i woke up here, today

finally coffee & roses, a wide old stoop. nickey had to move out from the mansionhouse. I slept so as not to be too far away, ever. in a cornerroom, many windows, and I feel like all I do is mention windows. I feel like my relations are sort of bedlamy. there is no adjective for it, maybe. uproar, confusion? scenes of madness? it must be me, I'm the common denominator. ha ha it's all about me. when I moved to chicago I went to my first urban outfitters. wait... no, I went to an urban outfitters with my dad when I was 15 in bend, oregon. I was grounded so he forced me to go on a ski trip with him over springbreak, which was actually quite fine, we listened to the wall in the car and I read all of the lyrics, and I was like, man who knew pink floyd was so relevant, I just thought dead kennedys and anti-flag were relevant, and afi who helped me veer in later years to some emo place. we went to the urban outfitters, I had a meager allowance at the time though I doubt it was terribly meager because my mom gave it to me so it was probably pretty hefty. I mostly spent it on pot. but I bought a blue skirt with birds on it. birds on clothing and tattoos has been done for hundreds of thousands of years. it's one of those eternitrends. we went to portland, too, and I'd never been there before. britta was there, her brother bought me a pipe & a blue plastic bong (with my allowance). I named my pipe princess symphony and I named my bong sgt. bongo after my friend stacie. my dad let me drive the car awhile on the way home. I got ungrounded when I came back to boise. for a little while, like a couple of weeks. but in chicago I was never grounded again, so I went with this girl named cindy who I thought might become my best friend. she was like, Let's go to urban outfitters and I was like, Ya, that sounds pretty cool. we met a girl named mary who was with jean, who immediately became my best friend. jean told me a couple of weeks ago that she is pregnant. the year after I met jean we moved into a brownstone on kedzie blvd in logan square and she was the baby machine for halloween. she had babies all over her, and she was pregnant, and she had this phone cord attached to her and was dragging around this baby that we'd covered in fake blood. I was a dead bride. at the party I made out with two boys and fell in love with one of them. he was my best friend for awhile, but I was always terribly in love with him. at urban outfitters, the day I met jean, I bought a book called ALL ABOUT ME. you answer questions like who do you love what are your favorite colors, etc. I think I threw it away after I filled it out because I thought it was embarrassing. the things that don't embarrass me that should make me wonder, sometimes. I don't wish I still had it, I'm sure it was hopeful & maudlin & very, very teen. can I blame my parents? did they not teach me to think of others, ever? when I was a kid my grandmother told my dad that she didn't think that I liked her and my grandfather. my dad told me, and I felt this feeling I'd maybe never felt before. I think it was regret. I'd already felt guilt one million times. it was likely a combination of the two. from then on I tried really hard to show them that I loved them. I think it worked. I still can't imagine what I'd done as a child to make my grandparents think that I didn't like them. the thought makes me feel creeped. I must have isolated myself & never smiled. but what's smiling, anyway? when I moved to highlands elementary in the middle of 6th grade my mom told me that she thought I'd make friends at my new school if I smiled more. I thought that sounded like a reasonable plan, so I tried, I really smiled, I smiled a lot at everyone, I was friendly. but I didn't make any friends. in fact, I had enemies which I'd never really had. one of those enemies was kari, with whom I am temporarily living now. her friends monica & teri & jessica-marie would dare kari to do things, like cutting her hair and taping it to my desk and writing cryptic notes to me. I didn't know how to react to that, so I hung by myself on the playground. on the first day of school, the popular girls asked me to sit with them at lunch. I smiled a lot, but I was very shy. I tried not to be weird. jessica opened her milkcarton and asked me if I knew megan, who went to my old school. I don't think I could smile, then. megan was my archrival since kindergarten. jessica asked me if I thought she was a bitch. I said yes, I did. it was over for me with the popular girls. jessica would come to school and yell across the playground, Molly, I heard you dye your hair. I totally did but I said, No, I don't. none of them really talked to me after that. I stopped smiling pretty fast, decided again not to brush my hair. it wasn't very fun at the new school. I wanted to write stories and plays and have my friends act them out at recess like I used to do at roosevelt elementary. but all everyone else did was play tag. I didn't like running, or being chased, or feeling like I was losing. so I would go and sit on the hill and watch the two groups of girls who hated me. but they also hated each other. I would listen to them talk shit about each other. jessica would laugh at how kari was a cow and how jessica-marie was a stick figure. I thought it was mean, but that they deserved it. 

I've liked the album the wall for my whole life. it's one of kyle's favorite albums, we listened to it on the way back from raunchfest, we listened to it when he came to family dinner. I haven't been into urban outfitters for awhile, I tried to steal a bra from there but I got nervous and just paid for it. I also tried on some stretchy floral pants to make bikeshorts from one time, but there was mad blood in the crotch and I was so disgusted I just left without telling them. it did make me laugh. I feel like everyone then had a convoluted idea about who they were & we're a confused people, but it's all about us. 

98∘

I came home from work and I looked at the backyard of gayulz club

and I was like

FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK this place

it's so dirty & gross here, god

and I looked at the bed I'd made & slept in, on the cement

and it is covered in little gnat corpses and little pollen flecks and sticky matter

and I was even more disgusted

but here I am, sitting

I cleaned up cigarette butts

beerbottles

beercans

a can of diet coke? whose

an empty pizza box

and I said, You know what, Molly?

and I said, WHAT, Molly??!

You deserve some WHISKEY, gurl

and I was all, YA I DO

so I got on my bike & rode my ass down to the liquor store. It's really hot out.

The temperature clock says almost 100

The internet says it's 92 degrees.

Remember that boy band

Nickey saw a pic of them these days

what, it's like 20 years later or something

and she said, Gross! they are so gross and OLD now

and I'm like Ya, why would they let a good thing die

which reminds me: remember when Jessica Simpson ballooned to like 150 lbs

and everyone freaked

bc it's Jessica FuckingSimpson

and she's hot, so how did she get so FAT

omg, did Nick Lachey leave her, you think

I don't even know

I need to look at more mag covers at the stores

I came home and I thought to make myself a cocktail

where's my cocktail?

I thought I really need a cold cocktail, I'll use the martini shaker

put in some ice, some ginger syrup, a little lemon juice, some sparkle water

and then I noticed it!

a single watermelon beer

and I was like

Why would I ever maudlin-exclaim that life sucks?! No way

it's even better than whiskey right now

in 98∘

Nick & Jessica, forever

fat or thin

gay or straight

geniuses,

I hope they made it
in all this heat

29

it's official

summer is here

I baptized everything

at do-it-yourself doggy detail

the proprietor is a giant man with dredlocked dogs of all sizes

he said, When you shave a dog like this, 

and we look suspiciously at the collie,

You have to go at it like you're scraping ice off a windshield

it's official

because Nickey made us a birthday salad

like she made last year, when I turned 28 

& discovered bulleitt bourbon

Everyone cries on their birthday

& I was in love again or still with someone I'd loved 5 years before

and I left the bar alone

so the bar could be alone

so I could be alone with my middle-aged present 

& my maudlin I-miss-you past

we drank the bourbon with salad sap,

rhubarb syrup

we took it to the river with us, 

and a shorn collie

and our beached chairs

and I climbed into the river, under the water

and while I was inside her for those seconds

the hard seconds, my being very much aware of how

soft & warm

my innards are

how they're encased in a thousand knives stabbing you all at once

not to beconstatly reaching for titanic quotations, but

it was a bliss

a true moment where I wasn't terrified

because I am 

soft & warm

at least inside, still.

and I surfaced, gasping, mouth gulping sun

my wet seal hair long down my back

the droplets on anxious tired flesh

trying, breaking, popping 

in the light.

When I'm 29 I will police my emotions

I will make arrests

I will cuff me

I will throw me in the back

I will read me my hurried rights

I will put my heart on a leash

in a chokechain

& demand it next to me

legless, dragging along

taught tether,

slack tether.

that water was life-affirmer

my river hair, passion-confirmer

vehement future-asserter

(The other day she asked, how do you pronounce that word, vehemence, and we said it aloud a couple of times

I don't know that I do anything with vehemence, I said, and there followed the scoff of the century.)

When I'm 29 I will write down the names of everyone I've been in love with

and the list will crush the planet

the names will fall into trenches

into little graves

with headstones in ornate decay

How many people have you been in love with

Are you in love with anyone, now?

I used to ask two questions

when I was falling in love with someone, I'd say

Are you in love?

and

Are you an alcoholic?

It used to be that I'd turn away when the answers were yes

which they often were

but mostly I'd stay. Else how would I keep it all so relevantly destructive?

There are new questions to ask

like,

Do you love

or

Can you?

How many people have you been in love with

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 9

or

1,2,34

or never say forever, and never forvember me 

nevember me forever

you're so reasonable & I'm so maudlin

I'm a model. I moved to New York City to walk down the sidewalks in towering alexander mcqueens and nylons ripped at the knees. I'm so modeling right now, it's insane. EVEN under the thunderstorms, here in the city, right next to the piers where the concerts glow at night, and the summer-stench crawls from beneath chinatown drains, with the women whispering from staircases, the escapes from fires don't pull down, that never seem to work. The women here are talking bored about child support & doctor's bills, and I am wearing too much copper so rains like these move my skin off, they patina my bones and veins. But since I am so modelin' right now, I am all ribs and clavicles, and my jutting hip on which a trouser-waist sits hangs like a hanger, as I am. I'm a model, and I moved to New York City to stumble down the streets in the earlymorning dark, after salons in my prada pumps. I'm sooooo modeling, but then there is you & you are so able to reason. You aren't even here in New York City because you couldn't exist here, because the beach touches the asphalt and the flowers are spare and wispy, and my hair never ever tries to grow here because only the molds and bugs and beauties of the undergrowth underbenches underground can grow, and my one face melts into nothing with the splay of the city, the stupid subway stench in identical nostrils, and we all evaporate simultaneously. You can't be here, because no one is here, and you are so real, so reasonable. Those days (these, of summer here) are entire worlds, are lifetimes and the end never darkens, just turns to puce & salmons & body-odor vermilions, and the sun rises unobtrusively and casual is the steam from the jamaica bay fog. A man in a yellow convertible comes to me, hawaiaan shirted, and I begin to fall back into the walk I do.

slow

Wednesday, 17 November 2010, Boise Idaho (from leather journal)


"I think that job interview went really well," says Brittany, reclining beneath the bedclothes.

-Build a diary
-Dylan & Nancy
christmas
             Aubergine

Brittany's house, roommates introducing themselves to love of life. To get good at writing quickly again.

             Great.

     What are you guys moving?
           A couch.

and later...
              Magenta sky turns lavender. Brittany tells love-of-life to look up... I want to give a love the same urge! Too bad to be loveless. So I send it to the first of whom I think: but remember, this doesn't appeal. And if it does not appeal to him, why does it appeal to me?
        I try to say, it's worth it. If you feel appealed, and if you urge towards response.
But madly you do not. Madly feel nothing. With all the passion drive to feel nothing. If I would keep my mouth shut, my fingers from walking honestly, if I could keep myself from fishing. But with he I'm asking for something, for proof that I needn't be gone. It is so apparent, nothing to do for fighting it. Nothing to change. Yours & your way and nothing else. Forever and ever.
        Oh, day. Coffee, and pot, and a bagel sand? And a cookiedough brownie?! Of which I can only eat two bites. And games of pool, a salty dog, and coffee with whisky & kahlua.

The money I have is for keeping. The nails I have are for scraping.

P I Z Z A ! Michael?
How should we make him pay?

         Look at the sky,
       ? I think I missed it

You most definitely have. So much cheesy meaty grease congealing in a stomach. Who finds this interesting? Brittany doesn't feel good. Her boyfriend isn't calling. The pizza crust sits uneventfully on the plate.

Why hang out? because you can't say no? Even though it's the most obvious? I know how I'd feel if I felt this way. I'd like to say I can relate. I wonder if I should go buy more poison...
          But my stomach is full and all that's left is a walk. To find something better suited for something else.

          "I like Magma Chamber..."


Don't be Molly Molly Maudlin


Have you found a place to keep your face? In a large frame, hazel blue, narrow straight a point. A real blonde, but dark. Mellow monotonous moderately-pitched. The lean height. The oily aubergine curls. Dark eyes framed as always. Lips showing behind thick varicolored beard. The voice of an excited teenager.

           Respond to me, because I'm dressed for 1996. Black little boots, navy tights, gray Paris dress, olive & gray plaid pendleton. The new mittens exchanged; thumb fitting perfectly and rest of hand free & open.

           Exceptional things are happening to us now. The first seconds of freedom. And forgetting and forgiving.
           There are many of us for friends.

          A pledge
                  to never, ever live love in a sentence.

this is all of moderate import

Almost last winter turning spring in portland I purchased a pair of black doc martens. Brand new, & too large for me. If I get ahold of some insoles, however, they'll be perfect. At the moment they're inside an amazing black & white trunk with old leather handles ripped long ago. 

I came back to boise in late october. I found from savers some little black boots & inside, on the bottom, there reads NICOLE. I love them, but my broken toe is alas still broke, and pressure from the thin outer side of a shoe is still pressure, then. The click they make on a woodfloor or a cement walk is tempting & generates a moderate satisfaction.

Blue leather lace-up shoes with heels from a suburb of seattle. I've been asked: are those leather soles, there? to which I wrongly replied, rubber. I got some cole hahn tassel loafers at the same store, mostly for entertaining the thought of my dad's probable jealousy. I think I lost one of them; I'm not sure how, but I'm certain I lost one of them. I brought the one with me, when I moved, just in case the other turns up. I could never forgive myself if it did... these shoes were like slippers on the feet; leather & with a heavy wood heel. Toes always wet. Ball of foot always loud & doubtless.

In new york last summer I wandered soho with alex in the sweltering bosom of that lusty town. He wanted some adidas, I said man, get sambas, and he said, well, I want white shoes, and I said, great. He forced me into a large retail store; he had to get a white tanktop (it's impossible to wear white adidas without a white tanktop) and I gladly thought of buying the gray mesh butterflyprint shirt. It was fifty dollars, and mass produced, and a nylon poly blend, of course, so Instead I bought some suede oxfords with faded wallpaper flowerprint. Some of the greatest shoes the world has known. And what a sound on the street they make.

Twothousandten sees my hair fall down, and the tears in my eyes. It sees me maudlin. It sees me intrepid, erasing a hapless/imagined ten years from my life. It sees me in sweaters, relating. In eyecontact, in the hushed yells on an earlymorning park bench. The clasp of a mouth around me. My own views of drunk couples pressed against the outside wall of a bar. The eager fingers pinned against the brick, her hand letting his wrist drop on occasion to her skirt, pushed up or down. The mendacity of aforementioned loves, the ones who come with their own apology, nonspecific to our relations. Your unctuous apology, secreting your fancy for fear of me. Of me? Keep one of us from the other. Pushing me against the wall is goodless, I see only a reflection of the drunken couples, salacious on the streets, careless, ostentatious. I and you cannot be they.

views from belows

And to think:

now, if they would have looked in through my kitchen window, would have seen me nude. as I now go nude through rooms, as it seems I'm alone finally in my big apartment. Save for the cat, and the coffee, and the epics (thoughts, musics). I allowed myself minutes here to do justthis: I will drink quickly a cup from coffee, and in the new sundress shrunk slight & ripped a new one. Makes it iffy for a button, a buttonhole no more more like a button tunnel. When I finish the coffee from the cup it's just a jar I have to find, one with a lid, and I'll fill it up with the brown black drink, and on the train to Russia. Floral print seems to me what a Russian would want to wear. 

A few words which spring to my fingers from a personal lexogram: about the feelings felt:

maudlin, mellifluous, mercurial, mucilaginous.

or, Love, times