Open A Vein

I have something to say to the beautiful people who read my seedy little blog. Huh. Seedy? Yeah, someone I loved used to call it that. :)


Anyway, if you've been reading then you know I've been writing like a neurotic crackhead walking around in a shell-shocked state of drama and depression. I've been oozing text as if it were my life's blood and my heart was naught more than a shrapnel laden lump in my chest. I have been indulgent and reveled in my wallowing...


It turns out that I don't handle loss well. Lol. Okay, understatement of the year. When my Grandfather died in 2000 I withdrew for a whole year, couldn't function, couldn't breathe. I haven't hurt like this since he died. I know it's not the same. Relationships end, people move on, the world keeps spinning, the fucking sun shines. I get it. I see it. I'm here--in this manic present.


It's just...there is so much ugliness in the world--so much pain--that when I find something beautiful it's my nature to hold onto it and protect it fiercely. I will fight for what is important to me to the bitter end...even if it costs me pieces of myself. That's not necessarily a good thing. But it's who I am. I can't wrap my brain around throwing away something good and pure...for no reason. It baffles me. Cripples me.


But I've wallowed long enough. The pain is still here. I still write about him, but I'm gonna try like hell not to post about him ever again. So I may not post anything for awhile, or maybe I'll post total bullshit, or maybe I'll post something decent everyday. I don't know.


I never choose my topics, they choose me.


I may mess up and post something inspired by him--if I do--slap me. Because it would only be in the pathetic hopes that he might see it. Might feel something...even just a twinge of remorse. And I'm not that girl. I can't be that girl. I'm not stepping in front of a train because he doesn't love me. I'm done begging and pleading with him, hoping he'll answer. It's ridiculous and I have my pride....what's left of it.


At least when my grandpa died it made sense to me. I could rationalize it. This? This is just stupidity. Selfish stupidity. And I'm too old for these kind of games.


Sorry for being such a buzzkill. Take care and happy blogging y'all.


:)

Time Bombs and Kisses

The device swings
Between love and hate
Like and lust
Good and evil

It veers
Ricochets across my heart
Keeps time with the beat
Thump--thump in my chest

I want a kiss that means something
To taste hungry lips
To drink someone in
A life line

I'm drowning here
Fluxing between okay
And heartbroken
Trip the switch

And self destruct.

Dreams

Silk stockings and aftershave
White linens
Sheers catch in the breeze
Cool Florida ocean

Kiss me
Lock fingers with mine
Bend me back
And trace fire along my neck

Palm trees sway
Bodies rock
Back and forth
Mmmm...deep in my throat

Sensation
Anticipation
Frustration
Giving way

Music flows
Lust in the morning light
Tanned skin sensitive
Aware of the hunger

Driven toward release

Rage and Bitterness

It's been a month to the day
Since you turned me out
One month since you said
A damn thing to me

One month since you said
"I heart you Kitten."
One month
Of questions without answer

One month of being ignored
Shut out
Discarded without conscience
One month of confusion and pain

One month of sleepless nights
One month of fucking up everything
One month of crying
One month without you

I want to scream at you
Be ugly
Make you hurt like I hurt
I want to be cruel

I want to hate you
But I won't
Can't
Happy one month anniversary, Babe.

Hot Coffee

Hot coffee and reality
Settle like lead
In the early morning sun
Words that twist inside

Rise to the surface
Beckon me sweetly
So many things I wanted
Needed

Craved

A vision of the life
I thought I could have
Flickers in the shadow
Of your retreating form

Sorrow

But when one door closes...
Another opens
Even if just a crack
And hope swirls

A bitter-sweet thing
So tiny and delicate
Love for you lingers
And might never lay to rest

Anguish

But he's sweet and gentle
Forgiving of my flaws
He's beautiful
Not like you

There's no one like you
But he's beautiful and new
Sweet and funny
As laid back as you are intense

Different

My heart still beats for you
But it'd kill me to take you back
The next time you left
Would cut me to shreds

He says he'll always be there
He likes our tender friendship
He likes my smile
Says he'll make me hot again

He's a musician
Has tattoos and the face of an angel
A smile to rival the stars
Warm Latin eyes that see too much

Bliss

He says we'll go camping
Snuggle while the sun sets
He'll play his guitar
I can sketch the mountains

Make love under a starless sky
Kiss and touch and be
While we're still young
And unburdened

Joy

It could be so beautiful
Not the manic thrill of being with you
Something softer
Something attainable

Mellow

I can't unlove you
Or reconcile this strange creature I've become
With who I was
Who I should be

In the back of my mind I wonder
Is it fair to offer
A trembling wreck,
A shell of myself to him?

He deserves so much more
He calls every night
To tell me he's alone
Says I'm the only one he wants to unwind with

Sigh

Being with him is easy
It's like being home
Being with you is amazing
Like a drug

I can't OD on you
Not anymore
I need his healing scent
Need the peace in his voice

I guess I'm letting go
In pieces
One fragment at a time
Take a sip of coffee

Grimace at the bitter liquid
Burning a trail down my throat
Brutality in truth
I really should add some sugar

End

Glass

Things that are sacred
I want to gift to you
Gently stroke your hair
From your brow

And guide your heart to mine
Need to drink honey from your lips
And whisper soft warm breath over you
Feel you shiver and smile

Such a simple girl
With simple hopes
Please be gentle
Be sweet

I'm fragile glass...

My Greatest Regret

The music flows around and through me. I close my eyes and see it shimmer, skimming my skin. I feel it when I inhale. I breathe a heavy sigh and put my pen to pad, thinking to write some profound tidbit. But leave a trail of doodles instead. Take a sip of wine. Funny, I never drank much before you.

Tilt my head back and sing the words, so familiar. They hug me like an old friend. “Never is a promise. And I’ll never need a lie.” I feel the tears swell inside my soul—but my eyes are wrung free of them. It’s a wordless hell that grips me. Put down the wine. Pick up the pen. Say the words. They’re there just on the cusp, waiting to spill like water from a broken glass. Transparent and devoid of purpose they flow from me, entwining with the piano. Sing with robotic notes. “You’ll never feel the heat of this soul.”

Now come the tears. How they sputter and trickle. How they claw at me dragging me down into the abyss. I fall to my knees—a sullen girl—a wreck among wrecks. My hands grip my heart and I swear I feel physical pain. I feel the shards shatter and shift. I hold the space tightly as if I can reach inside my flesh and push the fragments together, as if I can fit the pieces and mend it with super glue. But they twist and scatter. I cling tighter to the spot. My hands are the tourniquet, my heart the seeping valve.

I loved you best of all. Better than I love myself. And for that I’m a stupid bitch. I’m a worthless cunt whose hair falls out in strands. Whose eyes are swollen and whose heart lay in a defecated pile at your feet. Feet that have long since turned and walked away. I feel your absence in ways that paralyze me. Just when the madness has taken me the song reaches its crescendo. I lay on my back staring with vacant eyes at the ceiling.

I need to feel your phantom arms envelope me. Need your ghostly lips to press against my forehead. I need you to say, “Sssh…Kitten, it’ll be alright.” I need it like I need air—because right now everything is all wrong. I wrap my arms around my knees and roll to my side. I know what to say now. I found the words in the pain. I found my voice.

I sit up and put the pen to paper one last time. The words spring to life of their own volition. It’s not much, as it turns out. It isn’t profound or even interesting. All it is, is truth in black ink on yellow legal paper—a mourning that’s beautiful in its simplicity.

“I deleted all of your texts today. When I can breathe again…your emails are next.”

*lyrics from Fiona Apple

Tease

Organ Mountains rising in the distance
Warm sun on my skin
Your hand stroking my knee
The feeling of contentment engulfing me

So easy to be with you
To giggle with glee
So easy to chat with you
Rest my head on your chest

Simple things really
That lead to something more
Avoiding that first kiss
To draw the tease out longer

Your hands hold fascination
Much larger than mine
So strong, so nice
Softly strumming my senses

And then...
And then...
Your mouth on mine
So heady and sweet

The scruff of your chin
Scraping my soft lips
Your hands in my hair
Pressed so tight against you

A wild passion
Bursting to break free
But restraint pulls me back
Stop. I can't breathe

Look at your face
Your warm twinkling eyes
Your sweet, sexy smile
Oh holy hell!

I'm gonna kiss you again...

Beginnings

Warm is the heart that skips
Ever so gently
A flitter-flutter of delicate wings

Of new beginnings
Hopeful and bright
Eager to please

To tease
To thrill
And taunt

A simple chat
Flowing conversation
And I look for his name

Is he about?
Is he thinking of me?
Questions bound

Each layer better than the one before
A fragile thing--new starts
So easily broken

His smile grips me
His laugh draws me in
Excites me in impossible ways

I smile shyly
Raise a glass to my lips
To new friends...


For Larry :)

Uncertainty

He says the sweetest things
Says he'll put a smile on my face
Make me giggle again

But you said things like this
You said so many things
Hollow words that echo

He wants to stroke my cheek
Brush my hair over my shoulder
He wants to kiss me

I turn away at the last second
How is it that you still own my mouth?
How is it that everything comes back to you?

He's a good man
Strong and smart
His big body excites me

But he isn't you
Isn't even close
Can I learn to see past you?

Why should I have to?
I want to chase you down
Shake the truth from you

This discrepancy is driving me crazy
I can't reconcile what we had
With what you've left me

Can it all have been a dream?
A nightmare I can't wake up from?
He clears his throat

I snap back and give my apologies
He takes my hand in his
He says he'll erase you from my memory

I watch with growing fascination
As he traces circles on my inner wrist
And wonder if he can...

Peter Pan

The fragments twist and turn
Splinter into hardened shards
Love as elusive today as it was yesterday

So much sadness to feel
Gotta shake it off
Hold my head up high

See the truth that shines inside
But it's so hard
So exhausting

Wish I could sleep
But sleep's a slippery bastard
Darting in and running out

Must be male
Men like to run--float like Peter Pan
Like to kiss you soft and sweet

Then disappear like pixie dust

Fool's Gold

I don't expect you to understand
I don't quite get it, myself
I love you so much

These weeks without you have been hell
Friends look at my face--
And say I'm not well

The hurt became bigger than me, Babe
Consuming
No excuse, just truth

I said I'd wait and God knows I want to
But I need something to fill the void
To fill the silence you've left behind

It's so hard without you
Worse at night
When the moon is high

And I'm so fucking alone
Trying not to cry
Wishing I'd never known you

Never heard your voice
Never saw that look in your eye
When you looked at me like I was candy

It's so horrible sometimes
And I'm so pathetically weak
But you're a closed door

And I can't pick your lock
I've tried--you know I've tried
I need a distraction

Or else go mad
Can't sleep, can't eat
Have to forget you somehow

But I know I never will
I curse your name when I'm out on dates
Cuz it should be you

It can only be you
Why can't you see?
Am I so awful?

I don't want your permission
I just can't bleed anymore
I need to smile again

I smiled for you
Tried to shine my light in your life
But you went underground

You're a fool
Stick to your drink and your games
Piss away your life--such a waste

I have to live mine
Raise my kids
I can't cut out my heart

Like you did.

Dating

Painted lipstick smile
Delicately perfumed skin
New black push-up bra

Heels that give an extra inch or two
Witch's eyes that never miss a trick
First meeting

He say's she's beautiful
She thinks he's sexy
He's got a smile to melt butter

A chest to die for
She wants to trail fingers across his shoulder
Desire drums hotly under her skin

She licks her lips in anticipation
Vanilla lip gloss tastes sweet on her tongue
It isn't love--it's self-preservation

She loves another
Someone who doesn't want her
But damn--the rest is gonna be fun!

Tales from the Rabbit Hole

I watch the macabre and the lovely with equal fascination. Each swirling face slips through the looking glass and I stare in awe. The young mother and her dancing daughter trailing behind are as beautiful as the bum sitting in his own stench with one eye cloudy and one eye clear.

My artist’s palette knows no discrimination as I sketch with quick sure strokes. It’s peaceful here away from soul draining men, peaceful locked inside my mind. I filter out the street, the sunlight, and even the Yucca Plants blooming atop their mighty stalks. I see only mother and child. I see only the bum. I chew my lower lip and scrape the pencil across the paper, knead, erase and smear. I abuse the canvass of heavy weight white vellum.

The bum smiles. His toothless grin brings tears to my eyes. The little girl giggles bouncing blissfully unaware of the world around her. And I weep openly. Wipe away the tears and sketch some more.

It’s healing here. Perched on the bank’s steps, drawing in the cool shade—this must be heaven. I take a sip of cool iced tea. I love the feel of the sweet liquid slipping down my throat. I’ve got to be to work soon, won’t see my children till the next day, and I know when I get home to my empty apartment there won’t be a message from you. The loneness will crush me and I’ll sit in a pile of self-hate and doubt.

But that’s later.

Right now is paradise.

The mother chides her daughter, calls her closer, as mother’s like to do. I remember being free like that. I remember the promise of life hanging sweet and ripe from the vine of youth. I remember the feel of love curling up so innocently and wrapping welcoming tendrils around my heart. I remember you saying “Wanna talk about your pretty smile?” “You’re ace, Kitten.” “I love you.”

I remember you saying good-bye.

Syllables are weapons, too, Babe.

The bum holds out his gnarled hands and greets the passersby. They avoid him. He’s toxic, you see. He’s the path not taken, but that could one day take us all. One missed paycheck, one bad choice, one drink too many and we could all be bums with yellowed fingernails and dirt that’s merged with the texture of our skin.

I remember dirt. I remember the flush of innocence stolen in a darkened room with whiskey on his breath. I remember the tears, the fear, the confusion. I remember feeling lost, that’s when I met Alice. She smiled and held my hand as we skipped through Wonderland until it was safe to crawl out of the rabbit hole. She kept me busy until it was safe to open my eyes and sob in the stillness…the door closing quietly behind him…whiskey on my skin.

Scrape, wipe, streak, erase, and pour the pain into the piece. The mother and child are barely visible now. Their forms are little more than black silhouettes against the sun. I’m so flawed, so weak and clawing at some intangible thing. I grasp and fight and struggle, but it’s good. It’s when the fight goes out that the trouble begins. I blink as they disappear like some fantastic dream, its elusive strands already slipping from my memory…

The bum’s still there. He’s solid and real, immovable as the stones on which he rests. I can see the pain in his weathered face, but I also see his joy. That’s right, I said joy. It’s there shining in his mismatched eyes. A pureness that I’ve lost somewhere along the way emanates from his childlike expression. I smile through my tears and he nods at me—a living exhibit in this museum I call life. He’s the finest work of art.

And I realize something then and there. This strange limbo that I’m drifting in is nothing in the scheme of things. It’ll come, it’ll go. Men will come and they will go. I’m likely destined to be unlucky in love—used and cast aside. Because I trust too easily, love too deeply. I used to hold myself at bay, keep them from touching the real me. I let my guard down with you. I let you touch the core of me. And now I don’t know what to do.

But it doesn’t matter. Sure as the sun kisses the Organ Mountains the bum will be here, the little girl will dance and the mother draw her near. Life happens when I’m not looking and then I miss so much. I made a promise to myself, right then and there to look, to always open my eyes and see the people around me. I want to see their pain, their joy, to find the thing that makes them beautiful. I want to understand. I need to understand. That’s the only way I can forgive.

And I have to forgive…

Because we’re all beautiful. We all contribute in one way or another. I smile and close my sketch pad. I wipe the charcoal on my pants and look at my blackened fingers. Am I so different from the dirty bum? Am I so different from the child? I smile through my tears and smear black streaks across my cheeks as I wipe the wetness away, but I don’t care. I nod my thanks to the old man and his dirty face as I walk away. We’re all beautiful.

Even you.

Even me.

It's All Your Fault

"It's all your fault...you called me beautiful...you turned me out and now I can't turn back...I hold my breath cuz you were perfect...but I'm running out of air...and it's not fair."

Pink

Fake It Till Ya Make It

Dig deep and bury well

No one wants to see your tears

They only like the clown

With cherry lips and sassy quips

Hide away the pain

Steal it up inside

You know he said it’d pass

(Though he can kiss my ass)

So practice your fake smile

Paint it on if you have to

Don’t let them see you’re crumbling

Cracking under all the strain

Tell a joke

Deflect the truth

And smile, baby girl, smile.