Borderline

My nerves lie outside of my skin
They wince and gasp,
wrapped around tattoos and old scars.

Too sensitive to function
without medication and intensive care
perhaps, perhaps
perhaps, perhaps

A breeze can shake to the floor
this precious house of cards
that all of my life
I have built but never glued

A breathe, a giggle, a well-intentioned caress
and I'm a mess, I'm a mess
all over again

Foundation I have found
it lies at the bottom
at the heart
where I never thought to look
but of course,
being the foundation,
has always been

These nerves shoot pain, overestimate
the pressure of a kiss, of an embrace
love can crush, casual a casuality

I ain't crazy no more
I ain't crazy no more, darling
but there's still too much of me
I brim with mire and angst
I brim, I brim, I burst and ooze

I spill out of jeans
My heart an overbubbling pot
My arms extend too far,
wrenched out of sockets
fingers splayed,
reaching and grasping
at empty air
Eyes locked, their gaze
dry and desperate
on the closed door
three feet above the floor.

The muses have returned
they recline around my living room
snorting Adderall
notepaper in shreds and ink spilled
on my brand new carpet

Perhaps it's the price you pay for genius
he says as we drive through town
he's too drunk to be behind the wheel
and I'm too drunk to care

Reckless and free
I think - a price for genius, perhaps
it is to be paid
but a cost for medicoricity and namelessness
and me, pennies too few

Everyday when I write, when I can, when i am able
when whispers echo in my brain
and fingers, possessed, dance upon plastic keys
I think of Sylvia, of Papa, of all those
who died at their own hands
unable to take their own brillance
all those who died at their own hands
who also wore their nerves
on the outside of their skin

Celexa, you sound like a goddess
you tuck me in bed at night
in cat-clawed crimson sheets
you kiss my forehead
promise to keep crazy away
for one more day

You turn off the light
and left in the dark
I ponder borderlines
I chew on compromises
and sacrifices

To burn out
or to fade away

To burn out
or to fade away

3/7/2010

There are many places
that I do not fit

due to expanse of hips
or a lack
of social grace.

There are many invitations
that I turn down

because of fear
that I'll be Carrie'd
and drenched in pigs blood.

It's a lonely way to live
but perhaps also wise.

thought it was a clear morning but glanced up and saw it was snowing like hell.

hate that.

acceptance

Well obviously I can't force myself into epiphany. It's going to come in its own time and I've got to accept this and try to nurture patience. I'm still on my path even if I'm just sitting at a cross roads, right? I guess I should just stop and smell the daisies where I am.

Zak says I think too much to the point of indecision and then inaction. I say he rushes to action without enough thought. He needs temperance, I need passion. Or maybe perhaps it is just what 9 year of experience does to you?

After I wrote the last post I huffed around the house and pouted until I realized that while I can't seem to figure out what will make me happy, I can figure out what makes me unhappy and avoid those things. I've just always been a girl with big lofty dreams. I spent most of my life wanting to be famous, to be reknowned. Now I don't know what I want. But at least I can look at what I don't want, right? I can start there. And maybe some action on my part will spur some epiphanies that sitting on my ass watching the snow fall isn't.

I like not worrying about money. Which means that I need to cut my expenses and make more (or at least consistent money.) I am making the first step toward that by moving to Jersey. I just need to make smart decisions. I need to slow down and figure things out. I also need to work more in my current job and/or find something to supplement it. Or I need to move on.

These are the big struggles. I guess if I make my priority saving money so I don't have to WORRY about money then maybe things will become clearer.

I'm tired and sick of thinking. Going to go practice avoidance :)

flat

I'm still so lost.

I keep waiting for epiphanies telling me where I should go and what I should do but I'm just as lost as I have been for months. Life is so juicy and full of adventure and here I am struggling through to figure out what I want by process of elimination. I don't want to live in the North Country. I think life would be easier in Jersey. So I guess I'll try there. But there's no joy in anything. It's not even that I'm depressed - I don't feel I am. I just have a very hard time thinking of things that make me happy. That's not normal, right? I love my friends and family and being around them makes me happy. But I don't want to live up here. In the city my friends are spread out and I'm afraid I won't ever see them. Especially if I move to Jersey. I'm not so afraid of the prospect of meeting new people though, so that's good. But I am just SO lost.

I'm trying to find my way, I'm trying to rediscover dreams and passions. Just nothing stirs me. I don't want to write. It feels like a chore and it's so draining. I love performing. Maybe I should do that more? Fuck, maybe I am depressed. I don't fele it though. I just feel... flat. Uninspired.

I just hate the idea of chugging along just to chug. Of settling. I want so badly to be happy, to be over-the-moon happy. But I don't know how. Or what. It's so frustrating. I'm starving with a fucking buffet in front of me!

There's just something missing from my life. Missing from me. There's a vacancy, there's this lack of .....

I hate this SO much. I hate it. I fucking HATE IT!!!!

Flow. Part One.

It’s called a thrisis.



Or at least that’s what some cutesy Gen X-er labeled it to sell some of those cutesy pink-covered books at the front of Barnes and Noble. It’s mindless bullshit like chick lit that gets published these days, that is spoon-fed to the masses. Not like my books. I drum my fingertips against the nicotine-stained Macbook and remind myself that the only thing that stands between me seeing my titles on the shelves at B&N is that pesky application and review process. Somehow a month has passed and my memory is like sieve. Why haven’t done the paperwork?



Oh yeah, I’m having a thrisis.



With no one to share my joke with, I light another Marlboro Light. Another day in the North Country – the third day in the row of snow. Only an Eskimo and their supposed fifty names for this sky dandruff could tell the difference between morning and evening. Constant white falling toward the thick white ground leaves me feeling like I’m at the bottom of a grave watching the dirt pile up on my chest. The plows and sanders rumble down the hill and down the road, cutting through the fluff like nostrils clearing a path through a pile of cocaine.



Cocaine, now there’s something that could help me write. Help me rediscover some passion. It appears that my brain is experiencing some sort of limp dick complication. It can’t be ADD. I’m thirty. But synapses aren’t firing right and since the Celexa I stopped skating razors across my forearms. So it can’t be depression. And despite the pseudo-demensia that my doc attributed to ten years of borderline personality disorder and medications, it can’t be just memory. This swiss cheese brain of mine. I’m like a fucking gold fish. Five second of memory that no ‘to do’ list can save. I’m writing now, I’m even wearing pants and sitting at my computer. I have a –



thrisis - a mid-life crisis for those in their mid to late thirties



Mid to late? Goddamnit. I got my period at eight and now I’m ahead of the curve again. Deep drag, the kind where you’re ensured that something’s sticking, that the carcinogens are in your lungs long enough to really burrow deep in pink tissue. Twenty-two years of wasted eggs, of fertile ground left fallow. I’m convinced that by the time I get ready to have kids my ovaries will only be spitting out dust.



Have you ever used Google as an 8-ball? I type, “Will Janice ever have kids?”



Press enter. Shake the black orb. First article up – “meet the women who will never have kids.”



I stub out the cigarette and peel the label back on a container of Activia Light, Raspberry flavor. The pooping yogurt. This is what life has come down to. Starring at snow sitting in my childhood bedroom eating food to help me poop. I feel about fifty years too early on this one.



Perhaps I’m some kind of young, female Bukowski. He sure wrote about shit a lot. Maybe if I do people will think I’m edgy. I consider other adjectives people will assign me. I’m tired of “fat,” “troubled,” “crazy,” and “different.” I can do my own marketing, I can manufacture personality and persona. There’s this whole world out there and I know deep in my gut that I have something to offer. I am a brilliant twisted genius and within me I hold answers and secrets. I could slay this world and earn fame and accolades. A fucking contender, right here.



I swallow the thick pink load, sweet and cold on my tongue. I am too lazy. I am too heavy and too melded to this chair, to this floor, to this ground to fly.



And the worst part? I don’t think I even fucking care anymore.



I’m feeling lucky, Google. Give me your prediction, give me your definitions.



An apathetic individual has an absence of interest or concern to emotional, social, or physical life.



The opposite of apathy is “flow.”

I Might've SIlenced My Muses

I haven't been able to write anything since a poem I wrote November 24th. I started on anti-depressants November 3rd. Coincidence?

Usually where there is this fount of words and poetry there is nothing. I'm not sure if it has to do with the meds or that I'm just distracted with life in general.

Just trying to be open minded about it and not freak out.

I really hope that mental stability and writing ability aren't mutually exclusive.