july 20th, 2009

nothing but a throbbing pouch

The crumpled paper fortunes make it hard to stick my license in the wallet pocket, but I don’t mind.  I usually keep the good ones; the ones I feel are true and the ones that will keep me going.  It’s hard when the night is closing in and all I want to do is stay up and get higher and higher and higher.  It’s hard when she’s not here and I know I will have to wake up sweating alone.  It’s hard to accept these solitary nights, even though I know I need them and secretly love them.  I can’t write any other way, and writing is what kicks me when I’m down then helps me up and treats me to drinks.  Writing vengefully convinces me to stay up all night only to hand me two ibuprofen and a cold glass of water in the morning.  Have a good day at work honey, I love you. 

I just don’t know what I would do without these words.  Less and less I fear them leaving, which is nice.  I used to think once happiness moved in she would throw this habit right out the door; clothes on the lawn, spray painted messages of hatred on the car, the whole shebang.  What I’ve realized is even happiness is not ever-present.  I can still be a happy man in a rut.  I can still be a happy man who despises the beeping cue to go to work each morning.  The idea of constant happiness is a ghost and I don’t want any part of it. 

prolonging

Some woman is singing the same words over and over outside my window and although it is nearly one thirty in the morning and I know I have to be responsible tomorrow it just doesn’t feel like a Sunday night, it feels like another beautiful chance to spit out my masterpiece-- but then again, I’ve had quite a few drinks and when I get some wine in me I feel invincible, unstoppable, casually capable of total literary domination-- which is laughable and preposterous but so much fun to mull over because without the feeling that you can create perfection you are settling, and settling is a repulsive creature of the night who howls alone and sleeps alone in filth.