(gnawing the ice deposits)

My brain is a slow pair of puppy dog eyes plucked out of the back of my head in nothing short of a futile endeavor to warm the indignent squalls of my bed.

Today i almost gave up on crushes.

I don't know why.

I've been hurt (smash the violin and choke the chicken off with the strings) before, again and again. most times to my credit discredit. other times knowing full well just stepping into the first kiss that things would all end very badly. very fucking badly indeed.

And yet, through all these years i've persisted in the cheap innocence of the flutter my heart gives when the right woman walks in the room. says my name. grants me the time of day or a kiss in good company.

Today though, i wondered, if it was really all a fucking waste. not one as grandiose as my time here usually permits, but one i could simply do without. after all, crushes are always best left inchoate. soon forgotten. off the planes of adolescence only the arrested still tread despite the fast track to fucking thirty.

And right now i could do with real tangibility.

There's enough here nowadays to leave me ambiguous. to raise my pressure and ire in one flail swoop of failure. writing's odd. home's a shambles. job's a job's a job's a job. and sleep's proved so welcome to me lately it's a little fucking scary.

So why bother?

Why keep up the trend of the unrequited, unacknowledged, over-examined and otherwise interrupted life when all my friends are giving up the little death in the hopes of finding the one and keeping them pinned to the stripes of their sleeve for nothing short of goddamn eternity?

Wouldn't that keep me happy?

It seems to be working out there...

But as soon as the thought gave up it's last elipses (the kind that usually leave me drunk and listening to sad noise on the floor) it fleeted.

Who the fuck am i if not a half-drunk romantic still scribbling poetry on window panes for no one particular to read. blind. errant (HA!). and stolen as ever on the arc of familiar lips.

Yeah, it's a hell of a place to be most days. but sometimes. on these quiet nights when all i have is this machine's callow light. there's nowhere else i could ever be.

In the arms of fledgling dreams.