What if we started
talking about love as a
humiliation?

Or maybe taking
not now then not ever's as
gun imperatives

Or using that word
as Norwegians do, for
wives, not entire lives

I oppose you, T
S Eliot. L'art can
not be erasure.

Not because it'd kill
you or me or any one
in between, just...

My body requires
photos, in snow, disrobed, all
which needs an artist.

kshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

If you ever think, "If not now, not ever," then it's probably worth happening never. I stole for the first time in five years two days ago. I stole medicine because the greatest medicine to ever happen to my work, and i think that means me, couldn't afford her own medicine, because she bought me medication. We've been living poor but not impoverished for three years now. It may become both because we're both leaving, unabashedly. The bay is poisoning me, mom.

Are you coming back to Madrid soon? If you don't want to, maybe we can meet in Berlin and live there a while. Would you want me there? Did you like my new piece? I'm going to write you back soon. The new screenplay is about you. Especially the part about never looking in a girl's purse. Thank you for the critiques-- I'm rewriting it right now. Are you coming back to Madrid soon? Are you coming back? Are you coming? Are you?

"I know that it is not necessary to love like this. There are people who do not love like this. He does not love like this. Most people do not love like this. But I love like this, and Shiva loves like this, so I know that I am not entirely alone in my lot, we are just some tribe, some weird archaic tribe, the people who love too much, and save nothing, but nothing, for themselves."

Did you read Sean's new screenplay? Did you like it? Is the part with the girl, with the sensual legs, in bed, about you? What parts are about you? Did he let you read it? Do you miss Madrid? Are you coming back? I thought you couldn't wait to leave. Come back soon. Come back. Are you coming?

I'll let you know. I don't know. I'll see you soon. I'll see you. We'll see.

"Puking up collard greens." "Alabaster." "Problem." "Unwilling." "Making the stone stony." "A good impression" "Don't get up for running"""Run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run run go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go gogogogo chorus

Being on Medication is Disgusting

You first realize this upon loving someone pragmatic, ideally someone more put together than you. Not more beautiful, of course, because these cosmos are fond of the ironic: the beautiful are always rotten fruit, damaged goods, moldy wool left in a monsoon, by careless parents, maybe. No, this pragmatic lover will not be as beautiful as you... but more worthy? Always. They will have this way-- this way of cooking neatly, writing neatly, reading neatly, and fucking like Mussolini intervened in their love life. He made their damn train run on time. They may perform art but they are never artists, never stricken with the impetuous feverish urge to cut open their tongue with a pen, slide a quill along their veins and bleed out on vellum so quiet and picturesque, a mimesis of crying trees. They are skilled and they are brilliant but they are not good, they are not great. But function wins over form, these days.

And you realize that you are not functional, not like them. And they can maybe teach you to be functional. So you watch, and you imitate, and you suppress the urge to gobble down the sticky bits of beauty, hoping to keep your shirtsleeves clean. They take you to a fancy restaurant and tell you to stop yelling fuck, it's embarrassing. And god forbid you should ever fling those skinny arms around their neck and bellow, "I LOVE YOU! I LOVE THE WORLD AROUND YOU! KISS ME! FILL MY WOMB!" And you never thought you yelled with a yearning full of blisters until they stopped letting you. You thought yourself to be regal until encountering them.

The thought will sneak up on you one day, thank god, that you need fixing. A pragmatic lover will never submit to aiding in this endeavor-- it is, after all, an inefficient undertaking-- and so you shall begin alone, with an endless excitement for the day that you can meet them on their own terms. One day, you think, I will be okay with mediocre love. And who does not want this? After all, this tempered romance is the fate of all affairs. Count how many impassioned marriages you know and I'll give you a few bucks for each. Buy yourself something nice. A donut, perhaps. And so off you go, optimistic that the pragmatic in your life will one day love you, because you can finally stop making them so uncomfortable with your goddamn desire, your inappropriate affection, your constant lust, those early morning tears from reading Durrell or remembering how you starved yourself at age 15. Once you're better, the little cuts on your thighs will disappear, shit, you'll even stop having to blow your nose.

The first step, of course, is to get off medication. It always made you uncomfortable, having to sneak off into the bathroom before bedtime, while they're changing into pajamas (the pragmatic do not sleep naked, although you surely do. When sex is over, if it even happened, they shower and put on some sort of cloth barrier. It's bedtime, not touching time). Go underground a few days, detox, sleep for 30 hours straight, shake shake shake it out baaaabyyy, and emerge wan and smiling. A new you! A newly stable and organic you. And you will be better for a few months, because your mind is wrapped in cotton, and the two of you can pretend that their having no heart, and yours being caught in misfiring synapses and then shutting off, is the same thing.

And then they leave and you miss being shit on every day, because damn that smelled nice, and then realize that you can have that without them, because you haven't left bed in days, not even to go to the bathroom. But at least you're off the medication. Fuck the man! Fuck the medical institution! Fuck your parents for not caring, for fucking you up, for shipping you off to a psychiatrist and not dealing themselves! FUCK PROZAC NATION! Pragmatic lover may be gone but at least they left an organic, self-sustaining you in their place. You are their collared chimera but no longer will your love be chimerical.

And then you develop annoying habits. Sure, you'll always be a little neurotic, so these are to be expected: having friends turn the car around so you can check the stove. Never mind that you didn't cook that day. You start to pinch your side-- again, of course you're beautiful, but a little less fat around the middle couldn't hurt. While you're at it, start running and working out once in a while. After all, you're single now, out and upon the meat market ice you go! Better make that a few times a week, or maybe twice a day. For two hours a day, perhaps, until your knees and joints ache and you start tripping, your mother walks like you do, and it's weird because she's 58 and you're 22, but fuck it, right? Nothing tastes as good as thin feels. And you start counting calories and throwing food out and checking your locks several times before bed and smoking a pack a day and eating in a blind howling tunnel at night until your stomach rips with shameful engorgement and you never menstruate and wish you were pregnant because at least there'd be a reason for all this and fuck leaving the bed except if you don't your life will come to a screeching halt and all you've ever ever wanted is that degree from the big pretty school on the hill and ex-pragmatic lover who never thought of you in the first place will find out you failed and you hate all your friends, god they're fucking noisy jabber jabber jabber, and you're not good enough for God and you can even say that you never asked to believe anyway and even more whisperingly, ducking your head under the bathwater, just sometimes you wonder,

is this all there is?

But, again, at least you won over that pill bottle. Mazel tov! You showed them, those money-grubbing fucks.

Deprivation Dinner

I keep our deprivation dinner a secret. I walk home in the rain. I call my mother. I talk to my raving girl. I smoke five cigarettes. I keep our dinner a secret. I restrain my fingers, I throw my phone against the wall. It is raining. My bed is empty. This is nothing new. I miss what I thought you were. I pretend you are a man. I keep my deprivation a secret. A lullaby sung to the betrayal in Spain. Hush.

I look across the table. You are no longer beautiful to me,
but God your wrists have stayed so skinny.
You know I like that.
Closure is so conventional. Here we are, at our restaurant,
I gag it's so trite.
You tear as I'm talking.
It makes sense, because I am saying things like:
"We can talk about things now, like adults. I don't care anymore, after all."
"When you call, and I don't answer at all,
it's because I can't be not cruel. I have so many mean mean things
to say."
"I was so very unhappy with you."
"Why didn't you leave me when I needed you to?"

"My girl, my girl. I wanted to fix things. I loved you."

You answer to that effect.

LOVING IS A VERB LOVING IS A VERB LOVING IS A VERB YOU'VE GOT SOME NERVE LOVING IS A VERB living without you is made of sweet sweet
sweet
verve.