jessewestend

pieces of a story...

I walked quickly, self-consciously even, to the urinal and pissed out of sheer nervousness. The center piece of the urinals plumbing, had a reflective surface and my distorted image on its surface showed my penis to be about three feet long, while my head, and consequently my brain, occupied less space than a conservative belt buckle. It seemed appropriate the first time, funny even, but by the tenth or twentieth time it started to feel like an attack. A direct judgement of my past and present. The reflective part of the urinal was embossed with the logo of its manufacturer and the model name. Sloane Regal LLC was thus prominently displayed in a circular fashion beneath my prophetic visage. I dated a girl named Sloane once all these years later, no matter where I am in the country, I am still hopeless unable to relieve myself in public without thinking of her.

the wind was blowing too hard, i tried to use the book as a guard, but it was useless. Which is unfortunate, since the two things I am worst with are love and cigarette lighters. And it seems all I ever do is smoke and write poetry. I set the book down and the wind blew its pages open, the words she sent to me glaring at my guilty face. I felt naked and insignificant so I turned the book 180 degrees and sighed in relief as the wind held it down. After trying four m ore times, i finally lit my cigarette, and picked up the book... I could never face her on any terms but my own, even through association... it explains a lot

I found it funny that the need to leave my only home sprung from my frantic desire to move about. I called it Kinetic Energy but it was more like Kinetic Potential for however much of it I consumed saying goodbye and zig-zagging across the country I can hardly believe I used up enough of it to be where I am now: in a city where I cant drive, dont know where to go, and have nothing to do, getting paid to sit still in awkward positions for the sake of art.
Atleast Im getting paid, a part of me thought.
Bribed is more like it.

And now Im back home, after all thats happened Im back where I started, in the same bed where my hair-brained trip West was first dreamed up. But there will be no dreams tonight. Im too busy trying to fight off the voices that spill over around, and through my fragile psyche as I both try to make sense of the facts and make fiction out of them. The problem is its a simultaneous event and I could never tell which was worst. Some writers have a nasty habit of living their stories, and selling their journals. Were I capable of selling my work, I suppose I would be one of them. The words came in a thousand voices from a thousand directions and battered me like wet leaves in a tornado. Most nights, I couldnt stop them or slow them down without drinking or writing. Tonight I could tell it would take both. The part of my mind that serves as a net, capturing the marketable thoughts and storing them for transfer to the keyboard began working its way into the storm it came back with nothing.
No story, no heroes, no heroines, only one little truth way down at the bottom of the net. I peered in to see what could have possibly blocked out all the competition for writing time and immediately wished I hadnt. All at once, this tiny truth brought my world crashing down as if Atlas had finally lost his balance. Shockingly, I remembered the true sequence of events I hadnt lost my way with words, I had thrown it down the deepest darkest hole I could find. And then like a foolish Amnesiac, one who memory or no- should have known better, I jumped head first back into that abyss of doubt and confusion, of titles and punctuation the selfsame bottomless pit that I had apparently been running from all along.
The realization does me no good. I was no happier as non-writer, but atleast I could sleep at night

from the highest highs to the lowest lows
swingset mindset here we go...
i meant to dance but came to cry
such is romance, such is life
and the ones i love to meet
never even take the time
to feign love or say good bye...
so why should i?
why should i?


Same Story, New Title

I still remember when the realization hit me. It was a cold febuary day, and San Francico was drowning. I was so tightly bound in protective clothing that I barely noticed the damp warzone around me, and so I bounced down the street in bland security with my leather and denim keeping me safe from the cold winter weather and my safe little thoughts keeping me from wondering the things I used to wonder: like if any homeless people would die today? How old would they be? What would they look like? Who would find them? What would their last thoughts be...

Thick, brutal sheets of heavy water fell from the awnings, trees, and rooftops, and all of San Francisco's residents seemed to curse in unison as the city slowly became an extension of the bay. I could feel the weight of the water beneath my jacket and fedora but had no sensation of moisture. I could feel the wind's push and pull but had no knowledge of the cold. I had forgotten what it was like to be homeless and lost until my random, happy-go-lucky, thoughts stumbled upon the awful truth of what I had become. There I was, walking downtown, more humming along to Elvis Costello's British moan then listening to the words, when one lyric's clarity found its way to my brain and the part of me that appreciates words more than food, sex, or even sanity was suddenly ressurected along with the realization that I, a person who once lived to write and always claimed to be a writer, had completely lost touch with the world of language.

My thoughts had grown dull and my routines mundane. I was no longer a man of words, and this knowledge left me gasping for air. The rain that had bounced off my back only seconds before was now shocking me with the sudden intensity of each drop as it cut into my skin. I was naked and shivering, exposed to the intolerable cruelty of a hard rain.

How can this be? I thought, as I ran for cover and stumbled into the covered bus stop on the corner of Market and New Montgomery. Back home, I lived and died by my words. I curled up with them at night and they kept me warm, and if my bed had company I would wrap her in words so sweet that she would never dream of leaving. Somewhere along the way, some how... I've lost my soul. My God, I thought, Ive lost my soul!

I made up my mind that I had to get somewhere safe, and took off running for the Transbay terminal. the Transbay was a massive bus station that ran busses from every major California bus line, Greyhound, and all S.F. city buses to locations all over the country. It was three blocks away and I suddenly dreaded all the prying eyes of the locals more than anything I could imagine. I ran with my head down and narrowly avoided being hit by a Yellow Cab as I covered the three blocks in record time...

Collapsed, on the concrete damp from a thousand shuffled feet, I pulled my journal out my back pack. It had become a calendar, a phone book, and a to do list. It was once my absolute best friend. I tried to write something pretty, something smart but I could barely sign my name to the crap that sprang from my atrophied muse. I had plenty of thoughts, i had plenty to say... the words to describe them were simply gone... I rode the bus home in shame and told myself the only way to cure myself was to break the cycle of reading the weather and tv schedules and get back to my roots. I was a worshipper of words long before i ever dreamed of becominga prophet... I would have to read Nerudo, Winterson, London, Keats, and Byron. Reality had robbed me of my dreams, but that wouldn't be enough. I knew something else was missing, there was a root. My passion was gone and I knew who had stolen it. The wind reached through the tiny crack in the window and grabbed me by the throat, shaking me to the very bone as I realized that I would have to talk to her. I would have to find her. Or risk never being myself again...