melancholia

I'm going to say this as simply as I can, Dad: stop with your fucking homophobic bullshit. I'm serious. I can't take it anymore. Do I have to write bisexual in big bold letters on my forehead for you to get the fucking point? Sometimes, I feel bad that I haven't outright told him; Mom has known for years and so has my friends, so why is it so hard to just fucking come out to him? I thought maybe you'd mellow with age, but no such luck.

In short: one more homophobic remark out of your mouth and I won't be responsible for my actions.

(In happier news, I watched Shelter last night, and omg it was just what I needed. Zach and Shaun were adorable, though I hated Zach's sister. Burnt Money is up next, and I know that I am going to fucking love it. Gah.)

through hungover eyes the room is tilting,
having lost ourselves in the space between
the parting of lips and friends; so long, farewell
good riddance.
(wouldn't you like to know) i cut myself on a knife,
turning me obsessive-compulsive with each passing moment.
we stand and inhale monoxide by the road while overhead
skies stretch towards infinity. lean over so I can small the acetone
on your wineglass fingers; it's not so much betrayal
as never really having had it to begin with.
let me tell you a secret, just between you and me:
the party's over. there, a flash of passion red,
the sound of shadows departing. autumn is pretty enough,
but dead leaves are just that,
(dead) -
the summer has ended, and we are not saved.

(in the bathroom i found bloodstains and an epiphany,
cupped hands numb -
i'm running on empty and writing my own demise -
with the absence of hope.)

sweet soft spoken singer boy,
you polish your nails and keep
the feminine appeal on.
you were just as deceitful then
as you're a liar now,
and i wonder about the
other self you keep along side
your shelf of used pre-packaged condoms.

boy meets girl,
boy pretends to be with boy.
a gender garage sale that was
created with the bisexuality in
you and i.

they all loved Marilyn's sex appeal,
and Jessica Savitch was always willing
to put up a fight,
but she lost the battle to the golden locks
and her cocaine trail.

i know what you're thinking,
so don't even.

humanity finds God on the magazine aisle,
CD rack, our own American Idol.
you were always willing to sell it out,
spread your legs,
and pretend to be the new Messiah with
eloquent words written in praise of you.
all girls love to be whores in the bedroom,
Martha Stewart white linen table cloth
that was bought just for you.
we know men demand their virgins to remain tight.
but i'm still,
i'm still coming now.

down the leg and to the bedpost,
with my ankle all tied.
twisted,
twisting,
the psychological frame work of your mentality.

and the world falls into silence when a
groupie bitch decides to speak her mind.
it was almost as intense as my date with Charlie,
but never as extreme,
never as passionate as your lyrical daily bread.
you as a Messiah never bled when you were
symbolically crucified on a St. Andrews cross
and asking God why the pleasure has to end.
maybe you feel too much,
maybe you feel nothing at all,
or maybe you're as spiritually elite as
Jesus, because you demand that your
followers are like Bartholomew
being skinned.

but you'll fail every time when your soul
is only captured in the remembrance of a limelight,
and the humanity you claimed would never die.

In a 1917 essay titled Mourning and Melancholia, Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis, began a career-long meditation on the manner in which the human psyche deals with loss. "Mourning," he wrote, "is regularly the reaction to the loss of a loved person.... We rest assured that after a lapse of time it will be overcome, and we look upon any interference with it as inadvisable or even harmful." This is grief at the "normal" register. By contrast, "melancholia", though sharing many of the surface characteristics of "mourning", is identified by Freud as a pathological illness, marked by an inability to recover from the loss, to "overcome" it, and to return to daily activities. Thus, "the complex of melancholia behaves like an open wound," a wound that refuses to heal, a loss that cannot be salved.

ask me who i am and i'll always answer 'anyone
else'. i aspire to anonymity.

iii. sometimes it feels like i'm too late, like
the whole world has passed me by. but even if it has
i'm still sitting here with my syllables and word counts.
i spend my time thinking about
all the girls i'll never be. i wonder what they're doing.

iv. if i were them i'd look at the world
through the electric eyes. live like new york city,
neon lights & showgirl shine. i'd wake up to the sunrise
and yoga and vanilla cappuccino: i'd eat candied apples
and wear my hair down. at night i would run the streets:
breathe in copper-teardrops breathe out indigo-anger.

here i am, sinning six ways to sunday and singing
in the shower. somehow i'll shed this scarecrow skin.

You lean your back against the cement wall underneath a wide-open window, your head thrown back as though frozen in the picturesque motion of rising, water breaking across your forehead. I can't see, but I can feel the intensity of your half-lidded eyes upon me. One mile-long leg stretches out and the only sound is of your slow, unsteady breathing mingled with the occasional sucking-in of smoke. Smoke, smoke; it rises, engulfing us both in a silvery cocoon. You lazily part your lips and pretty words exhale with the blue-grey fumes in a familiar raspy tone.

"I don't think you understand," you drawl, flicking cigarette ash onto the cracked floor. "I'm not lonely when I'm alone."

This could be perfect, I think, so sensual-like we were lovers already. I could spend my whole life doing this. I could live, forever, with the careful moonlight streaming in above your head, entering into alien marriage with the miasma of stale cigarette smoke, and this quiet adoration.

And all I can whisper back is, "God, you're beautiful."

I have no idea what that is. Wrote it in English class, bored out of my mind, staring out the window. The weather's been dreary today, feeling more like fall than winter. And it's raining.

(Do you remember how much it rained that day, walking home from school? The pink umbrella you'd brought with you didn't help at all, and even though we looked like drenched cats we were laughing and singing English Summer Rain and even took the long way home. Do you remember how you made us hot chocolate and even let me put on a Metallica music DVD, since your mom and brother weren't home yet? I remember. Too well.)

I miss England.

This is how I envision the world ending:

I don't see an exploding sky of blue and yellow and red and green. I don't see tectonic plates snapping into pieces and surging from the confines of the earth, and into the sky in a slow-motion frenzy of flying rock, flocks of people despersing in every direction, crushed cars, tumbling buildings, and fractures of glass littering the roads, reflecting the glaring eruption of the sky. The people's hysteric screams of terror and panic won't be there to be drowned out by the sun's apocalyptic bang and the moon's desolate wail and the little girl on the corner of the intersection, clutching onto her teddybear, won't be whisked away by chunks of civilization tearing the wind apart.

No, I don't envision the world ending in a cataclysmic, paraoxysm of loud booms and bangs.

Nope.

When the world ends (and it will, everything has an end, even the sun will eventually burn out), I see the sky dimming, illuminating the earth with a feeble tremble of sun and warmth, like a candle struggling to keep its flame. I see the lone car crawling along the desolate strip of road, and the absence of the bustling streets and bright city lights. All the stars diminish one by one, in sudden pops, some flickering in a desperate attempt to thwart the final judgements. Inside houses families clitch despairingly onto life, and the little girl huddles in her corner, shivering. Her teddybear falls limply to the ground beside her; she lets out a small, oblivious whimper. And that is the last sound that no one will hear.

That is how the world will end. Not with a bang, but a whimper.

This is how the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper
T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men