if not now, when?

Here is an analysis.
The 'Julian' figure here does not correspond exactly to the presence of Julian Watts as a character in my life; rather, he is representative of a protective male figure, one which, at that time, I had but did not know how to make use of. He is also representative of a 'listener' figure, someone with whom I would theoretically be able to speak to about all the fucked up shit that was happening, without necessary response- but who would understand, effortlessly, what I meant. What's compelling about the poem is how I begin the conversation with Julian only to lead him into the enigmatic semi-discussion of the subjects at hand, never allowing him to have a part in the conversation.
"do you know anything about africa?" (line 2): Claire was, at that time, just returned from living in South Africa with her boyfriend Robert. This line, literally translated, means: Do you have any idea what happened to her there? The irony here is that Julian has no idea, but that I do. And what was that?: She lived in Robert's house for several months with no job and slowly fell into the depths of a deep, dangerous alcoholism (a manifestation of the disease she was actually suffering from; NOT the disease itself) which nearly took her life several times. And will continue to do so.
"that inky glue on the back of my throat:" (line 4): Semen. This line is derived from an unpleasant and wholly unexpected moment during which ejaculate was, well, ejaculated into the back of my throat. This experience left me feeling used and degraded (I don't even like giving head in the first place. And this unanounced indulgence made me so fucking angry) Which leads us to:
"this isn't plate-breaking material / this is not a kiss on the mouth and a kick in the jaw / this is not the tiny bones in my feet snapping." (lines 5-7) These lines are a deliniation of the fact that, even though I felt angry about the boy having cum in my mouth with no warning, the anger (and shame and disgust and feeling like a whore) were not passionate; rather, they were not passionate responses, but dejected and quietly seething emotions fueled by an intense self-hatred (and guilt! though that doesn't figure into this analysis of the poem, but to an analysis of that time itself) rather than a firey hatred of others. These emotions also apply directly to how I felt when Claire moved back home (especially that first night when my parents left me with her & she got so drunk & made me take care of her & how much I cried! Do you remember me crying on the phone to Caroline? Do you remember me sobbing into your arms?) Which leads us to:
"do you know about vomit in the sink? / and babies crying to you from their unbroken, perfect wombs?" (lines 8-9) This is, actually, a direct question, not to Julian but to Mark. When Claire told us, through her slurring blackout, that she was pregnant, I prickled and wanted to die. To me that baby was crying out to be aborted! I felt like such an asshole, but I couldn't think of a worse thing to happen to anybody! First of all, for her to have a baby, that would have straight up killed her, ripped her in half, literally. Second of all, the baby would have died, one way or another, either in the womb or out. And thirdly, our family would have been cleft into so many more pieces than it was already. ALSO I would not have gone to college, no money. But Mark. Oh, Mark. You sat with her as she chainsmoked and drank and drank and drank. You rationalised with her, you spoke to her like she was a real person (which at that time, and after that, she was not to me). You tried to take care of her! But what these lines are really saying is: you will never understand who Claire is, and you never can, because you never knew what the fuck I went through with her, even though you went through some of it, too, because to you it was ok but to me it was unpardonable and inconceivable and totally incomprehensible. I will never be able to explain what it meant that she got so sick. And so the question: do you know about vomit in the sink? is rhetorical, because you will never know. It isn't just the vomit, the purging and the manipulation of own her body and of others', it is the fact that I bled myself dry and thought myself responsible for so many years.
"julian, it's late" (line 10) this line is like me saying, it's too late for me to be able to tell you what it what all meant because there are never enough words for that, not after so many years of it.

and why did i write this? this analysis of meaningless, bad poetry written so long ago? because i have been thinking so much about the scars I bear from it all, and have been wanting (waiting?) to explain it, and the truth is that i did those things to my own body for the sole reason that i was punishing myself (it was not because I have no natural predators, no. just, no.); punishing myself both for having caused her sickness (i truly thought it was my fault!- which is something one day i will have to explain, just like everything else, but won't right now) and for feeling such guilt (on some level i knew it couldn't have been my fault, but was sure those feelings were just plain selfish).

OHWHATEVERIJUSTMADEALLOFTHATUPHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Why were we so nervous?
All that time spent with butterflies, considering and reconsidering. Waiting. Configuring the correct combinations of words. Why?
If I could go back. If I could go back, and do it again, this is how I would do it. I would walk with my face set, my hair pulled up and pinned away from my skin, geometry textbook pressed to my chest. I would walk straight up to you and say it.

"If I could go back." How ridiculous. I do go back.

The best thing I ever did for myself: I was in 11th grade and I rode the bus late at night to him. After rehearsal, I called Max and asked him how to get to James' house. I took the 57 down Van Ness and changed at Union to the 1. That was the first time I'd ever taken that bus route; just a year later it became my afterschool activity. But this night I was lost and worried. I called my mother, "Ma, there is something I need to do."
I called him and said, come outside. I am outside.
He came down.
We stood in streetlamp glow and I kissed him. Said, goodbye.

"We talked about that a lot of after you did it." Pause.
"James and Simon and Jeremy, they all thought it was weird and creepy." Pause.
"I thought it was sweet." Break.




The more I drink, the more drunk I feel. Is this normal?
So okay, let's write some poetry together.
I made a whole life for us, it was written in three parts and the first part was called Now I Am a Part of You, pt. 1. But I won't package it up and send it to you, though I already burned it onto three blue blank discs, because I am embarrassed. That seems to be the theme of this post, and of my life: being embarrassed. I imagine what would be possible if I were to erase that word from my vocabulary, nullify it as possibility. I would take off my shirt. I would pinch my OWN NIPPLES. hahahahahaa

But listen to me, first. She miscarried. It's true! Lying dark at the bottom of the bowl, there is was. This is why I fill my lungs with smoke and this is why I take in as much cocaine as possible through each and every nostril. No, I lied. The reason is that I am so sad. Her miscarriage is just coincidence. Excuse.

But honestly none of this has to so with the image here. However, I did write you a poem when I was walking back from the gas station. It goes like this:
Mon coeur.
Mon propre coeur.
Je n'y arrive pas.

It's short & it sounds better in the original.

Well I was going to tell you about how I lay on my stomach for a while, trying to bring you to life, trying to bring myself to life with the contraction or uterine walls and release of oxytocin, your face the only image behind the lids of my eyes, but I was so fucking tired that I fell in and out of circular motion there, in and out of dreams. And when I, periodically, woke and began again, I was so confused. Where did he go. Whose hand is this? Should I stop and fall into the dream for real or should I continue this delusion, fuck. So anyway I'm unsatiated, and when I woke for real I was on my back and naked, and I thought you were here! And pulling myself up out of that hurt somewhere deep in my sternum. And I do that every morning, that pulling, that convincing: no, just a dream, again. No, no warm flesh against you, that sweat you're pooled in is simply your own. Oh, Eleanore, I'm sorry. I'm sorry you have to wake lonely and I'm sorry that it will be that way for a long time. I'm sorry it's so hard to fall into sleep these days. I'm sorry he runs through you like birds singing. I'm sorry there are so many possibilities and I'm sorry you finally gave up looking at flights online. Oh, Eleanore. I'm so sorry you did this to yourself.
So here is where the text connects to the imagery. Those shadows? Those belong to you and to him.
Eleanore, I know the tug. I know the lack. I know that your bones feel weightless and unhinged. I know that it's always, always, always nighttime for you, because daylight here belongs to the afterdark there; and vice-versa. Your mind finds him asleep; though honestly your sleeping mind is the only one which truly finds him. Last night you looked at books in the basement of his parents' library, didn't you? You undressed in the stacks and found him, poring over old pages. You came to him naked and perfect, your body lit by the golden shine of text, and he had you. He was everywhere, he was inside and he was outside and you came with a gulp and a cry out simultaneously, your hips spreadeagled and sweat mingling. You kissed his temples and held his face in your hands, oh Eleanore, I am sorry-sorry, but that was a dream. You still have the feeling of his beared on your fingertips; that beard no longer exists. I am sorry you are so sad. I am sorry that you sob your mind quiet at night. I am sorry that his absence is stronger than his presence, these days. I am sorry that he is far. You are sore, aren't you? You are sore. You ache all over, your mind a muscle that works too hard in the dark for him. And the hands of others, they burn on you. They are jokes that serve to remind of you what is missing.

I am sorry that the future can't exist. Plans are impossible, though you can't help but force the images of it into being.
You'll be happily exhausted next to him. One day. I can promise you nothing, but I will promise you this anyway: distances are easily shortened. The only thing you want is to touch him, I know this, but listen to me Eleanore: what is not now is not discounted in time to come.
No, even better: there is no such thing as time. It is fabrication!
Oh I know it's not enough just to see him and listen to him, a projection of pixles on a screen. But take what you can get and close off all other thoughts, baby girl. Oh Eleanore. I am so, so sorry. Your cheek aches for his chest, I know, stop crying you beautiful girl.
I'll stop; otherwise this will never end.
The point is, it's a physical ache I'm enduring over here. It has to do with the longings in my brain, but it is manifested in a real, actual pain in my chest. Oh baby, stop being a shadow, start being mine. I don;t want to wait! But I will. I will.

i am
slowly
picking myself up

Here she is unpacking her suitcase.
Here she is getting off the train.
Here he sucks the hickey right off her neck.
Tears roll up his face into his eyes.
She lights cigarettes with the heel of her shoe.

I'M GOING TO BE THE FIRST NON-RUSSIAN COSMONAUT AND I'M NEVER GOING TO DIE.

here is a true fact:

it has recently come to my attention that no one reads this blog.

that's ok.
here are some secrects i've been meaning to share.

one. I'm going to be free. And I'm going to be brave. I'm going to live each day as if it were my last. Courageously. Fantastically. With grace. And in the dark of the night, and it does get dark, when I call a name, it will be your name.

two. I don't want to send you the mixes I made because you're going to hate them.

three. I am desperate.

four. If I were less lazy, I'd be happier, but instead I sit around.

five. This weekend I am going to do a lot of drugs in an attempt to forget you. And it will work. And I will fumble around in the dark with some body that I will wish was yours, but which will not be yours. And when I get home afterwards I will cry.

six. Seven is my lucky number and I miss you all the fucking time.

i just keep telling myself: these are powerful images
& these are the right words

Robert pulls the gun out of his pocket, watching my face. He's looking for clues, but I am made of marble.

Rebecca, he says, and I remember again that I do not like the sounds of our names next to one another.
I tell him: I wrote Haikus.
I tell him: I was long-winded.
He grins and says, the two go hand in hand, don't they?
He's illiterate.

He shoots the dog.

I've been telling him ever since I've known him that the dog is on its way out. Hind legs broken, blind and angry, that dog was dead before it was born. But in a way, we all were, right? If not death, what is the space before the womb?

He asks me again what we're going to name the baby, and I don't have the heart to tell him that the baby left me weeks ago. Christopher, I say. Yes, I lay on that sticky plastic table, with goop on my belly as the nurse said, Oh. Yes, I lay in bed and bled out onto the sheets. A thick, lifeless mess of genetics burrowed its red flesh into my underwear. Yes, I let out a sob. Yes, I wanted to tell him. Christopher, I say again.

He fires the gun again into its thick white body. He lights a cigarette.

I get up and go into the house.

(in collaboration with wag scala)

So what you're asking me is, Why did I go over there?
I wasn't thinking. Or rather, I was thinking that my heart hurt and that I wanted to get fucked up on as many drugs I could. And I knew his yay connection was pretty alright, and that he'd pay, as long as I brought the beer. I forgot that I would also be expected to bring the pussy.
His apartment was spotless.
He was very kind.
But then he picked me up and I wrapped my legs around his waist. There are some things no one should ever know.
I said, I'm sorry but I can't.
I said, I have done this before. I said, I got hurt.
He said, I didn't know that. I laughed, even though I knew he was serious.
He said, you can tell me to do the things he does.
This made me feel sick to my stomach. I said, There are some things that do not belong to you anymore.
He said, you can call out his name if you want.
I began to cry.
I tugged at the corners of my skirt. I took off my shoes. He watched me take my hair down. He said, you are usually so full of joy. The smile on my face said, I am so sad.
He asked to see my boobs and I thought, it's the least I can do.
His guy never called him back. I suspect that was never on the books in the first place. Another deal I got burned on.
We lay down and I turned away.
He said, I can't even touch you now?
My body shook, my hands in fists between my breasts. I closed my eyes. The salt spilled over anyway.
He pulled me over to face him. His fingers were at the elastic of my underwear.
There are some things you should never know.

He said, I don't love her anymore.
My belly sunk, and I understood, not for the first time and not for the last, why he wanted me.
All this hurt and all he can do is give me her jewlery and ask me to tell him he's perfect again.

(in collaboration with wag scala)