It's a proven fact

that women feel intimacy from discussion

yet men feel closest through physical contact.

why would God play this joke on us?

making us polar opposites

protons and electrons

no neutrons

almost impossible

to meet each other in the middle.

modeled off of "One for Sherwood Anderson" by Charles Bukowski

sometimes I forget about him and his erratic ways,

almost unbelievable, unexpected and always hurtful.

he loved me, I think, maybe he could have, but his condition was just too much.

tonight I think about him, the way he could make everything feel light,

and his exuberance

something like a little kid. but still

he was as fickle as the wind

sometimes here and sometimes there

leaving without justification

then coming back begging me.

he didn't have consistency. he

found me weak and wanting to fix him

he didn't know I couldn't

he promised me a diamond necklace that never came

he stole from his oldest friends

he talked a big game

and started to become like a Monet painting

because the colors mashed together start to look like something bigger--in his case, monstrous

and the nice little things started to get blurred by the bigger picture

and I couldn't come to know what was what

and I couldn't tell anymore what part was him or what part

his disease.

sans parapluie

Je suis sans un parapluie

toujours.

Mais j'enseignerai

d' être heureuse

quand il pleut

quand je suis seule.

Je danserai dans la pluie.

J'ai mon coeur, et ça suffit.

♡​

modeled off of Bukowski's "hello, how are you?"

a club I was never invited to join

this fear of being what I was:

sick.

at least I was mostly functional, I

went to class, not listening to a word that

washed out professor said, my peers

exchanged inside jokes, the room smelling like a cesspool--

the stale scent of fitting in

of last night's alcohol

of crappy campus coffee

of cigarettes smoked on the sidewalk

on the walk home from the bar

with the people that live on their floor

feeling nothing

except like a part of it all

except on top of the world

at an unaffordable school

free of feelings

of antidepressants

of broken hearts

of loneliness

of avoidance

of missing people

I stand motionless, jealous of their zest for life.

I'm wondering why you left me at the worst possible time and made it all impossible to attain.

hello, how are you?

by Charles Bukowski

this fear of being what they are: dead. at least they are not out on the street, they are careful to stay indoors, those pasty mad who sit alone before their tv sets, their lives full of canned, mutilated laughter. their ideal neighborhood of parked cars of little green lawns of little homes the little doors that open and close as their relatives visit throughout the holidays the doors closing behind the dying who die so slowly behind the dead who are still alive in your quiet average neighborhood of winding streets of agony of confusion of horror of fear of ignorance. a dog standing behind a fence. a man silent at the window.

♡​

♡​

nice people

nice people extend themselves to the underdog

wave to small children, coo at infants

nice people ask the library clerk her name

then engage her in lively small talk

nice people wear vineyard vines apparel and always seem to be carrying a tote bag,

they are preppy and fresh like daisies.

they smile at strangers, always say thank you and you're welcome,

are tactful when debating the price of their tuna steak at the grocery store

nice people always have permanent wrinkles from grins of white

they seem untarnished by life's tests

they make the dean's list, but it's not like we didn't expect them to.

nice people appreciate their spouses without being asked.

am I one of you?

thank god I'm getting out of this writing rut

Here we go again, I keep thinking to myself. "The dark place" is such a cliche' but I can't think of any other way to describe it right now, after having not written in months. I haven't experienced the friction of life with nearly as much fervor as I am right now.

I came to the library. I wanted to get out of my house, out of my head. I wanted to write in the artsy little cafe' by the lobby, a half a dozen tiny tables, chipping red paint of the walls, a window to write by,

But lo and behold, the tables all have two chairs, and there's just one me. The windows look out onto a ring of dumpsters, multicolored, white, green, rusty brown in their splendor.

If I focus hard enough, I can ignore the carelessly sprawled open receptacles and observe high-rises in the distance, little yellow houses with welcome mats, perhaps I'll even own one someday-- but as for right now I'm alone, and the gilded steeples are miles away. I'm too close to the garbage not to turn my nose up a little bit.