with my family. I could be wrong, but, hey, oh well...here it is. Later on in the future, once
I get my act together, I may begin to write more Tori lyric inspired poetry.
by Karen Elizabeth Waters
She says dancing in graveyards
with vampires 'til dawn,
I reckon this is a way to spend
ones spare time.
Fingers lightly play the keys
as Marianne lives on.
Whose to say that gumdrops
and Saturdays don't
bring out the faeries?
But things are getting kinda gross
in Little Amsterdam.
All these thoughts run deep,
here in my head
as these precious things
break away leaving
pieces of me behind.
All these take me back
to when I was coming out of
my mother upside down.
Now, here I stand,
a professional widow
with my warm little diamond gone.
So I shaved every place that
you've been, boy,
and Jupiter needs a friend.
I can't hold back any
glaciers, and I'm out of
lip gloss.
The Dew Drop Inn is vacant.
Screaming in cathedrals won't solve
anything even if I think
it's beautiful.
So I sit and feel these
little earthquakes once again.
by Karen Elizabeth Waters
We’re best friends in
my dream world. We hang
out all the time and drink lots
of margaritas, sing, joke around,
and talk about everything and anything.
In my dream world you always
make sure I get the best seats
at every concert I attend.
Sometimes, you even ask me to
come up on stage and sing
along with you.
We sing your songs.
We sing my songs.
And sometimes, we sing
our favorite songs by others.
When Tash entered your life,
I was there to help you and love her.
You know I can’t be a mommy
because my body won‘t allow it,
so you allow me to love, hold, sing to,
and play with your beautiful daughter.
You always tell me it’s your way of giving
me a chance to feel like a real mommy.
We go out for breakfast and drink tea
and eat lots of bagels until we’re stuffed.
Then we go and shop ‘til we drop.
After a long and fun day of shopping,
we go to your favorite Italian restaurant,
and eat way too much pasta and
drink way too much wine.
I love to visit you, Mark
and Tash in England.
You love to take me sight seeing so you
can show me places I may never get a
chance to see in real life.
We love to take long walks in the forest
and call and sing out to the faeries.
But our favorite place to visit is the ocean.
We always sit on the beach and talk about
what it would be like to be a mermaid.
Sometimes we sit silently and listen to
the waves crash up onto the shore.
We walk along the shoreline looking
for the most interesting seashells to
add to our collection.
We’re best friends,
you and I.
Best friends until the end of time.
by Karen Elizabeth Waters
When they told me I was dying,
I didn’t know what to say or do.
You were already in my life and
just listening to you helped me
get by with the horrible news.
I never thought I’d see today.
I thought I’d be gone by now.
I’ve fought hard to keep going
and I’m still fighting for my life!
The pain is still here.
I try so hard to get by with
your medication as well as
my doctors medication.
It’s your songs and angelic voice
that soothe me and give me the
hope and courage to carry on.
I’ve passed my love for you
to many friends and what
you’ve done for me has also
healed them.
We want to thank you.
It’s not everyday that
someone enters your life
that makes life a better
place to live.
by Karen Elizabeth Waters
I thought no one would ever love me.
The kind of love that everyone hopes
to find someday.
I gave myself to too many men,
and all I got in return was a
depression I couldn’t escape from.
“No one will ever love you,” she said.
“you’re fat and the only thing a man
wants from a girl that’s fat is a fuck!”
“I’m ashamed of you. Look at yourself.
You’re fat, you’re lazy, you are a nothing!”
Night after night, little or no sleep,
I wept because no one loved me.
I asked a few male friends to go
to the prom with me.
They all laughed in my face.
“I wouldn’t be caught dead in
public with you!”
I turned to drugs for an escape of
my horrible reality. My friends, or
who I thought were my friends, used
me and put me up to daring tasks.
Shoplifting and stealing money from
my family, taking strangers to the
beer store just so my so-called friends
could get drunk!
I only did it because I thought they were
my true friends. They didn’t laugh at
my weight. They didn’t make me feel
ugly. They wanted to hang out with me.
I drank until I puked.
I broke into someone’s house.
(they told me it was a friend’s house and we
had permission to party there)
I tried to kill my mind.
I scarred my wrists and arms
with scissors and knives.
What’s wrong with me?
Then he came into my life.
He treated me like a queen.
I gave him my virginity.
I moved in with him before
the end of my senior year.
One month later, he changed.
I wasn’t allowed to have any friends.
I couldn’t see my family.
I didn’t have a life.
Yet, I stayed with him.
The hitting began, followed by
the raping. I gave in and allowed
myself to be used for his sexual pleasure.
There was no love.
Only punches and such.
My 18th birthday came and went.
That’s when he almost killed me.
We were swimming.
He held me under the water.
All I remember was everything
turning black.
When I came to, it was his friend
that saved me.
I still didn’t leave him.
When I finally came to my senses,
I moved back to the place I tried
to run from. My parents home.
They didn’t believe the horror I went through.
They claimed I was lying just to get attention.
Soon after returning home,
that’s when the health problems began.
Just another nail in my coffin, I
thought. Why couldn’t I just die
and get it over with?
Five years after him, another man
came along and showed me a different
world. I fell hard for him.
He didn’t hit me...he didn’t force himself
on me. He was perfect!
But he didn’t want me like the way
I wanted him.
He ended it with me the night
before Christmas Eve.
When would this misery end?
Months later, HE, the thief,
the liar, the user, the cheater,
came into my life.
Being desperate for love and
affection, I answered a personals
ad from a local personals column.
That’s how I met HIM.
HE told me “I love you!”
one night, after making love.
Or what I thought was making
love. I cried. I thought HE was
telling me the truth.
Things went too fast!
I wanted to escape from the
clutches of rules and regulations
from my parents.
Once again, I packed up my things
and moved in with another man.
That’s when my things started
to go missing.
A cd here, a Nintendo game there,
a movie here, and my favorite
crystal ball ring. Even my brand
new Egyptian ouija board disapeared.
He used my car behind my back.
Crashed my car with my sister
and Grandmother in it.
The straw that broke the camels back,
was me returning home from work to
find a house full of drunks lying on the
floor, food everywhere with ants
crawling all over it.
No sleep...I cleaned up everything!
I screamed at the drunks to get out
of my fucking house!
That night, a night I’ll never
forget, he returned from HER house
(some chick he met one day while
living with me) with sucker bites all
over HIS neck.
I had been in the hospital all day long.
HE wasn’t the one who took me...HE didn’t
stay by my side.
I told HIM to get out of my life!
I was tired of supporting HIS lazy ass.
(HE never worked and HE never tried
looking for work)
The pain from my health and the pain
from HIM drove me to the point of insanity.
Especially when HE told me HE fucked that
Goth whore Courtney Love wanna-be on MY bed.
The story continues, but I’ve said enough for now.
My life is better.
Better because I did it by myself!
I broke free from the chains of misery.
It was you, Tori who began the therapy.
You rescued me from myself.
You saved me from ending it all.
I love you!
parody of the song “Hotel” from Tori's album
"From the Choirgirl Hotel"
by Karen Elizabeth Waters
Met ‘em near the roadside,
met ‘em near the roadside,
driving to work.
Working on the nightshift,
working on the nightshift,
watching out for critters.
You were wild, where are you now?
You were alive, where are you now?
Oh, porcupine, porcupine, porcupine
porcupine, porcupine oh
I - I - I - I have to watch for reflective eyes.
I - I - I - I have to keep alert so I don’t crash.
Met ‘em near the roadside,
met ‘em near the roadside, they say
they’re the sharpest critters out this year.
Guess I wasn’t looking out,
guess I wasn’t driving slow.
Met ‘em near the roadside,
met ‘em at the double lines
one night when going to work.
You were wild, where are you now?
You were alive, where are you now?
Oh, porcupine, porcupine, porcupine
porcupine, porcupine, porcupine
I - I - I - I have to watch for reflective eyes.
I - I - I - I have to keep alert so I don’t crash..
Lou Reed on the radio,
Lou - Lou Reed singing
to me, to me, to me.
Lou Reed on the radio,
Lou Reed singing
to me, to me, to me.
You were wild, where are you now?
You were alive, where are you now?
You were alive...
Queen Elizabeth’s Throne,
Exit 69,
I’m still alive, I’m still alive.
You’re not alive, you’re not alive,
I’m still alive.
10/14/01
Were Your Great Disappointment”
by Karen Elizabeth Waters
Too many of them.
Not enough of you.
Only one of me.
Joyful promises broken,
my heart torn in two.
So many tried to bring
me to you.
False hope,
like trying to survive
long enough to tell you
“thank you”.
I blame not you.
I blame not the protectors,
friends, and loved connections.
I blame the hundreds of followers
that forced you away from me.
You sang my favorite songs,
I saw you from afar.
“What’s your name?” the
woman asked, before the show.
I said, “Karen Elizabeth Waters.”
The pain I was put through
just to see you left marks
on my body and bruises
under my skin.
The pain continues, something
I didn’t want to happen.
I watched you climb aboard,
wave, and leave.
So, so close.
How much longer do I have?
How much longer do I have to
wait to see you again?
My body keeps dying.
I still keep crying.
Promises destroyed.
I return home...
drugged by pain medication
because of selfish beings that
held me back and pushed me hard.
Will we ever meet?
I request this before I die,
to hug you, thank you and say
my possible goodbyes to
the woman who made me strong by
her wisdom, faith, and songs.
To the woman who gave me hope,
when I thought there was none,
and gave me my voice, pride
and courage back from the death
of a great man.
Thank you Tori, for everything.
by Valanchie
we all have our sToris
we all have our own theme song
we all know what it’s been like
to fall in love with something
named something like Easter
we’ve been moved
we’ve been saved
we’ve looked in the face of God
and all that she will say is that
it was us ourselves all along
by Karen Elizabeth Waters
I don’t know how to respond to the words
I’ve read, to the words that sting
like a bee...like a wasp or hornet.
A woman who has saved me,
now has ruined me...has turned
my friends against me.
How should I feel?
How should I act?
I’ve cried.
I’ve torn down all my
beloved things that show my
respect for you, Tori and for
all my other favored loves in life.
Now, I’m afraid to even listen
to the music that used to heal me
when I was so depressed.
I’m falling down a hole that I was
slowly climbing out of.
It’s getting deeper and deeper.
I feel like Alice, because as I fall,
I see my life as it was or is surround the
walls of the tunnel that I’m plummeting
down at an increasing speed.
My wounds that I scarred my
arms with begin throbbed and beg to be
opened again.
I see the devices I used and they call out to me,
but I stare at them with hatred and terror,
for all they did was hurt me more than helped.
There’s no one left in my life now.
No one to talk to.
I can’t trust anyone.
I wish I could talk to you, Tori.
The woman who came to me years
ago when I lost my voice.
When I lost my teacher who helped me
develop the music that made me who I am.
My keyboard weeps because
it wants me to play it
and I don’t want to.
I don’t want to sing either or
write anymore songs.
My companions, the felines I care for
like children, the children I can’t have,
walk around the house in a daze or maybe
confusion because I’m not singing to them.
I’m crying instead.
What’s happening to me?
Am I a failure?
I feel like that little girl who’s
lost...who was lost so long ago.
Who needed friends and thought
she found them, but found friends
in things like drugs and alcohol when
she should have been putting more
effort in her education in high school
and thinking about a future in music
and in college.
I feel like the girl who was taken advantage
of by violators, just because she thought it
was a way of getting love.
I feel like the girl who kept losing one thing
after another only to discover, she was losing
her soul.
Why is this happening to me?
I didn’t ask for this, did I?
They claimed I pushed them away.
They said, I’m selfish and mean.
Did they push me on purpose just
to see how far they could go?
Just like when I was little and how
the kids used to tease me?
Let’s see how far we can go.
Let’s see if we can make her cry.
They’re right, but, when you’re lost,
don’t you have a right to beg for help?
Over a year ago, I experienced a scare that
I never want to feel ever again.
That’s when it all started.
Slowly, one by one...they all left me.
I secluded myself because of fear.
I cried out for help.
I became mean when no one listened to my cries.
That’s all I do...that’s all I ever do anymore is cry.
I’m selfish...because I’ve lost so much and cling onto
what I have and beg for more.
I’m mean, because there’s a bug inside me that
takes control of me, like a possession, an evil
spirit and I can’t control it, try as I might, but
it controls me.
I’m not getting better, I’m getting worse.
I thought I was getting better.
Then I was betrayed.
Oh, they say they still love me,
that they’re still my friends.
If that’s true, shouldn’t they be
here...now, talking to me, not
yelling at me, telling me I’m mean?
What more can my doctors do,
when the options are small?
Now I beg for death.
Not by my own hands, mind you.
I fear there is no hope.
All the medicine in the world,
all the therapy in the world,
and even a trusted musician’s therapy that
I love and look up to (hated by all
those around me because my love for
her is an obsession) is no hope.
Think positive. Put a smile on your face.
There’s a pot of gold at the end of every
rainbow. There’s a happy end to every story.
I’m beginning to doubt all that.
My fantasy world is falling down around me.
My love for faeries and mermaids just doesn’t
seem enough to protect me from the negative
thoughts.
Did it ever occur to people that I surround myself
with these beautiful things to make me feel and think
positive? That listening to Tori Amos’ music makes
me feel positive about myself? About the musician
that I am? That I want to be?
They’ve destroyed that.
And now, I’m packing my things up,
just to prove to anyone who enters
my place that when you’ve broken
my heart and taken my soul away,
you might as well pack my things.
I may not be moving away to a
different home, because I can’t
afford to move.
But, there will be no pictures to look
at on my walls anymore.
Just emptiness.
Like how I feel now.
Thank you everyone for standing by my side when I needed you the most.
I just hope that there is a happy ending to this sad story for this
little girl who’s lost in this sad world where hope is just a word
tossed around like the word “love”.
August 1, 2002 2:15pm
Since August 1st, I've started to hang my Bob Masse artwork of Tori back up on the walls. Boy, they were dirty! As well as my Paulina Stucky pictures of Tori as a faery or witch. As well as my other faeries and decorations that are very much apart of me. I realize that sticks and stones may break bones and words can hurt me...but I must keep going on. I must go on. I must be strong and not let those who've hurt me get in the way of my healing. I've suffered greatly. Whether it be my physical health or my mental health. And they hit me as hard as they could with the truth...and yet they also were cruel about it. When one needs love and support...you don't go about hurting them. You give them love. You don't walk away from them when they're crying out for help. My therapist has taught me that. The one who hurt me more than ever is my own blood. And if she reads this, fine. That's what I want. I must be brave...that's what someone told me (a very brave soul who is the very same age as her...Natasha) When you're locking your feelings up inside and you don't get what's on your mind out, it begins to build up and soon, you're gonna crack! Split apart like the earth during an earthquake. Like little earthquakes. I don't want to be locked up in some locked down unit. That's where I won't be able to do what I do best. Sing and write music. Do what I'm doing right now. Writing this very website. For now, that's all I'm going to say. I just wanted everyone to know, that I'm going through some tough times, but I'm not giving up. I may be strange...I may drown my sorrows in my music sometimes or my writing...but I will be become better. I will be better. I will overcome my fears. We'll see how brave you are...yes, Anastasia. Yes, Anastasia...we'll see how brave I am...because I am brave. And I won't be afraid to hit back anymore. I've been the scape-goat...well not anymore...not anymore.
Sunday, August 25, 2002 11:00am
