Press Repeat

Given Twice

“How are you?”

“Work is interesting right now (interesting is a synonym for comical tragedy). I’ve got a new EA and CFO role I’m

Trying to build on the fly, layered over 50-100 children wearing adult suits. These adults appear like time has shaped them into something solid, but they are squishy, misshapen, unconscious over-ripened adolescent self important creatures that subversively conspire for sclerotic atrophy to feed the evil system they’ve grown to hate but love the predictability of and quietly enjoy the sick ways they have found to enrich themselves within it.

People

Aging mother is an interesting side job.

Orchestrating a few Reno projects simultaneously.

My dogs bleeding all

Over my house. The other one a 200lb Hercules that’s lost 99% of his IQ in the process. My perfect little dojo is probably soaked and redolent with the odor of dog sex. Me screaming some strange paternal chastity over the rim of a coffee cup from my desk. Where I’ve been entrenched in some form of email jihad for god knows how long.

Dogs disappear in the woods. I’m out in the snow with a fucking headlamp following tracks with no goddamned shirt on.

I remember I took something today that’s likely making me feel funny. But can’t remember the particular cocktail while I scream my dogs name into a padded forest of thick frozen cotton that swallows every goddamn syllable and sound wave.

While my dinner burns in the oven.

And by most people’s conjecture this is considered successful

And to their credit. This far exceeds the most hopeful dreams a dissociated little boy from outer space could have ever dreamed

So I keep going. And going. And going. The way you might chew on glass just to feel anything while you gaze too long into the abyss—- or looping videos of animals being tortured for no apparent reason.

And you think, this is probably just the downstream ketamine metabolites from Sunday evening.

And you think “this fucking day, I’m not sure how many of these my body has left to be”

And I’ll wake up tomorrow with sweet blissful amnesia as though it never happened. I’ll find optimism at my core. Even a little electricity. I won’t even recall me, it will take downloading the memory of me.

I’ll swallow a handful of pills and brew the coffee and wait for it all to kick in.

I’ll watch the sunrise of my own mind like it’s the first time.

And I’ll press repeat

Thanks for asking”

Sober

Given Twice

Im off more shit than I’m on, and i’ve been on it all. I’ve been through it all, but no, its all been through me. Wish to death right here I were on anything that made me feel nothing again.

So fucking numb I forget my teeth.

Wish it burned in all the familiar places. Wish it peeled me smooth. And abraded my imperfections, and tumbled my homely soul.

Wish it took the wheel.

Wish I knew how to be.

they all talk about sobriety like some great envy. They talk about sobriety like they cant control the anxiety of holding on to something designed to be slippery. Hot bile, steam and saline, burning fear. Entangled with the meaningless void of life hung out dry and straight.

I used to have poems and ideas. Inclinations, epiphanies and goosebumps. Now I have a running number of time spent waiting for something to come and save me. And if not save, at least validate me. And if not me, my parking.

But it never fucking does.

Its alright.

Its okay.

Thats what people say.

But it never fucking does.

That’s just how it is.

I’m too old to get credit. Too washed to believe this is it. It ain’t it. This ain’t it. Every day my eyes get a little more dry and the sun bleaches my bones all white. You come to find thats how dirt and dust are made.

theres so much further to go and I don’t know. I haven’t gotten what I need just yet. So I’m here, steeped in fear, doubling down on nothing again and again.

Bet it all. Make it all back in one trade. More red, more black. Up some, down big, full tilt, free fall.

rifling through barren pockets for sedatives I never planned to crave. Praying for distractions that haven’t happened yet.

Stop the film.

Burn the reel.

They stopped watching.

So have I.

Here I am.

Home

Given Twice

You take all my hard and make it soft. I resent you. I resent me. I resent us.

You take whats potent in me and make it disappear in your belly.

Just a little flick of the wrist.

We drift and rock and fuck and kiss long after the fact.

You pet my hair and tell me I’m on top.

You make me love to believe that.

It’s the cotton balls stuffed in my mouth up to the hilt and back again. Pouring up over the rim.

I have nothing left to say because I’m linguistically bankrupt after depositing every word I ever had.

In you.

that makes you feel so safe.

I’m left to wait.

On you.

For you.

In you. If I’m lucky.

Hold little things over you.

Fuck time with you.

Forget about me with you.

involved. Enthralled.

in the throes of you.

Trade my altar, eschew my god, and close my eyes to the sun’s rise for the occasional sunset with you.

get all cocked up and twisted and wait for you to come fix it like you do.

Nervous that I love you.

Jealous you made a life before I made you.

I want to make you forget you ever existed. In that way everything you are from here on—— makes you mine. and I’m yours. If I pluck out our eyes and we try to be blind.

You’d be my one. I can be your only.

Laugh until things burn. Too many things hurt.

Why do you even understand me? With your big brain and cavernous mouth that makes me bite sized.

I want to choke you on all of me.

And tell you, casually, all the evil I’ve borne and all the evil I’ve known.

I borrow your eyes and use them to contemplate the beauty I never was and never knew. I pull out your pages lying naked in linen blankets and I borrow your lies to help me drift and forget the ages I’ve wandered to no avail.

I’m all jacked up and spun out and threadbare and fleeced——fuck, naked.

Wild remainder in my stare.

With powder on my nose.

And hope caught in my throat.

I’m home.

Choke

Given Twice

What the fuck am I supposed to do

with high anxiety

tight walk despair and

cinderblock boots.

Make a move, any move

And if it doesn’t give

move different,

move again.

Just like piano wire wrapped

Two times around my neck.

Pull apart. Wrench and twist.

Meat splits.

The pressure would expose

every cord and rope

in my throat. My jugular

the most. The tendons in gross.

until the pressure finds

other places to go,

and my head is dethroned. My neck

opened like a hose.

The gods cheer “Exposed! Exposed! Exposed!”

I’d collapse to the floor.

Never having regretted

No longer dreaming of starting.

No more pretending in beginning.

Painless i’d tell you.

How the light is

swallowed

when we’re departing.

Wheresoever we came.

Thats where we go.

Thats the joke.

This life. Headed or headless.

This life is mirrors. This life is shadow.

This life is smoke.