~fuck off~

cat + iz, grade A pr!m!t!ve b!tches

[co5mic-cunts]

Want

If I am being completely realistic, this is what I want out of life: a good, successful college experience I can be proud of. At least one really solid college friend I will know for the rest of my life. To live in LA in a home that I am happy in, that I don't hate and sell within 5 years. I don't care about size, but I want a quality home. I want the means to come home for Christmas. I want a job where I will laugh, look forward to going to, a job where I am respected. A job that leaves me tired but satisfied at the end of the day. I want dogs who will sleep curled up on my bed, dogs who love other people, too. I want to wake up in the morning and see palm trees and feel the coolness and sun and dew of an early LA morning. I want to fall in love with someone who makes me laugh, someone who makes me forget stretch marks and acne and knocked knees and bad eyesight and all of the flaws that I hate so much about myself. I want a wedding that makes me cry. I want a life that makes me cry, because crying reminds me that I'm alive. I want a garden filled with beautiful plants and as few flowers as possible. I want neighbors who will make me late for work when I see them getting the mail and strike up a conversation. I don't want my kids to grow up without seasonal weather changes. That gives people small things to love. I want to stay in touch with the things that made me happy as a kid. I want to be healthy. I want to see the country from where I come. Most of all I want to remember this, all of this, because I truly believe that these are the years that will make me who I become.

[co5mic-cunts]

A thousand gold stars, a second chance (pt. 7)

I'm starved for air. I'm starved for the way it seems to move around us as we move through it. I wish I could be that fluid. When I look at him it makes me wonder what I'd fuck up to make things right. I don't know the direction in which I am moving, but I like to think of it as a moving picture perfect. I feel like a broken record sometimes saying eat sleep breathe again. And sometimes I can't hold it down. I type for the rhythm. I'm a bubble. Impenetrably fragile. Fucking and floating and smoking out the bathroom window. I wonder if it's worth it to get out of bed and light up when I work so hard to keep the smell of fire out. My parents think my neighbors are addicted to midday bonfires. Sometimes I wish I had no friends. Not even the good ones. I move through life like standing water waiting for something to leave a trace. If I kiss you once, I can never do it again. Sometimes I feel like Calypso, alone on Ogygia, waiting for a hero to fall so that she can, too. For a little while. Everyone is a stranger on Ogygia. All of my childhood memories are bad ones. Maybe I blacked out the good. Introspection makes me feel alone; that's why I do it so often. All I have, all I have ever had, is what I am. I live by the stars and die by the moon and I am my own hands. Never lonely but always alone.

[co5mic-cunts]

And I'm small in this world and of all the people moving and the clouds drifting and grass rustling and water flowing and planet turning, I was still.

Messy notebook excerpts

[co5mic-cunts]

I have never read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

The first time you smoke a cigarette,

do not cough.

When my grandfather was fourteen,

he fell into a well.

If a boy who is an artist asks to draw you,

tell him to hold his pencil in his non-dominant hand,

or to shut his eyes.

  My grandfather struggled by himself, grasping the slick walls around him.

Someday, perhaps, you will have the urge to stand in a downpour,

to lift your arms to the open clouds, and pretend you never started hiding childhood joy in the back of your closet.

Do it.

He called out until he was hoarse, and could yell no more.

Tell lies to your teachers. Tell lies to your mother,

your rabbi,

your lover.

Tell lies like they will save the boy

from stepping in front of the bus,

from falling because he thinks he will fly.

Give them away in nicely wrapped jewelry boxes,

send them cross country with extra postage, share them with anyone who asks, like sticks of gum on public transport.

Eventually, my grandfather had to be content with treading water and waiting.

  When you take your first long drag of a cigarette,

do not cough.

His small village moved around him as he paddled his feet, unaware of his sopping plight.

If you find heartbreak,

hold it close.

Press it into your chest like the last surviving photograph of your long dead great grandparents, whose touch you can only pretend to recall.

His survival was uncertain.

If the time comes when you are angry and you cannot understand it,

be angry.

Fight.

Scratch and hiss and brawl

and let your fury rain down on those who incite it.

If you feel a hot heavy unyielding unbending hard fierce turning smoky paint covered fingers rollicky careening incredible dying lying sighing HEAT HEAT HEAT squeezing you, let it squeeze.

After several hours his rescue came,

 a hand,

a rope,

a questioning voice.

When you smell flowers, do not remember the girl you loved first.

  The first time someone hands you a cigarette, breathe deep and do not cough.

Seventy years later, he sat beneath an open canopy in the early summer,

and told his granddaughter

“I survived.”

  You will wake up one morning before your bedmate,

you will look at their sleeping form for a warm moment,

and you will feel your ribcage chip with every shudder

of your poison breath, and the lining

of your stomach will turn to stone.

You will claw at the loneliness with two wrinkled hands when this happens.

You will go for the throat of what terrifies you

and feel its howls reverberate inside your wasted body.

You will roll over, wrap an arm around the one who ruins you,

and close your eyes to the soft snores and start of day.

The first time you smoke a cigarette, you will not cough.

[co5mic-cunts]

It breaks my heart because I grew up in a place where people are friendly. To live anywhere else would be unfamiliar and daunting. It's a test of my courage. Do I have to guts to get out of this town? Will I ever be happy? I fear that the people who spend their childhoods waiting on happiness are the ones who never find it.

Messy notebook excerpts

[co5mic-cunts]

A thousand gold stars, a second chance (pt. 6)

I once spent six hours in a bar. This was before alcohol and drugs and all mistakes and all lies and trying to be okay and failing miserably. This was back in the days of good and happy and the land of toys not quite misfit, not quite perfect. This was the land of toys that blossomed by day and rested by night. This was the land I left behind:

After the first hour, you start to wonder what people might say if you ordered a drink. You're sixteen and you look it, but this is a bar and this is redneck country and filmmakers are free-spirited. The sound technician is eighteen, pops outside every so often to cop a smoke. The second assistant director plays with matches and wears his shoulder-length hair back in a ponytail. They're both still kids. You're still a kid. God, it's all kids in a bar before happy hour, before nightfall and before drinks passed around and bar becomes sticky. 

After the third hour, you go to the bathroom. You walk out wondering if it's possible to have an STD now. You're not going back in there; you're gonna hold it. 

You go out to guard the bar door and make sure no one messes up the shot. Skinny bald men with bloodshot eyes and cigarette holes in their flannel shirts hit on you, three-quarters empty bottles dangling from their skinny wrists. You just want to go home. 

Inside the bar, they've forgotten about you. They got the shot they wanted. They pack up the equipment. They come outside and you're standing there, almost in tears. Everyone notices and no one says anything. This is the film industry, and you have to have a tough skin. 

In bed that night you change your mind.

[clairetonic]

[co5mic-cunts]

Beast

Bedroom animal

left the cave

and her hair stood up straight

on one side

and the circles under her eyes

were the dark side of the moon.

She hunted

for food

and liked the taste of none

for water

and drank until her teeth chattered

and her eyes saw nothing

except moving pictures

silent films

'67 Imapala

the words of other animals

and they spoke

for the bedroom animal.

She waited to know another story

but lost herself in a photo.

[co5mic-cunts]

scared angry agony sad unbelieving sorry never sorry promised lonely christ help no goodnight travel well no more promises islands the coast leaving leaving leaving always leaving toes things I said I can't believe how did this happen smoke swallow saved empty full of you not YOU never the big you always small chance I swear I haven't forgotten chances I will take every one Jane Gallagher and all her hopes are waiting damaged not damaged no ugly deception and pain and unfeeling touches and I swear I don't love I believed in hate if I believe it leaves orange in the fall under the sky tonight was green and then it was gone every night has to leave sometime everyone will leave okay what will I remember little white pills little white lies liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar 

[co5mic-cunts]

It’s okay to lock yourself in the medicine cabinet, 
to drink all the wine, to do what it takes to stay 
without staying. It’s okay to hate God today 
to change his name to yours, to want to ruin all that ruined you. 
It’s okay to feel like only a photograph of yourself, 
to need a stranger to pull your hair and pin you down, 
it’s okay to want your mother as you lie alone in bed. 
It’s okay to break to fuck to flame to church to crush to knife 
to rock and rock and rock and rock and rock and rock. 

It’s okay to wave goodbye to yourself in the mirror. 
To write, ‘I don’t want anything.’ 
It’s okay to despise what you have inherited, 
to feel dead in a city of pulses. It’s okay 
to be the whale that never comes up for air, 
to love best the taste of your own blood.”

Rachel McKibbens, “A Letter From My Heart to My Brain”

[co5mic-cunts]

Summer

I started out the season with songs and smoke. I sat with chicken wire feelings and inhaled them deeply and tried to blow them away in a melon flavored cloud. We held hands in the heat and it helped for a time, but when he began to talk about the things I knew all too well, my body swelled and I longed to drown. Things started that weren't finished. But the feeling was there. It struck me hard in the ribs and cold in my shoulders. Sometimes I feel immeasurably, insatiably sad. I still cannot apologize. I can only exist and not exist and never be sorry. I am, at my core, still a liar. I am rotting inside from the decay of truth and myself. I am decomposing, my body says no, no more. The stench of emptiness and half wishes is present in my breathe, sweet and sickly. My eyelids are heavy when they reach your chest, my hands closed into fists that you unclench finger by clinging finger. We are not damaged, I remember in every moment, in every blink and stretch of muscle. We are not damaged. We are not damaged. We do not need to be fixed. We are not damaged. 

[co5mic-cunts]

[co5mic-cunts]

Bluest

Regret is forty-five percent

mistakes.

We have a hallway friendship

and that's not enough. It's

never enough. 

Because when I'm with him,

I am never really with him. 

We sit beside one another

and hold silent conversations

with the people on TV. 

How was your day? in a callous voice

changes the channels

Fine is the response

and the TV speaks for us.

They're best friends

and you start to feel like that girl

and you know you hate yourself

more than they will hate you. 

And maybe it's enough

that you remember how he was

in the first seconds of the dark morning

laughing at himself

and maybe you can survive on just that

the flat memories

because that's all you're ever gonna get.

Maybe you can teach yourself

to be okay with that

with passing wordlessly

and awkward conversations

and read receipts.

You won't feel it a year from now,

you hope

you won't remember it.

You think you'll be better 

a year from now.

But we'll all be gone

a year from now

we're moving on

and there will be other blue eyes.

You'll feel it still.

[co5mic-cunts]

Carperted Parking Lot Madness p.2

Everyone's favorite word is either no or yes and most of the time it's a lie. There are a lot of words on my wall and not enough space because lately writing on paper makes me angry but lately a lot of things make me angry. I drove myself to the hospital on my lost weekend and I sat and stared for a half hour and then drove home. I have missed the words I have missed the sounds. Today I played my saxophone for the first time, actually played it. It is dark here now. I am less fragmented now only because I took all the little pieces and some gum and balled it all together into a bigger clumpy piece that can be molded to fit into any spot. Walls boxes scarecrows and straw that doesn't belong. Sometime I forget to remember. Sometimes I forget to forget or remember to forget and everyone is falling apart, playing mind games. Everyone is crumbling and holding on for the last moment and everyone's eyes has that look in it that they get right before they fall before they let go and I don't want them too please will someone catch them I am not strong enough when I hear songs from a long time ago all of sudden I have gone back in time to that summer every song I have ever heard Iheard the for the first time during the summer and I am in a courtyard in a computer lab in a coffee shop next to the only one I promised anything to the only one I lived for I think we are just kids we were just kids and we were everything everyday we liked blood and sadness and pain and we knew of nothing else we hated too much and loved too often and tried at all the wrong moments but at least we tried and I promised I still promise I won't stop you never stop.

[co5mic-cunts]

Carpeted Parking Lot Madness p.1

Selfish I exist for me yellow mellow lines and layers onions reeking smells reeking lies today I am full and combustible and pop pop pop remember Christmas lights remember crying in the dark remember sun and sun and skin the first time I remember the first time she remembers castles and her cousin on the stars and the stairs sound rage sound stage cage cages caged out of the game the game is the skin the skin is off underneath bones and blood and flowers and filth and animal feelings I exist for me I am not for you but you can put your words on a wall and say that you're done with them nothing exists for a moment it lives on somewhere forever forgetting is a lie because these are just words just letters crammed into syllables into sentences my messy itchy arms that can reach and reach and stretch across days but never meet in warmth the human body needs seven touches a day so let us exist for a time okay hands ears eyes legs arms scars please do not look away the words that came before ring for a long time like a giant iron bell tolling behind my ears vibrations in my skull there is a poem on my mirror and it will be there tomorrow there is a poem in my hand that I will try to throw there is a poem in my chest in my lungs that tells me that one day there will be nothing to breathe there is a poem when I see the back of your shirt and my throat hurts there is a poem in the way every morning many stop in front of themselves and stop paying attention there is a poem in the space before sometime moves after staying still for a long time there is a poem inside of me selfish selfish selfish but I swear there is a poem and I want it to stay there. 

[co5mic-cunts]

A thousand gold stars, a second chance (pt. 5)

I love small spaces. I love to squeeze myself into tightest crevices and minute corners. I find it's easier, that way, to disappear. To fade away and be forgotten, because sometimes, isn't that all we can ask for? I like it in the dark, the small spaces. I like them because they make it easier, far simpler, to pretend I don't exist. As I press myself into the corner where two walls meet I bid everything else goodbye. And I like to imagine that I sink into the wall and am gone, and no one notices. You don't notice when the quiet leave you. I think they like it that way, unnoticed, undetectable. I too like to slip away in secret. I like for a conversation to carry on for awhile before its perpetrators realize I've left. I like to have other places to be. So as I dip myself into his hips I pretend they are the wall. He holds me close to him and presses his lips to my forehead and never wants to let me go and sometimes I am there with him in the swirl and twirl and whirlwind of love and warmth and films but then often I find I am long gone, long disappeared into the wall and gone away. The faded memory, out for a walk in the woods from which I will never return. I like these small spaces because when you feel so alone in the world that you have to take silver to your skin, and no one wants to leave you alone for fear you'll be bleeding out by sunrise, then they are the places to which you turn. You and people like you. You roll on your side and face the wall and squeeze your eyes shut and the pain is real but you are not. When you leave this place and go somewhere else you will leave nothing but pain. Small spaces are portals. You are not fine china and you are not porcelain and you will not break when you fall. But there are small dents and scratches and so we all need our portals, our small spaces in which to be left alone. This is not goodbye, just arrivederci. I am not leaving, but I am not coming back. And I hope you understand that I was happy.

[co5mic-cunts]

the happiest

you say yes to everything. asks for your paper, "yes" asks for your food, "yes" video chat monday night three hours forgotten homework "yes" "do you think she is cute?" "…yes" "should i date her?" "…yes" and you say nothing and feel everything and wonder what to do what this is and yet "i love you bby" and "you are my favorite" "literally i will date you" keeps you hanging on you're gonna wait.