Click to enlarge.

Suburbia Scene

FLMST 102 - Scene assignment #1 from SubUrbia(1996) - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120238/

I feel this one. It's about having and losing. About people and what we let them do to us almost against our own will. Open, again and again but goddamn I knew your actions maybe before even you did. I almost want to laugh at the repetition, floundering pathetic and I wish it was not me. Not you.

I'm worried. Insecure. I hear myself say the memorized words and know they sound fake. I know that I'm fake. I want to succeed but to let your strange topography touch me deep is an invasion of privacy that I can't stand. The past lets me relate to this other person's fantasy but keeps me from letting you see that I know, I understand. Is that ironic?

"Six-fifty" becomes a plea for understanding "come with me" I LOVE YOU and "new ground" becomes everything I ever hated about you.

It's not really acting anymore, is it?

Intermission Breaks the Illusion

Wrapped in your insecurities I greet the morning with the friction of our flesh, pushing pulling dashed against my dreams. You never slept so poorly. I stood face upturned in your barrage of words you give so easily, and knew this storm could not last but I thought we could ignore the forecast a while longer. And now someone's sunny days have arrived and I find myself again voyeuristic, always leaving leaving never left.

I never dream anymore. Only play pretend with myself and others, your temporary cooperation is appreciated. Thank you, don't come again.

A revolving cast of distinct faces, my roots seep down through the cracks in the stage and I can't help but wonder out loud "Who today, and what tomorrow?"

Put pen to paper, everybody plays and are played.

Maybe I never should've put myself between five sons. Do you reap what you fuck?

""

I have nothing to say.
I have to say nothing.
I have, to say, nothing.

Drug Fueled

Here's a great big fuck you to the world, eat this you piece of shit cuntbox. I am angry and I am finally ready to express it. I bounced the ball so high that it momentarily covered the sun and I wept at the beautiful sight, the fleeting relief, I'm undone by you. I promise not to hold on to the tail of this roaring mountain, it will pass me by and I will hesitate ever so precariously perched at the intersection of hate and morose wondering if I can step without earth quake. They built this cage around me with little white pills and I'm safely contained but angry angry pained, one replaced by another, what was the point of this exchange? I don't have much time and you're bleaching all the colors from the walls I want to beg but that's pathetic well maybe a little bit won't hurt too bad. Don't go don't go don't let me go I hate the weight of need that strikes me over and over again my head against the bricks thudding softly gently lovingly. It feels important, it feels like something big but I know in hindsight everything is diminished and I'll soon forget like everything everyone else have a good run sunny days I'll be waiting under the rain.

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.

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?

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.

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.

On a Sunday.

I'm sick of your sass. Who cares if I've drowned myself in my bubbly sorrows swimming ten miles to reach the cusp of your lips so that I can have a chance at stroking the plush fur of a woman gone long time ago. Who care if mine eyes are no longer yours and I'm just running on and on in a memory so that you can no longer shout that you once knew me. I don't know where these scripts go or where my fingers trail, all I know is that today I spent five hours in the library poring over the remnants of a past far gone and it felt good. Your judgments have no traces on me, you ridiculous fog. I know I once walked the trail of the beaches that spread themselves wide and generous. I know I once had friends who cared, who spoke words that I heard before they were uttered. I know that this is temporary, so. temporary. that it hurts me to even think about what things may be a year two years five seven from now on. And if you want to remain close, to hug my words till they are squeezed till their drops limit then I don't frankly care because once they are released they're not really my pets, are they now? You knew this yet you are no longer known to me because you've changed and I expected as much but it's still unwelcome news arriving on the lips of a crow now estranged because in some small part, I expected to find the you that I once possessed. How is it that we are the focus of our own obsessions yet others are living their own roles with such fervor that we can no longer use building blocks, we're constantly taken by surprise, taken by the gasp, taken by the tail?

My fingers may tingle till they fall and my toes may wiggle till they jive but in the end it's the same old me that you never managed to know despite the best efforts of your limited reach. I wish I could've opened myself up to you but it was never meant to fit so and I assumed it was foolish to try because the sofa hugs me so well it was like the lover that I dreamed I'd have one day. I'm sick of your words, sick of your inane sufferings, sick of your total bullshit that you shove down me every day every second until I don't know which way is down and if only I could kill you I would relish the opportunity to do so with my own flesh clamping down on your veins like a fiery delivery of a play that once was written by a man, maybe a woman.

Don't say that I'm too vengeful because you know it's not true.

White Elephant in the Room.

The eyes are pretty important for your status in the line, waiting with certain nameless others bound by the silent volumes screaming to be heard through the curtains of time that have been tightly drawn shut like that time you took her and she closed herself to you, on you, over you again and again until there was nothing but your shut eyes, open mouth and the floating darkness that was filled but not quite because afterall, you were just a boy, not a boulder.

We're building around ourselves a thesis cobbled together with sheets of stained paper cuts in the flesh. So if you'll call this clean and take it to the movies then i guess I'll come along because I once looked like the sun that you used to moon over like a silly bird, singing songs about a future history that you never had. Dust rolls through your town but your can already left so you're stranded with your lists and boxes; the delivery will be delayed indefinitely. Oops.

Glamorized, idolized white image expands in the mirror and I am the spectator hovering above the deep beginning waiting for you to finish its end. He got my nose and never gave it back but I try not to think about the truth that I never cared enough to start with. Line up, why don't you?, at my door with your upturned feet, fists, fists, and slightly used hands, I never knew you weren't happy to see me go. Now that that's returned, we can be literal with each other, unlike when we were young but that was only a little ago, I even almost remember it.

A rusty nail can be two years old. Two years without even a hello on a birthday card that overstays its welcome until conditions change for the worse. At least I brought a song for us to sleep on even if I never waited for a reply you didn't have to carry that monkey up the river. Now that I stole your verse from the secondhand store I'm frankly quite upset with you for not a lot of reasons but still we knew the tree didn't have to burn quite so crisply in the middle of three, didn't we? Shame on us. Shame floats like a brick held down by the balloon I tentatively anchored my arms on with your green pen. Let it sit uncomfortably with them while I ascend down the stairs with with my basket of worries, freshly hatched by the corner. Sharp, she whispered for hours while somewhere I laughed and the parade passed us through skin, kinda clammy but not alltogether unpleasant. Sometime. Smile at me through the crack in the door, the dim is there for a purpose of power attentive.

Close it.

-

The boundaries are not clear. Let's start at 73. And then. Pause, pause, pause like a line of elephants rounding the corner of Regret and Laughter rings through the crown of my head. Back up a little if you want to find out where it'll all end up I'm pretty sure somebody planned for all this ugliness at some pointed edge. I'm sick with fever at the messages of need I threw out just to see what would catch when you're dropped from that high perch simultaneously with the enforced bottom, who hits fully first? Anybody hear read from the red chipped particulars, we might need you but nobody can be sure yet. Eyedealize the relative because deadlines are rising and the vigilance would've paid off if I had enough rules to scatter around the bay.

First.

See, that's why I told you to stay out of the kitchen. The eggs can be a little bit feisty on Tuesday mornings with fat girls bouncing around like jello, what do you really expect from them? Neighbors test our patience, like little angels sitting on window sills. When it snows I can see my breath like that one time when the cat acted surprised just to please me. I really do hate it when the blinking lights call my name from across the street and I have to walk all the way over in my bike with three wheels that clatter on the black sidewalk filled with whales. Writing with teeth is really hard but not as hard as riding camels with your toes. It's funny how you got all A's in your agnostic ascension while I managed to fly all the way to the moon and back with my three musket barrels and a backpack.

-

What is all this nonsense about being filled anyway. Like a rice cooker toppling over the window to the voice of the young girl I once saw carried by the orange breeze. I like it when it's in me but sometimes I resent it so I color it multirainbow and call it Bob. We can use them for our pleasure but enslavement only goes so far to upholster our couches like bright diamond kites floating in the water's surface, unbroken by the barks of the coyote that I once punched for telling a dirty joke. It called me a feminist.

So if I say fuck off, I really mean fuck me and you and everybody else for wearing those shoes that burn with the cold waves of math, science, and layered theory that somebody somewhere laid down because they had a lot of time on their hands that somebody laid at their feet and if the fireplace was a little bit warmer none of this would've taken place anyway. Like an abandoned bear rug in the middle of a forest where virgins were taken to live forever among the pomegranate trees and mossy old ladies with eyes in their hands. And when they reach out to shake you, you better run faster than you can because if you fall into the puddle, that's it, no more cupcakes for you and that pretentious dog, too.

If it's too short for you, then hell, you might as well take it upon yourself to bring a little pain into this bowl because we gotta fill it before the man comes back and hugs us for being who we are and not who we were. And if I wanna bake the cake then I damn well will frost it with snow because it needs a little sunshine in it's life.

-

I know they're good people when they like my underwear because really, it's called intimates for a reason. If you don't like the colors of my eyes then I guess I could pluck them out arranged across the silver platter that you call home so that the elk can sing a song for your lullaby on your return journey hope. And if you prefer them short then I guess I better leave because I refuse to stand tall for you in this icy gutter feeding on the scrap metal of the rich while the crows laugh their hee haw cry from the top of the buildings while itching their heads necks and toes.

And if sheep crawl like elephants in the dead silent morning fog then you can come along too while we discover spelunking in the dark where sparks fly. Be careful because they say it's dangerous territory and our guide just had a grilled cheese sandwich made with real lime juice and porpourri. I like when violets bloom in the high fields with the grasshoppers singing away like it's their last day on this Mars far away from their mothers' homes that once burned with the sound of crispy footsteps.

Sometimes I like to hold your special features in my mind until I'm not really sure whether it's been me or you that said that one thing that made me laugh and the sound rippled across the ground until it hit something sharp and then things weren't so good anymore. It's too bad things had to start that way although I guess I like endings because they leave a sense of permanence that's comforting in it's finality if not it's conclusion.

And that's how we've been living these days from one conclusion to another until we don't really see open doors anymore, it's really more about door jambs and curved locks that click in the dead of night until you can't stand the fingernails anymore so you rip it out like a barren woman.