rats

I got stuck coming out, which is why I’m now here

in tears only twenty years later, with neighbors banging

walls and telling me to shut up; “some people work” after all.

Manic depression is like the rat that ran across the room

pulling a trigger and launching its claim to what’s left of

good judgment. So I’ll remain awake and take what’s left

of the night and put it to good use, (I dare say, staring at corners)

waiting for mice. Friends are busy sorting their squalor

and don’t want to hear about vermin. “They will just eat the flies

anyway” they say, though humor is stiff when you’re awake in bed

flinching at each sway of the blinds and the hardened sap. I sometimes

prefer dramatic wars over still evenings like this, listening to car

crashes on the 55 and plotting with peanut butter and traps.

At least you took the time

Happy Birthday to You,

reads the card in blue

beneath a framed Yosemite.

First time in 20 years

I felt the sting of just a card

with barbed names along a line.

At least you took the time, I thought,

To sign the card (it would’ve been blank)

as I hear the car drive off

and cry over candles and cake.

FINALLY, a new poem

You will forget those ties un-hemmed:

You will forget those ties
un-hemmed, even through torn photos
and shards of glass from the smash
against the wall. “Time heals all” but
there’s still a mess to mind and
who has time nowadays to cast a thread
to fix the damage that’s been done?

old haikus and a new book

I’m going to write a book… I don’t know specifics, but it’s going to be about life– my life specifically and my family tales of old. I figure, why not? It dawned on me that I have A LOT of old journal entries, saved conversations from AIM, tons of fucked up family dramas to exploit and sappy stuff that’s bound to amuse. If people don’t like it, screw them. I know it’ll be entertaining.

It’s all a matter of compiling it in an understandable way. I’m thinking it’ll be separated in themed sections, or it will go chronologically. Maybe I’ll just throw everything together for a big life collage. I want it to have photos, conversations, memoirs, poetry and stories. eew. It kind of sounds like a nasty soccer-mom scrapbook…

I need to think this through some more…

Anyhow, during the height of my hormonal teen years (wait–I’m still in them technically) custody battles and family warfare, I wrote these haikus. I think they are fucking brilliant for lost-and-found haikus. They sort of summarize my life experience from age 13-16.

DMV nightmare
waiting in bleak endless line
for “come back later”

Parents armed for war,
in child support battlefield-
with greasy lawyers…
Californian dreams!
Look! big time hollywood stars-
and overpriced rent.

Taco truck business
not producing needed cash.
Where are the tacos?

Permit sinks in sky
as mom says the dreaded “no…
“I can’t afford it”

Time, clicks by slowly
monotonous Mr. Guy
thinks his goatee’s cool

Mustang fantasies,
red and black within my dreams-
heat, in the back seat?

Miles- for a friend

It’s warm, like the
Charlie Brown Christmas song–
shakers and snowflakes
resembling the sensation of
you and long hours of
front seat conversations,
trying to hide dog breath
and pimples while you lean in
close and tell me
about spirals and atoms.
And there’s so much there
to play with—tones and words
and tangible snowflakes, that
it’s overwhelming: the spiral
and your voice. I want to
hold it, traveling through
tunnels and the quantum abyss
together. (But it gets complex
when you’re channeling Miles Davis.)

Cutting through static night

Cutting through static night, a plane flies

while you mumble breaths and

think of scenes with someone else.

In solitary sleep, bareness engulfs me

and you too are soft; unaided and striking;

on your own, and yet how ironic it all seems!

This fleshy arm spun around a tired, frumpy

clump of nothing really, save some

weathered down that seeps through little

holes you meddle with mechanically.

Who am I tonight? It’s your pick between

characters who beat and touch–

the ones who ignored you and the others

who never said much. I’ll just let you

do the talking and help you forget

those doors that quietly unhinge in tip-toed

stillness– the 5-o-clock get-always and

sad hours when we wake at once together again,

empty. You’re mine, and despite gentlemen

who gruffly grab and push us to

the side, tomorrow evening, alas,

it’s me with whom you’ll sigh, and say

“good night.”

He looked so different

He looked so different online; Jesus Christ…
with clichéd spiny hands and beady eyes
that detail of his drive and Northern Lights; 
“While here the chicks wear short-shorts and get high”—
Again there’s coffee and another lie—
our angled photos, fiercely hiding truth.
 I can’t get over chin and mouth that spies 
my own (a grotesque notion.) Quite uncouth 
for someone like me… Grinding grinds and tooth 
we sit and talk about our lives. I leave
and yet we both feel less. Here’s solemn proof:
still driving home to cats and empty sheets…  
And yet, despite the fickle web I spin
I know that I am lonely, just like him.

so small

Stuck in this cemented state of wishfulness,
longing to wake up one day to find that you've grown
to be six foot four, your feet dangling off my bed,
pushing me in deep sleep with your trumpet arms.
It really sucks when all that stands between us,
is 14" and our complexes...
You never seemed so small.

Strutting down the speckled pavement

Strutting down the speckled pavement,
clad in Minnie-Mouse-onesy
having happy two year-old first walks—
little wobbly paws and fuzz,
moving along in a
clear California winternoon,
down the block while dad
captures the moment for the books
and the tail drags along the cracks.
Mom right here close,
mushing high-pitched
words into the sky.

But, deep down it’s blue
and “agoo” and
about to whisk me up—
the long palms and then
dad’s gone.
Dee Dee with the thoughtful look of
something that’s just sorta
there beneath the wear and tear
of a Minnie Mouse onesy
with pointy, little ears
that are always listening.

Night stand

I’m beautiful.

It’s hard to remember, when you smell like cheap cologne,

and sting like the long drive home, listening to the sound of

unfulfillment swell about the car. Hard, while following

to some static room where SNL and infomercials sound

as he awkwardly fondles and frets and you wonder what

time it is… are we over yet? But it’s still there—behind forced

conversations and “what the fuck am I doing here?”;

limit the eye contact and remove your glasses for groping.

Polite moments, and then flash-forward to 3am laundry,

doused in rubbing alcohol and familiar thoughts.

An accidental catch-the-glance of an eye behind the glass

and it’s almost striking.