draft three of letting go of crazy

*letting go of crazy. (2009)

I. Sunday Morning, Upon Waking Alone and Thus Not Distracted

What do you do
When it hurts to move
But if you don't move
It'll just hurt more
And you'll eventually
Never move again?

What do you do
When pain pills kill you
But if you don't find an alternative
You'll grow crippled
And eventually
Die anyway?

(repeated overdoses leading to lethal allergy bittersweet irony)

How do you find the energy to run
When the energy to walk alludes you
How do you explain that you are rotting
You are atrophying yourself
Forty feet above the street
in a crumbling rented playhouse

How do you explain to others
That you just may be slowly killing yourself
(albeit lazily and without any conscious and direct intention)
As you crawl away from society
As you hide from the light
As you accept the seizing of organs and joints
And you are ashamed
You are so ashamed

II. I Hate This Part. Disney Movies Have Poisoned Me And Fucked With Life Expectations

If I don't call you and you don't call me
It must mean it wasn't meant to be
anyway
And I have proved the world right
In this model it is you
It is never me

But then, no.
It is both of us.
Me being the Ursula, the disgusting sea-witch
(and thus obviously not deserving of love)
And you being the asshole Prince
Who won't even try to peer past
The supposed evil and ugliness
Who'd never attempt to kiss a toad
Just to see if a Princess would appear

Where oh where has Ariel gone?
I used to have red hair, too
But it wasn't the same
Tt never was the same.

I'm more Sylvia than Walt.
More Plath than Disney.

(Something else
Hauls me through air ---
Thighs, hair;
Flakes from my heels.)

I find joy in being right
That it is you that is unfair and unloving
But also that I am not worthy
Of attempts to slay dragons
And struggles through briers and thorns
To rescue me in my castle tower

(Does anyone know her real name
Was Aurora?)

No, indeed it is proof
It is logic and irrefutable facts
That I am no sleeping beauty
And I can dream myself quietly
Into gentle, un-fettered death
Undisturbed by attempts
At resuscitation


III. I Am A Masochist And A Sadist. I Like the Color of My Own Blood and the Taste of My Own Tears

Perhaps I am an ugly creature
Perhaps I am a sloth, a mole woman,
A warted witch
Perhaps I am best suited for dark internal rooms
Perhaps there is reason why nature has
Declared me not suited to breed
(If only by omission)

Depression and self-loathing are nature's way
It's neo-Darwinism
My species has no place for party poopers
Only the happy and well-adjusted survive
And let's face it, I'm not the best specimen anyway




IV. Self-pity Parties Are the Cheapest to Throw and Saves You Hundreds of Dollars in Catering Costs

I turn back into myself
I waddle and huddle
Into my cave with the view
I am retreating from all that I want and love
And for the life of me
I don't know why

I am thirty and arthritic
I am thirty and obese
I am insulated and safe
And eventually life will leave me alone
With its disappointments and pedestals
And other high places I can no longer place others
Only to watch them fall and roll away


V. A Reflection Due to a Lack of Objective Mirrors. With an Acceptance of Distortion

Go away
I will run from you
I will hop a city bus

My motus operandi
Is to hide and to be the center of attention
At the same time

My own paparazzi
My own shampoo-bottle Oscar speech
I don't take photos
Of myself anymore
And the pills that have half-helped
Leave me bloated, thin-eyebrowed, and
Still probably damaged goods

I still play Guyville on never ending loops
I listen to the music of my youth
because I want to be mesmerizing, too



VI. A Review of Conditions, Disorders, Medications, and Attempts to Diagnose and Pinpoint Reasons Why I Am Not Responsible for My Own Self

So many labels I have tried on
They never fit, they curl and split,
Tear and crumple
As if one term can explain all that is Janice
And one reading of the DSM-IV can find the cure

Can it be Effexor, Depakote, Topomax,
Paxil, Celexa, Klonopin, or Xanax?

And how do I get off and how do I get on?

Serotonin syndrome
Withdrawal syndrome
Suicidal crisis
Black box warnings
And me spending the early part of my twenties
On cliff edges with no FDA advice or knowledge
And no doctor's notes to get out of life

I have embraced crazy, creative, poetic, different, Chaotic, tortured, misunderstood for so long
To properly see they are excuses, not personality

Thirty years of chicken or the egg
Is it my thyroid? Is it my parents? Is it genetics?
Why so fat so early?
Was it emotional abuse on the playground?
Are my classmates to blame?
Or the gym teachers who forced me to run
And balance my bulk on gymnastic beams

Borderline, Bipolar, Depressed,
Eating Dis*ordered,
Crazy, Agoraphobic, Obsessive Compulsive, Emotionally Unavailable,
Emotionally Unstable,
Spinster, Self-Medicator, Binge Eater,
Post Traumatic Stressed

Weak, Pathetic, Bruised, Chronic, Hopeless.

Unstable. Warning. Do not enter. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars
Approach with Caution. Unpredictable.
Check any applicable symptoms.
Be aware of any potential side effects.
Please sign here, you have been informed.



VII. Here Is The Part Where I'm Going to Scream. I Might Even Curse. Bear With Me, Gentle Reader.

Look at me.
You, hey you, mother fucker!

Look at ME.

Buy a book, support a true artist.
I am entitled, you see, I have suffered
And thus I deserve your attention
and your money, your penance

Please.
Please.
Pretty please?
With my cherry on top?

You see.
You must
Understand that
I hate you.
I fucking hate you.

But ....
I am fighting demons you can't see
And thus I am important and raw and
DAMNIT
I have something crucial to say
that you
that YOU
could NEVER understand.

Look at me.
I am better than you
because I am vulnerable and did I mention raw?
I am talented and memorable and
(please please please don't forget me)

I am bad genetics, I am bad environment,
I am malnutrition, I am a memorandum
of psychopharmacudical pamphlets,
I am simply a product of rape, cruelty, of a society that doesn't love me.

I need you to save me. Carry me. I am heavy.
Bulk up. I am worth it.

But sad, sad sad sweet shame.

Nothing will ever be enough.
You can never be enough.

I am an imploding star
a black hole that sucks the air from your lungs
I am a car accident about to happen

It is inevitable that I will crash and burn

I will be spectacular, a fucking cosmic event
And you
will
NOTICE.


VII. I'm Sorry, You See It's Not My Fault. In Fact, Nothing's My Fault. You see, I....

I am incapable
I am a writhesome, fucking anomaly

The doctors told me
They assured me when Iwas locked away
When I was twenty-three and institutionalized
They told me it was not my fault

And back, at nineteen
My first psychiatrist
During my first mind-fuck
Proclaimed me "chronic" and forever diseased

It tasted bittersweet.
I imagined Angelina Jolie
In Girl, Interrupted.
I pictured Elizabeth Wurtzel
Naked and beautiful on Prozac Nation.
I can be a rock star at this.
I can be an amazing insane
Perpetually falling star.
Sylvia Plath with her head in the oven.
I can do that.
And I can be gorgeous
And luminous
An idol. Mysterious. A Marilyn.
I can do this.

Thank you for this role.
I am ready to perform.
I take direction very well.
I always take the drugs I am handed.

I don’t want to be the fat girl anymore
Crazy suits me just fine.



VIII. New Perspective Spoken by an Older Lover Who Has a Good Eye for Such Things.

"You have issues with growing up."

I laugh. I say I was menstruating at eight
I was wearing a bra on the playground
I have an apartment, I pay my own rent
I have lived in New York City
On ten thousand dollars a year
At age twenty-two.

I am an adult, my license proves it
Thirty years old this past March
I have the scars to tell
I am responsible and independent
and quite capable, thankyouvermuch.
I am in a union, buddy, and have
a hundred thousand dollar education


We walk in silence.
Cross Manhattan Avenue on the way
To our show.
I consider a past boyfriend who'd accuse
Me of manipulation
Of crying instead of talking and screaming Instead of communicating

You're a fucking child! a bratty, immature, Emotionally crippled child"

I'd act out more
I'd slam my head into walls
Bruise my hands and head
and use that as proof that
I was just "troubled"

I'm sick of being sick, I said five years ago.
But I never grew sick of talking about it.
I never took off the hospital ID bracelet
Burned my certificate of insane

Two more blocks
I say please don’t call me a woman.
I say this to the first man who’s held me
To the first non-boy to sleep in my bed
Nearly forty, balding, settled, stable, loving
Part of me wants to start a fight
Change the subject

I don’t.
Always I try.
Rarely I succeed. But more, in time.
Habits die hard.
Cigarette butts hidden in drawers
Stale but safe and there if needed.
Sometimes I just need to puff.
Nicotine. Getting mean. Staying clean.


Perhaps it's time to seal my juvenile record
Pack away my Liz Phair cds and
Wear long sleeved shirts
Put away childish razors
And stop drinking myself to amnesia

This world owes me nothing
Despite my shoulders, so deeply chipped

I am refusing to drink the Kool-aid
That I so routinely spike

I take his hand. We talk inside.

I am letting go of crazy.

snake berries

expansive
under water
cello serenade
tattooed wrist
i am swimming tonight
if only in my mind

i miss the horses in the meadow
the silver light of the moon
falling on equine backs
the distant howl of coydogs
nick drake in my ears
northern sky

once again i am writing poetry
that'll be read by all but the one in question
once again i am picking the snake berries
that grow next to my sand box
I am swinging on metal poles
in lightning storms
wearing rubber boots

country meditation on a blurry city love affair (draft)

Ablaze, on foot,
I step carefully.
It is the mud season.
Still I slip.
I rise. Cushioned yet covered
in North Country clay.

In the lawn, I balance
between moods.
Melancholy, my old flame
rivals and demands a duel
with Joy, my courting suitor.

I can only write poems
and see where I land.

I pick up my Buddha books
I remind myself, it's a practice not a perfection
I have lost my compassion
I am white knuckling life
I am strangling joy

Again. I am going to try this again.
For the millionth time.
Until then I am steadying my footing
I am lacing my shoes

Sigh. I'm going to fail again.
I am not going to get it right.
Bit by bit we live, we learn
I forgive myself for not existing
in magazines and motion pictures
I forgive myself for everything
but forgetting to be kind

I am a control freak,
a perfectionist,
a manipulative force
but mostly
yes, mostly
I am just fearful
and faithless.

I am so good at being blue
I am so good at being down
I consider myself water
I insist I have drowned

Ophelia-like, ropes and rocks at my feet
I crash and smash upon the cliffs
I am not car parts, I am not cutlery
How many times I have jumped
without cord or chute
How many times I have leapt
and landed
bruised yet complete

Reflected yet smudged
Mirrored yet fogged
I see myself too late
in the still water beside your bed
I recognize my features
my nose, the slope of my forehead

my god you were right, I'm beautiful.
my god you were right, I am holding on too tight.
my god I'm sorry, and you are no where in sight.

(I miss your arms. Does that make me clingy?
I miss your snoring. Does that make me crazy?
I miss your laugh. Does that make me pathetic?)

Perhaps I am more Norturne
than Fur Elise
but perhaps you could play for me
as I curl on your couch
a somewhat circle of girl
imperfect, utterly aware,
sincerely trying,
and lovely in sleep.

suture (draft)

I am the most pointless foreman
Despite broken bones and
childhood cuts and scrapes
that healed without so much a thought
I do not trust my body
to be able to handle a broken heart
I'm afraid that if I do not relentlessly process
if I do not suffer or rub salt in wounds
I'll never be able to get over you

I am a watched pot that never boils
more and more heat and best intentions
I lance my own blisters
without proper sterilization and practice
Perhaps I just like to watch the ooze and the bleed
new ways to self-mutiliate and punish
under the guise of mourning, of relieving pain

It is as if I lack faith in everything including my own biology
I struggle daily with convoluted and molested chemistry
I lay down at night without prayers, only attempted avoidances

I am a flash flood in a time of slow, natural erosion
Irrigation and dams erected, false sense of control
as if I could wake up tomorrow, stretch, and be
this elusive, this vague, this illustrious "sane"

I crawl through deserts and I whip myself with chains
I pay penance for things I have not done, I do not deserve
I search for grails I already possess and polished

I have admired the craft and skill of the suture
I have applied the bandage and the gauze
I will not peek, I will not touch
Despite hints of red, despite the need to itch

rain and tides (draft)

this tastes so bitter
my tongue is burnt
bubbling, oozing

i recall champagne
i recall drinking stars
i remember constellations under my skin
i remember moondust licked from my lips

I fall
I break
I request elmer's glue
glitter, construction paper
scotch tape
and hope for amnesia
before I finish this collage

storm shelter (draft)

it is only after the storm
in the wake of the roar
that I recognize the calm before
the pressure drop
the sickening atmosphere shift
only after can
I consider the cellar in the dirt
only after I realize
the importance of hiding
and waiting the thunder out

berry (draft)

you taste like ripe strawberries
i used to pick in the fields as a little girl
crouched down in the rows of plants
lost in the red and the green and the dirt
my pint basket half empty at my feet
stolen fruit, juice on my chin
guilty eyes, shaking hands

hoping I won't get caught
that my youth and loveliness
will excuse me from theft

I hope the berries I pay for
will be half as sweet

sweet sweet shame (draft)

I roll down the window in the back
Dad looks over his shoulder, laughs
"too warm?"
I smile, slide my hand out of the car
"no, I just like air."

He lights another cigarette
He wears a camo jacket
We're driving to the thousand islands
I feel so far from my life and yet in the midst
"what? do you not have air in new york city?"

I say nothing, Mom cuts in
Babbles about the convenience store robbery last night
some story in the paper about someone
cutting off the tails of horses in the dark
We drive past a farm and she muses
"I wonder if those horses still have theirs."

Country blurs by
I think it's strange
that for a county so full of hills
so close to the mountains
that these flat meadows
stretch as far as I can see

golden, heathered, spring earth
in a couple months it will all be hay
the tractors will roar to life
and the north country will smell like summer again

it is mud season
the deer linger on the fenceline in the distance
I want to walk down the dirt roads
I feel ten again, innocent, curious

I try not to feel disappointed
I am sitting in the stir of pain and frustration
inside the hive of my mind
and trying to see past the whirl into the outside

These are the unlined roads
of my childhood that I retreat to when hurt
I am an accelerator cruncher
I am not one to line up pool shots
Just slam the cue
hoping something is sunk
and hopefully in my favor

I close my eyes
hope patience will court me
wish for the eye and the temperance
to breathe, aim, then shoot

it's such a sweet sweet shame
such a sweet sweet shame

Detox (draft)

I woke up to dandelion tea
Gulps of water and psyllium powder
If I don't drink it down fast enough
It all turns to orange paste too thick to swallow

I half-jokingly report
that my last days in this decade
will be spent pooping
peeing and turning my liver
and kidneys inside out

I'm allergic to aspirin now
because I tried to kill myself with it so many times
It is only now that I want to live
That it can close my throat

My idols have stayed and also changed
I am black thick banged
I am white wide and spunky
and I feel like bouncing tonight

the vapors, the expectorate (draft)

i am stream of consciousness
i am a moment in time caught in a net
stringy, sticky, and always moistly wet
I am hocked up on city side walks, mixed with dirt

once while walking down the street
you laughed and said "my god we're contemporaries"
I imagined thick anthologies written years from now
I imagined my diaries sold at auction, letters bound and leathered

did ginsberg and kerouac and plath and burroughs know?

I can't help but smirk
think of the man who proclaimed me brilliant
"the epitome of the new generation of the New York school"
and when he asked me whom I read
I could only say "no one." or "they are all dead.
and I haven't visited them in ten years"

names fly by, spouted and spurted
I do not know them, I do not know them
is it vain to hope they will soon know me?

I know I am of no consequence
I do not torture myself with perceived importance
I have pride, I have ego
wrapped like bacon
salted and spiced with merry delusion

it is all a giant game of pretend
I am the unicorn
I toss it out
crusty tissues
do with my DNA what you will

the poets we learned about in school
do not compare their verse to bodily fluids
they spoke in deep symbolism and painted with flowers
(perhaps I am more stamen and pollen than petal)

I shall go down in history
as declaring my poetry the orgasmic splatter
that rages and erupts
spilling over your thighs and rampaging through
the pubic mountainside, clumping the trees
and bushes and twigs with ectoplasmic love and disregard
for the way words, the way sperm were intended

I feel in bursts, I am wave-like, and I am sinew
I am finger snaps, I am late night blues
At another time perhaps I was to be born
but delayed in utero, I grew fat and ripe

I am mouthfuls of juice
I am dew and sugar water on your chin
Delightful both tasted and worn like perfume

Like any human that soaks in their own juices
I am marinaded but yet sour on the tongue

I am sputum, mucus, phlegm
I am snot, I am spit, I am cum

I'd rather be a violent, vicious, passion-laden pelvic bruise
then cheap dollar store lipstick smeared on virgin lip

I am a pretty farm girl overladen with perverse conceptions
I am a hermit city girl that speaks in pixels and pulses
I am that girl that you notice only after she has left the room
I am the vapors
The mist and the fog
I am the vapors
and the expectorate

the language

i speak static
am fluent in typo
but despite my attempts
despite thirty years of study
I am unable to learn
the strange idioms
the illogical conjugations
the irregular and bizarre
language that is love

i am faux pas
i am slip of the tongue
i am twisted contractions
i am translation failed
i am constantly insulting the natives
i don't even know how to ask
where the library is
or "how much is this?"

i still travel the land
i still navigate the transportation system
i am, at times, able to un-lose myself
amongst foreigners in their homeland
and the mountains and gutters and steel

however, the tongue alludes me
and most of the time
all i can do is point, grunt, shake my head, or smile
and hope for the best