Dearest Jughead,

You must have been tapping your leg a lot,

Must've gotten really into the one,

Two,

One,

Two,

Three,

Four.

That happens to me when my juices get bagged up and stored like banks of blood,

Waiting for unthinkables,

Just waiting for the tragedy of a death time.

One.

Some people live for the end of it all don't they?

Not you.

Not my little square brother.

You're about the process; the taps, and ticks, and beats, and numbers, and scales in between all the amps and jumps.

Right?

The part of the sock folded into the pant, that's the good stuff.

Everything else has holes, and dangles, and grays.

So you might as well, well.... Fall down inside of it and make your way out.

Survive like that baby that fell in the eighties down that headlining, jug lining, pastorical accident. That unthinkable sake of my name.

Two.

Got a message from east coast half #1.

Voice message.

The Shrewsbury twang gets thicker and thicker, sets quickly like meringue in porcelain.

Linda's doing well.

Better even.

Not fair, even.

Revenge. Revenge for something I was born to fall for.

Rhymes with Eden.

Smells like, well,

A combination of two different yadda, yadda, language, jargons.

It's the better, even, judgement updates that really fill my veins Kiefer.

The dying once again's let me eat whatever I want, comfort me, familiar me.

One.

Two.

Three.

Because it doesn't scan properly, it snags.

It pulls me under.

Gives me asthma and huge eyes.

I can't always remember the lyrics,

But they sound a little something like,

You can walk you hairy vampire!

Get up!

Off the couch!

Buy a plane ticket with all that money you stole from all those native Americans!

Put one foot in front of the other and come home!

You can talk can't you?!

Speak, woman!

I'll take you to the theatre.

I'll introduce you to my brothers.

And all the other brothers I've picked up along the way.

One of them will go bat shit crazy and purge for you.

For all of us.

For her.

For him.

For the words, and symbols, and bodies, and lives.

For interesting stage pictures.

For the friend with the crooked strings.

For the process.

The experiment.

For whatever happened to this girl, and my girl sitting there on the stairs with our arms around each other, sticking and holding. Our breath.

It's a process!

There is no clear end you blood sucker!

Life, ever heard of it?

Four.

Oh my god I thought you were actually going to do it jug head.

I mean, I knew you weren't, but you know, like, that was so cool.

Dead on.

It was like watching someone die of cancer, but they weren't sick at all, they were in complete control.

I have a lot of experience with that.

You looked completely different,

Lost the ability to speak,

Lost all the fatty tissues,

Couldn't pack any wounds,

Needed a lot of help,

Bald.

All of it hand picked by you, for you, that's suicide!

Bingo!

Retreat!

Good theatre with picnics, and bean bags!

Even touches, brushes against the night gown of respect that one often catches from the disease,

It's brave to take a walk in the river.

Pour me a glass.

Keep those lungs puffed,

I love plays,

And aesthetics

That keep us

All

together.

living lightly.

Turn it up,

Skin and Toast

PS: Good show. I'm OK, I just cry when people get skinny fast.

Dear Ani, it's me, your biggest fan,

Been thinking a lot about inspiration,

And where it comes from,

And how to bottle it,

And if it works.

And if it could run down the middle of me in pink ribbons and stay aways.

And if it could give the rest of my organs the royal Buffalo finger tip and rip van winkle some highly educated midsummer laurels'?

And what's it to them?

And who are you?

My poetry teacher wears really cute clothes, but I wish she wouldn't eat bagels while I'm proposing, I mean, um, what is it?

Sharing?

Crucifying?

I guess the stakes are much lower then I'm used to.

Wow, that's really, totally; special. I like it.

Could we blast some Not A Pretty Girl and do some jumping jacks real quick?

I need to clear my eyes for a second.

Kids these days blanch their margins so white, I have a hard time understanding the words.

Good thing I have your lyrics threaded through the stone black lips of my clitoris.

I used to have myself convinced that you rode subway trains to your own concerts, and on my way to the Aragon I would most certainly find myself on the same car and pole as you. And it would be packed, and pushy with judgers, florescent and straight lined like the hallways at state schools, hard schools. But we, Difranco and I, we would lock eyes, and I would play it so cool, cool like the q-tips that twirl on those fields I never had.

I know you get this all the time,

But,

Your music really got me through some really rough times, and I just can't thank you enough, so I wont even try, so, I was wondering?

Is there any way, on this crowded subway train, you could, I've been thinking about this a lot, and we're not getting any younger--

And then she would shove her folk singing girl powered tongue down my inspired throat so hard, and roll it around so deep--that gold fish would have memories.

And I would get discovered, and lived in new York at the top of the cellar, and continued on the back flap without even trying.

The water would meet the rocks, Iowa would knock on my door, and frustration would plummet.

Oh Ani, I got my fist in the air and I'm willing to fight.

Thank you for having a van, I need my fantasies right now.

As is every Napoleon,

Skin and Toast

Paper Girl,

I know,

Me too.

I'll get an assignment that's like; start with a metaphor, say something outrageous, alternate between five and seven words per line, stop at twenty lines, end with the same metaphor you used in the first line.

And, whoa, hold the phone Nelly Bly!

Why would I sleep outside in a refrigerator box lined with garbage bags, when I've made a nice bed for myself right over there on the screened in porch, it's downy and original.

Oh well my friend.

The check's already in the mail.

I'll just pretend it's a Joseph Cornell box.

The dove is bleeding.

Be home soon.

Love, Skin, Toast, fresh out

Daily's Done Undone Today

Dear Bike Path,

This is what happens when it's time to go to work,

First of all, I don't wake up in a panicked headache,

And, the sun is also up.

It's not 3am, it's 7:30am,

And I have to be at work at 8am.

And I get there on my feet.

And cars, and whistles, and humans are buzzing around me,

The world is on my side.

Or at least my community, my safe neighborhood.

My Chinese restaurants and my second hand boutiques.

I don't have to strap flash lights to my forehead and snake through tunnels to get to work.

I don't share the last car with bus boys and exchanging stocks.

I just walk ten minutes in the sun to a building on a corner, and watch out for the bikes on my left.

All the people I serve have the same blades of grass that I have on my patch of land, they have roughly the same philosophical climate and cuisine.

They wear clothes not unlike mine, they smell faintly of strife over come.

They want to be with me in the building on the corner.

They work with me to make the experience durable.

They didn't wake up already deciding that I was put on this Earth to disappoint them, and their family, and all the things that make them happy.

They don't even order, they ask, and then they get comfortable, and then as soon as I get the chance, I politely do what they asked.

And they say things like thank you, and how are you? And please take your time.

Sometimes I have to get out the glossary to look these words up to the heavens.

When it's time to go home I'm already home.

I don't have to share the last car with the charter school trips.

My feet might have a dull thumping, but they don't throb up to my knee caps.

I don't collapse onto my pile of dirty laundry and sleep for nine hours, I boil water and look out the window for forty five minutes.

Then I set my pages up next to my tea and read the literature, and scribble the poetry, and google contests, and google submissions.

And take it all into the grain and the now.

This semester has actual writing classes, actual pens and jars of ink.

And circles of critical, long legged, youngsters.

And I have to say, I definitely, how do I put this, notice-- a-- difference.

Not in talent or ability, no, no.

Acting college taught me that those things don't exist.

And if they do, they're so obviously fabricated, and manipulated into lies and deceit, that you'd have to reduce them to a crumb of dust to get them to shine.

I'm just saying, that even though I have just as much to learn as the next Christian liberal artist, I definitely notice a difference in experience, and voice.

I like the teacher, I like looking at her curriculum, seeing how she maps it out, adjusts it, commands it lightly.

I like that she has her life absorbed in this thing that I'm also passionate about, I like the mold of her days, I like that, I want that.

Honestly, folks, a writing class is not that much different then a Too Much Light rehearsal, if you can conduct one of those, you're just one step away from orchestrating a syllabus.

I have this distinct memory of being in the Art Institute with east coast half number two, you know, the sister with the secure marriage who makes art that hangs on walls.

She was in town visiting me and my mother who is also her mother, and we were all dressed up for the opening of a Monet exhibit.

Number two and I had gotten separated from the dragon somehow.

And wandering through all those hay stacks at different times of the same day was a bit on the overwhelming side, plus we had probably been in the company of the dragon for at least seven consecutive hours, in pantie hoes, which means, to say the least, we were ready to go.

And I remember this so clearly, she stopped at a pink and yellow impression, turned to me, and said, "I can do that".

Now don't go flooding her in box with accusations and bible verses.

She wasn't saying she could do it better.

No one's saying that.

She wasn't even saying she wanted to do that, landscapes aren't even her thing you guys.

My point is; I can do that, in whatever context you choose to interpret it in, is the perfect string of words to stitch onto the backs of your eye lids.

Simple Strokes,

Skin and Toast

Everyone Sleeps,

Everyone.

Teachers.

Fathers.

Monsters.

Girls.

Boys.

We all get tired and have to take a break,

From being sad,

Or wanting to be sad,

Even from being ecstatic and frantic,

The girls with legs have to stop and lean against the walls that lace up the backs of wild parties, I see them, they pause,

To wipe it away,

before going back to the fields,

to combing the Earth,

to treading the tides,

Their heads bent in hopefully nothing,

Just heat and exhaust.

But most likely something,

Statistically anyway,

Everyone sleeps.

Everyone has some innocent process of preparing for bed.

Some simple routine of enamel,

of rinse,

of snuggle,

and breath.

I remember the last time I took a bath.

It was also the last time I felt attractive,

Desirable,

Worthy and ready for the mystery of pleasure,

Sexy, like the girls I would later hate at wild parties.

Girls in lean, and drag, and shot, and safety, fishy nets around their fully developed legs.

I remember the last time I took a bath.

I was four.

I remember I wrapped the towel around me extra tight once it was all over,

Tight like the dresses I saw on TV when I stayed up too late,

Tight like the cup you make with your hands when you're whispering a secret.

Tight like the seal on the coffin you're paying for,

Tight like the things you keep even from yourself,

Tight and deep for only so long until it seeps through to your day chores in odorless forms of acne and bulimia.

I slinked passed the threshold that supported my father in my cute little terry cloth number,

I paraded and modeled my way out to the couch where my oblivious, absent, mother sat reading.

And I could tell by the shade of grey in her left iris that something was wrong,

And I could tell by the slope of her nose that she was jealous, and wounded,

That something had been going on,

You think she's reading architecture books,

But, tapped inside those hard covers are pamphlets on how to be the most selfish person in the world.

He poured my last bath down the drain and put me to bed.

She did what she does best, nothing.

I remember the first night I prayed,

Something other then the usual now I lay me down,

I prayed that I wasn't in trouble,

I prayed that my kitty was safe,

I prayed for a miracle to bring him home,

I prayed for fields to plow,

And water to tread,

And grace to save.

A wretch like me,

Skin and Toast