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Take Two: Response to Flynn

As the last post was an elaboration and answer to some of Flynn's commentary, I've decided to provide a bit more. No no, not another long entry about an individual who is a waste of my time...but the poetic counterpart to poem A...the sister poem if you will. No, it doesn't star screaming on bridges, but it fits together with it nicely, although it was written a day later, as I pored over Hegel in an attempt to reach understanding.

3 February 04

No more pipe dream fantastical
notions / No more vie on rose
deliberations / No more immaterial
non-starts / No more fighting of windmills

It all comes back down
deeper further cuts
that I can't countenance
continuing anymore

All the faceless boys
in the turnstile
each with some untouchable issue

Can't commit - has a girlfriend -
not interested - too shy shy - nothing to say -

So many ways so many cases
seems they've all just lost their faces
and I can't begin to see them

These eyes too clear
fixed dead ahead
and their expressions blur
and fade out mysteriously
and their chatter is nothing but noise

This disclosure of un-clarity
rings clarion in these eyes
only sensible, only sensible

So I've stopped trying to see
all that's not there
and just -
ease into this skin again
feel it out / It's been so long
easy now
it just makes sense.



Comments welcomed and appreciated.

 
This skin

Now, I understand revenge rather well, and I'm good at it in the samurai sense of the word - unswerving in purpose when pushed to my point, I can really let that individual know that it's a bad idea to cross me. Granted, it takes a lot to push me to my point, and I have more patience for some than others - various reasons, some good, some invalid, but hey, I'm human - and then when I get pushed to that point...

And I was at that point with this egotistical bastard. Beyond that point, crying at night point, becoming someone I don't even recognize point. And yet, I still managed to get drawn into this bullshit of a non-relationship, or a non-commital attitude, of a non-entity of lots of things.... I'd gotten to the point of rage and tears and I was genuinely at the point of wanting to punch his fucking lights out. I know that if I uttered even HALF of what has gone on in the past 6 or so months to my brother, that he would probably want to commit radical physical harm to this individual. I don't slap people, I surely don't punch them - and yes, I was ready to sling a drink in his face.

Now. It was at that point - that I got it back. I'd used words words to try to sort it out, but communication with him is a one sided affair / ordeal. Nothing really gets through, and I stopped trying, but me being me, I held fast to this hope that maybe one day he'd see, maybe one day we'd actually be friends (no romantic hope), maybe one day he'd wake up. And then I realized that it was all an elaborate illusion, constructed at myself, and shot through with my own convictions about what a friendship and / or relationship are supposed to be. I was trying to hold him to a standard that he couldn't dream of rising to - ever. My other bit of quixotism is the "No one is a lost cause" sort of drivel. Sure - lots of people are - maybe even I am - you are - maybe maybe maybe. So I dropped it all. I screamed along to Nina Simone in the streets and in the car and expressed the fact that I don't want to just slide through this - I want to feel. I want someone who fucking recognizes me, and doesn't just use me for his musical machinations. It's the inversion of the Stone Roses: They say "I'd rather be no one than someone with noone" - and I disagree with every fiber of my being.

So between this union of minds and Nina and a speeding ticket and screaming on a bridge -
I got it back. I regained my resolve, my conviction, my sense of self that had gotten bogged down and lost and degraded somewhere (and I know by whom; yes, I am partially guilty). The day after the screaming and the augratin potatoes at 2am, other than feeling super cracked out, I felt amazing. It had left me - all of it. I could no longer countenance continuing this - mentally, emotionally, physically - I couldn't do it anymore. I didn't WANT to do it anymore. But I don't feel upset - I've been upset for months. I finally feel resteadied. Reentrenched in this body this mind - the one that I am supposed to have. THe one I forgot about somewhere, and found every now and again back in NY with L. and N. and CT - F. I found her, and she's not leaving again.

I went out last night - yes, I know I had a lot of work to do, but I needed my karaoke fix. All the essential players were there, and yes, some drama, as always....I showed up unexpectedly...and eventually when I returned from upstairs, he was there. I didn't feel one way or the other about it. He tried to be super sweet to me, tried to change conversation to himself (as always) and I just engaged as much as I felt like engaging. I was friendly and polite, but we aren't friends. I called him out on his bullshit (which was always a fun pasttime for me, much to his egotistical chagrin, I feel), and you know I've got a great bullshit meter. I didn't let it bother me because in the grand scheme of things, eventually I'll leave Nashvegas, and he'll be out of my life forever. This non-friendship is not a keeper in any sense of the word. I was done. I purged something on that bridge in that car, and in a 50 dollar minute, I was restored. It was actually 65, but I didn't find that out until later on. So as to revenge - I don't seek it. I seek noncommital uninvolvement. The reason why words fail me with him is that there is nothing left to say - I've said it all, and it changed nothing. L's friend Jaime was there last night, and she was ready to beat this girl up for me - who has an interest in the EGO and who seems to be a real ho-ish girl. She kept eyeing me, probably because she could sense some sort of history or quasi-present something or other, and has seen it unfold in the past couple of whatevers --- She's a ho. And she kept eyeing me - giving me the look. I was ready to pound her myself, just because she was looking at me wrong, but in checking my J.B. complex, I know it isn't worth it. Jaime was ready to do her in basically because she is loyal as shit and crazy to boot - and was a bit drunk at the time. I told her not to, but she went over to that girl and said SOMETHING to her that apparently was rather disconcerting. It put a smile on my face, and I got my coat to leave. The EGO said, "you're not leaving, are you? In the middle of your song?" and that's when I proceeded to zip up my coat, and walk out the door.

I've exercised the demons, all right. And I am satisfied in that.

 
Affirmation

For the last couple of weeks, I've been needing some sort of affirmation - about lots of things I guess, but mostly due to two important and bullshitty factors that are major parts of my life: 1) grad school inadequacy issues, and 2) relationshippy garbage. Now, the former always weighs on my mind - am I good enough? Do I know enough? Will I be able to stand toe to toe with my colleagues who already have masters degrees and / or have been at this a hell of a lot longer than I have? When will I get the time to finally read _______________ (insert the name of the latest philosopher who has become a name dropping victim / commodity along the lines of MALKOVICH MALKOVICH, MALKOVICH MALKOVICH MALKOVICH!), etc. and so on. The latter, as many of you know, is something that plagues me to no end - romance being this particular Sag's Achilles' Heel. Fine well, and good, but I have a magnetism for drama. This has been even worse for wear lately, as I try to be the more adult person in an historically shitttttty situation with the biggest ego I have ever met in my entire life - and believe me, I've known some. This is the same individual who is the star of "Vignette" from 18 Dec, as well as probably many other posts. Point being, I have written this particular individual off time and time again, and for all really good reasons, but have lacked the resolve to follow through on it. This has been an on-again-off-again phenomenon since oh July, and hasn't gotten any better. It's just spiraled and spiraled into worse and worse, to the point at which I find recognizing myself as a difficulty. Who is it that I become when I'm around him? Why the fuck do I still try to be his friend, when clearly we aren't friends, never were friends, and he's just a self-serving asshole who only cares about his alleged musical career (which by the by is a major fucking joke). By now, the old me, the one who is really good at being vindictive, the one who left somewhere along the lines of my junior year of college, not only would have kicked his dumb ass to the curb, but would have thrown a drink in his face and probably punched his lights out. This being said, I don't usually slap, let along punch anyone - but this piece of shit is deserving of that and so much more. I could fucking tear his world apart....and I have told him off a bunch of times with classic EB lines like, "If I was being completely honest, I'd tell you that you're an asshole" and such...but no matter what I've said (and you know the candor queen) nothing seems to reach him through his narcissism. Sure, he's got that insecure underbelly, but a swagger and ego that doesn't suit him that he flings around... So I've needed affirmation, after falling back into this situation again and again...I hate who I am with him - I hate my quixotic cynic personality at times, thinking that anything I say or do will change his immature ass. It won't. I hate thinking that someone is a lost cause, but this boy (and I say boy deliberately for although about 5 years my senior, he is truly a boy) is a lost cause. I can't show him anything. I've used up all my words and more, and it does nothing. We can't communicate, and really, I've stopped trying. Last night I screamed at the top of my lungs in a car, and on a bridge about how much of an asshole he is - and how he should fucking recognize the pain that he's caused me again and again. It's a longer story, assuredly, but this is the capsule of it. So I've had some mantras lately: "It's never too late to get it back" (about my personality and worldview) and other things that are probably more suited, but they slip my mind now. Anyway, it's shitty mc shit.

Here's a recap:


A game was won and lost
in a fifty-dollar minute
fit and start effusion
that just before a heavy burn
got side tracked, so as to
prevent utter destruction
of all parties involved

voices elevate - higher and higher
until which is whose
like fingers intertwined
I can't tell his or mine
so close inexplicably
sensitive to all the ways
we are who we are

And on and on to wherever
it doesn't matter, so long
as these chicken in a bucket seats
carry our asses along
side by side
we'll feel and live
and be as ok as any of it gets

not medicate and mediate
and deaden these limbs
these raging minds
clawing and arching for all it's
worth /

but live and fucking feel
so many people tiptoeing eggshells
in circular patterns
because they're afraid to feel

but we zigzag and meet
at top speed from whereever
to the direction's taken up
and tell of our adventures
and wounds - loves and fears
and have to explain nothing
because our souls were imprinted
in the overlap.