Holding glasses of vino tinto, they gazed across the bay, speculating about the silence under the sea. "Seaweeds swaying like palm trees," they all agreed, "quiet as the grave."

Tonight I saw a three legged bijon frise; it was missing its right hind leg. The dog jumped up on me when I entered my apartments elevator. I pet it before turning to its owner and saying, "He has three legs." The owner was a slightly overweight, middle aged woman who had on clear, chunky 80s reading glasses. She nodded at my comment lethargically. "He's very cute though," I said, apologetically. Before they exited the elevator I wondered if I'd said the wrong thing.

"How would I describe myself? Well. My name is Yoni and I like to fuck."

"What do you think your strongest mental skill is?"
"Disassociating."

I'm a kindergarden teacher for asian kids. All their parents work at the chinese dumpling factory next door.

Tasha Story

I took my driving test a few months ago. I was nervous but the roads in Buffalo are completely empty so it's really easy to drive. Everything was going smoothly, and then I got to an intersection and in front of me a huge funeral procession passing. I turned to my instructor and said, "There's a funeral procession." She said, "Oh! Good eye." There hadn't been any other cars on the road during the whole driving test. We sat there silently for 15 minutes, waiting for it to pass.

"Oh you want to see the gazelles, do you mister? Well, you've got three gazelles right here in the car!"
There were three women in the car.
"But can they dance the way a gazelle can?"
"But of course! Even better than a gazelle."
"We'll have to see about that."

You know, I get up at five every morning, I work from morning till evening, I am always dealing with money--my own and other people's--and I see what people are like. You've only got to begin to do anything to find out how few honest, honourable people there are. Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I think: "Oh Lord, you've given us huge forests, infinite fields, and endless horizons, and we, living here, ought really to be giants."

You are the wolf and I am the moon.

Once a kid was making fun of me ceaselessly during class. This had gone on all year, and I was fed up. I got up from my seat, sharpened my pencil in one of those old school sharpeners that made you turn the little knob, and as I was walking back to my desk, I stabbed him as hard as I could with my pencil. He screamed. It was the most satisfying sound I'd heard in a while.

He said his upsidedown tear drop tattoos under his eye meant that he had two children. Being the father to two children is not the opposite of killing two people, but hey. I asked him what the kids names were. He said "Peanut and Butter." If they had a girl they were going to name her Jam or Jelly. He said he always wanted a girl, but instead he got two boys. "Girls are smart, boys are dumb," he said.

While he preached, Bevel's eyes followed drowsily the slow circle of two silent birds revolving high in the air. Across the river there was a low red and gold grove of sassafras with hills of dark blue trees behind it and an occasional pine jutting over the skyline. Behind, in the distance, the city rose like a cluster of warts on the side of the mountain. The birds revolved downward and dropped lightly in the top of the highest pine and sat hunch-shouldered as if they were supporting the sky.

I see myself writing the same thing over and over in here. Sorry.

I've got to turn this solipsism into something productive. I feel ill. I'm sweating. Shambles, shame and shadows. Nonsense, common sense, awful scents, pay for your dinner with 99 cents.

Always the moon rises or sets in the ocean. One or the other. From endless seas into endless seas.

Read this. Roll your eyes.

Dysphoria

I've never felt like this before. Not in my recent memory. Disenchanted. Sweaty palms. Empty brain. Inarticulate. A lightness. A weight. Exasperation. Where are all the other people like me? If I were happy, someone like me would piss me off.

-What's with her?
-Why does she have to be so indulgent in her own "sorrow"?
-Stop with those rich kid blues.
-No one cares.
-She's got it alright.
-She needs to shut up.
-She's weird.

But I don't have enough energy to feel pissed off with myself right now, which seems strangely unfortunate.

It's not apathy. It's sadness.

I think I've got a poets heart: poets feel deeply. They're self absorbed, self obsessed, self indulgent and in need of an abundance of solitude. They're dark, and yet awed by the beauty of the world. Despite all their solitude, they're thirsty for love. Or to be loved. This is making poets sound wretched and cliche. Coffee shop assholes with berets. It's not like that though. Where are all the people like me?

I grew up speaking poems, and after I learned to write, I grew up writing poems. My mother said when I was 4 I would sit on the beach and speak poems to the moon. My old journals are filled with poems. I have all my journals from the time I was five onwards. I'd write poems talking of loneliness and persistence, of beauty and pain, of love and longing and loss. I can transcribe some here. Or scan them. As if I need to prove my own authentic "poets heart" to my non existent blog audience.

I still write poems, though not as avidly as I should. It seems like my generation doesn't appreciate poems. Or maybe I'm in the wrong crowd.

But wait, I'm not in any crowd. I'm just fucking lonely.

Longing. Sweaty palms. Empty brain. Frowning in the mirror, I look at my face real close and all I see is scars. What do you see when you look at me?

I call myself The Misfit because I can't make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment.