Towel Thrown

It’s all Greek to me.

Greek, French, Spanish, whatever.  The point of the matter is: I cannot seem to do anything right.  Fighting against my ideals of self-worth – trying to put as much energy into positivity as possible, believing there’s a little section of shanties living under my lip shouting out absurd obscenities that push people away.

That’s all I ever manage to do.

So, onward, plight of my soul.  I’m still screaming out at the stars for reasons I’ve grown up believing.  There’s only that beaten up, tired-ass metaphor left for me, and I’ve taken myself out of that cesspool.

What is this hindrance?  What is wrong with my perceived reality?  What do I exude that makes it impossible to love me?

We are social creatures.  We want to be together, with other creatures of our mettle.

Oh am I

So hard to love

1. Holly Conlan ref.

XXXI

Disparagingly. What do we yearn for and motivate ourselves to do, so fervently? A misconception, a manufactured belief, shoved down our throats at birth, that inhabits our limbs and tears us omnipotently between lives. We’ll sit like this again with our hands to our mouths, fresh out of good ideas and choking on betterment. Feeling the good points get stuck between our teeth and try to fight their way out with thick blood and food.


I want a daughter while I’m still young
I wanna hold her hand, show her some beauty
Before this damage is done
But if it’s too much to ask, if it’s too much to ask
Send me a son (1)

I’ve decided that I’ll be artificially inseminated when time deems it appropriate, rather than wait on a man that doesn’t exist. Some clean, DNA-approved stranger’s sperm inside me, squirming in the juices of my fallopian tubes, seems more comforting than a forced love, doesn’t it? Rather than going through the motions of love, not feeling a thrill of excitement or wonder; rather than faking it; rather than lying to myself, this child could be born of me in a positive swell of reward and beauty. With it will be no negative attachments; no strange stories of wild encounters; no tales of some man wanting a child, close to me, close to them. No lies of forced rejuvenation. We’re here and we’re dormant; we’re ready for release and experience; for foolish games played elegantly toward goals we’ve pitched for ourselves.

I don’t have to tell my child about love. I don’t have to shatter their shell of splendor with falsified ‘realities,’ of which there are plenty, and I don’t have to see them fall into darkness in search of fulfilled majesty. We can simply live, and live simply, fed on the food of light and poetry and literature. We can relish in George Eliot, share Shakespearean poems, of which there are plenty not dealing with love, and laugh with Mary Oliver and CK Williams. I will read to her while she swims in my stomach, and I will sing to her, songs that are filled with sweetness which she will remember and sing to her children’s children.

We can remember our moments of truth when we are old, or make them when we are young, pondering the meaning of insect song, watching the rain fall onto leaves and blades of grass, and listen for the silent notes escaping each drop. This will be our faith, and our love. We will have no need for another.

Only for each other. Rococo (2).

(1) From Arcade Fire's The Suburbs
(2) "

XXX

Sometimes I can’t believe it

I’m movin’ past the feelin’ (1)

Something turning, burning, polishing the severed nerve endings littered around the edges of my brain. Don’t you remember when love was fruitful? Don’t you remember when you could spin and spin and spin until you fell, tumbled, laughing, cackling onto the freshly cut lawns of remembrance, chuckling ‘til your sides hurt with glee and terror of the fall? I want to love like that again; I want to feel more than a bitter curdled sob rising underneath all of the happiness and fluff within my heart.

Memories of dreams swell, and I fall back into the unresponsive, out-of-touch, unreachable minor I once was, sitting on the playground swing-set watching youth bubble, as I pondered my own two hands and the wrinkled lines running around on my palm. A large Mount of Luna – would I be a good lover? A ragged Life Line – would I find something heartbreaking that would change my life forever; that would change my dreaming; that would change my ideals of fairness, judgment, self-worth? An estranged Mercury Finger – would this redeem my eccentricities and place me into a strange, distant relationship in which I could never fully give myself?

I watched as the beautiful girls never stared headlong into the clouds, over all of the blood spilled in snide curses and slanders on the football field, school gym, classroom, etc. Never wanted to explore how far the tide took them, how strong the current was, pulling and pulling down into the silent meaning of what it was to be alive. To live. To feel.

After years of envy, jealousy, spite – I wandered at ignorance and turned my back to density. My love was my loneliness, and my music; something that could never leave me. Something that could never wound me as harshly as others had wounded me. Arrows could no longer pierce my heart with their points of love and farce. I could no longer cry.

No longer love.

(1) From Arcade Fire's The Suburbs

XXIX

Vince declared how he wanted to date a professor from Lynchburg. Apparently, her husband died a tragic death – a tree branch fell and killed him.



They planted a tree in his honor.

XXVIII

I wish I had the time to prove.

XXVII

We don’t find redemption or perseverance. We don’t find bereavement or pleasure. We seek derivatives and wish for something that explains the dreary bullshit that fills us. I don’t know if commitment is my oven, or if waiting tells me to hold on, but I know I’ve become numb to the love so expressive in our souls.


I was made to love, and I wish I had the care inherent in the weakest rain. But I know I cannot strive to fulfill anyone else until I have fulfilled myself.

It’s the hardest decision I’ve made. To take the possibilities and weigh the depressive outcomes. To take each luck of the draw and realize my possibilities without succumbing or dreaming. Fantasy presses on my reality like an ice cube on a hot sea. Melting to the desire of the surrounding waters, and giving way to larger creatures. Yet I want to advise and believe that there is something greater than all of us.



That someone watches our little loves and rewards the stretches and realizes the strives we take to love.

XXV

Windows down, blaring Nirvana – Drain You. I feel the sun on my arms, the nicotine buzzing around in my brain, the church sign advocating “True peace is found only in Jesus Christ,” passing school buses with children waiting for the summer and heat. The blacktop sizzles and blurs before me. Yellow double lines. I cross them anyway.


Something whispers to me on the wind swirling around in my car. A quiet secret slishing and sloshing. We’re all in this together. We all bait and switch, eliciting strangers to smell our palms. It’s a lazy love, and we’re all guilty of something grand.

I’m not sure where I’m going, but I’m having one hell of a ride. My 22nd year spent in a drunken haze, smoking cigarettes, laughing without a care that I’ve stained my underwear with blood. It’s the time and the place, and I’ll pass out wherever there’s an empty space. Time pending absolution.

Whatever. I’m free, I’m full, and I’m fondling the illusionary blanket I’ve wrapped myself in. It still doesn’t help me sleep at night, but I’m finding new ways to collapse into darkness. It’s the insanity and morose tragedy within me that allows my folding. I haven’t killed, but I’ve creamed.

I’m still dry. I’m still looking but I’m not searching, and I’ve had it with the bigotry. It’s not a small thing that we haven’t stalled, or slackened.