My Whole Expanse I Cannot See…

So, it’s open mic again tomorrow, and I’m running out of old stuff to read. I want to write something new, something really worth reading, but I’m just kind of stuck lately. Sometimes the words are so easy, just so right there, and other times they’re just not. I’m a fellow in need of inspiration.

So, there’s this Nirvana song, Hairspray Queen, and my favorite line ended up being my twenty-seventh tattoo…

I don’t sleep easily. I have trouble turning off my head, I almost never feel content enough to just close my eyes and drift off. I’ve tried liquor to lull me, and meds to make things fade, but honest to Christ sleep is very rare to me. I don’t sleep, I have only the dark to keep me company more often than not. I stay up, sometimes until the night starts to go from black, to grey, to blue. I stay up, and think about so much.

At night, I always feel things that I want so badly, things that the day can drown out. Most nights, I just want a particular someone asleep next to me, asleep with my arm around her. When she’s close I don’t feel lonely, night is actually peaceful. Loneliness is the feeding I hate most, loneliness is all that scares me anymore. Loneliness is why some nights I’ve felt like opening my wrists just to make it stop. At night, what I want is so clear, and the wanting is so intense, whether it’s something beautiful, or… not.

Tattoo by Colt, hardcore fuckin' badass at Doc Dog's Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

“At night, wish the hardest…” It’s so true, at least to me.

I have to say that Negative Creep is probably the most fun song to sing when in a dark mood. The words are garbled, Kurt’s pretty much just screaming into the mic, it doesn’t really tell a story, but it’s just so full of raw energy. I like to sit here sometimes, screaming with Kurt, and sometimes I still expect to feel air move past my lips and hear the voice I hear in my head.

So, a few months back, I had a poem published in an issue of Weird Tales Magazine, and I wrote it a few months before that.  I got the idea in my head listening to a Nirvana song, Stain. I was feeling especially lonely, especially empty, and the song just sounded so right. I felt like a stain, something awful. I wanted to take the word “stain” as a metaphor and make it something more literal. I wanted to write about how being close to someone can end up causing so much pain, how it can cost a person everything. I wanted to write something beautiful, and dark, and brutal, all at once. So, I went out, had couple of vodka tonics, and wrote what I wrote. It’s just a quick little piece about a woman who seems beautiful, and this fellow, and an encounter that ends very badly. I wrote that, and it got published.

I often still feel the way I felt when I wrote You’re a Stain, and it’s the first thing I’ve ever had published in print, and I love the song…

Tattoo by Colt, hardcore fuckin' badass at Doc Dog's Las Vegas Tattoo, Ybor City

Hence tattoo #26.

Aside from love of the craft, I write to be known, and to make honest connections with people, that’s why I started this blog. Nobody has to read what I write, or like it, or even like me, but the writing’s always out there. Lately though, I’ve been really down on my writing, just hating every single fucking word I slam down. Which isn’t really right. I love writing, and I know there are some people who like what I write, sometimes it even helps people. The problem, a problem, is that I just hate how I feel. Lonely, bored, depressed, uneasy, functionally suicidal, afraid, it’s all me, and it all shows up in whatever I write.

For awhile now, I’ve been very self-conscious about showing these things in writing. It’s very easy to write wide open when you feel like you have absolutely nothing to lose, it’s so easy. Palahniuk writes about it, there’s a certain sort of freedom in losing all hope. It’s a horrible freedom, the sort of freedom where slitting your wrists seems like a fuckin’ awesome idea, but as a writer I could feel that feeling, write it into something, and not worry that someone I love will read it and maybe stop loving me back. You don’t have to worry about someone to lose, when there is no someone. When there is someone, honest writing gets complicated, at least to me. The thing is, and it’s something I almost forgot, if I want to feel genuine closeness to someone, I can’t stop being honest. I want the freedom found in honesty, not hopelessness. I can’t stuff things in a box, and stick that box in the attic, and expect to feel close to someone.

My writing has been the one place where I don’t hide things. I’m the sort of writer who bleeds out in words, that’s how I write. Even when I write fiction, I’m still in there somewhere. People write differently, for different reasons. I write descriptions of whatever’s in my head, dark or otherwise, because I don’t want to fade out feeling like no one ever really knew me because I never let anyone in. I’m not perfect, and I write about those imperfections. I want someone to love me, imperfections and all. I want to be worth it to someone. I’ll never find that if I’m locking things away.

So, I’ve decided that I should go away awhile. I won’t be Tweeting, or IMing, or Facebooking, it’s all stopped. I’ll still answer e-mail, and blog comments, and I’m going to try writing more, but all other digital communication is ceased. I really don’t know how long this will last, I suppose until I figure some things out.

So, last night was another open mic night at Cafe Bohemia. I, for whatever reason, picked out many of my more obscure pieces…

Drowned kittens

Happy and Sad

I wonder

Your daily suicides

You’re all

And he made a whisper out of you…

One passing dusk

Waking up someone who isn’t me

Let you in

I think people liked them, but I’m not sure. Listening to Jimmy (my open mic voice) read, I just started thinking about how so fucking weird I am. Then I started thinking about someone close to me, and wondering how all my weird looks in her eyes.

I want to let you in, to hand you the key to me.

I want you to see all my locked rooms, the lonely places people never see. They’re all dark, dusty, full of hidden things. I want to show you the rooms that keep my secrets, my fears, the dreams too stupid to show anyone else.

I’ve locked so many rooms, guided people away from the things I don’t trust to anyone. The things I didn’t trust to anyone, until you showed up one day.

I want you to see everything, to know everything and maybe stay awhile. I want you to stay, though I want most people to go.

I want to let you in, to hand you the key to me. It’s scary wanting something so much, scary to feel so much trust. You might not take the key, you might not like what you find inside. You might say, “Goodbye, nice try.” So much I don’t know, but I want to let you in.

Last night was my very first open mic night. There’s this little cafe in down-town St. Petersburg, Cafe Bohemia, and every Thursday night is open mic night. They have a stage set up in this really pretty outdoor courtyard for poets and musicians to do their thing under the starry night sky. I found out about it totally by accident, but it was exactly the sort of thing I’d been wanting to find for so long, a place for creative types to just put there stuff out there for a live audience. Applause are different than blog comments. A silent audience says more than a post with no comments at all. So, there was one other writer, Jimmy, and a bunch of musicians, generally really good musicians. I picked out seven pieces of my flash fiction/poetry…

Suicide Party

Golems

Brown eyes, and a kiss

A beautiful fix

For her

The push

A nothing of a prayer

I just needed a voice for my words. Jimmy, being a writer and all, with his own poems to read later, he let me borrow his voice. He read my stuff well, and the audience responded the same. I got decent applause for each. I heard one fellow say of Golems, “That was was haunting.” It felt good to put my stuff right in front of people, scary and exciting, all at once. Some musicians played next, then Jimmy read his stuff, then more musicians played.   The place had such a good vibe, people having a really great time. I showed off some writing. Some friends were there, I talked to them. I met some new people. I stayed to close the place, and went home to nothing but my thoughts.

So, I’m going for my usual fresh trache. I’d like to write something compelling, or beautiful, or both, but I’m tired. If I go down, I’ll go down with things unsaid, unfinished, not done. Odds are, this won’t happen, I’ll come back to write more and do more, so I’m not particularly worried.

Things I have yet to write:

Tattoo #26: Stain

Tattoo #27: At night, wish the hardest

Tattoo #28: A black balloon

Stuff about a girl

An unfinished short story

Lots and lots of other thoughts…

If anything really spectacular comes to mind, I’ll have my computer while I’m waiting to visit the O.R.