Why-I'm-Not-An-Artist

the scab that formed on my right knee after one of my bicycling accidents. i went to the co-op to get us groceries and tried to balance either bag on each handle of the bike that kid who worked at the St.Paul./Mpls. airport gave me. He was living out of his truck and the only thing he owned was the Oxford English Dictionary. My hubris out ranked my skill and I crashed into that bar by the side of Lyndale-got tangled in the stantions. The chain came off and the groceries rolled into traffic. I was bloody - elbows and knees. The manager of the bar came out and handed me a paper towel. I fixed the chain, found my wallet and walked home to see you. i locked the bike up outside - the seat was stolen that night. you and me - you and me - always you and me - ordered in and stared out at the static on the tv screen - i kept the scab, wondering if it would out last you, it has. people think scabs are disgusting - i think they are a wonderful - metallic and a sign of healing

because of all-girls boarding school i know how sacred a watchman is and the woods are holy - cigarettes are what you bring with you to the shower and "she's your problem now" is what mother barks in the ear of the headmaster - barn jackets from j.crew were part of the uniform so were black turtle necks - and duck boots - oh my - hitching rides to fields in the middle of connecticut was a night out - keg stands and secrets were better than salisbury boys or avon old farm puck heads - the meadow was the place to drop off 13 year olds - peter pan bus service let us drink and get high in the way back near the bathroom - and we glared out the window with loose leave paper on which we had written "whip it out" to the single white men who were stuck in traffic - and they did "whip it out" leaving us horrified. mix tapes always had kate bush and peter gabriel on them - oh and the pixies and public image limited and the smiths - and every now and then liz - on the way back from the city would mutter "look at that hot guy" and i would say "that's a chick" cause this is a girls school - we did too much jane fonda and watched footloose on vhs and no tv - so many bye bye birdie performances and rituals and shiny quarters shot in the slot of pay phones to hassle some guy in another town - bring booze pls - i learned how to twist my body into a ball so small i hid in the dryer in the laundry room - and spent winters beneath the paddle ball court and with every girl that did time in the infirmary i would come to visit and give that fire alarm a little tickle - so i breakout in hives if i see j. crew, .l.l. bean, catalogues altogether - laura ashley - in fact all floral patterns - and connecticut - for love of denim jeans - as my mother likes to declare "where were the parents at that boarding school anyway!" turn off supertramp girls grow up too fast - with or without shin guards

“As I look around the restaurant at all the beautiful folks enjoying themselves, I wonder what catastrophe awaits each one. Young man, will your heart explode? Will your intestines fill with blood? Perhaps a seizure on a boat in the middle of a lake. The sun shining down. The stars concealed once and for all. I always feel less anxious when I recognize that the collision is already well under way.”

M.Hindley

last night girl Sam and me were walking up 7th ave and we pass the fruit stand that is out all night - across from what was St. Vincent's Hospital - now scaffolding - and on the side of a mailbox i see a guy who looks like he's bowed down in prayer and i ask girl Sam if she sees him too. she does. he is in all blue - camouflaged beside the mailbox - but he is not moving and kinda looks broken in 2. like a camel with a hump on his back and a second back - his knees pushing him up arms missing shoulders holding him up as well as his head - no hat - and it's getting cold. girl sam and me sit across the street on the bars that are now part of Lenox Hill ER and there is an ambulance parked in front with 3 EMT workers. we aren't sure what to do until the man who is by the mailbox collapses into a pool of himself - and we wonder if we should get him into the ER. so we go to the ambulance and the driver says "yeah, i thought that was a box." we tell her it is not a box, it is a human person. the EMT next to her says, "he's probably drunk and if we go near him he'll tell us to 'fuck off'" and the 3rd EMT starts laughing. girl Sam and me say - what if he's dead - can you check if he's dead? so begrudgingly 2 of them come with us across the street to the mailbox next to the fruit stand and take his vitals. he is not dead or drunk or angry. he doesn't have a hump. it is his backpack beneath his blue shirt. he was in the ER and was asked to leave because he is homeless - he gets up from behind the mailbox and sits on a bench across from the fruit stand. the EMT's thank us for calling their attention to him. Girl Sam and me cross the street and again, a man - where there is always a man - lies outside the 14th street subway is pressed up against the wall of the Duane Reade covering his face with his coat toes sticking out in the cold -

dear big bright nobodies could you not hoover under the scaffolding of twisted tree branch by aria or was it spasso friday saturday every night possibly lightening cigarettes in the 21st century tippy toeing in your way too high heels and pushing the neighborhood off the sidewalk into the street - like last night you did to me - and i was in my own way too high two inch heels and out way too late and seeing the group of girls holding no -good -will -come -from -this -court -of light -my -camel- light i took myself out of the equation and tried for the street and slid into a wet pile of leaves - thank goodness for leaves and landed hard on my thinking hand - the one i lean on when i'm trying to pay attention to whenever big bright nobodies are blabbing at me - now it's busted and bruised - but it is nothing really - ectomorphs don't need a lift - not worth those 2 inches - i'd rather smell like leaves then smoke and bad chatter

in the aftermath - because a cab driver bought me a frappucino at the starbucks on the corner of 19th street - and i would never buy myself something so extravagant - with so many calories - we decided to go West, where the dust had settled, where the screaming was dulled by desert. so i tossed all my everything stuff i really loved on to the sidewalk in front of 363 W 19th and we drove - and drove and drove, took the southern route 80. yup, with a guy i barely knew. decided i should quit smoking too since the whole city was on fire - decide to read Fast Food Nation too aloud and convert this dude driving with me to vegetarianism. we got snowed in near Reno. almost had to chain the tires - kept driving. gambled in vegas - gambled in vegas and i called no one - couldn't look back at nyc - i had my 1st nokia cell phone - but there was no one to talk to and this guy i barely knew - wrestling one arm bandits in gas stations with bad tattoos well we headed off towards donner's pass - i was wearing a sky blue t-shirt from the strand - probably wore it for the entire drive to highway one - and we got to san diego - jamba juice in a shopping mall and i thought - huh - climate change and head south to l.a. - drove up to san francisco. san francisco where i worked at a bar south of market and everyone knew dave eggers. i wanted to leave - i cried serving drinks. customers kept comparing the towers coming down to the dot com crash - and i wore my I love NY t-shirt and stayed silent, sickened. every time an earthquake shook the city i figured it was - well - you know what i figured it was - and roaming blackouts and the gym equipment stopping - and not sleeping through the night and the guy the cab driver frappucino guy would call my mother telling her i went catatonic in trader joe's - then he'd look at me and say somethings i will never forget adding to the layer cake of life's long list of "never forgets" but a year later i came home to NYC and all the people i had left said one day you will look back - someday you will look back ... - somedays you can not help but look back and you are unrecognizable -

pretend like we’re dead

Bad Date

you tore into the neck of a duck - i stared at the hand written sign on the wall "sammy's wifi password..." and picked at the fried rice in front of me- i heard what sounded like a pebble drop on to your plate and i asked "did you lose a tooth?" - but you were spitting duck bones out of your mouth - like pieces of gravel from a drive way i never want to drive down. you said that was the real way to eat duck, the right way to eat it. it was like watching you snap someone's neck. you might as well had blown fresh feathers from your face as you told me my rice was bland - you had reached your hand across the table and tried a bite. i told you "i don't use salt" and separating his food from mine was a rolodex of sweeteners - equal and splenda, some pure domino sugar - i ask the waiter for duck sauce - leaving with a brown bag of leftovers. against the wall a sign read "today special" - today? not today - not this day. i told you there was a store on the corner of 14th and 6th that was called FUN HAPPY CRY - but it is long gone - full of lard and fat and feather perhaps - you mumbled at me "how great is your Chinese." any opportunity to blow out the candle - and i still brought you back to my place - up the elevator with your plastic bag of Ballantine 40 ounce - without a conversation you shoved my rice milk aside and put 2 bottles in the fridge. "where are my pants?" they are not your pants and they are in the laundry and i put them in the laundry because last time was the last time - i went into the closet and pulled them from the middle of the pile. you helped yourself to the chair by the window - as i busied myself moving furniture back to its proper place after a pipe burst - and you sat there just sat there drinking drinking - you took off your shirt. i saw a swollen purple mark above your rib cage. "what's that?" i asked - and you and you and your hi-brow bullshit told me it was from choking someone unconscious with your jujitsu skills - told me when the guy came to he went outside and cried - you acted contrite - but you were so full of shit - are so full of shit - the conversation took a detour and you began telling me the difference between the two of us - it kind of made me sick - i must like getting sick - you smother me in redundant "i'm sorry's" when i tell you anecdotes that need no pity - you try to tell me i've been traumatized - you tell me i have intimacy issues - no no no i don't - Cate Marvin writes in one of her poems "it is not (your) fault, (you) were raised in a tin can" but you don't read poetry so you don't know this secret language. you are talking and i'm trying not to listen - the iceman - the serial killer - the difference between a psychotic and a psychopath - i want to drink chamomile tea soaked in honey tell you to leave so i can go to sleep - but i don't have the guts - not yet - not the guts and if i did would you rip into them like a dead duck in a dingy Chinese restaurant - so angry with my insides each organ would snap and every bone would be spat out and taken as a trophy. "Have you a little chest to put the Alive in?" Have you?

a body of work is living proof/ we’re all rare forms…living in the dead

Once again,
Randolph Scott is thinking out loud on TV
about the end of freedom,
God, mercy, why
barbed-wire fences no longer hold back
old or new grudges, rabid squatters,
the wagonloads
of gruelling pilgrim faith
in an ever-westward-expanding destiny,
while once again
I’m up late remembering
the lacquered sunsets
on the Paramount’s patched screen
Saturday mornings, me
and ten to fifteen other hoodlum sons
of immigrant dreamers aloft
in the filthy froth of the balcony,
surrounded by the ear-popping
fall-to-your-knees-
and-say-hallelujah serendipity
of the swooning music.
Westerns
were what we wanted, couldn’t get enough of,
all those standoffs between
postwar rectitude vs. existential greed
feeding our burgeoning hunger
to be part of
the great American rhapsody.
Everyone mumbling,
believing only in gullibility,
Technicolor,
eradicating evil,
owning everything—is this why
every ten minutes the plot questioned
everyone’s manhood for no reason whatsoever,
the town drunk drank,
the hero sought revenge from a flashback
(that’d murdered his entire family in slow motion),
why everyone believed in
the rewards of futility,
the solace of violence,
the dignity of misfortune,
waited endlessly for the always late,
just around the bend,
steeped in appetite,
in irresistible grief,
beaten to a pulp
utterly insulted point to arrive,
hoping
it’d tie everything together, finally, maybe,
why
all these peculiar curlicues
are whirling through my sleepy brain,
because nothing has changed,
and my tiny moment is also quickly passing
while the end is taking me somewhere
the beginning never wanted me to be?

 Philip Schultz

 in a dream you came back and made the same mistakes you already made. 3 broken ribs and hospital bound. i played the cd that was in the back of a songbook i bought on the east side. we listened to it over and over and over. we prepared. what song would accompany those who mourn you? i looked up a word - new to me - beautiful in its meaning "terpsichorean" - but i have not had the chance to use it. 3 times i was told - use a new word three times - it will harness itself to your tongue and it is yours forever. i joined a group of linguists lead by a righteous academic who told me there were no words for "you belong." he told me i was not welcome. if i stayed it would get unpleasant. i am use to unpleasant - my tongue twisted and tangled and rolled out of mouth like a rotted tooth. i knew you knew - in a dream or in truth - i was telling the story of our time - your fingers dipped in ink, my face covered in sweat - sitting in a used ford taurus- nineteen ninety six - each word had a purpose - the feeling of your filthy fingers wrapped around my slippery tongue - pulling and pulling, helping me puke up what it was i meant to say - it's so good to dream of you shoving me up against a tree - lost - the 2 of us - lost in the woods - my body opens up, my ribs scrape yours and we are sewn together - bones weaving upwards like lattice crawling over brick 

in the hospital i said to you "...and they read no more that day"

William Blake lived and dressed in inconceivable filth, and virtually never bathed. Diego Rivera rarely bathed. when i was in my 20s i was sleeping with a guy who had a bath tub but no shower. i was in between addresses, in between states and my entire unimportant life was shoved into my car. his sheets were filthy - cigarette ashes, coffee stains, fluid from him - fluid from other women, cat hair. i was in some sort of coma - when i learned the word "anhedonia" i might have used it when referring to this time. he taught me about awkward silence - he taught me to stare out a window while he was talking - he lead by example - we don't wash, we don't change our underwear, we don't talk to one another, we squint when looking at one another, we touch when the lights go out - after 6 days i felt sick - my skin had grown another layer - drying moss and debris that would have to be cut off - he went to the kitchen to make tea - i snuck into the bathroom and ran the tub - sat in the dark reservoir that barely covered my thighs. i wanted scissors to cut off all my hair - i wanted soap, but there was none - no toothbrush so i used my finger - and his tom's toothpaste- that doesn't do much. we drove to NYC and on the way i asked if we could stop at a motel - i wanted to scrape the itchy film from my body. we checked into a motel 6 and there was soap wrapped in paper in the shower - i could have burned my flesh with the heat of the water - a pumice stone in my fist scrubbing him off of me - his dirty sheets, his cigarettes, his other woman - i could walk out of that motel on my own with open wounds- red and clean - but he had the keys - to the room, to the car. Ablutophobia is the fear of bathing - it is common in depressives - common - not weird - not abnormal - not what my mother calls "disgusting" although she has had her bathtub torn out. it is another piece of rubble in a pit of a sickness. so it is normal - to not want to wash - to hold on to skin cells, to fear water and being alone in it - at the institution 2 of the aides dragged me to the shower - there was no soap in a paper wrapper - there was whatever some other patient left behind. the aides sat in metal folding chairs and watched me bathe - they were being paid - it was for my own good - when the water was turned off they held out a small beige towel for me to dry off - and gave me back my paper gown - fresh white gown - beautiful ribbons that tied in the back in two places and i was taken back to the quiet room - where i would lie on a blue mat for hours and hours now in my later life i have found a solution to this ablutophobia. a friend will talk to me through the door or sit on the bathroom floor - and i feel safe, even happy - the drain won't distract me - i am - physically speaking - quite clean, and when i get out i dry off in martha stewart towels that my mother gave to me - and then i put on my white paper gown -2 ribbons tied in the back- and lie down on a mat for hours and hours

I called on you at 406 W 15 St. Brought you cheese & strawberries. We had lunch. You sat in my lap and kissed me. I made up my mind to eat you. You said yes! 

 I took you to an empty house in Westchester. You picked wildflowers. I went upstairs and took off all my clothes. Then I went to the window and called to you. When you saw me naked you began to cry. Oh how you did kick, bite and scratch. 

in grad school a teacher of mine did not understand why i had a horse living in my apartment. she said it wouldn't fit. i had to convince her- so i brought a horseshoe to class - she still insisted i was making it up - made up the fact that the horse was in my kitchen - that his mane grazed the stove top - that he kicked when the kettle whistled. she did not believe that i got on my knees to sweep up after him - that i brushed my hair with the very brush i used on him - i told her i would look up from the street and see his tail swaying against my window. i said "it is a tight squeeze" the 2 of us sharing 450 feet - still she said i should write about something more relatable - "write about depression, write about your medication, write about your symptoms and the ugly side effects." no, no thanks, i want to honor this horse - who is huge and dark and smells and chews with his mouth open - and breathes hot air from his nostrils while i sit on my bed drinking coffee - while i look out the window and wonder what other animals are out there. i read a poem recently about the leaves having teeth, about laying with a wolf, about becoming the wolf - about men who are better than grass - i read a poem about bob dylan - and a banjo and a deer caught in the headlights, i read about a weak man lugging a bag of foxes through the woods and i understood it did not matter if i understood - it made perfect sense - i would rather write about a bird being driven mad by a clean glass window than concur with a professional professor of words

“must I sleep?”
“I think I’m going crazy, am I?”
“what am I?”
“how to know if you’re going crazy”
“can we control more than we think,”
“what is magic”
“what does ‘Am I Crazy’ really mean”
“why aren’t we happier”
"if a drunk says, "i love you" 2x in the night is he sincere?"
"what happened to the toe nail on your right foot?"
"why aren't we happier"
"why aren't we"
people want to be on tv
people want to be judged on tv
compete for spots on networks no one watches
someone told me nobody reads anymore
there are podcasts devoted to murder & rape
the newspaper reports underdogs going viral
viral with no health coverage -
every day for more than 20 yrs the middle class disappears - vapor is a class
in a dream i lost my apartment - every night i prepare for loss
i get 3 different tenants' mail
lost in a dream
in the morning i miss my parents 
philosophy is a form of homesickness
where have the yellow pages gone
in a field you should tuck your jeans into your socks
in a field i heard a rifle go off
i was not wearing orange, but my boyfriend was
i continue to read henry miller
i don't want any more books about anger
even Frankenstein wanted love - 
24 hour drug stores 
vacant lots 
i run my index finger across the ashtray in your car
fearless is sticking your fingers in a bowling ball 
he said he was lost, she replied, "what's wrong with being lost"

Hebrew Lessons; Nefesh In Translation

Now and then a hummingbird 
removes “soul” 
from the Book of Jonah 
Jonah, caught in the depths of a giant fish’s gut, 
sings about the terror of near-death by water. 
Jonah says that the Mediterranean waters:
“compassed me about, even to the soul” 

A hummingbird knows the problem 
“soul,” has its connotations-
an incorporeal, immortal being, 
the dualism of the soul - apart from the body. 

To the contrary - 

Nefesh suggests mortal parts, 
things that make us alive
on this earth 
the body

Nefesh can be ‘breath’ or ‘life-breath’ 
or ‘throat’  
or ‘neck’ 
or ‘gullet.’ 
it can suggest ‘blood.’ 
it can mean ‘person’ 
or even a ‘dead person,’ 
a ‘corpse.’ 
it can be ‘appetite’
or ‘life’ 
or even ‘the essential self'

But it is not ‘soul.’ 

Jonah, caught in the depths of a giant fish’s gut
near-death 
Jonah doesn't sing
can’t carry a tune
even a hummingbird knows that.

we text because i can't stand the sound of you slurring your speech - "what do want from me" i don't answer - i email - lines from e.e.cummings - it doesn't matter if you write back - can you imagine - again - doing this again - up against the river horse - and you're telling me about danger? did you know they can't swim - did you know i was raised in a rip tide - i will time the current to the sound of the wind- i leave my window open - and my door rattles and i hear the bell of st.luke's off key on the hour - your voice sounds small - as if someone has had their foot on your throat for all 49 yrs - it is easier to sleep listening to a priest preaching to a flock of chickens then relax beside your sweat and chills and breath of sleeping pills mixed with liquor - i am the bell of st.luke each night every hour up watching out for you - smashing into my mother's vanity, into the hallway, waking my neighbors - turning the door knob - afraid to wake the zombie version of you - who i don't want to meet. i swim along the shore - i can make it to washout point - i will move into an abandoned beach house - but then you bring me bones of quail and frog - you boil them in my pot - scrub them with a scouring pad, let them rest until they have dried - and i take a bottle of gin and wipe them off again - sometimes we behave as if delicacies are important - although i hear your phone buzz - although it's your ex again - although you have no discipline - a river horse - no matter how fierce - sincerely can not swim 

in the institution i took notes inside an anthology of the paris review - secret dirty notes. no one gets you out and i continued to scare other patients. what a strange way to be sick - starving and infected. like i had swallowed contaminated water at a 5 star restaurant - and i would dream and i would record the dreams - mostly they were awful - but one was kinda funny - i was a contestant on Survivor - the reality show - and i showed up on the island in my hospital gown - my luxury item was a bag of medication - but then Jeff Probst told me i had to survive for 39 days - and i only had enough prescriptions for 30 - he walked me into the jungle where there was a cot and a blanket and that was where i stayed - then one day a gypsy cab pulled up and said i could go home - home meaning brooklyn - and i started feeling ill again - the driver had a picture of Jesus on the dashboard - he asked me why i had been left in the jungle - i told him i wanted to leave earth awhile - he tried to convert me to dashboard Christianity and suggested i quit quoting poetry out of context

you want to set a date to visit fossil hall but neither you nor i can keep a plan. i wait til you bathe and your skin is raw and red and scratch "see t-rex" into the side of your lower back - nothing is as fragile as this - the road we walk it is made of used dental floss - look, my gums are bleeding and i swear you rinse your dick in the sink but somethings i don't want confirmed - after onetwothreefour beers you cradle my head in one hand and call my occipital condile your favorite - i touch the top of your head and i swear it is the spine of a stegosaurus - i write love notes to your fatty liver - you collect reference pain. some days you show up with pastry, other days you come with clipped wings -in a photo on instagram you are holding a cats cradle made with sweet bread and sausages - understand why i won't touch your hands

"The man moves on, but the cloud remains..."

i went to my doctor with two points of contention - doctor - who i can't look in the eye - i have been sad. doctor - i don't mean to disappoint you but i am dating a terminal patient - my doctor asked me why why why would you be with a man who's so sick? because doctor - i can be sick too i can be reckless and irresponsible i can cancel my appointments i can eat as if every day is someone's birthday because it is i can breathe because he is not judging me - my doctor - sweet - fool-of-an-optomist - suggested i get him to go to silver hills. suggested i give him an ultimatum - but doctor if i can't see the point in getting my teeth cleaned because one day we're going to die why would i bother to bother another guy in the line up of terminally unique unequivocally similar guys. this is why we leave the windows open in the winter this is why we eat dinner at the walgreens. i'm not worried but i am feeling sick - and if i bathe i swear i'll drown