Love's Inquisition

You are not pushing me, I do not see you as a Gestapo making demands and threatening me with medical instruments. I do, however, see myself that way.. and it cracks me up really, to see myself in an eyepatch badgering my own heart because really..that's just the way I operate these days. It is sad, I suppose..for gone are the days of open windows and spilling myself out all dizzy and young over the chest of some beloved. I don't know, maybe those days will come again. I hope so. When I speak of Love, I mean just that..Love in and of itself..and what it asks of me. The way I see it, when we fall in love it is no longer just two people but something new they have created together, some new entity that tugs and guides us and its ways are sometimes as mysterious as any acts of Providence. It stomps its foot, demands faith and vulnerability and all manner of frightening things to a still tender-hearted sullen girl such as myself. It is this entity that I speak to, not you. Look, I'm just a person and I have doubts that hang off my shoulders in crooked angles. I don't know if I can step up, I don't know how brave I can be in the face of it, certainly I am not as strong in the chest as I once was. I know I can't do it alone. Yes, it is true that I sometimes wonder if I can do it at all. Surely you can relate.

The optimist says the glass is half full.
The pessimist says the glass is half-full, but I have bowel cancer.

Love is an act of the will, according to Augustine.
Things count because we say so.

Heavy heads soaked in sorrow's eye brine...

Yes, I know. I've been silent these last few days but I just have alot on my mind right now..most of it having to do with work, namely the community I have come to know and love through my work and there is a surge of panic and horror edging my heart...among other things like the fires burning through my family and then this pushing..shoving of Love's inquisition, holding me in a dank basement somewhere and questioning...questioning.... slapping me around, wearing an eyepatch... I am too full of this recent immediate tragedy to make much sense of the whole of it all. If you haven't seen this on the news, here's what happened:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003162640_investigation30m.html

Really, I am okay. I am just quiet. I did, however..see the Dresden Dolls play at an unexpectedly intimate venue on Friday and it was an extraordinary show and really the best show I've seen in a long long time. So, that was pretty fucking great.
See? Not all doom and gloom...no, sir..not me..

How fabulous! How extraordinary! I am just tickled fucking pink!

Looks like I'm sick. Hooray! How the hell did this happen? Came out of nowhere..I haven't been sick much at all this year...now here it is..July..and I'm at work and feeling like falling onto the floor to sleep and every inch of me has that dry hot fever ache feeling and the trek home seems like miles barefoot through Antarctica. It is really that daunting, I feel so shitty. Maybe I should call a cab. I wish this wasn't happening the day before I'm off for two days...if it were earlier in the week then at least I could of just missed some work..and that I certainly would not mind. Damn. All my weekend plans pretty much in the toilet.
Oh, pop my head open like a pez dispenser..suck on my brain tablet and get my disease..
because
well..fuck,
you deserve it too.
I hate all you healthy people right now. seething with envy..
go get stabbed.

My niece exacts her revenge with a Foxy Brown pistol-whip

My nephew decides to re-enact a traumatic event in the life of WIlliam S. Burroughs

My father, the super hero...or is it diabolical villian?

Sometimes I pull out a really old journal, and carry it around and read it like a book. I wrote this over a decade ago..it's about Ma Grover.

It's 1986.
the music is cued...
It's Micheal Jackson's Thriller.
Keisha's in the corner..waiting..trying to hide her teeth as she giggles but I can't see her anyway because I'm laying on the floor- arms crossed over my chest-eyelids pulled down in my best rest-in-peace expression and we are both waiting for Vincent Price to start in.
When he does I rise up from my shag carpet grave with arms out rigor mortis..eyes wide and searching for munchable mortals and as the voice of Vincent and I become one I am getting louder "...The funk of forty thousand years!..and grisly ghouls from every tomb.."
Oh shit.
Here comes Ma from the living room...and the real terror begins.
It's Ma Grover, Keisha's grandmother..my default sitter
Sh's got a grey puff of hair stuck atop her head like a Brillo pad
Two thin Avon-scribbled lips pulled down to a permanent frown like a caught catfish with two hooks in both corners of the gasping mouth
She's got a
Big
Fat
Ass
usually planted in front of some televised evangelist as she slurps eternal tomato soup out of geriatric tupperware
If she's not chasing Keisha around with that same ancient bottle of baby oil trying to rub out some sort of imaginary ashy spot or tugging at Keisha's head with that boar-bristle brush as I look on in empathy-
thankfully exempt from this salon by Ma's fear of the lice that can hide in a slip of white-girl hair.
Ma's always making a big fuss over hiding Keisha's Ugly
but it is a lie
the child gleams
and you can't kick dirt over that kind of lovely
In my 8-year old head still stuffed with fairy tales I see a Cinderella story
and I am the Beast who knows Beauty when I see it.
We had little in common
save the same sad hole of a neighborhood and the same brand of parents who needed us out of their way...but
hoped we were okay
My parents young punks in a band
Keisha's Oh Father Who Art in Prison and an overworked mother whose soft sweet voice opened out of her throat like a yawn..like she had always just woken up.
I didn't have to be there.
I could of hung out at the Schaffer's- smoked stolen Kools on the steps of the burned-out church across the street...run rampant all the soggy summer day..barefoot and deliciously delinquent.
But Keisha was good..and hadn't learned yet that defiance was a poor kid's best line of defense..and I thought she needed me...and I so needed to be needed. So under a dogwood tree I held her hand, named her Best Friend and swore that I'd never ever leave her.
We did allright most of the time, staying outside till the folks arrived..we'd pee in the bushes to avoid Ma.
Occasionally she'd storm out at us, screen door banging..to shake a stick at us, make us cut a switch, teach us a lesson, make us behave..
One day Ma Grover heard me say the "F" word. When she was done with me I winced the whole way home, couldn't ask Mom where the band-aids were so I patched the backs of my legs up with tolet paper and scotch tape. The worst cuts were made by that slip of metal that had edged the ruler she'd broken over my bent bony frame.
I went back the next week, and I never let her see me cry.

It's 2 am, Ma.
and for 120 minutes, I've been seventeen.
And I am Everything...
every shitty thing you ever said I'd be.
You are probably dead by now, but I wouldn't know.
I left Keisha behind a long long time ago.
Of course I did.
Of course I did.
Oh Ma...I need you.
I need you to beat me so hard
that I'll never smoke, cut, snort, fuck, steal or run away again.
Old Lady, right now I am beggin to break
beneath your brand new ruler.

and on the topic of "girl getting bitter"...

So, Miss Lady of the Pains and Aches...you said you'd be looking this blog up and so..as promised, here's something for you out of my very own journal, written not 2 months ago. Remind you of any conversations you've had lately? Maybe now that we are not at the bar and gripping PBR bottles with our teeth and then glugging them above our heads like water coolers you can hear this: Take heart, dear sardonic one..it comes and goes..mind the puddles.

Dear John-
It's not you, it's me.
It is Somebody who is not you
It is some body I have yet to know the breathe/curve/voice of and
there are NO NEW MESSAGES
though I do keep leaving messes
but if you'd quit tossing your heart at my feet like a banana peel then maybe I wouldn't step on it and then skid on it across the linoleum.
I don't have the why of this
you are a sight for
psoriasis
every time you darken my door.
Did my kisses taste like metal when you propped me on this plaster pedestal?
Witches always melt in the rain.
Pull my waxed chest apple out of its ribcage prison..have a bite and find a maggot at its core.
It's not you, it's me.
I just need to find myself.
I just need to find myself with somebody else.
But my tedious pet,
don't
fret.
For your munchkinland can sing
"Ding Dong, the Witch will wait long..."
For there are no new messages
there are no new messages for her either.