The Sum of Parts

Am I collection of experiences and memories?  Is that me?  Thinking about possessing a soul, a type of divine energy never created and resistant to destruction...trust me, I've tried...was almost always a comfort.  I could rely on the fact that this core at the centre of it all was the "real" me...Rhandi.  Yeah, she spells her name with a fucking H too.  It was like I always had a partner in my rowboat to maneuver the falls and take over when I was deflated, depleted and drained.  What if?  What if I am merely a collection of forgotten moments and pain?  Sure, there's been some good stuff in there, but fuck...that's not the shit that builds a person;  Creates an entity with awareness.  Even still...if that be the case and we are all void of some deep, cosmic vigor that compels us to do, do, do...achieve, prosper, grow damn you, GROW!...that's mildly comforting, is it not?  This means in my life that I am limitless.  Limitless possibilities, not necessarily in potential.  I think about the things that make me, me.  I thought I've felt the presence of that energy, that silent witness that is always there and ever stagnant.  Why the fuck would I want that?  That judgemental bitch secretly knowing all the answers and smirking at me smugly from her soap box?  Without her, I am a river of knowledge paving my way through, well...whatever the fuck this is.  If there be not a soul, and a place for it after this mortal coil, then we're pretty fucking lucky to be here regardless...ain't we?  Apart from the fact that why, and how will still remain as repetitive questions in my mind, I can adapt. 

Does this mean then, that at the core of all this nothing, I am a performer who loves music, the arts, endless walks in puppy parks, and three orgasms a day?  That's it?  This is me?  Perhaps why we cling so indeterminately to the notion, nay fallacy, is as a result of the bleakness of what this shit really is.  Sure, we've all had varying experiences but at the meat of it all, we are all identical life-forms of a highly intelligent nature who stumble about trying to feel meaning.  Still, the question remains...why?  how?  What happens when that's determined?  What puzzles will be left?  How could we possibly go on, if we knew it all?

Once, I wanted to be the greatest.  I wanted to be creative.  Beautiful.  Intelligent.  Graceful.  Warm.  Funny.  Compassionate.  Generous. I feel as though I always come up wanting.  Finally, the meat.  It's the meat of nothing however and that...that sucks.  I would like to instruct that shit to get bent.  I feel insecure, or stupid, or worthless, or the antithesis of every word above...and I question.  I question anyway, but it's not normally so dark, dreary, desperate.  Tonight is a night of D's.  Drunkenness, debilitating emotional upheaval, drowning in consolatory tune-age.  Fuck...   

A Boy and His Dog

I couldn't get out of bed today.  It wasn't on purpose.  I was consumed by something I've been before.  It doesn't surface often, but when it does I am paralyzed.  Incapacitated.  Useless to and for the world.  It's better for others if I am alone during this.  I don't know if I could be truly held responsible for my actions if I were to enter into the world.  Life is distasteful during this time.  These bouts of seemingly unending darkness.  I need to recharge.  Sleep evades me and compounds the shadows that envelop my every breath.  Something is missing in me.  I feel it. 

I saw a boy and his dog yesterday on my sunlit walk.  He looked happy.  The dog was of course delighted, for he had his boy and the boy had his dog and all was right with the universe.  He grinned at me from ear to ear as I passed, as I smiled at his puppy so immersed in life it nearly broke my heart.  They jogged on down the path and I stopped and turned.  I wanted that.  Not the boy, nor the dog...but that indescribable moment to moment awareness that finds you when you've let it all go. 

I hold on too tight, you know.  With a grip akin to death, I squeeze and prod and squint until distortion and dismay ensues.  I want normal thoughts like normal people.  I want to make myself feel better.  No one else can do this for me.  I'm broken, you know.  A busted doll with one eye...tattered and filthy;  Tossed in a corner with no lustre left.  Where does this come from?  Do I breathe life into it and it boils and festers or is it always there?  Biding time for birth in my brain.  I see happiness, you know.  I recognize its colors...it's contrast to where I live.  The brightness pains my heart and angers the rest.  I want to live there, goddamn it...I want to live THERE. 

...Off By Heart

It's nine o' clock and I am severely unable to drive...a fifth of rum and I'm a goner...whatever, I ate an orange.  When I was a kid, more of a kid than current state of mind dictates, I would subject myself to a few belts of whatever mummers had in the cupboard(sorry, now you know) and consequently 'belt' out a song or two on her awesome stereo system.  Being the product of an artist/musical connoisseur, one develops tendencies in this manner/matter.  I remember distinctly that first time this happened:

Sixteen...typical situation of adults and sibling away for the weekend.  I break up with my first boyfriend/first boy kissed in my short existence and regret it...age old and understood by all, I realize.  I helped myself to various alcohol stored in our cupboard above the glassware...rum, vodka, cognac, something in a purple bottle.  I really went to town.  Second time only ever partaking in the pastime of the drink, as my first experience yielded mixed results:  Two beer and vomitous maximus. 

So, blaring Silverchair and screaming every word at the top of my lungs, I proceeded to drink random liquor til the projectile puke came followed fast by sweat soaked sleep.  It     was      awesome.  The longing, the regret, the passion!  I have not felt that way in, oh, a few years since and here I am.  I am back, or never really left and just hid it rather well from the world.  No, this is new, again.  I am new again.  I lie on my carpeted floor, music at reasonable decibels only cuz I'm not a fucking asshole and respect my neighbors, drunk, covered in citric acid and singing like a maniac.  Did I mention it was nine pm?  Yeah, perhaps my staying power ain't what it was...that's okay, I can live with that. 

I am a teenager once more...less acne and debilitating self loathing, but a teen nonetheless.  I feel renewed.  Alive.  Desperately sad.  Honest.  That last one is the rum talking.  I haven't been here in some time and it is wonderful.  I hope it's real.    

Toxicity

"It Stinks," she says to herself, "Your poisoned breath," plugging her ears.

It's difficult to admit for her sometimes that she exists like all others: lonely and disillusioned with security.  He says things that make her want to escape.  Where to I wonder?  Running only wearies the soul and little else.  Escapes at hand for the travelling man but not much else.  She could live without him, she could do without.  His poisonous air hit chords she never knew existed.  Should she show gratitude and sustain her self worth with mindless mantras of past predictors?  Perhaps evolution passes in such smaller increments for her that a difference won't be felt til the end of days...the end of life as she knows it now.  Faith in others was never suppose to be.  They will forever disappoint, forever take without consent and forget you when you're done.  His foul spewings are often not thought through and she questions why?  Your bowels force this putrid, dank air from the place where hurt resides.  It lives there don't you know...breeding, feeding and depositing its impurities for his brain to grasp and dispel.  She thinks before she speaks.  She plays all of it over in her head at untold velocities to keep him safe and sound.  She keeps him sound for her sake as well and ponders why he chooses not.  He chooses.  He makes the choice to force the fictitious nonsense that somehow still pains her so.  Her fault I suppose.  She chooses to be pained.  He doesn't know...it's the fault of ignorance, not his own.  I have tears and bleary eyes for her.  I've been there and I can only console her with one thing...talk to yourself, for there is no one else who needs to know.

Killing Time

My life it fades
away from me;
Running its course
without consent.
The smoke...
she breathes me in
without remorse,
regard, dissent.
It's not a lack
that keeps me
wanting...time
itself.
Regret harvests time
before its due,
and nothing can be done
to save him. 
Wanting more is not
the case, rather wanting
now to last a day.
A day! you say,
is nothing missed
lo when it's lost,
tragic remiss.

"I can see the city in your sunglasses."

I couldn't feel the cold today though my toes screamed their dissent from below.  I walked our path of destruction completely unaware that, that was my journey of choice.  I've confused you with a dream, I believe;  One in which happy endings prevail and the soul is fed its gruel.  Fairness plays no role when you've vanished into rainy days and waves of green.  I feel as though I've suckled at the breast of enlightened interdependence, glimpsed reality in all its impressionable euphoria and lost it all in a single whisper of a breath of a moment.  Now to reconcile my loss with the current state of mind, it is put upon me to find solace in meat and drink.  These empty and evil desires...merely a distraction from the heart of truth I find wrapped in your arms.  Would lack of distance keep us apart?  Would we have strength enough to stomach the other?  I fear the response to this pondering, yet i disclose that those little natterings of insecurity are submitting to substantiated evidence.  I long for your sweet departure time and time again for I know your return brings forth thoughts I had let fade and fall to their demise.  They've found me though...renewed and prepared for the steep ascent.  I am ever so grateful for their return for I was awash in a stagnant pool too deep for light or love.  So, now I linger, anticipating your touch on the part of me that was somehow always yours.

Just a Girl

I am a putrid pile of lady parts painfully arranged into a pleasing pose for all others to gaze upon.  I should be grateful for at least that;  For at the very least I have a fraction of what it takes to make it in this cesspool of liars and impostors.  Never mind the intentions, golden roads were once paved with their debris and now they are trampled and tarnished to such degrees.  I went a time not looking at reflections of my shell.  I shrugged it off as being liberated from the self that others want but in reality, (where i live now), it was because of how much i hate the sight.  I am trumped by insecurity, fueled by jealousy,  and spurred by hate.  I am adrift in a tempestuous assault daily which i create and perpetuate all by my lonesome.  I get so excruciating lost in this loneliness that I drown in tear drenched pillows and salt stained t-shirts.  I exaggerate to entertain and feast on the good will of others.  I attack without warning, leave without hesitation and shut out the world whenever I can.  I long for a love that seems so unreal and refuse acceptance once granted for only I know the truth.  I am a seeker of sadness and find solace in anguish.  I am a wretched creature who needs and takes it without consent.  I will wither and shuffle off the coil in the fading candle light however, and there you will see it - the one thing that keeps you silent and holds you still.  This moment when you realize....................she's just a girl.