Rot.

 

It’s never going to end is it?  Shit like this never does for people like me.

That’s fresh. I don’t know anyone like me and if I did they wouldn’t be real high on my “To do” list. I would avoid them like the plague.It’s agony.I think that I should cut my phone off. It’s just a few who have my number but I stutter like a fucktard when they call and ask me questions that any sane person would have the answer to.

“How ya doin’?”  they say sunnily.

“Fucked” I reply.

This does not lead to great conversations. And now my Dr’s are throwing their hands up. Magic. I’m not improving despite valiant efforts on their behalf and mine. How do you cure greif ?.This question keeps me up many a night. They are now rumbling about medication. Fuck off.

Its the bottom of the 9th for me.

Came home from my appointments feeling like I had been broken,saddled and  ridden into a wall. Curled up on the floor and slept for a few hours which means that I will be up all night pissing and moaning to myself. Joy.

I just cry and keen like a wounded animal.I remember the beginning.The holy start that defined my heart.When he asked my mother for my hand in marriage. All the forever moments that I die by. It’s all picked daily and market fresh. It never goes away. How do you love someone who does not want to be loved and who wants to destroy you when they are done hurting themselves?

How dammit? Fucking tell me how to live through this.

Have you ever noticed that the ones who destroy you just keep going? That they get off scott free? Can someone tell me how that fucking works? I have incandescent moments of rage that I turn inward. You told me that my love was not real because I did not  hate you. Oh Darlin’ I never could hate you….

(Guess that you are filling her cock-struck peanut brain full of fake horror stories about me just like you did to me in the beginning about your ex’s. Its never your fault is it baby-boy? Funny how so many don’t get back to me now after you have dripped your poision into their ears.But all the ones that I thought were my friends,that I gift wrapped and handed over to you still have your number on speed dial. Funny how that works. She’s just another hole. Picture me when you come. Dog.)

Glass veins full of mercury laced sand. I’m tired. I’m so fucking tired.

I miss your kiss. The open-mouthed silver tongued dance our mouths would do. I would keep my eyes open. To drink in as much of you as I could.Did I know,somewhere deep inside, that one day you would take yourself from me in ways that I could not follow? Is that why I stay up all night tending my ghosts? Re-reading letters from what could almost be 2 different men, trapped at war forever in the body that that I loved and swore that I  would be buried beside. The you who loved me and the you that hated yourself.

Oh baby.

The weight of loss cripples me. The love lost. I miss our bed full of blue eyes and the forever you decided to derail.I will never have any answers. I will die unknowing and unknown by you ever again.

So I pretend to live.

Saw my name on the poster for the next show I’m doing. Reminded me of when I was something. I really don’t know why I am doing it. Just to prove that although the one I trusted killed my self esteem,my heart, my confidence and hope of ever having any hope again that he didn’t kill my voice?  He used to say that he loved it, me singing. Fans would be nice to me and I would be accused of fucking them. No wonder I have totally shut down.

Its an opening spot so 20 sick inducing minutes should do it. Covering Roky hurts though but my voice is real there. The other shit is mine and its fucking harrowing. It’s so ugly.It warms my heart that people want to see me play. Or feel sorry for me so they put me on the bill.

Hard-ons are playing tonite. So is Summous. All my mates getting on with their lives. Bless ’em. They are all so talented. I send messages saying sorry for my  eternal absence after sweet invitations have been extended to me. I never show up and when I do I run away. There’s just no point.

Sat on the stage at The Melvin’s,my dead grandmothers ropes of crystal beads and pearls dripping into the hidden shadows from my neck, swallowed by the lace of my Edwardian blouse. The mosh populated by the fast greying remnants of generation X.I let it wash over me and bailed 3 songs into Primus. I looked out into the crowd and it twisted my tender insides. I have to go.To leave. One friend tells me not to put myself down,she says to work out who I am ,rebuild and storm the castle. I use to think like that. On a good day I still do.

Good days are hens teeth and rockinghorse shit. Beyond rare.

But as Miss K calls it ,the “Black dog” has its decaying teeth sunk in my sad ass to the gums right now.And it ain’t gonna let go.

I see the bones shift in my face.I’m shutting down.Fuse by fuse burning out.

We all rot. I hide myself in solitude.In words because I can’t talk. I deflect any kindness. I wear people out with my silence until they give up. (You showed me how worthless I am and for that I thank you.) I need everyone to give up. It will be the only thing that saves me. Kindness gets me to thinking about making out with a Remington,tonguing the barrel like I once kissed you.Bitten fingers carressing the oily black trigger. Of the train tracks,the mournful whistle blowing,the spine shattering conclusion.

I am so fucking tired tonite. I don’t need fucking Dr’s bargaining with me. I had what I thought I needed and it wanted me dead.I now trust my judgement and dead heart on nothing.Love tried to assassinate me.I should have stayed distant and flippant and mean. Never let my heart get touched.

But baby,I had waited so long,so so long and you said I was the most beautiful woman you had ever had and we burned in Hollywood and fucked till we passed put and you woke me with roses and starbucks,whispered into my ear…..

“I am gonna marry you”

And I believed you.

And now?

And I die.And I die.And I die.

Sound.

I am so glad that I no longer exist. I should throw my own funeral. That could be cute,cute,cute. My Slayer casket covered in Hello Kitty decals.

Peachy.

The fingertips on my left had are bullet proof.I lie in the dark and run them all over the fretboard of my guitar without strumming. Ghost songs in my head. I was playing the other day,sitting on my porch and when I was done I heard a smattering of applause from over the back fence.

Whatever.

( You used to want me near you all the time. You driving,I would kiss the side of your face,spy on us in the rear view mirror ,so perfect together. I never thought it would end…..)

It’s so hard not to smash my guitar. Not to give up. And I do ,100 times a day.

Have put myself up for a run of shows in the near future. Because I am a fucking idiot.

My voice makes me sad now. It’s so heavy with heartbreak. I was tracking some shit to do harmonies over and it almost broke me in two. I don’t know if it is wise to take this noise anywhere let alone in public. I don’t know what the fuck else to do with it.

Keep it all inside and all it is gonna do is give me cancer.

So I guess I should finish writing this stupid fucking album. Pointless really.I don’t know what I am trying to prove to myself.Big deal.Still alive.

The scant audience I had has drifted away. No one cares. Thank GOD I am just a figment of the imagination.

Its late as always. The crickets are doing their thing outside my window.I’m not eating again.I look like shit. There is no hunger. I cant be bothered. Notebooks all over my bed and The Blasters on low,whispering from my speakers. Too tired to sleep. Seems that I am on the door for The Melvin’s tomorrow night. I would really like to make it but ,but,but….

“Hi Michele! How have you been??” and so on and so forth and I know that people mean well but fuck man…

But being that I am a theory now I may be able to do it. And Buzz is so cool to put my name on the list.The Fish gave me a ear-full about not going to Soundwave today. I cant cope with the crowds. It makes me feel hunted and although most people who talk to me are really sweet,wanting to know what I am up to ( “Well! Fuck all really since I got my heart shattered and my ass handed to me and every dream I had cherished for say the last 8 years murdered in front of my face….how are you doin?”) 

I don’t like festival season much. It makes me lonesome for what I lost.

Like my well meaning Doctor tells me whenever I am teetering on the edge of sanity once again “You can always leave” I tell him that my idea is better,ie: not going anywhere in the 1st place but he starts telling me about new mood stabilizers. I hang up.

He calls me back.

“Michele” he sighs heavily ” You cannot stop your life like this”

“Why not?”

“Because you are still young and there is so much to..”

“Do you love your wife Doctor?”

“Well.yes of course!” he sounds flustered. Maybe he doesn’t,maybe he is boning his secretary,what do I care.

“And tell me, how would you feel if she died?”

“I would be shattered!” he exclaims.

“Exactly” I say softly and hang up again.

He does not call back.

Bound by sound. Bound to what I wonder? All those stages that framed the love that I thought was going to see me through till the end. I never want to return to any of the cities we played. I was nothing but another stop gap on his annihilation trail. I will die here.When I believed that I had found forever I glowed. I was on fire.

Now?

Nothing. What a fucking winner.

Maybe I need to go and bathe in sound tomorrow night. See that big fuzzy head back lit and let the feedback floor me. Or not.

I wonder why I write when I am like this.I know that there is no one out there. But all good theories need to flex one way or another.

I’m going to sleep.

I’m going to dream of doing an autopsy on myself,pulling the little yellow pearls of fat out of deep creamy incisions.

 Know the true depth of  damage.

Theory.

Decisions,Decisions.

Sleepless and addled ( Maybe not?) I ask of you,why be a person when you can retreat and be a theory?…….

Off the grid of flesh and into the otherworld.To be a “non”.A “non” anything.

To think of you raises bile in my shrinking gut. Raises hackles.

Blind with the misery of existing on this hunk of rock with immoral grifters,fuck-sticks of every stripe and caliber,abusive heart-crushers and garden variety imbeciles ,I have decided that I am done.

Finite.

And that is official.

I should try and sleep but what is the point? I shut my eyes and all I see are the people that I want to kill and how I would do it in a loving zapruder-esque frame by frame breakdown.

Francis Ford? Eat your heart out.

Piano wires wound around defenceless genitalia, Knee caps blown apart, digits removed, vices, blowtorches, jumper leads attached to dirty car  batteries sweating acid .Malice. This is the entree. I’m only just getting started. This lasts for hours. I am Charles Darwin’s natural selector. The job that I was born,nay,created to preform.I am the Morningstar’s public servant. I am the cleaner of humanity.The angel Gabriel with tits and a footlocker full of firepower.

Besides hanging out with Elvis and Johnny Cash my fondest fantasy would be not only to be the last thing you see before I flick your switch but to outlive you all together.

Ah,in a perfect world…..

Theories tend to roll on.

You see me sitting alone with a faint smile on my face? Staring dreamily off into the middle distance,note book open before me,lost in thought… it’s vivisection that is on my mind darlin’. What I could do with a sound proof room,you and an ice pick. These are the things that give me my radiance.That put a spring in my step.This is what keeps me alive.

So this being what it is I think that I shall remove myself in the physical sense and become the aformentioned theory.  

No one will miss me anyway.Its not as if I am some manic social doyen. Some Inner city tragic with a twitter account. I am the kudzu of the imagination,I creep,I take over,I appear in dreams and on tortillas.

( A straight razor, hatpins, wire brushes making sweet time with mucus membrane, Drain cleaner, hacksaws. bolt-cutters,rubber mallet meeting with knuckles….)

Lets face it,shall we? Good never gets rewarded and nor does grace although I am desperately trying to hold it together on that front ( How’s my composure? 1-800 7771818)

See? there is no point.I am failing.I don’t like failing. So away I go.

Where was I? Oh. That’s right. Done. In a blinding fit of clarity while I kicking a cab tonight as it attempted to run me over and fucking up my foot in the process,I decided that, for all extensive purposes ( Dinners,social interaction,conversation,human frailty,ect,ect…) that I no longer exist.

I am relieved it has come to this. My Howard Hughes years so to speak. I’m exhausted. Exhausted trying to deal with all the loss that threatens to kill me every day,with trying to make conversation with anyone who is not my therapist….who am I kidding? Trying to make conversation with my therapist….

I have decided to be a theory.

I’m not sure if it was kicking the cab or the daily barrage of abuse that I got from The Lebanese contingent down the road but whatever it was?  It was tangible. I cant even leave my shack without complete strangers giving me a raft of shit.

When I am on top of my game ,I am glad that I provoke such a strong reaction in people. They want to lynch me or buy me diamonds.It’s one extreme to another. Both of which I would not trust as far as I would throw and at this juncture I don’t even want to pick them up,let alone try and get them airborne.

Fuck.You.All.

Here.

This is where I want to be. On the page or in the airwaves.. I don’t want anyone near me. When people try and talk to me now its like the static tuning in at the start of “Rock and roll radio” by the Ramones. Brilliant!  I can no longer understand and what does make it through?  Faint and irrelevant. I have lost the knack of language. Well,when spoken to me by minimum wage pulling monkeys confusing their ambition with their ability. By anyone at all really.

Eat shit.The shaved apes will all be napalmed in time.

So I will write. I will play my piece of shit guitar. I will train till my stomach muscles are harder than Chinese arithmetic. I will dress like its 1978. And at the rate I am going I will stab the next cunt who fucks with me.

Photos. Photos are perfect. I want to be somewhere in the ether. I want my words. I want this. I am allergic to mankind. If I am a theory I can write the script .I can write you all out. It’s a solo show. If no one can get near you,under your wire ,there is no hurt. I am sick of amoral self serving lying pieces of shit. Just moving from one good heart to the next,doing the same damage over and over again.

“Not me” said the flea.”Not I” said the fly. 

Maybe I will never solve myself or come up with any answers. Who cares??  As I am a theory and no longer a person feel free to discuss. Correspondence will be received via the usual channels but don’t hold your breath on the reply front.

Wait, upon second thought, do…..

Unforgettable.

I used to love the looks on the faces in the front row.How they would strain to get away from Me. I think the thing that tickles me the most is the hate .Love the hate . Why?

Because they could never hate me as much as I hate myself.

Amen.

So now I sit here like a broken magic 8 ball.No answers,just questions…..

What would be the reason? The purpose?

Prey tell because darlin’  Tonight ,I am all ears.

I spoke with an old friend tonight.One who really tried to pull me out of the black whole that consumes like some kind of misery fueled cancer by the day. I combat its rapid advance with running and over training. I have to be exhausted. Leaves less time for my thoughts to get the better of me.

So,one of my oldest and only friends who I attempt to keep at an arms distance just like I do with everybody these days. He asks me how I am doin’.

Crickets and tumbleweeds.

I know that he wants me to be well. To be the ornery old ass kicker that he knew. I sense frustration in the few that I know cause I am still broke up .I am still a mess. I don’t leave the house less I have too. I ain’t the life of the party no more….

He told me that he ran into someone who stopped him on the street.Said he had seen us play once,said that I was “Unforgettable.” Dig that huh? Unforgettable.

Well.

That and 5 bucks will get you a coffee.

I want to forget myself.

I don’t think that I will ever relax again as long as I live because a s far as I can tell people just live to fuck with you.To take back what they have bestowed. I must have a hot price on my head because I think that people are,at this point in the hunt,competing to kill me.

Or make me kill myself.

Remember what Kurt said kids “Just because your paranoid,don’t mean their not after you”

Bitter? I guess.In a way.

Back to my friend.

I tell him that I don’t know what the point is and I hear him sigh. This is why I cant talk anymore because in actuality no one wants to hear it.They are wondering why I am not “better” yet. Why I didn’t dust myself off and yee-ha into the sunset like I always do. They cant quite fathom that I am finally broken,band-less and bereft of love. That if  love is offered I run like Jesse Owens.

We say goodbye and hang up. I lie on my bed and keep the vigil. There is nothing out there but a bitch wind and a cranky moon.

I don’t want to know anymore….

Because I know its a lie. Love is a lie.I know it will leave. It left me on the day I was born and has not stopped going ever since. I wanted it so bad too. That’s what kills me. I thought that I had met the one who could deal with my darkness and my huge life. So I put every motherfucking egg I could find into one basket.

It was so hard for me to believe and to trust that I was loved. I was convenient I guess? I don’t know what the fuck I was.

I’m throwing out 5 things a day. I am tiring more and more by the day.Trying to relieve myself of my life. To be clean and fast. My knee is grief incarnate still and the dentist hit the nerve in my jaw today with his slap happy anesthetic ministrations. I crawled into bed fully dressed and proceeded to pass out from the pain. I try so hard to keep it together.

So move on and away from here. I have got no explanations left to give. I have nothing but a shitty guitar and a heap of second hand clothes.

Kids writing to me.Its sweet. They are too late though. Whatever I was then is long gone. They ask me about songs, for advice.I tell ’em that I am great at being right,just ask me. I can help everyone but myself but aint that always the way?

Physican heal thyself and so on?

I will go to my grave wondering why all the love that I had stored up was not good enough.

Ment to be going out tommrow. It wont happen. I think that I agree to shit just so people don’t ask me. I should be doing more with my time than writing crap but its like throwing up.You don’t want to but after you do you feel born again.I have read every book I own and was not smart enough to raid my brothers collection before he high-tailed it to Japan. I work on my writing.The shit that is not up here. I like the people in my stories. They are as tough as I once was. Before the fall ,so to speak.

I think that I am gonna take a break for a while.

Break for the broken

Hate.

Corpse is breaking down.Corpse hates me.

Today I hate Corpse too. We are having a Mexican stand off.

Maybe there is an art that I have not yet mastered that informs you how to deal with endless grief and loss. I still see you in my dreams and it is there that we are perfect. This is not real. I feel that I am much of the same.

I hate this.This endless fucking loss.

I hate my body as much as you once claimed to love it. I dream of cutting my extremities off. Peeling this foul animal that I am.

Pure white lightning hatred of the self. I should sell tickets and barf-bags. Limited season! Be sure to book early!!

( I hope she is,or should I say,that they are as fine as paint motherfucker. Hope she can take it as good as I did. We both know that ain’t never gonna happen.You must have all but erased me by now huh? Lined up all your new little fuck-holes? You never would have stayed true to me,I don’t know what the hell I was thinking…. I should get some kind of “Dumb ass of the century” trophy huh? ……Oh,but when I believed in the little boy buried beneath your bullshit. Mama knew just what you needed,didn’t I?  Hmmm?  I gave myself up to focus on nothing but you baby. Never-e-fuckin’-nuff for you, my baby boy……)

Hate.Regret.More hate. More hours. Days. Mostly of myself. Let’s bring it in to 99.9 percent.Let’s round that son-of-a-bitch off.

Jarred my knee the other day,been tiptoeing round like a frightened fool ever since.Just do weights and no road work and it’s driving me insane. Had all this time on my hands so I have been sleeping and having fucked up dreams or writing oodles of sub par dreck. I starve my body of sleep and now that I can’t run away,literally, its taking me under. I have all these things I wanna say but….

What is the point? Time forgets you and moves on. My annihilation of everyone outside of myself is almost complete. I don’t talk on the phone cause a friendly voice can undo days of resolve in the aloofness that I seem to think will save me.

Save me for what?

When I said forever I meant it.This is my lot now. Sweat and self hatred weave and conspire themselves into my widows weeds.

I have been dreaming of the beauty that I once knew and shared. The lack when I wake up is tangible. So I press weights.Answer a few emails and kill my computer before temptation to dig up my buried past gets the better of me.

One of my only friends asked me to write to her,to tell her of my trials and tribulations. She has a kind and true heart. How can I explain that I am the walking dead.That I keep just enough social graces on the end of a short chain to keep me from being incarcerated. That it is easier for me to write here where no one is really looking that tell someone who still cares and then fall apart.

And that is what I do.That is what will happen.I will come undone in the face of kindness.I am hospital food and sensible shoes emotionally at this point because the feather boas and rhinestones studding my dreams got my heart all broke up and my pretty little ass kicked.

So back to bland and blackout.Back to dental work and a jaw that feels like its done 7 rounds with Mike Tyson.I can taste the anesthetic for hours.Tomorrow I have an extraction to look forward to. Joy. I’mfinally fixing myself. For what? What is the point of getting my corpse right? Outside of my obsessive need for control?…..

I have no idea.

I doubt that I will ever be ready for my close up.

I miss myself when I was great and by his side.For the start of what I thought was going to be the rest of my life. Nothing holds that much friction or allure.

I doubt that it will again.

I love the kind hearted, bless them, who inform me that I will move on and love again,that time heals. All that shit that you would read in a fortune cookie or a tabloid horoscope.Time shows me nothing.Time tells me of lack and a graceless state. These are people who don’t really know what I am capable of when I set my mind to something. They mean well.

I don’t. I just don’t happen to care anymore.

(Oh! I hope that you are happy and that she is hot and tight.I hope you see my face when ever you close those pale blue 1000 mile eyes and stick it into whatever ass has presented itself to you tonight and all nights. The Hollywood hustle that serves them up,a smorgasbord of smut just for you . To me? You were irreplaceable. To you? I was a receptacle with an accent. I was a fucking fool and I will hate myself for it until the day I die.I throw up when I think about you touching someone else…..all of this till the day I fucking die.)

Which will not come soon enough.

Tell you what killed me? Seeing my baby brother getting married a few months ago. I was so happy for him and his girl, don’t get me wrong.I even got off my fat ass and made a speech. What killed me was not having the one that I had given my heart to next to me. That it should have been us. That I meant it and he didn’t? 

I used to sleep with my engagement ring pressed up to my lips.

How do you recover?

Allow me to tell you how.

If you are me and lucky for you ,you are not,you don’t.

Got that? You don’t.

You tell everyone you are fine so they don’t lift the edge of the scab to check for themselves. You do your little dog and pony show so that they leave you the hell alone and then you go back. You go way back to the delicious beginning when on your first real date he slept the whole time and you watched him,watched over him. When he would talk in that voice to your little burrito of  a pug  puppy and it would melt you. When for the 1st and only time in your life you thought that you could have a child….

The depth is fathomless.

That’s where you go. You do not thrive there by any means but still it belongs to you. The one time in your life that you loved.The one and only time that you trusted. And lookie where that got your dumb ass.

You stupid bitch.

Hate.

Beautiful.

 

When I first saw you it sucked the breath from my lungs like an air strike. Like those cheesy movies when the edges blur and fade out. Violins. All of the sudden everyone fell away.There was no one there but you.Sitting there smiling up at me……………….. 

The summer is 4 on the floor this year.Its easier to come to life later. The heat tells me to go harder.

I’m going to sell a kidney and spend the money on plastic surgery and a .44.

Its hotter than a fat man’s ass crack here. A heatwave ,and not the Motown number of which I am very fond of.

 Old people falling over  like wrinkly bowing pins outside the market. I stop on the way home and stick my head under a tap in some random front yard. Its relentless.The lawns all look blond,crew-cut down to the dirt and mean. The earth bereft of moisture. An angry asian man yells at me out of the window.Like I give a fuck. I shake like a puppy ,drenched, flip him the bird and keep walking home.

I’m bone dry within half a block.

You know,I would have set myself on fire if I though it would have made  you laugh. That “Tee-hheeee” laugh that I loved. The way you would impersonate me twisting my mouth to the side. Jumping up and down with my hands on your shoulders.

That kid is dead.

The gap is big and I can see it stretching on forever with no reprieve.

Horror rounds of the dentist and doctors today. I am now filed under the mental health act. How about that huh?

I’ll tell you all about that. It sucks the high hard one. Why do they bother asking me how I am doing? I am a homicidal, body dysmorphic recluse with PTSD.

How the fuck do you think I am doing?

I had to wait till late to train.The sun almost down, I shot out of here like someone had lit my feet on fire and my ass was catching. Ran.

 You don’t want to know what happens to my fragile balance if I don’t do it. Got home ,sweating like a rapist and I plugged in the colored light bulbs that hang on my porch.

Approached the bench. Guilty of  imperfection, I tore my muscles apart for another day.

The lights made me recall the last party I threw.

(Cue flash back.)

How I gathered all my friends and family together to celebrate you. The holy day of your birth. How I presented my life to you,gave you everything that I had that you didn’t want. I guess that it,me,all of it wasn’t good enough for you to commit to.

I get it.

You are a natural beauty. No wonder I bored you with my effort and eagerness to please. Big dopey dog at your feet trying to hard. Wish I was cool like you.

Wish I was beautiful like you.

Beauty such as yours gets everything that it wants and then pulls the wings off it. Boredom? I assume that’s what it is.I am wingless now. I am earthbound. Forever the grunt while you, like Icarus, flirt with the sun.

I come undone when I see a picture of what we were. Your smile. Those husky-dog blue eyes,full of lust and desire putting on a show under the lights. I didn’t know I was fragile until you broke me. I didn’t know what love was until I was yours.

I am dead in the water.Lame.

And you are still beautiful.

Me? Oh hell. C’mon now.I’m just a small town fat girl with a chip on both shoulders for symmetry and balance. You can get who and what ever you want. You used to remind me of this as if I wasn’t grateful enough to be the one that you chose.

Me,the flat footed,rotten toothed maybe.

Me. Me who was so good at loving you. Us ugly girls try harder don’t you know?

So,after puking on the jasmine bush I rinsed my mouth out with the home brand soda water I am so fond of inhaling ,wiped my mouth on the hem of my sodden stench laden Jack- in -the- box tee shirt, recalled you calling me a whore and kept going.

Why? WhyI keep going?….. I don’t know.

I battle myself everyday.I told you I would never fight you.I told you my guns were unloaded when it came to you. I was weary,so tired. We had fought the world to get to where we were…..

I  drifted dangerously from my fragile frag-grenade laden moorings today and thought about when I had my breath last taken away.

My memories are not safe. But that is where I return to time and time again.A mix of an orgasm and Hamburger hill .It feels good for a second then you get your ass kicked.

When I smelt of Christian Dior’s Poison. When I would stay awake just to drink you in at my leisure for hours. Lean over you and breathe in your dead oxygen. How I knew that I would never love another. How you warned me and I didn’t listen because I thought that I could fix everything and how long I had waited for the chance to prove it.

How cocky I was. Boy, oh boy,did you learn me a thing or two! Betcha golly gee by wow you did!

How ,to this day and I believe ,all days to come, that you were beautiful.

I try too hard. I’m always outside myself watching. Doing a critique.

Telling myself to stand taller, lose more, run faster, eat less, write more,get tanned, get inked, get lean,get a fucking clue. It’s remorseless. A flesh fax spewing endless lists of hatred. It’s not like that for you.You know the fruits your perfection brings. That everyone will do anything just to rub a little of your golden charisma up on them. Another hole to fill,another heart to break.

We had some fun didn’t we baby? I write and I write and I tell myself not to edit not to hold back. The roaches out here are tame and drunk on the heat.Stumbling with it over my floor. They ask me if I want a beer. I smile and refuse.Sweet to offer though…..

Been playing my guitar because its too hot to do much else. Finished another 2 songs. Next show is in march somthing unless I get off my ass and book more.I cant be bothered. Now that I have got the 1st one out of there way I figure I should keep showing the world my disgusting lack of talent. I am actually proving a public service. I make people feel better about themselves.

“Fuck! she sucks! I am doing better than I thought”

See?

I dream of LA too much.

It’s a can tied around my fat ankle. I can hear it rattling when I run but I don’t want to cut it off. I hold onto everything like a bower bird. Even the bad stuff is still stuff in light of all that I have lost. 

(Can keep it?. Can’t I? please ? It followed me home! It can sleep in my room Ma! Please…please!!! )

I see pictures of you and die.

Beautiful.

Smell your scent lingering on the wind.I fold like a letter and it sends me back into us. When you looked at me like I had a diamond wedged up my ass and you were gonna retrieve it with your tongue.

beautiful.

Your laugh and when I could cause it.

beautiful.

It’s just breathing honey.It doesn’t mean a thing. Any idiot can do it.

I said that I couldn’t live without you and guess what?

I don’t.

.

Nada.

My Life. this clock watching joke of little or no distinction.

It all falls away.

A year since New York in the cold. A year sucked back into nothing. My country alternates between drowning and frying.My dear Miss Karen survived the hurricane last night,thank Elvis. It must look like a drowned moon up there now.I don’t have a TV so I don’t know.I’m just glad that she is safe.

Existance is?

Its a mix between full blown denial and polishing a turd. I don’t wanna know anymore.I move in very small circles and 3am wont pull a punch.It beats the evergreen shit out of me. I am battered. My kidneys ache hand like a codeine overdose.I just don’t want any more bad news. A lifeline in LA tells me that all it is, it being life,is a game of skill.

On the skill front I am a thalidomide baby attempting origami.

I was told that I live my life in public.That its a stage. I got to thinking, not so much more than anyone else.Just with foxier shoes and better one liners. The one who accused me of this fault (among so many others ) was and is more famous than I ever will be. If laughing didn’t give me acid reflux and  make my wrinkles  demand  a heafty  botox milk shake I would be in stitches right now.

Ho,ho,ho.

Cotton wool dipped in oil.Tastes like shit but by golly it fills you up.

I dreamt that I set fire to my house last night. I had a cup of tea on the lawn with the fire men. Then they all shook my hand and applauded as I  separated from them and walked into the inferno. I turned and waved,my hair alight,a corona ,a torch. I saw one of them wipe a tear from his sooty cheek and give me a watery grin.

Its almost 10 in the morning.I have already trained. I have nothing else to do ,so I do that.

Kindness comes and I don’t know what the hell I am meant to do with it.I am so incomplete .I don’t want anyone to see me in such a state.It fucks with my inner equilibrium.I am never gonna get right at this rate. Gram Parsons helps. Till I get to thinking about him buying the farm out at the Joshua tree inn. Room 8 I think I read somewhere.

Which gets me to thinking about the house that was dreamt of….Tear me apart. Drawn a chalk outline around it.I bore myself. My demons and ghosts yawn. They don’t even feign interest and I don’t blame ’em one bit.I listen to Roky. Some times he helps too but in all reality I am just hurting myself over and over again questioning the legitimacy of any emotions at all.

Celibacy is not radical.It is an amour.

Wish I was John Wayne,Clint Eastwood….I dunno. I keep thinking if I get so strong and so right that it will save me. That no one will ever get close enough to fuck with me again. The thought of human touch,of flesh makes me ill. Of ever being touched.

If anyone expressed any interest in me I would cut them out without question. They must be sick and unsound. Wanting a disaster. Assholes. I don’t even want me. I cover up the mirrors and sit in the dark.

Fuck you,fuck you girl. You are a wreck. A treasure less wreck.

Click.

 

 I was yours.

I could ever only belong to one.

The moon is hanging low, looking like it’s auditioning for the Turkish flag. Spent my night watching documentaries curled on my roommates floor.

She is a photographer.She looks like a flapper on a  cigarette card from the 1920’s.Her mouth a tart cupid’s bow. Her eyes full off storms and black coffee. If you amplified her heart and asked it to sing, Tom Waits would come growling  out of the speakers. She has elevated the migrane into an art form.

She is my friend.

Click.

Her eyes are blades.She dissects and reassembles me in the blink of an eye.

Every frame a Punch.

And your older.(click). And your older .(click) and your older and older and degenerating and your value goes down.

“Oh baby!”  the lens says to me “Its a buyers market but no one’s selling.”

( You told me.But I’m not telling….)

I lie to it. I want it to think that I am something special. To think I am so cool.

You don’t have to care about such mundane things now do ya baby boy?.There will be always someone to pick up the bill and the peices. You were always too beatiful for me. A palm springs peach.

I used to think that if you had of kept wanting me that I would have lived forever and that we could have done anything and that you would have kept me safe. But you get so bored once you break your toys doncha’ angel?

Precious?

Once I was but not now. Now I am trash.I am a scar collector.

Now I am here and you are there. You and me hurt. Me broken. Me dirt.

Click.

She shoots with nasty flash so you can see everything that’s wrong with me.Big red eye giving flash .Merciless. Every mark and scar.No more smoke, no tricks anymore. I am ugly as fuck,human roadkill and caught in the moment.

I flicked through them and noticed all the bruises I have on my legs. The deep mean cuts set in lurid gangrenous looking pools of pain. Black to green to yellow.Tasty.When the katana catches me,tears  me a little to show me who’s boss when I train without focus.

I am not the boss.The blade is the boss. I do my own stitches now. Who says you are ever too old to learn something huh?

What happens when I drift away and don’t halt the moment.

Blades have no mercy so I dab iodine on the cuts and get back to it. Stitches can wait till after the shower. Duct tape will surfice for now.Soak it off in the water,tie it back together over the sink.Doesn’t hurt if you do it quick.Don’t jab in too deep, skim the dermis,keep it on the surface.The cotton will rot out within a few days and voila!

 Does hurt if you use dental floss.Found that one out the hard way.

Click.

I push this corpse so hard.I have become my own experiment. I live only to see what damage I can do to it.How far I can push it,starve it,fuel it,reshape it.

(Good dog Michele! Good dog….Now play dead!..)

And Miss Lilli takes the honest pictures. Glamour is dead here.Frame by frame I destroy myself.

Click.

I am an ugly animal.My bones have shifted to lupine planes.Dead eyes.Blade jaw.

Click.

So that’s me.

All dark circles under the eyes,hangdog mess.

What a fucking prize.

As I am .

On the tiles.On the edge.

So hot that thinking makes you sweat. I stay up all night and write. Play my guitar some. Press some weights.Try and make friends with the tiny kitten that I see stalking the lonesome perimeter of my yard, he doesn’t want a bar of me and I think that I need to get a life. Oh that’s right, I HAD one!

Fat lot of fucking good it did me ,so….

(Cue me heading for my bench press again.)

I sat on my sweat slicked bench feeling too big and far too present in the sun today.Between sets I tick and ping like a cooling engine. I give the clothesline my patented stink eye. (“Hey motherfucker!”) I like to practice. To see if I can get to levels of Clint-ness. As one does.

I wish for a .44. A hand cannon. For a passport with a whole new me on it.

I would go. I would be one of the missing.

You kept me company today. The you that used to crave me like a narcotic.The you that slept behind and inside of me,chin tucked into the back of my neck under the weight of my hair.That you.The one that liked me.The one that thought I was the cat’s meow.

The you who claimed to love me.The you that I believed.

That Guy.

My run was heavy.Lead-footed.My hip thinks its gotta get away from my leg.I tell it that it that divorce is not an option and to shut  the hell up. I carried a dull ache and the shape of your words dripping down the knotted length of my spine.

Nobody saw you like I did. Saw through you like I. And I was never loved until you decided to do so. So that’s where I went, that was the room that I unlocked today. Where you loved me. Where you couldn’t keep your hands off me,where you bent me and…well,who cares right?

So there I am. Like a fuckin’ lab rat.Running in circles. St Scumbag of suburbia ,clicking over kilometers in lieu of novenas and Our fathers. My father? Well there’s a  joke with no punchline or pay off. You two would have got along so well…

My body nothing.Untouched.Because that was the deal that I made with myself  because I believed that we couldn’t fail.

Without the writers there is no history.

I wish that I felt something for myself.Even a little benevolence.

I feel nothing. I don’t touch myself. I can’t come.

Porn leaves me numb. I give up. I gave up. I have given up.

Life as I knew it does much of the same ,it leave me numb.I watch and pretend to sing along.

Is this liberation? Is this where I really begin? Everything I invested in gone. Gone for years like family that I never had or gone for months,like us. Fresh meat, fresh wound. Purification.Viral. Lost. Lose. Misplaced. Missing.

That you thought I would ever be with another. I have to laugh. You will find another host .You warned me…

I gave myself to you till the grave. You were the one who looked through me. Who looked past me and my noble heart. Your beauty guaranteed that you would aways find a new piece of ass to destroy.You informed me of this fact yourself while I was bending over backwards,killing myself  in the process of trying to please you.

I don’t sleep.I pass out. I wake up crouching in the middle of the room.Or curled next to the gold chest at the foot of the bed. My sweat smells like lemon rind and dust. I am cursed.

Fear. Its the fear of being left. Thats what I am going to credit it to. Of putting everything that you are into one set of hands.Is that why you pushed me till I broke and left me no choice?

I was made for you,you dipshit. Built to your specifications. I was so ripe that my ass was dragging off the vine.I wanted you to pluck me.Suck the juice out of me till your chin looked like a glazed donut.

I was yours.

Wedding dress. Shroud.

Cat.

 

He thinks that he is a tiger and the yard is his own private jungle. I keep calling him “Little Mate”

He rolls his eyes and goes back to stalking the rusting barbecue listing  drunkenly beneath my window.Black and white. Big black patch over one eye. Looks like someone dipped their fist in ink and cleaned his clock.

I want him to like me. He’s so small. I chat to him when he is sitting on my sofa ignoring me while I contort myself through a million sit ups.

“So….” I pant ” Do you live….gasp….round here…or….”

He yawns, showing off tiny needle teeth and does that feline yoga thing when they stick their hind leg right up in the air and makes licking your own butt-hole look like the classiest maneuver in the world outside of a curtsy.

“Your problem Michele….” he lowers his leg and looks at me with a thousand yard stare “Is that you try too hard and desire conditional loyalty under pressure”

I finish my set and take a belt on my soda water. Tiny little black and white kitten sitting pretty as you please on the 25th anniversary addition of Elle magazine handing me my ass. Its gotta be the heat but seeing that he had a point I’ll give…..

“What do you mean under pressure?” I stand up and move closer.

He holds up a paw and looks at me like I just took a dump in his catnip stash. I halt and sit down next to the rusty table my old roommate left behind. Seeing that I am done with trying to invade his space, he does that cool C shaped stretch and commences pacing up and down the sofa.

 He looks intent. A feline James Cagney. If I still smoked I would offer him one.I start unstrapping the weights from my ankles and pay attention.

“If they are not for you they are against you right?”

“Sure” I reply defensively

“By the way” he says “Your form is shot on those sit ups. Hold your core in”

Before I can tell him where he can shove that he continues.

” You want people to chose. You try so hard to be everything to the people that you love. When they let you down”  He raises his eyebrow, do cats even have eyebrows? I shake my head  “And they will let you down, you expect them to take your side in conflict”

“What’s so wrong with that” I sniff  at my clothes drying and stiffing with nasty salt.

“The Conflict is yours! Yours Michele and believe me no one is that interested in a hermit living in a shed who…”

“Who what? What? What is it that you think  I do” I yell.

“Nothing.” he says,resettling on the magazine pile. So he can look down at me, I’m so sure. “Your not doing a fucking thing. ”

“What the fuck do you know! I write,I train…I…I….”

” Yeah, you, you, you what?”  he narrows his eyes “You push yourself so hard that you don’t have to think. You keep going and going but its not advancing ,its just the circle getting bigger but more limited at the same time.You can’t go back and solve anything but yet you keep trying.” He gives me a look of such disdain that I feel ill.

“What do you want me to fucking do?” I yell

“I don’t know? ” He does that stretch again “Why not start with anything and go from there?’

“I told you ,I ….” I bluster

But he’s got to me and he knows it .I am a puddle of  the past melting into the grass near Miss Lilli’s potted succulent collection clustered like gossiping women on a rotting board. Dinosaur plants. I am fueled by fear.Fear being the polar opposite of love. If not fear,revenge. I avoid everything and then take it out on myself day in,day out. I find no peace. No answers are forthcoming. There never will be.

“Yeah you told me.” I concur.

“Little cunt” as I have now rechristened him, smirks.

I lose it.

“What do you Know! Your just a cat, not even! A kitten! A fucking kitten!” 

I rage pointlessly. Knowing that my anger is made of paper and ice he ignores me. The tantrum melts and drifts away to nothing. Much like the life I am leading.

“Yeah?’  He says slowly 

” Well at least I’m not a fuckin’ pussy.”

Gift.

 

Now.

According to the carefully sealed letter,she had done it to herself as the evidence was to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt.

It was her decision and her’s alone,she claimed fervently as if lit by some internal fire.

It was her,and I quote ,”Tribute”.

The recipient of her gift was currently under heavy sedation at ( hospital name withheld ) My questions would have to wait. His nightmare had only just begun.

Neighbors reported seeing him receiving a delivery from a UPS truck at about 2 pm on ( date withheld ) at residential address ( withheld ).

 Between 2:17 and 2:25 ,neighbours then reported seeing the man run into the street screaming with what the  key witness first believed was paint dripping from his hands and smeared over his face. Witness made the call to 911 from her cell phone.

Dispatch operator -Police,fire or ambulance?

Witness- There is a man running in circles screaming his damn fool head off in my street ! The crazy fuck! He’s a mess too! I don’t need this shit!

Dispatch operator-Is he armed? Do not approach him if he is armed.

W-I don’t think he is but I can’t see what he has got…

D.O-Do not approach him.

W-It looks like… Oh my sweet Jesus! Oh god! (Screaming  man clearly heard in the  background)

D.O- Ma’am? Ma’am, you have to stay on the line, ma’am? We have traced your call.Try and stay calm.

W-Its,its….

O- We have dispatched the police to your location. Stay on the line whi…

(Call truncated.)

It took four officers to bring him down. One of the attending officers located the packaging, footage ,photographs and letter by the front gate. The ambulance attendant pried the rest of the contents from his hands, post sedation.

I bet he wished that he hadn’t.

I had so many questions.

How high had she been and on what?  How high would you have to be to do such a thing?

Sober as a judge it turned out.

Toxicology turned up no traces of numbing cream or of local anesthetic.No narcotics. Pure as the driven snow.Her pupils looked oddly focused in the video footage and the pictures.

No dilation. Just fierce and overflowing with, dare I say,compelling concentration

Calm. Our lady of the lost . Saint like.  Even with the hemorrhaging, the arterial spray that threatened to hit the lens (7:13 sec)  and very some difficult angles, her face was almost impassive but held in check,with,what was it? 

A great joy?

I think it was release.

She wanted witnesses to,what she called “My self delivery.” (2.43 sec.)

We bore it.

We bore witness.

The packaging involved alot of double wrapped plastic and was extremely well sealed. Immaculately so. After being dusted with dragons blood and held under the correct lights not one whorl or point match was found. Clean.

Gloves.Of course.

Print free. Not that it mattered ,we had her face on film. It was just procedure.

I tried to imagine the amount of pain she would have been in both during and after the procedure.Thus,the packing of the fruits of her sadistic labour became even more of a superhuman effort.  How had she stopped the bleeding?  How had she not lapsed into unconsciousness?

She worked fast.

Timed, the procedure itself was 17:13 sec  from beginning to end. The whole tape clocked in at 22:14 sec. 

Under half an hour to reap total destruction upon herself.

Half an hour….

Not including the packageing and I assume, the shipping.

I hung my head,closed my eyes and wondered.

Somehow, knowing that she would be what? 

Doubted? or just for or impact, who can say, she had lovingly taken pictures and filmed the entire procedure. Her “zeal” she wrote,and I quote “Must be taken into account.”

“You never should have doubted my dedication” she said directly to the lens (2:02 sec)

 And her dedication to the terrifying task that she had set herself?

Unquestionable.

Fig.1.

Here,the instruments laid out like jewels on a thick clean towel. White. She lingers upon them lovingly with a smooth close up. Look, Rubber gloves,latex free. Behold,Iodine. Swabs ,suture’s. A small hand held blow torch.A cornucopia of sharp stainless steel infiltrators.

Openers.

Fig.2-

Already threaded,a large needle,the kind often used to repair heavy fabric,rents torn in upholstery. From it’s blind eye, a long tail of thick ,waxy white thread.

Fig 3-

Mirrors. None matching in size nor shape, angled carefully in a watchful semi-circle on a large expanse of blindingly well lit cataract colored plastic.

Silver druids. Watchers.

Fig 4-

A  70 dollar a night no-tel motel in ( City location withheld ) .

Records show no lodging of noise complaints or irregular behavior. Security footage retrieved from the front desk shows her calmly smiling into the the camera while her check-in was being processed. Hair back, sunglasses pushed  on to the crown of her  head.

Completely identifiable.

Fig 5-

The letter.

“A flesh ode to my failure” she began. (  contents of documents restricted, further investigation pending.)

And so there it is.

And now we watch.

In HD on a big screen TV, we watched.

13 of us.

At 6:34 sec, 3 remained consisting of  myself,my stupefied and shocked superior and the head pathologist who talked us through the operation in somewhat awe struck and admiring tones.

The tape rewound itself with a gassy hiccup and commenced again from the beginning.

No one moved.No one said a word.

She turned to the camera and smiled.

“I love you baby,I love you so much ” she said

Legs parted, face glossed with sweat and determination, she began.

And we watched.

Helpless.