mass elk suicide

this is what happens when

2011-11-19T18:09:00.000-08:00

...matthew neglects me for videogames

13

2009-06-28T17:36:00.000-07:00

once you were gone
i crawled off of the couch
and into your bed

put on your best dress shirt
and lay there
petrified of wrinkling it

and i thought "i will live honestly today"
which means "i will not leave this bed ever"

12

2009-06-08T14:42:00.000-07:00

the worst part about an incoming nervous breakdown
is that it's incoming

i don't know how to write a poem
i only know that i came into my bedroom
expecting to see me sleeping there
wishing i could put my guitar down gingerly
and kiss my own forehead--

is it possible for you to remember
a memory you don't remember
a brick fireplace in ann arbor

i've been remembering two things:
you & your impossibility

but mainly your impossibility
which i must always return to
not a washbasin or the smooth of a collarbone
under a hotel sheet

11

2009-03-23T15:36:00.000-07:00

you were not a woman
or jesus or a dinosaur
you were not burning books
you did not believe in ghosts

you have not seen the apocalypse
why aren't you sharing the bagel

you were not rollover minutes
you were not hole punches
you were not laying in the grass and your shoulders were not a machine

10

2009-03-14T08:41:00.001-07:00

you walked to my house from taco bell
that happened

9

2008-11-24T17:13:00.001-08:00

the first time i slept next to you
i was amazed by your stillness

breeding mosquitoes
with your lakes

i could die slowly, i could eat glass
but only if you are there
and sighing a little

8

2008-11-04T18:40:00.000-08:00

through inductive reasoning
i learned that if i apologized to you, i would get a response

i couldn't move you

i wanted you to wash up like a frozen baby mammoth
i wanted to unfreeze you so that you could finally walk away

7

2008-09-04T16:25:00.001-07:00

i can't write a poem about you without mentioning the fact that you are homeless
you smelled the new sleeping bag as i drove away

6

2008-08-20T08:13:00.001-07:00

i remember this commercial i had
i mean dream

5

2008-07-25T11:46:00.000-07:00

we were on the floor
the window was bigger than you both ways
your arm span and your height
the window was bigger or something
you wanted to touch all parts of the window

i said "aren't you glad we're not in the sky looking down at all of the things on earth, we would be bored in the sky"
you said "you think about things too much"

4

2008-07-02T13:14:00.000-07:00

in a beauty magazine i saw a dog wearing a wig
and i thought, "animal cruelty" and "i bet the dog didn't like that"
i don't want to offend anyone

my guitar teacher said that people give human qualities
to animals too often and it makes the humans afraid
with large eyes

he said when you are snorkeling and you see a barracuda
it probably is not thinking about shark week on discovery channel

3

2008-06-30T16:36:00.000-07:00

a few minutes ago i had a panic attack
i saw a minivan full of people who i didn't really want to see
i said blunt things to them and my behavior surprised them
they probably think i am "inappropriate"
i feel destructive
i want to go to the pool and wreck havoc on everyone
i just want to curl up somewhere with someone's cold arms on me

2

2008-06-30T12:29:00.001-07:00

at my first therapy appointment a few years ago, i wondered what to wear because i didn't want to seem "too crazy" but my sense of style is eclectic naturally

i didn't like that doctor very much, only i didn't know it then
because she was the first
i had no one to compare her to
i stared at the Persian rug in the office and laughed out loud
sitting right across from her

1

2008-06-30T11:22:00.001-07:00

when i was little my brother and i were fighting
i don't remember why we were fighting
it was probably over a toy
or sharing something
he chased me up the stairs
i flattened myself against a pillow on the bed
i pretended to cry
he said, "jillian, it's ok"
and i turned to him quickly
and revealed my hands-
i made the "if you look at this, you're gay" sign with my hands
my right pointer finger was pressed in the middle of my left palm
my brother screamed
he was dumbfounded
he screamed again
we didn't know why, we didn't know what gay is
my best friend is gay
my neighbor is gay
my gay best friend has millions of gay friends
on myspace

one of my friend's little brothers is at the stage now where he calls everything gay
"not gay as in you like a man," he says
"gay as in you're stupid"