Campaigns

I’ve been obsessed with the simbiosis of campaigning and self-loathing lately. The decay parlayed into something to sell, to show, to shroud. I’m drinking last night’s glass of wine and just noticed the tv’s been on mute for so long the same show’s back on. Oh, I’ve sat through so many loops. 

By campaigning I don’t mean political in nature, although campaigning of every other sort can be political in course. Look it’s me. Look how great I can be. Look at me. 

People confuse adoration with love. Be my fan. Love me. Little monkeys doing tricks for coins that line the pockets of people who couldn’t care less. Still they’re out there campaigning; selling themselves, selling themselves short. 

I don’t know. I just can’t give it a rest. Everyone’s always begging for approval. And then the party’s over and you’re face is in the toilet and the cum in your sheets isn’t even your own. But at least you won the race, right?

Pathological

Pathology: it is not the intention of a path; it is the path of the disease. The two are often confused. His pathology is far-reaching; it reaches out beyond his bones and into mine, and into me. His loathing loads across the wires, a telegram telling me I am not who I once was. I am not who I once was. It is pathological.

Misery loves company and we're an infirmary. We're firm in our armory. We've got all kinds of worded weapons for each other and ourselves. To protect our co-bedding; but this is not symbiosis, it is simply parasitic. I am trying to get well again; I cannot get well for us both. His poison seeps into the safety of coming up close. I'm getting loaded alone, grasping for ways to dull the pain. But nothing cures a cancer that can metastasize in time.

We are growing older, but wiser none the same. His pathology reaches out to me, like a desperate plea for reprieve. His loathing loads across the wires, I'm a telegram disconnected; the message is there forevermore but lost in translation. There's nothing left but a handful of beeps blaring out into space. And the space between grows and grows at such a disparate pace.

I am growing out of him, a cantilevered mass, like a bowlby baby who needs to be cut out of some suffocating grasp. I need him 'cause he needs me.

The pathology is deep here; it is far-reaching. Loneliness is never intended. It just comes and grows and gains and goes from whence it came: Alone. So I'll tether myself to the wires all around me, and I'll double down, as swift as tension will subscript. He pulls at me; coiling and uncoiling. There is no simple path, simply the pathology of some terminal disease. Our intentions are all moot now; we are pathological.

hearts

i let him in, again, just like i knew i would. just like he knew i would. i liked it. i hated it. i hated myself for it. i loved it. for all the things i believe in, there are so many things i don't believe in. for all the trust i have for him, i have no trust in him. still i answer the phone, i answer the door. he took little pieces of me, so many for so long. there only but a few left. still i answer the phone, i answer the door. i am broken from him, i am weak from me. i am sick of this. i am in love with us. or who we used to be; of who we might have been. it's hard to have faith in anything. it's impossible to have faith in him. still i answer the phone, i answer the door. i don't even know who i am anymore. i was better before. i was better before. still i answer the phone, i answer the door. and in the morning he texts me hearts, like it means something; like everything is fine. and i'll know it's my fault. and that's all he needs to do. because i let him. because i answer the phone, i answer the door. how can i expect him to care for me, when i don't care for myself? i was better before. i was better before. i was better before. but the phone and the door. and hope. all that fucking hope. i should know better by now. but i was better before.

Fades Away

the moon is full, my arms are empty.

somewhere between fourth and sixth the urge to cry began to violently climb my throat. i held it in as best i could; i made it all the way to melrose. alone in the elevator, i finally fell apart. love, fade away. love, just fade away.

every face looked so familiar, because none of them were yours. you are nowhere. yet, you are everywhere. in everything. you are all around me; i cannot escape. love, fade away. love, just fade away.

nothing and no one is permanent. but how can something so deep inside me, so coursing through my veins, be gone? you are nowhere. you are everywhere.

i am skin and bones and devastation. alone in this house, i am reeling; i am reeling myself into tight knots, heavy holds, creases over where you used to be.

everything feels broken. all these useless bones. all those hopeful promises. what are we of this mess? what are we of this?

love, fade away. love, please fade away. love, fade away. love, please fade away. love, fade away. love, please fade away. love, fade away. love, please fade away. love, fade away. love, please fade away.

the moon is full. it means nothing. no surprises, no last stands, not even a ghost. my arms are empty now. i am empty now. i gave it all to you. everything, for you. every little piece.

love, just fade away.

goodbye, hello

the sound resounds of your goodbye; a slow draw and slower fade. it fades throughout my day. a haze coming up from where the sound meets the sky, indivisible by the words you say and the ones i do not. we don't agree on much, but this is axiom. sometimes you drive me crazy, crazy, harshly, horribly. sometimes i cannot bear to be around you. sometimes enough is enough and i've had my fill. but i love you all the time. i think of you all the time. i thank god for you all the time.

love is no easy task. love can destroy so many pieces of you, pieces you didn't know were there to fall apart. love is exhausting. but it is such a blessing. it is something to behold, to brave through. love is no easy task. but i love you all the time.

you're everywhere, all the time. you're everywhere in me, all the time. you kiss me and say hello. and after all this time, after all this... you kiss me and say hello and i still melt into a million pieces.

it's easy to look at the big picture and see all the missing pieces. but when you start to take it all apart, when you start to remove the pieces that are there, you realize how much you value them all. people do their best. sometimes we forget to try. sometimes we forget how much we value all those little pieces. last ditch efforts are better than none at all, are sometimes the most successful. love and places and faces are irreplaceable.

Somjai Setabul

In 2002 a woman in Thailand went to the zoo, nonchalantly strolled to the crocodile enclosure, climbed atop the fence and dove in. When at first the crocodiles ignored her, she swam to the closest of them and hit it in the face. The crocodiles then tore her limb from limb. She never made a sound. She never said a word.

Her husband had cheated on her.

I think of this woman almost every day. Some tragic modern-day Daphne. The ways we treat each other. The ways we destroy ourselves over something so precious as love.

It happened again 3 months ago.

It's a story that my mind cannot seem to escape.