#why ask why?

[savageleewriting]

Why We Don’t Connect:

You are listening to me and I’m listening to you and we’re talking oh how we’re talking we’ve got ears up to mouths and we’ve got anuses up to microphones and we’re not going to miss a drop of something interesting that’s coming down the pipes.

Baby I wanted to make love to you, but I didn’t bring the tools to assemble it from the raw materials you provided me with. Now I got sawdust and blood and bile and old photos and loose hairs stuck all over my hands. Now I got nothing but an empty room where you were but there’s just this strange echo there currently that tastes sort of like how you might imagine sadness would if you were just a little kid who’d never experienced a day of true hardship.

What did you want me to give you? An exit? A drink? A shiny crystal glass to piss into? A cab ride home? I’m more likely to just fall on my knees and apologize than I am to ever provide you with any sort of amusement. 

If we were lovers, you’d love me. As an artist, I leave you as cold as that cup of coffee I poured myself a few hours ago back when I wanted the rush of self-awareness that’d come with the gut-ache and chronic trips to the toilet. 

We’re signalling noise here. I miss you, but only because I’m not really paying attention to where I’m aiming these days. 

[savageleewriting]

When You Write & You Say Nothing

You send me anonymous letters. You won’t even sign them now, not even an initial or a spot of blood. I’m sure I can still remember how you taste. 

You send me weird filth, dirty ideas, lewd suggestions. It’s almost like harassment, but you know I love the attention. I’m a slut for it. I’d suck it up with a straw if I found a puddle of it out in the street. 

I wonder what you want out of any of it. An experience? A taste? A bit of attention for yourself that you can wrap around your naked body and use to feel special and intimate and right with the world.

I doubt that I can offer much of that. Aside from text and a warm body and a slightly detached heart. 

You want to reach out, but you don’t want to touch. I get that. It makes me feel a little like an animal in the zoo. Pacing around, seeing if I can manage to squeeze between the bars of my cage.

[savageleewriting]

Fistfuls Of The Good Stuff

I walked right up to the edge of the bad part of town, and I pulled my heart out and stuck it to the side of a building with a fistful of nails I found rusting out in the cracks in the street. The divots in the roadway where busses had cracked into the firmament of the world for what must’ve been an eternity before I came along. 

But I had to do it. I had to show everybody. I’d fucking bleed for this town. I got it in my veins. I got the pavement in between my teeth, but anybody can say that if they feel like it. I got some fucking proof of how I live. I got my heart, nailed there in the centuries-old brickwork where ages ago tired workers used to stop for a piss on their way back whatever pub would fill their gullets with enough numbness that they’d feel finally capable of wandering home to mistreat their families. Loveless hovels of humans hunched together, squatting close for warmth, but trying to stay just out of stabbing range. 

Yeah, I know this city. I know the history. I know the secret stuff that they want you to know, to cover up for the real secret stuff. Monsters, mostly, living under the city and looking to devour late night ramblers with big mouths.

So watch yourself. 

[savageleewriting]

THINGS WE COULD DO TODAY:

We could be lovers, sure.

We could check into a hotel room together under assumed names, and have crazy weird sex for days. 

We could move in together and share socks. 

We could hold hands on the bus, and share sips of each other’s sodas when we’re out on dates. 

We could be lovers in love.

We could travel from end of the country to the other, just slitting throats and dropping bullets into bodies. We could eat truck-stop lunches and burn children with blowtorches. We could carve our initials in the foreheads of the severed head of rednecks that we leave in big messy piles along the side of the road. We could poison our waitress with bleach, and figure out where she lives so that her family could join her. We could be brutal and cruel and cool. 

Or, I don’t know. 

We could stay in bed a little longer.

Or maybe we should stay strangers.

One never knows.

At least until it’s too late. 

[savageleewriting]

Improve Yourself Or Burn Yourself Alive

Look over here.

No, you looked too much.

You ruined it. 

Now it's gone.

Look away. 

No, don't look so sad.

You make us all feel sad.

No, don't look like you want to look sad.

We can see straight through you.

Just act natural.

That's too natural.

Plan it out more.

But not so premeditated. 

Breathe in.

No, out.

Relax.

Just have fun.

Be happy. 

It'll all be okay.

Once you learn to be...

better.

[savageleewriting]

Here. Right? Here.

Here is a brokenly resonate sound. An echo trapped in a tight space. 

Here's where all the stars realign themselves into perfectly straight lines, the whole universe like a giant arrow pointing straight into your heart.

Here's a missing passage in your favourite book. It turns out they all died in the end. 

Here is where the rubber meets the road and the two turn out to have a lot in common so they settle down and find a nice place with a big yard and a house that's got three bedrooms and a garage that can hold two cars and then before you know it they're in the later years of their lives, holding hands on the porch and watching the sun go down. 

Here's a little quiet place I left just so you could scribble down some thoughts of your own.

Here's a rhyme: escape. 

Here's a riddle: what has one heart and one brain and one mean outlook on life and actually kind of likes you a lot? 

Here is piece of writing. I didn't do it for anybody.

Except maybe you.

[savageleewriting]

This Shape That Is You

Why do some people like mint, while others don't?

Why are alliterations so pleasurable to some people?

Why do jokes make some people laugh?

I was walking down the street today, and a specific set of scents entered my olfactory organs. It was a crisp, warm December day. Leaves have all fallen from the trees and begun to slowly rot. Snow has fallen, turned to ice, and melted away. There is a faint trace of sea-water on the air, no doubt quite cooler than the air.

All of these smells came together, and activated a long unused series of neural passageways within my head. For a brief moment I was a child again, tiny in the world and understanding so little of all that happened around me. I was joyful in a simplistic way which I cannot continue to connect with on a regular basis. I was simpler. Uncomplicated. The world was so much larger.

Those smells on the street brought back the feelings, the emotions, the physical sense of that time and place.

Why do these things work this way?

What shapes our thoughts, and what allows those thoughts to be reshaped over time?

How are we who we are?