarot at the Pigalle fairgrounds at the turn of last century.

Or just locked up for heinous crimes against fashion.Rock on Gold Dust Woman.

So, there was my baby brother and his serene Hitchcock blonde wife whom I adore.My stepfather’s stunning daughter with her new husband,his cool son and my Saint of a Mother and her Birthday boy.

I should have just sent a card. A hamper from a swanky food store filled with tempting obscure morsels clad in a crinkly shell of cellophane.I can’t do this anymore.More to the point,I just shouldn’t.Don’t get me wrong,it was lovely ,the food was good and filling and many plaster plates were loudly and joyously smashed on the mosaic floor and all I could think of was that I never made it that far.That it never mattered to me,being alone,until I had found out how great it was to meet the person who completed you.

That’s when you really get your ass handed to you.

I still dream about my wedding dress.Of the nights we used to plan the big day.I wanted to take your breath away.

(Don’t worry baby,I would have given it back…..)

Fear.

Fear of being hurt so badly the next time that it kills you.The only thing that is going to kill me is me.Ever the control freak.I get to wondering if this needed this to happen to me?

(“Michele! You get down off that cross right now young lady! I am going to count to three and if your not down here by the time I….”)

Some people are built different.Cannot love.Do any of us get the love that we truly desire? I did.For one brief time in my life and I am irreparably broken by the loss

I am great at lavishing attention and when on top of my game I am an incredible cheerleader but there is always a distance within me.I wonder if that is fear or wiring? But the one time I let go? The only time? I was electric with it.A million ballads and poems that I never would have whistles or wiped my ass with were all of the sudden sung and written just for me.I would have been better off shooting Mexican tar into my eyeballs,Playing chicken on the Long Island express way blindfolded on magic mushrooms tripping balls,chowing down on discarded tumors pilfered under the cloak of darkness from the medical dump like caviar.

It would have been safer.

I have learnt more than I ever think I needed to know about myself over the last year.I am like an emotional Ikea bookcase.The end result looked fabulous erected on the floor at the shop but when you get that fickle flat box home and the instructions are written in what appears to be a Swedish Mandarin hybrid, well,your fucked aren’t you?

There are rare times (“How would you like your steak Sir?”  “Just wipe the cows ass and send him over” ) that I imagine doing great things.I got a message from one of the girls that I worked on that last film-clip with.She is presently going to all the big metal festivals in Europe.She told me that she had met a couple who raved about me as I had taken the time to hang out with their young son at some meet and greet and sign his leather jacket in ’07.I can’t even remember being that person.But I sure as a two in the-pink-one-in-the-stink finger fuck wish that I could forget who I am now.

My guitarist has been ill and my panic is rising as I need to teach him new songs for the next show.I am also going to sell my bass and buy a new guitar. You gotta do what you gotta do and since I have not been having any more rad dreams about Saint Dee Dee of late maybe its time to let the dream die. I sucked anyway,it’s not like Geezer Butler was ever shaking in his shoes or anything.I am sharing the bill with two of my absolute heroes which is exacerbating my nerves no end.

I have been blessed on more than one occasion to support Blackie and its always a pleasure .The other gift on this bill is Marcus Depasquale from Looking Glass.I can’t believe that he accepted the gig. To those of you who have not seen Looking Glass, they are one of the few bands in the world who leave my jaw hanging every time I am lucky enough to witness their greatness live.Marcus is the lead singer and guitarist and I cant wait to see what he brings to this occasion.

Why am I doing this to myself ?.

I avert my eyes when I see people connect.  Sex is a memory. I move train carriages when I see people in love. I blanch and my mouth floods with bile merely imagining a face looming closer and closer to mine wanting to kiss. I break out in hives.I dread my period because it means that I have to deal with my genitalia.I  fill the patches in that have pulled from my eyebrows with a soft brown  pencil.I get nervous and tug the hairs out you see.It’s a follicular twitch Do the same thing to my eyelashes.

I look profoundly retarded.

Let me tell you somthing……

I am so fucking far from perfect.I change my birth date like I change my underwear,I don’t want to grow up or get old,I am vain and stupid,I fish for compliments,for attention.I lie,I bleed,I am so fallible and human.I am stubborn and self loathing.I am boring and well read.I am loyal and compassionate.I have no blood of my own so I built my own family because I wanted something to belong to so badly.To lay the cards on the table, I am more than a few deli platters short of the buffet.But with all my flaws and mistakes I did nothing but love  with all my scars and my big heart.I thought that my love was perfect because of his unrepentant flaws.I thought that he thought the same of me.

I didn’t realise that it didn’t work that way.What did I know? That some people need the honeymoon over and over? Is that it? For someone so smart I really am dumb.While I was being silently toppled from the pedestal that I had been placed lovingly on a scant few months earlier I was happily mapping the foundations to lay beneath what I foolishly believed was a shared palace of dreams.

I could have bloomed.But I guess that was never in the grand plan was it now?

I despise feeling like an idiot.Its takes up the biggest wedge of pie in the chart of my depression. (“And as you see here,highlighted in green….”)

I don’t drink,don’t get high.Don’t sport fuck.I don’t surf singles sights looking for corpses with negotiable self esteem to be the suture on an ever hemorrhaging sexual wound.I am dry.The mere thought touch of human flesh makes me retch.I can live without it all.

And I do.

I Should move to Texas and hang out with Roky.What I should do is finish this fucking album.I have to do it now.I have painted myself into a corner.

Kinda like that Raymond Pettibon picture.

Nice.

This could shape up to be my ” Exile on asshole street”

I don’t know what to say.How to start. Did you ever think of that? I am afraid but that never occurred to you did it?……..The roses are beautiful……

Drown.

When I am this tired, I wallow. Face down.Pass me my snorkel.

Thank you.Now get out.

Wallowing. Not a trait that I appreciate in myself.

A hippo of emotion flopping into a muddy oasis of sadness somewhere on outskirts of the the Serengeti of shit.Violent vistas.Torturous terrain. Pass me my gun.It was once said that anger is the weed and hate the tree. You don’t want to be walking through my woods after dark if that is the case. ( “And miles to go before I sleep” Thank you Mr R.Frost) Between hateful trees and depressed hippo’s my goose is cooked. Honk. The hours weave together and the wind wails a Coltrane solo (“My favourite things” if you must know) though my shattered ceiling. When I dream, I dream of Los Angeles,the marble smooth fools gold flecked footpaths of Hollywood rising to meet me,your hand possessive and proud on the curve of my hip and I wonder if I will ever see it again.At the saddest of times I wonder if I still want to.It twists my insides like a malicious menstrual cramp.To breathe that rare sugar scented air once more…

(Your name is still a prayer to me.)

Threw on “Hi Infidelity” by REO Speedwagon and burst into tears when “Keep on lovin’ you” came on.Kevin Cronin’s voice tends to have that effect on me.(“When I said that I loved you I meant that I’d love you forrrrever….”)

Sleepless.

The only thing to do at times like these is surf plastic surgery websites compiling my dream-list of procedures and focus on  winning the lottery. (“Dear Michele,thank you for contacting us about liposuction…”) And yes,I have a ticket.It’s on my shrine being watched over by Quan Li and Elvis.I am hedging my bets.

(“Luck be a lady tonight! Baby needs a new pair of shoes!”)

It’s beyond hateful.( “Next stop,eternal damnation,please stand clear of the doors….”)I have had insomnia my whole rotten life and it just sucks.Right now my sleeplessness  thinks that it’s Kiss and my brain is Cobo hall.It’s flamboyant ,messy and keeps playing reunion tours while overcharging for merchandise.And knowing that Ace Freeley and Peter Criss are not behind the face-paint  just makes it all the sadder doncha think? Cue the fireworks.Sigh.

(Oh, but if you could have seen the pornographic hunger in his eyes and it was for me,me,me.)

The only time I ever slept well was when I was in love. Because I felt safe ,dig it?.I would be woken with soft kisses and eat endless sodium soaked shrimp cup-of-noodles.I wanted for nothing. I finally got what The Beatles ment when they sang “All you need is love”  (“Dah-dah-dah-dah-dahhhhhhhhhhhhh“).Tell you what i should have done.I should have made a human sacrifice,burnt candles round the clock to St Dwynwen . Anything to make it last forever….Ah love! I wrote a few years ago,rather flippantly may I add,about the difference between desire and love.May I state for the record,in light of what has befallen me, that I had no idea .Smug and clueless.Trust me,I am getting my licks  for that transition now.My emotional back is mincemeat as I bleed tied to the mast.

(“We’ve not seen land for days Capt”)….

Isn’t hindsight just dandy?

Fatigue has a scent.Cloying and lacklustre.I think its chemical composition is close to the open grave like stench of failure.So says the 8th grade queen.Both medicinal and rank.The wreck under the bandages.Oh,how we avert our eyes.In public.But everyone is guilty of some degree of scab picking behind closed doors.Nothing like holier than thou pucker mouthed zealots who claim not to.

Turds,one and all.

I’m not right.I have fleeting glimpses but its so not ok.My life feels like it has been drained of the fluids one needs to be,well,alive and smothered in morticians pan-stick.Thick make up used to hide ligature marks,bullet hole,knife wounds.You know,the fun final stuff. The full stop injuries.Because as one knows , you can’t have an open casket viewing without it.You know what is tickling me today? What has its digit wedged twixt my ribs? I just marvel at how when people get right they think that you are just going to fall into line and everything will be great.Now that everything is great for them the corpses are meant to rise from the battlefield and do a big song and dance number like at the end of “Grease” ?

Ta-da!

My therapist asked me to write a list of things that I wanted to happen.

“Michele, “Amnesia” is not an option!” she berated me.” Nor is” she squinted at the creased paper and then at me” Spontaneous combustion?”. She sighed and rubbed her forehead.

Oh well.Worth a try.

That’s how I became mired in all this dental work .She told me to pick a goal.

“Genocide?” I said hopefully.

“How about we start with something else?”

“Oh,ok….”

At least with amnesia I could try again.

Is that how it goes? I sleep on my side as the knife is still buried to the hilt in my spine.I don’t even know who I am anymore.I gave and believed until I broke and now I am just wasting time till I die.I hope I die on stage and that its fast.

That’s about it.Oh,and thin.

My Doctor is going away.Panic now please.I will fill books in her absence trying to heal myself. All I do is write the same lists and shit over and over again.What a joke.I sleep round the clock due to depression then I burn awake for days doing nothing and attempting to feel much of the same.I can’t fucking move….and none of this matters because I was just something that happened a couple of miles back right? A bump in the road? I deal with my anger every fucking day.I try and sleep when I can’t (as opposed to when it’s all that I do) and under my sternum  there is an oily twisting sensation. A toxic ball of black worms as thick as your little finger.

Who ever thought that dying was going to be this slow and boring?

How very twee and catholic of me to think that I felt it the most because I am suffering still.I yell at myself.Its operatic.

I will accept no assistance because you always pay in the end.It always gets thrown back in your face.I am not as dumb as I look although many would beg to differ I am so sure.I have fallen for that old chestnut before…..

Head-shy.You keep yelling at a dog,hitting it…it’s going to bite all and sundry eventually.I should have a PHD in flinching.

I was watching all the ugly people the other day when it occurred to me that guys will fuck absolutely anything. Anything.Rub lard on a knothole in a fence and its on.There would be a pack of dudes in a sloppy line  jostling with each other smelling of Lynx,hormones,desperation and Southern Comfort waiting to run a train in it.I was at the store buying applesauce when I noticed that all the women pushing baby buggies looked like soft focus extras from Todd Browning’s “Freaks.” I shit you not.That’s when it occurred to me that some one had had sex with them. They had spawned.They are legion.

I puked a little in my mouth and left.

Eyes too close together,fiveheads over foreheads,stubby limbs.Pockets of fat in weird cottage cheese configurations under velour tracksuits.Mercy! Ugly people making more ugly people.I used to want a gun but it would take far too long.Even on an automatic my finger would be worn to a stub.Rolling thunder is the only answer and logical solution.I want,nay,I need napalm,to call an air-strike.Dial in those foxy coordinates from back at the DMZ. What do you mean am I serious? Did I stutter?

It is the ugly children that offend the most.Poor little beggars.I was one of them and the kindest thing would have been to let them sleep themselves to death.Its nothing but a life of mistrust and heartache ahead.

(our son would have been a king.)

If there is a God he has a perverse sense of humor to say the least.I will stick to fart jokes and  bell tower fantasies.

I can’t even jack off and these mongoloids are multiplying.Sickening.

Dental work laid me low again last week.I have one more wisdom tooth to get out and it will be over for at least a little while.Then come the bridges.Sigh.Someone asked me what I was doing on the weekend. “Staying home and brushing my tooth” I sighed.This is not far from the truth.I have been going great guns because I want it done? Or….because I hate myself and pain feels like home ? Answers in by midnight eastern standard time kids. Nah,I have no prizes to give but by golly,I wonder what the fucking point is.Onto cup of tea number five.

Why do I do it? Why bother to invest in beauty? I do it to try and make myself feel better and some days its kind of sweet but once your dreams have been stripped? Shit gets dicey to say the least.Most days? It’s pointless.For what? I see women primp and pose trying to get a mate.Honey traps.Its so gross.Like I said ,I am just trying to drag my fat ass from A to B and not fall off my high-heels while doing so.What an effort.I had someone make me feel beautiful once and then when I finally felt magnificent it was taken away .I couldn’t win.I could list the transgressions  but that futile exercise, it sends me back to bed for days so I will desist.

Never question why I am insane.Not wrapped so tight no more.Why my corpse is untouched.I will kill anyone in cold blood who attempted to touch me.Not a threat.A promise.Without thought or remorse.Still sleeping with a knife……

This is why I don’t move.Why I hide.

(...hope it tastes so sweet.)

So,to vaguely summarize, ugly people fuck,I am homicidal and brimming with hatred,I have not run today and my wardrobe is a floordrobe and I am writing.Better than thinking. Therapy again. There is,I have been informed, a Post traumatic stress disorder support group.Will I go? Will I fuck. Absolutely not.Locked in my shittacular shed soothed by Black Flag,Bob Seegar and his mighty Silver Bullet band and Fleetwood Mac in equal and brilliant measure I am able to tend to my flashbacks with some semblance of dignity.I take my own inventory.Blankets over the mirrors and Bob’s your mothers brother.The last thing my agoraphobic overweight ass needs is a Church hall full of fellow whack jobs,Gulf war veterans,rape survivors and crap coffee. Look,I don’t even drink coffee.

Miss Otis regrets.

I am so sick of myself.I want to leave myself somewhere and take a vacation without me.I wish.Tell you what else I wish? That I had never found out how great love was. I wish that I had gone my whole ignorant lanky life sans that sexy knowledge.Love is like the 1st time you get high.But better.It’s being finger banged by the Gods ,it completes you and vanquishes all doubt.It’s that amazing but here’s the kicker sports fans….No matter what you do to recapture it,that first perfect sublime vein shaking hit  it’s never that good again.But that ,I think,is an attribute ascribed to me alone because every other cunt seems to be able to move on just fine.They keep trying.I ,on the other hand will not.

And I am not going to chase that dragon.No fucking way.

Anniversaries.Dates that anchor you.Kill me now and make it quick.

I want to back out of doing this show.This always happens to me.I feel like a car crash that people cant look away from.I guess I told people that it was happening so I couldn’t do just that.Vanish.I hate modern life.Just think,a scant 50 years ago all you needed was a elephant sized set of balls ,a shot gun and a fast get away car and you could be on the border by sundown.I dream of that kind of caper. To never suffer though loss like this again.

To honestly disappear.

The guy who served me at the store shocked me today. “Are you still singing?” he casually inquired while scanning and putting my endless jars of soft baby-food,being that its all I can eat due to my dental disarray, into the big basket that Miss Bliss got me for my shit-heap of a birthday last year.. “Um,well,not really” I muttered as I grabbed my change and legged it out the sliding doors. I hate that people once saw me as great by my loves side,our voices swimming languidly upwards into the ether curling like smoke through the rafters. I cripples me how huge the lack is.Hell,I just hate.But the greatest amount is reserved for myself.Ohh….Trust me….

Or not.

I don’t trust anyone.Gimme 10  solid reasons free of greeting card whimsy why I should without getting cranky at me and I will buy you a beer.I have a scant few people that I like well enough but never again will I put myself in any-one’s hands.They drop you just to see what happens.Never will I believe in claims of love.No fucking way.Two alpha’s! What the fuck was I thinking? What ever it was it was wishful,reeked of Calgon ginger body-spray and crashed and burnt like the Hindenburg of hope.( “Oh! The humanity!”) Why do I get the feeling that my next tattoo should say “Sucker” ?. I despise myself for being so broken.For thinking that love applied to people like me.Oh my sides! Love is for gormless civilians…which goes back to my horror of ugly children at the store.These cunts have something that I don’t.They think that they are worthy of love.For one brief moment in time I thought I had made the grade.

Fool.

My no-brainer of the day….

The last song? The last song I would ever get to play? In my desiccated dreams my last song would be sung to you and you alone.It’s purity would fell us both on the spot.

Don’t think you can get much better than that.

Then I would know how perfect felt.

Never.

She never in a million years thought that she would have to live without him.That he would drive her to the point that she could not come back from.She is not sleeping again.

She re-read the letters that she has horded,their past,good and bad,more precious than diamonds.She was never going to leave.She never wanted it to end but the hurts piled up on each other day after day. He has had someone to ease his pain.She has not and she wont.She wonders who the next lucky hole will be…..

So long without his voice.

She knows that she made mistakes,she feels them more deeply than she was given credit for.But she loved him more than she ever loved herself and it was not enough.

Hope sinks like a stone.

I seem to be in a bad way again.Ok,why fuck around and mince words.I am in a bad way again and I hope that I can see my way clear.( “Iceberg! Starboard!”) I am climbing the walls and even though my ideas are good and my aim is true I wonder why I bother.( Why do I bother?) The weight can crush you if you are not equipped to lift it and today I am not.My small life with my faded big dreams.I can hear the early morning trains huffing in the distance and I wish the night was longer.

I stay awake because my mind flat out refuse to stop.Things that shouldn’t drive me crazy do.The details.Time to pack up my life again and fade away.And its all too much effort.The only thing that is any good right now,and I find this so ironic,is my voice.That I am not in a band makes it even funnier.My small bathroom is an acoustic mecca.And then there is my room.Almost all of my ceiling has fallen in and because I am not a big ol’ famous rockstar I know that it ain’t gonna get fixed. I don’t want to be here anymore.I need more tattoos or else I am gonna have to get my kicks with a knife .

Fragile.How the fuck can I be built the way that I am and be fragile? It makes no sense.Us humans.What a joke. I put up pictures to prove what? “Hey! Look at Me! I am fine!” Uh-huh.Sure you are.Go lose some more weight.

An unexpected gift.I read that I was a cross between Angelina Jolie and Steven Tyler a few days ago. My heart restarted, beat 4 times and then fell silent once again.I don’t know what to do with kindness.I don’t know what the fuck I am doing at all. ( so glad that it has all worked out for you as always…) I read letters from sweet souls who tell me that I have made their lives some how richer? How,I really cannot fathom but anyway…Its really nice but I cannot seem to heal myself and its a hard fucking yard. My nerves are shot.I was a fucking pirate.We both were . (Hurt? You wanna talk about hurt? Pissed off?? look at what you left behind .) Nothing fazed me and now everything does.This is not a quality I wish to possess.

I see all.

Dog will hunt.Ain’t that right?

I did not get to jam this weekend but I wrote some.It’s a long weekend so I know that people are doing stuff.I practiced my finger picking till my hands cramped in the cold.No where near as good as Blackie but way better than I used to be so I guess that is something..I wonder where they are in Europe and I hope that the tour is going well.

My life.It’s all getting me down and I try to fight it off.All this dental work is shit.I swore to myself that I would get it all done this year but it’s really hard to keep going.Thought it may help my self esteem,you know,not having a smile like a retired street fighter.What self esteem? I just want to be finished.I don’t smile real wide anymore because of the gaps.Ha! I don’t smile anyway so I guess that its not that much of a problem.That’s a plus right?

I thought I knew who I was and where I was going.( we were going to build an empire ). Heartbreak does nothing tasty for my looks I will tell you that for a fact. I know where this is leading me and I could try to stop it but I won’t. I will take it out on myself physically.Why? Because that is where I have control.That is where I am the boss. Love? Love took me for a ride ,fucked me and never called.That is what I got from love. But the gym? The gym has eyes in the form of mirrors that show me my every failing and mistake and I have and make many.It is empty for hours and I sweat and pace like a caged animal.In that temple I forget myself. I will train my corpse to do what I want it to.I will fuel it and flog it….

And no motherfucker will ever touch me again.

I miss having something to look forward to.I miss sharing my life with my love. Goodbye forever. Oh well.

So here is to me and my untouched loveless corpse.Here is to my atrophied aorta.Here is to maybe,just maybe, feeling like life is worth living.Here is to hopefully not making old bones because,hey, who cares?

Funerals.

Mate,everyone showed up for you..I stood by Mo and Oscar and I cried my fucking face off. Everyone spoke so beautifully about you and it broke me seeing your dog sit by your coffin.I didn’t come up and lay a flower.I wanted to be invisible.I could not have moved if I tried.Then Angry got up to talk about you and his words and sincerity ripped me right down the middle.Kingy giving me a huge hug and me shaking like a a poodle trying to crap a pine-cone.All my own grief so readily reactivated.Always so close to my paper thin surface looking for escape routes.So many cunts roaming the planet,a few of them at your wake may I add, and you,dear Clarky, gone.

I remembered your sweetness on the road and in Europe.You tuning the PA’s with Bloodduster….

“I was just talking about you the other day Michele” Said Angry and took my hand in his. I sat on the edge of the table with a sigh and we spoke of sadness.He fixed me with those thousand mile eyes and saw right into the depth of my loss. I wondered how much he knew,what he had been told of the reasons why I barely exist anymore.He spoke to me about standing for what I believe in and the healing power of  time.He asked me what I was doing with my music,said that he loved what I did.I told him I was singing again. “Not just yelling” I smiled.He laughed that great laugh of his “I always knew you could do that!” .I invited him to my show and he assured me that he would not miss it. I got up to go.

“I like your hair,you look lovely” he said like the father I wished I had. I blushed ” Yeah,I grew up!” I sheepishly replied “Don’t get me wrong Mish,I liked the dreads but you look beautiful love” and with that he gave me a iron gripped hug and folded back into the somber black clad crowd.

Beautiful Mary Cocks,Mick’s widow full of such sweet words. She told me how  Mick spoke highly of me. I still regret not being here for his funeral.He was the reason my old band ended up in Europe. Being with him and Kingy backstage I always felt like a cross between a princess and a treasured kid sister.

I said my goodbyes and left.

Crying behind my big glasses on the train home thinking that I would be squinting into the darkness at every show to see if Clarky was on the desk.

Rest in peace.

I wish that I could.

And I wonder.Would you show up to my wake in sadness or to piss on my grave?

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.

Blood.

I woke up choking on my own blood.I do not advise this.Not choking on my blood or any blood for that matter.I thought I was going to have a fucking coronary.

All over my face,my sheets.Clots running down my dry throat.hack,hack,hack And I have to clean it up.

It”s is now 8:51 am and I am still in pain.I spent 2 hours in the chair getting  yet another tooth ripped out of my head yesterday.The root canal failed,I repeat,the root canal failed.I feel like the skull on the Jolly Roger,although what the fuck he had  to be so happy about is beyond moi.Think tender.Think chasm.Think lack.I can”t eat or sleep.And yeah,I cried.So I have been up all night driving myself insane.Googling all the wrong things.You would think that when in such pain I would be nice to myself right? Righhhhhht?

Getdafuckouutahere! Are you shitting me? I decided to go on a loaded landmine tour of my fucked up loveless existence complete with photographic proof. Roll up! Roll up!

Brilliant.

I am gonna be out of the race for at least a week.This is not good.This could send me over the edge.Not impressed at all.That means no training.( William Dafoe at the end of Platoon as he runs out of the jungle chased by the NVA and Charlie Sheen looks out of the chopper horrified. Bang! bang,bang! Dafoe falls to his knees in slow motion….William Dafoe is my self esteem at this point.Which makes the jungles of Vietnam my gym? Charlie Sheen my cowardly departing resolve?…hold on,ok,um forget it….)  That means I am going to lose my motherfucking mind,well what’s left of it.Life wants me dead and I really do get to wondering why I don’t oblige it at times like these. I was trying to think of all the good shit in my life and there is some at long last but it’s sure as shit not saving me today.Ok,so not being able to eat works in my fat asses favor,that’s a good thing,right? You can’t get fat on air and blood.

What else,what else,think woman!  Ok,Tell you whats weird…….. I have been thinking of California.As in Going back. ( but feeling Minnesota…) Now how about them apples? Keep in mind that I still have a panic attack when I think of catching a plane,Fuck! I feel ill when my train passes the airport,but still.Rebuilding myself once again. ( am i able?,can i do it?,is it worth it?….)

I have me a few rare but mighty persistent  friends. Friends who still see me ( Bless them!)  in front of a band once again ,no less.I want it ( at less and less fleeting intervals) but I have been so poisoned. I swore that I would bury myself alive in the boonies and not risk it all again but then I remember…it kinda,I dunno,creeps up on me,slithers into the soft grey folds of my addled mind,plays soft shoe fucky with my frontal lobe.I remember just what those amps stacked up around me make me do,all that electricity,the shapes and sounds that tear their way out of my corpse and wouldn’t ya just know it ?  The last year has seen me writing.That’s right rabbit. Big evil screaming hurts.Autopsies on babies and cancer riddled cripples of things dragging themselves round legless on skateboards,just begging I tell you, for a band to want to bring them to life…curiouser and curiouser huh?…….

Some shit just don’t fly with me and my battered acoustic/autistic act-shun.Nuh-uh.Can I get an a-men up in here? I want 8 ohm. I want raw power mama….

Now, let’s just say I got me an all star band that just happened to need a singer that they wanted to give, say,total fucking carte blanche to,that just happened to believe in me.And then let’s just say that maybe I had paid some dues,taken my lick’s and done some hard fuckin’ time.Let’s just imagine that I had learnt from the mistakes I have made and a fair few years on the road. Allow us to pause and  ponder for one red hot moment that I had maybe rebuilt myself out of barbed wire,mercury ,scars,loathing ,revenge fantasies and defiance when no one was looking.When they had all written me off…underestimated,let’s say.Hold fast in the knowledge wouldn’t be the 1st time that had happened…..

And then someone just happened to hand me a microphone.

And my own ticket to write.

Now,what do you think may happen then ?

Life is not done with kicking my ass,I know that but maybe,just maybe I am done with kicking my own for a while.And that is something I didn’t think was ever gonna give me a look in again.

I don’t know.Its nice that people still want to work with me,that they still see something worthwhile in me.From the filmclip the other weekend (” You like me,You really,really like me!”) to the solo shows played and yet to come  and now offers from my much missed west coast.(” get here and we’ll do the rest….”) Am I ready to get back in the ring? Well,not fucking today that’s for sure.Blood all over my REO speed-wagon t -shirt.Lament! Sheets.Fuck! Looked like some one got murdered.

3 years today since Skoota died. I lost him and Michelle within weeks of each other.Some shit you never get over.Death and broken hearts. That’s my short shit list of the utterly insurmountable.Tell you what shoved my fat ass over the edge? Losing my forever.When he and I ended,I ended for good.Losing the love of my life was the break point.All the shit that I had held at bay for so long broke though the gates and trampled me.And here was me thinking that love was going to save us both.Oh my sides.Look up “idiot” in the dictionary,personally?  I don’t think they got my best angle in the photo but I am prone to nitpicking.

The west is the best Mr Morison….I fear returning.All the memories like tripwire but to limit my fast failing future at this point? C’mon! Everybody loves a train-wreck right? I have nothing left to lose right? It’s all gone. Love.Being loved.Sex.Gone.He gives that to some hatchet faced Hollywood whore now.Not me. My once believed in future.So if I don’t have to worry about all that,just wrangle my ghosts and cry myself to sleep…well!

Looks like it could get interesting again.

We shall see.We shall see…..

Glad to see that even when I ain’t doing shit I am still a pioneer. Some ding dong ( Ok,Otep)  basically remade a film-clip that I did over 5 years ago.But hey,they say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.Made me smile.So,do you try so hard when there is no one looking honey? Oh yer so cute! I bet you do! Y’all should pucker up and kiss my trail blazing whitetrash ass.

Finally working on the sketches for my back piece. Better to get inked in the cold I think.Hopefully be starting on it next month.

Can I just say that these painkillers are turning my stomach to mush.I have gotta try and get some sleep.Hateful.I hope I can sleep soon.The last 3 days are feeling hallucinogenic.I only got about 5 hours in and that’s only because I passed out with the pain.Thought I was going to have to crawl home.To tired to walk to the store.Princesses get a glass tower and a prince.Me? I get an asbestos shack in the suburbs with the ceiling falling in and PMS>Its been said before but I wont hesitate to say it again…

“Michele Madden.All Class.All the time”