Two Weeks...

I've been busy. The time goes to impressing bank workers with my knowledge of salad dressings, classmates with my ability to destroy my own life, and friends with fragments of a meaningful life. Most days don't count anymore. No fire in my head, no fire in my heart, no fire in bed. I'm relying on things I did weeks and months ago. No one can keep track of what I contribute. I'm as stagnate as the beer in glasses scattered around the room. But they grow mold. I grow nothing. It is all empty bottles, residue and religious candles. I make calls I shouldn't and neglect the ones I need. I pray for familiar faces and voices, if praying is a pattern you repeat on most Tuesdays and the occasion Monday and Friday. I don't bathe. I don't clean. I don't wash clothes. I don't care.

Someone told me a bill needed to be my top priority. Above eating? Above drinking? Above fucking? Above writing? Above the band? Above my heart? Above all the bullshit I put here trying to look smarter/more attractive/more interesting/more together/more anything?

There are less then two months before I hit twenty eight.

The damn cannot hold.

Tables, desks, floors, and beds.

I'm using every flat surface I can find to spread my life out on. I'm stacking up photos on top of books I haven't opened yet but pretend to know what they are about. There are cans of spray paint holding up sketch pads that I only use as a surface for my knife blade and an extension of the screams stuck in my throat. Things to burn: candles, receipts, lottery tickets. Things to recycle: cans, bar poetry, canvas. They alternate on these flat surfaces, sometimes merging into piles that are so cluttered I don't know what to do with what. There are pens, a screwdriver, first aid spray and bobby pins. Change and wrappers to things that save my life and keep my mouth moving. A plastic apple shoved full of blades that won't rot or rust. If I could pour my heart into that lifeless fruit of temptation I would. But tonight I'll keep it. I'll mix it with the sweat on my skin, the fluids on my sheets, the beer on my nightstand, the broken dreams my friend left on the old brown couch last night. I'll learn to play that song on guitar that I should be singing to myself that I pretend is for everyone who is gone. I'll draw road maps, leave detailed directions, carved and burned into my skin. A treasure map for the hunt of all the bullshit that gets listed here. From where my car sits tonight: first right, second right, third left, first left, fourth right. You'll pass the spot I last saw family; it'll be on the left. And you'll see where I spent my first year, trying to be all the things that I thought would make us happy that just tore us apart; it'll also be on the left. And if you go a little further, then go right, then second right, then follow that street till it ends You'll find some other haunted spot. There's a bunch of them, and this is one of the few I thought of, because I know that ghost is around. I can hear familiar voices and feel some of those familiar knots. I'm not nearly drunk enough for this tonight. But I am tired. Let's leave this unfinished.

French Exit

Ummm, wow. I don't think I've mentioned this on here yet. New band. You'll love it.

French Exit - frenchexit.bandcamp.com

Check it out. More writing tomorrow.

The withdrawl of troops

The mornings come faster then a week ago. There is more noise: the rumbling of stomachs, the creaking of knees, and the ever-present soundtrack of men from Scotland trying to find the same place in their lives that I am flipping a coin to choose to run away or hide from. The cough is back, it is strong. It fell from trees, broke both arms, but quickly dusted itself off and ran straight down the street. There is no blood though. No open wounds. No trickle from my nose. My heart is finding ways to pound, but it does it's best work in dreams of old houses and drunk texts to women who don't even exist anymore. Or rather women who don't exist the same way in my heart or my head. There is more smoke. There is a hell of a lot more fire. There are fortresses, encampments, armadas, fronts, prison camps and place to smuggle all the worthwhile things out of the country that is my life. The fucking skin is fleeing my finger tips. It has been a while but it is still too familiar. If I had saved my photographs from the friends and places of years before this would be the time to set them on fire. I recruit new hands, new captains of ships that I will run into ground. No self destruction this time; Just trying to sow together a quilt to remember everything that isn't around anymore. Things I miss and the things I will forget. I am cramming my life full of living, someones idea of dreaming, and losing everything I can't keep in my pockets. Grab a bucket, there are holes everywhere.