The hospital is cold and pasty. Infested with rank air and overly sanitized sheets. My eyes are heavy and twisted, drilling towards the back of my head. The hurricane of my body is paralyzed by the cold bags dripping into my ripped vein. 

I’m saying stupid things. Talking about Jesus and LSD and caves… things I’m unfamiliar with… strangers to my own experience… but they rise vulgarly to the surface. A sweaty hand is patting my pale fist and I am an island… isolated from all but waves of sound that stream in and out of my carousel head. 

“I love you,” I say–to the sweaty hand. 

“I know.” He says.

I’m such a liar.

“Don’t get beautiful for strangers.” He said. Unfortunately, strangers were the only ones she cared to impress. None of the people that she knew seemed to be very worthwhile. So she painted and primped before she walked down quiet streets. There, strange men walking the family dog would cast shadowy glances against her frame. They’d never touch her though. And it wasn’t in their nature to gawk or spit grossly spun syllables. They just looked at her, seemingly secretively. Admired her like some exotic painting on display. This worked for her. She liked imagining herself like art. She liked imagining love like art, like something poetic and complex and flawed and beautiful… And all those other words you never hear strung together anymore.

Note: I had to do a series of “profiles” on strangers. I saw this woman (probably 24) walking in this really quiet corner of Central Park. She was absolutely stunning but completely overdressed. She was just meandering along as if she had nowhere to go but you could tell she was soaking in every subtle (and not so subtle) glance.

I want to disappear down long hallways and paint the city red.

Where old men appear in lanky attire and attempt to steal you with their whirlpools.

All four one foot in?

But we’re walking along a tight rope,

In a circus,

Bereft of clowns.

Where the elephants are cripples

and nothing goes up in smoke.

We have to run away from the apocalyptic
Even if that means running towards an apocalypse
We have to drown it all
In rooms without any air
And drain all the swimming pools
Of their chlorinated corpses

We have to pass through closed doors
And wear coats made of gum drops and processed cheese

We have to draw maps of Ireland
In invisible ink
And send secret messages
Through billboards
On Highways
Between hell and San Jose

We have to take pictures
Of all the strange bodies
Strewn on all the strange subways
With expired throw-away cameras

We have to melt plastic
While wearing newspaper and trashy magazines

You’re going to get hurt by all sorts of people. The people you’d expect and the people you wouldn’t. You’re going to hurt all sorts of people. You’re going to forgive yourself for some of the pain you caused and never let yourself off the hook for other transgressions.

People are going to die. People are going to leave. People are going to reject you. People are going to dislike you and say things about you and try and break you down with their words. Sometimes they’ll succeed.

You’re going to fall in love. Sometimes there will be someone to catch you. Other times there won’t be. Sometimes people will fall in love with you but you won’t fall for them. On rare occasions you’ll find someone who wants you just as bad as you want them. You’ll date. You’ll fall in love. You’ll fight. You’ll probably break up. When you do there’s a good chance you’ll hate the person that you once loved.

Some days you’re going to love yourself and some days you’re going to hate yourself. Your friends will annoy you. You will annoy your friends.

You will be betrayed and you will be hurt and you will be left for dead. You’re going to go to funerals. You’re going to feel ugly. You’re going to get old. You’re going to wish you’d done at least part of it differently. You’re going to be haunted by that one mistake.

You’re going to be foolish. You’re going to realize that you were foolish and then you’ll feel foolish all over again. You’re going to hate at least one job. You’re going to regret at least one of your flings. You’re going to feel weak.

But you’re going to do good.

You’re going to help someone. You’re going to help yourself. You’re going to feel like your existence is worthwhile—at least some of the time. You’re going to hold babies and hold hands and hold flowers. You’re going to kiss and make love and fall in love. You’re going to change a stranger’s life. Your life will be changed by that of a stranger.

You’re going to grow gardens and make art and cook good food and take long naps and dance til dawn. You’re going to find someone who makes you happy. You’re going to feel beautiful and see beauty everywhere. You’re going to see good things spark up from the bad.

You’re going to get back up when you’ve been pushed down. You’re going to learn to love again and this love will be fuller, more determined and more seasoned. You’re going to find a job that you love. You’re going to be appreciated. You’re going to seize the world. You’re going to have really good sex. You’re going to be prophetic. You’re going to make babies. You’re going to better yourself and better the world. You’re going to play with puppies and eat chocolate and indulge in all things simple and wonderful. You’re going to dive into the ocean and lie on the sand and climb mountains and change worlds.

Life is not mutually exclusive to misery or brilliance. To be alive is to suffer. To be alive is to strive. You won’t appreciate the good without the bad, you won’t see the possibilities if you don’t first have the doubts. But finally, and thankfully, moments of beauty can override years of suffering and the deepest pain can be eclipsed.

I know you meant it

when you said that the sky

was going to crumble

into our lawn chairs.

But those weren’t very good lawn chairs anyway.

So who really cares.

And on those idle Tuesdays, the has-beens cover their eyes to forget…
Sometimes they spend so much time forgetting what never was to begin with…
I forget things that never were… Or rather I remember things that never were which in turn forces me to forget… My intent was never to make sense so don’t stop me if you’re lost… So many people are lost… You’d think all the empty boxes of the world would already be taken… You’d think it would be time for us to find… But life is a residual cycle of course… So let’s laugh and forget the things that truly haunt us by trying to forget hauntings of our own inventions… Distraction of our own devices… Wastes of our own meandering experiences… Nothing is forever… We enter and we exit, just like everybody else… We all make asses out of ourselves at some point, we have our dramas our comedies, our laughter and our tears, things we want to remember and things we’d like to forget. The only things we want to forget are those that are still alive… When we’ve put the past to rest there’s no longer an urge to forget it… Not to say the pain goes away… I’m not sure the pain ever goes away… And in the most twisted and awkward sense, I’m not sure I’d want it to… Pain is a caution of sorts… A sign that points out the detour so you can avoid the car wrecks… But that’s not the reason that I’d like to remember the pain… I need the pain so that I can know the good. I need the ugly to remember the beautiful… I need the experience to tell the truth. I need you to tell me when to stop talking…

Don’t tell me where you came from… Tell me where you’re going… I lose my sense of direction frequently. I live viscerally; finding my life in between crags of compositions and existing amidst high notes… I live between the lines of Ferlenghetti and I live in the eyes of everybody else… But not in my own. I live in the taste of Werthers Originals and Black Licorice candies. I live in the photos, the note cards that are pinned to my wall… A constant nagging on the moments worth framing… A focal point to savor. I swallow pills and force myself to open… I look at things bigger than me, work for things bigger than me… You’d think it makes me feel small… It doesn’t. I live with abandon. I live with intention. I live with conviction. I don’t work as hard as I should on the things I should be working on. Instead I find pleasure in doing the unassigned, the unrequited… I either move too slowly or too fast… I see beauty in dragonflies… The “metamorphoses” of them, as a good friend likes to say… I exist in simple clichés but nowhere in the dictionary… I try to be undefined… I do it purposely. And then I put on make-up… Not to prove to the world that I’m beautiful, but to prove it to myself. I get lost in the lines of sketches, only read to inspire my own writing… But this is off the subject… I distract myself from the topic. I’ll say it simply: