Pyre.

As seems to be my habit of late I can’t be bothered to do a goddamn thing.I have had enough of it.

This is not good.This is hard place to come back from.In short? It sucks.But I have got things to do…..

It’s time to get back in the ring.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

(Short burst of manic steel pedal guitar. Pan from head to toe of a back female silhouette.The shadowy figure raises her arm and shoots the camera.Screen turns red….)

( Voice over,classic male announcer.) “And welcome back to an all new season of  “So you fucked with the wrong cowgirl!” (applause) .And heeeeeere she is! Michele Madden!”)

(Michele walks on stage through red curtains. Studio audience goes wild,close upon random faces in the crowd who lose their  collective shit as they see themselves on the monitors. The band is tearing through a s-mokin‘ hot rendition of “Gimme back my bullets ” by Lynard Skynard as Michele makes her way to the front of the stage in a pair of jeans that would be illegal in at least 19 states. They wind it up and crowd falls silent but heavy with expectation.She smiles and speaks.)

“Thank you! No really,thank you so much!  Your too kind.So glad that y’all could make it back to witness my triumphant return.Yes, I have had a  a bitch of a time since last August,as ya’ll know ( Crowd makes sympathetic overture) No, its ok! (Killer close up of her face)   Boy-oh- boy have I got some sweet revenge in store for you! (applause). So sit back and relax while I go and kick some ass and remember kids? ( Close up) don’t try this at home.”

(Cut to add break)

Depression relapses are fucking shocking.And here was me thinking that I was finally getting somewhere (*pft!*) All the days bleed into a big shitty mess. Its looks like Monet’s “Waterlilies”.I hate fucking Monet! All blurry wishy-swishy take -a-Valium-and-let-it-go crap! Gah! I have a black sequined teddy bear named Henry! I live for high heel boots! I have a silver framed picture of Lemmy on my table next to a knock-off Ming vase full of light up orchards. I .Don’t.Do.Subtle.The end!

I hate that I am back here again.All sad and sleepless.Going to meet up with my tirelessly excellent friend Miss Emma in Bondi tomorrow.I am so down and faithless.She gives me mucho great advice and is all round great.I am giving myself crap advice and am not great in the slightest.I am making myself ill. Time to look for inspiration again.And fat is not an option.Half of my formidable wardrobe is orphaned at the moment because I am a gross 15 pounds overweight. I hear them crying at night “Mama!”  sob my now too small garments to my chubby ears “Get your ass running!”they moan “I miss you mama!” wails my size 6 (us) black shift dress. I cant take it!

ENOUGH!

(This is a true story.)

I wish that I could find a shady Doctor who would do gastric lap band surgery on me. One can dream…..

I must be dehydrated because my skin is looking like a relief map of the moon.Scurvy wouldn’t be that much of a shock at this point in the proceedings.I am starving myself out again.I hate being big.I hate fat in general.Ohhhhh! Time for a  “Shit that I hate!” list…Wait,I’m gonna add myself to that list as well as gangs of Lebanese in their too small hats and stupid haircuts,civilians in general,women with too many cats who write shitty poetry,people with bad manors,lack of control,blame laying,denial,your new fuck-hole whore….Whoa! this could become a long fucking list.

I see targets on their faces,on their backs.

( Does she think that you love her? I wonder if you do.At least you have a body to go home to and that is what you want.Me? Alone. I can never fill the space that you claimed in my heart and more to the point would never try. I am strong and respectful to the ghost.All I ever wanted I had with you.No one could ever come close. I hope she looks up and sees my initials on your arm.I hope it burns her the fuck up. But I guess its different for boys.All they care about is a warm hole to drop their load in right? Do you kiss these days? If you do,you snake,close your eyes and think of me.Open your eyes to the disappointing reality….I wonder,how do you sleep these days baby-boy?……)

Excuse me while I go and punch another hole in the drywall.

On the up side I did get to sing on the new Hard-on’s ep. Went in and got my parts done cold in under an hour. It was my slightly wobbly 12 year old in a choir voice they wanted. “Don’t sound too fucking good!” said my brother from the control room as I adjusted my levels on the console beside me .I let out  a big snort of laughter  straight into the mike which caused the polite Chinese assistant to look up with concern. Blackie writes such great lyrics.I am still singing them under my breath. ( “But like a dumb dog I keep wagging my tail….”)  I am always trying to be too clever I think. He cuts it to the bone and says it like it is. I like singing other peoples stuff better than my own. Got a nice letter the other day from some one complimenting me on some you-tube clip of “Four corners” ( do you ever remember how great we were together ??)

I turned off my computer,went back to bed and stared at the ceiling for a few hours.

Since my computer crashed,(Well, what did I expect buying old stock refurbished from a school? You get what ya pay for right? Mine still has the kids name on it. Hello Angus Jameson who ever you are…I digress…) I have not downloaded anything that enables me to watch videos. Why bother? I would sit up and watch old stuff of us for hours and mourn. Its hard enough staying away from Google images.( Nice brunette in Glasgow by the way….)

(“Miss your face”, sure you do)

The lord helps he who helps himself. Apparently.

Is it our obsessions that make us beautiful or are they the very things that damn us?

I don’t feel too fucking beautiful at the moment. Bitter flesh and too much of it wrapped in my ratty old Down long sleeve that still has  hot pink  stains on it from when I decided to paint the atrium at The Ranch about a million years ago.It went a treat with the lime green walls and black and white checker board floors. I think I decorated that whole house in the grip of an acid flashback. My bottom half is resplendent in leopard print pajama pants. I am a nightmare. I managed to get my laundry done and am doing the dishes in an installment plan. I can’t spend another day locked up with ennui and  inertia. It shits me to tears.

They are a persuasive pair I will give them that.

Oh.Completely off the subject of me being a retard….If some one dies? And they are your size? Score.I have a black garbage bag full of unworn lingerie with the tags still attached courtesy of a shopaholic with an  aggressive tumor .I will have to sort through it all soon.

In between inspired bursts of domesticity I am going to write all night long. And get my set ready for the show on Saturday. Not feeling so crash hot so I am going to go to the doctors tomorrow to complain about it.He will try and sway me towards antidepressants.I will threatened to slash his tires. The usual.Good times.

My hair is a bird-nest and I don’t have the shekels to get it done.Woe.I want to go a whole new color.

The winter has fallen on Sydney like a fat chick on ice skates.Horrible. Going to make up some paper and plaster of paris to block the holes in my roof. Blah. I hate the cold so much.

(Do you feel the absence like I do? Is that why you kept pushing  me,because it was too much that someone finally loved all of you,all your past and all that you could be? I loved and accepted you. Always did. Shame you didn’t feel like extending me the same courtesy…your loss..)

I was full of good intentions last night to get up and tackle today but its getting harder and harder to find a point to it all.I re-wrote my will yet again last night. I am gonna be an organ donor ( Just had a visual of a dying man dragging a Wurlitzer down a snowy deserted street.) Whatever is not fucked the doctors are welcome to.Guess that rules out the heart.

Raquel can have all my shoes,at least they will fit her.The two Lilli’s can divvy up my vintage tee shirt collection. My Big brother can have all my books and music stuff,don’t think my little brother will want any of my crap.The Lee-fish can have all my art work and so on. The Goochmonster and Toddski? Rossco? I will work it out…..I spend my life writing lists.

( …he used to say that I would not care if he died,that I wouldn’t even show up.Idiot.I would have sold a kidney to be at his side….I wanted to tell him the story of the Indian bride but this was when he was not listening to me no matter if I spoke or wrote ,so it would have been pointless to try and explain, but….

The pyre burnt hot and true sending ashes and sparks into the muggy night air. He was gone and the whole village was in attendance as the fire claimed him.Ashes to ashes.Shiva claims all in the end.Howler monkeys lamented in the surrounding tree tops as more wood was added. Music full of wails, bells and flutes met the darkness head on as the flames grew higher. The corpse cooked and tenderly fell apart. All of the sudden a great silence fell over the mourners. Even the monkeys canned it. From the perimeter of the crowd she came. Her long hair lose and wound with jasmine ,her bare feet peeking from beneath the hem of her simple white dress.His bride once more.Her smile was warm and calm.They parted like the pages of a dropped book at her approach. She stopped before the pyre and extend her arms to her love. The flames licked at her finger tips with a cat like slyness. She laughed. Soundlessly lit she climbed unflinching into the infernos blasting embrace. She stretched sinuously across the flaming wreck of her husband as if settling into a clean bed made up of the finest silks and linens. Still smiling ,her dress ash,her features dripping like wax,she closed her eyes and thrust her arms down and around the corpse beneath her.The wood spit in a crackling hallelujah chorus. It engulfed her. Limbs became snakes of fire.The jasmine blossoms popped like stars. Together they burnt eternal…..the women in the stunned crowd swooned at the romance and pledged themselves to the same fate when their time came.

This is a love story.)

Men don’t want fast,funny ,smart good looking women,no matter what they say.The want mediocre fuck holes that they can project all their self loathing onto and into and then go out and cheat and complain.They want fat drunk hairdressers and  kiwi backpackers. They want neurotic artists and failed  tweaking actresses. They don’t want to man up and build a future. They don’t want to take a shot at the real thing.Excuse me for a moment,I’m gonna be sick.

Just saying.

Other final wishes….

Have also decided that I want to be cremated. Gotta get some of my ashes sent back to California. I don’t know to who. I want a vial of my dust to be taken to the Whiskey and rubbed into the carpet on the drum riser. The view is great from up there.I would also like some fed to my dog.,Sir Henry Rollins of Black Flag,(esq) ,who lives in Long Beach.I end up as pug poop. That’s kind of cool. I still wish that God hadn’t of got the invoices mixed up. He took the wrong Michelle. It was meant to be the Michele with one “L” .Not the one with a young son and a future.The world would have got over me faster than rabbits fuck.I’m sure that it was meant to be me and not her.

Its sad and annoying all at once.

Listening to “Celebrity Skin”. Miss Love crafts a fine tune. I love this super polished pop. Books everywhere as I went to the secondhand bookshop in Padstow after therapy last week and blew the rent on a heap of escapism. Laz’s spooky portrait of Ace from Kiss stares through me above the old nail-bomb tee shirt that I have strung across a piece of dowel on my wall.” Feels good to be a punk rock loser” trumpets the  print on the back of the ratty shirt. Well,some days maybe but I think that this little punk rock loser is having a non starter today.

(Dear Miss,please excuse Michele today as the dog ate her life,yours sincerely…..)

I am strong. I will pull my shit together. I do have a show to play after all.

Get out of my way.

Broken.

It’s your mouth,your tongue,your taste,that I miss. You would touch my face.Look at me like I was worth dying for. Your mouth and mine fit perfectly. Your kiss……

I wonder what the break point is. I know that it only takes 7 pounds of pressure to tear off an ear. That’s about the only fact I can pull out of nowhere right now.  But breaking?  Being broken? Well!  To quote Ralph Wigham “That’s where I’m a viking!”

I fucked my wrist up punching a guy on the bus. It was a bad punch. I guess the whole thing is on CCTV. Who cares. I told my Mother. She doesn’t yell at me anymore. Sometimes when she looks at me I know that she doesn’t know who I am . That used to make me sad but its ok. Guess that I am tired of people fucking with me.

All the way from the City to Lakemba on the bus he was giving me shit. Complete stranger giving me shit for no reason. I turned up my i-pod but I could still hear him and I could see the look of pity on the faces around me.

So I clocked him.

Is it wrong that I wished that I had a knife? That I wished that I had of silently got off at his stop and followed him,hunted him? That as I was walking home,my wrist hot and aching, all I could think about was king hitting him,pulling his head back and slitting his throat?

I don’t think so.

Me and my damage.Me and my lost …..

I guess he is back home in LA now. Must be busy and happy.California in the spring.I think about being there too. I won’t go back.There is nothing there for me now. No band. No friends that he hasn’t poisoned. Its all too depressing for words really.

You win.Are you happy now?

But hey! Welcome to my life.

I figure that I am broken. I try and go day by day.Keep my shit intact.I don’t look like no movie star when I cry and no one needs to see it. Oh,but try as I may….So my life,my dumb shit heart, is broken.I have tried to tie it back together with the Ramones,parade drinks  (What a joke that effort was! I went to Starbucks,ordered it shaking,went to the park and cried for an hour solid by the war memorial.I left it on the stairs untouched and went home.) Johnny Cash singing “You wild Colorado” on repeat till I stop weeping and pass out and time but here’s the deal,nothing works.Memories snake their way in and keep chipping pieces off.

I am in pieces.

This is a funeral without a body.

So I get shattered everyday. By scent,sound.You name it. I fell once. I knew it would only ever be once for me.I bet on it.And so I handed over my whole heart.I held nothing back.What an asshole I was. You and your new piece of ass must laugh yourselves silly at me.

And it got me broken.

Is it meant to make me feel better that I at least got to love? That I found the other part of my soul that I had been searching for since ,I dunno,forever? That his self abuse made me want to slit my throat in front of him so he would stop? That when he hurt himself he hurt me too?

So many fucking questions.

Does she know how to untie the  tricky knots in your laces and that you need matching socks to play a good show,that you hate eating new kinds of food and can live on junk food and never put on weight, does she fuck you for hours wrapped in sweat and fishnet,does she scrub your back,sing to you,do stupid dances to crack you up,does she write songs about how she wishes she could cook up your essence and take it like a drug,does she scratch your back,laugh at your bratty self till you laugh as well,do you take her to our Denny’s, does she go to war for you honey,does she bring you beer and violet crumbles from the other side of the world,does she hand you all of her friends,her whole life, on a silver platter,does she get in the ring and vouch for you time and time again,does she put herself second to make sure you are first,does she support you tirelessly,always take your side,get you tattooed, does she take you up a mountain side,just you and her and show you the kangaroo’s close enough to touch,did she make you a Black Flag birthday cake…….

I wonder…Does she have to try  not to put a gun in her mouth every fucking day because the loss of you is endless and will never stop?….

Summer has gone. I am not talking yet again. Nothing to  say.Its cold and that makes me sad. Well,even sadder. I am finally training again.Injury and depression laid me lower than a snakes ass in a wagon rut. I am going slow. I train in the middle of the night when the gym is empty and I don’t have to deal with anyone. All I do is sweat and think.

I wonder if he even liked me,the love of my life. If he dug how fast and funny I can be,that I like to read a book a day,that I used draw little pictures of what our house would look like in the back of my journal,that I am a writer,a musician,that I wasn’t just another dumb hole,that I didn’t take his shit like everyone else does. I got to thinking that all the stuff he may have liked about me at first he sure as shit didn’t in the end.

I wrote once “Everything they love you for in the beginning.they crucify you for in the end”

Magic huh?

I think about him all the time.Want to see him,never want to see him again.Miss him.Want to blow his knee caps out from under him with a .22 in a deserted carpark somewhere.You know,the usual.

Get so mad that I puke.Furious that he was so fucking blind accusing me of fucking around.I have gotta laugh. I didn’t then and I don’t now.My cunt may as well have a chalk outline around it. Its dead. I know how guys deal with break ups. Best way to get over some one is to get someone new under you,isn’t that how it goes?. I wonder what she looks like. Get over him? What fucking joke. My Doctor wants to send me to a ,wait for it,hypnotherapist,because I can’t touch myself. Because I don’t want to. Because I have not had an orgasm in,wow, eight almost nine months. Since Him. Because I shower in the dark, because I am too depressed to eat again.

And here’s me faithful to a fucking ghost.

” Your Dysmorphia and PTSD and running riot together” the Doctor tells me. They can move in next door to my depression and have a pity party for all I fucking care.I don’t give a shit but he seems to think its a problem.

My problem is that I am broken but no one seems to know how the hell to fix that.Least of all me.

One shot,remember? One shot.

You underestimated my faith and my devotion.

In valiant moments Id like to believe that its your loss but I know that I am just kidding myself.It’s my loss.

Bet you don’t even remember how I taste.

Smell.

Feel.

It’s my loss.

Wish that you were broken too but that’s not how it works.

Lock.

In the few hours sleep that decided to grace me with its elusive presence round six am this morning I dreamt. My heart feels like it is rattling like Pedro Perez’s maracas, but more on that later.Dreaming….

So,Henry Rollins was repeatedly jamming my fingers in the middle draw of an old grey filing cabinet backstage at the Sydney entertainment center.I was showing him photos and scraps of paper,ardently trying to convince him of something.What? I don’t know but it felt urgent.Pearl Jam were dithering about with a heinous sound-check.Hair farmers.

“Its NOT important Michele!” he bellowed as my lacerated fingers bled everywhere.

Courtney Love,resplendent in some chiffon disaster complete with a jeweled headband was trying to give me a red book and vehemently  telling Hank to fuck off. It was scandalous.I kept trying to tell her how much I loved the song on her solo album that she did with Bernie Taupin.She butted out her cigarette on my neck.

I lost my shit operatically at Sir Rollins as Milo from The Descendants tried to give me a pair of Frye boots.”Did you write that notebook song about me?” I asked,eyes narrowed.He poked his tongue out at me and stormed off. Fine behaviour that is from a college graduate! I turned back to Henry pulling the Marlboro butt from my neck wincing.

“It fucking well IS IMPORTANT!!”  I roared back into his shocked face waving a strip of black and white pictures of my felonious amour and myself taken in a photo boot in Berlin.

I don’t think many people yell at Hank.

Not even Chuck Norris.

I then proceed to hit him with a large piece of frozen meat.

I woke up thinking that I must have been asleep for hours.Days. I was feeling blasphemous and guilty over the Henry thing. I turn to look at my Hello Kitty alarm clock balanced crookedly on top of a tall pink mug emblazoned with a cupcake.I rub my eyes in disbelief and feel like crying.

Three hours? Three fucking hours.

May as well rise and fucking shine.

Get up with protesting left knee that I tell to shut the hell up.Remove earplugs,stretch,fall over pile of books,cringe at repetitive lyrics written under the burden of sleeplessness and heartache. I shudder to see that I have rhymed “Kiss” with “Miss” . Kill me now.To appease the gods and bribe them into sending me better songs I light a fist-full of incense and jam it into my shrine beneath the gaze of my black velvet Elvis picture.

Its getting cold here.Panels of my roof are falling in.

(I wonder what its like where you are…..)

Therapy was a shaky shit-fest and as I stumbled home my piece of crap phone lit up with a text from an unknown number. No sleep.Rollins related guilt ,so sick of myself….Now fucking what? ( A fucking filing cabinet?? Frozen meat???) I open the message with mounting dread.

“Pick up the phone! Bawlk!”

Professor Chicken. My vertically challenge producer and rabble rouser from the frozen tundras. Canada’s primo homicidal sound shifter.Try and imagine Charles Manson getting a perfect drum sound.That’s the Professor.Frightening and brilliant.  And one of my last remaining champions.

I answer on the 1st ring.Or should I say flash of the screen as I still will not turn up the volume on my phone.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Now you tell me,how can I not smile shuffling home from Padstow weeping at an opening gambit like that?

Long story short I got my ass handed to me by a hobbit.

When Michelle Meldrum passed away The professor worked tirelessly on the  album .I had a month to write it and sing.To say that I was petrified is a staggering understatement.I was a mess and we yelled at each other alot.I got fat.He drank hand sanitiser and we made a record.And I made a friend for life.

The Professor has never really understood my need to purge and write. He once sagely told me that “The only thing I want people to know about me is nothing”.

I don’t think I write so people “Know” about me per say. Its just what I have always done. Its the longest running thing in my life. Right now,short of a few shows where I manage to upset myself and the entire audience in under twenty minutes,I think it is all I have bloody buggery got.

I still have my first diary aged 8. Seems I was happy to be going to The Shack for the summer with a grand total of 3 dollars.We had a puppy…yawn,yawn….I write.Always have.Some shit never changes. What was my point? I guess that The Professor is an enigma and I am a flabby Rollins disciple with a broken heart and a chip on both shoulders.

Whatever.Get a helmet right?

“Fuck Rollins Michele!” He  bellows  (What is with The Black Flag leader and me today?)

” He’s Gay!”

“HE IS FUCKING NOT!!!!”

The professor laughs.

“Dude” I sign ” You have just told me to pull my head in.I can deal with that but not your “Henry and the young boys” fable.Not today”

He snickers.Tells me he has a hot date,tells me to get it together,squalks and hangs up.

“Weirdo” I smile at my dead phone shaking my head.Go play my guitar.

Really made my day.

So my rattling heart. I think that its panic.I’m not sure what it is.Was reading about the physical symptoms of grief. Compelling stuff.You can actually die of a broken heart. Look it up sports fans.I get so angry,turn it on myself and then exhausted….I write. So, The professor berates me for writing too much. Giving it away I guess. Opening the plague vein over and over. I think about the pages of death and vipers that the world never sees. I should be locked up or killed. So fuck it? What do I care? Take it or leave it,I am done with giving a fuck.Ashes in my hands kids. I rise from Zero.

Your ink on my wrists. Four crosses.Turn your palms up and remember me.Locked.

This is not optional.This is marrow and sinew.This is scent and cum and sweat.A map given to you and I alone .A secret place.I reside there still……

( She was dark and tired against the white sheets.Huge blue eyes. “You are not what happened to you” she said into the camera. Hollywood hisses like a feral cat outside their locked door.They take clean towels from the maids trolley and forget to eat.She doesn’t care.She loves,loves,loves him,…..)

I remember.

Locked.

Widow.

Its late. my mouth tastes dry,chalky.I grind my teeth lightly. I have been lying here for an hour trying to find the right words.There are none so I slouch on towards blessed,too short unconsciousness. The world is asleep and I keep watch. I wont sleep for hours.

I tried today. I got on trains and did things.Miss Karen in town for the weekend. A dirty carrion bird of panic strutting behind my ribs. So many people. My hearing hums like a cheap TV. And I tried. I tried to be a friend. The friend that my friends knew. I’m  so brittle. I laugh too loud and too long.I try too hard.I don’t last long….its a flare you see?

I want to go home. Please. I have to go.

This is the 3rd time I have tried to write tonight to calm myself down. I think as long as I can still do one thing…even badly as I am doing this .I think of stories and they leave me hanging. I got nothing but this dateline from the killing floor. I’m biting my nails for the 1st time since 2007. Memories king hit me out of nowhere. I laughed till I cried today thinking of how I had been accused of fucking some old Swedish guy who I had never met in my life who had a girlfriend in Melbourne or something. Some 50 year old with a fucking  kid??  Please!?? Trust me,at this point?  If I don’t laugh I will die. Fuck. Dying gives you less wrinkles I am so sure.

Why isn’t there formaldehyde face cream?

But I have to tell you.Nothing is very funny anymore.

I brought a sign in Chinatown today that translates into “Double Happiness” I lit a candle in front of it and I thought of you. You are all I think about. I play the movie of us over and over in my brain. I miss your salt. I miss us when we were us. There was never anyone else for me,you idiot .There never will be.

I lost all my photos and the rest of my hard drive. It kills me. Just another thing to kick my ass…But I still have one picture. We are on stage in Berlin. If you ever wanted to see what a woman in love looks like this is the picture to prove it. I am leaning into you.One hand on the mike and you, just you is making me smile. So bright.I had never looked so alive and beautiful.

Its black and white and we look like history.Like Gods.Like the picture that would illustrate the first chapter of forever.

At least I still have that.

Its all I have got.

There is this perfect 4 seconds when I wake up. Because I think that we are still us and everything is alright. I had a referral to another Doctor the other day.Forms to fill out that give me a headache.

Name: Michele Madden. D.O.B: **/*/****.Marital status: Widow.

Because that is what it feels like. This loss. I carry you in my heart. I have for many years. Nothing can compare. There would be no point even trying.

So I don’t try. I run. I don’t answer the phone. I don’t answer letters. I stay plugged into the I-pod you made me and I imagine that a some point,somewhere in the world you may just be listening to the same song.

( I miss holding hands so bad…)

I am hopeless you know? But when we were hopeless together I believed that we could make it.

I find it hard to believe in Elvis anymore and that is fucking with me on subterranean levels.

You are where I always knew you could be again. I never stopped believing in you.But you know that…

I was your biggest fan.

Christ I’m tired.

Enough.

More than.

Less than.

Never.

( I have had,at this point,of myself )

Quite enough.

……………………………………………..goodbye for now.

Letter.

Michele,

This is it.You stupid fucking cow. I am honestly asking you right now,did you really think that there would ever be anything good for you? A happy ending? I hate you so much today and every day, you make me sick,huddled in your room in the middle of nowhere. I hate you.I always have.

Even the people who made you wanted you gone..You are fully aware of this.You know that this is a fact.

You are a fool. Please don’t sing anymore. I am begging you,you are dreadful and quite frankly, its embarrassing.Its painful to listen to and to watch. And while you are at it,stop writing as well.And it does not matter how much you run and train and pluck and brush you are still going to be a lanky fat disaster. Don’t you think that its time that you just gave up,I’m sorry to be so harsh but what are you trying to prove here?

Do you even know anymore?

Did you ever know in the 1st place? I cringe with embarrassment when I remember how much you tried to please the one you lost.How you wanted to be perfect for him,an equal,not to make the mistakes he had complained about in the ones that came before you. You swore that you would let him do what ever he liked. And where did that get you my girl?  Exactly.

You fucking fool.

You were so pathetic. You still are. If I could be bothered I would destroy you but your not worth the fucking effort quite frankly.I’m just going to sit here and watch you fade away. How is it that you loved him but never yourself? At least he loved himself enough to survive .I don’t know what the fuck you think you are doing. Oh so frail and sad. Boo hoo. Aw, your widdle heart is all broke up. Poor you.

Asshole.

You think anyone gives two shits? The answer is no.

So eat your clean food and over-train.Starve or binge. Or sit around staring at the walls for weeks letting all that hard work go to waste.Whatever.Go and see your fucking Dr’s and shrinks. Try and unravel all that ails you ,crying your big blue eyes out all the time.Your so fucking dull. Oh yeah! So strong avoiding being medicated. Ohhhh! A  real fucking hero. You idiot. Nothing is gonna save you. They could pump your sorry self  full of pills from now untill kingdom come and you would still have to wake up and look at that face every day.

What is the fucking point? Your sorrow is killing you.The one that you miss wasn’t even real. He has replaced you. Just like he said he would. You are nothing and mean much of the same. You don’t have any band to play in.Your solo stuff sucks. All your supposed friends are sick of your behaviour and have rightfully deserted you.

And you watch it all fade away.

You know that there was nothing you could do to make him believe in you.He was wrong about you but that and 50 cents will get you a phone call. I really wish that you had more guts than this,that you would just finish.Big tough you.What a fucking joke! That you would end. It’s the loss isn’t it? That you had your hearts desire and now its gone.Its the lack that is the cancer that eats away at you day after day. All you do is write the same things over and over again.

And for what?

No one is out there dipshit. You were in a  band million years ago that never made it,you are not going to make it now. The end. And what did you think was going to happen? You just a small town loser. Remember all the things he called you that were not true, that broke your stupid little heart? All the things he accused you of….

You were faithful then and you still are while he is out there living a great life. Just like you wanted for him.

You are faithful to a ghost.

God, Just die.

It makes me sick looking at you,shrouded in misery. And sad. I can see that you never loved anyone as much as you love him in your life.And there you sit hour after hour re-reading poison letters.You read them.You are hated. Give up.Throwing up your stupid vegetarian food into the green bucket by your bed.Lighting incense to get rid of the smell of bile.You are fucking pathetic.

Why do you keep hurting yourself? You are unfixable and unworthy of saving. Its all lip service ,its all bullshit. No one fucking cares. Fuck you and fuck this site and your delusions of being a writer. Your not a fucking writer. You are a failure with an 8th grade education. If you can try to make peace with this your decline will be a little easier.Just shut the fuck up.

Give up.

Your best years and one love you ever had are behind you. Its fucking done. You make me sick.

The sun is coming up and I am wasting my time writing to you. You fucking Rollins wanna be.You fucking wish! You are pathetic. A novelty act past its used by date. Its all gone .All your supposed mates in LA?  Gone. Your friends here ?  What did you think was going to happen? That they would be loyal to a never -was like you? Yeah right. Sure.

You trying to do shows.What a joke.Have you no shame? You are dreadful and its embarrassing to watch. Your never gonna be as good as the ones you worked with and its like watching a bad comedian tank,a car crash. Its gross. People put you on bills out of pity,you do know that right?

You are such an embarrassment.

For all I know you will wake up tomorrow,make your bed,run,do all the things you think will save your little life.Stick to your tight little loner routine,try not to scream when you recall how amazing it was at the start and what you lost….but remember,I am here and I am watching.

Remember this……

No matter how thin you get,how many miles you run,how many hours you get through without crying,how many weeks you spend in therapy,all your crappy little victories…. Remember that I am watching and that I know you are and will never be great.That it was a fluke. Anything in your life that was good? A fluke. And that good things only ever happened to you so you would feel the loss even harder when they were taken away.

I hate you.I despise you.And I am watching.

Keep trying.I like seeing you trying to believe in hope and happy endings.Its the best laugh I get all day.You ugly excuse of a woman. Its a shame that you have so many dead friends that were so great. Shame that they died and not you.Just goes to show that God really does not know what he is doing.

Keep failing.Your good at it. Its good to know that you are good at something. I have no pity for you whats-so-ever.

I hate you.

I despise you.

And I am watching.

I hate you Michele.

I despise you.

And I am watching.

Sweet dreams asshole.

Love, Me.

xxxxx

Less.

(I hear it. My internal I-pod flicks and shuffles and throws his voice at me like a 90 mile an hour fastball.)

Everything is a trap.Everything wants me dead.Everything is an illusion.

I really cannot handle it at all and I miss it more than I can say.

I pulled my entire little toenail out.One down,nine to go.

I played last night.Shaking alone under lights so bright that you could still see them falling like radiation once you closed your eyes.People liked it or else they were just being polite.I err on the side of polite. Its Sunday night. I’m home and it is late. I’m only writing because I don’t know what  else to do with myself anymore.My foot is throbbing.It came away easier than I thought it would. You said it was ugly.I remembered. It’s not anymore.

I took care of it.

I turn my computer on and off.I do not recognize myself on the screen.All facilities and talents fail.I can smell my own skin and breath and I can’t stand it.My Corpse,my machine  disgusts me and I treat myself with the science of calculated loss.To fish out the Slavic bones from beneath my fatally flawed flesh once again.

If my body can keep up with the hurt in my heart will one cancel the other out? Is that what happens? I dreamt last night of rolling the meaty vein nestled in the crook of you arm under my tounge.You threw your head back crucified upon desire and begged me to never stop.I wanted to tear the pulse out of you.To swallow you raw. I loved you so much I wanted to kill you.

You are gone so day by day I kill myself instead.

I hear static.It takes me more time than is socially acceptable to tune in when people are talking to me.Why are they talking to me? Fuck off.

Long ago I presented my scars to the one I loved.He was dismissive. I hung my head heavy with shame. I wanted to tell him how my shoulders itched when he kissed me,how the keloid marks filled with blood and bloomed.I thought that he of all people would understand the poetry of damage….

If I had a dollar for every time I was wrong I would be a motherfucking millionaire.

I still shower in the dark.

I’m being weird about food and motion. Less and faster, in that order. Its getting colder here. I will dig myself in for the winter.Its the longest I have spent in one place for years.I can’t pretend to care anymore. I work on my music and I cry and cry.My brother and his girlfriend told me I played good the last night. That my voice is strong and he couldn’t believe how much …well,it doesn’t matter,they were just being kind. Some of my other peers and hero’s were there as well and they expressed similar amazement.Made me realize after being in bands for most of my life that nobody actually realized that I can sing.

Kinda funny.

(But I could never sound as beautiful as I did when I belonged to you…)

So I’m starving myself out again.Weight renders me lame.Not fight ready and my antennas are picking up danger on the fast cooling air. I have nothing left in my solitary life but this.I have to keep my machine right. I may need to run.To fight.To flee. Or none of the above.I just want to be ready in case any calamity chooses to befall me.

And I have a feeling that it will.

I have to do rounds of the Dr’s this week. New referrals,check ups. I can’t fucking stand it. I stay up.I keep thinking that I am going to die in my sleep. That’s the new one. Dying in my fucking sleep.I guess it makes a nice change from the stabbing one.It’s driving me totally insane. I leave my will on my desk.In case you know? Not that I have much to leave to anyone. I feel bad because my roommate will be the one to find me,ect,ect .

It’s endless and to stop it,and it feels so real,I stay awake which leads to bad encounters with my psychiatrist who in turn gangs up on me with my physician who wants to drug me as I am aways in a heightened state of aggravation.

Peachy.

(“Michele,you cannot continue to exist in a heightened state of aggravation” Says the Dr,words weighted with the lead of disapproval

“And?”

“Well,have you been doing your breathing exercises?”

She moves too fast for him to stop her,she mutters over her should before the door slams.”I gotta go” )

I’m so fucking tired.I add up the numbers on the walls of the carriages of trains.If they are a 13 or a 6 I have to move or go home .7,9,and18 are all fortuitous and I will continue to my destination under their protection.I set my I-pod to shuffle. If I hear his voice the day is cancelled and the phone will remain unanswered. The Ramones are safe,at times depending on the track.The Descendants,Motorhead and Rose Tattoo can go either way. I don’t train or I over-train to the point of illness. I puke alot.

I have been pulling the hairs out of my legs with tweezers.One by one.This takes hours.I have hours.I have nothing but time.My left hand and forearm are now dilapidated as well.I attack my face for hours.Tug on my eyelashes till they come loose.I have an industrial needle in a shot-glass full of rubbing alcohol that I keep on my bedside table.  I run it beneath my gum-line and poke into my rotten teeth as I stare into the dark ,humming tunelessly.My blood tastes of iron,pennies and decay.Plasma and plaque cake my tongue and mouth.My spit, red laced ,stains my face and pillow.

The less of me the better. I dry brush my skin till it is raw. Exfoliate.Wash my hair over and over or don’t wash it at all. I want to disappear.I hate people.I want to stay away from humanity.Its in humanity’s favor if  I do.

My toe looks much nicer now.

Well,it will once the scab comes off.

Glue.

She begs sleep to fell her,to beat her like a rented mule.She pleads for sleep to kick her ass,to knock her out.

She rolls the dice as she goes under. Luck be a lady tonight. No one understands so she doesn’t talk.(She doesn’t understand and hardly even talks to herself )  Mute. She has no language.No map to take her home.

They just think that she’s crazy. That’s ok,its a free country,they can think whatever the hell they want. As time takes its toll she tends to wonder and worry less about what anyone may think at all.Loss has granted an amnesty from concern.

Crazy. Uh-huh. Sure.

He didn’t though. He didn’t think she was crazy at all. He knew she was a fuck-up of the first degree and finest pedigree. Just like him. That she had hustled and fought her whole long liars life just like him. Both thrown away and over-looked they clung to each other like children .Almost afraid. Editing their lives so the other would not turn in disgust. But the other never did. Telling their terrible tales in tiny installments,receiving applause and smiles form the other rather than grimaces of disgust. It was heaven. They were stuck like glue.

They still are.

Bless their fucked up damaged selves.She could not believe that she was enough and he could not believe that she was for real. They were so hurt by life that they did not know what to do with the real thing.

It was fragile.It was spun out of sugar and soundchecks.Woven from stains,boarding passes,Mr Pibbs, sweat and utter longing. It was written on their palms,twin lifelines and passed in notes.Recklessly inked onto their flesh .It was their birthright.

And still she dreams of him,without fail, every night.

She remembers every hotel room,the static of the sheets,the mean thin towels,the number-mounted doors . Their whole world was them.That was all that mattered. They were selfish with it. Before she would fall asleep she would have a flash of recognition.The same one that struck her on the day that they met. The absolute familiarity of knowing that you have met yourself. The same animal. Taking a huge greedy breath of their scent  intertwined on the still air she would smile and drift under curled around him.

Only the rejected and scared understand.The abandoned. She had stored nothing but love beneath her hard hide,waiting for him,her other half, her answer.What you have to wrap your head around here ,what you have to try to understand, you see ,was  if she  could save him, if he wanted to be saved?….Well,she would in turn save herself.

And it would be there, safe together and free off the things that had haunted and hunted them their whole disastrous lives,that they could start over and win.

The dream takes her back,high above Eagle Rock in the grounds of the Pink Palace.She stood next to him, her friend.He smiled and pressed his face to the side of her hip.Her heart hitched and flew on wings of fire and gold from her open mouth. He pulled back shyly and they both smiled.

Love. A lifetime spent waiting for her love..

He treated her like all the rest in the end.He didn’t want to trust that she loved him.That she was different so he drove her mad and drove her away just so he would be right in his self loathing. That women are all the same. Boy, was he ever wrong.

And now she dreams. She dreams that she was really the answer for him.That they were forever.

She piles up pillows on the empty side of her bed and sleeps fitfully with her arms wrapped around her tattooed shell.She remembers his huge hands ,so territorial,claiming her in the dark.She would smile her lions smile in the sticky Hollywood night and try to climb inside him.So hot for him she swore her tattoos smudged beneath her skin.Two alpha’s tangled in a knot on the San Andreas fault-line.

They would languidly bathe together .Always making a mess. Living on creamy caramel laced drinks and frozen Popsicles.They spoke in shorthand littered with private references and pet names. His voice low and filthy, telling her of  the forth coming obscenities yet to be danced upon her dermis would make her pupils dilate and her knees weak with longing and desire.

There was a time when they couldn’t be in the same space without touching. Standing in line at the market,in the car.Always connected.Hands on hips, curling round the tender nape of a neck, fingers laced.When he was proud that she was his woman. He desired her all the time as she did him. They glowed with rude health and a compliant illicit sincerity. Blunt force desire. If they hadn’t just fucked you could bet your bottom dollar that they were going to sooner rather than later.

This was before he decided that she had betrayed him somehow,before his paranoia stole her hero from her.She spun in confusion ,defending herself against crimes she had never committed.Against actions that she never would have even considered under threat of death.

She longed for him when they were apart and wrote their names, painstakingly epic upon backstage walls all over California.Knowing that he would see them soon enough on his tours and that they would make him smile. All she wanted,all see needed ,all she was devoted to was him.

She is not real now. Breathing but no longer alive.

She listens to her Dr’s, well,sometimes. They look exhausted by her destruction.

She stays alone and untouched. Married to the past.   Her few friends are done with her now. Knowing that he has moved on they inform her that he is now “in a relationship” on some status update .Her scattered soul dies a little more. They tell her because they want to hurt her out of it,to push her back to life.

But all she can remember is the man that she saw beneath the battered bullshit and hopeless excuses.The potential for good if he could forgive himself. One lost night,long ago,she knelt between his knees  in their tiny apartment as he sat deep in his black leather chair.She pressed her kiss swollen mouth to his sternum and sang directly into his heart.The words that he had written for his best friend.

She had finally arrived in the middle of nowhere and into the arms she had waited two thousand nine hundred and twenty days for.

She felt that they had somehow solved something just by knowing each other.

He pushed her and she bent into shapes for him that took his jaded breath away.

He held the softest part of her Hello Kitty heart like it was worth a million in prizes,a living thing,how she swooned.

Her eyes glaze like cataracts now and she tells no one anything. She’s dead now. She tries but she is dead.

On the rare days that she has the energy she is mean with it.Pacing like a big animal,wearing a groove in time, in the floor….Tries to picture where he lives,whose bed his boots are under now. Does her love her? Does he tell her he does? Did this new cunt slip into the space that she left? She never wanted to go but he didn’t like her in the end. Her best friend.The love of her life.And it was there that hope died.

Is she blonde? Brunette? What does it even matter. What does anything matter?

(“If you go now,I will never speak to you again” he ranted. She threw her case into the cab and sobbed all the way across the ocean.)

She lost.She is lost. This is real.This is permanent.She remembers everything and it robs her of sleep .Its the memories that keep her awake.

The Dr says “25mg Phenergan.”

The Dr says “Mersyndol 450mg.”

Its like a list of characters.The five dollar words.Codeine,promethazine hydrochloride,doxylamine sulphate,Valium,Prozac,Zoloft,xanax. Blunt edged benzos that they want her to take when she sits before them twisting, silent tears running asking the question that cannot be answered.Pills that she denies.Nothing they can do to solve her so they aim to drug her instead.

They say that its ok and that it wont be forever.She doesn’t believe a fucking word of it.

“Why,why,why,why,why,why why??”  she croaks like some graved voiced bird call.Some prayer.A song.A chant.

All the time going mad with the thought of him touching someone the way that he touched her at their sacred start. Under her head at night,bunched in her bitten fist ,his shirt,his scent growing fainter…..

“One day” she thinks with a shadow of a smile “I won’t wake up and he will be there waiting for me and it will be ok”

And it is there that  they will never let each other go.

Blank.

Its all gone. All my photos and that’s what hurts the most.

So now my whole life is really wiped.Its done. I don’t have any visual proof left. I should try and look on the bright side? Ha. What fucking bright side?

My hard-drive brought the farm a week ago and now all my memories are dust. The shows,the travels, on the train platform,me always trying to make him laugh. Gone.  I don’t know why Elvis is fucking with my tenderest and most sacred emotions.

I feel sick.

The computer shop got ram-raided the other night. I walked past the boarded up windows in shock as my tech-geek waved me around to the side door. They were so kind and helped me set up my life on this thing again that I told them to keep the ten dollars change that they were handing back to me for beer money.I recommended one of my tattooist’s after the younger kid quizzed me about my ink and dragged my sad carcass home.

My Dr’s are hunting me because I have been canceling appointments left right and center.I will not pick up the phone.I have to bite the bullet again tomorrow.Then pull myself together enough to get on a train and play a show. Everything reminds me of something. The last time I was there I was with the one I loved and we sang. He napped on the train and I watched his face so happy that I was loved. Unbelieving that he was really mine…..

I will do 5 songs and run away. My usual trick at this point. I cry when I sing most of the time. Must be like watching a musical car crash.

(The planet is so big and there you are doing what you do.I get letters from people wanting to get tickets to you all the time. I am nothing but a gateway.I’m not even good for that.I answer no mail. I engage in nothing.)

See, I was a true believer in the one I loved. I knew that he would get back on top even of he had to use my head as a stepping stone and my heart as a launch pad.

Memories all over and I just hate it. The Monster Sessions are today. A year gone. I’m not going.I don’t go to anything much anymore.I write not to be read. I dress like a 12 year old boy and run away when people try and talk to me. (” You fuckin hard-tail,fuckin dyke!”) I hear it in my sleep and wake up having a heart attack.I will never understand.Never get it.

Its Saturday. I am going to stay in my cave and pick myself apart. I think that I am a land speed champion at this point if I manage to get out of bed. Ah, the weight of words. I would prefer to have my ass kicked that words. I’m a fucking writer. I remember everything. And that is what keeps me company. History and regret.

I’m not doing to good with this right now and its annoying me.

Fuck it.

Fuel.

Rain tap-dancing on the roof.A liquid soft shoe. She has slept around the clock again.Slow with it.Poisoned.Ill.

She knows that they want her weak. She may be beaten but mama didn’t raise no fool. Broken. Even the ones that claim to love her want her down because it is there that she is easier to explain.To themselves and the world at large A wild horse broken.The fucking cowards.

She is almost disbelieving that the spark she can see deep under the agony and shit that constitutes her innards is real. That it could set anything off at all.That it could be of any use….but time will tell.

Her pilot light.

She thought that it was out.

This feeling of wronged indignation and fury does not last long so she knows that she needs to use it while she can.Distill it. Its fast and to be feared. Her nitroglycerin. If she can set the wheels in motion tonight no one is safe.And she will.Finally,after the dark comes fuel.

Them.They are almost away from her now ,they cluck their tongues and move onto the next subject. Laugh at her running and pushing weights.At the hours she spends with her sword. They are used to it.The don’t see how fast and true she is. She’s so tired.Every day is a battle. But she has a reason….

She needs to be ready to kill.

And the 1st target is herself.

She has drifted for weeks.Lost her tender fingered grip. Forgot the evil that was said,what it cost her. She relaxed into the illusion that she had meant something. But tonight she remembered.In Technicolor,in Mono and Stereo. If you were to ask her she would not be able to place her finger on the metaphysical trigger that pulled her back to the start. But it had,just in time and the gleeful relief was tangible.The big zero. Flesh has crept onto the bones. She has been sleeping as if drugged,falling back into old patterns. What they underestimate is her vigilance,the routine that she favors. The fact that she is and will die a grunt.

That she has written her own ticket and has all the time that you don’t.

What ever tripped her wire has left her weak kneed with gratitude. Time is of the essence tonight. All ducks must be got in a row. They want to drug her “To even out the losses of serotonin” they smile wet mouthed at her stormy countenance. She see’s it as the beginning of the end. Her gut,the very one that she told to “Hush!” a million times over in LA is awake and on a 5 point look out.There is something more that she has to do,another level that she has to obtain. She slipped.

( …..back through the mist she falls only to land with a spine jarring thump. Manic eyes over her,her hungry and trapped. Blamed for everything his paranoia could drag up….she remembers it all tonight.Tonight,no matter how fleeting ,heralds the death of romance.)

The house is empty ,she slides through the darkness,knife in hand, sharpening the edge of her senses dulled by misery over the last few weeks. A day off spun into three days, spun into weeks. She is not beating herself up. Merely logging it in the fat file of enemies that she keeps updated and fed at all costs.

Memory is the enemy. Weakness is the enemy.You are the enemy.

Movement is her only gift.The last one she possesses.

The one’s that tried to help her? She let’s them go. (“I knew that you were fucked up but I didn’t know how badly” said her friend “I can’t help you”) She flashes back to her beloved 3rd grade teacher who told her to help herself,said it with an angelic smile.

Oh.She was gonna help herself alright.

And then there are the liars and the fakes.Thrumming with passive aggression. Aiming their self loathing at her death defying honesty. Her stripped words and ferocious output. Claiming a higher purpose and delivering nothing.Pandering to the masses. Editing themselves. Afraid. She disturbs them.Makes them aware of all that they are not,all that they will never have the courage to be. They picked her bones clean and paraded in her flesh and fables. They rewrite her history and battles and claim them for their own. But the reality of her?  Never. They bend with Chinese whispers. They bow in her alpha presence and bitch in her wake.

It will always present its self this way. She knows.She has always known. Fucking vampires. Sucking the life out of her. She goes into battle alone only to return to hear her tale co-oped by wannabes and dogs.

She’s lean tonight. She will watch the night suicide into the dawn. She will rise and rise.

She cleans her cell and then her corpse. She writes a list that encompasses all targets that must be annihilated over the coming weeks. The visions that crippled her have been turned to fuel.Hate is her co-pilot tonight. She and hate left compassion,hope and love on the soft shoulder hours ago,miles back.

She is mean with it.Fecund, full and abundant. Taken to her psyche with a steel wool pad. All memories have been quarantined until further notice.

If your not afraid you should be.Fear is a great motivator.

Hell hath no fury…….

You  know the rest.