Thinkwonderimaginepicture

I rest my head on the crusty yellow bedcover and think about how many angry mothers have tossed their babies down on it to change their shitty diapers, how many long-legged girls with tattoos on their butts have sat on it, bent over, and painted their toenails, how many big hairy Wall Street guys have grunted and pushed their way inside some girl they gave a big wad of cash to.

I wonder how many people like me, afraid and alone, lacking any sort of control over their own thoughts, have scrunched themselves in the corner of this dirty hotel room, trying desperately to block out the scraping gnawing roaring thoughts. Pushed themselves tight between the nightstand and the squeaky bed. Laid their heads right where my head is laying now.

There’s a dark yellow spot under my cheek, and I imagine all of the dirt that my tears have dissolved, all of the disease they’re carrying back into my body through me eye. I imagine some dude with HIV splooging all over, falling asleep on top of his boyfriend, and forgetting to clean it up. I imagine some chick with blood positive for that baby-killing virus squeezing her palm over her bleeding wrist but some still getting out. My mind is like one of those CSI black light things. I can see it all. You clean up your blood with everything under the sink, and I can still see it in my mind.

I picture my mind being a ferocious lion that all the zookeepers are trying to pull away from the limp body of some kid small enough to fit through the bars. They’re roping him and choking him and using the tazer, but he bucks and rears up and roars a roar so loud even the mom and dad want to run away. I picture my mind something not just out of reach of my fingertips but so fucking far away it looks like just a speck on the smoggy horizon.

buffet.

Her pink sausage arms jabbed into his ribs and nodded vigorously at the rows and rows of sliced deli meats and cheeses like brightly colored decorations in front of them. She licked her lips and drummed her pudge fingers on the plate pressed against her thick breasts. I look one way and I see magic. I look the other and there’s more magic. Oh, Mr. Yeast how I love your All-you-can-eat Feast! Her indecisiveness ended as soon as she saw the sweaty brown and pink glazed ham smothered with sugared pineapples and melting butter. Her wide eyes were like two bits of coal in a fleshy pink snowman. Jackpot, she thought.

He rubbed where her meaty elbow had struck him and frowned down at the stacks of small plates on the table in front of him. How do they expect me to pile all I can eat on these shitty little plates? His mouth was set so deep in his face that the flesh around his lips and nose and eyes reabsorbed any facial expressions back into his face. He set to work. His thick arms couldn’t bend at the sweaty joints of his elbows. They simply curved to accommodate all of the quiches and crust rolls and bacon-wrapped hot dogs and rump roast and macaroni and brownie bites he scooped onto his plate. He shook off his food-covered arm and looked down the row of horrified faces. "What?" he growled from the hole between his two huge cheeks.

so be it.

The following poem is written from the perspective of Hedda, the main character in Henrik Ibsen’s play Hedda Gabler. With the piece I have written, I intend to elucidate her feelings about the people and events surrounding this fascinating individual. Gaining more insight into Hedda’s personality, the reader will realize her vices and quirks, which makes for a better understanding of her identity. Each stanza dissects an aspect of this complex persona. There is also an accompanying Statement of Intent that I have chosen not to include.




Passion, rage, fire
Burning in my soul and through the papers
Through to a world of death and dance melodies
Of curtains and corsages
A manuscript seared A child gone
Loss of innocent life? So be it.
Eyes burning in their sockets
Reflection
My brain burning in its skull
Charred fragments Pieces of their soul One collective soul
Charred fragments all that remain of
They who disgust me
With hair gold as weeds
With lack of courage Lack of beauty Lack of a better word
Nothing beautiful Just accidents
Curtains, the end, drawing to a close
Something he could not But will

I? Clinging to you who is not my savior
Holding on for dear death
And yet slip
Slip and fall
Deep into Then
Because Now is colorless? So be it.
The color of your times will never flood my life
But always my memory
But you are gone Forever fading
And replaced with a ghost of a trace of a fraction of nobility
Of respect and honor
From your place on high You watch me even in death
I will join you someday Flee far from the place
From him
He will never be you
Never shelter me Keep me

And my crimson pain
Can’t breathe in this life
Trains go on While I wait here
His midnight blindness Flaming ebony blindness
Lack of sight Lack of mind Lack of a better word
‘See I’m drowning in the life he’s made?
No? So be it.
I become jade As the days dawdle Linger Loiter
In these gunmetal gray times
For what is there to live?
In these gray times He has nothing to offer
He speaks of violet mountains and ancient peoples
But the pages of his books are yellowing
Cracking and the words fade white
He tries to revive them With travel With travel
But he is once again blind He sees nothing of what is placed before him
He has nothing to offer But he’ll try to

Shift me Shape me Make me pure
With your lies and perfect words
Pure like deceit Smooth and romantic
Toy with me As I toy with them
Secrets
Not an escape but a freedom
Not a refuge but a relief
Transient amusement? So be it.
You bring me a shape that belongs
Not in love
What is that? I know not
Laugh at me Laugh at my drama
My foolish heart and childish games
You adore them Revel in them
Feed off of my spirit
I squirm under your gaze
You reach for me but Never will I give in

To scandal I say bah
To gossip I say nay
Not afraid but utterly terrified
Discover me not
My nose in the sky I sneer at them all
Another enemy? So be it.
Disrepute shall not tarnish my name
Degrade Deride Dethrone
I shall sooner die than do such
Things
I am ugly I am weak I need salvation
But it lurks in shadows
The answer hides in Dingy dirty squalid shadows
So I clean them Clean but not use them
Polish to perfection I expect to rub right through!
Shiny and inviting But their reflections wreak of scandal
Not for me

Even a moment of indecision
Vile music swirling
Giddy voices chatting
Suspect me not…
Before my eyes no flashes no memories no life no love
Before my choice. Be it so beautiful.
Faster faster racing heart beating heart faster racing
Blood pounding eyes throbbing ears screaming
Hands hot feet cold Arms tremble
Trigger cut my skin cold steel temple
Smile creeps lips part no scream no laugh
Final rush a blow a hole a fire a light a dark
Trickle sweat tickle feel fickle girl with a selfish heart
My poison delivered in powder metal smoke
This is it this was you I will feel beautiful
My criminal hands do it do it do it
Calm before the storm
I wonder what hell looks—

raven.

“This is called scene setting: where everybody is, who's alive, who's dead.”
- Invisible Monsters

She had escaped her higher-than-the-heavens friends and wandered through the soggy drag of the air thick with body odor and pot smoke and fake fog. The sound was oppressive, pushing down on her head and shoulders, breaking her neck with the weight of its bass lines, pounding on her spine every time the speakers shook. The beat beat beat her down deeper into the pulsing crowd.

She marveled at the bodies, swirling through the beams of colored light shooting down from the ceiling. They ran barefoot over crushed beer cans, sticky wristbands, and 3D glasses. They danced in circles, spinning on their sticky heels, on their cut-up heels on broken beer bottles and melted Sno-cones. Dancing and spinning on their heels, black with dirt and beer and bile and grime tracked in from the asphalt outside. The girls with pacifiers, stolen from their baby brothers, and their bracelets like armor filling up their skinny arms.

A dull-thud-ache began at the back of her head. She closed her eyes for a moment—and looked up to a wide-eyed girl with shock pink hair. The girl kept throwing Smarties into her mouth; she could see her teeth grinding on the little candies, her jaw muscles rippling. "Want some?" she shouted, pink spit flying out of her mouth.

She turned away from the Candy Girl and pushed deeper into the sea of bodies—almost tripping over a boy sitting cross-legged on the dirty floor. He looked up at her with ice eyes. He parted his dry cracked lips and breathed sourly into her face, "Wanna party?" His voice was surprisingly audible for how low he was speaking. She found herself drawing closer to hear but not really needing to. His eyes grabbed at parts of her that made her sick. She moved on again.

A she-skeleton emerged from a hole in the wall of people. The sweat on her bony neck mingled with a candy necklace and left pink, purple, blue, yellow stains that dripped to her collarbones. She chewed the sugar loops down to the string until it broke and the candies hurriedly followed one another dropping off of her neck and to the floor. The hunger in her deep-set eyes was so intense that she expected the gaunt girl fall to her knees and to gobble the candies from the floor. Instead she just wrapped the wet string around her finger so tight the skin turned purple and she could imagine her blood.

"You rollin’?" she screamed, repeating herself several times, as if she was attempting to ask every person moving around her. Before she could open her mouth to answer the girl, she was shot forward, her shoulder blades caving in from an impact. Pain radiated through her back and connected with the pain in her head. A boy in a rainbow scarf flailed his arms and legs, gyrating past her, sharp elbows swinging in all directions. His disco dance world had consumed him. He had no idea she even existed.

The crowd was completely alive, a separate entity, a living organism, pulsating and throbbing to some internal digestion of the music. Her body, squeezed so tightly between so many other gummy hot bodies, was caught up into the dense air. Her limbs pasted to her sides, her neck crooked at a harsh angle, her body was caught up and her feet lifted off of the ground. Dizzy, in her own whirlwind, she crushed her eyes shut.

That deep in the crowd, there was no light.

rest.

i feel like i'm continually one step behind myself
with every sip of caffeine I feel more and more sluggish
food doesn't give me energy it weighs me down like a rock in Greasy Lake

this perpetual ache in the pit of me eats away at the lining of my stomache
it doesn't burn it rolls rolls around inside of me threatening to throw itself out of me

he said "home" and asked what i saw in my head
i said "besides the migraine?"
he wanted me to say my childhood house or where my mom is
i just saw The Cottage
i think i'll only ever see a cottage
i think i'll only ever see a place that's never been mine

by Mark Twain

"After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her."