I'd like to be freer, please, to say what I want to say. People would be upset or angry with me if I said things more. Sometimes people don't listen so I don't try at all. Sometimes there is so much a b a b a b that i begin to feel nothing I would ever say would make a difference.
This is not because I feel I have less to offer, but because sometimes nobody really wants anything anyone else has. People are always wanting to be most present. And I always just assumed I was an extrovert. Oh, fuck.

An excercise in over-writing a vacuous moment in a boring life.

"We're all just a bunch of queers, anyway," he said to her over a mess of ketchup and home fries. He shoved another fork-full into his mouth, took a half-chew and reiterated himself, this time with immuring sincerity. She looked at him, mostly amused, slightly puzzled; she believed him more than she wanted to admit, especially to herself. He went on: "I mean it. We're all just a bunch of fucking faggots. I'm just wondering when we'll all finally admit it to ourselves and stop breaking so many hearts. It's a wonder I can even sleep at night. Jesus, I've got so much blood on my dick!"
"Uh . . . how's everything going over here? Yinze alright?" the spavined old waitress asked. She had obviously showed up in time to hear him say that he had blood on his dick and now she stood there with a contrived air of insouciance, smug and yet so oblivious to the world around her. Rather than respond he simply glared at her. She raised her eyebrows with mimed inquisition and false concern and then, after finally grasping her imposition, left them alone.
"Ugh! Don't you hate that shit?" he asked her. She was texting. She was always texting.
"Hate what shit?" she asked without bothering to look up from her phone. He didn't answer her. Instead he closed his right eye and imagined stabbing her head off with a giant fork. She caught him doing this, "Real mature, Everette."
"That fucking attitude that old waitresses give you. First of all, she stinks of fucking cheap cigarettes and you can see the fucking stains on her sleeves from jerking off her fat-ass, loser boss in the handi-capped shitter! She's a fucking wreck and she comes over here, barges in on our conversation, and then acts like she's got some kind of social upper-hand because she heard me say that I have blood on my dick. I wasn't being literal, but that dumb cunt doesn't know that. She thinks only in literals and absolutes! and paychecks! and gossip! She's a redundancy; too fucking dim to even battle against her own obsolescence. God, I hate that shit! Fucking look at me like I'm some kind of back-alley rapist. What a dumb, old cunt."
"You know, I think I like you better when you're calling your friends faggots."
"Ha ha ha! I think I like me better then, too."

The Last Year of Life

Day 12. Bedroom. 2:20AM
I was looking over Mindy's brother's cat this weekend, they went out of town together. Went to slide some coins into some slot machines in New Jersey. The cat is named after a laxative he used to take when he was growing up. His hair is falling out, the man's not the cat's, and his skin is thin parchment that cracks with every step. He smokes more than life smokes and his laugh sounds like it was rattled straight from the sewers. He's 36 years old. Looks twice that. He takes her, his sister not his cat, out every now and again. He doesn't have anyone to spend his money on. He works as a waiter, actually one of those guys who orders around the waiters, like a graduated waiter. He claps his hands and they clean up the dirty plates in front of them. Then he twirls two bony fingers in a circle and they hoist the soiled trays on their shoulders and walk out in a single file line behind him. He knows where they are coming from, so he treats them like people. He follows the system. He is assimilated but it has not failed him. He's a good man. He is lonely. But so am I. The cat ripped apart the plastic tree in the corner of the room. It will have to be replaced.

after all this time. after all of the encounters. there i was, feeling like a sad, helpless fucking child all over again and not understanding why. why i always cared so much. a long time. me, the pessimist? but after all this i still can't give this up? i can't stop hoping for the best? i always kind of hoped if i ever really got to know you (which i thought i never would,) i would figure out i wouldn't really like you. like all of that feeling would disappear and i would write it all off. and now i know you. i know you. and i shouldn't have let this happen and why do i constantly let other people have all of the control. why i accept that everyone fucks up and why do i have to understand the underlying meaning behind every fucking shitty thing you do to me and tell you it's okay. i say it's okay because it's safe to say i don't care that much about me until it gets this bad. it's so sad. i am willing to put myself through all of this to actually feel something for once. i haven't felt for so long. i don't know what's real. nothing is real. everything is real.

the cat slept in between us. my eyes were closed but i didn't sleep.

Yes, sometimes you do, you voluptuous Chimera!

Today I wrote you a seven thousand word poem on the sidewalk on my way to work, but the homeless people gobbled it all up before I could memorize it. They said they needed it for their spirits. I tried to tell them that science says there are no spirits, but they can't afford science. They can't afford the ends of their gloves or blankets without obituaries. They just floss their teeth with all that hair you cut out of me last week and they're smiling all over it. You fucked it up on purpose because when you're away you don't want other girls to notice me. You can hang with my hair being too high above my ears. You can get used to that. Spock kept it that way and you've got your mindmeld all over this free heart. Shit. The poem sucked anyway. A homeless man, stretched high and sucking at the trickle, belched out the only line worth remembering: "And the Good General doesn't keep his gun by his side for his private misfortunes, but for when the whiskey stops burning them up." Your daddy spent a lot of money to put that book in your hands, so keep your thumbs around it and not my throat.

But I guess that's just one more weight for me to carry; one more face to fashion. No matter, so long as you never see who I really am. You, the stench that's not the air, but my insides rotting; the sizzling Coke concentrate dissolving at the scene of the crime; the bent nail that snags the elbow and breaks the skin. You. You, the multi-headed succubus benighted in my window, screaming into my nightmares, your tits crashing like death knells, hypnotically spiralling tongue of lies and misfortune - be they private or publicly operated - digging your nails through my karma and ruining my life. Goddamnit! Is there a sentence in this mind to contain you? Leave me to my petty devices and my demons, you Siren! Leave me!