Vernon God Little

"Velcro spiders seize my spine. You know gray areas are invisible on video. You don't want to be here the day shit gets figured out in black and white."

-DBC Pierre

For Such A Long Time Now . . .

I'm in that sad place of recognition where life pokes holes in my naive theories of happiness. Everything is OK, until it isn't. Coasting, then falling, with saltwater rushing up my nose. It's strangely incongruous that I can play pretend so well. Most of the time my anxiety leads me to see each step as the steepest fall, but I can flit and smile and enjoy the moment to moment. I can somehow believe that it is the long road for us both. That we are OK. Despite chemicals, death, and dramatics - I can experience the good of two people sharing their respective lives in a consistent way. I can find a way to be happy.

But its gravity on the other line when you realize you can have the same disagreement 3,000 miles away. It's not even a real relationship at this point, just lose threads waiting to be cut. Distance makes the heart cling tighter, though, and whole worlds can be romanticized in the space of months and miles. I never wanted to get married and I never saw myself returning. But it's that sad, final, blow of difference. That I believe in the inherent potential and good of the human race and he reads too much Ayn Rand. That I want to understand where words shift and a conversation turns over and ugly, onto its ear. That I want to piece that out, and he wants to sulk and swallow, rage and ruminate, accept and acquiesce.

He isn't going to be it.
Not the one. Not one at all.
There are no more fantasy options.
The safety net is gone.
I've engaged in some fierce subtraction since moving out here and right now that feels terribly isolating and frightening. I just hope I can wake up tomorrow and see the freedom of it all.

I've Found A Way

"A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent."
- - - William Blake "Auguries of Innocence"

If we kept this going, eventually I would fight back.
Nearly two years of shirk, shy, duck and cover, but in the end I found a way for 5 feet to meet 6.
Then three and a half years of flame-retardant bridges and missing vertebra. Its own brand of love, certainly, but acres of experience lost to 6 feet 4 inches of complacency. I could not fight for two.

So now, when you take that tone. That tone you say I project upon you. I'm out of practice. I can't stand up. A stolen punch to the throat or a swift kick to head and that's all I've got. The rest congeals and stops up my throat and nose, stops my heart and tongue.

In time, I could meet you at eye level. You're shorter than the rest, anyway. In time I could stare you right back down. But I'm not even sure if that's the point of this exercise. This triangulation has worn me thin. I need new shapes and colors for my lenses. I don't need to win. I just need to stop crying.

And tonight I realized the following: You can never hurt me as deeply as I can hurt myself.
Now that's a little twisted, but when scrounging around in my pockets for some strength and some fortitude within the context of a particularly unpleasant conversation - the memory of this will serve me just fine. Your measured wrath, the extent of which I have yet to see, will still never surpass my own ferocity and severity of self. So really, I have nothing to cry about with you. You ain't got nothin' on me, darlin'.

Until I Find My Footing

the true story of what was

the light blue flickering rhythm
of the neighbor's big console t.v.
is basking on the ceiling
of another insomniatic spree
and outside sleep's open window
between the drops of rain
history is writing a recipe book
for every earthly pain

oh to clean up the clutter of echoes
coming in and out of focus
words spoken
like locusts
sing and sing
in my head

and thing is
they often seem
in my memory's long dream
to be superfluous to
the true story of what was

cuz

real is real regardless
of what you try to say
or say away
real is real relentless
while words distract and dismay
words that change their tune
though the story remains the same
words that fill me quickly
and then are slow to drain
dialogues that dither down reminiscent
of the way it likes to rain
every screen
a smoke screen
oh to dream
just for a moment
the picture
outside the frame

then in a flash
the light blue horizon
spanning a sudden black
is sucked into the vanishing point
and quiet rushes back
to search for the downbeat
in a tabla symphony
to search in the darkness
for someone who looks like me

(though i'm not really who i said i was
or who i thought i'd be)

just a collection of recollections
conversations consisting
of the kind of marks we make
when we're trying to get a pen to work again

a lifetime of them!



i say to me
now here listening
i say to the locusts
that sing and sing to me sitting
now here on the front porch swing of my eyes:
i hereby amend
whatever i've ever said
with this sigh

~Ani DiFranco