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.

clouds
where did you come from
it was just so sunny
and now you threaten
with your evasive gray

i've been casting out demons
voodoo spells on my lips
i've been dancing with devils
and laying down lines

clouds
you're as dark as ever
and hovering at the horizon
pissing on my daybreak
and menacing my mascara

i've been a very good girl
i haven't even cut
this feeling just appeared out of no where
deep, lonely, and screaming in my gut

clouds
scratching my eyes, making me cry
with your dust and corrosive lies
your wet doesn't moisten my skin
just bloats and cakes and ignores
natural rhythm and laws of water

trickery

I'm gonna dig out this love of mine with a rusty spoon. I'll sit with the sore, the blood, the gore. Wait for the infection. Drain the pus. Wait and wait and wait and wait til the fade. Til it passes. Til the sun sets. The twilight, the daybreak. I will force hands and heart. I will twist arms and break ankles. I will stop this somehow, I will slam brakes and grind gears. Fast forward years. Rewind days. I will wring out the meaning of this lesson before I've learned it. Cheat life, the universe, the morals of the unrequited. I will break the surface, gasp for air, and only return to the bottom of the ocean if you take my hand and hold my breath.

could be

perhaps you don't belong
but you are needed and desired
in the hearth, in the house
barefoot and warmed by captured fire
there are arms for you here
and fresh baked bread

this is a place to wait out winter
where the floor grows thick carpet
the windows thicken on their own
northern drafts howl but do not touch
the sink is always empty of dishes
the trash never overflows
soft lamp light and hot cocoa in unchipped mugs

mulled apple cider whiskey on the stove
the world smells of cinnamon and cloves
hot baths in a tub suddenly big enough for two
history channel then cartoons at night
the sun finds us in every corner
where we curl up like cats, circular and unaware

in the center of my belly, slightly higher than my navel
in the root of me, i try to ignore, i try to reason
you don't belong here, you don't crave
my head and my heart argue behind closed doors, undecided
but in the depth and breadth
I feel it, like butterflies, like mother, like destined lover
eventually you will come home
exhausted from sewing seeds and fighting wars

lights are left on and finest linens are laid
your hands touch me from the future, from simple pathetic fantasy, perhaps
the settling, the exhale, the entwining of limbs
i tell myself if not you then perhaps another just like
there are spaces to fill and journeys to end
but only when we are whole and can be two, not one

another just like perhaps
but the original seems most likely
cells of me ache to their core
with the knowing, the conclusions drawn
in the dna, the zodiac weaving
before we were even born

maybe it is not intuition that speaks, that fills my core
but hunger, primitive and not spiritual
maybe i own no chakras or auras and maybe the stars are dead
it could just be misfired synapses and psychiatric diagnoses

or it could be love

it could be love

this i bury in my backyard with bones and tin boxes of buttons
this i tuck away in the back of closets with old board games
with the outgrown shoes, with the fairies and forgotten oil paints
this i pull down when i unsure, this i embrace when scared

perhaps from delusion, perhaps from fate

it could be love
it could be love

unrequited

i can be something you can lose
sand between fingers, under the nail
why do i think only in absence
can i fill a room or mean something
more than cubic space i occupy
and statistics and bank account talleys

do you know the kinda love
when all you think is
i'm in love i'm in love i'm in love i'm in love
over and over?
it renders you retarded and inarticulate
when you think of the person
and all you can think is
i love you i love you i love you i love you

then we get mad because three words
don't equal three thousand
attention spans are short
and the days artificially long

...............

i fell apart
but only for a week
so maybe it doesn't count
maybe i can still be forgiven
and thought of as strong

you and i are at our best
between three and five a.m.
there's no bullshit then
eyes see clearly and wise

someday i may be
the girl you lost
not to cocaine
but brain static

strobe lights behind my eyes
ravers, glow sticks and E