tumult

i am welcome to your nuzzle
to the fallen scent of your muzzle
it fades to red

but the palest
the slowest
the slinkiest nightmare demon

who wanders
and wonders
in wait

if you'd just say
stay
it'd become

and we'd free fall and fade
and persist and re-exist
and and and and and

a tumult, a gray hair
i can be the pull
the loose thread of your sweater
caught in the breeze
as you rush down the stairs
to catch your silly train

Update

Hey everyone.

So I'm sure a lot of you have seen the updates on Facebook and stuff. Things have been pretty rough for me as of late. There are so AWESOME things going on - five agents have requested to see my book and I'm back to work. But I'm also really struggling with the fact that my beloved group of friends has dissolved and I'm a bit lonely and depressed. For four years I've had this wonderful group of friends in my neighborhood that I spent almost all of my fun time with. We'd go to our fave bar down the street and I felt like a part of a community, of a family. In the past six months, that family has gone its separate ways and I somehow ended up the only remaining person in Williamsburg.

Couple that with a new job that keeps me chained to my desk in my office for 10-11 hrs a day and it's just a lot. I'm very depressed and very lonely.

I also had a negative experience at a poetry reading that has just made me not want to deal with that aspect of my life anymore. I'm sure I"ll once again want to perform, want to organize shows, want to publish people's work, but right now I just don't want to. It's not fun anymore.

I will put out the second Stain anthology and I will publish Persephonous Blue, but that's it. At least for now. I don't have the time or energy.

I am trying to focus on my health. I've decided that I'm probably going to leave NYC as soon as the show I'm on now wraps, or sooner if the level of stress I'm experiencing now doesn't level off. No show, no pay check is worth that sort of stress.

I'm applying to grad schools, studying for the GRE, spending time with my cats, trying to see my remaining friends when I can, and hopefully returning to some semblance of a real life complete with having fun, relaxing, and smiling.

I really appreciate everyone's support and cheer and smiles and encouragement. I won't lie - I'm pretty stressed and depressed adn horribly lonely. Please don't stop asking me to hang out. Drag me out by the hair of my head if you need to. Please. I'm self-isolating again and hair-dragging is appreciated. Hugs and drinks and laughs are needed!

I've seen to have lost my "spark" and my passion. I can't think of really anything that makes me happy right now. Funny how depression does that to you. Not only takes away your present happiness but erases the past and any hope for the future. It's such a soul-sucking disease.

aimee

how can i read poetry
when i want to cut out my own tongue

how can i stand before you
when i want to never be seen again

i simply want to be left alone
away from your dissections and half-nods
i need nurture and my inner chambers
i need proximity to gas-less ovens
and bladeless baths

aimee mann over and over
i think of magnolia
the line i was always so quick to quote
"i have so much love but
no where to put it."

these days i have no love
nothing to give
and i want it all to myself

when i speak i can be mistaken
or i can be bared and examined
i don't think i will stand
up to sane standards of common man
and even your poetic heart
will push aside or dismiss
as pretty words meaning nothing

no subtlety of suicide note
detected

can you hold my hand
but promise not to look
at my face


for a little while?

two

I hate you, crazy girl
You whisper in my ear when I try to sleep
You keep me up all night and
If I don't watch you close
You take razors to my skin.

You scare away everyone who tries to love me
You remind me of my fears
and poke at my insides
with dull, rusty tines.
I hate you, crazy girl.

I decided yesterday on the way to work yesterday that I'm depressed. I've just been too busy to notice. I'm going to see if having more time to myself and time to organize my life will make me feel better. But yeah, I'm miserable. I thought the job would help but all it does is make me exhausted and distract me for 10-11 hrs a day. I get home to my empty apartment and I sit on my couch watching tv talking to no one until I crawl to bed. I crawl to bed and I lie there awake for 5 min every night thinking "holy shit how did this become my life?"

I feel no spark. I thought at first that it was because I've been shying from dating but it's way deeper. All of my friends essentially moved away. These streets feel haunted. Just a couple months ago everyone was here, in WIlliamsburg, and we did things together. WE went to the bar on Saturday nights knowing that everyone else would be there. We had a community, a family, we had fun. We had each other. And everyone's gone and its just me all alone just going through the motions.

I have a handful of other friends who still live here but we're no ways as close or see each other as often. They're scattered, Carebear Cousins to the main group. I guess I need to try harder. When I can find some time.

I hate my life. Fucking hate it. Get up early in the morning, rush to work, spend 10-11 hrs there everyday with a majority of my day thinking I'm going to get fired. I sit in my office - all alone. I work my ass off and I leave, exhausted. I come home to an empty apartment. The pattern repeats.

When people come in my office to talk to me - like TALK, and not ask me work-stuff, I wonder why they'd ever want to talk to ME. I feel like shit about myself. I've had no time to do my hair, I look awful. I need a hair cut, my eyebrows waxed, a mani/pedi, and some new clothes. Because I just feel wretched. I feel ugly and fat and more and more like I have nothing to contribute to society.

I"m lonely as fuck. I hate New York City. Every night I come home and haul my fat ass up those 4 flights and think I really hate it here. I'm here just til this job ends then I'm going to pack up everything I own and move back upstate and see where I'm going from there.

Everything is just so fucking hard and without my friends, New York feels like it just wants to crush me. In the past month, I fell down stairs and fucked up my leg and ankle and got a black eye. Life is just SUCKING. On the bus yesterday I was thinking "I don't want this anymore." And I'm worried that I'm stuck and it ain't gonna get better.

I feel myself growing into this person I never thoguht I'd become. This asexual, sparkless, auto pilot of a woman. I'm THISCLOSE to giving up.

New York City feels so cold and cruel. I'm sick of it. I was full of youthful energy and dreams and I was SO in love when I first came here. It was years ago. I've accoplished so much but this isn't where I want to be anymore.

So this job is the only thing holding me here right now. I know I need the money for the next adventure. But I have no idea where or when. I hate this uncertainty. I REALLY hate this lack of passion and excitement. I guess I'll clean my house, throw myself into studying for the GRE and hope grad school is the answer.

I sound pathetic I know :/ I feel pathetic.

Just a bit down. Kicking around this apartment feeling lonely and down. It'll pass.

my michael poem

joey, do you remember
us so young and giggling
in your grandparents' rv

inside, the ceiling fan circled
low and guillotine-like
over the kitchen table filled
with cards and pizza

outside
you slid 'bad' into the
cassette player and we sang
dir-ty di-ana oh

ejected the tape
delighted
michael also on the fm
we kept singing
we kept singing on

soon

To count your eyelashes
the risings and collapsings
of your molded chest
I'd set myself asunder
fall to the thunder
and make myself your home

To fall, to drift
I dream of you
partial silhouettes
rotating faces of lovers
and friends and crushes I have known

Will you be frightened
or elated
at the mounds of poetry
I wrote of you
before we even met?