Belly of the beast.

You are wide awake
You are everything
We've done wrong.

I need Phil Collins today. I need to write a song and be vulnerable upon shaky writer's legs and I need to call up Phil and ask for his honest opinion. I need to hear his sonorous accent and his mysterious intonation and I need to know. I just need to know. Phil obviously wouldn't be my first choice to ring up to sing a song to, but I have a few others who I would like to share some sort of exchange with at some point in my life. Joanna would be my number one. Joanna, as in Newsom. I think we could sit down in my living room, throw on a record, eat some pistachios and drink some wine. She might tell me some stories of her life on the road or how she keeps the calluses on her plucking fingers down to a dull roar from the harp. I bet she wears plastic gloves with Vaseline to bed. I would.

Yosh wrote a song called 'Meat for us' two winters ago on all the days of the week that didn't fall on Wednesdays. His organs partitioned his living room into four neat quarters and he wrote this and I love it. Sometimes he let me come over when he was writing and I would wash the dishes and mouth the words behind all of the organs. When I picture past happiness, that is what I see.

And we'll die here if we must
Why are you nervous?
It's only love.
And we'll do just like they said
There won't be any living.

Not a single head
Not a single head
Not a single head
Not a single head
Not a single head
Not a single head.

I had one of the hardest evenings of my life today. Not because I was upset (even though I was), it was more gutting than anything; humiliating, and final. Finality and defeat have been very difficult for me to swallow lately. Actually they have been hard to swallow my entire life. I know this is cryptic and dark, but I will be fine I think.

A proverbial book slammed shut with a mere two word sentence, sending plumes of dust and dashed hopes up my nostrils and straight to my heart. Someone told me recently that I am too gung-ho and my enthusiasm for things will also be my greatest downfall.

Fuck that
This one's for me.
Step outside
Open wide.

Last week I sat at a high wooden table eating kettle corn popped on the stove and reading poetry aloud. Our laughter filling the corners of the impeccable kitchen, a cat swirling a tail about methodically, like a ladle in a pot. Figure eights. Figure eights. Paul Simon's jungle beats were in the background and all I could do was look up from the book in my hands, read a line, "Beef tongue, beef tongue!" and laugh aloud, all the while feeling so grateful to have fallen into the person across from me. When I think of present happiness, that is what I see.

I wonder what I will be doing five years from today. I hope I am happy, confident in love and in another's; I hope I am full well. I picture a sturdy hand clasping my own, attached to my outstretched arm behind my back. My other hand lazily holding a glass of wine or maybe some good cheese. My back turned casually away from the clasping, sure, supportive hand, talking to a host of people in a gallery somewhere. My own photographs in heavy white frames lining the walls blurred in my peripheral vision behind the heads of the people I am engaged with. I have no idea who is attached to this hand of integrity, or when I will meet him. When I picture future happiness, that is what I see.

But for now, I am content merely crossing my arms among a host of people. I am alone. I am alone. I am alone. I am alone and I am okay with this.