cardboardgarden

Dear Candy

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:55:08 GMT

You are the embodiment of selfishness. You are determined to refuse a fellow coworker - probably the kindest, most selfless person on the staff - a few hours with her children just so you don't have to work with me. I wouldn't have thought it possible that you were actually uglier on the inside than on the outside, but congratulations, I'm a believer. You are the first person out of the many assholes I've met who I've genuinely found isn't worth the air they breathe. You have no redeeming qualities. The only people you are ever decent to are those who you perceive as nearly as apathetic as yourself, and only because you need them. I did a tarot reading for you the other day, and as I was visualizing you while interpreting the cards, I actually saw a veined web of tar void where normal people have a glow. You leave a trail of sludge behind you like some twisted, negative-energy slug. Did you make a deal with the devil?

The world will be a better place if you choke on your next Texas bacon double patty melt.

the dark side of the mirror

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 23:07:45 GMT

Her life is a somatic death
Halfway through the glass
She watches her reflection walk
Through ever-greener grass

She craves to end that other self
Draws blood to kill her past
His memory reminds her that
Her happiness can't last

Every thought belongs to him
She fights to gain control
A ceaseless lust builds within
Where once she felt so whole

She binges on her love for him
And purges it with tears
She knows it's an illusion
But she holds it all so dear

She stares toward that carefree self
And bids her to come nearer
But always she walks far beyond
The dark side of the mirror

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 03:53:37 GMT

We're made of blood and painted wood,
Lies and lead just look so good,
We can't even notice
The sheen of degradation.

Our hearts may hide their holes,
But empty eyes echo our souls,
We're all jaded by
This loss of all sensation.

In paper gods we trust,
Not in liberty but lust,
And 'till the end
We'll be fighting isolation.

Is there salvation
in this emptiness we feel?
Can we find ourselves
by process of elimination?
Do clouded skies
prove the stars aren't real?
Do we want true love
Or the first good imitation?

So many bugs outside my door

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 06:02:06 GMT

There's giant brown 1.5-inch feeler bug...
And there's red/white/black mosaic poisonous-looking bug...
And there's shiny green fluorescent-winged bug...
And there's stick-legged walks-like-he's-having-a-seizure bug...

Totally unproductive day. Cool.

Poor tonsils

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 07:11:56 GMT

The Silo needs cleaning before it gets beyond the point of no return, and my website desperately needs to be coded if it's ever going to get launched. I was going to take care of that today, but my sore throat worsened and I decided to go to Taylor on campus to see a doctor. That process took two hours out of the day, and it turns out I've got acute tonsillitis - but if nothing else, I got a penicillin prescription and a note for work out of it. I finally bought a power cable for my computer that actually works (Cost me $90 - ouch - but it came with a dozen different tips and works with virtually every laptop) and returned the useless Walmart version, which I got a full refund for. Right now I'm finishing up my agonizingly simple six-hour online Defensive Driving course so I can get my speeding ticket off the record. All in all, a fairly productive day.

Last night I had a long (and mostly-honest) talk with Zach. I told him I liked him, but his insecurities and potential for clingyness were troubling to me. And that I'm still feeling too hung-up on the whole AJ thing to know if a relationship is really in the cards for me right now. I know it's not what he wanted to hear, but it needed to be said before he ended up Geddy number two. Anyway, it hasn't really changed anything, except maybe brought his expectations down a bit. Which is hard for me to think about.

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 15:20:05 GMT

I was attending an inauguration speech, or something like it, by Obama. The setting is hard to describe - maybe a mansion, maybe a really nice hotel... I don't know. I'd brought Cleo for some reason, along with three other snakes that I remember in some abstract sense picking up along the way. They were all pythons like Cleo, but two of them were a deep red color and the other looked dark. At first I was excited about having them, but then they began escaping and every time I would see one of them, it would hiss at me and try to strike. I felt guilty for having to leave them, but I was too scared. Anyway, Cleo never escaped and never tried to bite me. She was an anchor in my dream, and a comfort.

After leaving, I was driving down a ridiculously rough and narrow road. They'd built it over big tree roots and around winding corners by cliffs, and I was only slightly aware of how strange it was. Chris was behind me in his car, and I saw a cat walk into the road in front of him. I didn't know what to say or do. I felt like I could stop it, somehow, but I didn't know how. The cat looked almost cartoonish when it was run over, not bloody, not even broken, just paper-thin and obviously beyond help. I tried to turn around, but the road was too narrow and there was no way. I kept driving, looking behind me, wanting to go back...

And then I was woken up, and the morning didn't get any better than my dreams.

Doors

Noone dares fight angels
We don't even ask our odds
Noone remembers how to stand
On knees to pretty gods

Every fleeting pleasure
To pass through these doors
Every temporary treasure
Cuts down a little more

Please shut your ugly doors
I'm sick of seeing through
Please lock those fucking doors
I don't need to look for you

Please burn down all the doors
Make ash and glass and smoke
Stop killing for amnesic gods
Stand up and break the yoke

I'm going for a while
Searching for new shores
I need to take some time to look
For a place devoid of doors.

Sat, 31 May 2008 02:06:29 GMT

Welcome to the downward spiral
Where we stumble down to sex
Welcome to the slippery slope
Where we're headed nowhere next

Welcome to this happy hell
Delicious bite to bite
Welcome to the final stand
Where fuck-ups last your life

Welcome to the pre-storm calm
Taste the peaceful pain
Forget the best you can that this
Was constructed all in vain.

Tue, 27 May 2008 21:59:38 GMT

"I feel like I have one hand on the cliff edge and the other around your wrist and rather than you holding on or trying to help me to help you, you are squirming and reaching away at transient pleasures. I feel as though I have only the choice of letting go and saving myself or falling with you. You know how much I love you so you don’t have to wonder at the choice I will make and it scares me. I am scared.

Love Mom."

My heart hurts...

Fri, 16 May 2008 15:41:13 GMT

I saw AJ for what will be the last time for at least a few months. And it's never going to be the same. This week has been one of the best experiences of my life, and I know it's because of him. The things he says and the way he touches me - I've never had a guy treat me better. Ever. Every day for the past week he's told me I'm beautiful, that he wants me. Last night while he was holding me, he whispered into my ear that he's going to miss me - so much - and asked if I'll miss him, if I'll remember him.

What? As if there should ever have been any doubt.

And now I'm crying, which is just silly. It's only been a week.
But I don't want to give it up. It's the last thing I want to do.

I don't regret any of it. I'm so glad that I lost my virginity to someone who treated me so amazingly sweetly. But it makes it too hard.

This will be my first night going to bed alone in a week.

I NEED A HUG.

Rainclouds

Mon, 12 May 2008 20:56:41 GMT

I'm walking on rainclouds
I can see through the folds
Through to the world below
A thousand breaking souls

The window slowly closes
Through the darkened mist I crawl
I'm starting to gain focus
I'm remembering to fall

Through the steamy skies I drop
'Till bone and brick have met
The world opens his great jaws
And I've forgotten to regret.

What to never, ever do

Sat, 03 May 2008 03:01:24 GMT

Just trust me on this one.

Don't buy a tank. Don't buy fish. And whatever you do, don't let anyone else get involved.

You'll clean it, you'll use water conditioners, you'll pour in food and pH balancers and antibiotics and in the end the whole thing will just reflect your own inability to ever do anything right.

Okay, so it probably won't. You'll probably be one of the majority who can manage not killing off everything they want to love. But if you aren't, save yourself the anxiety and just drink yourself into oblivion when you feel like you need a hobby.

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:09:42 GMT

Your LJ Slut Stats!
Out of your 15 friends, percentages you have:
met		100%
hugged		86.66%
dated		0%
kissed		60%
seen shirtless		66.66%
seen naked		0%
had net sex		0%
made out with		46.66%
had oral sex		0%
fucked		0%
Get your LJ Slut Stats!

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 13:48:50 GMT

LOL...

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 03:58:47 GMT

Twenty-eight months, two and some years
Tears on my pillows to battle my fears
Knives to wrists, kisses on loathing lips
My greatest missteps walked me here

I'm not afraid of the world or of you
There's nothing left I can't afford to lose
Please tell me you'll see all this through
I'm cutting my conscience and fighting my fear

Love me,
Hate me,
Touch me,
Bait me,

I hold it...
Everything...
Dear.

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 11:39:59 GMT

I too can bear this cross; it's been done before. She failed, but I won't - I understand that nobody is truly trustworthy and that noone who is loved will fail to disappoint. Such is life, and I will still live it beyond what most dream of. That is what I am asked to do, and I will not be a failed investment.

If my young adulthood is going to be measured in mistakes made and dollar signs lost, I'm going to cover my tracks with an artistic efficiency. I won't be used. Ever.

Love,

Katie.

I can has gay boy love.

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 07:34:25 GMT

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 08:45:16 GMT

I had to walk back from Bear Park North tonight. There was nobody outside, and the elevator (which got UP to my floor fine, by the way) was buzzing every number with an upward arrow while slowly - at a crawl - going down. I thought it was going to stop, and I'd be stuck in a cold elevator at three in the morning with my phone already dead. By the time it finally got to the second floor, I'd already pressed the [2] button a hundred times frantically and, thankfully, it decided to open.

Then there was a street light buzzing so loudly that I could hear it almost all the way to Freddy. I heard footsteps - not too close, but I should definitely have seen someone. I turned around twice, and there was nobody anywhere.

I was pretty sure I was going to die.

I think I probably need sleep now.

Dreams

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 14:36:05 GMT

I had a considerably more terrifying dream last night.

At about 3:00 in the morning, I woke up (sort of) so frightened that I went to my mom's room and tried to get her to convince me everything was okay. Even though I was awake, I was seeing things from my dreams. I had to turn away from the bedside table because I could have sworn there were rotting skulls behind the big plant that sat on it. I can't really remember what had happened at this point in the dream, except that everyone was killing everyone else in the most gruesome ways possible. This horrible, murderous face was following me, showing me the dead. I fell asleep on my mom's bed and woke up an hour or so later. I felt better, so I went back to my room.

I don't remember any part of the dream that took place while I was napping on the edge of mom's bed, but she said in the morning that at one point I suddenly sat up and screamed, "Thirty!"

I remember the rest a little more clearly: I was in a shopping mall, trying to find someone with an antidote for some potent, horrible chemical that had gotten into a cut on my hand (I think Ozzy Osbourne put it there, but don't quote me on it). The antidote was called seneca, and it was evidently illegal, but I needed to find it. Someone promised to have the stuff, but rather than give it to me spent a good chunk of time trying to make a sale of some other product. One male member of our group - I don't know who it was - stood up and left. He was dressed like the devil, but with long, spindly, antler-like horns.

Outside, Brycen was being killed by his mom. She hoisted him up into the air in a harness. I don't know what else she did to him, but I heard two gunshots, and I could see that he was still alive, though his body was twisted and his eyes were unfocused. I was terrified again, just as terrified as I had been at the beginning of my dream.

I don't know why I'm suddenly dreaming again. Normally I can't remember a thing, and I haven't actually woken up scared for my life since I was seven or eight years old.

Dream Fragments

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 14:21:34 GMT

What a fucked up night!

At a restaurant, my dad and stepmother eat horse meat rare. I feel angry and betrayed.

I lose my car keys. I don't know where to go or how to get there.

I figure out that I'm in China. I'm at a harbor full of boats.

A boy and his mother are trying to escape something in his attic. I don't know what they were, cougars, maybe?
(Brace for weird gruesomeness)
The boy shuts the door on his dog's tongue but can't open it without letting the cougars in. He needs something to tie the door handle in shut. He rips a ribbon of the dog's skin from its belly. It doesn't whimper or struggle, but I can see the poor thing's insides. I feel nauseated and helpless. The boy's mother promises to take the dog to the vet after all this. The boy says that the dog will die too quickly. I'm not a part of this scene, but I hate the boy as much as I've ever hated anything in a dream.

I'm a ghost. I think I'm still in the boy's house. There are two other ghosts here, but I only see one - it's a shapeshifting animal. I see it as a lionfish. Someone is trying to get into the house; I try to scare them away by throwing things, but they come after me. I am a goddamn GHOST and I am still having a being-chased, running-away dream! I am invisible, but they can still feel and grab me. I feel like the woman can almost see me, because no matter where I run she follows. The man has a net. I must not really be a ghost, because he catches me in that net, and what the hell kind of ghost can be caught like that?

Days 1-3

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 19:01:59 GMT

WEDNESDAY
Broken pencils in writhing hands.
Who the fuck cares about Jacques Cartier, anyway?
One last cigarette to calm my nerves and curb my cold sweat.
A few minutes to pack, then on the road.
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tickety-tock...
Joplin, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Dallas...
32 miles to Georgetown.
Oh, God, where am I?
Headlights flicker behind.
Nodding off at ninety-five.
Sleep.

THURSDAY
It's already half past noon.
Shower, dress, breakfast.
A soft heat and a gentle breeze.
Goat kids, flicking tails and bleating.
Back home, Law and Order.
A fight, because they don't understand.
They're people, can't you see that?
It's not a joke.
I cry. It's been a while since I did that.
They stop and stare, silence screams.
She apologizes.
Then he does.
They begin to understand, and so do I.
My friends are the strongest people alive,
Because they have to be.

FRIDAY
The smell of horses and cedar.
Tacking up, going out.
Cantering across the lawn.
Texas skies go on forever.
Letting go of EVERYTHING, if only for a moment.
Horse sweat smells like redemption.
I need a cigarette.
It's 2 PM.

Armor of daisies

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 07:04:08 GMT

This subtle burning effigy;
The line drawn in the sand.
Herein lies my vindication;
This is where I stand.

I can’t purify your motives,
I can’t justify your core.
You can leave me bent and broken,
But you still can’t leave me sore.

The heat sterilizes,
The beating galvanizes;
The silence anesthetizes;
And I know what's left in store.

Ballad of the Victim's Heist

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 04:52:28 GMT

Eluding living shackles
Nurtured by your touch
Blossom they to avid thorns
Bleeding in my clutch

Tambourines at my ears
The skies so darkly weeping
Building high this ruin
While the gods are still sleeping

Your hair at my fingertips
My heart so sickly swollen
Even Judas had his choice
I choose
To not be stolen.

Oh HAYL nah.

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 07:29:41 GMT

The cute but assholish one-night stand opportunity (who told me pretty damn clearly that he didn't feel like hanging out at all if sex wasn't on the table) had the balls to text me tonight.

Kyle: So hey... I'm really sorry... I was an ass... I don't expect you to accept my apology, but i felt that i should give it anyway... Sex isn't normally my goal.

Katie: I want you to know the wven though I am drunk and feeling like having hot, passionate sex with everyone in the room, you have become an instantaneous turn-off.

Kyle: I didn't expect you to forgive me... All i can really do is tell you that i meant it... I'm not normally like that... It was mean of me. Good night tho.

Katie: It's a pity, you really are pretty cute. But not cute enough to warrant a venereal disease. Sleep well.

Kyle: I don't have one... But good night. Be safe.

Katie: You too. Sorry it didn't work out, but I'm not a cheap first date fuck. Try not to get herpes.

Kyle: Haha... I'll always try not to... but they're getting hard to avoid! I hate checking every girl for them before we do it! Hah.

Katie: Your classiness never fails to astound me.

Kyle: It was a joke ;)... I haven't had sex with that many girls honestly... Like i said... It wasn't normal for me to try it with you like that.

Katie: I figured you typically waited at least a few hours before making your move, but my succulent eyes just begged to be treated like a cheap whore.

Statussss

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 02:12:24 GMT

Today - - -
Watertowers: SEVENTEEN of them.
Smoking: Inside, while watching TV and internet...ing!
Food: Bruce put our pizza in the oven at 8:03 P.M. And we KNOW about it!
Pictures: LOTS of them.
Buildings: Kick-ass in these here parts.
Two beds, eight pillows, three of us.
It's a good day.
And it's going to be a fantastic weekend.
:)

Visual poetry...

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 08:05:06 GMT