Sisters of Mercy

Come over, rub your toothy skin all over my sensitive life. Come over and help me wrap things in barbed wire.

Come over and drink, having never seen me before, rubbing my head, grabbing me, pinning me on walls. Give me enough rope for noose-making, asking for walks out to your cars and then just getting into the cars and driving away, hands under arms, me like a rock hurled at so many pigeons.

"Matt, girls don't like your posters. What the hell do you have on your walls? Commando? Funny pictures? The Kiss. That's alright. That shows you're sensitive. We want you to change your posters, please. Why didn't you make out with that girl? Give me your phone, I'm going to call her."

Then

"Matt, untuck your shirt. You look like a boyscout,"

swarming, untucking my shirt, goofy mannequin,

someone grabbing it, ripping all the buttons off in one movement, shrieking,

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrupture, tipping, inhaling acrid bullshit in the garage,

stranger hugging me, all grabbing at each other's elbows,

saturated with the frustration of it, the obscenity of desiring,

waiting for the sharp grain to rub in the right direction,

watching her truck disappear down the street,

needing a thing,

needing a new shirt,

needing a new life,

waking with aching head, reading Bukowski in bed for an hour,

remembering tests,

"What's my name?"

"Uh, L?"

"No."

"Well, I don't even remember my own parents' birthdays. I don't even remember my own name. What's my name?"

"Matt."

"Oh, really? Ha ha."

never seeing them again,

having failed their test, having shown them my silly boy's wrong objects,

now summoning the truck back, reversed, the door opening, passing it, heat moving to wooden limbs,

sick,

of the crucible,

the variables,

finding nothing in my kitchen but buttons and empty bottles,

finding in my heart reasons for tears,

hoping that somewhere

she is filling my room with honey,

keeping my wings still,

wrapped in amber.

Gummo

Watched a movie that is one of those that I don't doubt has changed my life in some way. Usually hate these types, go out of my way to despise them. This one sticks to the ribs; I may lose sleep thinking about it.



Ive never seen a more honest piece of art.

Cue Ball

Shaved my head. The kind where every strand of hair is a centimeter-long cliché standing at attention. New Beginning whatever.

A nice little analogy pooped into my head while I was trying to take a nap at 8 p.m. My life is like a cruise ship. Plenty of opportunities for merrymaking, but completely intolerable if not moving forward.

Now my head sheds water. I'm feeling all hydrodynamic. I'm going to sleep at four in the morning not because I can't bring myself to close the book on a day in which nothing was discernibly accomplished but because my cerebral cortex is itchy with visions of the future.

I love and hate the night before travel. Ever feel like a pellet in a slingshot, stretched taut?