Meager, self-obsessive gruel

Dear blog,

I've been wanting to write something in you for some time now (image: tattooing the heart, X marks the spot), but I'm saving my good story, the one about the snail, for later, and I've quit writing poetry since we last met. Where does that leave us? Don't worry, dear blog, I won't turn you into a journal, not entirely, not yet. My regurgitation of daily events will at least be frilled with fine lace and white lies. Still, I regret to say that I can no longer avoid the mundane or skirt the commonplace... which brings me to the fact that, right now, my back is fucking killing me.

As far as I can tell, some phantom is digging his thumb into the right side of my spine, somewhere between my shoulder blades. The sensation spikes when I turn my head, breath, or otherwise try to function as a human being; the phantom clutches the top of my head and drives that long-nailed thumb deep into the tangle of nerves. What I've done to offend this demon, I can't say. There's an entire week of bad deeds to pick from: maybe I'm being punished for drinking chocolate milk straight from the carton, for bumming too many cigarettes, for continuing to hate my dad for reasons I can't quite place (safe to say it's not the Oedipus complex; dad left mom years ago, left her to be fucked by a rotating door of part-time dads: Jerry, Marvin, Steve; maybe that's what it is, an unsettled anger over leaving momma to the dogs). Perhaps it isn't a phantom, but a deity of some kind, the God of Productivity, come to poke me in the spine until my ass lifts from my seat and I get a job (fat chance, brash celestial being: my ass will remain forever planted!).

Whatever the entity, the pain is very real, and it's blocking better thoughts, ideas of any actual interest. I'm thinking that if I keep complaining about it, my uncle will slip me some pain medication, a little taste of sweet narcotic. Sure, my spine will be soothed, but more importantly, my brain will be all filaments and fireworks, bright lights and luminescent words. I could do some real writing. (Then again, I shouldn't be writing this in you now blog, not since I've included it on my professional resume, squeezed in at the very bottom. What will they think, my potential employers? Should I assure them that I don't have a proclivity toward pills, or would such an assurance only confirm their suspicions? I suppose it doesn't matter. I suspect that I'll kill myself before finding a job anyway.) Until then, dear blog, I hope you can survive on this meager, self-obsessive gruel.