Eighth Square Curtsey

Down To Size

“Weep Little Lion Man,

You’re not as brave as you were at the start.

Rate yourself and rake yourself,

Take all of the courage you have left

Wasted on fixing all the problems

You made in your own head.”

-Mumford and Sons

And so suddenly, I am kicking the hay around the cage. Pacing from bar to bar, and counting the pulses in my hands before the words in my mouth. Shrunken by the world I stitched together too quickly in bulk, impulse, and fear. Trembling at the motive to flap a wing even if it’s the top of the mere inches that are containing me.

Sometimes I talk with the world. Their cackling cries or matter of factness make me wonder where their daddies are now. Is he walking across the yard with sweat etched in his brow and dirt under his fingernails? Does he sleep alone? Is he in the background of any of their pictures? Or, is he a robot? You search his face for years and still see the stranger that pushes his way through a closing train door. As he paces the floor in his shiny shoes and ironed suit, he would stumble at the thought of tenderness. Forgotten so far that they never knew if he tossed and turned at night at his love for them.

It makes the soft spots in my heart fall through the floor. It catches the wind that soars to my chest. It makes the hope of keeping my birthright instinct leak through my eyes until it’s dabbled across my shirt.

And so suddenly there are shadows in the valley. Left lifeless behind every step of mine, I wander in rotation amongst the abandoned. As the hours pass, the silence lifts, and I have found myself in a vastness of what could’ve been. I’ve forgotten the sound of the wind, the beating heart in the trees, and the crunch beneath my feet. Yet the words in my head scream so loud that I don’t know how long it’s been since there’s been one to my ear.

Sometimes I talk to the sky. He says he can’t see much as billowing smoke hangs from the corner of his eyes, but that there’s too much to see. Too many cracks in too many great walls, too many windows watching too many people, too many lights illuminating too small a space, and too many miracles taking birth upon too many underdogs. But, he also says, that I have too little strength in my two little legs, too little hunger for an apple too big, and too many clouds blocking too much of the way. 

It makes me wonder if I should start running now until I find out where too. It catches my fist that falls too far down to the ground. It turns my vision inside out until what is in front of me matches the fantasies that have brewed in my mind for far too long.

And so suddenly, it is already so far past midday that I remember I saw the sun rise this morning. I am recovering my routine with a toothbrush in my mouth as I stare into two eyes that haven’t found a reason to be open yet. I look around my apartment searching for something disgusting enough to give me a reason to shower as it’s the only bacterial contact I’ve made in days. I spot evidence of a beautiful day peering through the blinds, and realizing that I have no premeditated reason to enjoy it. That in some sick way, I am only able to participate if I anticipate it long enough beforehand.

Sometimes I talk to my dog. He cocks his head to the side as my pitch raises, and once it cannot soar any higher, he has at least attempted to leap into my arms. He flops to fall over and sleeps longer then he’s awake. He furiously runs in circles over and over, and I feel like I’ve failed him for not giving him a space far enough to run in a straight line. He searches around the room for something to chase, and never gives up even if he has to wait a half an hour before he spots the fly against the white wall. In some ways, I feel like he is the only friend I truly have.

It makes me pace in circles wondering how I used to think there were not enough hours in the day. It catches the danger that I was so excited to meet, in a delicate net for another to take my place. It reduces me down to size, until I have found contentment in the small world I have created and traded for the one I once inhabited.

Oh Me, Oh Miley!

Little Red Miley Hood: And The Tragedy of Max Azria


Once upon a time, in a card board box on the out skirts out Nashville lived a very démodé girl named Miley Cyrus. Her teeth were so very large that she often lost her balance while standing atop of her horrible Dock Martins, whom she borrowed from Britney Spears at the abortion clinic when avoiding K. Fed numbero tres. Anyways, one day after finding fragments of a trash bag to match her Faded Glory cut off’s, her father staggered out from a nearby rubble of Pat’s Blue Ribbon’s.  “MIY-LAY!” exclaimed Billy Ray,”NASA cawled and the’re gonna need ta’ borrow yer forehead as a landing dock fer sum spaceship. Awlso, today’s yer Party n’ Amerca video shoot!”
“But Daddy,” said Miley, “Haven’t you heard? The Civil War is over! Nobody’s interested in white trash anymore! I know a girl who actually had a baby outside of her bloodline, can you imagine?! How am I supposed to win over the nation with my multiple personality disorder and lack of intelligence?”
    Billie Ray, who couldn’t keep his eyes open at this point due to the excess Pat’s, let out a sigh. “Miy-lay, if Reba Mcentire can convince tha’ world that he’s a woman, you can brang back the white trash nation. You know why, Mil-lay?”
“Why Dad?”
“BECUS ITS AMURCAN!”
    After watching her father protrude an entire tin of chew and explain the triumphs of incest and cow tipping, Miley was convinced to do the video and set off on her adventure.
    Miley felt very much in her element while walking to the video shoot. The paths were lined with broken fishing lines and used condoms (she was one of the few girls in her backwoods to have been educated of what a condom was used for. Birth control was a mystery until Britney told her about her younger sister). While Miley reminisced of her Nazi Power days back at Disney, she was startled by a noise. She looked all the way around her buck teeth to discover a lone Wolf shuddering behind his thick rimmed glasses.
“Excuse me, my name is Max Azria and I’m completely lost. Lagerfeld told me that this is where Tom Ford lives, do you know where that is?”
Miley was struck with discovery. She had never heard of this Tom Ford man, but she wondered if he looked as interesting as this Max Azria. With her mouth wide open, her eyes traced the silhouette of his solid black blazer. This appeal was like nothing she had ever felt before. This was not a matter of wondering which one of her relatives double wide’s she was waking up too, this was so much more then that. She was both intrigued and ecstatic at his splendorous clothes.
“Gee, I don’t know sir but your clothes sure are…interesting”
“Oh this old thing?” he said. “I just threw it on with this fabulous sapphire collared button up.”
“Sapphire? So you’re blue collared too?!”
Before poor Max could respond, she grabbed him by the hand and pulled him farther and farther up the pathway until they reached Miley’s favorite department store called Wal-Mart. She rushed inside to the manager with Max at her overweight fingers, dragging him past the barefoot customers.
“Hi there! My friend Max here designs clothes and is looking for one of your employee’s named Tom Ford, is he here?”
The manager lifted up his netted Dixie Pride hat and grumbled at her “Ford? Ya say, Ford? Look out front baby girl, there are about twenty parked Ford’s that your friend could talk to.”
Max, who quickly realized that he was going to be subjected to this pathetic doom until Lagerfeld called the National Guard to rescue him thought of how he could pass time. As he looked around, he became terrified with every corner that he passed. A rack full of grammatically incorrect labeled shorts spelled out things like “Shake it, Sis!” and “Don’t ASS Me!” almost made him faint with sickness. Having feeling faint, he thought he could see a clearing of forest up ahead. Instinctively, he ran for it until about a yard away he jerked to a halt.
    For it was no clearing in the forest, it was the camo covering the beer guts of seven “Santa-Claus-meets-lack-of-civilization-and-ABC-store”ish men. As he began to retreat, one of them stepped forward.
“Son, immawl need to ast you some questions.”
(Ast: To interrogate or inquire, as when a revenue agent seeks information about illegal moonshine stills. “Don’t ast me so many questions, it makes me mad.”)
Max cowered in his Valentino flats. “Yes?”
“Why you look so differnt?”
“All the better to umm… “
All of a sudden, the rank stench of Miley came soaring to his freshly plucked nostrils.
“MAX! Guess what? The manager says that in order to pay him back for the herpes I gave him last week, we can make clothes for him! Isn’t that great?”
Under the glow of the flickering banged up lights, he cried until he agreed to design clothes with Miley. And Miley eventually went to her video shoot and shook her barely covered bottom while her dad wept because it was AMERCUN.
THE END!

April 4th, 2010: Yep, I Finally For Lack Of Better Words “Grew A Pair”

Goddammit, I just must be such a horrible person. Excuse me that my guilt caught up to me. You know what it was? It was when I was sitting in my closet, just bawling my eyes out because I’m so fucking lost now because of how much you’ve made me question my worth. And then it hit me, I was just like “that could be Micah in a year.” If you think for one glimmering second I’d feel bad about exposing you, then you can’t imagine the guilt I’d feel knowing that I could’ve prevented a girl going through the same sick fucking twisted emotions that I’ve had to live through for the past year and a half. And so, I betrayed you? Completely severed your trust? Well Josh, could you even possible fathom how fucking unbearable it’s been for me to hide all of your dirty little secrets all this time? Not secrets in your past, not wrong doings you’ve commited to yourself, but situations where you could’ve been potentially breaking someone else’s heart, while leaving me  feel like I’d be responsible if the truth ever came out.

And you know what the most fucked up thing for me is? How acceptable you were of me being your side-line girl. You knew I’d eat the shit right out of your palms, and you fed it to me every fucking day until I was sick. To say you abused my love is a complete understatement, you abused every moral and reason of logic until the only meaning my life had come to was to appease you. And you can ask me, “how the fuck can you say that?” I can say it like this, Josh. The only reason you ever made room for me in your life was to get what you wanted. Crash at my house whenever you wanted to, get laid whenever you wanted to, have someone beg to talk to you, buy you shit, go out with you, and just give you a goddamn good time, while hiding it from the world. Do you have any idea how shitty it is being convinced that someone adores you, but not enough to tell anyone? How the fuck could you have ever been ashamed of someone who was as good to you as I was? And you lied to everyone, your friends, your girlfriend, your parents, while you threw me in a corner with tape over my mouth while you basked in all of your social and fucked up glory.

And I did all of this, for one goddamn reason Josh, because I loved you. Because some undeveloped part of my brain was living in a fantasy world that all of my efforts would one day be appreciated. But for the first and only time in a year and a half, that part of me has grown strong enough to see that you were never good enough for me. You aren’t good enough for anyone I know. Not Micah, not me, or any person for that matter. You know why? Because every person I associate myself with possess’s the one quality you dont; love. In order to recieve love, you have to give it, and the only person you ever loved was yourself. You did everything in your fucking power to sustain your love for yourself. Whether it leading me on for months at a time to ditch me for a new shiny toy that you’d cheat on with me, lying to your friends and everyone about what you were really doing, and having the audacity to make me believe I ever meant anything to you, the only person you’ve ever been loyal to in your entire life is yourself. I was the generator in your selfish fucked up social machine, and I’m done with it. It wasn’t even that you ever felt guilty about doing it, you were only ever guilty about getting caught. You’re days of playing everyone against each other for your sexual and social gain are completely over as long as I can help it.

I hope you spend your life living as uneffected by the emotion’s of others as you always have, and I hope the world gives you the same in return. You’re are the only person I could ever wish that on, because you are the only person selfish enough to deserve it. So go hire a fucking whore if you don’t want to give a girl the respect she deserves, and I can promise you one thing, you never deserved me and you never will.

March 9th, 2010: When I Wake

Yes the clock is ticking, and yes I’m wasting time
Yes I’m visiting all the thoughts you thought you left behind
But you sank beneath my hands like quick sand in the sea
And the waves have now become what is rectified in me

When winter came I thought you’d hold your ground
Stick with the guns you left me for by the time that I was found
But you shot well and you shot hard when you shot me to the floor
I am wounded, but I am aching for so much more

I know I speak in riddles to save me from my tongue
To convince myself that you’re not lost, you’re just ignorant and young
And when sleep falls, you’re my favorite kind of fake
So the truth is that I miss you when I wake

I guess you could say that my reaction time has distilled
Washed out with the doubt that you have filled
And cliff hanger intentions that end with much detest
Another tally in the margin of when you beat me at my best

No we are not animals, I am not the killing kind
To leave what I know for the flesh that I may find
And my heart beats harder then the hunger in my eyes
Cause there was more to this meaning then the element of size

I know I speak in riddles to save me from my tongue
To convince myself that you’re not lost, you’re just ignorant and young
And when sleep falls, you’re kisses make me bruise until I ache
And how it hurts how I miss you when I wake

It’s not the first time that the lion left the den
And it’s not the last time that I’ll be a human again
These vultures have left me starving for a purpose to believe
That maybe you’re not so young and naive

Yes the clock is ticking and yes I’m wasting time
I’m visiting all the thoughts you thought you left behind
And I’m picking up the bones that make me brave as I can be
But you’re just too much of a creature for you and me

I know I speak in riddles to save me from my tongue
To convince myself that you’re more then the instincts you’re amoung
And when sleep falls, the beast dies with the same threshold you make
All I know is that I miss you when I wake

When sleep falls, I know that in the morning it’s a mistake
It’s still not enough to say I miss you when I wake

March 1, 2010: Anatomy.

Where the ridges of your back meets the mountains of your shoulders. Where the foot hills of your ankles entangle in the sheets. Where the sides of your stomach turn into the tips of your chest. Where the nape of your neck lays bare and bewildering. That’s where I belong.

February 21st, 2010: New Romantic

You stay unmoved, adding notch by notch the belt that I’ve buckled for you for so long. I’m irrational, I’m over dramatic, I’m too romantic, I’m tied up in the chaos I’ve longed to create. So you say. And you let the door close behind you, leaving me with the guilt I spilled down your throat. At least I could say I was happier knowing the morning would come, then laying there for nothing as the afternoon chased me out of bed.

And look at me now, I don’t want a part in it. I don’t want to investigate the ways they’ll give myself back to me, tattered and worn. Letting myself shed with every man who grows tired, until there’s nothing left to give. Wondering why anyone would give away the power I gave you. So I’ve grown, so I’ve isolated my thoughts just a little bit more from my feelings, but now I don’t feel much at all. I look at pairs and think about how he’ll tell her why she’s not enough. And how she’ll cry when she goes too far. And the world they built together will come crashing down, so they can renew their lives for the thousandth time.

This heart of mine isn’t going back on the shelf to be taken, and borrowed, and torn, and kept, and trashed. I don’t want to blame you for the cold shoulder I’ve given to what I used to believe, but I wouldn’t have a doubt unless I had you to prove. I don’t think of you anymore, I’d rather sleep alone. I’d rather be in the misery of the afternoon, then the lies the morning brought. In the numbness, I am safe from being pinned to the ground by a pulse beating out of control. I won’t be liable, I won’t trust, I will happily be hidden in my own loneliness then in the vulnerability you shred from room to room. We’re just creatures, and all we’ve got is ourselves. And I’m too scared to admit that I’m scared.

February 3rd, 2010. The Way Things Are Meant To Be.

And maybe it’s because I’ve had too much to drink. Too many Special Blends for my my lungs to take. Maybe it’s because I have a light as I place my fingers to the keypad. And maybe it’s because I’ve been surrounded by the most amazing set of people I could put into place.  But here it is, the calm after the storm. The blissful calm that surfs out beneath the waves of the sunlight. Here you are. After all the pieces I’ve been searching for, I found all of them in me. The better half of me is taking the whole of me by this rain cloud my life has been hiding beneath. I can feel the sun, and feel it the way it’s meant to be felt. That clarity comes lagging behind the depths of truth I’ve sheided before me. That this is my time. This is liberating. This is exciting. This is the way things are meant to be.

January 28th, 2010: No thoughts, just visions.

You tear me up more times then I can figure out. One minutes I’ll hate you, wanna throw your phone down to the ground and watch your face as it shatters. Leaving all your dirty laundry on the floor. I wanna forget every picture of every moment those lips weren’t mine. I wanna hit something, I wannna scream loud enough to make you hear me for the last time, I wannna cry so deeply that these tears can wash away the way things are. I’ve never been violent, but oh, how you corrupt me. With the slither of your hand down her spine, and it’s a time bomb in my head. Ticking to the sound of sanity. But there’s no where to shatter. No place the pieces can scatter soundly. And it’s inevitable. It seems as though each countdown kicks the clock the minute your hand meets mine. And from there we go, down we go to the depths of broken promises, we break like practice. Plunging farther with every move we said we’d never make again, every look that we said wouldn’t turn into a stare, and every feeling of contentness I promised myself didn’t come from you.

But they’re all right, we can’t do this. We run in the circles we cut out of the squares. We hold back until it hurts to wonder if the other one has let go.

But this is instinct, this isn’t wrong and right. This is the way your body looks like the back of my hand. These are the curves I ache for when there’s nothing beneath my fingertips. This is the way you look at me when I’ve said something predictable. This is your stupid stride, and our five minute alarms turning into months. This is what makes me tremble when I’ve walked away too soon. This is when I can’t reach to you because they might see, goddamn they’ll see. And what would they think of you if they knew the truth? What we we think of each other if we would see the truth for ourselves?

I’m selfish for you. And I’m running out white flags that always end up in the dust.

January 14th, 2010: Sick Riddance.

January 14th, 2010. 12:04 a.m.

So I guess everything is moving. After being put on hold for three days due to an endless sneeze and a migraine that could split ice, I’m back to “normal.” One of the bad things about being half dazed on Nyquil for three days is that the time you spend thinking is ten times above what is normally is, which is already too much. I’d like to blame it on the drugs and maybe a significant part of me can for playing red rover with thoughts. I’m just to the point where it always comes back to the same question.

WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE.

One half:

I want to be a girlfriend, his girlfriend. Hell, I could get married right now. I want to marry someone who will let me be as domestic as possible. I don’t want any direction in my life other then the one that will lead me to the person I’ll be spending the rest of my life with. Too many options, this is easy, reliable, and easy.

Other half:

I don’t want to give myself to anyone, ever. Setting yourself up for failure is in no way beautiful, no matter how well you sugar coat it. They’re all the same, they’re all idiots. They’re pigs before 30, and then afterwards they’re boring. I want to move to NYC. I want to make clothes. I want to be bigger then this town, and I want to stop talking and start doing. I want it now, I don’t want to wait. And I want to do it all alone.

One quarter:

I want to forget everything, and move to the middle of nowhere. I’m scared, deeply and truly to the bone. I don’t know what I want. New York is too big, there are no trees. I want to move in a small house surrounded by no one. I want to write until you can read every thought in my head in fine print. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I need to rehabilitate myself until I have a plan. I’m not the person I want to be, and I don’t know who that is. I just know that I’m unhappy, so unhappy, and every exit just leads me in circles. Before I know it, I’m back to the core, and I just can’t take it anymore. I wish my mom was normal, I wish my dad had never left, I wish I could focus, I wish I wasn’t selfish enough to respectably take care of my brother, I wish everything that happened two years ago never happened, I wish I wasn’t scared of driving, and goddamnit I wish there was something about me that made you want to keep me. I feel like I’m going to explode. There’s never a night that I don’t cringe with some form of regret. I’m sick of being scared for the next day and wondering if I’m going crazy. I don’t know what I want because whenever I think I know, it always lets me down.

I can’t trust my judgement. I can’t trust the plans I’ve made for my life. And I can’t trust that these problems are going to just vanish.

Now, where’s that damn bottle again?

January 10th, 2010: “Every heart is a revolutionary cell”

January 10th, 2010. 11:56 p.m.

Things are better, time is easier to pass by. It’s about not letting yourself think about it, and creating a new reality to come to terms with. I get lonely and I get cold, but I have friends and I have blankets. It’s just hard sorting through the pieces of yourself that broke in the breaking of something so much bigger.

I think about the summer. I think about the winter. I think about your big white car, and your little red bag. I think about the things I couldn’t change, and the things I have. And most importantly, I think about how nobody has ever made me feel that way.