in Dilapidatia

9/10/23

Actress: “Seems like every year more and more celebrities and people I grew up with keep dying. Dick Clark, Elizabeth Taylor, Johnny Carson.”
Sam: “Everybody dies. Even those people we think are gonna be here forever.”
Under The Silver Lake

I keep having this dream that I’m living in my old house and the owners are going to find out. I am watching them live their lives, in the spaces where I used to exist.

Aging has become porous. There are holes opening up inside/ and out, like cracks in the pavement.
Have the service signals ended?
Is there something wrong with my phone?
Is a week long to respond the new?
I have thoughts of subterranean-ism.
Shim the corners & the edges to create stability.
Wrap them all in black so they blend in.
Still—my hands are bone white & wrapped in callous.
With a certain level of freedom—one becomes a tyrant.
Inanatomically correct, anatomically speaking.
Where do we go when all our work is finished? The hammock?
Those lazy idealisms cause us to forfeit our dreams.

I still dream of a house that doesn’t belong to me—a house that is falling apart.

Or maybe I am the house in dilapidatia (i.e. the pours are opening wider by the year). Maybe I am the house falling apart—or I am somewhere that I am not supposed to be.

{this is coming together nicely}

“I’d tell all my friends
But they’d never believe me
They’d think that I’d finally lost it completely
I’d show them the stars
And the meaning of life
They’d shut me away
But I’d be all right”
Subterranean Homesick Alien

Mornings taste foreign like the smell of other people’s laundry.
In an intergallactic burst—I am back to wash the curtains & mirrors.
I am the Mary Poppins character, spreading rainbows and cheer in the form of pancakes and clean underwear.
Dressed in black.
Getting poked by an umbrella.
I will replace the head of your toothbrush without asking.
And wash the dirty couch blanket (that smells of mulch).
All of these words may as well be written on toilet paper, and flushed out to sea.

This form of suffering is like a whisper.

Or a brand new neurosis that refuses to heal.

No amount of wine and tin foil will keep the gnats from inheriting the earth.

I write all this knowing cake is reserved for Saturdays.
Maybe I’m just being
uptight.