--IT COULD MEAN PEOPLE ARE CLEARLY NOT IN THE SAME TIME PERIOD OR PLACE

                              

                                   The Thing About My Depression

 

My depression is irritable, antsy, having a lousy day, so I burrow into the charred ether, chin strapped to chest, another stooge impaled by Stockholm Syndrome. 

I watch the Shaman shape-shift into an eye tic, or deer tick distended on the front of my corneas that keep swelling, won’t stop pulsing, won’t have a thing to do with me.  Such cunning theatrics should be applauded and syndicated.

There’s an explosion above and beneath me like two planets crashing headlong while my chair splinters into a thousand jagged toothpicks.

And so I am lying flat-backed on the floor again, cold sober, feeling last, least, lost, shuddering stock-still, as the menagerie around me shatters like a sledgehammer to the teeth.

You’ve told me to call.  After all, the phone’s right there, a small chirping brick by my cheek, but it might as well be the boulders strapped to my ankles as I’m thrown overboard.  Still, I watch my fingers twitch stretch inch then curl right back, like a radish root turning conveniently in on itself, so that my depression need not snip off the loose ends this time.

In the walls, a herd of rats scamper and wrestle through the husky insulation, drunk on derision.  The lights percolate and pop like a migraine that means business.  Every atom wants a piece of the action, chuckling at the drowning clown.

It doesn’t have to be this way, but it is.  A bad hamburger could send a drill through Anthony’s skull.  Air and space is all it takes for me.

Sound of a plane engine rattling inside my head.  Sound of someone saying, Please take care.  Sound of someone else screaming in an alley perfumed with piss.  Sound of fourth grade, hooligans ringed around me, chanting hieroglyphics I can’t decipher.

Birds keep slamming into the window, smearing the view.  A dog driving my car takes a corner too sharp and cannonballs into the lake, killing every last fish.  An eagle flies by with another bloody jugular in its talons, not even bothering to wink this time around.

My neck is a stump, my legs two railroad ties, my body duct-taped to the swooning ground while a ticker tape parade rains down noose after noose, each one just my size.  

The clock looks aged and has psoriasis or leprosy, its hands now filaments of dust.  I look through a hole in the roof, at all that black black black expanding, the angels that were once there now too hungover to look below and see the flashing red lights, hear the wailing sirens, hear the wailing silence, hear the wail wail wail of nothing.

Sometimes this is what it feels like to carry a day, what it feels like feels like to lose it, and not even know why.

—ABOVE THE STATION WALLS, THE COLORS BLEED AND RUN

        

…Yesterday I sat under a shade tree trying to forget all my mistakes.  I read rousing poetry that made me re-read lines, slower the second and third time around, while the wind did its work in the branches overhead.  Yesterday, before that, I swerved to miss a dainty, black squirrel that sat too far out on the road, chewing its fingernails like a Nervous Nelly.  Yesterday, before that, while I was on a run, a rabbit darted out in front of me, out into the road, hop hop hop, then stopped, paralyzed by fear as a pickup ran straight over it, making the rabbit’s heart ratchet up faster, no doubt, while the bunny realized how lucky it was not to be smashed.  Yesterday was all kinds of near life and death.  

…The comment, “You’re lucky; it could have been worse,” is the kind of helpfulness I can do without.  After all, it also could have been better.

…People like to make comparisons, but some things are completely incomparable.  Completely.

…One less thing to be confused about—now that’s funny.

…Time heals all wounds—I don’t buy it for one minute.

…Other people’s anger has done a hell of a lot for me.  I just never knew it at the time.

…Don’t push.  Don’t hang on.  Lean back and let reality happen.

…Fear is usually the static that prevents a person from hearing their intuition.  Fear is often an indication that they’re avoiding themselves.  And that includes me.

…If something you do rankles me, I should know that your fault is my fault, too.

…I like a man or woman with faults, especially when he/she knows it.

…No one is really ever wrong.  At most, someone is un-informed.  “You’re wrong,” usually means “I don’t understand you, I’m just not seeing what you’re seeing right now.”  

…I am a fan of sporadic profanity when used to fire up speech, but the truth is, it fixes the other person’s attention on your words instead of your thoughts.

…When you’re a train wreck and someone still loves you anyway, that’s when you know you’re one lucky sonofabitch.

…I hope I’m not ever not curious.  If that should ever happen, feel free to use a hammer, toss me in a box and then dump said box somewhere no one ever goes.

…There’s something about compliments that scares me.  Part of the reason may be that I’m afraid of getting something that can subsequently be taken away.  I put myself in the hands of this other person if I let my emotions hang on their statement.  Another reason: I am being put on the spot and now must watch my actions to keep them thinking this way about me.  Another:  There is a part of me that knows good and well I’m not as great as their compliment implies.  Another:  I’m sometimes insincere when saying similar things.

…When you’re young, you feel invincible.  It’s easy to say things like, “Sleep is overrated.  I’ll sleep when I die.”  When you’re older, with more skin in the game, you don’t really even want to think about dying.

…And still it’s past 1am, and I’m wide awake, and the only thing showing in my window is an exact replica of me staring back at me wondering why I’m here.  Perhaps that’s the definition of a death wish.  

…If I couldn’t write, I’d die.  I’ve come to the place where I am now comfortable knowing I should write what I want, regardless of how other people view it.  It’s writing for me.  And that is so fucking selfish, but it feels good and it feels right.  I realize how lucky I am.  I wish everyone as much luck, if not more.

…I’m alone a lot.  But when I’m alone and awake late at night, that’s when the world makes the most sense to me.  It’s as if the stars are trying to knock some sense into me because they know that’s when I’m most vulnerable and open-minded.

…I don’t want to just listen to what you say.  I want to feel what you mean.

...“You ought to” really just means “I want you to.”  So why not say so?

…“I don’t care what people think”—that is, by far, the most dishonest sentence in the English language.

…When someone is silent it can be a little unnerving.  I think:  maybe they’ve become bored with me, maybe they’ve moved on because they’re losing interest.  But maybe silence means live and let live, trust, or I appreciate that I am I and you are you.

…I am already me.  And that is both the easiest and the hardest thing for me to realize.

--IN CASE YOU’RE WONDERING, IT’S NOT GETTING ANY EASIER

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZGgJuebtXI&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_2iN8GZaao&feature=youtu.be

…Someone recently told me, “When everything feels like it’s falling apart, it might actually be coming together.”  I’m not so sure.

…Somebody else told me to stand on my toes because they didn’t have any.

…I still look every day.  True story.  Most times, more than once. 

…Everyone gets scared, but the question is: Do you see what I see?

…These things are a two-way street.

…More and more I find myself talking to the dog, saying, “Hey, what’s up?” or, “Hey, are you happy down there?”

…So the elephant said, “Never mind, he’s with me.”

…I’m trying to believe that there are things that you can enjoy, but being the kind of person I am, having the type of brain I have, you don’t really think about happiness as much as you think about relief.  Still, I guess we’d all like to be a little better off.  Happiness, though, that’s a whole other ball of wax.

…People tend to prepare an awful lot, and they’ve got an idea of how things are going to go based on their over-preparation.

…Are you kidding?  I don’t have anxiety dreams: I’m living my anxiety dream.

…I think the idea that you should take whatever comes your way is bad advice, but I tend to do it a lot.

…Sometimes you have to follow your gut about not doing something.  But then there’s that voice that urges you to play it safe, and sometimes you have to ignore it.

…There’s always a struggle to live up to expectations—and a reality.

…Where are all of the angels when you need one?

…That accident on the side of the road was me.  No, really, it was.

…Poor choices.  Man, they can really do you in.

…I take the softest rain with me when I leave.  It rests now as a mist in my hair, my ears, every available socket.  It smells like you, like fresh air, like nothing at all.

…I keep crawling under my shadow, but it keeps shimmying away.

…I don’t know if it’s true or not, but someone once said: The rainbow is more beautiful than the pot at the end of it, because the rainbow is now.  And the pot never turns out to be quite what I expected.

…Sometimes these allergies really knock me around.  All up in my nose, my head, my psyche.

…An editor read some things I sent him and said, “I really like these pieces, but the blog isn’t for fiction.”  That was funny. 

…All I want to do is just keep pace with myself.

…I’ll be what I’ll be.  Where is the anxiety in that?

…As I look back on my life, one of the most constant and powerful things I have experienced is the desire to be more than I am at the moment—a desire to do more, learn more, express more—a desire to grow, improve, accomplish, expand.  I haven’t always hit the mark, but I’ve mostly tried. 

….A sure way for me to have a disastrous experience is to do something because “it will be good for me.”

…Because I assume there is something unnatural about my having a problem, I attempt to present a problem-free appearance, which, as we all know, is a joke.

 …Sometimes I read things I wrote a while back and go, “Who wrote those?  No really, who?  It couldn’t have been me.  If it was, what was I thinking?”

…”Next time I will…”  “From now on I will…” --What makes me think I am wiser today than I will be tomorrow?

…I’ll admit, I’m a little suspicious of people who have no bad habits.

…I live from one tentative conclusions to the next, thinking each one is final.  The only thing I know for sure is that I am confused.

…You never know, do you?  You just never do.

--SET MY FEET UPON THE SEA, TILL I’M DANCING IN THE DEEP

                             The Thing About Birthdays

It’s my birthday, but the clouds are offended again because of something I’ve said or thought.  Their bellies are full of dark-sick, gauzy vomit, pushing away the sky which doesn’t remember I’m nine today.

People are talking about the moon, how there are men on it for the first time, but people have told me lots of other things that weren’t true, like what a miracle it is to be a kid and have your whole life ahead of you.

The imaginary clown I had for a friend disappeared or was kidnapped or killed so now the moon is my surrogate best friend, but those bushy gray clouds are pissed off and won’t let me see Luna, let alone talk to her to find out if there really are spacemen pouncing around on her chest and forehead, so I toss rocks in the air, one after the other, thinking about gravity and the things I’ve already learned that can hurt me.

It’s my birthday, which feels both boring and burdensome, as if I have a massive boil on my back the way lonely Quasimodo did.  I need a bad habit or some crime to commit so the guilt I wear will have a purpose.  One thing I know already is how guilt is like fire smoke—you don’t have to be the one to start the fire, but if you get near it, its smoke claims you just the same, weaving into your skin for all time.

At school, there are lots of happy noses and shiny tongues that answer the teacher’s questions perfectly.  Every weekday it’s the same cheerful chorus of precision.  I sit at my desk, which is the size of combine, wodden like Pinocchio, me feeling wee wee wee tiny tiny tiny.  I pretend I’m mute because it’s easier that way, the same as it is at home.  Only a loon would talk to a stuffed animal, especially one with no plush.

But last week my brothers ditched me at the carnival, and that was fine, that was all right.  I had enough coins with me to have the turbanned Madame read my palm.  She peered in, watchmaker close, and kept asking me if I was tricking her.  “Where’s your life line?” she kept asking, her voice picking up pitch each time until I scampered off while she screamed, “WHERE’S YOUR LIFE LINE?!!!”

My grandmother had seventy-nine birthdays, but not eighty.  A train hit her going too fast while Gran was sitting in her stalled car going nowhere.  Before that, I used to visit some.  She was German and looked it, would wear floral bonnets and tent sack dresses that could create their own breeze if she swung around quick, like the time she thought I was lying about what had happened at home.  That was the day I learned how to lie or just play deaf, dumb and blind, three monkeys all rolled into one boy.

Gran kept trying to feed me, even when my bones were already full.  “You’re too skinny.  You’re a rung,” she’d say.  I thought she was saying I’m a wrong, because her accent was thick and scratchy, and sometimes she butchered words the way Mom did chickens and other things.

So, it’s my birthday, and I’m a wrong.  I can’t see the moon, but she can’t see me back either.  Nobody can, if I don’t want them to.  At least that’s what I’m going to believe.  Maybe when I’m ten, things will be different.

–I WISH I COULD BE THAT HAPPY

                                  The Thing About Glass Boys

I’m an old man now, but I was a boy once, and I saw things--adults with backward roller coaster eyes, muddy backhoe faces, steel wool fingers, javelin forearms that could tack anything they wanted to a wall, a floorboard, a bed board, or a rusty bedspring creaking for rescue.

I was a glass boy then, blown wrong, on accident or on purpose, I never knew.  My spine was shaped like a jug handle.  People would pick me up that way and pour me out, every bit of my being sprayed every which way like a never-ending salt shower.  The crush of people walking over me sounded like a mouthful of Pop Rocks candy.  It felt like sand stuck beneath eyelids.  It smelled like formaldehyde steaming ripe under the nose.  It…

It didn’t count if I cracked or got leaky.  That just meant I would face the blow torch, get melted and reformed wrong again, this time my legs bent in upside down U shapes, me a human bike rack without any locks.

The things I was asked then were always puzzling, troubling.  

Like: You wanna know where are all the angels are when you need one, take a peek in the garbage disposal.

Like:  Did you ever know your heartbeat has a problem with arithmetic and your chin never stops doing The Charleston?

Like:  How come you’re looking at me that way, you little fucking pussy?

My teacher sat me in the back of the class, in front of all the Mason Jars containing bloated dead frogs.  One of them was actually a clown fish and seemed to wear a coiled beard similar to my uncle’s.  I wondered if it felt just as rough against the skin, on those patches of skin that are not supposed to be touched.

For a while, a girl liked me for some reason.  She was only three and a half feet tall because her waist kicked hard to the left, as if the ribs on that side were soggy French toast.  Because I didn’t know how to like a girl back, all I ever said to her was (…).  I remember her name was Suzie and that her left hook felt like a sheet of molten steel.

At church, people spoke in tongues with their tongues, though I couldn’t actually ever see their tongues.  One woman fainted, and collapsed into my lap, shattering my knees and groin, every shard ricocheting off the back of the walnut pew in front of me.  Mother coughed coughed coughed, impressed or embarrassed, I never knew, and tossed my upper half into her alligator-mouth purse while it burped sour milk smell until she fastened the snap.

I saw other things…  I shattered lots of other times…  There were other… 

I’m an old man now, but points of glass still float beneath the second layer of my dermis, glowing blue-white, like eager ghouls.  When they push through the skin, I use a tweezer to pull them all the way free.  There must be a million of them by now.  I’ve made a mosaic with every flint shape of tainted crystal.  They cover the entire wall in my study.  Depending on the way the light hits them, they either resemble my mother, or on other times, an exact replica of my father, lighting a match or torch, inhaling smoke with one eye squinted sharply, his mouth a dark, gluey tar pit, staring right at me.

--I CAN’T STOP THE SUN FROM GOING DOWN

                                                       In Session

I think this is harder than I think.  I think blue is an assassin, and red a plane crash just before the explosion.  I think the way you’re looking at me says you don’t trust people with brown eyes or people whose bones are molten and indecisive.  I think, every time you yawn, that hoot owl in your throat has a message for me, and it is bad news.

I think my twin may have died before me, caught in the half-pipe with his too-big feet and too-big cranium, and he’s very happy about that.  I think I may have killed off everyone who needed it, except myself.

What else?

         I think this chair has polio, that painting skin cancer, your tablet Ebola.  I think you’re not even listening, but instead you’re having sandpaper sex inside your head but there’s too much friction and not enough lubrication.

I think the reason I turned out this way has more to do with the dinosaurs than Mom or Dad’s preferred methods of torture.

That’s okay.  I don’t need the whole hour.  Almost done.

I think the reason she got that restraining order had nothing to do with me and everything to do with (…)  I think you should ask her instead of always asking me.

I think there’s a liar in every room of every house, even if it’s a horsefly.

I think the moon is moody and pretentious as hell. 

I think this couch needs its training wheels back.  For sure that hat rack needs its training bra.

I think cops are just dying to ruin someone’s day, someone’s life, why else would that have happened? 

I think people have their reasons, but maybe I don’t know anything.

--I CARRY YOU EVERYWHERE WITH ME

                                                         Strain

Your face is a Rorschach test and there’s no way to know what your eyebrows want. 

So we dine on oxygen.  The table explodes in balls of black and red fire, then regenerates.  This happens over and over.

The children are off playing somewhere or maybe they’ve moved out, maybe they’ve grown that old.

Our dead honeymoon cat won’t stop staring. The walls have even bigger ears stuffed up with canopies.

We used to play Gin Rummy in the tub. We used to keep a solitary kiss intact for a whole week.  We used to We used to We used to.

If I ask, you will blame it on Shakespeare or Hitler again? Your friend who killed himself on the freeway wasn’t fooling around and I guess you’re not either. Or maybe he was more than a friend.

                                             My Father’s Legacy

         When they call your name, the angels shudder and go up in a gaseous plume of tar smoke that flounces off the ceiling, rocking the attic, the locked chest, the ancient lock cracking, lid jarred open, all of your sins slipping out for once, ghosts of a dozen dead girls, none older than twelve, strangled and buried in a quarry where no one found them until now.