I feel like Sausalito. The slow fog rolling down the side of the hill covers everything, hidden behind something eerie and beautiful at the same time. A certain safety in the release from view, even if I know it's still there. I feel, or not feel really, the novacaine in a lower lip. I read the pages of a book, and realise I have to read it all over again because nothing has registered....

I feel dizzy, and pointless; emotionless. I feel blank. Hearing underwater.

And feel is entirely the wrong word. I am writing this and it has no connection to what it is I'm NOT feeling, in a sense. To what it is I let go.

One tiny blue pill, one tiny concession on the battle uphill, but more on that tomorrow I think.....

Back to the blank pages of the nameless book in the colorless sleeve.

The roar.

The jackhammer pounds.

The welding crackle.

Familiar sounds.

I’m not chained down to a desk.

A nest.

I’m free to spit and swear and kick shit

unlike the rest.

The blueprint a scatter

of blueprint lines.

My blueprint guide

mapping out time.

And I don’t have

to take it home.

When the afternoon comes

and the chain fence closes.

Cuz I hit it

with a hammer.

I killed it with one good stroke

in the clamor.

I threw it from a ladder’

Saw it crash into the dust.

I beat it with a sander.

Removed all its rust.

I pushed it over the edge.

Watched it fall and break.

I piled it up

and got rid of its waste.

I wear so many labels I feel like an antique suitcase that's seen the world.

When I was in grade school, It was trouble, fat, stupid, ugly, distracted, exasperating, defiant. I would go get on the merry-go-round and the kids would get up and run away. For some reason the kids at the bus-stop targeted yours truly. As an adult I don't blame them, children mock what they envy, or what intimidates them. I was smarter, funnier, talented, but dirt poor. That gave them an in.

As a teen, it was trouble, defiant, dishonest, depressed, distracted, disrespectful. I had pushed so hard against everyone that they threw their hands up and gave up on me. This is where I started to realize I was not like other people, not in that disillousion of grandeur way, but I was just different. Still, I thought it was cool that the rejects thought so much of me. I was the coolest loser to know. That was something, if I had nothing else. I sold pot behind the school library during breaks.

As a young woman, for the most part it wound up being depression, bi-polar, ADD, borderline. It was really none of those things particularly, pills couldn't fix it, because it wasn't something that needed medicating. I decided to medicate myself in an attempt to ignore my differences, and that didn't work. Mental health proffesionals couldn't figure me out any more than I could figure myself out. I once swallowed a bottle of pills and drove myself to the Brown County Mental Health center at 1am. They wouldn't let me in, told me to go to the hospital to be admitted. I drove all f*cked up back over tower drive bridge and at the stop light before the hospital, one of the hoses under the hood blew and steam came blowing out. I actually laughed, I took a right, went to my apartment, puked and went to bed. The next day I was fine.

So now, I do get depressed, I am distracted, I am a bit paranoid and lost. But I've accepted those things as a part of me, the part that will stay on the inside, I've learned to live around them. As I move through my life I gently peel those labels off one at at time. Some of them leave a mark they've been there so long. Some of them peel right off. Some of them I have to soak for a while because they are good and glued on.

But that's ok, one of these days I imagine I'll get them all off, and the world will no longer be able to tell where I've been.

Once upon a time in a land called Scum,

there was a little girl born with no thumbs.

She was awkward and silly,

gave the other girls the willies.

Less evolved they thought,

with her eight fingers she fought.

What they didn’t know was,

behind the cave girl’s scars,

she was a hero in her head full of dreams and blue stars.

She ran from the mix, tripped over sticks,

she climbed the hill and screamed when she fell.

But she got to the top you know, that eight fingered kid.

with dirty knees and scraped knuckles she no longer hid.

Turning around she saw that whole valley.

A fire circled the Earth, ending those peanuts in the galley.

And now there she sits, on her mountain near the fire,

hand on one knee, a smiling canvas for dead liars.

I'm a Beat and a Stuckist.

Money really is the root of all evil, cept for the rent and a few bags of bread for buyin bread. I've lived my life hard, I've said it a million times. I've been close to lost staring into the face of my face in the mirror, trapped far from life, same as running from death to the light. I don't need a new car, I need to BE in my skin. Answer all the whys. I don't sign my paintings because I don't want to be famous when I'm dead. I want life right now. I want the answers to all the questions of the universe and the only wisdom I have is knowing I'll never get em.

I am a beat, and I am a stuckist, I'm a million tiny moments that will be washed away into the mud in another hundred years leaving ahead of just one more kid staring at the sun, wondering why.

What can I do
if I can't see with clarty
the fine details of my life
The sounds of my memories
The smells of my history

What can I do if I lay dying
and my only wealth
is in the quality
of the past

What can I do to gather it up
and hide it
in the fabric of my mind

I remember a small girl in a field of tall grass
with long hair and a tiny fistful of flowers.
Tiny fists that could hold the awe of the world
with a big heart, no burdens no cares.

No history of loss she walked alone.
She wandered the road meeting devils with songs.
Got left at the wayside holding her soul her
tiny flowers gone.

But found her way back, face pressed in the grass,
the familiar smell she had known
Of believing in flowers new to the ground,
embracing them with arms that had grown.