bakelite, telephone.

that thin fucking line

between just a little whiskey

mostly here, in this room 

that line between here, the warmth, the womb

and there, the deep

so god damn thin

opalescent, it spasms and bends

squirms and writhes until

it’s impossible to find

It turns out, there is a God. They were sure of this, now, because on that day he had shown himself. Not in a ‘mysterious ways’ sort of shown himself. He showed up. In the sky. 

He killed. Nearly everyone on earth. The number left was exactly 225,000. He told them this. In their heads. People from every religion and no religion. Apparently, everyone got it wrong. 

Then he disappeared. They had expected more, but heard no more words. Come, kill, leave. That was it. Nobody knew what to do.

There was a God out there, and he apparently hated them. The wrath had come strong, early in the morning. Pure violence. A slaughter. Visceral and merciless. There was nothing to fight against. The face in the sky orchestrating the whole thing. No where to run. Death came like a wave in a ballpark. You could see it march down the street, bursting bodies and cutting short the screams of panic. 

The wave skipped a person here or there. They had stood and waited like the rest in terror, waiting to feel their bodies torn apart from the inside, but the crest would pass them over, and they fell asleep.

it’s a simple life

that i desire

not of whitman but almost

one of unprotected sex

and solar power

of being left alone

until I need a wake

wailing slobbering

on beat

in the brush

with the quail and the katydids

against the sunrise

and betrayal

sober, finally

through death 

throwing accurately

with a enviable percentage

hitting each box 

without even looking.

She’ll ask you to call her ‘Lissa’.

“My dad always called me ‘Lissa’…”

He never did. Nobody ever did. Her name is Melissa. MUH-lissa. Her dad was never really keen on that name either.

“…and it just kinda stuck.”

She made that up. But people believe her, and will call her ‘Lissa’ without thinking twice about it, because who would lie about such a stupid thing?

She would.

She started telling people to call her ‘Lissa’ right after her ‘dark’ period. Oh fuck, don’t ask about her ‘dark’ period. She loves to talk about it. She’ll happily show you the scars on her arms, while she lights a long cigarette for effect. 

She’ll say she never fit in during high school.

She fit in just fine. Not with the really popular children or the really unpopular children, but right in the middle. 

She played soccer (Junior Varsity) and had sleepovers. Her parents were perfectly average folks with a new home that looked only slightly different from the others in their development. 

“We opted for the brushed aluminum fixtures and the kitchen on the OTHER side.”

She was a small, skinny girl who was flat chested until the end of her senior year when she finally starting developing breasts - too late really to do anything fun with them. 

She was boring. She knew she was boring.

It all changed when a glorious gift was dropped at her feet - one the unpopular girls had committed suicide. All the adults freaked out. All students were forced into mandatory grief counseling sessions. But nobody really paid much attention to the girl, so nobody was actually grieving.

Students were put into ‘trust groups’ of 10 or 12 where they were prodded to talk about their feelings. Nobody did. Everybody felt guilty about not talking to the girl, because the teachers told them they should feel guilty about that.

One girl piped up, “Melissa, weren’t you guys friends?”

“Yes.” It had slipped out so easily, and she tried to suck the word back in as soon as it left her lips. She panicked, and started crying. 

They weren’t friends. She could only remember seeing the girl slink soundlessly through the halls a couple of times. But it didn’t matter now. 

Her trust group rushed to her side and tried to console their grieving classmate who had just lost her best friend. 

It felt wonderful.

She felt all of the hands on her shoulders and knees and really laid into it, sobbing the dead girl’s name over and over.

The principal was notified - they had successfully flushed out another ‘troubled student’. 

The principle notified her parents, who raced from their jobs to comfort their grief stricken baby, never thinking about if they’d ever seen or heard of this girl before, because who would lie about such a horrible thing?

She would.

The next week, school was back to normal for the most part. Parents of children who didn’t commit suicide were busy purchasing caps and gowns for their upcoming graduates. 

Melissa was reborn.

“How are you doing, sweetheart?” her teachers would ask. 

Classmates would slip notes of encouragement into the air vents in her locker.

Her parents started paying for therapy. For the next six months, most of her sentences started with, “My therapist said…”

Her therapist WOULD have said she was full of shit, had her dad’s company not offered a premium health insurance plan, which it did.

Everybody wanted to be her friend. They weren’t going to feel guilty if this one committed suicide. They’d be able to say they ‘reached out to her’. They’d be able to sleep at night knowing they had asked her to movies and linked arms with her as they walked to class.

She started wearing black. She had to go buy black clothing - she didn’t have any. 

“My therapist says it’s a part of of the process…”

He never said that. He didn’t give a shit. Her ‘dark’ period coincidentally ended the same time her therapy did.

“I had started cutting myself a lot. It was the only way I could feel something.”

She always over-emphasizes the word ‘feel’.

It’s mostly bullshit. One scar is truly from when she cut herself with a razor she wrestled out of a Lady Bic. Shaking, she had delicately sliced through her arm. Deep enough until she was satisfied it would leave a scar. It had hurt like hell, and she fainted at the sight of her own blood. 

The other scars are from a hedge. She fell off her bike into a fucking hedge when she was 9 or 10. 

But folks will believe. They’ll look at her with pouty eyes and nod in understanding.

Any chance she can bring them up, she will. She loves the pouty eyes. All her shirts have short sleeves. She always wears bracelets on that arm. Little shiny baubles to attract pouty eyes. She always hands back a customer’s change with that hand, and is slow to draw it back.

“But now I have my poetry.”

Well, of course she does.

I’m not a writer, but I know what she writes is shit. It’s full of words like ‘masks’ and ‘hearts’ and ‘darkness’. Oh, and ‘zombies’. Fuck, I almost forgot about the zombies.

She ‘loves’ them.

When she’s not churning out bullshit poetry she’s ‘working on her novel. 

“It’s this sort of post-apocalyptic love story, but nothing real girly. Like ‘Twilight’ with Zombies. It’s a saga.” 

She always over-emphasizes the word ‘saga’.

She loves to talk about her novel - her ‘writing’. 

People eat it up.

“Here’s a young girl who’s seen the worst of the world, and came out on top. She’s trying to be a WRITER.”

Pouty eyes switch to proud eyes.

Fuck, people are stupid.

Should I tell them

That the finials on the bed

They so proudly purchased

Look like peyote buttons

Or Kurt vonnegut’s assholes?

last night

i floated on my back

for three hours in the pool

drunk

watching the thunderstorm overhead

catching rain with my eyeballs

listening to ‘night swimming’ on repeat

it was one of my best moments.

In twenty years would an Allen Ginsburg of our generation have written a beautiful poem about a tweet? Or a post? These are the things of our lives like the typewriter and written word of our literary forefathers. Should they be eschewed because they are ‘easy’ or ‘of the masses’? Can you write the great american novel in 140 characters or less. or text me your heart. Post your call to arms on your wall. We are a lost literary generation, because our tools are trifling.

I tried to write the truest thing I could think of about myself. I tried not to think of the words or the phrasing. I didn’t want to ‘write a poem’, I wasn’t inserting any style, or purpose, or  anything that would distract from the message. I wanted to go to the barest of myt being to see what was actually down there.

I urge you to try this. Don’t ‘write something’ - just,  write something. As simply as possible, and the most free of bullshit you’ve ever been.

Don’t write for sympathy, don’t write for other writers, don’t write for cleverness. 

I’m really interested to see what I take out of this, and really curious to what you guys will do. 

Please tag your post “truth about me”