Every time something bad happens,

I drown myself in the bottom of a bottle,

and hope idly I'll wake up, but don't hold any anger to the thought I might not.

I fill my lungs with toxic chemicals until they ache, and batter against my ribs with angry fists once so pink now ashen.

I sleep next to someone without a face or a name just to feel my worth weighed in breathy pleas and ribbons down my back.

I exert myself to injury under weights I cannot lift, and stare into the mirror with bruising flesh like a bad peach until I am warped.

I try to bleed myself dry, however I can, because my blood is leaden.

It is treacle, slow and sticky and I cannot live with barked arms and rotten skin.

My therapist calls it avoidance. I call it retribution.

In watching American television, for those programs through which I must still suffer with commercials, I've noticed something very dishonest:

Everyone in commercials dances.

No one dances like that every time they're happy or just catch a fleeting wisp of good luck. Of course, this is symbolic of the person using a product being tickled shitless about using it. How life is so damn sweet in using a product or service that the dancers just can't help themselves.

Saving money makes the debtor dance. And being just a click away, there's plenty enough time to dance. How clean the soap makes you feel provokes the rhythms in your spine that have you dance away in pure muscle memory. Picking up your rental car without the wait, you don't just want to dance — you have to.

No gluten, then dance! No interest for a year? Gotta dance. Double your order (just pay extra shipping and processing), then dance!

Aliens monitoring our airwaves would come away thinking we are an exclusively dancing species. Are we? Yet, all these dancing fools dance alone. They twist and turn and put that pep in their step, prancing to some call of the Sirens heard in their limbic systems. Until that year is up and the interest starts accruing again. Not so sweet. Dance? Melancholic, dejected, gloomy, heartbreaking, and mournful dances don't come full circle for these people: advertising does not deal in duality.

The last time I danced was...I don't remember. And while good things are still happening to me, I fail to enter any type of obedient dancing trance. Yet, now that I've noticed this pattern, I cannot UN-NOTICE it on commercials. Maybe I should pay the extra for Netflix without them.

I am unwanted on this planet. From birth I was given up for adoption. To parents who abused and destroyed any hope I had for a future. The abuse they put me through only set me up to become what I am now. Crippled by PTSD and OCD. Every step forward is two steps back. Any time I think I can get ahead I'm slapped down and reminded that I'm not supposed to be successful and happy. I'm supposed to be miserable. Always the stepping stone, never the destination. When I gain a foothold I lose it within the next step. There's no way for me to get ahead and after so long trying I don't know why I don't just allow myself to fall off this mountain and die.

that's the thing I've noticed in life,

the Impossible, in shadows,

the way it stretches and yawns.

it's always blackened and dark,

and sometimes there's red, viscous,

or orange, and incisors of white,

on closing my eyes at Night.

and other times there's blue,

even brown and yellow, cider

like in phases of the moon,

when the Sun is splayed out.

There's just no pure hue.

10.23.2023

Patterns challenge @TheWolfeDen

Today he is white, clean shaven, and tanning in the glistening sun

Tomorrow he will be raven haired, tall, and mysterious, sitting alone

Today I imagine our life together and the possability of fun

Tomorrow I fantasize about his stature in the bedroom and dream of being thrown

Today, while I sit inside my lonely room, my eyes lock onto my daily distraction

Tomorrow I will hang up on my yelling parent and yearn for comforting touch

Today my homework suffers with my need for satisfaction

Tomorrow I will scold myself for being unfocused and wanting too much

Today I allow myself the dream of intimacy instead of my daily tasks

Tomorrow I will pretend to focus but fail at my mundane asks

Everywhere I go, the number 23 sticks out to me like a sore thumb. For instance, if I was taking a math test, the number that would stand out to me would be 23. The first time that I actually noticed this was happening was 2 years ago, when the number stood out to me three times in three different places. It wasn't until later that I realized that the number had been sticking out to me for years. Sometimes, I think that something good will happen to me on the 23rd day of the month, but nothing too special has happened on those days. At one point, I thought that 2023 would be a great year, but then again nothing good has happened. If anything, I would say that messed up more this year than before, but still, I have learned a lot of new things this year. Because of how many times I've seen '23', I feel a sense of comfort whenever I see it. I'll be having a bad day, and then I'll see the '23' somewhere and remember that's it's okay and that I'll be alright. Maybe when I'm 23 I'll have the best year ever. Whatever the reason '23' keeps appearing, I will always think of it as something good to come.

She lights up the room

Purposefully and barefaced

Indifferent to nightlife, donning a posture suitable for exposed shoulders.

The air fuels her tightly-fit gown—the color of Indian corn.

Like a curved banister, her hips gracefully escort your eyes, long after you pass

Her notoriety is on spectacle; agile talents she brings to brighten the display.

A stage performer

Disposed to wanton spontaneity, employed for a time at a cabaret.

Hers is a dance made scalable, an acquisition for the patron’s desire

A rhythm naked of words, taught by the ancients and rehearsed for centuries

Anonymous—she bribes the imagination

Alone

The kind of alone you feel, when most afraid.

You watch

Her physique, amorously tone, leaves a larcenous taste in your mind

As if tethered discretely to outside her open bedroom window

Enamored, the voyeur continues, not the slightest unnerved.

Watching her practice an Island dance routine, her next ballerina pirouette

A pose that is sometimes hypnotic, sometimes immobile; the allure is always the same.

Cavorting is one of many enticing endowments. Radiant, a foretaste of incandescence

Her gradual cadence rivals a narcotic, administered by loose ends and twists

Predictably untamed—a jungle predator

Masterful

A primitive rumba choreographed for yours, for theirs, and for everyone's impromptu pleasure.

Your eyes speak but fail to overstate the monologue seen living in her exotic expression

Dripping perspiration, her dance renews with slaloms upon slaloms of sensual fluidity

Shortened breaths accompany the ease with which she escapes into another consciousness

Effortless frolic—a single weave of yarn trapped inside a zealous summer breeze.

Her arms stretch overhead—surrendering to the moment

Higher and more exaggerated, with black-painted fingertips straight into the air

On tiptoes, her body spasms, then recoils, as if alarmed by some threat of discovery.

Her charm regenerates, and for as long as you continue to watch, her restless body burns.

Gaze for an additional moment, and you may see beyond her limber backside

Watch

Observe this disproportionate shadow in play, bewildered and elusively raw

Shameless

Despite the impulse to perhaps extinguish, despite the mood of an unnamed master

Silently outspoken, the consummate performer; her reflection in the mirror reveals the ordinariness of a single candle flame.

©2015 Bill Canepa

I didn't like a lot of my current friends when I first met them. I would think that they were annoying, or mean and I just didn't want anything to do with them.

I can think of 7 friends off the top of my friends I didn't like at first. Now when I see someone I don't like, I think "maybe I'll befriend them next".