How to Be Happy Again

Tell the stained glass windows I apologize

When I was a child,
I found your ceiling underneath my feet.

It took me all damn day to free the rafters,
another year to walk your floors
without coughing,
but as I stood there
with my father’s shovel on my shoulder
and my mother’s kerchief wrapped around my face
I saw my shadows in your archways
and my reflection in your dingy mirrors.
This is home.

It was weird to find you in my backyard.
Seems my parents should have found you first
or the millions of people who came here
who passed you by and never bothered to look
let alone poke through the roots of the earth
for your beauty.

I don’t know who lived here first.
I can’t see them though I hear their footsteps
sometimes– your heart is full of ramshackle hallways
and the ghosts of a saint who can’t sleep.
Felt like I’d been scrubbing dirt from those murals
for three hundred years, instead of just three.
My parents wanted to know where I went all the time.
I told them I didn’t know, but it was pretty.

The girl next door likes your high ceilings.
The climb is easy and she claims that this is hers,
abandoned the tree she likes to play in.
And I guess I expected you to shake her loose,
to see me with my dirty knees and my sleephunger
and keep your doors closed.
You didn’t.
You’re just a fucking castle.

So goodbye, old friend.
Farewell.
I’ll miss your floors, your windows,
the echoes I heard my name in
back in the days when you liked me.
And as for the new girl, goodbye to her too.
I hope she knows her way with a shovel
though more for your sake, than for hers.

2009

Human beings are mechanisms, vibrators, you wind them up and they make the love motions

me (5:22:41 AM): it’s pathetic.

me (5:22:49 AM): People don’t act this way.

me (5:23:02 AM): It’s okay, i’m not a person.

matthew (5:23:10 AM): and that’swhyt it is embarrassing

matthew (5:23:17 AM): your a demonn

me (5:23:23 AM): I’m a cyborg.

matthew (5:23:30 AM): you wish

me (5:23:33 AM): with human skin on the fingers and throat

me (5:23:46 AM): the rest is made of tin cans.

matthew (5:23:54 AM): and old guitar strings

me (5:24:05 AM): you can tie a string to my ear and pull it tight and speak near it.

me (5:24:11 AM): I’ll hear you from many feet away.

me (5:24:19 AM): sister, can I tug your ear?

me (5:24:23 AM): yes you can. Just find the end.

matthew (5:25:03 AM): i’ll make you speakers out of pie tins and a voice box from old furbies and those greeting cards that make noises when you open them

matthew (5:25:51 AM): and this thing i saw in chinatown that made cricket noises when you opened the box

me (5:25:55 AM): don’t let me near the microwave!

me (5:25:58 AM): that’s wonderful.

me (5:26:05 AM): I would love to be partially made out of that.

me (5:26:19 AM): I could just take the cricket box out when I move to Portland.

matthew (5:26:31 AM): and put a real one inside

me (5:26:34 AM): I’ll tie it to the back of a real cricket

me (5:26:34 AM): ha

me (5:26:35 AM): yes

me (5:26:43 AM): i was going to go with that but then i thought you wouldn’t hear the cricket box

me (5:27:02 AM): tie it to the back of a real cricket, using my earphonestring

matthew (5:27:14 AM): i’ll tie it to a parakeet

me (5:27:24 AM): you could tie it to one of your fingers and wear it like a ring

me (5:27:27 AM): the cricket long dead

me (5:27:46 AM): and pass it on to your children, who will say, the fuck? and wonder why their father kept a dead cricket tied to a little box

matthew (5:28:07 AM): that will be the least of their worries

matthew (5:28:09 AM): or wonders

me (5:28:14 AM): they are your children

me (5:28:17 AM): it will be the least

me (5:28:22 AM): but it will take some time out of their day