The Prodigal Daughter

I’m your worn in leather jacket
I’m the volume in your fucked up teenage band
A pack of smokes and a six pack
I’m the dreams you had walkin’ down the railroad tracks
You and me

I’m your first taste of romance
I’m your first broken heart on a Saturday night
Guys like us ain’t got no chance
But I’m the thing that keeps you and me alive
But not forever

Chorus:
So take me down the road
Take me to the show
It’s something to believe in
That no one else knows
But don’t take me for granted

I’m the blood on your guitar
I’m that wave you caught back in 1975
I’m as strong as a thousand armies
I’m as soft as a pedal on a long stem rose
I am love

Chorus: x 2
So take me down the road
Take me to the show
It’s something to believe in
That no one else knows
But don’t take me for granted
I’m with you when you’re born
You can take me when you die
With all the reasons why
But don’t take me for granted

No one knows
Don’t take me for granted

—
Social Distortion

“Dear Mister Language Person: I am curious about the expression, Part of this complete breakfast. The way it comes up is, my 5-year-old will be watching TV cartoon shows in the morning, and they’ll show a commercial for a children’s compressed breakfast compound such as Froot Loops or Lucky Charms, and they always show it sitting on a table next to some actual food such as eggs, and the announcer always says: Part of this complete breakfast. Don’t that really mean, Adjacent to this complete breakfast, or On the same table as this complete breakfast? And couldn’t they make essentially the same claim if, instead of Froot Loops, they put a can of shaving cream there, or a dead bat?
Answer: Yes.”
–Dave Barry

Drty Txt 1
skin cancer oil
deep into pores
fuck

Drty Txt 2
thighs apart like
tides ocean
roars

	
>>>>>>>>>BEGIN TRANSMISSION:
                            rescue yourself (stop)
                            keep yer chin to the grind stone (stop)
                            (the brown girls' voice sounds like song
                                    even when it's screaming)(stop)
	
faces never recover after that kind of skin damage
hands don't recover after walls
bearing teeth. teeth. teeth.
	
don't look her in the face
she will eat you from yer bones
and suck the marrow dry
a monster
                                  we heard tales(stop)
	
cycle back in an anachronistic
card catalogue to conrad?
but there's nothing to identify it
she is beyond sex and has no eyes
just obsidian pits where volcanic
stares once erupted forth over lids
	
he does have eyes, the poison coming out
through the edges betraying any health
he choses to wash down his throat with
burning liquid so it throws monsters'
smell sense off, he is not a sweetness
	
                            rescue yourself (stop)
                            keep yer chin to the grind stone (stop)
                            (the brown girls' voice sounds like song
                                    even when it's screaming)(stop)
	
pockmarked faces skinned from skull
hands dangled after dismemberment
bearing teeth. teeth. teeth.
	
he looked it in the face
and it did only what he expected
he would've had marrow w/o thought
a monster?
                                  we heard tales(STOP)
	
                                  :END TRANSMISSION<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

rough working of The Box:

she told us not to open the box until 20 years after death.
“it was a stipulation in her will”
a lawyer with tight dry lips told us in an overwarm office too dusty;
a film had accumulated and made a blanket that trapped sound inside of itself
i was 10 and knock kneed sitting on an over upholstered chair
that lifted my feet off the ground which were the
recipient of a glazed stare while his soothing
voice got trapped and muffled.

now we are standing in this bank cold marble flooring where
a sterile looking young man shows us the bank vault.
the box was too large to keep in a locked box
and she must have lived under the idea that its contents were too
valuable or perhaps this was a sham, it was an
elaborate joke for her to look upon in eternity.
whatever the case cancer had taken my father 8 years previous.
cancer or something like giving up.
after the rest of us left the house, me being the last to leave;
scattered about the country, my two brothers
living at separate ends and i somewhere in between.

the one with the most years over all of us
took over the property that the old man left behind.
the dust in the carpets had
made the house very quiet like a small town covered
by snow on a february dawn. my brother
came down from the stairs descending as a patriarch, i smiled
when really i despised him and his thin mustache.
i hated that the house was a poorly kempt wax museum.
my father’s relics from hunting taxidermied long ago
and my mother’s poor choices in wallpaper, now covered
in dust and stained by years of indoor smoking. david was
also a collector of useless paper items, as if he
was responsible for the periodicals section of a library.

i spent a lot of time being angry, hurt, sad, and confused.
                                     now i am just fuck!ng
                                                   amused.

it was good:

the way back…now backwards:

breanne and william (her father)

alanna and jeff. he called me mam’ alot.

the wedding party

me and my new boyfriend…

the best picture of me in pink ever

i am free.

“Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid.”
- Heinrich Heine

i caught myself looking at a picture of you. wondering what was next. knowing there most likely wasn’t going to be anything. and then coming to terms with that.