An open letter to 4:00am

Dear 4:00am,

This letter is being written to address my grave concern over your very existence. I tire greatly of your incessant need for me to be awake. The selfish and arrogant way in which you maintain your very presence is so offensive to the senses that it makes me want to retch. Though you may continue to exist I ask you most fervently to cease your consistent prodding and poking of me to enter and experience that existence with you. It is not necessary, nor is it wanted. In fact, no one, in the history of the world before or after the birth or death of any believed deity has ever or will ever want to join you in your heinous and ridiculous existence. You are a stain on the idea of time, a skid mark, left to remind us of terrible memories and rob us of precious life continuing rest and relaxation. There is nothing desirable about you, not the darkness, not the quiet, not the solitude. The putrid, rotting corpse that you call your “self” is in fact, nothing more than an unholy bag of dung that not even the beetle bearing the very name proclaiming love for such would dare walk upon you.

Even those who came into this world at the farce that you call an “hour” shower you with curses and insults. Echoes of their mother’s screams of pain and anguish are your only reward and they, brave souls, are proof indeed that great things can come from the tragedy that is you. If you were to vanish from the earth, we would not lose and hour, but rather, gain freedom from your odious actuality.

If this constant interruption and continued reminder of your universal habitation continue let me be frank, the consequences will be most uncomfortable and likely dire for you and all of your offending counterparts. For you, good sir, are a puss covered, maggot infested donkey bunghole and if you remain I will see to it that myself and all of my brethren will find you. When we find you we will tie you down, tar and feather you, and toss you into the nearest bog of eternal stench. There you will stay to worsen the smell and offend the senses and indeed the very being of those who dare to act as brazenly and abusively as you.

Sincerely,

The woman who wishes every type of torture and ill upon you. 

Sea Metaphors

I'm struggling right now. To deal with the realities of things that will never go away. No struggling in the way that I feel like drowning or like I can't deal, just struggling with the constant, persistent nature of situations and choices that i'm presented with. I want to write but my words don't seem sufficient to describe, but the reel of text that rolls through my brain all day begs to differ. I want to be relevant, witty. I want to be true to the events of my mundane and extraordinary and yet I am silent. Well, not now, but I was...am...whatever. Every morning is like jumping into an icy sea of fresh adventure, and dragging my body out at the end of the day I find my fingers pruned and the fresh awareness of morning replaced with the duty and regret of evening. If I could actually jump hurdles I might use that comparison but I feel like my complete lack of athleticism insults it, so we'll stick with blindly jumping into dark water. Like a Spanish explorer searching for the new world (but you know, not in the rape and enslave all the people kind of way), I feel like I keep sighting land, just off the port bough, but on second glance it's a trick of nature's cruel mirage.

So here I am, bored on the boat of life, lost at sea. Surrounded by water I can't drink and not a glimpse of land in sight. I wonder if i'll ever feel content with where I am? Does anyone? Do you? I find myself understanding adulthood more and more each day, and losing a grasp on the whimsy of childhood. Death and taxes is what they say, or so they tell me.

An unimportant birthday...

A quarter of a century. 15+10. The exit from my early twenties. No matter how you'd like to put it, it pretty much doesn't matter. Since the passing of my 18th, birthdays have become somewhat meaningless to me. The luxury of days off school and presents galore wore off, what seems like eons ago, and now, they are just a way to bump you into another insurance bracket and out of another year of youth. Not that I'm lamenting my age, I've waited a long time to be older, more mature, respected by my older peers. Yet, for so long I've been told I should be enjoying my youth, my twenties, for soon those years would be gone and I would be shouldering the adult burden and slogging along the path paved with mortgage payments, child rearing, and woefully small 401Ks. It's not that I have nothing to celebrate. I am a blessed young woman, surrounded by caring family, a loving husband, a over excitable but affectionate dog, and the necessary provisions to keep my belly full, my feet warm, and my social life active. So here am I, pouring out my cynical little soul out to a blank page and a blinking cursor trying to kill my pessimism and revive the much repressed positive cheerleader  who lurks inside myself.

25 is an unremarkable age. I tire of the push, push, push of milestones in adult life. I am no where near where I thought i'd be at 25, but that's because before "real life" happens none of us really have a good idea of the work, drive, money, time, connection, serendipity, sacrifice, etc that it takes to reach our goals. Not that one should stop reaching or working towards those goals, but for myself, I certainly have taken a look around and realized i'm in a very new place, with very new people, and it's not where I wanted to be, but it's where I need to be. And that's just right. Somedays it doesn't feel right, some days I look at my peers and wish for the green lush grass upon which they seem to lay, but I know that some day my yard of life will look just as lush, just as green and I will have more pride knowing that I cultivated it, nursed it, and babied it myself. 

A poem for a Monday night walk...

* DISCLAIMER: I draw writing from life (more often than not the overly romantic/Gothic person who lives in my subconscious),and although deeply personal my writing is not always about ME personally. 

It seems all that was, was fight all around.
From every window and porch, brawling
and babies bawling.


Politics, history, race and religion. 
Nothing came easy on this particular night.
Each of them dosing the chemical fission.

Triumph was had, battles lost, but not a one rested easy.
No peace.

Anger and angst, frustration or perhaps ever fear,
not a single trigger could cure one, the plague of emotion.
The petulance raged, long into the black. 

Even the weather couldn't seem to fight back. 

When soldiered wrongs lined up tall, staunch, drawing ever near,
and good was seeking the horizon
 it seems as though Humanity itself collectively fractured
splintered
under the weight of it's fault.

And tears were shed, voices horse, and conversations
stretched beyond the limits of sinew and bone,
where spirits lay waiting, shivering, 
fetal. 


Time, however, is on our side,
light is inevitable,
the sun breaks through,
and the soldiers retreat, 
the petulance ceases, 
and the child is calm, asleep in his crib. 


Only the day to day, and yet we still live.

I wake, body heavy, eyes tightly shut, praying for blaring alarm clock to stop. For gods sake just stop already. I hate this day. I spit at it in my mind, I throw words not meant for page or speech, hoping to break its seal. Hoping it will end.

It doesn't end, its barely begun.

The knot  loosened by the world of dreams, pulls, tightening, forcing its way back into its chosen position in my stomach and I lie motionless.

Realism at heart is nothing more than a slow march into the sunset of things you cannot change. It is a clearly viewed, high defenition picture of all of the events, all of the worries, all of the faults, knicks, scratches, tears, and toils of life flash, flash, flashing before my eyes. And down I fall, hands clentched at a desk I loathe the tears of the day stinging, attacking my eyes as I hold them tightly, ever so tightly, shut, hoping to damn the now daily flow, hoping to sniff back the red faced, snot laced sobbing I know is at the ready to siege me and gobble me up. Nervousness and worry dive into me and splish, splash, sploosh come the tears. Dripping into the abyss I see before me. And I gaze into its depths only to see what i've seen a hundred times before. Nothing.

I turn to face the sea of life behind me, reaching touching its shores with my hand. Testing the waters. Bitterly cold. North, South, East, West. Every direction, wave after wave of endless blue, nothingness. An island of fear that saps the hope I had, have, haven't....didn't. Its me and my canyon now. Echoing our sorrows into the night until sleep comes and the world dispells for all to short a time.

I have a headache and I'm done.
I want to sleep for a week but only
because its 3 o'clock and I can't see the light at the end of a the tunnel, day, same thing if ya think about it.

I want a million dollars to have a million moments
to not think about money or not enough of it.
I want simplicity because simple means
that I didn't forget to read the instructions,

on the box of life...


Every day I wake and think that its
the right time for the wrong day to
go away and come again another day,
but it never listens anyway.

I'm old enough anyhow, or am I still
to young? There never seems to be
a right age only the one your in, but
then again we're all the right age at
the right time.

I have a headache and i'm done.
Where's the fun in that.

I'm asking for help people...That's the first step right?

I have no idea what to write, and yet, I feel compelled to write. The last few days have been a tornado of thoughts and stories, things I want to write, things I want to sound witty and elegant. Instead, I ignored that tornado and it has now made soup of my brain matter and I am left to function without logical thought or really, anything else for that matter. Not that this would come as a surprise.....

Nothing makes sense right now. I feel as though I am carrying weights with me where ever I go. I'm sluggish and moody and I feel like a brooding teenager who's angst warning is about to sound. I thought I was supposed to be done with this stage of life. This whiny, lets go to the cemetery and write poetry about how pointless life/work is, type thing is SO 2003-2005, and possibly portions of 2006-2008, and 2009 and March thru May of 2010. Ok, so obviously the stage is far from done, but if I could find a way to cope with it a little bit better that would be cool, so I'm taking suggestions, for the benefit of myself and others. But since I am currently sitting here emoting and typing to myself I have a, something, to pose to all of my loyal readers (Hi Mom!).

Have you ever been in a small, unfamiliar town that follows a freeway and you get off to get gas, or coffee, or another box of ding dongs, or whatever, and when you go to get back on you just can't seem to find your way? You can see the freeway, cars of many colors zooming by, and you keep turning down side street after side street only to see that gray concrete wall. You drive and you drive, no signs are in sight, and you just keep saying to yourself "Maybe it will be the next intersection." or "It's the next street.". With every turn you meet the same gray wall, taunting you. Eventually you'll stop and ask for directions, hoping the locals will know the easiest way, but inevitably they'll end up using strange landmarks like "old Aunt Betty's house with the white trim" or "that corner with the store" and getting you more turned around than you were before....

That gray wall haunts my life. Every time I feel like I've got things figured out, I turn, and there it is. Hard, foreboding, and completely immovable. My life is beginning to feel a little bit like Labyrinth, only without the creepy dwarfs or the be-mulleted David Bowie, although there is, arguably, a lot more singing.

David Bowie aside, I suppose my real question is how do I get back on the freeway? Or am I not supposed to get back on the freeway? Should I buy old Aunt Betty's house with the white trim and live in the small town of notknowingwhatyou'redoingwithyourlifesville and raise a small family of confusion babies. Or do I take the local scenic route?

Answers people. I need answers.

If I don't get answers I'm going to start taking myself hostage.

I may or may not know what that means, but either way you should be scared, or worried, or indifferent, or possibly tickled. It really depends.

This is all going downhill very fast. I should probably stop.

Ok I'm stopping.

Soon.

Ok now.

Now.

I promise.