Nerve.

I mean, I hear the songs.

I’m not Helen fucking Keller.

But tonight? The words? The words that I wrote avoid me. I hunted them and trapped them with ink and they ignore me still….and it is devastating.

I don’t know how to be anything else. Please come back ,I swear that I will be good.

I have the CD that we recorded when we jammed the other night. Before I continue, is it too much to ask for fold-back monitors in rehearsal rooms? Staying in tune is ? Ha! I would have an easier time fitting into Kate Mosses jeans. My boy’s go loud. I would like to join them in sonic intensity,as soon as possible thank you kindly…if I could hear myself that is…..

My short term memory is, sadly, not as resilient as I once thought it was .Spiderwebs snap and retract into nothing. It decides,at whim ,not to serve me. I walk into a room and forget why and what it was that  I wanted.

Every effort is last ditch in its intensity and urgency. Every action a breadcrumb on my terror trail to lead myself back to the ruin of my ruin. Back into my inked arms.

( i will hold you till we die dust to dust .i will never let go.i cant stay.i will never leave.i cant stay but i will remain.as.much as i can and to the best of my limited abilities i will give you everything.let me.i ache to show you that i am capable.will you allow me in? in to show you that I can.i can.i can. i cant not try.i will court you with all that i am broken..)

I beg myself on bent and bruised knee to stay but the truth? I only really like the idea of myself as I am leaving, when I am gone again.

Absent we all become more beautiful. Larger and more precious in the minds of all that we leave behind. I leave myself and go.

I am running, writing, folding,sorting,washing,folding, singing for my life. Boring myself to tears. So horrifyingly far from the perfection that I crave. My corpse, ever the trooper..(.march!.)  The acid in my gut makes it’s dire desperate way into my dry mouth. Stomach twisted like a dirty rag, harmed hands hoping for ever absent moisture,dammed and disappointed by ensuing result. Dry pills stuck in my craw. I try to remember that I need hydration. Rest?  I cannot keep still.

I fidget on the point all night,

Food is a hassle and an afterthought. My periphery is fucking with me.Things move and shift in my twitching wake. I opened up my forehead on the corner of a shelf last night. I saw sounds. The sky descended. I make no effort to mask the corner shaped cut above my left eye. It compliments the bags residing below them nicely.

Compulsion is a wicked master out to entertain himself at your manic clockwork expense. I find myself in front of the bathroom mirror armed with tweezers,with a tooth brush, a razor…. many times over the course of a day. Preen  ,pick ,groom for you are naught but a stupid ape. Bad monkey, grey track pants hanging from your jutting immigrant hips. Period looming ,anvil heavy, breasts heave with volcanic rock, borne on lava. A filthy flesh foundry of blood.

A cathedral of cells and shifting seasick horizons.

Floss ,buff, moisturize,rinse ,buff and repeat.

clean/cleaner/clean/damaged stock/fire sale/reduced to clear/ you are never new again.

Repeat.Repeat.Repeat.re-peat.rep-eat.repe-at.repea-t-r-e-peat-repeat-r-e-pe-eat-rep-e-at.

It sounds like wire tempered by heat and ringing its tight lament into the evening. Pinging and groaning. haunting the tender and sensitive.

My nerves keep me honest and connected. My humanity,the failure of fallibility. My heart is lead. My heart in littered with bones and red neon chambers. Cloistered. Always a saint never a martyr. Never pity. No pity.

Are you trying to kill me?

I compete against the last breath that I took. The last step strode. The last kiss stolen. I became a master thief for your affection. A criminal for your attention. An addict. Did you, do you know that?

Candles are lit. Ashes pulled from flames embrace.

And so it came to pass that I draped it accordingly, this animal that I am and let is loose. And I stick it on a stage. It is to the tripwire detriment of all involved but in Orwellian times of no adrenaline assisted danger don’t you want to see? To watch? Can you smell it beyond the abyss? I can feel you but the lights take my vision so I am running blind and it is all for you.

All for you who paid and stayed. Voyeurs. Rubberneckers. Perverts. Audience most beloved.

And for the object of my erstwhile hunger ? A certain starvation specific to you alone. Lionheart.

And we need this. We desire it. The cleanest want. Neurosis gets high and weaves a crooked home coming crown for its aqua eyed queen out of KISS records, doves tears, the dust of the Sunset Strip ,green opal swans carved by blind sailors and a lock of Bridgette Bardot’s hair .Glass slippers pinch.Shatter.Bring stigmata. Beware that verisimilitude only goes so far young lady.

You have been warned. Grab your hindsight,passion and courage and go. We can make the border by day-break if we are immediate. We cannot be any other way my dear, come near, I want to tell you a story….

Are you in the shadows beyond my line of limited sight? I sing for you.

I dream in braille.

I talk in Morse code.

The press is held. Shadows shelter and  there I belong to you. Soft hand to claim me. Don’t you see? It has to be you.  Please touch me so I know.You illuminate.  Why? Don’t make me say it, I will if I must, but you know why….

I don’t have the nerve.

( It is 3.46 am.)