left hand gone missing

Keyword #1: "Wolf Status"

2011-04-21T11:08:00.000-07:00

stillness pierced
those vast, empty vistas filled
by a course, warbling wail
of the weary
calling on other lone
and empty visions of night
whose starry slopes see only
mirages of self
in the distance

the pack echoes its
pride, fiercely feeding
on the claw-marks
so deeply etched through
fissures
visible only when
the night
reclaims its solitude

Resurrecting the Keyword Poem Project

2011-04-21T10:56:00.000-07:00

Having returned to this long-forgotten blog a few days ago, I had the chance to read again those few poems produced in concert with the original Keyword Poem Project (see post below) and found, much to my surprise, that I enjoyed these poems very much. And so, I decided to relaunch this project.

Luckily, my friend Barbara was very obliging. I also hope to work again with Martyn on this, but I know his time is very slim.

And so...to more keywords, to words in general, I eagerly submit.

keyword #3:"a city at night"

2009-07-28T23:16:00.000-07:00

steel beams sigh at
sun lost, a slow
abandonment to sole,
single strolling night-watch
men, remaining world alight or
soundly snug; a couple screams from
abstract, accusations lost from
windows that once cried joy,
splendor, now a dismal hum against
the dreams that drown them out.

Keyword #2: "despair" (as conjured in Martyn by Nabokov, in two parts)

2009-07-23T16:52:00.000-07:00

"despair; 2.1"

these facets sprawl
labyrinthine, corners cut
deep below the surface
of highrise expectations.

surfaces jagged, engraved with
freedom of choice:
layers abundant
measured in metric scaling
of toxicity.
facades chipped, fading
falling fast to wasteland arms
that grasp the only, the
singular stance of reprieve--
none of the above.

________________________

"despair; 2.2"

a hand to beseech amongst
debris of emaciated intent
lopped off at the wrist
digits flexing toward a final
repose, to clenched
hand-in-fist. why
does it always end like this?
amputated extremities with
chain still attached
key down your throat, lost
left less a limb but
an X on the wall
signaling all I ever wanted
a maligned statistic.

Keyword #1: resistance (in shades of etymology...and pretention, it seems)

2009-07-22T13:41:00.000-07:00

ramparts loom
above the dusk, quiet, assuming
the isolation sewn
from strands of a self
in retreat

carousing steep stages
unrepentant of this
object, if I'd
only relented
an age ago

if I'd
abjure, if only
recognize--obtest
vertigo's mournful hues--
panes of sky broken
beneath the rising weight
of regret.

Daily Keywords with Martyn Conterio and Danielle Booth: A Joint Poetry Venture

2009-07-19T17:25:00.000-07:00

My dear friend Martyn, who lives in London, finally shared a stanza from one of his poems with me. It happened to be about the first time we met face-to-face, as we'd previously known each other through a Myspace literature forum of awesomeness called The Fiction Files, and he flew to Venice to meet me and experience the Biennale. It was a lovely time; we got on great, wandered about, chased hordes of Japanese tourists in a bizarre attempt to make a short film via digital camera video about the resurrection of dead philosophers descending upon the sinking city,

Anyway.

Martyn's a writer; I'm a writer. He writes poetry; I write poetry, though not as often as I'd like to force upon myself. Martyn never lets me read anything, even though he's been published. I'd like to write much more frequently and keep in closer touch with my friend, and suddenly--in an IM conversation with him, he properly pissed and me on a 4-day run of avoiding sleep almost entirely--I thought of something.

A joint poetry writing project wherein we send one another daily keywords or concepts, picked using whichever method we choose, with or without specific stipulations as to context, usage, etc--a launching pad to drive the both of us into the daily practice of poetry composition. I am sure the results will produce a lot of useless swill, but the focus, the repetition, and the discipline will help the both of us to hone our poetic senses and that both of us are producing will drive each of us to fulfill the commitment.

I've been assigned my first keyword, no stipulations: resistance

Results to follow.

Pointless inner self-criticism leads to completely anti-climactic not-so-much-a-resolution

2009-05-27T11:54:00.000-07:00

It's not so difficult a task--to scour a stack of CDs for pre-licensed mini-edits or stingers in order to buffer/add flair to the intro & outro of my project's very first audio "cast." The generosity of the teams and individuals with which I work is astounding, and when I asked for some music to cushion Gary Barth's excellent rendition of the script I wrote, tongue-firmly-in-cheek, I was greeted this morning by 23 CD cases, many of which are double-disc editions of songs, edits, stingers, and loops from varying musical genres: Urban Drama, Funky Soul, Garage/Pop/Punk/Rock, etc.

Yet I struggle, every genre with potential casting an entirely different, apperceptive ear towards the tone and thus the trend of the project itself. Currently I lean toward a 60s groove funk reminiscent of B-line spy flicks a la What's Up, Tiger Lily?, but there are also some great guitar riffs and elegant beats that conjure contrasting aural experiences.

And here I am, expressing an abhorrent, perfunctory display of anxiety over what should be and truly IS a fun and exciting process leading to an eventual decision. Now I've made that decision, and I'm entirely happy with my choices, and perhaps it was the breath of a deadline breathing down my neck and the perfectionist in me unwilling to sacrifice the finer details for the rush of corporate exactitude, along with emails from "risk assessment" because the ergonomic situation at my desk (of which there is none) has been leading to increasing quantities of pain in my shoulder that forced me to leave work early on Friday...and all the further technical corporate jargon that befuddles me when all I want is an ergonomic keyboard and a sliding, under-the-desk stand for it (which I'm forbidden to purchase and bring in myself).

Maybe...maybe I'm just smothering in layers of stress I've yet to resolve individually...but that could pertain to most things in my life. I suppose.

"Things My Typewriter Taught Me"

2009-05-18T21:35:00.000-07:00

Sitting at my typewriter, the force of my fingers banging away the loud click-click-clack of the keys, thoughts form in tiers of heavy, rounded letterforms, errors are common and, in this age, even quaint. Backspace on a 1929 Remington portable lets me type over the wrong letter until I bleed an illegible mess on the page. There is no automatic return, so the page twists up and to the left every time I start a new line. No exclamation point, the apostrophe hidden in the powerful effort of shift8, and the ribbon turned upside down in response to my sudden demands after years of nonuse.

The tips of my fingers prance discordantly, striking ‘9’ instead of ‘o’, ‘4’ and not ‘r’ or ‘e’ or ‘t’, and so accustomed am I to the automatic response of “delete, correct, continue” that I plow through half a page before I realize the gibberish I’ve been concocting. I lean over the carriage to glimpse the wreckage and ponder its results.

Where have all the errors gone?

We live in a world without mistakes, shiny and new with plastic coating and car wax to hide the dull unsheen of time. The soft whisper of my fingers on computer keys, squared and silent, lets me drift back over a misplaced letter or spelling error. We airbrush pimples, fat, redeye and other unwelcomes from our photographs, painting time with perfection so our lies become transparent.

But the world is not without mistakes, so where then do we err?

We’ve come to treat every interaction of our lives with the same disposable correction as the devices that communicate, transport, wash, fluff, dry, dice, slice, and shred. Working on a typewriter you’re forced with the unretractable forward thrust of intention and consequence. White Out may rescue a letter or two, but forget a single word and the entire page must be rewritten. Surely, this is seen as a good thing—a time-saver, salving our patience with convenience and editability.

I’m afraid there’s more to it than that.

Typewriters were built in an age like most other things were built—to last. If it breaks, you fix a knob or replace a spring and it’s good as new. If the computer malfunctions inside your new flatscreen TV, you have to buy a new one. Not a new part for the internal computer, but an entirely new television. What happened to the time when you fixed things that were broken? Where we had an inkling of consequence because errors were so common, such an inevitability due to a misplaced pinky finger striking ‘9’ instead of ‘o’.

If it can’t be fixed today, we throw it out. So where do we err? Everywhere else. Without the mundane to trip up and force us toward caution, we only have the rest of the world to destroy with our distorted view of simplicity and self-entitled amenities. Filmmakers and photographers don’t have to work to get the perfect shot because of digital’s infinite opportunity. Anyone with two fingers and brain enough to use the ‘delete’ key can write a novel these days.

We’ve lost the rite of passage, the threshold guardian that protects integrity because doing something and doing it right is supposed to be a pain in the ass. It’s supposed to be time-consuming and dangerous, with a consequence every time you hit that ‘9’. It may be more democratic with an access free-for-all (and how else would an illiterate cokehead make it to the White House?), but it’s just not as good.

In fact, it downright sucks.

So I’ll stick to my typewriters, bungling along with an appreciation for manual dexterity, until arthritis cripples me or I succumb to the cancer of convenience.

"some kind of love story"

2009-05-18T21:34:00.002-07:00

my favorite verb and I are sitting together
on a bench in the park
(this doesn't mean, however,
that my favorite verb is 'to sit')
we speak, hold hands,
it runs its infinitives through my hair
and I sigh, knowing all too well
this can't last
familiar as I am with
action's whimsical nature -- one second
in the present and, before you know it,
we're speaking in past participles
when all I ever wanted from it was the
future perfect.
but I'll enjoy the moment.
my verb and I in this discreet act of
exhibitionist wordplay, then its
final consonant drips off my tongue
and leaves me a mere pronoun,
singular and
searching for my adjectives.

"problem solving"

2009-05-18T21:34:00.001-07:00

like figuring out which way to turn
on a business trip you've traveled ten times before,
but you still can't get there without a map or, better,
the tracking device on your dashboard driving you
into the river that says it's a bridge but
you drive into the river anyway because, damn it,
it says "continue forward" and
"turn left" gurgling through the water
gushing in the vents of your climate control
to cause a moonroof eclipse.

you might have survived if
you'd rolled down your window, if
you'd remembered there was actually air out there
and that a plummeting ravine
was not a bridge after all.

"I’m Not a Knight Who Says..."

2009-05-18T21:33:00.000-07:00

I don't get topiaries
all those circular and rec-
TANGular masses, like steps
or stairs or shaved pregnant bushes.
How are these awkward masses
ever attractive?

Once, I suppose, at a French Chateau,
there were some shrubs shorn
like mossy bolts of lightning,
but with curves formed to fit the earth --
those, I suppose -- those were OK.

But my neighbor and his giant
graying green ball and the nice folks
across the street with their admittedly
greener green ball and smaller green
balls gaining on it --
what the hell are they thinking?

And what of the shrubs themselves?
Do they beam with pride, heralding the
grinless grimace of a reindeer or tyrant-
osaurus? Or do they shudder at
their fate, somewhere deep inside
dying to shrivel up, to lose a limb,
to become the first amorphic, leprotic rebel
on the block to scream, "I'M UGLY AS HELL.
AND I'M NOT GONNA TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"
but in tones so subtle as to be raked up,
lost in the depths of a mower bag
(for lawns are as pointless as topiaries),
only to be heard
by the blind.

"Indiscovery"

2009-05-18T21:31:00.000-07:00

Skin slits like continental drifts
from one limb to another
as she falls, once, and next
wakes in a night terror
of her dark stained
oxide ocean.

I roll her arm with gauze,
thick like a mummy
all the way to her wrist.
(She's been giving her organs away early,
so the scavengers can't have at her
at the end -- I got a kidney and
part of a lung. She's saving her heart
for last. Who'll that go to?)

I cover the new land of
Minnilako with ointment and
layers of padding like a football player.
I hope the sediment will settle
this time.
I hope the oceans will stay
off the shore.
I hope she'll keep that heart
a while longer.
I keep her kidney and half lung next to mine
so they won't go bad
just in case, you know,
she ever wants them back.

something about time

2009-05-18T21:29:00.000-07:00

17 minutes to go
it took 15 to spell my name. funny,
i always thought i had one of
the simple ones, but it ends up
always mangled, sometimes
diane, sometimes shang, someone
once wrote esmerelda, i think,
and i think i laughed too
or i would have laughed had someone once
written esmerelda instead of danielle.
pessoa possesses me today it seems.
small speaker crossed out mutes handlebarred
jarring images of rigs and young men
cabled to their deaths i can't hear don't watch.
14 minutes left.
there's a train passing someplace and
an ambulance passing and i
know it's an ambulance and not a firetruck
because of one fine demonstration one day by
one fine young boy who said
"fire trucks go WHEERRWHEEERWHEER and
ambulances go WHAAARWHAAARWHAAAR" a
very subtle difference you see, says the train.
ah yes, whaars the ambulance in reply, how you
recognize my finer attributes. 12 minutes.
then 10. 2 passed in silence. birds chirping. fingers
in respite and a sip of water to calm the waiting
in me. 9 minutes, roars the airplane from 12,000 feet,
traytables still in upright and locked positions.
i have to go i have to wash the octopus dander i have cats
i have to clean my totem my friend and i only have 7
minutes to do it in oh shit. but i really only need 3.

something about angst

2009-05-18T21:27:00.000-07:00

watching the bare half hours of the
in between shows
waiting like i'm heading to the gallows or
something else at least
sort of monumental
but i'm really not really
just counting down hours counting
down time minutes between
half hours of shows
until I can leave to go
not to be hanged not to be
nailed to anything, no
just to claim my pain like
a dirty gringo washed up at the embassy
"i lost my passport but you can see you can hear,
i am an American see!"
do i even have these invisible credentials?
have i forged proof enough?
fingerpainted skulls, gee...
complaints and talking points, i see you watch
the news, young lady.
55 minutes. meaning, 25 minutes left
in this show then the topheavy 30
of the next and then
i can go and then i can
drag on the road miles and miles
and then i can say, look here, mr. degrees-on-wall,
I AM NOW IN CONTROL OF THIS SITUATION,
Right?

A Plea for Pleasantries

2009-05-11T11:10:00.000-07:00

Most likely in line with those that know me well and perhaps in contrast to those that don't, I'm an exceedingly friendly, polite, and unassuming individual, especially to strangers. I truly believe that, by default, every human being should be treated with kindness and respect, and I almost always smile and/or say hello when passing someone on the street, in the supermarket, waiting in lines, be they a businessman or an elder couple or a parking attendant.

This behavior is met with varied reactions, from being ignored to disdainful glares and sometimes the occasional nod of recognition. Once in a great while, even, the other person will say "hello" in return.

Unfortunately, over the years I've had to curtail this instinct of mine due to some unwanted--and sometimes dangerous--attention. Because most of the rest of the world ignores the average everyman on the street, my acknowledgment is sometimes misread as romantic or sexual interest, and I've had to evade numerous advances, pick-ups, even stalking.

This pisses me off.

I don't like ignoring someone who says hello to me, but I like even less my greeting being returned by an invite to **** someone's **** in their **** ***. Ignore this request and I'm called a **** or a **** *** ******. I've had to stop frequenting particular stores or parking garages because my friendliness is returned by incessant and frightening doggedness--it's amazing how much information someone can attain by knowing your license plate number or full name, and the possibility that you can be followed home is more than a mere concern.

So please, people--just be nice. Be nice so everyone can be nice without fear of reprisal. I'm tired of making up stories about my Champion UFC boyfriend and Sheriff of a father. I'm tired of assuming the posture of unaffected bitch so I can maintain a sense of safety when buying a gallon of milk or parking downtown. Everyone DOES deserve respect; a nod and a smile can go a long way in this world.

2009-01-19T21:38:00.000-08:00

how to discern my own thoughts and feelings from those pouring in from outside. where am I in all of this? what has my ME become? I don't even know what the fuck "me" or "self" mean. identity, yeah--ok. sense of self, the ubiquitous "I" click-clacking around, all thought, prelude to action, absent from REaction, buried in blurred hazes my "I" calls "pain," pain those outside seem to think I've allowed to usurp my me, but I know I KNOW MY ME KNOWS INSIDE I FEEL this pain this interference this l'intrus isn't some fantastical concoction.

it makes me angry, in a way, in a lot of ways, in every way ANGRY can influence my sentiment towards those I love most dearly--ANGRY I AM ANGRY AT THEM. I thought--I expected it from my mom--but it makes me sad now and ANGRY now to admit I'm angry at my dad for his honesty. not angry that he was honest, but angry that--in his own way--he's dismissed and belittled what I'm going through in his own way, which is full of common sense and comes from a place that is nothing but love and care for me, but that I have allowed "this" to take too great a place in my life, that if I just work hard and not think about it anymore it'll just vanish--he really believes that. and I tried to tell him, but dad--it didn't come from stress, it didn't happen because I was upset or depressed--I've been that way for YEARS--it started because of a physical illness, a virus, an invasion, and progressed slowly until it occupied all my me all the time, and that's different. IT'S DIFFERENT, DAMMIT. and I guess I'm saddest that, although he has been so supportive and so THERE for me, still he doesn't understand.

I guess it feels like everything else that's ever been "wrong" with me--my weight, my loserness, my emotional outbursts, my depression, inappropriate remarks, now THIS...THIS THISNESS out of nowhere--it's my fault. MY FAULT. if I just forget about it it'll forget about me; that's what he believes. and this makes me SO ANGRY and SO SAD to be angry at him.

I guess...it just shows again again and again how impossible it is to explain to anyone who hasn't experienced complete and unrelenting chronic pain what it's like, where it comes from. I thought that visit with my doctors might have delivered some revelation. I don't know--I don't know what to do about it. I feel like I can do nothing about it. he thinks I need to grow up--I can't rely on people to take care of me anymore; I'm a grown woman and I have to deal with things on my own. I understand this reasoning, but I'm not asking for my family to hold my hand and do my work and carry me through life--I'm asking for an attempt to GRASP what I'm dealing with, and neither of my parents seem to want to do that. they have their own conclusions, their own conceptions, and it seems there's nothing I can NOR SHOULD do about it.

BUT I DON'T WANT TO DO NOTHING ABOUT IT. why do I want SO MUCH for them to just try to understand? maybe Steve will talk to my dad for me for a little bit. maybe he can explain this isn't just some wacked mental fixation but a very real physical problem that results in my being in pain at every minute of every day and CAN YOU EVEN GRASP THAT, DAD? CAN YOU? I know you don't want to--I know you don't want to even imagine that your daughter is living like this, but SHE IS. I AM. please, please please please, dad, please...just try, for me. just try.

2009-01-17T22:08:00.000-08:00

My dad said I let this take up too much a part of my life. That if I just refocus my attention will go elsewhere and the pain will disappear. I understand where he's coming from, but I still don't think he understands what dealing with this is like. Today, pure debilitation. Surrounding, enclosing, suffocating pain. No concentration, type and retype, fight the keys, fight the couch, fight the remote, fight the day. All these talks suddenly make me feel like maybe I AM making too big a deal out of this--but then I wonder how one can make such a big deal out of being in pain all day every day every moment no stop unrelenting . . . I don't know of an "overreaction" to living like this. If I had to -- I don't even remember.

How could I hope to explain it to anyone if those supposedly closest to me can't even grasp what I'm feeling? Maybe that's my problem--trying to make people understand. Maybe I need to just suck it in, internalize, keep it to myself. I don't know. I don't know what any "supposed to"s are supposed to be in this situation.

So I'll do my best to just complain to myself, here, alone, in the anonymous binary abyss.

2009-01-15T16:50:00.000-08:00

So shocked. So hurt.
I was told that my mother doesn't believe my pain is as bad as I make it out to be. As in, she thinks I'm exaggerating, blowing it out of proportion . . . making it up?
While I am shocked, I'm not terribly surprised It explains some behavior.
But it's my mother.
My fucking MOTHER.
My own mom doesn't believe me.
And she's seen me at my worst, my lowest points, my deepest pain.

I guess this is why she's refused to help me in the past.
Why she redirects all her "care" towards me into other areas that are full of emotional violence and disregard for my well-being. I guess this is one of the reasons I've been avoiding her.
And it hurts to avoid her
I have no idea . . . I've been agonizing over what I might have done in the past, how I could have led her to this conclusion. Out of all the years I've been dealing with this--all the disbelief, the utter dismissal by doctors and coworkers and bosses and friends--to discover, to KNOW my own mom doesn't really believe me . . .

I'm gutted. Something irreparable has been severed. That tenuous tissue, invisible to the gaze of science and all its apparatuses, that binds whatever connection there may be between heart and soul.

2009-01-13T00:55:00.000-08:00

despite bottled relief, relief has been slow in coming. I won't name the quantity I've taken in an attempt to curb the pain I've had today, but it's been a lot. A LOT. And still . . . STILL . . . the stalker that never sleeps.

And I need to get to sleep. I have to get up in 7 hours, which would normally in someone's normal world wouldn't be such a big deal, but for me--either no sleep or MUCH sleep--who knows what it'll be tonight. I'm not tired. I spent too much time with Madame Bovary, over 5 hours, and then suddenly it was almost midnight and I hadn't packed and I have to leave early in the morning and wake up earlier than that to call my electrician and get ready for my trip to Rutherford. AND shit god damn I need to get directions. I wish Minnie would let me drive my car so I could just use my GPS. And so I could smoke. And listen to my music. And use less gas. But oh well. WE COULD, but she just...she thinks her wheelchair is only properly suited for her vehicle. And I forgot to cancel our dinner reservations. Maybe we'll keep them. Whatever.

BUT THIS . . . PAIN . . . OF MINE . . . ceaseless, relentless, overwhelming, constant, closer than my shadow, suffocating every thought in my head, pulling my strings to and fro, this master puppeteer coils its strings noose-like to drag me uselessly behind through this ghost I call life, mammoth phantom-me, the ultimate undesirable, as its been made so plain in so many ways from so many sources.

NULL AND VOID.

The validity of my existence expired years ago.
Like a fucking pizza-place coupon you find stuffed in the creases of your couch with loose change.
What's the culmination of my legacy to be?
Lists of complaints: read on . . .

2009-01-12T11:45:00.000-08:00

Waiting for the relief that comes in a handful of small circular pink pills. New year. New deductibles. Scrips ate more than half my last paycheck. Dreams like labyrinths. Pain like my shadow, always by my side, most faithful of companions; a stalker, relentless. Controls my every move, mood, action, desire. O, puppeteer, your strings coil noose-like and drag me uselessly behind you. But you're all I have left. Where, what would I be without you?

2009-01-11T22:14:00.000-08:00

All my directions are cut off.
I'm stuck where I am.
No place, there's no where to go. No escape.
No fast getaway.
Tomorrow feels so far away.
My head feels like an anvil, dragging me by the ears.
All the while, upside down.
Sinking.

2009-01-11T21:16:00.000-08:00

Inner-pulsing, like a swelling from the core of my brain, pressing out, out, out against my skull, eyes, ears, temples, like that first one when I was so desperately ill in the ER, my mom begging rushing interns for a damp cloth, for anything to put on my forehead, waiting 9 hours for a doctor, and morphine...so useless.

But not as strong, now. Obviously, or I'd crawl to an ER, feel my way across the cold, course cracks of pavement, eyes useless, directionless, waiting, hoping, praying...relief...relief...

Now, the junior version. Baby-monster. Spawn of spawn. Decidedly uncomfortable, decidedly present, decidedly...decided.

in no particular order

2009-01-11T15:58:00.000-08:00

I think I must agree with Monsieur Daudet sr. and acquiesce to the dominant force of what I am feeling, acknowledge and agree that there is no language for pain, just maybe some reminisces, Brent Arnold and the Spheres bending a saw in my direction, flurries of adjectives criss-crossing my eyelids closed on the day from my newest nausea or--or god damn some MUSIC IS NOT MEANT FOR PAIN--don't whisper sweet nothing bullshits at me from afar, Mr. Nowhere Nothing Man, some star ensconced in earthly mansions--THAT DOESN'T MAKE YOU LUCIFER.

and yet still that strange power that illusion of WHAT COUNTS I read Alphonse he cannot feel his legs he is wracked with 40 years of disease but he is at Victor Hugo's funeral and he writes, "At Victor Hugo's funeral..." like I would say "At the grocery store..." and it's all mixed up in me, in this topsy-turvy wildly worshipping world. But I would rather go to Victor Hugo's funeral than a Hollywood soiree. Even though that means I'd be dead already.

Just straws to grasp it, since there's so little else...
I don't have a bottle to grasp for today.
...tomorrow...
I will.

That bottle those bottles they're the only solace I have. They take it away for just for such a moment and suddenly I can smile I can do LIFE I can hug someone and let go. Today I am couch-confined, swooning across the confines employed by the circumference of my skull. I find Continental good for this think-spell. I still think the world would have been a more interesting place had Ian Curtis not killed himself, a legacy of more JD rather than birthing NO. But I can't say I blame him. I can't say I don't know what that helplessness feels like. As Jeff Tweedy yells at me, "Why would you want to live in this world?" Good fucking question.

So much in busywork approaching me.

I will lend an aspect of inspiration from Daudet; fragment myself in notes.

Pain has no narrative structure.
No throughline.
No payoff, no underlying meaning.
It just persists.
The only tension, I guess--the only question that remains to be seen: who will last the longer?

1001 for valium

2008-10-25T12:55:00.001-07:00

Without the pain of points
bulleted in shrapnel shards, my
life, liquefied intacto sum, seeps
listless its stresses through cracks in
my curvature, unlucky stone-
faced facade.

An unfortunate Must-Parade squawk
ing in shambles, checks un-checking all
on their own, despite which-
ever scrutiny you apply, lacquered layers
indiscreetly opaque.

Again,
again again again
wishful thinking.

just to clarify

2008-10-19T12:09:00.000-07:00

I fucking hate balloons.

4-1

2008-10-18T13:34:00.001-07:00

And of course the game last night was...well, fuck, thing is it wasn't even a bad game. The Sharks played maybe the best I've seen them play this year, and Anaheim was mediocre, and they still won 4-0! Oh well--SJ won the first 4 of the season and it had to end sometime. Anaheim just pisses me off. Hopefully they trounce Philly tonight.

Saw Lynn briefly today which is always a wonder, and to other people would probably be like finding a rare species of self-replicating mammalian double-headed monkey-owls (body of a monkey, head of an owl, duh) since we have this ability to just KNOW. I love her so much. I hate that for me to have someone to cling to that knows what I'm going through means she has to suffer so much so constantly, but having her and knowing her has saved my life.

Anyway,
Hockey thus far has been my biggest respite, aside from the few friends who're still around, or new and willing to tolerate my meness. There were so many fights in last night's game it was like a boxing match on ice; good ol' Jody Shelley. Stacks of film noir waiting for me. Time, enemy mine.

Uncanning myself

2008-10-18T01:27:00.000-07:00

Whatever the fuck that means--maybe I'll find out.

I get a lot of sympathy, I suppose, some pity I'm sure, but just letting me be in all my goods and bads for better or worse sobbing in pain in self-styled tragedy and loathing in disappointment and frustration and complete despair--near to never. How can I expect that from anyone who hasn't felt each moment of every day like a branding iron searing the seconds just before they pass, marking and damaging them before they can trod through my skull in my heart and whatever dust I have that amounts to a soul--how?

Do two en-dashes make an em-dash?

Alphonse Daudet wrote, In the Land of Pain, a number of notes, fragments of thought, observations of his own physical state and its effect on those around him, to which I relate wholly, and other turns of phrase so beautiful as to take my breath away:

'What are you doing at the moment?'

'I am in pain.'

. . .

I cannot bear it

. . .

Ephemerality of my impressions: smoke against a wall.

Effect of intense emotions: like going down two steps at a time. You feel as if you're drawing on the very source of life itself, as if you're attacking your capital, low as it already is.

. . .

A sort of hollowing-out that doesn't go away.

. . .

I'm a poor old wounded Don Quixote, sitting on his arse in his armour at the foot of a tree.

. . .

Are words actually any use to describe what pain (or passion, for that matter) really feels like? Words only come when everything is over, when things have calmed down. They refer only to memory, and are either powerless or untruthful.

No general theory about pain. Each patient discovers his own, and the nature of pain varies, like a singer's voice, according to the acoustics of the hall.

. . .

What we want diminishes to fill the smaller space available. Today, I don't even want to get better -- just to keep on at the same level.

. . .

The garden awakening. The blackbird: his song making a pattern on the pale window -- a pattern drawn, warbled with the tip of his beak.

. . .

Pain is always new to the sufferer, but loses its originality for those around him. Everyone will get used to it except me. [emphasis mine]

Aside from the simple elegance of his writing that moves all that loves words in me, reading this is like ripping out my own heart to have for lunch, being force-fed yet somehow still party to it, sharing a guilty secret, having my pants pulled down in front of an audience, choking on tears. And I think about that in vivid detail--cutting/ripping through skin, fat, muscle, breaking the breastplate with some inhuman claw-fist (Ichabod's gift to me?) to grasp, at last, the lopsided, still-pumping organ. Feel its beat die in my palm. Examine its curves, its orifices, while the rest of me shuts down without it.

I can't sleep.

I forgot to take my meds, the doses of which are so high that missing them in the morning will make me sick AND in major pain by the afternoon. Halfway through the second class, I felt like a victim in Scanners. I lied on the sofa in the kitchen of this old church, behind the stage, and just. . . fucking cried. It felt like my body saying, who the hell do you think you are trying to live a normal life? along with everything I think and feel recurrently around this idea/theme bombards me at once and it's just simply too much. And I felt like such an asshole for abandoning my post as "co-instructor" and for inevitably making some kind of scene, no matter how minimal.

And Jesse (that second class' main instructor and all-around wonderful creature) was so kind to try to do. . . anything? at all for me. Not much to be done. Who the fuck wants to deal with that kind of shit, man? How IMPOSSIBLE is that situation for people? My own MOTHER is done with it. She can't handle this me this most of me anymore. What IS there when someone is so in need of some kind of help and nothing absolutely nothing you can do will help?

That is how most people seem to feel. The thing is, I don't ned HELP from people -- not from my friends and my loved ones, except on rare occasion (as in rides to the emergency room &c.). 5 neurologists, 2 acupuncturists, 2 chiropractors, an allergist, a rheumatologist, 2 physical therapists, a spinal surgeon, a myriad of massage therapists, a few psychics/spiritualists, my physician, and 2 pain specialists HAVE NO IDEA WHAT TO DO WITH ME OR WHAT IS EVEN CAUSING MY PAIN. The thing I NEED from the people who love me is to just keep fucking loving me. Just be there. That's all.

I don't know why it hurts so much just to type that, even knowing most of the people its meant for will never read it. I am so weary. I am tired. I don't want this to be my life anymore. I want to lose the weight I've gained in the couple+ years of my in-valid-ity so I feel just a smidgen less undesirable than I already do, but chronic pain, nausea, vertigo, and fatigue don't inspire the gym-freak I used to be towards resurrection. I want to make it through a day without fantasizing about decapitating myself. I want to want to live.

I also just confessed my crush to my crush in an email, which is probably the dumbest and most inconsiderate way I could do it, but as I got out of bed and wandered into this realm of paper-pyramid chaos, driven as I was by despair at the discomfort that kept sleep from me, "fuck it, fuck it all" and "what's the point?" were the top sentiments regarding just about everything in my life at the moment.

See? See how old this gets? There she goes again. But it's not again. It's brand new to me, even if I've said and felt similar things before, because trauma doesn't get bored with itself, and that's what chronic pain IS--constant, daily trauma. This is why chronic pain sufferers have such high suicide rates. But I DO feel like I'm repeating myself and I feel whiny and complainy all the time and I see it getting old and tiresome and pointless for people around me, and I have absolutely no idea what to do about that.

Maybe that's what disturbs me most. Maybe that's why I got out of bed, more than the ice picks in my head and the early-stage withdrawal nausea--how can I maintain my grasp on what little semblance of life I have left?

How to buoy this leaden hull?

. . . with five minutes to spare . . .

2008-10-07T23:56:00.000-07:00

I've waded through the often-painful layers of creative spelling, grammar, and instructional interpretation to reach the end of my progress grading. . . finally!!

These grades have been hanging over my head the whole week; now I just have to prepare for midterms! This includes creating a midterm exam for my Film Genre class, properly setting up the midterm project for my storytelling classes, and gearing up to read a further series of excruciating papers.

At least Keith Olbermann is on to vent what remains of my evening's rage. Oooo, lookitme! My own wee space to bitch and moan to my heart's content! This is as close to heaven as I think I'll ever get.

if there is a God, I'd very much like to punch Him in the face

2008-10-07T19:07:00.000-07:00

It's not enough that I've had a chronic pain condition going on four years, is it?

Nah, of course not.

Is it enough that I lost my dream job on my birthday so I could overload myself with classes to teach, so much so that I had to give one up and have fallen so far behind in my grading that the administration has started calling me to find out why I'm being such a terrible instructor?

Or that my pain has been escalating beyond the new medications to land me in the ER twice in two weeks?

Or that a dear friend of mine died unexpectedly while I was doing nothing less petty than shopping the day before the start of one of the most stressful weeks of my life? That I can't even remember the last time I paid my bills? That I'm accruing parking tickets for the luxury of taking BART to work? That I've been getting a collective average of 3 on-and-off hours of sleep per night and have to remind myself that eating is part of staying alive? That I get paid for maybe a third of the work I actually do?

Is it funny that my aforementioned dream job has contacted me to work again now that I don't have enough hours in the day for a modicum of stillness or creativity?

I suppose I'm just being whiny, all because--after spending hours trying to complete my official progress grades, I finally decided to take a short break to read a few paragraphs of Heidegger in an attempt to further research for a doctoral dissertation due in a matter of months--a police officer strolled up my front path and asked, very cheerfully, how I was doing this evening.

• Busy, I say, just taking a break from work.

• Oh, then do mind talking about the collision?

• Collision? I ask, utterly befuddled.

• Yes, he insists. You hit that car across the street.

This is true. A car parked at the lip of my driveway, and so, upon backing out to go get my first meal of the day, dinner with a newly dear friend, I bumped into the back of my neighbor's minivan. And a "bump" is what it was. We looked--no damage. Good, no damage. I glanced up at her house, saw no activity, inspected her car again, and drove on to get dinner and stop by the pharmacy in hopes my doctor finally allowed a prescription to alleviate some of my pain.

So I'm staring at this policeman in the dark, and I explain, with genuine surprise, Oh! I just bumped into it while I was backing out, and I stopped and inspected it and there wasn't any damage.

• No damage? he mimics me with prototypical PD condescension.

• Yes, I repeat, I didn't see any damage and I just bumped into her car so I thought it was fine.

• It's not up to you to decide of there's damage or not. Failing to notify the owner of an accident is a hit-and-run and can send you to jail.

This mother fucker is talking about jail for a bumper-to-bumper BUMP, but I'm thinking, what the mother fuck why now why now what the fuck is GOING ON IN MY LIFE?!?

• You inspected that car and didn't see any damage? he repeats.

• Yes!

• Your whole tail light is broken and imbedded in her back tire.

• What?

• I need your license, registration, and proof of insurance.

I'm so honestly and earnestly shocked, I went inside and got my license and went to my car and got my paperwork and inspected my own car and still had no idea what he was talking about, then went out to the minivan. My insurance card expired 3 days ago, but the new one is inside somewhere under my piles of cluttered insanity. He points out the "damage" to me: bits of red plastic that are indeed broken around the base of the minivan's tire. I see no "imbedding." I see no body damage, but just for emphasis, he says, You don't call this damage?

• I didn't see where it was broken on my car, I say.

• I'd be happy to go over and point it out to you, he offers, and points his flashlight down to display a quarter-inch piece of red plastic that has settled between the hubcap and rim of the tire.

I want to start screaming in his face; YOU CALL THIS DAMAGE? but cops tend to react disagreeably with any signals of belligerence, so I ooohh and aahhh at the horrendous mess I've made of my neighbor's vehicle. He orders me inside to get the new insurance card, which I locate only after a very literal tearing apart of my living room.

By the time I come back outside, my neighbor has descended on the scene. She and I have spoken a number of times, mostly about the theft that occurs on our block. She says, yeah--there isn't any damage or anything, I'm just scared of pulling this piece of glass out of my tire. I want to mention that it's plastic, not glass, and that it's beside, not in, her tire, but again, I keep my mouth shut. I apologize profusely, and I am genuinely sorry; if I'd known there WAS any damage, I would have contacted her immediately instead of fleeing the scene like a dirty criminal streaking innards of small children behind me on the pavement.

The cop seems sufficiently pleased with his display of dominance, or he's just plain bored, because he proceeds to explain the banalities of a collision report. He returns my paperwork and leaves.

This is an absurdly long and overly-detailed rendition of this occurrence, but the pure and unrelenting ire it spurned in me at that moment I cannot begin to convey. Every step of every day for the past week alone has been an affront of kismet, a brutally blatant slap-in-the-face, and if I get one more I won't be able to recognize myself.

I was overwhelmed by a sense of betrayal, a profoundly neurotic overreaction to a mere, stressful slight that knocked me over the precipice of rational behavior into an abysmal emotional collapse with all the trimmings: uncontrollable tears, shortness of breath, the need to blurt my misfortune to anyone who would listen, and a compulsive urge to leap from a ten-story window.

Unfortunately, all the houses on my block are single-story craftsman bungalows, so I'm writing a fucking blog about it instead. How apt.