phthalombrage | Thursdays are for drinking, Fridays are for drinking

I think I'd be a lot less comfortable without alcoholic roommates. Ah, refuge!

Tended to the kremthing and other attractions of the UC, but had ingested only thé sucré. Eight ounces. Another sleepy morning. Stop and go, like the traffic as I could only think of clocks, searching with eyes for wristwatches. Frustrations with the mails, cookbooks undelivered. Red door locked in point breeze means bus back to drooling half-nap. Intricately braided woman smelled like lotions both repulsive and tolerable. Drag myself out of bed to accompany chris to borders. Where would the doctors be without it? Get untranslated Les Fleurs du Mal, which is totally hot, among other things. Disappointed by whole foods, have to settle for less. Bought real groceries (not frozen burritos) at market district geagle. Got chris to eat my awful brownies and dry the dishes for me. Watched mirror mask. Roommates not home yet, continued absence explained by the fact that bars close at two. I should have remembered this from my dad's brief stint as a waiter. (He was a terrible one, yes.) Snorting the propellant from cans of whipped cream. Bada Bing's every night, sometimes didn't come home at all. Returned items not my own.

I want to be a person. I want to make words describe these things I see as I limp through life. I don't pay enough attention to the shading, for I am young.

the curl of hair on the backs of swarthy men
peeking out from under shirtcollars
sweaty rings beginning to seep out from under their swinging arms
watching these strangers walk downhill
heel, toe, heel, toe
doing it the other way around, yourself
like going downstairs instead of down a slope
but trying not to look at the ground
just feel when to stop
be confident
like when you first scraped the tap of a shoe on the floor
a strange sensation
a way to make noise for once
watching the marks it left
lined up neatly
like pages before you clip them
a dangerous habit
borderline insanity, even
prancing like a pony
do they notice?
surprised that nobody on the carousel had taken the dragon
it's totally badass
didn't they notice?
this brilliant doctor, so young and soft
fresh from halfway across the globe
watching the ink dry on his poster
nervous as a young man watching his date? across the table
he thinks of her that way
a moonlit slug with feelers out
you pay your respects
emptying the pods from the coffee machine
fresh, still warm
returning to a chair still warm from another ass
becoming familiar with the feel of certain keys in certain locks
the look of their teeth
traces of metal on fingertips
from keys, paper clips, quarters
doorknobs that turn in unexpected directions
no longer any use to try to wash it off
you're going to die anyway
fearless as that squirrel running on the telephone wire
loving that rodent intuition
finally learning to touch-type, maybe
to the chagrin of the stubborn mind
remembering a long account string through writing it
twenty-three times
consciously having changed the numerals recently to make them more european
(although you may note that my spelling has gone the opposite way)
alphabet might be up for tabling again
candle still lit
burning low on the tabletop when we talk as you are in bed and I on the floor
on my back so I don't have to look at you
like the bug I smashed last night
oozing precious bodily fluids onto a notebook best unseen
my friends have set themselves on fire hilariously
we can be friends if you're flaming
I don't have to show them my tits
wasteful, perhaps, when nobody's looking at
this flame
junk piled up in old laboratory space
it's a gas to be alive