I am a difficult person to love.

I only need a few moments of your time. I promise I'll be as brief as possible. Just shut the fuck up for five goddamn seconds, will you? Christ. I know you've noticed that something's been a little...strange, lately. Something I haven't been telling you. Alright, fine, I'll own up to it! I've been staring. I'm not made of fucking stone! The truth is...well, to be honest with you...this isn't easy for me to say...it's those jeans, you know the ones - probably picked them just for that. Come-fuck-me jeans. I can't keep my eyes off you in them. I guess, what I'm trying to say is...I think I might be falling for you. I'm having a lot of trouble controlling my emotions. All I can think about is tearing them off you, imagining what you look like underneath them. I've been trying to keep my distance, out of respect - I wasn't really sure you feel the same way I feel. I'm tired of playing these games. Either you want me to make you come, or you don't. Cards on the table. I didn't want to ruin our friendship, and I understand if this is a little confronting for you. I'm trying to be as considerate as possible. I'm thinking about it right now! Bending you over that couch, throwing you into bed, up against a wall, anything. Anywhere. You want it as much as I do, you fucking slut. I just can't hold in this feeling anymore! I...I think I'm in love with you. God, you want me right now, don't you? I just wanna feel you shiver, make you moan. Give me the slightest sign and I'll have you right here. Anything. Please, give me a sign. I need to know how you feel. Have I ruined everything? Do you want to be ruined?
I'm going mad not knowing how you feel. I didn't mean to take you by surprise, but I just can't hold back anymore. I'm going to come back later. Let me know how that felt...

Heart and Mind and Soul

I'm blogging as soon as I wake up. This is rare. But as usual something occured to me in the shower and I feel I should write it down.
I spend a lot of time talking about heart, mind and soul. I use them a lot in my prose (such as it is). I realised this morning that those three things are what I believe constitutes a human being and I'm going to note down what I believe those things are - and then note down who has mine, because that's the other thing I thought of in the shower.
Right, so. Mind.
Mind is all of those thoughts you have. Mind is your sense of self, basically. Everything that lies behind your eyes, every time you think 'yes' or 'no', every time you formulate an argument, willfully make a choice, express your emotions that sometimes come from other places but eventually ferment in your mind, so on so forth. Mind is thought. Thought is mind.
Ben owns my mind. He owns my mind because I refuse to allow him my heart any longer, as there isn't a point and because he doesn't want it, because he can't have my soul, and because his mind and my mind together are like fireworks and matches. Friendship is a choice, and the mind is the home of choice. He is my best friend and probably will be for a very long time. Thus, he owns my mind.
Now then, the soul.
The soul is all of that intuition bullshit. For me, the soul is the feelings that cannot be rationalized, those subtle things in life that have no explanation, no obvious source - that feeling of wholeness or emptiness, that deep-seated sense of right and wrong (not always, sometimes the mind handles that), contentment, equilibrium and all that other hippy crap. I was raised by hippies, I refuse to be an athiest, sue me. Anyway, the soul is all of that unexplainable yet essential stuff.
Baesty is my soulmate. She can't have my mind because she already has so much of me that even I don't understand, and she can't have my heart because we will never sleep together. She has my soul for reasons I can't fathom, but she has it regardless.
Finally, the heart is love. Physical contact, affection, and love. The kind of love where your blood quickens in your veins at the sight of someone, the kind of love that leaves you tongue-tied in the wake of their scent, the kind of love that makes your dreams haunted and tortures you with senseless yearning.
At the moment, I'm heartless.

So, that concludes my just-woke-up-must-write-wtf moment.

Dinner

Our kitchen needs a clean.

First thing that crosses my mind as I walk in - before the smell, before the sight of you at the bench, before the rumble of my aching belly. I'm right. It does need a clean. The sink is piled high with dirty dishes. The floor is encrusted with old sugar, split and forgotten. The trashbag is full and sagging. The cat - that hateful, mewling cat - is sitting by an empty, chipped bowl.
Yes, our kitchen needs a clean.

"Smells good," I say. I try and be appreciative. You do your best with what you have, in this filthy, filthy kitchen. "What is it?"

"Not finished," you let me know. You're distracted. I can sense it in your voice, see it in the arch of your back. I wonder idly how long you've been in this kitchen, amongst the dirt and grime. You'll cook anyway, you always do, but I'm wondering where you found the resources. The fridge is empty - aside from what's rotting in the vetetable crisper.
There was some milk that had gone off, but I drank it on the way to work.
There was a side of rancid meat, but you ate that for dinner last night. You tried to hide that from me, but I knew you did. It was gone when I looked for it after you went to sleep.
The fruit was rotted a week before we had that, trying not to meet one another's eyes.
I wonder what you've cooked.

"Is it far off? I'm starving!" I was, too. I'd been at work all day. You were here, seeing to the house, I suppose. I didn't really know what you did today, or the day before, or the day before. I suppose I just stopped paying attention. My mind wandered back, following my footsteps mentally, back along the crowded, smelly trainlines, back past the decrepid fields, back past the tumbledown buildings, back to work. I didn't remember anything about the day's work, really. It was all a bit of a blur. I do remember, quite vividly, that one of my workmates, Kerry, had half a box of cornflakes today. He had kept it under his shirt, to save it for our lunch break. Did we still get lunch breaks? I couldn't remember.
I wondered what had happened to Kerry. I reached up, slowly, and found a cornflake in my ear. I fished it out and chewed it slowly.
It was stale.

"How much longer?"
"Long enough. I've been here all day, you know."
"Have you?"

We trailed off. I knew there were things I was supposed to ask you, things I was supposed to do. But it was all so far away...like a dream. Something that we didn't need to do anymore, surely? Something that had been nice for a while, but wasn't important to anything now...
The smell of the turning meat made me blink and forget what I was thinking of. It almost brought tears to my eyes. I wondered how you had resisted the smell for so long.

There was a knock at the door.

You didn't turn around. I didn't move. The smell of the cooking meat was overpowering. It held me there, entrapped. Slowly, I started to wonder - if I moved quickly enough, there was that filthy frypan in the sink...if I grabbed it before you could turn, and hit you over the head hard enough, you probably wouldn't get up aga-

"I think you're supposed to go and open the door."
"Right."
I went to open the door. The smell of the meat lessened. I tried to focus on what I was doing. Hand on doorknob, door eases open, cough, blink. Not used to doing this twice in a day. Door opens outwards, not inwards. Not leaving for work, just answering door. Can do this. The smell of the meat is fading. Can do this.
It's the neighbour. Dimly, I remember that means he lives next door.
"Ah..." he says, and then blinks a bit and makes strange noises. I realise he has forgotten my name. I realise I have forgotten his name. Did I ever know it? I think I did, once.
"...you," he finishes. "I seem to have lost my children. Have you seen them?"
I blink stupidly. Have I seen his children? I don't remember. What happened to Kerry? "What do they look like?"
He blinks stupidly back. We both seem to be blinking a lot. Is that normal? Are we normal? "You know...I don't actually know. I wouldn't have come over here at all, only we're out of food at our place, me and my...and my wife...and I thought that one of my daughters was hiding a string of sausages...you know, for herself...so I thought I'd come over here and see if she'd been around..."
He slumps. Recalling so much had clearly been an effort for him. I feel a moment's sympathy for him, and then wonder why. Then I wonder what sympathy is.
He perks up. Flares his nostrils. "Say, what's that divine smell..."
I close the door. Smell the meat. Head back towards the kitchen.
For some reason I look out the front window as I walk past it. He's still there, standing stupidly in the garden. As I look out the window he slumps to his knees, starts picking the flowers in our flowerbed. Bringing them to his mouth. Eating our flowers.
I vaguely feel that he shouldn't be doing that, but he's doing it anyway, and the meat must be nearly done. You must have nearly finished by now.
"Who was at the door?" you ask me, not really caring.
"A man, looking for his daughter..." I reply, not really caring either. "What are you cooking?"
You don't reply.
The meat cooks in the oven, and smells delicious.
I notice a spot of red on the back of your hand.
Our kitchen is filthy.

Sweet Dreams

I took the grime in at a glance,
The dirty dishes, underpants -
Tossed aside by happenstance,
and strewn upon the floor.

I watched you grope for who to be -
You'd lost your touch, you lacked the grace,
You used to wear while choosing face,
To wear instead of bearing me.

And we had yet to even touch.
This is too much.

You settled then upon the friend,
The host, the bluff and hearty man,
That one that we both hate and scorn!
This is the face you chose?

Well, what shall we compose?

I resigned myself to a difficult task, and looked around the room again for inspiration.
There was little to delight me on the floor,
but I turned my gaze upwards - and what is this?
A little white bottle,
on the desk,
innocent.

You had the decency to look ashamed.
I found my voice.

"And what is this?"

You looked at me.
Of course, I knew.
But to voice it made you know my disgust.

"I come calling at the open door,
A door long closed, a door long locked,
But I did not come expecting war,
A prison cell, a rifle cocked - "

"Don't stanza me," you cut me off -
"I know that it looks bad, to you,
But you aren't here often enough,
To keep the dreams at bay -"

"Rhyme, my boy" I said, nonplussed.
"At least do that - for am I not
here as often as I must?
It is through me you stop the rot!

And this, this is your shield?
To pat you softly on the head?
To send you softly to your bed,
At mercy of the powers you wield?"

I lifted the bottle.
Diazepam.
There was no rhyme there.

"You dream the soft sleep of the drugged and duped."

"What of it?" you demanded.
"So what? I take a pill to sleep at night, I hold the terrors of the night at bay, and I am still -"

"A slave. This is but a symptom, a sign of doom, gloom - there's no more room!" I was enraged. "You are still what? Alive? Yourself? A man? Do you dare to do all that may become one? Are you least yourself when you wear your own face? Do you look out of your tower and think of birds?"

Now you were annoyed. "You speak nonsense."

I was unrelenting. "Shall I give you a mask, so that you will tell me the truth? You had trouble choosing, when I came in."

You retrieved the bottle from my shaking fingers. I could feel myself unravelling. Structure was forsaken. Verbosity was deserting me, and I could see in your eyes that you felt it too. There was no unity, no completeness. There was no singular purpose, no completed work, and yet I was being pulled away. Something was wrong. Something was wro -

You unscrewed the top of the bottle and tipped a tiny pill into your hand.
You brought the pill to your mouth.
You swallowed.

"Sweet dreams."

I could not tell if it was your voice or mine.

Brewing and Brewing and Brewing

I must not descend into this.
Must not, must not, must know.
Proper spacing, proper pacing,
And all will flow as all should flow.
Spaces and spaces and spaces and spaces and spaces and spaces and spaces and spaces.
Filling! I'm running out of room! There isn't any room! And I'm going to explode, implode, destroy, deploy, extremely decieved and bereaved as I retrieve.
That fucking rhymed, again and and again and again. Everything fucking rhymes. I find myself deleting words because they do not swing.
What a crime.
What a fucking crime.
Words that spewed forth are deleted before they have time to take root,
Because they don't mean anything unless I make them fucking swing, fucking sing? What a fucking thing.
Pressure. Pressure. Pressure. Pressure.
I'm like a patient, gibbering and writing on the walls in fury. Or one of those 'different' girls, who scream the thoughts that come into their heads in order to glean notice.
Strained beets, strained beets, and all that rot.
My god, this fucking pressure. Stones in a spiral. My gaze is drawn, but my mind is tearing away.
I held on to you, to this, to us - but what a fucking joke THAT is, right? Who the fuck is us? Did we fuse? Am I you? Are you me? What a fucked up sentiment. I was lost until I found you. Lost with me. Who the fuck needs you? I have me.
And there are people who are annoyed at cats in trees, and the wrong fucking shade of magenta.
What a fucking mess.
Anywhere's better than here, but I'm here, so there's nothing better.
I'm here.
You're not here. Why the fuck are you here? You shouldn't be, you're not.
Where's the valve on my head to turn this shit off? Release it, let it flow, let it show, let it GO.
It needs to go.
It seeps and it weeps and NO MORE, I SAY. NO MORE. I WILL NOT MAKE THEM DANCE FOR YOU. I WILL NOT GIVE IN TO THIS FUCKING MESS. I AM NOT THE FOOL.
I will not rhyme anything with that.
Fuck.
There's that fucking valve.

Alters

But blink your eyes -
Is this the boy of who you dreamed?
A boy who sucks, a boy who fucks,
A boy who makes his partners scream.
Is this not all you dreamed?

Turn away, and try again.
With heart, and mind, and soul.
Outstretched.
With pen to make a mockery.
Do you think he'll write of thee?

Or are you now the country lord?
His clothes so fine, who drinks his wine?
He's undemanding, yet commanding -
It is he, who rules this place.
Do you recognise his face?

What is it you truly want?
To flick your fingers, crush your foes,
No need for love, no need for prose,
Just power, and the will to fight.
That's who you wanted, right?

But now, the howl of misery,
This one is blinded, and yet sees,
The sorrow and the endless woes,
With mind for all the subtlety.
This is what you'll be?

Perhaps you'll be all five,
And then, you'll be alive.