Letter to Ryan, January 3, 1990

Hey, hey, hey, I wrote a story, but it’s not funny.  In fact, it’s not even happy.  Don’t worry.  I’ll spare you the agony of reading it.  I tried to write you a funny one, but it’s not going well.  Cindy read the part I have done, and she said it doesn’t sound like me.  I think I need a totally new idea.  I’m sure I’ll think of something.  I wrote a poem, too, but, oh well, nothing for you to read except this lame letter.

Actually, it’s been a highly stressful few days for numerous reasons that I need not complicate your life with.  I think that’s why I’ve had the nightmares.  I told you that I was a hyper person who worries excessively, didn’t I?!  These last days have been enough to shave ten years off of my life!  (It’s a good thing I don’t smoke – ha ha!)

Intrusion

The Dragon in the Elevator, Pt. 3

Welcome back

I am not back

do not speak to me

Tell me a story

There is no story

only tears that blur

the words

Tell me a story where

no one wins

I lost victory long ago

lost its taste, its smell

I lost the smoke and

the screams and

the burning

I lost the cool taste of

water on a hot day

I lost the quarry and the

lake

I lost what I believed myself

to be

I lost daydreams and goodbyes

and hellos and new chances

I lost imagination

You are not lost

Stop talking to me

I forgot the lyrics long ago

YOU FORGOT NOTHING

I will cross out words

I will make believe

I will stop everything

You know me

I was something I liked,

once

I think

I don’t know

I don’t know a damn thing

anymore

the fire has gone out and

I am cold

I am so fucking cold

The Dream

I mean, however and wherever we are,
we must live as if we will never die.
--On Living, by Nazim Hikmet

Diary entry, April 26, 2014

In the year (fill in) nothing happened.  There is a sad story to tell her that has no significance whatsoever.

Eventually we will all have the same problems.

Who would have thought that yogurt with prune would be so delicious?  Or banana Weetabix.  Well, actually that sounded pretty good from the start.  Weird, but good.

In the red straw network there is:

*no hope

*no telling

*no entrance

*no exit

*no talking

*no timeline

*no travelling

*no sharing

*no laughing

*no smoking

*no milk with cereal

Thank you for respecting the rules.  Carry on with your business.

But your legs get a little bit heavier.  And the strings get a little bit longer.  And the knots feel a little bit tighter.  And the joke gets a little bit harder.

A harsh beautiful place, this memory horizon.  If you squint your eyes you can see the moon.

There isn’t much I can see anymore. 

I am losing.  You don’t just suddenly stop losing.  You think about why you’re losing, you despair that you are losing, you blame the universe for losing, you write self-pitying poems about losing, you come up with reasons why losing is not really losing, you give yourself pep talks about losing, you brainstorm how to stop losing, you develop five-point plans to halt the losing, you wonder if we are all really losing, you become heavy and tired with losing, you think maybe if I get a haircut I won’t keep losing, and then you find that after all of this you are still losing.  And not only are you still losing, but you are now losing by so much that winning becomes unrealistic, so you start coming up with easier goals, like “accepting,” or “taking small steps” or “adapting.”  But in the end you will just be losing again.

This is when you stop and realize that you never actually believed.  Why?  Was it a man in a mask and bad makeup who took that away?  A woman with witchy hair and a purple mantle?  A balding man with a soft voice in a basement room?  Or was it just the old run-of-the-mill no one ever gave a crap about you or let you believe, so you never learned how to?  Did you have to come up with some fantastical story to make the humdrum, boring, heard-it-a-million-times annihilation of the self story more palatable?  Would that make losing better, somehow?  If someone breathed in your ear that you were born of the dirt and will blow into dust?  Does that make it more romantic, more tragic, more ACCEPTABLE?

I don’t think so.  It just makes you an even bigger loser, because you can’t even lose with your integrity intact.  Of course, if you had any integrity you probably wouldn’t be a loser.  If you had even the tiniest sense of self you might have whispered back, but I will fall from the sky and detonate like an atomic bomb right in front of you.

But we are not winners.  We are mantras.  We are encouraging words sent to each other in emails that we won’t really mean.  We are inspirational quotes on posters with rays of light piercing clouds while beautiful people look on.  We are the two-sentence explanation that solves what ails the protagonist.  We are the ones who know, not so deep down inside, that next year will be no different from the last.  We are the dozens of therapists who ran out of therapeutic techniques to lay siege against our fortress of failure.  We are winning at losing and you will never stop us.

Diary entry, July 2, 1998

Just around the corner,

you can be singing,

staring at the clouds forming,

or at the ants running.

            And then you will see nothing else.

            You will wonder why you never saw it

            coming.

Diary entry, March 25, 1988

I let my mom read some of my poems, and she didn’t really get them.  She said she could see talent, but she admits she likes those poems that are real obvious in meaning more than the abstract stuff, which I tend not to get into.  She didn’t like some of my word choices.