mmdcxcix

Sex, Love or Both at Once

     SKIN
     TWICE
                —graffiti found in Amsterdam

HOLD ON!
Incorrect!
How might I
make the best
of a bad situation?
Remember that the
ones that seem worst
aren’t always so.  Any
way, a lot has happened.

Everyone went to bed, for example,
and forgot all about me. And that
nightmare (this one very much a reality)
of the jealous cellphone ringing incessantly
that I can’t help but listen to; voice messages
I obviously shouldn’t be hearing. But I’m the
crazy one. I’m the bad boy. Always have been 

(well, ever since a senior in high school when
I did a complete about-face from goody-goody). 

What did I do about it then? Headed straight in the 

opposite direction. Drive for miles like I’m heading 

to California to realize my dreams.       Years later, 

when I am convinced they’ve been realized--my dreams--

I head straight away to the stress (back home). Well, I am 

home. Or at least I always believed myself have one--

a home.  Somehow, I slept a little bit. This part never 

had a hint of danger before. But now? Now, I’m a

“chickenshit?” Maybe so, but not in the way in which 

that accusation is pelted at me. The irony keeps ring

ing in my head and I spin around for years wondering

when the vertigo will ever go away; if I’ll ever know

the firmness of reality or the moist breath of honesty.
Such things have never existed for me.  Perhaps I was 

born into the wrong era. Or I skipped the day they 

covered chickenshit in high school (which would, 

of course, have to’ve been during my senior year,

after my one-eighty). Was I something 

different before? Was I really better?

I feel as if I’ve been split from my toes 

all the way up to my head in an extra large
cheese grater. Silly, silly, heart that acts like rubber;
takes forever to damage, even just a little bit. But a little bit
is all it takes. Now that’s complete erasure, I think.
But really, which me do you think was better?

     silly rendition of human behavior...
            —Marlon Brando on the Dick Cavett show, shortly after he 

               refused his Academy Award for The Godfather