don't make me promise; i can't keep it.



you called me beautiful, and it hurt.
you said my name slowly, and i cried.
i saw you for the boy only you know you were.
and you saw me as broken, as everyone knew.
we held hands, friendly flesh never hurt.

you were the only person to ever write a poem
to document the tragedy you found in my every
word.
you were the only person to cry for a night
over the depression you found in my every
word.

you were my sympathetic eyes,
when all i could see was blind teenage rage.
you were my ever wasted youth,
when all i could hear was my own sick lectures.
you were my conscience,
when all i could be was flesh and bone.

and heather pat my back, laughing.
said, girl, i love your back bone.
and i smiled.
i found out then when you're soft,
you're soft to everyone.
and when you're hard,
you're not hard to everyone.

i have the most peculiar memory of my father
crying, when i was a small child. that isn't
to say he didn't cry easily, but he was very
upset. more than i had ever seen him before.

he told me if i made my mother divorce him, he'd kill me.
i told him that it was his business to handle, not mine.
i was seven years old, i think.

i tell everybody i lost my faith in god at a young age,
and it's the absolute truth.

i have written of it before, but no
memory haunts me as deeply. nothing
can affect you the same way. there
is not one thing in the world that
can make you fear your immortality
as much as being a small, but smart
young child,

and seeing your mother threaten suicide
in the carpeted country-styled kitchen
she and your grand mother decorated the
year before.

and your dad screams,
and you can't even see through your own tears,
and you run into your room,
with your heart filled wall paper,
and minnie mouse bed sheets,
and the mickey mouse phone you got for christmas.
so you call your grandma,
and your dad comes into your room,
and he says, only loud enough for your seven year old ears to hear,
that if you ever do that again,
he will fucking kill you.
so you lick the salt off your face,
and you stop your hyperventilating.

i have a sense that you don't know how badly i have been hurt.
i have a feeling you think i'm just some self put-upon suicide lolita.
i have a knowledge of you calling me a spoiled, nagging, bitch.
i have a feeling you think i'm caught up in my own sense of loss.
cos i am not saying i've had it the worst.
i'm just saying i've had it bad.

i've had this rage all along,
& i've kept it under my skin.
stop pretending you're the only one to hurt.
or the only person to live a life depressed.
dont ask me to apologise when you offend me.
dont expect me to live up to your standards.

saved,buylies.txt


do you feel as if a weight has been lifted from your shoulder?
do you think you're getting smarter as you keep on getting older?
because these crocodile tears don't ever come cheap,
and you will pay the price when you can no longer sleep.

i found the words i had thought i'd lost.
stuffed in a box, with hallmark cards i should've tossed.
and if you see maria, tell her hello from me.

these are the days of our life and they are not getting better.
these are the hours of our decay, summed up in a single letter.
because you see it in a photograph doesn't mean it'll come true,
and you'll pay the price when the dreams come back to haunt you.

i saw my life before me at twelve years old.
i was married.
i had a child.
i had a s.u.v.
i had a j.o.b.
a pedicure.
a manicure.
my hair was blonde.
my moustache waxed.
my shoes were gold.
teeth bright white.


    i know this girl who got knocked up at seventeen.
    and she disappeared like some aging beauty queen.
    two years pass, saw her in a shitty trailer park.
    she ended all her sentences with a question mark.

  you can't cry out all the potential you have lost.
  hide in dad's garage, breathing in car exhaust,
  i promise, you won't regret it, i promise.
  bury the body, hide in the closet, cut off your clothes,
  make love to your depression, kill of your senses,
  accidentally cut too deeply, accidentally cut too deeply.

            no one cares as much as i do.
            no one cares as much as i do.
            no one cares as much as i do.
            cos if you know just 1 thing,
                  would i lie to you?

     bridges burn and so do i.
     towers crumble
     and the white man will lie.
     because he loves you.
     he loves you, he'll marry you, he'll marry you.
     he promised to keep you sane.
     he promised to remember your name.
     promises go left unbroken,
     but it's just a matter of time.
     you know this.

i found my masked avenger, lovely dearest.
hog tied to a tree in my daddy's backyard.
the sign said don't touch, but i touched, alright.
i found him and i'm never letting him go, alright?

                         i am not insane.
                         i am not insane.
 i wish i knew then all the things i know now.
 i would've jumped off a bridge when it was still dramatic.
 now it's just stupid, now it's just pathetic.
 i would've slit my wrists when i was still so beautiful.
 now it's just bullshit, now it's just stupid.

      my dad won't ever let me finish eating.
       my mom won't let me finishing breathing.
        my grandma won't let me try to struggle.


         my grandpa told me young that there was no use trying.


 hands are dealt,
 bluffs are faked,
 i was 6 & thought,
 "rape" was 'raked'.
 and said, mommy does it hurt when they rake over you?
 is that why the girls on tv cry when it happens, too?

    i was pushed aside.
    i was a nevermind child.
    i was a throwaway kid.


when the wolves are at the door &you can hear it banging.
never mind the food on the dinner table, let it get cold.
and when those wolves hunt you to the corner of yr house.
apologize, anesthetized, do it all, and be saved by lies.

        i tried to call you
        but i cant call you
        i tried to hurt you
        but i cant hurt you
        there is no use get
        ting through to you
        your skull is thick
        your completely obl
        vious to what i see
               inside of me

up& running


digital versions of past traumas left behind
the scabs she left you have already scarred your mind
an echo in the dark, a voice you have heard before,
`these cotton clad hips will be yours to touch no more`

holding my hands will never make it right
it will not be her back against yours tonight
i've fought my hardest battles behind the screen of virgin lips
i've bared most of my parts to you, yet still i cannot strip

your heart is with old lovers whose touch still linger on
i've given and i've tried, even spent these nights until dawn
a thousand glances could break a bridge built on trust
but those thousand glances, i know, are nothing more than lust

nevermind the supposed silver lining of being your families child prodigy
because i can't make it any better for you than it is for me
nevermind the supposed silver lining of living to simply be free
i can't make your rain clouds sprout rainbows, but i'm trying, believe me

i am trying.
please, believe me.

i can hear david bowie blasting down the halls
him and ziggy bouncing off these paint chipped walls
some weirdos are sitting outside, making cat calls
wanna join me and cushion my fall?

only you can make the beautiful seem cynical
yeah, only you can make my life seem whymsical

cause you don't got no sympathy. what the hell is empathy? build your life on apathy. give advice, and charge a large fee, right?

you think nixon was our nations downfall.
you analyze and say maybe it was washington that screwed us all.
on, in time you will be like them, and sell out, and give up.
grow up, and say your goodbyes.
i bet you'll become a fucking national treasure.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

i promise i'll always be the bane of your existence.

Sometimes I just want you to care. Sometimes I want to have you ask me how my day was, ask fifty thousand questions, even though we both know the answer to them all will be "Oh, you know.", cos that is okay. This part of our routine has been missing since I was eight years old and I fucking miss it. Why did I have to grow up so fast and why did you have to start going downhill, just as I made my progress? Self-hatred is a bitch, but you could never hate yourself as much as I hate you sometimes.

My analytical mind tells me to lay off of you, to cater to the needs we all know you have, to be the sweetheart we all know I am deep down inside. But when I come home and see you on the couch sleeping, it is four in the afternoon and there are two empty cartons of ice cream laying on the coffee table and last weeks dirty laundry is quickly becoming this weeks dirty laundry, I feel like screaming and throwing you against the wall. I don't think it would help the situation, I think it might even make you more depressed, more anxious, so I just trudge upstairs and sleep.

Your depression is turning into my depression and I do not see a cure for either of us in the near future. My pills have been missing now for, what? Two weeks? Something like that. I'm getting back into my mood swings and I love it. Prozac not only takes the edge off, but keeps me from being angry and I think my anger is the one thing keeping us going. You fuck up, I yell at you, you try and fix the fuck up, and life goes on. Repetition, repetition, all our happiniess lies the safety of day to day actions and I don't think, no- I know that that isn't healthy.

The idea of 'change' is not only foreign, it also feared by us. It seems as if the only changes we've had in the past three years have been bad, shitty, and even worse. Divorce, bad physical health, bad mental health, cheap townhouses in the projects, abusive cocksucking boyfriends, and cars that don't want to start, no matter how hard you kick them. Change may bring joy to some, but we keep getting the shaft end of fate.

Could we freeze in time? Just stop where we are, drop everything, and exist in the spring of 1996, when the end of the beginning started? We know we can't but the denial still leaks out on occasion, like when the neighbor bangs on the wall at two in the afternoon, screaming for some bloody fucking silence. We hated ourselves and eachother that spring, but in comparison, were we not beautiful? Were we not a big happy family, that had and dealt with normal problems? I know, I know- define 'normal'. But we made it all out to be so bad, so horrible, so emotionally wretching. The agony about it now is that I realize I never appreciated myself or those around me, and now I am older, not much wiser, and still cannot acknowledge how good I am treated by some. Age may add flavor, but all I can taste is bitterness.