i heard the upsetting and grotesque moans of my cell phone alarm, shaking itself on top of the personal fridge at the end of the bed i’m sleeping in. i had set it for 12:31 p.m. and so i got up and turned it off. i put on new boxers, old shorts and shirt, got my pall mall soft pack unfiltered and al’s computer. i headed upstairs and poured myself a glass of pink lemonade i had made the night before. when i got onto the back porch to smoke and sip, i realized it was only 12. i don’t know what had happened. i assume i had moved forward while traveling back in time. it’s the only reasonable explanation.
i read sunday and wednesday and felt bad. i had not been keeping up with anything in my life. i texted matthew and told him i loved him because all i had been able to think about as of late is how much i fucking hate eliot smith. he asked me to post and i told him it was exactly what i had planned to do with my three hours before walking to cambridge for work.
last wednesday i moved from boulder, colorado to lower allston, massachusetts. three weeks before that, the girl i had been living with in colorado, the girl that i had fallen in love with, wanting to do anything and everything for, broke up with me and kicked me out. the night before she did that, i had spent over a hundred dollars on making my nose bleed, meeting up in a blue 80 something bronco in an old block buster parking lot, outside of an ice cream stand.
these things got me to leave. back home in boston now, i realize it was the best decision. after three weeks of self torture and blame, shame to the most wild and vivid ideas. she had told me at work over the phone, as i stomped around back stock punching wood beams and brick walls, that i was narcissistic, too self-destructive, spending money i didn’t have on drugs she said i shouldn’t use. i was a child and she was sick of being my mother. tired of taking care of my mess.
i begged and told her when i think of her, even now i can smile; and she told me in an even and steady beat, as i could hear her crying, that when she thought of me she no longer did.
that struck me in the chest and i almost threw up. i choked and got a headache. she said goodbye and hung up. i left work stumbling home into our sun room with a giant mirror under one hand and my typewriter in the other. i stayed up and there for a few days. i didn’t bother to sleep or go to work. i got drunk and high and wrote a lot of sad poems about why no one could ever love me like her. it didn’t matter. she was gone a few months before that, i had just been talking to and fucking a ghost.
i can say now that i’m beginning to appreciate myself again. i had gone threw a long transition of hating myself and becoming completely dependent on another body. seeking all my happiness in her. it was selfish and unjust. i know that now. but here in the city, i can feel life and love. there is hate here, people are angry. you can walk down the street and see someone and hate them. you don’t need a reason for it. it’s how this city works but i love it. at least it isn’t a dull wash of emotion where people are happy for the sake of being happy. life isn’t like that. colorado was a falsehood that i am beginning to understand.
talking with matthew i have begun to get over a creative slump. i packed up my writing from colorado and have a nice fat stack of a few hundred pages of poetry. i wrote a short script titled The Idle Argument and a longer one i’m still working on called Two Houses. I’m writing of relationships, between husbands and wives, parents and children and destroying a suburbian dream.
matthew asked me to draw some pictures for him, ones that he had lost. i hadn’t drawn in a while told him i couldn’t promise anything that amazing. to my surprise i fell in love with them. i found old porn in a dumpster from the 70′s and 80′s and used the women as my models. i didn’t want to use a face in them. i didn’t want any personal connection. i wanted naked bodies and cigarettes in their asses. i had always wanted to draw the female body in these simple and easy lines. i was unsure if i wanted to show the vagina. i had never really drawn them that much and when i started to i felt like i was a kid doing something bad, like writing swear words on the walls when i was in kindergarten and getting yelled at for it. this isn’t how a man should feel when he is drawing something beautiful. this shame of sex and women. these drawings have helped me start to understand and get over this. i showed my mom this when we got into the car off the plane driving back up to boston. we got into an argument about whether this was sexist or not, if i was defiling and objectifying the woman body. i disagreed, if anything i am objectifying the human body. women and men should not be separated. i’m sorry if this is a jumbled mess, i am still waking but needed to get this off of my chest. here are the pictures and a few poems i have been writing, i might share some old ones as well. i have felt uncertain about my writing lately, but exploring again.
reading dostoevsky;
Born a brute
I drink not for joy
I weep with each sip
and in an empty cup
I can find sorrow.
Only do I lay my head
to be pitied.
Son of a thief-
and father of shame,
I hold my lines of mirrors
so I can see my true self.
about Joshua.
Tired and talking
Lazy, we’re floating
like yellow canaries
draped soft in a cream cloak
you were always there
smoke drifting
through the cracks of your
calloused fingers
open hands and dried eyes
the circles lift
and spin towards the
ceiling.
more poems tomorrow. work today.
thank you.
oh and for yer ears.
I really appreciate this post. I guess I can just relate.
Allston isn’t far from where I find myself pretty often. We should meet up for a beer sometime.
I really appreciate this post. I guess I can just relate.
Allston isn’t far from where I find myself pretty often. We should meet up for a beer sometime.
oh my goddddd quit your stupid weeping white boy! this was the most irritatingly-bukowski-esque, insufferable post that has come from you yet. this is saying a lot! i can only hold my tongue for so long.
you sound like you’re searching for tragedy, or at least you’re addicted to it. this is the thing that bothers me most about “young creatives.” do you realize the amount of people that would do anything to be in a position similar on the socio-economic scale to yours?
“i disagreed, if anything i am objectifying the human body. women and men should not be separated.” and i cannot leave without noting how naïve this bit is…
read something other than poetry! the answer ain’t in the tea leaves!
oh my goddddd quit your stupid weeping white boy! this was the most irritatingly-bukowski-esque, insufferable post that has come from you yet. this is saying a lot! i can only hold my tongue for so long.
you sound like you’re searching for tragedy, or at least you’re addicted to it. this is the thing that bothers me most about “young creatives.” do you realize the amount of people that would do anything to be in a position similar on the socio-economic scale to yours?
“i disagreed, if anything i am objectifying the human body. women and men should not be separated.” and i cannot leave without noting how naïve this bit is…
read something other than poetry! the answer ain’t in the tea leaves!
At least put your name on your comment! I guess being this hateful is embarrassing though. It is silly of you to say he is naive to at least promote the idea of the body over gender. Im sure he knows the implications of the work, but his intention is important to it no?
Don’t attack people if you wan’t to critique the work. Being Anonymously bitchy is never a good thing.
* Also, dont belittle someones suffering. Something tells me you don’t relish every moment of your very privileged life.
Don’t be an Asshole. There, I said it.
EDDIE
At least put your name on your comment! I guess being this hateful is embarrassing though. It is silly of you to say he is naive to at least promote the idea of the body over gender. Im sure he knows the implications of the work, but his intention is important to it no?
Don’t attack people if you wan’t to critique the work. Being Anonymously bitchy is never a good thing.
* Also, dont belittle someones suffering. Something tells me you don’t relish every moment of your very privileged life.
Don’t be an Asshole. There, I said it.
EDDIE
haha eddie thank you so much and chris to you as well, i would love to meet up for beer some time.
and to “sorry”, you are right. i am addicted to tragedy. i fucking love it. i want my whole world to be crashing down at every moment and i will revel in it’s shitty mess. i know i create this destruction for myself and that’s why i find it so attractive.
but thank you, your spontaneous tirade made me smile when i woke up this morning.
and i’m not fucking lying.
haha eddie thank you so much and chris to you as well, i would love to meet up for beer some time.
and to “sorry”, you are right. i am addicted to tragedy. i fucking love it. i want my whole world to be crashing down at every moment and i will revel in it’s shitty mess. i know i create this destruction for myself and that’s why i find it so attractive.
but thank you, your spontaneous tirade made me smile when i woke up this morning.
and i’m not fucking lying.
I have a problem with anonomous comments because it says to me the commenter is unwilling to own their words. Each author on this weblog is held accountable for every word and image they publish. It is disrespectful to give feedback on a work while leaving the name and email field blank. Feedback on this site is not a glass box or blank book in a gallery where you can drop a quick poignant criticism. And it is definitely not a piece of white printer paper tapped to a display case like at RIT. It is a valuable tool intended to aid discussion and project ideas. So please, the next time, give the author the right of knowing who they are speaking with.
Matt Kelley
I have a problem with anonomous comments because it says to me the commenter is unwilling to own their words. Each author on this weblog is held accountable for every word and image they publish. It is disrespectful to give feedback on a work while leaving the name and email field blank. Feedback on this site is not a glass box or blank book in a gallery where you can drop a quick poignant criticism. And it is definitely not a piece of white printer paper tapped to a display case like at RIT. It is a valuable tool intended to aid discussion and project ideas. So please, the next time, give the author the right of knowing who they are speaking with.
Matt Kelley
This post makes me sad. I knew you once, not well and not for long, but enough to say I know you. I thought you were one of the most intelligent and hopeful people out of your whole bunch of friends. our love of writing and expressing yourself was interesting and genuine. I enjoyed conversation with you and thoroughly liked spending time with you. I am choosing to be anonymous because when writing anonymously (and not being nasty and critical like that other post) it causes the person reading the comment to reflect a little more than just pass off the comment and ignore it because of how they feel about the commenter.
I am amazed at your writing style. You obviously still have the talent, and and your word choice makes the reader feel enthralled in your story. I could go on about the photos and the objectifying women part, but it wouldn’t be food for thought, because its obvious you’ve already made your opinion on the matter. I think everyone in some way enjoys tragedy, but with the hope of happiness, and that’s why this post makes me sad. I don’t think you are destined for sadness and sorrow, I think right now it makes you feel good because it’s at least something to hold on to, it’s something that is a constant in your life when everything else is crashing. I hope this comment reaches you well, and that you will know someone out there, anonymously has confidence in you, and a hope for you, that you will some day find happiness, fulfillment and joy from life.
- An anonymous, non-judgmental, old friend.
This post makes me sad. I knew you once, not well and not for long, but enough to say I know you. I thought you were one of the most intelligent and hopeful people out of your whole bunch of friends. our love of writing and expressing yourself was interesting and genuine. I enjoyed conversation with you and thoroughly liked spending time with you. I am choosing to be anonymous because when writing anonymously (and not being nasty and critical like that other post) it causes the person reading the comment to reflect a little more than just pass off the comment and ignore it because of how they feel about the commenter.
I am amazed at your writing style. You obviously still have the talent, and and your word choice makes the reader feel enthralled in your story. I could go on about the photos and the objectifying women part, but it wouldn’t be food for thought, because its obvious you’ve already made your opinion on the matter. I think everyone in some way enjoys tragedy, but with the hope of happiness, and that’s why this post makes me sad. I don’t think you are destined for sadness and sorrow, I think right now it makes you feel good because it’s at least something to hold on to, it’s something that is a constant in your life when everything else is crashing. I hope this comment reaches you well, and that you will know someone out there, anonymously has confidence in you, and a hope for you, that you will some day find happiness, fulfillment and joy from life.
- An anonymous, non-judgmental, old friend.
i dont notice when the blankets are
going short-ways to my feet
or long-ways towards my feet
no longer not anymore
the days melt in colors and sounds
before my very eyes
i dont find myself looking forward
and i try hard never to look too
far backwards
at least i have my health
at least the hospitals are still sterile
-
my mother used to sing me to sleep
i used to drive all night
until the car moaned for sleep
no longer
not anymore
i dont notice when the blankets are
going short-ways to my feet
or long-ways towards my feet
no longer not anymore
the days melt in colors and sounds
before my very eyes
i dont find myself looking forward
and i try hard never to look too
far backwards
at least i have my health
at least the hospitals are still sterile
-
my mother used to sing me to sleep
i used to drive all night
until the car moaned for sleep
no longer
not anymore
I love that the anonymous “sorry” called you Bukowski. From your inspiration comes your work! I love this blog, and I love you Chris. I want to see you soon, man.
I love that the anonymous “sorry” called you Bukowski. From your inspiration comes your work! I love this blog, and I love you Chris. I want to see you soon, man.