Okay, So.

Do you think people can change?
(Do -I- think people can change?)

If people can't change, then what does that say about the things I've done?
If people can change, what does that say for anyone who believes they can't?
If I believe they can't, what does that say for me?

Maybe -some- people can change, and others can't.
If that's true, which one am I?
And how do I know?
By my past actions?
But my past actions are...inconclusive.
Yes, I was a faithful girlfriend to one guy for years.
Then I got married, and a year later, suddenly I...wasn't.
And then, because I was with someone I truly cared about, then I was.

Or--example two:
Yes, I quit heroin for five years.
Then I un-quit for six weeks.

And yes, since then, I've quit for nearly-three years now..
But: once I quit for FIVE years...
...before I UN-quit.

Just how do I know I've changed?
And how would I, if I needed to, convince another?

But--fortunate child, I--never have I needed to convince another.
I have been lucky enough that when I've said,
"I've changed..."
I have been believed.
And I have been right.

But: again.
I was right.
For nearly five years...and then, for six weeks, all that "change" was a lie.
For six weeks, and then it was the truth again, for so-far three years, and hopefully longer--much, MUCH longer.
BUT: for six weeks, I had no longer "changed".
For six weeks, I was a hypocrite, judging others
because they did the same as me.
(Not the "same" same, but the same not-changing.)

Who, then, am I,
to say
that someone else may not have changed?
Even for a while--for a few years, maybe,
but SOMETHING?

(You know, of course, where this is going.)

I talked to him tonight.
He has three sides, mostly:
1. macho-bullshit blustering shithead (but oh, quite seductive, he is);
2. perfectly normal, more-intelligent-than-he-knows (the piece I miss most of all);
3. heartbroken emo-guy, inconsolable (but oh-so-lovable, so very needful)...

...tonight, I talked to Version #3.
just SAD, just angry, fed-up, lonely, broke...
asking nothing but an ear
to pour his exhaustion into.
He yawned as he spoke, pushing a grocery cart
through some Southern-Indiana store
asking for two packs of Kool 100's
("two?" I said. "You tryin' to smoke yourself to death, baby?")
the wind in the cell-phone receiver as he crossed the parking-lot
the radio as he started up the car,
sleepy still, counting on my voice to ride home beside him.

"I don't want anyone else to get hurt," he told me,
one night after some drunken e-mail
escaped my "draft" file
into the realm of "sent".

That, alone, spoke volumes:
when you offer something
and it is declined
out of concern for someone else,
their nobility
(real or imagined)
is all you have to cling to.
(That, and the fact that in the past, he blatantly SAID he didn't care if someone else got wounded, somewhere in the rifle-spray of his existence.
Or, as he used to phrase it:
"When you pick up a snake, you can't be surprised when you get bit.")

But tonight...

tonight, just a sad, exhausted boy, really,
tired of work,
of life,
of bills,
of worry.

"Hey, thanks for the letters," he said, as we said goodbye. "Keep writing to me...No, they don't annoy me, I LOVE the way you write."
I smiled. "Thanks," I said.
"Try to have a good day tomorrow, okay?"
"Yeah," he said. "I'll try."

It's not so much that I need someone to need me.
It's more that it's so much easier to be with someone who feels the same things I feel--
the tiredness, the worry, the outrage
at music, the media, the TV talking heads,
at politics and fakes and phonies,
at sellouts,
at growing older.

("Don't you hate it?" he said, one of the first times we spoke again. "Everything we liked? is OLD now. It's all past." How many times have I said or written those same words?)

And yes, I know:
there are others who feel this way.
There are others who feel this way
who have never hurt me
who have never lied
who have never left me
who have never said a cutting word
much less the words he said,
the ones that have followed me for nearly seven years now...

Yes, I know.
There are others.
And yes, I'm sure
that I should go and find them.

But I'm a bit too old to start again at kissing frogs,
at hoping for stray and random princes.
Old, and other things,
not least of which is "disinclined".
I'm everlastingly tired
of the taste of frog-skin.

So:
here I am again.
But this is the last,
the last, last, last, last, last, last time
(last time was just the last last last last last)
that I will even pretend
to think about considering the possibility to wonder if perhaps I might one day believe again.)

I know:
I'm stupid.
I know:
This will end in tears.
It's not like I was doing anything better in the first place.
We shall see
what happens.
Maybe it will even
spur me to make art. Who knows?

JP and I
had many, many mottoes
but one of them:
"there is no such thing
as a bad experience"...

...hard as it is,
I still believe.
I wouldn't trade
anything that's happened--
even the things I hate the most.
So many times I've wondered
who I'd be
if I'd had a softer life.

I imagine her
and I don't like her much.
She cries less
because she knows less
and I'd rather know more
and smile less
than the other way around.
Tears always dry.

So...yeah
off the edge I go
and I hope
for a soft landing.