these past few months have been a blur
sort of when you walk somewhere or you drive somewhere
you remember leaving your house or the library
getting into your car
starting it
or on your bike or putting your shoes on
but you don’t remember the entire drive there
because the next thing you know is you’re stopping
your car is running
and when you see the reflection of yourself in the windshield
you feel just about that same way about what you’ve been doing with your life for the past few years
to bed when she was thirty-six, and Marlon Brando’s daughter
hung in the Tahitian bedroom
of her mother’s house,
while Stanley Adams shot himself in the head. Sometimes
you can look at the clouds or the trees
and they look nothing like clouds or trees or the sky or the ground.
The performance artist Kathy Change
set herself on fire while Bing Crosby’s sons shot themselves
out of the music industry forever.
I sometimes wonder about the inner lives of polar bears. The French
philosopher Gilles Deleuze jumped
from an apartment window into the world
and then out of it. Peg Entwistle, an actress with no lead
roles, leaped off the “H” in the hollywood sign
when everything looked black and white
and David O. Selznick was king, circa 1932. Ernest Hemingway
put a shotgun to his head in Ketchum, Idaho
while his granddaughter, a model and actress, climbed the family tree
and overdosed on phenobarbital. My brother opened
thirteen fentanyl patches and stuck them on his body
until it wasn’t his body anymore. I like
the way geese sound above the river. I like
the little soaps you find in hotel bathrooms because they’re beautiful.
Sarah Kane hanged herself, Harold Pinter
brought her roses when she was still alive,
and Louis Lingg, the German anarchist, lit a cap of dynamite
in his own mouth
though it took six hours for him
to die, 1887. Ludwig II of Bavaria drowned
and so did Hart Crane, John Berryman, and Virginia Woolf. If you are
travelling, you should always bring a book to read, especially
on a train. Andrew Martinez, the nude activist, died
in prison, naked, a bag
around his head, while in 1815 the Polish aristocrat and writer
Jan Potocki shot himself with a silver bullet.
Sara Teasdale swallowed a bottle of blues
after drawing a hot bath,
in which dozens of Roman senators opened their veins beneath the water.
Larry Walters became famous
for flying in a Sears patio chair and forty-five helium-filled
weather balloons. He reached an altitude of 16,000 feet
and then he landed. He was a man who flew.
He shot himself in the heart. In the morning I get out of bed, I brush
my teeth, I wash my face, I get dressed in the clothes I like best.
I want to be good to myself.
I distinctly recall water a beverage that I think was water that had balls in it that you could drink. I don’t remember what it was. It was the next coolest thing to ramune because you could drink it and ramune was just fancy opening and had a marble that you couldn’t choke on pop into it’s neck
drinking a bud light lime and video gaming when I should be studying algebra. I don’t even know. no wonder I’m so bad at math.
I’m better at hand eye coordination. I should eat something. I haven’t done that yet today. Beer on an empty stomach is manly though.
sometimes i wake up
not knowing how to do anything
my shoes remained untied as i wander the streets of the city
and i don’t remember how to talk to people
the right way to look at them
in the eyes like a good person does
or how to enjoy what is around me
like the sky or the sounds of automobiles
all i can think about is her
and then when i am not thinking about her
i am thinking about things that make me so anxious
and full of anxiety
that i lock myself in my room and type away
i haven’t written in months
and i’m starting to think i’m better without it
I fell asleep surrounded by 3 books I had been reading. I have this habit of if I can’t get into a book I shuffle to another or I read ahead scrolling through. I have a pile of books I’m returning tomorrow because I just couldn’t get into them.
They were stacked on top of one another opened. There were two dvd’s tucked under my torso. I woke up with the light on and a stick of gum digging into my side. I was awoken by a knock and her face poked in. Some days are more difficult to get through than others but each night I see her face it makes it a bit easier.
I went to the library today for the first time in months.
“it’s under circumstance”
he said
to these rules that are out there
because nothing is set
unless a circumstance permits
so if i layed down my hands
palms down
would you tell me you were god
would you confess to me your deepest sins
or would it be a gesture of you denying everything of truth
if i kneeled before you to wash your feet
would you reveal the wounds on your feet
would you show me your palms and reveal to me that you had in fact
risen from the dead
you said it was under circumstance
the day i rolled the stone over your cave
and the day i removed it and you were gone
i found a tree growing
in front of a rabbit hole going underground
did you rise after you perished
or were you pretending to be dead
only to run off to have a cup of tea
with our old friend the mad hatter
