I am painting again.
I don't know what. Paint is blood and you can't control how blood comes out and the only way to get it out is with damage.
I am dizzy in thick globs and my brushes are screeching, flying, sparring with the cardboard. Cardboard is the only surface I can face. White paper is too precise and pure.
A million voices trample across my forehead. I am out of black and am using brown instead and it is no good. I get wider and wider with strokes and am irritated by the forgotten scratching record which has skipped across my pallette. I am painting him into a grave. And I am painting that grave into a grave and I want to crawl under that paint and be the grave.
Instead, my yellow paints these words across the brown dung mess of acrylic:
"A light has come."
I am listening to the words. They are coming out of the tiny dot on the stage. Dangerous words that are hurting me somewhere I cannot locate.
"Blessed are the poor in spirit
for they shall see God..."
Sand and glass dirt fill up in my lungs, the sharp welling of all tear refusal. I am looking away from the rest of the group, my mother and even Heidi my best friend.
I want to be gone from this. The tiny dot keeps ambushing me.
"Blessed are those who mourn
for theirs is the kingdom of God."
The dot has packed all of the weight in the world into a bag and has thrown it on to me.
The auditorium is getting smaller and smaller and has herded me into the target zone where the tiny dot can get at me from all sides.
For once, the blackness of my heart is a relief. I use it to stand in the way of this nameless harrassment. I try to become stone and repel the abusing wave from the stage.
"Blessed are the pure in heart
for they shall inherit the kingdom of God..."
It is unraveling me and cramping me from pinched inside places and dredging up a gurgling gasping toothless despicable body of ooze.
I try to sop it up with black heart sponge and close it up with dead death stone.
what is it what is it what is it?
The tiny dot is pulling it out of me, now. Trying to rip it out. Just when it is about to vomit loose, Blank comes. Just in time.
The tiny dot is muted and the auditorium grows back to it's natural size. White knuckles release and I am vacant space again.
One day I will return to this near ambush.
I will wish I had surrendered. I will lift up the black heart stone sponge and peel up those smashed wave words from the stinking bottom.
They will be flat and rotted in my hand, but I will hold on to them this time. No matter how thin.
Love. Thin, old, and squashed in my hand.
I know they know I know.
I can tell by the tap-tap-tapping on the line.
Stupid-heads. Hmmph!
i can't keep falling
i want you to grab on
but the more i ask the more i fall
and the more i fall the further i go
i'm built to last, you know
i'm thinking of reading this book
the one i think that you wrote for me
but i cannot open it
and i cannot open
and why would i want these tears to go away
why would i ever want your promise on that day?
because when your promise comes the only thing i ever had
will fade
but that's okay, i'm built to last
even when the last of it's gone
and i 'm so sad
in the midnight hour,
but i'm built to last
i started a conversation with you years ago
i was answering questions you did not ask
you always speak in such secret silent ways
the kind of speak used in a mind game
but my mind is weak
out on my sleeve
replacing the part
it could not keep
not built to last
talking to the stranger
that never existed
walking one sided fences
and playgrounds
changing schools and wet beds
and churches
and faces
not meant to last
pretending this meal
was the last of it
and realising it was never pretend
we never wanted our invisble enemy
to come out in the end
a mountain of regret
over uncaptured memory
captured me
wishing what i did not know
a long time ago
wishing buried star wars treasure
would come look for me
in a lost back yard
where i lost my mind
and played jesus again and again
i am the splintered saviour
laying on this piece of fence
and the splinters
will help me find my soul
they are popping it off bone by bone
digging in to the skin of the one
who is built to last
i am walking the block
srteet preacher nursery school
who will believe our message?
who would have known
the best preacher is sex
i am coming upon nuts and bolts
in the garage of my father
where i gave pre-mature salvation
to boys who didn't know enough
or what it's for
or how it's built to last
i am getting lost with strangers
running roaming blue
ramming
the father-built bike into the walls of
homes who are not our nearest neighbors
they are driving me home
i am built to last
i am caught
i am watching their 9pm TVs
and playing with their nameless
children
their tree-houses
their macaroni and cheeses
their backyards
i have invited myself in
and have sat at their tables
waited for their bed times
i am in their new school clothes
and am waiting for their father to come home
this is not my life
because i am built to last
i could go to one of 3 churches or schools
but the last of it is gone
and i am not sure if this street has ended
or if another has begun
it is the goodbye town
with a goodbye party and violins
and backstabbing
and a father who took it like a man
dad man
beekeeper sad
on rooftops hosing away fires
and building homes
that we would never live in
we were all things to all people
we were built to last
the special school
where i was almost in a play
then when ET came
we too,went on our long distant way
driving into the barren blue star night
i became one with the rear window
never sleeping
keeping track of every mile that slipped by
goodby goodbye goodbye
this is the only word i ever heard from you
the beat of the one-sided conversation
and it's built to last
