day one hundred and twenty.

a library book returned
but a thought
and a feeling
only secretly.
there is much
to be done
in the realms of
the mental
and the physical
with plan b
hiding in the bushes.

dreams of garbage covered
canvas,
things worth more
before they
were used.

day one hundred and nineteen.

i want to throw up
all the food
i've ever eaten,
turn it into a waterfall
and re consume it
then sleep until
2035.

day one hundred and eighteen.

a cake shake
after a tumble
down the stairs
the april fools
was on both of us
that night.

everybody chug
and bernie the
thoughts away.

day one hundred and seventeen.

plans made,
delayed,
then run away from
in the attempt
to make something else
of the night.
one night jokes
of the unmentionable
only to be mentioned
two days later
in an underlying
pleading tone
but pleading in a way
in which the receiver can only
figure out
with close reading.
all is never clear, even if the words seem so.

day one hundred and sixteen.

the itch to get out
scratched by unplanned
hangouts.

day one hundred and fifteen.

i don't know what to think anymore
- why is he still here?
people act differently
when one of them
is missing
- why is the chomping louder?
i don't know if
i should think
to find what should
be in that thought
or to just let
it go
and hope for it all
to come back to me.

dat one hundred and fourteen.

when midday fantasies
seem almost real
there is no telling
how you will feel.

day one hundred and thirteen.

all are upset;
unrest,
while resting on this.
on the ideals
we still think are
ideal -
they're not.
anyone can change
what they don't like.
if a group is needed,
i guarantee
that you aren't
alone.

day one hundred and twelve.

a new form of torture
is carrying a
twenty pound
bucket of muffin mix
with limp and sun burned arms
across a generous
room
with a gimpy,
limpy
leg.

drained.

sitting in the bath
until the water runs out
until my heat runs out
until the sound runs out
until my thoughts run out
so i jump out
trying to feel clean
on the inside
as well.

day one hundred and eleven.

where do you
search
for the appreciation
you want to give
and what is in a name
a title,
even
that makes it what it
is.

you might be hungry,
while
another under-appreciated
dad joke
flys by
rolling eyes
without a second
thought.

day one hundred and ten.

that dusty old dust
on the car dashboard
and the road
and on the trees
blocking ones view
of the sunset.
that dusty old dust
on the graves
distracting one
from the sunset
and on the
records
you wish you
were near.

day one hundred and nine.

sun shining down
on your arm
coming down
pulling your
sock off
down
onto the ground
where your empty
beer cans
lay.

nothing to worry about
the pizza man came
the beer run is done
(the second one)
and the kids know how
(now)
to fix their
popped tire.

day one hundred and eight.

we have a
vomitorium
for booze
not food.

we throw our problems
on the floor and then
have new ones
to choose.

day one hundred and seven.

the only way i can
get a kiss
is with a dog biscuit
between my lips.

day one hundred and six.

eating special sticks
but hungry for
something intangible
who knows
what will fill
(or not)
my appetite soon.

day one hundred and five.

hm no messages
i won't send one
still nothing
okay in a couple of hours
if i get this cleaned
i'll send one
there
now don't check your phone until
you get there
nope
okay checking
nothing
damn
shouldn't have sent it
i just won't send one
tomorrow
to make up for it
god damn
oh oh
something
k not replying.

day one hundred and four.

is that heaven?
yes.
i'd trade the boy i don't have,
i'd trade my family,
i'd trade the last shard of my soul
i own
without even thinking about it.

day one hundred and three.

one day i'm going to date a chubby boy
and he'll be very cuddly
and maybe he'll like me a lot
and he'll tie dye with me
and like paper crafts
and will wear the clothes i make him
sometimes
if they work out
and we'll cook
and we wont have to try and impress each other
or act funny
it'll just be funny
we'll do fun things
he might be irish
he will be irish
he'll have dark hair and
those dead brown eyes
maybe hazel
and then
he'll leave
or maybe i'll leave
or one of us will die
or the pirates will come.

day one hundred and two.

to china and back
with some that don't belong
but have the right fit
since the shoe fits
and the buns go down
nicely.

day one hundred and one.

switched messages
hidden mixed messages
late in the evening
but early in the morning.

day one hundred.

you're polish

you must massage feet

you're poor

cooking wine is your reward

you're not pop enough

don't use that

pillow

or dem covers.

shiver with the timbits.

day ninety nine.

i'm not wasting time
i'm just spending it
in ways you wouldn't
want to.

day ninety eight.

finally free for a little while.
i shall be working on some of
the stuff i meant to do
all year round.
pictures...
are
a maybe.

day ninety seven.

a little nothing
over nothing
a few bruises
but still got
the paycheck
for reading dostoevsky.

day ninety six.

it seems
that i'm only one
continually humbling myself.
everyone else
can find praise in their
mistakes.

day ninety five.

best to start riding
the low horse
it hurts less
when you fall off.

pick wisely.

it's just probably not

a parody
or going to be one
it's nothing
even more so
nothing
than my
circus career
but at least this
nothing will
become something
one day when i get
my whole nothing
going.
was is it that the visible
are the only ones
considered
something.

day ninety four.

everything sounds
better
when you can hear it
more clearly.
that is except
if the message
is spat
towards you.

day ninety three.

INSTALMENT FOUR - HETERO + EXTRA

The only place in the small town of Newcastle that one could buy alcohol, closed at 6:00 every night except on Sundays (when it wasn’t open). This almost posed a major problem for a group of girls just ‘legal enough’, who arrived at the store at 5:55. It was a Friday night and really, what other choice did they have but to drink, after their long, one hour tutorial on Friday afternoons.

The girls knew exactly what they wanted, or rather, followed their friend who assumed the leader position to pick up exactly what she wanted (it was her turn to supply the real drinks, another to supply the mix and the last one to supply the dark and dingy basement which only got sufficient use on Friday nights, as it was completely too haunted to visit on the remaining days of the week). One mickey of vodka was all she could afford and it was all they would need – they didn’t plan to drink this slowly. The leader brought the bottle up to the counter with her troops right behind her and paid.

“Do you have airmiles?”

“What’s that?”

“That’ll be $13.95”.

They rushed out of the store with their bagged bottle of delight right before they got kicked out; the transaction had taken 3 minutes exactly. When they closed the door to the liquor store, the manager put up the closed sign with a sigh, hoping she wouldn’t have to deal with the awkwardness of accepting another fake I.D. that night.

The girls skipped home arm in arm, oblivious to how foolish they looked and eventually arrived at the musty basement in which they had already set up their cups and mix. Out came the bottle, and with a quick twist by the leader it was open, and poured into three glasses. The bottle itself was placed out of the way on a shelf, hidden in case a mother or father appeared downstairs.

All of the excitement of their I.D. working and talk of how it was ‘fair anyways because they were all 18 which is almost 19 anyways’, caused them to make their drinks disappear within the hour. Now red faced and hiccupping they had acquired that heavy, loathful thirst for more to drink. They decided to go back to the liquor store in hopes that the manager was still closing it down. Laughing at their new plan, they grabbed the bottle from the shelf and left, arm in arm, a little more unsteady this time.

They reached the store a convenient ten minutes later, though they almost became distracted by a dog in the catwalk they took, and collapsed against the glass door to look inside. The manager was nowhere to be seen, nor was anyone else, or any light for that matter. They tried the door; it was locked. Angry now at that ‘stuck up, snooty, stooopid fuckin’ airmile manager’ the leader raised their emptied bottle in the air and let it crash down in front of the store.

Satisfied with their destruction, and feeling drunk again, they left to go to try and find some pot to smoke from one of the stoners at the park.

The bottle lay smashed in twenty different pieces next to a squished cigarette butt.

day ninety two.

INSTALMENT THREE - HOMO + ETRA

Though not all of me is a part of my original self, the part that thinks, whatever part that is, stayed in tact and is still with me today, as I sit on the same shelf in a different location. I have been stagnant, bought, used, abused, smashed, thrown into bins, and melted down and had to start all over again. For ten years this has been my life. This cycle has happened so many times, as I suppose it has to other bottles as well, but no matter how many times I am abused then melted down, I have never forgotten my first time. I feel as if no bottle really does.

Ten years ago, I was probably (and still am, compared to brand new and educated bottles I see now) the most naïve bottle I knew. I had spirit, yes, but so did all of the other bottles. I had only been on the shelf a couple of days before I was carried out to begin the first cycle of many, and no bottle or otherwise had given me the slightest hint of how I was to think of myself. I wasn’t proud, but I thought I was worth something beyond $13.95, but hadn’t been put right. My first purchasers (whom I thought were to be known as my master’s at the time), even knew this; that while my spirit was worth $13.95, my shell, my body, was worth nothing. To them, or any of my later purchasers.

I know now but still reminisce. It was near closing time for my little store and my ‘masters’ had just made the deadline for buying me. I was put in a bag, which is a standard practice to be done to us bottles, as we are not allowed to be seen out in public (perhaps it would be too tempting for other purchasers?). A couple of moments later, the purchasers had arrived at their ‘home’ and gone into the ‘basement’. I found out two years after this event, after having been purchased by around the same size of purchasers many times, that they usually drink me in what is called a ‘basement’. Older purchasers prefer to leave me on the shelf for a while, or anywhere on the main level of their ‘home’s.

These purchasers, I now realize, were actually very kind, in terms of snapping away my virginity; they did it very quickly – I have heard horror stories of weak purchasers who have had to give it a couple of go’s before they got it. They were also quick to drain me of my value, which I was horrified to see. I was not in that basement long, and am still not usually in basements very long, unless I am forgotten underneath the couch.

My purchasers quickly tried to take me back to my original home, their faces bright red, which is a normal occurrence for those who have a lot of spirit in them. Angry at the closed door, for my store is not always open (due to the fact that the masters need to ‘eat’ and ‘sleep’), they smashed me on the ground and left me for dead. Little did I know then, that I actually could not die.

After moping all night to a neighboring cigarette butt, who explained my worthlessness to me, when the sun came up, I was swept up by my master and thrown into a bin. So soon after had I both experienced the loss of my virginity and the loss of my former shape, I also lost the shape of the very pieces that made me up, as I was melted and molded, filled and shelved, to experience it all over again.

day ninety one.

INSTALLMENT TWO: HETERO + INTRA

Ah was mindin’ me own

business one night when some o’
them pink things came to tha

store and got them a bottle,
yis, and ah know ‘zactly what happen’
to that bottle, it was next to me
all las’ nigh’ cryin’ and what not
like a sissy and tol’ ol’ smokey
(that dun smoke no more)
the whole thang.

They was fin’ly sold
an’ to tha pink things
which weren’t too big
er too small
jus’ bout the righ’ size
to be full o’ trouble.

Bottley said they took ‘er home
and they din’t waste no time,
they poured ‘er soul
out an’ used her up
soon as ‘er blindfold what was
ta’en off o’ ‘er. –cough–

Blech, even I git some o’
the smok’rs cough ah give.

Anyways, after that they dun had
no need fer the lil bottley.
course she was young and din’t
no one told ‘er that as
bein’ what pinkies an’
brownies an’ erryone
(ah really see no diff’rence buhtween

any o’ em big loomin’
usin’ things)

an objeeect, she wasn’t s’posed
tah have no life
beyond havin’ yer most precious
part o’ ya sucked dry, and yis she was
sucked dry, jus’ like me
couple’a hours afore.

So then whens they done
suckin’ er dry they take ‘er

righ’ back here! They

‘pparently din’t know tha
‘er home din’t want ‘er
back says bottley. er rather

said, she long gone now

that ‘er ‘ome is back open,
so they’s raise ‘er up real
high she says like jus’ as high
as the shelf she came off o’
and then smash she be in twenty
sparkly pieces.

Scared the las’ bit o’ smoke
outta me, I tells ya,
din’t expect no comp’ny
las’ night, figured I was tah be
‘lone fer good, after my ol’ master
used me up.
but bottley is gone now,
this mornin’ her real master’s
came back an’ sweep ‘er up
prob’ly tah go’n fix ‘er
‘er somethin’ but I dun know
ain’t no one ever sweeped me
up a’fore.

So now’s I’m alone,
jus’ thinkin’ bout that
bottley an’ hopin’
tha she be alright.