I'M ALIVE I PROMISE
I'm just a terrible updater.
Here's something I've written on a character I'm creating named Memphis:
You know that song that goes, “I’m bouncin’ off the walls again WOAH OH” well, I feel like that right now and maybe all the time too often. I tied my bracelets too tight and now my wrist is stripes of purple and I could be a firework now, or Spiderman, because he’s got strings inside his wrists, too. I wrote a song for Cleveland on the harp, but the notes sound like jellyfish bloo-bloop bloo-bloop so I won’t play it for him, even if he asks nicely. The scientific term for deep sea is ABYSS and that’s a weird word if you say it over and over again in your head like I do. Abyss abyss abyss abyss and eventually it’s just snakes rattling. I want to keep that word in my pocket, but it just washes up on the shores of my back and sinks into me like the Titanic. It’s because I’m absorbent or actually just bloated and full and cloying and repulsive and my seasalt hair sticks to my forehead because I’m always nervous. I wrote something in my sleep yesterday, maybe backwards upside down turned on its side sitting on its own axis & it goes, it goes like this: I’ve got 20 million tons of gold in me like all the oceans combined and the tombstones are actually starfish bent inside out because no one can imagine that. My mom sent me heaven telegrams & they hit me like sound waves & I surfed them ‘cause she taught me how & I haven’t showered since Tuesday (she also taught me how to conserve water). I’m naked all the time, sitting under the umbrella of my honesty: I could be quiet sometimes, I try, I really try, but it gets loud just the same. And anyway, my heart is the size of a Volkswagen (like the blue whale-bigger than any dinosaur could ever be) so I’ve got good intentions, I promise on everything I ever wrote. The thing is, though, that I’ve got all the ugly tattooed along the hairs on my fingers so it stamps anything I touch, even if I’m playing hot potato. I was named after a city and I think that says a lot about me. I mean, I could say a lot about me, but if you heard my name get called from across the way, then you’d know anyway. You’d hear a big siren, one that calls all the fish in to schools and pulls you into some reality you don’t like so much, melting at the edges and sitting in monstrous masses and now my voice is the gold ocean, too. I let the knots in my hair stay until they’re barrier reefs, just ‘cause. And that underlying fuzzy vision you hear are the seashells in my back pockets. But there’s gotta be a reason people crawl away from me. I’ve got this unabandoned fullness and I can’t swim across it. But anyway, I’m a midwest city and I can’t shuffle past the borderlines either. The reason I like Cleveland is because of the way his arms come out of his body. And also the way he looks naked in my head, like he knows he’s attractive but pretends not to notice and it surprises him in waves. Nothing about it is inappropriate, though. It’s real and I’m not denying it. I won’t lie to you, and I probably couldn’t anyway. It’s like when I look at the pool in the backyard for too long and then I find my reflection somewhere near the deep end, but it isn’t me, it’s my mom, my Byrd, and she’s smiling, seaweed stuck in her teeth like she just walked out on dinner plans with Poseidon, and that’s just a regular thing to me, now. I don’t want to think about it but it flows in and out of me like water weight seems to do-all on its own, wrapped up in sweat and rung out tight-gripped, callousing against prunes for hands. I can’t even look at aquariums anymore. The fish are dead-stopped and pressed against pa(i)nes of glass, sitting in their own eventual coffin and that reminds me of my Byrd. So ignorance is my shoreline until I’m asked why when how are you sad, and then it’s my lighthouse. See, I’m an existentialist but the only constant for me is absence. It will never not be there. It covers 75% of my world and the other 25 is a blue-hued humanity, like I’m looking up into the bottom of a glass boat. My hair is blue (and bluer with grease but that’s okay, I’m dirty anyway) and I pretend it’s made for surfing sometimes, just ‘cause. Just ‘cause.
Memphis
Here's something I've written on a character I'm creating named Memphis:
You know that song that goes, “I’m bouncin’ off the walls again WOAH OH” well, I feel like that right now and maybe all the time too often. I tied my bracelets too tight and now my wrist is stripes of purple and I could be a firework now, or Spiderman, because he’s got strings inside his wrists, too. I wrote a song for Cleveland on the harp, but the notes sound like jellyfish bloo-bloop bloo-bloop so I won’t play it for him, even if he asks nicely. The scientific term for deep sea is ABYSS and that’s a weird word if you say it over and over again in your head like I do. Abyss abyss abyss abyss and eventually it’s just snakes rattling. I want to keep that word in my pocket, but it just washes up on the shores of my back and sinks into me like the Titanic. It’s because I’m absorbent or actually just bloated and full and cloying and repulsive and my seasalt hair sticks to my forehead because I’m always nervous. I wrote something in my sleep yesterday, maybe backwards upside down turned on its side sitting on its own axis & it goes, it goes like this: I’ve got 20 million tons of gold in me like all the oceans combined and the tombstones are actually starfish bent inside out because no one can imagine that. My mom sent me heaven telegrams & they hit me like sound waves & I surfed them ‘cause she taught me how & I haven’t showered since Tuesday (she also taught me how to conserve water). I’m naked all the time, sitting under the umbrella of my honesty: I could be quiet sometimes, I try, I really try, but it gets loud just the same. And anyway, my heart is the size of a Volkswagen (like the blue whale-bigger than any dinosaur could ever be) so I’ve got good intentions, I promise on everything I ever wrote. The thing is, though, that I’ve got all the ugly tattooed along the hairs on my fingers so it stamps anything I touch, even if I’m playing hot potato. I was named after a city and I think that says a lot about me. I mean, I could say a lot about me, but if you heard my name get called from across the way, then you’d know anyway. You’d hear a big siren, one that calls all the fish in to schools and pulls you into some reality you don’t like so much, melting at the edges and sitting in monstrous masses and now my voice is the gold ocean, too. I let the knots in my hair stay until they’re barrier reefs, just ‘cause. And that underlying fuzzy vision you hear are the seashells in my back pockets. But there’s gotta be a reason people crawl away from me. I’ve got this unabandoned fullness and I can’t swim across it. But anyway, I’m a midwest city and I can’t shuffle past the borderlines either. The reason I like Cleveland is because of the way his arms come out of his body. And also the way he looks naked in my head, like he knows he’s attractive but pretends not to notice and it surprises him in waves. Nothing about it is inappropriate, though. It’s real and I’m not denying it. I won’t lie to you, and I probably couldn’t anyway. It’s like when I look at the pool in the backyard for too long and then I find my reflection somewhere near the deep end, but it isn’t me, it’s my mom, my Byrd, and she’s smiling, seaweed stuck in her teeth like she just walked out on dinner plans with Poseidon, and that’s just a regular thing to me, now. I don’t want to think about it but it flows in and out of me like water weight seems to do-all on its own, wrapped up in sweat and rung out tight-gripped, callousing against prunes for hands. I can’t even look at aquariums anymore. The fish are dead-stopped and pressed against pa(i)nes of glass, sitting in their own eventual coffin and that reminds me of my Byrd. So ignorance is my shoreline until I’m asked why when how are you sad, and then it’s my lighthouse. See, I’m an existentialist but the only constant for me is absence. It will never not be there. It covers 75% of my world and the other 25 is a blue-hued humanity, like I’m looking up into the bottom of a glass boat. My hair is blue (and bluer with grease but that’s okay, I’m dirty anyway) and I pretend it’s made for surfing sometimes, just ‘cause. Just ‘cause.
Memphis