Possession

To D, When It Is Cold Outside

In the night I am an oven;
I preheat until I bake.
And in the morning,
when your skin is crispy,
I know it’s time to eat.

I Am Virginia. I Am Validated.

Yes, I have been going through some unfortunate issues lately. They always come along in a big bundle like property rights. It is good, then, that things have settled in my favor, as they do. My only complaint is this that every time, every single time, I have gotten the same response from friends and enemies alike. I have been told that I am a good person, and that good people always end up...well...good. What is this Good? I am not good. I am not of the Discovery Health Channel minions who can find beauty and joy even after suffering a horribly disfiguring disease. I cannot adopt a child of my own race, let alone of another, and love him as I do my own. I will laugh at you and talk behind your back. Regardless of whether I am right or wrong, I will tailor my arguments just so in order to win them by the widest margin possible. I am often sad, angry, superior, aloof. I pick my nose and flick it out the window, preferably at somebody. To be sure, I am not bad either. Still, I do not know this Good. And I am not so sure I would like it if I did.

On My Way Back Home

The path from our nation's capital is riddled with stops. Not the typical ones, though, as we've tried to avoid those, but the ones that tell us about Joe Sweeney's banjo, Walton's Mountain and the Virginia Prison Farm recordings of 1936. The real stuff. Sure there's Appomattox and the Blue Ridge Parkway, whose suicidal turkeys cause much laughter, yet there's also the Carter Fold off The Crooked Road. There's Jonesborough Tennessee, the Lost Sea and McCaysville Georgia. There's the downtowns of Asheville North Carolina; Richmond, Bristol and Lynchburg Virginia; Auburn, Montgomery and Monroeville Alabama. There's great food and views in Rabun County Georgia with nary a squealing pig or a dueling banjo in sight. There's mountains and lakes and creeks and trees and really nice people.

There's so much more.

Just get off the damn interstate.

Stuff I Didn't Write

See the dwarves and see the giants. Which one would you choose to be?

I'm freezing like a 30 Century Man. Again with the Disney reference, but he is safe and buried somewhere in California. NOT, as is commonly rumored, in a freezer - with his feet in the air and his head on the ground. Ewww...or is it Oooo?

Don't believe all that I say. Hell, I don't believe all that I say.

The termite eats the windowsill. And I'm determined to believe that if I lift the shade there will be more. I envision the Koi pond at that Chinese restaurant in Orlando. Nasty, slimey fish. I see the termites, but I don't see that thing hovering out of the corner of my eye. It is not there. IT IS NOT THERE. The wine will help me believe it. It'll slow me down, like the night I did 'shrooms and ate the tiny Kit Kat bar in six hours. You know what I'm talking about, little sister.

There are people I dislike in this world. You know who you are.

There are people I love. Like My Bloody Valentine. Loveless is eleven tracks of pure perfection (sorry if I'm repeating myself TOTW). Buy it if you know what's good for you. I'm listening to it now and it makes me want to...do things...with certain people. Again, you know who you are.

I laugh like a machine gun.

This is how I feel at this moment.

If I walk down this hallway tonight it's too quiet, so I pad through the dark and call you on the phone. Push your old numbers and let your old house ring till I wake your ghost. I think last night you were driving circles around me.

There is dirt on your pants. Who made you crawl?

Crap. I'm not supposed to be saying all of this. Honestly, though, I'm amazed I can type at all. Oh well. Tell me what the saddest song in the world is.

About A Boy and A Girl

I can slice these grapes
tenderly, in two, like the
way you sliced my heart.

Wide Awake

This morning I woke up and he was still dead. Damn. Just when I get used to the idea I have to fall asleep and start all over again the next day. And the next. And the next.

Then one day I'll wake up not thinking about him much. Then one day I'll wake up not thinking about him at all.

Really I'm already not thinking about him much. It has been so long, in fact, that I'm beginning to wonder if he was real or just someone I made up. That, I think, makes me saddest of all. A real deep-down-achy sort of sad. One that comes very, very close to touching the place in us all where we question the point of things. Because I used to not be able to live without him, yet now I'm doing just fine.

Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow

I believe people still want to live like human beings. But there are a lot of things that could be done. I'm not against the automobile, but I just feel that you can design so that the automobile is there but still put people back as pedestrians again. I'd love to work on a project like that.
-Walter Elias Disney

Me too, Mr. Disney. Me too.

The Cuyahoga Falls Business Association Ball

As Mayoress Reputa (the Beauta) makes out the list for the upcoming Cuyahoga Falls Business Association Ball she wonders if she’s the only rational person in this town. In her opinion, there is not one denizen within a ten-mile radius born with all the right chemicals. She has always felt like this is one of those places inhabited by strange and intriguing characters one always reads about in books. But of course she knows that this place and these people are as real as the setting sun. Or even God, Himself.

Althaea Officinalis

Marshmallow candy was not invented in Cuyahoga Falls. It was also not, as insisted upon in a popular cruise along the Fowl River, invented in Mobile. I pant undeniably at the beauty of the marshmallow. Why do I love it so? Ah yes, it’s because they are good to me. They fill me with sticky sweetness.

What can I say to conjure up unusual facts and trivia? What is a usual minded person and why must he always exist among the red rose bushes? Can man truly succeed in the plethora of mindless activities he is forced to perform day after day? Is Lawrence Welk really dead? I had a cow once, has it been eaten?

In a dark corner of a dark restaurant sits the man who knows you well. He looks like everyone you’ve ever known. Looking the other way when it happened is the woman who is all things to all people. When they get together things are mentally devoured until only the skeletons of what once was remain.