I took out this piece of silver & made it into stream of consciousness. There is darkness when my eyelids are pressed into my forearm, & minute sparks of color.

Yellows & greens stand out best against the black; their brevity does not rob them of their brilliance, but it makes me want sincerely to push my face into the black & enjoy a fireworks show for a sleepy lady like myself. I could write a poem if only the words would come out in perfect order as my often-preoccupied hand pens them permanently onto the silver. The firmament, the firmament meets the fugue of dark.

Dark, abstract memories that should smell much better or @ least stronger. I only get flashbacks when I least expect them, & even then they oftentimes feel like deja vu instead. So I can predict the future.

I predict that my temper will ever swell & my blood pressure ever rise so long as I can’t shake the feeling of being left out. & why do I feel left out? Ah – there it is –

I was trying to not ask rhetorical questions. I don’t want to defend their presence in my brain; indeed, I want to acknowledge – on the contrary – that I do not rhetorically question myself all the live-long day. When I & I speak, it is with self-assuredness & fervor & an alternating sense of guilt or joy. But I do question others in my head. I goad them into admitting wrongs, professing affections, or sometimes the people I over-develop inside my head just tell me jokes.

It’s my expectations versus them as a reality & admittedly I am the person who comes up short when others fail to meet my expectations. I look @ others & think “You are only being exactly who you (probably) should be – or just being who you are (modal verbs aside). So I, being who I am (& maybe shouldn’t be) grow belligerent  & beleaguered w/ myself & get out all my vices.

My vices are alcohol, smoke, sugar, & sadness.

My vices should be writing –

ah, there’s that gnarly little modal verb again.

Now writing, I hope, is good. Or I hope I use it for my own good. But it comes from a deep, muddy, brightly-decorated, muscular well of hopes & dreams & fears

fears

fears.

A favorite horror author once mass-printed himself saying that in his head he imagines his ideal reader. &, not to my surprise, that person by whom he wants his

fears

assuaged is his wife.

& so he has her, both in mind & in real life, read & critique & become invested in his work.

Um, I’m still looking for my ideal reader. I write well when I know my audience, but my writing takes on so many slightly different versions of my voice when I have no person but myself in mind to read it. I become esoteric, foolish, hubristic,

& moderately relieved. I love the thrill of imagining others unearthing my work & being stirred to emotion by it –

but so far, never the admirer I had in mind when I started to pen thoughts.

I wonder if I will grow to resent the feeling of writing & performing songs for people who will never pay attention to them.

Maybe that makes being a rock star a pain – maybe that’s why not everyone (or nearly no one) is a rock star. We spend life, instead, finding a somewhat ideal reader & clinging to them, telling them secrets in close quarters & praying

praying

praying for continued acceptance. Nobody’s perfect but here, I brought all my maladies out into the sun today so they can glisten with my miserable sweat & you can take a good look then either cover them – shield them from the bright hot lightning sun – or you can turn around.

& damnit, that’s probably just the way it goes – several times @ least before you yourself look out into the place w/ the bright hot lightning sun which illuminates not just your own troubles & maladies but

everybody’s. & out of everybody & every malady, you pick someone else’s troubles – sweating all the while – & you

march over to those troubles & you cover them. You get between the sun & the strife, & you cast a shadow to cool them off & for goodness’s sake, you take the hand of the person there & tell them, “I love you, I will make up for the things you lack. I will cover these.”

& if that person gets it, hears you, sees you, feels you, they’ll cover your struggles in return. If they get it.

Only if they get it. How do we get anyone to get it? There I go – asking rhetorical questions again, when I have no more an answer to them than I have fireworks under my eyelids, dream though I might.