ROCK STAR

There’s no amount of $$$ you could offer me
            To shut my mouth
            (unless it was a million; I would maybe shut it for a million. Dollars. Dineros. Whatever.)
            (and by ‘you’ I mean the literary community; don’t flatter yourself)

I pay my own bills at The Plaza, Chateau, et al. FYI
            I don’t know if I have a sensitive gag reflex or not
            I’ve never been very interested in finding out, tbh
            (what abt U?)

Control your bitch
            Is the best line Axl Rose ever wrote
            Even if there was no way Kurt (or anyone else) was ever going to control
            Courtney

I’ve never required a mentor 
            I created this monster
            By piecing back together
            The shards of my heart
            (some are sharper than others; sorry!)

you being mad is ok/means you don’t own me (either)

(and by ‘you’: I mean myself)
(don’t flatter yourself)
(not everything is about you)
(and by ‘you’ I mean me again so shut the fuck up already ok?)

walking on eggshells is something I did once
            I didn’t care for it TBH
            I learned to put cigarettes out on my arm instead
            (it’s not that hard)
            (is this a poem? Is this punk rock?)           

all I really want is to have Axl rose think I’m a bitch
            or someone who can be controlled
            (did something I say make you think that, honey?)
            (and by ‘honey’ I mean every member of the literary community; don’t flatter yourself.)

 

another shithole poem I’ll never publish (7-29-2020)       

My boyfriend is convinced I’m still in love with you
Because of the cigarette burns on my arm
He asked me when I did them and I said last winter and he said why
I said I wanted to know what it would feel like; how bad it could hurt
I said I wanted to know if I was as fucked up as a man, as fucked up as you

I said, no, no, I swear I’m not
I promise you
I’m not still in love with him

We were standing on my balcony, staring at a group of deer,
He behind me, his arms forming boundaries on either side as he gripped the railing in front

I wasn’t lying
When I said it
I meant every word

I wasn’t still in love with you
Two weeks ago
I swear
I swear

Even if the way he smokes a cigarette
Occasionally reminds me of you

Even if

I wasn’t lying

I wasn’t still in love with you

I just liked the way the scars looked on the inside of my arm
How they reminded me of our friendship…
How you said it was important we always be friends

You probably weren’t lying then, either
You probably meant every word, at the time

Did you show him? He asked me
Yeah, I said. I showed him
What did he say?
He showed me his . . .
But I promise you: I’m not still in love with him
Stop worrying, baby, I promise

Then today I watched a video of your npr interview
I don’t know why I did that
That was a stupid thing to do

Because it showed a prison cell and I didn’t know if it was your actual
Prison cell or just one that looked like it

Either way it made me cry
It made me bawl
staring at the prison cell while listening to your voice

That soft, slow drawl
That I remembered . . .

And I thought of the months we were writing letters
The months you were reading my books
While I was reading ----
The phone calls…
Your soft slow drawl making me laugh,
Telling me ‘take care’
Before we were cut off again; another month to wait

I bawled because I didn’t understand which one of us was lying
The one of us who said she’s not still in love with you
Or the one of us who said it was important we always remain friends.

 

(the) Conjuring

As a new hobby, I think about sabotaging our relationship. I think about this a lot while we’re at Home Depot looking at Christmas lights.
         “If we ended it right now, think about how good it would end,” I say.
         You look at me funny when I say this. We are each buying a new Dustbuster, tho for some reason yours costs twenty dollars more than mine.
         “I don’t get you, baby, why would you say shit like that?” you say, your mask under your nose. “If you want to break up with me, just do it; get it over with.”
         But that’s not what I’m saying at all.          

I spend another twenty minutes after dinner fantasizing about ending things. You come in from smoking and playing video games on my front porch and I’m crying and crying. I thought you’d left.
         “I’m just so tired,” I say. I am apologetic. (I am your baby, your baby girl.)

I hide my eyes with your hands. An hour ago you wanted me to dominate you. Thigh highs, cock ring, handcuffs. You can’t get more All-American than that.
          When you come inside me you say: shit, goddamn, fuck.
          When you come inside I say, “We better break up now,” and I am crying and crying.

 

Please read dennis cooper rn please

Remember when you could watch a movie liked Badlands
w/out worrying abt the moral choices of the characters
or how old the girl was (14) (to his 20 – aghast! Clutch pearls!)
when you watched a film for the beauty of the cinematography
the indieness of the soundtrack
the cool style of the actor/actress/horses

remember when jodie foster played a twelve year old prostitute
when she was twelve?
She turned out alright, huh?
I mean, who amongst us turned out ‘alright,’ anyway?

Remember when jim carroll made $$$ for drugs
By turning tricks in nyc when he was fifteen
Sucking guys’ dicks, letting them suck his
So he could score some dope
Remember when one of the ramones did the same thing (at the same age?)

Remember when my baby daddy impregnated
His high school girlfriend when he was 15 and she was 16
And a catholic so kept the baby and raised it
And now that baby is 27 and one of the loves of my life

Remember when my boyfriend’s brother’s friend
Was 13 and knocked up a 30 year old and his mom raised the baby
As if it was her own
Like jack nicholson’s mom/grandma/whatever?

Remember when the fact you could make a baby
Meant you weren’t a baby/child, anymore?

Remember how bonnie was sixteen when she married her first husband,
Not clyde?

Remember when it was normal to leave home and move to a new continent
To find work when you were seventeen (donald trump’s grandfather)
To forge a fake ID so you could go to war before you were eighteen???
Remember when kids moved out of their parents’ houses
Wanted to drive a car
Wanted to get drunk/fuck/suck cock/do drugs/worship the devil/runaway
From home/join a commune/cult/band?

Remember when joan jett moved to LA w her parents’ permission
At 15 to start a band/make her own $$$/do WHATEVER she fuckin wanted?

Remember when that was cool?

Remember when art was art
And if you bitched abt the morality of it you were part of the
Religious right?
Or a real square?
A total drag, man
Pedestrian
Bourgeois
NOT VERY SMART
Not INTEL-ec-tulle

A BORE

Remember when garth greenwell talked about cruising parks
When he was 14/15, having sex w adult men
Remember how that’s ok/how it didn’t cause him trauma
Because all boys wanna fuck
All the time
Always

Like sam lansky
Who wrote a memoir about being a teenaged boy
Fucking older men (and younger men and whoever!)

nancy spungen was 20 when she died
She’d already been a stripper and a prostitute
And a runaway at age 17

courtney love was a runaway and a stripper at age 17

angelina jolie’s mother let angelina’s boyfriend move into the house and live in her bedroom when angelina was 14

melanie griffith started dating don johnson when he was 22 and she was 14

If r Kelly had waited five months and he and aaliyah had been from Canada he would have had no problem legally fucking her

I was wrong about bonnie parker
She was still 15, six days shy of 16, when she married roy thornton
She still had a tattoo on her knee with their names inside a heart
                -Bonnie&Roy -
The day she died next to clyde.

Please read dennis cooper rn please

 

AMAZON PRIME

I was waiting
I was in my gold dress
The one with the shoulder pads like you like
Joan Collins, Linda Evans, Dynasty

I was in my gold dress, waiting for you

It was after the time you normally come home from work
I hadn’t looked at my phone all day
I was terrified of rejection (it was our first big fight, sleeping in separate beds!)
(I was terrified of you)

There was the sound of wheels, an engine
The dog picked up her head
In synchronicity: we both turned our heads toward the door
We were eager; a kinder word for desperate
Eager for daddy to get home

I started crying when I saw it was only a Prime van
That it wasn’t my husband (you/daddy)

It was a large cardboard box: your Xmas present
I lugged it upstairs in my gold dress, panting

I went back to what I’d been doing before:
Pretending not to listen for cars (your car) while writing a blurb for a friend.

If you’re not here by six I plan to slip my snow pants on under my gold dress,
Light a cigarette on the front porch,
So very Joan Collins, so very Dynasty …

Do you think Linda Evans ever waited for her husband to come home in a gold dress and snow pants?

Do you think Joan Collins ever smoked on the front porch, head downcast, waiting, shamefully for her ‘daddy’?

At least your Xmas present is here, anyway.
At least you weren’t here when it arrived. (but what if you never do? What if our first big fight is our last? Questions to contemplate in gold lame, in shoulder pads, in snow pants, on the front porch while smoking.)

 

Joan Didion is dead, 12/27/21 (a poem)

She should have killed herself a long long time ago
             like Hunter.
W a gun. in a Corvette. Before her husband died.
             The American dream.
anywy. Whtever.
She’s dead.

I walk into fires willingly because I am a writer
I don’t concern myself w burns – burns are words on a page
Haha what a cheesy ass line to write!

You’re right, baby, you chose the wrong woman

I will never be happy/satisfied w the TV/pills/paycheck combo
I’m sorry I really don’t like pizza either to tell you the truth
It’s ok tho
I’ll still see you on some future lunch hour;
an hourly rated motel near the Ford plant

I won’t be the one filing
I’m fine w being married and never seeing you
Like those odd cpls you hear other ppl talk abt

So mysterious!
(me, I mean; I will be mysterious, when I tell ppl this,
that I have a husband I haven’t seen in x months, x years, x decades)

how many years did Joan live
w/out a husband

I can easily live that many w/out you, dear;
More

A man is only something to have
When you have nothing else

I don’t so much mind being kicked out on Xmas day, honey
I just minded that you didn’t get me one book

That’s how I could tell you were losing interest
For my bday you gave me at least three books, that I
Can remember; maybe four

Tennessee, Sylvia, a biography of the Bouveir sisters, what else?

Joan Didion is dead and I never even had a chance to tell you abt her
I know if I ever kill myself in a car it should be a Ford, not a Chevy, tho
On account of you

Remember when you thought I fucked the Bumble guy
Cuz of the tampon wrapper in the toilet last week?

I told you, baby
My pussy is always so wet

“Not a domestic vehicle in this parking lot” is something I’ll never forget
you saying after dinner on Easter

It’s interesting the things we humans learn abt each other
Human behavior, et al

Joan Didion eating eggs in a Corvette on the highway
Or her character anyway

Elizabeth Ellen inserting a slender tampon because her pussy is so wet
Or her character anyway

(slight bleeding after intercourse is normal is all you could think abt when you saw the OB wrapper floating in the toilet after work last Tuesday)

my first marriage was ruined by a man’s insecurities too; watchaknowabtthat

the irony – or at least, I believe this, unlike the examples in the Alanis Morrisette song, is an example of irony – here is that I was the one who got cheated on

what a perfect American dream

(incidentally, Joan Didion said infidelity was nothing to worry abt; haha, JOAN!)

The truth is I fear equally: you coming back, you never returning

for the next two weeks
I will communicate solely with IG likes and posts

Joan Didion said infidelity is nothing to concern oneself with
But Joan Didion is dead
And I’m alive.

Anywy, I stole your favorite camo hat

I never even had time to go to social security and change my name

The only thing that concerns me now: who is going to help me get this ginormous
Christmas tree out of my house?

Joan Didion is dead and not a domestic vehicle in the parking lot.