Dream.

There were insects living in my body. In the fleshy center of my right foot, nestled under the curved arch was a long white grasshopper, safe and warm in the hole it had dug for itself. A fat cockroach 3 inches long scuttled under my skin, making long graceful loops around my right foot and ankles, never staying in one place. A large prehistoric creature resembling a bothriolepis canadensis hugged my left knee cap, so perfectly married to my movement so that it was virtually undetectable. I wanted to crush them under my weight to cease the constant twitching but somebody informed me that that would release their eggs into my bloodstream and turn me into one cozy incubator for a whole batch of little invaders. I hobbled around, conducting everyday business, always aware, always afraid.

I had forgotten about my guest in my left leg until it forcefully propelled itself out of my body, exploded out of my tissues and scurried away in to a long hallway.

The cockroach grew bold and began to climb up my leg, heading for my crotch. When it made its way into the fleshy part of my thigh, I clutched a fistful of the fat, trapping the bug under stretched almost translucent skin. The membrane easily gave way under my fingernails, and I popped the bug out of my leg, leaving behind a red gaping wound. There was no pain. Only victory.

I decided to go to a doctor to get the grasshopper removed. I did not know how to reach into my foot and extract the bug without breaking parts of it off.

I think it's worth noting that I fell asleep to the dull thuds and scripted moans of my neighbors fucking.

I Need A Resistor

It strikes and it strikes hard.
Live wire and charge volted.
Stand there ungrounded.

A super-surge across your heart and through your eyes.
Snap the wires, flail!
Shock remember, catch them with your eyes.
How do you feel?

I'm sorry, this wasn't supposed to happen.
I sad high, thinking it'd never change.
But the storm came.
Oh, how it mixes.

How close are you to it?
Careful, I might bite again.

Do you think it's best to just let them stay like that?
Maybe it'll fix itself.
That's what I'm hoping for.

Let's See.

Let's talk about what you've done - this breach of the clean break between my solitary valley and your raging forest. I can't work any longer with this son on my back, beating my brow like the drug-fueled rhythm of my pen, scratching throughout the night, curling under my skin, echoing through my head until even the softest sign is amplified with the force of a lover's blow.

I'll take this unmediated approach to your scent and crush it between my palms until your juices run between my fingers and pool in the dips and crevices of the cold dark floor. It drifts in through through the windowsill, seeps into every surface until I'm faced with the fantasy, of you, everywhere I turn; especially in my dreams. Like a series of cascading notes you flow through, leaving moisture in the wake.

The quake subsides and I'm on the precipice of collapsing the deck, giving it away, letting it spoil. Words words words push against the razor edge of my teeth, buzz at the tip of my fingers, leak from the corner of my eye. Details cut against my defense - I'm reduced to a pile of powder waiting waiting waiting for... what?

Patrick Procrastinating

Pretentious proclamations pounced places predetermined
prattling pricks pondered presence
Proto-Merkabah pounded plates
priestly prophecies plotted pernicious precipitation
promises put plainly placate proletarians
plastics predate palladium
perennial pathways provide passage
partway plundered palaces plant
Panama's preeminent planetary pornography
pregnant polygamous pinhead
Patton planned peppering pawns
ploys penned partly pragmatically
presents pacify prenuptial paedophytes
paranoid pussies panic pall-bearing pissants
pangea's power
population's psychologies parabolically plummet
Penis.

-Patrick

Not My Apples

Brazen chill of fire wrestle life out of the lake.
The life of he is wandering in the loser of a heart burned in the sight of the forgetters.
Pick me up by the shoulders, Saints, before the wolves rush through the tunnels and define me.
Bleed the fire, Heat up the hearth with my heart.
Gouge my organs and solder my eyes shut.
Then I won't cry.

The whore will suck you dry.
You'll throw the last of your life towards him.
Regions of toxic abominations will fight their way into your mind.
You're poisoned now, dear.
Keep yourself clear.

He Just Might Be Into Me

So last night I went on a date. With a guy. That I met online.

I know what you're thinking. That's creepy. That's dangerous. He might have diseases. He might be psychotic. What's wrong with you? Can't you make friends like normal people? Do you have to resort to a dating website?

But the thing is, it was actually quite fun. We talked a lot before meeting in real life. He was nice. We went and saw He's Just Not That Into You and made fun of it. Then we came home and watched Man From Earth. We talked about deep things, shared pretty private information. He says what he means. He doesn't play games. We ended up making out pretty heavily on the couch.

Then he says that he's not easy. That he doesn't sleep with people on the first date. That I'm really cute. That he's only slept with three people in his life. That I smell good. That he's moving to San Francisco in April because he's gotten a job as a video game developer for a small company. That we'll definitely see each other again. We kiss in the light drizzling rain leaning up against his truck and he tells me I'm not that short but then I point out that I'm wearing heels.

So now I'm that girl. Waiting by the phone. Checking my email, facebook, text, IM. Waiting for him to call. Wondering if I should call him. Or text him. Or message him. Replaying the night over and over again in my head. Talking about it with my girlfriends. Wondering if I was a good kisser. Wondering when we'll hang again.

I'm not even all that into him. He's decent looking, decent at kissing, moderately interesting. But he's easy to hang out with and soft and new.

I also got totally stood up by this other guy who I have all these classes with and now I'm worrying about whether it'll be awkward on Tuesday and whether we should not sit next to each other anymore or not make too big a deal about it whether I should mention that I went on a date with another guy this weekend or whether that's too obviously flaunting my desirability. How could I have been so stupid, he didn't ask for my number I asked for his so obviously he wasn't interested, why did you think that he was?

So anyways. I haven't done any homework, I'm on anti-depressants even though I'm not depressed, and I'm hungry but too lazy to cook. It's cold, I have a shitty gas heater and my clingy ex-boyfriend won't stop iming me, messaging me, texting me every single fucking day.

I'm so sick of boys.

And all I got was this crummy t-shirt

Bowel shaking earthquakes of doubt and remorse assailed me impaled me with monster truck force in my mind I was still driving still striving still making the grade but still given time her memories never did fade cuz i was racing and pacing and plotting the course and fighting and biting and riding on my horse and there was no moon to follow the sun i should've strived for more than to just have some fun but those times are over now I'm holding a gun these lyrics are worse than what I'd penned then and it's hard to make it rhyme when its not separated into stanzas but my attention span is shorter than george costanza and I went the distance and I went for speed but it never added up so I'll continue to feed my ego with this angsty stream of consciousness I've set myself up for failure because nothing rhymes with consciousness I'd be a terrible rapper so thank God I've got a sense of humor because I have an extra dimension to examine there's a purple layer inside these pokemon cards that the bootleg ones dont have but I need to give things context to those not privy to the director's commentary in my brain and now I'm compelled to write a line that ends with the word "pain" even though it belabors the point that I'm no less whiny and in the face of the reconstruction i've gone through in the past quadrage I'm still just a speck of lint on the penis of an alien but that's what the years will do because I kept mum on the fact that I was the one who supervised the construction of light none of this would be here were it not for me I am the Savior you've all been waiting for the blueprints were triple checked and the supplies all accounted for the dayvan cowboy surfed through and demanded some more but I'd given my all the budget all spent so the need arose for me to become clark kent I hid in the phone booth waiting for the end still knowing that it was me alone who had the power to rend this universe and its neighboring properties this shit was going to get torn up like the subject of some obscure pop culture refence that I was compelled to assimilate while the french awoke from their naps to discover that they'd missed the boat and the missiles had been fired by a malfunctioning computer but they were too hairy and apathetic to do anything about it and that, folks, was a tangent which is something else I treasure tangents and obsucre pop culture references I am truly The Product of the Family Guy generation and my contempt for my creator is more ironic than rain on my wedding day oh my god alanis morisette sucks you know if you say "oh my god" in lower case then it's not bad because His name is not "god" it's "God" and even that is up for debate because "God" is still just a word in the english language his actual name is the intentionally unpronouncable "YHVH" which I'm assuming makes more sense in Hebrew but regardless where was I going? Yes all the references and trivia, I'd accumulated it maybe to compensate for something? There's definitely a more immediate return on knowing that kind of stuff than learning things that actually matter. I can walk up to Joe Bro and say "hey remember the part where Seth McFarlane cut his arm off and lopped the head off of pop culture and connected his spurting stump to our vernacular with a bendy straw?" This message brought to you by my feelings of inadequacy brought on by a victim complex inspired by some of the greats of our day. There's so much potential but if I get to feel troubled by not reaching it that makes me feel I don't know? What is the core feeling of turmoil. I'm having trouble distilling the spirit there's too much ectoplasm in the way I do think that once the zeitgeist is jarred and labelled I'll be better able to see how I'm directly guiding its course and I will inevitably be disappointed at how little control I really have over the rudder but I'll get to make a generalized statement about the human condition and isn't that all we really want anyway?

This Will Be the End of Everything

I spend inordinate amounts of time blaaaaaaaaaaaaaah thinking about either music or religion. Both have become an escape for me. An irresponsible escape. Is my increasing interest in music and the production/creation of said escape due to my decreased involvement with religion? My heart is beating faster as I write this. I am the bitch of my subconsciousness. I think that deep down what makes people religious is that most Abrahamic faiths preach some sort of end of everything. This completely excludes eastern religion because they're doing it wrong. Reincarnation? A fate worse than eternal hellfire. Bramin is the highest caste in Indian society if memory serves, but I could be wrong because I learned that like six years ago. Bramin also sounds like ramen. Just saying. So back to this that and the other thing. The most appealing aspect of abolishing my agnosticism is the assuredness that the ad naseum aspirations of the apes will finally be arrested. We have an out. Christ said he would come soon, so I mean obviously he meant "soon" in the grand scheme of things because "soon" from the perspective of the bible would've come about 1,980 years ago which is also ironic because I think a lot of people thought he would come back during the 1980s because Regan was president because everybody thought Carter did a shitty job and Regan really did do a pretty good job I think he had the highest approval ratings of any president ever? let alone a republican. And just look where we are now. So in conclusion, a comet is taking too long to smack into the Earth so I feel that this is why some form of divine intervention has become necessary. I hope the council will at least consider these arguments and take a responsible course of action. Thank you, and good night.

A tree living with disease, feeding, persistent till the bell tolls our end. Tell me your concerns let's set forth our animosities like counting ducks in our shallow ponds. Hear me when I am speechless the rhythm of my silence beats strong, you say that there's power in our grasp but it's been nothing but whispers in my tongue. Remark, that we met last week in the corner of someplace and somewhere until our inks bled together slowly until I hardly even struggled to get past the first row. Now my mouth gapes, stretching with filth till the doorknockers turn away their faces from the echo of their own screams. Let us speak generally.

Twenty.

The day I turned 20 it hailed in LA. This struck me as poetic not so much for the uniqueness of the interaction but indeed because it was a rather un-unusual combination that became special only in my mind. I felt uncomfortably old, irrevocably separated from that scapegoat label "teen" and also intolerably young, just barely starting on two.

I loved aging in obscurity, as if the gravity of the situation was a precious secret to be protected from the false celebration of others. I imagined myself year after year, becoming an ageless constant like my mother, who hovered above late 30 no matter how many years passed.