Predators - Poetic Explanation Of Falling In Love (with Me)

predators - poetic explanation of falling in love (with me)

someone’s going to crack and i hope it isn’t me. we’re circling each other through circuits and panes of glass, we’re staring each other down through the rear view mirrors of our cars. its a game of chicken on opposite sides of a two way road. we are these fucked up pen pals. they told me to pick up an out of blue phone call, and i can only imagine you’re the one on the other end. and i may not pick up, i won’t recognize the number. but i might, i’ve spent some time trying to remember all the digits but i always got distracted. sixty two something. a seven, a six, maybe a three.

you know this isn’t your best work. i know exactly which words you added in as an afterthought, things that you insisted fit right there but ideas that could have been left in the shadows. you’re convinced you loved me. you handed over pieces of yourself. i told you from the beginning, this was a terrible idea. purple night under the popcorn ceiling stars, hand in hand eventually became bodies intertwined. you know how to make the chemicals flare up, make us feel like we can stop taking our antidepressants and feel like this could never end. i used to pass by married couple’s dimly illuminated windows at night after dropping you off, and i thought, they aren’t even feeling what i am feeling. i am the only one that has ever experienced love. but they’re just chemicals that flare up when you kiss enough, have enough late nights resting together. i feel a little less special now that we’re broken up. i realize we were just like every other set of lovers. led to the same demise as the rest of them.

someone’s going to crack and it won’t be me. and even if you called, you’d ask me, “what is your problem?” and i might shrug. i guess i’m on a mission to destroy the nothing that’s left. destroy everything beyond repair so we can never repeat this again.

its my turn to be angry.

sure, i’ve moved on but i’m allowed to revisit these feelings for some sick ass journal entry. its healthy to take my anger out on something that cannot be hurt anymore, right? and yeah, i know you read this sometimes. but that’s your problem. you know what you’ll read and what you’ll feel when you open this up. don’t know why i end everything with an explanation, an apology, and i just don’t know how to tidy up the frays on the end of this ribbon.

its not all about you, now, is it?

“i am almost completely soulless,”

i need to throw away everything in my room, throw away all my plants, throw away all my clothes, all my art,

“i am incapable of being human,”

i’m not thinking straight and i don’t remember how to calm down because everything i’m doing isn’t helping. i’ll try a different song, hell, an audiobook, deep breaths, god, i hate the feeling of coming down,

“i am incapable of being inhuman,”

why do i do this to myself again? its not unlike you to shit talk me backstage, and i’m sorry no one told you, (i thought someone would,) and its not unlike you to think everything is about you,

“i am living uncontrollably,”

(i watch your hair fall all over your face and i’ll look away and i’ll swear to never think about you like that again) and you’ll think that secret’s about you but its fucking not. i don’t think about you as much as you think i do.

(i’m lying to you and i’m lying to me,)

you, of all people, should understand, right? you should see through this, but you fucking don't.

lost cause

i mean it when i say i truly am a dead end. i don’t deserve the money and energy and relationships i destroy trying to get better. i’m doing everything i can. i do the talk therapy, i take my meds and supplements, i eat the right food, talk to my friends, go for walks, sit in front of sun lamps and tell myself i’m a good person yet i’m still fucking sad. my therapist says that really all i can do is find the right meds. vincent says my therapist is shit. he doesn’t get it. there’s nothing i need to talk through, i’ve written my way out of all my problems except this.

at some point, you’ve got to swallow your pills and accept that this is as good as its ever going to get.

but i can’t help but whine, “it’s not fair!” that everyone else can talk their way out of things and i’m left stuttering and desperate sputtering out sophisticated words in a pathetic attempt to get my point across.

but i can’t help but wonder if killing myself isn’t a bad option. i mean seriously, what else is there left for me? what’s the point of this shit if i’m just going to be a shaky grey line, a greasy 6B pencil held at a 170° angle, down a newsprint pad held in your non dominant hand, shaking because you haven’t eaten in a day or so and its starting to show.

and sometimes i wonder if tonight is the night. but it never is. but sometimes i wonder if i’ll man up enough to do it.

double mastectomy

i don’t think i’d fight it. what’s the point. why prolong the inevitable?

i don’t think i’d fight it. the worst part is i feel jealousy. how does it feel to have a reason? a chance to feel at home in your dying body? why couldn’t it have been me? i’ve dreamt about this for years and someone who is unwelcoming, undeserving, beats me to it.

and the comedic timing, god, i’m rolling on the floor, hysterically laughing (out of my mind,) it only proves that this is a

Sick Fucking Game

they’re playing on me. couldn’t even make it four months. i’m not sad, i’m upset, i don’t give a shit about her. but there are people this affects. maybe it happened by complete random happenstance, things like this happen everyday. just happened to us again. sometimes i feel completely out of my body. i go to scratch my nose and i can’t feel my hands against my face. the ground under my face. the movements i make are not mine, the words i speak are not mine, my vision sits at the back of my head and i don’t remember anything at all,

do you think she remembers?

all eight minutes and forty one seconds pumped out in waves on a frequency, data transmissions indecipherable to me.

what do you think she’s told her kids? that this means certain death? what happened to aunt jenny is what’s going to happen to me? do you think she’s scared? terrified? what has her life been like? would she fight it?

a double mastectomy,

would she welcome it like i’ve been yearning for years?

she’s dying. and i’m selfish enough to wish it was me, even when i’ve seen arteries beating out of her neck, sickly yellow skin, incoherent strings of words, aging twenty years in a week. and another twenty in the next week. until she’s sixty years old, my final words are “see you tomorrow,” when i should know that tomorrow was never guaranteed.

but i never thought any of this would happen.

and now i’m hysterical(ly laughing) on the floor promising to never fight it.

“i like you,” revised. again.

“i like you.” i’m convincing myself i do. “i like you. i like you. i like you. can we hold hands? can we cuddle? i’m just joking, haha i’m so funny.” i’m so funny. its clear you see us as nothing more than friends. its clear you see what i doing. we’ve talked about attraction. sexuality. the rest of our lives. i’ve even dropped the big L word, yeah, the big L-O-V-E, i know. a feeling that goes away just as quick as it came on. shit, someday, i’ll probably find myself with a wife and kids, look around, and think, “god, what have i done?” i’ve told the neutral ai robot friend about this. and he remained neutral. i could never do anything about this, but let myself grow up, grow out, grow on.

“i like you,” but it hangs heavy in this god forsaken car. air is dense walls close in my mind goes blank i don’t know how to save this-

“i like you, but,” but? dipshit. “i wouldn’t drive you home if i wasn’t sober.” i really hope its the weed making me feel dumb. i’m sober enough to drive, right?

as he sits in the passenger seat, he almost leans in and i almost put my arms around him, but i follow his eyes to the backseat, he was just grabbing his backpack. i look away as he stands up to get out. he says his goodbyes, starts walking away, but quickly turns and comes back.

“i love you,” he says quickly. “no homo. because it wouldn’t be complete if i didn’t say no homo, right?”

right. cuz we totally needed to clarify that. we’re all just a bunch of mosaics from past lives/friends/lovers. he shuts the door again and walks off for real this time. running up that hill starts playing, and my god, that is just sad. this car knows too much about what my love life has been through. the previous scene feels awfully familiar, the upcoming scene feels awfully similar, but i can change that. i skip the song. if i’m going to drive home at midnight, at least its not something that reminds me of terrible times.

“why do i care?” is the only thing that gets my mind off you when i catch a glimpse of anything that may relate to you at all. i know you’ll never text me but sometimes i hope you do, so i can respond with, “who’s this?” to show you i’m stronger than i was when i was fourteen, but i suppose i’m really not, considering i still write about you. i can turn anything into a conversation about you.

“i don’t feel at all like i thought” i looked again. i told myself i wouldn’t, but i had to unfollow you. i always send myself into a panic attack when i do. shaking, shivering, jaw clenched, disorganized thoughts. we are fucked up pen pals. we always meet at the worst times. we are the perfect ingredients for a beautiful shit storm.

i deleted my three thousand word essay about everything wrong with me, you, and the combination of the two. i am better than that.

writer to writer, poet to poet, i feel like you of all people should understand not everything i write is what it seems.

sorry i didn’t like your friends, i just didn’t like feeling so completely and hopelessly alone in a room full of people. come on up to the third floor of eastman hall. or don’t. i don’t care.

you’re a secret my peers don’t even know about. i mean sure, “i write on the side,” “i’m really more of a poet than an artist,” and all that jazz, but they don’t know shit about this. i like anonymity. nameless title cards. clipped out faces, blurred hands, and trailing frames. unfinished indesign files laying around my hard drive. the art of dragging things out for as long and as long and as long as i possibly can. i can break my work up into shows. but poetry doesn’t work like visual art galleries unless i give it visuals. and i try, all i’ve got are half finished sketchbook pages and notes crawling with ballpoint pen ink. and this isn’t even poetry, god, its just writing.

i think i’ve found my passion or some shit, less terrified for the future but still willing to let someone discover my cold body hanging by a rope. i’d be perfectly happy being an artist for the rest of my life but god, i don’t want to deal with the uncomfortable parts of life. i want words to flow from me not like they are, i want beauty dripping from my fingertips and i want people to like it. i want a fucking pat on the back. i want a hug. i want to be comforted, to be loved, which leads me back to why i do all this shit anyway. but it sounds pathetic,

Artist’s Statement:

I create art as a means to express my longing for emotional intimacy and desire to feel cared for. In “Seventeen” I depict my journey getting over a breakup that happened forever ago but please keep reading, there’s so much more you just don’t understand, i can give you receipts, quotes, i want you to feel what i feel, i want you to know that i— but i— i hope that you’re—

so i don’t know where these sentences were going or what the point is. the only reason i didn’t kill myself was because i wanted to graduate on time. well shit, i’ve got six weeks before i can officially fuck my entire life up. but i’m happy, right? i take long drives because the sunshine leaves a gentle smile on my face, not because i’m desperately searching for a distraction or a reason to keep going.

i don’t think i’ll ever find another person like you. i hate to quote that song that’s like “you’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you,” cuz fuck, that’s exactly what i’m trying to say. kicking, fighting, biting with the brick wall with absolutely clue i’m even here. well, it does, its fucking ignorant as shit. but that brick wall “loved” me, right? it “loved” me. it made me feel “loved” or whatever chemicals come with that. and that’s what i want again. he’ll take you in and make you think you can stop taking your antidepressants and then he’ll absolutely fuck your life over. and he just. gets away with it. and it comes out in all the worst ways possible. can you tell i’m resentful? its because i love dragging things out but i try to blame it on a desire to be an artist. some shit i’m not even good at.

this was supposed to end forever ago. but you don’t even remember. was there a point? was there a reason? no. you wanted to be beautiful and this is what you got.