the quarry

picnic

i could swarm here, buzz and flicker, your honey so electric it makes my screen glow.

death comes like a shot, a pinch and a scream, a sudden gushing and it all fades before my eyes. now i am useless, i'll think, my last thought.

no ache to be entered upon lightly.

commuting

the way -- every day -- the 1 and the 2 are sitting in the station already, so you must push your way through a throng of acending zombie-like inhumans, only to miss the trains by an instant, suffering mild humiliation as the doors mockingly bing-bong in your face, suddenly drenched with the kind of sweat only subterranean sprinting can produce, forced to face the resulting wait in a state of menopausal heat-flash hysteria... this i won't miss. routinely smelling piss, vomit, old garbage, horse shit, dog shit, unidentifiable shit, sewer steam, mysterious toxic puddles, and a variety of other stenches so foul they could make a clown kill children... this i won't miss. the same two paperboys from their competitive free-press establishments who daily fail to recognize me as the girl who just yesterday was all "i don't want a fucking paper!" as the train roared into the station two flights down, causing me to miss it due to their pointless, entry-clogging, ad-revenue-driven peddling... them, i won't miss. lecherous leering man, fuck you. ipod that can't play a song for 30 seconds in a row, fuck you. times square tourists, fuck you. swipe again at this turnstile, fuck you!

i'm really looking forward to my last day.

shying away

sometimes i hit up my drafts for ideas. there are a lot of them. drafts, i mean. there are a lot of ideas too but in a different way. it doesn't usually help.

i'm inspired but i can't commit. i'm a deaf mute in a phone booth. there's this one scene, this one song, again and again in my mind, so perfect, so moving, so utterly uncreatable. and you come along with your blanket statements and you think i'll just let go.

it's not like you can just count to three and then do it. you're not a child on a diving board. you're not at the public pool.

i have lost all sense of right, of true, of meant to be. i'm happy and i'm sad, i'm puffed up and sick and pounding, i'm a robber's rubber feet, plodding and dumb. i found inspiration where i least expected it. i wanted to be up there too.

there's so much i can't say now. i can't even say what that now means, or what it is to can't say. i'm reading these letters in the dark as my fingers pop along the keys, pixels lighting my face, circling me like wagons at a war, like a halo on a saint.

holding my horses

this is the first saturday i have spent in new york in six weeks. i've only been up for an hour and i have all these things to do, but already i'm feeling a nice weekend slowness about me. these things, they are not urgent, and they have two whole days in which to be accomplished. there is also always next weekend.

not that i wouldn't rather be at the cape. last weekend was so amazing and wonderful i hardly dare to ascribe words to it. we swam, we biked, we ate at my favorite restaurant, we rode the ferry out to martha's vineyard to stay with my two sugar daddies who spoil me rotten at all times. we sucked down fresh oysters. we saw fireworks. we napped in the sun on the beach. we got tossed around in the surf. we watched the tides come in and out and smelled the sweet salty air, and at night there were a million stars. the moon was new. we made a pact.

also, i decided to quit my job. life, i decided, was inherently good, was sadly short, and i wasn't going to spend another minute torturing myself just because it paid well. i will miss the money for sure, but i feel like i've claimed my life back. i can finally be myself again. maybe even sleep through the night.

now it's a waiting game. two more weeks? three? it doesn't matter. i have set myself free.

tonight

the lights are on tonight, and by the lights i mean the spears that head straight up into the sky, the points of rememberance. i recall, after all, the people jumping and the exploding and the crashing burning falling ending gall of it all. they died all at once and somehow this was worse. worse than what you knew, which was already bad.

i quit my job yesterday and i was elated and then sad and then elated some more. no one ever tells you that when you quit you earn respect. people love you for it. i'm a fucking goddess.

i don't love these people but i'll miss them all the same. my cat glances hungrily around the room, looking for mice that will never come. i'm having babies, i tell her. i'm having babies and they are named after you.

even in my fantasies, i don't wear tiny shorts, and i do not play the drums. we can dream this later and we can pretend it means nothing. on a whim. it will be flippant, and by that i mean it will be the best, better than what we set out for, which frankly wasn't ambitious to begin with, which frankly never suited me all the same.

i'm not out to make sense. i'm jealous and ecstatic and cold. i did not do drugs.