A brief justification for the ontological necessity of modern man’s existential dilemma (Also: I’m dumb) 

I used to talk a lot,
but I tend to let wine and cigarettes speak for me nowadays
and the words I write down lose everything I put into them when they’re read aloud
and it’s strange, looking at your face in the mirror
remembering things
imagining things
and it’s strange, learning how to feel comfortable in your own skin again 
because the only thing harder than loving someone else is loving yourself
and no one teaches you how to do either at the start of it all
and every fucking day it becomes less of a game of pinball and more like making breakfast
you know what you need to do, what you have to do,
for you
and for him
there is routine and structure and a set outcome
instead of flailing around aiming for something without knowing why -
pushing buttons and leaving things to chance.
Some things work out because of reasons.
Some things don’t work out because of the same reasons.

There are no words to describe how it feels when you can’t fucking itch that scratch
for the dialogue you have with yourself alone in your bed trying to convince yourself that everything you’ve ever done hasn’t been a waste
that your body isn’t made up of the same decaying organic matter as everything else because you are made of dead stars and there’s something gorgeous and horrifying about that.
When you die, 
                      nothing happens.
When you live,
                       a lot of nothing happens,
but there are a lot of somethings that make the nothings worth something.
No one had the fucking nerve to tell me that,
so I made it up to give me something else to believe in besides butchered religion and pseudo-science
it’s not all about hypotheses and proving something to yourself
                                                   proving something is right
                                               or proving something is wrong
                              it’s about the proof itself
that it exists somewhere in your words
and in your wheezes
in the warmth of a cheek despite how cold you are inside and outside
in not knowing how to live
in not knowing how to live, but trying to
in not knowing how to try,
but making yourself get out of bed in the morning and putting your face on because no one knows what to do when you keep smiles and scowls in your pockets

and my pockets hold cigarettes
                          and lighters
                          and my face
and the things that make me talk to you when I don’t have anything to say,
but I’ll keep telling you about how my fingers hurt from trying to make music
and how the music goes to places where no one listens
and how the voices get sucked into a vacuum 
and how I am the vacuum that swallows myself 
and how there is no place that exists where you can escape yourself
and how my body is constantly doing things that I don’t fucking understand 
and how there are marks that never fade 
and how there are so many things to tell you
and how there are so many things I can never tell you
and how there are so many ways I can’t love you 

                                                                         
                                                                          but some ways I can.

What happens if you fall in love with a writer? 

karenfelloutofbedagain:

Lots of things might happen. That’s the thing about writers. They’re unpredictable. They might bring you eggs in bed for breakfast, or they might all but ignore you for days. They might bring you eggs in bed at three in the morning. Or they might wake you up for sex at three in the morning. Or make love at four in the afternoon. They might not sleep at all. Or they might sleep right through the alarm and forget to get you up for work. Or call you home from work to kill a spider. Or refuse to speak to you after finding out you’ve never seen To Kill A Mockingbird. Or spend the last of the rent money on five kinds of soap. Or sell your textbooks for cash halfway through the semester. Or leave you love notes in your pockets. Or wash you pants with Post-It notes in the pockets so your laundry comes out covered in bits of wet paper. They might cry if the Post-It notes are unread all over your pants. It’s an unpredictable life.

But what happens if a writer falls in love with you?

This is a little more predictable. You will find your hemp necklace with the glass mushroom pendant around the neck of someone at a bus stop in a short story. Your favorite shoes will mysteriously disappear, and show up in a poem. The watch you always wear, the watch you own but never wear, the fact that you’ve never worn a watch: they suddenly belong to characters you’ve never known. And yet they’re you. They’re not you; they’re someone else entirely, but they toss their hair like you. They use the same colloquialisms as you. They scratch their nose when they lie like you. Sometimes they will be narrators; sometimes protagonists, sometimes villains. Sometimes they will be nobodies, an unimportant, static prop. This might amuse you at first. Or confuse you. You might be bewildered when books turn into mirrors. You might try to see yourself how your beloved writer sees you when you read a poem about someone who has your middle name or prose about someone who has never seen To Kill A Mockingbird. These poems and novels and short stories, they will scatter into the wind. You will wonder if you’re wandering through the pages of some story you’ve never even read. There’s no way to know. And no way to erase it. Even if you leave, a part of you will always be left behind.

If a writer falls in love with you, you can never die.

orientaltiger: Love Letter from Johnny Cash to June Carter

orientaltiger: hijackyourlife

When people say nice things about my writing 

For example: “I think it’s chaotic and beautiful, and honest, and absolutely wonderful, and makes me feel so much.”

I love you people. For reals. 

It’s 4am  

Naturally, I am not sleeping, so I’m reading Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Murakami and… well. I feel significantly less accomplished as a poet/writer reading his short stories. I can’t decide if this is happening because Murakami is just a fucking genius or because I’ve been so uninspired lately and my writing just feels redundant, or it sounds like I’m trying to be Richard Siken (let’s be real, I probably am because I think his poetry is so quality). I don’t even know. I think I just need to make a shift in my writing style. It feels stale right now. I don’t know how else to put it. Buuuuuuut if anyone would like to read/critique/give me feedback on any of my pieces, I would really appreciate it. Here’s my dA page, if anyone is remotely interested (okay, you probably aren’t but I’m just throwing this out there because there’s not much harm in trying, is there?): http://crookedthoughts.deviantart.com/