preparing for the end of the world

I’ve been on a disaster film kick lately:
There’s something romantic—and appealing—
About the storylines of disaster films.
Knowing that the fate of the world
Is completely out of your control,
It’s relieving really.
As the sky comes crashing down,
You don’t have to worry about
That painting you never finished.
You don’t have to worry about
Remembering birthdays,
Or running red lights or taking your vitamins,
Or making sure your hair doesn’t look too stupid,
Or finding a practical job or paying the rent on time.
You don’t have to worry about
Keeping track of the pain of the surrounding villages,
Or mourn over road kill or your dead car,
Or worry about your friend’s sick mother,
Or the ghosts on Riverside,
Or the meth head that creeps around in the ditches at night.
Trying to stay alive becomes your only priority.
Everything else is trivial.

Things would be easier,
Besides the impending doom.

If the world were ending,
I wouldn’t have to concern myself
With finding love,
Only with finding a way
To stay alive.



Hope for the best,
Prepare for the worst, they say.
And I would.
I’d map out escape routes,
Pack practical provisions
Of bread and cheese,
Gather my friends
And my worthwhile relatives,
Board up the house,
Break out the booze
And hope to god we live
To see another day.

(Unless the aliens were coming,
In which case, I’d promptly
Mow a crop circle in my front yard
Asking them kindly
To beam me up off of this planet.
And I’d never look back.


Unless they were hostile.
In which case,
We’d be fucked.)




Unfortunately, the world isn’t ending.
And we have to deal with life as it is:
Disastrous, and certainly not over.







Things always seem to go south all at once,
And then they get worse.
And you can’t just ignore the warning signs,
You might lose a foot.



We all have scores to settle,
Pieces to glue back together again.
I suppose it all just boils down to
A matter of whether or not
We chose to take on the world
By ourselves
Or
With the aid of our allies.

The table is set.
The guests are all seated.
Do you tell them the party is over?
Or do you
Join hands,
Break bread,
Assess the situation,
Weigh out options,
And try to figure out a solution
Together.








It’s rough out there.
Just remember,




















You’re not in this alone.

cornfields and rockets.

I think I have an unrealistic conception of what the south is like.
I envision dirt roads and old, weathered wooden houses,
With sturdy front porches lined with rocking chairs,
And nectarines and lemonade and jars of honey.
And everyone has screened doors and southern cross windmills,
And wears straw sun hats and hangs their laundry out on the line to dry,
And the sky is always blue and clear,
And you can always see the stars at night.
And if you wanted to,
You could sleep in a cornfield.


We went traipsing through a cornfield the other day,
It was beautiful.
Slender green stalks,
With reaching arms,
Stretching to touch the sky.
Flimsy leaved hands,
Wafting and fluttering in the breeze.
Knee high by the fourth of July, they say.
Most of the crop was my height,
But that was fine.
There’s something liberating about getting lost
In a field of corn.
For a brief moment,
You’re isolated from the world.
Alienated.
And nothing matters.




(I found a wild onion.
It tasted sweet.
I’m thinking about taking up gardening.)











I didn’t watch the fireworks tonight,
It would’ve been too heartbreaking.
As corny as it sounds,
I want nothing more
Than to sit under a sky of exploding rockets
Hand in hand with the one I love.
And as the cherry-bombs and roman candles detonated,
We would kiss.
Cue majestic, grandiose sweep of violins and bluebirds on your shoulder,
All Cinderella’s castle and stained glass,
And glittering magic fairy dust.
And it would be disgustingly sappy.
Yes, I want that bullshit.


Instead, I drove in the opposite direction,
The pyrotechnic stars bursting behind me.
All I could see were the flairs of the fireworks
Reflecting off of the clouds
As the sonic booms from the explosions rattled my car.
It felt like the city was being bombed.
It felt like the apocalypse.
I expected air raid sirens to sound.

They didn’t.
The world wasn’t ending.


I went and saw some friends.
We lounged.
One of my friends calls herself
The virgin of the couch.
(She’s hardly a virgin)
A poetic way of saying she’s a hermit.
I want to paint her,
With neoclassical drapery.
And naked Egyptian servants.


It’s Sunday.
The day of rest.
I’m going to lounge some more when I wake up.
Goodnight.

booze, blues, birthdays and tattoos.

It’s cold tonight,
It feels like October.
The chill out of context is unsettling.
Earlier I was outside smoking a cigarette, wrapped in a warm sweater.
The fireflies were out, riding the breeze,
Choreographed constellations,
Waltzing and twinkling and lighting up the night.
The cicadas and grasshoppers and crickets singing in three-part harmony,
The moon high and in full bloom,
It was strange,
The symphonic summer lull against the frigid air.
An unlikely juxtaposition.
It’s like when you’re driving at night,
And suddenly, your lights reflect off
Of hundreds of glistening shards
Of broken glass from a fatal automobile accident
From earlier that day.
And the shimmering, sugarcoated glaze
Of fractured window shield
And crushed side-view mirror
Icing the road
Is just so beautiful
That you forget, for a moment,
That the scene really supposed to be tragic.





I’m twenty.
I’m still trying to get used to it.
It’s an uncomfortable age to be caught at.
My friends go to the bars and I feel young,
When I went to the pediatrician today, I felt old.
Two shots of penicillin later, I still felt old, and sore.
The hipster highschoolers make me feel old,
And the charming couples in their thirties
With their sharp style and classy taste and expensive wine,
And perfect relationships,
They make me feel young.

I’m almost old enough,
(But I’ll never really, truly, be old enough)

Oh well,
Here’s to a new decade:
The roaring twenties.



I celebrated my birthday for about two weeks,
The days jammed full of cigarettes by candlelight, stargazing, porch-sitting, celebratory drinking sessions, cheap booze, acoustic guitars, cherry wine, liquid gel ibuprofen, good friends and good times.






I have a tattoo,
(I’m officially a hard ass)
It’s of a needle and a spool of thread
(I’m officially a pansy)

It’s a metaphor for women’s suffrage, and because I have vagina envy, it just seemed fitting.

Joking.
(Not really)


It’s a symbol of creation and art:
The ability to produce something out of nothing
Using only your intellect, hands, and raw materials,
The same way a seamstress creates a garment following her vision,
Using only fabric,
Thread
And nimble fingers pulling a needle.
It represents my domestic side,
Rooted foundations,
Keeping the fire lit,
And the importance of the home and hearth.
It also represents self-sufficiency,
Self-sustainability,
Self-healing
And self-reliance.
Being able to do things on your own,
The same way a seamstress can make her own clothes.
It represents consistency,
Like repetitive stitches;
Following a plan of action.
Keeping yourself together,
And the ability to fix yourself when things fall apart.


The part of me that thinks I’m a spider finds this really poetic.





My tom’s shoes came in,
They look exactly like my old hospital slippers,
Only they won’t fall apart after a week,
And even though when I wear them I look like I just escaped from the psych ward,
I now own shoes with arch support.







It’s July,
Mission for (summer) love = still unattained.

But that’s okay
I’ve been busy,
Tree-climbing,
(Productive)
And song-writing,
And cutting off my jeans into shorts,
And not wearing t-shirts,
And drinking excessively,
And howling at the full moon,
And enjoying every ounce of summer.




I’ve also taken to playing the piano naked.






I’m
having
a
ball.