Plans Got Complex

I hope she is everything
I am not,
or will ever be.

I hope I can wake up
in the future
and not hurt
because of this.

I hope I can wake up
and feel good,
drink tea and read books
in the morning fog.

I know she is everything
I cannot be.

I know this will 
sting for a long, long time.
A place within me 
will be full of bitterness
for a while longer,
if not for years.

Because four years is
a decent chunk
of my conscious
life, 
and your existence
in it is often a 
nuisance I wish
you gone.

Go back to Texas
or Ireland and 
leave me alone.

Don't tell me anymore stories,
don't laugh at my dumb jokes anymore,
don't smile at me when I walk in the room,
even if it's just being nice.

Don't show me your cute turntable
and don't give me anymore music.
Don't get me anymore books
and never again read my poetry.

Don't wear plaid,
don't swoosh your hair like you do now,
don't give me those "everyone else is crazy" looks
and never again say we are a club.

I am not a member anymore,
I'll find somebody else
that can discuss supermarket-poetic theory
and philosophy
and poetry and art
and all that lovely stuff with me.

Don't.
Just 
don't.

I want to cut you 
out of my heart
and hand over the
sopping red thing
in a plastic bag
and say 'look what you've done to me.'
So you know,
so you know the hours I wasted 
thinking of you.
The hours I wasted talking to you.
The cds I wasted for music for you.
The nights
I spent crying and sick to my stomach
because of you.
The poems I've wasted in your name.
The days of my life
that have accumulated 
regarding you.

Honey, I can't do this much longer.
Something's gotta give so
I can get on with my life.

I was a Kaleidoscope

Oh gee,
I accomplished things today!

I finished all my homework:
-read physics, did problems,
-read gov, took notes,
-outlined an essay
-wrote an issue report
-write a gov blog

And I filled out the student
of the week scholarship form
and wrote one of the essays.

AND I LOOKED AT COLLEGE STUFF
OH MY GOODNESS.

Wrote down 
what I need to apply
and what date the
application is due.

Yay.
I did things for
my future today.
Now I just need to
write one billion essays
and submit
one billion common apps
and I'll be done.

Oh boy.

Styrofoam Plates

For a long time
I thought 
"I could never 
marry a poet."

And now I am 
thinking,
"but who else 
could I marry?"

Poets are bound to each other.
We are a collective all our own,
nearly another species.

And there is no one else
I could marry, but a poet.
A writer, perhaps.
But a poet
would be best.

Put two poets together
and the world instantly
changes, for they
realize that they aren't
the only one who thinks
a certain way,
who watches certain things.

My poetry teacher at camp
married another poet
and while they cannot
critique each other's poetry
they are perfect for each other.

You understand the same things,
but interpret them in different
ways poetically.

I'll have to marry a poet,
and in this way I am afraid.
I've yet to meet a male poet,
a real one. One who reaches out
and claims the title.

Where are they hiding?

Because these things
in my life just are not
working,
and I am so tired,
so tired of this.
This lacking in emotional
connection, to a boy,
a guy who can complete
what Zeus cut in half.
Literally, the
other half of my heart.
Plato was right,
we're cut in half by the gods
for fear of our whole power...

but we're so wounded 
while we quest.

Blacking Out the Friction

So soon, anxiety?
I figured I could hold you off
longer than this.

But you're a mighty beast
of burden,
which may make
me drop a class.
Probably College Algebra
because who needs
that anyways.

I am unstable, 
too many dishes 
in the stack
and it fell.

This is what happens
when I try to be
who I was.

Movie Script Ending

We are renovating the D-Town studio.
We are taking down the lighting,
all of it.

We are painting the walls.
All the walls.

We (meaning 99% Taylor)
ripped out the weird 
and ugly blue shelving.

It makes me feel
good, working like this.
It is so great.
We're making the studio
look nice.
And professional.

And it's fun.
It's a feel-good thing.

And today,
I got my poetry medal
in the mail.
It is a little gold
round medal-pendant
on a nice purple ribbon.

It says I am a published poet,
in 2012, and that I won the Editor's 
Choice Award.

I am so happy with it.
It feels good to have a medal.

I wore it when I came home.
I usually don't do that sort of thing.

But my day went south
around 3:00 pm.

I needed some feel-goods.

Because whenever she 
comes up in conversations
I feel immediately sick
to my stomach.
I wanted to leave,
to cry.

Instead I helped renovate.

Because imagining him with anyone
is a sucker punch for me.

Turkeys come with their entrails
in plastic bags inside of them.

Somebody ripped
out my plastic baggy 
of
guts.

I am a gutless turkey.

Because I love him,
and I told my psychologist
about this whole years-long ordeal
and he was a little stumped.
He said he has to think about it.
Because I see him everyday,
so avoidance is an impossible
tactic to use.

It felt weird,
it was awkward
to describe out goings-ons.
The music and the books
and the conversations.

I am thoroughly sad at this point.

But I took my aggression out
on a rowing machine at the Y
and felt a little better.

But I want to punch him
in the guts
so he knows how this feels.

Sorry this is a dumb stupid feelings
blog post but
I do what I want.

William Bendercuthencal's Generic All-Brown Spread

For TWO days
I have had
POSITIVE ENERGIES.

Let it me known,
written down and
recorded.
My first two days
of my senior year
were 
tolerable,
and I was 
POSITIVE.

Laughing, even.
Smiling and enjoying
the company of my peers.

I found my omen,
my favorite dress,
whose zipper had seemed
broken for months,
zipped right up yesterday.

I couldn't zip the damn thing
since May.

It's a good sign.
It's the one I needed.

And I'm saying this now,
that I am positive
and stuff.

I want it to stay
this way,
but I know winter will
be hard.

Winters are always hard
on me.

But for now,
there is sun.

And I find 
your inability to flip pancakes
very cute.

Oh! And a college sent me a t-shirt today!
It was exciting,
because this college
(University of Chicago)
is on my list!
I shouldn't get all jazzed,
but like, that's pretty cool,
getting a t-shirt and all,
from a college I actually like
and might go to.

This is the Place

The eve of my Senior Year.
"senior"
Senior what?
Not citizen.
People don't even think
I'm an adult,
so I find 'senior'
to be a dumb term.

I'll just stick with independent woman,
thanks.

Senior means the end of high school
on one level,
when the word is separate to me.

The end.
Of a four year long
hell?
Of a huge chunk 
bitten out of my life?

This is the beginning
of an end.

For that, I am thankful,
and for that alone.

My motivation for tomorrow
is really only to go and get
the music promised to me.
That's it.
The rest I'm just ignoring.
It hasn't set it.
Tomorrow night 
I will cry with shock:
inevitable.
Shock of what my life
will be for a year.
How trapped I am.

Last year,
the eve before my junior year,
a huge thunderstorm kept me awake
most of the night.
I took it as an omen,
that my junior year would be bad.

It was the worst year of my life.

I'm looking for a sign.
Waiting for a good omen.
Hoping this will be something better.

I just don't know.

I have only one goal
for this year,

to survive it.

Thriving,
that's for other people.
I'm done here,
I mean only to 
eke out a meager existence.
To live.

I am going to survive this year,
there is no other option.

It is just a roadblock 
to the rest of my life.
It's a sobriety check point.
Have I been a horrible failure?
No.
Ok, I can pass go,
I can collect 200 dollars
after this is over.

I am looking forward to my music
tomorrow,
a good parking spot,
my friends first in first period,
and seeing that one guy who's pretty ok.

The rest is a vast barren wasteland I
could always, always do without.

But suffering 
usually makes good art.
And I'm in the business
of writing,
and that business takes
a lot of misery.

We'll see what comes of all
this shit,
and hopefully
I do 
survive.

You're Only Human

Yes, well.
It hits you,
and then you forget
to breathe because
it seems like
everything
(yes, everything)
is wrong and
will never, ever be right.

And you afraid of
your life,
your future,
your friends,
you become momentarily
terrified of 
the world.

And you don't move,
and you breathe ragged
when you can,
and you cry
and it's scary.

When it feels like
the entire earth
is eating you up
limb by limb.

And you're scared
and can't fix it.

It may happen
when you're listening
to Jeff Buckley's
"Hallelujah",
and if it does.

Then you're hosed,
because it's so damn sad,
on top of all the other sad.

My Door Is Always Open

Ahh, well,
I am trying to 
be my once-productive
and ambitious self.

I catch glimpses,
today she scheduled
two college visits,
printed a copy of the common app.
She surfed hotels
to stay at while in NY.

Then she got sad
and went away.

Because the future
isn't so much my goal
right now, I damn myself
every time I say it,
but it's true,
I don't care.

I got tired of
the protocol
but I'll ride that wave
until I can finally
get away from it.
Probably another
five years.

If I'm not out of the
flow by then
I'll spend my entire life
unhappy
and incomplete
and broken.

I'll waste away what I have
to please the system
and the people I know.

In five years
I want to be
myself and happy
and doing something
I love very much.

I want to live how 
I actually WANT to live.

Right now I'm
just masquerading 
as a high school senior
going through the motions
because it's the only thing
I can respectably do.

Cotton

Four hours of sleep,
compulsive itching
muscle twitching
in my face making my teeth
chatter.
I just sort of sat there all
night re-putting my hair up
in a ponytail.
And all of my
little in-between sleep
state was mixed with Pawn Stars
visions.

All that on a full dose
of Vicodan.
No sleep on Vicodan?

Geez.

And then you
asked me what the book
was I gave you a story out of 
a while ago.
You want to read more,
and it makes me pretty
happy you like one of my
favorite books.
And it's also cool
you're going to read 
the book I suggested to you. 
And that you wished me well
on my wisdom teeth surgery,
you're so nice.

Hallelujah

Well,
I have to get my teeths
out tomorrow,
and I shall lose all
my wisdom.
I hate pain,
I hate pills,
and IVs are no fun.

And I have to go to Worthington
for the whole thing anyway.

I'm not looking forward to 
this, or its aftermath.

Also,
I've been stewing
over my age and how
people perceive me.

I want to walk with a 
sway in my hips
like a woman does.

I want people to go,
oh! You're an adult
and can make good choices
and have a brain!

I want people to see me 
as an equal, a human.

It's so frustrating to feel
so ageless while being
stuck with a number.

I want to be an adult.
I want to be able to 
live my life.

How can I prove
myself as a real person?

I Live in an Unstable Graham Cracker House

That feeling of fever.
I have a soul fever,
those hot-cold chills
you can't stand.
The temperature a 
shower sometimes reaches
that makes you feel
so ill,
you just want to double over.

A soul ache,
and I can't find a band-aid
big enough to cover it,
no sutures strong enough to
close it, 
no doctor skilled enough 
patch it up
clean.

Because knowing 
you're torn 
is so much worse
than letting it fester,
under your skin 
without your awareness.
I am fully aware
that pieces of me tug
and break off
and collide
and are exploded
regularly.

And it hurts.
Physically
sometimes.

Sometimes I can't get a breath,
sometimes I can't see straight,
or my chest won't beat right
or I will just ache in my entire
physical being.

And I know why,
and I know it's not
really right.
To hurt that way.

Some people say great art only comes
from suffering,
immense suffering.
So many artists had diseases
that made them insane.

I don't have black sores,
I am not bedridden or blind
or have lead poisoning.

But I do have open wounds
somewhere inside me,
because I can feel them,
in the supermarket.
In the shower,
in the car,
anywhere I am.
A burst of pain.

I will hear waves in head,
smell the salt in my hair
and my chest rips open,
ragged and frayed.

I see your face,
and something inside of me
can't work.

I know I am a failure
when I take my pills
and I can't breathe.

Does it make me crazy
to feel this pain,
for my body
to be a punching bag
for worldly things?

-------------------

And I feel like a failure,
when I take my three pills,
and this week
I had to do this ritual
in front of my family.

And I couldn't help but think,
"I disappoint them."
Because who wants a 
daughter on pills 
who is sad
or too silly.
Who makes chicken noises
and reads all the billboards
along the roadside.

Why do they keep me
like they do?
Why can they love this
person so dependent
on medicines and fears
and books.

But I still take them
because I am scared 
of what might happen
if I don't.
And I can't deal with the sleeplessness
that comes, have to push back the
sadness as long as I can.

-------------------

I read a beautiful book called
"Diary" by Chuck Palahnuik.
(Why has nobody made it a movie yet????)
And it was absurd,
and scary, and a fairytale,
and statement on art, and advertising.

--------------------

I am sad now,
for a dumb reason-
I lost 75% of all of my music.
I don't have any one way to get it back,
or even remember what all I had.

Because that music meant a lot
to me. Because I missed listening to
good songs everyday
in my car.
Because it's hard to encompass how I
feel without it.
Yet another part of me
is missing,
floating above the stratosphere
somewhere I cannot reach.

I miss lying in bed
with a soft lullaby song
with guitars and twinkly
sounding things.

-------------------

A week I was gone,
from you, blog.
I was in mountains with bears
and accents and moonshine.

With arcades and funnel cakes
and mini-golf.

With my family and waterslides
and the creek.

it wasn't bad, it was nice.
But now I am ready to 
get away from them
for a little.

I'm not ready for the impending
future,
and I am just not ready.