the carpet should be replaced

I’m sitting in a room
that echoes
like every other year once did
when I found myself
starting a new school
in a new place

The walls that once wore
my skin
are now clean
and pure
in that “new house” fashion
when eager strangers walk around
and imagine the new rooms
cluttered with their old junk

No one can see
the ghostly impression
I left on the place

The ink stains on the carpet
hold paintings and stories
of 10 months time

My life trapped
in fibers

But to the others,
they’re just stains
And the carpet should be replaced

mushrooms & goldfish

leaving it behind

If you’re unsure as to whether people
actually care about you,
pretend to be moving

Make up some
elaborate story
about how you have to
go to Serbia for a year
and you won’t come back
until your third cousin
gets out of rehab

Add in a long lost child
or a war story
to add to the emotion

At first, your “friends”
care a whole lot
Suspiciously too much

Then just wait in your house
eating cereal
for a month or two

If no one calls
or emails
If you become forgotten,
then maybe it’s time
to actually leave the country

Those who do not care
will never care

And you have nothing to lose
by leaving them behind

whimsical inventions

There’s a girl who lives alone in that apartment. I heard she breaks all the rules. I’ve never actually spoken to her, but from the way she walks and never looks at the ground, or the way she knows exactly where her apartment keys are in her bag, she seems like she always knows what she’s doing.

Sometimes her hair changes color. She doesn’t seem to notice. I think it might happen out of a force of nature, rather than her own deliberate planning. Sometimes she doesn’t wear any make-up. And sometimes she wears a lot of it, dark eyes and lips, and earrings too. Again, she doesn’t seem to notice. It all happens as if nothing ever happened.

She’s some kind of artist. I don’t know too much, but she often carries canvases or strange objects with her. She never uses the elevator. Only the stairs. Most people who live on this floor are all artists or drug addicts. I know a guy down the hall who calls himself a writer. And a divorced lady with a cat who knits. It always smells like weed around here, and there’s always someone yelling. Often in a language I don’t understand. It’s poetic chaos. But if there is anyone to bring peace to the chaos, it’s that girl.

I think she travels. Sometimes I won’t see her for weeks. But when she’s here, she’s always alone, always quiet, and always with a look on her face that seems tired and energized at the same time. I can’t explain it. I don’t think she sleeps much, and I don’t think she eats much either. She’s always in one gear, and that’s forward. Up the mountain and back down again, just for fun, never missing a single detail. She doesn’t have time for anything else, other than her own whimsical inventions.

house goddess

 

Sketchbook page… I’ll let you interpret what on earth (or in space) this could possibly mean. What I can’t write, I draw. What I can’t draw, I write. And what I can’t write or draw sits in the back of my mind and eats at me until it finds a way out.

Questions

Being sad is like
staring at a computer screen for so long
your eyes melt off

You want to access
your fountain of creativity
but become distracted by the
plastic jewels

I can’t remember when I was normal
I can’t remember when I didn’t ask questions

The teachers always told me it was a good thing
until I asked one too many
and got sent home for
“crossing the line”

Being sad is like
being a dumb smart kid
in school

You’re too lazy to pass any tests
and too smart to be like
everyone else

Eventually you get hurt
and you don’t want to ask
any more questions

Kali

Kali, the hindu goddess of change and destruction is my latest obsession and one of my favorite goddesses.

A few notes for those of you who are not familiar: Her story is that she cut off the heads of demons as a quick way to remove the ego. In a passionate rampage, she destroyed everything in sight. She is the great protector, one of my favorites. She wears the heads and limbs of the demons as a reminder.

You don’t mess with those kinds of goddesses.

Jasmine

You wait outside with a coffee that’s too hot and a cigarette you don’t really want to smoke. You don’t know why you’re waiting. You look at the time on your phone. You’ve been standing there for 7 minutes.

“Honey, honey, you smoke??” a regular customer says to you as she approaches the door. “How can you afford the things??” she asks again before you could really answer. She tells you about her son in Connecticut who spends $10 a carton on cigarettes, and how much money goes to waste. You tell her you’d quit. But you don’t really consider anything at this point. You sort of wish sunset was earlier, like in the winter. People don’t really recognize you at night.

You go back inside, reluctant to look up at the counter. A girl is behind the register this time. She waves at you while organizing DVDs. You wave back at her and half-smile, then swiftly make sharp angles past bookshelves of new in fiction.

The younger girl who reminds you of you when you were innocent is standing at customer service. She’s in a fluorescent spotlight. She is turning her head to talk to the boy you were waiting for. He skipped his smoke break to take her to lunch. She laughs at a joke you don’t hear. Her hair is long and soft. Her face is round and pure. She smiles at people. When did you stop smiling at people? Your stomach hurts. Your hands smell like Marlboros and hers probably smell like jasmine.

 

Mona Lisa’s unconscious luck

Two brush strokes on a canvas fighting for the glory:
Which will be the brush stroke
that gives the Mona Lisa
her crown?

Little did they know
that they’re both part
of the same painting

Without either,
the canvas
would be missing
a piece

And the Queen,
our legend Mona Lisa
would have died
a failed art project

1134

Hell is not the place you hear about
It can be your life if you let it

I think we might have been destined for hell

It starts at conception
When your parents were too wasted
to use a condom

It starts when you’re in school
and the 9-5 schedule is
hammered into your head

And slowly you get to know the demons
and your skin burns a little more each day
with knowing that this is all you’ve got
if you let it take over

We were probably destined for hell
As little fleshy experiments with
too many emotions
suppressed

We’re definitely destined for hell
As evolutionary mistakes
still believing in an all loving
and controlling, abusive, metaphysical father

We were all born with daddy issues
And we search through the dead souls,
and the stars and skies
in search of our own

scribblings

I don’t leave the house for three to four days at a time. When you’re in essentially one room for that long, the walls begin to scream at you, and every dust particle in the air seems to be repeating itself for all eternity. Repetition is torture. I learned this as a kid while I was in school every day, and again when I went to jail. I wasn’t there for long, but I could have memorized the mildew patterns and fingernail graffiti on the walls from staring for hours at a time.

My room is cluttered with stacks of books, random notes, and drawings, papers of any kind covering the lavender of every wall. I hate lavender. I want it to know that. It wasn’t my choice. This was the only room in the whole world that welcomed my temporary stay when I had nothing. I still have nothing. And I’ll probably end up going to a much smaller room. But it doesn’t matter. At least then I’ll be free.

The visual noise of this place makes me go a little crazy sometimes. It can’t be any other way. I seem to express myself on every inch of everything I touch. All that except a spiral bound notebook that has been begging for my attention for months. My excuse: writer’s block. A wiser part of myself could tell you I’m in a transitional state in my life. Either way, it’s painful. I don’t remember when it wasn’t.

crab therapist

i need therapy
and all the therapists are
crazier than me

“you seem uneasy”,
the mustard-seed brained man
said to me
i was looking around
at the crab decorations

my left hand raking
the sand in the mini
zen garden next to the kleenex
that just made me angry

great observation, doc
you try being surrounded by crabs
for an hour
in a room that reeks of
insanity

i can see him scribbling
his stupid notes
like he knows me
like he’s not crazy too

“tell me about your childhood”
well i don’t know
when was it over?