1:42 a.m.

i'm finally in the driveway.

it's not even my driveway --- at least not the kind of driveway i wish i had, what with its little dumpster and discarded charcoal and lighter fluid by the fence. tomorrow morning i will come out and a grill and a bicycle will have been added to the pile. two nights ago there was a vacuum cleaner, but that was gone by the next morning. hand-me-down trash --- what a concept.

this is later than i've stayed up in weeks, maybe months, and it feels so right. i belong in this part of the day after the sun has long disappeared and the heat has been banished, replaced with cool winds full of memory.

__________

my blood runs quickly as we bid, i am bold and nervous both. i can get it just right, i can dominate, i can win.

__________

Only With Laughter Can You Win --- i think i own this album. is it the lavender disc with the tall white lettering? the one with "pretty dress"? i can't remember. music has been lost to me for its former purpose in my life for awhile now. no more desperate nights, no more clutching at lyrics. no more feeling like the only thing that can save me is this song, these words, walking at night like this, an untouchable, vulnerable mess.

despite myself, i miss those days.
art came first; self came next.
art was self; no separation.
it might have been my downfall.

__________

rumour has it the rumours are false --- who knows what to believe anymore?

__________

every human being deserves respect and maybe even some friendliness. i will give this respect and moderate friendliness to every person. but there are people who i want to respect, people i cannot help but admire. when those in authority over me are not these people, i find myself split in two, double-faced, folded in to hide the seam between What I Am and What I Must Do. life as part of a big machine is no life at all, no life that belongs to you at least. you do what you must by day and do what is right underneath, by the night of your soul, slinking around with armfuls of compassion and know-how, while up above, in the daytime that they see, you are robotic and slightly dull.

don't stick out --- don't draw attention, even with your outstanding unique self. it is important that we are all the same, convey the same message: Machine good. Machine goes like this. I go like this, like machine. I good.

__________

and yet i am a whole person, a whole woman, containing multitudes (i never did like whitman, but he may have been right about this). i am also broken and missing, both kinds of missing: missing from this world and missing the world i wish was.

it doesn't make any sense --- but that's only a rumor, and we all know what to think about that.

__________

until tomorrow, then.
wait,
it is already tomorrow.
it is already tomorrow and today in the same moment.





until.