March 29, 2012

This is Us: Dead




I feel them watching me. I am at the side of the basketball court. I hold my breath as I pass by. I know nothing of what they see, I can’t understand myself in that way. What I am to you, was always unknowable, so what I am to the world, is unknowable too. As much as I don’t want that to be true, it is. In my mind there is a ball of light, I don’t know how else to say it. It lives there and gives me all my ideas, but it is not really a part of me. instead it is larger than I am or larger than I pretend. When I think of you, you are in the absence, not in the light but outside of it. You live there and haunt me like a ghost. I have done many things to love you and just as many to hate you. I have tried to forget you, but you are all around me, like air.

When I had my first dog, which was my only dog, I understood that you can love a thing and fear it. Not fear it in the way you fear a monster, but fear it in the way, that the thing that loves you needs you and that you will never be enough for that thing. You are only you. A human. I am me. A girl. That is all I will ever be. I have tried to be more, but I was born this way. Fragile and trying to cover that up. I walk the planet knowing that things can love me, but that I cannot help those things. They will be outside of my reach to make safe or to save. This fact is like a tree. It is there and once you see it, it just is. Beautiful and green and vastly alive, but all alone in the way we all are when it comes down to it. A tree keeps its distance from the other trees, if they are too close, they fight for sunlight and their roots get tangled and they become each other. Or something.

I was thinking in that golden shiny ball earlier today and it moved. It traveled down into where my heart is supposed to be. It is there now, making that spot warm and getting it ready for something. I can’t sleep. I know what’s coming and I’m scared of it. I know I cannot meet the challenge of being anything at all except my quiet self, my real self that I hide because I don’t think you would like it or understand. I am usually on some sort of stage trying to entertain you so I can feel love.

Have you ever held a bird in your hand and felt its heartbeat? Birds are wonderful, I think my Father said that and he’s right. There have been many birds in my life. Broken ones. Dying ones. Healthy fat ones. I have always loved them. Except for seagulls or pigeons. Both of those birds make me sick. Like they are rodents with wings. Scavengers that aren’t actually birds at all, because they pick garbage and do a bird bath in gutters. I realize that doesn’t make sense, but nothing will after this. I am a different thing right now.

I am not of myself in the way that I can describe something as accurate or in the way I am actually feeling it. I have always wanted to say things with precision, but words have an inherent limitation being that we are all animals and communicating as if we are noble and fearless. That’s dumb isn’t it? To be something we aren’t.

When I went to school, I saw kids there. I didn’t know how to talk to them, because I was scared. I thought they all knew each other already and I didn’t know how to meet them. My mother would say, just go and play with them, but I didn’t know how. So, I would walk up to the place that the kids were playing and find something to do with my feet. I was ashamed that I didn’t know what they knew. It made me scared to be alive. Later, I became an athlete at least a playground athlete, on the monkey bars swinging the whole time so I looked busy and wouldn’t have to talk to anybody.

My mother used to say she was painfully shy and her sister looked like Elizabeth Taylor, but my mother looked like Audrey Hepburn and I thought she looked better. Not as fat. When I was little I always thought Elizabeth Taylor was fat, so to say someone looked better than her was stupid. Just be happy to look like Audrey, I would say, she’s thin. I was painfully shy to be myself, never comfortable to be myself. I thought I wasn’t enough. I remember sitting in my mother’s car while she had panic attacks and didn’t know how to drive across the street. I remember being so young and not knowing how to drive and thinking, this is a bad scene, me in this car and my mom freaking out. I didn’t know if telling her to stop acting crazy would make her more crazy. I remember thinking things I wanted to say and then not saying them afraid I would upset my mother. I was very quiet as a child.

When I told my mom I was too scared to go to school, she didn’t believe me. I was scared for real. I would go and no one would talk to me and I’d be scared. Later after I made friends the people I did meet told me I seemed stuck up. I just didn’t know how to meet them and it froze me. I found out if I got sick I could stay home. So, I was sick a lot. Earaches. Sore throats. Fevers. It kept me away from school and I could get codeine. Codeine didn’t help the pain, but it made me feel quiet and safe. In a warm bubble all by myself, but not caring anymore that that was the way it was and was always going to be. It made me happy to be alone. It made me understand I had the best brain and I was the coolest person.

I realized today that I tell people how to be around me, but they don’t pay attention. I am very particular and closed off while pretending to be open. They say they understand how to act, but eventually I see some glimmer in their eyes wherein they think I’ve changed my mind about the directions I’ve given them. I want to tell them, you can only be close if you play by the set of rules and parameters I have given you, but there is free-will and they think they’ll do things their way and that I will like it, it will be good for me—their way. Only their way shuts me out forever. They didn’t listen. I have rules—you can only get close by pretending not to and once you drop the pretense, you are out. There is no other way, it’s because I’m scared of dying.

I think about death more than most people. When I was little I knew that all the people I loved were going to die someday and the pain of knowing it was hard to take. There wasn’t anything I could do about it. I remember finding out. I was in my parent’s bedroom, I even remember the bedspread—it was mustard yellow and brown flowers or leaves or something. My father was on the bed and I was on the floor with my world piggy bank, I was counting my money and my father was telling me stories. I asked what would happen to me when everybody died and he told me I’d die too someday. Why be born at all if only to die? It seems unfair. It stayed—the knowledge of it. Most people know this and can forget it and that’s why they don’t do anything in their lives with a desperation—they think they have all the time in the world. Or feel content in relationships or find stability---But I know it and can’t forget it, so I am awake to it all the time, which is a burden in one way, wherein I’m in more pain and feel things all the time, because no one else seems to know what I know, that we are all going to be dead, so why not try things, at least just once? Why wait it out. I think that’s why I live the way I do, in a way, like I am perpetually on vacation, doing things children do or teenagers do. It’s because we are dying.

March 26, 2012

Dear Diary--Are You Bored Like Me?




Dear Diary,

When last we spoke, I had been thrown into a jail cell for a long weekend and it was the single best forced diet I have ever tried. What they don't tell you about jail is its like the worst highschool gossip nightmare anyone could imagine. You are not separated from people unlike you, you are sleeping, pissing and eating with them. My friend Anna was looking at a 7 year sentence for heroin possession. She was my jail friend, someone I would only know then and never again. I always like to think she is the one Anthony Kiedis wrote about in one of his songs, "she got seven years for being sad." I was released before her and being held for a very bad crime that I did not commit. My boyfriend had his jaw broken in  four places by some gang in Venice. I had driven drunk and hit the car that came after us. By the time we got home Brett was so angry he jumped up and down on my guitar and smashed one of my chairs to my little antique table. Although I was in bed and crying because Brett could not be persuaded to go to the hospital, the cops came because of the screaming. He told the cops I had broken his jaw with the chair leg. Anyone knows that in Los Angeles, if the cops are called and there is a scratch on the other person, they have to take you in. Brett later recounted everything in front of a judge and I was exonerated and the "crime" was expunged from my record. It was a long nightmare, Brett, but I'll never forget him. He's on me like a stain.

When I got out, I was skinny. The jail was in the middle of Los Angeles, near Beachwood. I lived on Argyle. I walked home and sat down and never wanted to be in a relationship again. 

Goodbye. You write to me next. Start it with---Dear Lisa (Wizard of all things Human) and end it with a sincere statement on what it's like to be you, the only one who hears my secrets. Till we meet again. Goodbye.

March 24, 2012

A Tale Of The Spider Who Was Actually Satan




A Tale of Why We Are So Fucked—As a Species

Before the Baby Salty Jesus birthed us and we became our non-human selves---it is written that we had once been human. We were real live human beings that liked to kiss and tell and do the Holiest of the holies in front of the videoscreen. But that was before the spider incident which later conflates into the Satan incident which follows:

Once upon a time, in the middle of winter, one winter when we were really fucking cold in our beds and wearing our see-through hot pink number without panties, somebody came to visit us in our rooms. It was the first night after the brand new white sheets and the first night of the spider who stared at us with his beady eyes on our bedspread—wherein we went---why is that spider’s legs spread out like he is about to run the 100 yard dash and why do I feel like he is conscious and wants to talk to me about something quite important?
We were all ears.
On this night of the spider, we looked again and there was a man, this man was Satan.
Remember: Before this happened---We had known how to love one another without fear and we had understood that one text does not make or break any relationship of value and we had been unafraid to do what we liked because there was no fear to do the Happy.
But, what happened was we wanted to be cool, more than we wanted our hearts deepest desires and Satan knew that on some level when he came to us in the nighttime while we were fast asleep in our angelic poses in our beds without wrappers or crumbs but still in a cute outfit. On that night that Satan came, we opened up our beautiful orphan eyes and said to the Bad son of God because he was more competitive than Jesus and corrupted souls through deviant means:
 “Hi.”
Satan the Lord of Darkness had a little contract with him and he was charming and good looking (even better looking than our adorable bedmates who we had just stopped hugging to witness the aforementioned spider)
and Satan goes: “Hi.”
We felt our wholeness right then and there. We were no longer ordinary—we were visited by Satan and that fed our enormous but undeservedly so's ego.
It was terrifying how like a human Satan seemed and how handsome and how we hoped he would text us the next day. (We smoothed our hair in the face of it).
But we weren’t scared of new things at that point, we were still innocent with pure hearts.
What Satan said was hey, you seem cool and I’ve been watching how everyone else kind of looks to you as the model of cool and how you have a hard time with commitment and significant others, so I was thinking you might want to join a club:
The Club of Not Feeling or Caring and Impure Hearts but Look Cooler Than Everyone Else Club. 
We thought we might.
He made it sound so fancy.
So, Satan the Lord of Darkness made us sign a commitment to not feeling human emotions at the expense of our inbred coolness. So, we were like: “OK, what do we have to lose anyway, we are always trying to avoid feelings and stuff by eating too much or too little or buying shoes and obsessing on how to wear our hair in order to be neat and different.” But, really we just said, “OK.” (Because we want to be considered cool and like we aren’t overthinking this shit).
And we signed.
The contract basically said, anyone who loves you from here on our will be seen as the enemy and Lo and Behold it motherfucking was.
After that our hearts were closed off. God and the Baby Salty Jesus were disturbed and kept sending us people who wanted to love us, but we only saw them as suspects in a larger scheme of our newfound paranoia of all things cute and adorable and we read into everything with the one thought: What can this person possibly want from me? Fear Fear Fear Fear Fear Fear Fear Fear Fear Fear Fear I'm Scared, Etc. (Only to be cured with copious amounts of anonymous sex and vast amounts of designer shoes for the girls or car stuff for the boys).
And that is how we became non-human and unable to love.
Please send $200 to Lisa Douglass at her PayPal
fishtwin@earthlink.net
For this most important fact that is unchangeable and why we are all so fucked.
The end.

March 20, 2012

Why Doesn't He Like Me, Lisa?



I also get calls from girls, going, why didn't he like me? Wasn't I cute enough? Smart enough? Did I bang him too soon or not soon enough or in the right position or it took too long or too short, Etc. Etc.
Here's the Real truth---I sat with my friend, kind of famous for being good in the sack and good in jail, and he told me the real reasons, the ones we all fear are true but never get told because the guys are being polite. His name is not Matt and not Brian and not Gregory and NOT Josh and or JIM (although those are five very good SOLID guesses).

Exhibit one:  Your pussy is too tight. This is the one boys can never say because it harkens back to pre-verbal stage when the insie-dimensions of the pussy-of-the-world---the one belonging to the MOMMY, well.. Yours reminds him of that pussy and he can't have that pressure on him ever ever ever again.

Exhibit two: You text smilicons and emoticons and tell him too many flowery things after he leaves your apartment and before he gets back to the other girl he is fucking. She then looks through his phone and the boy gets in trouble. So he gets FUCKED three times, not just twice like he planned.

Exhibit three: You believed the lie the boy told to get into your pants. It was basically, I really really really like you and even though I have a horrible reputation that all your friends warned you about I won't treat you that same way. In this way, the boy feels he's degraded you and that you aren't that smart. Dumb girls scare boys as much as smart ones do.

Exhibit four: Whenever he looks in the mirror and go: MONKEY! BANG!, you ask him what that means. It just isn't polite to always be asking a dude what everything means. And he doesn't know how to answer you anyway. (See: Exhibit Seven).

Exhibit Five: He likes bigger titties or smaller titties or faker ones or less fake ones or ones with the giant nipples and you only have the tiny pink nipples and he likes the other kind of nipples the opposite of the ones you have. The darker ones or pinker ones or bigger and or smaller ones. (This one can be fixed by painful plastic surgery ONLY IF the dude is willing to tell you his preference--which is very hard to get a person to admit).

Exhibit Six: Your breath is bad, consistently like you just ate a whole plate of salmon. Boys don't like that salmony breath, but are scared to tell you, the only difference is they will fuck you first and then ignore you unlike a girl who if they smell the salmony breath will just think of a cat they once had. (Cat's name: Mittens).

Exhibit Seven: You analyze everything the boy said or did or didn't say or didn't do and you go over it with your smartest friends and your dumbest but sexiest friends and then you call some psychics to see if they can get it right or tell you that very thing that is a match for the answer YOU WANT TO BE true but never is. You analyze it to mean the boy really must LOVE you, that is why he is avoiding you and that is why he said that thing about Mr. Rodgers and that is what the spirit guides mean when they said: HE IS NOT THE ONE (in your mind it still equals HE LOVES ME). Hint which hurts: He's not intimidated or too into you to call. (Hint which hurts more: If he won't fuck you, he doesn't find you attractive---for serious--NO one is going to say out loud--I don't want to bone you cause of your weird NOSE, that's just mean).

Exhibit Eight: The boy didn't like you all that much, he just wanted to see what all the fuss was about and you seemed to enjoy yourself too, so what's the BIG WHOOP? (And you actually did say too much or not make the right sounds during the "special act.")

Exhibit Nine: Cars and motorbikes and "TIME WITH THE BOYS"; and or working too much or not working enough or working on himself---all code for: I DON'T LIKE YOU I JUST WANT TO FUCK YOU AND DISCARD YOU LIKE A FILTHY WHORE but are too polite to say what I want.

Exhibit Ten: Once when the boy was very small he realized he only liked blondes and you, sadly, are brunette, beautiful, but only for fucking not for marrying. DYE YOUR HAIR unless you don't have the skin for it, then MOVE ON.

The boys say sorry they are such cowards, but are convinced that you are cowardly too in too many ways to count seeing how you are the weaker sex only to be used for sex and psychological domination. SORRY, they feel really really bad and guilty but you mean nothing to them.



See: Porn addiction
See: Video Chat Rooms
See: Lying.

Sincerely, boys of the Americas and British Isles (Not Japanese or Kazakstanian boys).

March 18, 2012

Why Doesn't She Like Me, Lisa? A Tell All.




To all the boys who have been calling me recently telling me that a cute girl dumped them and they don't know why but think they want to know but even as I write this I am doubtful that anyone wants the truth, still I submit the following: 

Exhibit One: Your breath is bad, terrible even and we don't know how to say that thing to you. 
Exhibit Two: Your penis has the same exact dimensions of the one guy that you can never replace because he was WAY more dysfunctional as a lover and we need that dysfunction to feel sad about ourselves and our place on planet earth as the weaker species.
Exhibit Three: You aren't smart but try to be and we don't know how to handle that. We feel scared of dumb things.
Exhibit Four: We slept with your ex wife and or girlfriend and she told us about that thing you did once that you better not do with us but that you secretly hope will get you arrested one day. We actually admire you for doing it too, we think that took balls.
Exhibit Five: We aren't that available but tried to be. There was that tiny window, but then it closed, you were too nice, mean, angry, sweet, horny, not-horny-enough, BLANK, hungry, too skinny, too KAZAKSTANIAN but without the charm, too fat.
Exhibit Six, Seven and Eight: We wanted something different, we aren't sure what, but we'll know it when we see it.
Exhibit Nine: Your voice lacks testosterone and if we wanted a female lover, well..
Exhibit Ten: Your life lacks adventure and seems boring. 
We hope you understand, please forgive us our cowardice but we are fairly certain that you have been a coward too.
See: Ex wife
See: Ex girlfriend
See: Truckstop Bathroom
Sincerely, 
Women everywhere.

March 17, 2012

Night In Hell at the Chelsea Hotel




Night in Hell at the Chelsea Hotel

The man was married, but not in any traditional sense. Morally speaking, he was getting off his original mark. The Chelsea stunk of perfume and opium. His trench coat was black and he was dirty. Dirty from drinking in a nearby dive, dirty from living wrong, from not being able to love. He brought Dolly with him, if this was his last night on earth, he might as well fuck. She was no whore either; she had nice skin and a pretty smile. She told him the first time she got paid for it; she had been out all night and forgot where she was going. Something about a bus ticket home. She said she had a mental disturbance that made her forget every man she had since that first one. She was smart though and took to reciting Allen Ginsberg's Howl for entertainment every time things got too quiet.
Finally, he said, shut up, and he took her hand in his and they walked quietly up the stairs. From some of the rooms you could hear fighting and others you could hear the white noise of late night TV. He held her hand and then opened the door. They sat on the couch with a bottle of wine. He told her it was going to be a bad night after she was gone. “I don’t have to go.” She rested her head on his shoulder feeling the warmth of two people who needed something they couldn’t give the other one.  He had changed his mind when he got her inside. It seemed too sad somehow to have sex with someone he didn’t even really know except for drinking. Too ordinary. Too every other girl he’d every met-like.
“Don’t you want to?” Dolly said.
“Nope. I want you like this, if we do it, I won’t be remembered.”
“It could be fun,” Dolly said, but made a face that said otherwise.
“I’m not going to be every other guy to you. No way.”
After she fell asleep, the man told himself that he better listen to some music and he better do his drugs before morning.  He gently moved Dolly’s head off his shoulder and lowered her onto his couch.  He pulled the blanket off the chair and draped it over her.  He thought her face was pretty in a noble sort of way, the kind of face that seems wiser than anyone else, only appearances were false, that much he knew. It wasn’t like he thought it was going to be, he knew things he wasn’t supposed to know, he tried it out and he realized he was good at it though, so what the hell, he did it every chance he got.  Some would call it weakness, but others might say it was talent.
He poured more wine. He got the David Bowie album and put it on.  Dolly was asleep so he didn’t put it on too loud.
Ground Control to major Tom
Ground Control to Major Tom
Take your protein pills may god’s love be with you.
Ground Control to Major Tom.
He sat down and dialed hoping against hope she wouldn’t pick up. Why does it always have to be me that calls, he was thinking. She answered.
“I know, I know.  I don’t give a fuck who’s sleeping.”
“Really, is that so?  Do you fight with him like we did? I miss you.”
She didn’t say it back.
Later at four, he put a gun in his mouth and said goodbye for good.

March 16, 2012

Advice For Writers


Lately, people have been writing to me asking me to help them in a variety of ways. Some of them are cool when I say, look I'm all tapped out, some of them get mad and don't understand my health issues or that I'm in school for a another full year after this one is done. So, here we go--My blanket advice to writers who hate me for telling them the truth and the manipulative ones who try to make me feel shitty for being a real live human barely able to do my own work: you guys can get fucked.

Rules for becoming a writer:

1. Fall in love. It should be noted that there are different versions of love most of which include one person parasitically sucking off the other more strong person, but this still can be used to the writer's benefit. What you do is you label anything love that you can't figure out or when a person acts inconsistent, one day happy, one day angry (like father), and you sleep with that person and you listen to their hopes and dreams and they never ask you about yours and you don't care because deep inside you know this isn't the real thing but the sex parts feel good and you really really really like their nose, but inside you know it won't last. This isn't love, and you won't call it love, but it will hurt you when you end it just as if it were real love because the person with the nose you love will cry and act needy and you will go, where is the one guy and or girl who is not needy and just wants to be around me without projecting their past bullshit onto me and assuming that I feel more for them than they feel for me when usually it is not the case. Don't you remember the story about my dog and how I stopped being able to love after my dog was put to sleep while I was at school? Bambi--I miss him. He loved me. He did hump my leg (not dissimilar from the men I date or even fake date). But, he loved me in a way that no one else can because their private parts steer that part of their brain that they try to idealize and call things love when it is really can I put my privates into your privates and will you be nice to me after and see me as a superhero? 

2. Get drunk and take pills. This part, is debatable, because I no longer drink, but the thing is but when I did drink I DRANK EVERYTHING and drank with a vengeance and drank at people and drank with men without teeth and found myself making out with harelip dude and toothless dude and then had boyfriends that did drugs so I did drugs with them and we HATED each other and HATED ourselves, but it was FUN. The ones who drink are in the most pain and their pain makes it interesting to be them in their confusing sad lives and they are the best writers invariably. I also think the one guy in my class who only likes dogs and hates humans is going in the right direction. 

3. Jail. I think if you want to be a writer and you have never been arrested you can still be a nice writer, many people might read you, I just won't care about it very much. But, I, thankfully, in all my pretentious un-goodness as a human being, am not your only reader, nor will I ever buy your books or think you're cool at all.

4. Look rad. This one is a must for any writer. It doesn't have to do with your face as much as keep yourself cool looking. You have to have personal style. That is very important. A style that is not copied or fake. It is your own and while there may be copiers, no one does your style like you do.

5. Learn to hate. I was raised by Seventh Day Adventist/Christian Scientist/Sometimes Cult member parents and they taught me to never lie, never dance, if you are sick that there is something wrong with you on a deep spiritual level, because you wouldn't get sick if you could pray rightly. I don't hate them, but I have learned to hate ideas. Learned to hate people who try to make me feel guilty. Learned to hate parasites. Learned to hate the things in myself that close off to you when you are an ignorant person. Hate has wings. Hate is memorable. You can write about hate. I'd much rather be hated than almost anything else. I love hate.

6. Read astrology. This one sounds totally dumb, but is as real as the rest of them. Look up why people are acting certain ways and find that astrology answers the most predictable of all the questions you would ever have about said person, confirming what you already know but are loathe to say. Then you can admit to yourself that people can be categorized and no one is really unique or even that different from what it says about you on google. Take me for example Pisces with Leo rising. I am difficult, self-righteous and hard to be close to, but once you are in, I am loyal forever. If you cross me, you will go on my dry-erase board and become one of the people I am on a singular mission to destroy psychologically. It will happen. The Pisces may easily swim away if you do one wrong thing, but they never forget a slight. Not EVER. Serious. And while Pisceans are the most loving and giving of the zodiac, their ability to choose inappropriate partners is legendary as can be seen if you study this blog. But, the leo rising part makes up for it in ways that will make you scared to be alive. All this is factual and should be paid attention to in legions of ways, so that you can figure everyone out and waste a whole shit ton of time wherein you should be writing.

7. Be irresponsible. (Steal stuff, sleep with bad people, say stuff you don't mean, fake love fake people, don't be honest, etc.) This creates the kind of guilt that keeps writers up at night and those writers have very little to do having already worn out their lover, so they have to write stuff down so that their conscience can catch a break.

8. Lie. This one should be obvious to any would be writer. But, you only tell the truth on paper, lying and exaggerating facts makes you memorable and while you never lie on the page you confuse all those around you into thinking you are someone you aren't and this makes you memorable. (Writers, that are real should be memorable).

9. Be memorable. In all ways, be different. Think different, say different things that no one else would say because they are too concerned with being properly human but not a real human. Don't cater to societal expectations. Be a nice person one day a mean person the next. 

10. Write. While this is something that should be obvious to anybody, it isn't. You should write everyday and have opinions about the world you live in that are sacrilegious and scary to others, but don't fabricate this--they must be the secret things inside of yourself that you secretly think but would never ever say because you are too polite to say to someone's face. Say those things. Like when I broke up with you and I said the sex was good I only said it to make your face stop crying. I didn't say it because it was real. 

11. Be more yourself. I don't know what else to say about this one. Only you know what that means. But, if you are secretly copying anybody, trying to be like somebody else in anyway, style, dress, speech, thought, stop that shit and become what you were born to become. YOUR OWN PERSON. 

12. Eat things that aren’t known to be food, like hotpockets.

13. Question God or ideas on God or all the ideas that are in your head and ask yourself, are these my own made up ideas or did I steal them or be infected by someone else’s thinking to believe them. do this everyday about everything until you are able to generate your own ideas not tainted by socialization, weird parenting or psychologically abusive “friends.”

14. Dump people that are dicks. Do not let people around you that don’t make you feel better or suffer in some way, but for sure get rid of the dicks. Especially if they are dumb.

15. Burn things in your oven. Food because you fell asleep, but other things are fun to burn in there too. Use your imagination.

The end.


March 14, 2012

The Burning




The Burning

And there are other reasons I burned the mattress.
I learned to sleep standing up against the wall
The moon cast a shadow on the mattress
of the both of us when we were children.
You were in your bug phase
The one where we researched the bugs that could exist
in a house with no couches, no tables.
You told me, “They smell like cumin.”
But I couldn’t smell it
We checked our bodies
Cleaned our couches
I still have the vacuum cleaner
It was 400 dollars.
You were married, that’s the one thing I never say
It was a girl who worshipped me
Her name was almost like mine. 

March 13, 2012

Caroline--Dedication





Some of you know that my friend Caroline Thompson died of an overdose January 6th. I still don't know what exactly happened, and it is a terrible loss to everyone. Before she left us, I had just been offered publication in a journal called Blood Lotus Journal---it will be my piece Try Stuff--it's somewhere on this blog. I wrote to Caroline or called her and told her to submit. Then, she died. Her father recently wrote to me and said her poem On a Drawing of How to Kill Sam Pink was accepted and what did I think of the journal. I told him it was a great journal up that gets looked at by the Pushcart people and they give chances to many amazing new writers--in other words I told him what I knew--please accept. I will be in that same journal with her, so I wrote to the editor and asked him to make sure we were going to really be together in the same issue. She was a poet, and he is the fiction editor, so it took a few hours to figure it out. But, he wrote to me sincerely offering his condolences for the loss of this friend and wonderful writer, and asked if I would like to say anything on her behalf--of course I would, but what could I say? Her poetry is a work of genius? That she was a beautiful human who made me laugh at myself? What? So, I wrote a small dedication and it took me awhile to come up with something that made sense and didn't sound trite. Death is confusing, I'm still sad over it and I didn't want to be indulgent--I want Caroline to be remembered. So, the following will appear in the next issue of Blood Lotus Journal as a dedication to our friend Caroline Thompson. We fucking miss your guts, my dear and you will not be forgotten. 



Caroline Thompson was my friend and fellow writer. She died on January 6th of an overdose that for sure was accidental. I know Caroline’s choice those final days resulted from the thing most of us as writers deal with, an overwhelming sensitivity to the harshness of day to day reality and that she just wanted peace for one second from the brain that she was gifted with. Unfortunately the wrong mixture ended her life and broke our hearts. She was a wonderfully inappropriately funny human who wrote about the absurdity of life in a way that was remarkably disturbed and poignant. I miss her terribly. You can find her work at http://carolineruththompson.wordpress.com <http://carolineruththompson.wordpress.com/> . And who am I? Just another contributor to Blood Lotus Journal. I am honored to be printed in the same edition as my dear friend. I wish you all could have met her. She would have made you laugh your guts out. This little blurb is in her memory and to remind all of us who struggle with such things: life is beautiful, hard and incomprehensibly short. So, do what you love and be yourself and stay alive. Your invisible friend, Lisa Douglass.

Castera Street




Castera Street

On the floor of Nana’s house
---I was sent there because my mother couldn’t handle
my sister and I--
I played with dolls and gave them voices and names
Nana disappeared into back rooms
or outside to water succulents
the plastic pitcher with flowers on the side
I never followed her unless I needed something to eat
she sometimes made me those cookies
white powdered sugar over crescent moons
Later she forgot my name
called me, Janet, her dead alcoholic daughter
I thought that meant I was bad
but had no one to ask
Sometimes I sat in the avocado tree
watching her love her plants
bending down, dusting them in her sun-hat
I wondered why there were no other girls on that street
I asked Nana-- she said it was time to water the garden.
When I slept there, I stared at the alarm clock with
glowing hands while
Nana drew letters on my back
and I would guess what they were
Sometimes I would confuse X with T
because of the angle.
Nana slept with toilet paper pinned to her hair
and I asked her once
“When you die can I have this?”
holding up a beautiful watch with diamonds for initials
I didn’t know what I was saying
She walked out of the room
Her short heels clack clacking on the hard wood floor

March 12, 2012

He Wore The Shirt I Slept In




He Wore The Shirt I Slept In

I
My ex is behind me
Watching my neck, my ear, my hand to my cheek
I slump down in the black dress
On a chair that belongs in basements
Cold and hard 
My black suede booties slung out into the aisle
Covering the feet that inspired him
To paint the dead thing and stick it on my wall
Leg over leg or ankle stretched out
I am with witch girl
Who swears she sewed her soul into mine
But I can’t feel it
She laughs her puppet arms around me
I touch her face like a lover
And make fun of her blow-job lips
Not quite kissing them, but almost

II
I stand in line and turn to catch him
In the purple shirt
I used to sleep in
Hiding by the coffeemaker
Eyes like a showroom
Full of the things he once loved
And remembering the things he thought I could make him forget
I only glance in his direction then turn
To the two men who want to talk about
My outfit, my style and what they think about
Late at night
I turn again to see my ex hiding, but I can’t see his face
Just the shirt and the torso of my lost lover
He hasn’t been eating
That much is clear

what sets you apart




what sets you apart

so me and some people are in an apartment

we don't leave because we are paranoid

they agree to anything i suggest

it is not my beauty or youth because i never looked more tore up

but my passion they warm to


I guessed you won't believe me, so i kept the pictures
in a box


they don't like me
 and i don't like them
but we get along-
our understanding is as loathsome as the political climate


but why should i care, i'm here ain't i?
hate streams from our eyes cause no one is smart enough to stop the dreary incomprehensible sameness 
of days

  
i hold my breath for what seems like weeks
 with kings on hollywood hilltops and dirty homeless
 in basements where hill street meets that bright neon sign of jesus



we are always peeking out windows

time isn't anything to us
--lifetimes come and go
 
i have always gotten my way through them all 
and what of it?
you don't let me and that's what sets you apart

March 11, 2012

There Is No Substitute For Love



Dear Daddy,

          When you went away and the Mommy went to bed, I didn't know where you had gone. I was told you were traveling, but no one travels that long. My small girl heart didn't know what things meant, so I would ask, but the answers were lies. I don't blame the Mommy, she went to bed and I gave her orange juice and tried to find out why she was crying. She couldn’t tell me. But, that's not all. You were the fun one, you were loud and silly and smart and we looked at the stars together out in the courtyard under the Jacaranda tree.  When you went away--for many years after-- the Mommy said that you had been traveling. The day you came home, I ran to hug you and kiss you and love you and ask you where you were why'd you go, I missed you so much I cried. The Mommy told me to leave you alone. Your eyes were sad or dark or other-than-regular. I didn't understand where you were. You were standing in our Los Feliz House--the one over the Shakespeare Bridge and you were not yourself. Anyone could see that. I didn't know what to do. Because the Mommy told me to leave you alone, I thought it had something to do with me.
         We still took long walks through the streets and up and down the stairwells in rain or shine. We listened to records on the oriental rug in the living room. You taught me to sing.
         Many years later, when I was seventeen, drunk on Thanksgiving, I threw this tantrum saying to the Mommy, you lied to me, you left us in this house where my sister got beaten and Daddy went away and you said he was traveling. At this point, I was told you had a psychotic break and that you had been on Thorazine and that I wasn't told because you didn't want me to think there was mental illness in the family or not understand what it was, but either way, lie or no lie---I felt it. I knew something was different. I just didn't know it didn't have to with me. 
          You went off Thorazine, you seem better, you are happy and dancing but there is a lost thing that we had between us. I was your favorite, we were close, now there was a space that I couldn't get back. I saw your love still in your eyes. You told me I had a pure heart, you told me I was the most special kind of person that there was and that life was going to be hard for me because I love things more than other people love things. I feel more, I am more open, I am happier and sadder and all that stuff. You told me I was the most beautiful thing, the thing that no one could touch, I would take over the world, but it would be hard and I would feel everything but you told me not to change myself just because I was different. So, I didn't.
         But, what I remember and what I can't take back or change now, is there were years when you were angry or moody or couldn't talk to me in that old way and I never knew how it was going to be. I was just a kid, I tried my best to understand you. You were my first great love. When you told me I couldn't marry you I stomped my feet and said, "Who will I marry, then? No one will be as good as you and no one will love me like you do so why would I get married?" I was depressed at the age of 5 or 6 or whatever that age was when you told me I'd find someone else to marry. It's so weird, but over the last month I've had three different men ask me why I never got married and I didn't know what to say to them, but what I can say to you, is no one was smart enough and funny enough and liked me enough for whatever weird overly energetic happy to be in the world but sad when I saw an orphan bunny kind of person I was. You did. There is no substitute for real love.
         The Mommy did her best to protect me from whatever was wrong with you and you did your best to help me see what kind of person I really was. You told me I was the smartest, funniest, most brilliant one. But, you were right. My life was hard. You had problems and couldn't see me as much as I wanted to see you. You never called me on the phone. I thought these things meant you didn't love me. All my other friends saw their Daddy's even if they were divorced. I really thought something had happened that made you not love me. I asked you about it more than once, but you always said it was ridiculous. I find in life people say things are ridiculous when they are not accountable or can’t give a logical reason. They don't show up and have an excuse. I know why though. I always know why. It's just that even if what I know is wrong. I just can't help it from being that.
         Whenever I come home for Christmas you tell me to stay over, I know you are hurt that I don't. Things happened in that house that I still remember—not things that had to do with you, but the whole adolescent disillusionment happened there. I started writing there. I did cocaine on the floor of my room. I made a girl dry hump me in my bed and I made out with my first boyfriend and then broke up with him when he wanted to have sex. I wanted to stay innocent.  You say you could just have me there forever and ever and I love you that way too, it's just I'm out here trying to be a person and make a life for myself.  You were lucky you found the Mommy when you were young and handsome and you two made a life. I am lucky in a different way. My idealism and uniqueness has kept me silent or hidden or vanishing from individuals that want to trap me, but still I perform for the people who know what it is I am and what it is I do without letting them get too close. The ones I don't care about are safest. The ones who want to get close I push out. I am afraid that something will happen to them, like that thing that happened to you. I just want you to know that that thing that happened to you also happened to me. It still affects me, but I love you even though we are not close like I want. I know you love me although sometimes I can’t feel it like I want to.
           I know I never have said these things, because truthfully they embarrass me, I am an adult and should be able to shake it, but I just can't.
           Your daughter in all ways that can be counted, felt, expanded upon but never diminished.
With my whole heart,
Lisa

March 10, 2012

The Grad School Diet


          
LISALAND
THE GRAD SCHOOL DIET

Today I was driving down the street and it occurred to me that I haven't been eating. Sometimes I don't have any food here or any money for food or sometimes I have food, but it isn't what I WANT to have at the moment. But, that is not why I stopped eating or am now eating very little. I never eat A LOT unless I'm at a beautiful restaurant, but right now I'm on my cute but hard chair with no couch and feeling a bit depressed. This depression is chemical though---from antibiotics. They make me sick and feel twirly and have bad thoughts. They make me hate food and most people. They make me go: where the fuck is my couch and why did I pick that banned book to read when all it turned out to be was one dude touching other dudes but really really really badly written? I don’t need to read about cocks described in a million different ways and how some of them seem to be smiling.
         And standing in Trader Joes I tried to remember what it is I even like to eat. That was hard. Ever tried eating when all you feel is nauseas? Well... what I like turned out to be lemon yogurt and bread and water (jail comfort food) and mac and cheese (firestarter tendencies) and chips and Orangina. All these seemed like safe foods. I bought them with a hundred dollar gift card my mother gave me when she came to visit me last week.  I was happy for one second. Then, I had to come home and try to eat something. I tried. I made toast. But the butter was too cold and the toast not toasty enough. I tried. I really did. I ate one half of the cold butter violently mashed into the toast by the wrong kind of knife because I was too dizzy to look for something else and covered that non-toasty enough toast with cherry jam because I might like to have some fruit in what I refer to as the Grad School Lisa Diet. I don't recommend this diet, but in case you were wondering it goes like this:

1. Wake up shaking from lack of food and/or sleep and or love.  Be sad. Have sad memories. Realize my boyfriend is gone. My friend is gone. My dog died when I was a child.
2. Hear alarm (yes after) go off for 25 minutes until it shuts itself off--get up--make coffee with half and half and sugar.
3. Do homework and at the very last minute jump in the shower and find outfit--make it cute but not too revealing because there is a cute boy in your class and you know he's cute and he knows you know he knows and he thinks you're cute too or likes your brain and you say things to him on his paper like: do you need to suck a fat cock? I mean your character? And you make it funny and fun so he will think you are a genius. Make sure the outfit has sex appeal but no see-through tops. Save those for workshop.
4. Drive to Irvine---look at balance bar, other kind of healthy disgusting bar, luna or otherwise on the passenger seat and or at the bottom of your purse and turn your face away in disgust.
5. Get to Irvine--hit Peets and buy a tiny scone. Put that scone in your purse, but don't eat it. Just drink the coffee. Forget there is a scone until much much later in the day when you see it in your purse, maybe on the drive home, take it out and put it on the seat with the rest of the rejects. Think about eating it, but not know if you really want to eat it. Is it still good? Fresh and crumbly like it was at the beginning when it was born? You wonder, how many scones get to travel around in Lisa-Purse and wonder what it would be like if scone knew all that you know but never ever say. Not even to your own Lisa-self. The lies and stuff.
6.  Drive home and go to Starbucks to do coffee--I mean homework. Drink coffee with so much sugary goodness that it might just be the sugar keeping you alive. Have more. Try to read or think or write or whatever. Get distracted by every text message and human that passes through the door. Be grateful when someone comes to visit you to save you from your thoughts. Someone who really likes you and finds you to be entertaining and tells you---you just cheered me up so much now I don’t need coffee (yesterday). Say no when he asks for your number. Too much pressure.
7. Go home (this really includes eating) put something in the oven and sit on hard chair and wait for it to be something more than its frozen boxy previous self.  Know in your heart that this thing—this made up frozen thing will in no way be like food or delicious. Set the alarm on your phone to be sure you'll know when the non-delicious thing will be unfrozen and ready to for the experiment.
8. Call friend. Say ridiculous things to friend till both of you are laughing and crying from laughing at each other and the dumb same story you are both always trying to figure out but never will. Laugh at your ignorance. Realize your lack of intelligence in new and different ways.
9. Dinner is ready---stare at it and stay on phone so you can ignore that you basically are living like a kid without skills or even the desire for skills---take bite—make face no one can see, but pretend you didn’t make it so you can go on eating, hate it all the way through because you don't like TV dinners whether they are supposedly healthy or not. They disgust you, they make you wonder why the world exists at all and then you come to the sad realization that everything disappoints you, not just frozen TV dinner, but TV itself. How the people who are ordinary and boring and latching onto you or running away from you that they are all their exact predictable selves and know this and know you can’t change it and know it doesn’t matter we will all be dead in the deep earth one day where no one can run or hide or be annoying anyway. Not only that but also be greatly worried about the people who pretend to like you but don't really like you and then get mad and tell you things about "how once a girl did a thing and I hated her and made voodoo dolls and stood outside her house because I didn't have a car" but its the EXACT thing you did and you know "the girl" is really you and you worry if voodoo dolls are real. A guy last night really said the words: “Your pussy makes most guys crazy, but it just makes me angry.” Ask why but not really understand the answer about how you wouldn’t fuck him and then his girlfriend hated you and etc. etc. Remember the time he lifted you up at Swingers in a front of all your friends and ran you down the street and pushed you up against the wall saying this is your one last chance and you laughing at him and after that he didn’t talk to you for nine months enough time to make a baby only you didn’t make one and he didn’t make one—he just vanished from your life.  Be disappointed that you can’t tell when someone really likes you for you and wants to be your friend or just for your sex parts and know that if you are attracted to each other hanging out as friends will drive you both mad and that you are lying if you say you can.
10. Sometimes eat a snack of some kind of chip dipped in something too delicious---cheese spread, hummus in all its varieties, bruschetta sauce, etc. Sometimes eat ice cream that is still after all this time in the freezer---more likely look at it and know it was once delicious but you aren't really hungry at all just eating to stay on planet earth.
11. Think about why you are on planet earth to begin with: the food isn't very good anyway and the people are mean and shut down and not playful like they should be and you don't have any money and it makes you worry about if they will be kind when you are outside pushing a shopping cart but well dressed and hope you can still look cute when you get old and be cute and act retarded and make your friends laugh. Stare at computer screen. Make puppet show about a boy you like.
12. Think about a time you were happy, but that just creates longing and makes you feel like eating less. Remember the saying affection and attention are two different things. Remember that right now there is nothing that could be categorized by a brain that is being misled by all these antibiotics.
13. Bite something, chew it down. Swallow.
14. Remember that you are here at all because you mean something to someone even if they won't ever say it and people mean something to you even the ones you lie to and make sad. And writing. That might be the whole thing. I might only be here for that and never get what I want in any other way. 

I will have to be on these pills for the next few weeks: side effects are:
1. Alienate friends with rages similar to ones my father used to have. see the effect it has on people—say sorry but watch relationships destroyed. Scare myself.
2. Make up with enemies because now they seem suddenly just in whatever their initial hatred of me stemmed from.
3. Dislike everything I previously liked including whatever I have in my closet.
4. Feel nauseous and dizzy over and over and over and over and over
5. Lose sleep because I keep feeling like I’m falling into a dark deep ravine and can’t wake myself up because I’m already awake.
6. More stuff that isn’t very interesting except to say my always puffy stomach is now very flat and weirdly cute.

(omitted parts--real boys, action in cars, subways, stairwells)