last night, too much to drink

back to camel lights? marlboros make my lungs hurt. i need to quit smoking.

THERAPIST
...I think, I think that you're...searching for something, and ... whenever you don't find it, you get frustrated and turn to using. or abusing."

ME
... it's funny ...

THERAPIST
What's funny?

ME
the prefix "ab" on the word "using" is the only thing making the word negative. the prefix "ab" means, away from. Away from using? Ab-use. Use away from.

THERAPIST
What does "using" mean, then?

ME
When you ... damn, it really is one of those words. When you.. um, are acquiring? No. Taking... Using .. see? damn. When you ... are trying to achieve something, when you're ...okay. Let's say: When you need to get to a goal, and something aids you. No - see, that's not it either.
(pause)
I don't know.

THERAPIST
So when you "ab"-use something, you're taking that thing's function and using it away from the goal.

ME
But... what is the goal?

THERAPIST
It's something different for everyone, isn't it.

********static*********

my dreams last night: the color red, predominant. red tongues, red walls. red dress on the red-eyed woman. firestone jewelry, glittering white fire. fire leaping out of the totaled car, leaping licking flames against the black skin of night - the girl with blood sliding like a hand down her face, half in, half out of the metal wreck. her dress had fallen over her body and i could see her cunt, now just another gory slash in the company of so many others. like a child with a pair of scissors snipping idly at a piece of paper. you know, to make a snowflake.

a party, a veritable gala. huge chandelier. big old house with a lot of people crammed into its foyer. the wings lay empty, almost eerily so. what would it sound like if there had been no house built there. in the middle of the forest.

someone at the party jumps off a cliff and splashes soundlessly into the sea. then they all start doing it. from my view on the third floor: penguins, hustling themselves off of an ice floe. the house inches closer to the edge, picks itself up and shuffles towards them in ashamed lemming-fashion. i run out of the room and try to escape before it hurls itself to the pitch-dark sea. i am successful, though by only a stuttering toe-hold on the edge of the cliff as it plunges down to the waves behind me. it's one of those instances when i feel that logically, i should have plunged with it, but because it is a dream, i allow myself to suspend logic and continue on living. most of the time in dream, i am a camera behind my own head. i am a brilliant cinematographer in my dreams: i work all the angles.

**************

plaid shirt to work tonight? warmish weather. maybe rain tomorrow. wash away the dirty snow. ryan says: "one more blizzard before spring, i guarantee it." he "grew-up-around-here." i said we should put a wager on what date the huge snowdrift in front of the museum would melt by. i was joking. there was no bet. but now i'll be watching.

big band of green and pink coming westward, crawling in on the edges of the radar like moss, vanishing, and doing it all over again. i am watching for green grass. i am on the lookout for that first warm day. the sun and the birds. the surrender of winter, snow plunging heedlessly from roofs and impacting the ground in huge heavy splashes. the thaw's begun, i'm waiting for the capitulation.

sometimes i feel inordinately crazed, of a sudden, spasming with fury, frenzy, and desperation - like a dog that's been poked one too many times with a stick. then i settle down and realize it's nothing.

such big words from such a little mongrel.

such dramatics, such histrionics, from such a little man.

it's a wonder people like me. i am unable to see how.

cigarette.

the next big thing

... And You'll Be Shocked By The Surprise Twist Ending!

sometimes i feel like my eyes are sewn closed but i am unaware of it. everything that i see i project onto the back of my eyelids. what i see is what i make of what i hear around me. this morning, during daily calisthenics, this headline:

Blind Man, Having Acquired Heightened Senses, Becomes Bodybuilder

the sun, particularly distinct this morning and early afternoon, has already capitulated to the horizon's yawn. i get very tired around four or five.

one of the first things i'm noticing is the sharp crack & shiver of icicles melting, the grumble of snow, shifting. the temperature maps slowly acquiring the midrange colors: greens, yellows. the need for less layers.

once again, i have a telephone. i can be reached. i am no longer so incorporeal. and things start to warm up, as the sun is brighter & the windows less closed, the mess the winter made is becoming painfully visible. i know i'm jumping the gun a bit, but i can hear the ice breaking. stupid groundhog-seers.

another thought on the bus:

Robber Jone Is Actually Robert Jones - Or Was, Once

Headlines Nowadays Too Pun-chy, Says Times

tiny microphones in the trees

the nightmare is over: i wake up with heartburn. i open my mouth and a large red flower blooms out of it, demure, but shuddering with fire. in the nightmare, i shot him in the head. it looked like he died, but as soon as i turned my back, there he was again, bloody & lurching. the frame: awful stalker flick whose final "he's-not-really-dead!" twist never stops twisting. the dream, like a gas which expands to fill its container, ran away from the gory invader. the gun went off again and again, each report as loud as the next, sharp, sure sounds that ricocheted off the walls of sleep.

spring is going to be here one of these nights, just show up and sniff around. in an old backpack i've carried around for years, i found my old arrowhead necklace. thought i'd lost it on block island with that starfish & my copy of anne mccaffrey's "dragonsinger." then the summer, with blackflies and the hard gaze of the atlantic hidden under the beatific spangles of sun. i want to crush the summer as it dies in a mortar made just for it, crush the summer into ashy orange dust & rail it in the dead of winter. february's almost over. gray clouds flee toward the curve of the horizon, become swallowed by the vanishing point.

your life's going to change, yeah yeah. your phone's gonna ring or you're gonna need that pack of cigarettes. can't stay in the house forever. can't sit in the kitchen listening to old coltrane & drink wine until you're sloppy. can't replace the human need to communicate with talking to the cats. or maybe i'm just not trying hard enough. can do anything if i put my mind to it.

nothin' else to say.

i'll whistle you out.

things i have caught myself thinking about.

1) "it is very cold in this room."

2) "man, i don't really actually do anything."

3) "my job basically consists of taking something from one place and moving it to another. a porter of sorts."

4) "mmm. whiskey."

5) "eventually, all these people that i work with will be 'these people that i worked with once' to other people. how can i prevent them from becoming caricatures?"

6) "i made out with a girl and then gave her a copy of Henry & June. isn't that considered erotic fiction?"

7) "god, what's she gonna think when she sobers up?"

messiahs

so i'm worried about this barack obama fever. i like the guy. i don't like his rhetoric. he promises all this change, well, obliquely, promises us that we have within us the power to change, but he really only has about 100 real days in the oval office before the crushing wave of the legislative schedule catches up with him & his administration. how will he end a war in 100 days? how will he reduce carbon emissions and work toward a greener america while ending a war concurrently? how will he rejuvenate the economy while doing this?

i feel kind of like america just wants someone so badly that they're willing to settle, convince themselves. it's stockholm syndrome. the guy's still a politician. he's going to be making empty promises. but the stronger a promise is, the angrier the other will be when it's broken. if barack obama is elected the next president of the united states, he had better live up to those promises, or there could be some real backlash from the country he governs.

another thing: this celebrification of the election? it's gotten to the point where i don't want to use or even remotely like the word "obama." it's kind of like when you say a word over & over until it loses meaning. it's a gap-word to me now, having appeared in so many functions - as phonetic pun, as racial slur, as the one-word 'buddha-esque' messiah nominative ... i admit to enjoying the logo for his campaign - the O rising majestically over the flag (made to look like rows of corn) - but the font, i think, maybe that's what bothers me. anyhow. superficialities. let's hear about the democrats jabbing each other with tiny pricks of subtle meanness once more, can we please? let's follow that right up with a breaking news - what's going on with Britney? can we really compare the two? just for drama's sake. just for that hook. that catch.

last thing: i'm tired of puns in headlines. everything's gotta be a pun. the hook. that catch.

just a question -

is it dark in there
between your cells?
is it bleak & blind
and filled with the
hum of machinery? these are,
after all,
your gears, which churn
and bite and whistle
while they work -

as you whistle
while you work -

(snip)

'i like the cold,' he said. 'it reminds me that i'm out of the womb.'