these days I sit inside smoking as the rain blows upon my windowpane my mind is off in the nowhere land again the land of screen dreams each icon a portal to a hopeful refuge that may save me from this reality this is part of my devaputra mara also copious amounts of weed and porn cups of ginger tea on my nightstand trying to keep warm these days I spend an hour and a half on my makeup just to cry it off on the twenty minute drive to school these days I fall asleep under the rosy glow of a salt lamp and dream of a girl on the internet my venus from mars who wears tulle on the subway wields an eyeliner pen and brandishes a voice that booms through the graffiti’d tunnels of my mind she levitates above dark crowds in dimly lit rooms sonic miracle of crushed velvet and blunt ash and 808s honeyed incense floating sex and rage I imagine that’s what her pussy smells like her confessional has a microphone and I sit on the other side of laced wood drinking in the nectar of her sins "sexy, fire, scary, psychedelic" I walk around her Garden of Heavenly Delights Bosch baby see her frolick around New York City with freaks ambling the asphalt aimlessly yelling at her mother in Spanish hanging from street signs red yellow green bokeh remixing the city red yellow red yellow green against rudimentary feelings, shapes, colors she hears melodies coming from the whir of the radiator whistling through a brick fortress in Alphabet City trains rattling towards the future laying the track to the rhythm of lovemaking she turns heads of purse dogs on Fifth Avenue and construction workers, cranes the necks of lampposts I envision her fifteen, bobbing in the backseat drunk on love and Hennessy and wishing for greatness seventeen, staring hard at the basement wall she divines a new future twenty-three, bouquets at every show across the continent my heart ignites at the grandeur of this fairytale these days I'm happy to wander under unlit lanterns get lost in alleyways roll eyes at wisdom divulged by tea enthused centenarians inquire about snow fungus and dried fish and deer tails let the Chinaman teach me how to play how to live these days it's all a caricature: the Dominican, the slavic bimbo, the old Chinaman strumming at his lute, the kundalini guru, the professor with arched eyebrows and eyes that glow and a smile sweeps across his face frame by frame with the same eerie proclivity as the Cheshire Cat and even I, eyes like a Littlest Pet Shop whore, am just a funhouse version of myself these days I've been spending time in North Beach I’m a Beat– jazzy, but not overly jazzed spiritual, but mostly, and most importantly, lost perusing City Lights contemplating romanticizing the night I spent at the strip club on Broadway replaying the scene in its vacant beauty: 3 AM empty and blue sitting on leather couches sitting with you watching my friends slip tongue with older men we met at Monroe I feign unamusement even though I'm the only one watching the stripper with long raven hair as she shimmies her titties at the edge of the stage in slow motion the flat tops of them shimmer in the spotlight her areolas glistening, majestic until now strippers have only existed in my mind like unicorns stuff of girlhood fantasy these days I slather myself in inky crème douse myself in powdered kohl in the scorpionic hope to emerge from the blackest black a goddess swooping onyx wings up towards my hairline bold but feline it’s surprisingly easy second nature a falcon I am, an ocelot, a woman I feel fierce and perverted looking into the mirror girl in drag as girl dissatisfied as if I expected to see my venus from mars staring back at me these days I lose myself in the chasm of digital orgasm and then lose myself in the best sleep of my life these days I’ve been feeling ye tang che aka fed the fuck up with my life so I've been reading Things Fall Apart again in the margins, I write "hope for life out of the ordinary, fear for mundanity" yama mara I wonder if this is what my venus divined in the stucco