Letters to Whoever's Listening

all my marbles

intelekshual — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 21:28:50 +0000

As simply as I was dead weight

as lightly as I was driftwood

I am only what you’re building here

in the spaces between what you say and what you won’t,

I live in what slightest silence allows me to imagine is true

and disappear with a single word,

disappear in every no, maybe and yes.

I used to grow smaller when I was small

I used to live in a process of elimination

in each step between here and gone,

innocent and guilty

until it turned out that there is a limit to how much of me you can eliminate

before I am just hunger and history

heavy and breathing hard

waiting for the spaces.

The Answer Could Never Be Yes

intelekshual — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:41:03 +0000

The boy across the bar believes he has mastered the art of building something out of nothing, and maybe he has, but he doesn’t know the first fucking thing about making something into nothing, and there’s an art in that, too. The ability to turn what you want when it’s within your reach into just another quiet empty room is something you have to work at, something you have to hone, something you can’t just stumble into. It requires talent to ruin everything worth ruining simply by entering the race.

He won’t understand that and so you don’t tell him. You listen and you talk and you listen and you talk, and you wait the appropriate amount of time between sentences, you pause, you smile, you nod, you place your hand on his shoulder in what you hope is a conciliatory fashion at just the right moment, and you shake your hair, you avert your eyes, you play for him the woman he wants you to be, and you talk and you say nothing worth hearing.

You say nothing worth hearing and you say nothing worth saying, and you know this to be the only way because you know this way to end the same as every other way. It wouldn’t make a difference if you offered him the world between your eyes alongside the world between your thighs, because the end would always be the same and you have already learned how to hug the pillow so it seems like a comfort and how to hug the floor so it tells you what you already know, and you have already learned how to say goodbye without saying anything else.

You have already learned.

You lean in the right amount, you lean over the right amount, you lean back, you lean, you lean, you lean any way but on him and you learn what he wants you to be and you be it. You be that thing, because the thing that you are has only the oxygen to breathe and not any left to keep breathing, and you be a thing instead of a person, you be so much less than free. You just be.

You have already learned the science inherent in losing, and you play only the game that gets you there.

You in the morning, invisible

intelekshual — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 07:59:39 +0000

There are 28 windows on 2 of the levels of the boat outside the window. There is one of me staring at the four of you sitting in two of the windows, watching the world outside you with no particular desire written on your tired American faces. The end of the day is spelled out in tiny lines across the language of your eyes, and you are lost in a grace you do not know.

You are not being watched as long as you think that you are not being watched. You are not ending the day with eyes on your eyes as long as you think that you are not ending the day this way. You are left alone with the rhythm of waves and the tiny failures of being you today, and you are alone as long as you believe you are alone.

My heartbeat matches the movement of the water beneath your feet, and I am with you. I am here and I am watching, but I am not a part of the world you know. As long as you do not know me, I am not a part of the world you know. It is the idea of anonymity that balances your every movement, and you believe beyond belief in this, the idea that you are unknown outside of the people that you know, and I cannot be the one to tell you a different truth. I cannot be the one to tell your story in lined lips and limited smiles, I cannot write your wrongs in a way you’d understand, a way you’d know was true.

Your feet move, stutterstep. For a moment microscopic, you turn my way and I think that you saw the me watching the you that watches the world this way, at the end of this and every day. For a moment microscopic, I know the you written between the lines between your eyes, and I can sleep.

That Part of You That’s Part of Me (in Colorado)

intelekshual — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 03:21:51 +0000

Dear ______,

I know that little about me makes sense to you. I know, too, that in this script I am supposed to shrug despondently and tell you that little about me makes sense to me, and I understand your confusion. I am supposed to say that. That is my next line. I am supposed to deliver it with a weary care, a note of sadness.

It isn’t true and I’m so very tired of lying.

There is a pathology to my emotions, a precise science to my highs and lows, my wild swings from a place you know how to find and that wild country beyond. I have studied me my entire life, I have gone beyond my doctorate, I am an expert in my field. I know how to repair myself, and I can map out the more important place, the area that shows you how not to break me.

When we met I thought about writing you a technical guide to the thing that I am, but I know that things like that are in the category of reasons that I never win. It would make perfect sense and someone else could know me, too, I could have a colleague in this, my life’s unwilling work, but to give you the book implies a belief that you want to know. I am far too frightened a field to ever suggest such a thing, even when I believe it may be true.

This is one of the most important things that you do not know, this fear that leaves me wild-eyed and breathless behind whatever I am pretending to be. I am afraid of all the things you think I might be afraid of, but I am afraid of so much more.

I am afraid that you will not like what you learn, that will find behind the skin of me a blood unbearable, a thing that is so many things you never needed to know. This I suspect you know, and know you suspect.

I am afraid that this machine that I am was manufactured to live landlocked with love. I am afraid. I am afraid.

But I am also afraid that I will not want you studying me. I will not want you wanting to know all that I know, all the ways the tiny wires connecting the meat of me make me the things that I am and will be. This is where my science becomes as cruel as science tends to be, and makes the scientist mute. I can’t tell you that I fear I am only saying your name in reverent tones and while sweating because I need to say something, I need to know someone else’s name and believe that they know mine, and you are here. You are here.

I am afraid that I am always right when I am afraid, and I am afraid that this tested result is consistent.

I am afraid that you will never ask what I haven’t told you yet, and it isn’t simply fear that makes me know that if you don’t I never will. I could tell you all the ways I work, all the things that leave me on the ground two steps too close to the edge and unable to work my way back. I am afraid that you are just another you, and not something different entirely. I am afraid that I know all of you now, and there is nothing new to learn, I am afraid that you are only what you are and not any of the things I think you could be.

I am afraid. I am afraid. I am afraid. I am accustomed.

Instead of Counting Sheep, and Less Effective

intelekshual — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 21:08:09 +0000

Mostly, I am worried that someone will break into my house in the middle of the night, come right into the place where I sleep, where I am trying to sleep right that instant, and kill me. With a gun or a knife or with their bare bear hands.Mostly. That is the primary concern, but it is far from the only one, and even this one primary concern gives birth to a seemingly endless parade of baby concerns – all these tiny worries swimming around in the stomach of the big worry like fishes inside a whale.

Once I have worried that someone will come into the house and murder me, I start to worry about how they will do it. I have this terrible fear of guns, but it seems to me that if I have to choose between massive head trauma caused by a gunshot wound and being stabbed, repeatedly, hands waving in what looks like it could be a seizure or a new dance move but is really the only stupid struggle I can manage, the bullet is the best way to go. All this worrying between bullets and knives ignores the possibility of being strangled, of course, but we’ve got to narrow the field a bit, so I toss that tiny idea back and focus.

When I’ve worried about the nature of my death nearly as much as it’s inevitability, I begin to worry about my worrying. Worrying ages you prematurely, it causes lines and wrinkles and, I’m sure, any number of other things that I’m told are unattractive, physically, and because I am so worried about all of these problems caused by my worrying, I cannot stop worrying. More than the ways I am making myself less appealing, I worry that all my worrying is for nothing, because I am worrying about things that either are or are not going to happen, regardless of my behavior. I am wasting large amounts of energy and time on all this worrying about things I cannot possibly change. If someone is going to end my life with a gun or a knife or their awful bear-hands, they just are going to do that, whether I lost all my sleep imagining it or not. This builds a new wrinkle in the worry brain, as I realize that I really ought to be concerned as to whether this acceptance of the inevitability and unchangeable nature of certain events means I am giving in to some rising fatalism in my blood, and this is a terrible idea, terrible, terrible, I believe in free will, I believe in impactful actions, I believe in choices, I do, I do, I do. Destiny has no place here, and I am troubled by the fact that there is clearly some part of me that disagrees with the rest of me, and now I am beginning to worry that this war between the vast majority of me and the Falkland Islands portion that is apparently hiding in some tiny spot, maybe by the liver, maybe, maybe somewhere near the the bottom of the spine or nestled cozily between two ribs, will escalate as I age, and I will never find myself in agreement with myself again, ever.

Now I am worried that I don’t know enough about the Falklands War, and I am worried that this reveals that there are many subjects about which I know nowhere near enough, there are all these fucking moth bite holes in my knowledge, and there are not enough minutes in hours in days in years for me to fix this, there is not enough time, there is never enough time for anything really, and that is not a worry so much as it is an understanding, and this forces me to realize that daylight savings time is coming, maybe not soon but definitely some time, and this will be a day packed with worries, worries, worries and all their synonyms, because there is nothing quite so alarming as the offhand subversion of the linear nature of time, and that is an endless hole for me to fall into, and now it is morning, everything is light and I have not slept and I am still worrying and I have to stand up, I have to stand up and walk and dress and move and speak and smile and nod and navigate and drink coffee and read a book and work and speak some more and stand again and sit and walk and I have to do all these things, all day.

(I am in the shower and I am secretly worried that all this worrying is why you don’t, won’t, can’t love me and then I am secretly worried that it is not, because if it is not I still do not understand and sometimes, most of the time, I believe that I can live with anything I can understand, and I would like to give your not loving me a name and put it away with the rest of the things I do not like but do understand.)

One and one and one and one and

intelekshual — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:11:46 +0000

I start counting, because counting is enough sometimes to make the time pass and to get past this. I count my feet because there are two and two is an even number, but once I count my feet I have to count my body all the way through. I count my fingers and there are ten and that is even and I count my toes and there are ten and that is even, and things are looking good so far. I have two legs and two arms and two hands and two feet and two breasts and two eyes and two lips, scratch that and make it four which is still fine and even and right, but now things are complicated. I have one nose and one mouth and one cunt, I have one face and one torso and one ass and one clit and you used to put your one tongue on it and then press your one tongue against my one tongue, filling my one mouth with the taste of my one cunt and then that was okay, no matter how many ones we put in we were always two and that was even and so it was fine. Now I’ve lost count and my two eyes are crying what I’m sure is an odd number of tears and I’m pressing them closed using four of my ten fingers and even that reminds me of your fingers pressing into me and I am lost here and stuck here because an elevator doesn’t just let you off whenever you want it to, you have to wait for the two doors to open and sometimes you have to wait for an odd number of people to get off in front of you so you can break free and run, run, run.

The two doors open and I am still one on this elevator when they do, and this is a time when one is better than two, as impossible as that sounds, and I don’t run, run, run even though I want to, even though I want to just bolt through this lobby and past the guards and down the escalator through groups of misters and misses and suits and ties and I want to burst through their days and break through the doors, I want to scream as I do it and I want them to hear me but I want you to hear me even more, and I don’t do it. I don’t run. I don’t make a noise. I walk calmly to the doors, I ignore the revolving ones because what a nightmare of possible numbers that is, and I get outside through the much more maneuverable traditional doors and I breathe deep in the rain soaked air and I light a cigarette and I take one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten steps to a spot that is not too close to anyone else and I stand.

I pick up the phone that lives in my head and I call you. I have so many things I want to say to you, but today I start with:

“Do you remember getting kicked out of that cheesy bar in Pioneer Square? The one with the faux western theme and all the frat types mixing with the forty somethings, all hoping for a chance to fuck the girls dancing on the bar or at least one of the drunk misguided stereotypes writhing in a solid mass to top forty pop hits? That was one of the best nights of my life with you.”

I take your silence as encouragement. I continue my story, our story, because maybe you don’t remember, and sure, that’s almost too awful to consider, but it’s something to say other than “I miss you so much I feel like I’m fucking falling all the time now” or “I love you and you loved me and how can one little letter make such a huge difference in my life”.

“We went there hoping for trouble but not looking for it. We went there like we went so many places, wanting not necessarily violence but it’s potential. We got our hands stamped and forced our way up to the bar, not caring how many future bankers or car salesmen we trampled and shoved past. Once there, we eyed the dancer on the bar and ordered two shots and two beers. It was like we were in a movie, we just ordered beers and waited to see what they brought. We already knew it didn’t matter. The dancer came over to you and started her obligatory mating ritual, practically rubbing her scantily clad vagina across the top of your head as she gyrated. This was our chance and I took it. I got angry. I got wild eyed. I pounded the bar and I started to shout. I demanded equality. “Get over here and rub your vagina on my head this instant, young lady! What’s wrong, don’t you believe in equality? Is this bar anti-gay, or is it just you? Do you people discriminate against women? What the fuck is wrong with you, you bigot!” I built to a frenzy and began rhythmically pounding, chanting. You joined in. “Equality. Equality. Equality. Equality.” Predictably, a bouncer laid his hand on your arm, because obviously you had to be the source of the trouble. Just another drunken pile of raging hormones gone mad in the face of tits and ass all packaged and displayed neatly. He grabbed your arm and I caught your eye. As soon as I made contact, you nodded and we were off. I grabbed my beer, never knowing what they’d served me, and threw the drink in his beefy face. In the moment of shock that followed, I made a run for it, screaming “REMEMBER THE ALAMO” as I ran. I never looked back for you, I knew this time you were our lamb to the slaughter of a bad idea and a good time. I ran in circles around the dance floor crowded with people we knew we didn’t want to be or know. I ran and I ran, only deviating from my circle when I absolutely had to. I made the situation into a scene out of Looney Tunes, the bouncers playing Wile E. Coyote to my Road Runner. I wasn’t trying to escape, I didn’t want to get lost in the crowd. I just wanted to keep going as long as possible. They were closing in on me and I knew it, but I just kept running, limbs flailing wildly, jumping over people where necessary. When they finally grabbed me near the women’s bathroom, I knew I had a choice. Would I go quietly into this good night? Fuck I would. I’m only five foot two, but I thrashed and kicked wildly as they carried me out. I’d never been physically removed from anywhere before, and it fulfilled all of my expectations. They carried me out and tossed me on the sidewalk. I was sober but I still felt no pain as I picked myself up and went looking for you. They were as dumb as they looked, shouting “Where’s the other one?” as they rushed back inside to find you, forgetting that they’d already deposited you safely outside the other entrance, quietly and with no fuss. No nonsense for you, not that night.”

You still haven’t said anything, and I’m hoping that’s because you’re remembering us that night, our manic glee as we created a cartoon scene all over their meat market, the way we were always a team this way. I’m hoping that you are remembering us and that this might be the thing that reminds you to be in love with me. I press on just in case things are this way.

“Every time one of us ended up bruised we fucked like we believed in forever, usually wherever we stood. That night we ran laughing, holding hands a half block before we saw the fence surrounding a parking garage and knew without exchanging a word that we had to climb it and it had to be a contest. Most of our contests were like this. There was no prize and there were no rules, there was just this thing we had to do and losing was almost as good as winning if you did it with enough enthusiasm and style. This was that. We said nothing, we just ran and started the climb. You were fast, you were always so fast. Contests involving speed usually belonged to you, unless you tripped, unless you fell, unless you decided to let me win. Tonight was usually, and you hit the top a full minute or more before I did. You got to the top, and you stood laughing and stripping your shirt off as I continued to climb. Losing is never an excuse for giving up, we told each other every time. You, half naked and full of joy, standing there watching me made me climb faster than I thought I could. If you’d been at the top all along like this, I’d have won, hands down. I could beat anyone to get to you this way. You grabbed for my hand to pull me up but I shook you off, wanting to do this myself. I crawled over the final rung with the lack of grace that was my trademark, and as soon as I was up you were on me. I stood up and you shoved me back down on the cold concrete, a rough shove that had my scabbed elbows taking more damage. You straddled me in my shock, and it took a moment for me to respond. It took all my strength but I shoved you off of me and stood again, watching you on the ground. I gave you my hand and pulled you back to your feet. As soon as you stood in front of me I knocked you back down. There was a crack and I knew it was your head against the cement and we were even then, while we were being odd, and we were just starting. It wasn’t always like this with us, but oh, when it was. I was on top now, and you slapped wildly at my hands when I reached for your zipper. You fought like you meant it, and I loved you then like a fucking housefire, I wanted to consume you that way, to leave you burnt and ruined, to turn you into something no one else could ever experience. A hard left to my jaw broke me out of needing to be the last person you ever knew, and I was on the ground again. Do you remember us that way? Do you remember that I couldn’t stop smiling at you that way, with my teeth loose which was okay because if they were loose they were still there, they were still in my mouth like I wanted you to be in my mouth, you and my loose teeth jammed in together behind my red red smile. I was on the ground with that smile, and you were on me again, kissing that red smile, and it hurt, but I wanted you more than I wanted the pain of it to stop, and this time you didn’t fight me when I reached for you.”

Week Two

intelekshual — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 08:44:59 +0000

Walking through your city sleep-mad and heart heavy, performing this constant dance like a bright light caught in wild dogs’ eyes, I am never quite sure of the time. Winter makes slipping through time simple, dark is always and doesn’t mean morning or night, and daylight is so brief that it serves only to exclude a few cold hours. On morning (I think) three (I think) of not sleeping, my eyes take on a simpleton’s gleam, they betray me and tell the world I am either insane or touched, and when I look in a mirror, I cannot tell the difference anymore. It amazes me that no one questions my explanations. Of course it is only sleep I lack. Of course there is nothing wrong. Of course the only thing I am is tired, and that is enough to explain away my moron’s eyes and lunatic grin, my stutter stop sentences and lurching gait, the staccato bursts of profanity followed by apology. The allowances granted me by anyone hearing about my troubled sleep are enough to convince me that all wars have been fought over sleep, instead of sex, money and god as I have always assumed. Sleep is more precious than gold, and it is clear I am late to this party of knowledge.

Everything becomes a pillow in my fading sight. There are times that I am sure I could fall asleep, and stay in that blessed state, if only I were allowed to lay down where I stand and make the room go dark and silent for as long as it takes my head to hit the ground. These moments are many, but pass quickly and turn into more not sleeping. All the minutes in my day become minutes in which I am not sleeping, except for the minutes I am using to try to sleep. Helpful people make suggestions. Tylenol PM, exercise, cough syrup, codeine, a bottle of wine, a shot of whiskey. I smile and nod, tell them I have tried all of these. What I do not tell them is that I have tried all of these at the same time. I am a scientist at night now, mixing all the solutions for sleep in as many combinations as I can think of and recording the results. The results are always the same.

The clock tells me it is 12:36 in the morning, and who am I to argue? I am not tired, and I am not surprised.

1+1=you

intelekshual — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 22:51:46 +0000

You know how, in movies, there is always a hooker with a heart of gold? Or a criminal, a man with a difficult past who, if given a chance, would reveal that underneath it all, he is living kindness, he is some saint sent to save us or at least the female romantic lead of whatever story we’re being told? There are so many stories like this. The whore, the thief, the violent, the insane – if we would simply patiently dig through the negative, there would be the positive, the warm heart, the kindness, the cookies baking, the wife the mother the husband the perfect friend. But it’s never actually like that. The whore is a whore and that’s all there is to it and the thief is going to steal just as much as he damn well pleases with no regard for how much work you’ve put into helping him realize his true butterfly beauty. Everyone is fucking determined to remain a caterpillar, and no amount of love or self righteous support is going to change that. Even if you managed to find someone who had all that shiny perfect positive under their nasty negative, the golden heart might be fucking boring and it could turn out that the only real thing going for that crazy violent drunk was being crazy violent and drunk, and really, you should have known all along that if once you got rid of the surface what’s underneath is never as much of a prize as you thought it would be and it is no fun to fuck a saint, they are invariably bad lays.

The night I met you was the first time I believed that the story might be true and maybe we weren’t all being lied to all. the. fucking. time and maybe just maybe ohgodplease there might be someone who was this and that, not this or that, and all I wanted to do was wade through you for as long as you’d let me or as long as it was still what I wanted to do, and I wouldn’t dig through your exposed negative, I promise, I would just watch and wonder and want and have fun with you, because what else is there, really, when it’s over?

What if What if What if What if What if What if

intelekshual — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 04:02:05 +0000

What if every time you felt something about someone or something that you felt like you couldn’t say to that person, about that something, even though you knew it would make you feel about a million times better for at least one second, and that that one second of a million would make all the seconds of feeling like dirt and shit and saliva mixed together on a shoe shoved into a face worth it, totally worth it, you said that something to someone you didn’t care about at all? Do you think that would help? I mean, you wouldn’t tell them you didn’t feel it about them, you would just say whatever it is you think it would help to say, like “The sound of you laughing, throaty and low, is maybe the best thing I’ve ever heard and I would do anything, no matter how fucking ridiculous, just to hear it again” or “Immediately after I started loving you, I started hating you and just kept going and I don’t see any other way for it to have gone and now that’s all that’s left and I don’t even remember what loving you was like” or “yes, that’s right, it was me that killed your dog that time and I am not even kind of sorry and I would do it again” or “I hope you fucking die, but more than that I hope that everyone you love dies in front of you, you terrible fuck” or “I have never had sex that terrible in my entire life, what is wrong with you” or “when you smile, things go crooked and I can’t walk straight’ or “I don’t even ever want to have sex with you, I just want you to kiss me and then I want to keep knowing you forever” and then you would wait awhile and see if it helped.

I do not understand why we are not all doing this already. Unless I don’t know, we are?

An Encyclopedia of Broken Things

intelekshual — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:37:54 +0000

It’s light out. It has been for hours. The sun is shining and I am the only person in the world, in this world, with a smile so bright. The sun might not even be out, it’s possible we’re all basking in me.

Everyone who isn’t you.

How did we even get here, how is it that the sun came out and the world is new and everything is everything and I am the only person in the world with a smile so bright red? How did we get from last night to this moment without any stories to tell, without any sentences that end with “and then we both started laughing and everything was fine again”?

I don’t know how we got here, but this is all your fault. It’s always your fault, and I stand by that statement, standing here next to the chair because I can’t even stay in the chair, the chair is trying to destroy me like you tried to destroy us and it’s all clear now. This is your fault, and I can’t stop smiling at you this way, with my teeth loose which is okay because if they are loose they are still here, they are still in my mouth like I want you to be in my mouth, even now, right now, you and my loose teeth jammed in together behind my red red smile.

I don’t know what I’m going to do next, so I’m just standing by the chair I can’t stay in and I’m still smiling because I am certain that if I stop smiling there will never be anything to smile about, ever again, so I can’t stop, not even for an instant because a life without a reason to smile is like fucking with condoms which is why we don’t ever, ever do that.

I’m going to stand here until you come back, until you wake up, and tomorrow I’m going to carve our names inside a heart on my arm and pretend that my arm is a tree, and pretend that that constitutes a vow, that that heart on my tree-arm is a wedding without the possibility of escape that divorce or death provides, because I will never let you die without me, I will never let you be without me. Not anymore.