ostranenie, II

(written november 14th, 2005, sid smith hall.)

I no longer have any doubt that I am stretched more thinly than usual. My skin is fairly vibrating; no sleep, too much booze and coffee. I smoke cigarettes like breathing. Lights are too bright, and frustrating. Now matter how much tape I use, the Bristol board on my window continues to fall down, like the wind that hasn't died down in days is trying desperately and resolutely to get in, to break the window and chase me around. My apartment is too small and too full and there is absolutely nowhere to hide. I am quickly becoming afraid that the wind might find me. My body is betraying me, slowing me down no matter how much I exercise a will to starve myself into clarity. I'm drunk on whiskey and wind, or else my perspective shifts too fast to follow. I live with shades and I am pantomiming a useful existence. You don't know it to look at me, because at the end of the day I look so damn good. I can't tell; I can't tell. I am stability. Without being singularly important, I am yet something. And I hope to hell that this will improve me, this unavoidable penance and the exercise of a paradoxical control. I had better be a genius or else I'm one more burnout. Good thing I'm poor or I'd likely be dead. There are subways rumbling through the tracks in my brain, and god help me one of these days I'm likely going to jump.