And now the drugs don't work..

Today is Thursday.
I slept in.
I had a pepsi for breakfast.
I saw my therapist.
We talked about you.
We doubled the dosage.
All I can think is
one more time from the beginning.
Let's get it right.
I have nothing else to say.
I will just go watch The Office
and when I laugh out loud I will
look next to me and realize I am alone.

Anonymous

A Moment.

I don't know if this is true to you but for me
sometimes it gets so bad
that anything else
say like
looking at a bird on an overhead
power line
seems as great as Beethoven
symphony.
then you forget it and you're back
again.

Charles Bukowski

Berserk.

Let’s lie down on the wet grass on an autumn morning with my sweatshirt stuffed against my back, allowing damp greenery to ache my stomach strip. Don’t lie on your back, but rather on your side, allow me to be in your sight. Balance your head on one hand and hold the e. e. cummings poetry book with another. Read a poem for me out slowly, as I puff my smoke at God. Give me the book. I shall read one too. By-passers will not grasp my attention and will not interrupt the flow of words out of my lips… nor the smoke.

Allow us to go shop for groceries and buy chocolate bars and coffee jars. On our way home and as you drive, I will remove the branding tickets off of everything we shopped for – for we promised to keep our kitchen brand-free. I shall not litter any street with those removed tickets – let it be ugly or beautiful. I’d keep them in a plastic bag and get rid of them in the trash can on the sidewalk on the right of our house’s door.

Shower. I won’t. I’ll leave the coffee jars in the bag, grab two chocolate bars, and throw them on the table by the sofa. I’ll put on some music and intentionally list two or three tracks to play before “Private Investigations”. I’ll lie again on the sofa with my damp sweatshirt stamped against my back allowing the warmth of home to soothe my stomach strip. By the time you are next to me, it will be one track away from Dire Straits’. By the time we are half way through the chocolate bar, it plays. Lips.

Let’s make babies so that on the days you choose to ignore me, I’ll drive across town to get them to spend time with Omar. He will teach them what they cannot be taught in schools and what they can’t learn from you or me. There is no need to bring up Omar when one of them is always putting ear-speakers and so-not-depressingly feeding on Salinger. They got that from me.

I’ll drive back across town and shop for wine bottles that I shall let the baby in the backseat remove the branding ticket for. I’ll secretly get some bourbon too. But before I throw anything in a trash can, and before I throw any chocolate bars on the table and definitely before I prepare any playlists, I need you to know… My hands are scarred from touching all the wrong people.

Of Fish and Bourbon.

There is a bleak piece of furniture in the only room I can stay the night in these days, which I fail to recognize what it is called. It has four drawers and two compartments where I put all my stuff and I don’t order any of them. Ordered stuff get on my nerves, I mess up my clothes whenever I find them tidy to tell you the truth. If I get into a girl friend’s house and find her clothes ordered according to colour and her shoes according to heels, I secretly declare she’s not a friend anymore. There are a lot of items on that piece of furniture, that I don’t recognize what they’re called, ranging from stuff that I use daily like slim perfume containers and black-framed eyeglasses all the way to shoe boxes that have items inside their hollow stomachs, that I never use. I know you’ve noticed how I’ve remembered the perfume and the glasses, but I like to pretend I forget things. It is a newly acquired habit, for when I actually forget things; I can always blame it on my fish memory. For example, I can save the guilt trips I am forcibly injecting into myself today for forgetting the card I was given by the most important salt-n-pepper haired man in a multinational corporate, on my fish memory that I convince myself I have… but that’s another story.

There is a bleak piece of furniture in my room and the only reason it exists is for a half empty bottle of JnB to sit on.

I get home and that’s all I can stare at.

I travel the distance between my bed and the piece of furniture. I raise a shot. I raise a second. Now I can get back to bed harmlessly and safely. I can get back and convince my body to sleep and beg my mind not to think of today. I don’t want to think of today nor any other day. There are things I have to forget like how I know things are getting from bad to worse, from expected failure to utter failure, from temporary safe to permanent hollow and from phases of vulnerable to classic modeling of lonely.

Years down the line, I might not have a room which I know I shall stay the night in nor the cash to afford proper bourbon. However, I wish I can still depend on bleak pieces of furniture having a cheap bourbon bottle on top and my earned fish memory.

Self-closing Tags.

The younger sister sucks on my knees without any consideration to the bone joints her teeth are carving into. It’s been years since she was born and breast feeding has never really been her thing. She sucked the life out of our mother’s breasts and now years down the line; my knees are the only source for her to feed, to breathe and to smother her ugliness with further life. I throw my head back, at first glance; it looks like it’s out of ecstasy. My upper body on that wooden chair might look like that of a woman getting her long-awaited treat, but when one looks closer, my hair is falling on the floor – out of frail, my lips are growing whiter – out of motherhood. I wish I have the strength to let that groan out. I wish my moans were any audible to express the pain. They’re not though, gratefully not making her misunderstand my pain for wanting her to halt. She never stops; she smothers her lips with blood, teeth with flesh and body with gluttony.

Outside there is night. The suckling sister wolf-runs outside when she hears the footsteps of a man. I fall off the chair, thirsty and drained. I jump unconsciously back and forth between the white light I see when I close my eyes and the sounds of my younger sister being humped outside. I fall for the white light again and she brings me back. Orgasm after another, my little sister saves me for that light was pulling strongly… enough.




Beware of the old lady who brings apples to your house. She stands before me with the classic basket of full ripe apples in her left hand and her fake smile in her inviting right hand to pull me off of the floor. I bite off her hand and spit it inside the basket she holds in her left hand and thus her smile goes back to her more familiar smirk which in turn goes back to her face.

By the time I stood up, she vanished into thin air. I go outside the already open-door and run at full throttle on my four limbs. My hands give me a strong front force as the asphalt cuddles the wounds on my knees and increases them. I run not for very long away from the house but I find myself getting back to it. When I wondered how could I run away from something and still get back to it… I was answered that this world is small.




Whenever he is around, I can’t look at his face. I look down at my naked stomach and I find red rays of sunlight coming out of it. There… there it is my definition of love. The red rays wrap my fair body and choke me against them. When he decides to hold me, I don’t feel any arms nor body – for the rays and straps of light are already pressing too hard on my skin.

I open my eyes to find me still lying on the floor, this time – naked. The rays are gone but a certain pain down there suggests there has been a man – one I have never felt. This time I don’t bother to get off of the floor but I could hear my sister licking the rest of the mud off of my knees so that she can have her brunch.

Thy Button-sewn Eyes.

I’ve been awaiting the new Henry Selick with stretched toes and bitten fingernails. In my opinion, Selick’s peak was in 1993 when he coupled up with Burton’s story to create the immortal “The Nightmare Before Christmas”. Selick’s career so far has been brief and non-vibrant ever since; I personally believe the reasons can be summed up in Selick constantly failing to find a grotesque hard-core dark content that he can fine-tune into a more pleasant film. I mean, working with Burton in the early nineties will definitely leave you for a while starving for an equally mind-blasting content.

Nobody can ever tell if Selick gave up or had a hard time with mediocrity, but then came Neil Gaiman with his 2002 9-pages novella “Coraline”. Frequently compared to Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” and described to have been found scarier by adults more than children, “Coraline” was the awaited content for Selick to convert into his new 2009 stop-motion film. He did a great job, making a festive out of the simple illustrations one can find in a 9-pages comic strip using the concept of stop-motion. The same one used all over by the Burton-infused “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Vincent”; defined by Wikipedia as an “animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own”.



My initial reaction after watching the movie was not all that impressed; especially that it had neither a Danny Elfman soundtrack nor any rhyming literature-orgasmic Tim Burton conversations. However, it grew on me, for the rest of the day; I couldn’t get the story out of my mind. I mean, this is sheer genius. Coraline, the unsatisfied ignored-from-her-parents-blue-haired kid gets to find a secret door where she gets inside to get to her “other family” who get her everything she wants and lacks in her “real life” including waves of good food, a better garden, better neighbours, pure attention from everyone’s side… correct pronunciation of her name. However, since there is no such thing as a free lunch, her other mother tells her that she can stay there forever if she wants to, on the one condition of “sewing buttons in her eyes” for her to be just like them. If I read this novella when I was a child, I would have probably been blind by now for I would have definitely tried to sew buttons into my eyes… I mean what sort of grotesque drug was Gaiman on. It had been a long time since someone gave me a simple metaphor I can dwell and day dream about. Coraline left me with a mission of acquiring the novella in my possession – even though this whole possession of things stuff was never really my thing – in addition to his Sandman comic series especially when he gets to introduce Death as the older sister, tag lined “How would you feel if Death was your older sister?” but that’s another story…

كولد تيركى

نسيت شكلك. بأحاول افتكر ملامح وشك وبتيجى وتروح بسرعة قدام عينايا... كأنوار رعاشة على صالة رقص... كل اللى فاكراه منك هو جسمك الضئيل... الضعيف... الممل...

طول عمرى فاكرة أنى بأتشد للناس اللى عارفة هى عايزة ايه... بس لما بأفكر دلوقتى فى أخر اتنين أو تلاتة شدونى على مدار السنة اللى فاتت... كلهم مش عارفين حاجة... وقرروا أنهم ميقرروش... وجسمك الضئيل، الرفيع، الممل كان بيكملى البورترايت ده... بتاع الشاب اللى مش عارف... مش بس مش عارف هو عايز ايه ولكن مش عارف أى حاجة... ضد جميع معايير الصحة التافهة... ضعيف... غير قادر على أى شئ...

من اللحظات المهمة فى السينما وغير السينما... لما يضرب قائد حرب الأرض بركبتيه فى استسلام ضوضائى... درعه على شماله ملقى فى منتهى الهزل، وسيفه على يمينه... وذراعيه مفرودتين أمامه... ليس كمسطرة فارعة قوية ولكن كجزع شجرة هفأ على وشك الانكسار... وعلى وجهه نظرة... "ها؟ ايه تانى؟"... بالنسبة لى ده من أكتر الأشياء المثيرة حاليا... وده اللى شدنى فيك... أنك ضعيف... هفأ... زيى بالظبط.

كل ده دلوقتى مش موجود... اللى موجود بس شوية أنوار رعاشة رقصا على مزيكا اليكترونى... فخورة أنا بالمرحلة دى... وفخورة بأسلوب الكولد تيركى اللى اتبعته عشان أوصلها... الهفأ عمره قصير... يقدم مواساة تافهة يجب أن لا تستمر أكتر من شهر أو شهرين والا تحولت المواساة الا مآساة... وبعديه مفروض يختفى تماما... مش مفروض يظهر فى أى لقاءات اجتماعية خفيفة... مش مفروض يتشاف له صور ولا يتسمع له مكالمات تليفون... مش المفروض يتشاف اسمه على تليفون... بالظبط زى البار مان اللى بتعيطله وانت سكران... بعد لما تفوق مش عايز تعترف بيه أو بأى ارتباط كان يوصلكم...

جسمك الضئيل.. الضعيف.. الممل.. لا يثيرنى حاليا...