chain

there are seventeen double-sided aluminum foil stars lying in the kitchen, i made them from scratch the way one makes cookies.

i hate harry potter only because i have to deal with him. it isn't personal, but he's got this way of screwing around with my free time lately. why can't it be easier?

*

tonight i was at the mtv taping of hot hot heat for their new elevator. it was okay, i was kind of upstairs, looking down, that inadvertant, completely intentional feeling of age and superiority that point of view brings. we shake our heads at the twelve year old moshers and laugh at the exaggerated wimpishness of the lead singer and sigh.

i am waiting for an angel, or a messiah, or a virgin to come and put my hand into their side. i am tired.

*

if, instead of foil stars, i were at some community art center somewhere making paper stars, or paper snowflakes, i would be happy.

i think this to myself as the night wears on and the coke stops being caffeine and instead becomes pure sugar; i crash and long for sleep though in bed the best i can do is lie naked and still without any covers and try not to contemplate not-existing.

i think of san francisco -- named after my favorite saint. i think of art schools and community arts. everyone is a snowflake. we would decorate a space. a community-installation all about our individuality.

i read once that two alike snowflakes actually had been discovered. my meaning could remain but always that doubt. i'm not a stigmatist like bleeding frank. i'm not a psychotic. i can't make it happen if it isn't there. i have lost a certain amount of vision -- i'm tired i guess. i used to be able to see so far.

i think of earthquakes and masturbate until sleep comes up on me from behind. i wake up the next morning aching and cold above my sheets.

*

if not snowflakes then maybe paper chains, paper silhouettes holding hands -- chain letters promising a kind of finite answer to the bigger stuff. i think of dan often lately and of swimming, the fourth of july, and the entropy of summer. all of these things bring me back, here against the sallow light of trees draped with spanish moss. i think of scad, of thin-hipped boys and then of dan again, the time i fixed his hair in the deep end of a community swimming pool, swagging it to the side like the bass guitarist from hot hot heat.

*

"Don't EVER leave the one you love for the one you like, because the one you like will leave you for the one they love. Tonight, your true love will realize how much they love you between 1 and 4 in the morning. Tomorrow, the shock of your life will occur. If you break the chain, you will have bad luck."

*

the irony of posting chain letters is that you're actually doing what they ask -- propagating.

*

"Why can't we be creative?
Why can't we be together?"

*

the irony of love, of life, is that you still have your feelings even if you can see them from up above, balcony seat, listless and casual and over -- over -- it. problem is you want to be on t.v., a star or a reckless teen, floating, lifted up and surfing over heads, you and the music and dissolving into that. problem is your heart is tapping its feet, mouthing the words, pointing out that part that describes you however aptly you will concede.