2pm nap on the couch

The blinds shake softly
But I’m scared
I raised them
To let the sun in
They’re still now
The cat and me
Take a nap
On the couch
Each day
A little after two
The sun has made its way
Over the building
To shine through
The west windows
My fear keeps from seeing
That the blue sky
Framed in the window
Is really
Quite wonderful
I worry
Instead

July 14, 2023 at 02:20PM

What if we set all the domestic cats free?

I’ve been seeing brighter than normal flashes when I turn the lights on in a room
Glints in the air, on the floor
Out of the corner of my eye when I turn my head too fast
That hummingbird won’t leave the cat alone
Buzzing right outside the window
The cat behind the glass
I’m not sure he would even know what to do
He’s so used to kibble at one in the afternoon
He misses my girlfriend, I think
She gives him more attention than I do
She gets back from Costa Rica this afternoon

July 09, 2023 at 09:29AM

Progress

I write all my best poems in an afternoon
If the sun’s right
And my blood toxicity is just right
I go for months
In the fog
I’d rather just
Watch the performance
Than write right now

July 02, 2023 at 04:03PM

Right right now – Copy

“If you’re an artist and you perform on this stage, you must think, I’ve made it.”
What’s after you make it?
The kids in front of us draw and smoke American Spirits. She has a pen behind her ear, bobs her head slowly, cool like.
“Shit’s right.”
Dialogue from the TV show last night resonates.
“We should eat the rest of the mushrooms.”
Okay.
Robots can’t write this.
Can’t feel the sun coming through the clouds. Hear the subtleties in the performer’s voice that sound like she knows, like the experience she had growing up in Baltimore and going to church. One of those churches where people get filled with the spirit and fall down. That stuck with her.
It feels right right now.
I used to always have to write whenever I did drugs. I felt like I had to take field notes and bring them back to my sober life.
My spiritual progress can be measured by the decrease in my will to write.
It’s right here.
I can leave the flower in the soil.
I write like I pick flowers from the garden to bring back to my lover.
Be there in the garden.
Let them grow.
Be the flowers. Or the soil. Or the sun. Or the gardener.
Be there.
It is what it is.
And it’s right right now.

July 02, 2023 at 03:44PM

Right right now

“If you’re an artist and you perform on this stage, you must think, I’ve made it.”
What’s after you make it?
The kids in front of us draw and smoke American Spirits. She has a pen behind her ear, bobs her head slowly, cool like.
“Shit’s right.”
Dialogue from the TV show last night resonates.
“We should eat the rest of the mushrooms.”
Okay.
Robots can’t write this.
Can’t feel the sun coming through the clouds. Hear the subtleties in the performer’s voice that sound like she knows, like the experience she had growing up in Baltimore and going to church. One of those churches where people get filled with the spirit and fall down. That stuck with her.
It feels right right now.
I used to always have to write whenever I did drugs. I felt like I had to take field notes and bring them back to my sober life.
My spiritual progress can be measured by the decrease in my will to write.
It’s right here.
I can leave the flower in the soil.
I write like I pick flowers from the garden to bring back to my lover.
Be there in the garden.
Let them grow.
Be the flowers. Or the soil. Or the sun. Or the gardener.
Be there.
It is what it is.
And it’s right right now.

July 02, 2023 at 03:44PM

Somewhere in between young and old

By the time I started to realize what was happening
They already had me
Still, I tried to fight it
I skipped class
And spent every weekday
In the philosophy section
On the 13th floor
Some kindred spirit
Had written
In red marker
On my favorite desk,
“Ships are safe
In the harbor
But that’s not what ships are for”
For a few months
Of my sophomore year
It seemed like
I’d jumped off the conveyor belt
In time
But I was already
In the belly
Doing my job
With the other cogs
Because even if you’re not working
They’ve still got you wrapped up in it
Somehow
I cared so damn much
What my dad thought
And the girls at school
I studied hard
And when that wasn’t enough
I cheated
You see
They get you when you’re young
And you’ve got no idea
You’re still wet
You’re drenched
And you’re already counting blocks
It takes a few years
But they keep at it
Until you’re sure it’s all about the blocks
You get old and you get set in your ways
And you don’t even want to smoke weed anymore
You just want to feel a little less pain
And you laugh when you think about
The meeting at night
In the abandoned room above the dining hall
And the plan to distribute pamphlets
And overthrow the whole university
You laugh at it now
But you were dead serious then

June 23, 2023 at 06:37PM

The lump in my neck

Is probably benign
But nonetheless
Makes me think about
What I would do
If it were a tumor
I realize
The article I’m writing
Is less interesting
Than I convinced myself it was
In order to motivate myself
To keep writing
I’m grateful
For the good times
Fond memories
Play like blurry films
I imagine I’d be given some time
The cliché of the doctor
Telling me I have
Insert number of months here
I’d probably start living
The way I should be living
Right now
But the bump is benign
So I keep wasting my days

June 20, 2023 at 07:01PM

I write best when I feel good

I know
It won’t last
I have to
Get the words down
While I still
Feel good
I want to play
Death metal
At max volume
But it’s 4pm
And the sun is up
And my neighbors
I hold it in
Point it at the paper
Proceed to type

June 06, 2023 at 04:19PM

Untitled

That boy
Striding
Across the street
There’s a reason
That old men
Wear watches
The boy strides
Across the street
Looks down at the watch
On his wrist
Steps longer
Walks faster
He is too young
Who gave that boy a watch
Who told him
He had somewhere to be
It’s a shame
To think of midnight
In the morning
the li

June 06, 2023 at 08:05AM

Can robots take our art?

I don’t know why
I try
AI
Can do this
As well
I guess
It’s a good thing
If robots
Take our jobs
Then we won’t
Have to work
But can robots really
Take our art?

May 28, 2023 at 10:17PM

Ad space

Is it back in style
To blame business
Or will we sell
Ad space
On our foreheads
On my walk home
I couldn’t look anywhere
Without seeing
Models posing
Like salespeople
Words designed
To make me buy

May 28, 2023 at 08:50PM

Making tea

The teapot whistle
Turns into
A scream of pain
I smile
As a musician
Hearing harmony
Smiles
I let the scream
Of steam
Sing a duet
With my soul’s
Incessant
Shrieking

May 19, 2023 at 08:43AM

Death poem

I start to worry
About whatever
Until I remember
I won’t
Make it out alive
Even if
I win the game
Eat my greens
Avoid the accident
Write my masterpiece
We’re all
Still dead
In the end

May 16, 2023 at 06:57AM

In the bar is where

In the bar is where
I’ve found my peace
Where I’ve
Fought my demons
And fornicated
With my angels
It’s
Something about
The intoxication
That accels
The anxiety
Accentuates
The fears
So that I can face them
With dance
And other means
Of destroying
My ego
My understanding
Of the way in which
Things are supposed to
Transpire
I
Only wish this
Weren’t the end
That I could
Employ my efforts
In service of
Something
That actually matters
But alas
I base my decisions
On the fine line
Between another drink
And calling
A car home
I
Pick up my glass
And stand
To  return
To the dance floor

May 12, 2023 at 10:41PM

Let us bleed

The bass beats
The only bulbs
Are being the bottles
On the shelves
Shaking
In sync
Steps
Of dancers
Unpartenered
Are also
In sync
I close my eyes
And it’s all
In sync
I can tell
Even without
My eyes
The bass
Beating in my chest
Beseeches
The beat
Begs
For everyone
To stay
Together
To love
And not fight
To dance
And not disintegrate
We are one
We are
Together in this
Even when we forget
We are
The same flesh
Same blood
Soaking
The towelette
Held to the nostril
Who knows
What made the cut
What brought forth
The bleed
But let us bleed
Blood red
Together
Let us bleed 

May 12, 2023 at 10:32PM

Dissociate

Even
The excessive alcohol
Can’t stop
My thoughts
About the investable
I dance
Stomp
Shake my head
Striving
In vain
To dissociate
To sift off into
The bass beat
But I can’t
Quite
Get there
Get away
Get past
The threshold that
Separates
My conscious thought
From future
To present
From forecasted anxiety
To present passion
From death despair
To dance floor
I drink
More
Dance
More
All
In an attempt to
Lift off
Leave my
Consciousness
If only
For a moment

May 12, 2023 at 10:21PM

In the bar forever

The skateboarder
At the bar
Says he does
Downhill
As the candle wax drips
And smells
Better than the dance floor
I’ve lost count
Of the bars
Doors, hallways
Drinks I’ve had
In this bar
Like an American
Mall
Drink
And dance
Are the only directives
I heed
Drink
Dance
Drink
More
Dance
More
Stumble
Down another hallway
Order a drink
At a different bar
Smile
At the bartender
Make small talk
With a fellow drinker
Anything
In hope
That it won’t end
That I won’t wake up
Hungover
That it can just be this
Forever
And never end

May 12, 2023 at 10:14PM

In the crowd on the dance floor

To hear that
Everyone else in the crowd
Shots hey
At the same time as
I feel the hey
To be appropriate
I dance harder
Bend my knees
Deeper
Throw my hands
Higher
Feel that I am
Myself
Less
More a part of
The mass
More comfortable
To close my eyes
And lose myself

May 12, 2023 at 09:52PM

Feel now

I love to just
Close my eyes
And listen to the beat
He leans in
To tell me
I respond
That it has something
To do with
Self consciousness
If you close your eyes
You can forget
About everyone else
And just feel
The bass beat
Beat
Beat
And move with it
Side
To side
Up
And down
With your eyes closed
You can feel it
Just feel it
That’s it
Don’t worry about
The girl looking
The guy posturing
Just swing
Side
Yo side
Up
And down
With your eyes closed
Feel the beat
The floor is muddy
The drinks are strong
Everyone else
Is as drunk
As you are
Close your eyes
And feel
Dance
Feel
The DJ
On the deck above
The others
Dancing around
The watches
In wrists
The drinks
On the counters
The seltzer
Bubbling
The heels
Pressing into the ground
It plays here
And plays
And plays
Don’t think about tomorrow
Feel the beat
Close your eyes
Feel now

May 12, 2023 at 09:38PM

Bookstore

Do you try to read books
From every genre
To be able to make recommendations
When people ask
One associate
Asks the other
As my eyes scan the spines
Searching for something
To teach me
What I didn’t know
I needed to learn
A bookstore
Is a good place to pass time
While I wait for my friend
To finish his appointment
Down the street
What do you call someone
Who works at a book shop
A clerk
An attendant
A seller
A keeper
I don’t know
But anyway
I’ve always wondered about this
And so I was delighted to hear
Over the shelves
When one of them
Asked the other
Do you try to read books
From every genre
To be able to make recommendations
When people ask
As my eyes scanned the spines
Not looking for anything
In particular
As I waited
For my friend
To finish his appointment
Up the street
A bookstore
Seemed to be
The best place
To pass the time

May 09, 2023 at 09:32AM

Rain on a Tuesday

Bus wires drip
With rain water
Walkers
Hold bags over their heads
Some run
Stop
Under overhangs
Others
Don’t seem to care
The soothsayers
Sport umbrellas
I’m happy
For now
In the coffee shop
Watching
Through the window
Waiting
For it to let up
So I can run home
And make breakfast

May 02, 2023 at 12:34PM

Untitled note

The night comes for me like a lioness stalking her prey.
I am distracted in the daytime.
Even as the sun sets, some light still stands between us.
But I can hear her slow steps in the tall grass at dusk.
I am somehow always surprised when she pounces.
darkness descends.
I become aware of how alone I am.
I am somehow always caught off guard when she pounces.
It is sudden.
And then it all goes dark.
And I am alone in that darkness.
Alone in the belly of the beast.

At home at last

I’ve been feeling
More at home in the world
Even outside my apartment
I take my shoes off in the park
Sit on my neighbor’s steps
Eat food at restaurants
Drink at bars
Sidewalks are hallways
The whole city is a house
Strangers are my roommates
I guess I just feel
A little less separate
A little more at ease
Like I’ve been on a long journey
As a stranger
And I’m finally arriving
Where I belong
Even though I was always here
It feels different now
Like I’ve journeyed far and wide
In strange lands
And I’ve finally found
Where I belong
Which is right where
I’ve always been
But now it feels different
I’ve journeyed far and wide
Feeling like a stranger
In foreign lands

April 25, 2023 at 05:22PM

Untitled

I write around
What I really
Want to say
When I’m on drugs
And all the truths
Seem apparent
I almost don’t want to write
Because I know I won’t get to it
Because of all the other times I’ve tried to get to it
And failed
I’ve gotten pieces
And I guess that’s how it goes
You can’t get the whole thing at once
No matter how many drugs you take
The truth takes her clothes off slowly
There’s nothing to say
No words
If you’re going to write down words, what are your options? Studies, notes, a letter to a friend. If we’re talking about the written art forms.
Novels are about other worlds
What about this world?
But not the academic writing
It’s a hundred pages for one truth that doesn’t really mean anything to you and me in our daily lives
I want my writing to be like tungsten cubes
Dense
Just be
Don’t write
Just be

April 24, 2023 at 10:08AM

Sights too good for photographs

At the park I set
My sack of groceries
Next to the bench
And sat down
To smell the fresh air
A little longer
Before continuing
On my way home
Looked at the grass
Bending in the breeze
Got out my phone
To take a photo
But it didn’t look the same
Put my phone in my pocket
Picked up my groceries
Kept walking
In the kitchen
Sliced a strawberry in half
And it happened again
The white center
Reddening toward the edges
Leapt out at me
Like the grass
Looking beautiful
I didn’t bother with my phone
This time
Dumped the strawberries
On top of the cereal
And sat down
Smelling the smoke still
From the napkin
That caught flame
Too close
To the candle last night
Couldn’t eat my dinner
Without the smell of smoke
In the taste
But I was thankful
The house didn’t burn down
Ashes in the air
Flew up
To the paper lantern
Look
It’s when I look
And it asks to be photographed
But it’s only for me
If I were photographer perhaps
So I write it
Why can’t I just watch it
See it
And let that be it
I have to tell someone
Want to share it

April 20, 2023 at 01:14PM

It’s not complicated

It’s not complicated
It’s
The guitar string
Strummed
The piano key
Pressed
Held
Sounding
Still
Eardrums
Drumming
Still
Drumming
Drummed
And held
Hard shoes
On the floor
Bikes swaying
Side to side
Eyes closed
Up at the ceiling
Band still jamming
Beer still
In my hand
Take a sip
Dance
Take a sip
Without spilling
It’s still
Not complicated
Even after
All these words
It’s still
The guitar string
Strummed
The piano key
Pressed
And it’s all
Still
Sounding

April 14, 2023 at 12:13AM

Old men

At the coffee shop
Talk about
The old days
I think about
How time
Is slippery
And wonder
If my father
Realized
He was getting old
Or if he just
Woke up
That way
One day
The days
Are long
But the years
Are short
I’m most afraid to die
At night
But in the morning
It seems like
It won’t ever end
The old men
At the coffee shop
Make me
Want to live
Now
While I still can
While I’m still
Full of life
And strength
To do things
I still can’t believe
This will ever end
That it has to end
That that’s
Just the way things are
If I could change one thing
It would be that
To not die
To live forever
But greater men
Than me have tried
So instead I
Spend my energy
Trying to live an eternity
In a lifetime

April 05, 2023 at 11:07AM

Follow the sun

Like a cat
Beyond the rays
Shining
Though the shades
Into your living room
Not just
The sun shining
Through the shades
Chase it over the horizon
Into the next time zone
So it’s always noon
And if not the actual sun
If you can’t keep up
At least the light
Stay in the warmth
Squint your eyes
Feel the energy
For as long as you can
Just make sure
When you fall asleep standing
Your under a tree in the shade
And then your sleep is the night
Because your eyes are shut anyway
And hopefully when you open them
The sun will be shining again
And you can go on chasing

April 03, 2023 at 03:54PM

Walkers walking

Across the street
Walkers wait
For the light to turn
It turns
They walk
To the next light
Other walkers arrive
At this one
It turns again
And they walk
On
And on

March 24, 2023 at 11:52AM

Vesuvio

What a life
Wood
Under my banging fist
Solid
Like something real
My martini
Is mostly gin
People talk
Music plays
The bartenders
Take shots together
The ceiling
Has been painted over
Who knows
How many times
Glasses clink
As they’re put
In the dishwasher
Everyone shouts
Over the music
At each other
And it doesn’t matter
If we understand
It was never the words
That made the meaning
It was always
The subtle sound
The brush of skin
The accidental glance
The all-knowing
Ever present
As I bang my fist
On the wooden railing
It’s here
And I can feel it
Pushing back against
My skin and bone
I make believe
I want to push through
When what I really want
Is for something to push back
Glass bottles glow
On crowded shelves
Behind the bar
As full after
Drinks already made
Tabs paid
Patrons have come
Drank, laughed
And left
Like we all
Eventually leave
The bar
This life
You can’t come
And not go
Stay leave
It’s all the same
Somewhere
Between hello
And goodbye
Ah I’ll split this up
Anyway
I’ve just gotta
Get it down
The lemon twist
At the bottom of my glass
The olive
At the bottom of hers
The businessman
Talking loudly
About us business
Whishint

March 23, 2023 at 10:48PM

One beer in

I love the feeling when I’m
One beer in
Walking across the street  I
Look right and see headlights
But after a beer I’m
Invincible
Gliding across
The crosswalk
Looking lovingly
At other drinkers
Coming out of other bars
Just walking down the sidewalk
On our way to dinner
Is wonderful
I should write more about that other price I wrote about how I write when I feel good to give it away

March 17, 2023 at 07:20PM

My girlfriend is the future

My girlfriend is the future
And I’m the past
I grew up in the middle of the country
Where work is still the way
So I studied hard
And got into a good school
Only to move to a city
To find out
That the work is all done
And the men who hunted
And swung hammers
Are no longer needed
It’s a woman’s world now
It’s a world of slowing down
And healing
And feeling good
All the things
My girlfriend is good at

February 27, 2023 at 09:48AM

Hoping it will last

It’s the second to last day of vacation
And I’m stuck between
Not wanting it to end
And not knowing what to do with myself now
As I sit on the balcony
Looking out at the blue water
Hoping it will last
Somehow

February 16, 2023 at 02:16PM

Bukowski

It makes sense to me
That Bukowski was a drunk
With an almost gone glass
On the table in front of me
It’s something about the courage
To say whatever you feel
Or maybe the alcohol is a key
To the spiritual realm

February 14, 2023 at 08:01PM

La Manzanita

There are three blades
On the fan
Spinning slowing enough
That you can see them
The blender
Blends frozen fruit
This poem hasn’t started out too well
But I’ll keep going
Cars speed by behind
It’s a sidewalk smoothie shop
And they make breakfast burritos too
The vacationers next to me
Talk about football
The shirts hanging from the roof
Of the gift shop next door
Blow in the wind
Alas
I’m only describing
This is what my editor was talking about
There’s got to be a deeper meaning
In order for it to be a good poem
In order for anyone to care
And I pushed back and said
If it is what it is than that’s it
It just is what it is and there’s nothing more
But maybe that’s why it’s not good poetry
We want to feel like it means something
And good art allows us to feel that way
So if a poem is just about what is
And it doesn’t make it mean something
The poem might be right
But good art isn’t about being right
And this is where I feel that art and my spirituality diverge
I see it for what it is
But then I don’t make it mean something
The first part is spirituality
And I fail to get to the art of the second part

February 14, 2023 at 09:49AM

Sunrise

I can only write poetry
When I’m inspired
And this sunset
As beautiful as it is
Orange at first
Now turning yellowing
As it’s half circle
Is yet made whole
Sliced by the horizon
Just isn’t doing it for me

February 14, 2023 at 06:00AM

Buy low sell high they say

Buy low sell high they say
There are more options than I can count
On the menu
How
Am I supposed to know
What to do with myself
What is the most moral
The most pleasure-maximizing
The best for society
Whatever will give me peace
I guess I’ll just have
The octopus
Because I like the way it tastes
Even though my coworker told me
They’re intelligent creatures
And we really shouldn’t eat them
So when the waiter asked
If I would also like to try the brussel sprouts
I said okay
Even though they were 28 dollars
I guess you pay for the view of the ocean
From the rooftop of the resort

February 14, 2023 at 04:14AM

And now it is

We were joined by grunts. To be eloquent is to be alone. So many books since the printing press until the final book will say it’s not a book that will say it. Its isness smiles smugly as you try to explain it. How can one explain what it is to be other than by being? How can you look at me and say words when we’re as in love as we are? Don’t you feel it? Didn’t your teachers always bore you? But you learned to stand it. Learned to speak and study and remember. All while the mountains stood still and the rivers ran. While what was stayed the same and still is. Because it all just is. And that’s it. We’ve worked ourselves up into a tizzy because we thought we were onto something. We thought we could figure it out. But it already was figured out. It already was. And now it is.

Almost art

I caught a sense of it
In the store
The speakers played music
That seemed to match
The models portraits’
But I guess that’s
What the marketers wanted
And here I am
What a sucker
Letting it work so well on me
That I almost
Thought it was art

January 21, 2023 at 03:08PM

Two hairs

I took two hairs from my mustache and twirled them around between my thumb and finger. I twirled them and thought to myself, how simple. I twirled them like a child with a toy. I twirled them until I got bored and then I took two more.

Lots left

The ocean still goes as far as I can see over the horizon
The sky still goes as far as I can see up somewhere
Even when I close my eyes I cannot see to the end of the darkness
All the places I haven’t been
All the foods I haven’t tasted
All the songs I haven’t heard

January 16, 2023 at 10:06AM

The watch on my desk

EDITED:
To face the facts
Of my finitude
And my ever nearer end
To face the fact
Of my finitude
ORIGINAL:
The watch on my desk
Ticks
All the time
Even now
It ticks
To remind me
There’s nothing I can do
To stop it
I could smash the watch
Throw it out the window
Put it in a drawer
But that wouldn’t stop
All the other watches in the world
From ticking
So I leave it on my desk
To face the facts
That I am temporary
And my end is ever nearer

January 14, 2023 at 07:46PM

Thank you trees

I feel excited again
As I look outside
At the trees
There are trees
Standing out there
Just being trees
And I can see them
In the light
From our neighbor’s back porch
They are themselves
And I am myself
But we are somehow together
As I stand in my underwear
Checking the back door
To make sure it’s locked
And they stand in the yard
Wet from the day’s rain
Waiting in the night
Waiting
So that I could see them
And feel excited again
Thank you trees
Thank you world
Goodnight

January 11, 2023 at 10:04PM

After making love

After making love
I spoke
As matter of fact
My no’s meant no
And my yes’s meant yes
As she asked me
If the sheets would stain
I did not intone
My reply
With anything other
Than the exact meaning
Of my words
Because
After making love
Our bodies
Are not accustomed
To anything other
Than the truth
Flowing through

January 11, 2023 at 09:58PM

What’s left

EDITED:
What’s left
When sex
Isn’t secret anymore
The drugs
Are all done
And the highs are familiar
When your dad’s beard
Grows on your chin
You’ve seen
All the colors of the leaves
And even the river
Seems the same
ORIGINAL:
What’s left
When sex
Isn’t secret anymore
When all the wars
Have been fought
When robots
Take all the jobs
And the economy
Prints money on its own
What’s left
When ancient philosophy
Found it all out
And then modern philosophy
Said it’s all absurd
Anyway
What’s left
When you get old
And Santa isn’t real
And it turns out
The adults didn’t know any better
After all
What’s left
When the commercial airlines
Take you wherever you want to go
And it all starts to seem the same
What’s left
When you’ve done the drugs
And all the highs
Are familiar

January 11, 2023 at 05:22PM

What’s left

What’s left
When sex
Isn’t secret anymore
When all the wars
Have been fought
When robots
Take all the jobs
And the economy
Prints money on its own
What’s left
When ancient philosophy
Found it all out
And then modern philosophy
Said it’s all absurd
Anyway
What’s left
When you get old
And Santa isn’t real
And it turns out
The adults didn’t know any better
After all
What’s left
When the commercial airlines
Take you wherever you want to go
And it all starts to seem the same
What’s left
When you’ve done the drugs
And all the highs
Are familiar

January 09, 2023 at 06:38PM

I am – POSTED

This morning
I can feel my feet
On the floor
More
Than usual
As I walk
To the trash can
To throw away a tissue
It’s my callused heel
Hitting the hardwood
That reminds me
Again
That I am
That
I am
This
This thing
That can feel my feet
On the floor

December 28, 2022 at 08:25AM

Sex with the lights off

Sex with the lights off
Is abstract and
Natural in the ways
We find each other anew
After sessions of certainty
Under the light of the lamp
It’s calves on shoulders
In the dark that
Re-open everything

December 23, 2022 at 09:50PM

Coffee and gum

The taste of cold coffee
In a mouth chewing minty gum
Is appearance anxiety
Mixed with performance enhancement
Can an oral fixation
Keep away the shakes
So close, I
Don’t want to go to bed
Without finishing this again there’s
Just so much to say so
I take another stick
Unwrap it, place it between my teeth
Chew it, pick up the cup
Take another drink
I would never
Order coffee and mint together
If I were getting two scoops
At the ice cream shop
But at the desk
Almost done
It’s the violence I need

December 09, 2022 at 01:11PM

I have to wait to get a good run in

I have to wait to get a good run in. I need rest in between. The first cup of coffee after I’ve been sober for a week hits the hardest. If I try to keep going, drinking coffee successive mornings, I’ve built up a tolerance and it’s not as effective. I have to slow down and rest and be bored even. Once I’ve done that for a while, I’m primed to blast off again.

Untitled

At a coffee shop with a vaulted ceiling, I just so happened to look up.
A white ceiling with sky lights. Orange-purple light coming through one. White-blue light coming through the other. The corners where the walls meet the ceiling. Four windows on the far wall. Yellow light shining through at an angle from the east. Four rectangles of light on the west wall at a stair-stepped diagonal.
We don’t look up enough.
We look down. We look ahead.
We’re very concerned with ourselves and what’s going on around us.

Sidewalking on a cold, rainy morning

As each heel hits the sidewalk, the sound reverberates up through my bones, beating the drums of my ears from the inside. The coffee shop I was at before had its front doors open. Too cold to work. The seat was uncomfortable anyway. I’m walking to another coffee shop down the street. One, two, one, two. I count my steps. Heels hitting. I have my head down. My hands are shoved deep into my coat pockets. It’s raining. Occasionally a heavy drop drips from a storefront overhang and lands on my head. I try to avoid this by walking closer to the curb. It’s cold. I tuck my chin to my chest and shrug my shoulders. It’s dark. The sky is fog in all directions. The only thing to do is to go faster. I hope the next coffee shop will have its front doors shut.

Untitled note

The floorboards creak
Beneath my feet
As I stand
Slowly shifting my weight
Watching the edges of each egg
Sizzle in oil

November 21, 2022 at 11:41AM

When god became man

I watched a beautiful man sneeze today. He stood there on the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets, looking like a god. Then he scrunched his nose, threw his head back, and convulsed. And I thought, ah, he is human.

Untitled note

Electric shavers would make good soldiers. The one I have has been sitting in my toiletry bag. It’s been at least a week since the last time I shaved. I took it out of the bag and pressed the button and it started buzzing like mad right away. Such power. Such obedience. It sits there in the bag—silently, not moving. And then, at a moment’s notice, when I give the command, it’s firing on all cylinders.

I get so excited

I get so excited
Until I remember
That this
Won’t last
I get so sad
Until I remember
That this
Won’t last
And sure enough
It never does

November 09, 2022 at 08:18PM

Inside and out

Through the drapes
The leaves shake
Something about
The separation
Inside it’s
Hardwood floors
Plaster walls
Soft sheets
Out there it’s
Wind
Rain
And sky
Something about
The separation

November 07, 2022 at 04:01PM

A thread falling

A thread falling
In the light
As I lie
Looking up
For a second
Shimmers
Sinking
Through the beam
Between the shades
Then disappears
In the darkness
Of the room

November 07, 2022 at 07:24AM

Atop a rock formation in Joshua Tree

Some bits of the sand are shaded now, as the sun starts to set behind the rocks. The wind rustles rigid aloe vera leaves. The day is coming to an end. It had its stages. We were excited as the day began. We packed the cars, made the drive out, walked the trail, climbed the rocks. We were ecstatic at high noon. Observing the desert desert terrain off into the distance. Feeling the texture of the rock under our palms. And now we are quiet, almost mournful, as the sun starts to set behind the rocks.

Life is art

Art occurs to me now as a channeling of this primordial awe of life into a form. It is the mark of a master to imbue a form with enough of their own awe of the first lived experience that the secondhand consumer of the art can almost experience the same awe as the first. And all that is ever inspiring the art in the first place is life itself. So why do we even channel the awe of life into an art form? For others to consume it, of course. But the point here is that life is art. Your life, as you are living it now—seeing whatever you see with your eyes, hearing whatever you hear with your ears—is art. Sure, sometimes it’s more sensational, which is why the famous art pieces are of bloody battles and forbidden loves. But even your everyday life is as sensational as any of the greatest artworks. And you have a front-row ticket to the film. Even more, you are in the film. You are its main character.

Death and desire

I will continue to have desires until I die.
And my consciousness is in a bodily form so that I can satisfy my desires.
When I am dying, what if my desire is to stay alive?
I think I will be able to satisfy that desire. I will be able to keep myself alive until it is my desire to die.
I am part of all this. I am not separate.
Parts of the universe are satisfying their desires, down to the subatomic particles. The universe will go on desiring and satisfying, even as I pass away.
Perhaps what I identify as my own consciousness is really just the universal consciousness as it has occurred in my unique corporal form. The universe has no desire for consciousness to persist in my corporal form, just as it is. I am part of it all. It all comes to pass.
For some time, I will continue to have strong desires. As long as I am having the desires, I can pursue them. I wonder if I will gradually have less and less desires until it gets to the point that what I desire is just to be and I will continue to be aware of my present human experience, but I will have little desire to do anything other than sit and be aware of my experience.
But I am still young and full of desire.

Thanks babe

You are here with me, teaching me. You came in the form of youthful beauty. You entered my soul through the corporal path. And here you are, still with me in my soul, even when our bodies are apart.
I love you because you are beautiful, of course, but also because you understand. You tell me of your death anxiety. The way you look into my eyes when we’re both on drugs.

Tripping on one tab atop a rock formation near the Boy Scout trailhead in Joshua Tree 10/26/22 – copy 1

What the book says about the eternally desiring nature of the universe is starting to make more sense to me. 
For example, I am getting hungry. I am looking forward to eating. I will eat. It will be good. I will be satisfied. Then, at some point, I’ll get hungry again. 
It feels good to satisfy desire. And new desires are constantly created by the ever-changing variety and contrast in a dynamic universe. 
Combining this with “The Power of Now” … 
Be present. Joy is the standard of success in life. You feel joy by satisfying desires. How does being present relate to that? 
What happens if you have a future-based desire? 
Is there ever a case where you should deny yourself the satisfaction of a desire in the present in order to satisfy a future-based desire? 
For example, I desire to relax in the present, but I am going to keep working because I desire X in the future.
Or, I desire to spend my money in the present, but I am going to save it, because I desire to do X with my money in the future. 
What is X? 
What do I desire in the future? 
What do I desire in the present? 
With work and personal finance, I’ve gotten into the habit of neglecting my personal desires in the present in order to achieve X in the future. 
To an extent this makes sense. Some things take time. 
I’m in the habit of abandoning my present self. 
What would my life look like if I was solely focused on satisfying my present desires?
I would wake up each morning and do whatever feels good. 
There was a moment 
When I was holding my journal
And the wind would blow
A few pages would blow over 
And it would stop 
On the page with your handwriting
And I remembered 
When you wrote that page
On the train to Paris
Just to see your handwriting 
Here alone in the desert
Made me smile
Whatever will happen will happen. We are humans with desires. Some desires will be fulfilled. Other desires will be unfulfilled. Even when desires are unfulfilled, there is immediately a new desire. So is desire ever really unfulfilled? Or is it just a new desire? 
You are here with me, teaching me. You came in the form of youthful beauty. You entered my soul through the corporal path. And here you are, still with me in my soul, even when our bodies are apart. 
I feel my various spiritual lessons converging. 
It is what it is. 
This too shall pass.
The force of life is desire.
I will continue to have desires until I die. 
And my consciousness is in a bodily form so that I can satisfy my desires.
When I am dying, what if my desire is to stay alive? 
I think I will be able to satisfy that desire. I will be able to keep myself alive until it is my desire to die. 
I am part of all this. I am not separate. 
I love you because you are beautiful, of course, but also because you understand. You tell me of your death anxiety. The way you look into my eyes when we’re both on drugs.
Parts of the universe are satisfying their desires, down to the subatomic particles. The universe will go on desiring and satisfying, even as I pass away.
Perhaps what I identify as my own consciousness is really just the universal consciousness as it has occurred in my unique corporal form. The universe has no desire for consciousness to persist in my corporal form, just as it is. I am part of it all. It all comes to pass. 
Art occurs to me now as a channeling of this primordial awe of life into a form. It is the mark of a master to imbue a form with enough of their own awe of the first lived experience that the secondhand consumer of the art can almost experience the same awe as the first. And all that is ever inspiring the art in the first place is life itself. So why do we even channel the awe of life into an art form? For others to consume it, of course. But the point here is that life is art. Your life, as you are living it now—seeing whatever you see with your eyes, hearing whatever you hear with your ears—is art. Sure, sometimes it’s more sensational, which is why the famous art pieces are of bloody battles and forbidden loves. But even your everyday life is as sensational as any of the greatest artworks. And you have a front-row ticket to the film. Even more, you are in the film. You are its main character. 
What do I desire in the present? 
I want to do this—what I am doing right now, as I write this. I want to think and create. I like writing because it is the fastest way to create what you’re thinking. 
I’ve been doing the work I’ve been doing because it pays well. I want to keep being paid well. But the problem is that I’ve been prioritizing the pay ahead of what I actually want to do. 
I previously thought I could compartmentalize the money making work life from the rest of my art/spirituality life, but I don’t want to do that anymore. Now, I want to do what feels good in the present. This is my first and primary desire. Secondarily, I like to think and create. I like to write. I like to have conversations. 
It’s important that the topic of my thinking/creating/writing be free-roaming. I’m a human being. My interests and desires change. 
It all changes, even my desire to think/create/write could change.
This is why it’s important to remember that my primary desire is to do what feels good in the present. 
The world is a creative playground. I have been given an opportunity to experience joy.
So what do I want to do in practical terms?
Orban is fine, but it requires me to focus my thinking/creating/writing on topics that don’t always interest me. 
It happens subtly. It seems rational to focus on my Orbit work and nobody is telling me otherwise, but I feel like I desire to be focusing my energy on something different. 
What do I want to do if I really dream? 
I want to do what I am doing right now. I want to experience life and write about it. And I want to be paid well to do just that. 
It is a holy experience to be alone with yourself. I realized this when I rejoined a group of my friends immediately after a period of deep personal meditation. In communicating with them, there is a layer between me and what is. That layer is ego. Everyone is trying to seem impressive by making a witty comment. If you make a comment that you think is witty and nobody laughs, you feel personally offended. This is the arena of the ego.
And this is what gets me excited about Authentic Relating. Authentic Relating melts away that ego layer. How can we be in community without our egos? Just the energy of our souls joining in Source. You can’t explain it, but you can feel it. When someone gives you a hug and it has that energy, you feel it.
Maybe my form isn’t supposed to be poetry. Maybe it’s this prose-diaristic style. Similar to Kerouac’s Dharma Bums. I can take the time to learn poetic meter, but that shouldn’t stop me from writing in this style in the meantime. 
Some bits of the sand are shaded now, as the sun starts to set behind the rocks. The wind rustles rigid aloe vera leaves. The day is coming to an end. It had its stages. We were excited as the day began. We packed the cars, made the drive out, walked the trail, climbed the rocks. We were ecstatic at high noon. Observing the desert desert terrain off into the distance. Feeling the texture of the rock under our palms. And now we are quiet, almost mournful, as the sun starts to set behind the rocks. 
Okay, so I want to experience life and write about it. 
Now, what do I want to experience? 
Up until somewhat recently, I was choosing life experiences based on the needs of my ego. And there are still certainly remnants of my ego. 
Perhaps what I want to experience is just living a human life. 
Remember, you are not a human being having a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being having a human experience.
In the car, listening to a good song, I notice I get jealous of other artists. 
As a spiritual being having a human experience, I choose to be an artist. 
So the life experience I want to have is being a human being who is realizing that I am a spiritual being.
My most recent discovery on my spiritual journey is manifesting my desires and feeling good.
So, I arrive back at the same question: what makes me feel good? 
It’s a question I’ll have to keep asking myself because it’s constantly changing. 
So it’s this practice of being present and consciously aware of my ever-changing desires. 
For some time, I will continue to have strong desires. As long as I am having the desires, I can pursue them. I wonder if I will gradually have less and less desires until it gets to the point that what I desire is just to be and I will continue to be aware of my present human experience, but I will have little desire to do anything other than sit and be aware of my experience. 
But I am still young and full of desire. I have strong energy to fulfill my desires, but I have not been aligned. I have been focusing my energy on work that I don’t want to do. The only reason I’m doing work that I don’t want to do is because I think I can’t get paid well to do the work that I want to do. And that is where my next step is. I will do the work I want to do and I will be well paid for it. 
I will write a book about my spiritual journey. The writing I’m naturally producing as this prose-diaristic style on spiritual topics. I can collect these writings into a book. 
I desire to be well paid to be a spiritual being having a human experience. 
Orbit will be my last traditional W2 job. 
After Orbit, I will be well paid to be a spiritual being having a human experience. 
I desire to be well paid to … 
  • Write about spirituality
  • Write poetry
For a second, I asked myself, “Do I want to be well paid?” For a second, I thought no. But the only reason I think that is because I think I can’t have it all. I previously thought that I can’t be well paid to do exactly what I want. I’m done with that thought. 
I can be well paid to do exactly what I want to do. 
I really enjoyed talking to Connor about his mindfulness, relationship, etc. just now. 
Something I personally want is a therapist who also understands Buddhism, mindfulness, etc.
Perhaps I could become this therapist. 
I could be a therapist who helps people like myself … 
  • Burning out at work
  • Deep thinking about spirituality
  • The struggle to get paid to do what I really love
  • All the other emotional stuff
Listening to people and taking notes is what I do in my sales job already. 
Therapy is like Authentic Relating. It’s different because therapy is one-directional. 
I think I’m doing that thing where I try to find the most profitable path. But that’s okay, as long as I’m not sacrificing what I desire for profitability. 
Do I desire to be a therapist? 
  • I like talking to people. 
  • I like connecting with people. 
  • I like helping people. 
  • I like helping people to feel better.
  • I like thinking talking and writing about how to feel good. 
  • A big part of feeling good is mental/emotional. 
  • A therapist can help with that mental/emotional part, whereas a normal physician just helps with the physical part.
I would also love to study to be a therapist. Just the reading and writing involved with becoming a therapist would be a lot of fun. 
And I’m already thinking of starting a therapy startup … 
Pain point: when I wanted to find a therapist, the first place I looked was the insurance website.
  • I didn’t know which therapist in the search results was good, e.g., education, skill, etc.
  • I didn’t know which therapist would be good for me personally, e.g., Buddhism, mindfulness, etc. 
  • I didn’t know which therapists are covered by insurance and what percentage is covered.
  • I wanted to do in-office visits, but it seems like virtual visits via Talkspace would be easier.
Being a licensed therapist would be a platform for me to publish my writing on death, anxiety, emotions, etc. 
Active inference—Kyle says this relates to thinking feeling a future state in order to bring that future state to be. I told him it sounds a lot like what Kirissa explains with regard to abundance and spending money to experience wealth in order to manifest wealth. 
Kyle told me, “You’re good at asking questions.”
This encourages me that I would be a good therapist.

Untitled

Everything is fine
And that’s the problem
Any good art
Is just a different way
Of saying it’s all the same
And there are only so many ways
To say it
So when will we all
Finally agree
That is, indeed, all the same
And just say it that one way
Rudyard Kipling
Wrote about this
I’m sure
I mean
With a name like that
Being an artist is the only way to escape the market. Otherwise, you’re crammed into  profession and you get tugged and pulled based on supply and demand.

October 21, 2022 at 01:02PM

Hope

The world seems wide
Open again
Out the window
The sailboats
Sit on the water
The birds
Fly somewhere
Off into the distance
The headlands
Are crowned by fog
And whatever
There is
Beyond the fog
Feels never-ending
And everlasting
In a way
That gives me hope
Sitting here
Finishing my beer
In this German bar
I have hope
Because the world is bigger
And never-ending
And everlasting

October 14, 2022 at 05:22PM

Seemed so grand

The waiter sprayed
The table behind her
With cleaning product
And even that
Seemed grand
As the foamy liquid landed
On the wooden tabletop
And sat there
In spurted form
For a moment
Before the rag
Smeared it
And in that moment
I was aware
Of the sun shining
Through the window
The smells from the kitchen
Her golden necklace
On her bare chest
And I exhaled as
It all seemed
So grand

October 14, 2022 at 04:02PM

I wonder if our cat has ever looked in the mirror

I wonder if our cat has ever looked in the mirror. I know he has seen a mirror. He has walked by when the closet door is open and there’s a mirror on the inside of the closet door. He has jumped up on the sink in the bathroom and there is a mirror on the wall there. But has he ever paused and looked into the mirror and seen himself? Even if he did, would he recognize himself as himself? And if not, who does he think he is? How does he know what to do every day if he doesn’t know who he is? What motives move him? What motives, if not, “I am this, and therefore, I should do that.” It seems that he just does whatever, but why? Because he is hungry, tired. I wonder what it would be like to live like a cat. Not doing what I think I’m supposed to because of who I think I am. But just doing what some primal, universal force moves me to do.

Maybe love is just the chemicals

Maybe love is just the chemicals, but so be it. If I’m addicted to you because of all the times we’ve made love, then I’m still addicted to you, so what difference does it make why? And maybe it’s not just love. Maybe bravery is caused by a greater primal fear. Maybe hope is the only cure to death anxiety. Maybe all grand theories are just placeholders for things we’re yet to understand. But what difference does it make? I love you. I feel it when you go to your mom’s for the weekend and I get home and the lights are off and our apartment is as empty as I am without you.

Bus outside

Sitting at the coffee shop
Light was pouring in through the window
Reflecting off the tabletops
Warming the skin of my arms
Then it all went dark
As the bus pulled up outside
And blocked out the sun
It all went cold
And I waited
For the bus to pull away

October 02, 2022 at 02:07PM

Things

Things seem so simple
When it’s just
Pushing diced apple
With the flat side of a knife
Off the edge of the cutting board
And into a bowl
The knife is a thing
The cutting board is a thing
The bowl is a thing
One thing
Pushes another thing
Into another thing
Things seems so simple
When they have shape and color
When you can touch and see them
Things seem so complex
When I think too much

September 23, 2022 at 10:28AM

Lying on a blanket in the park

Sometimes I
Look at the sky
And
Can’t help but
Keep
Looking
At the blue bathing
In wisps of white
Wondering
At one point
Does the blue
Turn to black
Like all the pictures of
Space I’ve seen

September 17, 2022 at 02:35PM

Memories

So many memories. Some I still remember. Others I have forgotten. I was sitting at my desk, and I was reminded of the neighborhood pool. It wasn’t my neighborhood. It was the neighborhood where the girl I had a crush on lived. I had just started to drive. I can feel the wet cement under my bare feet. I can feel the painted gate in my hand. I had to wait there for her to come over to unlock it for me. Only residents of the neighborhood had keys. I had my shirt off and a beach towel hanging on my neck. It’s been years since I’ve remembered this memory. So real for me still. So many lives I’ve lived.

Seeing sound

I hear lights she
Says as she’s
Too high how
Do you hear
Lights I ask I
Don’t know
She replies I
Just do

August 26, 2022 at 11:28PM

Still new

The world is more or less
Known to me now the
First times are fewer and
The doors are all open
Walked through
The house is full of
Memories but it still seems
So empty without a
Newborn learning to crawl
It’s all a reminder of
What’s already known but
Of course there is
Always more and
That’s all I’ve left
Is to search for what’s
Still new

August 24, 2022 at 01:34PM

Morning

Waiting for the water to boil
With my hands in my pockets
The sun shines through the wi Dow
I wonder about what else to do
For thirty seconds but I
Stand right here instead of
Going off to fuss with whatever else
Close my eyes and let
The sun shine on my face

August 20, 2022 at 07:51AM

Abbreviated pontification on how everyone is an artist

*Upload original audio file from Otter as part of the Substack post for this one.
The barrier of stage performance.  Yeah, like the there’s a scale of formality. It’s like the very formal is the, you know, the tall stage. Lots people in attendance. Very little crowd interaction.
Middle is like open mic, you know, here’s a microphone. The stage might not be elevated, maybe some little crowd interaction.
And so at what point do these artistic performances just bleed into real life? At what point is somebody in real life being an artist? Or a comedian? Are they a model? Are they a dancer are they a poet? Just living their everyday life.
Like that guy right here, he’s a comedian.
When you go to an open mic as I okay, this person has microphone or they’re gonna do are okay.

Different modes of regarding material reality

It is what it is. There’s too much to be considered. The crowd walks by. Everyone is going to the next show. Every individual is different. All the same, all human beings, but each different. Different in appearance—height, facial bone structure. Different personality—memories, mental contents.
And when we all get together, there are moments when we are all the same. When the band comes on to play and the beat of the bass drum moves all of us in the same rhythm. we are the same in our response to the rhythmic pattern of that sound. It is like we all remember we are the same when we dance together
We get to see our bodies reacting to the sound in the same ways and we look at each other and we smile and we nod our heads and we say silently, “Ah, yes, I remember. We are the same.”
But then there are moments when we stand apart. And we look at each other only with our eyes. And then, of course, there are differences.
You can start to see how things are different with your eyes so quickly. Things look different, of course, but that is only one way of regarding things—with your eyes. If you close your eyes and reach out and touch something, that is a different way of regarding things.
How would we define, structure, categorize things if we could only regard things with a sense of touch or even with a sense of feeling—with a sense that isn’t physical at all, with a sense that is just that gut reaction, that visceral way things make you feel.
How would our language change? How would our companies change? How would all of the structures we’ve built around this lived experience change? Just based on how we process sensory input in the first place.

Ephemeralness as a quality of beauty

As the crowd was trampling through the forest, there was a moment I saw under our feet.

It was broken branches, a pine cone, pine needles—all clustered together, arranged just so, as a portrait, as a sculpture, as a work of art.

I wish I could have taken a step back, crossed my arms, and considered the work longer. With my chin on my chest, leaning my head to the side, I could have walked slowly in a circle around it to see all the angles.

But it was on the forest floor, being trampled underneath so many steps of the crowd pushing forward to get through a narrow passing between two trees.

And it occurs to me now that it was special for that very reason, that even if I wanted to stop and consider it—crouch down, cross my arms, look at it—I couldn’t have. The extended period of appreciation was forbidden me because the crowd was moving too fast and pushing me forward. I couldn’t stop. I had only that quick glance.

So it was beautiful for two reasons. First, it was beautiful like any other art that appeals pleasantly to the sense of sight. Second, it was beautiful because it was forbidden. It was rare. It was a moment that passed. I couldn’t have stopped and considered it because the crowd, like the march of time, was pushing me along.
Perhaps this is why a young woman is beautiful. Why her body is a work of art. Because she is beautiful in the first way, of course. But also because she is transitory, ephemeral—like a flower that will wilt, like any other organic part of natural life that is born, grows up, grows old, and eventually passes away.
>>>
is too young to be considered beautiful. For a period of time, during childhood during infancy still growing at that stage not yet ready to be revealed. But then there is the moment of revealing when the high school girl can wear the crop top when she starts going out to the football game and night.

Yet it is transitory like that cluster of broken branches and pine leaves on the forest floor. I cannot stand there and consider it forever. Just like the young girl will grow old. Her skin will wrinkle. It is temporary and it is beautiful for that reason.

ORIGINAL:

As the crowd was trampling through the forest, there was a moment I saw under our feet.

It was broken branches, a pine cone, pine needles—all clustered together as a portrait, as a sculpture, as a work of art.

I wish I could have taken a step back, crossed my arms, and considered had it not been on the forest floor, being trampled underneath so many steps of the crowd pushing forward just to get through that point, just to step over just to get past and it was special for that very reason that even if I wanted to stop and consider it crouched down, cross my arms. Look at it. I couldn’t have it was forbidden me because the crowd was moving too fast and pushing me forward I couldn’t stop. So it was beautiful art for two reasons. One that it was beautiful. Like any other art that it looked beautiful that it appeal to the senses of my sight. But the second reason was that it was beautiful was that it was forbidden. It was rare. It was a moment that passed. I couldn’t have stopped
and considered it because the crowd was pushing me along. And it was beautiful for that second tragic reason as well.
Perhaps this is why a young woman is beautiful. Why her body is a work of art. Because it is beautiful in that moment. Yes, of course.
But also because it is transitory ephemeral, like a flower that will wilt
like any other organic part of natural life that is born
is too young to be considered beautiful. For a period of time, during childhood during infancy still growing at that stage not yet ready to be revealed. But then there is the moment of revealing when the high school girl can wear the crop top when she starts going out to the football game and night. Yet it is transitory like that cluster of broken branches and pine leaves on the forest floor. I cannot stand there and consider it forever. Just like the young girl will grow old. Her skin will wrinkle. It is temporary and it is beautiful for that reason

The advice of the old man

The irony of it all is the advice the old Parisian man gives you at the cafe by the park as you sip rose and eat macaroons is the same advice you’ll be giving to another young man a generation later but this time you’ll pay for the bill because you’re older with more money and more wisdom but the irony remains that the advice never makes sense until your old yourself and you’ve lived it and by then you’re the old man and you want to give the advice to one younger than you and so it goes, generation to generation, time to time, learning the lesson of how to love just in time to die.

August 06, 2022 at 09:40PM

It all dances

It all intersects as I learn about meter of poetry and the rhythm of language at my desk in the morning and dance to the bass beats from the speakers at night the sound stops coming from the speakers and I keep dancing as I’ve gotten that sense of the rhythm in my soul the rhythm that all of life dances along with even when it doesn’t know it even when the business man walking to walk doesn’t know that his steps land on the sidewalk in a rhythm and the whole city dances as the office workers type on keys on their individual keyboards but it’s all in accordance with the same rhythm as the stressed and unstressed syllables that I’m learning about in my poetry education as the in breath and out breath in yoga it all dances sometimes faster sometimes slower sometimes faster sometimes slower it all dances.

August 06, 2022 at 09:18PM

The comedian

The man at the table is a comedian all of a sudden as he started talking and I started laughing and then all of a sudden he was more than just a man he became the comedian and I was his audience with the privilege of more than just having an everyday conversation with an everyday man at an everyday table the occasion took on a moreness that I would usually buy tickets to be part of.

The duality of the universe in a hand holding a shoulder

Even the tension with which I hold her shoulder is yet another example of the duality of the universe that is ever in balance as I squeeze tighter and she either feels a pleasure from that or says ow that hurts there is the balance of my bony structured muscular hand being supportive or being harmful a weapon
It’s more about the structure or the lack thereof in how hard I squeeze I can flex that hand and tighten the muscles and hold harder or I can release and let go and sometimes she wants that hand holding her squeezing together supporting but sometimes she wants me to hold her more softly even step back and regard her in her own right without any of my structure

August 06, 2022 at 04:53PM

Never in the middle

It all strives to stay in
the middle while
either end the
higher and the
lower lure
the center to either
side so nobody can ever
go along steady it’s
always too low too
slow too calm too
sad or too fast too
much too anxious too
busy and
so we go
back and forth but
at least in that going
there’s something steady

August 04, 2022 at 06:35PM

Candle wax coffee

While I was engrossed enough
In my work in the morning
I reached for what I
Expected would be my mug but
Instead curled my fingers around
A candle holder and lifted it
To my lips to take a drink of
Hot wax had the flame not
Burned the whiskers of
My mustache

July 24, 2022 at 07:55AM

Dare to be the artist

How often are we
Honest with our art how
Often do we
Let the raw rip if
It’s really self
Expression anyway all
Of it is art it’s
Just how you life your
Life whether the
Paint is landing on
The canvas or
The notes are being recorded it’s
The step of a stranger on
The other side of the street while
You sit at the cafe
Sipping your espresso it’s
The individual audacious enough
To stand while everyone
Else sits but
How often do we stand for
Ourselves how
Often do we dare to
Be the artist if
All it really takes is
Just to be yourself because
The art is just that it’s
The expression of the self in
A unique
Individual
Instance

July 16, 2022 at 06:01PM

All good on the dance floor

The techno kids in
The club can’t even
Keep step with the beat they’re
So drugged that
Any music moves them any
Noise no matter how
Dissonant no
Matter how loud as
Long as the lights are
Strobing and the crowd is
Still around the
Techno kids swing their arms and
Stomp their feet and
Shake their hands and
Smile at the ceiling with
Their eyes closed because
On the drugs it’s
All good even
When it seems to
Be the music it’s
Really just the pupils
Dilating arteries
Opening heart
Beating there’s
Blood on the dance floor but
It’s all in bodies so
It’s all good

July 16, 2022 at 05:42PM

First puff of a cigarette

The first inhale of the
Cigarette makes it so that
I can see the lights clearer and
Actually taste the gin in
My drink I inhale and
Hold the smoke in
My lungs long enough that
When I exhale there is
Nothing there is
Only the renewed exactness now
That the nicotine has married with
The other chemicals
In my mind

July 16, 2022 at 05:05PM

The guitarist in the park

The singing guitarist on the park bench is as good or better than any other I have ever heard. For famous musicians who tour and play on stages, we pay a hundred dollars for a ticket, wait in line, stand in a crowd, and take pictures. For this guitarist on the bench, we eat our baguettes, read our books, clap absent-mindedly in between his songs, and maybe toss a few coins in the upturned hat at his feet. Who will stand and raise their hands for this unknown musician in the park? Who will be the first to say that he is good, even if nobody else has already set it?  think we do what others give us permission to do. I think we like the things that other people like. Maybe it is better this way; it is more orderly, at least.

Untitled

I can almost catch a vibe here at the cafe as the blonde woman in the pink dress with tattoos on her arms and earbuds in her ears finishing her coke. She leaves. I can see the condensation on the side of her glass sitting on the bar. Ice cubes melting at the bottom.
At another table, another couple drinks. The young woman laughs a little too loud at the man’s jokes, in a way that seems to suggest she doesn’t really understand the humor in what he is saying, but she feels that she should be laughing in this situation when she is sharing a drink with a man and he is telling her things.

July 10, 2022 at 06:07AM

Magnificent pigeon

I watched a pigeon walk along the wooden planks of the roof deck where I sat at the edge of a beach chair, eating picos y espetec.
I thought to myself, how helpless does that pigeon look hobbling around me hoping I’ll drop a pico.
Then the bird all of a sudden leapt up and took flight, at first diving over the edge of the building, down in between the other nearby buildings, and then up into the sky.
How wrong I was that a bird should look helpless. Even the rats of the sky are magnificent in flight.

Musing about Madrid

For some reason, I thought Spain would be all Sangria on the beach and octopus at cobblestone cafes but Madrid is more like New York City the buildings are tall and say you can’t see landmarks to orient yourself. Tapas are most often pieces of bread with different toppings like raw fish or tomatoes or mashed avocado. They call prosciutto smoked ham.
It seems like more people spoke English in Portugal, whereas people in Madrid just speak Spanish and don’t know as much English. I wonder if that’s because Portuguese is a less dominant language. So people are forced to learn English whereas Spanish is a more dominant language so more people don’t bother learning English.
The architecture is more beautiful here. Buildings in America are boxy. All the architecture here is ornate. Curved terraces, fences.
It’s true that people eat much later here. Our reservation for dinner last night was at 10:30. And there were still groups being seated past 11. One theory we have for why people stay up later. Here is the heat. It’s hard to do anything when it’s hot. Outside, you almost immediately start sweating. So maybe people stay up later to take advantage of more hours when they can be outside without sweating.

Desire is the force of life

On the plaque next to the painting at the museum it said the painting was depicting the idea that desire is the force of life. Those who have strong desires are the ones who move things in the world
The desire, in order to be effective, must have two qualities. It has to have the magnitude, the power, the passion in order to have enough energy to have an impact. And it also has to have direction.
The second quality of direction is important but often overlooked. If you have a lot of passion, but you are not focused or directional or intentional, your passion will spread out in all directions and not really have a great impact in any one place.
Excess magnitude can compensate for lack of direction. If you have your desire has excess magnitude, then perhaps you can spread it to two or three or four different directions and still make a great impact in one of the directions. But if you try to spread to 50 or 70 or 100 different directions, you will have only a small amount of impact in any one directions.
Perhaps someone with greater magnitude of desire can have more impact in multiple directions. But it is best in order to have the most impact to have the greatest magnitude of desire and focus in only one direction. This is how you bring about the most change in the material world.

Waiting while my girlfriend shops

In the soft chair at
The jewelry store I
Sit and tug on the
Top of my ear trying
To achieve some sensation that
The drink at the bar before
Didn’t give me it’s
Hot outside in Madrid today we
Walked on the side of
The street that was
Always in the shade but
Still sweated I
Can’t tell if it’s just the heat or
Maybe that margarita had
More tequila than I thought

July 07, 2022 at 09:45AM

When she’s gone

She is gone to
The bathroom and I
Look at the empty chair
With her
Coat hanging over
The shoulders
It’s as if all
The life has left the room as
If I won’t have
Any air left to breathe if
She doesn’t come back I
Look down at my drink and
Listen to the other
Tables talking
Listen to the yawning sound that
A great void makes
Within me
I
Can only write while
She’s gone
Can only describe the pain just
Not to feel
It ahhhh
Yes
Here she
Is
At last

July 05, 2022 at 01:50PM

The moon

I can never
Quite capture the
Moon with a photo it’s
Up there in a way that
My eyes understand

July 04, 2022 at 01:52PM

Drunk on sangria again

In the middle of the day, it’s like the wine drunk has chose me, like the sangria chose my soul to intoxicate, like the fermented fruit found my mind to inhabit with the idea to cross the street without looking both ways, almost getting hit by a motorcycle and a car from both sides at the same time, but not even caring whether it would happen.
The sun is too bright and the building tops are too beautiful, so it’s not important to do anything except for smile and walk in a way that is more like dancing. Stepping in and out of shops. Looking at things just to look but not caring about buying because my drunk mind doesn’t think about owning or taking things home, it only thinks about right now and feeling good, so I step out of the shop and walk along the cobblestones, looking for the next thing to entertain me.

Runaway olive

As a man was eating at a bistro table for two with his lover on the other side, a black olive jumped off his plate and onto the cobblestones, then started to roll down the hill. It rolled and rolled all the way to the bottom. The man watched it and I saw as he considered getting up from the table to chase the olive down the hill. He looked at the rolling olive with an expression that said he knew he had an obligation to not litter the streets with olives.
Perhaps he would save someone from stepping on it and ruining their shoe or squashing it and making the streets seem slightly unpleasant for everyone else walking by. There are plenty of reasons why there can’t be olives all over the cobblestone sidewalk. But even as he considered all this, he had to also consider that he was at a meal with his lover and he had his napkin already on his lap. And it would have created a scene for him to get up and run down the hill, chasing the olive. So he left it and let it roll and looked back down on his plate and continued to eat.

Finishing dinner at A Despensa

With my elbows on the table and my knuckles under my chin, I watched the ice cream slowly drip down the side of the cake, as we waited for the waiter to bring an extra plate. My stomach full of ravioli and veal. We discussed whether we would go to the bar or just go home and get in bed and watch TV. The piano music playing softly from the speaker overhead. Plants in vases hanging from ropes swaying softly, even though there was no wind inside the restaurant. The clinking of plates in the kitchen. Other diners conversing in the other room.

Getting drunk for less than ten euros

When I asked the bartender what is Vhino Verde, he started to explain that it is wine that is made when the grapes are still young and green, then he realized he could explain better by just letting me taste. So he got out a glass and pulled the bottle out of the fridge and poured me a small drink. It was carbonated and bitter, like white wine but less sweet. I appreciated the taste very much, but I didn’t like it. So I ordered two glasses of red wine instead.
He poured the glasses very generously, with probably twice as much wine as I’m used to having poured in a glass in the U.S. It was only two euros per glass. I gave him a ten-euro bill. He gave me back a five-euro bill and a one-euro coin. I left the one-euro coin on the bar. I brought both glasses back out to the patio and handed one to Kirissa and told her we’re going to get very drunk for less than ten euros.

Drinking as the sun sets in Porto

The seagulls fly overhead as the ladies put out their cigarettes in the ashtray. Sangria is cheap here, only two euros per glass. Most tables on the patio have two or three people talking eagerly to each other. At one table, a lady sits alone and picks out her fingernails.
There is a constant flow of people walking out of the door to the bar with full glasses in their hands. The hum of conversation is incessant, but any one conversation is incomprehensible, perhaps because it’s all in Portuguese, which I don’t understand anyway.
One man with a leg crossed over the other pulls a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and fumbles with his fingers to pull one out. He puts it in his mouth, cups his hands around the end. ights it sucks in, blows a puff then pulls it out of his mouth with two fingers and proceeds to scroll on his phone with the cigarette in between his two fingers still.
Unknown Speaker  3:13 
People stand up from their tables and go perhaps to dinner. Bro, perhaps to drink more elsewhere. Perhaps to their homes to make love a lady comes out of the door with two beers and sits down with the other lady who was picking her fingernails earlier.
Unknown Speaker  3:47 
They clink their glasses together and each take a drink and then proceed to talk with their elbows on the table looking at each other
Unknown Speaker  4:00 
music plays from inside the bar it is almost impossible to believe this will ever and
Unknown Speaker  4:20 
impossible to think that the energy will dissipate and eventually be totally gone. But surely, as at the end of all nights, the umbrella will be drawn down. The chairs will be folded. The tables will be be carried inside and the patio will be empty
Unknown Speaker  4:48 
all through the dark night. And all through the day. And so the sun is almost setting yet again. And the tables will be brought back out and the chairs will be unfolded. The umbrella will be extended and the first patrons will arrive to order their drinks. And then many more will come and yet again everyone will be talking and drinking everyone

Drinking sangria at Aduela

In Porto, the tourist culture is pervasive. Anywhere you walk, there are myriad patios for wining and dining. Perhaps it’s not just for tourists though. Perhaps this is just the culture here, even for the locals.
It’s more relaxed, more beautiful. The architecture is wonderful everywhere. A few times we’ve climbed a hill or turned a corner around a cobblestone alley to find an amazing view over the Douro river or over the multicolored buildings rising up the hill.
More people smoke here. People drink on patios under umbrellas. Sangria and wine are at the top of most menus. The streets are not straight on grid systems like they are in American cities. They curve and wind around and crawl up hills and turn around corners. Even the urban design permeates the more free-flowing culture here, whereas in America, it seems the streets permeate the culture of right angles and sharp edges.

On the train to Porto

In the seat across from
Me she was
Already asleep so I
Leaned my head against the
Window and watched the
Countryside pass by
When I woke I
Had forgotten who I was and
The first thing I remembered
When I looked across from me was
That she was mine and I
Was happy

July 03, 2022 at 07:30AM

Order

On the train all
The luggage is overhead in
Its place on the rack if
It was all in the aisles then
Where would people walk

July 03, 2022 at 07:28AM

As she lies on her side

When her breasts press
Together in
Between her arms as
She lies on her side I
See bounty in the line that
Runs likes a river
Deep into a valley

July 03, 2022 at 07:21AM

Sad accordion player

On the sidewalk in Sintra
He held his accordion like
It was his last hope leaning
With his ear
Near enough to the keys
To hear his fingers pressing
Hunched over almost
Hugging the instrument like
A lover about
To leave him
Looking over his knees at
Only a few coins in the
Empty case at his feet

July 02, 2022 at 06:34AM

In the car back from the club

In the car back from the club I
Can’t help but think I
Left it all behind there left
All I’m ever after I
Consider telling the drive to please
Turn around sir please
Take me back there I
Made a mistake I should have never
Left before it was completely done before
It was all completely over for everyone I
Really don’t know what I’m
Going back to don’t
Know what I think I’ll find in
My empty bed I
Might as well stay out all night searching
Searching for something
Something I can’t describe
But something I
Nonetheless know is out there
Something I
Know is possible
Something for which I’ll search again every
Other night I
Know I’ll find it

June 30, 2022 at 04:55PM

Lazy A/C

The air conditioner ahhhhs like
It’s only just beginning like
All the cold air in the world wouldn’t
Make a damn bit of difference it’s
A lazy job letting the cool air into
A too hot hotel room in Portugal
A too late up still
A time to go to bed but
Still awake searching about for
Sometimes to write and
Settling on the only thing
Still making noise at
Five in the morning

June 29, 2022 at 08:43PM

The last night

Nights when sleep seems
Too much like death I
Lie awake looking
At the ceiling seeing
Every small detail I
Just have hard time
Imagining what it’ll be like when
It all goes dark and
There’s not another bright
Brand new morning
To show me that a
Rising sun means there’s
More life left to live

June 29, 2022 at 08:36PM

Blinking light on the fire alarm

Oh, blinking light I
Know you’re just doing your job I
Know you couldn’t shut off even
If you wanted to I
Know your boss would
Banish you to some spot on
The ceiling in the basement I
Know you worked hard to get to
This ceiling on the second floor I
Just wish there was some way for
You and I to come to terms with
The fact that it’s very unlikely there
Will be a fire tonight and
Even if there will be I
Accept the risk in exchange for
A bit more sleep without a light
Blinking … one second and
Blinking again I
Just want to get some sleep and
You, my dear blinking light
Aren’t helping

June 29, 2022 at 08:27PM

Silent muse

In the dark my
Muse lies honestly about what
A body can say to
Searching lips seeking for
Only one truth to whisper only
One song to sing only
If she’d open her mouth the
Poems would pour and
Pour and
She knows this but
Lies in the dark singing
Silently to herself sorry that
The world of man wants so
Desperately just for one when
So many are within

June 29, 2022 at 08:15PM

Why poets drink

The drunk does it
Like
It always does
Like
It’s something about
Being beyond what
I would normally consider beyond
What most would say is
The way it is
It’s
Just over the horizon
Just
Behind the hill
It’s
Waiting there wanting
For me to come just
Beyond but
How many times I
Stay sober and
Sprint part when
I forget to skip

June 29, 2022 at 08:04PM

Wide awake wondering

In the night
Like
A thousand other nights I’m
Awake wondering
When
When will come the last
The last thought I’ll remember
The last open-eyed
Dark sight I’ll see
The last silent
Sound I’ll hear
The last moment I don’t yet
Know is my fondest
That’ll flash just
Before the dark

June 29, 2022 at 07:59PM

Piano playing inside a house

I walked by a house one
Foggy morning
On my way to drop off a book at
The library
I heard a
Piano playing from
An open window on
The second floor
I wanted to
Climb the tree up to
The open window and
Step inside and
Walk over to the bench and
Sit next to the player and
Just listen
Like a ghost

June 26, 2022 at 09:17AM

Playing the present game

On the plane I
Play this game with
Time wondering
How long until
We touch down
At take-off I
Know exactly
Two hours and
Fourteen minutes
Because the
Pilot said so
Over the speaker
Ten minutes in I’m
Already calculating
Guessing that it’s only
Two hours and
Four minutes
But I could be off by a
Minute or two
And the number is
Only the start of
It
It’s really how
I react when I
Know it’s
So much longer I
Look out the window at
The roads zig-
Zagging earth
More baseball diamonds than I
Would have expected
Or just white when
We pass through clouds
Closing my eyes I
Breathe but
Can only focus on that for
A few minutes
Until I realize it’s
A game and
The goal is
To not let time
Or, rather
Your perception of time
Keep you from playing
The present game because
There’s always
Something
Going on and
Just because it’ll take
Longer isn’t a
Reason not to play because
Longer
Is all it’ll ever take and
In between
Before the long time
Elapses
Is all
You’ve ever got

June 22, 2022 at 11:11AM

Lamps shades softly shaking

The air moves through
The room
So that the
Lamps shades hanging
From wires in the
Ceiling shake
Softly, silently
Dancing calmly
Tirelessly
As long as the wind blows
Through the
Room the
Lamp shades dance

June 17, 2022 at 01:36PM

Fresh cut grass

I hated every mower my
Father bought but
somehow we end up loving the
Things we hate (at times)
And wanting back what
Hurt us before

June 17, 2022 at 05:38AM

Cars from far away

The cars are quite in
The distance
Soft and even seemingly slow
Though I
Know that up close in
Between lanes of
Traffic they are
Loud and menacing

June 16, 2022 at 08:43AM

Thinking of other men

Other men have
Lain in this
Bed but
The sheets have been washed
So who am
I to
Deny myself
The present pleasure of
My dear love

June 10, 2022 at 10:04PM

Men at work

I’ve watched the
Yellow-vest men work for
Weeks now from
The window of
The high-rise
They spread out like
Ants all over the
Skeleton of the
Only three-story building so
Far
Soon to be
Many more stories taller even
Than the twelve-story
From which
I look down
At these men working, I
Mean
Really working
Not just
Sending emails
From a laptop like
Me
Really
Pouring cement and
Spreading it
Out
Operating
Heavy machinery
Planning for something
That will continue to
Exist in the real world once
Built
They play sometimes
Tossing tools
Back and forth
They seem to fight and shout
And disagree sometimes
About how
The thing should be built
The take their lunch breaks
And eat sandwiches out of
Plastic bags packed
In paper bags
They sit on the site and eat
Because they are tired
From working their bodies

June 10, 2022 at 05:01PM

Guy with new shoes at the day rave

I look down and see that the guy in front of me is wearing a pair of new sneakers. I wonder if it’s true that they are new. I’m guessing that they are because they’re so clean. It could be that he is just very careful about keeping them clean. If they are new, I wonder if he is proud to be wearing his new shoes out in public. At some point, they will become dirty and he’ll no longer think about the shoes he’s wearing as being new. He’ll just put them on and leave the house and probably not think about his shoes the whole night. 

Shoeless at ReelWorks in the sun

With my eyes closed, all sorts of apparitions on the backs of my eyelids, I could be anywhere. But I can still hear the music, so I know I’m in the club.
Ah, it occurs to me, first as a thing unworded. It could pass and remain unworded. But I am a worder, a trapper of moments. I catch them and consume them and spew them back out so that others can consume.
Some dance for others to watch. Some watch others to see how they should dance.
On mushrooms, I’m not sure how loud to speak, how much strength it requires to keep my body standing. It seems that it all should just flow, and I should be part of that flow, without enforcing to much of my own will on that flow.
I look out at a sea of emotions, energy like light reflecting on the angles of waves, faces contorted with any of either joy, elation, interest, love. If I were not human, these contortions would mean nothing. As I am, I am interested, empathetic, wondering: why? Why the emotion

Waiting for bugs

Originally transcribed on May 22, 2022

It was getting hot in the room. I closed the book I was reading and set it on the nightstand. I pulled the covers off of me, swung my legs to the side, put my feet on the ground, and stood up from the bed.

I walked over to the window, put my fingers on the edge of the pane of glass and slid it to the side. I felt the cool air come in and hit my bare chest.

The leaf of the plant on my desk trembled. The blind blew away from the window. I stood there and watched.
It’s summer in Denver and our building is by the river. When I opened the window a few weeks ago, no less than a hundred bugs flew into the room in less than a minute. After that, I didn’t open the window for weeks.

Tonight I thought it might be worth the risk, but I still wasn’t sure, which is why I’m standing here, watching the open window, feeling the cold air hitting my chest, waiting to see if there will be any bugs.

Drinking

I love just to see
When I’ve been drinking
Just to feel
Just to drink and eat
When I’ve been drinking
Gosh, it’s all
Just
Just
Just
Why does drinking
Make me feel so
So
So
I don’t know
It’s just all
So good
So much
And I don’t want it to end

May 27, 2022 at 04:33PM

Up in the night

Up in the night, can I write? Is there anything interesting enough?
Lying on my side, I see the silhouette of the plant on my desk, it’s leaves standing straight up, after they were drooping languidly over the edges of the pot only two days ago, as I had left it unwatered and in the sun during a month-long vacation. Amazing that it sprang back to life with only a deep drink.
I recall looking at my hand last night, as it was holding a book. On the part between my thumb and the back of my hand, a vein pulsed so that the pumping of the blood made a visible up and down on my skin. I stopped reading the words and started reading the same sentence of my aliveness over and over again.
I am a dualistic person. I also work an office job. I have a spreadsheet with numbers to work on. With this wakeful energy, I wonder what type it is—numeric or creative? Should I try to write about dead plants come back to life and a visible pulse on the back of my hand? Or should I try to do the calculations on the spreadsheet? I have tried one. Now perhaps I should try the other.

Waiting for her

Outside of the lunch spot
Standing on the sidewalk
I watch either way
Waiting for her
Waiting to see her walking
Waiting to see her smiling
Waiting with more wanting
Than I ever wait
For anything else

May 19, 2022 at 01:35PM

Death of a spider

When I first saw him he was on the edge of the tub behind the faucet. I thought it was a speck of dirt at first, but then I saw its legs. I didn’t have a tissue or anything to catch it with while I was in the shower, so I went back to washing myself and figured he will crawl away. I got distracted and forgot about him. And then I saw him in the water floating on the surface, his legs kicking helplessly. I don’t know why I wasn’t more alarmed, but somehow I got distracted again and then, when I looked back, I knew that he was dead because of the way that his eight legs were curled in towards his body. I was sad when I saw him dead like this. I don’t usually have sympathy for spiders. Whenever I see them, I immediately think of how to kill or capture them. I have ideas in my head about spiders biting people. But seeing this dead spider floating on the surface of the bathwater with his eight legs curled in towards his body, I felt sad. I wondered what had happened. The spider was on the rim of the bathtub, still very alive. He could have crawled anywhere—down the side of the tub and onto the floor and then up the wall and out the window and back outside to spin who knows how many more webs. But somehow he got into the water I didn’t watch this happen, so I don’t know. Surely the spider did not willingly decide to crawl down into the water. Maybe he didn’t know any better. He could have crawled one way down the side of the tub onto the dry floor. But he chose to crawl down the other way and into the water.He must have been scared when he found himself suddenly a float in the ocean of bath water. How much did he struggle before the water filled his lungs and drowned him? He had no family with him. Probably no spider society would remember him. He had no idea he would die today. Even as he was on the edge of the tub, he didn’t know that he would die. I don’t even know if spiders are capable of knowing that they will die. This small death just seems so sad and lonely to me. I finished my shower and stepped out of the tub. I didn’t know what to do about the little small dead spider still floating on the surface of the water. I thought about going to get a spoon to scoop him out. Then I realized that he was dead and he couldn’t possibly bite me. So I reached into the water with my hand and scooped up underneath him. I was still slightly afraid that maybe he wasn’t dead and when I lifted him out of the water he would come back to life and crawl along my hand, but I scooped him up anyway. And he didn’t move. He just lay there lifeless with his legs curled in towards his body. And I held them there for a second and looked at him, a creature of a kind for which I usually have no sympathy.I opened the seat of the toilet and dropped him in the water. He sunk slowly down to the bottom and just lay there. Spiders are not supposed to have their legs curled into their bodies. They’re not supposed to sink to the bottom of water. The only time they do either of those things is when they’re dead. And then they’re not spiders anymore. Then they’re just matter that hasn’t yet decayed. Their spider souls have gone on somewhere else.

Right here right now

In the white sheets
While I wonder 
Where else I have to be
What else I have to do 
Who else I have to see
I remember
The mattress under my shoulders 
The quiet like crickets 
Baby in bed next to me 
And the rest of it 
Is all right here
Right now 

May 11, 2022 at 08:19AM

If I stay

Talking here to her
I have to
Get up and go 
But maybe 
If I stay 
She’ll show me 
Whatever else
I was trying 
To find 

May 11, 2022 at 08:13AM

Silent white room at night

Face down 
In a room of all white 
The sheets are white 
The drapes are white 
The walls are white 
Even the chandelier is white 
Except for the bulbs
Those are clear 
And the floor is the color of wood 
It’s quiet as can be 
All that happens is a car drives by outside 
The door to the bedroom is open 
If I lean up in bed
I can see the shadow of the dining room table 
It’s simple
Simple as it can be right now
The simplicity of white 
The simplicity of the night
All the details are washed out
Either by darkness 
Or monochromicity 
Or silence 
A creak in the wall
Is the first sound I’ve heard 
Other than the occasional car
I could go on and on like this
Even about nothingness 
Probably forever 
Combining the same words 
In different orders 
And even the orders 
Would eventually become the same 
There’s something to that 
Even if I wrote it all
And you read it all
You wouldn’t remember 
This life isn’t about the words
There’s something just behind them 
There’s a meaning 
But it’s not the dictionary definitions 
It’s more meaning than that 
It’s the meanest meaning 
It’s the silent white room at night 
It’s the singularity of all words 
Sucked into a black hole 
At any moment 
It is what it is 
And that’s not too complicated 
It just is what it is 
And the words try to get at that 
But the more we write
The more we read
The farther away we get
It just is 
Right here 
For me now 
And the writing is just a dance around it 
It’s really the sheet against my cheek
And the static sound of silence
And there I go again
With the words
It just is 
As it is 
For me
Here now 
As it is 
For you 
Wherever you are
Reading this
And that’s it
That’s all of it 

May 08, 2022 at 08:26PM

So shady

Shade 
Is just 
Sooo
Shady
You know 
It’s just
Not light 
Like dark 
And cold
Covered 
From the sun 
Just so
Shady 
Like I said 

May 08, 2022 at 03:14PM

Straight away street

Walking across
The street seems so straight 
Clear
And open
The only way 
You can see
In a city 
Farther 
Than a few feet
Before being blocked by
Buildings 

May 07, 2022 at 06:57PM

Alone at the bar

At the sushi bar
I want to close my eyes
Because the darkness 
Of my mind
Is more interesting 
Than the sake bottles 
Arranged in order of height 
On the glass shelves 
But I wonder whether 
The bartender will judge me 
I’m dressed well enough 
To not seem 
So crazy
But still the stigma 
Against a man alone 
With his eyes closed
At the bar
Persists 
But what’s the worst 
That can happen 

May 07, 2022 at 06:25PM

2C-B (Pink Coke) at Halcyon

If the club can’t keep the lights like 
Club wide nights up 
Into the too far
I just need to record my voice 
When I get home 
But I wish I could capture 
The club atmosphere 
In writing 
When I’m on drugs 
But it’s too loud to record my voice 
And too much motion and light to type 
So I’ll just have to remember later
Which is impossible 
How do I write these moments 
That aren’t for writing 
I feel good
She said when she went to the bathroom
She could hear the womp womp womp
In the walls 
I feel good too
I have this habit I realize 
Of writing when I feel good
And not just feeling the good feeling
But instead putting it into the writing 
To try to save it, I guess
Give it away, I don’t know 
The rounded circular rim 
At the lip end of the glass
Bottle neck filled with 
Bubbly lime beer liquid 
I can only see her face
For a few seconds at a time 
As the lights strobe on 
And adjace dark shapes
As shadows across 
The bridge of her nose
Then darkness 
That has no beauty 
No sense 
Just nothing 
For my eyes at least 
My ears still thud 
And then the strobes again
And her face
And beauty 
How does the light shine in mid-air
Like there’s something there
To catch it 
Hold it
Have it happen to be 
The blue, green
Yellow I can see
Swirling 
Revolving around the room 
With my eyes closed 
Everything else goes 
Except for the music 
And my body 

May 05, 2022 at 10:23PM

Motion in the distance

Empty rusted rail cars roll along
The river water rushes frothy over rocks
A dog chases down a ball in the park 
Runners run past walkers on the trail 
Cars get to wherever the highway goes 
Sometimes you look and there’s nothing 
It’s all still and staying 
From the rooftop
I can see all the way to the mountains 
It’s morning 
And Denver is awake and moving 

April 27, 2022 at 09:11AM

A text of love

Leaning back in my office chair 
Looking out the window 
Watching the workers 
Build the first floor 
Of the commercial building
As the crane rotates overhead 
My phone buzzes in my pocket
I take it out and read 
A text from you that says 
You love me 
I know it’s only words 
But it’s almost too much
While the workers work
And the soft music plays 
And I know that you love me 

April 25, 2022 at 03:19PM

Heroine withdrawals

So this is what it’s like 
To have everything 
And then lose it all
To hold an angel in your arms
And then watch her fly away 
To stay in bed for days
Because everything you want 
Is in the sheets with you
And then try to sleep alone 
It almost would have been better
To stay a poor lonely bastard
And never have felt her love 
But of course not
Because as low as the low is now
The high was even higher 
And I’d walk on glass for miles
Burn for years 
And take even more pain
Than the space of my body can contain 
For one more night with her 

April 07, 2022 at 07:18PM

Porter Robinson Red Rocks Two Grams of Mushrooms 4/2/22

At the concert, in the crowd, I wish I was more masterful in the art of dance. The music moves me, but my bodily motions don’t match the beauty that the music makes me feel inside. 

Like blades of grass in a dark field, the crowd bends and wavers in the wind of the music. Rays of light shoot forth from the stage through the smoke. The singer jumps and turns in circles and shouts. The guitarist walks casually by and strums. 

Tinted glasses are a reminder that I can change my perception as easily as taking the frame between my fingers and shifting it up and down so the lenses alternate between being in my line of sight and below it. The color of everything changes between having a blue tint and looking normal. How easily can I change my perception in other ways? 

As a writer, I am jealous of singers and musicians. Their art form is so tangible and accessible. Reading writing requires opening a book or otherwise getting the words in front of your eyes and then reading them silently to yourself in your own head. Just as the act of writing is solitary, so too is the act of reading. Music, on the other hand, can be played out loud. It reaches your ears in the physical world. 

Two men of about the same age

I walk the border
Between these two worlds
Behind a father
Backpack with
Baseball bat and racket
Slung over his shoulder
His beard greying
Holding the hand of
His young daughter
Son and wife
Walking alongside
And the homeless man
Asleep in the sun
On his thin cardboard bed
Arm under his head
Eyes closed
Wearing clothes he’s worn
For who knows
How many days
And his beard
Is also greying

March 26, 2022 at 02:39PM

With you

I don’t fear death as much when I’m with you. It just doesn’t get any better, so why go on living? I only want to go on living if I’m with you. And I know that might not happen. So I don’t really care if I die now. It’s like I was only ever born to do one thing, and that’s to be here with you now. 

You’re my drug

I don’t even need drugs 
When I’m with you 
Because the motivation to please you 
Is amphetamine 
The intoxication of your aura 
Is alcohol
The connection when I look into your eyes 
Is psychedelic 
And the embrace of our love 
Is ecstasy 

March 20, 2022 at 01:15PM

This is not wasted time

There is not good
Or service 
That I am expecting in return 
For the time I’ve spent 
There is nowhere 
That we’re trying to get to
Like a timed race 
There is no bank vault 
Where I’m storing
These memories we’ve made 
Other than my own heart 
I know that one way or another 
There will come a time 
When we may no longer be together 
Either because you choose
That you don’t want me
Or one of us dies 
Or is lost at sea 
I know that this won’t be forever 
But you’re here with me now 
And I’m thankful 
So thankful that I would live 
A whole other life 
Of agony and despair
Just to experience this moment again 
But I have it right now
And I don’t have to suffer for it
And I am thankful 

March 20, 2022 at 01:01PM

I, I, I

Up in the night now
Not having written in a while
Lifting off like I used to
Listening to the wind howl
Around the side of the building
Outside
And remembering
How I always write
About myself
Sweating
Because I ate too big
Of a dinner
Before bed
It’s always
I, I, I
Me, me, me
Even though everything I read
In the spiritual books
Stacked on my nightstand
Says that “I”
Am just an illusion
And “I”
Should just let go
But it’s hard
To let slip through my fingers
Like sand
The solid form
That society has sold me
On cementing and stacking
Ever since my earliest memories
Of hope for love
And fear of never being enough
See, it’s only up in the night
Like I am now
That I’m ever honest
Which is not to say
I lie on purpose during the day
It’s just
I don’t know
I am losing the magic now
I must
Lay my head back down
I have been awake too long
And here I go
In the middle of the night
Writing all about
I, I, I
Again

March 18, 2022 at 01:41PM

I, I, I

Up in the night now
Not having written in a while
Lifting off like I used to
Listening to the wind howl
Around the side of the building
Outside
And remembering
How I always write
About myself
Sweating
Because I ate too big
Of a dinner
Before bed
It’s always
I, I, I
Me, me, me
Even though everything I read
In the spiritual books
Stacked on my nightstand
Says that “I”
Am just an illusion
And “I”
Should just let go
But it’s hard
To let slip through my fingers
Like sand
The solid form
That society has sold me
On cementing and stacking
Ever since my earliest memories
Of hope for love
And fear of never being enough
See, it’s only up in the night
Like I am now
That I’m ever honest
Which is not to say
I lie on purpose during the day
It’s just
I don’t know
I am losing the magic now
I must
Lay my head back down
I have been awake too long
And here I go
In the middle of the night
Writing all about
I, I, I
Again

March 18, 2022 at 01:41PM

I want you in my bed

I want you back in my bed
I never want you to leave again 
I’ll bring you everything you need 
I want you to wait there for me
When I go out to get food
I want you to be there
When I go I sleep 
And when I wake up in the morning 
I don’t want you to worry 
About a single thing 
Other than being there for me
I have strength enough
To conquer the world
But I can’t take care of myself 
Only you can do that for me
And I know that’s not true 
They tell me to love myself
But my love is not the love I want 
I want your love 
And I’ll give you anything 
If you’ll just come back to my bed 

March 08, 2022 at 05:22PM

Feeling true pain for the first time

I’ve never felt pain enough 
To write about it like this 
Never loved deep enough 
To feel loss like this
To feel hurt like this 
To be willing to resort
To begging and pleading
Like this 
It’s my own fault 
That I lost her 
I let her go
I took her for granted 
They say 
If you love someone
You can let them go
But they also say 
Separation 
Makes the heart grow fonder
Both are true I guess 
But the truth didn’t help me
It only brought me pain
I welcome the pain
It’s worth it
I want her back
And I’ll fight for her
And I might lose that fight 
But I’ll only accept losing that fight 
If it means she’s happy 
And if she’s happy 
Then I have to find someone
To help make me happy 
That starts with myself 
I have to love myself first 
Which is maybe the reason 
I left her in the first place 
And the reason why
I’ll spend the rest of my life
Searching for another portal to heaven
Another angel with the keys 

March 07, 2022 at 05:37PM

Feeling true pain for the first time

I’ve never felt pain enough 
To write about it like this 
Never loved deep enough 
To feel loss like this
To feel hurt like this 
To be willing to resort
To begging and pleading
Like this 
It’s my own fault 
That I lost her 
I let her go
I took her for granted 
They say 
If you love someone
You can let them go
But they also say 
Separation 
Makes the heart grow fonder
Both are true I guess 
But the truth didn’t help me
It only brought me pain
I welcome the pain
It’s worth it
I want her back
And I’ll fight for her
And I might lose that fight 
But I’ll only accept losing that fight 
If it means she’s happy 
And if she’s happy 
Then I have to find someone
To help make me happy 
That starts with myself 
I have to love myself first 
Which is maybe the reason 
I left her in the first place 
And the reason why
I’ll spend the rest of my life
Searching for another portal to heaven
Another angel with the keys 

March 07, 2022 at 05:37PM

Talking dirty

She asked me
To talk dirty
With my elbows 
Indenting
Into the mattress 
I told her
I wasn’t 
Very good at it
But I tried 
Anyway 
And it came out 
Off-key and
Awkward 
The only time
I’ve ever talked dirty
Is when
I’ve been telling the truth 
And with her
In that bed
At that time 
There were no 
Dirty truths
To talk about 

February 08, 2022 at 10:57AM

Chap stick

Lying in bed
I smiled
And split
My chapped
Upper lip
So I rolled over
And pulled out
The drawer
In the nightstand 
My eyes scanned 
Still sleepy 
The pills 
The ear plugs
The cough drops 
And then
The chap stick 
On the far side
Of the drawer 
And I thought 
To myself 
At least
I can see
What I’m looking for
And now
All I have to do
Is reach 

January 28, 2022 at 08:33AM

Feeling good working

Jasmine green tea
Is enough
Of a drug
For me
As I can’t help
But bob my head
And bounce
To the electronic music
In my headphones
Standing at my desk
Looking through
The ten-foot-tall windows
That show Denver
In winter
The flat buildings tops
Are all white
With snow
Bright
And blinding
I squint
Smoke billows
From the icicle-bearded
Pipes
And AC units
The crane stands
Erect and idle

January 06, 2022 at 10:22AM

Feeling good working

Jasmine green tea
Is enough
Of a drug
For me
As I can’t help
But bob my head
And bounce
To the electronic music
In my headphones
Standing at my desk
Looking through
The ten-foot-tall windows
That show Denver
In winter
The flat buildings tops
Are all white
With snow
Bright
And blinding
I squint
Smoke billows
From the icicle-bearded
Pipes
And AC units
The crane stands
Erect and idle

January 06, 2022 at 10:22AM

Jalapeño margaritas

Playing the board game 
I know
There are poems to write 
That aren’t 
About drunkenness 
But I am 
And everything 
I’m thinking
Seems to be
Through that lens 
It must be
For a reason 
That the glass
Which is now empty 
With a slice of lime
And bits of jalapeño 
Must be
Saying something 
If for no other reason 
Than I’m not looking
At the lines 
With which 
I started this poem
Now
I hear the music 
And my brothers 
Are arguing 
About the rules
Of the game 
I’m outside 
Of myself 
For once
Which is the key
To any god poetry 
I’ve ever written 

December 22, 2021 at 11:06PM

Miss you

I got drunk 
And I’m in touch enough 
With the world outside myself 
To say that I miss you
But I’m still not so
Totally 
Up, up, and away 
To send the text
Saying such and such 
I’ll swallow it 
But god
I love you 
And miss you
And hope you’re well 

December 22, 2021 at 10:58PM

Chaos at home

My sister opened the door to the back deck and our dog ran out. My brother chased after him. An ice cube fell from the dispenser on the fridge and shattered on the floor. The burgers were sizzling in the iron skillet on the stovetop. My other brother was saying something to my mom.

Untitled

A car pulled into the parking lot with its high beams on. My shadow stretch from where I was standing in the infield of the b

Stubbing your toe

As you stub your toe
Against the oven
While carrying the cutting board
Or chopped onions 
To be dumped into the pan
There is an eyes-closed instant 
Cringing 
While you wait
For the pain to travel 
From the nerves in your toe
To your brain 
When you’ll find out
How bad
You really stubbed it 

December 20, 2021 at 10:44AM

My brother’s theory about heaven and hell

When you die, DMT gets released in your brain. DMT can dilate your experience of time. In the instant that you pass from life to death, you experience that moment as if it were temporally infinite.
Heaven is an infinite good DMT trip. Hell is an infinite bad DMT trip.
Whether you have a good or a bad trip depends on your “set and setting“—i.e., your mindset and your surrounding environment—at the time of your death.
It’s possible that you could have a good enough mindset at the time of your death to overcompensate for a bad surrounding environment. One who wishes to go to heaven might spend their life trying to adopt a good mindset before the time of their death.

The sound of the dryer in the laundry room

Like a heartbeat, the drum revolves: wuh-WUH … wuh-WUH … wuh-WUH. The buzz of an electrical appliance. A scratching like stiff hairs being dragged along a sheet of metal. A tumbling of solids like rocks rolling down a set of stairs. But I only put towels in this load. What could be tumbling?

Mailbox man

I thought a mailbox 
Was a man
When I looked left
At the intersection 
But it was just
A mailbox
Standing there
Probably holding 
Some mail 

December 17, 2021 at 10:50AM

My vision’s getting worse

Last night, we drove to Union Station to pick up my brother. He took the train from Chicago. We pulled into the parking lot at 9:41, but his train wasn’t scheduled to arrive until 9:49. I sat in the passenger seat and squinted out the window at the signs on the buildings in the distance. I held the right temple of my glasses between my index finger and thumb, raising the lenses up and down. When I was looking through the lenses, I could see clearly that one of the buildings said “Sun Life”. When I lowered the lenses and looked with my naked eyes, I could only see a white splotch in the top right corner of the black building.

Down to one necklace

I took off my quartz crystal necklace yesterday. It kept getting tangled with the other necklace I wear: a silver chain with a Celtic coin that Dad bought for me on a fishing trip in Key West. I had a dream last night that Mom hung the crystal on the Christmas tree as an ornament. But it was just a dream. The necklace is still in the front pocket of my toiletry bag on the top shelf in the bathroom. 

A morning on the cusp of winter

It rained last night. When I came up the stairs this morning, I saw through the glass front door there were puddles around the welcome mat on the front porch. While I stretched on my yoga mat, Gregorian monks chanted on the speaker. Through the window, leafless branches wavered in a way that matched the deep, somber forlorness of the chanting—like dancers swaying in rhythm to music. I stepped off my mat and stood behind the screen to the back deck. I put my nose to the screen and breathed in the air—humid, wanting to be warm, but chilled dampness. The clouds overhead were a an expansive layer of blueish-grayish with splotches of whiter areas where the sun wanted to break through. The few leaves left on the trees rustled as the wind blew. One bird chirped monotonously, while other birds sang sporadically. Squirrels darted along branches, nimbly hopped between trees, their brown fur blending in with the bark, but still more visible than when they had the leaves for camouflage. An unseen plane flew audibly above the cloud layer. Trucks were louder than cars driving along the highway across the pond. 

Standing desk

Sitting at my desk, bent over my laptop, my back started to get sore. I stood up and reached behind me to pull the wheeled chair to the side. Then I grabbed the handle of the crank underneath the desktop and spun it around to raise the desk. The crankshaft made squeaking noises as it revolved

Gate A17 at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport

By the window, a father holds his toddler son in his arms. “Do you see the plane?” he asks in a high-pitched voice. “It’s going to go bye-bye.”
What looks like a giant accordion attaches the end of the walkway to the door on the side of the plane. In the cockpit, two pilots are wearing headphones, looking at the dash, leaning forward, and reaching out to twist knobs and flip levers. 
The screen says we board in eight minutes. On the speakers, announcers recount the movements of players in a game of football that must be on one of the TVs that I can’t see from where I’m sitting. 
The other travelers waiting to board talk on their phones, scroll on their phones, stare at their phones. One guy in a red polo shirt stands, holds a coffee cup, switches it from his left hand to his right hand. A woman takes off her glasses and cleans them with a cloth while talking to her friend. 
Now the screen says we board in one minute. An automated robotic voice says, “We will now begin boarding …”

Gate A17 at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport

By the window, a father holds his toddler son in his arms. “Do you see the plane?” he asks in a high-pitched voice. “It’s going to go bye-bye.”
What looks like a giant accordion attaches the end of the walkway to the door on the side of the plane. In the cockpit, two pilots are wearing headphones, looking at the dash, leaning forward, and reaching out to twist knobs and flip levers. 
The screen says we board in eight minutes. On the speakers, announcers recount the movements of players in a game of football that must be on one of the TVs that I can’t see from where I’m sitting. 
The other travelers waiting to board talk on their phones, scroll on their phones, stare at their phones. One guy in a red polo shirt stands, holds a coffee cup, switches it from his left hand to his right hand. A woman takes off her glasses and cleans them with a cloth while talking to her friend. 
Now the screen says we board in one minute. An automated robotic voice says, “We will now begin boarding …”

Saturday night in Phoenix

I’m not sure if the flower vase was intentionally designed to be an optical illusion, but the lines in between the checkered diamonds were pulsing from dark to light. 

Note

Sam called the restaurant and they said it would be an hour-and-a-half wait. I went upstairs to shower. When I got out, my phone rang. It was Sam. He said, “I drove up to the restaurant and put our names down. They’ll seat us at 

Untitled

The sun sets before five this time of year. I’m not usually done with my work before then, so I’ve gotten into the habit of going for a run at night. It’s peaceful and there’s nobody else on the path.
Tonight, I saw an animal down the hill by the tree line.

The feel of my feet on the ground

Most of the pressure is in my heels. The arches of my feet aren’t touching the ground. The balls are the points where I feel the second-most pressure. My toes are touching, but I have very little weight on them. They seem to be there for balance.
I’m wearing socks, but I can’t acutely feel the fabric. It just feels generally comfortable to be wearing them. I’m also standing on carpet, so there is some cushion.
If I lean back, the weight goes to my heels until my toes lift off the ground and then I almost fall backward. If I lean forward, the weight goes first into the balls of my feet and then to my toes. My toes flex and bend at their joints until my heels come off the ground and then I almost fall forward. I can lean farther forward than I can backward.

Burning leaves on Sunday

“I’ll show you how I do it.”
I followed Dad out to the fire pit in the back yard. He pointed to a spot in the side of the pit where two bricks had space in between them. 
“I get the blower and set it up so it’s pointing right through that hole there. Then it’s like an incinerator.”
“There’s a lighter on the desk in the garage.”
Then he and Mom got in the truck and went to church. 
I got the blower off the toolbox, carried it over to the pit, set it on the ground, flipped the switch for the choke, and yanked on the cord … one, two, three, four times until it started up feebly at first and then strong. 
I set the opening of the long neck so it pointed at the space between the bricks. The motor was making the base bounce around, so I got two rocks and set them on either side of the neck to hold it in place. 
Ash was blowing out from the bottom of the pit. Two metal pales beside the pit were already full of ash from the leaves that Mom burned the day before. I took the two pales through the tree line and down to the pond to dump them in the water. This way they wouldn’t have a chance of causing a fire in the dry brush if I threw them over the fence behind the yard. 

I brought the empty pales back, set them by the pit, and shoveled the ash from the pit into the pales. Then I took the bucket and scooped up leaves that were already on the tarp and dumped them in the pit. 

The fire didn’t burn right away like I expected it to with the blower blowing and some hot embers still in the bottom of the pit from the fire the day before. I went into the garage to get some paper and the lighter off the desk. When I came back out, the fire was blazing two feet tall. 

Then it was just a process of raking the leaves into piles, pulling the tarp next to the pile, raking the pile onto the tarp, pulling the tarp by the pit, and dumping bucketfuls from the tarp into the pit. 

It was like an incinerator. Dad was right. 

The smell of air

Fresh, but not as fresh as outside. Slightly chilled; it’s winter. Cold on the inhale. Warm on the exhale. Perhaps slightly metallic. I am grasping now. It’s like the taste of water. I know from middle school science class that the gas I breathe in is different from the gas I breathe out. But I can’t smell the difference. There’s a reason olfactory art isn’t popular.

Plastic

I opened a plastic water bottle and the cap made a series of snapping sounds as it detached from the plastic ring holding it in place. I raised the bottle to take a drink and the plastic made a crackling sound where my fingers made slight indentations. 

The blue pen on my desk

The clip says the name of the manufacturer and the size of the ballpoint. The grip is rubber and it has eight indented ribs. The tip is conic with an opening at the end.

In the park again

Lying on my back in the grass, looking up at the cloudless blue, the ball rolled toward me. A young boy came running toward me with his hands held open, smiling nervously. I picked it up and threw it back to him. 

Our backyard in Kansas on the first of December

The squirrels chased each other around the trunk of the tree. Brown leaves lay in piles in the yard. At the pond beyond the treeline that becomes visible each year when most of the branches are bare, a flock of geese all at once stand on the bank, bound toward the water on their flipper-ended, spindly black legs, take flight, and glide to various points on the surface of the pond where they each alight for a splash landing.

Starship

A blinking plane moves across the dark night sky filled with other—more natural, but more stationary—stars. 

At the shooting range

At station nine under the roof of the 50-yard pistol range, I held the gun steady, making minor adjustments to my grip until the center white dot was in between the two outer white dots. With the center of my right index fingertip, I pulled the trigger slowly, remembering Dad’s instructions, You almost want to be surprised when it goes off. The moment of explosion is sudden and disorienting. After each shot, I lowered the gun to look at the target. I was hitting the target below the orange circle in the center. I raised the gun again and aimed a little higher. To the left and right of me, at stations eight and eleven, two other guns were going off. The noise each time a gun would go off was so loud that I could feel the pressure of the bang moving through the air. 

At the shooting range

At station nine under the roof of the 50-yard pistol range, I held the gun steady, making minor adjustments to my grip until the center white dot was in between the two outer white dots. With the center of my right index fingertip, I pulled the trigger slowly, remembering Dad’s instructions, You almost want to be surprised when it goes off. The moment of explosion is sudden and disorienting. After each shot, I lowered the gun to look at the target. I was hitting the target below the orange circle in the center. I raised the gun again and aimed a little higher. To the left and right of me, at stations eight and eleven, two other guns were going off. The noise each time a gun would go off was so loud that I could feel the pressure of the bang moving through the air. 

Kitchen aesthetic

On the circular blade of the pizza cutter in the cylinder of kitchen utensils, the reflection of the flame from the gas burner glinted, as the tea kettle on the stovetop whistled, to tell me that the water was hot and ready to be poured into the mug in which I had already placed a bag of chamomile tea.

Another story that Grandpa told after dinner tonight

When he was a kid, Grandpa, his siblings, and their neighborhood friends used to sleep in the backyard some nights. They had army tents that were long and triangular with two walls and no floor. After their parents went to bed, they got up and walked to the nearby golf course. They went to the fourth hole because that was the hole with a water hazard. They rolled their pant legs up and, in the dark, stepped around in the shallow parts of the pond, feeling around and picking up golf balls with their toes.

Snake stories

Sitting around the table, we each told our best snake story after dinner tonight.
Grandpa ran over a rattlesnake with the lawnmower. He hung it in the tree, finished mowing the yard, and then, once he was back in the house, he thought, I should go get the rattler off that snake. So he walked back out to the tree where he had hung it, but by then a bird had gotten it.
Dad was driving down the highway one day and a snake crawling across the road was so long that its head got to the median before its tail was out of the grass.
I was using an earth auger to dig holes for tomato plants and the bit stopped turning. I looked down in the hole and I could see something wrapped around the bit. I thought it was a rope. I reached down to pull it out and then the head of a snake came up and hissed at me. I jumped back, pulled the cord to start the auger back up, and made the snake into fertilizer.

In the corner of the room

An outlet on the wall. A phone charger plugged into the top outlet. A yellow cord plugged into the bottom outlet. The corner of the pillow case. The books on the shelf. The empty shooter standing beside the open case of poker chips. The phone face down on the ground. The stack of multi-colored poker chips. The carpet.

Two birds

One little bird
On a power line
Crossing the sky 
A chem trail 
Higher up 
Crisscrosses the line 
Another bird 
From the east
Flies up and perches 
So now
There are two birds
On the power line 
Like a row
Of bleachers
To watch the cars
Drive by 

November 22, 2021 at 08:20AM

Thinking too much

I stood at the fridge, filling up a cup of water. I looked at the clock on the oven. I was still writing downstairs, but I also needed to trade a crypto. I already knew what trade I wanted to put on. I had checked the price this morning and it was down, which made it a good time to buy. But then I had got caught up with my writing and forgotten about it. I wondered if the price had moved back up. I hoped it hadn’t. The clock said 4:19. I had a meeting with a writing group that I needed to finish the writing for at 5:00. I also needed to edit the pieces of the other writers in the group. Did I have enough time … Then I heard the splashing and felt the cold water hitting my bare feet on the hardwood floor.

Porno magazine

One day, when I was in grade school, there were about 200 kids on the playground. Somewhere on the jungle gym. Summer on the asphalt playing kickball. Somewhere on the field playing soccer. Somewhere on a different section of the asphalt playing foursquare. Some were in the trees, running around the trunks and pretending to be horses. I don’t remember where I was. Maybe I was playing kickball. All of a sudden, there was a mad rush to one area of the soccer field. At first, it was like a scene out of a movie or something bad happens like a bomb exploding and everyone is running around, not knowing what to do. In this case, however, it was the exact opposite. It was like the bomb imploded and sucked all the kids into one point near the center of the soccer field. I was one of the last ones to get there. There was already a crowd gathered around the center. I thought my way through grabbing shoulders, pulling them back, getting down on my knees my hands and knees and crawling in between legs. Once I got there, I got one glimpse Of what was causing all the commotion before a teacher reached in and snatched it away. It was a picture in a magazine of a naked woman in a bathtub. At the time, I had no idea I was looking at a porno magazine. I didn’t even know a porn was. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a naked woman before. But in an instant, without explanation, I understood why the magazine was like a bomb that sent a shockwave through all the students and sucked them in, almost with some intangible suction that pulled on all of our intuitions. I learn more about the world—about why wars are fought, why poetry is written, and why humans keep on living and dying—in that instant, than I had in all my schooling up to that point. 

Morning math

When I woke 
I wasn’t quite ready 
To face the light
Coming through the door 
To the right 
But I was tired 
Of lying on my left 
So I did 
A quick calculation 
That was actually 
Rather slow 
In my sluggish 
Morning mind 
But eventually 
Did find 
An answer
And then
Rolled over 
With my eyes
Shut tight 

November 16, 2021 at 06:49AM

Hubcap not human (non-human hubcap)

The hubcap on the wheel of the car driving by doesn’t care how many times it spins, how many revolutions. It doesn’t have a stomach. It won’t get sick. 
The hubcap 
on the wheel of the car 
driving by 
doesn’t care 
how many times it spins, 
how many revolutions. 
It doesn’t 
have a stomach. 
It won’t 
get sick. 

I’m more afraid of heights

The spider crawled up the wall in the basement and through the crack in one of the ceiling panels.
How many spiders are up there?
As long as they stay up there, I don’t really care.

Talking to my brother about the future

We started talking about crypto and how the U.S. dollar might lose its value. Then I brought up how I think most of the tasks currently done by the human labor force will be automated. We’ve won. We’re the most dominant species on the planet, but we can’t stop ourselves. We’re at the peak, but we’re about to fall off a cliff. My brother mentioned the importance of sustainability. We need to engineer and produce sustainably. But it’s more than just an economic problem. It’s an emotional and spiritual problem.
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” — Blaise Pascal

My brother said he doesn’t have a problem sitting alone in a room. I asked him, what do you do? He said, think and create, come up with new ideas. I said, that’s the problem, we can’t stop thinking and making. He said, no, not thinking about new ways to produce, thinking about how to modify, reuse, and recycle. Thinking about how to repurpose all the trash in our landfills, how to clean up all the waste in our oceans. He said, I think the change is going to happen when our generation realizes that our kids are not going to have a full lifetime on earth.

This made me see a new perspective. We can still use our economic energies to go in reverse instead of forward. But still, we are just putting off the problem. What will we do once the landfills are recycled, once the oceans are clean? What will we work on then?

Sunburn on vacation

The first is the worst day of a vacation to get sunburned. On the last day, it doesn’t matter as much, especially if you are headed back to a place with less sun, like San Francisco. It is even good to have the sunburn when you get back, to prove to yourself that you really went and had a vacation and were changed by it. 

Liftoff

Taking the drug is like gas. But you won’t get far, even with the high-octane premium stuff, if you’re filling the tank of a lemon. A rocket spends many hours in a million pieces and, even before the pieces, as lines on the chalkboard. All that takes time, hard work, and discipline. Then, once you’ve earned your heroic hit and you step onto the launchpad, you’ll look up and know, without fear, that you’re about to get high.

Thunderstorm

We kept the back door open during the thunderstorm. The rain pattered on the fallen leaves in the yard. Through the window, a lightning flash illuminated the cars in the driveway, the neighbor’s fence, the pond in the distance. I counted the seconds … one, two, three, four. Four seconds. Then the thunder rumbled, somewhere off to the northwest. When I was young, I was told that the lightning strike is as many miles away as the seconds you count between when you see the lighting and when you hear the thunder. Four miles away, someone didn’t even get to one. 

Procrastinating

I’m not usually a procrastinator, but lately I’ve been making tea, checking my phone, chewing gum, playing with the dog, doing push-ups, watching YouTube—anything other than sitting in my seat and getting the words down.

Night run

It was beautiful again today. I meant to go outside in the early afternoon, but I watched the first half of the football game on TV, worked on my computer, made dinner, and
It didn’t help that daylight savings ended today and we lost an hour.
I went for a run after dark. The moon was like a fingernail clipping in the night sky. The lamps along the trail in the park were all turned off. I could just barely see the paved trail under my feet.
With less to see, my mind’s eye turned inward. I could feel my breath pumping in and out of my body. I could feel the shockwaves radiating up my legs as my heels impacted the pavement, as well as the subsequent flexing of my muscles to stabilize the shakiness.

My fingers rest idly

A strand of cobweb hangs from the ceiling, swaying like it’s suspended in water. The big clock ticks on the wall. My fingers rest idly on the keys, or at least they did as I was looking for something to write about, before I started typing this.

When I drive

When I drive, it feels like a simulation. Like a racing game in a video arcade. I think it’s because I spend too much time on the computer. I forget that I’m a body in the physical world, not just a mind in the virtual world. I stumble on the stairs after I’ve stepped away from my desk and think, “What’s going on? Why am I not ascending?” Then I remember, “Oh, I have to use my legs.” But on the road, the stakes are higher. I can stumble on the stairs and still survive. A crash could be fatal. Not like the video game. There’s no respawn. 

I know

Oh, I don’t know. None of the rough drafts are ready. It’s late. I should have posted before I went to the bar.
It’s 12:45am. I should have posted before I went to the bar. The time stamp on this one will probably say tomorrow. I know I’m supposed to be posting something daily. 

Stray cat in the city

When we walked out of the bar, there was a cat sitting by one of the cars. It wasn’t wearing a collar. I walked her to her car and then when I walked back I saw the car scurrying across the street. It must be a hard life for a stray cat in the city. 
I got in the car and pulled out of the parking lot, thankful to be driving home.

A nice day

It was nice today. Probably one of the last semi-warm, sunny days before winter. I took a backpack and a sleeping bag into the backyard and folded myself into it. I just laid there, feeling the ground beneath my back, breathing the fresh air, Looking up at the sky at the times when the clouds cover the sun so I wasn’t too bright in my eyes.

A man aware of who he is

An older man wearing a blue rain jacket and a red hat open his garage door and walk down his driveway to where a trailer was parked at the curb. He let down the back gate and stepped up into the trailer. He already had a cigarette going, hanging loosely from between his lips, smoke coming out of it. He wasn’t puffing on it. It was just hanging there. He sat down in a riding lawnmower, leaned forward and twisted the key to start it up, and then lean back in the seat and pull the levers back to make the mower move in reverse down the gate and off the trailer. He held the levers like a man aware of who he was and what he should’ve been doing in that moment. The cigarettes still hung, smoking, from his lips. Even the cigarette didn’t need to be puffed. It just had to be there. And its place, doing what it was supposed to. After the man had backed all the way off the gate, he pulled the right lever back and push the left lever forward to turn. Then he pushed both levers forward to drive up the driveway and into the garage.

How quickly things seems to be in their places

This morning, I vacuumed the basement. To prepare, I put the floor pillow and rug on the couch. I also put a box of old clothes, my slippers, and the rolling desk chair on top of the exercise mat. This way, these things were out of the way, so that I could run the vacuum undeterred over the carpet. 
Once I finished vacuuming, I unplugged the cord and wrapped it around the hooks on the side. Then I put the floor pillow and the rug back on the floor. But I forgot about the other things. I left them on the exercise mat. I went into my room and got a notebook to write some letters and only when I came back out to sit at my desk did I realize, “Hey, where’s my chair?”
I turned around and there it was on the mat, along with the box and the slippers—all of them together looking like they’d been standing there their whole lives, never having been anywhere else. 

How quickly things seems to be in their places

This morning, I vacuumed the basement. To prepare, I put the floor pillow and rug on the couch. I also put a box of old clothes, my slippers, and the rolling desk chair on top of the exercise mat. This way, these things were out of the way, so that I could run the vacuum undeterred over the carpet. 
Once I finished vacuuming, I unplugged the cord and wrapped it around the hooks on the side. Then I put the floor pillow and the rug back on the floor. But I forgot about the other things. I left them on the exercise mat. I went into my room and got a notebook to write some letters and only when I came back out to sit at my desk did I realize, “Hey, where’s my chair?”
I turned around and there it was on the mat, along with the box and the slippers—all of them together looking like they’d been standing there their whole lives, never having been anywhere else. 

Up late

I hear the clock tick
That’s it
Just the big clock
On the wall
Ticking

November 04, 2021 at 10:02PM

Up late

I hear the clock tick
That’s it
Just the big clock
On the wall
Ticking

November 04, 2021 at 10:02PM

I was feeling ambitious yesterday

Next to my laptop is an open notebook. On the right page, on a line about halfway down, “11/3/21” is written in blue ink. Below that is a blank line. And then below the blank line are seven lines filled with an empty square followed by an item of the to-do list. Only two of the boxes are checked. The rest are still empty.

I was feeling ambitious yesterday

Next to my laptop is an open notebook. On the right page, on a line about halfway down, “11/3/21” is written in blue ink. Below that is a blank line. And then below the blank line are seven lines filled with an empty square followed by an item of the to-do list. Only two of the boxes are checked. The rest are still empty.

Decisions, decisions

I’m at my desk. The lamp is on. There are two packs of chewing gum stacked on the base of the lamp. The still-wrapped pack is peppermint. The unwrapped pack is spearmint. I want to have a piece, but it’s late and I should probably just brush my teeth instead.

Adding jelly to the grocery list

When I woke up this morning, I wasn’t aware that I heard silence first, before I heard second: the knife clanging against the inner glass walls of the almost-empty jelly jar. Up in the kitchen, my sister was getting ready for school. 

I could still hear the silence, like the static channel on television turned down to low volume, in the space in between—the open door in the basement and the jelly jar being scraped for its remaining contents. 

Untitled

Watching a football game on the TV, I saw a mustached fan in the stands look into the camera, raise both his fists, shake them, and shout, “Let’s go!”

Well, not exactly (More like an independent writer)

My mom told the piano salesman that I was a writer.

He looked at me and asked, “Who do you write for?”

“For myself.”

“Oh, so you’re a freelancer.” 
Well, not exactly. A freelancer works for different employers at different times, selling their services at a rate per time period or per project. I don’t write for anyone. I don’t sell my writing service. I just write what interests me for as long as it interests me, and then I write something else when something else interests me. 
But instead of explaining all that, I just said, “Yeah, sort of.” 

Phone addiction

When my phone vibrates, I try to wait. I try not to stop what I’m doing to pick it up immediately. But I want to, I have to admit. I want to see what’s popped up on the screen, especially if it’s someone texting me. I want to respond right away, but I make myself wait.
Like a high-functioning addict with a high to look forward to, I make myself finish my work before I pick up my phone.

Picking blackberries

The biggest, ripest berries were often in the center of the bush. Blackberry bushes have thorns, so I’d have to contort my body in order to reach far enough into the bush without being poked. Sometimes, I’d reach the cluster of berries, pick them with my fingers, and hold them in the palm of my hand, only to realize, as I started to slowly inch my body back out of the bush, that I couldn’t remember the complicated contortions I’d performed to get in. And I couldn’t turn around to see where I was going. There were thorns all around. So I had to make slow backwards movements, until I felt the sharp point of a thorn press against some part of my skin. Then I knew to go forward and come back at a different angle. The worst parts were when I proceeded backwards too quickly and a thorn poked into my skin. The thorns are at an angle. So I couldn’t just keep going past that point, or else it would tear through my skin. I had to go forward in the bush until the thorn came out and then proceed backward at a different angle.

Fixing the sidewalks

The road workers tore up the parts of the sidewalk that were cracked. They poured new cement for the new sections of sidewalk and paved them just pretty and fine. But on the sides of the new sections where the grass was tore up, they didn’t sprinkle of grass seed in the dirt. So the balding patches of dirt look even worse than the cracked sidewalk. But at least nobody will trip.

Seasonal depression

Even sunny days seem dark, like I have a personal cloud hovering above me, following me around. I mean this more than metaphorically. When I think back on recent memories, they actually look dark in my mind’s eye. 
Winter is coming. And the days are, in fact, getting shorter and darker. So maybe that’s just it. And I’m screaming about the sky falling when it’s only a raindrops. 

Note

Standing in the shower, waiting to dry, I exhale. A smudge of fog appears on the glass door, expanding as my outbreath continues to blow hot air against its surface. The edges of the condensation grow unevenly, with rounded front forces, like bacteria multiplying in a petit dish. There is a brief pause just as I’ve expelled all the breath I have, and then I inhale, and the opaque shape starts to shrink. All the bacterium that were born just seconds ago, die in mass

In the laboratory

I stared at the words on my computer screen for long enough that the depths and dimensions beyond the edges of my computer screen started to play tricks on my perception—slanting slowly side to side, zooming out and then back in. I leaned back and pushed myself away from the desk, rolling in the wheeled chair. I looked at things to the left and right of the screen—a stack of books, a coffee mug. I stared at them and concentrated until I felt that my perception was back to normal. Then I pulled myself to the desk and started typing again.

So far from natural

I wonder if our nine-pound Maltipoo is aware that his occupation is Lap Dog.
He still growls when he sinks his teeth into his toys and shakes his head, as if he were tearing prey limb from limb. He still barks when the delivery man drops off a package on the front porch. He still leans forward, pulling on his leash, trying to run, when we’re out for a walk. He still sniffs and marks his territory.
If he were suddenly cast back into his natural state in the wild, he would almost certainly die quickly.

When my writing feels more like work than art

When I’ve stood writing at my desk for long enough that my back starts to hurt and I’ve skipped a meal or two.
When my addiction to writing becomes apparent in moments that I am incapable of leaving unwritten.
When I become aware that what I am writing will be read and then start to write what I imagine readers will enjoy.
When I think deep down about my reason for writing in the first place and realize that it comes from my desire to be loved.
When I am editing or working on any part of the writing process other than the original moment of creation.
When people ask me what it is that I do and I tell them that I am a writer.
When I even consider the possibility of writing for money.

Should have just left it

I was lying on the ground. The door was halfway closed. I wanted it all the way open. So I rolled to my side, reached over, and pushed. It swung open, hit the wall, and then swung back until it was even farther shut than it was before.

I picked my nose in private from then on

All of us in the kindergarten class were sitting criss-cross applesauce with our hands in our laps, looking up and listening to the teacher.
She was sitting in a rocking chair, reading a book in an overdramatized voice, her puffy cheeks swelling under her eyes when she smiled.
She stopped reading, looked down at me, and ordered me aloud to stop picking my nose. All the other kids looked at me, with my finger still stuck up to the knuckle in my nostril.

Impromptu exercise date

He was doing pull ups on the monkey bars in the park. She came up to and asked, nonchalantly, hey can I ask you a question? He let go of the bar and hopped out. Curiously, he said, yeah sure what’s up?
She asked, do you want to take me on a date sometime?
He laughed because he was caught off guard and he didn’t immediately know what to say. He honestly thought she was going to tell him off for working out on the jungle gym that was meant to be for children. But there were no children around it was the middle of the day the kids are at school it was just him and her standing on the playground. 
He looked at her as he considers her question. She was pretty, so he didn’t have to take long. How about right now? He said. 
Now it was her turn to be caught off guard. 
Well, I, um, yea, I mean I was going to get coffee, but sure, yea, I have a few minutes. 
Okay, he said. You can start out with ten pushups. 

The simplicity of cross-country coaching

I was on the baseball field, holding a plank. A high school cross-country team was running on the path. They were nearing the end of whatever distance they were running, however many laps. 
There were two coaches standing near the path by what I assumed was the predetermined finished line. They were clapping their hand and shouting the following instructions:
“Quicker.”
“Run faster.”
“Come on.”
“Faster.”

A strategy to stop worrying

When I am worrying about something incessantly, sometimes all I need is another word to come along. For some reason I can’t worry about two things at once. Now the second worry must be big enough to take my attention from the first, like a planet that is big enough to attract the gravitational pull of my worrying. But it shouldn’t be too big because then I will be in the same place I started: worrying about something equally bad, ego is terrifying, equally as debilitating with its promise that life is not worth living anymore and I might even might as well not put any more effort because if this worry is realize that nothing will matter anymore my life will be over. Tori needs to be big enough for the gravitational pull big enough to get my mind off the other worry but spa enough they can forget about it after all my attention has been focused on it. And then for some reason the first worry has gone away and doesn’t come back. 

Doing what I can

I drag the bottom of my sticker and arcs along the dirt and gravel of the baseball fields in Field of the holy Davidson left by the cleats of the last team practicing here smoothing out my section as best I can. I look up and see there are holes in David’s all the way across the field at least 60 or 70 feet wide. But at least this small section is smooth now. 

Like a kid again

I tap tap tap the palm of my hand on top of each plank in the fence on my left side and then lean over to tight rope walk the edge of the sidewalk on the right side like a kid again and step far is short to avoid the cracks in the sidewalk like a kid again making up games out of nothing.

Acorns

Acorns are all over the sidewalks in this part of Kansas, this time of year. I’d very the length of my steps, sometimes shorter, sometimes longer, in order to step on them with my heel at first only a top then as they launch forward through the rest of the step and my weight all focuses on my ear I hear the crunch of the acorn beneath. I know I am not but, in the back of my mind, I’d like to think I’m helping the squirrels by breaking the nuts for them.

Thinking deep thoughts while eating breakfast

While I was sitting at the kitchen counter, eating my oatmeal, I thought about dying. Then I thought about how there could be nothing. Everything could just not exist.
Then I looked outside, through the glass door. I saw the branches of our oak tree waggling, light dodging around the edges of the leaves, dropping onto the deck around the tree-shaped spots of shade.
And I was glad that it does exist, all of this.
And I was glad and grateful that there is what there is and that I am here for it. 
I thought about death and how it could all go black in an instant, which made me wonder, what if it had all been black from the beginning, always was and always will be, forever and ever, the end. 

Thinking while eating breakfast

While I was sitting at the kitchen counter, eating my oatmeal, I thought about dying. Then I thought about how there could be nothing. Everything could just not exist.
Then I looked outside, through the glass door. I saw the branches of our oak tree waggling, light dodging around the edges of the leaves, dropping onto the deck around the tree-shaped spots of shade.
And I was glad that it does exist, all of this.

Lying on the floor

I don’t stop writing, get up from my desk chair, and lie down on my back to think of new ideas for my writing. I do it because my back hurts. But I’ve realized that lying down and looking up at the ceiling, just taking a second to lie down and breathe and let your mind wonder away from your work—is an excellent creative exercise.

Can’t stop, won’t stop

When I’m driving, I like to see the light change from green to yellow just as I’ve gotten into the intersection. It gives me the sense that I’ve just made it, but I’m getting where I’m going faster and not stopping.

The Monday after a 3-day festival

[insert the rest from Otter recording]
Do you think you’re feeling like that because of the drugs from this weekend?
Yea, maybe. But I was honestly feeling a little off before this weekend. Maybe I’ve been working too much.
I was excited for this weekend because I just wanted to get away. But maybe I did too much. Now I feel like I’m lost somewhere in the middle. I’m back in the grind but I feel like I’m off away somewhere else. I’m back in the very demand job and having to focus on a computer and be productive but now after this weekend I just wanna listen to music and feel good.

First high school party

James wake up in the middle of the night to pour a few shots from his dad’s vodka bottle to take to a high school party. James thought he was smart, refilling then missing liquid with water. The next day, Mr. Oliver went to put his nightly cocktail, but the liquid in the bottle was frozen. James wasn’t so smart after all. There’s a reason you put vodka in the freezer. It doesn’t freeze. But water does. 

Learning to parent

I went over to my grandparents’ house with two of my younger cousins, Jon Henry and River. Jon Henry is five and River is seven. My grandparents live on some acreage in a more rural part of Kansas. I went out into the backyard to play. Before I went out, my grandpa told me, “Jon Henry has a brand new basketball in the bucket in the barn.”
First, Jon Henry ran out to the barn, lifted up the garage door, and came riding out on a bike. River said, “Hey, that’s my bike.” Jon Henry has his own bike. I tried to talk to him,
Before I went out, my grandpa told me, “Jon Henry has a brand new basketball in the bucket in the barn.”

It was the hug that started it

She was my best friend’s sister. She enrolled at the university, two years below us. I was studying abroad in London during the semester that she was introduced to our friend group. I met her when we came back to school the next year. We moved into a house off-campus. She came over a lot, asking if my best friend was home, but he wasn’t usually. So we started to spend time together. Not much at first. She’d linger in the kitchen, take something from the fridge, sit down on the couch, look at art on the walls. One afternoon, I was in the kitchen cooking dinner. She came in through the front door without knocking. I turned around and there she was in the doorway. I can’t remember if she said a word. Maybe she said, “Hey.” And I said, “Hey.” Then she walked across the linoleum tile and gave me a hug. And that was what did it. There was electricity and warmth. It was the most natural thing. But it still wasn’t appropriate. She was my best friend’s sister. She was two years younger than me. We had the same friends. We had never thought of … So she dropped her arms and picked through the fruit bowl and I turned and kept chopping onions on the cutting board. We talked about my day and her day and if my best friend would be coming home soon. Then she left. It was a week later, maybe a month, when we found ourselves at the local sports bar, eating dinner, just us. I think that was the first time we were alone together. Then we were back at her apartment. The living room was psychedelic. Multi-colored lighting. Posters and paintings all over the walls. She lay in the corner of the couch. I sat nearby. We watched music videos and documentaries on TV. The only bathroom in the house was upstairs. I asked her where it was and went up there. When I came back down, she had her shirt off, and she was sitting up straight on the couch, looking at the stairs, waiting for me to come back down. 

The blind dead painter

He always said that his art was what he loved for. When he lost his sight in the accident, everyone that knew him knew that that the car might have killed him. He wasn’t going to live long without his eyes. They found him dead the next day. At the bottom of the staircase of his apartment building. He apparently hadn’t died after throwing himself down the first flight. He flew himself down eight more before he died from head trauma. He was determined to die. For him, the only world worth living in was the one he could paint. And he was banished from that world as soon as he lost his sight. 

They don’t understand me

Doing an indie showing with a few other visual artists around here .
“Those people in there, they just don’t get it. They look and they nod their heads, but they don’t know why they’re nodding.”
He dropped the hand that was holding his cigarette, let it hang at his side, exhaled smoke. They were standing in an alley in New York, leaning against a brick wall.
– inspired by texts with Lake

The right amount of sad

What’s the right thing to say when somebody tells you they’re sorry to hear that. 
Maybe you just broke up with your partner, one of your relatives died, or you’ve found out you have a serious illness. 
If you’re too sad, then it’s just awkward for the other person. It’s hard for them to console you, especially if they’re not a close friend. 
But if you’re not sad enough, they might think you’re a psychopath.
I struggle with the second one. I tend to be rational about things. It is what it is. 
But when people tell me they’re sorry to hear that, I feel pressure to act the appropriate amount of sad. 
So I end up sharing something like, “Yea, thanks, it’s tough.”
If I was responding honestly, I’d probably say, “Seriously, no worries, we’re moving past it.”

The right amount of sad

What’s the right thing to say when somebody tells you they’re sorry to hear that. 
Maybe you just broke up with your partner, one of your relatives died, or you’ve found out you have a serious illness. 
If you’re too sad, then it’s just awkward for the other person. It’s hard for them to console you, especially if they’re not a close friend. 
But if you’re not sad enough, they might think you’re a psychopath.
I struggle with the second one. I tend to be rational about things. It is what it is. 
But when people tell me they’re sorry to hear that, I feel pressure to act the appropriate amount of sad. 
So I end up sharing something like, “Yea, thanks, it’s tough.”
If I was responding honestly, I’d probably say, “Seriously, no worries, we’re moving past it.”

All I could see was white

I was down in the basement, where it was dark. Before she left, my mom said I should take the dog out. I went up the stairs and stood in front of the door. We have an angry neighbor who gets upset if the dog comes over into his yard, so I always check to make sure he’s not outside before I let the dog out. The door has two side-by-side windows that are slightly higher than the top of my head. I stood on my tiptoes to look through the windows to check for the neighbor. What I did not expect was that the light outside was much brighter than the dark basement. It hurt my eyes and, for a second, all I could see was white. 

What I hear while lying in bed in the dark at 6:10 a.m.

The first sound I hear comes from the fan. It is mostly a low, monotonous drone. But then there are subtle groans in brief moments when the fan seems to be exerting more effort. These moments come every three or four seconds and last about a half-second.
Mmmmmmmm-yu. Mmmmmmmm-yu. Mmmmmmmm—this is the continuous drone. Yu—this is the extra-exertional groan. The groan sounds like a car’s engine—softer, far away; then louder, coming closer. Except the car is not driving on a road perpendicular to my ear. Instead, the road is in a circle that loops out away from my ear and then back around. It is when the car comes back around that I hear the groan. 
Other than the fan, there is the sound of silence. It is like the static, salt-and-pepper channel on a television, turned down to the lowest volume. Or, like a million bugs in the trees at night. Not big and loud cicadas; more like little mites, whispering softly. And so many of them. Ssssssss. But the ‘s’ sounds too much like a snake. Silence doesn’t stick out its tongue or slither, so the ‘s’ can’t be right.
The sound is consistent. There is no inbreath, no reprieve like the groan of the fan. Just one soft, constant, slightly high-pitched exhale. So I assume the onomatopoeia for silence should have only one letter.
—If it’s like the bugs, though, it’s not completely constant. If it was recorded and slowed down, the sound line might have slight wiggles.
I try out other letters. Tttttttt. Yes, maybe ‘t’ is closer. Actually, more like this: teeeeeeeeeeee. But there can only be one letter. So maybe just ‘e’ then. Eeeeeeeeeeeee. That, as of now, is my best guess at the sound of silence.

Irony

Today, at 1:45 in the afternoon, I realized that I has missed a 1 o’clock appointment with a therapist, to whom I needed to talk, about my problems, which include working too much, and ignoring important things.
At 1:45 in the afternoon
I realized that I had missed
A 1 o’clock appointment
With a therapist, to whom I needed to talk, about my problems, which include working too much, and ignoring important things.

War kills in many ways

In the few years after the war, he was as happy as he could be, happy just to be alive, that he survived.
Then he started to feel guilty. Why me? Why do I get to go to the bar and get drunk and make love to women? But Johnson and Frederick and all the other guys got to be nothing but worm food.
So he started to kill himself, little by little, until he eventually, ultimately, succeeded.

Running to the point of pain

When I walk, unless I run to the point of pain, my mind wanders. I try to focus on my steps—when my heel strike to the sidewalk. Left, right; one, two. I went to the shoe store one time and the salesman videos me walking to analyze my gait. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but I think it was something about trying to step so that my foot lands flat, as opposed to leaning back and striking with my heel first and my toes last. This is a good example actually – thinking about the shoe salesman and the gate analysis – of the thoughts that creep into my mind and distract me from focusing on something simple like just my steps. When I really can’t stop my thoughts, that’s what I actually enjoy running to the point of pain. Persistent physical pain is a good object of mental focus. If the pain is dangerous like a pain that might kill me and I would be worried. But when I am running, I know the pain is just from exercise, so I enjoy it and focus on it and don’t worry and even see if I can test my limits.

An argument about ethics

Do you actually think you’re right?
I don’t think I’m right. I know I’m right.
Well, that’s where you’re wrong.
No, I’m right.
Okay, but how do you know?
There’s such thing as morals.
There are certain things about which knowledge of right and wrong is not possible. Morality is one of them. 

Something he could be good at

When he joined the football team freshman year of high school, he was barely five feet tall. His father was only five and a half feet tall and his mother was shorter than that. But his great grandpa Eli had been five feet and eleven inches, so he still had hope.
By his senior year, he was almost exactly five and a half feet tall. Despite his best efforts in the weight room and eating as much as he could in the cafeteria, the most he ever weighed was 160 pounds. Coach put him in the games after they were already winning.
He went to the same college as some of the other football players from his high scool team. He enrolled in business because that’s what his great grandpa Eli had done. One day, he got a B+ on a test. Then he met a recruiter. They said he could make $100,000 per year. He looked at the requirements for the job. There was nothing about his height or his weight.

A late night gamble

There is a panel with two electrical outlets in the corner of my room. Four cords share these two outlets. They are chords for my electrical toothbrush charging stand my phone charger, a floor fan, and the lamp. I need to use these electrical items at different times of the day so I’m always playing musical chairs with the outlets sometimes I have some of the items r Running that are already plugged in. But I want to plug in something else for example if I have the lamp on and the fan on but I need to charge my phone. Tonight I was in the situation I had the lamp I had the fan going and the lamp and the fan or both plugged in I wanted to keep the fan plugged in because it was hot and I was about to turn off the light for the night but I need to charge my phone so I wanted to unplug the lamp the only problem is both the cords are black and they look the same usually I follow the cord along their paths to find out which one is going to the electrical appliance that I don’t mind unplugging tonight I looked at the two cords there and I didn’t have any patience for some reason so I just unplugged one and I looked at the fan to see if it would go off but it did not he kept blowing so it must’ve been the lamp that I am float I had guessed correctly.

Paying attention after my shower

Looking down at the shower drain, chin against my chest, aiming the drops falling from my forehead to land in the holes of the drain, waiting to dry. I close my eyes and the image of the drain persists, only with inverted colors—the surface of the drain cover as dark as the drain pipe running below and the holes in the drain as light as the white shower floor. 

Digging up a boxwood bush in the front garden

I dug up a boxwood bush in the front garden today. I got back from my walk, and mom was already out there with a shovel and a spade in the bucket and some gloves, and she said she needed some help.
I started driving the spade into the dirt and pushing in farther with my shoe. But I realized it wasn’t going to be easy because there’s so much rock around. I would drive the spade in and the metal spear hit the rock and it would spark. So I had to get down on my hands and knees with a smaller spade and shuffle away the dirt and the rock to create space in the soil where the bigger shovel could really drive through. I built the moat around the bush. And then I really started driving in and leveraging up, and I heard the roots snapping underneath and the soil. Finally I got it where I could grab a hold of the bottom of the branches, and pull it out and break the rest of the roots manually. I took it out by the curb. Mom said one of her friends, is going to come by to pick it up later. Then she had me dig up another one of the flowering plants and put it in the place of the boxwood bush.
I was sweating from my forehead. Once I was done. I don’t usually stuff my forehead, even though I work out pretty much every day. There’s something different about yard work. It’s different than exercising your whole body is engaged and you have a goal so you’re only thinking about the goal, you’re not thinking about how your body aches. And so I think you ended up working harder without even thinking about it. It was nice to work my body like that, a nice break from working so hard mentally just standing still at my desk just staring at the screen trying to solve a problem with my mind and my body being no help at all. Except for to keep in the same position and keep staring at the screen. I should go and ask my mom she has any more bushes for me to dig up.

Are certain experiences captured more aptly by certain art forms?

I posted a short prose piece yesterday titled This should have been painted [link].
I have some more thoughts …
Here’s my conclusion. Certain art forms are best to capture certain experiences. Certain experiences are differentiated by the senses to which they appeal.
Or, because the senses of the experience weren’t matched with the senses of the art. This is something I’ve been asking myself lately: are certain experiences captured more aptly by certain art forms? I think so. I think certain experiences appeal to our senses more than others.
But it was more particular than that. Too much? But too much of what? There is always too much. In this case, there was too much to see.
The backyard was primarily an experience of sight.
[None of my other senses were receiving much input.] It was quiet in the early morning on a weekday. All I could taste was the remnant of minty toothpaste in my mouth and all I could smell was the crisp air. The only physical feelings were my knees on the hardwood and my forearms on the sill.
[[[My eyes were the windows where the beauty shined through and it seemed that there was too much of it for words.]]]
Why though? Why could I not capture something seen with my words. It’s not that I couldn’t, but writing just wouldn’t be the best.
>>>
It didn’t seem that a reader would enjoy a catalog—separated by commas and periods, organized in block-of-text prose—of what I was seeing.
I am not a painter or a photographer, but I think these visual art forms would have been more capable of capturing the beauty of the backyard scene, at least more capable than poetry or prose.
“A picture is worth a thousand words” proves true in this instance. Our eyes are eyes. They are not lips and brains. What part of us processes the written word? What experiences are most appropriately communicated in the written form?
But how many words, exactly, was this backyard scene worth? At 40 words per minute, I could surpass the painter in less than a half hour. But if the picture were worth 10,000 words, then I would be writing for over four hours.

Zooming in isn’t always clearer

Okay, then zoom in. Focus. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Don’t pick up more than you can carry. And I tried this. You’ve already read how I tried this—by focusing on the leaves, the dew, the lemons, the flying bug.
But those were not the sources of the beauty. The beauty came from the whole scene of the backyard. All of it, working together in codependent unison somehow.
It was like a piece of abstract algorithmic art that my friend recently made and showed to me. In the center of the piece, I saw a face—a lizard head with one eye, sharp teeth, and a stuck-out tongue. I thought if I looked closer, I could see the reptilian head more clearly. So I zoomed in on the image on my computer, but the apparent image of the lizard head dissolved. It was even more abstract, the farther I zoomed in.
The point is: I didn’t want to zoom in on the backyard. I wanted to somehow wrap all the way around it and capture the amount of detail just as it was.

A worrier walks into a bar

Well, what is it that you’re so worried about? I’d rather not say. Why? What is it? What could be so bad? Well he said. Then he stopped he was about to say it but he didn’t. Yeah, you know, I really just not rather say rather not say. I OK, the other guy put his hands in the air and then slapped them down on his lap and picked up his beer to take a drink. If you’d rather not say, that’s fine. We can just talk about it generally. So there’s this thing italicize thing, and it’s been bothering you.
Cole Feldman:
For the beginning of the short story about the guys having a beer… The first dialogue should be so what did the doctor say? She said I’m fine the EKG the bloodwork and the x-rays all came back normal. So what does she think it is then. She doesn’t know. She said it might be anxiety. Well, have you been feeling anxious? Yeah, a little, I guess. I didn’t really think about it until she told me she thought that’s what might be causing my chest tightness. This other nurse came in and asked me a bunch of questions and then I feel Out of form and they asked me if I want to meet with a therapist about my worrying problem I said what do you mean by worrying problem and she pointed to a section on the questionnaire where I circled three for all the answers. Then she said it looks like you worry a lot. Well I guess I do. The other guy asked what are you wearing about?
Cole Feldman:
Well, if it’s probably not gonna happen, can you just forget about it? I’ve tried. I can forget sometimes, like when I’m focused on something else. Reading a book or working at my desk or exercising. But then it always comes back but I have nothing else to think about it’s the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning.
I don’t understand why can’t you just forget about it it’s gone. I know I don’t understand either I guess I have less control over my mind that I thought. Maybe if I drink 10 more of these beers then I can forget about it.
Cole Feldman:
Hey man, when’s the last time you shaved? Ahlf looked up, he did stare down into the bottom of his beer, as of coming out of a days his eyes were glassy what? He asked then he raised his palm absentmindedly to his cheek and rubbed it. Oh, he said. As if he had just realize he was growing a beard. I don’t know maybe a week ago, maybe two. Clive noticed Ahlf was maybe a little more drunk than I thought. Say, when did you get here? You said to meet you here at 7 PM and I was here right on time. Did you make it here before me and start drinking on your own? Yeah, I got here a little early. Oh hey, I need to go to the bathroom. Then I’ve got up and walked to the back of the bar. Clive took a drink of his beer. Then the bartender came over washing a glass of the rag. Hey Sir I don’t mean to be eavesdropping but I overheard your conversation with your friend And I thought you should know he’s been here all afternoon. I think that’s his fifth beer is made if my accounting is correct and he ordered two shots first thing when he sat down on the bar.

Lake Heckaman:
hello
hows your doctor appointments/heart doing?
Cole Feldman:
Hey friend
Appointments went well. I got an EKG, blood work, and an x-ray. All came back normal. Doc said it might be anxiety. I have another appointment with a “behavioral consultant” on the 12th
Thanks for asking ?
How are you doing? Posted up in NY?
Lake Heckaman:
what do you think is causing anxiety
ya i’m just chilling enjoying the fall and trying not work too much haha
Cole Feldman:
Generally, I have more time to think and less distractions as I’m not working 10-hour days
Specifically, I obsessively worry. The small possibility occurs to me that something bad could happen and then I follow that train of thought to the worst case scenario and then run that worst case scenario on a loop in my head.
A year ago I thought they were external problems but not I’m starting to see the mental pattern and realizing that I literally make up things to worry about
And there are actual risks but they are like 0.00001% risks and I’m not spending the appropriate amount of time thinking about them
Like there’s a chance I’ll get in an accident every time I get in a car, but I don’t think about it, ya know?
Lake Heckaman:
yes totally – that seems like a somewhat painful but probably healthy realization to have
but it sounds like you know it’s irrational – what do you think causes the worries to continue after you say to yourself “there’s only a 0.00001% chance of this happening”?
or is it more like you’re just in the part now where you’re trying to retrain your mind
Cole Feldman:
That’s the question!
It’s like my mind isn’t obeying the rationality
But I think what it is is the magnitude of the worst case scenario
You know, kinda like expected value
Except more like expected doom
Even if there’s a low chance
The possibility is SO bad that even the slightest chance is worrisome
Lake Heckaman:
yeah i get that
i think everyone struggles with this to some degree  – i def used to way more than i do now
and still actively do esp related to work stuff sometimes
so i guess a better question is
what are you gonna do to try to change the way your mind is working?
Cole Feldman:
Mainly meditating
These worries are thoughts
When I meditate, I see my thoughts, but don’t engage them
I’ve been spending 10-15 minutes nightly
I can increase that
Lake Heckaman:
if i can make a suggestion
i think you also need to learn how to engage them in a constructive way
simple engagement is not me easily enough
easier said than done but i think important 
Cole Feldman:
Hmm, I think you’re right
Maybe I’m trying to avoid them too much
Do you have any suggestions for engagement methods?
Lake Heckaman:
something that i do a lot when it comes to non-fatal worries is when reflecting to almost assume/believe the event actually did happen
and think of the world as it would be then / what i would actually practically have to do in that scenario
for me, that does 2 things
1. most of the time i realize the actual impact of an event would be lower than my first instinct (eg what happens if i get fired tomorrow)
2. establish a clear plan for just in case which for me just eases my worry since i know what i’ll have to do. even if that thing is unpleasant
i’ve also been increasingly a fan of trying intently to put actual probability on things and then instead of worrying about the worst possible thing, force myself to first worry only about the most likely worst case – whcih also let’s me plan and feel more at east
ease
there’s a different class of worry that i would say is more existential dread (what if my family dies tomorrow or i die today or i never see my gf again) that the above doesn’t really work for – those are harder but at least for me, grounding in probability theory and really internalizing “okay if this is just as likely to happen as getting struck by lightning in the next minute, and i’m not scared of that, then…”
Cole Feldman:
I think this makes a lot of sense: trying to put actual probability on things and then instead of worrying about the worst possible thing, force myself to first worry only about the most likely worst case
And makes me realize how irrational I am
I definitely worry about things that are .0000001% and there are probably things that are like .01% and way more likely that I’m not even considering or actively working on preventing
What exactly would you say makes the existential dread class different? Just because they’re way worse outcomes?
And it seems like your answer to the existential dread ones is also probability?
Again, I think this logic makes a lot of sense: “okay if this is just as likely to happen as getting struck by lightning in the next minute, and i’m not scared of that, then…”
Lake Heckaman:
yeah the general logic is the same, the difference is just in how you frame it
since you can not really imagine how to act ina world i’m which ur dead
all comes down to accurately assessing the probability or at least making an attempt to
https://ift.tt/2WH3Bqw
not 1:1 on this issue but it drives the point home
Cole Feldman:
Sweet, I’ll read that article later
Thanks for helping me talk through this
How’s it going with trying not to work so much?
Made any dope art lately?
Lake Heckaman:
i am always happy to talk
esp on things like this
honestly i’m working a ton
https://ift.tt/2WH3Bqw

I couldn’t save even one

A flock of leaves
Blew off the tree
In a breeze
One fell
Within arm’s reach 
I reached out
And tried to catch it 
But missed 
>>>
A flock of leaves
Flew from the tree
In a breeze 
Well, they fell
More than
They flew
So a “flock”
Might have been
A misnomer 
>>>
Unless the leaves
Really did
Fly east
For the winter 

October 05, 2021 at 02:21PM

If being together is more comfortable, why might one choose to be alone? Part 3 of a serial essay about solitude

If being together is more comfortable, why might one choose to be alone? Part 3 in a serial essay about solitude
In a relationship with another human being, do you together become more like the grander society? In the context of all human beings, can one become a more unique human being by remaining alone? The more humans one relates with the more they become like the average of all humans. 
But I don’t think it has to be this way. You can still be unique with a partner. 
Here, I find my ego again. Define ego. I don’t want to get deeper in a relationship with a partner because I fear losing my ego. 
I am reminded of an advertisement I saw on a pouch of loose-leaf tea, “Be in harmony with the flow of life.”
I am holding on too tight to my ego. I am resisting, as my girlfriend said. I am holding on to my ego because I want to be somebody. I want to make something of myself. Because I want to be loved. I don’t know why exactly. 
This seems like a waste of energy. If I just woke up each morning and went with the flow of life, I would have more energy. 
>>>

The more time you spend alone, the more alone you become: Part 2 of a serial essay about solitude

The more time you spend alone, the more alone you become
You have thoughts that form into memories, feelings that develop into fears and ambitions.
The longer you watch your biopic alone, the more alone you become.
You are never yourself; you are never alone
You remain yourself when you’re alone. But then again, you are never yourself. Even if you are not with another person, you are with the chair you sit in, with the wallpaper you see on the wall, with the wind whistling through the branches outside the window. We are always in relationship with everything around us. And our relationships change us. We cannot be alone because we were never alone in the first place. 
Our idea of solitude is the result of a narrow, human-centric worldview. We think we are alone when we are not with other humans. This is more than just a human world. 
But fellow humans have a different kind of effect on us than a chair or wallpaper, or even than plants or animals. Other humans have knowledge and opinions. They can talk and sing and be beautiful. 

It was 80 and sunny in Shawnee today

The smell of asphalt on a hot day reminds me of recess. We played kickball in the parking lot. Dirt from the ball combined with sweat to fill the wrinkles in my hand with little lines of mud, like mountain ridges on a topographical map. I wiped them on my white polo shirt. My mom always wondered how it got so dirty. 
Like rivers on a map

Sunny side

At three in the afternoon, the sidewalk on the east side of Johnson Drive was in the shade of the trees, so I stopped, looked both ways for cars, and then crossed the road to walk on the side that was still in the sun. 

Can something be beautiful just because it is?

Me:
I do think we could have a deeper philosophical discussion on each of our theories about this: “A moment in time is beautiful because what it can tell us, not just because it happens to happen.” Probably gets way too deep, but I think, to some extent, I believe that things are beautiful just because they happen.

Hannah:

My brother is that way, as far as things being beautiful because they happen. It’s part of his faith as a rabbi- to see and take note of the small things in life is a mitzvah, a religious moment owed to his God. I totally understand that view, and actually if you wanted to lean into it a little more I’d say just dive in on the description. If it’s beautiful because it Is, show us what it Is, give us the grains of dirt and sunstreaks that make it itself.

>>>
Second, in a note from an editor regarding a recent collection of poetry, the editor wrote something like this (paraphrasing): happenings are beautiful because of what they can tell us, not just because they happen.

I have been mulling over it and I’m still not sure I agree with her. Might things be beautiful just because they happen? As humans, we want to have things our way. We want cars so we can travel fast and far on roads. We want tall buildings so that we can cram more people into cities. We want our lives to mean something. And we want our art to mean something too.

Why is all the most popular art focused on the same handful of themes? Love, violence, success, failure. Is there a place in human art for a backyard to just be a backyard without personifying it? Without analogizing it to the ecstasies and miseries to which we are accustomed because we are human?

Debate tournament

I judged a debate tournament today 
I don’t wanna miss it. 
You don’t to miss prom, but homecoming is whatever. 
There’s gonna be so many people there though. 
I’m just gonna go home and play video games. I don’t wanna risk being around that much coronavirus.”

Untitled

I was doing leg raises, hanging from the crossbar above the dugout on the first-base side. A little boy and his mom came in through the third-base side. She sat down on the bench in the dugout over there and opened a book. He came running across the infield and hopped up on the chain-link fence next to me. He climbed up until his feet were higher than twice his own height, then he plopped down and, without pause, squatted and started digging in the dirt with his fingers, as if that were the very next idea that popped into his mind

Talking to my little cousin

My little cousin wouldn’t finish her dinner. She had barely taken one bite of her burrito, which was really just a tortilla with a sprinkling of cheese and a speck of ground beef. She sat there and grumbled until everyone else had finished their food, got their desserts, finished their desserts, and all left the table. It was just me and her left at the table.
She wanted dessert (apple strudels, cherry turnovers, and vanilla bean ice cream), but she could only have dessert if she “cleaned her plate,” and she knew that. So she started nibbling, at first. Then she took big bites with her eyes closed, munching fast to get it over with.
Her dad (my uncle) came back into the dining room to see if she had finished. He said to me, “She’s skinnier than her little brother.” I asked her, “Do you like being skinny?” She put her tongue in her cheek and cocked her head up and to the side and thought about it. Then she said, “Yea, because what if someone has to fit in a small space, like if we want something and it went behind a wall and there was only a small hole to get through then nobody would be able to get through and get it, but I could. Or if there was a little doggy door. Nobody else could crawl through it. But I could.”

Which eye

I was listening to him just fine, until I realized I was looking at his left eye. It was blue, encased behind the one lens of his glasses, staring straight at me. I thought to myself, Can he tell I’m just looking at his one eye. So I switched and started looking at his right eye—also blue, also encased behind glass. Well this isn’t any better. Where am I supposed to look? Where was I looking before, when I was listening to him just fine. I was so worried about where I was looking, I wasn’t paying as much attention to what he was saying. So my cues were getting off. I started laughing, nodding, smiling, shrugging at the wrong moments. I kept searching all over his face for a place to unconsciously rest my eyes so that I could focus on what he was saying. Eventually, I must have found somewhere. Because I stopped thinking about it, and just listened.

Grandpa talking about his sister

“There’s this book 1776 by David Mcullough,” my grandpa was telling me. “You really should read it. I would give you my copy, but I already gave it to my sister. She ain’t gonna read it though. She’s a meathead. That’s what we used to call her, meathead.”
My mom chimed in, “Well, then what did they used to call you, Dad?”
“Bobby. They would call me Bobby.” We all laughed. My grandpa’s name is Bob.
“Anyways,” Grandpa would always say this word to continue his story. “Anyways, she was a flower child.”
“She brought this one guy to Thanksgiving one year. He was wearing a military jacket down to his ankles and a beard down to his belt. He wouldn’t eat the turkey. He said he was vegetarian. But he was putting gravy on his potatoes. So I said, then don’t eat any of that gravy either. That’s got turkey in it too.”
“She dated another guy who drove an eighteen-wheeler. He would park it outside the house. One day, I think he even drove the kids to school in it.”
“She was so far to the left she was going to fall off the earth.”

Good thing it was the butter

My mom was baking banana bread earlier today. She already had four overripe bananas set out on a plate on the counter. Then she went over to the fridge, opened the door, and got out a stick of butter in one hand and two eggs in the other. On her way back to the counter, she dropped the butter. It thudded on the hardwood floor. She bent down, picked it back up, and examined it. One corner was smashed in. Other than that, it was fine, still usable.
Alternate titles:
Better that it was the butter
Good thing it was the butter
Better than the eggs

At Swarner Park on a Thursday

In the park at two in the afternoon on a Thursday, it was just me, the landscaping crew, and some birds circling overhead. The birds looked like seagulls, but I knew they couldn’t be, because where was the sea? The only body of water in the park was a pond smaller than a parking lot. 
I was walking on the paved pathway. One of the riding mowers was coming my way, mowing the grass along the edge of the path. The guy driving, shut off the blades and swerved wide into the field, in order to avoid throwing up grass clippings in my face. I waved and nodded at him in thanks. He nodded back but didn’t wave. He had his hands on the levers. 

Wow

When I go to the park, I usually walk clockwise around the trail. Today, I walked counterclockwise. Wow, what a thrill.

The lassoed bull

She thought she was the one who had finally lassoed the bull, but she was really just the one who was there at the end. Before her, he needed a harem, and would settle for nothing less. But he became tired of their jealousy, realized it would be easier to have just one. The society was organized such that it would be more simple and easy if he was just with one. He realized this over time. And his potency had diminished over time. He didn’t need a harem anymore. He couldn’t go round after round. He could only go run one round per week. And by then it just made sense to have only one.

Coin-op laundromat on California Street

At the coin-op laundromat across the street from our apartment on California, the machines didn’t always work. So after I had all our clothes loaded in, the door shut and handle twisted, all 29 quarters pushed through the slot, and the START button pressed, then I would take one step back, cross my arms, put my chin on my chest, and wait, looking through the circular, silver-rimmed glass door, checking for three things. First, for the clothes to start spinning. Then, for water to cascade down the glass. Finally, for their to be suds in the water. I added the last step after I forgot to put soap in the machine one time. That was my own fault, had nothing to do with the machine not working. 

Note

Sometimes, when I’m feeling good, I throw my arms up in there air, like I’m forming the ‘Y’ in the ‘YMCA’ dance. I did it today when I was walking down the hill on the sidewalk that runs along Johnson Drive. It was ninety degrees and the sun was shining and I had my shirt off. I had also just realized, as I passed by the Johnson County Library, that it was within walking distance from our house, if I ever wanted to put my laptop and some books in a backpack and bike over and work there for the day. 

Killing squirrels runs in the family

My dad shoots squirrels in our backyard with a .22-caliber pellet rifle. At first, my mom agreed with me, that we shouldn’t kill other living creatures just for sport. But then the squirrels started tearing up her flowers, and that was enough to change her opinion. Today, my sister got home from school while my mom and I were baking oatmeal raisin cookies. We heard the garage door open and saw her car parked in the driveway, but she didn’t come up the stairs. My mom asked, “What’s she doing?” I went out and looked through the glass door to the deck and saw a sixteen-year-old girl with pigtails, still wearing her school uniform (plaid skirt and burgundy polo), carrying a shovel with a dead squirrel on it to toss it over the back fence. I told my mom what she was doing. She said, “Well, she is her father’s daughter.” When she came up the stairs, I asked her, “How many did you get?” She said, “Two. I hit another one, but he kept running.”

Cool mom

Pulled into the pickup lane at the Christian middle school, driving a black SUV with the driver side window rolled down, singing, “The hippies on the bus go puff, puff, puff … puff, puff, puff.” Every time she said the word puff she leaned her head to either sad in a little dance. The mess of blonde hair tied on top of her head fell to either side. She was wearing a tie-dye shirt too. I couldn’t believe it. Maybe in San Francisco. But here, in Kansas? She looked young too. Maybe she was late-twenties, early-thirties.  I thought to myself, there’s no way this woman is about to pick up her kids from this Christian school. Then again, maybe she wasn’t a mom. Maybe she was an older sister.

Imaginary friend

I thought the dog was lying next to me, while I was working at the desk in the basement. I could see his furry body out of the corner of my eye, curled up on the carpet. I went on typing and felt comforted by his presence. I had my headphones on, but I didn’t have to worry about being caught off guard because I knew he would jump up and bark if anyone came down the stairs. I finished a paragraph and knelt down to crawl over and scratch his belly. As I extended my hand, I realized it was only his toy stuffed squirrel lying next to me on the carpet the whole time—comforting me, protecting me.

That had been his nickname for her

She watched him on the televisions screen, dressed in a tuxedo, looking older than she remembered, more gray in his beard, but still the same sincere smile. He accepted the award and gave a speech that she knew was written for him, because it was chocked full of the type of platitudinal statements that he despised.
After the ceremony, a reporter caught him walking out to his limo. She leaned against the bodyguard’s forearm and asked him, “Sean, congratulations! Is there anything you want to say to the people watching at home?” He walked past the reporter, but then turned around as if he had just thought of something. He looked straight into the camera lens and said, “I still love you, little goose.”
She dropped her glass.

Ah man, now we can’t play no more

When we were young we used to play all the ball games at our cul-de-sac, baseball, basketball, kickball. Along the curb of the cul-de-sac was a rain gutter. We would play until the ball would roll into that gutter and then if we didn’t have a back-up ball we were done playing for the day and we had to wait for our dad to get home. We would wait to see his pick up truck pulling in the driveway and then we would go out in the garage and tell him and he would get a crowbar out of his toolbox and walk over to the top of the gutter and loop it under the handle of the big heavy metal sewer cover. Then one of us would have to go down the ladder into the bottom of the sewer to get the ball. It was real scary down there, just a concrete shaft going about 10 feet down. Then at the bottom of the shaft, there was a hole about one or 2 feet wide where the water flowed through. One time I looked down the hole and it was just black. I could see no end and I imagined having to crawl all the way through it and shuddered. Then I would climb back up the ladder with the ball and my dad would move the big heavy cover back into place until it would fall with a heavy clink into its circular place.

My first accepted script

The editor-in-chief turned over the first page and creased the stapled corner—that was a good sign.
“Who’s this character?”
“He’s my dad.”
“Can you write more about him?”
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean you can’t?”
“He’s dead.”
“Well bring him back to life!”
I stood there, shocked. Even for Waterbee, that was a calloused comment.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” He didn’t skip a beat. “Go, write, we have an open slot to fill next week.”
I turned around and was halfway out the door when Mr. Waterbee said, “Oh yea, and Jefferson … “
“Yes, sir?”
“Can you tell Jones to come in here? I’m going to tell him you’re moving into his office.”

In the park again

With my hand shoulder width apart on the crossbar of the soccer goal I pull myself up and tell my chain is above the bar and then let myself slowly back down. On the way up, there is a brief moment of shade from the sun as my eyes are parallel with the bar. The oak tree to the left of the goal cast a shadow three times a tight across the field small soccer fields are painted out with white lines in the grass the yellow blue orange and red corner flags blow languidly in the barely perceptible win father off players practice on the baseball diamond. One player runs out into the outfield wearing a black cap and a red shirt picked up the ball turns and throws it back to the infield.

What else, when you have it all

“I didn’t mind the poverty, but now the money has come, and I don’t mind it either,” he said, seeming not uncomfortable in his smoking jacket, a cigar stuck between the fingers of his hand resting on the white tablecloth. 
“What about your music?” the interviewer asked. “Has your composing changed at all since you’ve started to receive recognition?” 
The composer exhaled a cloud of smoke and, veiled behind it, looked down as a lock of his perfectly combed hair fell over his forehead. His hand was shaking as he raised it to smooth the deserter back into uniformity. 
“Ah, yes, the music is going well. I have much more time now, so I can sit in my study undisturbed and work.”
“It has been almost two years now since your last symphony. Are you working on anything new currently?”
“Would you like a drink, my friend?” He raised his hand and signaled for the waiter.  

Whaaaaa

The fan rotates side to side automatically as its blades spin and circulate fresh evening air coming in through the open window. My mom said I have to be careful with the window open because spiders will come inside this time of year. When the fan gets to the power of its rotation when it faces me seated on my meditation cushion, my shirt blows like a sail on a ship. I alternate between focusing on my own breath and the breath of the blades blowing. It’s almost midnight. It’s dark in the basement. The door to my room is open. But I’m less afraid than I’ve been before. For one, I double-checked that all the doors in the house are locked. For two, if I only focus on my breath it’s impossible to think of any scary thoughts.

Lavender oil

The world flipped upside down and the drop of lavender oil almost fat enough to fall  got sucked back into the bottle while everything else came crashing down. 

Many me

In the reflective dial on the washing machine, I see my face, as I reach down to open the drawer and take out the plastic box of floss. 
While flossing, I look closer at the dial. There are two of me, one in the mirror in the dial, and another just in the dial (not in the mirror, but between the mirror and the surface of the dial). 
I look back at the mirror. The dial is in the mirror too. And there are two of me, one in the dial in the mirror, and another just in the mirror (not in the dial, but between the dial and the surface of the mirror). 
I notice the lever on the toilet is also reflective, but I look away before I can meet another one of me.  
Only one of me can walk out of this bathroom.  

Fifteen minutes of fame

There’s no ending yet, but there might be one later, so keep writing, beginning and seemingly endless middle. Because the rosy good-ending glasses through which you’ll look back down at the muddy valley through which you crawled up to the peak will cut out whatever doesn’t fit within your allotted time to speak on the late night talk show when the host asks, “So how’d you do it?” Everyone’s at home watching and the producer won’t let you give the honest answer, “You just had to be there.”

Then you will see clearly to remove the speck

She is on her second glass of wine, maybe her third. The empty bottle is on the counter. I don’t know if the bottle was full when she started. Or if someone else had a glass. The doctor has told her not to have any alcohol. I wonder why she won’t listen. People are set in their ways, I suppose. 
I pull the heat pack out of the microwave and walk over to the couch to lie with it underneath my back. Looking up at the ceiling, I see it—the beam in my own eye. I laugh to myself. The doctor has told me not to work so much. I stood up at my desk and worked all night tonight. I am set in my ways, I suppose. 

Note

I drank tea with valerian root before bed. That must have been what stimulated the dreams. I was telling my friends about an experience I’d had earlier in my life. I told them, honestly, I could not remember whether it had actually happened or if it was just a dream. Now that I am awake, thinking about it, I am sure that it was a dream, an older dream to which I was referring in this more recent dream. I’ve heard that we cannot always distinguish our dreams from our lived experiences. After ample time, they are all vague memories, just the same. This dream, the older one, I had not once recalled in my waking life until now, as I recall it only because it was first recalled by my dream self. 

Untitled

I had a page pulled out of the newspaper with a column that I liked. After positioning it on the wall and making sure it was square with the top of my desk, I started pushing a thumbtack through the top right corner. It went through the pages with ease, but when the pin met the wall its progress halted. Maybe it’s a stud, I thought to myself. So I pressed harder, all the blood rushing from my thumbnail turning white, the plastic head of the tack digging in to the skin of my thumbprint, the joint of my thumb bending back to the point of hyperextension.
And it still wouldn’t go in. But if I stop now and take my thumb off the tack, I thought to myself, then the pages will fall off the wall and I’ll have to go through positioning them again. I couldn’t give up. I was resolved. I had to press on. Even if my thumb breaks it will have been for a noble cause, I told myself. So I took a step back, reset my feet, and drove all my strength up from my legs, through my torso and arm, into my little lionhearted thumb.
In that moment, my life had meaning. There was a river bed for all my blood to flow, a singular purpose for my mind to concentrate—a point to all my power.
It didn’t matter who would win. I had brought my sharpened thumbtack to the battlefield and the wall had met me there with its impenetrable shield and we had done battle, fighting for our rights—I, to decorate and domesticate; the wall, to remain native and naked.
I started to sweat. I could feel my thumb joint bending back, about to break. My heel throbbed at the point where it was driven into the carpet, drawing up the force that coursed through my braced body. I took a deep breath, bellowed a battle cry, and lunged forward.
Slumped with my back against the wall, sliding down to sit. I looked at my thumbprint and there was a circular, red-rimmed indentation.
Just as I was about to give up, it went in all at once.

I am that I am

It is difficult for me to answer when people ask me what I’m doing. When they give up on helping me to summarize the ambiguity of my present activities, they start to ask about my future, “Well, do you have a plan moving forward?” I want to say, “Yea, I do. Next Tuesday I’m going frisbee golfing with my friend Jake. Oh, and I’ve got a dentist appointment on Thursday.” Then surely they would roll their eyes and move on to find someone else more sure of themselves. See, they would move right along with their customary questioning if I were to say I’m going to school or I’m an accountant at Joe & Schmo Inc. It would not be acceptable for me to say, “I am that I am.” And if I was feeling really cheeky, I might add, “You are that you are.” But they have no idea. And I have only just begun to realize. And so it is. 

Fall

After I cut all the leaves in the yard to shreds with the mower, I went inside for a drink of water. When I came back out, I saw that new leaves had fallen. They were yellow leaves, which confused me. I looked up in the trees and most of the leaves still on the branches were green. And the leaves previously on the ground, since mulched by the mower, were brown. Whence then did the yellow leaves come? I pondered and thought perhaps the green leaves turn yellow before they fall off. And then they turn brown as they lie on the ground dying. 

Empty

In lanes parallel to the street in the front yard and perpendicular in the back yard, I mowed. Just as I was one lane away from finishing the back yard, the mower sputtered and died. I unscrewed the gas lid and looked inside. There was only soaked sediment in the black and nearly dry bottom of the tank. I walked into the garage and shook each of the red containers on top of the toolbox. I took the one with the most, walked out to the exhausted machine, and gave it a drink. I pulled the cord and a cloud of black smoke billowed from the exhaust. The engine roared with the new life that only a meal and some rest can give. I pressed the blade initiator and pieces of acorn and shreds of leaf shot out in all directions. Then I pressed the clutch and we were off to complete our conquest, beheading every living member of the grass nation. 

Picking up sticks

Picking up sticks in the backyard, I understand my father’s work ethic. It is pleasant to have something to do, especially something that involves being outdoors and is something that you can finish and clearly say, “There, it’s done.”
When we were kids, he would tell us to pick up sticks before he mowed the yard, but we never wanted to. There was always so much else to do. We could be playing with our friends, watching TV, riding our bikes, shooting hoops. Picking up sticks wasn’t fun. We only did it begrudgingly out of obedience. Even then, we did the bare minimum to pass Dad’s inspection (which we often failed).
Now, it’s all work. What’s fun is productive, useful. So I can either sit inside and work on my laptop or go outside and pick up sticks. Picking up sticks is less complicated. And I get to be outside, soaking up some sun and stretching my sore back.

What if

I don’t want her to be pregnant. I’m not ready to have a kid. But if it turned out that she was, then maybe it would be a sign—that I shouldn’t have left. Otherwise, I won’t hear from her. She’ll go on with her life and I’ll go on with mine. We’re both too stubborn to be the one to reach back out, to wordlessly admit that we need each other more than either of us are vulnerable enough to admit. She would be a good mom. I’m almost ready to be a dad, maybe. Before I left, I didn’t think that I was. Now that I’m gone and I’ve been thinking of only the best parts of our time together, I feel like we could do anything together.

Writing fiction

While I stand in the park, I start to understand fiction, I think. The fountain splashes into the unseen pond over the hill, the cicadas in the trees ceaselessly sing, the coach shouts “Go!” to the group of kids practicing soccer. I watch and listen as each of these stories remain boring. I need for 
One of the walker’s would let their dog go down to drink from the pond, and then an alligator would burst from the surface and eat the dog. 
Or the cicadas would stop singing in fear, and a moment of silence would ensure just before a tyrannosaurus red breaks through the trees. 
Or the soccer coach would say something cruel to one of the kids and that kid’s dad would jump up out of his lawn chair and punch the coach in the face. 
Perhaps none of these stories are believable. 
Perhaps there is a climax here. I just can’t find it. 
So how long do I wait before I start making stuff up? 

Washington hiking voice memos 09/15/21

On the trail, my granola bar slapping, plastic crunching, in my pocket. Branches and leaves hanging over the trail, reaching out to touch my shins. One longer step over areek, crisscrossing the trail. Fallen pine cones, tumbled rocks, broken twigs on the trail. Steps made of logs Up and up in elevation, steep. Cobwebs, stuck to my arms and legs. Like this trail hasn’t been walked in a while. Breathing heavy between words, holding my phone and speaking to it. Trunks cut in half by the rangers. Some broken up, crumbled, their red, woody innards spilling out.
Part 1:
The meditation of the trail. Step, step, step, step.Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch. Fallen pine needles. Exposed rocks and roots. Dusty shadows of trunks. Boughs, branches, leaves above, shaking only slightly. The roar of the river far away. The wind and the leaves rustling. The footprints of those still ahead. Stepping straight forward, for the most part. No decisions necessary, except for step, step, step. Left, right, left. The water in the bottle in my left hand, sloshing. The sound of the sand shifting beneath my shoes, making footprints of my own. Meditation made easy by the singularity of the path, only one direction to go—forward and up. Step, step, step is the only decision. Stopping only when a chipmunk in the trail found some food, picked up the food in its paws, and hopped up the rocks beside the trail to sit back on its haunches and munch.
Part 2:

It’s more sustainable to do what you love and to be yourself. If you do something that you don’t love, or that you don’t identify with, you might be able to get along doing it for a while, to make money, to impress somebody, or to survive. But eventually, you’ll get tired of it. Because what you actually love will be calling you and your true identity will be pulling you away.
The energy it takes to resist these other callings will take away from the energy that you can put in to what you’re pretending to love or who you’re pretending to be. Whereas when you do what you love or be yourself, though it might not be lucrative, successful, or impressive in the beginning, you at least don’t have to worry about carrying on because you are doing the most natural thing—pursuing your passions, being who you are, which is just as natural as eating when you are hungry or drinking when you’re thirsty. You will always eat so long as you live. You will always drink too.
Then, eventually, success will be inevitable. I don’t know if I can explain why success is inevitable.
I just believe it. Maybe it’s just a principle of business, of marketing. Maybe because of consistency. You build up your brand. You work your way into a niche. And people have enough time to realize who you are and what you’re about and what you create. And they can tell your friends about it. And it just takes time.
Or maybe it’s because other people are attracted to those who are themselves. I once listened to a Bukowski interview in which he talked about why people love horror films and documentaries about serial killers because those people do whatever they want, even if it’s against the law or immoral. People have a desire in themselves to be like that, to do whatever they want. Deep down they resent that they have to obey, they have to fit in line, they have to follow the rules.
Part 3:
The roots weaving, exposed, across the surface of the trail. Worn smooth, like leather. Gnarled, twisting, covered in dust.
Part 4:

Where human feet flayed back the soil, exposing veiny roots. Some broken, maybe kicked and cracked. Others reach above with space between themselves and the trail, and then dive back down into the dirt. Next to a large tree, many extend out, like many fingers, reaching down this trail. Grasping, crawling towards the river, parched. I wonder what messages they send through the system to the deeper roots,
submerged—dank, dark, hydrated. These roots exposed on the trail are on the front lines, doing the dirty work in a foreign land, keeping the pipe open, protecting the flow of water.

Suicidal grasshopper

I happened to look where I was about to put my foot down just in time to see there was a grasshopper in the shadow of my imminent step. I recognized its hind legs, bent into the trademark triangles of its kind. It waited, poised to live up to its name, until right before
Pavement hopper
Grasshopper
Evaded
Centimeters away
… from m,making his way to a new life
He could be a man, he could be a blade of grass, but he would be different.

In the morning in the basement back home

My brother took the workout bench to college with him. He took the thirty-five-pound dumbbells too. Those were the heaviest we had in the set, but they still weren’t heavy enough for bench press. He took the desk and the mattress from the bedroom too. There are wide open spaces on the carpet where they used to be. 
Hanging on the walls are pictures of us when we were kids, standing up in frames on the counter shelves. In the corner, thousands more photos are boxed, labeled with our names, and organized on shelves.
The other three boys won’t be home until the holidays. It’s just me, my sister, mom, and dad at home. 

A large two-foot-diameter clock ticks, ticks, ticks but you can’t tell the hands are moving because there’s no second hand, only a minute and an hour hand. 

The basement is dark. The only light comes through a window smaller than the clock. Leaves blow on the trees in the backyard. 

In the morning in the basement back home

My brother took the workout bench to college with him. He took the thirty-five-pound dumbbells too. Those were the heaviest we had in the set, but they still weren’t heavy enough for bench press. He took the desk and the mattress from the bedroom too. There are wide open spaces on the carpet where they used to be. 
Hanging on the walls are pictures of us when we were kids, standing up in frames on the counter shelves. In the corner, thousands more photos are boxed, labeled with our names, and organized on shelves.
The other three boys won’t be home until the holidays. It’s just me, my sister, mom, and dad at home. 

A large two-foot-diameter clock ticks, ticks, ticks but you can’t tell the hands are moving because there’s no second hand, only a minute and an hour hand. 

The basement is dark. The only light comes through a window smaller than the clock. Leaves blow on the trees in the backyard. 

In the morning in the basement back home

My brother took the workout bench to college with him. He took the thirty-five-pound dumbbells too. Those were the heaviest we had in the set, but they still weren’t heavy enough for bench press. He took the desk and the mattress from the bedroom too. There are wide open spaces on the carpet where they used to be. 
Hanging on the walls are pictures of us when we were kids, standing up in frames on the counter shelves. In the corner, thousands more photos are boxed, labeled with our names, and organized on shelves.
The other three boys won’t be home until the holidays. It’s just me, my sister, mom, and dad at home. 

A large two-foot-diameter clock ticks, ticks, ticks but you can’t tell the hands are moving because there’s no second hand, only a minute and an hour hand. 

The basement is dark. The only light comes through a window smaller than the clock. Leaves blow on the trees in the backyard. 

Locking eyes

Standing with everyone else, waiting to board our flight to Kansas City, I caught her looking at me. In that moment, I could have either looked away or held her gaze. I chose to hold, and so did she. With our eyes locked, we had our moment. I was the first to look away. I turned and resumed my pacing back and forth. Unintentionally, I looked back. I don’t know what I would have done if our eyes locked again. But she wasn’t looking at me. She had her arms crossed, staring forward. I think she was miffed with me for looking away. Blonde, pretty, and sure of herself, she must have been used to being the first to look away. 

Holy man on the plane to Salt Lake City

While I was waiting in the aisle, I looked to my right and saw him in a middle seat. Even without the white woven cap on his shaved head, the unpretentious reading glasses, the long, grey, scraggly beard, and the white robes hemmed with ornate gold lace, I could have still told you that he was holy, by the way he had his arms crossed and folded up under his armpits, his eyes closed, his head nodding slightly forward. He was not sleeping. He couldn’t have held that posture if he was. While everyone else watched their screens, tapped on them, listened to their headphones, he sat there in silence and prayed for us all. 

Note

When we were going steady, I wanted something new. Now that we’ve just broken up and I’m in a car on the way to the airport, a box full of all my stuff in the trunk—now I just want one of our normal days. Whoever woke up first would make two mugs of hot lemon water and then roll out the yoga mat for morning stretches and leave the mat out for the other, sleeping in. 
We would each have our alone time in the mornings, typing on our laptops, sipping lemon water. Sometime before noon, one of us would get bored and go

The day I left

“It’s time to say goodbye,” I said. 
She pushed out her chair from the dining room table and stood up. I walked over and hugged her. 
I held her against me, her cheek bone resting against my chest, the top of her head fitting perfectly under my chin. I raised my hand from her back and held her head in a more gentle, caring embrace. 
“You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Thank you … so much … for everything. You are beautiful. You are smart. You are kind.”
I didn’t expect to cry, but I suppose you can’t really say words like that and really mean them when you’re leaving your lover and not cry. 
With one tear on my cheek, I said, “I love you.” 
Then, “Can I have one last kiss?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t want to make it more difficult than it already is.”
I hugged her and held her, more softly, more tenderly than my customary tight and constrictive embraces. 
I dropped my arms and turned around to pick up my box. She followed me to the door. I opened it and she held it open behind me. 
“Bye, Cole,” she said. 
When she used my first name it shot like an arrow through my heart. She never called me by my first name. She always called me “babe.” 
“Bye,” I said, with as much care and love and gratitude and solemn regret as I could fit into that one word. 
She closed the door behind me. I don’t even remember stepping down the stairs.

When I got out by the curb and set my box by my feet, I looked down and noticed one of her dark curly hairs was wrapped around my fingers. I saw the last part of her holding on to me and I wanted to turn around and march right back up the stairs and set my box down and stay. 

But I walked over to the car. The driver opened the trunk. I picked my box up and put it in, walked around, opened the door, got in, and we drove away. 

A portrait of the artist as a young girl in the park

She looked to be sixteen or seventeen. I couldn’t tell because she exhibited the typical unsure-of-themselves behavior of a kid out on her own. Her hair looked like she hadn’t learned the tricks that older women know to make it pretty. Her body was also smaller like she hadn’t finished growing. She wore a black crop-top, black jeans, and white sneakers. And here’s what I didn’t get: she sat on the asphalt walkway and leaned against the chain-link fence. Why not in the grass like everyone else? Surely the asphalt and the fence were less comfortable. But perhaps she was aware of the aesthetic. She knew her black outfit would look better in contrast with the grey than the green, the industrial feel of the metal fence would complement the dirt on her sneakers, and the sketchbook she pulled out of her backpack would cohere all the elements into the image of a young artist already aware that discomfort is sufferable for good art. 

An afternoon at Alta Plaza Park in San Francisco

When we got to the park, there were still splotches of shade in the grass, shaped by the cirrus clouds, stretching languidly like man’s hand to reach God in the Da Vinci. We laid out our blankets on the other side of the park, where less dogs were unleashed, and we could see the skyline and watch the tennis players. First, we leaned up on our elbows, cracked our cans of carbonated water, and drank those until they were gone. She asked, “What do you want to do for dinner tonight? I started to answer, but then she interrupted, “No, wait, nevermind. It’s too early to think about dinner.” Then I tried to read, but the clouds had already given up on reaching the heavens, fallen down into the bosom of Twin Peaks. So the sun was shining through too bright to keep my eyes open looking at the page. I rolled up my jacket for a pillow, laid back, and closed my eyes. I could hear whop … bounce, whop … bounce, whop until there was a bounce and then a “dang it” instead of a whop. I don’t know how long I listened to the back-and-forth of the tennis ball before I fell asleep. I woke up long enough to realize I was too hot, almost sweating. I leaned up, pulled my shirt over my head, and rolled over to lie on my stomach. When I woke up again, she was asleep too, covering her face with her arm. The tennis players had changed. A blue-hatted young girl was throwing an orange frisbee to her black-and-white dog. The children were squealing on the jungle gym. Three adult women were sitting in the grass near us, talking about their jobs and their vacations and other people and their jobs and their vacations. 

In preparation for death

Pains in the left side of my chest make me realize how unprepared I am to die. Could it be my heart? Because I worked too hard? Or the cholesterol from eating four eggs every morning for the past month? Everything I’m working on suddenly seems pointless. Why continue working if I’m going to die soon? 
Well, what did I think? That I was going to live forever? As a kid, I remember being afraid of death. I would lie awake alone in bed and think about it. But it was only an abstract concept then. These pains in my chest feel real. 
I scheduled a doctor’s appointment for next week. Maybe they’ll tell me I’m alright. But what if I still feel the pains? Maybe they’ll tell me it really is something, but nothing serious. I’ll take a pill and go back to being young and alive. Or maybe it really will be something like heart disease. I try to imagine what it would be like for the doctor to tell me that. I guess I’m already thinking of it now so maybe I won’t be so surprised. I try not to think about it because I worry that somehow I’ll think it into existence, but I feel the pains and then my mind starts and I eventually get to thinking about terminal disease and death. 
But it will happen sooner or later. I might as well learn how to deal with it now. That way, even if the doctor does tell me it’s benign, then I’ll have the training for when something is inevitable malignant. 
I’ve done a lot of living and learned about all sorts of things but I know nothing about dying. I’ve lived as much as I can without knowing about death. If I learn about death and face it honestly then maybe we can shake hands and have an agreement and then I’ll be able to live without having to worry about when it might sneak up. When it comes, I’ll know it. We’ll both honor our agreement and that will be that. 

The final hour

The first five left in one car earlier this morning. I went for a walk in the rain on the gravel trail and can back to find the last three, lounging on the couch in the living room. The kitchen counter cleaned and all our remaining food in one pile. Quiet and waiting for the hour to pass, and then load up in the second car and drive to the airport. The house wasn’t this quiet all week. Maybe at night, but even then it was still loud with the presence of breathing, all of us being together. More than half of us gone now, the magic let out of the door when they opened to leave like air out of a balloon. There are five more beers on the counter. We’ll leave them for the next guests. 

Conversation with Braxton

Braxton said, “You gotta write before we leave.”
I said, “I can write at the airport.”
“Really? Isn’t it distracting?”
“No, airports are inspiring. And when I’m on the plane, I keep my WiFi off to get away from everything.”
“Really? I turn my WiFi on to keep me grounded.”

Untitled

It was as early as the fifth grade when I became aware of other people’s preferences for my behavior and my appearance.
There is no being right or wrong, when it comes to art; there is only being loved or not.

If I ever leave

I kiss her, I love her. I mean it, I do. I wonder how much I’ll miss her. I’ll deserve it if it’s a lot. I’m used to having enough but wanting more, working hard, and getting it. With this, it’s not wanting more that’s the work. Now that I’m about to leave, I don’t want to. But I can’t forget that when I wasn’t going to leave, before I told her, I thought it was the right thing to do. I love her too much to think. I still try, and the thoughts come, but they change like the seasons. The sun shines; it rains, snows; and the leaves fall—all in an afternoon. But I’ve always loved her, since I told her for the first time. Even when I leave, if I ever do, I’ll still love her. 

Nap all day

After our 10-mile hike, we were all exhausted. At four in the afternoon the next day, Jack was still asleep on the couch. 
“I need to do something,” he groaned, shrugging off the blanket, standing up from the couch, stretching. 
“What’s something?” River asked him. 
“I don’t know,” Jack signed, sitting back down on the couch, reclining, pulling the blanket back over himself and closing his eyes. 

Boogie towel

The white towel
Hanging 
From the oven handle 
Shimmies
Its shoulders 
Dancing 
With an unseen draft 

September 16, 2021 at 06:45AM

My girlfriend isn’t like a city

My girlfriend
Isn’t like a city
If I leave
She might not be there
Waiting 
When I come back 
Title: She might not be there, waiting, when I come back 
During college, I did my summer internships in three different cities: New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. I figured I could experience each city and then move to the one I liked best to start a full-time position after graduation. I chose San Francisco and moved there with a backpack, knowing no one. That was almost five years ago, and now I’m ready to move again. I want to live in a few more places before I choose somewhere to settle down for the long run. I love San Francisco, but I know I can always come back. But what if San Francisco meets somebody else while I’m gone? I love San Francisco, but I also want to live other places. What if I move and live somewhere else and it’s not as good and then I want to move back to San Francisco but by then she’s married to someone else? Part of me says I can’t be afraid. If I want to live other places, I should go. Another part says I’m taking San Francisco for granted and forgetting how great it was in the beginning. When we use to get smoothies on our lunch breaks. When we finally went on our first date to our coworker’s Christmas party. When we opened the windows in the morning and smelled the bakery and I went down to get her a croissant. When we would make french toast on Saturdays. 

Maybe it’s my fault. I’ve been staying home and not getting out and exploring city. 

Splash

It’s hard to think about two things at the same time. As we were talking, Carl and I were stepping from rock to rock along the river bank. I was leading, turning around to ask questions. I asked him if he was planning to get back together with his ex-girlfriend, then I heard a splash.

It’s all good

When he said “it’s all good,” he didn’t really mean that everything is great. What he really meant was that the there was some bad stuff that he would rather not talk about, like, “Yea, my job is tough, but it’s all good.” Or, “When I go to Europe I’ll miss my family, but it’s all good.” 
Maybe he didn’t like talking about his emotions or seeming weak for complaining. Or he just wanted us to think that everything really was great for him. 

But maybe, just maybe, he had it all figured out, having realized that none of it is either good or bad, so you might as well call it all good. 

The song of the four old friends playing cards

I lay up in the loft and tried to sleep but gave up on avoiding listening to the boys downstairs playing euchre and talking about the cities where they each planned to move and just opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling and opened my ears to learn what I could from the words and maybe end up falling asleep to them like a bedtime story and even if not oh well this too shall pass I told myself and a good opportunity to practice letting go of my desire to try to go to bed even though I had nothing to do in the morning and instead meditating on the present listening to the words not only as vehicles of meaning driving from their mouths to my ears with some sort of useful fact in tow but also as interesting in the way that I read in a spiritual book about how when you glance quick at first and see a dog but it’s something before you say in your mind oh that’s a dog it’s the color and the shape which is really just color so it stays raw like it would be if you were seeing for the first time and not even knowing that you could walk up and feel its fur so I lay and listen and try to just hear the noise and furrow my brow and wonder ah what is sound what are these noises laughs exclamations interruptions oohs and ahhs glasses being set down on the table cards being shuffled altogether the art of the opposite of a silent movie a pictureless film the song of the four old friends playing cards in the living room at night. 

Eyes closed in the car on the ride back from Icicle Gorge 09/13/21

In the car in the middle seat between my two buddies from college, I closed my eyes and paid attention. My shirt sleeves whipped against my arms. The wind blowing through the window came constant and then calmed when our speed slowed. The light through the sunroof made epileptsy-inducing, fast, flashy, shape-shifting mosaics on my inner eyelids. Speeding up again the wind somehow got into the back trunk and whirled around back there and then came rushing from behind me against the back of my neck, whooshing around my ears, slapping my cheeks. I opened my eyes right when Braxton was trying to take a funny picture, catching my sleeping. My weight leaned left when the car swerved around a rightward bend and then right around a leftward, swinging our way down the side of the mountain, the river rushing over the rocks down the slide to our right. 

Why write when I can just watch?

While sitting in the car waiting for everyone else to load up so we can drive to the hike, I watch and listen for something to write but a thought that’s been recurring as I’ve periodically done this, especially recently as I’ve had enough free time to just sit around and try to write, is this: why can I not just stop after the watching and the listening? Why must I proceed to the writing? It changed then, when I proceed to write. I’m no long we watching and listening then. I’m thinking of words and playing other lexical games in my head, sometimes even with my eyes closed to concentrate, and sometimes even with ear plugs, closing out the world. If I wouldn’t stop to write, I could just sit and listen and watch and keeping on sitting and listening and watching and that’s all of it, that’s life. But I was raised to work, make something, contribute. Sitting around and doing nothing isn’t enough. Life in America isn’t a spectator sport. Everyone’s got to play. I’ve been getting away from it as much as I can. I gave capitalism an honest try. I looked hard for a reason to want to make money and found it when the bank took our house. And I worked hard through school and studied a marketable skill and got a job, but I was always writing. Some part of me was rebelling against the work. So now I’ve made some money and I can spend my time writing. But it feels like even writing is only a stepping stone and I haven’t completely pulled away from the perpetually-productice. I’m still trying to make use of my time and get something out of it. The watching and listening is really the important part. But maybe the writing is part of it too. It’s all life I guess because we’re living and doing it in our different ways and who’s to say one person is living and another isn’t. All our hearts are beating and we’re breathing and looking around, worrying and striving and then dying a little all the time until finally dying for good and living all the time until that point no matter what we’re doing. My personal problem is I’ve got feelings about it. I’ve got feelings about what I should be doing and occasional little reminders tell me I’m not doing it yet but it feels like I’m making progress and right now I’m thinking if it weren’t for my ego and my desire to make art that people love (and therefore, feel like they love me if they love my art) then I wouldn’t write, then I would just sit around and do nothing and watch and listen. But I’m not there yet. My ego is still within me. And it’s life now like it will still be life when and if I ever get rid of my ego and finally do nothing but maybe I can even float above my life somehow even as it is now and still live it and do it and be myself but not get so worried about what happens and so just be like a character in a movie I’m watching and be interested in the movie and even love or hate the character at times but that being nothing personal just like a story and stories happen to characters and you don’t ever get mad at a story or stay sad after it’s over it’s just a movie and it was a good one or a bad one for whatever reasons that don’t really regress to truths anyway but those people that make up the good and bad are just living their lives too and they aren’t either good or bad themselves because they make up the good or bad, they just are, and it all just is, and one day maybe I’ll just sit and watch and listen to it all be. 

09/12/21 Morning #1 in Leavenworth

We all woke up one by one. I was first. I went out on the deck and sat on top of the hot tub cover and meditated. I thought it might cave in but it seemed sturdy and it’s nicer to meditation sitting up higher so I decided to risk it. River came out and sat at the table, put on his headphones, and opened his laptop; didn’t say a word, which I appreciated. 
Then Nick was next. He sat at the table and wrote in his notebook, looking up occasionally and thinking, before bowing his head again and starting to scratch. I could hear his palm sliding across the page as he was going along from sentence to sentence. I wanted to ask him what he was writing about. I told myself I’d ask him later in the day. I love to read other people’s writing, especially what they’ve written in their journals when they don’t expect anyone else to read it. Eventually everyone was getting up, coming down the stairs; some more bleary-eyed, those who stayed up later and drank more. 
Braxton bowed to me at the foot of the couch where I was lying and reading, mocking my attempts at peace and quiet study in the morning, as it should be I think, but Braxton would joke at a funeral so I never think much of it and just bowed back and go along with him and have fun with it and smile and really marvel that he’s able to come up with so many jokes all the time, an art form in its own right.  
Nick came in to get the coffee pot and asked me if I wanted some and I said I was alright. I drink tea instead. Too much caffeine in coffee. Cameron came down and asked about the coffee but couldn’t find any mugs in the cabinet. River said, “Did you check the dishwasher?” Sure enough, there were all the mugs. 
And one by one they all came, some from the room upstairs, others from the rooms down the hall, and all ended up on the deck drinking their coffee, telling stories—one person getting the stage and everyone else sitting around listening. 

It is what it is

I don’t let it get too bad no more to really need a bounce back so I stay mostly in the middle like a plane running out of fuel sputtering along but never falling completely out of the sky but not soaring too high neither but it’s that big crash all the way down that bounces you back up and sometimes you bounce up even higher than the point you feel from because you’ve got momentum somehow even despite the fact that you’re fighting gravity it’s like the world gets turned upside down once you get depressed enough and it happens right when you crash hard into the ground and you think you oughta just have fallen into your grave and be done with it but nobody was there to dig your grave and so you just hit the hard earth and that’s right when the world turns and all of a sudden you see that you can’t go any lower and it’s only up from there and besides you’ve got reverse- gravity at your back now and you’re soaring up up up but I don’t let it get that bad no more like I said don’t drink too much to get sick don’t stay up to late to be tired in the morning don’t push myself until I break don’t go off on crazy foreign backpacking trips meeting new people and living on ten dollars a day it’s all bed before ten stretches in the morning and then tea at the desk trying to work and keep calm and concentrated maybe I’ve done my falling crashing and bouncing all the way back up and now it’s time for what I’m doing now just as it’ll always be time for what I’m doing now because, well, it’s what I’m doing and time is passing and that’s just what it is. 

Feeling the life of it

Sitting cross-legged on top of the hot tub cover, my hands in my lap, left hand in the cup of my right, a wool blanket draped over my shoulders, I opened my eyes after my meditation and reacquainted them with the intricate other-than-darkness. I looked at a fir, standing tall and skinny. At first I just saw it and glanced away, but then I looked back and felt the tree. I reached deeper into it and felt the connection that one living being feels with another. Imagined what it was like for the tree to grow, storms it weathered as a sapling. And still growing, but too slow for me to see. Everything around me, trees mostly, but even the mountains—all seeming to be still, appearing as an unmoving picture, but really growing and living. Slow-living like this is unusual for a human like me used to living fast.

Note

I don’t let it get too bad no more to really need a bounce back so I stay mostly in the middle like a plane running out of fuel sputtering along but never falling completely out of the sky but not soaring too high neither but it’s that big crash all the way down that bounce 

September 12, 2021 at 08:08AM

Scary chair

Walking by a chair
On my way up the stairs 
And to bed
I thought the arm
Was human
Scared me for a second 
Someone
Sitting silently 
Their forearm perpendicular 
Fingers curled up
Tucked under their palm
Staring blankly
Quietly 
Not noticing me go by 

September 11, 2021 at 10:42PM

Conversation with Connor Fox in the Seattle airport

Braden and Krys watched the Notre Dame football game on Braden’s iPad, drinking their pints of Stella. Connor and I stood by, talking. 
Connor asked why I pause when I’m talking. I told him the Native American story about how, when they would sit in a circle and smoke a peace pipe, it was impolite to answer a question before taking some time to think about it first. 
He asked if it’s been hard for me since I’ve started writing full-time. I told him no, if anything it’s been easier than working a job. 
We talked some more about writing. I told him about how Joyce would write two sentences per day and it took him 17 years to finish Finnegans Wake. Connor asked a good question, do we think Joyce would overwrite and then trim down to two sentences, or would he obsess over every single world and only write it down when he was sure of it?
I also told him what another writer said to me about how I’m a 800m runner right now, as I transition from poetry to short prose. I’m not quite to the marathon-running that is novel writing. I think Borges said he could never write a novel. I think I’ll try, someday. Not yet. Now I’ll focus on shorter runs, writing what’s happening in the very moment around me. 

Seattle airport shuttle from D gates to A gates

In an eerie moment 
Alone 
On the airport shuttle
I realized
That I was 
Alone 
No other passengers 
Not even a conductor 
Just me 
In a metal car
Inside a cement tunnel 
Hopefully headed 
To the A gates 
But maybe 
Just on and on
Forever 
Alone 

September 11, 2021 at 12:37PM

Landing in Seattle

It’s one thing or another. My heart hurts. My back aches. She’ll get pregnant and then I won’t be free on my own anymore. I’ll run out of money and have to go back to work and give up the writing life. But it’s any sign of ill health that’s the worst. I can get through anything if I’m alive and strong. I guess I’m still afraid to die. That’s what I need to work on—learning to die. My friend told me about an inscription (from Ancient Greece, I think), “If you learn to die before you die then you won’t die.” I also read somewhere else about being “in harmony with the flow of life.” I’ve been spending all my time writing and sometimes reading, but I need to spend more time meditating, learning to die, and flowing with life. Maybe then I won’t worry so much. 

Dead and gone

On the side of the highway 
A cross commemorates 
Someone who died there 
I wonder where they were going 
And all the other places 
They might have gone 
Thereafter 

September 11, 2021 at 07:44AM

How long is a week, really?

I have a trip coming up, tomorrow actually. My flight leaves at nine in the morning—late enough that I don’t have to worry about sleeping in and missing it, but early enough that I won’t have to spend a large part of the day in anticipation.
I’ve been looking forward to this trip, but I’ve been playing the game of pushing it out of my mind to keep the excitement from building to an uncomfortable level, like when I was sent to my room as a kid, looking out the window and watching the other kids play, wanting to play with them, but knowing that I had to stay in my room for at least an hour, and only making the time pass slower by watching the other kids and letting the wanting build. At some point, I learned to distract myself. I would read comics.
And that’s what I do now. When I have something to which to look forward, I distract myself, often with work.
Something else I learned, maybe around the time when I first fell in love, was to minimize my expectations. Their shoes get so big that reality can never fill them. Like telling a fishing story, “You want to know how big the fish was? Just guess!”

Eating a plum over the sink

I hate to waste
The blood that gushes
Forth from the flesh
That I tear with my teeth
The heart seed
In the center
Still beating
The sweet taste
On my tongue
In my hands
Half of the body
Still itself
Though mangled
The other half
Chewed, swallowed
Eaten
And inside
Now part of me
No screams
From the victim
Just snaps
As the skin breaks
And then soft
Slushing
As ivory knives
Cut through its innards
It knew
When it was growing
Drinking
From the fountain of youth
It knew its purpose
Was to be eaten
Everything must die
Maybe being eaten
Isn’t such
A bad way to go

September 10, 2021 at 12:30PM

Smallest

Everything I need
Is in this room
And by room
I mean body
And by body
I mean
The smallest
Part of me
Which also
Happens to be
The smallest part
Of everything else

September 08, 2021 at 03:13PM

Oh, what a wonderful world

There’s only one story I want to write. If I could just write this one story, then it would be more than the sum of everything I’ve written and will write. It’s like Hemingway said, about writing the truest sentence you know. I don’t know if “truest” is the right word for this story, but the suffix “st” is certainly appropriate—the biggest, the saddest, the most, the mostest, even more than the mostest. I’ve read the story myself but only a few dozen times in my life. It’s very short. And it’s not like other stories. It’s elusive. I call it a story, but it’s not. I only imagine it as such because it is my art form.  I’m not even sure that it can be made into one.
I read it just now as I was in the kitchen, making a smoothie. I reached into the jar to scoop out some powder, and there it was. My hand, my fingers, the scooper, the powder—holding space, being. Being why? Because it is. Or because I can see, feel. Do not answer that question, that endless rabbit hole of philosophy.
That we are. That is it. That is the story. But the words are not right. It is such a rough translation that a native speaker would not understand.
That we are … in a world such as this. I am not sure if the right direction is forward or backward, more words or less.
That I am. The “we” seems excessive.
I am. So did the “that.”
But gah! Those words do not tell it. Perhaps, then, the right direction is forward, more.
When I reach into the jar, I am suddenly aware that I am in control of my fingers. Around me, there is more, like my fingers, but not the same; material, but not me. The two—my body and the material world—can communicate, can dance, can cause a change in the other. I pick up the scooper by the handle, it raises in the air. I dip the scooper into the powder, it fills.
Of course, there is more—the other senses, the other ways in which our kind interacts with the material world. But again, do not fall down the rabbit hole. Stand at the edge.
It is all there! Around me, as I now sit at the table, writing. The chairs pushed in under the table, the plant and candlesticks standing in the center of the table, the light coming in the window through the open doorway beyond the far side of the table.
I can see it! If I were to stand up from my seat, I could pick up one of the candlesticks. I could walk over and close the door. I could change it. I could change what I am seeing. I could block the light from my sight.
I see something, hear something. I am able to go it, see it closer, in more detail. I can run away from a sound, until there is silence.
Smells from a bakery. I could go there. Open the door. Taste the bread.
I wish to convey the marvel of it. How do we forget? Maybe it is not possible to survive in a constant state of such rapture.
I am not concerned with the actual, the facts, the science. I am concerned with the experience.
What are the words? For the moment when I discover my own existence. When the amazement of it strikes me, especially after I have forgotten for a while.
The tragedy is that it will not be forever. I lift in the joy of finding it and then immediately fear losing it.
I will die, but while I live, oh, what a playground. What a fortunate child I am!
If I had none of it, even a string would be the world. How I would finger the string. Twist it, tie it, throw it, ball it up, stretch it, taste it, wrap it around my finger, and on and one, never bored.
But here, there is so much, like a candy shop.

Wanting

Well what happens
Is I’ll start strong
Sprinting along

Until my wanting
Starts to wane

And then I slow
To a stroll

And eventually
A full stop

Where I’ll sit
Wherever I end up

And wait
For another want
To come along

September 06, 2021 at 11:32AM

Last-minute deletes from The Art of Sidewalking 09/06/21

LAUNDRY LADY

A pair
Of worn, white socks

Encircled
By dark, dirty clothes

In a heap
Of laundry
On the floor

Look like
An old lady’s face
Wrapped in a shawl

MEATHEAD

Oh here he goes
With heft again
Heaving as he may

Huffing and puffing
His big chest for something
But still, he holds no sway

For strength aside
His muscles try
To make up for his mind

That door would budge
With just a nudge
If the knob were so inclined

ON THE CORNER

Pedestrians walk across the yellow rectangles
Two men drink their coffee under an awning
The tree branches bob gently

One of the men holding a coffee cup
Gestures vehemently with his other hand

A man with a dog on a leash
Stops to look inside a shop window
While his dog sniffs at a light pole

Blue and green trash cans stand by the curb
Cars continue to make their noise
And barely avoid crashing

One of the same pedestrians from before
Walks back across the yellow rectangles

IN SEARCH OF A BATHROOM

When any bin,
Bucket, basin,
Or brick wall
Would do

DEAD BUG

Cutting a green pepper
On a wooden board
I saw a little black speck
A piece of peppercorn
That I almost just tossed in
With the tacos

But I’m glad I didn’t
Because I slid the point of the knife
Underneath the speck
Brought it closer to my eyes

It had legs
A little creature, dead
With its legs curled up
Underneath it

But it must have had its fill
And thought itself lucky
To have made its way
Inside the pepper

Until it realized
It would be a coffin
Albeit, one fit
For a Pharaoh

So maybe, all in all
Life wasn’t so bad
For the little dead bug

HER HONEY

Some would say
That the beekeeper
Brings us honey

But, really, she
Is the artist

Like the bees
Bring the honey

And I am only
The collector

Like the keeper
Who stands idly by

Patient enough
To collect and deliver
Their sweet creation

LEFTOVER LOVE

I try to drink it in
Eat it
Consume
And digest

All of this moment
That taste, smells,
And feels like
I wish it always would

I want it so much
That I miss it already
Even though I still have it

I breathe in deeply
As if I could inhale some
Seal it in a container
And put it in the fridge
To save for later

THE SUN COMES UP

So early
In the summer
That I wonder
If I even
Got to sleep

OLD MAN #2

Another old man
With a gray mustache
And glasses

Eats a biscuit
And drinks a coffee
By the window

Picking up crumbs
Delicately, slowly
Between his fingers

DRINK CART

The attendant came down the aisle
Rolling the drink cart
With her gloved hands on either side
Looking down
To the left and to the right
Shouting, “Elbows! Elbows!”

PHOTOGRAPHER #2

Stood on the path
In everyone’s way

Looking up at the sky
At a trail of smoke
Left by a plane

Some of the passersby
Stood for a second

And tried to find
What the cameraman
Was seeing

He pointed and explained
But they couldn’t see
Or just didn’t understand

What the big deal was
About a trail of smoke
In the sky

NAKED IN THE TREES

I stand among the trees
Welcoming back the nature
That got poured over in the city
With cement streets
And concrete buildings

A few trees remain
In square-foot sections of sidewalk
But not enough to stand among
And be surrounded by
Like the forest out here—

The grass is overgrown, as it should be
Some trees lie knocked down, but not by man
Most trees still stand, as they should
And I stand with them, at peace

CROOKED EAGLE (this would be better as prose)

A desert eagle landed
On the roof across from our balcony
And James explained
How the falconer
Brought the eagle everyday
To chase away the smaller birds

We watched the eagle
Pick at its plumage
As one small bird
And then another
And another
Landed
On the roof next to it

The eagle must have
Been getting more
From the small bird mafia
Than from the falconer

MARCUS (this would be better as prose)

I got the chicken
With brussels sprouts and pumpkin purée
The chicken was perfect
But the brussels sprouts were undercooked

I wasn’t going to tell him
Because you don’t tell strangers
What’s wrong with
What they love

But he told me his story—

Made his way over to the U.S.
From Germany
And sold automation technology
To auto companies
Even though baking
Was always his passion

He would take the executives
Of these auto companies
Out to dinner
At the nicest restaurants
And that is when he promised himself
He would open his own someday

It started as a bakery
And then expanded to
A dinner menu

And I told him I believed in him
And I thought his restaurant would be big
And then we weren’t strangers anymore

So I told him
The brussel sprouts were undercooked
And he shook my hand
And said he would tell the chef

TELLING STORIES (this would be better as prose)

When you talk to someone
And listen for a while
You get restless at some point
And wonder when it will be over

But you get past that
And forget about yourself
And actually start to live in their story
And be interested in it

You ask them questions
Really wanting to know
What it was like
At the twists and turns

It’s their eyes
That always get me
When I am as close as I can get
To leaving my own life
And living theirs

Their eyes
Are the last door
I look
And then fall
Completely into them

>>>

When I listen to someone
Tell a story
It’s always their eyes
That finally get me
Out of myself
And my own worries
And into them
And their story
I leave my own life
And live theirs

AN OLD WHITE MAN (this would be better as prose)

With gray stubble on his face
Wearing a tattered cowboy hat,
An oversized button-up shirt,
And oversized khaki pants

Slouched
In a straight-backed
Wooden chair
His head leaning forward

He looked out from under
The lids of his half-closed,
Bloodshot eyes

Raised his veiny,
Hairy-knuckled hand

Pointed
One of his long skeleton fingers

At the flamenco dancer
In her festive
Red-and-black dress
Stomping on stage
Putting on a show for the gallery

And said something
To explain
Why he was pointing
But it was incoherent

Maybe because
Of the empty bottle of wine
Next to him on the table

But for a guy of his size
He would have needed
More than just one bottle
To get to that point

By his demeanor
I guessed that he was either

The proprietor
Of the gallery,

The artist who made
All the pieces,

Or otherwise the man
In charge of the moment
In some way
Or another

As we all watched
And waited for him
To take the lead

THE OLDEST GAME

The girl whom he
Was trying to get

Danced
While he pretended at it

And mostly
Just watched her

WHERE ART THOU, HANGOVER

I woke up confused
By not feeling worse

And confused also
About what to do

Other than whatever
Would make me feel better

Eventually
I went down to the pool

And so started
A day full
Of what wasn’t planned

But just happened
One carefree accident
After another

FORCE

I carry with me
Force

Walking
Through the hallway

I bump
The door frame
With my hip bone

And almost
Knock
The house down

>>>

Apparently
I don’t know
My own strength

When I bumped
The door frame
With my hip bone

The structure
Shook so

I thought I almost
Knocked
The house down

CONSTRUCTION NOISE

At the job across the street
The construction crew
Must have taken off today

I can hear the leaves
Blowing down the hill
Scratching on the cement

The soft wind
Whistling around the edges
Of our bay window

And even the light buzzing
Of complete silence
For brief moments

—Sounds that,
For as long
As the construction
Has gone on,

Have been drowned out
By hammering, sawing,
Nailing, shouting,

And other sounds
Of industry

Which usually
Make me feel guilty
For lying in bed

Today
I can take the day off too

A SPACE IN TIME

The hot sun
On the back porch

Bakes into
Bare legs
Crossed over

Eyes closed
Head leaning back
Lungs exhaling

Here is where
I’ve needed to come

Less of a place
More of a space
In time—

A moment
Like this

BIG DENTURE

Bright light
Breaks through
The mouth
Of the tunnel

Like the face
Of the mountain
Is missing
A tooth

MENTAL

I can never
Get my mind
Out of the way
Fast enough
To get
To the visceral

I’ve already
Abstracted
Clouds to heavens
Blood to war
Food to hunger

Described it
To death
Pondered every
Possibility
Made it
Mental

>>>

I’ve already sent
My mental assistant
Running down the hall
To pull the file
Of past memories

LAST BEER

Beer bubbles
At the bottom of the glass
Make me sad

Because this
Was the last one
In the fridge

And I’ll have to switch over
To white wine
After these last sips

RESORT NEIGHBOR

Drinks in hand
Forearms resting
On the railing

He said, you are young
And full of energy

What do you mean
By “energy,” I asked

He pointed out at the lights,
Boats, roofs, roads, water

And asked me
What do you see out there?

He waited patiently
Like a teacher
For the right answer

I said I saw lights,
Boats, roofs, roads, water

He said there are
Protons and electrons
It’s all energy

I could see in his eyes
When he said it

He meant more
Than the physics lesson
I learned in high school

I wasn’t sure
Exactly what
But still

When he looked at me
And asked if I understood
I said I did, sincerely

THE SOUND OF BEING UNDERWATER

Treading water
With my ears above the surface
I heard
Squeals of children
Music from the beach bars
Waves crashing
Vendors selling

Underwater
I heard
What I try to remember
How to describe
Back on the beach
It was
Not silent

I’ll have to
Swim out again
And fish
For words
So you can
Bring it back to shore
Inland
To wherever you are

Grill it, bake it
Or however you like your fish
To taste, hear
And be there
Underwater
And at peace

ORNERY FUTURE

I get into a moment
And think that this
Will be forever
And start to plan
Accordingly

Setting up expectations
And parameters
For the future to fit into
What I’m experiencing
Right now

But of course
The future
Is an ornery child
That never obeys
Its present parent

LOOSELY

I can close my eyes
And escape from where
My sight says I am

But my other senses
Still tether me
To what I can hear and feel

So I plug my ears
And lie down
On soft cushions

I still remain myself
Albeit
A little more loosely

DEEP BREATH

I was so worried
That I wasn’t breathing

I realize now
As I’ve gotten the news

That what I feared
Isn’t true

And I take my first deep breath
In a while

PARK POEMS

A baseball
In the grass

As the sun sets
On the skyline

I pick a poem
Like a leaf

Or a lyric
From a bird’s song

Then run home
To write it down

MOMENTS

If I could just keep in
To each for its own sake

Not always looking later
Longing for the next

They would come and come
Countless

Each for itself
As all things are

Eased into being
And then back to nothing

Without my meddling
To make moments
More than they are

BROKEN BLENDER

Melted the rubber
Wedged between

An engine that had
All the strength

And a blade that had
All the ambition

It was obvious
That the rubber

Was already
Worn out

But the engine-blade
Industrial complex

Didn’t really
Seem to care

LIKE THE HARE

For what do I wait
While wanting wanes
Though I may be
Strong and swift
At the start
Rejoicing
In the sprint
Stretching
Straight ahead
Until the end
Seems farther
And farther
And the wanting
Which at first
Burned bright
As a fire
Turns to ash
And cools

GRATITUDE

I close my eyes to remember sight is a gift
I sit in silence to remember sound is a gift
I fast to remember food is a gift
I catch a cold to remember health is a gift
I spend time alone to remember friendship is a gift
I stay in one place to remember travel is a gift
I go to sleep to remember life is a gift

SOOTHING SHEET

I laid my ear
On the sheet

And listened
To the silence

That softly
Said, “Shh

All else
Is outside

Far away
From here”

ONE BOAT

With my forehead pressed
Against the plane window

Leaving a greasy smudge
On the glass

I looked down at the ocean
And spotted a solitary boat

Reclined in my seat
To see all the ocean ahead

And then leaned forward
To search the blue behind

But there was not
A single
other
one

This should have been painted

I got down on my knees, opened the window, rested my elbows on the sill, and stuck my head out the window to breathe some fresh air. While I did, I watched the subtle movements in our backyard (lemon trees, other trees, stone steps, an elusive black-and-white cat, border by other apartments on all sides). Dew gathered in the upturned, cupped hands of leaves, glinting in the light as the leaves slightly shake, as if to drop the heavy burden filling their palms. One leaf on another tree fell, collided with other branches on the way down—I thought to myself, how lucky that I looked out in time to see a leaf fall, but then again there are probably leaves falling all the time. A bug, not a normal fly, judging by the way it hovered at one point in the air, like a hummingbird.
I saw all this and it started to seem like it might be beautiful. And, as I do when something starts to seem like it might be beautiful, I started to write a poem in my head—trying out lines, forming stanzas. But I was discouraged, for least a couple of reasons.
First, poetry did not seem to be an apt art form for capturing this backyard scene. It was primarily an experience of sight. It was quiet in the morning. All I could taste was the faint remnant of toothpaste and all I could smell was the crisp air. The only physical feelings were my knees on the hardwood and my elbows on the sill. My eyes were the windows where the beauty shined through and it seemed that there was too much of it for words.
Dozens of trees, hundreds of leaves on each of them. The trunk of one tree so broad that I probably couldn’t have gotten my arms all the way around it. Branches of the lemon tree sagging, lemons almost touching the ground. Millions of grains of dirt on the ground. The dry birdbath, the cushion on the ground that perhaps someone brought out to sit on and then left. Light playing off of all of it in myriad ways.
And I could have gone on like this—using my words to describe what I was seeing. But it didn’t seem right. It didn’t seem that a reader would enjoy a catalog—separated by commas and periods, organized in the typical block-of-text prose—of what I was seeing. I am not a painter, a drawer, or a sketcher, but I think these art forms would have been more apt for the backyard scene. “A picture is worth a thousand words” proves true in this instance. Our eyes are eyes. They are not lips and brains. What part of us processes the written word? What experiences are most appropriately communicated in the written form?
Second, in a note from an editor regarding a recent collection of poetry, the editor wrote (paraphrasing) that happenings are beautiful because of what they can tell us, not just because they happen. I have been mulling over it and I’m still not sure if I agree with this. Might things be beautiful just because they happen? As humans, we want to have things our way. We want cars so we can travel fast and far on roads. We want tall buildings so that we can cram more people into cities. We want our lives to mean something. And we want our art to mean something too. Why is all the most popular art focused on the same handful of themes? Love, violence, success, failure. Is there a place in human art for a backyard to just be a backyard without personifying it? Without analogizing it to the ecstasies and miseries to which we are accustomed because we are human?

Distracted

I poured water
From a pitcher
Into a glass
And almost forgot
To tighten my grip
As the weight increased
Maybe if I did
Drop the glass
And it shattered
At my feet
Splashing water
Everywhere
It would have been
A good reminder
For me
To stay present
And not
Think so much

September 03, 2021 at 10:48AM

Distracted

I poured water
From a pitcher
Into a glass
And almost forgot
To tighten my grip
As the weight increased
Maybe if I did
Drop the glass
And it shattered
At my feet
Splashing water
Everywhere
It would have been
A good reminder
For me
To stay present
And not
Think so much

September 03, 2021 at 10:48AM

Faces of

Frost and Cummings
On book covers 
Atop the table 
Staring stoically 
As I try to write 
Like they did 
Stumped
On where to break
Or what word
To replace
I look up
And see them
Staring 
It’s honestly 
Not as inspirational 
As it is
Nerve-racking 

September 02, 2021 at 07:46PM

The rest, we make up

I hear 
A blower blowing 
Leaves somewhere 
But that’s not
Interesting enough 
A car 
Pushing its motor
Up the hill
But that’s not
Either
Just sounds 
Everyone 
Has already heard 
I’ve got to
Make it mean
Something 
At least that’s 
What my editor said 
In reply 
To my poems 
About what comes
And how it comes 
To my senses 
And that’s it 
What more
Is there?
The rest
We make up 
So why not give them 
Some
Of what’s really there
And let you
Make up the rest 
The blower’s blowing 
There 
Do you give a damn?
No?
Well, then go lie down
Try to have a nap
In the middle of the day 
On a Thursday 
When the city outside 
Is still sounding 
And hear what you will 
And then you won’t
Need me anymore

September 02, 2021 at 04:26PM

Never half-full

I fill 
And fill
And fill
Sleep
And stay safe
And satisfied 
Because 
When I pour 
I really do
All of it
Looses
And lets go
Even myself
Abandons
Its integrity 
Until it’s all
All of it 
Completely gone 
Then I fall
Into a deep
Deep sleep 
Stay still 
And start to fill 
Again 

September 02, 2021 at 04:21PM

Sell-out soul struggle

A band doesn’t play their best song. The crowd boos them off stage. In an interview, the lead singer says, “I just don’t feel that way anymore. Singing those words makes me feel a certain way and I don’t want to feel that way anymore.” But the band takes a vote. They vote to play the song in order to keep touring without any more booing. The lead singer sings this song, feels the way the words make her feel, and just has to deal with it.

Abstinence

My desire for her wells and wells without release. I am unequipped to sink as deeply into the ocean of her as my heart alone would, if not encased in my clumsy corporal form. I pull her body close to mine, constrict my embrace until she says I must be gentle, but still, she comes not near enough. The water to which my lustful flesh would have my horse heart led is obvious, trite—a played-out platitude. I have drunk myself to drunkenness from that fount. I have splashed like a child in the shallows along the surface and held my breath to swim deep into the depths until my lungs screamed, but I never reached the bottom and always returned gasping for air and exclaiming, “There is no end to this wonder!” But even swimming starts to seem like walking to one who spends too long in the water. And then, to make the long-time swimmer walk again, where then does their desire to swim satiate itself? Bathing in public water fountains, perusing fish aisles at pet stores. It is agony, yes, but sweet agony. Like hunger before a meal. The first bite is the best. The second, third, and so on are increasingly unconvincing impostors of the true taste in the first. But even before the first. What taste is there already in hunger? Standing in the kitchen, smell is a stand-in. Far away from even hope of food, stranded in the desert, memories of taste remain. But alas, here I am, in an oasis of her—sleeping in the same bed, seeing her naked, holding her. All but the deep drink. Like Tantalus, except the fruit lays itself in my palm and the water rises almost to my lips, and it is only my obstinate attempts to channel my natural inclinations in wide circles that loop back around to the same inclinations in the end. But not all in vain, as I have found new ways of loving her, and thus have grown arms longer and stronger for reaching around and holding the ever-expanding ocean of her.

Abstinence

My desire for her wells and wells without release. I am unequipped to sink as deeply into the ocean of her as my heart alone would, if not encased in my clumsy corporal form. I pull her body close to mine, constrict my embrace until she says I must be gentle, but still, she comes not near enough. The water to which my lustful flesh would have my horse heart led is obvious, trite—a played-out platitude. I have drunk myself to drunkenness from that fount. I have splashed like a child in the shallows along the surface and held my breath to swim deep into the depths until my lungs screamed, but I never reached the bottom and always returned gasping for air and exclaiming, “There is no end to this wonder!”

Achieving inhibitionless writing via speech-to-text transcription

The method of speaking your stream of consciousness aloud and letting it be transcribed by software is, I think, a really great way to achieve free and open creation.

There’s something that happens when the method we use to record our thoughts and feelings is able to keep up at the same pace in real-time. There aren’t any pauses that give you the opportunity to second guess, go back and correct, or intentionally steer the tracks that your train of thought is already chugging along at its natural pace.

There needs to be a certain disconnect between the writer writing and the writer reading. It can be disruptive for the writer to read their words as they are writing them. When a writer types or writes by hand, it’s difficult not to read the words they’ve written. They are right there on the page or the computer screen next to the space soon to be filled by the following word that they were trying to get down.

When you are speaking, you can’t see your words. This may be one of the main benefits of writing via transcription—you can’t see what you’ve already done. If you close your eyes, let go of inhibition, don’t worry about who is listening, and really twist the lens of the microscope to focus down on the exact present moment in your head and your heart and translate those thoughts and feelings in the vocabulary you have—I think this is one of the best ways to create freely and openly, to make our internal world feel wide and expansive and limitless.

Miss you man

A text I won’t send 
To an old friend with whom 
I haven’t spoken in a while:
I saw a guy running in the park today 
He kinda looked like you
I actually thought it was you at first
It would have been a happy surprise 
I would have said 
What are you doing in the city?
I thought you were in Palo Alto
And then I don’t know after that
But it would have been as great as
All the conversations we’ve ever had
We haven’t talked in a while 
I’m not sure why
Maybe it was something I did 
Maybe it just happens
As we get older and get girlfriends
And eventually start families 
I guess I’m having a hard time
Letting go of the college days 
I liked it when we were all together 
And we didn’t have anything to do
Except learn and hang out 
I wrote some articles for newspaper 
And you built robots 
Adult life just doesn’t seem as good
We’re all in separate cities now 
Staying in our apartments most the time 
Hanging out with coworkers sometimes
Working, working, working 
I guess I just miss you man 
But I know this might just be how it is
Maybe I should send you this text 
I don’t know why I won’t 
I’m sure you’d understand 
But maybe there’s nothing we can do
And I think I’d rather just 
Hold onto some hope 
That somehow things will go back
To how they were before 

August 30, 2021 at 07:01PM

Classic

Do I make
My modern experience
All-timely enough
To merit
A classic stamp
Of approval?

August 30, 2021 at 08:55AM

Little leavings

I leave her a little
Every time
I walk away
Even when it’s just
From the kitchen
To the dining room
I hug her
Hold her hand
Then turn
Let it drop
And walk into
The other room
As soon
As her fingers
Fall from mine
I want to turn
Walk back
Hold her again

August 30, 2021 at 08:49AM

Little leavings

I leave her a little
Every time
I walk away
Even when it’s just
From the kitchen
To the dining room
I hug her
Hold her hand
Then turn
Let it drop
And walk into
The other room
As soon
As her fingers
Fall from mine
I want to turn
Walk back
Hold her again

August 30, 2021 at 08:49AM

Little leavings

I leave her a little
Every time
I walk away
Even when it’s just
From the kitchen
To the dining room
I hug her
Hold her hand
Then turn
Let it drop
And walk into
The other room
As soon
As her fingers
Fall from mine
I want to turn
Walk back
Hold her again

August 30, 2021 at 08:49AM

Form in art

Even the art forms are commercialized, controlled, meant to be marketed and sold. Dear artist, who were you before you chose your form? How have you edited yourself since then to fit your form? What did the painter call herself before she became a painter? What did the novelist call himself before he became a novelist? From whence in her did the urge to paint come? From whence in him did the urge to write come? How did they experience it at first? What outlets did it find before she picked up a brush, before he picked up a pen?
In order to be a form, there must be guidelines, rules, restrictions. I recently read about how Kerouac did not abide by the 5-7-5 syllable format for haikus. But what will they be called then? What will the poems be called that are in a 4-7-6 syllable format? Or 6-7-8? Or 8-6-7? They are close to haikus but they are not. Who invented haikus in the first place? Why did they choose the 5-7-5 format? Perhaps because there is a natural rhythm to it, similar to how iambic meter sounds like a human heartbeat. buh-BUM-buh-BUM-buh-BUM. unstressed-STRESSED-unstressed-STRESSED-unstressed-STRESSED. But there are more natural phenomena than just the human heartbeat. A format that sounds natural to one person might sound unnatural to another. Maybe there is an emotion that needs an unnatural format to be properly articulated.
The creative romps of an artist are not cut and dry. They run amuck, break rules, like a child colors outside of the lines designed by the coloring book company that implied the child would draw within them.
But maybe there are lines. Everything is not disorder. There is cause and effect. There are commonalities and universalities. As humans, there are things we can agree on. Survival seems to be one of them. Art may be another. If we generally agree that some art is better than others, this may be how forms get there beginning. There are some forms we prefer to consume over others. Certain ways we like to hear stories told, certain ways we like to see paintings displayed, certain ways we like to watch actors and dancers.
So I do not think that doing away with form altogether is the answer. But when is the appropriate time to break from form? And how does abiding by form affect the art that an artist creates?

To the man with his back turned at the restaurant

To the man
With his back turned 
At the table 
Ahead of ours
At the restaurant 
—Do you hear
What I am saying?
—Do you have 
Something to say?
You seem
To be scholarly 
I do not
Know you 
But I see
You are eating alone 
Your side profile 
Shows the arm
Of your glasses 
Reaching back 
And over ear
Your elbows
On the table 
The way
You sip your tea 
I just know 
You are thinking 
Masterpieces 
Imagining 
Wonderlands 
Why
Are you alone 
When 
Was the last time 
You shared 
Your stories 
How
Can I communicate 
To you 
That I want to hear
What you’re thinking 
About my lauding 
Of Nabokov
Are you sitting there
Silently participating 
In our conversation 
Only as a listener 
How many other
Conversations 
Have you heard 
And not spoken in 
How much knowledge 
Have you retained 
Incubated
Let mix and mingle 
What has it become 
What do you have to say 
I would ask you
To pull up a chair 
But I am with my girlfriend 
No, that’s not an excuse
It’s because I’m shy
Not drunk enough 
Not sure if you
Would even want to

August 29, 2021 at 05:48PM

The art of the breast

Leaning back
With her arms
Overhead
No, not like that
Too flat
Stretched out
Only the nipple
Has accent
Like a lone blotch
On canvas
But leaning forward
Ah, yes
There is the art
Of the breast
She shrugs
And pinches her arms
So they fill
On the insides
And unders
Bulging beautifully
Voluptuously
Coming down
To mold itself
In my cupped hand
Like a dewdrop
At blade’s end
Achieves its fullness
Right before
Falling off
Its insides swell
And press
Against the bounds
My baby hand
Might have felt
That fullness
Which is why
My adult appendage
Is now livened
By the very same
In the body
Of this beauty
Who makes me
Want to make her
A mother
Of my own

August 29, 2021 at 12:14PM

She got too high

Took some tincture on her tongue two or three hours ago and didn’t expect it to hit her so hard. I thought she was just taking her time in the grocery store. On the way home, I thought she was just hungry. Finally, while I was standing at the stovetop, stirring the couscous, and she was sitting at the table behind me, making a charcuterie board, she said, “I think I’m just really high.” I laughed, “Well, that would make sense.” She said, “I forgot I took that tincture earlier.”
Fast forward to after dinner and after the deep spiraling conversations after our plates were clear. I got out of the shower and walked into the bedroom. She was naked, sitting on a meditation cushion beside the bed, stretching her neck with her eyes closed. As she strained her neck to one side, her curly hair fell over her face. She opened her hazy eyes and looked up at me. I squatted down by her side, rubbed her back, and gave her a kiss.

Conversation with Lake about short prose and negative space 08/23/21

Cole: I am really attracted to moments that are impactful yet brief. Like how could I give the reader all the necessary context of a novel but really just have them read something the length of the climax?

Lake: I think (unsurprisingly) that there is much to be learned from short stories, especially by really powerful authors, in as far as the information they choose to make explicit and that which they let/force the reader assume.

Cole: The letting/forcing the reader to assume is important. With my poetry, some of the editors want me to come out and say the point. They don’t want me to just describe the physical moment. They want me to explicitly state the metaphysical message. It’s a balance, getting the reader close enough, but then letting them make the leap themselves.

Lake: Yeah, and constraining the conclusions the reader can jump to.

Cole: It’s not so much what you say but what you don’t say, not what you write but what you don’t write, not what you paint but what you don’t paint. The impression that any word makes on the reader depends on the words around it. The impression that one splash of color makes on the viewer depends on the colors around it.

The most obvious negative space is silence in song, monochrome in painting, blank space on a page of writing. But negative space is really just one end of the scale. We might say positive space is on the other end. Between them, there are pixels of subject that each participate to varying degrees in subjectness.

Now, is there really such a thing as purely negative space? How can we make such an assumption, on behalf of either the creator or the consumer? How can we decide for them what parts they will consider subject and what parts they will consider background?

Like a little girl who holds her father’s hand while waiting in line for the train. Everyone else is leaning side to side, jumping up and down—trying to get a glimpse of the train, the door, how full it’s getting. The girl is crouched down playing with an ant. Who could have seen the ant in a painting titled “In Line For The Train?”

Some writers talk about “filler.” In the middle of a novel, there may be pages that are not the writer’s best work, but they get the book to a total page count and they progress the story along. Filler is still positive space. It’s words—the main medium for the art form of writing. But might we say that filler is closer to negative space than, say, the climax?

As a writer, what am I letting the reader assume? How much relatively negative space am I giving them to fill with their own imaginations? The reader is not completely loosed. Even blank white pages will confine their thoughts and feelings to a certain section of mental-emotional possibilities. How meticulously can I reduce the number of possibilities?

If I have written a poem to twenty lines and there are three possibilities for the conclusion at which the reader will arrive, should I write a twenty-first line to reduce the possibilities to just one? How does it change the experience of the reader to make the leap on their own? To solve it like a puzzle. I would say there is some joy and sense of achievement to be derived from this independence.

Lake: I agree with some of the things you said. When I was talking about negative space with writing I was not thinking about physically, but more so negative or empty space in the environment you build for the reader, i.e., when you have a 20-line poem that leads to 3 conclusions or a 5-line poem that could lead to the same conclusions, the 5-line poem has more negative space and also more power because it focuses the reader to the same point with less filler. And I think that is what skilled short story writers excel at. Because then you can think of it the other way: what is the most cohesive and specific, even if not well-defined, environment that you can create in the space of a short story? Whether that is like geographic depth, visual detail, character development, plot texture. Imagine a surrealist essay. They paint a very cohesive and specific picture, but not necessarily one you could describe neatly in a few sentences. Like Kafka can make you feel a very specific way, even if you can’t really put your finger on how you feel.

Cole: Yes, but that seems separate. Can Kafka make you feel that specific way using less words?

Lake: Maybe, maybe not. The point I was making was that you can know something without needing words to represent it, which means you can make someone else feel something without making it explicit. And I think that by properly choosing words you can be very precise with the atmosphere you create and what feelings you grow in the reader. And a large part of that is what you allow the reader to assume based on the information you provide and the info you don’t provide.

Cole: Ah, I see more clearly now. Let me regurgitate back to you a bit. Premise: I can feeling something without words to represent it. Conclusion: You can make me feel something without using explicit words. Whence, then, does the feeling come? What DO you use to make me feel it? Maybe just other words. Not the explicit ones that say what I should feel exactly, but other words that make me feel it by some other means. Maybe these means are something like the subconscious, logical conclusion, or imagination. It seems the minimalism / negative space conversation is unessential to this one.

Lake: I don’t think so! The negative space is where the mind is able to make connections between the words you do use that then lets it feel something greater/different than what was explicit.

Cole: Hm, so negative space does not exist only in the art itself. It exists also in the viewer’s mind?

Lake: What is in the viewer’s mind is a function of the art, like if you only give someone 5 words on a blank page, they twist and turn mentally until they figure out how those 5 words all connect to make sense.

Cole: But the reader already has words in their head. Words that didn’t come from the page. The viewer’s mind is a function. But the art isn’t even a variable in that function. It’s just an input.

Lake: A function takes an input and creates an output. Mind is the function. Art is the input. Feeling is the output.

Cole: I still don’t think the negative space exists in the mind. The negative space exists in the art.

Lake: Okay, but I think that’s wrong, or rather is missing the point. Let’s say negative space exists in the art. What impact does that have on viewer?

Cole: It has an impact on the viewer’s functional mind via the input of the art.

Lake: Yes, but like what does it mean. Why is negative space helpful?

Cole: Now we’re back to square one.

Lake: Humor me.

Cole: Negative space is helpful because … (A) It allows the viewer liberty to draw their own conclusions, which are not explicitly concluded by the positive space in the air itself. (B) It preserves the energy and attention of the viewer so that they can focus with more power on the positive space. (C) It allows the positive space to exist. Without negative space, there is only positive space; there is only space, general space, without an opposite, without contrast.

Lake: Yes, so really what we are saying is don’t give the viewer all the pieces to the puzzle and let them find some on their own. If the input is sparse the function has to make more assumptions, yielding a more interesting output.

Cole: I disagree with the word “interesting.” Maybe the output is more personal to them. Or maybe the viewer feels a keener sense of accomplishment.

Lake: I would say “interesting” is correct because it’s actually just a conclusion that isn’t handed to you therefore you have to think a bit therefore you focus more of your active interest in it. But whatever, not gonna die on that one.

Hungry

I can get almost as high
Not eating all morning
As I can off of
A heroic hit of acid

August 27, 2021 at 12:08PM

Longer than expected

I walked by
On my way
To the bathroom
To wash my hands
Saw the door
To the bedroom
Slightly ajar
Extended my hand
And pushed it
To open
All the way
And let in
Some light
Proceeded
To the bathroom
Turned on the water
And was halfway
Through washing
My hands
When I heard
The door bump
Against the wall
Which I thought
Was uncanny
Because my best sense
Of time
Told me,
“That was
An eternity ago
When you pushed
Open that door”

August 27, 2021 at 11:47AM

Engorged

God, I feel
Like a bull
With broad shoulders
And sharp horns
I’ve already killed
Eight matadors
Just this morning
And wrote some
Damn good poems
With their blood
I should abstain
From sex
More often

August 27, 2021 at 11:44AM

What is love?

Standing in the kitchen, holding a spatula, I leaned around the edge of the doorway to the dining room and said, “You’re cute.”
Sitting at the dining table, looking cute—freckles, curly hair, dewy dark skin—she replied, “You’re just saying that because your balls are full” (we’ve been abstaining from sex).
“Well, yea, maybe. But what is love anyway?”

The last chip on my shoulder

At what point should you stop psychoanalyzing yourself? When is the shrink’s work ever really done? If you unpack all your boxes and empty out all your baggage, is there anything left inside your home? If you wash your hands for long enough, your skin will peel away. If you use enough shampoo, your hair will fall out. You get a nose job and someone says, “Oh, but I liked it the way it was before.” You retort, “But why? It was crooked.” They shrug, “I don’t know. I guess it was more you.” To the selfless person, the standard advice: you have to take care of yourself. To the selfish person, the standard advice: you should think more about others. I have only one chip left on my shoulder. All the others have either been sanded down by my boss, anointed and bandaged by my girlfriend, or politely plucked and discarded by my maturing friends. If any of you come any closer to my one last chip I’ll scream. I’ll writhe like Alex the droog under attack by the eye-opening claws of conformity and assimilation. Leave me this one chip, please. Or else there won’t be a me anymore. Whatever the hell me being me is worth to anybody, I don’t know. Asking what it’s worth is what got all my other chips blown away in the first place. I don’t care what it’s worth. I don’t care if it’s irrational, unjust, careless, contrarian, or the opposite end of any other binary that you’ve invented and chosen your side of. I’ll take the other side. Even if it’s just me over here and the whole rest of the world over there. At least I’ll be me.

Psychedelic doorbell

The doorbell
Went psychedelic
For a second
Its yellow
Turned purple
And floated
Off the plastic piece
Drilled to the wall
Dancing
In my field of vision
Like a musical note
Hopping up
To each line
Of a staff
Keeping rhythm

August 26, 2021 at 08:54PM

Flag shadow

Only the edges 
Of a flag’s shadow
Wavered 
On the street 
Beyond the greater
Black shadow 
Of the house 
To which 
The flag was attached 
Above 

August 26, 2021 at 03:15PM

Death, again

We’re going to die. You’re going to die. I’m going to die. I remembered again as I was leaving the soccer field tonight. I saw a man get off the bus. He was wearing slacks and sunglasses, headphones in his ears, the takes-himself-seriously type. Probably coming home from the office. I just so happen to not be working right now, but I’ve done some time. I know what it’s like. The office isn’t the only place to waste your life though. You know what? Forget I said anything about the office. It’s not about Mr. Sunglasses-Even-Though-The-Sun’s-Down. It’s about dying. It’s about living before judgment day, flat line, termination, the end, eternal darkness, the great beyond. Okay, here it is. Just imagine it. Imagine dying. Seriously sit down and comprehend that you will leave and not come back. What would you miss the most? I think about my senses. I would just want to see the sky, hear voices, smell cut grass. I wouldn’t even care if they were pleasant senses. If I was dead, I would take anything. See a white wall, hear a faucet drip, smell smoke. Gosh, it’s really crazy. I’m not getting it here. I’ll have to come back and try again, But seriously, if you’re reading this, remember that you’re going to die, and then live like it!

Negative space

It’s not so much what you say but what you don’t say, not what you write but what you don’t write, not what you paint but what you don’t paint. The impression that any word makes on the reader depends on the words around it. The impression that one splash of color makes on the viewer depends on the colors around it.
The most obvious negative space is silence in song, monochrome in painting, blank space on a page of writing. But negative space is really just one end of the scale. We might say positive space is on the other end. Between them, there are pixels of subject that each participate to varying degrees in subjectness.
Now, is there really such a thing as purely negative space? How can we make such an assumption, on behalf of either the creator or the consumer? How can we decide for them what parts they will consider subject and what parts they will consider background?
Like a little girl who holds her father’s hand while waiting in line for the train. Everyone else is leaning side to side, jumping up and down—trying to get a glimpse of the train, the door, how full it’s getting. The girl is crouched down playing with an ant. Who could have seen the ant in a painting titled “In Line For The Train?”
Some writers talk about “filler.” In the middle of a novel, there may be pages that are not the writer’s best work, but they get the book to a total page count and they progress the story along. Filler is still positive space. It’s words—the main medium for the art form of writing. But might we say that filler is closer to negative space than, say, the climax?
As a writer, what am I letting the reader assume? How much relatively negative space am I giving them to fill with their own imaginations? The reader is not completely loosed. Even blank white pages will confine their thoughts and feelings to a certain section of mental-emotional possibilities. How meticulously can I reduce the number of possibilities?
If I have written a poem to twenty lines and there are three possibilities for the conclusion at which the reader will arrive, should I write a twenty-first line to reduce the possibilities to just one? How does it change the experience of the reader to make the leap on their own? To solve it like a puzzle. I would say there is some joy and sense of achievement to be derived from this independence.
Works of art that utilize negative space may be more enjoyable in a world filled to the brim with positive space. We see these trends in “minimal” art—one-line drawings, flash fiction, etc. In a boring world full of background, detail is desirable. In a busy world of information overload, detail is overwhelming.

Need and greed

They say the world
Doesn’t need another
Banker, politician, what-have-you
But they, the suits and ties
Need the world
Desperately
And they’re willing to do
Whatever it takes
No matter the price
And they’ll keep being born
As sure as we’ve always fucked
And the tragedies have told of greed
And our great green-blue marble
Will keep spinning
Not according to need
But to greed and power

August 25, 2021 at 02:28PM

Need and greed

They say the world
Doesn’t need another
Banker, politician, what-have-you
But they, the suits and ties
Need the world
Desperately
And they’re willing to do
Whatever it takes
No matter the price
And they’ll keep being born
As sure as we’ve always fucked
And the tragedies have told of greed
And our great green-blue marble
Will keep spinning
Not according to need
But to greed and power

August 25, 2021 at 02:28PM

Need and greed

They say the world
Doesn’t need another
Banker, politician, what-have-you
But they, the suits and ties
Need the world
Desperately
And they’re willing to do
Whatever it takes
No matter the price
And they’ll keep being born
As sure as we’ve always fucked
And the tragedies have told of greed
And our great green-blue marble
Will keep spinning
Not according to need
But to greed and power

August 25, 2021 at 02:28PM

Jealous of my gender

When looking at a handsome man, I used to feel jealous. I would wish that I could look like him in order to make women feel about me the way that I felt about him. Why must the emotion pass through the subjectivity of my own sexuality? Why jealousy instead of attraction?
– inspired by Justin Bieber in the music video for STAY (with the Kid LAROI) when Bieber looks into the camera (neck tattoos, earring, short haircut)

Jealous of my gender

When looking at a handsome man, I used to feel jealous. I would wish that I could look like him in order to make women feel about me the way that I felt about him. Why must the emotion pass through the subjectivity of my own sexuality? Why jealousy instead of attraction?
– inspired by Justin Bieber in the music video for STAY (with the Kid LAROI) when Bieber looks into the camera (neck tattoos, earring, short haircut)

Jealous of my gender

When looking at a handsome man, I used to feel jealous. I would wish that I could look like him in order to make women feel about me the way that I felt about him. Why must the emotion pass through the subjectivity of my own sexuality? Why jealousy instead of attraction?
– inspired by Justin Bieber in the music video for STAY (with the Kid LAROI) when Bieber looks into the camera (neck tattoos, earring, short haircut)

Hiccups

Are hilarious
I have to admit
Even
As I have them now
And hate them
They come so
Unexpectedly
Uncontrollably
Harmless
Quick convulsions
In between
I wait, hoping
They have gone
But then
Another
They are starting
To seem
Less hilarious
I wish
They would
Go away

August 24, 2021 at 09:34AM

Hiccups

Are hilarious
I have to admit
Even
As I have them now
And hate them
They come so
Unexpectedly
Uncontrollably
Harmless
Quick convulsions
In between
I wait, hoping
They have gone
But then
Another
They are starting
To seem
Less hilarious
I wish
They would
Go away

August 24, 2021 at 09:34AM

Writing made physical

I wish writing were not so mental. I sit here in my chair, my stomach pressed against the table’s edge. My elbows on the tabletop, leaning forward, hunched over my laptop. Trying to think of novel ways to re-write a phrase. Ten minutes already, I’ve labored over this one phrase. Twenty minutes more, I’ll likely sit here. My back aches, my elbows are red, the table has made an indentation in my torso. What if writing were physical? What if I could use my body, which has not evolved to sit at a desk, to write? I would punch a punching bag one hundred times for one sentence. I would run a mile for a metaphor. I would swim around Alcatraz and back to the Wharf for a whole chapter. I would swim the length of the west coast for a novel—around the whole continent for a good one.

Om

There are
Three parts
Of OM

AHHHH
—Open mouth wide
Release fully
All breath
OHHHH
—Narrows lips
As if to whistle
Focus sound
Drop pitch
MMMMM
—Close lips
Smiling, similar
To satisfaction
After eating
Then silence
Before repeating

August 22, 2021 at 07:28PM

Idea for a book (inspired by reading “Dharma Bums” by Jack Kerouac)

Keep a journal. Date entries. Record your actual daily experiences in narrative form. Write well, not just to get it down. Include dialogue.

Then, I can return to the journal and make a book out of it. Maybe some day’s entries were no good—they don’t have to be included. Even whole weeks, months could be cut, but I won’t know what’s good unless I write it all down.

I already have a notebook in Evernote titled “Personal Diary.” I can put the entries there. The title of each note will be the date and a detail from the day.

Currently, I am writing moments—just small snapshots, unrelated to each other. If I’m going to write something longer form, there needs to be continuity, characters, dialogue. I can achieve this by writing in narrative form in a journal, like I’ve said.

Mushrooms Trip in Elk, CA 08/21/21

There are
Three parts
Of OM

AHHHH
—Open mouth wide
Release fully
All breath

OHHHH
—Narrows lips
As if to whistle
Focus sound
Drop pitch

MMMMM
—Close lips
Smiling, similar
To satisfaction
After eating

Then silence
Before repeating

>>>

My back starts hurting, usually, when I am seated or standing for a long period.

Why am I seated or standing for a long period? To work.

Why am I heeding the call to work and ignoring the pain in my back?

>>>

Self-conscious

I do
Or say something

As I would
Alone

Without realizing
I am not

>>>

A handle pokes out from under the blanket draped over the daybed. I put the pan beneath the bed before I went to sleep last night, in case of an intruder.

Usually, I write well when I take mushrooms, or at least more creatively. I lie here, on pillows on the floor, having taken them once more, waiting for something to write about.

When I take mushrooms, I sit, lie, lounge, walk in circles, but mostly just wait in between bouts of writing. WHY CAN I NOT DO THIS SOBER?

Mushrooms remind me how to live like a child, but then I go back to living in the adult world. They treat me like one of them because I look like one of them. I often want to do things that are not customary in the adult world, either because they are just not usually done or because the law explicitly forbids it. When walking on the sidewalk the other day, I was curious about a shrub. But I could only see its leaves. I was interested in the trunk and the branches. I thought to get down on my hands and knees there on the sidewalk to have a look, but then these other thoughts came marching one after another into my mind like soldiers. One of the soldiers said, the sidewalk is dirty. The next said, someone will see you. The next said, you are not dressed like a gardener. And so I went, walking on down the sidewalk, not knowing what I would have seen if I had lifted up the skirt of the shrub.

I finish one piece of writing. I want to continue on. I have more to say—things I thought of while writing, but they were unrelated or otherwise wouldn’t fit in the prose, because of the technicality of it, and at the moment I was writing, they wouldn’t fit presently, so I carried on with whatever else and my other thoughts waiting in the queue were forgotten. But I have now remembered some of them! Alas, they are only parts. Their beauty was, and still is, in their belonging to and being placed in each of the appropriate stations inside of the whole. Now, I must forget them, maybe forever. Whether they will return to me, in my mind, is up to forces greater than me. My only choice in the matter is either to hold them and have them as they are for me now, or to let them go and know, twofold—that they may never return to me, but also that new and different others may come to fill their absences. Consistently faced with his choice, how deep shall I go with any one thought? How much time shall I spend with her? Does she have more to teach me, more to say? Or might I learn more from others—different, younger ones? Are my wishes the only ones to be considered in this matter? Now I am thinking no longer of thoughts, but of my relationship with my girlfriend.

On my knees, on the rug, I become aware of the classical music playing. I close my eyes, raise my arms in the air above my head, bend them at the elbow, twirl my fingers, curve the side of my body into a bow, and dance to the music—slowly, softly. I had a thought that someone might be watching. The possibility that someone might be watching made me ask myself, should I be dancing in this way? And now other thoughts come of this. First, we are at a cabin in the woods, just my girlfriend and I, and it is unlikely that anyone is watching. Second, if someone were watching, why should I dance any differently or stop? Third, why is it that someone else watching makes me consider whether I should or should not be doing something? Not even them ACTUALLY watching, just the THOUGHT that they MIGHT be makes me second-guess the way in which I am dancing, alone in a cabin in the woods. Perhaps it is too feminine—the way my side bends into a bow and my fingers twirl. I am a man. Should I, therefore, not be dancing like a woman?

As a writer, I think of myself as such—as being one, a writer. When I write, if it seems like it might be becoming a piece that will be well-received—like a young boy shows early athletic promise and might grow up to become a great baseball player—then the thought that it might be so interrupts me while I have not yet finished with making the piece whole. I think to myself, what if so-and-so reads this, or if they publish me in such-and-such magazine? And then what will that mean for me? Riches, fame, and all the other gifts that are usually given to the main character in a story that ends well. But it interrupts me, this dream of glory, as I am still in the act of making the darn thing.

I worry that I can only write well when I have eaten mushrooms. I don’t believe this is true. I think I write well even when I have not eaten mushrooms. It is the READING that is different after having eaten mushrooms. Everything I read seems to be right and true, fantastic and new. It seems this way whether I have written it or someone else has. When I am writing, I am also reading what I have written. On mushrooms, what I am writing sounds wonderful. I have had this experience several times—eating mushrooms, writing, deeming it well-written. Thusly must the belief, first, and worry, next, have arisen.

Now, as an aside, being an aside because I believe my previous thought has concluded well where it has, still, I might add: I have read, while on mushrooms, what I wrote, while NOT on mushrooms, and found it to be the work, not of a genius but, of one relatively advanced in their craft. I have also read, while NOT on mushrooms, what I wrote, while on mushrooms, and found it to be the work of a lunatic who aspired to write, discovered mushrooms, thought they might aid in his writing process, ate them too often, and never stayed sober long enough to master the intricacies of the craft, which can only be learned by long hours of bored, tedious, and frustrated trying-and-failing, interspersed with reading the greats and wondering—of some of them, why can I not write as well as this myself; of others, are they really as great as everyone says they are?

While writing on mushrooms, many thoughts come to mind while I am already engaged with writing a specific one. Some of these I can forget easily, as they showed a little promise of extraordinariness. Others, those that show more promise, make it difficult for me to decide—between cutting short my current engagement (writing a thought that, before, what the same as this other one than I now consider, a question mark) and ignoring it to delve deeper where I am already standing, up to my knees in disturbed dirt, digging deeper still, to find any stones unturned. They linger, like a first taste that forbids a full bite. With one hand they wag a finger in front of my face that says “no, not yet.” The other hand they hold out, palm facing up. They are asking for something. A price. The price I must pay if I wish to bite into, chew, and mull over the thought to which I have not yet committed. The price is the one with whom I am already. Both, I cannot have. I must place the one I have, still an infant, into the upturned palm. I will never know what the youngling might have grown up to be. But, oh! Here is another, newer, brighter. If only shining its light to attract, if the flame cannot stay lit, if it proves to be no better than the one I had before, then I will go searching once more, and again—the two hands: one, wagging its finger; the other, an upturned palm.

I feel that one of us will win, and the other must then lose. Why must it be this way? I read recently that, based on our evolutionary predispositions, the man desires to spread his seed far and wide, while the woman wants to retain a man to provide for and protect herself and any children they may have together. Is this true? How can I say? But let’s pretend that it is. The desires of the man and the woman are opposing. The women cannot retain the man while he continues to spread his seed. Or, maybe … Already I see margins of possibility in which the man and the woman, in the context of a monogamous relationship between them, must not necessarily be opposing forces. Alas, here I am on the ground floor, writing my own thoughts, while my girlfriend is upstairs writing hers (I can hear the keys clacking on her keyboard), and we are breaking up. It’s not a surprise. We’ve been talking about it. At one point, she wanted me to pack my things and leave that same day. Somehow we ended up here together in this beautiful cabin nestled in the forest of Northern California outside of town called Elk. And I return to my beginning question: if we are to separate, why must it feel like one side is winning and the other is losing? Because one side chooses to end it while the other wants it to continue. There is the opposition: one wants it to end while the other wants to continue. In this situation, both cannot have what they want. Unless, maybe the relationship can transform. One wants it to end, but maybe it doesn’t need to end on the whole. Would the other be okay with a few modifications, in part? Could the relationship still live on, after the modifications? This makes me realize: relationships are always transforming. Because they involve individuals who are always changing. What happens when one changes in a way that the other doesn’t want them to? Then it becomes complicated. She asks, were you this way when I met you? How could I not have seen it? All my other relationships were the same way. Blaming—me, herself, past boyfriends. But the facts remain: people change, relationships transform. Now, the question is: how do we navigate the transformation?

I thought I heard her crying. I couldn’t tell if it was just the music or if she really were up there whimpering, sniffling. I got up and walked over to the steep steps (almost a ladder) of the old-water-tower-turned-cabin. I grabbed the railing and climbed up. There she was—her caramel skin in contrast to the white sheets, her curly hair slightly frizzy (as it gets when she’s been rolling around in bed). I asked how she was doing, if she was okay, or something like that (I forget exactly what I said). We skated, as we tend to, like those water bugs, along the surface, before descending. Then she told me that she HAD been crying. I told her, oh, I’m sorry, well, that is why I came up here. Then she said oh, did you hear me? You couldn’t have. It was only a tear. I wasn’t sobbing. I told her about how I thought I had heard crying in the music. We marveled. I must have FELT her crying, somehow, even though I wasn’t actually hearing her. She was crying because she read a few pages out of a book she found on the steps by a Vietnamese author about how he was thankful for his mother and for memories of when she would take him to the mall. My girlfriend’s mother is Vietnamese. I suspect that is why she felt a closeness to this particular book. She said, “I realized I want to cry more. I want to have things in my life that make me cry. Not just shallow melodrama. You know? Like (and she preceded to describe what she meant and how she felt in words that were perfect, but all I can remember is …) things that make you feel like you’re on the brink of being alive.” The moment was sublime, terribly so. I, knowing our relationship was ending, one tear already on my cheek and more welling. Her, being beautiful in her body as she always is, but then also the depths and intricacies of her emotions, as well as her lexical prowess to communicate them. The trees through the window behind her, bending in the wind, a glint on the glass making their green look red. Ah! What is a man to do? Other than audibly call for his deity, cry more than he already has, and shield his eyes, only to pry them back open, unveiling the portal to his heart, inviting in the moment that is more than can be captured by any artist, no matter how skilled, nor how numerous his forms. Only I, as I was in that moment, the material world as it was, chakras balancing, energy fields in opposition, formless feelings floating, angels singing—all conspiring to torture me, as if all the potency of life were distilled down into one drink, one swallow. As soon as it touched my lips I sputtered and spat. If it were spread out and watered down, so that I could have had time to process, make rational, cram into my own understanding—then I could have taken it. As it was—me, her, and the trees through the window behind her—I had to run. In this case, I slowly descended the steep steps, holding onto the railing. It took some willpower and a great deal more conditioned concern for my bodily well-being not to suddenly fling myself down them as fast and as recklessly as my heart and soul were fleeing. But no matter the manner in which I did, I ran, nonetheless. I ran like I always do. I ran like a thief into a field clutching above my head the bouquet of flowers she had given me, petals flying off of them as I went. See, I’ve never been able to stay put there and just listen to her. As soon as she starts being beautiful (which is immediately, and always) I run away with derivatives, hand-me-downs of her to render into my heart, so that others will pay me, praise me, or whatever will validate the male equivalent of female beauty. I do this, even as I am somewhat aware that I am running in a wide circle, the path of which is laden with obstacles, deceits, let-downs, repetitious exhaustion, self-loathing, and various other trials which must be faced by a man working his way up through the world to be worthy of a woman at the top—all of this, I persist in putting myself through, even as the woman of my dreams lies here in bed asking me, why will you not listen to me? Why will you not come to bed? Why will you not stay?

*** This prose above has the same idea as the poem, HER HONEY. I need to return to that poem. The idea is there. It is true. But it is not yet well-written.

When I forget to breathe, I cannot make up for it by taking rapid deep breaths, which is my habit. I failed, was resultantly worse off, may even suffer lasting damage, but there are some mistakes in the past that I can’t set right presently. I can only learn from them and avoid making the mistake again.

I am realizing, now that I’ve come down from the mushrooms high but still writing, that STAYING PRESENT is important for writing well. This is a partial answer to a recurring question: why do I write better on shrooms, compared to being sober? When I write sober, it usually goes like this: I am inspired by some sensory input, thought, or feeling, and then I formulate an IDEA thereof. I thus interrupt the otherwise seamless flow from stimulation to words, by having an IDEA of the stimulation before I begin to write. I end up writing about an impostor, the intermediary idea. While on shrooms, I stay present. I write about whatever comes up. And I write honestly, rarely second-guessing.

Selfish

I am too eager. I claw at the earth with my bare hands in search of precious stones. Who said that the stones are precious? Why do I care that they said so? What do I seek by acquiring the stones?

If I would wait, the stones would unearth themselves. A river would divert its course to flow over this land and move away the sediment. The wind would blow away the layers of sand. But I do not have enough time. I have only a lifetime, and I do not know how long even that will be.

If I am to have the stones for myself, I must act quickly. I cannot wait for the forces of nature to do my work for me. I will not live long enough to take possession of the fruits of nature’s labor. So I go to the toolshed and return with a shovel. I start to dig more effectively than with my hands.

Why must I have the stones? Why am I not satisfied that someone else should have them? Why do they need to be had by any human? Why can they not stay in the earth where they are?

I am selfish on two levels. First, I think only of myself. Second, I think only of those who are like me; I think only of the human species.

When I remember that I am one with this world, then progress and development, especially economic, seem silly.

There are two wills at play. There is the collective will of humanity and there is the will of the natural world. As a species, we have grown strong and capable of bringing our will to bear, to great effect on the natural world. In many instances, the will of man overpowers the will of the natural world.

Then again, maybe this is the way of things. Maybe the surge in humanity’s power is not at odds with the will of the natural world. The will of the natural world will curtail man’s power in time.

Originally written: Friday, July 9, 2021, 11:28 AM

Human encyclopedia

He would say the name, then he would pause for a long second to see if I had met them or been there, or at least if I knew of the person or had heard of the place. He talked like an encyclopedia. Every twentieth word was a proper noun. He enunciated the first letters of the names to remind me they were capitalized.

When I didn’t know of the person (which was more often than not) and confessed that I didn’t (which I only did a few times when his pauses were extra long and accusatory of my ignorance) he would say, “Oh, they are important, you must read about them.” Of a place, he would say, “Oh, it’s beautiful, you must go there.”

Afterward, I thought of a couple of possible reasons for my conversational partner’s manner of speaking. Either he had learned in the past that bringing up names was a way to seem intelligent, or he just wanted to be anyone other than himself, somewhere other than where we were.

Faces

There are faces
In the clouds
They fade

As have those
Of people
I have known

The clouds shift
And different faces
Take form

As do those
Of passing strangers
On the sidewalk

The clouds stay
For an ephemeral moment
That lasts forever

As does the face
Of my lover
Looking down at me

Originally written: Sunday, Jul 18, 2021, 7:49 PM

Write it down first

You don’t always think what you think that you think. Sometimes it’s actually an emotion and not a thought at all.

When you have a thought in mind, try putting it into words by either explaining it to someone in a conversation or writing it down on paper. Then you will know if you were thinking precisely what you thought you were thinking and, further, if it actually makes some bit of sense.

When you have an emotion in your heart, do the same thing—try putting it into words.

In my own experience, I have had thoughts that I believed to be strong and true, but when I tried to explain them to someone else in a conversation I realized either that my thought was still incomplete and/or tangled, or that there were gaps and inconsistencies in the thought, pointed out to me in conversation.

I have had emotions that I felt deeply and passionately, but when I tried to write them down the passion faded or seemed irrational. This has been especially helpful when I have experienced emotions that can become negative, like sadness or anger.

REMINDER: When I can start pulling content for my next book: June 10, 2021

I don’t think I added any content to The Art of Sidewalking that was written any time after June 10, 2021. The last content I added was “Drench warfare,” I think.

It was basically after my trip to Big Sky, Montana with Kyle, Lake, and Krys that I stopped adding new content to The Art of Sidewalking.

As I’ve gone back through a lot of my content from the past two years, I realize my next book should be SHORT PROSE. I have a lot of good content in the format of 50-to-200-word prose pieces.

Heart poet

At the library
I learned a little
About meter

This morning
I put my ear
On her chest

buh-BUM
buh-BUM
buh-BUM

The heart
Is a poet

Beating on
In eternal
Iambic

August 15, 2021 at 10:27AM

Bored

I can
Only taste
The first
Few sips
Of wine

In sips
Other than
The first

There is
Only a
Vague sense
That the
Liquid is
Alcoholic

Whether it
Is because
I am
Drunk, or

My taste
Buds have
Become bored

In either
Case, I
See little
Point in
Finishing
My glass

August 13, 2021 at 09:13PM

I am writing, I am, me

I am writing
The way
I know how

Which has changed
As I’ve
Gone on

When I read
And enjoy, a writer
Who writes differently

I think to myself,
“Gee, maybe
I should write like that”

But then I read
Another writer
Who writes like me

I think, “Well,
The way I write
Is just fine”

But neither
Should affect me
I know

I should just write
The way
That I do

August 12, 2021 at 12:14PM

Summer

Summer
Used to mean something
When we got off school

Now
It’s just the hottest
Of the seasons

And we work
Right on through
Sweating

August 10, 2021 at 02:42PM

Some thoughts on my progress and the path forward for my writing 08/09/21

I am almost finished with “The Art of Sidewalking.” As of now, it is a book of about 110 poems.

Next, I want to work on a book of short prose (or flash fiction; I’m not sure of the correct term). Part of the reason I am drawn to poetry is because of its brevity. According to a study, the average human attention span decreased from 12 seconds to 8 seconds. I feel my own attention span decreasing. I don’t have the patience to read, or write, anything that is too long.

When I was in Cabo on vacation with Greg and Devin, I started to write short narratives about people—the lady shop owner in Todo Santos, the young pianist in San Jose. Originally, I wrote them in verse. I think they would be better written in poetic form. This tells me that my writing style is naturally stretching toward short prose.

I would like to take these narratives from Cabo and transition them from poetry to prose.

Once I finish “Sidewalking,” I will post all the last-minute deletes and additions to the collection. This will help me remember what was included in the collection.

Generally, I stopped adding to the collection after the end of my trips to Cabo and Big Sky. I got back from Big Sky on June 12, 2021.

Sober moment

After I
Have gotten drunk
And danced
I remember
There are things
I’m supposed to have
And I check
My pockets
In a sober moment
For my wallet
And keys

August 08, 2021 at 04:37PM

Always alone

Is the aloneness
A musician experiences
On stage
Performing for a crowd
Any different
Than the aloneness
They experienced
When they played
Just for themselves?

August 08, 2021 at 04:17PM

Nonetheless

Three-legged dogs
Are heroes
Because having four legs
Seems to be such
An integral part
Of a dog’s life
It’s like a person
That has lost
One of their senses
It’s so sad
Because it’s such
A human thing
To sense
But then it’s inspiring
When despite
Their loss of humanness
They carry on
As humans nonetheless

August 08, 2021 at 04:04PM

People watching

Along the walkway
I’ve watched
At least a thousand different people
Walk by
While I’m supposed to be watching
The musician on stage
So far away
I can barely see
But I honestly enjoy watching
The people on the walkway
Much more
If I could pay admission
To somewhere I could sit
And unabashedly
Watch people walk by
I would pay that admission
As happily as I have
To any other show

August 08, 2021 at 04:01PM

At least not suicide

It’s not that complicated
The emotion is real
Complicating it with words
Won’t get you any closer
To the original emotion

If these authors
Of thousand-page volumes
Were honest with themselves
About why they write
In the first place

God, I don’t know what they would do
Maybe they would just kill themselves
So maybe they are
Better off just writing
And maybe someone will read it

But it doesn’t matter
What matters is the writer
Did something for a while
Other than kill themselves

August 08, 2021 at 03:32PM

Burnt the fuck out man

Have we done enough
In the meantime

To earn our right
To eat and sleep
Again

God damn
That’s all we do

Eat, sleep, eat, sleep
Try to fuck
With a semblance
Of the passion
That some great great
Grandfather of mine
Who I will never know
Fucked with
The passion he fucked with
That birthed
All the generations
That fucked with
Gradually less and less passion
As certain men and women
Fucked with such passion
To birth, not more
Men and women
But advances in science
That established so strongly
Our position on this earth
As a species
That those of us now
Don’t know what the fuck
To do with ourselves

It’s all a big sham
In these modern times

The only life that’s real
Is the surviving
The eating and being eaten
The sex and reproduction

And these originals acts
We still perform

But we are only
Going through the motions

There are no
Noble professions left
Other than
Being a burnout

Our species has burnt out

The only generations
That had to fight
In order to survive
Have long since died

Everything we do now
Is just killing time

Literally thousands of people
Over thousands of years
Have spent their lifetimes
Trying to come up with
Some meaning for our existence
And they can’t fucking do it

We’ve taken over the whole planet
And now we just want it to mean something
In the meantime
As we continue to exist
On the planet we’ve conquered
Each of us as individuals even
Want our individuals lives to mean something

Fuck me man
For once I should publish a poem
With all the expletives
And the rawness
As I wrote it

Because god damn
Of course I’m going to edit out
All the curse words
When I’m sitting in the apartment
And not feeling a damn thing
Other than the desire
To make the poetry good somehow

August 08, 2021 at 02:58PM

Before the band comes on

The stage is set
For the band to come on

The musicians
Are doomed to play

They could not
Walk out onto that stage

And do anything other
Than play

Their instruments
Are already set out for them

The opener has already
Come on and gone

The crowd has waited
For long enough

They could not come out
And take a nap

They could not come out
And eat lunch

There is not a single other thing
They could do

Other than walk out
Onto that stage

And play
Like we all expect them to

August 08, 2021 at 02:53PM

Raw consciousness

Did I capture
Consciousness
In its rawest

She asks me
Sarcastically
After I’ve written

I know
She really means,
“Pay attention to me!”

She won’t admit
She doesn’t like when I write
When I’m with her

But her question
In the first place
Was rather apt

I go back
And read what I wrote
To give her an answer

August 08, 2021 at 02:14PM

Wanting

I always want
Want, want

When will I
Be satisfied

Even when
I am, after

Having gotten
What I wanted

It lasts
Only briefly

Before another want
Assails me

I know
Or, I have heard

There are ways
Not to want

Most of them
Eastern

America wants
Not to want

But we fail
Before we start

Because wanting
Not to want

Is still
Wanting

August 08, 2021 at 02:05PM

Hot water in the morning

With my fists
Half-heartedly
Balled up

(Without vigor
Enough to make
My knuckles white)

And stuffed
Into the pockets
Of my jeans

I lean my bony hip
Against
The marble countertop

And wait
For the hot water
In the kettle

It does
Eventually
Bubble audibly

I look up
At the cracks
In the ceiling

And exhale
In the dark
Of the kitchen

(We leave the lights off
To save
On electricity)

Before I can
Pour the water
Into my mug

I walk away
To write
This

August 08, 2021 at 09:37AM

Inevitably alone

What crazy things
We wonder
When we are alone
In our minds

What impossibilities
We figure feasible
For the satisfaction
Of our fancies

What horrors
We conjure up
Only to have
Fodder for fear

What dreams
To hope
Especially
When we have none

August 07, 2021 at 09:53PM

Feel something

At first, it was only
To remove a bit of soap
From my eye

That I held its lid open
Under the direct spray
Of shower water

But even after blinking
And feeling the sting
Had been banished

I opened my lid again
And looked back up
Into the waterfall

Just to feel something
Even uncomfortable
Is better than nothing

August 05, 2021 at 06:23PM

Hot

The heat
From the oven
Warms my face
Almost to the point
Of perspiration
As I reach in
To carefully place
Slices of bread
Without burning myself
On the baking sheet
That I should have removed
But forgot
Before I turned on
The oven

August 05, 2021 at 12:02PM

Struggling

I struggle with my work
And feel sorry
For myself,
But then I see

A fallen leaf
In the soil
Of the potted plant
Atop our dresser

A construction worker
With dirt and sweat
On his shirt
Leaning over, exhausted

And I realize
I’m not the only one,
Which makes me feel
A little better

August 05, 2021 at 10:36AM

Runner

Walked
To the window
In the bedroom

Looked down
At the sidewalk
Just in time
To see—

Running out of sight
Underneath
The bay window
Next to ours—

A pair of legs
Not-too-skinny
Dressed in denim,

A hand
Holding a grocery sack
Blowing in the wind,

And sneakers
With lime-green
Stripes on the sides

August 04, 2021 at 10:02AM

Fantastic

A fly crawls up
On the rose quartz
In the crystal grid
My girlfriend arranged
Atop the dresser

The fly takes flight
And buzzes
Over to the light
Of my laptop
Open next to the grid

Now
I feel good enough
To find this
Fantastic

Other times
I would swat the fly
For disturbing
My work

August 04, 2021 at 09:46AM

Dead

Our love’s
Not the only thing
That’s been dying
Around here

The bananas
In the fruit bowl
Have black spots
And flies

The arms
Of the cactus
In the window
Are discolored

The leftover chili
Has been sitting
In the back of the fridge
For weeks

And now
The construction men
Have knocked out
The power

August 03, 2021 at 11:45AM

Sick

While sick
Things seem
Different

My healthy mind
Is not awake
To impose
Its assumptions

My energy
Is focused
On surviving

In a moment
I forget my sickness
And see

A puddle
From the broken fridge
On the kitchen floor

Like
I was seeing a puddle
For the first time

I stood there
For as long
As my shaky legs
Would hold me

July 28, 2021 at 09:25AM

Interior design

About whether
The tea bags belong
In the utensil drawer
Or the pantry

I have no energy
To argue

It seems to me
Unimportant—

Where things
Should be arranged
In our home

But she believes
In the art of it

July 28, 2021 at 07:56AM

Help

Every new piece of furniture
That gets delivered

Every piece of art
That I help her hang

Every plant that gets added
To my weekly watering routine

Every welcome wine bottle
The neighbors bring

Makes me that much
More certain

I’m never getting out
Of this domestic prison

July 26, 2021 at 04:15PM

Yellow markers

On the logs
Along the trail
There are
Fluorescent
Yellow markers
Screwed in
Two per log

So bikers
Can see the logs
At night
And avoid them

Some logs
Have only one
And a few
Have none

But I know
They were there
Because I can see
The screws
That held them
In place

I search
For the escaped
Yellow markers
In the forest foliage
Beyond
The log barrier
But they are nowhere
To be found

I wonder where
The yellow markers
Have gone
And what occupation
They have taken up
Instead of the one
They were screwed into

>>>

On the logs along the trail
There are fluorescent yellow markers
Screwed in, two per log

So bikers can see the logs at night
And avoid them

Some logs have only one marker
And a few have none

But I know they were there
Because I can see the screws
That held them in place

I search for the escaped yellow markers
In the forest foliage beyond the log barrier
But they are nowhere to be found

I wonder where the yellow markers have gone
And what occupation they have taken up
Instead of the one they were screwed into

July 26, 2021 at 09:49AM

Creaky door

Healthy
And already overwhelmed
The door creaking
Barely open
And then shut
Would have been
An unwelcome
Interruption
To the rare silence
I find
In my bedroom

Sick
I was bored
And grateful
For anyone
Who would talk to me
Even a creaky
Old door

July 25, 2021 at 12:51PM

Watching workers

Sick
I sat
On the edge
Of the bed
Shivering
Watching

The workers
Wearing
Orange vests
Outside
Working
On the street

One
With a shovel
In the trench
Sticking it
Into the dirt
And then stepping
With his boot
To drive it deeper

Another
In the yellow
Backhoe
Digging out
The trench

The big bucket
Of the backhoe
Dumped
Into a white
Dump truck

July 23, 2021 at 11:21AM

Idk

I am telling you
Exactly
What you
Already know

The wise men
Talk in metaphors
To stay
Wise

All that art
You don’t understand
Isn’t meant to be
Understood

Turns out
You can
Judge a book
By its cover

If it doesn’t tell you
What you need to know
On the back

Then it’s probably
Not
Worth reading

July 22, 2021 at 09:29PM

Lift off

I’m susceptible to it
Today
To lift off

I can tell because
I take
My first sip
Of tea

And my brain bumps
The top
Of my skull

Like an astronaut
In zero gravity

And when I look
Through my eyes

Like windows
On a spaceship

Everything
That just before

Seemed perfectly
Terrestrial

Now seems
Terribly alien

July 22, 2021 at 10:52AM

The tea is brewing

In its glass pot
On the marble countertop
In the other room

But I might just wait
Let it cool
And heat up more hot water
A little later

After I’ve done my work
That might not go so well
If my hands are shaking
And my mind is racing

As tends to happen
When I drink tea

July 22, 2021 at 10:48AM

Self-image

I look alien
In the mirror

In the instant before
I recognize myself

And my preconceptions
Load
Like a computer file

But in the instant
While the pinwheel
Still spins

And I am seeing
Beneath the veil

Splotchy skin,
Lopsided pectorals,
Crooked jaw

Rectangular prism,
Cylinder,
Cube

Color,
Light,
Dimension

Who am I
When I forget?

July 20, 2021 at 10:00PM

Calm cat

Up the crumbling
Stone steps

Next
To the lemon tree

In the backyard
That we can see
Through our window

But cannot access
Because it’s only
For our neighbors
Who pay more rent
Than we do

A black and white
Cat
Crept calmly
As cats do

Sat back
On its haunches
And looked left
Then right

And saw me
In the window
Watching it

And watched
Me back

Still
As a statue

For a while
We watched
One another

Then the cat
Lifted its leg
And licked itself

To show me
How much
Of a threat
It thought
I was

July 20, 2021 at 07:45PM

Cutting potatoes

The knife
Makes a song
Of two notes

As I cut potato
Slicing
Away from me

The angle
Cut through
The gold

Is such that
The blade
Slides off

And bangs
Onto
The board

Then I make
The opposite cut
Down
And towards me

So that the blade
Meets the board
Muffled
On either side
By potato flesh

And so
The note
Is duller

And on I cut

Out
And away
Banging

Back
And towards me
Muffled

July 20, 2021 at 03:42PM

Dog walker

I walk by
A professional dog walker
In the park
Holding the leashes
Of six dogs

And wonder
What the rich owners
Of the dogs
Are doing

Such that they cannot
Walk
Their own dogs

July 20, 2021 at 10:05AM

Meditating in the Presidio

With my eyes closed,
My legs crossed,
And my hands on my knees

Sitting on a Mexican blanket
Folded and laid atop
A fallen log

I started to hear drops
Falling
On the leaves and the dirt

This
Broke the concentration
Of my meditation

As I worried
That it might
Start to pour

I forgot about it
And remembered
My breath

Uncrossed my legs,
Got a book out of my bag,
And stood up

I felt something fall
And bounce
Off the top of my head

And into
The crease
Of the open book

It was a twig
No longer
Than a quarter inch

It had not
Been rain
Falling

It was pieces
Of the trees
Cast down

July 20, 2021 at 09:31AM

Nightmare

In a nightmare it occurs to me
That I can become the scary thing myself

So I make myself light,
Float up somewhere near the ceiling,
And shriek high and loud

My victims get out of bed, terrified
And run through hallways in their nightgowns
Stumbling against the walls

I don’t actually mean to scare
I never wanted to be a scary thing
I just wanted to not be scared myself

So I try to float down from the ceiling
To tell my victims it’s okay
It’s just me and I’m not scary

But all that comes out is a shriek
And that’s when the nightmare
Became truly scary

July 19, 2021 at 11:18PM

I feel like I have it all

Two burners going on the stovetop
Shelves in the pantry freshly stocked with groceries
Diced onions next to the knife on the cutting board
A shower that runs hot or cold
A sink faucet with as much water as I could drink
My girlfriend in the other room on the phone
A computer with access to limitless knowledge
Shirts hanging in the closet
Pants and underwear in the dresser

July 19, 2021 at 11:28AM

Long sleeves

After I had gotten
Out of the shower

Before I went
For a walk outside

I opened the second-
From-the-bottom
Drawer

In the five-drawer
Dresser

And took out
A t-shirt

But considered
Before putting it on
That I might be cold

So I put the t-shirt
Back in the drawer,

Took out
A long-sleeved shirt

And pulled that one
Over my head
Instead

July 19, 2021 at 09:51AM

Hot water

The water
Got even hotter
As the heater
Heated it up
And sent it
Boiling
Through the pipes

I could not finish
Washing my hands
Without them burning

And so I
Took the handle
And turned it
To the left
To cool

July 19, 2021 at 09:47AM

Driving in a storm under a series of bridges 

In a storm
The rain peppers the windshield
Making a rapid
Pattering noise

Under the bridge
There is a moment
Of clarity
As the windshield clears
And the pattering stops

Until we come out on the other side
And the windshield blurs again
And the noise even louder
In contrast to the momentary quiet

July 18, 2021 at 01:57PM

Brief

I want it
To pack a quick punch

There are too many people in the world
Too much to read
Too much distraction

People don’t read novels anymore
If you only had one sentence
What would it be?

July 18, 2021 at 10:52AM

Family reunion

My girlfriend told me
That my grandma told her
That black people
Had slaves too

We sat in the cabana
At the rooftop pool
In Nashville
And talked about
Whether it was worth it
To try and convince people
Who are stuck in their ways

I told my girlfriend
I didn’t think
It was worth it
Or even possible

She said she thought it was
Because all people have souls
And all people have depth

She is making progress
In convincing me of this

I am arrogant to assume
That some people
Aren’t worth talking to

I assume they can’t
See the truth

But I am guilty
Of the same inability
If I won’t talk to them
And listen
And really try to understand

July 18, 2021 at 10:45AM

Nashville #2

In Nashville sitting at the bar
In a diner for breakfast
After waiting in line for an hour
I got disgusted with the city
All at once
And couldn’t even order
When the waitress asked me
What I wanted
I just had to get out and away
From the food, the alcohol
The obesity, the intoxication

My dad told me
When we were waiting in line
That the wait was so long
Because everyone was still
Collecting their unemployment checks

Once I got out and walked
On the sidewalk
I saw a homeless man
Shirtless in the hot sun
Still not sure
Whether he should be awake
Or asleep
Or what he should do

I smelled the grossness of the city
The vomit from the man
We saw sitting on the curb
Last night
His friend was holding his head
To keep him upright

The leftover food in the trash cans
The sweat
The smells from the street food carts
That would have normally
Incited my appetite
Mixing with the foul smells
Made me want to vomit
More than I wanted to eat

I wanted to purge myself,
The people walking by
To eat, to drink
More
Already eating, drinking
On their way
To eat, to drink
More

I walked faster
To sweat, to move my muscles
To work
To do the opposite
Of eating, and drinking
More

It’s no wonder
How more than half the people
I saw walking around the city
Were obese

Every egg scramble
On the menu at the diner
Had cheese in it

All the tables were full
Of families, couples
And bachelorette parties
Eating, drinking
Smiling, laughing
Talking about where
They would eat and drink
Later that night

Sitting in their hotel rooms
Watching TV
In between meals
And bouts of drinking

July 18, 2021 at 10:27AM

Waking up on the neutral side

I woke up
Sideways
In bed

Rolled down
Longways
To the foot

And lived
Days differently
From then on

Getting out of bed
On neither

The left nor the right
The right nor the wrong

But an altogether
Other
Escape from morality
And judgment

Through the hatch
At the bottom
Out
From underneath
Tucked-in sheets

July 17, 2021 at 04:42AM

The second derivative of wanting

I want to want
What I have wanted before

I know the wanting
Precedes the satisfaction

But I still try to force it

The sandwich and chips
I ate for lunch yesterday
Were delicious

Today, it is lunchtime
And I want to want
The sandwich and chips
So that I can satisfy
The same hunger

But I want something different
I don’t know what

I want to want
What I’ve wanted before
Because it’s easier

I learned to love
When I moved to San Francisco
I stayed up all night with strangers

I want to want that again
But I am comfortable

To hunger for a sandwich
Like when I returned home
From a hike yesterday

To lust for sex
As when I was young
And didn’t know what it was

July 16, 2021 at 03:22PM

Drunk

After days of drunkenness
Sobriety seems
A more novel experience

Just to change my mind
Which is the same reason
I started drinking
In the first place

July 15, 2021 at 08:39PM

Family reunion

In my mind
My father’s face
Is as young as I remember it
When I was nine or ten

But in reality, it’s older now
More wrinkles
Red cheeks and nose
Visible veins

I didn’t realize until
I look at photo albums

At a family reunion
With his dad (my grandpa)
Who turned eighty yesterday

And see photos of my dad
When he was really young
And had blonde highlights in his hair
And smiled in all the photos

I wonder if my grandpa’s face
Is as young in my dad’s mind
As my dad’s is in mine

And what it will be like
When my dad’s as old
As my grandpa is now

I wonder how my dad feels
About my grandpa getting closer
To dying

It occurs to me only now
As I write this
That I should ask him
And leave nothing unsaid

July 15, 2021 at 06:34PM

P.S. This should be prose, not poetry.

Grandpa

As if there weren’t
Any other way
Of seeing things

My grandpa talked to me
About work and money

And asked whether
What I had been doing
Since quitting my job
Made any

If it didn’t
Then he didn’t
Want to hear about it

Writing,
Especially poetry,
Doesn’t make much

So we didn’t have
Much to talk about

July 13, 2021 at 02:25PM

Pool with my brothers

I pulled back the cue
And held my breath

Playing pool with my brothers
In the basement

For a moment in the quiet
As I held my breath

And my brothers
Held theirs too

We could hear our parents
Arguing upstairs

July 12, 2021 at 07:50PM

Bony fingers

My fingers feel
Bonier than usual
While washing my hands

Like lifeless cylinders
Unfeeling as they rub
Against each other

Windchimes
That collide
But make no sound

The calluses
Have calluses

The feeling skin
Wears away

Skeletons hands
Can grab, lift,
And carry as much
As skinless hands

So why not
Peel away
The excess layer
Like wrapping
On a package

July 12, 2021 at 03:50PM

In and out

It is this
Which comes on
Only as this can

Fast and strong

Out of contrast
As its opposite
Retreats

With equal speed
In the other direction
Out

As this
Comes
In

July 11, 2021 at 08:40AM

Now

A moment
Which was in the future
In the past
Is now
Now

I am not surprised
I knew
This was coming
But it’s still
Surreal

To see the bones
Of an imagining
Dressed
In the flesh
Of reality

July 10, 2021 at 06:09AM

Nashville

As if I had just seen
My fingernails
For the first time
Pissing
In the basement
Bathroom
Of the bar
On Broadway
For what seemed like
Forever
So what did I have to do
But look at my nails
And wait
To finish my piss
And then go upstairs
To get the drink
They said they would
Order for me

July 09, 2021 at 09:59PM

Pain and death

My pain invites me to grapple with my mortality on a daily basis. For all my life, I have been healthy. More than that, I have been strong and capable. My dad used to tell me, “I was too rough on my body when I was young. Now I’m paying the price for it.” I’m starting to pay the price too. What is life without a strong and capable body? What really is dying is my old way of life. Maybe I’m still a ways away from my ultimate end. But I will die several small deaths before then.

What’s the point?

There is no point. First, what does have a point? Survival seems to be the most widely accepted point of doing anything. For a long time, there was no point in doing anything other than what was required to survive because, if we did not, then we would have died and we would not have been able to carry on much longer with the pointless activity upon dying. But we are past that now. Can we now begin to spend our time on pointless activities?

My parents would feel better if I get a job. They would prefer that to me being a poet. Where does this obsession with working come from?

I myself feel a little guilt when I spend an entire day and all I have to show for it is maybe twenty or thirty lines of poetry. It seems like very little compared to the economic production of which I know I am capable from having worked a job before.

Blind soldiers

For as long as I
Can lie on my side
Looking at the light

Bleeding in ever so softly
Through the white, wooden slats
Strung together and hung
To face the fury of the sun

Staying in bed until noon
Free from the day’s oppression
Would not be possible
Without their bravery

I yawn, smack my lips,
And close my eyes again
To return to rest
In their honor

July 08, 2021 at 09:42AM

Sex on July 5th

I.

She walked toward me, dressed
She lay before me, undressed

—The only two scenes I remember
Of the girl from my dream

At the moment I was to have her,
I awoke,

Got up, went to the bathroom,
And almost forgot

Back in bed, I remembered
Hurried to sleep, hoping she would return

II.

Scratched my chest,
Sucked on my neck,
And swung her leg over

I stood on the side of the bed,
Laid her on her back,
And pulled her in close

Put my thumb in her mouth
And pressed on her molars

Plunged, as with my arm
Into a car motor

To reach a part, her heart
Unreachable

I was losing my strength
Worn out, but not finished

III.

So I closed my eyes and called
For the girl from my dream

She walked toward me, dressed
She lay before me, undressed

I could see her with my eyes closed
Feel her with my body

And my strength resurged
As in a hungry, hunting animal

I wrapped her hair, like a rope,
Around my hand, and pulled tighter

Galloping like a whipped steed
A horse will run to death, they say

Originally written: July 5, 2021

Birdman

The crow (or raven;
I can never tell
Which
Is which)

Walked across
The yellow rectangles
In the road
Like a pedestrian

As if the black bird
Had forgotten
Its wings
Which would take it

Up
And along
Aerial highways
Unregulated

The avian nation
Has yet
Resisted
The Fall

Originally written: July 4, 2021

Nectarine

Dug my fingers
Into yellow flesh

Clutched wooden heart
With nails

Sucked sweet strings
Of nectar

Until there was none left
But what dripped
From my chin

July 07, 2021 at 11:41AM

Growing boy

There is no
Expiration date
On my hunger

Only a sign
Like the ones you see
In the window

When a shopkeeper
Goes to lunch,

“Be back in 30”

July 07, 2021 at 10:16AM

Shrooms trip with K in the Presidio 06/27/21

Words express the “manifested” world.

When you go deeper into your Self, there is a point when words no longer serve their communicative purpose.

Because communication between two consciousnesses is like this …

Firsthand experience of the speaker –> Words –> Secondhand experience of the listener

If you attempt to communicate the depths of your own spiritual journey to another consciousness, after you have gone deep in your own journey, there is a lot of work involved in retracing your steps and defining terms.

In my personal journey, I started writing as a way to express my questions, discoveries, inspirations.

It was always a spiritual journey. My writing was my ego wanting to bring the unmanifested to the manifested for its own benefit. I am growing to a point in my spiritual journey when I can leave things unwritten.

Other than my ego, why else do I need to manifest the unmanifested in the form of words?

  • Because it’s beautiful and there is joy for others in appreciating beauty.
  • Because it is and I am writing what is.

Does there have to be a reason for it?

I am drawn to poetry because it is minimal, in terms of word usage (less words).

It is also approachable for the reader, easier to start reading a poem than a novel.

My emotion about my back pain is more about the future of the pain. Will it ever go away? Is it something more serious than just muscle tightness?

In the present moment, my back pain is just that, pain. And pain is only a sensation, not necessarily a negative one.

The dollar

I don’t mind living
On rice and beans

If that means
I can think for myself
All twenty-four hours
Of the day

But I grew up
In the grocery store
Begging my mom
For sugar cereal

Learned the capitals
Of all fifty states
Instead of hunting buffalo
On horseback

Went to college
On government loans
Instead of walking
To the water

Got my first job
In a big city
Instead of moving
With the herd

Soared too high
On the dollar
Like a folded
Paper airplane

Even if I ever landed
Back on earth
I would not know how
To live there

July 06, 2021 at 07:40PM

Feathers

The tag
On the pillow

Rustled
In the wind

Coming through
The open window

As if a bird
Had flown through

And alighted
On the couch

Making the same noise
With its wings

July 06, 2021 at 05:08PM

Bored

Why do I deserve
This boredom

This right
To do nothing

Is this the freedom
The revolutionaries
Fought for

Is this the luxury
The industrialists
Worked for

For me
To lie in bed
Until noon

Eat the food
Delivered
To my door

And struggle only
To find new ways
Of entertaining myself

July 06, 2021 at 04:34PM

Shallow thoughts

Like a pool
With a sign that says,
“No diving”

But my hands
Are what really
Limit me

See, the sign
Did not say,
“No digging”

So I could go
And get
A jackhammer

Break through
The cement bottom
Of the pool

Then a shovel
To dig deeper
Into the dirt

There are no
Shallow thoughts;
Just shallow tools

July 06, 2021 at 10:31AM

Hummingbird

Flowers, I thought
Were the fancy
Of hummingbirds

But this one
Hovers above
Bare, green leaves

Dewdrops, perhaps
It picks
With its needle beak

To punctuate
Its taste
Of sweet nectar
With dull dew

July 06, 2021 at 09:10AM

Thread

A loose thread
In the process
Of escaping
From the hem
At sheet’s end

Wiggles with each
Of my deep breaths
In bed
Blowing it
Like wind, a leaf

July 06, 2021 at 08:46AM

 

Ghost

What are you capable of
Ghost

If you are merely
As your name suggests

I will pass on
Through you

Unobstructed
And unafraid

But if you are
More than just

A mirage,
A trick on my eyes

More than
A soul with no body

If you can
Enter my world

If you can
Grab me, stab me

I will be very,
Very afraid

July 05, 2021 at 01:34PM

Exciting but dangerous new friend

In the moment
That you meet someone
Who is like
An apple cart
Rolling down a hill

You can see them
Shooting by
Even pick up an apple
And bite into
Its sweetness

But to go along
For their reckless ride
Would be both
To leave your
Present place
And also to share
In their eventual crash

July 04, 2021 at 10:01PM

Bless me

I lifted my shirt collar
Over the bridge of my nose
To sneeze

Then turned it
Inside out
To check for snot

July 04, 2021 at 07:21PM

Kamikaze

I forget
To eat

To give my girlfriend
Attention

To change
Postures

To breathe
Even

When I really
Get into it

I feel like
A kamikaze

Not caring for
My corporal form

If I could just
Get this one
Down

Is a cause
I could die for

Longer lines:

I forget to eat
To give my girlfriend attention
To change postures
To breathe even
When I really get into it
I feel like a kamikaze
Not caring for my corporal form
If I could just get this one down
Is a cause I could die for

July 04, 2021 at 06:53PM

Meeting Henry

I held onto the metal bar above the doorway into the basketball court, doing leg raises. He stood on the other side of the chain-link fence, behind a storage container to shield him from the wind. He was drawing on a pad atop a tripod. I wanted to know what he was drawing, but I could not decide if I would go over and ask. By the time I finished my exercises, I had decided that I would.

I walked over and asked, “Do you mind if I take a look?” He stopped drawing, looked up, and, after taking a moment to resurface from his deep, drawing thoughts, said, “Oh, yea, sure, it’s not finished, but …” Then he took a step back and lifted his hand, palm facing up, to point at the pad, signaling to me that I was invited to see. I stepped into the studio he had made with a dirt floor and two walls—one, storage container; the other, chain link.

It was a pencil sketch of a tree. There was smudging that made a sort of background and eraser marks that looked like calligraphy—one art form within another. It was obviously a tree. The trunk and the branches were clear to see, but it was still unfinished.

As I was admiring the sketch, I remembered that I was meeting a stranger at the same time as I was admiring an artist’s work—both of which are events normally accompanied by certain manners. I said, “The eraser marks are interesting.” And explained how they looked, to me, like calligraphy.

He then explained how he used the eraser as part of the drawing process. He would erase to create a lighter shade and then wipe across it with a cotton swab to make a purposeful smudge.

We went back and forth about the sketch itself. He taught me about his methods and I asked questions. Lately, he had been using a ruler to get the scale right. Otherwise, he said, he would get carried away with drawing a certain part of the sketch—say, one bough—and then it would end up out of proportion with the rest of the sketch. So his solution for this was to buy a ruler at the art store and make tick marks along the length of the page that corresponded to different parts of the tree. Scale had been on his mind a lot recently. He wanted to draw the tree as it was.

I cannot remember all of what Henry said. I tried to be present in the conversation, rather than just trying to remember. But I do wish to record a few certain things he said that really struck me.

I explained to him that I was a writer and that I knew what he meant about how you can’t be too willy-nilly when you’re getting down your first draft because then you will create a mountainous task for yourself when it comes time to edit. The closer you can get it on the first draft, the more time you can spend getting it even closer during editing. Of course, this is balanced with not being so focused on getting your inspiration crammed so perfectly into what you preconceive as the proper form that you end up choking the energy and vibrancy that gave life to the work in the first place. We agreed there is a balance between form and energy, structure and chaos.

I also told him that sometimes I have an experience and become frustrated when I struggle to write it such that it is equal to the beauty, sadness, joy, brilliance, or whatever I am feeling so greatly myself because I wish for others to feel it too, via my writing, but I know they will not be able to if I cannot fit the writing within a tight enough pipe that it gets to them like a firehose.

And that is really what we were getting at. I may be putting it in different words but I can feel now, writing it, the same as I did an hour ago, talking to Henry about it, so here it is. There is a dichotomy. Many analogies demonstrate it clearly—solid and fluid, structure and chaos, form and energy, wind and tunnel. Let’s use solid and fluid—water in a hose, to be precise. The water is the energy. The hose is the form. Making art is the process of turning on the water and having it flow through the hose.

The water is what the artist feels. It is the emotion, idea, or inspiration. It gets into the artist. A painter beholds a nature landscape. A dancer is filled with potential energy for movement. A comedy writer overhears a funny conversation.

But does the artist have a hose? Does the painter have a keen painter’s eye to see the colors in the autumn leaves and choose the corresponding colors from his palette? Has the dancer trained and flexed her muscles so that her body is capable of the great leap to which her spirit aspires? Does the writer have the skill to translate the elusive rhythm of spoken comedy to the written word?

This is not the kind of hose that can be bought at the hardware store. It is more than just the painter’s brush, the dancer’s body, or the writer’s pen. It is the craft itself.

Many times I have been overflowing with water that I cannot force into my hose; in other words, I am overwhelmed with an experience that I cannot write. I can write some of it, but there are holes in my hose. There are holes because my craft is still of an amateur. My vocabulary has not expanded to the far reaches of the language. I have not read enough to gather a sufficient stylistic inventory. My words don’t sing in perfect harmony with the music of language.

The water wells up in me and I drown in the ecstasy on which I am already drunk and would readily pour out into the glasses of others so that they could be drunk with me. But my hose is holey and all that comes out the other end is a dribble. I cannot spray out of myself strong enough for my readers to be dancing in the water as in a sprinkler during a hot summer day.

On this, Henry gave me advice. He said that my experiences as a young man are ephemeral and I need to freeze them while I can. That means writing down my experiences with the writing skill that I now possess. As I grow as a writer, my craft will develop. Then I can return to my earlier works and raise them to the level of my heightened craft. Henry said that he had done this with sketches from his younger years.

A text from Henry the next morning (07/05/21) at 3:51am:

I can see the distant bay but I cannot touch it or use any other senses to flesh its reality. My awareness of rests on its image in my mind. Without embodiment, reality drifts into fantasm. “Feeling of reality” (referring to a term used by Andre Gide) is a little litmus strip one end is informed by all the senses and is rooted and the other has less sensation and is more ethereal and seems fantastic.

The young sand surfer

Blonde pigtails
Dripping down
The back
Of her wet suit

Stood watching
Waiting
For her chance

Then ran, slouched,
And slid her board
Along
The wet beach

Where from
A wave
Had just retreated

Jumped on
And skimmed
Out to the water

In a moment
Of grace
Gliding atop
The froth

Then slowed,
Stopped,
Waved her arms,
Wobbled,

And fell
Splash!
Belly-first
Into the water

July 04, 2021 at 01:15PM

She

She waited
Until after
A couple of drinks
At the bar
Before she asked
In an off-hand
Kind of blasè
Way
What street
He lived on
So he
Would not know
That she
Was sleeping around
Rent-free
To see
What neighborhood
She would like
To live in

July 04, 2021 at 01:03PM

Booze for breakfast

The glass
Of the bottle
And the air
Are all that separate
Me
From the molecules

That once
Have trickled
Down the hatch
And had
A second
To take effect

Would make
Me feel
For a time
Grand
And above it

But I think
I’ll have cereal
Instead

July 04, 2021 at 10:01AM

Charcuterie

Crackers spill
From the plastic

I look
At how they lie

And consider
They could be

Arranged
More beautifully

Than they happened
To spill out

So I stack them
In a row

But the order
Is even uglier

So I pray
The taste

Will be the board’s
Redeemer

July 03, 2021 at 05:26PM

Waving

At the man in the car
Who stopped
For my teammate
To run across the street
And grab the ball
Out of the gutter

I don’t know you
Dear driver sir
But in this moment
We are connected
By my waving
And you’re seeing it
And stopping

July 02, 2021 at 07:02PM

Me feel

I lie on the floor
Touching
The rug, the floor,
The brick, the wall
Any texture to make

I stand
On my head
With my feet up against
The wall
So the blood will rush
Down
And make

I start a song
And skip to another
That I hope
Will make

I read
The first few lines
Of a poem
And then the next few
Before I’ve understood
The first few
Searching
For what will make

In the fridge
There may be leftovers
To make

In some club
After nightfall
Deep underground
There she may be
Dancing alone
Just waiting to make

I crawl into bed
And touch her
Hair, skin
Look and ask her
To make

July 02, 2021 at 04:14PM

On

At some point
I’ve got to go
With what I’ve
Already got
And stop the getting
Just
To get on

July 02, 2021 at 04:13PM

On Shrooms 07/02/21 (Poetry)

Bim! Bim! Bim!
The experiences come

Crammed once
Into thoughts

Crammed twice now
Into words

What is left over for you
My poor dear lover

Who I have not
Yet met

Though I wish to meet
All of you

If you happen
To be multiple

Or just one
Would be fine too

If you really are the One

Having not yet found you
Oh grandmaster God

With more pronouns
Than I can fit on a line

While still maintaining
The rhythm of the words

Broken up
By appropriate line breaks

The music of it
Makes so much sense

That it need be born
Into poetry

Which can be reduced
To oblivion

As long as that oblivion
Is still broken into verse

Because there must be
A music to oblivion

It cannot come all at once
Just bah!

And there it is
No, it must come on somehow

And so
There must be the line breaks

It comes a little
And then breaks

Comes a little more
And then breaks again

You are feeling it, aren’t you?
As if you were here
With me now

Fuck the couplet

Let it be one line
If it wills

The blind adherence to form
Has been the circumcision
Of so much good art
That would have otherwise
Bled on past the margins

Margins, which our boundless souls
Must be forced into
For how else could we survive?
And by “survive,” I mean
For our physical bodies
To persist, in time

Out of sync, I’ve gotten
The words overpowered the rhythm
Which is how it happens
Sometimes
Like back when I said
Fuck the couplet

All so harmonious
And rhythmic
It feels to me now
As it’s all music
On mushrooms

But how can I bring it back
Why
Do I need to bring it back?
But then
What am I to do?
Mushrooms all the time?

Is this life for me?
Or is it for others?
Beautiful, it is, when
By being me
I am for others
In a way they want

And so I wish for it
Crying on my knees
Begging please
But I would jump up
Just so giddy
The very next second

You would say I am crazy
As we are accustomed to calling
Anyone who can experience
Those two very different emotions
Deep serious sadness
And singing joy
So suddenly
One after the other

But I can, I tell you
I can
So much
That it seems most appropriate
To dance and sing
Out of my skin even
Explode into all of it
Around me
Return to what I know I am
But forget, I do
When I am not on mushrooms

And the problem
Is the rawness

How can I shave it down
Real particular
Into a needle that will pass
With little pain
Through the pore
Of a sober man

So the only pain he must endure
Is either
Reading, listening,
Or watching

Into his soul, I must pass
Somehow

How do I get in
Through his body

He has holes
His nose holes
His ear holes
His mouth hole
The pores of his skin

How can I get in?

Not to take you by force,
Dear brother, no

Take me, if you would
Please

I come onto you so strong
With all the desire
That is really my own desire
To be come onto
In disguise

Care not, we need
About who is coming
That we are coming
Together
While we still can
Is the point

But the great song and dance
Is just that
Called so
For a reason

The arts are how
We’ve all agreed
To come onto one another
And really enjoy it
With the ecstasy
That is otherwise only appropriate
Behind the closed doors of a bedroom

Where we have shut our sex
Into such a modern construction
For where did we fuck
Before there were closed doors
And beds with sheets

Out through the cracks
Around the hinges
Through the keyhole
Oozing out from behind that closed door

Our sex learned to define itself
Because getting out of the bedroom
Was only the first step
And then past
The guards at the door
Was the second step

So we disguised our sex
Into art
Song, dance, poetry
We sang to the guards
Danced to the guards
Read to the guards
And they let us go
Out of the doors

And we ran free
And ran and ran
Until we were exhausted and hungry
So we ate and slept
And then woke to run
But to where?

We ran for years
Until we realized
The love we were chasing
Came from the guards

The bedroom was ourselves
They locked us in there
Locked us in ourselves
What a trick!

And all the fucking desire we had
To fuck
Was for the guards
Whomever they may be
Anyone, really
Ourselves, even

The real question is:
Who built this house?
We don’t seek to punish you
But merely to show everyone
That you aren’t so great
So we can then proceed
With tearing the house down

Our sex need not be shut up
Who defined it as it has been?

I have gotten too particular
I do not wish for this to be a novel
Oh blah blah blah
I am back again
I have come back down from the mushrooms

It will continue on for some time now
Along the plateau
But the come up has come
And gone

July 02, 2021 at 03:46PM

This

Can’t possibly be
An accident

This piece of yarn
On the rug

Or any of
The rest of it

It’s all too
Itself

Each thing
Is

Very much
Itself

But she almost
Has me convinced

That it’s all, really,
The same

July 02, 2021 at 03:31PM

Worth it today

Why is it
The mushrooms
That bring it out of me

Where
Does my exuberance
For life hide
On the days when
Just the thought
Of getting out of bed
Already brings
Other thoughts
Of what I will do
Once I am out
And for some reason
None of it
Seems worth the effort

July 02, 2021 at 03:23PM

Labradorite

How could the industry
Have possibly picked
Diamonds
Over the blue-yellow
Holographic beauty
That is labradorite

What does it say
About our standards for beauty
That we picked
The cleanest, clearest
Rock
As the one of value

July 02, 2021 at 03:10PM

Write like that

In most of what
Has been written
And deemed worthy
To have been read
By others before me

I can see how firmly
They must have pressed
Their pens into the paper
By the boldness of the font
Even though it is printed

So clear
Their editing
And obsessing over
The punctuation

What is it like
To sit in a room with someone
And watch them be
Who they truly are

Write, like that
I wish they would have
Like they would talk
If they were right here
On the couch with me

So that I could meet them
Instead
Of this castrated form
Into which
They crammed themselves

July 02, 2021 at 02:59PM

Pins and needles

Pins and needles
Press into
The palm

Hanging at the end
Of this here
Arm, shoulder

Wooden couch railing
Pressed up and under
My armpit

I let it hang
To feel the pins
And needles

July 02, 2021 at 02:53PM

Tear it down

To tear myself down
From these heights
Up to which
I have built

Thinking to myself
All the while
Sweating, toiling
That I was really
Doing the right thing
Building myself up
To achieve something great

Only to meet
A fat, smiling Buddha
Appearing to me
As a curvy, curly-haired beaut
Who said to me
In her sweet, seductress way
That I had to now
Tear it all down
Brick by brick

I was wrong all along
Or rather
The ones whom I listened to
Were wrong
But it didn’t matter
Either way
I had to tear it all down

July 02, 2021 at 02:48PM

Well spent

Like all the money
I made
In my short tour
Of the working world
Was for naught
But to buy
As many mushrooms
As our dear grower
Could grow,
Take them,
Trip my balls off,
And write poetry

July 02, 2021 at 02:37PM

Pushups

More
I can always
Do more

Even
When my mind
Says to stop

I can still go
Until
The muscles tear

If not
For my body
Maintaining itself

For what?
For oatmeal
And cribbage

In a wheelchair
Without the strength
To tear myself

Apart
Even if
I wanted to

So why not tear
Starting with my pectorals
While I still can

July 02, 2021 at 02:34PM

She protects me

She is my veil
Shrouding me
And my insanity
From the outer world

Which would not know
Why I lie
On the hardwood floor

With the chair legs
Gripped firmly
In both my hands

Shouting,
“Too narrow!
Too narrow!”

Because it is
Of course
Too narrow

But they
Would not know that
And neither does she

But still
She protects me
Like a young fledgling
In her nest

July 02, 2021 at 02:31PM

Her feminine world

Unlike her feminine way
Of seeing the world
Soft
And all the same
I plunge
With my mind
The spear
That they put
Into my hand
And sharpened
For reasons
Other than this
Though I broke
From that race
And now fling
My spear
At thought
After thought
Somewhere off
In the neverland
Of my mind
That they built up
So strong
To be for them
It has wrested
Itself free
Not even for me
Does it fling its spear
I know not now
For what I fling
Maybe I will crawl back
To her soft
And feminine ways

July 02, 2021 at 02:26PM

Congratulations

Just to be
Is quite a feat
Which wins
No awards
For we all
Are born into it
But collectively
We might all win
The award together
And this is it
That award
If I might be so arrogant
To don it on us
Myself
Here it is

July 02, 2021 at 02:24PM

On Shrooms 07/02/21 (Prose)

It is intensified, on mushrooms, what is normal. Why cannot, when I am sober, chase after, with such reckless abandon, whatever crosses the windowpane, of my consciousness.

I feel high and get too high and then get sad when I fear that the high will not continue. It is intensified, this going up and then fearing the come back down, on mushrooms. But it is no different than it is normally. Like if you took a sine wave graph and squeezed it’s x-axis into a smaller space so that the amplitude of the graph seemed much higher and much lower. It’s the same function, but the perspective has changed.

It can’t all be written. There isn’t any one art form that can capture it all. Modern movies come the closest, I think. They have something for all the senses. You see the movie, hear the movie. You don’t smell, taste, or feel it, though.

What art form communicates what is beyond just the senses?

That is the tragedy, there, that an artist must cram it into her form and the audience must suck it out, as if through a long and narrow straw. The sucking process is not instant. It takes the time of listening to a song or reading a poem. You have to let it get into you through your senses somehow.

Is that the most we can give to each other? What can fit through the long and narrow straw. And only for those with time and energy to do the sucking.

There is a rate at which the thoughts come. The rate is very high during the come up. It is so high that I cannot write them down. One will come, I will start to write it, and then another will come right away. During a period of the plateau, the thoughts come at just the right rate, so that I am just about finishing with the one by the time another comes. When I am sober, and not tripping, the thoughts come so slow—one worth writing, maybe, only once or twice per day.

Peeing on mushrooms

Peeing in the dark
I stared at
A stack of toilet paper

The dark, inner circle
Around which
The white paper was rolled

Expanded
And shrunk
Expanded
And shrunk

Like it had a slow
And epic
Heartbeat

I finished peeing
And went to look
At the plants

To see
If their hearts
Were also beating

July 02, 2021 at 12:58PM

Treading water

It may seem lazy, but it’s hard work keeping the world from crashing in on all sides, like being inside a box deep underwater. None of the sides of the box are sealed together and they all have handles, so you’ve got your two hands holding two sides and your two feet looped underneath the handles of two of the other sides, but there are still two sides left. So you’ve got to clench onto one of the two remaining handles with your teeth and still the handle on the sixth side is left free, so you’re always playing this alternating game switching one of your hands or your feet or your teeth to hold onto the unattended side, keeping the sides sealed together so no water gets in.

Oh, and the walls are clear, so everyone else is swimming around like they think they’re supposed to and they can see you inside your box and they say among themselves, “Why is he in there just sitting and not out here swimming like he’s supposed to?” They don’t see your effort just to keep the box together. They only see that you are not like them and not doing what you’re supposed to be doing.

The waters of this modern world are filled up to the brim. The waves are crashing and the riptides are strong, so it’s a real effort just to tread water.

Boss painter

I opened one of the windows
In the second-story bedroom
Of the Baker Street apartment

Locked eyes with a painter
Standing on the sidewalk
With his arms crossed

Smug and unflinching
His stance set wide

White shirt with paint flecks
Tucked in
To his blue jeans

Looking up at me
Like the referee
Of all household things

I was suddenly unsure of how
To properly
Open a window

Pushed out the pane
A little too far
And the ref blew his whistle

Brought it back in
The hinges squeaked
And he shook his head

Went to get some grease
Pushed it out somewhere in the middle
And stepped back

The painter opened his palm,
Flicked out his fingers, frowned,
Bobbed his head
As if to say, “Good enough”

Then walked across the street
To get into his white van
And drove off
With the ladder on top

July 01, 2021 at 09:39AM

Things are looking up

A physical therapy article
Say it’s only in rare cases
That back pain turns out
To be a tumor

The investigator writes me,
“I don’t know what will be decided,
But your cooperation and honesty
Will certainly be in my report”

My fears of being stuck in a cell
With another inmate, larger
And able to overpower me
Might subside, if only for today

But I am still stuck in this cycle of thought
Which subjects my well-being
To the ups and downs of the material world
Which I am passing through

Any later than this very moment
Is already further into the future
Than the spiritual book I’m reading
Would recommend me thinking

I am caught in between
Walking out into the Presidio
And lying down next to a tree
For the next rain to wash me away

And continuing this mad existence
That is all I’ve ever known

July 01, 2021 at 09:15AM

I don’t have kids

I play pretend
I have a friend
Who has told me her troubles

I imagine
We are at the park
And I ask
How her troubles have been

She catches me up to speed
While we watch
Our kids swing

July 01, 2021 at 03:49AM

Hungry and tired

When you are hungry and tired
You cannot satisfy both
At the same time

Unless you know how
To eat while sleeping
Or sleep while eating

I have tried both:

Once, arriving home after a day
Of foodless travel
I put some chili in a pan
Turned on the stove
And sat down at the bistro table
To rest
While it heated
But I fell asleep
With my head on my arm
And when I woke
There was a burning smell

Another time,
After a long day of work
When I had to skip lunch
I tried to take a nap before dinner
But only tossed and turned
On the couch
With my stomach grumbling
So I had to get up
And play the dangerous game
Of not falling asleep
With the stove on

July 01, 2021 at 03:27AM

No left

To the defender
In front of me:

I have no left

It might as well be a club
Or a phantom foot

One, two, maybe
Three times
I’ll have my glory

Dribbling past you
With my right

But you’ll learn
Like they all do

And then I’ll have to find
A new game

With new defenders
Who don’t know me

June 30, 2021 at 09:05PM

Where can I

Where can I stay
If I don’t go

In what state
Other than death
Can I suspend myself
While still living

If I could persist
Without eating, sleeping
I would find just one
True true

And chip away
The excesses of myself
To become
A statue of the truth

I am not fit for this life
I am a weak body
A limited mind
A sinful soul

Where can I go
If I don’t stay

June 30, 2021 at 07:53PM

No more

The price of a human life
Has gone up, Brother

There is no more time
In the bank
And survival is cheap

I have made enough
In one year
To live for ten

So what keeps me
From taking the first train
Out of the city?

Money used to buy
All that we ever wanted

Now it just buys
More of the same

But you can’t buy time

June 30, 2021 at 04:20PM

Mindfully holding a plank

Normally, I count in my head when I hold a plank. “One, two, three …” I’ve been counting in couplets recently, so it’s more like, “One-two, three-four …” I count the first half on the exhale so it ends up being longer than the second half. “Oooooone-two, threeeeee-four …” I wear a watch to double check myself. I’m rarely right on. Usually, I’m counting too slow at the beginning of my workout or too fast at the end when I’m tired.

Counting may do more harm than good for my persistence. I end up paying attention to the count instead of my form. I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that my energy wanes right at the end of the count.

I have to get to the point because my soccer match is about to start and they need help moving the goals. Counting is western, capitalistic. I think it would be better if I achieve the same one-pointed focus in my exercise as I do in my meditation. I focus on one thing and that is holding the form. I focus like this until something else, like pain, enters my consciousness with such vigor that my focus is broken by force.

Drying

On a silver, metal
Hook
In the shape
Of a “U”

Stretched out
Shallow
More like a bowl
Than the tall letter

A white towel
Hangs on
Just barely
To one end

June 30, 2021 at 02:06PM

Brewing tea

Beads of moisture
Burst
Into individual life
On the underside
Of the concave glass lid

At first, each bead
Is not even
Itself
In the pool
Of hot water
In the pot

Then the water
Evaporates
And travels
Through the air
From the hot pool
To the lid

On the lid
The bead is born into
Its individual life
Which it lives
In community
With the other beads

Thin borders of dryness
Separate them

Gravity pulls them
From the apex
Of the lid
Down toward
Whatever side
Is nearest

On their way
They cross the borders of dryness
Join
With other beads
And lose
Their individuality

Larger beads form
And grow
Even larger
With each bead added
To the mass
Until gravity pulls it
Down to the edge

Where it drops
Back into
The pool
Of hot water
Below

This process
Repeats itself

I am like a bead
Addicted to my ego

But I will join the others
In a suicide dive
Back to the water
Eventually

June 29, 2021 at 07:46PM

Mousetrap

With the metal bar
Pressed down upon
Its broken neck

The mouse died faster
Than its little mind
Could get from

The satisfaction
Of the cheese

To the pain
Of death

June 29, 2021 at 07:37PM

Leftover chili again

My forearms are flat
On the table
On either side
Of my bowl of chili

The wind blowing the leaves
And the sirens outside
Are too obvious

(But you have to understand
How constant
Those two sounds are
In the city)

I can hear her sighs
Coming through the open door
Of the bedroom
Across the hall

The dog upstairs
Runs back and forth
But doesn’t bark

The wind sounds like
A rainstick
Full of waves

The kitchen light
Makes a buzzing noise
That I’ve gotten used to

This bowl of chili is so big
I’d have to write for hours
To work up enough
Of an appetite

It’s quiet in a way
That makes that book
The Lightness of Being
Make sense to me
Even though I’ve never read the book

Just me and my chili
And the metal spoon scraping
The bottom of the bowl

There are moments of silence
In suspension

What makes them jarring
Instead of peaceful?

Knowing there are other parts
Of the world
That are loud
Even right now

And parts of my world
That have been loud
In the past

Is it only in contrast
That the silence
Strikes me?

Like the hardest
You could ever hit
A stone statue
With a pillow

The waves wash over
The sirens come for
The dog runs toward

Someone
Somewhere else

June 29, 2021 at 07:18PM

Dad

Remember when
We woke up early
To drive to that tournament
Out in the farmlands

You opened the garage
And we stood
Behind your truck

You breathed in,
Sighed, and said,
“The morning air
Is the best air all day”

You played rock songs
On the way
To pump me up

Slammed on the mat
And shouted, “Squeeze!”
When I had the other kid
In a headlock

I wish I would’ve won
Every match
You ever saw

If I could go back
And squeeze tighter
I would

June 29, 2021 at 05:08PM

Still wrong

They’re not
Who they are yet

Some of them
Think they are

But they’re still
Just
Playing the part

Others have no idea
Who they are

But these
I like better

Because at least
They’re not so sure
And still wrong

June 29, 2021 at 01:33PM

Of course, she is mine

It is hard to think of her
As being anyone else’s
Now that she is mine
And has been, for so long

It would be like
Someone telling me
That my mother
Is not my mother

I would tell them
They are wrong
Of course, she is my mother

Of course, she is mine
As if by blood

June 29, 2021 at 12:18PM

When I get it

I want
What I don’t have

When I get it
I am overjoyed

Nothing else
Could possibly be better

Eventually
I get used to it

I can’t taste it
Anymore

I eat so much
That I get fat

And then I want
To be skinny

When I get skinny
I am overjoyed

Nothing else
Could possibly be better

June 29, 2021 at 10:23AM

Damn dog

Farmer Jim’s wife
Lynn
Always let me
Eat their frozen
Country-fried steaks
Out of the freezer

It was the best part
Of my day
After picking cherries
Tying up tomatoes
Mowing the lawn

One day
I microwaved a steak
Put it on the bread
And sat down to eat
When I saw some customers
Through the window
At the shed
Out on the driveway

Which was another part
Of my job
To take their money
Bag their fruit
And be nice to them

So I left my food
Ran out there
Helped them
And came back
But my steak was gone!

I spun around
Looked on the floor
The plate was there
Had I not
Even made it?

I checked the freezer
But the box wasn’t there
I looked in the garbage
And there was the box
It was the last one

I looked down
And there
Was the old terrier
Named Pete
Looking up at me
As guilty
As a dog can be

June 26, 2021 at 06:20PM

Farmer Jim

Used to drive
A trailer-full
Of watermelons
Back from Georgia

He paid my brother and I
Cash
To wake up at 4am
And help him
Move the melons
From the trailer
To the cold truck

He’d stand in between
The trailer and truck
And hold each melon
On his knee
While he wrote a price
In permanent marker

“This is a biggun”
Holding it
On either end
Sizing it up
With a satisfied smirk
Squinting
In the shed light

17.00
He wrote on it
And he always underlined
The two zeroes

But nobody could read
His writing
At the market

Shoppers would ask
How much for this one
And they’d point

I’d look and
Make an attempt
To decipher
The markings
I already knew
Were illegible

Even if they hadn’t
Smeared
From the moisture
In the cold truck

I’d do my best
Farmer-Jim impression
Size it up
With a satisfied smirk
And say,
“That one right there
Is 20,
But I’ll give it to ya
For 18.”

June 26, 2021 at 06:07PM

Her hair

Pieces of her hair
Are everywhere

Tying together the tassels
At the ends
Of the hand towel

Twirled around
The shower pipes

Clogging
The drain

Interwoven
In the threads
Of the bedsheets

Stuck
To the bottoms
Of my socks

They latch on
And enmesh themselves
In the lives of things

Like she has
In mine

June 26, 2021 at 12:25PM

Delivery

The delivery man
Buzzes
Once, twice

And the footsteps come
Clop, clop
Creaking floorboards

The door downstairs
Swings open

A package gets dropped
On the floor

The door
Slams shut

The unit above ours
Goes back to what they were doing

The delivery man
Goes to another delivery

And we lie in bed
Waiting, listening

June 26, 2021 at 09:20AM

Spiritowel

The towels hang
On the drying rack

And meditate
Without moving

To become one
With the sun

Shining
Its wisdom

Through
The window

June 24, 2021 at 04:32PM

Nails, hammer, and glue

I opened the cabinet
To grab some nails
And a hammer
To hang a piece of art

I saw the bottle
Of glue
And almost grabbed
That too

As I remembered …

First, that
I had broken my glasses
And needed the glue
To fix them

And second, that
It was only in a dream

A dream, which I had not
Until that moment
Even remembered
Having had

Only in that dream
Had my glasses
Been broken

And I did not
In the same world
In which
I needed the nails
And hammer

For the art
As yet, unhung

Need the glue
For the glasses, which
Were never broken
In any world
Other than
That
Of my dream

June 22, 2021 at 05:55AM

Rolling r’s

At brunch David
Taught me how to
Roll my r’s
In Spanish

I erroneously
Rolled the “r”
In “naranja”
And David told me
It’s only for
The double r’s
As in “burro”
Which is Spanish
For donkey

David started to
Roll his tongue
And show me
How to do it
He said it’s not about
The tongue muscle
You just
Relax the tongue

But I still had
Food in my mouth
So I told him
To wait
Until I was finished
With my food
And then
I would try

Originally written: May 30, 2021

Moment invasion

One moment can’t
Hold up against
All the others
Attacking
The outside walls
Which define it

When the walls
Eventually crumble
And the surrounding moments
Invade and mix
The moments
Breed and assimilate

June 13, 2021 at 09:05AM

Photoshoot

“You see things
In a different way
On the shoot,”

Says the model
Drinking
After the shoot

Pontificating
About photo-taking,

What it means,
And how good
The cameraman was

June 12, 2021 at 07:56PM

Frozen strawberries

For her ranch water
I would have used
Ice cubes
But there were only
Four or five
Left in the tray
And I knew
We were going to drink more
So I unzipped
The bag
Of frozen strawberries
And plopped in
A few of those
Hoping
They would have
The same effect
As ice

June 12, 2021 at 07:51PM

How to lose it all

The world seems wide again
As I’ve just narrowly
Avoided disaster
Yet again

The allegations
Were not as serious
As I trumped them up to be
In my head

I can hold onto
My precious world
The way it is
For a little while longer

But each
Of these near-disasters
Are teaching me
How to lose it all

June 10, 2021 at 09:37AM

Mountain majesty

He opens the door
To the deck

Steps out
Onto the wood

Looks up
At the mountains

Bows his head
And ambles forward

Humbly
Approaching their majesty

– Krys in Big Sky 06/10/21

June 10, 2021 at 09:31AM

Deep breath

I was so worried
I wasn’t breathing

I realize now
As I’ve gotten the news

That what I feared
Isn’t true

And I take my first deep breath
In a while

June 10, 2021 at 09:12AM

The right question

About my writing
He says he wants to ask me
The question
Which he wishes
Others would ask him
About his music

This is the question—
“What question
Do you want me
To ask you
About your art?”

I cannot help but feel
That he is cheating

Isn’t digging through the dirt,
Clamoring through the confusion,
And finally finding
After much searching

Somewhat similar to
All the sunshine and rain
Required
Before a flower
Will unfold for you?

Did nature
Have it so easy
As simply having to ask
What it was
That the flower wanted?

Or did many flowers
Have to die
Before nature learned
The unfolding
Of a single flower?

Was it worth kneeling
In the soil
And watching
For every second
Of every day

To learn to ask
The right question?

June 09, 2021 at 12:00AM

Beauty becomes her

Other women, for me now, are beautiful insofar as they are like her.

When my friends talked about her, before I loved her for the first time, they said that she was beautiful.

Her physical form, for me then, aspired to participate in the higher form of Beauty.

Now, she has caught up and gone past, in her race with Beauty.

Anyone who is beautiful, for me now, is so in proportion to the qualities of hers which they possess.

When the faceless women in my dreams take off their clothes, they have her breasts, her milk chocolate skin, her hip bones that jut out.

When I see the face of another woman in a crowd, it is a beautiful face because it is like hers—dark curly hair, freckled skin, perfect white teeth.

In the beginning, she was beautiful. Now, beauty has become her.

Algorithmic art

Lake explains
How a machine-learning algo
Makes art

“The code
Prunes out what’s bad”

“It grows into
The right composition”

“It either ends up
Too random
Or not random enough”

Kyle argues back
On our behalf,

“It’s the same
As a human artist
Learning what feels right
From experience”

Lake responds,
“Those learnings
Are rules
That can be coded”

June 07, 2021 at 01:50PM

Almond butter on toast

When I stab
A knife
Into the jar
Of almond butter

There is really only
One thing
That can go wrong

Because I hold
The jar
Over the toast
On the plate

And once I’ve gotten
A glob
On the knife

I hold it
Over the jar
For a few seconds

Before I move the knife
Over and down
Onto the toast

—This way
If there is any drippage
It must fall

Either
Back into the jar
Or onto the toast

But there is
A terrible
Third possibility

That, in the time
I am moving
The knife

From over the jar
To over the toast,

A drip
Could fall
Onto the side of the jar

Which is really
The only thing
That can go wrong

June 07, 2021 at 10:58AM

Breakfast

In the morning
I work on my writing
For as long as I can
Before I eat

Because eating
Is the only thing
I know for sure
I’m doing right

June 07, 2021 at 10:41AM

Bored

At the cabin in Big Sky, we were often bored. Lake and I woke up early to work in the morning. I edited my poetry and Lake learned the formulas to make algorithmic art. We weren’t bored when we were working.

When Kyle woke up in the morning, he was almost immediately bored. He preferred to work at night, sometimes after midnight. He felt the nighttime was more conducive to producing his particular style of bass music that he described as “swampy.”

This morning, Kyle woke up, came upstairs from his bedroom in the basement, and then immediately laid down to take a nap on the shag rug in the living room.

At some point in the morning, we each make our own breakfasts in the kitchen. We take naps in the sun on the deck, on the ledge by the window, on the rug in the living room. We work on our laptops sitting at the dining table, standing at the kitchen counter, lying in the recliner.

Those are the only three definite things: eating, sleeping, and working. Other than those three, we walk around with our hands in our pockets. We pick things up, look at them, and set them back down. We look at things without picking them up. We sit down, stand up, and sit back down. We go outside onto the back deck, take some deep breaths of the crisp mountain air, and then come back inside.

We ask each other what we are doing—none of us have an answer to the question. We go upstairs into the loft to shoot a game of pool. We walk around with our hands in our pockets some more. We wonder if it’s too early to have lunch. We wonder if it’s too soon to distract one of us who has gotten into a flow working.

Being here in Big Sky and being bored makes me think about how busy we are most of the time, especially when we are working 9-to-5 jobs. Often motivated by either socially normative reasons (working a job, caring for others, not being lazy) or biologically necessary reasons (eating, sleeping), we are not accustomed to not knowing what to do with ourselves.

We are faced with a question that seems simple but can actually become complex, depending on how serious we are about getting it “right” and if we even believe there is a “right” answer in the first place. The question is this: what should we do?

Boredom is the state of not having an immediate answer to this question. Laziness is the state of having an immediate answer to this question and just choosing not to do it.

I enjoy being bored. It brings with it empty space and opportunity for creativity. There is less room for creativity when your time is scheduled with what you already know needs to be done.

Lying on the deck in the sun

There are at least
Three layers

—Sun,
Legs,
And couch cushions

But I cannot tell
Where exactly

The sun hits
The skin
Of my shins

The cushions
Press up against
My calf muscles

A general mass
Of warmth from the sun
And comfort from the cushions

And my legs
Somewhere, sensing
The warmth and the comfort

I know that
My legs rest
On top of the cushions

And the sun
Somehow
Warms them

But when I look
For my legs
In my mind

There is only the mass
Into which the three layers
Have melted

June 07, 2021 at 09:58AM

Don’t save it

In my travel bag
There are
A pack of gum
And a handful
Of cough drops
That have gone bad

The gum breaks up
Into grit
And the drops
Are fused
To their wrappers

All the times before
That I would have
Chewed a stick
Or sucked a drop
I said to myself
I’ll save it
For later

June 07, 2021 at 07:57AM

Frames

Other than the ones on walls filled with paintings or photographs, I see frames everywhere. Earlier I was lying by the pool and the umbrella framed the sky on one side. Now I’m lying on the couch on the balcony and there is a rectangular opening in the wall and along the bottom there is the top of a table and farther off there is the side of the building across from ours, so the sky is framed by the opening on the right and top, the table on the bottom, and the other building on the left. These frames occur all over where there are straight lines.

The most frames are in the cities where there are buildings, windows, roads, light poles, and other urban structures. Why do we frame paintings? Why must they end at the borders? Does it matter? The answer, I think, is the same for these frames that occur on their own. But you can only see the picture once. If you shift your gaze at all, the picture will change and you won’t be able to ever get the same one back.

Originally written: Wednesday, May 26, 2021, 5:38 PM

Ménage à trois

We met one of the three right away. We had just gotten to the condo, walked out onto the balcony, and talked about how great it was to be back, when she climbed up the pillar and across the branch-thatched roof of the balcony down and in front of ours. Gary seemed to know her, but he told us later that he had only met her earlier that day. David and I were surprised. The climb she made was not a safe one. Before she had swung her other leg over the iron fence and put both feet down on our balcony, she was already talking a mile a minute. She was high on coke, she hadn’t slept much the night before, and her other two friends were taking a nap in the condo below us.

Gary invited her and her friends to play volleyball on the beach with us that evening at 6. She said they would come and then she climbed back down.

She was late to volleyball. We waited for her and her friends by the fountain. She leaned over the railing on the third floor and said that they were coming, they were just going to be another two or three minutes.

Later that night, we got back from dinner and sat on our balcony. We sat there for an hour and talked and drank water. Then, around ten at night, we heard her voice, “Friends? Are you up there?” We said something to let her know that we were. And up she climbed.

She was even more drunk than she had been before. She talked. Then she swung her leg over the iron fence and stepped out onto the thatched roof. Ron was there. She slipped. We heard her squeal. I distinctly remember hearing one of the small branches snap in half. And then the smack of bare skin hitting glazed ceramic tile.

Originally written: Wednesday, May 26, 2021, 1:34 PM

Ocean vs. land

The ocean
Still holds its power
Over man

The land
Is being dug up,
Built over,
And otherwise shaped
By man’s desires

In the ocean
We cannot keep our grip
For long

Even the biggest boat
Can capsize

The ocean maintains
Her mystery
And her strength

Originally written: Wednesday, Jun 2, 2021, 6:50 PM

Plane surveying

Through a plane window
There are a few
Simple sights—
The sky, the clouds,
And the ocean

But the land
Is complicated
At least because of
All the man-made structures
—Roads and buildings

But the natural land
Is also varied

By the spines of mountains
And the ridges
Running down the sides

The flat lands
That are different shades
Of gold, brown, and green

And the lakes
And other land-locked
Bodies of water

Which would be as simple
As the ocean and the sky
Going off forever
As themselves
And never changing

But the land-locked
Bodies of water
Are defined by their shores

And so contribute
To the land
Being more detailed
Than the sky, the clouds,
And the ocean

Originally written: Wednesday, Jun 2, 2021, 6:41 PM

The winner’s speech

Honestly
I think a lot of it
Was luck

But the joke
You don’t realize
You’re the butt of
Until you finally
Get it

Is that being lucky
Can turn out to be
Just as unlucky
As everyone else
Thinks they are

Originally written: Tuesday, Jun 1, 2021, 2:56 PM

Sexy talk at dinner

At dinner she said
Something
And he said,
Oh
So she asked,
Do you like that?
Yea
When I say it
With my tongue
Flicking
My teeth
Like that
The trick
That some girls learned
Younger than others
And held more power
Over the world
Than they ever
Did again

Originally written: Sunday, May 30, 2021, 8:22 PM

Bee for free

The bee landed
On the rim
Of Greg’s glass

He leaned forward
And blew
On the bee
To get it
To fly away

But the bee
Fell into
The glass

And Greg
Flagged down
The waiter, Rubèn

To get
Another drink
For free

So the bee
Didn’t die
For nothing

Originally written: Sunday, May 30, 2021, 6:14 PM

Pillow

I lay on the couch
And played
With a pillow
Long, rectangular
And woven
With traditional
Mexican threads
Just to feel
The texture
With my fingertips
Holding the pillow
Above my head
Bringing it down
To my chest
To hug it
And have an experience
With an object
In space
Communicating
Its
Physical existence
To
My feeling

Originally written: Sunday, May 30, 2021, 3:03 PM

Glass pictures

I opened the cabinet
To place the wine glasses
Back on the shelf

The glasses
Already in there
Each reflected

A small picture
Of the room behind
In miniature

Originally written: Saturday, May 29, 2021, 10:50 AM

Young and old

The older people
Joined our dinner party of five
To make it eight
And after
The introductions
And the small talk
To figure out
Whether we had anything in common
And if not
If we could at least get along
The old people
After so many drinks
Started to thirst for more
For the youth
And us young
Started to want for some things
Too
That the old people had
Like money
And power and respect
So we sat there together with our drinks
Half drunk
And our empty plates
And sucked off each other

Originally written: Friday, May 28, 2021, 9:48 PM

Beauty and the geezer

The younger girl
Tested the older man
For potency
As far into the night
As he could go
If he could make it
All the way to sunrise
She would let him in
But he didn’t know
This was the test
And invented
Other reasons
Why
It wouldn’t work
And went to bed
If only
The old geezer
Would
Have known

Originally written: Thursday, May 27, 2021, 2:50 AM

Big moon

So good this night I
Try to breathe it all in through my nostrils
With my hands on the rails
Looking out at the biggest whitest moon
I have ever seen
So clear
I can see the light grey dark freckles
Like skin cancer on older skin
A boat bobs in the water in the moonlight
A smaller boat
Than all the other boats around it
Different music
Plays from different places
As everyone
Quietly enjoys the night
On their own

Originally written: Wednesday, May 26, 2021, 9:14 PM

Fascination

If I could foster
With others
The same fascination
That I have with
This beautiful girl
Sitting here
Saying anything
It doesn’t matter
I am as interested
As I ever was
In whatever else
Was supposed to
Hold my attention

Originally written: Tuesday, May 25, 2021, 5:42 PM

When it comes

I wrote some poems
On the plane
Even after I said I wouldn’t
Write on this trip
I wonder
If other writers
Know
When they are going to write
Or if
They are like me
And sometimes
It just comes

Originally written: Tuesday, May 25, 2021, 10:44 AM

Body parts

A lady in the seat behind me
On the plane
Talks
To the person next to her
About her body
And how
Her brain has not been doing so great
And one of her toes is swollen
As if
Her body parts
Were members of her family
Appendages apart
From herself

Originally written: Tuesday, May 25, 2021, 10:41 AM

Drink cart

The attendant came down the aisle
Rolling the drink cart
With her gloved hands on either side
Looking down
To the left and to the right
Shouting, “Elbows! Elbows!”

Originally written: Tuesday, May 25, 2021, 10:35 AM

One boat

Looking out of the plane window
And down at the ocean
I saw a solitary boat
I leaned forward in my seat
To see the ocean through the window
As far back as I could behind us
And then I leaned back
To see all the blue
As far forward as I could see ahead of us
And there was not
A single
Other
One

Originally written: Tuesday, May 25, 2021, 10:29 AM

The wind and the light

I went downstairs
And into the bedroom
To get my laptop charger
Out of my bag

I didn’t know
I was walking into
A dance
Set to music—

The cold wind blew
Through the window
I opened last night
To stay cool

The red curtains wavered
And shafts of warm light
Shot through
The dark bedroom

It was the chill
Of the cool morning air
Crisp in my nostrils

The way the light
Came through the curtains
In the brief moments
They were blown open

The color of the light
Yellow
Coming through the red
Like gentle orange fire

And then darkness again
When the breeze subsided
And the curtains went back
To being shut

I stood there
In the doorway
And watched all the love
Being made without me

I guess I’ve gotten
This misconception
That things are only happening
When we’re around
To make them happen

But the wind and the light
Lost their egos
Long ago

They play
With
Or without
An audience

June 06, 2021 at 06:11AM

He likes women

He likes women. That is his art, his joy, his purpose, his reason for living. He is attractive and friendly so it comes naturally to him. He is one of the lucky ones who has his abilities and his desires working in unison. He doesn’t have motivation for much else. He likes to go out looking for a new woman, to seduce her and make her love him, enjoy her love for a while, and then get tired of her and go looking for another. This is why he can’t commit. To commit to just one woman would be to give up his art, his joy, his purpose, his reason for living.

To live is to be challenged, to do again and again. We play the game until it gets dark and then the scoreboard resets in the morning. Nobody, not even the best, wants to win and then be done. You can also kiss your trophy so many times before the shine wears off.

Morning grouch

We will have plenty
Of time to talk
In the afternoon
My friend

The morning
Is for making
What music we can
In the silence
Of our solitude

So with all
Due respect
Don’t talk to me

June 06, 2021 at 05:45AM

Tight rope

A single thread
Of spider web
Stretched
From the table
To the ottoman
With a dewdrop
Weighing it down
In the center

A spider
Must have made
The leap
Across the chasm
In the night

June 06, 2021 at 04:56AM

Robin

A robin flew up
And landed
At the very top
Of a pine tree
With a worm in its beak
Squawking gently
Twitching its tail feathers
Stretching its wings
With erratic pumps

I could see it
So clearly
In contrast
To the light blue
Morning sky

I looked down
To write this
And then looked back
To write more
But the robin
Was gone

June 06, 2021 at 04:49AM

Time to work

I am awake
At 5am
I have energy
I will waste it
If I just lie here
And spin my wheels
Thinking about other things
I must
Get out of bed
And get to work

June 06, 2021 at 04:21AM

Mountain birds

In the morning
The many birds
Sang
Like children
On a playground
Make noise—

Because they can,
Just to hear themselves,
Or because they haven’t learned
To keep quiet
And only talk
When it’s intelligent

But these are mountain birds
Robins and finches
Nesting in the pines
And the rafters of cabins
Picking worms from the soft soil

They lack the education
That the pigeons in the city
Have learned
To keep quiet, conserve their energy,
And eat trash when they can

June 06, 2021 at 04:05AM

Candle killer

I screwed the lid
Onto the glass jar

While the wick
Was still burning

Watched the flame
Lose its vigor

And slowly shrink
Until the light was out

I felt
In the dark

Like I had murdered
An innocent

June 04, 2021 at 08:38PM

Myself

The man
Whom I write
Over and over
Is me
You see
I cannot escape from him
Even when
I look at others
I see myself

June 04, 2021 at 08:16PM

Stuck

Suspended
In this life
Viscous

So I can’t
Move much
Side to side

I’m stuck
Right where
I was born

June 03, 2021 at 06:30PM

Going out

Half dressed
For the night
—Hair done
Red lipstick
Dinner coat
But no pants

She poked
Two fingers
Between
The blinds
So she could see
Outside

As I
Was not joining her
This night
I lay
On the bed
And asked her,
“Are you waiting
For you car?”

She said, “No,
I’m just trying
To see what
The weather’s like.”

June 03, 2021 at 04:59PM

Construction noise

The construction crew
At the job site
Across the street
Must have
Taken off today

I can hear the leaves
Blowing down the hill
Scratching on the cement,

The soft wind
Whistling around the edges
Of our bay window,

And even the light buzzing
Of complete silence
For brief moments

—Sounds that,
For as long as
The construction project
Has gone on,

I haven’t realized
Have been drowned out
By hammering, sawing,
Nailing, shouting,

And other sounds
Of industry

Which usually
Make me feel guilty
For lying in bed
Instead of getting up
And doing something

But today
I can take the day off too
And sleep in

June 03, 2021 at 09:33AM

I know that guy

The guy in front of me in line for customs at the SFO airport pointed to a different guy at the window talking to the customs agent and said to his girlfriend, “I know that guy.”

“I know his face, but I don’t know his name. He went to my high school.”

“He tried out for the wrestling team.”

“His friends and my friends were in the same group but we never met each other.”

“You know those type of people? People you know but you don’t know,” he asked his girlfriend.

“Yea,” she said. “I know those type of people.”

The guy in line continued to look at the guy at the window and then he said, “Maybe it’s not him.”

She only sees herself

She looks at a photo of them
From years ago
And says it’s a good photo
We know
She was looking at herself
And no one else in the photo
When she said that

June 01, 2021 at 06:39PM

Planter’s patience

Holding a seed
In the palm of his hand
He could see the tree
It would become

Or so he thought
To save myself
The time and energy
He would spend planting

Who can tell, other
Than the many days
Of sunshine
And rain

June 01, 2021 at 02:04PM

Two salesmen

Two salesmen
On vacation
Talk to each other
About their products
The features
And how they really
Help their clients
As if they really
Care about
What they do for work
When all they really
Care about
Is their next vacation

June 01, 2021 at 11:42AM

Margarita Monday

On Memorial Day
An American holiday
Which didn’t mean much
To the Mexicans
In Todos Santos

Except in the same way
That anything from the U.S.
Influenced Mexico

We drank margaritas
That weren’t very good
Which we already knew
Would be the case
When we asked the waiter
Where he was from
And he said Seattle

We read love poetry by Neruda
In English
And it was already good
And then we read it
In Spanish
I didn’t understand
But it was still better
Because of the music
Of the words together
In the original language

May 31, 2021 at 04:26PM

Jido

Was a drummer
I locked eyes with
Whose band played
On the open roof
Of the restaurant
During dinner

Afterward
He was outside
Drinking a beer
And smoking a cigarette

My friend nudged me
To say hi to him
Which is how
I learned his name

My Spanish was bad
And his English
Was just good enough
To ask me
If I liked music
I said yes
And then I said sí
He asked if I played an instrument
I said no

But wish that I could have said yes
So that we would have had
Something to talk about
Though I wouldn’t have been able
To express myself anyways

So we shared a brief
Mostly-wordless moment
After the sun had gone down
In the street of Cabo

He drank his bottled beer
Leaning against the wall
Outside of the restaurant
Waiting for his band to go back on

And I, full from dinner
With my hands in my pockets
Feeling much less talented
Than the man I was admiring

He wasn’t even aware
Of how perfectly himself
He was being

May 31, 2021 at 04:23PM

Mary Beth

A sweet
Old lady
Shop owner
We met
In Todos Santos

Told us
She grew up
In San Clemente

The only people
There
Were jarheads
And surfers

Her mom said to her
When she was young,

“Mary Beth,
Why don’t you
Bring home
A nice marine
Instead of all
These surfers?”

May 31, 2021 at 04:22PM

Writing in the city

San Francisco is a lot
For a writer
Trying to get down
The small stuff

You see
A piece break off
From the whole
When you’re
In the right place
And time
To see the break

The wheel
Of a mail truck
Pulls up and over
A curb
And you think
To write it

But then
Another car honks
And you’re distracted
Which would be fine
You could return
To the wheel
And the curb

If not
For the other sounds
And sights
That come one
After another

One moment can’t
Hold up against
All the others
Attacking
The outside walls
Which define it

When they
Eventually crumble
And all the other
Surrounding moments
Invade
And mix
The moments
Breed
And assimilate

So you can’t remember
What the moment
Was before
And it changes
All the time

May 31, 2021 at 01:51PM

Drinking again

The bubbles from
The lime seed
At the bottom of the bottle
Ascend
To the surface
In a pillar
Of molecules destined
For kin air
Escaping
From an ocean
Of amber gold
Intoxication

I promised myself
Again this morning
That I would not
Drink today
Now it’s early afternoon
And this
Is my second

May 31, 2021 at 12:42PM

Peter

I stood on the balcony
With my new friend Peter
Who was about twice my age
We had just gotten back from dinner
And were starting our evening drinking
He started to talk about how
He was old
And I was young and full of energy
I asked him
What he meant by energy
And he pointed out at all the lights,
Boats, roofs, roads, water
And asked me
What do you see out there?
I said I saw lights,
Boats, roofs, roads, water
He waited patiently
Like a teacher
For the right answer
He said there are protons and electrons
It’s all energy
And that was his point
Which I did not completely understand
But then again, I did, somewhat

May 31, 2021 at 11:32AM

Escaping authorship

How far can I
As the writer
Get away from
The subject
Of my writing
If I must sense
See, hear, smell
Something first
In order to write it
Where can I
Cram myself away
So that
The subject
Can be what it is
Independent of me
Sensing it

May 31, 2021 at 11:21AM

Broken blender

I broke the blender this morning
Burned up the rubber piece in the bottom
Blending
A smoothie that was too big
On the high setting

I should have started low
Until it was mixed some
And then turned it up higher
So it wasn’t so hard on that poor
Piece of rubber

In between an engine that had
All the strength
And a blade that had
All the ambition
To blend more than the machine
Ever had before

But the rubber wasn’t ready
And the engine and the blade
Did not consider the rubber
In their plans

May 31, 2021 at 11:09AM

Afternoon

Is it even
Noon yet
Our brunch
Started
At eleven
And we must have
Spent more than
An hour there
So it must be
After
Noon
Now

May 30, 2021 at 12:24PM

Dust in the wind

I feel like
A floating speck of dust
In a very big world
Walking back to the resort
After
A very boozy brunch
After the third
Bottle of champagne
We had to get a fourth
Because it was two-for-one
I took off my shirt
To avoid
Sweating through it
The shirt
Hanging on my shoulder
And all the rest of it
Including
The dust speck
I am
Blows in the wind

May 30, 2021 at 12:20PM

Economics

I spend
And spend
And eat
And consume
And earn
And then spend
And eat
More
And more
And earn
Again
Until
I’ll eventually
Lose either
My appetite
Or my ability
To earn
And then die
Or else
Get taken care of
By another
Earner

May 30, 2021 at 11:35AM

Hurricane warning

The waves
Creep up along
The sandy beach
And then retreat
Forward
And back
Forward
And back
Like a dog
Nipping at the heels
Of the city
Waiting
For the collective power
Of their element
To overwhelm
All at once
In the rush
Of a hurricane

May 29, 2021 at 10:20PM

Standing on the rooftop

We stood on the rooftop
With our hands on the
Railing
Looking out at the ocean
And the lights from the few
Larger yachts
That stayed out in the water
Overnight
The other boats
Went into the marina
To dock
Most of them
Before sundown
The ocean
Dark
And mostly without any
Perceptible details
To our eyes
Numbed
By all the lights
Of the city
In the half of the view
On our side
Of the shore

May 29, 2021 at 10:15PM

Out of body

Dancing
I go back and forth
Between
Being aware of myself
And forgetting
That the experiences
Feeding into my senses
Are predicated
On the attachment
Of my sensory organs
To my body
With which
I identify

May 29, 2021 at 08:30PM

Nice bathroom

In the very nice
Bathroom
At this place
The hand towels
Are linen
Not paper
And they still get thrown away
In a waste basket
Lined
With a plastic bag
I hope
They wash them
And don’t just
Throw them away

May 29, 2021 at 07:25PM

It’s all alright

I am less worried now
About getting back
Across the border
If my test comes back positive
I’ll just stay
In Cabo for a while
It’s all alright
It’s all
It’s all
It is all
What is it
And I am here
And part of it
Anything past that
Is unnecessary
Complication

May 29, 2021 at 07:24PM

Artist’s budget

At dinner
Some of our group
Wanted to order
More drinks
But the artists
Among us
On budgets
Stumbled
Over our words
To say
We’d rather wait
And drink the cheap alcohol
From the grocery store
Back at the room

May 29, 2021 at 06:54PM

Gosh

I try to drink it in
Eat it
Consume
And digest
All of this moment
That taste, smells,
And feels like
I wish it always would
I want it
So much
That I miss it
Already
Even though I still have it
Right here
I breathe in deeply
To get as much
As I can

May 29, 2021 at 06:47PM

Loosely

I can close my eyes
And escape
From where
My sight says
I am
Off into
My head
It seems
Black
As far as my eyes
Are concerned
My other senses
Still tether me
To what I can hear
And feel
I try to escape
Plugging my ears
And lying down
On soft cushions
But I still remain
Myself
Loosely

May 29, 2021 at 05:48PM

Making music

Sitting in a chair
I started to drum
On the armrests
And really
Got into it
Tapping
A rapid
Multi-fingered beat
On the one arm
And a deeper
Bass beat
With my whole palm
On the other
Bobbing my head
Bouncing my feet

May 29, 2021 at 04:07PM

Passed out in the sun

On the beach
He lies
With the brim
Of his ball cap
Pulled down
Over his eyes
Seeming
To be asleep
But his hand plays
Intelligently
With sand
Flowing through his fingers
And into mounds
By his side

May 29, 2021 at 03:40PM

The sound of being underwater

Treading water
With my ears above the surface
I heard
The squeals of children
The music from the beach bars
The waves crashing
The vendors selling

Underwater
I heard
What I try to remember
How to describe
Back on the beach
It was
Not silent
A soft
Ahhhhhhhh

I’ll have to
Swim out again
And fish
For words
So you can
Bring it back to shore
Inland
To wherever you are
Grill it
Bake it
Or however you like your fish
To taste
And hear
And be there
Underwater and at peace

May 29, 2021 at 02:08PM

Cuddles

I held her
In my arms
On the beach
It seemed
To both of us
Like the thing to do
At the time
To maximize
Our pleasure
Despite her being
My friend’s
And the other
Usual reasons
For abstaining
From what we really want

May 29, 2021 at 02:03PM

Running to the water

I got up off my cushions
And ran
One bounding step
After another
To set
As few feet
As possible
Onto the hot sand
And reached the water
Quickly
Took two more bounds
In the shallow water
And then
Took off and soared
As best
As my young body could
My pointed hands
Were first
Into the water
And then all of me
Was in
And under
Suspended
And supported
On all sides
For as long as I
Could hold my breath

May 29, 2021 at 01:58PM

Ceiling fan

The fan spins
So fast
Shaking
Its center piece
Whirring
Whispering
To me in bed

Its blades
Blur
Into a circle
That looks
Like it’s painted
With one
Very light
Circular
Brush stroke

If you spin
Your eyes
Around
With it
You can catch
A glimpse
Of a single blade

Static
For a moment
In the blur
A blade flashes
To cry
To beg
For escape
From the race
That goes too fast
In circles
Never ending
Going nowhere

May 29, 2021 at 09:09AM

Small talk

Your part of the table
Succumbs to the silence
You rack your brain
For something to say
To the person across from you
Or next to you
Or anyone
Or else sit
In the silence
Staring off
At something else
Caught between
Still thinking of something to say
And seeing something interesting
Or thinking your own thoughts
And not really caring
About the silence

May 28, 2021 at 09:49PM

Telling stories

When you talk to someone
And listen for a while
And get restless at some point
Wondering when the story will be over
But you get past that
And forget about yourself
And actually start to live in their story
And be interested in it
And ask them questions
Really wanting to know
What it was like
At the twists and their turns
Like watching a movie
But even better
To meet the character in real life
And ask them questions
With no outtakes
It is their eyes
That always get me
When I am as close as I can get
To living their life
And leaving my own
Their eyes
Are the last door into them
That I look into
And then fall
Completely in

May 28, 2021 at 09:35PM

Marcos

Talking to the restaurant owner
From Germany
Who made his way over to the U.S.
At some point
And sold automation technology
To auto companies
Even though baking
Was always his passion
He would take the executives
Of these auto companies
Out to dinner
At the nicest restaurants
And that is where Marcos told himself
He would open his own restaurant
Someday
It started as a bakery
And then expanded to
A dinner menu
I got the chicken
With brussel sprouts and pumpkin purée
The chicken was perfect
But the brussel sprouts were undercooked
I wasn’t going to tell him
Because you don’t tell strangers
What’s wrong with
What they love
But he told me his story
And I told him I believed in him
And thought his restaurant would be big
And then we weren’t strangers anymore
And so I told him
The brussel sprouts were undercooked
And he shook my hand
And said he would tell the chef

May 28, 2021 at 09:31PM

At the villa

We sat and listened
To the wives
Talk about their preference
For flying first class
On certain airlines
And not others
As the fountain
Of their private pool
Splashed in the water
We nodded
And acted like
We lived lives
Similar enough
To understand what they meant
About spending
Thousands
On plane tickets

May 28, 2021 at 05:15PM

Coming to America

Arsenio made us our
Margaritas
With tamarind and jalapeño
And brought them
To the frontside
Of the infinity pool
Where we had our chins
Resting in our forearms
Talking about how
It’s easy to be
In the present moment
When nothing else seems
Like it could be any better
Arsenio
Told us about how
He went to the states
When he was fourteen
To Santa María
His uncle
Who was a coyote
Took him walking
Through the desert
From ensanada
Across the border
There was a fence
But there was a hole dug
Underneath the fence
Like little animals
Dig
He said
When he couldn’t translate
What he meant
By the hole under the fence

May 28, 2021 at 02:47PM

Crooked eagle

A desert eagle landed
On the roof across from our balcony
And James explained
How the falconer
Brought the eagle everyday
To chase the smaller birds
Away from the resort

We watched
The majestic eagle
Pick with its beak
At its plumage
As one small bird
And then another
And another
Landed
On the roof next to it

Not doing
Very good at its job

The eagle must be
Like a crooked officer
In cahoots
With the small bird mafia

May 28, 2021 at 02:46PM

Night drive

I lean my head back
Against the headrest
In the backseat
Closer my eyes
And let the air coming through
The open window
Blow my hair
There is something about
Driving on the highway at night
With music playing
We stay between the white lines
And behind
The red taillights
The black of the night
Blankets
Everything other
Than the road we speed along

May 27, 2021 at 09:30PM

Cheap meal

The two tamales
The chicken in the salsa verde
And the beef
In a sauce I could not translate
On the plastic plate
From the street vendor
In the square
Of San Jose
Was the cheapest meal I had
Cheaper
Than the tourist traps
Near the beach
I sat on the fountain
And picked with my plastic fork
Through the sauce
To find the meat

May 27, 2021 at 09:05PM

Old white man

A white older man
Gray stubble on his face
Wearing a cowboy hat
And an oversized
Buttoned-up shirt
And oversized khaki pants
Slouched
In a straight-backed wooden chair
His long skeleton fingers point
And he says something
To explain
What he’s pointing at
But
It’s indiscernible
Maybe because of
The empty
Bottle of wine
Next to him on the table
But for a guy of his size
He would have probably needed
More than one bottle
To get to this point
By his demeanor
I would guess
He is either
The proprietor
Of the gallery
Or the artist who made
All the pieces
Or the man
In charge of this moment
In some way
Or another
As we all watch
And wait for him
To take the lead

May 27, 2021 at 08:20PM

Coming to me

I watch for
What
I can write here
Whether
This is the way
Or
It should come to me
And surprise me
Like
I wasn’t
Waiting for it

May 27, 2021 at 08:14PM

One margarita

It’s amazing
How much better
I feel
From one
Margarita
Made with mezcal
After passing
On the first two rounds
Of drinks
That my friends ordered
“Amazing”
Is not the best word
I know
But if you’ve ever drank before
You know
What I mean
Which is the point
Anyway
Right?

May 27, 2021 at 08:08PM

Where art thou, hangover

I woke up confused
By
Not feeling worse
Than I should have
And confused also
About
What to do
With myself
Other
Than whatever
Would make me feel better
But because
I did not know
Whether
I was
Sick to my stomach
Tired
Or just fine enough
To go down
For a swim
Which is what I eventually did
And so started
A day full
Of what wasn’t planned
But just happened
One thing
After another
And so passed
Another day
Of living
As pain-free
As possible

May 27, 2021 at 07:55PM

Flamenco dancer

We sat at the table
Waiting on our drinks
Watching
The flamenco dancer on stage
Stomping her feet
Violently
And rapidly
The guitarist invited us to clap along
But there was
No hope of that
We could not even applaud
At the right times
The dancer
Would stop
And then we would applaud
And she would stamp right on through
Like a mother
Scolding her children
She snapped her head
As flamenco dancers do
And looked at my friend and smiled
Our drinks
Arrived
Eventually

May 27, 2021 at 07:40PM

Electric pianist

The young musicians
Played on a rug
Laid on the tile
In San Jose
For a crowd of mostly tourists
And a few locals
The pianist
Was better than the other three
Combined
He played the electric keyboard
And varied the sound
All over the place
Hunching his shoulders over the keys
And then leaning back
In the old, tattered office chair on wheels
That he was sitting in
His fingers jumped
From key
To key
Like grasshoppers
Making sounds of pressed
And held
Passion
Taking off
And landing
I don’t know much
About music
But I can feel
When someone else is feeling it
And I could feel the pianist
Feeling himself
And everyone else there
Feeling him

May 27, 2021 at 06:07PM

Honest young girl

“This has so much ego in it. It’s so good,” she says about the song playing. She says things, not knowing what she’s saying and how good it is, confirming the theory I have about the words people say in conversation in the moment being way better than the words remembered and written after the fact. She says this listening to the music and feeling it. The way she says it in this moment is different. It is like music. The tone makes it. Her facial expression, the environment around her, and, of course, the music itself—it all contributes. Film would get closer with its combination of audio and video. The art that we are all chasing from different angles is the present moment. When we cut it off from its original source, we only take a piece with us—the words, the sounds, the appearance. But the whole thing is here and only once. The art is life itself as it’s lived. What makes us want to divorce it from it’s natural birthplace, to pull the flower up from it’s soil. Because we want to show the beauty to others? Because we want to keep it for ourselves.

The oldest game

James and the girl
He was trying to get with
As well as
The other nice guy
Who I didn’t think was nice
When I first met him
And his girl
Listen to music in the room
The girls dance
While the guys pretend at it
And mostly just watch
The girls
Up later
Than they would be
If they were not
Playing at
The oldest game

May 27, 2021 at 01:44AM

On the rail

I leaned back
With both hands holding the iron rail
And my bare feet
On the tile
Swinging from side to side
Looking up
Through the thatched roof
At the stars
And the full moon
Pulling the waves
In
And out
In
And out
Down there
Making dry noise

May 27, 2021 at 01:40AM

Palms dancing at night

The leaves on the palm trees
Dance in the wind
Whether I
Am here
On the balcony
To watch them
Or not

They sway to the music
Of the wind
And everything else that either
Moves
Or stays still

They dance
Like a beautiful girl
On the dance floor
Of the night
No matter who watches

May 27, 2021 at 01:35AM

Lying by the pool

I was lying out by the pool not knowing what to do with myself. I was at constant risk of overshooting relaxation and falling into boredom but such was the peril of taking a vacation when I was already unemployed.

The waiters in their white coats walked by in front of the beach chairs holding silver trays that glinted in the sun. The day was hot as you would expect of midday in July on the top of the Baja peninsula. But it was enough to avoid sunburn sitting under the umbrella. I had learned to avoid sunburn on the first couple days of a vacation. For the last days, it doesn’t matter as much, especially if you are headed back to a place with less sun. It is even good to have the sunburn when you get back, to prove to yourself that you really went and had a vacation and were changed by it.

I could hear the spinning, grinding sound coming from the machine at the bar that made drinks with crushed ice. I looked over and there was one younger man in a white t-shirt at the bar. I thought of having a drink but then thought I better not. We would drink enough later in the night, I thought.

Daring dame

She left
Almost as quickly
As she came
Not more
Than five minutes
Had we been on the balcony
And not more than ten
Had it been
Since we stepped out of the bus
That brought us
From the airport
To the resort
And here came this angel
To welcome us
Climbing
Up onto the thatched roof of the veranda
And jumping the fence
To join us on the balcony
But maybe
Her beauty
Is more fit for prose
Than poetry
So I’ll leave this one be

May 25, 2021 at 03:27PM

An unexpected friend

We got to Cabo and went out onto the balcony and the first thing that happened was a girl named Sarah from the condo below us climbed the pillar of the overhang to come up to our balcony and say hello.

She said, “I think the reason our generation has so much mental illness is because we are so far from where we’re supposed to be, biologically, like we’re supposed to be monkeys crawling around in the forest.”

This was after some conversation but not the amount usually required to get to such depth.

How can I describe her? Completely unabashed. Young and full of life. Beautiful. Unapologetically herself. Talkative.

My two friends continue to talk to her while I write. Greg asks what her and her friends are doing tonight. They don’t have any plans. Greg says the rooftop club that we can see from the balcony is a good one.

She says, “Want to go now?” It’s 3:45 in the afternoon. She has been doing coke for the past day and a half. Greg still has work to do on his computer. I would go with her, but I don’t tell her this. I don’t say anything. I just stay quiet and keep writing about this angel, friend, someone, I don’t know; but she is certainly more interesting and exciting than any of the last hundred or so people I’ve met.

She leaned back with one leg thrown over the other, wearing shorts that barely covered anything. Her eyelids fluttered over her eyes as she took unconscious drinks of the beer Greg gave her. 

She talked about everything and I sat there and typed on my phone about her just hoping she would never stop or, even if she did stop talking, that she would at least not leave and take with her all the life that she so easily brought and could so easily take away. 

I wonder if she is aware of the power she wields, to bring the whole universe to bear in a pair of short shorts that contain barely anything, let alone all the stars that were ever in the sky for as many nights as a man ever lived. One moment is not enough to contain her.

Turbulence

The plane bumps
We are safe
I guess
Based on how calm
Everyone is
Sitting
In their seats
Carrying on
With their conversations
As if
Some very clever science
Which hitherto
Has failed
Very few times
Were not the only
Thin
Line
Between our happy cabin
Full of vacationers
And the mountains
Below

May 25, 2021 at 11:50AM

Mexico vacation

The guy with sunglasses on his head
Leaned back in his chair
To tell the flight attendant
Something nice
I don’t know what
Exactly
But I know it was nice
Because she laughed and said, “Oh, thank you”
And he smiled and nodded his head
I wonder
How happy he is
When he is not
On vacation
At his day job
At the office
With a pile of paperwork
Maybe
He really is
A happy guy
All the time

May 25, 2021 at 11:43AM

How far we’ve come

We didn’t even use to
Have plumbing
In buildings
On the ground
And now
We have bathrooms
In planes
That flush!
And the water
From the sink
Is hot!

Originally written: May 25, 2021 at 11:37AM

Water

Besides being blue
And besides being wet
And besides being
Anything else
Which it might appear to be
To another
Under different circumstances
One who may even
Speak a different language
Or know more English words
Than I
But even me
Being as I am
If I were
In any other time or place
Than the 25th of May
Up in the sky seated in this plane
I would describe
It differently
Its aspects
Are innumerable
If I look
Long enough
And especially
If I take time and go away from it
And then come back to it
Later on
It will have changed
As all things are
Changing
Not necessarily themselves
I’m sure
They stay the same
For the most part
But we
Yes, we
Are changing
All the time
And so too
Therefore
Does everything around us

Originally written: May 25, 2021 at 11:25AM

Dead bug

While cutting a green pepper
On a wooden cutting board
I saw a little black speck
That I almost just tossed in
With the tacos
But I’m glad I didn’t
Because I slid the point of the knife
Underneath the speck
And brought it
Closer to my eyes
So that I could see
That it had legs
And was a little creature
Dead with
Its legs curled up underneath it
But it must have had its fill
And thought itself lucky
To have made it
Inside of the green pepper
Until it realized
It would be
A coffin
Albeit, a big coffin
One fit for
An Egyptian king
Like a pyramid
So maybe not so bad
All in all
For this little dead bug

Originally written: May 24, 2021 at 05:01PM

Like Bukowski

I will try to write like Bukowski I
suppose
based just on what I know about him
from
the two of his poetry books
that I’ve read
holding one in front of my face now
looking back and forth
between this
and examples of his work
which I am trying to copy
with the uncapitalized first letter
to begin each line
and the seemingly random line breaks
that somehow work
I don’t think I
can make it all the way as a writer
copying like this
but my editor said that I should try
something different
with my form
other than just my same-sized lines
one after another
my poems run together
after a while
she said
is this any better?
I’ll ask her

Originally written: May 23, 2021 at 06:16PM

Repetition

I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories. I exercise to lose calories. I eat to gain calories.

Fresh air

I put my hands
On my knees
Bend over
And lean my head
To the side
To stick my nose
Out the window
And breathe
The fresh air

Originally written: May 17, 2021 at 05:22PM

Mental

I can never
Get my mind
Out of the way
Fast enough
To get
To the visceral

I’ve already
Abstracted
Clouds to heavens
Blood to war
Food to hunger

Described it
To death
Pondered every
Possibility
Made it
Mental

Originally written: May 17, 2021 at 04:26PM

Worst

Well, would that be
The worst thing
You can imagine
Happening?

Or, could there be
Something else
Even worse
Still?

At what point
Would you give up
And say
I’ve had enough

Originally written: May 15, 2021 at 05:50PM

Beans

It better be
Bags of beans
You’ve brought
And dropped
On my floor;
I have little use
For much else

Originally written: May 15, 2021 at 05:40PM

This too shall

I really cared
For a while there
As I thought
This all might
Really matter
Somehow
Or that it all
Might go on
Unchanged
And what I do
Will be forever
But I’ve remembered
That it all changes
Nothing matters
It all passes

I got caught up
For a while there
Thinking that
This all
Might matter
Somehow

But now
I remember
That it doesn’t
So I can
Forgive myself
For my mistakes

Originally written: May 15, 2021 at 01:42PM

Wishing

I wish for what
Would require me
To read the dictionary
Cover to cover
In order to obtain

To get out of bed
And lift heavy things
And eat
And then lift more
And eat more
And then get back in bed
On a strict schedule

To learn
Whatever others
Have done before me
From various
Secondary sources
And then rinse
Out their individuality
And repeat
With my own

Why can not
Wishing alone
Be enough
To muster the matter
If I were to lie here
Wishing hard
And sincerely

Originally written: May 15, 2021 at 11:47AM

Problems with authority

I do not like to measure exactly. Who is doing the cooking then? If I follow the recipe exactly, scraping the back of a knife along the top of the measuring cup. If I do not taste the ingredients for myself. What kind of cook am I if I only do what I am told? Who are you anonymous author of the recipe? When have I followed your orders before without knowing it? Not today! You say, a half cup of milk. Bah! I will put in three-quarters of a cup. Because I like it creamy! And even if I didn’t, I would do it just to spite you.

What is is what is

What is is what is. There, I have said it. I do not want to say anything else. I have said what I am sure of and to say anything else would be like stepping down from a rock when there is quicksand all around me. But what about this? You might ask of me, or I might ask of myself. I sigh. I don’t want to answer. I don’t want to risk it. But you have a point. How can we do anything in this modern world without asking and answering for ourselves those other questions? It reminds me of something I once read, which was written on one of the desks at the library where I studied during college, “A ship is safe in the harbor, but that is not what ships are for.” I am safe standing on my rock, but there is so much more to life than just standing on a rock.

Bedtime story

We didn’t really have it that hard is the truth. Some times were hard, sure. But some people have it way harder. Where’s their recognition? If you start almost at the top and then make the small leap at the top, how far did you really go? I have a hunch that the art we know about isn’t the best there ever was. The best there ever was probably wasn’t even translated into the common arts forms that we have learned to call “art.” It was probably something like a bum who whistled a tune in the middle of the night, lying all alone on his cardboard with nobody there to hear. But maybe even that is too cheap and cliché. Maybe it was just a single mom making enough at her night shift to put breakfast on the table for her son the next morning. Still, too obvious and trite. My view is still too narrow. Too human. Too here and now. We make art that we understand. Which makes sense, I suppose. I don’t know. Lying here in bed getting sober. My throat still burns from the cigar. It’s dark out and a car drives by. 2:45 a.m. I slept all day today, before we went over to John’s and had dinner and started drinking. We talked and we talked, but I don’t think we really said it. Maybe someone has already said it to me before and I just couldn’t quite understand. Even if someone said it to me once, I’d want them to say it again. See, I’m selfish like that. I have it too easy. I’m a glutton for more of all the goodness I’ve already gotten. In some rare moments, when I can keep from over complicating it, I can see straight through to the beating heart of the cosmos. I saw it in the white ceiling when I woke up from my nap earlier today. I thought to myself, damn, just the fact that I can see that white ceiling, just that is more than I can truly appreciate, when I muster all the attention I can give it. And I don’t know why, but that’s when I think of dying. I think, I will die and I won’t be able to look at a white ceiling like this again, and I want to cry. Sometimes I do cry. Most of the time I can only cry when I think about other people dying. Sometimes I get more sad than other times. Sometimes I’m not sad at all. I’m just very indifferent and I don’t really care what happens. Anyway, I think I’ll go to sleep now.

Make-believe

I see something
Which I think
Is one thing

But then
It turns out to be
Something else

I wanted to write
What I thought
It was before

Before it became
What it
Really is

As I realize
It doesn’t really
Make a difference

It’s all
Make-believe
Anyway

Originally written: May 05, 2021 at 06:19PM

Glasses

I put on the glasses
That I’m supposed to wear
All the time
And see
For what seems
Like the first time
All the finer details
Like leaves
On the trees

Originally written: May 02, 2021 at 11:27AM

Up

I am up now
I am assuredly
Up
And away
Chasing after
Even my faintest
Fancies
Which
When down
I would not
Walking
Away from the desk
Just to breathe
And let out
Some of this energy
I can’t
Contain it all
Breathing
I send it back out
Smiling
Happy to have it
And happy also
To let it go

Originally written: May 01, 2021 at 10:21AM

Ornery future

I get into a moment
And think that this
Will be forever
And start to plan
Accordingly
Setting up expectations
And parameters
For the future to fit into
What I’m experiencing
Right now
But of course
The future
Is an ornery child
Refusing to obey
Its present parent

Originally written: May 01, 2021 at 10:06AM

Windy beach

Lying
On the beach
In the sun
Wearing clothes
Because it’s windy
And a little cold
I squint
At the sun
Through the eyelashes
Of my one
Open eye
At a point
Where the light
Intermingles
With the threads
Of the jacket sleeve
On my forearm
Lain across
My forehead
Protecting
My face
From sunburn

Originally written: April 20, 2021 @ 2:08pm

Bored

I bring the full weight of my consciousness to bear on my own existence in moments of what would otherwise be boredom when I should really be meditating but my Western engine mind just can’t stop revving, solving problems until they are all solved and then creating new problems to solve, like sudoku and crossword puzzles.

Originally written: April 30, 2021 @ 11:11 a.m.

Mirror

I look at myself too long in the mirror and start to have an identity crisis. But it’s really just like anything else. I read the same word over and over and forget its meaning. I eat the same food over and over and forget its taste. I hear the same noise over and over and it starts to sound like silence.

But with my own face, it’s just slightly different, because when my own face starts to look like nothing, then I start to wonder, who am I? Maybe I identify too much with my physical form. Anyway, all of this is just to remind me that I really shouldn’t be looking at myself in a mirror for longer than ten or fifteen seconds at a time.

Originally written: April 30, 2021 @ 10:59 a.m.

Hard words

The hard words are too hard. They are too specific. How can you really mean what you say when you are using them? Maybe I say this just because I’ve never read a dictionary cover to cover. Maybe the exactness is necessary in some cases. But do we really experience life so specific, exact, and precise? I am happy and that is it. I don’t unpack it any further than that. Especially not in the moment. In the moment, I usually have no words at all. It just is what it is and I am in it and that is it. This relates to what I have said before about there being one word to describe everything. What do we gain by being more exact with our words? One of the experiences that I have tried to describe over and over as a writer is the experience of euphoria. And there I go, using the word “euphoria.” Breaking my own rule already. What is it then? What am I trying to describe? Maybe the exactness is necessary. But I just can’t help feeling that more is the wrong direction. If I could just sit with you and hold your hand and not say a word that might mean more to you than a thousand written pages.

Why do I write at all? Why do I not just go out and live if there is more communication in the wordless moment? Maybe because I am polyamorous and I want to commune with many instead of just one in one moment. Maybe because I want to live on in some form after I die. Maybe because words are what I was taught in school and I am still breaking out of this way of interpreting the world. Maybe I don’t know enough of the specific words to say that they are not good. Maybe I need to go further in the direction of more before I can say that less is the way.

Originally written: April 15, 2021 @ 10:02 a.m.

I can feel it

My grandpa is taping the baseboards in the hallway, preparing to paint the walls. I am making breakfast in the kitchen. He makes a noise, like a grunt. Something like ugh or grr.

I hear him make the noise and ask, loud enough for him to hear me in the hallway, “Are you alright?”

He says, “Oh yeah, I just have to make noises every once in a while.”

I laugh and ask, “Just a reminder to yourself that you’re still there?”

He says, “Oh no, I know I’m still here. I can feel it.”

I laugh again.

He is referring to the pain he feels in his joints, I think.

Originally written: April 7, 2021 @ 9:40 a.m.

The chicken or the egg

I wonder about the limits of being yourself. They say you have to play by the rules before you can break them. But they also say that just being yourself is the key to success. How much of myself is really me? Not much, I think. Unless, of course, all that we mean by “being yourself” is that you just stood there and let it all happen to you. Well, then everyone would be themselves by default. There’s no way to escape it. From whence does one’s self surge up? I am vaguely remembering Sartre’s essay on existentialism. How can the seed of yourself fall on anything but fertile soil? But then who put the soil down and who pulled you out of their seed bag and dropped you there? And these questions go on ad infinitum. So there is really only one true individual, and they are either the chicken or the egg. But we’re not talking about just any old chicken here. We’re talking about the Chicken with a capital ‘C.’ Or the egg with all the Alpha and Omega-3s you could ever ask for.

But I’m losing my head. Back to being yourself. Let’s depart from the true philosophy of the matter just for a moment and talk in practical terms. I think we can agree there are some actions that can be taken or decisions that can be made by an individual which seem to be willed or otherwise brought about by their own individual selves. In other words, we would not say of said actions or decisions that they were a result of the individual just following the rules or doing what everyone else is doing. In some way or another, an individual is capable of really doing something on their own. Now, I don’t think this claim really holds weight philosophically, especially for determinists, but let’s just hold it as an assumption for now.

Maybe it is an aesthetic argument. Because what I really want to convey is the sense of beauty that I get when I see someone who appears to be beating their own path. And I don’t think we get very many of these. Because the default is to walk the trail already traveled. Before you can even think for yourself, you’re already on that trail. And, if we’re subscribing to determinism, then the inclination to step off the trail might also be determined, which is why this is not an ethical argument. It is not good or bad to be on the trodden trail. But, oh, the aesthetics of the young girl in the dress running off into the tall grass and away from everyone else—oh, I want to chase that girl! I want to finally catch her in a glade and ask her all the questions that the travelers on the trodden trail could not answer for me. Why did you run? Where are you going? What have you found so far? Will you go back? Why? Or why not?

But how beautiful will her answers be? And herein lies the heart of the matter. Because it is beautiful to watch her run away—this much, I can understand. But how alien will she become? And how quickly? See, this is what I mean by the limits of being yourself. Because on the trodden trail, we can all understand each other. We have had relatively similar experiences, we speak the same language, we know the same people—we hold things in common; most importantly, in this context, our methods of communication. This is important for the aesthetic argument because how can something be beautiful if I cannot understand it? Now, don’t rebut too fast. I am not talking about complete understanding. A little bit of the unknown can be tantalizing. But this is different. I am talking here about not even a beginning of understanding. Something so alien that you can do nothing but stand there and gawk. Maybe there is some awe in the gawking. But if there is awe, then there must be some starting foothold into which your understanding has stepped. Otherwise, it is only hollow-minded gawking as your mind tries but fails to fit the experience into an existing neural pathway that isn’t there. This is the limit of being yourself that I speak of. It is the ultimate outer limit, so we now have a scale. The minimum of being yourself is the cookie-cutter human on the trodden trail. The maximum of being yourself is the girl that runs off into the forest who turns out to be a totally non-human alien.

Now, what does this mean for an artist? I think it comes down to appetite for the risk of being an alien. How far out are you willing to venture in order to find something new?

Cooking is creative

Now I have a better sense of why my mom got so upset when one of my siblings or I said that we didn’t like the dinner that she made for us.

As I cooked chili today, I found myself making decisions on my own and not really following the recipe. I didn’t measure anything. I added one cup of diced tomatoes instead of two. I added corn even though the recipe didn’t call for it. I was enjoying the creativity and I found myself thinking, “I hope this tastes good.”

Since I changed the recipe, it became my chili. If it doesn’t turn out well, it’s not the recipe’s fault; it’s my own fault. The chili is still simmering in the dutch oven on the stovetop in the kitchen. I don’t have any children to tell me how it tastes, but I hope my girlfriend likes it.

Conforming

I do not feel dreadfully the need to conform. I write “dreadful.” You read this and think to yourself, ah, it’s not so bad! “Look here,” you might say to me, “here I am conforming, and it’s really not that bad. It certainly isn’t dreadful.” I would respond, “But you are past the worst of it.”

Of course, to already be conforming is not so bad. But when was the last time you walked into the woods alone? When was the last time you didn’t agree? When was the last time you were hungry? In how many small ways did you, at first, think differently? And then, not all at once, but over time, your individual opinions slowly acquiesced and joined the general consensus.

See, it is a subtle dread. You will not have felt it if you have gone slowly over time. Like the criminal in his cell, awaiting the gallows. But the hangman is patient and cunning. Each night he comes to the criminal’s cell and asks, “Will you be ready in the morning?” And each night, the criminal says, “No, please, one more day.” Until one night, the hangman takes a different approach with the criminal. He says, “You know, I think you have learned your lesson. How about if we make a deal? Instead of hanging for your crimes, how would you like to serve as the hangman in my place?” How might the criminal’s view of the hangman’s position have changed, while he faced the prospect of his own hanging?

Which is the worst? To hang, to spend all your days in a cell, or to become the hangman? It is a trick question. You were never going to hang. The death penalty has been abolished. Exile is the worst that can happen to you. So the question becomes: how much do you fear exile?

When you die

What’s it like
In that moment
I wonder
When you die
Without any time
To think
About your life
And losing it
All at once
Except
For a split second
I try
To imagine
But can’t possibly
Fathom
What seems to be
Such a loss
To me
Still
Having not yet
Completely
Disidentified
With my ego

April 27, 2021 at 06:28PM

Looking funny

I look at someone
Walking by
On the sidewalk
As we pass
One another
And I wonder
Why
They are looking
Back at me
So funny
Until I remember
I have not showered
Or combed my hair

Call me

Do I contradict
Myself too often?

Does the name
That you used to call me
No longer apply?

Did I not stay
In the same place
For long enough
To be someone?

Did the waves
Wash away
What I wrote
In the sand?

Where can I possibly be
If not right where
You say that I am?

How can I possibly
Gain identity
All by myself?

Who will call me
By my true name?

I am searching for You.

Force

I carry with me
Force
When I write
Walking
To the bathroom
For a break
I bump
The door frame
With my hip bone
And almost
Knock
The house down

Shake it up

You’re not living just repeat, repeat, repeat. You have to shake it up to live again. Find newness to force yourself back into survival mode. Living the same groundhog’s day digs the trench too deep. Eventually it gets so deep that you look up along the canyon walls and you have no energy left to climb out, so you say to yourself, “Well, I guess this is just my canyon.” And then you keep on digging deeper. But there’s no light down there! No other creatures to keep you company. Back up on the surface you can skim along. Sure, you might wonder about the core. You might wonder, what’s down there? As you hop and skip over and across other canyons. You look down and see the others so deep down there and you think, maybe I should stay put and cut my own canyon. But don’t do it! Not until you’re good and ready to die.

Dying all the time

I am dying all the time already. I am letting it happen now rather than later. I wait for something small to end and then I think about what it will be like when it all ends. Something gets taken away from me and I think about what it will be like when it all gets taken away.

I eat the last cookie in the cookie jar and think of what it will be like to draw my last breath. I lose feeling in the leg that I had crossed over my other leg for too long and think of what it will be like to no longer be in my body. I try to trick myself into believing before I go to bed at night that I won’t wake up in the morning.

I do not know the best way to die. Is it better to pretend that it will never happen and then take the shock all at once when it does? Maybe I’ll die in a sudden accident and I won’t even know. But just in case it happens slow, I feel like I should practice.

Kill your darlings

You have to be loosey-goosey
Let it go
If you’re going to throw it all
Against the wall
And see what sticks
You can’t keep it all
Because it’s not all good
Can’t all be  good
Even if only in relation
To the rest
Some will be bad
So don’t grow too attached
To your babies
You’ll only get to keep
A few

You’re the only one

You are so you
As I look at you
At the features of your face
Which seem to match
The words that you are saying
It all goes together
Like a character in a movie
Unless you are faking it
Then you are really
Quite a good actress
But I do not
Think that this is possible
For you to pretend
To be someone else
And thereby escape
From being yourself
For even if pretending
To be yourself
Then that would just mean
That you are a pretender
And that’s just what you are
But you are not
You are different
Like everyone else is pretending
They’re all pretenders
And you’re the only one
Who is really yourself

Everything is repeated

Everything is repeated
Everything is repeated
Everything is repeated

The newspaper headlines
The movie plot lines

The causes of death
The reasons for war

The days and the nights
The sun rising
The sun setting

Falling in love
Falling out of love

Getting hungry
Being satisfied

Succeeding
Failing

Except for dying
That’s the only
New thing left

Lunch with my grandparents

I was sitting on the back porch having lunch with my grandparents. My grandma and grandpa were sitting in chairs next to each other, across the table from me.

It was the day after Easter. The buds of the first leaves were starting to show on the trees in the backyard.

“Those are farm trees, the ones that grow the hedge apples,” my grandma said.

“I have a list that’s 17 pages long, and you know what …” and I already knew by the tone of his voice that there was a characteristic grandpa-joke coming, “It’s single-spaced!”

“Hah!” He laughed like he always did.

“I’ve got to change the oil in the car,” said grandpa.

“That should be at the top of the list,” said grandma.

“I know it. And I’ve got to put another coat of paint on the door,” said grandpa.

“Well that should be toward the bottom of the list,” said grandma.

“Well, no, it’s at the top of my list,” said grandpa.

“The sun is starting to come over the house now,” said grandma.

“I’m gonna go get the umbrella,” said grandpa. And off he went.

Writing without ego

When they find me, when I make it, when I get lucky—they’ll box me in right then and there. So maybe it won’t be so lucky. Maybe I never want to be found. They’ll take me as I am, and then thereafter, I’ll have to work very hard to break out and become anything else. I might even have to work harder than I did to become something in the first place. Because to become something in the first place is just that—become it, and that’s it. But to become something else when you are something already requires an extra step—you must first break free of what you are already, and only then can you start to become something else. At first, I thought only of the social problem: what “they” will call you, what “they” will say you are. But the other, more subtle, and probably more dangerous part is what I call myself and what I say that I am. Because then I will build up an internal identity for myself and start to behave that way, just the same as society would build up an identity for me externally. And I think this matters for my writing. Because I don’t want to be boxed in. I don’t want to write just one way, from just one perspective. I want to write it all. And, of course, I know that I can’t. But I still want to try to get as much of it down as I can. And in order to do that, it seems that I need to stay loose and alone, being nothing more than a vessel through which experiences can pass and in their passing be quickly recorded before they shoot out the other end. I needn’t retain any of their details as parts of my own identity. I need only to study them like a scientist, let my senses record their findings, and then avoid them like snakes in the grass.

I like the night

I like the night. It is dark, quiet, and mostly made up of nothing. My back hurts less when I am lying down. Unlike the day, there are no disappointments, fears, angers, or other irritations—because nothing is happening at night. The lights are off. The doors and windows are shut. Nobody else is here. This is as close as you can get to the land before time, the land before anything. The night can be nothing, if you let it. That is, until you start to dream or otherwise create something with your own mind on the black canvas of the night. Even then, you are not limited by the rules of reality that afflict the day. The day can only be so much. The night can choose to either be nothing or anything. The day can only be something, and that something just is what it is. In the night you can choose. If you’re sick of it all, you can rest in the nothingness. If you want something more, you can dream it up. I do start to miss the day eventually. I want it to be real. Even if I can’t choose, it’s worth giving up some freedom of choice just to be a part of the real thing, especially being with others who are real and not just figments. The best mornings or the ones when I have started to miss the day as much as I can and that’s right when I open my eyes to see the morning sun peeking in through the drapes.

Nighttime nothing

It’s when I get into the nighttime nothing that I can’t remember a single thing about the day and the things I planned nothing really means anything in the night unable to see in the dark dreaming up free dreams as many as you could ever want with no cost of admission and no need to make money to pay for them after the sun has set there’s a brief time when the mind starts to wonder if it will ever rise again and somehow thinking that it might not nothing is off-limits as if it were really your last night to live and nothing seems impossible but you have to hurry while this feeling lasts because as the sun starts to rise and the sky brightens you will be sure that there is another day to come.

Originally written on: March 8, 2021

Sleep all day

An extra pair of socks placed on the nightstand next to the plant to breathe clean air and not have to go all the way to the dresser to have warm feet not enough room on the nightstand for all the things I would need so I have to get out of bed or else I might sleep all day.

Originally written on: March 3, 2021

Two worlds

I want to have my cake and eat it too when I am feeling pain I don’t want it but when I am feeling pleasure I want it when I am feeling pain I want to get away from the world I want to step out of the cycle but I still can’t detach from the pleasure I believe there’s a different kind of pleasure from a non-worldly life but I am not yet wise enough to have tasted it and also because the world is what I know it is what I was born into and my upbringing shaped me in the cycle of pain and pleasure.

Originally written on: February 28, 2021

Worry

As much as I worry
There are still worries
That I haven’t worried about
And I worry
About that too

Originally written on: March 9, 2021

Out of place

A book fallen
From the shelf
Lying there
On the carpet
Looking
Out of place
I think I should
Get off the couch
Pick up the book
And place it back
On the shelf
With the other books
But then I think
I should leave it
Right where it is
Because that is
Where it is
For whatever reason
And the argument
Of order
To be in its supposed place
On the shelf
Does not necessarily
Win out
In my mind
Over the argument
To let things be
Just as they are

Originally written on: February 11, 2021

Gas tank belly

If I were an automobile
Parked in the garage at night
My brain would be the engine
And my belly would be the gas tank
And they would talk to each other
Through speaker wires
And the tank would say,
“Engine, wake up, I am full”
And the engine would say back
Nothing
Because the automobile is not on
And engines sleep deeply
When not running
So the tank would wake up the ignition
And say,
“Ignition, wake up the engine”
And so the ignition would turn
And the engine would roll over
And wipe the sleep out of its motor oil-crusted eyes
And say,
“Gas tank, what the hell are you doing? Do you have any idea what time it is?”
And the tank would say,
“Yes, I know, I am sorry, but can we please go for a drive?”
And the engine would sigh and, already pulling out of the driveway, say,
“I told you not to drink so much at the station last night.”

Originally written on: February 2, 2021

What brings me joy

I was watching a movie about a jazz musician and there was a scene where he wins the role of piano player in a band that he admires. It made me think of my writing and how excited I would be to publish a best-seller. And then I compared that to the excitement I would feel if I were to make a lot of money from a more traditional job. I think I would be way more excited about the best-seller, which is an interesting perspective for how I’m spending my time. I spend a lot of my time working and not as much time writing. But if writing is truly what’s bringing me joy, then why am I not spending more time doing that?

Expensive restaurant

I dreamt that my mom wanted to eat at an expensive restaurant. I didn’t want to go because I knew I would be paying for it. We ended up going. It was my mom, one of my brothers, and myself. We sat down at a table covered in a white cloth in the middle of the room. The table had five chairs. We had started eating our bread when another woman and her son came to join our table. I was confused at first, but then assumed that it must be this way at fancy restaurants, where people sit together. Almost immediately, the woman pulled a crystal sphere out of her purse to display her wealth for us. She was explaining the type of mineral of which the sphere was made when her son made a comment about how she was always showing off. I agreed with him, out loud. The lady was offended. I didn’t care. My mom was embarrassed. We left the restaurant. The bill for the bread alone was twenty-five dollars.

Recorded in dream journal on: August 27, 2020

Wolves

I dreamt that I was back at our family home in the cul-de-sac at the end of Sumac Street. I was in the basement watching a movie with my friend. My dad got home from work and said he wanted to show me something. We walked through the sliding glass door in the basement, out into our one-acre backyard. We walked about fifty paces to a part of the yard near the trees that had been experiencing flooding. There was an irrigation system comprised of gates and a glass graduated cylinder that stuck into the ground and pulled up water. We were talking about it, when we heard a wild commotion in the forest on the other side of the yard. We turned, and through the trees, we could make out two buffalo being chased by a pack of white wolves. At first, it was nothing more than a marvel to behold, as one looks at something far away and not personally concerning. Until a few of the wolves noticed us and broke off from the pack, running into our yard. I immediately climbed up onto a stack of cinder blocks, stacked about six or seven feet high. My dad stayed on the ground, seemingly not worried. The wolves bared their fangs and barked and growled. One of them circled around my dad’s legs. He didn’t move. Most of them focused on me, jumping up on the sides of the stack of cinder blocks, and biting at my legs. I was very scared, and that was the end of the dream.

Recorded in dream journal on: August 20, 2020

Self-conscious but in charge

I dreamt that my teeth fell out last night. I spit a handful of molars into my hand.

I don’t think I am as worried about my appearance as I have been in the past. As I get older, I’m more concerned about my actual health, rather than just how I appear. I also have a girlfriend, so I’m not trying to impress other women.

Still, I think this is a sign of self-consciousness. Maybe it’s because I’m going to the hotel in Napa with K and her friends next month, and I haven’t gotten my hair cut.

I also dreamt of being in charge. I dreamt that I was in a board room. People were presenting to me and I was correcting them.

Recorded in dream journal on: July 17, 2020

Memory loss

I dreamt I lost my memory, from the 24th to the 7th; I can’t remember which months. Maybe from May 24th to June 7th. The dream was mostly in the context of work and high school. It was very emotional. When I realized on the 7th that I had lost my memory, I kept it to myself at first. Then I pulled my boss aside and I broke down. In the back of my mind, I thought it was because I had a brain tumor. This has always been a fear of mine.

Originally posted in dream journal on: July 23, 2020

Veggie monsters

I dreamt we were at a house in the country. We slept on a cot in the garden, K and I. My hand dangled over the side of the cot, and something nibbled on my finger. At first, it was non-threatening. Then, a larger creature, made mostly of zucchini, started to attack with garden tools like a shovel and an ax. Then it became more serious. The vegetable monsters proved very difficult to kill. We killed one and then fled into the house. There were others with us. We locked all the doors. More vegetable monsters had gathered around the house at this point.

Recorded in dream journal on:July 23, 2020

Swimming

A lot of progress in circles, swimming deeper, like a corkscrew. Sometimes circling several times on the same level, not really learning the lesson. Some circles are wide and lazy, without any real need to proceed deeper with haste. Other circles are tight and almost slanted before even one full revolution is complete, nose-diving for the bottom in this way. The ocean is deep, and there may or may not be treasure on the ocean floor where you land. You may also choose to swim wider circles at the same depth, or to swim the same circle over and over, content just to be swimming.

Originally written on: September 3, 2020

A still moment

In the middle of my exercises, in plank pose, I notice there are no noises and no movements around me. In an uncanny moment, it feels as if time has stopped. It occurs to me that if I could check my watch face, then I could see if it were really true. But the face of my watch on my wrist just so happens to be pointed away from my field of vision. I cannot move my wrist or my eyes, because doing so would ruin the still moment. It is a conundrum. I cannot confirm for sure that time has stopped.

Originally written on: August 27, 2020

To avoid restarting

I stay longer than I should. Shaping myself into my surroundings. Gathering what was once useful but will soon weigh me down. Holding onto the life I have, unwilling to risk it for what may be. I dig myself deeper and deeper until I can no longer move. Leave me buried here. I am happy.

Originally written on: August 27, 2020

Astronaut flowers

On the ledge in our apartment, a plant grows with hanging vines and thick, rubbery green leaves the size of quarters. We have had the plant for more than a year, ever since we brought it home from the store last summer. To our surprise, the plant started to grow purple things that looked to me like long teacups. Then, from the teacups, came forth red flowers that looked to me like dragon mouths. Ten or twelve of the these red dragon mouths grew from the ends of the lowest hanging vines, then, not more than two weeks later, the red flowers started to fall. We picked them up and put them on the window sill, not wanting to get rid of their red beauty. Sitting at the dining table, I realized what was happening. I could be wrong; I am just guessing. But it seemed that the flowers likely contained the seed of the plant. They were being sent forth to find fertile soil and grow a whole plant anew. I was sad then, because all the seeds had failed to find fertile soil. It made me think of our human race, and how we might one day send astronauts deep into space on a colonizing mission from which there is no hope of return. Such was the fate of these flowers. They were sent forth, with no hope of return, to find fertile soil and spawn a plant family anew, or else never know plant kin again. The rubbery red dragon flowers did not know that they would find only hardwood floor, and die alone.

Originally written on: August 23, 2020

Shower thoughts

I sit on the edge of the bath tub with my elbows on my knees. My spine bends like a cattail in the wind. My head sags like a water droplet just barely hanging on to the underside of a wood railing in the rain. The whole world tips up on its side, and almost falls over completely, crashing into black, as the blood rushes into my head. One elbow slips from my knee and the cattail bends deeper at the waist as the water droplet has almost too much mass to hold on. My head spills out like a bucket into the bath water.

Originally written on: September 14, 2020

11/11/20

As our plane ascends into the sky above the clouds, I am reminded of the heights achieved by man. Not one man, but many. One can only play his part. He cannot hope to achieve the whole of it on his own. Man is necessarily a social animal. They say, “If you want to go fast, to alone. If you want to go far, go together.” I am growing to understand this. My girlfriend is teaching me emotional intelligence. I cannot think only of myself. “To whom much has been given, much is expected.” I would be happy working for the good of others, and not just for myself.

Originally written on: November 11, 2020

Boat lights

Outside of the plane window, the boat lights in the dark night dot the ocean below, just like the stars in the sky above. I think for a second we may be flying upside down. I consider whether we will still get there, flying such, and it seems, to the best of my measurements, that it will make no difference. There is also the fact of gravity, and my being seated, to suggest that those are not stars below. What then? I know only stars to dot the dark void in this way, and they have always been above me. Ah! They are boats. I realize, as what I see is crammed into what I know. Though I would have been perfectly happy to accept that we were flying upside down.

Originally written on: November 16, 2020

Damn editing

I really touch it light like, afraid to overwhelm the original with too may edits. Like coming into a museum and looking upon the work of another, I wouldn’t dare step over the partition and reach inside the glass container, ignoring the “Do Not Touch” signs. The piece is beautiful for my eyes as it is, and there is nothing more for me to add by putting my hands on it. I have as much respect for my former self as the artist. I come now as the editor to do the necessary evil. It is my own, even the mistakes, and that is what makes it art, I believe. Everything that happens afterwards, with editing especially, is a derivation of the original. I am thinking of rules and the opinions of others when I edit. I am no longer thinking of the source of inspiration, which can only once be passed through the lens of my perception and, in that moment, recorded.

Originally written on: December 13, 2020

Toilet bowl water

The toilet bowl water looks a little different to me tonight, in the glow of the nightlight. Not in the bowl, obviously. It’s not big enough for one thing, and it’s also a toilet after all. But something about how the light shined on the water just right, showing dark narrow lines where the ripples cast cutting shadows down from the surface to the porcelain not far below. These lines danced in a way that gave the words blue and aqueous new meanings in my mind. It was the type of water that should have a beautiful woman swimming in it. I wanted to be swimming, myself, in that moment. I have never before seen toilet bowl water that looked so nice and inviting.

Rules

I know the rules. I have learned them just like you. But I still wish it were not so taboo for us to break them, at least every once in a while. For example, topics that are not appropriate for everyday conversation. But why not? I would bet that there is not a single person alive who follows every single rule. People pick and choose which ones they prefer to break. Some choose just a few. Some choose lots. Some choose ones that not many others have chosen, and for these people I believe it is the worst. We associate with others who have chosen to break the same rules that we have. Rules go in and out of fashion. There are certain rules that very few chose to break in the past, and now everyone is breaking those rules. And there are also rules, by which most abide now, that didn’t even exist before. There is something I read in an Eastern text recently. I cannot remember it exactly. It was something like “nothing real changes.” Well, rules change. I don’t think they’re real. So if I break a rule, and you tell me not to, and I ask you why, and you can’t give me a good answer, then I am probably going to scoff and go right on ahead. Unless the punishment is severe enough, then I will listen to your answer, and agree with you emphatically, and wait for you to turn your back and walk away, and then, once you are gone, then I will go right on ahead.

Angels and demons

God I got scared last night which makes no sense this morning with all the lights on drinking coffee excited to see all of the details of the room and listen to music later I can’t listen to lyrics when I write but like to listen in the early afternoon once I’m done anyway last night I was lying there in bed and woke up feeling a pulsing in my feet I couldn’t decide if it was just my blood pumping because of the way that I had my legs crossed or if there was a little demon standing there at the bottom of the bed squeezing my toes with its claws I couldn’t see in the dark and even if the lights were on I don’t know if I would have had the courage to lean up and look I just lay there going back and forth in my mind trying to find any reasonable explanation at all for what it could be other than a demon down there the most uncanny part as I write this morning is how nonsensical it seems during the day with the lights on to have been so scared as I was but something about the non-physical dream world changes your perception of reality and the angels and the demons have all the power over you in that other world.

Anxiety

What must anxiety do without making me do something or else just worrying and having learned that the worrying itself takes energy too and so might as well take that energy and do something about it to solve for the anxiety that will suck up the energy anyway and this may be why I tell her I don’t  want to be happy because it is the anxiety and the dissatisfaction and needing more which all together make me feel like I don’t have enough right now but she tells me feeling like I have enough is the key to happiness but I don’t want to feel that way I say and if having enough is what will make it so then I want to keep wanting more and can’t stop myself at least not now while I’m young and full of it but maybe later on.

What is essential?

I was editing a paragraph and remembered what I once read from another writer about how you can only keep what’s essential. Remembering this, I sculpted the paragraph with hungry scrapes. With each scrape, I asked myself, “Is this essential?” And the answer was always no. I would look at a whole clause, answer no, and delete it all. The paragraph started as, I don’t know, maybe ten or fifteen lines. And I kept backspacing and backspacing and the paragraph was down to about five lines. And then I asked myself the same question, “Is this essential?” And I wanted to say yes, but the answer was still no. And I thought to myself,  there is not much of this paragraph left. If I take out too much, it will cease to be itself. And then the paragraph will be more like a creation of the editing itself, and none of the original creation will be left—which could be said, I am realizing now, of even the first touch of editing as well. Only a virgin piece of writing, as it was born and unmolested by editing, is real. All else is editing. But still, I was asking myself, “Where is the essential?” Say I take this paragraph down to three lines, and then two, one. Will I be getting any closer? And on that last line: I take out the punctuation, I abbreviate each word, I take out the spaces. What if somehow I could get down to one letter? And then what? I was not taught in school about how to edit one letter. Or, maybe I was. I learned in art class about how to change what I was seeing. Not just the brute binary of add and subtract; art class was about seeing the void in the middle. And in that void lies the answer to how to edit a single letter. Think of any letter in your mind. Do you see it? Okay good. Now think of your letter as a drawing. Draw it and erase it. Once you have done that a couple of times, now start to remove as much of the letter as possible, while still being able to identify the letter as itself. Once you have gone as far as you can, now you can break the rule about identifying the letter as itself. What does it become? A slanted line? A circle? Even simpler—a straight line. And simpler—a dot. And then what? I do not know what, or when. But I am pretty sure that is where the essential will be.

Where does writing rank?

As a writer, I am often between wondering if what I want to say can even be worded, or if I just do not have the words in my vocabulary to say it. I do believe that words are limited to describe our experience. I also believe that, in some cases, other art forms are more successful, such that a really talented artist might have a few different art forms in their bag of tricks, to be able to switch, say, to painting, when sight is the best sense to capture the moment, and then to song, when right in the middle of the landscape, a bird chirps, and even though the bird can be painted, its sound cannot be captured, unless by song. This makes me realize the beauty of film, as it combines so many different art forms. In my pursuit to grow as a writer, if my goal is to depict and describe experiences, at some point that goal might find its means of achievement in art more generally, and not just writing. It takes a great deal of time to become talented at  even one art form, even to be just mediocre at one takes time. If I were very intelligent and knew the exact moment, I wonder when I would change over from learning writing to learning another art form, in the interest of being able to describe more holistically (because words are limited, like we said earlier). And which art form would be next in the hierarchy? Where does writing even rank in the first place?

Theories

In the morning my theories about myself and the world and how the two relate and interact seem to be strong and resolute and I dare even use the dread-word “right.” But then the day comes along to muck that all up with its messiness and make me feel wrong again.

I am learning from my spiritual studies that that feeling of rightness may not come from the math and science and test-taking rightness I have known from school. It may be closer to the metaphysical truth of all of existence really being One and myself being part of it and feeling closer to that One when I am in the all-black, silent, unconscious night, and farther away from that One when I am in the differentiated, working world, feeling separate, more like a link in the food chain, and less like a drop in the ocean.

What I believe

To become eloquent enough in my own worldview, that I could tell a stranger, when asked, say, at a party, or some other event where I would meet strangers, what it is exactly, that I believe, would require much remembering, of memories not even fully formed, or able to be remembered accurately, and depending on my mood, at that moment in time, and what I had heard or been convinced of recently, and so on. But the point is—and now, I cannot speak for all, though I wish I could, because I believe it to be true for all, but I will save myself from arrogance by speaking only for myself—my beliefs are fickle. They change often, even though I try to put them all through rigorous testing. Blah blah, not sure if this one passes the test.

Universal soil

I need something to bite on, to feed me, to metabolize and make work my body that lives according to the laws of nature which I have studied and memorized and tested on in school—for all those years, until now, when all the questions that come rushing in, are the ones we never studied. With nothing to bite onto, my jaw jabbers until it detaches, my brain liquifies and oozes out of my ears, my appendages start to come apart at the joints, and all other parts of what I hitherto believed to constitute myself, begin to spread apart and return to the one homogenous universal element that fills all of space and time, and has no name other than any of all the divine pronouns that the many religions have invented over the years. This, to me, though I do not know it fully now, is like the deck, under which the dog at that house in my memory, crawled to die. The universe is under that deck for me, where I will finally crawl and lie and learn to die, and then decompose into the universal soil, which is all there ever really was.

Spaceship

When my brother and I were younger, we used to play a game called “spaceship.” He would crawl out of his bed and get into mine, and we would lie next to each other and prepare our cockpits, which involved fluffing pillows and folding sheets and ultimately pulling the top blanket over our heads. Then we were locked in, with our fingers on top of a pillow, pretending it was a dashboard full of different buttons and levers and knobs all different colors and blinking and beeping. It then fell to me to create what we were seeing as we flew through space. Often this involved enemy ships that we battled or asteroids that we dodged or distant planets that we engaged hyperspeed to get to.

Last night, I played spaceship on my own. My brother was not there. He is in St. Louis. We are grown now, but I bet he would still play with me if I asked, even though we would probably need a bigger bed. Anyway, last night I played on my own. I set up the cockpit and started to imagine what I was seeing in space. I did not imagine any enemy ships, for whatever reason. I mostly imagined asteroids and small planets that I had to lean my shoulders left and right to dodge. Then I imagined nothing, and this is what struck me.

Without creating any other celestial objects in my mind’s eye, there was only black dark space. I imagined myself flying in a spaceship alone through the empty void. I cannot remember how long I stayed awake doing this.

Waiting for baby

I have waited for baby for weeks to get here. At least this morning, she will be here tonight, and I don’t have to go to bed one more night waiting, which is really the worst of the waiting—at night before bed, unable to sleep, full of the energy of waiting, which is the exact opposite of the calm necessary to slip into sleep. This morning I can let the energy abound, as I know the satisfaction it seeks will be here tonight. But I must remain present, she tells me, and not look so much to the future. So I sit here and type and work at my desk and try to get my mind, body, and soul all to focus on anything other than the one thing that they all want.

Must be

To let some go, yes, fine. This is not true. This is bad for you. This is unreasonable. This will not make you happy. This will make you sick. Yes, but die, we will, regardless. And truth, we will not find, in this life, at least. So what then? Why do we sit here and argue? I have spent all this time in the courtroom before even committing the crime. And who knows how the court system will have changed by then? I must. I must do. I must be. Now. When there is still time. I must be something … but maybe not. Maybe that is where I am hung up and nailed down to the world. Crucified to caring for my ego. Adamant that it all must mean something. Unable to accept that this is the way it is and let go of my need to change that. It may be true, really, I believe you. But if I let go of this, then what am I? Maybe nothing—and that there is the crux of my sometimes subliminal railings against you and your feminine way of seeing the world.

What matters

I am so far back from what matters, so far away from the frontier. It is only a feeling, for when I actually start to think of “what matters,” it falls to pieces. But still, there is something to it. I am well fed, but I still pace around the kitchen. I have enough money, but I still sit at my desk. For what? For lesser desires. What matters? What is beyond myself? For what would I ride into battle and risk my life? If not my life, what else can I risk? Such that I would be happy to lose it, just for the chance to be in pursuit of what matters. 

Beyond Hunger

I hunt and hunt, like I’m supposed to, doing what I’m built for. Searching for the next dose of satisfaction, with the last morsel still in my mouth, only halfway chewed. Having slept, drank, and doused all the other flames of desire, I have only left to hunt, lest I become idle. First a squirrel, then a rabbit, and finally a deer. My belly is full, but I am not yet tired. I eat until I am sick. I try to sleep but cannot. I think myself into an anxiety. And then I chase my own tail all the way back to the present, and repeat the mantra that was taught to me: I am safe. I am healthy. I am happy. I am grateful. 

Fate

I do not know all the ways in which the universe conspires to determine my fate. Even the few of which I am aware, I may misinterpret them—viewing something as bad in my limited view, which may actually turn out to be better in the grand scheme. Or, focusing inordinately on these few, I may miss another of more importance. We are not, however, completely powerless, when it comes to our destinies. What can we control? What should we control? And what else is better left to be as it will?

In the dark

I have not been up early or late enough lately. Only awake for the day, when it is light, and the whole rest of the world is awake with me, telling me what to do. It is in the dark where I used to find space to stretch out, but since setting my morning alarm, and getting to bed early enough to get a full eight hours, I have spent less time in the dark. That is where I used to find my inspiration. The dark is chaotic, but it is also creative and full of mysterious possibility. Whereas the light is clear for all to see—the title on your desk placard, the name on your name tag, the features of your face, the messiness of your apartment, the trash on the sidewalk—it can all be seen, accounted for, and set about the business of the day. But at night, all bets are off. God knows what people are doing. They should be asleep, and if not, then what? Where is the traffic cop to tell the hoodlums not to cross the road when the light is red? But there are no cars. Where is your boss to tell you to be at your desk during work hours? But the lights in the office are off and nobody is there. Where is the sun to say the day has started and it is time for you to be awake? But I am already awake, sun, I have beaten you to it. And the moon has told me what you would not. I will return in time, and when I do, I’ll have something new to show your day.

When the music stops

The mood changes. Why does that happen? Today we went to the park. It’s Halloween. There was a cement area with a white oval painted. People in costumes were roller skating around the circle. There were two particular skaters who were quite good. They were dressed as a pirate and a bumble bee. A large speaker in the center of the oval played disco music. We watched them dance—spinning in circles, standing up on the toes of their skates, bending low. And then the music stopped. They kept dancing, but less passionately, and it wasn’t the same. For us watching, the dancers now seemed out of place. But why? Where is that place that music takes us?

Niche down

Cleaning out my bookshelf, I am getting older—more stodgy and set in my ways. The books that I gathered in my youth were diverse. Now, I put certain books in a box to take to the store and sell. Others, I leave on my shelf. With the box packed, I turn back and look at the shelf, leaning my head to one side to read the titles on the spines. The books I have kept seem to belong to a more cohesive theme. Some of the books that I put in the box I never even read. There are so many ideas and so many ways of life. But I have only one mind and one life to live. How much can I contain? Certainly less than everything. I hope the books I’ve kept are the right ones. I want the power to know everything and the truth to know the right things, but I will likely achieve neither. I will only know a small chapter of the great library, but even that is so much more than nothing. 

Skeptical

Just how a glass fills, containing liquid that would otherwise run all over. Or how things stay in their places when left there, and don’t float away. Basic facts about the physical world seem dubious all of a sudden. Things I have known are rendered onto a blank slate and I realize they don’t make much sense standing on their own. Was it the lemon water I drank this morning? Or the love we made? Or the light coming in the window on one of the last sunny days before winter? I am varying degrees of certain about the world around me. This morning, I am unsure, without being unsettled. I am enjoying the new way that things appear. 

Pain is grounding

Standing in front of the toilet, having been on my feet most of the day, I feel a pain in my heels, as they press under the weight of my body into the tile floor. It reminds me of when the yoga teacher says, “Ground down through all four corners of your feet.” Pain puts you into your body. It takes precedent before your thoughts and feelings. Your main focus becomes relieving the pain. It is irritating, worrisome, stressful, and—of course— painful. But without any lasting harm, it can also be meditative, grounding you into the physical world, and connecting you with your body.

Dream travel

I went somewhere in my dreams last night. I couldn’t tell you where exactly. There were many places. At one point, we went to a house deep underwater. It was a very small house because, you know, real estate is very expensive at the bottom of the ocean. At one point, we discovered a passage in a dresser or a chest or some other nook or cranny. I say “we,” but I can’t remember with whom I was. But anyway, we found this passage in this small house at the bottom of the ocean and it led to a whole other place. There were more people there, which was very surprising because we thought we ourselves had made a very daring trip to the bottom of the ocean. How then could there be all these other people here? It did not make sense spatially, either. It is not easy to construct a house on the ocean floor. The house was, in fact, very small. And there were no connections to other places of which we were aware. Where then was all this other space coming from? I met a woman in this other place. I asked her a question and she said something that struck me as very wise. I cannot remember it exactly now. I asked her something alone these lines, “Why are you living at the bottom of the ocean?” She said, “Down here, we are living. Up there, you are …” And it was something else. Something that made me feel like I didn’t belong up there. That I should be living at the bottom of the ocean too.

I have had dreams like this before—specifically ones where you have to cram yourself through a tiny claustrophobic passage to get to a whole other wide open world that you didn’t even know existed. It is very much like Narnia. I wonder if that concept of traveling to another world through a closet was born from a dream. I don’t know what it means. But this morning I feel different. The only thing to which I can compare it is how I feel after I’ve travelled. Like the old world to which I return after is brand new. Everything I knew and felt before is behind me. I have travelled and learned something new and now things are not the same.

Gravely

To be serious, as if compelled by the impending finality of death. All things, viewed in this light—or darkness, rather—can be seen in one of two ways: comedically or tragically. It is the comedian who says, “Oh well,” and laughs. It is the tragic hero who assumes the grave demeanor, under the weight of an important task, and with limited time to achieve it. The tragic hero rebukes the comedian for not taking seriously the state of things. But the comedian knows that the tragic hero will go mad, even before his death over which he so worries, if he does not learn to laugh.

Editing art

It would be possible to subject my writing to scrupulous and excessive editing and critiquing by many different readers. But would this cause my writing to trend towards being better? That’s what we would expect. Like the blueprints for a space rocket. The greater the number of scientists, engineers, and physicists that have reviewed and double-checked the plans for the rocket, the higher its chances of success, right? Well, maybe. Assuming all the reviewers were intelligent and none of them actually made an edit or suggestion that was, in fact, erroneous—then yes, we would expect the rocket ship to get better with more review. But what about a piece of art? Something for which there is no objectively right answer, like there is for math and science. I guess it partly depends on your definition of art, and your standards for “good” art. Take cooking, for example. There seem to be some objective rules of quality. If a dish is burnt or undercooked, then it would break these rules. If a dish is not even edible, it may be difficult to consider it a culinary masterpiece. But once these objective rules are satisfied, we enter into a world of taste. What delights one culinary critic may disgust another. And the disgust of the one cannot be regressed to any of the rules; it is just because of their personal taste. Now, if we turn our attention back to writing. There are certainly some of these objective rules for quality that apply, like the rules of spelling and grammar. But to let too many editors comment on the “heart” of the work based on their personal tastes, and not any objective rules, may cause the piece to become “watered down” and lacking in the originality and individuality that made it good in the first place.

Morning

I like to see the world come to light again, leaving behind its veil of mystery. Opening the fridge in the morning, still in my bare feet and underwear, the light bulb inside turns on automatically, projecting a parallelogram crack of light up onto the ceiling and wall of the dark kitchen. I only wanted a drink of water, but now my mind is taking in the nutritional facts on all the sauce bottles. I close the fridge and sit down at the table to open my laptop. Other than the fact that the hot sauce in the fridge has 35mg of sodium per teaspoon, these are the first words I am reading today, as I type them, in the still dark early morning.

It always restarts

What you’ve done passes into the past. Each peak summoned is at some point soon after followed by the sheer cliff face of another climb that promises another peak, unseeable through the clouds above. No matter how many times you get through, there is no final stage of gotten through, made it, finished. There is only more getting through. Which is where I suppose the eastern stuff comes in. About it not being about the end. It’s about the journey. The journey is the reward—my girlfriend’s friend has a tattoo of this. I’ve tasted this peace before. Not as deeply as a veteran yogi. But I’ve tasted enough to at least know it’s there. But it still seems inhuman. Like an escape more than a solution. Everything we are is designed for the striving. For the satisfying of hunger that only begins to pang again not long after satisfaction. This is how we keep moving forward. Otherwise we might be very sedentary creatures. Completely idle even. Or we might have nobler incentives. Ideals of a higher form than bare physical needs that would drive us on. For now, most of our nobler motives seem to be just the base physical needs dressed up in fancy packaging based on our cultural or societal situation of the time, which really just regresses back to our base needs of safety and belonging.

Profound loss

Like a deep void of nothing. You’re not falling, because that would at least by something. Like being in the middle of blackness in space. It’s impossible to get your bearings. There’s nothing to orient yourself. You’re completely alone. Everything you used to know about life on earth is gone. No part of your body or mind has learned to speak the language of this alien dimension. You begin to sob uncontrollably because what else is there to do. Nobody is around to judge your sobbing. It eventually becomes tiring. And then there is numbness. Nothing but the sickening feeling of not knowing what to do or why. Just the profoundly peculiar sense of knowing nothing about where you are, how you got there, or what you can do about it. At the same time as being severely uncomfortable and wishing it would stop. Not painful. Just nausea.  Similar to the spins. Except lying in bed hungover, you at least have the bed beneath your back. This is like the spins, with nothing at all to hold onto. 

Simple man

Humans are simple. There, I said it. I’ll wait for the silent chiding. Seriously, go ahead. I’m counting in my head, but I’ll write it too, seeing as these words are our only link … one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi. Okay, I hope that was long enough. Now, hear me out. I don’t mean ‘simple’ objectively, if that adverb can even be used to modify a concept as relative as simplicity. The very language itself is complex, so that the second you have used your words to simplify something, then you have made it complex. And therein lies our problem. Humans are simple, but the word ‘human’ is complex. What exactly are we calling a human? And the complexity comes rushing in. So that a man given enough time with himself, will start to call himself by various names, and in doing so, build up his ego into a castle that is impossible for another human to penetrate with understanding, at least not in the same terms of which it was constructed. So that a man, coming to know himself, makes himself less knowable to others. Similar to how a professor, as he delves deeper into the knowledge of his field, limits the population of others who are apt to engage in conversation with him on topics of said field. A man with friends, therefore, is often a simple man, who has developed the habit of thinking more of others, and not so deeply about himself. 

The night is my mother

The night is the night. It is not the day. It is dark and away from all that the light shows. It is trite to compare the two, night and day, I realize. I wish, perhaps more profoundly, to convey the quality of escape which the night offers. Though the day may be painful or tiresome or stressful, the night inevitably offers its solace of nothingness. When the day drags on and the evening brings thoughts of morose finality that a tired mind is want to entertain, the vacation of sleep reintroduces a novel and hopeful mindset the next morning. I am straying from what I really want to say. Awake in the middle of the night, I feel safe, protected from the day. The day has become too much lately. Its someness is overwhelming. I need a little less. I have told this to the day, but it never listens. Drowning me out with all the other noise of everyone else being awake. But the night always listens. When everyone else is asleep, I tell her my dreams. I want for the dreams to be real, and inevitably begin to want again for the creative possibility of the day. I bring to the day a thousand dreams, and it smashes them down into one possibility, and I will have to pay dearly just to get that one. So I return to the night defeated, but she encourages me again with a thousand dreams, and I wake in the morning to make real one more.

Stairs to the bottom floor

At 2:30am, unable to sleep, I lie on my back and place my hands on my heart and my stomach. My mind turns inward to examine the space inside of my torso. It seems empty. Especially the space between my lowest rib and my hip on the right side. I search deeper there, as my lower rib extends out into a metal staircase descending into a pentagonal cement shaft. The stairs seem to descend without end. It is dark and I am fearful to go any deeper. I imagine the end, very far below, as nothing more than a cement floor. No door, and nothing else exciting, just a flat and cold cement floor where the staircase ends. And the shaft would start to fill with water, so that I would have to ascend the stairs, or float with the water back to the top, or stay there at the bottom and drown.

Cargo ship alarm

In the dark early foggy morning, an extra large cargo ship passes through the Golden Gate, stretching its waking arms and yawning with its excessively loud horn. These horn blasts may very well be necessary for the sailboat captain fallen asleep on the deck of his much smaller vessel to wake up and get his boat quickly out of the way to avoid being crushed underneath the boisterous breast of the cargo ship. But for myself, asleep in my apartment in the middle of the city, five or so miles inland—not in any immediate danger, or otherwise concerned with the passage of a ten thousand ton cargo ship carrying a thousand multi-colored cargo boxes filled with varied wares from all over the world—these horn blasts are naught but a morning alarm that has sounded too early. 

Yourself

Yourself is the first character you learn to write. How can you write anything else? Or, is it the other way around? We are born with omniscience, and then slowly, crammed into ourselves. Looking at a tree, I see it as firewood, something to climb, or shade. Then, if I try, I can imagine what it would be like to be thirsty for water and yearn to grow. But these are my terms. Can I ever get far enough outside of myself to see from the true perspective of the tree? Another way to solve the problem would be to redefine ourselves. Are we ourselves? Or, are we everything? A journey inward, or a journey outward—they may both lead to the same place. 

Want

I want so much. I want to listen to music, but then I realize music is already playing. I want to eat, but I’m not really that hungry. I want to work when I’m bored, and I want to be bored when I’m working. I even want to want, I realize, when I get down to it, but only insofar as that want will soon be  satisfied. Otherwise, I don’t have the patience. I am like a child, wanting all the time. And I must learn to give.  

The cost of growth

As one of the trees in our apartment grows, the leaves on the topmost branches grow broader, seemingly at the expense of the lower leaves, turning yellow and falling off. I cannot decide whether it is unfair, or just the way of things. Are the lower yellow leaves happy to support the tree as a whole? Sacrificing their own lives for the leaves on the topmost branches, which reach for the light that is necessary to sustain the whole tree. Or do they shake their fists at the upper class of leaves? Angry to have their own lives cut short, even if it is for the good of the whole tree. 

The marriage of right and left

In yoga, the two-sided symmetry is disruptive of the playfulness in my practice. As I flow, I think of nothing, other than the present posture, until I feel a desire to move into another posture, and then I do so, without second-guessing. With postures like forward fold, downward dog, or child’s pose, this is no problem, because these are all symmetrical postures. In other words, they are postures that are equal for both sides of my body. But when I enter into my warrior postures, which are necessarily focused on one side of my body or the other, then I am pulled from my playfulness, because now I must remember which side I have done, and which side still needs attention. In this moment, I wish that I were truly one, like a line. And not two, as I am, with two eyes and two arms and two feet. Being two, I must remember both, and cannot think only of myself. 

Where am I?

Sometimes I forget where I am, when I’ve been focused on my work at the desk for a while, or right when I wake up from a nap. My mind reels as I look around and try to refamiliarize myself with my surroundings. What I’m really trying to get at is that moment when I am unsure. It is indescribable, I think, but I will try. First, it is fleeting. It lasts for an imperceptibly short amount of time. Once you realize it is happening, it is already over. Second, it is disorienting. It is impossible to focus on anything else for that moment. Your mind is retreating to its primal instincts and trying to figure out what the heck is going on, especially with regard to your body’s position in the physical world. All other thoughts are secondary until that is resolved. And then I realize, “Oh, I am at home, sitting at my desk.” And then the moment is instantly finished, as everything falls all over each other, rushing back to being familiar. And the disorientation is gone, to be replaced by what my mind has seen so many times before, and therefore dismisses as given. 

Whiff

Cooking, I get a whiff of a smell that reminds me of the cafeteria where I went to grade school. I am transported there. I am small again. There are stains on my white polo shirt from the asphalt of the playground. I am upset because we have to stand in line in alphabetical order when we are waiting for lunch, and the girl I like happens to have a last name that is alphabetically far away from my own. I am hungry, but I am not self-aware enough to know that that that is why I am so excited to be standing in line for lunch. I’m just excited all the time, for everything, until one small thing happens, and then it seems like the whole world is ending. I can remember the condensation on the milk cartons in the freezer on wheels. At some point in the morning, you had to tell the teacher if you wanted vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry. I always chose vanilla. I didn’t like chocolate then as much as I do now. For a period of time, I had to bring my lunch from home. My dad’s business wasn’t doing too well and my parents said that buying lunch from the school everyday was too expensive. It was doubly bad because I didn’t have anything good to trade. My mom would pack healthy lunches, but none of the other kids wanted to trade their cookies for my carrots. 

Candle wax

I think I’ll sit inside and watch the green wax solidify inside of the glass candle that was burning, before being blown out. Now the room is filled with smoke. I open a window on one side of the room and a door on the other to create a draft. Now the sounds from outside are starting to get in. The wax is still very liquid. I wonder how long it will take. I’m not sure that I have the patience. 

Just a spectator

I get low for a while and think it’s all over, until I get good again and hope it will last. I’ve started to measure how old I’ve grown according to how fast I remember that both the low-groveling and the high-flying are temporary, and each have to be patient waiting their turn while the other is in the spotlight. I am just a spectator, and the more I can stay out of it, the better. 

Never boring

I feel it all oppress upon me in a moment, getting in through the pores of my skin. As if the present reality weren’t already enough, my past memories add a film over my surroundings, like a projector movie playing on a canvas that is not white, but already has something painted onto it. The physical feeling of sensation combines with the emotional feeling of something other than sensation, like the difference between being touched being physical and what happens when you’re falling in love being something else. I suppose the materialists would tell you it’s all physical if you get down to it, but it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like there’s just so much and I can’t swivel my head all the way around like an owl to see everything. So I sit here on my hands looking left out the window and all the bustle on the street, and right at our white wall inside the apartment that is almost more interesting with all my memories playing on the movie projector screen. And the black pepper from the tuna salad that I ate for lunch tingling on my tongue. I wonder how I ever feel bored.

Breakfast

The first taste of food in the morning, like first light when you open your eyes, acts as a reminder of a sense forgotten. Each one of these sensual awakenings is part of the process of coming back from the dark sleep world to a reality full of physical possibility. A green grape, as it happens to be, on the morning that I write this. In a white bowl, only half of the bunch is leftover. They are plump and wrapped in thin skin that can barely contain their sweet translucent meat. I regret now, not having savored the moment a little more. Maybe rolling the grape around with my tongue before biting in and chewing it all to mush. But I was not thinking then, until the taste awakened my mind. 

Two halves

I am stronger, as a whole, for the two halves of me, fighting all the time. My structure, having to hold together, and contain the orgiastic art, always trying to get out and wreak havoc. And so too, for the havoc, pushing out, until the structure breaks, and like a flock of sheep without a shepherd, the art wanders all around, until the organizer returns to bring it all back together. In this way, the havoc must burst forth with more might in the future, if it hopes to break free, as the organizer grows wiser and stronger, so too must the creative chaos become even more chaotic. Each half trades blows like this, never allowing me to become fully one or the other, but still, I am greater as a growing whole, as a result of their struggle. 

Love like new

On Sunday morning, it’s smoky outside. The forests have been burning in California. The news says it’s not healthy to breathe the air, so we’ve been inside our studio apartment all weekend. On Friday night, we fought. I felt terrible. When I tell her I love her, I mean it. I never understood before how you can fight like this with someone and still love them so much. On Saturday, we woke up unsure of each other. At breakfast, we talked some more. By lunchtime, we were coming back together. At night, we ate cookies and watched a movie. On Sunday morning, our love is rekindled like new. 

Being myself

My mind is too mired, to see this as you say. Even though I might look into your eyes, as long as I can without blinking. And wad up my memory into a big paper ball, to which I would set fire, and put the ashes in a safe, and drop the safe in the middle of the ocean—still, I could not tear from myself completely. Come close, and let me listen, to see as much as I may. But I will not get all the way. I am sorry. 

Chocolate bar

She offers me a bite of her chocolate bar. “I just brushed my teeth,” I tell her. “Just one bite,” she says. I laugh and say, “Didn’t you hear me? I just brushed my teeth. One bite would be as bad as two.”

Art

By a vague sense, that art, at least, of all things, matters, I am driven on. So that any time spent on my own survival, seems secondary, or even less, to the nth, in rank of importance, and therefore, in rank of what I should be doing. “Important” being that vague smokescreen behind which all of my not-too-fleshed-out philosophy hides. Spending time meanwhile, I grumble about my survival duties in the day, snatching what moments I can in the night, to blurt out art that comes during or after dreams. Reluctant to wipe the sleep out of my eyes and go about the day, I always say, “When I don’t have to work anymore …” That’ll be the day. When I can finally make it. When I’ll have enough time. When I’ll … what? I don’t know if I could tell you in specifics. But I think, truly, there will be a great void to meet me, when that day comes. And I am better off shoving my art into the small crannies in the meantime. Because that might end up being all that I’ll ever get. 

Jumping into ideas

I stand on the brink of an idea and lean forward to see how deep it goes. Sometimes I pack a parachute, knees-shaking, and jump, only to meet the ground just two or three feet below. Other times I stumble to the edge, trip on a rock, and fall and fall into a never-ending black bottom. Most of the problem is my being short-sighted. I can’t see that deep. I can only see the beginning. If I get halfway through packing the parachute and start to doubt the depth, I might walk away from a good canyon; I know I’ve done this before, and left canyons unwritten. Just the same as I’ve jumped without a ‘chute and fallen for a while in senselessness, until the crash landing inevitably ruins the piece. As I lose my sight of physical depth, I gain a feeling like my sore knee before rainfall, that tells me when to pack the parachute. 

Trite lyrics

It doesn’t matter if the lyrics in a song are trite, because the complexity is carried in the singer’s emotion. The same words can be sung in different ways with different emotions, and different meanings as a result. Emotions come through so clearly in a singer’s voice. It is hard to fake, I imagine. I recently saw a performance where the singer started to cry. I listen to a song now, and I take the lyrics and repeat them in my own head, bastardizing them from their musical context. They don’t sound the same. But when I listen to them as lyrics in the song, they take on a whole new meaning. That meaning is the unique emotional state of the singer. In a moment, I understand how important these words are to them. That understanding is communicated by the pitch, rhythm, and volume of voice, it seems. 

Dying in a bad mood

What a shame it would be to die in a bad mood. Not surrounded by loved ones or running into battle or sacrificing yourself in some heroic effort. Just sitting in a chair, brooding, and you have a heart attack. Or, stamping down the stairs, cursing, and you slip and fall and break your neck. I guess, in some sense, all your troubles would be over. But how small they must seem, to your soul in the afterlife, looking back. From that perspective, I find it very hard to be in a bad mood. 

Ideas

So many are almost there, but not quite. They come to the edge of birth, and then die off. Sometimes they are born prematurely, and doomed to die, without ample time to mature in the womb of the mind. Being fed with nutrients from past experiences, and growing into an individual one with a life of its own. No, ideas do not always make it. And it is the wise writer, as another wise writer once rightly said, who must do the killing. Of which, the benefit is twofold. First, to get rid of an unworthy idea. And second, to get the killing over with and bury the carcass in the soil, so that another life may feed from it and spring up. Like a phoenix from its own ashes, many ideas are born this way. 

Deep

What depth is left? Everyone has dug their holes, as far down as they would go. Back on the surface, they stand around, scratching their heads. One guy says to another, “You too?” The other responds, “There’s nothing down there.” Some phonies tell stories about what they found. People gather around them, either because they seek the entertainment of a storyteller, or because they want so badly to believe that someone else found something different. But it was all the same. Just a void at the center, where everyone converged. Some stayed down, too tired to make the climb back up. Some lost their minds. Some found the void to be quite interesting. Back on the surface, old-timers wonder to themselves whether all the tiresome digging was worth it. If they had only known what they would find, they might have stayed on the surface from the beginning. They start to talk amongst themselves, and many agree. They try to tell the young folk, but they won’t listen. They pull their hard hats down over their eyes and start to dig. 

Mac Miller

Listening to Mac Miller’s posthumous album makes me think about the meaning that an artist’s work takes on after their death. I think it has something to do with the finality of death and how the artist can never make more art. What they have already made is what gets left behind. They can’t return to edit, obsess over, or make any more. They’re dead and gone, and therefore their art takes on an antique quality, like a limited edition baseball card that’s no longer in print. 

Mountain pose

In mountain pose, I stand with my feet planted firmly on the stone mason man-made patio, arms outstretched and rising up with open palms. In my line of sight is a tall trunk of a tree, aligned perfectly between my hands. Framing its trunk with the inner edges of each hand, I trace its straightness, extending upward. Its symmetry surprises me, out here in nature, where I came to get away from the straight lines in the city. It makes me wonder, with renewed childish curiosity, if the straight lines in the city have some semblance to nature.

Modern beauty

In a sunset, I see beauty that might have meant something, if I had been born out of doors. If I had needed wood for a fire to keep warm. If rainfall had meant the bison would come to the water in three moons.

As it is, I see beauty in bath tubs and grocery stores with fully-stocked aisles. I see beauty in buildings, tall ones in cities and small ones in neighborhoods. I see beauty in the corner of a room where two walls meet the floor. I see beauty on the dinner table and between the drapes.

Through the window, I can see where building tops frame the sunset sky, and I cannot tell which I love more—the building side, that runs down into the life I know; or the skyward side, that runs up and up, to a life I do not.

Sad shower faucet

The shower faucet stares down at me, unrelenting with her many eyes, crying forth. Cold in sadness, hot in anger, steaming so the whole bathroom knows. The mirror no longer shares her secrets, in fear of who might come to wipe away the steam, showing her true self. The toilet bowl says, “There goes that faucet again.” The knob puffs out his chest and says, “I can do this.” The drain gurgles in agreement. The knob is turned and the whole bathroom sighs, except for the shower faucet. Empty-eyed and resigned to stare forth, studying the white basin of the bath tub and the white tiles on the wall, wondering if this is really all that a faucet like her is made for.

In between dreams and reality

Lying safe and alone, I am unindividuated and idle. My mind swims in the stream of dreams that is ever less loosely connected to experiences from my own lifetime. There are added elements from movies, books, and my own imagination, scenes I have only seen or heard about secondhand. I pass through these scenes, sometimes as myself, other times as someone else. Sometimes I am no one, I am only observing what transpires without participating myself. In this way, dreaming teaches me how not to be myself. Such that I awake surprised, when I find myself back within my own body and mind. At first, I feel contained. I feel that my wide-open dream perception has been narrowed into a limited point of view. I can still close my eyes and imagine, but it is less powerful, tethered to awareness of being in my own body, tied down by the constant reminders from my senses that I am connected to a singular body in a certain location in a physical world—hearing the traffic noise outside, feeling the bed beneath my back. I cannot lift off and separate as completely as I am allowed in the dream world. For one, there is less ability, but I also experience less need. I am not yet completely myself, in the groggy moment between dream and waking life, I have not fully remembered who I am. It would seem just as natural for me to close my eyes again and slip back into the dream world, if not for hunger or the need to get up and go to the bathroom. At the same time, I am happy, having returned to the land of the living, as I know it. Able again to say good morning and have breakfast and go about the work which I left unfinished last night.

Things my kids may not know

When someone takes change out of their pocket to pay for something, similar to someone smoking a cigarette—even more so if they carry their own pouch and rolling papers.

When someone wears a watch to tell the time, and when asked, they will either show you their wrist, or look at it themselves and tell you out loud.

When someone writes in their own handwriting with pen and ink and paper, especially when they are writing in their own journal or meaning to mail a letter.

When someone carries a paper book in their back pocket to sit on a bench somewhere and read.

When someone sits alone and thinks and does nothing else for a while.

When someone swings an ax to split firewood that will be used to burn and keep warm.

When someone breathes outdoors during the winter time and their breath turns to vapor.

When an older relative knits or sews clothing for the family.

When someone wakes up with the sun’s rising and goes to sleep with the sun’s setting.

When someone reads the newspaper at a coffee shop or listens to the radio in the car.

When someone wears a belt for its purpose and not just fashion.

When someone tells stories from memory, especially to their kids at night.

When someone walks to get somewhere and knows the way.

The irony of advice

Once you’ve gotten good at something, it’s similar to how all the advice from your parents starts to make sense once you’ve grown older. All the advice from those who were already good at the thing only starts to make sense once you’ve gotten good at the thing yourself. The irony, of course, is that you needed the advice much more before you became good at the thing yourself.

I find this to be especially true with art. You must slog through it on your own, no matter what. It is not like science. There are no repeatable steps. You could put all the same ingredients into your beaker as the person next to you and still end up with something completely different.

There are at least certain themes that seem to be consistent between artists. But even these themes suffer from being difficult to understand for amateurs. They are not themes that you can proactively put into place. They can only be seen through your own solipsistic lens, looking backwards on your own artistic development.

Fallen leaf

I have a small tree that I bought at the wholesale flower market a few years ago. It stands next to the bookshelf, against the northeast wall in our apartment. Its leaves are green and large, almost like lily pads. This morning, I noticed a fallen leaf on the floor. I could see a gap in the tree where the leaf had clothed the naked branch, now exposed underneath. It was a curious moment, to see the single leaf laying there all alone on the hardwood floor. On a forest floor, it might not have seemed so odd, with so many trees about, and plenty of fallen leaves. But on the apartment floor, it was like looking at a crime scene. Similar to a body in the street, it couldn’t just be left there. It had to be picked up and thrown away in the trash, furthering the unnaturalness of the event.

Changing perspectives

If you don’t like the way the world looks, lay down on your back. Look up at the sky, and see if it looks any better. Even if you’re inside, look up at the ceiling.

It’s the same concept concept as traveling. Changing your perspective changes everything. Laying down on your back can be just as good as drinking a beer.

Lose myself for good art

I have to lose myself if I’m going to create good art. All these poems that start with “I” are worthless. It was when I was meditating and putting unconditional love out into the world and remaining unattached to my material pursuits that I was creating good and honest art. Now I’m all caught up in my job and trying to make money and so focused on myself that my stream of consciousness is ego-obsessed. That stream is where I get my art. It’s no wonder I can’t get any art from a stream full of only one thing. I need to open myself up to the world, and lose myself, and stop writing so much about “I.”

Here now

I have this habit of thinking forward, forward, forward. Until I retrace my steps and think, it will have already started at this point, and this point—earlier and earlier, until I reach the present moment. Then I realize, it has already started, presently. I am living, now. All that I seek in the future—joy, entertainment, wealth, love. It is all, to some degree, here with me now. Possibly, it is in a form that I have more difficulty recognizing.

Fast and slow

Moving fast and slow
I move
Without a thought for
What I’m doing
When it’s fast
In the middle of the day
And I’m working
Washing dishes
While my lunch is on the stove
To get back
To the desk
Faster
On weekends
I slow down a little
For my meals
And eat
Without doing anything else
At the same time
Or sleep
Without an alarm
It’s nice
Every once in a while
But I need that go
Fast
Multi-task
Most of the time

Head space

I know things now
But I fear to forget
So I write them, recite them
Read them over and over
And carry a head on my shoulders
Full of the past
Like a traveler’s trunk
With too many things from home
On a journey to a place
Where there is no return
Back to how
Things were before

Something else

Two come in time
Taking space
Of what would have been third
If I could just keep in
To each for its own sake
Not always looking later
Longing for the next
They would come and come
Countless
Each for itself
As all things are
Eased into being
And nothing
Not so selfishly taking
With respect to what is
Or is not
One’s own
Let it stand there, being itself
Until it must be
Something else

Hard to hear

So worded strange
Wrung like rags
Wet with dish water
Saying so much
As a dirty plate
Could show the sink
By crumbs
From a meal now past
That taste
Travels so far to feel
In a conversation
Trying to keep clean
Between
Two non-feeling things

Nap time

Noontime sun seeps in
Singing of searching
Clouded and loud
For thunder could not
Strike so straight
Turned away by light:
Things, bright things
Searching still
In this dark draped bedroom
Go back now light
From whence you came;
You will find naught
But darkness here

There are limits

I imagine a knob
I can turn and turn
Down and down
Tighter and tighter
Until it’s flush with the dash
And the system turns off;
Or, up and up
Until it reaches the top,
Falls off the screw,
And is broken

Something new

Stepping up the stairs
That I’ve stepped up
A hundred times before
A thousand maybe
To get to the second floor
Unit number five
I look up and see
Something I haven’t seen
Usually looking down
Fumbling with my keys
A bright light
Under an arched doorway
Shining bright
Showing me
There is always something
New to see
No matter how many times
I think I’ve seen it
All before

Noises outside the window

Bus arms
Latched onto wires
Making a clicking noise
Passing over notches
Conversations
At the bus stop
And in line
For the bakery
Shouts
From transients
Usually at night
Sirens
At first farther off
And then closer
Louder
Sometimes much louder
On our street
Passing by
Quickly
Running the stop light
Honks
From non-emergency vehicles
Just upset about traffic
Or telling a driver ahead
To look up
And go
Through the green light
The garbage man
Picking up cans
From the curb
With his truck arm
And shaking them
Like maracas
The wine bar
Across the street
With live music
On the weekends
The rain
On the fire escape
The cement street
And the glass window
Pattering

Shadow yoga

Practicing yoga
My shadow practices with me
Doing as I do
In its own way
Black and flat
Against the stone surface
Stretching longer
Myself
Or my shadow
I forget who
Is leading the practice

Naked in the trees

Unclothed in between the trees out here
Welcoming back the nature
That got poured over in the city
With cement streets and concrete buildings
A few trees remain
In square foot sections of sidewalk
But not enough to stand between
And be surrounded by
Like the thick forest here—
The grass is overgrown, as it should be
Some trees knocked down, but not by man
Most trees still stand, as they should
And I stand with them, unclothed, at peace

Meditative hike

Gravel crunches from heel to toe
Counting its own cadence
For the group on the trail
To fall into step, synchronized
As the mind
Follows the body’s lead
Into a consistent rhythm
On the straight path forward
Mountain peaks up ahead
And tall evergreens on other side
Some fallen, long since withered
Crunch, crunch, crunch
Like counting one, two
And then back to one, over and over
With the nice scenery around
To chase away any possible complaint

Sky hunger

On the porch
The smell of chicken on the grill
Draws eyes back inward
Through the gut
To pull down a moment of beauty
Watching clouds pass slowly
In the blue sky
Back into very real desires of hunger
More pressing to an untrained mind
Than the allure of pure beauty
To be seen
But not eaten

Deck

The deck boards are screwed in
And have been
Ever since the deck was built

The wood is cracking
But the boards are held in place
And the deck will stand

Stout

Obsidian stout sipped slowly
Owing both to its belligerence
And the cigarette smoke from the ash tray
Making the air heavy
With a sense of wanting
To be nowhere other than here

A moment

The hot sun on the back porch
Bakes into bare legs crossed over
Eyes closed, head leaning back
Exhale
Here is where
Here is where I’ve needed to come
To this moment exactly, I mean
More so than a place
More so a space in time
A moment

Looking out the window on Monday morning

Rust flakes on the rail
Cars drive by in the background
The window is dirty and smudged
Pedestrians walk across yellow rectangles
Cars continue to drive by
Not two feet away
Two men drink their coffee under an awning
The branches in the tree bob gently
The man with coffee gestures with his other hand
A man with a dog on a leash
Stops to look inside a shop window
While his dog sniffs at a light pole
Blue and green trash cans stand by the curb
Cars continue to make their noise and avoid crashing
The same man from before
Walks back across the yellow rectangles

Think

You seem to think
You need to think
About something
All the time
Thinking man
Think as you can
You just can’t
Think it all

Sex

Sex makes sense
When I start to feel
Like I can’t hold her tight enough
And want to become one

House plant woman

With a few long leaves
Leaned over
Our house plant
Looks like a woman
With one hand on her hip
Copping an attitude
And the other hand reaching down
As she bends at the waist
To pick something up

Sigh

Fingers raking
Through my hair
In a sigh
With my eyes closed
Thinking to myself
What can I do
Exhaling
Over and over
Until I’ve got it
And get back to work

Creaky floor

I’ve learned which boards
Creak in the floor

When I wake in the night
For a drink of water

But I walk over them anyway
Too tired to care

Noise as it may make
Doesn’t matter much

As long as it doesn’t
Wake baby too

Just one

Does it really matter
Who
Exactly
If the shape is the same

I mean
Aren’t our powers
Of perceiving
Those small differences
At the margins
Fairly weak
Anyway?

So rather than one
Why not be
A mass-produced
Mold
Of that one?

There will still be
Some difference
Say ten molds
Total
And the differences
Between

But does each
And every person
Really need
Their own individual mold?

A mold to be
A mold to love
Just one
In the whole wide world
Just one to love
And just one to be
Really?

Or can we fit
More snugly
On the conveyor belt
Than we care
To admit

Car shadows on the ceiling

Lying on my back
Looking at the ceiling
In the late afternoon
I wait for the light
Outside the open window
Above my head
To turn colors
For the next wave of cars
To pass by
And make shadows
Through the tree
Between our window
And the street
On the walls
And on the ceiling

Gifts

I close my eyes to remember sight is a gift.
I sit in silence to remember sound is a gift.
I fast to remember food is a gift.
I catch a cold to remember health is a gift.
I spend time alone to remember friendship is a gift.
I stay in one place to remember travel is a gift.
I go to sleep to remember life is a gift.

Bowl song

As I gathered
Bowls
From the cupboard
One clinked
Against another
And made a song
Of just one note
In the quiet
Of the kitchen

Non-weather

Non-weather is when
There’s no wind
No rain
You can’t quite tell
If it’s hot or cold
And there’s an eery sense
That it’s about to change

Free from myself

I close my eyes, interlace my fingers behind my head, and forget who I am. I forget when I am, to be more exact. And as a result, I forget where as well. I can’t remember if I am young again, laying in my childhood bed. I can’t remember if I have laid down to sleep in any of the many cities I have visited. I can’t remember if I’m back in college, laying on the shitty mattress in my dorm room. I seriously can’t remember, for a split second. And my mind searches through all these memories, trying to find an identity to assume. And in this split second, I am free, unattached to myself; a soul searching for a body to inhabit in some time. Searching, for a split second, I am free.

An orange peel in the park

I was doing my exercises in the park, when I noticed a piece of orange peel on the ground, no bigger than a child’s palm. The inside of the peel was full of ants. Most of them were dead. I could tell because they weren’t moving. I’ve never seen a live ant sitting still, have you?

I wondered about how they died. Could something in the orange peel be poisonous for ants? Maybe it wasn’t poisonous in a small amount, but the dead ants were gluttons that ate too much of the orange. But I didn’t think this was probable either, because I’d never heard of ants being gluttons, only about them being strong and hard-workers.

I noticed there was a trail of ants leading away from the orange peel. It was a little hard to see because this part of the forest floor was in the shade and the black ants blended in with the dark dirt. I put my hands on my knees and leaned over to get a closer look. I saw the general direction of the trail of ants and started shuffling my feet to follow it. I followed the trail for a few minutes. It went a long ways. I was hoping to find an ant hill at the start of the trail, but I got bored and went back to my exercises.

Among the dead trees

We stepped off the trail, into a clearing in the woods where many trees had fallen. There was a lean-to that appeared to be man-made, dozens of broken branches were leaned up against the larger trunk of a fallen tree. Other branches were laid over the top of the fallen truck. In this way, there was a wall and a roof made from broken branches. We climbed on top of the fallen trunk. On its side, the boughs extended longways from the trunk, hovering at varying heights above the ground. Several trees were fallen this way, with their boughs interlaced, making a lattice. She said, “It’s like a playground.” I nodded my head in agreement, dangling my legs about ten feet above the ground, sitting on one of the boughs. “It’s chaotic,” she said. This inspired deep thought in me. I asked myself silently, “Yes, I also feel it is chaotic, but why?” It occurred to me that there was a lack of symmetry. In a forest full of life, all trees stand tall, with their roots in the ground and their branches reaching toward the sky. In this place, the trees laid on their sides. Their roots had been torn up; they hung loosely, with no soil to drink from. Broken branches were strewn on the forest floor, disconnected from their trees of birth. The lattice created by the interlacing boughs of the fallen trees was not natural. There were no leaves on the boughs. These trees were dead.

How he walked

He walked like he was going somewhere. Not like anybody was watching, or at least not like he had an awareness that anybody was. He didn’t have his shoulders thrown back or his chest puffed out. He wasn’t too serious neither. Not like a businessman with a briefcase, leaning forward and walking fast like he was late to a meeting. Not like he had all the time in the world. Not a slow stroll to enjoy the scenery. He had somewhere to be, I’m sure of it, just from watching the way he walked. And what’s more, I knew he believed in where he was going. He wasn’t going because someone told him to or because he had to. He was going for his own reasons. If you asked him, he could explain it to you, but he wouldn’t be able to explain it, at least not well enough for you to understand completely. His reasons were inevitably his own. And so he walked. His strides were even, each as long as was comfortably possible for his body. His shoulders were not hunched or thrown back. They were square and set perpendicular to his path. His gaze was forward, not looking much side to side, except for when crossing the street. He walked like this, on the sidewalk, on a Saturday morning. And I watched for not more than five seconds, and I knew that he was going somewhere.

Closing my eyes after a shower

I close my eyes and lose track of the reality that returns when I open them again. Standing in the shower, light-headed; I almost fall over. I close my eyes again. The longer I look at the black in the backs of my eyelids, the more animated it becomes, with figures I might learn to name if I were to look long enough. The black doesn’t always strike me. Sometimes I close my eyes and open them without noticing. The world returns and it makes sense to me, seeing again the same thing that I saw just before blinking. Other times, the black catches me, at first in its simplicity, in a reprieve from the physical world, full of complex optic details. Then these animated figures start to appear, moving with a life of their own. I wonder if we could adapt to that blackness, given enough time to evolve and get used to it. What would that black, close-eyed life be like?

Start

You don’t know. At the beginning, you have no idea. But you have to start in, because it could turn out to be a good one. And you won’t really know until around the middle, when you might as well finish up anyway. It takes time. Once you’ve picked one, seeing it all the way through takes time. So you’ve only got so many shots. You can’t start in on every one, and there’s the trouble. You have to decide, standing right where you are. You might find a pair of binoculars and look out ahead as far as you can. These are the planners. Or you might say, well heck, I’ll spend as much time sitting here looking as I would if I just ran on down the road a little bit. These are the runners. Some are a combination. They’ll run a little ways and then get out their binoculars. But either way, you’ve got to run the whole race at some point or another. Some run the race a few times. Running is one thing. Picking the right track is another. 

White noise breathing

On my hands and knees on the mat, bending my spine into cat and cow, I can hear my girlfriend in the closet on a work call. I think of getting up to grab my headphones to play a track of white noise that I have saved on my phone, to drown out the work talk and focus on my yoga. Then I realize my breath provides a natural white noise. As I am bending concave into cat and exhaling through my nose, it is loud enough that I can hear almost nothing else other than my breath. And the same for inhaling. This realization inspired a new attention on my breath, as a noise-cancelling mechanism, in addition to a life-giving force.

Nobody downtown

On the train going south from San Francisco now. Downtown was so empty as I walked to the station. The virus has emptied out all the tall buildings, which, in turn, has closed down all the shops and restaurants. There are still a few transients about, talking to themselves. But they seem lonely, even lonelier than usual. One woman I walked by was carrying on the most sincere conversation with no one. Not shouting, or jumping around; she was just hanging onto a lamppost and leaning out over the curb, balancing on one leg. I walked by and she didn’t even notice me. It was just her, all alone, for at least a few blocks. And all these tall buildings and wide streets, designed for crowded weekdays and rush hours. There were some service men too. One was loading boxes into a van from inside one of the cafes. It was a cafe I used to go to actually; I used to get their ham sandwich during my lunch break. Another man was up on a scaffold, fixing a window. Other than that, there was no one. It was surreal, seeing downtown that empty.

Speed walking

I walk fast like I’m trying to get away from something, but the truth is I’ve already forgotten where I’m coming from and can’t think of anything else other than where I’m going. Wanting to be there already, walking around slow walkers on the sidewalk carrying groceries or just lollygagging, looking around and enjoying the scenery. I can’t lolly, gag, or anything other than focus on keeping my stride as long as possible without dislocating a hip. All for where I’m going, I know I’ll be satisfied once I get there. I know it will have what I need. There’s nothing here for me anymore, except for what quickly slips behind, and what lies still ahead, representing all the hope in the world.

These scissors

These scissors smell like they’ve told secrets to get here. Like there were barge men that needed bribing. Like this pair was part of a special pack at the factory that needed to go out right on time. They smell like the metal mined wasn’t enough and there’s still some poor miner there, mining for more. They smell like plastic that came from a big vat of plastic that has all since been molded into separate things and ended up elsewhere, individuated and useful in some capacity or another. These scissors smell like they are capable of cutting hair. They still smell like metal, though, and not like hair yet. Having not yet had the chance to actually cut hair, they reek of factory-made frustration. “Let us work!” they shout. Let us cut, and keep on cutting. Let us do whatever we were made for. Until we are broken and dead and gone and discarded. Let us work!

Growing old

For me, it was sudden. One day, you’re young and pushing the limits, and the next, your back hurts and you’re trying to keep your job. I don’t think it was actually sudden. Looking back now, it seems to have happened over time. First, you’re so young that you don’t know what it means to be young. Then, around the time you start to rebel against your parents, then you’re young and you know it. Finally, five or ten years further down the road (even later for some), you start to understand what your parents were talking about—this is the mind growing old. The nail in your no-longer-too-distant coffin is when your body starts to ache. That’s when it all really slows down. You can’t drink like you used to. You’re less confident you would win a fight. If you need to bend over to pick something up or put on your socks, you have to do it real slow to avoid hurting yourself. From this point on, there is a certain amount of deliberation that goes into every one of your physical actions, which causes you to think twice before listening to what your raging free spirit is telling you to do. It is scary, seeing death as near as you ever have, and growing nearer all the while. But it is the way of things, and a lot more makes sense now.

Let it go

During a hip-opening posture in yoga, my instructor tells me, “Make sure the tension from your hips is not going anywhere else in your body. Wherever you are feeling tension, let it go.” With my eyes closed, I think of this. I realize that my eyebrows are creased with concentration, so I let the tension go, relaxing my face. Next, I focus on the tension in my legs. I ask myself, should I let this tension go? But I cannot, at least not completely, without falling out of the pose. Some tension is necessary to maintain the pose. In this moment I learn again, from my body, something that I have learned before: there is a balance, between focused effort on what is essential, and letting go of what is not.

Sleep in the city

I take a bite of the sidewalk and fall back between the cracks. Is it still vipassana then? If my mind is not allowed to wander any farther than the sirens and bus stop conversations outside the window we’ve left open. It’s too hot. So we have to choose each night, between sweating through our sheets, and opening the window to noise that even ear plugs with a 33 NRR can’t block out. We have ice packs in the freezer. I can wrap one of these in an old t-shirt and get my temperature low enough to at least fall sleep. By midnight, sometimes before, the ice pack is melted. So the window gets opened eventually. And then the same choice: to fight the noise, pull the pillow around my ears, and try not to hear; or meditate on the chaos. I cannot do this successfully. Some primal part of me cannot forget that loud noises mean danger. And my writer’s mind has a hard time hearing conversations without listening to the words being said. I try not to judge. I try to just notice. But I still miss the pitch black silent nights in Montana.

Individual life

My soul, having since ceased to be mine, jockeys for bodily position in the pool of purgatory where all souls queue en masse. Seeking flesh destined for another set of spacetime events not all too dissimilar from the physical life which preceded its most recent death, my soul searches. Hoping, as all souls do, to live again in individual form. It is a vague hope, to which not all souls are privy, in the ocean ether of all souls joined together, mingling and meanwhile forgetting having forgotten belonging to the One. It is the same problem on either side of the divine line—forgetting what is was like to belong to the One on the earth side, and forgetting what it was like to be an individual on the heaven side. Until the ethereal ocean lifts out of itself and prepares to precipitate all of its divine life into tiny ignorant droplets, all of which will once again fail to remember their former divine lives immediately upon impact with another life on earth.

Smart dog

This dog today, looked at me like he knew what I was thinking. He smiled at me with his tongue out, panting from his walk. Sitting there on his haunches, leashed to his owner, waiting curbside to cross the street. He said to me with his eyes, “It’s all a sham. I know it. You know it. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like to go for a walk every once in a while.” Then the light turned. The dog’s owner gave a tug on the leash and said, “Come on.” The dog got up and trotted happily along. I stood there long enough for the light to turn, and so I had to wait for the next one.

A transient walks by

A transient walks by a restaurant with outdoor dining. He shuffles his feet. His pants sag. A folded newspaper hangs out of his back pocket. A jazz band stands by, holding their instruments idly, in between songs. Seven or eight tables are set up outside of the restaurant. People are eating and talking at their tables. Forks can be heard clinking on plates. The transient starts to shout, something indiscernible. People stop what they’re doing and stare at the transient, as he stands there on the sidewalk. He looks at one table in particular, and continues to shout. Nobody does or says anything. Forks have stopped clinking. The transient stands there. For a moment, there is silence, other than the street noise—cars passing by. Then he continues to shuffle his feet, moving on down the sidewalk. The band picks up their instruments and continues on to the next song. Forks resume clinking on plates.

Excerpts from A Trip in Montana

I am a little off balance now as I walk. And so it begins.

Large ants crawl on the Mexican blanket. I am interested in their movements.

The shadows have caught my attention as they dissipate with the movements of the clouds between the sun and the ground.

It is starting to open up. Ideas in my head seem to be connected.

My friends are talking on the deck above. I am on the patio below. Their words are disruptive. They are talking about college.

I have a desire to put on my shoes and go into the woods.

I am going into the woods, to discover species anew and to give them new names.

It is hard to write
With the light so bright
On white paper

As I put my pen to paper, I almost forget the words, but still they come to me somehow, flowing from objective reality itself, then through my senses, and seamlessly into Word.

I feel the sun hot on my shoulders through my shirt.

An ant crawls up the leg of my shorts.

I have found a convenient stump to sit on and write.

There is an ant on my left pointer finger, probing me with his antennae.

I need to get out of the sun. My neck is already burnt.

I am tripping, assuredly. I have wandered a bit farther into the woods, where there is some shade. I stepped across a crumbling trunk, like a balance beam, to get here.

I can hear my friends laughing behind me.

I begin to feel fear for the future; fear because this good feeling will come to an end.

I remember the Bene Gesserit mantra: “Fear is the mind killer.”

The fear comes from my ego. When I remember that I am part of all this, the fear goes away.

There are certain words that reassure me. They are often phrases or quotations. Some degree of spirituality, it seems, is just to memorize words, and then, when the right time comes:

(1) Recognize the appropriate situation.

(2) Recite the words in your mind.

(3) Let action flow forth from your body with the realized meaning of those words.

Again, I start to think of the future, and ill feelings immediately follow. Stay present! Stay mindful! This is the heart of my practice.

I fear so much for the future. I fear so much for my ego.

I am concerned for the physical health of my body.

I am concerned from the performance of my financial investments.

Even as a bug lands on my hand, I check to make sure it is not a bee that can sting me. So what if it is?

I am a part of all this. If the bee stings me, it is a part of all this.

It is like the book that I cannot recall the name of. Ishmael, there it is.

He talks of how man was in sync with nature before. This is how it should be. This is the answer.

All of man’s developments have placed him in a position above nature. Many of man’s modern problems would be solved if he would return to his place in nature.

Now, that seems unlikely. It would mean the death of many humans on our overpopulated planet. We have trodden too far down this track.

I hear my friends laughing in the distance. I wonder if they appreciate the deeper power of the trip. Or do they take it all to be just funny visuals?

As they speak with each other, they are kept from going deeper into their own minds.

I think of the time. I do not have a watch. I am fully tripping now.

I wonder how long I have been standing in this place. My legs have held me just fine, but when I look at them, I am unsure of how they operate.

I do feel taller. This is something Sean mentioned he often feels while tripping.

When I misspell a word or scribble, I think, “Don’t worry, they’ll get it.”

But I must realize, they won’t get it. All of THIS, is captured only in my humble words.

I should stop writing and enjoy it.

It occurs to me to draw.

I laugh at myself for thinking I could draw such beauty.

I start to feel ill feelings. I feel them run a familiar track inside of me. I see them, like rushing rivers, encountering the dam of my heavily-fortified ego.

I observe, dangerously at this time, what my ego is built of.

The wind blows. I let it pass. I pick it back up.

My ego is built from who I think I am. My history, my present physical body, what others say about me …

It is hard to keep track of this thought.

I am fully tripping. I have stood in one place for so long, I had almost forgotten what it’s like to move.

I am fully tripping—these exact words occur to me again.

I constantly have these thoughts:

– What should I be doing?

– Is this, what I’m doing right now, productive?

And then I start to think into the future about what will be most productive …

I have to remind myself, that is not the game we are playing.

Stay here. Stay present.

It strikes me how easily I forget. I have an ill feeling, and then I am distracted, and then I forget.

Even control over my body seems to be something I could part ways with, other than for the convenience of my fingers which hold this pen to write.

Things occur to me as being beautiful, and in that moment of occurrence, nothing else matters. My senses are fully immersed in the beauty, like the sight of a crumbling tree trunk, split open and filled with forest debris. So dead, but so perfectly at home.

I think, how will these words sound to the others who read them?

I remind myself, it does not matter. Stay here. Stay present.

Of all the bugs, mosquitoes are the only ones I swat. I do not so much mind the prick and the drawing of blood. I am more worried about disease.

This idea of disease, planted in me by society, affects my behavior towards other living creatures. Again, I think of reading Ishmael.

I cough to spit. It surprises me that I have a throat and a mouth.

I am so at home in the woods right now. The wind blows through my hair, just like it does through the leaves in the trees.

I hear something behind me, a rustle in the leaves. I feel the desire to make myself unseen, to crouch low, to hide.

I feel that I understand my ancient ancestors in this moment. At the same time, I feel the call back to civilization.

I think of my friends and the house, and I smile.

I am surprised to feel my facial muscles smiling.

As the sun shines and the birds chirp, I am filled with so much love for nature.

A moment ago, it was dark. The clouds covered the sun. I was scared of what I could not see among the trees. I was alone.

I am resistant to going back, to have to talk.

I know it will be hard to stay out here for too long. I do not know the ways of the woods. I would lose. I do not want to lose, and so starts the civilization of man.

I was born civilized. At this point, it would take much undoing.

I see a runner on the street through the woods. It invokes a feeling of familiarity.

From where I stand writing in the woods, I feel perfectly balanced between far away from, and still close by, to civilization.

If I were farther into the woods alone, I might feel a more primal fear for my survival.

As I see things on the forest floor, I lean down with my paper and pen, like a photographer with a camera.

I hear trucks on the road. I remember what people have told me in the past.

I just feel so happy, particularly to be inside of my body.

To be contained in a physical being, capable of realizing thought.

The body is a beautiful thing. More than just the beauty of its form, but also of its function—to realize thoughts and feelings.

The importance of yoga, to cultivate this connection between body and mind, occurs to me now.

It is a practice I could spend my whole lifetime learning.

In contrast, I am less interested in certain aspects of my job. There are aspects that seem far removed from man’s natural state. Like keeping the body seated in the same desk chair all day.

Woah! A mother moose and a child moose just passed, not more than forty feet from where I am standing here in the woods.

At first, I felt immense fear. I could not tell what was near me in the woods, other than that it was big—bigger than a bird or a chipmunk.

Your eyes play tricks on you between the branches in the trees.

I am being bitten by mosquitoes. I choose to return to civilization, knowing the risks.

I am sad to leave. I must remember the connectedness to nature that I experienced here.

I hear my friends and their words. I cannot speak to them. They must come out here into the woods and experience it for themselves.

All around me, the forest floor is alive, mostly with ants. There are also mosquitoes, flying and landing.

There are many aspects. You do not need to fear that it will be over. It will continue. Whether your ego is involved, does not matter. You are a part of it all.

But these mosquitoes are insufferable!

I feel a drop of rain—another element forcing me to return.

My friends talk too much.

They do not wait in silence long enough to experience it themselves.

I look back at Marie, I think to talk to her as Marie—she, of the flesh and blood, with whom I share memories.

But she is not the same, as she appears to me now. She is participating in the One. She is a soul, and that’s all that matters.

I think of my own flesh. Am I housed in the bones I would choose? What does it matter, if we’re all the same.

These words are so meager. What art form then? What form could capture this most fully?

There is the question, first, of what art form could capture a lived experience most fully. Then, there is the question of what art form could capture THIS (tripping) most fully.

It occurs to me now that the “come up” has passed. We have arrived at the plateau.

I am not sure if any of the others would be willing to participate in this experience in the way that I participate in it.

The woods are a very clear analogy. Deeper in the woods, there is only the sound of wind in the leaves. The only movements are the ants on the ground.

Back at the house, there is music from man-made speakers, man-made words, and even man-made men.

These man-made men are the ones who do not understand.

I think of Ishmael again.

We come from nature, that is where we will find ourselves in order.

Man does not understand himself. Not even the accumulated knowledge of generations of man thinkers can understand one single man.

How then, can we expect man to build himself?

He cannot do the job of nature.

It occurs to me now, how brilliant the book Ishmael really is.

Even as I write these words, I realize that going back to read them will not be the same.

Impossible to achieve the same understanding.

I am aware of the ground being alive with ants. I cannot look anywhere on the ground where I do not see an ant.

These ants are like men—successful, relative to other species, and still working to further themselves.

The operations of nature make sense to me in terms of business. An enterprising species will take market share from others and win.

I almost caught a look of myself reflecting in the window, blue bandana. I looked away, not wanting to see my face.

Talking aloud to Marta, my voice sounds inadequate. I wish it were more musical.

You have to have your art form ready, before the experience.

When you are awash in the storm of your emotions, there must already be an artistic channel, into which that emotion might pour.

Without a specified channel, the emotion will search for one.

I am an emotional person, I realize now. I always have been. This emotion is my power. It fuels my actions.

If I allow it, the economy will engulf me here where I stand in this moment with the skills I have to offer, and my hopes and dreams to be used as motivators to put my skills to work.

The economy does not care where I land. It does not care what profession I choose. It will get use out of me, one way or another. This is management, the business of getting use out of people. And the managers report to investors, and so on.

This is the nature of the economy—investors pushing people to do things (who then push other people to do things) to make more money. It is the investor’s passion for more that sets the whole economy in motion.

Proper nouns

I’ve noticed lately that the type of poetry that I enjoy reading includes proper nouns. Poets writing about very specific times and places and people. This poetry is of the symbolic world. My poetry is not like this. My poetry includes abstract words that can mean many things. Words like light and time. Perhaps this is not well received because it seems banal and already said. 

Old art

I go about forcing, fitting square pegs into round holes, in my day job. At night and on the weekends, I must switch sides, and let it come to me, if I’m to make any art. It refuses to be forced. It seems to me that beauty is natural. It comes from an older source, that has always been here, long before us. What we create with our technology and economy is synthetic and modern. This may be a means to art, a means of production especially. But the source must still come from the trees and acts of love that have been here for eternity. That is the art we are drawn to. Even for art that may seem to be built on modern precepts, the root of it is always the ancient and natural that has moved us from the beginning.

Shower together

The apartment unit neighboring ours has a bathroom window that is about six feet away from our bathroom window. It is almost summer in San Francisco and we have no air conditioning in our studio apartment (most buildings in San Francisco don’t have air conditioning, due to the mild summers). So we keep our bathroom windows open all the time.

The window is built into the shower wall. It is high enough in the wall, that I can stand flat-footed in the tub, and the bottom of the window barely reaches my shoulders. Still, there is some lack of privacy from having an open window as part of your shower wall. The neighboring unit used to be vacant, so there was no problem with showering without a shade over the window.

About two months ago, our neighbors moved in. I believe it is another young couple. Lately, the young woman and I have gotten into a habit somehow of showering at the same time. I will get in and turn on the water and start to shower, and then I will hear the metal rings pulling across the shower rod from the open window across, and I know it is her getting in.

At first, I dared not look. I even arranged shampoo bottles on our window sill so as to create a barrier. One day, I caught a glance of her. As I reached to grab a bottle from the sill, I saw her brunette hair tied up on the top of her head. That is all I could see.

She is not tall enough to see above the sill over into our window, unless she were to stand on her tippy-toes or climb up onto the edge of the tub. But she must hear the water from our faucet and my occasional absent-minded shower singing. Still, we are complete strangers, for all intents and purposes. So we shower together, six feet apart.

She is not tall enough
To see above the sill
And we shower together
Six feet apart

Eyes closed

My morning routine, as of late, has been to wake up with the sun at seven in the morning. I get out of bed and get dressed, then roll the rug away to make a space for my yoga mat on the hardwood floor. I set a cushion on top of the yoga mat and start by meditating for five minutes. After meditating, I go through about ten minutes of yoga flow. My back has been hurting me lately, so most of the postures are focused on my lower back.

This morning, I achieved a deeper focus in my meditation. When the alarm went off on my phone, I was surprised. That’s how I knew the meditation was deeper. I was enjoying my sense of peace, but I also wanted to begin my yoga practice. So I made a compromise with myself. I took away my cushion and put my hands and knees on the mat, but I kept my eyes closed. My eyes remained closed as I moved between my yoga postures.

By keeping my eyes closed, the focus I had achieved in my meditation transferred to my yoga practice. I felt that I was seeing my body from the inside out. When a vertebrae in my back would pop, it sounded very loud, and I could tell exactly where it was. When I extended my hands to change postures, I had to feel with my fingertips for the edge of the mat. Once I had found it, I was reluctant to move my hands, knowing they were in the right position, and fearing to move them without the aid of my sight.

My thoughts drifted during my yoga practice to what it must be like to be blind. I imagined a blind man with a deep spiritual practice. Maybe he would enter a monastery and live a simple life. In a small space, it would not be so difficult to find your way around without sight. Without the prejudices of society, he might find deep friendships with the other monks at the monastery. He might even achieve a deeper spiritual practice, owing to the very fact that he was without sight, and thus less distracted by worldly appearances.

Rushing

Rushing, rushing, but why? To get back in bed. And then what? Rushing, rushing, to sleep. Cooking, rushing, chopping, to eat. Working, rushing, typing, to relax. And then what? Rushing, rushing, to see friends, get out and do something. And then what? Rushing, rushing, to get back home. And then what? Rushing, rushing, to sleep. To die. And then what?

Clogged shower drain

I turn the shower to cold, briefly, and then off. Standing in water up to my ankles, I turn and face the white shower curtain. Watching water drip from my nose into the pool gathered around my feet, I wait to dry. Standing thus, waiting, I remember my girlfriend hates it when I leave the drain clogged—this being the cause of the water up to my ankles. It’s my fault, really; being my hair, mostly, that clogs the drain. I reach down and scrape my fingernails along the edges of the indented mesh gate that covers the drain—this produces a mess of hair the size of a small mouse. Then the water really starts to drain. I resume my former position with my chin against my chest, holding the mouse, water dripping from the tip of my nose with slightly less frequency. The water line recedes down the slope of my foot. The drain makes a sound like rain in a gutter. I am caught up in hearing this and not much else. There is no other pressing concern, waiting to dry. The water finishes draining. There is no noise now; not the shower, nor the draining. It is over then. I prepare myself to pull back the curtain and find something else to do.

Ants

Today I’ve watched ants. They have crawled on the wooden boards of the deck and on the stone patio beneath the deck. Some have even made their way into the house—much to the chagrin of our host. One ant carried a dead ant, equal in size to the live ant. Another ant carried a dead bug of another species. The dead bug was three or four times the size of the ant. I could not identify the dead bug; a beetle, maybe. Its body was mangled. Last night I made a comment, “If ants were in charge of a country, that country would take over the world.” I continue to swat at mosquitoes; they carry disease and aim to drink my blood. They bring the violence upon themselves. The ants are peaceful, going about their business. They will climb up and over my leg if that is the most direct path to where they are going. I don’t mind. I like to see them up close. I admire their hard work.

Descent

“We’ve started our descent,” the flight attendant says. The plane banks to the right. When I look out the window, I can see straight down to the trees and streets and buildings. The houses are each about the size of a penny on the window, even smaller. We’re low enough that I can make them out as being houses with grey shingle roofs. One house has a circular driveway. It’s larger than the other houses and bordered by trees.

I wonder to myself, “What’s going on inside that house?” Is anyone home? Are they on vacation? Does a family live there? Are the parents happily married? Are the children happy to be children? Have they had lunch? Do they have a dog? Is someone taking a shower? Is someone doing something they’re not supposed to be doing? What’s going on inside that house?

I wonder, and I bet nobody else on the plane wonders about exactly the same thing as me. The plane levels out and the big house with the circular driveway slides out of view. White clouds fill the window again.

Ant killer

If I were to take an ant from the forest in Montana and trap it in a jar and take it with me in my suitcase on my flight back to San Francisco, would it survive?

I do not know for sure what ants eat, but let’s say I did, and I put some of that in the jar, say, some blades of grass. If the ant had enough to eat, could he survive? Maybe it needs some water too. Okay, so I add a few drops every week. With enough food and water, would the ant survive? If not, why not?

Would the ant die because of a physical reason unaccounted for? Maybe there’s not enough air in the jar for the ant to breathe. But let’s assume it’s none of this. What then? Would it be something mental or emotional? Could an ant die because of separation from his colony? What if I introduced the ant to a new colony in the redwood forests near San Francisco. Would the ant then survive among other ants? Albeit, not the same ants as the ones at his home in Montana.

But let’s say it’s not social. Let’s say the ant stays in the jar. What would kill it then. Like a prisoner in solitary confinement, what would break first? Would it be the same for all ants? Or unique to each ant based on their individual temperament?

Self-conscious

I step away from my desk to stretch. I lean over to touch my toes. The sun from the window behind me shows my shadow on the hardwood floor. I see that my hair is disheveled. Previously unaware of my appearance, I am now self-conscious of my appearance. What if I go to see people later? What if someone comes into the study? My hair should look kempt. I fuss over it, using my shadow as a mirror.

Gendered yoga

While practicing yoga, some poses strike me as being more feminine, others as being more masculine. Down dog, for example, with my rear end pointed up, strikes me as more feminine. Plank pose, with my bicep and forearm muscles flexed, strikes me as more masculine. This may be a bias in my yoga practice. I am unwilling to go deeper, stretch farther, or hold longer in feminine poses, for fear of appearing even more feminine. In masculine poses on the other hand, I am eager to go deeper to appear more masculine.

Krys says nice

Driving to the airport on our way to pick up Marta. Krys is driving. He has his hand out the window, letting the wind pass between his fingers. The sky is a light blue. The gradient grows lighter toward the sun, high in the sky. We come to a stop. Krys looks out the window, exhales, and says, “Nice.” Seamus looks at Krys from the passenger seat and asks, “What?” Krys responds, “All of it.” We all laugh, and quickly express our emphatic agreement. It is all very nice.

John and the coffee pot

John stands in front of the coffee machine. Connor asks him what is wrong. He explains that he can’t figure out how to turn off the ‘Clean’ function. He says, “I need coffee to figure out how to fix the coffee machine.” We laugh.

Cutting vegetables

Cutting vegetables for soup, I learn lessons like “a dull knife requires more power to cut” and “one cut across three carrots is as good as three cuts.” I start to chop slower as I am learning these lessons, until I am learning from each chop. It is simple—the vegetables, the cutting board, and the knife. I am enjoying myself. And the smell of the chopped celery. Soup is a simple dish—everything in the pot, with some broth and water.

Muse

She is gentle and will not be forced. She must come to you first. And then it is a matter of what you do with it. If you try to go to her first, it will not work. She will not be open or ready. And you will merely be grasping from the outside. You must be patient and wait.

Caught

I got caught peeing in public by the park police today. My girlfriend and I were walking on the sidewalk through the Presidio on our way to the beach. I stepped off and took two or three steps into the trees. When I turned around, the unmarked police car was making a U-turn in the middle of the street with its lights on, but no sirens. When I saw the car, without even thinking, I said out loud, “Oh man, are you kidding me?” I looked through the passenger-side window and the officer was motioning for me to come closer to the car. I walked over and bent down with my hands on my knees. He rolled down the window halfway. He said, “If you’re going to urinate, walk back far enough into the trees where people can’t see.” I said, “Yes sir. I apologize.” I tried my best to look scared. Truth be told, I was a little scared. I didn’t want to get a citation. He nodded, seeming satisfied, and rolled up his window and drove off. I stepped back onto the sidewalk and kept walking with my girlfriend.

She keeps me

She keeps me straight and narrow so I can focus my energies, keeping my sexuality from welling up and over the rim of myself. My sex flows into her only. This pointed and consistent release has allowed space for my other energies to grow strong. Previously this space was filled by frantic sexual energy, like gas fills a balloon. Now my sexual energy is compartmentalized. It is her compartment wholly and I don’t think twice about it.

Test

This is a test. I’m using a service called IFTTT to post automatically to my WordPress blog when I write a note in my Evernote. I’m curious to see if the service is smart enough to wait until I finish typing the note, before it posts to the blog. We shall see …

Test

This is a test. I’m using a service called IFTTT to post automatically to my WordPress blog when I write a note in my Evernote. I’m curious to see if the service is smart enough to wait until I finish typing the note, before it posts 

Non-specific

I don’t like particulars. I aim to be non-specific. I would rather talk of the sky that is the same everywhere, rather than what is only of this specific place here. Is this an inherent contradiction? Because symbolic language is specific, and therefore inept to capture the universal.

Lake and his book

Lake sits in a wooden rocking chair on the back porch. One leg is crossed over the other. The leg beneath bounces gently. A grey and white Mexican blanket is draped over his shoulders. His neck slightly craned over and eyes squinting at the book in his hands. Occasionally looking up at the Montana mountain scenery beyond the porch railing.

What will

What will happen, will. When I realize it is not me. None of it is mine. I am part of it, and that is all. What will pass through me, will. As I try to control and plan and schedule. Taking it all into my arms to wrestle it into the shape of my desires. My arms are not big enough. I only tire this way. It has all already been wrestled. It has been wrestled into what it will be. I am here for it. I am granted the privilege of having a part to play. I will play my part. As it comes to me, I will play.

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My girlfriend eats breakfast earlier than I do. She eats the same thing every morning. A bowl of granola and yogurt with fresh blueberries and a hard boiled egg. She knows I like to have a hard boiled egg too. So she leaves the cutting board and the salt and pepper out on the counter for me. I peel my egg and cut it in half. I don’t need to add any salt and pepper because I can just roll my egg in the salt and pepper that spilled on the board from my girlfriend’s egg earlier that morning.

Beyond skin

I wake up with my hand plugged into her heart like a battery. Her closed eyes staring past her eyelids innocently into the ethereal. My hand plunged deep into her chest in the dream world where skin is a permeable barrier. She breathes all the deeper, undisturbed. For a moment I feel as one with her not unlike the sexual encounter. It is as if we have both entered the dream world tethered together by skin. As if the dream world were a movie theater and we both handed the ticket man our ticket with the same seat number and proceeded into the movie theater to have the same dream at the same time and as the same person. I cannot feel where my fingertips touch her chest. It is like when your leg has fallen asleep and you can only feel above your knee. I can only feel above my elbow. The rest of my arm seems to be plunged into and past her body into the sleep world where my forearm and hand are cut off from physical sensation. My other hand cups her neck. We lay on our sides facing each other, an arm’s length apart, connected only by my two hands touching her, and some other link that goes beyond just skin.

Inspiration from sensory experience

Changes in my sensory experience are a main source of my inspiration.

Sitting at my desk in my apartment, I am experiencing the same senses. I can hear the sound of traffic on the street outside. I can see my computer screen and the white wall behind it. I can feel the cushion under my bum and the wood against my back. I can taste my saliva. I can smell the bland air. I am experiencing the same senses. I am bored. I am not inspired.

So I get up and put on my sneakers and go for a run. Now my sensory experience is changing. I see new storefronts every block. I see new people and new cars. I hear conversations and children laughing. I smell the pollen from the summer trees. I feel the wind and the sun and the cement beneath my feet. My taste is about the same—just saliva.

Now, this is not to say I could not have changed my sensory experience in my apartment. I could have turned on some music. I could have taken a heroic dose of acid. I could have punched myself bloody. I could have sat down and tried my best to enter a deep meditation.

What comes in through your senses is already art. Life itself is art. What you see is a painting. What you hear is music. What you feel is dance.

As an artist, I am more of a translator than a creator. My life, my sensory experience—this is already the art. It is like clay given to a sculptor. I take the sound or music and the sight of the sky and turn those experiences into words. But in some sense, they are already words.

I am like a kaleidoscope or a prism. The experience of life is light. I am not the creator of light. Nor am I the creator of myself. I am merely a vessel.

It is still work. It is not as passive as standing there and letting light pass through. But it is work already set into motion by forces greater than me, and I must merely play along.

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I get nothing done

All day

At my desk

Double guessing

And triple checking

Like I’m still in school

So I get up

And go outside

To run

And clear my head

And all my problems

Solve themselves

One after another

Somewhere

In the back of my mind

While I focus

On not getting hit

By a car

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I run all over town
Without a notebook
Practicing
How to hold
A hundred poems
In my head

I pick favorites
And sometimes
Have to forget one
To remember another

The trouble is
I get a full head
Halfway through
As I’m still out and about
And seeing and smelling
And so poems
Keep pouring in

Which is when
I have to run
As fast as I can
Repeating every poem
Silently in my head
And looking down
Until I can get home
And start writing
To make some space

Statistically speaking

I make these

Small calculations

For my chances

Of survival

Like whether to walk

On this side

Of the sidewalk

Or that side

And wonder whether

The time I take

To make

These calculations

Is greater than

Or equal to

The time I save

Surviving

Park photographers

I watched two
Photographers
At the park today
As they
Took pictures
Of the birds
And the sky

One of them
With the long lens
Stood in the shade
Resting his camera
On his leg
Like a hunter
Holding his gun
Lazy like
Waiting to shoot
A bird in the trees

He waited like this
Still as a cat
In the shade
Only moving
His other arm
Not holding the camera
To take drags
On his cigarette

The second
With a small camera
Stood in the trail
In everyone’s way
Looking up at the sky
At a trail of smoke
Left by a plane

All of the passersby
Stood for a second
And tried to see
What the camera man
Was seeing

He pointed and explained
But some just didn’t see
Or understand
What was the big deal
About a trail of smoke
In the sky

Triple washed

I got a handful of blueberries

Out of the carton

And went to wash them

But I dropped one

So I picked it up

And washed it again

And you wouldn’t believe me

If I told you

I dropped that blueberry

A third time

But I did

And washed it again

Tree and sun

Laying down
At the base of a tree
Looking up
Through the branches
At the sun

It is a tall tree
With many branch layers
So only some sections
Of light
Reach the grass
In between
Splotches of shade

The sun twinkles
As the leaves blow
And shift in the wind

I have to shield my eyes
With my hand
When the leaves blow
Just right
To let the sun
Shine through

Worrying about the future

I start to think about dinner

When I’m still eating lunch

I start to plan for tomorrow

When I’ve still got today

I start to worry

Farther and farther

Into the future

About what may never come

I start and never finish

Because I’m always worried

About the next thing

And the next

Nevermind now, I say

Look at what’ll happen then!

Focus

I keep returning to the idea of focus. In order to be successful you must focus.

With art, the artist must focus in order to establish a consistent theme. This is not only for the audience, but also for this artist, because without this consistency it’s not possible to gain the deep observations from focusing in one area.

With a career it is the same. You cannot do many jobs and be successful. You must choose one job and focus. It is only with this focus in your career that you can achieve the knowledge and experience to be successful professionally. If you try to do Many jobs you’ll be mediocre at all of them. If you focus on one job you have a greater chance of success.

It is the same with your identity. If you try to live many lives, you will be mediocre at all of them. In order to be successful you must choose one life to live. It is only by focusing on one identity that you can achieve the deep insights of that one life.

If you try to live many lives at once it would be like walking into a movie and walking out after the first 10 minutes never getting to see the middle or the end or how the characters develop. It will be like only reading the introduction of the book or only listening to the preamble of a symphony. Or when meeting someone it would be like only talking to them for one minute and then never seeing them again.

Spider web sparkle

A spider web string

Sparkles in the sun

Like a thin diamond necklace

Turning over and twirling

Seeming to float

Above the branches

Where it can’t possibly be attached

Just floating

Like a kite string

For a kite somewhere unseen

And not so menacing

Bare

And without a bug trapped

Lost kite

A kite caught up

On the tallest branch

Of the tree

Beyond hope of rescue

Blowing in the wind

Like one of the leaves

Except for the neon

Sticking out like a sore thumb

Among the green

Doomed to flap there

Until a fierce gust of wind

Blows it down

Or the tree falls

Run

Now I remember why I have forgotten why it is that I do what I do. Upon realizing recently, that I do not know why it is that I do what I do, I remembered this. Because I went about trying to figure out again, why I do what I do. Which is a funny thing, because I have been doing things all this time, but I cannot remember exactly why.

If I think of any particular thing I’ve done I can usually come up with a reason. For example, I ate breakfast this morning because I was hungry. But for all my decisions strung together, I can’t put my finger on a common theme, just disjointed ad hoc reasons.

So I started to think about it. I thought for a long time and took down notes and read some passages out of books. That is when I remembered why I have forgotten. I am not saying I know all. I do not.

But it seems there are some grim answers if you look hard enough, about why we are and what we should do. Upon thinking this thought, I was very depressed. And felt that I had experienced that depression before. I had, I knew it.

And that is why I have forgotten why I do what I do. Because at the point of my last depressions having stumbled upon these grim thoughts, I blindfolded myself and spun myself around and whispered a Truth in my own ear and pointed in a direction and said to myself, “Run.”

And so I ran. It took me a couple years to realize I couldn’t remember why I was running. So I’ll spin myself around again and whisper another Truth in my ear and set myself off running again.

Dry mouth

I wake up

With a dry mouth

From sleeping

With the window open

I get out of bed

And walk to the kitchen

To fill a glass

With water

And take a drink

Then put down

The empty glass

On the counter

And get back in bed

And fall asleep

Half notes

My heart sings off-key
For the half notes
That never got to whole

My hands beat a doldrum
Into the desk

Checking my watch
Every five minutes

Waiting for this day
To finally finish
So I can escape
To something else
Anything else

I can only whistle one tune
For so long
Until I forget the sound
Of all other tunes

And the hope of music
Becomes just
The senseless noise
Of that one tune

Nothing becomes something

One song
Without sound
And a painting
Without color

Dares you to look deep
Into the void
And press your ear
To the glass ceiling

Where you might hear
A white noise
Which seems at first
To be nothing

Listen long enough
And see
How nothing
Becomes something

Getting drunk and writing poetry

Getting drunk

And listening to music

I start to write poetry again

And think to myself

It’s no wonder

I haven’t been able to write

As of late

Because I’ve been too sober

And without music

Last beer

Beer bubbles

At the bottom of the glass

Make me sad

Because this was the last one

In the fridge

And I’ll have to switch

Over to white wine

After these last sips

Of good beer

The music is loud

The music is loud now

No exclamation points in poetry

Is a rule I once read

But I’m going to break it

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Because wow this moment

The music is loud

Did I already mention that?

Must be on account

Of my having had two beers

And already being buzzed

Because it’s been a while

Since I’ve gotten drunk

And danced around the room like this

The music is loud

And the windows are open

And it’s all alright

Tree branch lovers

I see a point

In the tree

Where two branches

Cross over

And I wonder

If either branch

Longed for the other

Before they crossed

And if they now

Miss each other

Growing

In their own directions

Spilled milk

I made a bowl of granola this morning. When I tilted the milk jug, to pour some into the bowl, but too much came out. And I thought of how to get some back in the jug. Then I realized the meaning of the expression, “There’s no sense in crying over spilled milk.”

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How can you be so sure
A wrong turn won’t be right

How come you grip
The steering wheel so tight

Watching lines on maps
And planning where to go

It helps to know
That the road will have its way

A detour
Might save a crash

And a pit stop
Might change your life

So step on the gas surely
For going is the only way

But don’t worry so much
About where to

Morning

A bird chirps
Through the window crack
In the morning

Car wheels
Roll to a stop
At the light outside

Baby breathes
A deep waking sigh
With one eye open

I stretch and roll over
Before the alarm
I know is coming

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Bright light
Breaks through
The mouth of the tunnel

Like the face
Of the mountain
Is missing a tooth

Meat head

Oh here he goes
With heft again
Heaving as he may

Huffing and puffing
That big chest for something
But still he holds no sway

For strength aside
His muscles try
To make up for his mind

That door would budge
For just a nudge
If the knob were so inclined

I walked to the park today

I walked to the park after work today. I walked down California Street until I reached the avenues in the Richmond and then I turned north on Sixth Avenue until I got to the park.

It was sunny, but not too sunny. It seemed like the sun was farther away, sending its heat from a distance, so it wasn’t too hot. I almost wished it was hotter. When I walked through a part of shade under a tree or on the side of a building and a breeze would blow at the same time, I was almost cold.

The sky was blue. It was the same blue across the whole sky, except near the sun where it was white. I got to the park and walked out to a clearing in between the trees. There were other people around. Some dogs and some small children.

I watched one little girl squat down and cry. She seemed to be about a year old. Her mother (or at least I presume it was her mother) stood there and waited patiently for her to finish crying.

There were dogs on leashes with their owners. There were people seated on the grass having a picnic or just talking. I sat down on the grass and talked to my dad on the phone. We talked about making decisions and how that’s part of life. He told me his perspective and I thanked him.

It is ironic that I realize as I get older the value of wisdom from those who are even older than me. Perhaps it is because I am getting older and will want people to ask me for my wisdom someday. Perhaps it is because I am getting wiser as I am getting older, and it is part of being wiser to realize that it is wise to seek wisdom from others who are older.

After my call with my dad I walked deeper into the trees. I found an area of level ground and did push-ups. I started with twenty normal push-ups. Then I stood up and took a short break and walked in circles. Then I did twenty push-ups with my hands in the shape of a diamond. And I stood up and walked in circles again. I did other variations of push-ups until I was tired.

I was relaxing and thinking of whether I should walk deeper in the park. Then I realized I was late for dinner. My girlfriend said she was going to put the salmon in the oven. That was probably over an hour ago, I thought. So I went back.

I was late. My salmon was cold and dry. But the broccoli was still warm. I ate and then took a shower. Now I’m sitting on the side of the tub in my towel writing this.

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Our shower drain
Has been clogged
For as long
As we’ve lived here
So the shower
Makes three noises

First is the water
On the floor
Of the tub

Second is the water
On the surface
Of the pool
In the tub
Like rain
On a lake

Third is the drain
Drinking the pool
Slowly
Making gurgle noises

White tiles

White tiles
Take time to turn
Into something
Noticeable
On the shower walls

My fingers rake
My wet hair
Not even washing
No shampoo

My mind
Is someplace else
In fact, many
Other places
At once

Until I open my eyes
And see white
Tile walls
And return
Realizing

I’ve been rinsing
My hair
For some time now
I don’t know
How long

Kid secrets

I see kids careful

Now that grown ups

Are watching

About what they say

In a circle

Of parked bikes

On a side street

In suburban San Francisco

Covering their mouths

Telling their friends secrets

About what they watched

On television

When their parents

Weren’t home

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I wait for a morning

Where I can see

What’s already done

And what needs doing

So I can settle

On what to do

With my day

Shy sun

Hiding below the horizon

Like a shy child

Who forgets every night

That he is the sun god

And must muster again

The courage needed

To shine all day

For the world to see

City alarm

The city alarm is set

By the bus route

And the bakery man

Driving his truck of bread

And the other cars

Their wheels and engines

And occasional radios

And the street light

That never stops

Or maybe it’s the store light

Or traffic light

That always finds a way

Into your apartment

Despite your best efforts

To drape the windows dark

—The light and noise

Even here in San Francisco

Makes you believe what they say

About New York never sleeping

Focus

In meditation there is a principle, that you can focus on your breath forever and never stop learning new things.

In philosophy there is a principle, that you can never know all that there is to know about a fruit fly.

For poetry, I believe that you could sit in the same room and never run out of poems to write.

Breathing in the night

I breathe easy

In the night

On my back

Four fingers

Rest on my belly

Feeling it rise

And fall

A wrist

Props my head

Looking up

At the ceiling

A slightly

Different shade

Than the day

In the dark

And I just breathe

Takes a turn

It takes a turn

Tight as can be

Up on two wheels

Leaning to the side

When you thought for sure

You were going one direction

And even started to think

You might only ever

Keep going in just

That one direction

And then it turns

And everything you thought you knew

Turns to memory

While what you can see

Is replaced

With this new way

That you’re suddenly going

Bed sheet blind

Prose:

The metal rod that held up our blinds over the kitchen window broke yesterday. So I took a hammer and some nails and stood on one of the dining room chairs to nail a bed sheet to the top of the window frame to serve as a blind for the time being.

I went to bed and woke up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water. I opened the fridge and poured myself a cup of cold water from the pitcher. I was on my way back to the bedroom half-asleep when the bed sheet hanging over the kitchen window caught my eye.

I stood there, naked and drinking my water, and watched the headlights from traffic on the street outside passing through the grey bed sheet. They seemed like ghosts from an unfamiliar world. The lights were distorted beyond being able to discern that they were car headlights. It was like an abstract movie.

I started to make up stories about why certain ghost lights would come to stop and then go again. The fast lights were in a hurry to get somewhere. Some lights stopped next to each other and made love before moving on.

I stood there in the dark by myself and made up stories about the light movie on the bed sheet until I was almost fully awake. Then I went back to bed.

Poetry:

The metal rod

That held up our blinds

Over the window

In the kitchen

Broke yesterday

So I nailed up

A grey bedsheet

To cover the window

For the time being

I went to bed

And woke up to get some water

Then stood and watched

Naked and drinking water

The headlights from traffic

Passing through the grey bedsheet

Like ghosts

In an unfamiliar world

Bird bath bar

A bird chirping

In the middle of the night

Singing her heart out

Must be drunk

Coming home

From the bird bath bar

Not to see

It’s pitch black out

And time to sleep

And save the chirping

For the morning

Now

Don’t look forward

Look right here

There is nothing for you

Beyond this moment

Nothing more

This is it

The source of your troubles

And longing

And lamenting

Is all in the future

Causing you to think

There is more then

That is not now

The future

Makes you feel

Like you’re missing something

You must be

If there is more to come

Then you were missing it before

You must have been

But don’t be worried

Don’t let the future trick you

Focus here and now

Start with the senses

What do you see

What do you hear

What do you feel

Focus all of your attention

On the senses

What picture of the present

Are they painting for you

What song of the present

Are they singing

Your senses of the present

Are gold

Compared to copper imagination

Of any future

Not yet come to pass

For the body

But only for the mind

As some figment

Focus here

Breathe it in

Do not worry

Let go of the need to plan

To prepare

The future is now

It is part of the nature of now

To become the future

So if you want to prepare

Focus here

Searching for my muse

I woke up early today to find my muse. It is almost summer so the light was up before me, peeking in between the drapes. I got out of bed and rolled the rug away to make space for my mat. I did my stretches and put on the clothes and pack that I had set out the night before. I opened the door and locked it behind me and stepped onto the sidewalk outside to find the peace and quiet of the morning.

I walked on a street with shops. I walked in a forest. I walked across the bridge. After almost four hours of walking, I began to despair. My muse had been missing for some time. All this past week she has been missing, and I had only caught glimpses of her a few of the weeks before.

I stopped overlooking the ocean. I took a drink of water and ate one of the bars I had packed in my bag. I walked to the beach. It was still foggy and the beach was not too inviting. But I was tired and wanted to lie down. I did, and after finding a comfortable position in the sand, fell asleep.

When I woke, the sun was shining. The clouds had separated for the sun to shine through. It was then that I found my muse. I searched in my pack for my phone and began to write. I wrote some poems and then I wrote this.

My muse will have to go again soon. I have become used to this, her coming and going. But I am grateful to have found her. And will be grateful to search for her again.

Now

In a moment, there is nothing you need. It is only over time, that needs arise. It is impossible to be hungry, for example, in a moment. It is impossible to be tired. It is only a period of time that makes it possible to become hungry or tired.

These needs keep you from peace. They fill your mind with motivation for action. They tell you it is time to go and have something to eat. It is time to lay down and have a nap.

To fend off each of these needs would be like pulling leaves from a large tree. To pull up the tree all at once by its trunk, you need only to forget the passage of time.

There is nothing to need if there is nothing to come. There is nothing to need if there is only now.

Getting here

I go out

To get here

Not really knowing

Where I’m going

All the while

But now

Having arrived

Realize

This is surely

Where I was headed

All along

Beach bum

What moves me

Other than belly

And bladder

Tugging at my mind

Telling my body

It’s okay to stay

And lay out

On the beach

All day

Sun god

After fog and cold

All morning

The sun breaks through

Cloud cherubs

That flee

Feigning fear

Of a sun god

Now known to be

Quite benign

Blue

It’s a blue day

Out by the water

As the clouds move away

And the line between

Ocean and sky

Melts into

The same blue

Speed limit

My sense of speed

Is less than perfect

I admit

But I would say

If I were a betting man

That those fast cars

Seem to be

Above the limit

Posted on the sign

Lazy

Out on a walk

I have the urge

To return home

Even though

I haven’t gotten very far

I wonder why

Am I hungry?

No

I just ate a couple of dates

Am I tired?

No

I just woke up

Then why?

Laziness

Is all I can think of

untitled

The dreamer is a night owl

The worker is an early bird

The realist is a businessman on lunch break

Dreams

Prose:

At night, I have a bunch of dreams and ideas for things that I want to work on. Most of them I forget soon after I’ve thought of them. Some I remember in the morning. I write down a list of the ideas that can be realistically achieved in a short amount of time. By the end of the day, I’ve completed less than half of the items on the list. Then the night comes, and I dream up a whole new list.

Poetry:

At night I have
A hundred dreams
Hoping for more
Than I could ever
Possibly achieve

In the morning I wake
With a heart full of hope
And a rested body
To go about
Making my dreams
Into reality

Around noontime
I have settled
On one, more realistic
Out of the hundred
Dreams to work on

Birds

I hear birds

And my heart lifts

Even though

They’re on the other side

Of a close door

And the clouds

Outside the window

Are dark today

My heart still lifts

Hearing the birds

What it means

After you have taken

It to mean

Something other

Than what I intended

It means

What you have taken

And nothing else

Bright city bedroom

Some light seeps in
From the street lamp
Between the drapes

Some light
From the buttons
Of various devices
Strewn about the room

And just those two
Besides the shimmer
On the ceiling
From one or the other
Of the aforementioned

Is enough to make
The night bright
In our bedroom
When we would rather
It be dark

The Potter and the Poet

I myself, was a potter
And my brother, was a poet
So we went to see a man
About some flowers
On the outskirts of town

We had already been
To the one man with flowers
Most well-known in town
In the morning
And had gotten two flowers

One for me
And one for my brother
And they were fine
But not exactly
What we had in mind

So we asked our driver
On our way back
If there were another
Man with flowers
Somewhere in town

And he said, “Well …”
And then he paused
“There is one other”

And by the tone of his voice
Like any fairytale
We should have known
To turnaround and go home
And be happy with our two
That we had gotten that morning

My brother, the poet,
Had heard the tone
And wanted to turn around

I, the potter,
Urged that we go on
And my brother, being the younger
Was forced to follow

When we got there
There was a large henchman
Seated at a long wooden table
In a larger open room
With a high ceiling
And a clutter of objects all about

We asked him to see the man about some flowers, and he asked us some questions that I now cannot remember. And our answers must have sufficed, because he turned and took us up the stairs that led to a small room in the back of the place, also cluttered with objects.

There was a man seated there, the man of the flowers. The second man of the flowers in town, or maybe the first—this we hoped to find out.

I told him sir, “We would like to buy two flowers.”

And he said, “Four.”

I said, “Beg your pardon.”

He repeated,” Four … that’s the minimum.”

“But the other man of flowers in town …”

“I’m not the other. I’m the only,” he interrupted me, without looking up from whatever he was tinkering with on his workbench.

I started to argue, but the henchman who had remained standing in the doorway stepped in and grabbed me gruffly, asking, “Do you know who you’re talking to?”

And what happened next will be hard to explain, but the long and short of it is, my brother the poet was turned into a pot to teach me a lesson about being greedy.

I was let outside and wept in the grass for the loss of my brother and learned my lessons once and for all about sacrificing the potter for the poet.

Done

Now it can be said
Of thoughts 
Passed through my head

Blunders 
They would be
In reality

Expect 
For this one
That I have done

Domestic branch

In the morning

I found

A tree branch

Had grabbed hold

Of the open

Window’s frame

As if to make its way

Inside

And out of the wind

Why writers must travel

In search

Of different

Travelling

And changing scenery

Smoking

And drinking

To move his body

Or at least his mind

A writer

Must always be

On the move

Lest he find

New ways

Of writing the same

Sailor’s story

A diversity of experience

Deemed to be

Different enough

From a normal day

To keep boredom at bay

Back at the beach

Left behind

And sailed away

Sought after stories

Of one’s own

To match the sailor’s

In the barroom

Boisterous

And spilling his beer

Is as close

To drowning

As he’s ever been

Hearing feeling

Having sex

While listening

To Sanskrit chant

Channeling

Into physical bodies

What would otherwise

Be only audible

For ears to hear

Senses mingle

In the heights

Of ecstasy

And ears

Start to hear

What skin is feeling

untitled

Like buried treasure
We found them
At a fourth the cost
Of the grocery store

In one big box
Lined with a plastic sack
Piled to the top

We carried home
A heaping quart
And gorged ourselves

On fresh blueberries
From the farmers’ market

Stain dream

I had a dream last night

That I stained a shirt

With what I stained it

I can’t remember

But the shirt was ruined

And I was worried

About people looking at me

And the stained shirt

I was wearing

Closet door

Prose:

A closet seems to be so private, if we are to measure it by the same standards as other private things. A bedroom, for example, is a very private place. Usually it is behind two doors—the front door and the bedroom door.

If a stranger were to come to your home and knock on the door, it would not be unusual for you to first look through the peep hole, and then open the door just a crack in order to ask what they want. If they give you a sufficient answer, maybe you would consider letting them into your front room. They have, at this point, passed through the front door.

But for someone to pass through your bedroom door, it is usually a great deal more intimate. For a person to pass your bedroom door, they must usually be a lover, a family member, or a close friend.

What then shall we say of the closet, this third door? To pass through this third door must be to enter into the depths of intimacy within the confines of a home, even if there are only old coats and forgotten boxes in there.

Poetry:

A closet of stuff

Alone

And closed away

Behind

A closet door

A bedroom door

And a front door

Huff and puff

I run the flats

And huff and puff

I run the hills

And huff and puff

I run the flats

And need

Huff and puff

No more

Her poetry

I asked her to recite some poetry for me, and she did, easily and brilliantly. She created poems completely on her own and right there on the spot as if she were saving them in her head and waiting for me to ask.

I was a bit taken aback, to be honest. Not by her poems being brilliant—if course they were brilliant. But more so by the ease she displayed when creating them instantaneously, without even appearing to be trying.

This confirmed for me my belief that she holds all the poetry. I dance around her all day and try to make her smile, which is all just another way of kneeling in front of her with my face turned down and my cupped hands held up and open, begging for her poetry.

She does not care to write it because that is not how she lives her life. She is the poetry. This is why she as able to recite a few poems so easily when I asked. It is already within her, and always will be. So why would she go through the trouble of writing it down and giving it away? That is no the way she interacts with the world. She goes about living, and that is her poetry.

As for me, I am a taker. Whether that is because I am a man or I am me or because I live in America, I do not know. But at least I have realized the relationship for what it is. My baby is my poetry, all of it. I am a taker, and I am lucky for what I can get.

Rolled rug

We rolled the rug

Away

More toward

The window

To have space

To play

On the hard

Wood floor

Friends

Friends come and go. You intersect on your paths. If you are to remain yourself, you cannot stay together forever. Doing so would cause you to become more alike, meeting on the middle path, somewhere between the two paths you would each otherwise walk on your own. There is a rare friendship where you can walk side-by-side. Some paths run parallel just by chance. Some will deviate from each other and then cross again at some point in the future. Some will deviate and never cross again.

I write when

I write in the shower
With my eyes closed

I write at work
When my mind wanders

I write during conversation
When my friend writes for me

I write at the park
Laying in the sun

I write in the middle of a run
When it gets hard to breathe

I write after a dream
That I can barely remember

I write when I read
Stealing words for myself

I write at night
When I can’t go back to sleep

Run to write

I run to the park

To pick a poem

Like a leaf

From a low-hanging

Tree branch

Or a lyric

From a bird’s song

And then run home

To write it down

The Fish Man

Or maybe, it is like a side show I once saw at the circus. “The Fish Man,” they called him. I watched the man in the human-sized fish tank. He even swam like a fish. The tank was small, but he managed all sorts of aquatic maneuvers. Bending his back and kicking the water with flipper-like feet, he could swim circles round and round in the tank. It even seemed that he had webbing between his fingers and his toes (but that could have been makeup and prosthetics).

I read the plaque nailed to the top of a stake that was driven into the wet ground in front of the tank. The plaque read thus:

“Behold the Fish Man. He was not born this way. He chose to become like a fish. Some rumors say that he once told his mother while taking a bath that he preferred it underwater. He began learning to hold his breath. At first, like any person, he could only hold his breath for sixty seconds. Over the years, spending all his time underwater, the Fish Man learned, by various unknown methods, to hold his breath for longer and longer. Today, the Fish Man only comes out of water once in the morning and once in the evening. He sleeps at the bottom of the same tank that you see him in now.”

At the time, I didn’t for a second believe it. I figured there must be some invisible breathing tube worked into the tank, and by some sleight of hand, or sleight of swim, the Fish Man was able to take a breath from the tube as he completed one of his back-bending flip maneuvers. I watched him for a while but couldn’t catch a moment where the Fish Man seemed to do anything like breathing through an invisible tube.

I couldn’t help but wonder to myself what it had been like for the Fish Man to learn to hold his breath. Even if it was a sham, he probably had some talents for holding his breath underwater.

Day and night

The day teaches us to live. The night teaches us to die.

I wonder if the nights start to seem longer as you get older. As of now, I can’t tell a difference. The days seems to be about as long as the nights.

Some nights are longer, when I can’t sleep. Or when I sleep deeply and achieve a dream that seems to last a lifetime.

For those farther beyond their youth, I wonder if the nights grow longer. For fear that death grows near. That a night of nothing—no sound and all dark—is not all too different from death itself.

Backstage

Backstage wasn’t usually this quiet. Not completely silent, of course. You could still hear the opener thudding through the walls of the dressing room.

As soon as they had the bandmates pushed out and the door closed behind them, she had his shirt off. There was a ferocious banging on the door. They ignored it. Then it came even louder, threatening to knock the door out of its frame, and a voice screaming from the other side, “Jackie!”

He unclenched her grip from around the back of his neck, turned, and opened the door just a crack, through which the sound of the opener forced its way in, vocals wailing and bass thumping.

Travis, his drummer, was standing there with his forearm resting on the frame and his head against his rest, annoyed, like he’d been through this a hundred times.

“Can you at least hand me the bottle of booze off the table there, mate?”

“Anything else?” Jackie said, sarcastically, handing him the bottle.

“Oh yea, can I bum a cigarette?” Travis said with an open-mouthed grin that revealed a gap in his two front teeth.

Jackie slammed the door in his face.

“Okay, where were we?” Jackie said turning on his heel and waking over to the couch that was missing a cushion where she was lounging, like she felt right at home.

She was looking at him. He walked over and put both hands under her cheek bones. She pushed him away, and kept looking at him, at his torso.

“What? What’s wrong? Is it my tattoos? The devil on there doesn’t mean nothing. It’s just an old band I was with …”

“No, it’s not that,” she interrupted him.

“Oh,” he smiled. “It’s just because I’m so devilishly handsome?” He said this with the best London accent he could manage. His bandmates were actually born and raised in London but Jackie was just a tourist there when they all met. Most of their fans didn’t actually know that. He figured he could fool this one.

“No, it’s not that either.”

“What is it then?” He asked, now a little alarmed, hoping she wasn’t crazy. About to ask him if they would ever see each other again.

“You’re so … so skinny.”

He laughed. “What do you expect? I’m a rockstar. I eat more drugs than food.”

After they were finished. Jackie walked right out onto stage holding her hand. He didn’t think anything of it. He didn’t care. The magazines would write about it for weeks, “Who’s Jackie’s mystery girl?” And a feminine silhouette on the cover with a question mark in place of a face. The truth was, there were many faces that could have replaced that question mark.

He walked right out onto the front of the stage and held her hand as one of the security guards helped her down into the front row.

After the show, he looked for her. He really did. He tried to catch her face in the crowd all the way through their last song. He worried about it in the tour bus on the way to the hotel.

Then Travis handed him a bottle. A new bottle, full again. Jackie took a drink and forgot.

Don’t worry wind

Edited:

I wish the wind
Wouldn’t worry

For the leaves will surely
Shake themselves

Free 
From their branches

Before the fall
Is over

Original:

I wish the wind
Wouldn’t worry

For the leaves
Will surely
Shake themselves

Free from branches
‘Fore the fall
Is over

A white dog called Winter

Prose version:

I was on my way home from the park, still in the park actually, but on the borders of it, almost out, when I saw a white dog digging in the trash for scraps. It looked like someone had taken the trash bin and turned it upside down to empty all its contents on the ground. Or maybe the dog did it. But I doubted that because the trash bins in the park were usually kept inside of a metal container. Come to think of it, that container was usually locked. So maybe the maintenance man had made a mistake by forgetting to lock the container.

Anyway, so this white dog is digging in the trash strewn on the ground. And I already knew there was trouble coming, because it was a very pretty dog with a collar, which led me to believe that the dog had an owner. And that owner was likely close by. After all, we were in a park where people often come with their dogs. So I figured I must have caught this scene in the small amount of time between when a dog gets out of sight from its owner and before the owner realizes.

And sure enough, I heard a voice from the other side of the tall bushes shout, “Winter!” And see, this is where I had to laugh to myself. Because if it had been any other dog’s name, then I couldn’t have known for sure. If it was Milo, or Buddy, or some other generic dog name, then I couldn’t have known that this voice was coming for this dog’s owner. But there was no mistaking, putting two facts together—this dog was lost and it’s owner would probably be calling, and it’s fur coat was white as winter—that this owner shouting their dog’s name from the other side of the tall bushes was the owner of this white dog digging in the trash.

And that’s when I left. I realized I had been standing there just watching the dog dig in the trash. And I don’t like drama. So I didn’t want to be there when the owner found their dog. So I started walked away as fast as I could. And by the time I was out of sight but still just barely within earshot, I head the same owner’s voice shout, “Get out of there!”

Poetry version:

At the park

I walk past

A white dog

Digging in the trash

For scraps

And already know

There’s trouble coming

Before I hear

From a ways off

The dog’s owner,

I’m supposing,

Shout, “Winter!”

As the dog proceeds

To lick a paper plate

That once held pizza

I walk by

Leaving the scene behind

But not before hearing

The owner come closer

And exclaim,

“Get out of there!”

A man with hands

Looking out the window

At a man on the sidewalk

Who speaks

So much with his hands

I wonder

Being unable to hear

If he is using

Any words at all

untitled

The horns honk

So loud

On the street outside

It seems

As if the walls

Of the apartment

Weren’t even there

present

All my life

Has led me here

To this point

For which

All my past

Has prepared me

—On and on

Over and over

This continues

For every

Present moment

sleepy studio

An open doorway

Into another room

Where daylight

Creeps beneath

The window drape

Does appear

Less dark

Than the lightless

Life here

On the sleepy side

Of the studio

Where the drapes

Are pulled tight

night time

Something clicks
In the night
Unnatural, interrupting
A sweet lullaby
Of silent sounds

A flash
From the bus claws
Catching on electric wires
Outside the window

I check the time
And realize
It is almost the hour
When the mechanical city
Will start its day

And this click and flash
Were the early signs
That I’ll have to wait
For another sun’s passing
For the peace and quiet
Of non-mechanical
Night time

poetry

Poetry is not a practice
Of making time
To sit down in a chair
And write

Rather, poetry,
As I have experienced it,
Is a practice
Of cultivating a life
Like a garden
Where poetry might visit
From time to time
Like flowers might grow

In moments of dream
Amidst a good night’s rest
Or moments of gratitude
Amidst seeing a new light
Or moments of love
Amidst listening to your muse

You cannot go away from life
To sit at your chair
And write of it

You must go to life
To take it as it comes
And write as best you can
In the midst of it

give and take

Do not be so greedy

As to try

And steal away

With what you have been given

As it goes

You must return

Because you can only carry

So much on your back

By your going

Do not burn the bridge

No matter how much you take

And think to yourself

I will never have to return

I have this much

But you will

Such is life

This give and take

That to participate

Most fully

One would be best off

Giving away

What they have taken

To return

And tell the giver

When asked

What you did

With all

That you were given

And say

I gave it away

And then the giver will smile

And give you that much more

soft skin

I trace

With my fingertips

Where her skin

Tells me soft stories

Soft, mostly

So I wonder

What coarse sand

Made this skin so soft

up at night

Up, I am up now

As surely as I said

I would sleep

Through the night

I am up now

Having failed

To fight off thoughts

That couldn’t wait

Until the morning

I stopped to ponder

Dangerously a dream

That, if left unconsidered,

Would have passed through

Perfectly in peace

To go on its way

In and out

Through each ear canal

Yet it was something

Shocking enough to stir

And once my woken mind

Got a hold

And seized it

Somewhere in the middle

Still in my mind

The gears start to turn

And the whole factory

Follows suit

Coming to life

In the middle of the night

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I touch her skin softly

Like an instrument

That I hope will sing for me

In the silence of the night

her honey

All the art

Is in her

I believe

She is the artist,

Truly,

I am only

The collector

Like some would say

Of the bee keeper

That he has brought

Us honey,

But no;

It is the bees

Who brought the honey;

It is the keeper

Who stood by idly

Patient enough

To collect and deliver

What the bees brought forth

midnight mass

I learn as much

Laying up at night

Listening to

The radiator wheeze

And the fridge whrr

And baby’s soft breathing

As I ever have

Up and about

Out in the day

Listening to words

Spoken with some

Supposed meaning

That I’ve

Yet to grasp

moon making do

Each night

There is a scar of light

That holds its shape

Shot through the drape

And onto the ceiling

From the moon outside

Making do till morning

waiting for my muse

I must not be greedy

Having already

Gotten two good poems

But I cannot help

Wanting a third

So I lay up in bed

Looking at the dark ceiling

Waiting for the dream muse

Who delivered the first two

To return with the third

my masterpiece

A masterpiece

I once wrote

On a computer screen

That did not save

Or on a piece of paper

That blew away—

Such stories I would tell

Of how my brilliance

Managed to elude me

For so long

As a lifetime

Rather than face the fact

That I was never

Good enough

To write a masterpiece

remembering paul

For the first time
That I can ever recall
I met a man
Named Paul
That I could not recall
At the time
In a dream

Particular
Was this perchance
Precisely because
This Paul was a man
Who I was meeting
For the second time
When the first time
Was also
Only ever in a dream

So it makes sense to me
Now awake remembering
That in this second dream
Where I was in a golf shop
In rainy New York
Testing out clubs
With my friend John

And afterwards we walked home
In the rain
With our coats
Pulled around our necks
(I can remember
Now awake
With uncanny accuracy
That we seemed to be older
Than I am now
Here laying in bed
And also that a group of people
That we passed in the street
Were huddled under an awning
To stay out of the rain
Watching the news
On TV screens
And talking about trading stocks
(Such is my subconscious
Perception of New York
It seems)

So John and I
Make our way back to the apartment
And this is when I meet Paul

John and I
Are sitting at his kitchen table
Late at night
On a weekday
Eating pie
That he had left over
From a party
—I remember these details
Because John said to me,
In the dream,
“This is never something you would do,
Eating pie
On a weekday.”

And before I could respond
And tell John
How vehemently I agreed,
But this
Was a special occasion
—I prepared to tell him this,
I was thinking it,
I can remember.

And right then,
Paul came up
To the table
With another friend
Seemingly
From another room
Somewhere else in the apartment.

He and his friend were dressed
Like they were going out
For the night.

He came up
And slapped me on the shoulder
And said,
“Ho, Cole, how have you been?”
Which is when,
I looked across the table at John
And then back up at Paul
In confusion
As I thought to myself
That I had never met
This Paul before
And so wondered
Why he was now greeting me
With such seeming remembrance.

As they both perceived my confusion
And in the space of silence that lingered thereafter
Where Paul seemed to be expecting a greeting in return,
John stepped in and said,
“Cole, it’s Paul!”

I did not know the meaning,
At first,
Of John repeating
With more intonation
Paul’s name
As if that would be the cue
For me to remember
But I still
Could not recall.

Seeing my inability to remember
They all started to laugh
Even Paul’s friend
Who seemed to have no relation
To the situation,
As if they all together
Were in on some inside joke
That I was left out of.

When they had all laughed
And slapped each other’s shoulders
And wiped tears out of their eyes
John caught his breath
For one final try, and asked me again,
“Cole, do you really not remember?”

Remember what?
I thought to myself.
I felt like a man
Left outside in the rain
Looking in through a window
Into a warm and well-lit party
That I was not part of.

But this Paul was a cool cat
And he brushed it off like it was nothing,
My not remembering him.

He stepped around the table
To grab something from the cabinet
To eat on his way
To where he was going out,
This I can best recall
From the dream
From which I have woken
And am now writing.

It was then
That the mental event
In my own mind occurred
Which makes this a dream
Worth remembering,
And therefore writing—

For as Paul
Was walking down and out
Of the long hallway
In the apartment
With his friend,
It was then
That I suddenly remembered!

Paul!
Of course I knew Paul!
The last time I was in New York …
It was all coming back to me.

On another occasion,
I had visited John
And we were all going out.
We were in the living room
Of his apartment
And Paul was there too,
And as a matter of fact,
So was his friend!

We were drinking,
I was remembering
Within this dream
What seems to be
A memory,
Which at the time
In the dream
Seemed to me
To be completely organic
Just as anyone
Would all of a sudden
Recall a memory
That they had
For an instant, forgotten.

And so I said again, “Paul!”
But this time aloud,
And got up from the table
To chase him down the hall.

He turned on his heel
Hearing his name
And I ran down
The not so long length
Of the long hall
To give him a hug.

I could feel the extra mass
Added to his thin frame
By the winter coat
He had put on
To go outside.

He hugged me back
And then pushed me away
And laughed like before.

In the interchange,
Paul tried to hand me
A cigarette
That he had seemingly
Lit up
While he was still in the apartment
Walking out the door.

I tried to grab it
But missed
In the pinch between
Our fingers
And it fell on the floor,
Still smoking
Inside the apartment.

But this Paul was so cool
He didn’t seem to notice
Or care.
He would have just as soon
Gotten the pack
Out of his coat pocket
To light up another
Before bending down
To pick up the dropped one.

“There you go,”
He said.
“Now you’re remembering.
Not your fault,
I’m not offended.
We did feed you
Quite a few drinks that night.”

And this I could now recall,
If only in blurry pieces
How we had all drank together
That night in New York,
For my first visit
(This now,
Being the second).

Us four,
Including Paul’s friend,
Who I now assumed to be
John’s third roommate,
Had all had
Quite a good time.

“Well, I’ll see you next time,”
Paul said,
Now seeming
To be in a bit of a hurry
To get out the door
To wherever he was going out.

Hearing this,
John leaned back in his chair
From the living room
To poke his head
Around the corner
Into the hallway and say,
“You’ll be seeing him,
A lot more now,
Paul.
Cole’s going to be
Our fourth roommate.”

This must have been
The occasion
For my being
In New York,
I thought,
As John said this
As if it was news to me.

And that
Is the last thing
I can remember
From the dream.

Now I wonder,
Awake, as I write this,
If the memory
Of meeting Paul
For the first time
Was another dream
That I have had
Some other sleeping night
Out of my actual
Waking life.

Or, if it was a memory
Completely fabricated
Within that dream itself,
The one I have just had
And am now awake from,
Writing about it.”

For the feeling
Of having forgotten something
And then soon after,
Remembering all of a sudden,
Like a word on the tip of your tongue,
Or the name of an author
Whose book has come up in conversation

—That feeling
Was so real to me
In the dream,
That surely
That memory must come
From something else
At least as real
As another separate dream,
And not something so fickle
As a memory
Within a dream

—For then,
From what other world
Would come that memory?
A memory which has never
Seen the light
Of a real waking day
Nor the muddled dark
Of dreams
That are themselves
So often forgotten
But somewhere deep
In my subconscious
Are a subset of memories
Which I may never recall
As I remember things
While awake,
But may only ever recall
Within a dream,
Or not at all.

black

A black crow

Perched

On a black power line

With black

Clouds behind

Bodes ill, I fear

As if the day

Were not already

Dark enough

hot soup

Eating hot soup

On a cold day

I have to blow

On each spoonful

To cool it down

Which gives me time

To look out the window

And think

Between bites

bananas

A bunch

Of bananas

Ripen

All at once

So I’m eating

Only one

Perfectly ripe

While the few

Eaten early

Too green

And the others

Eaten late

Too yellow

With brown spots

looking at her

She looks up at me

And frowns

At my expression

I must look silly

Staring

As she sits

At the coffee table

Sipping her tea

And I just stare

Like I would

At the gallery

Unaware

That the object

Of my affection

Is looking back at me

upside down

In a yoga pose

Upside down

I see the world

Anew

Out the window

Tree branches

Become bushes

Planted

In the sill

A shaggy rug

Ceiling

And a chandelier

That looks

Like a couch

So now I know

That in order

To travel

I needn’t even

Walk out the door

But instead

Can stretch out

In downward dog

And look under

My left shoulder

To see a new world

Upside down

Ishmael

Ishmael says the world is not created for man. This is the creation myth our culture tells us. So too, I am not made for myself. This is the creation myth that my ego tells me.

I may be created for uses other than my own. Thinking of this makes me realize how selfish I have been.

the game of tag

To chase and catch

But not devour

The game of tag

Is primal

Prepared for bodies

That had to hunt

In order to eat

—Now,

It’s just a game

back patio

Chimes whine

In the wind

Blowing softly

Singing

The pin wheel

Patters

Leaves of trees

Rustle

Birds chirp

Neighbors

On the other side

Of the fence

Can be heard

Through screen doors

A sunny day

Spent lounging

On the back patio

grass track

Out on the lawn

I run in a track

Made by the mower

Between yellow lines

Four feet apart

Where the wheels

Killed the green grass

silent sheet

I put my ear

To the sheets

And listen

To the silent rustle

That says shh

All else

Is outside

Nonsense

And absurd

Far away

From here

age

Climbing stairs

In socks

My toes crack

And knees pop

Like a band

Playing a song

Called age

an old book

Sometimes you see the same book on a different shelf; the same book that you have on your own shelf back at home.

It’s been sitting there collecting dust, as its binding has become commonplace among the other books that you haven’t opened for a while. Their bindings become usual, like a painting is drawn across the face of your bookshelf, for long enough that it becomes like a barrier, dissuading you from taking any of the books off of the shelf, thus breaking the barrier.

And here is this same book, the same one that you have on your shelf at home. But here it is—the same book, on a different shelf, so there is no barrier. You take it and open it and, oh, the knowledge that you once knew. You rediscover a chapter of your life that has been closed for some time, almost as clearly as if it were yesterday.

reading before bed

At night

I lay up

And read

Later than usual

Turning pages

At the pace

Of her breathing

In bed

Next to me

The city

Still sounding

In the night

Outside

in the park

I can still hear

The birds chirp

In the park

A baseball

In the grass

As the sun sets

On the skyline

Easier here

To worry less

About the woes

I ran from

keep on

I start to feel

That I should stop

That the train

Has too much steam

That the snowball

Rolling downhill

Has gained too much mass

Or that I should at least

Slow down some

—But I’ve realized

The only way to slow

Is to stop

And the only way to stop

Is to end

And if I choose to end

At this age

I fear I’ll never

Begin again;

So I keep on

Opera

Boy and girl go to the opera on a first date. 

“Don’t you worry about bringing someone here on a first date?” She asked. 

He was struck by the question. “Why should I worry?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the date turns out to be not so good and then, well, then you’re struck at an opera!”

She said the word opera in a way that disclosed her feelings about it. 

“Ah, I see. Well for me, it’s the exact opposite. If the date turns out to be bad, then at least I can enjoy the opera.” 

He smiled at her when he said this, hinting gently at the possibility that the date could go bad, but he rather liked Rachel already, even though they had only met for the first time in-person just fifteen minutes ago. 

They were walking down the sidewalk wearing winter coats. Winters in Chicago were very cold. He wore a grey pea coat with the collar pulled up around his neck. He had his hands tucked into the pockets in both sides of the coat’s abdomen. She wore a fur coat and a scarf.  She had on black leather gloves. Her left hand held her purse and the other held his arm. 

“Have you ever had a bad date at the opera?”

She was still on the subject, it seemed. But this was a trick question, he knew. Not so much about the opera as it was about his recent dating history. 

“I did once, yes. She actually forced us to leave right in the middle. She wanted to go for a drink. So we went across the street for a drink. And then I said I had to be off because I had an early morning the next day. She wanted to keep drinking but I insisted. I don’t like drinking much anyway.”

They kept walking in silence for a moment. He studied her pause. That bit was important. He had avoided anything distasteful about the dating and revealed a few key pieces of information about himself. 

He carried on the conversation to avoid dwelling. “How long have you lived in Chicago?”

Like this, they walked and talked along Main Street. By the time they arrived at the opera house his shoulders were tucked up tight around his neck and her nose was bright red. They were glad to get indoors. 

The opera house was brightly lit. 

He marveled at the capabilities of a human voice. 

Like any great feat, it made him wonder about the capabilities of man more generally. His mind started to drift, but he pulled his attention back to the music.

time

Whole hours pass

Unnoticed

When I pay attention

To anything other

Than time itself

bistro chair

This metal-backed

Bistro chair

Makes no good

For sitting

Any longer

Than’s required

For a cup of tea

giving birth

I read it lazy like

Looking past particulars

Paying poor attention

Preferring to play

Privy to pondrance

Of short-sighted solutions

For the human condition

Appeased temporarily

By sex and violence

Ceasing to be

And becoming

Giving birth to all

That we ourselves

Hoped to escape

like the hare

For what does one wait

While wanting wanes

Though one may be

Strong and swift

At the start

Rejoicing in the sprint

Stretching muscles

Straight away

Until the end

Seems to stretch

Farther

And farther away

As the wanting

Which at first

Burned bright

As a fire

In an engine’s heart

Turns to ash

And cools

untitled

Between drapes

And cracked window

Peeks a nose

For a breath

Of fresh

Outside air

After hours

Indoors

Cooped up

fields of time

Perhaps perilous

Would pause be

For a picker

In the field of time

With only

A moment’s harvest

And drought

For a hundred years

Thereafter

branches in the rain

Branches bend

Burdened by rain

Their leaves

Dancing in the wind

Dodging drops

Dripping down

From leaves

Already laden

On branches above

praying for poems

It is in between naps

With my hands clasped

In between my legs

Laying on my side

My own

Praying posture

To look out the window

And listen

To the rainy Saturday

Voices and horns

Wet wheels on road

And thudded footsteps

In the apartment above

Make music and art

That I seek to capture

Laying here praying

For another poem

hanging picture frame

A picture in frame

I notice how hangs

Lower with time

Not on the nail

Where the frame

Stays sturdy same

But the paper inside

Pasted

Or however fastened

Loosely

Or seeming so

As it slides

Lower in frame

Disobeying

Its hanger’s wish

To hang in the middle

Of its father frame

That hangs steadfast

cars in the rain

Car wheels

Whistle and spit

While wet in the rain

Sounds slush and puddle

Whrrrrrrr

From off in the distance

Past our open window

And off again

Whrrrrrr’ing

As if the r’s

Grew smaller size

Softer, more quiet

Until silent

Farther off

hopes of spring

Outside our window

Stretch branches

Bare for months

When we too

Under duress of winter

Couldn’t stand

To sustain much more

Than ourselves

Now blossoming

Bits of green granting

To my bed laying head

Hopes of spring

To get out again

And grow strong

cars in a storm

Outside

Under eyes

Of soft storm

Slick tires

Skate across

Wet road

Wafting wind

Carried

Car noise

Shooting by

Slip

Sliding along

am i me

I do not need to persist in my own ways any longer

If I am to do this thing that is outside of me

And lives according to its own principles—

Such is the way to become anything other than what you already are

And to become is the only way to be, in a time-sensitive world

So that trying to bring forward in time, any part of you from the past, would be a fool’s errand

But we must not forget, that you too, are a part of what there is

So to say, that this is itself and you are yourself, ceases to be true upon you entering into it

And some people enter in so big that they end up accounting for more than half of what was already there

So the real question turns out to be, how big do you really think you are?

Are you big enough to enter in and bend to your young will what was already there and old before you?

Or are you small so that your only hope is to learn as fast as you can what it’s about and assimilate as best you can, even if that means losing whatever you were before.

In some cases, it is perceiving yourself as such which makes you big or small.

So if you walk in with your chest puffed out, you might just make it that way.

Or if you walk in with your shoulders slumped, then it’s already done, and there you are small.

In most cases, it seems a newcomer is proud enough for his first few entries to walk in with his chest puffed out.

Until he is beaten down, and his shoulders slump.

There is no right or wrong way, viewing it all at once, from the outside, from no particular set of eyes.

It is all there, in one form or another, changing sometimes, but it is all still there.

Regardless of the point of view of one seeing from his own perspective, wanting to be the one with his chest puffed out.

But forgetting this mist necessarily mean that there are others with there shoulders slumped.

And if you can start to see that point of view from the outside, then maybe you start to realize that it doesn’t matter much either way.

pass faster

It’s hard to write

so short-sighted

trying to survive

seeing only as far

as my next meal

or night’s sleep knowing

this too shall pass

as all that has before

but wanting it to pass faster

like the impatient child

I’ve always been

Radiator

The radiator wheezes

Like a weary asthmatic

Wanting for air

Drawing struggled breaths

From heated pipes

And seeming to be in pain;

I myself am thankful

At mid-morning

Having just drawn the drapes

To behold a cold outside

But inside

Feeling warm

From the radiator’s struggle

shadow

A shadow

In the corner

Of my eye

Seems a shape

So real

Until I turn

And watch

It disappear

Shadow ribs

Standing next to the light

That shows shadows

In my rib slants

Shirtless

Knees against the mattress

Staring

At myself in the mirror

With a sideways glance

Observing

Parts of my body

That I hadn’t noticed before

Trusting the decisions you made a while ago

It is often difficult to remember after much time has passed why you decided to do what you are now doing. Even if you had written it down in clear detail in a note, that note may have been lost. So it becomes important to trust the decision-making process of your past self.

As an investor, when the market is going through turmoil or your view has become contrarian, you must trust the decision of your past self in order to continue holding your position, as long as your thesis has not been fundamentally broken.

In choosing projects to work on, jobs to take, or relationships to enter into – it is the same. Because you cannot constantly be re-evaluating your “why.” Once you have made a decision you must be focused on the “what” and the “how” entirely, in order to succeed. In every moment you are so focused on the execution of the task, you are trusting that your decision to enter into said task was, and continues to be, a correct one.

Keep on keeping on

I like to be

Getting going

On my way

After all

There seems to be

Something still ahead

On the horizon

Over yonder

So long as I can

Just keep stepping

In that direction

I’ll be alright

Her heart

If the pulse

In my hand

On her chest

Is her heart

Or my blood

Become one;

I cannot tell

Who is who

Like roots

That run deep

Into soil

Sending life

Back and forth

Go on then

Do you see

These same things

That I see

Anymore

Simple as sure

No more words

Than three

To a line

Are needed

To describe

Something

So simple as sure

That I wonder

If you see

Anymore

Walking swiftly

You must have

Somewhere to be

Whither where

You might ask me

Don’t you see

Where I’m going

Pointing somewhere

Far away

I nod my head

And bow

To pick at the grass blades

Beneath my bare feet

Basketball

I saw a man

Bring a ball

Inside a backpack

To the court

Fenced all around

By chain link

In the park

On a Thursday

Just before sunset;

I watched him

Bend his knees

And shoot

Too real

Sometimes I see the world too real. I see that things are actually material and animated, driven by life forces. In a special moment, when not taken for granted, this seems to me truly incredible.

It becomes hard to keep on a conversation with someone as I start to marvel just at the fact that they are speaking and living and breathing in front of me, and I am such that I can, not only witness their life unfolding in front of me, but also interact, affecting their life with my own.

It becomes difficult not to suddenly exclaim as I realize this. I am sure I must have a glazed-over look in my eyes.

Stagnant

Sedentary

Starting to stagnate

Sitting inside all day

With the drapes drown

Sulking

So as to further feed

My worries

When an open window

Would do me so good

Ants

I sat on the step

And watched ants

For the better part

Of an afternoon

 

So many ants

On the sidewalk

Made it seem

Like the cement

Was moving

 

Made me realize

My troubles

Were not so bad

 

With my elbows

On my knees

And hands folded

Scowling

Despite the sun

Write what escapes

What I see once

On my walk home

And exclaim at

As a thing

Which ought be written

Though I can’t

In that moment

Muster the words

So I write nothing

And walk by

For days on end

Until finally

The sight strikes

With the right odds

When I can write

What has escaped me

All the days before

Rush hour

There’s this deep

City river gorge

Filled with yellow

Headlight fish

All swimming upstream

I can see here

On the hilltop

Standing sidewalk

With my hands in my pockets

On a night stroll

Watching the river of light

Pinch off into the distance

Wondering about

All the commuters

Just trying to get home

five faces

For all the five faces

Fighting for four

Fear holds most sway

Rapping at the door

Sadness slumps down

From his forlorn armchair

As haste steps forward

To swing wide open

Heedless and headstrong

Anger would surely

Slam the door shut

Though love lets all in

Welcome with open arms

And an enemy even

Cannot remain heathen

Happy in a hearthy home

Blessed

Often

I do feel fond

Of fancies

As I’ve had

 

Though

In moments

Of boredom

 

I’d sacrifice

Them all

For a chance

At change

Gratitude

Consider the many multitude

Of things which

You would rather not

Have happen

And at least for this

At any time

You might be thankful

Travel on

O’er in my memory

My mind has run

The now worn path

Of fine times past, indeed

 

So of this place

Where I’ve long stayed

As with all things

Which do arrive

Doth finally come

This time now

To take my somber leave

 

A thousand ways

In my old age

I’ve lived my younger days

 

If you could only

Promise me

One last thing

Before I go

 

To have as much

In memory, your own

When time for you

Doth come as well

To travel on

Lying on the floor

Lying

On the floor

Looking

At the ceiling

Seems to be

More simple

Than the life

I left outside

Needing

This nothingness

To wash away

My mind

Writing my dreams

A daytime nap

Marries the motion

And light

Of the waking world

With the wonder

And formlessness

Of dream

Wherein the middle

Poetry lives

Dancing

Back and forth

In wheelbarrows

Full of dream

Dug up in sleep

And delivered

To be re-planted

Here in my bed

Brain tree

Putting down roots

Staring at the ceiling

I like to lie

And look a while

At the ordinary

And its layers

Of interesting

Offered only

To eyes

Like rivers

Wearing away

With time

To watch patiently

The stony surface

Which eyes

With less time

Only ever see

On the outside

Unaware

Of the river bed

To be found

Cut beneath

Ceiling scar

The same section

Of ceiling

Has this shimmer

In the noon time

Which reveals

Its blemish

Of poor plastering

But maybe

On purpose

As an artist

Plastered it this way

Like a scar

That is beautiful

As it appears

To me now

Staring at the wall

Staring

Long enough

I start to see

The space

In between

Focusing

On each speck

Of dust

In the air

A gradient

Obscures

My vision

Of the original

Object

Of intent

Farther off

Desire

Sweet time

Slow enough

Such

Anticipation

Is part

Of the excitement

Building

Like all desire

Blinds us

To the past

And future

While we’re waiting

Impatiently

For something

Immediate

Like hunger

On the hunt

Or lust

On the way home

To bed

With another

And in many

Other

Much smaller

Ways

It’s that immediate

Promise

Of satisfaction

Moving us

Most the time

Grinding my teeth

Clenching my jaw

Unaware until

My bottom teeth

Meet the top row

Mashing

Like corn in a mortar

To dust, powder

Eventually

But not so soon

More slowly wearing

Waking me

In the night

With yet another

Symptom

Of my anxiety

Waiting for the bus

I check the time

At which the bus

Is supposed to arrive

And realize

That I have ten minutes

Left to kill

So I start to go about

Distracting myself

Stretching

Looking up

At the building tops

And people watching

Strangers

Until I run out

Of distractions

And venture a glance

At my watch

To find

I’ve only passed

Three of the ten

untitled

I take the backpack

Off of my shoulders

And feel relief

Immediately;

 

So much

That I think

Of leaving it there

On the sidewalk

Laptop and all

 

And continuing

On my walk home

Without it

Highs and lows

Just as I am

For certain

That it is all done

And gone forever

For sure this time

It all comes

Rushing back

Reviving me

Once more

To go on high

And then soon after

Subtly low

When I will again

Be for certain

Even more certain

Than the last low

That the revival

Will not come this time

Until it surely does

And I go back to soaring

Though I know

And of this, I am sure

There is one low

In which

I will lie for good

And not soar again

Walk some more

I come home

From a night walk

To let my dinner settle

And close the door

And put my keys in the basket

And start to take off my shoes

As I realize

I am not yet satisfied

And slip my shoes back on

And grab my keys

And open the door

To go back out

And walk some more

Couple walking

A smiling

Mustached man

Holding hands

With a beautiful girl

He’s telling a joke

One hand in his pocket

She’s laughing

Trying to keep up

As they walk

Nightime stroll

I go for a walk

At night

Slowly

Strolling

And see

So many things

That I miss

On my walk

To work

Rushing

In the morning

Old man

Looking through

A restaurant window

I saw an old man

Using a magnifying glass

To look at a menu

Simple

That simple man song

Keeps ringing in my ears

From Skynyrd and Thoreau

Louder than city buses

And conversations

In the apartment next door

I hear the simple silence

Louder than the city noise

Whispering to me

Up reading alone at night

Or deep into a hike

What if not to be

Is Shakespeare’s answer

And all of this

Has become too much

Counting seconds

Seeing as a second

Wasn’t long enough

Stretching now

For two or three

So time feels spent

Sufficiently

 

Whereas waiting

Wouldn’t do it

Doing had to be

Seeing newness

Touching other

Change it had to be

 

To feel alive

Past idle nigh

Now counting

One, two, three

Next stretch

As soon as a stretch

In that direction

Left me off center

I wasn’t either

Anymore

And after a while

In between

It started to seem

A new center

Comfortable

For the time being

At least until

The inevitable

Next stretch

Soon to come

Gratitude

Today, when I got home after work, I laid on the floor with my eyes closed for a long time. When I opened my eyes, the first thing I noticed was the ceiling light in the middle of the ceiling. The second thing I saw were my hands. I turned them over in the dim light of the one lamp I had turned on in the room. I exclaimed silently to myself about how amazing it was that my mind had complete control over these physical objects. And then I realized how happy I was just to be alive in that moment.

Shoulder kiss

In the dark

In the night

With my eyes closed

Redundantly

I reach out

Quietly, slowly

With my lower lip

To touch her shoulder

Having to lean

My neck forward

Until I find

Her soft skin

Hands

It seems to me that hands work harder

Than other parts of the body,

Though maybe only more, in variety

As the heart surely works always,

Albeit the same beat is all

Whereas the hand writes and works

And picks up and puts down and rubs

And sews and draws and kneads

And most other verbs

Whatever waxes

I reckless write

What comes at night

Waking lately

Makes me wobble

Whatever waxes

Wanes tomorrow

When I one time

See for three

So I learned to

Sleep with ease

Into a groove

The same things I’ve seen

For some time now

So my thoughts

Are mostly deja vu

Like the same lights

At the same times

And the same habits

Wear this groove deep

Where I’m happy enough to be

So subtly

This groove creeps deeper

Being worn

By my own passing

Back and forth

Over and over

For I enjoy it now

Almost completely

Except for the small fear

That the deep wear

Caused by my repeated enjoyment

Will make it difficult

To climb back out

And wear again

Elsewhere

untitled

You can’t think of nothing

Looking ‘round all the time

Restless and ready

To chase any rabbit

Down its respective hole

Stop and stay for a second

In the patch of grass

Where you are standing

Close your eyes and look up

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I get here, I “arrive”

Is the only way

I can describe it

Once I’ve had the right amount of coffee

And lasted through the brief period

At the onset

When I worry

I might have had too much

Giving my mind time to adjust

To a state it’s not used to

Like climbing a mountain

Huffing and puffing

Until you get to the top

And take deep breaths

As you see what you’ve climbed for

So it is sitting here

With my headphones in

And all that is happening

In the coffee shop around me

Is no different

Than a Wednesday

When I am rushing through

But today

On a Saturday

With some time to sit and think

It is all art

And curious to me

untitled

The orange awning

Outside the window

Blows in the wind

As I realize

Writing this

That “wind”

And “window”

Are similar words

Running in the city

You can’t go so loosely

Running amuck

As you would in the plains

In any direction

No matter

Flat and far enough

To run with your eyes closed

If you wanted to;

In the city

You must be careful

To obey the signs

And posted placards

Going your own way

Won’t take you far

untitled

letting words run as they will

like waking up a mass of clay

as haphazardly as thrown

on a potter’s wheel

just to have a starting point

and at least get something

out into the open

where it can at least be seen

and then shaped and refined

so better to have it out haphazard

just to get a start

rather than nothing at all

and refining thin air

and making the mind sick

by refining itself

for lack of anything else

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into the hundred thousand apartments

curated for mankind to invade a peninsula

with their buildings and restaurants

and cars and stoplights and commerce

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Sleepy somber sweet time notes

Leaving longer knee-high modes

Making mostly meager half rhymes

Seeking timbre needle thick lines

Needing no more they say lies

Singing one too many times

Age as motivation

I see age, and it makes me want to live faster. I see an old man with long white hair in the coffee shop. He walks with a cane and holds onto the counter. It seems like he has trouble seeing too. I wonder what it would be like to lose my own sight. I think of all the things I could no longer do. I must do them now! Quick, before it’s too late. Run! Get up. What are you doing sitting down in a coffee shop? You must use your youthful abilities while you still can.

More sleep night stuff

Dark as night

Except for sun

So when to wake

Is clear as day

Not for nocturnal

Lights at night

Never sleeping

Up early to find

Sleepy nighters

Still stumbling

Soon to bed

In the daylight

Not right

Can’t sleep

Sleepy man of slumber

I wonder wakey-eyed

Do you step

With extra pep

After many restful nights;

For me I cannot

Sleep at all

As wakeful as I am

Up till dawn

And on and on

I cannot rest

I’ll do my best

To shut my eyes again

So sleepy serious

I wonder waking

Will I be

The same he sleeping

Dreaming

Of other lives

Living them

So sleepy serious

Feeling their fears

Scared to death even

And excited at their joys

These others

That are not me

But still are

In some way

What keeps me

From waking

As one of them

I do not know

City symphony

Outside the window

In the morning

A song bird

Sings soprano

And a car horn

Beeps baritone

Slightly more symphonic

Than the city sounds

I am used to

Sleeping in

Sometimes

There is something to be gotten

Just sitting here

Lying in bed late

Waiting or postponing

Whatever was planned for you

Awake and out the door

Against that schedule

Structure

Serendipity strikes

Requiring

A non-staunch demeanor

For once

To lift your head

Off the pillow

Just long enough

To turn off the alarm

And return to a dream

More important than reality

Watching weather patterns

If only watching

Weather patterns

Carry cloud wisps

Away carelessly

Unbeknownst

To eyes without

Patience to watch

One point

Long enough to notice

That the clouds

Are actually moving

Albeit slowly

As eyes accustomed

To fast things

Will surely miss

While beach laying

In an effort

To slow down

Sober trip

Rubbing my eyes

I enter into

This outer space

An oxymoron

To go into

What leads out

Like the small door

In the Wonka factory

Or the key

To Wonderland

I chase after

With eyes for legs

Abstract patterns

Like fireflies

In the night

Of my closed eyes

Forgetting everything

Like being a body

In a shower

Noticing only

The bright yellow halo

With a black hole

In the center

Pulsing and blurring

Off into the distance

Of my vision black

I run harder

To intensify this vision

Of my own internal

Solar system

Of dynamic stars

That dance

As I rub my eyes

Accustomed to seeing

The real world

Mixed up

Offering apparitions

In a dark world

Of my own UFOs

Where I can play

Like a child

Chasing after

What I do not yet

Understand

Love burns

You fall in

Or you fall out

Either way

You are falling

As love does not

Take one

Or let one go

Easily

It is in heat

And then ice cold

By its very nature

Fighting for dog custody

An older lady

Crossing the crosswalk

Runs behind her dog

Holding the leash

Trying to keep up

Arm outstretched

Until she can’t

And let’s go

As the leash falls

And the dog is free

To sprint full speed

To meet a friend

—A man outside

Of the coffee shop

Holds out his arms

For the dog

To jump up

And say hello

Classic nap trap part 2

I am iffy

After a nap

Staring wide eyed

Woken

Too soon

From deep sleep

Jumped up

And almost fell over

Holding

My hands out

As stabilizers

Stumbling

Bumping

My shoulders

Against door frames

And hallway walls

Without my wits

About me

Classic nap trap

I woke up wobbly

Without my brain

When I realized

All of a sudden

That I was late

For a dinner date

And pulled on jeans

And snatched my coat

And slammed the door

And stumbled

Down the stairs

Shouldering the wall

For support

To catch the bus

And only when

I was finally seated

Did I get the chance

To be confused

About how to fare

In the fast-moving

Bright new scenery

Having been dreaming

Just moments ago

The above is the edited version.

The below is the original.

I woke up

Without my brain

Wobbly

Late

All of a sudden

I realized

For a dinner date

And walked outside

To catch the bus

Confused

And wondering

How to fare

In the new scenery

Having been dreaming

Just moments ago

Buried alive

I lie on a pebble beach

Arms outstretched

Grabbing fistfuls of pebbles

And covering my chest

In vain, as I breathe

And my chest expands

The pebbles fall off

To either side

Thinking hole

At the beach

With my friends

I went away

On my own

Over to the cove

And found

A little laying spot

And so I laid

Until I got caught

In a thinking hole

Then I came back

For my friends

To help me find

My lost mind

Rise and fall

With my fingers

Interlaced

Over my chest

Lying down

Breathing deeply

Through my nose

I can feel

The rise and fall

Of it all

Blue sky

Laying on my back

On a hilltop

In the Marin headlands

I focus on my eyelids

With my eyes closed

Squinting to vary

The abstract shades

Of blue I see

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The mood light

In the bathroom

Changes shades

Of mango

Cherry lime

While the shadow

Of the shower faucet

On the far wall

Remains black

Need to sleep

I cover up

My colored soul

With sheets

To sleep

In the night

Woken

Wanting to

Start the day

But it’s too early

Needing to

Defer to dream

A little longer

Woken to write

I wake up

To write poetry

Like that must be

Why I’ve woken

With a full subconscious

Spilling over

Out of my ears

And onto my pillow

Wetting my cheeks

Waking me

Blanket in bed

I am cold

In bed

So I add a blanket

Then I am not

So I push the blanket

Halfway down

Then I am cold

So I bring it back

Up a quarter

Then am hot

So I get up

To gather

A thermometer

And ruler

To measure exactly

Sad

Why feel sad

I don’t know

I just do

Well stop

I say to myself

But I can’t

Not that easy

Feeling frustrated

It is not that simple

Like work

That I can work harder

In order to solve

To feel better

I wish it was

Then I would work

All the time

To feel better

Material light

A speck of light

On the floor

In the night

Looks like something

More than light

Material

So I step over

In the hall

To avoid

Stubbing my toe

Realizing

It is only light

By the shadow

On my shin

Choppy waters

Out in the ocean

I can see

From the hilltop

The water is drawn

With white lines

On a windy day

Not so glassy calm

As most mornings

I’ve climbed atop

This here hill

How old men walk

I’ve noticed that old men always walk with their hands behind their back. Usually one hand is grabbing the wrist of the other. They’re slightly  hunched over, watching the ground in front of their steps. This posture has always struck me as pensive.

untitled

I watch the wi-fi

Tower lights flicker

Next to the bookshelf

In our apartment

And wonder if

Those waves go

All the time

And if they might be

Unhealthy

Buildings dance in the wind

The wind today

Is so powerful

Silent

For the most part

Blowing as usual

Until a big gust

Musters up

All at once

Even the buildings

Lose their footing

And creak

As they lean over

Happy Sunday

I think of myself

As if looking

From up above

And the expression

That I would wear

While laying here

How would a painter

Paint this smirk

Of contentment

How wonderful

On a Sunday morning

To sleep in

Baby on my arm

Breathing softly

And white sheets

Perfectly warm

While the wind

Blows outside

I wear this smirk

With my eyes closed

Staying silent

Breathing through my nose

Sounds that keep me up

Outside the wind howls

Cars go by

Some shouts from who knows

Inside the radiator whistles

The fridge whirs

The walls creak from the wind

Sheets rustle—

These are the sounds

That keep me up

Love you too babe

Standing in the bathroom

Putting lotion on my face

Tapping my foot

To the sound of the shower

Water splashing

On the other side of the curtain

I said aloud “I love you”

And from the other side

Of the white curtain

Came a cute hand

Along with the words

“I love you too babe”

Spooky light

A green light gotten gantry straddles the bathroom door to lift up the ceiling and allow in some more grim spooky Halloween mood that goes with the green slimy swamp like expecting to see a skeleton or something floating in the bath water

Work life balance

I get sick and congested

With my office life

Blowing old allergen air

Through the HVAC system

Suffocating in my desk chair

Shielding my eyes from the screen

As low as I can get the brightness

Eventually having to hold my breath

And barely escape on a Friday

When I can snort and hock a loogie

To finally take a deep breath

Of fresh weekend air

And say how I feel

Not holding my tongue

Only for profit

And what my boss allows

And stretch out

Of that ninety degree seated posture

Light passing through

Light passing through

Like a shadow lantern

Let on from street light

Between tree branches

And fire escape rails

Tinted by window glass

Cut in eighths by drape

Entering our bedroom

Making a movie for me

Falling asleep watching

The walls come to life

New shadow

A shadow I don’t

Normally see

Separated in half

At the wall’s height

Halted only by

Intersecting ceiling

So far as candle flame

Keeps light left

And right of lamp shade

Monster trash truck

The trash truck outside

Sounds like a force

To be reckoned with

Mechanical monster

Clanging the can

Banging it back and forth

Shaking out its contents

Like a culprit for answers

Or a debtor for spare coins

Then crushing it all

It’s trash anyway

But consuming is fun

So the trash truck bangs on

An object in motion

What speed goes so fast

As I head off

Hurtling downhill

Into the afternoon

And straight past 5

With my fingers in my hair

Trying to shampoo out

My thoughts in the shower

And wash them down the pipe

With hot tea to relax

I can’t stop going lately

And part of me loves it

Like an object in motion

Happy to stay moving

Having gotten to this speed

Seeming almost

Not to require energy

To maintain the breakneck

Though I fear the force

That will halt my hurtle

And possible break everything

At some point down

The non-now worry road

Go with what you’ve got

Go with what you’ve got

Getting after all or not

Not needing much

To muddle with mundane

So much sometimes

Bordering on the insane

Inane enough to notice

Not twice but thrice

That you were off your rocker

Off indeed and down stream

Drowning at times

If not for the nine cat lives

Keeping you above the surface

Or at least quickly erasing

Your memories of death

Like the lives we live waking

Returning from dreams

Which we’re certain, are not real

Unless something uncanny

Recurs into your reality

Forcing you to remember

When that had happened

Like deja vu, or a past life

Unsure of which and why

You cannot tie or trace

The beginning and end

Of an endless race together

Knowing only that you must run

And never stop

For as long as you are breathing

Heaving after, lurching

Lunging for what you see

Or to stay ahead of others

Everyone has their reasons

Expect for those who stop

And even turn around

Causing perplexion

On the faces of those passing

Who will still not turn themselves

As long as there are still more going

In their direction

Like a school of fish in a current

We are all just passing by

Idle my sigh not for me

No not for me

For I enjoy this race

And run with pleasure

Until my lungs burst

Here come the good smells

A sliding car door

Opens and shuts

A van must be

Bringing pastries

For the bakery

Downstairs

At 3:53am
A sliding car door
Opens and shuts

A van must be
Bringing pastries
For the bakery

I will smell them
When I open the window
In the morning

The steak I ate too late

I wake up in the middle of the night, I think because of the steak I ate too late before bed. I have this energy now, as I digest, keeping me up. At first I am annoyed, wanting to get back to sleep. But then I think, I might as well take advantage of this energy and spend some time waking now, and then surely tiredness will come again, once I’ve digested and used up the energy.

The split in the drapes

The drapes that cover the floor-to-ceiling window in the living room, are separated just barely, like the split in a log that appears as the axe is first wedged in, but before the two halves completely separate. The split in the drapes is slightly wider at the bottom, so more yellow light gets through there, and onto the white rug. Light from passing cars gets through the narrower part of the split at the top. This light is dynamic and animates the room as the car passes. It’s shape depends on the part of the split it is passing through. And it’s position on the wall depends on the cars motion. As the car is coming from the west on California, the slim light starts above the dorm or way to the kitchen, and then travels over the bookshelf and desk until it is above our bed and then disappears because of the angle once the car is too far east. This is the closest thing I’ve got to a motion picture, since we moved the television into the closet last week.

Meditation about meditation

As I mediate, I stand with the point of my nose touching a surface that is black as night. The surface is like a wall that extends as far as I can see in all directions. If I only look forward, there is only this black. If I look side to side, I can still see some of the world outside of this black in my peripherals. I can see some light and non-black colors reflected on its surface. This is at the beginning. For as I breathe, with my eyes focused forward, looking “at” the black, I start to see “into” the black. Then my nose starts to permeate the black surface, as I take long, deep, and even breaths. The non-black colors in my peripherals narrow on each side of my field of vision until my eyes are completely submerged in the black. My nostrils and mouth and breathing are also in the black now. My whole focus becomes this black world that is beyond the surface, like it is to see the surface of water from far away and only be able to see it as a sheet of one color, until you are submerged beyond the surface and see all the sea life and depth underneath which contribute to the surface color. In the black I start to see mirages – abstract shapes of varying colors and textures, often moving off into one direction and eventually out of sight, like odd, slow shooting stars. I am not sure whether these are real or just my mind playing tricks on me. Perhaps memory scars of the lighted world that I left behind the black surface. I strive to step deeper into the black, but it is a viscous atmosphere, even more so than sludge, like rock that I can only move through very slowly, and by remaining focused on my breath. Otherwise, if I began to lose focus, I am pulled back out of the black. Sometimes I teeter back and forth, on the verge of the black, at the point where my eyes are just on the surface, and some of the lighted world remains on my peripherals. I wonder what it would be like to step all the way into the black and then turn completely around, so that instead of looking into the black from the outside, I would be looking back out at the colored world from the inside, with my nose pressed against the surface of a multi-colored world. But that would take much focus and time, to step into the black world and turn completely around. It might take days of meditation.

working too much

People in my dreams tell me I look tired. I wake up and wonder if I am working too much. It is 4 AM so I try to go back to sleep. I sleep until 5 AM but then cannot sleep anymore. I wake up and get dressed while my girlfriend is still asleep. I fumble for my things in the dark. I step out of my apartment and start to walk on the sidewalks that are empty. I prefer it this way, but I do wonder if I am working too much.

Watch man

Whereas I once

Would have rather

Left it at home

Preferring to be a boy

Ignorant of that number

To which the hand points;

I have since become

A watched man

Watching all the time

Alley worship

At the end of a long little bit Alli Lough let Lough let Alli a man on his hands and knees on a cardboard Matt bows waving his arms shouting like he is worshiping not to a God I don’t think a guy that would’ve put him in this alley in his dirty clothes just something else probably if you made of his imagination maybe inspired by drugs maybe you’re just being in the alley too long I have to emphasize how long the alley is and it’s a dead end at the end I say this because he is so far away from everyone that is walking by the mouth of the alley on the sidewalk is very low and having a zone momentI wonder how long he’s been down there and if anyone has visited or maybe he chose to be alone on purpose for his worship

edited:

At the end of a long low lit alley a man on his hands and knees on a cardboard mat bows waving his arms shouting like he is worshiping, not to a God I don’t think, not a God that would have put him in this alley in his dirty clothes. But something else, maybe made up by his imagination, maybe inspired by drugs, maybe just from being in the alley too long.

I have to emphasize how long this alley is and it’s a dead end at the end. I say this because he is so far away from everyone that is walking by the mouth of the alley on the sidewalk. He is very alone and having his own moment.

I wonder how long he’s been down there and if anyone has visited or maybe he chose to be alone on purpose for his worship.

Broken wheelchair

I saw a man
On the sidewalk
Laying on his side
Beside
A broken wheelchair

One wheel
Was detached
And he was tinkering
With the part
Of the chair
Where
The wheel connects

One of his feet
In a cast
Was laid out
Far enough
Into the bike lane
That bikers
Had to swerve
To avoid

All considered
He did not seem
As stressed
As I would presume
Of a man
In a wheelchair
That is missing
One of two wheels

Tinkering
With the wheel
With the same disinterest
That one would surf
Channels on the TV
In their own home

me

Anything that starts out

With I as the object

To which the attention

Of my poetic diction

Has turned

Is bound to be

More subjective

Than an actual object

Outside of myself

(Like a cloud or a car)

To which readers can

More easily relate

Unless I can make myself

Objective enough

For readers to see me

As themselves

Writing makes things make sense

Putting things into words makes thoughts or feelings makes sense in a way you didn’t even know they could. In your mind I think feelings take on a form in a language that is only yours in your own heart or head. Writing forces you to translate those feelings into language that is common and relates to others and the rest of the world around you—and therefore makes your feelings seem immediately more rational and objectively understandable, or at least more fleshed out.

Gratitude for health

I am sick

Sound and central

Swept away

After who knows

How long

Healthy as can be

Forgetting

As I always

Eventually do

After some time

Just after

A period of sickness

That I am grateful

As I should be

For the health

God grants me

Sunday nap

I wake up

From a Sunday nap

At 6:49

And for a second

Am not sure

If it is night still

With the drapes drawn

Or morning

I ask the clock

But he will not say

AM or PM

I draw the drapes

And the amount of cars

Looks like

It could be either

Like a skier

In an avalanche

Supposed to spit

To find

Which way is up

I am unsure

Traffic noise

There are periods of peace

Sitting on the street corner

While cars on both sides

Are waiting

Until the light changes

And engines rev

And some honk

To get the ones

Not paying attention

To go

And peace resumes

Once they’re gone

Until the next light

Cafe chair

On a chair I sit

Outside of the cafe

I wonder how many

Have sat here before

Some vagrants

Others, patrons of the cafe

It is sunny today

And this seat

Is a nice place to be

Hippie surfers

They’ll all find some day

Found things lost time ago

Take a cycle to repeat

Trending up and down

Rearing their headed crest

Above the horizon

So the mainstream can see

And all behind is hidden

When the surfers swam out

Far enough beyond

The crest headed wave

Will have the ocean

Dark blue and deep sky

All to themselves

Until that wave crest crashes

Where the mainstream can see

And a few more will venture out

Building tops

Where building tops
Meet sky
In a fine line
That defines
The clear distinction
Between our
Complicated world

Balconies, parapets
Window sill, frame
Glass, trim, terrace
Fire escape, chipped paint

And the heavens
Always there
Much simpler
And promising
In my opinion

Free grass

In the backyard of houses in the Marina neighborhood in San Francisco, I see tiny plots of grass that are hundreds, maybe thousands, of dollars per square foot, in terms of real estate cost. When there are plots of grass 100 times larger occurring naturally in nature, completely for free.

Stage fright (1/22/20)

I perform better under vigilance from others with feats involving strength whereas sometimes self-conscious like with speaking I can do better alone or at least I perceive hard to hear myself as I ramble on wondering about the push from others in some regards and in others hand clammy getting nervous can’t so much as utter a word stage fright if only I could lift the podium off the stage and toss it into the crowd I could do that just fine

I think only of production (1/21/20 3:09am)

I think only of production often times I can’t even access parts of my brain associated with pleasure from normal waking hours before something in my hunting cortex pushes a to-do list in front in part do to my being male and in other part due to making to-do lists in the first place about which I am encouraged to obsess over by various pressures so that when I wake up at three in the morning the order of things which I think about is I need to use the bathroom I am thirsty and then thirdly not but a few seconds after having had a drink the to-do list enters and working begins as soon as waking energy begins I realize this because the weekend before this Tuesday I was ill and forced to think only of my health and realize again what it is to live in the present and enjoy without planning for the future — for this reason, I was actually enjoying being sick as dreams inspired by idle reading returned to my sleeping hours and passive curious thoughts after hours of laying in bed and staring at the white ceiling and wondering only about what was slowing right then without energy to do anything more

Harmony

Sometimes

the sounds around

harmonize

with the music playing

from the speaker—

the honk outside

matches a high pitch

or the door lock

clicks right when

the cymbal crashes

Good art vs. great art (01/19/20)

I think one of the differences between good art and great art is that good art is enjoyable once you’re already in the mood that it was created for—like club music when you’re drunk or academic writing when you’re up early drinking coffee.

Great art gets you into the mood whether you’re already there or not. You could be sitting at your desk at work in the afternoon and read a great poem and all of a sudden you’re transported to an emotional state where you’re almost crying.

For good art, you have to be there already. Great art takes you there.

Tea color

I stand and watch slowly

As the tea color turns

Hibiscus light pink

To darker blood red

In boiled pot water

laying in bed

In a posture

I thought of moving

Observing each part

Thinking

If I move this

That way

Or bend that

This way

But ended up

Laying still

And falling asleep

Like I was

sitting by the fire

A little lick

Of lantern light

Leftover from the furnace

Frolicking

With burning branch

Smoldering in earnest

Warm palms rubbed

Cheeks

Covered up

Sitting

By the fire

re-create

Sometimes I try to re-create a time or place when or where I was creative so I go back to the same coffee shop and drink a cup of coffee and sit in the same seat and look at the same window, but it doesn’t come. Creativity is never the same, otherwise it wouldn’t be creative. So an artist must always be exploring, going to new places with her eyes wide open. Sometimes you can even find creativity in an old place if your eyes are open wide enough. This is why success for an artist is somewhat different than anything else. With most things you can find a routine or a set of repeatable steps define success over and over again. With art you must always be changing

afraid to die

I’m most afraid to die when I feel most alive. And I feel young and full of energy, like all of life is ahead of me, then I am afraid for it to end. When I am closer to death, sick or feeling old and spent, then I am less afraid. Sometimes I am in pain and the pain of death seems like it would be lesser than what I am experiencing. I feel that I have less to lose. The fall would not be as great from an already low state, whereas when I am up high it would be a long way down.

sick day

Laying at home

On a workday

In a suburban

Part of the city

It is loud

In the morning

As everybody

Gets up

To catch the bus

And go downtown

Leaving me here

To lay

Come lunchtime

It grows quiet

don’t fight the seasons

Don’t fight the seasons. Go with the cold depressed wet rain. Run into the gutters and beneath the city like the plastic wrapping on a food item thrown away without any ability to pick itself up like a responsible wrapper and throw itself away just running with the rain. Lay down and let the cool winter air come in your nostrils at night and the muffled city noises come through your walls and into your ears. Let the radiator hiss now, for this is its life, quiet dormant and seemingly dead all through summer. The seasons have been forged over the years of a natural undulation of a frozen slow down sleepiness for things to hold form and stay where they are focused and rigid and indoors if possible while the summer will come to let all those out who have been cooped up and cold and will run amuck for long enough to sweat out hibernated calories and gather new ideas that can be seen in the bright light but only captured in the morning winter dark of a study with paper and pen in hand. Don’t fight the seasons. Let them take you.

untitled

I’m a shell of a human

after I’ve emptied

into my art

outpouring all I’m worth

forgetting

there is still

life to live

after this

some things i see

an empty
open
iPhone box
laying
on the ground
next to
a trash can

a neon sign
that says LAUNDRY
with the D
hanging
just slightly off

a man
in a suit
and scarf
walking
while talking
on his phone

a man
with his hood up
walking
on the crosswalk
ignoring
the red hand
telling him
to wait

the snowflakes
on the light poles
lit up white
leftover
from christmas

speech to text on 1/11/20 walking home after the coffee shop

I go out early in the morning to get nice and caffeinated like most people my age do in the night time out to the bars to get nice and drunk and then stumble home with someone is there for Mozart in love after lock on weekdays at work warehouse for me it’s more about the coffee and the caffeine in the early morning when you can still change to do in the crisp cold dark there and being one of the first people to a coffee shopThen by 10 AM it’s back to a normal world everyone awake and going about their day so I scrambled back home to be on my own and read and write until the early afternoon

Figuring out now that I can talk to my AirPods without even having to pull my phone out of my pocket

Walking home in early January how’s the gas station that’s empty year that I’ve seen it before things have been slow the start of this year it seems holding eggs with bacon in my backpack going home from the coffee shop to cook breakfast with baby glasses slipping down my nose shoes scuffing on the sidewalk one lace hanging out loosely left hand in pocket past peers

use AirPods to make speech to text content. Become an art tech start up yourself. The key is editing. You can mass-produce the content with the technology. It’s just a matter of being discriminatory to find the good content

Siri

I imagine reading this like Siri does, fast and run-on without inflections at the right points in the sentence—but she’s learning, and getting better.

sexual art

An artist’s art ain’t as good when there’s a good-looking girl around. His sexual and creative energy gets into thinking about that instead of into what he’s making.

left ear louder

i feel a little off center

like my left ear lags

my right hearing louder

leaking out sound somehow

past the bud before the drum

i take out my AirPods

and case them to check

but upon re-inserting

realize it is just me

side sleeping

as i try to lay

flat and orthodox

looking up

at the ceiling

breathing

through my nose

i lay abstract

and off-center

spine twisted

like a wet rag

ringing out water

with one shin

straight

the other bent

and crossed over

shin bones

crossed over

hand over

half of heart

sloping down

rib cage

pelvis slanting

to the side

forearm slipping

underneath skull

other hand

between thighs

can only sleep

on my side

as hard as i try

to lay flat

her roar (1/7/20)

i put my ear

to her back

and hear

at night

what i can only describe

as a roaring

going on inside

it seems

all the time

like you would

put your ear

to a sea shell

and hear the ocean

inside

but with her

is the fiery inside

of a furnace

like a train engine

that a brusque man

with his sleeves rolled up

feeds coal

with a shovel

or the white noise

of space

if you were hurtling

very fast forward

and wind was whipping

past your ears

all this energy

inside

of her sweet silent

sleeping small body

high highs (1/6/20)

i know now not to ride the highs too high holding on past stratosphere onto space where i’m alone smiling looking around wondering who’s here in the black silence only do i realize after the bright light of the booster flare fades that i’m all alone in my ascent and look earthward for who i left already falling

a poem that rhymes

a little late
up at night
feeling light
and lifted

dreaming dreams
of prior scenes
i didn’t know
existed

hoping though
that see and sew
sad stories
still be told

since dreams of life
from younger years
now fearing
to get old

a dream of childhood

in a dream, i was in class with my little brother’s childhood friend, christian. i was still the age i am now, while christian was the age i remember him—about 7 or 8 years old. i must have been acting as a teacher’s aide in his kindergarten class. at first, he was asking me whether he could bring a baggie or cookies to school. i told him that he should ask his mom or his teacher. he said they already told him no. they wanted him to eat healthier snacks like raisins and nuts. i told him he should probably listen. then he told me that he would just bring the cookies anyway and just sneak them at his desk when nobody was looking. i thought of telling him that’s what i would do when i was his age, but decided against it. next, the class was taking a spelling test. i was seated at one of the desks next to christian. there were about twenty other kids in the class. they all had their eyes closed. the teacher was going around the room taping up cards with letters on them. i gathered that she was spelling out a word that the class had attempted to spell on their tests (this way they could see if they had gotten it right). i watched this like a person out of place, bewildered at first, and then studying, trying to understand. when christian opened his eyes, he looked at the cards that were taped up. “got that one,” he said. i watched him make a check mark next to the word on his test paper. at that point, i wasn’t sure who i was anymore. was i christian’s age? was i a student in this class? the table’s turned and i started to ask christian questions. “should i be taking this test?” i asked him. “probably,” he said. and pointed with the pink eraser end of his pencil to a stack of papers in the middle of our desks. i grabbed one and a pencil, and then started listening to the teacher and looking around to try and gather what the words were that i had missed. it was right then that i started to feel out of place. i wondered, wait, who am i? what day is today? i remembered that i own an iPhone. and i thought, “oh shoot, what day is today?” i reached in my pocket to check my digital calendar. a feeling of dread came over me as i feared i might have missed my flight back to san francisco. then i woke up, back into my adult life, at 2:25am on monday morning. i felt relieved that i hadn’t missed my flight and wasn’t late to anything or out of place. i was just in bed waiting to go to work in the morning.

speech-to-text back and forth between apartment and laundromat 1/4/20

walking so fast I can’t say one way or another what I see clearly wanting for some clarity supposed to be separating safe from dangerous getting somewhere to satisfy hunger finding love of forcing me on primal being the main driver but being able just briefly on a Saturday like today to walk on Fillmore Street before noon sun shining in every darn thing looking gosh darn perfect that dog leashed to a traffic meter majestic that bookstore with all the books I would never want to read on its shelves each restaurant and café serving all the foods that I would want to eat every person I passed smiling seeming like they want to have a conversation with me and having all these thoughts that I wish I could share with the moments when my creativity Waynes But needing now just to get down as much as I can and bottle up this feeling or at least put it in art to remember a gosh darn great Saturday like today

I want to find her gray hairs fondly for her to see that there’s not much time and understand why I believe it now is the time to live and we must press on and not relax too much laying in bed all day need to get out and go while we still can for what seems good and satisfying on its face is sticky and alluring slowing you down seeming to go slowWhile really proceeding quickly to old age

I like a little let loose crazy longing for the void only after some time structured set in my ways and nailed down long enough to let sit like clay in the oven or metal in the mold just to be cast back into the fire and barely kept form melting to reshape refusing to stay same sending forth like a god trying to be many and eventually all once obliteratedAnd nothing anymore

swearing to myself to stay sober so as to avoid a sudden left off like last night leaving earth so suddenly that I look down it is only a marble not even the oceans able to be distinguished from the land forgetting everything I knew out here in the black space void truly creative having nothing to draw from like God before originClosing my eyes and making something out of nothing but if I am truly being honest what comes behind the black clothes dies was for another life still like the God that came before ours

Pumped full of fumes filling my Freudian with fear feeling that it is really the end this time having run on planes for so long looking up towards the sky not expecting to step and land on soil no longer falling framed by the cliff face falling is all that is leftAfter plane running and before jagged rock crashing

Knowing when to stop not the morning no that is the time to go after a restful night for the energy rise with the sun at work getting into it and excited waiting to go on even for getting lunch but at some point must slow down must eat rest and relax and get ready for nightfall when the natural energy leaves and must slope down into sleep if the same cycle is to repeat itself tomorrow

if you get to work producing too much at once then Sam gets lost and might have even been better off not produced in the first place the two worlds work together preservation and production producing when energy is available to be spent and even benefits the system as a whole to be spent rather than conserved but sometimes need to conserve like needing to rest at night If only we had something as simple as the sun rising and setting to instruct us went to work and went to rest and all other areas of life

it should be done by now having had ample time to dry the timer telling me this chiming in go and check it says someone may be there waiting with their wet clothes counting on you to come timely like I say what I said a timer if you were going to wait anyway

seeing

seeing clearly

i have to stare

for some time

to make sure

what i’m seeing

is really there

washing my hands

shaking my hands

washed

spattering drops

in the metal basin

making music

rain

all at once

stop

then spatter

and start again

two machines, one broken

the one with my sweatpants

wasn’t working

two washers going

side by side

one clearly working

wet water splashing

suds bubbling

while the other

its brother to the left

spinning uselessly

waterless

wasting

four dollars

and seventy five cents

speech-to-text after walking home from the coffee shop 1/4/20

I think I have to relax I’ve worked too much then relax and lay in bed all day and realize why I work avoiding lethargy boring listlessness in the idle dark and quiet with only my thoughts that get to go too far on their own and need to get back to work again to think of something other than nothing

I’ve got a good coffee high going so I can’t stop myself from running on the way home just to see new things faster I startle an old man walking with his hands Behind his back slow spooked to see me turning every which way at the street corner bouncing up and down waiting for the light to change

That’s just not true what you repeat to yourself having heard once and at some point believing From the repeating having forgotten the original lie Intel a collision with what’s really reminds you

getting older

on a stool at the coffee shop

sharing a wooden table

with an older man

next to me

drumming my fingers

and bobbing my head to music

he glances sideways

disapprovingly

he cannot take away

my energy

other than

by my becoming

him someday

your name

I hear your name called

at a coffee shop

by the barista

waiting for someone else

that is not you

to pick up their order

though i wish it was

you

can’t possibly be you

I know that

but still can’t resist

turning around in my chair

hopefully

more SOC at the coffee shop 1/4/20

You start to say things like surely more sure of yourself with the unspoken seal of certainty granted to those that have grown older or for some other reason regarded by society as being more sure of themselves like a child regards her parents

blue slug bug

an old light blue slug bug

(and i mean old

like 20 or 30 years)

waits at the lights on sacramento

hoping to cross fillmore

if this light will ever change

moving back and forth

over the thick white line

that is supposed to separate

cars waiting at the light

from pedestrians crossing

the slug bug moves

back and forth like this

i presume because

its transmission is manual

unable to press on the brake

i don’t know

how manual works

owing to this bug

being older than me

having grown up with automatic

and never learned manual

like my dad told me

now far away from that

watching this

through the window

of the coffee shop

where i work on my laptop

more modern than my dad ever imagined

watching the manual transmission slug bug

through the window

stream of consciousness at Peet’s coffee shop on Fillmore 10:08am 1/4/20

i think there’s something about it being strung out and straight on so you can’t catch your breath reading until you gasp and choke for air trying to get on to one more word and then once you think you can’t go no more then one more still because it’s that good and will cease to all be the same run-on if you stop to breathe (i’d like to write a piece one day that runs on so good i’ll get lost and read it run on like this and overcome even my instinct to breathe and lay there on my deathbed reading it right to the end)

everything collided so perfectly in that time after which now it is only worthwhile looking back longing with less to be gotten from the present it seems compared to thinking back in my imagination on that past good time which may be me getting older and the best behind me so i wonder if this in between turning twenty five is the time to start looking back or if there is still more to look forward to

I published this in the moment I wish I would have because I don’t think art happens over time more editing overthinking less of what was once natural coming out as art in the first place because that is what you thought or felt and that is the art right there as soon as it comes out like a live performance and anything after that is manufactured

tea affecting me

I think its when I start to think that I’m supposed to feel something that I feel at all otherwise just going along thinking mostly and acting instinctually unless I do something like drink a tea that’s supposed to affect me and all of a sudden I’m wondering has it hit me yet looking at my hands more closely and putting my palm over my chest to feel my heart beat asking am I sad happy excited calm when it’s really just an herbal non-caffeinated tea and I’m doing this all on my own

how i write

I don’t usually write sitting down, and I almost always write on my iPhone, by sending text messages to myself. I’ll write on the bus on the way to work, in line waiting for lunch, at a concert holding my phone above the crowd—pretty much anywhere I’m inspired. I write in that very moment.

blunt tooth

v1:

i tongue this tooth

in my top row

touching

its blunted point

worn down

by my crooked bite

v2:

i tongue this tooth

in my top row

blunted by

my crooked bite

tonguing over

its point

sharp previously

now worn

new year’s eve trip 12/31/19

already i feel it
fall away
on the outside;
or, rather,
the need 
to call it
outside, other
than myself
for my skin
has melted away
joining
my true inside
with everything else

k and i
clear away
the teardrop tables
from the rug
in the living room
so we can play
while we take apple
on new year's eve

childish
things matter
less to me
than seemingly 
is so
as the adults say

starting to see
visuals
on my phone screen

shadows 
seem to me
striking

my face
feels like
a picasso

you just
can't capture
the trip;
i wish
we could,
but i can't

i have
to get my art
and hold it
within myself
long enough
until i can
give it to her

I used to think I needed fruit for inspiration and creativity. 
Now, tripping, I realize I have developed a creative system for my sober life. 

I like apple because it's a fair fruit.
On oranges, there's only up, until one big down.
On apples, there are ups and downs throughout. 

I think deeply about the need to spend time with others. 
How many others? Just one? Just your love.
Or more? How many then? Family too? And friends?
How many are needed to make a man happy? 
More than just himself?
As I sit here, having chosen to stay inside and trip,
on New Year's Eve,
instead of going to a concert with my friend Zach.

senses that feel
the foam edge
of pillow
where does
my hand meet
start and stop
stretching feet
yellow streaks
on white paper
the distinct drop
of water
from bath faucet
amid classical
playing
from the speakers
streaking
all colors
clear at once
then jumbled
eyes closed
off into anywhere

the pen rolls off
of the notepad
paper laying
on my lap
startling me
as the pen
rap-rap rolled
across paper
with the clip
rap tapping

it could be
anyone
me and you
you me
playing parts
'parently 
another
stepping in
unbeknownst
to the other

instead of homeless
we could say streetmore

scribbling 
i need some
inspiration 
to get started
so i just
start to scribble
and if i keep scribbling
words will eventually form

all these emotions
experienced on apple
show to me the heights
of what's possible 

you see
some things
that are real
and others
that aren't

convincing yourself
that it's just because
you're tripping

i look at things
a little more closely
when i have the time
noticing finer details
like small imperfections
in white paper
or the perforation
along the edge 

sometimes
my legs shrug
to say 'oh well'
just like
my shoulders do

untitled

i often had

to settle down

and listen

to what i was

being told

or else

i would let loose

into a mess

final approach

we are on

our final approach

to san francisco

says the pilot

as the plane

slants downward

and my stomach

presses into

my seatbelt

i get

a little scared

beautiful sunset

a beautiful sky

passed through

all colors

of the unspeakable palette

unwriteable red

right there

on the window

phosphorescent

between white clouds

and unseen upward

blue sky

that meld in the middle

neon orange

yellow in the center

glowing

gets me

shimmering golden

like it can’t be

at a time

when i am most glad

not to be blind

 

cut at odd

perfect angles

by cloud coverage

 

red ready

to wage light war

on the white

purple battleground

 

some turquoise even

i think it’s turquoise

made by what two colors

i don’t know

 

like a life giving light

all colors i swear

that i’ve ever seen

too shy

a poem i write

while sitting next to

a lady on the plane

as her and i both

admire the sunset

at six in the evening

landing in san francisco

i think of showing

the poem to her

but decide not to

dome sky

above the clouds

the sky

opens upward

like a dome

large enough

to see only one side

and no top

but a dome

certainly

for the fact that i

can look all around

and up

and still see

calm

calm

palms resting

hands folded

on my

belly breathing

reclined

in my chair

relaxing

untitled

faltering forward

from one fear

to the next

for lack

of some

satisfaction

short-lived

between fears

right the first time

i start in the night

wondering

if i wrote it that way

repeating

the write way

in my mind

out of bed

leafing through pages

looking

for the one

to scribble out

and write correctly

what came to me

in a dream

only to find

the one already

written correctly

like my future self

traveled back

before

or my present self

now past

was right

from the start

turbulence

the airplane shakes

and the woman in front of me

lifts up the window cover

hoping to see land close below

then shuts the cover quickly

—i presume because …

with my own cover closed

i cannot know for sure,

but i presume because

she did not see land

as close as she had hoped

and i feel some fear too

for her and i both

as the plane

continues to shake

untitled

i didn’t write much

looking back

through the log

and start to worry

that i won’t write

anymore—

which is when

it’ll really be over

a nice man

a nice man

from colorado

sits next to me

on the plane

says he can’t

stand the broncos

but can’t root

for his chiefs

on account of

his denver friends

readsy wordsy

a little readsy

gets me wordsy

and back into

the note-taking mood

many more

mind’s eye

fleeting thoughts

fly by

paper birds

with words written

of where they’ve been

caught

by the tail feather

with branch fingers

grown

from readsy roots

change

you change

you don’t think so

but you do

a thin string

ties it all together

loosely

loose enough

that new you

might mistake

a stranger

in a lineup

for old you

non-joy

Moments of nervousness

Interspersed with joys

Enjoyed briefly

Forgetting so soon

The non-joy that came before

Until thrust back into it

Forgetting to remember

Forced near-sighted

by emotion

an analogy for balance

there is a balance between pain and pleasure. i have been taking cold showers for about four years now. it’s not cold for the whole time. i wash for about 10 minutes in hot water, and then turn the water to cold for just a minute or two at the end. one time i decided to skip the cold shower at the end. i was enjoying the hot shower and thought it would be nice to avoid the pain of the cold shower at the end, just this once. but then i realized, as soon as i got out of the shower, the air felt cold to me. i had to put on clothes quickly to get warm. once you’ve enjoyed the warmth, you can’t escape the cold. whether i chose to turn the water cold by my own hand, or feel the contrast of the cold air after opening the shower door—either way, there would be an inevitable cold after the warmth. pain is inevitable after pleasure.

it is like my muay thai trainer once told me, “fighting is fair. if you choose to attack, then you put yourself at risk of counter-attack. if you choose not to attack, then you are not fighting.”

the universe is fair. balance is the rule of fairness. pain is the counter-attack after pleasure.

untitled

i love to have a thing to do

an action

a direction for my forward leaning

which would lean anyway

listless

without a list

bullet points

that must be purposed

or else any direction

i would surely go

riding in the backseat

relax where you go

watch what comes with

wait and see what happens

hear for wind gone by

sigh for scenes past

on the road going somewhere

in the back seat no matter

let the driver drive

lean back and relax

you’ll get there

what people say

there is a feedback loop

between what you say about me

and what i want you to say

so i adjust my internal switches and levers

to get you to say

and when it is not

what i would prefer

i will twist a dial

and pull a lever

then look back out through

my windshield eyes

and listen

going back to adjusting

until what you say

is what i’d like to hear said about me

and then i stay

mostly the same

until someone says something else

(sometimes myself)

that i don’t like to hear

icicle identity

coming into myself

like an icicle

freezing into form

once fluid

and dripping along itself

now believing

what others think of me

and agreeing

to go in this direction

settling into the mold

like sculpture clay

hardening in the oven

formed by the artist’s

left nurturing hand

and right natural hand

then set into stone

by the fires of time

now staying the same

as what others walk by

in the museum and say

reading the placard

and seeing other

statues nearby

this is a statue

of such time and place

you can see clearly

because of this and that

truly seeing

sometimes i look at something

not really paying attention

and accidentally start to see

the space in between

sparkling in broken fractals

going off into gradient corner

abstract offering to me

all sights other than

what makes sense

giving my mind a break

to see without thinking

anxiety

i am anxious

and incapable

of anything else

other than worry

wasting what energy

would be spent

pointed, purposed

let out listlessly

in all directions

jockeyed

i’m in the system

more so

than i’ve been before

standing still

sitting here

taking orders

jockeyed

with a horse

on either side

and one behind

so all that’s left

is forward

and fast

coffee

to sit still

and stay focused

with coffee

in my veins

is the test

of a mental task

wanting

to get physical

but needing

to look, count

and read things

microwave

watching

the microwave

count down

in neon green

analog numbers

the space in time

between seconds

seems longer

waiting

for my coffee

to warm up

lost jacket

i got my jacket

back today;

the one i left

yesterday;

leaving home

cold

this morning;

returning

jacketed

once more

singing in the shower

i rung here

a chord that

resounded

ringing

my ears

out clean

hoping to glean

at least some

satisfaction

from a choir

of voices

but quickly

found myself

one of many

and so

went back

to singing shrill

all alone

media room

i try to read

right before bed

ready with words

waiting

in my head

mixing and matching

meeting each other

making magic

in the midnight

like a media room

rushing

to go to press

in the morning

fire detector

sitting

at my desk

i lean back

and look up

at the fire detector

on the ceiling

alone there,

alone all day

flashing

that one light

every five seconds

forgot

digging into the front

right pocket of my jeans

and then the left

and the coat pocket breast

trying to find

what i thought i had taken

but must have not

double take

what once

looked right

looked twice

takes double

distorting

distrusting

what appears

the first time

from now on

transient

a transient sits

on a brick bench

elbows on his knees

leaned forward

rocking

back and forth

with a hat held

by the brim

in both hands

upturned

shaking it

for money

young man in the morning

a young man

downtown

in the morning

leaned against

a fire hydrant

curbside

with feet

on the street

and right hand

holding left forearm

and left forearm

holding a cigarette

chewing gum

looking up

at the building tops

worn tooth

the tip

of a tooth

worn down

i tongue

obsessively

wondering

if the wear

has come from

chewing

or grinding

my teeth

at night

think of others

sitting in the car

thinking

of my own problems

realizing

the driver

is patting his knee

and must also

have things to do

other than drive

and another rider

gets in

out of breath

and must have

been rushed

this morning

soothing

to think of others

and take a break

from myself

stretch

i used to

lose my footing

with my head

in the clouds;

a little older now

i’ve grown taller

and can keep

my feet in the dirt

at the same time

as i stretch

up high

ponderance

it is a ponderance

which i repeat

for you to mull

over, unwritten

just sitting there

and listening

letting go

of the worry

to remember;

for like i said,

i will repeat

as many times

as need be

reading seeing

most

will read it once

as they would

naturally

going

at their own pace

and then

again

this time

placing punctuation

according to

often

unnatural notions;

it is the same

when you look

at something

and for

a split second

see it

for what

it actually is

luv

i love to work

at my desk

at the foot

of our bed

when baby

is there laying;

it feels like

i’m at the mouth

of our cave

up at night

with a torch light

fending off

dark thoughts

from her dreams

bouncing

young

you bounce

from thing

to thing

like a pinball

bouncing

in between

believing

it must be this

no, then this

bouncing

back and forth

until old

realizing

it is none of it;

but rather,

something learned

from the bouncing

in between

all

it all appears

to me now

getting in

through my senses

inside of me

somehow

making me feel

as part of it

pouring in

and back out

miss me

a profound sadness

comes over me

remembering

what it was like

to be alone

as i now

fear dying

slightly less

having someone

to miss me

risky

i didn’t

roll my dice

right, waiting

to check and see

what could

have happened

easily

love and art

managing

the emotions

of making

your own work

falling

into love

and back out

easily

but having

to stay

committed

if anything

is ever

to get done

creativity

if just to avoid

being done upon

myself—

sounds vaguely

sexual—

as does

any doing;

creativity

is a sexual thing

stuck door

when opening a door that is stuck, there is usually the first attempt that employs the usual amount of force. then, realizing the door is stuck, there is a second attempt that quickly follows the first; this time with more force. after that, depending on the person, there are sometimes third and fourth attempts with an increasing amount of force. or, there is a step taken back, to discover why the door is stuck. and the attempt that follows, then addresses the root problem.

socks still on

i swear

i took off

these socks

that i see

still on

my feet

just a moment

ago

undressing

after

getting home

standing

in the kitchen

looking down

expecting

to see toes

seeing

cotton socks

instead

i write anywhere

i stop anywhere

to write

on the street corner

in the rain

on my phone

on the bus

in conversation

on the move

anytime

i’m in the mood

coming to me

only so often

i can’t afford

to let it go

old man

an old man

with a gray mustache

and glasses

eats a biscuit

and drinks a coffee

by the window

picking up crumbs

delicately, slowly

between his fingers

holding

a cup still steaming

trash can

the mouth

of the trash can

stays open

a little longer

than usual

after i have

thrown something away;

stuck

at the hinge

i’m sure

but seeming

for the second

staying open

to take on

a life of its own

and decide for itself

when to open

and when to close

i start a poem

i start a poem

walking

trying to remember

the first few lines

repeating them

over and over

still walking

to where i can find

a place to stop

and write

and another line

so now four

repeating them

and five

still a ways away

at risk of forgetting

the beginning

to remember the end

a body of work

it becomes

a body of work

gaining value

and creating fear

of loss

like a notebook

filled with notes

just a notebook

before

but now the result

of hours of work

on its face cover

just the same

as any other

but flipped through

and read

like hemingway’s

lost manuscript

my

what a notebook

could be

coffee line

all these people

waiting in line

for their $5

cup of coffee

when down the street

a half block

is a deli

that will sell you

a cup of coffee

for 50%

of the price

albeit 80%

of the quality;

but math is hard

in the morning,

i understand

two

i talk in twos

making it simple

as if this

is not that

and that’s the end

only ours

and other

without parsing

the other

just not ours

easier to see

binary

and easier

to decide

but really

many more

than just two

most often

personal projector

in the daylight

wide-eyed

and seen

what most

assume to be

all there is

sleeping

deeply

leaving black

to be just that

unaware

that if

you open your eyes

with your eyes

still closed

lights will flash

and a movie plays

on that

black backdrop

and you can play

whatever movie

you want

when it’s real

let it be there

push it as you will

into was

but let it be

short of memory

presently perceived

even then

when is it real

synapses firing

when is it real

i wonder

what makes it

what we’re after

what substitute

will suffice

like a dream

or a drug

lying to oneself

going insane

are just as well

in some cases

who’s to say

otherwise

supplanting

their reality

for another’s

who’s to say

when it’s real

a.m. radio

a car radio plays

at the stoplight

outside our apartment

at 3 a.m.

and i wonder

if the driver

is a late traveler

trying to stay awake

or an early worker

trying to stay awake

a dream misremembered

a vivid dream

reminds me

of something i did

a while back

even though

i never did

actually do it,

it might as well

be the same

—a memory

misremembered

and a reality

recently forgotten

private concert

turn up

the trance

in my AirPods

to drown out

the radio

that plays

in the car

i share

with strangers

that could be

nice people;

i’ll never know

sex sells

all these popular appearances trend towards shock value and sex it seems. simple and calm art gets drowned out but still has a place i think

labels

an argument

to exist,

to take up space,

to even be there

for you to read;

and numbers

and other symbols

like on a clock

or the brand names

on clothing

or equipment

constantly telling you

what is what

and this is that;

people

have them too

on placards

outside

their office door,

not to mention

their names

and the acronyms after

all this information

looking around

which is why

i think i like

so much

to be in nature

where nothing is named

except

the occasional trailhead

walking in the rain

stopping under

a stranger’s roof

in the rain writing

needing to get home

but cannot

get more

than a half block

without a drop

of rain poetry

falling

on my head

can’t write sober

the poetry

is there

latent

laying

waiting for me

worrying

as i have

that it had gone

as the lifestyle

i’ve been living

working

focusing

staying sober

had snuffed it out

dead pods

in the height

of a song

my AirPods die

so i must make

my own music

for the time being

until i can get

to an outlet

walking in the rain

leaning

with my shoulder

against the brick wall

in the rain

typing

on my phone

drops collecting

on the scene

blurring

the words

so i cannot read

what i’ve typed

shopping for friends

i know

there are others

i wish

i could meet them

browsing

my options

perusing

the aisles

like a grocery store

going

to my section

and having

four shelves

ten across

and twenty deep

to choose from

people

like paper boxes

with labels

listing

their ingredients

and health facts

walking in the rain

walking

as i normally do

slowly

and looking around

as it starts to rain

and i must speed up

if i hope

to reach home

dry enough

to go indoors

without undressing

undoctored

i feel alright

undoctored

by my own doing

like usual

seeing a symptom

and writing

my own prescription

like coffee

in the morning

or a walk

for my anxiety

having

to self-diagnose

but this morning

the universe

saw my need

and helped me

on its own

all love

just love

for everything

i think

of one person

to show it to

but can’t stay focused

and remember

what a girl

i once loved

once told me

about there being

no limit to love

when what she

really meant

was she

just didn’t love me

and now

i understand

feeling

this feminine love

to just nurture

and give good

to everything

rainbow

just a little

rainbow light

on the right side

of the cabinet white

when i wake up

and walk into

the kitchen

to make breakfast

under the couch

i like to get

onto my belly

and observe

underneath the couch

such a simple world

of unused space,

dust bunnies

and lost items

laying there

minding their business

welcoming

newcomers

warmly

like my lost watch

or a coin

dropped and rolled under

escaping the worlds

of time and money

to lay gently

under the couch

appreciate

what is

already here

what more

need we make

look

and this too

all this

here for us

without us

why can we not

just watch

sometimes

rather than

always make

to claim

for ourselves

the beauty

marvel, wonder

whether we are

i wonder

creatures

to create

or just

appreciate

common words

in an educated democracy, why write in words that are not commonly used? to sound more intelligent? at the expense of alienating a percentage of your potential reader base. better to write with common words, i think, and reach most of the masses.

inferior

an inferior

i have to

let go

for something

else superior

—but then

also risk

something worse

than the first

inferior

steep hill

i wasn’t sure

i would make it

up that hill

in fact, halfway

i thought

of tucking myself

into a ball

and rolling

back down

sidewalk fog

walking on

the same sidewalk

as this morning

when everything

was completely covered

in fog

now midday

and bright out

i can see the sights

i missed

this morning

machine art

i wonder if

a machine

could make the art

that i do

i think as far

as appearance

it would look the same

or better

but the point of art

is not that

it merely

be produced

but rather,

that it be born

from a genuine

human experience

otherwise,

what’s the point

transient

a transient

sitting against

the store wall

flicks

a cigarette butt

still smoking

impressively far

—a futile display

of rage

against everything

creative chaos

my art benefits from my work and vice verse. chaos crispier structure and structure controls chaos. sitting focused on structure an artistic idea will occur in my subconscious. creative trying to make my work experience will move the ball forward.

body of work

I have an idea of my body of work the rest in my mind always stretching it self and trying on new limbs. meeting other bodies there in my mind and comparing itself taking from others to add and sometimes subtracting out of self-consciousness the body of work is imagined as its whole at onceSo that I can close my eyes and edit apart or move pieces around or have a sudden realization waking up in The Morning Show how to fix something I’ve been stumped on the body of work lives in my mind

cigarette

how a cigarette

hangs

not yet lit

stuck

to the upper lip

resting

on the bottom

pointed down

looking cool

be more selfless

you’re not only working for yourself; you’re working for your clients, your team, your boss, and your future family. these people depend on you the same way that you depend on others. you have a responsibility to contribute as much as you can. you have your possessions, abilities, and life itself because of what others have given you—both from your nature and the atoms that were not yours until your soul enlivened your body, and from the nurturing that you received from your family, teachers, mentors, and peers. give back to this system with all that you have been given.

last night

i feel like

an impostor

with

the up-for-work crowd

like i slept

last night

though i was

in the warehouse

eyes closed

trying to keep

my balance

in a different

kind of crowd

how

i see how

these things

would happen

now

having seen

what i hadn’t

when i wondered

how

these things

could

writing is like space travel

writing a moment is like an astronaut observing a new planet. you have traveled all this distance to get here, and will only have this one chance to observe what you came to see, passing by. in that time, it is best to do no thinking and only recording. then, later on, endless analysis and editing can be done with the raw content captured from the moment of observation, which cannot be re-lived.

saturday

i wait all week

for this one moment

on saturday morning

when the drone

of dribble from work

dies down

in my latent mind

cleansed by

a friday sleep

knowing there is no

office tomorrow

sitting down now

at a desk wherever

a coffee shop

to open my writing

and have all

flow forth

what was pent up

and refining itself

like a diamond under pressure

myself mining above

now descended

to the depths

to collect

playing pretend

i don’t want to actually experience that artificial depression madness sadness malaise as the experience itself is not so pleasant as it is to sit back removed and consider the possibility and ponder like watching a movie actor manufacture emotion interesting to think of what could happen to me or someone i love without it actually happening

cute stranger

a cute girl

a stranger

sitting next to me

in the backseat

gets out of the car

and closes the door

but not before

letting the cold in

to take her seat

traffic

traffic is often

dressed in

the red hue

of brake lights

glaring through

the windshield

into the backseat

where i

lay my head back

against the headrest

and exhale

technology

sitting in an Uber

trance music

turns on

unexpectedly

in my AirPods

as my LTE

reconnects

transporting me

to another

fast-paced world

zooming

out of traffic

and along

neon highways

thank god

i keep thinking

this is it

like the end is near

or the sickness

won’t cure

this time around

making a promise

to god

if only just

a little longer

i look back

and realize

i’ve made many

of these promises

and god

has let me live

all this time

vertigo

i don’t understand

how space works

right now

falling over

leaning on a wall

feeling for

a center of gravity

forgetting

how to stand

walking on divis

walking north

on divisadero

in the morning

once i climb

to the top

of the hill

and reach broadway

that is when

i first see

the ocean

out in front of me

and then

a little further

downhill

to vallejo

is when i can see

presidio forest

to my left

and i start

to feel better

walking to heal my anxiety

walking is healthy for me when i have anxiety. just to get out and see some new spaces and get exercise without too much risk or danger. the longer the walk the better, getting into a sort of meditative state just focusing on putting one foot in front of the other. especially if i can walk from inland out to the coast to see the water and horizon, reminding me there is more and i am small and it’s alright.

questions for an artist

i think one reason for depression of the artist is that any good feeling must be immediately expelled into the receptacle of the art form, quickly before it passes.

art is about feeling—and for most, feeling cannot be controlled. so when a good feeling comes, the artist jumps to take advantage of it, by translation into her art form. while good may be produced in the art, there is none leftover for herself. this can lead to depression when the good is constantly poured into the art and never left for herself.

this idea, however, i now realize, is partially due to my own bias as an artist, as i am the type that produces only when i am feeling good, maybe because i think this is what is preferred by those to whom i will show my art.

but now, i wonder, what is it like to be an artist that produces from the bad feeling. does the same effect take place where the bad is expelled from the body and mind, and absorbed by the art? is this why art is sometimes used as therapy? is this the type of art people will want to consume? is that type of art, consumable art, the art that should be created?

a stranger smiling

i love someone

stifling

a smile

trying not

to laugh out loud

inappropriate

in a public place

covering their mouth

and shrugging their shoulders

turning away

from the crowd

to have a private joy

with a merry thought

that popped up

unexpected

ups and downs

i don’t trust my ups

when i know

there’s a down

right around the corner

ready to

pull me down harder

if i get higher

gaining momentum

during the fall

sun dial

as i lay in bed

on a sunday

an oblong shape

of light moves

across the wall

through a small slit

in the shades

at first nearer

the arched doorway

and yellow

each time i stir

more golden, warm

closer to

the west wall

like a sun dial

in motion

an object

in motion

needs to stay

in motion

a machine

revving

for so long

might even

rev longer

if left to rev

rather than

stopped to rest

a fire

must burn

its fuel

to survive

it cannot

stop consuming

more fuel

nor can it

conserve the fuel

it already has

it must burn

until all

is burnt

because that is

what it is

for a fire

to be

rest

it all is

what it is

and will go

as it will

lying here

not there

trying to wonder

what i can do

while resting

there is nothing

and must rest

sometimes

and let go

metabolism

like a flame laying dormant unmoving needing to take in to burn and grow larger and larger given more fuel burning until all burnt and receding unable to stop even for self preservation to burn is to live for a flame no other way of going on so burning all the way to ember and eventually ashes once all is consumed

alley

how deep

dare you go

into the alley

deeper

into the middle

the way out

is farthest

from either side

ten minutes

ten minutes
seems like
an eternity
drinking coffee
and listening
to trance
reading
getting lost
checking my watch
to see
when i should
leave
for work
realizing then
it’s only been
ten minutes

abstract telling

something as

abstract as

destiny

you will understand

only when

it occurs to you

and exclaim then

to one of those

whom you confide in

confused

asking why

can’t they understand

until realizing

you are more often

the one confided in

misunderstanding

meditation on subconsciousness

everything you think makes an impact. a thought is created when you think, and that thought does not go away just when you stop thinking it. the thought enters your subconscious and stays their in your mind, manifesting itself in dreams, body language, intuition, etc. influencing your thoughts and actions subconsciously.

the words in the music you hear, in the books you read, and from conversations you eavesdrop on; the things you see looking out the car window, on the television screen, in your own living space. all this enters your mind through your senses.

a dream, for example, causes a chain reaction, where you wake up with the feeling of the dream, whether that is horror from violence or fear from losing a loved one, or joy from achievement or love from a dream of passion. these dreams are grown from a seed planted in the subconscious by the once conscious mind.

radiator rain

listening to the rain
in a sheet metal gutter
on the side of the building
making a hollow sound
dropping from the top
to the bottom
then flowing
like a city stream
over sidewalk
and to sewer eventually

(turns out
this poem i wrote
laying, hearing, imagining
was a lie
or a fiction at least
as i discovered
getting out of bed
for a glass of water
that the sound
which i thought was rain
was actually the radiator)

checking

i check things

that have been checked

two or three times

already

sometimes

just moments before

zipping up my bag

just moments before

boarding my flight

and unzipping it

to check once more

that my laptop is there

or the front door at night

turning the knob

and pulling

to make sure

the bolt is latched

before bed

or opening and closing

my wallet

counting cards and ID

putting it in my pocket

then taking it back out

to open

and check again

opening the alarm app

on my phone

to ensure the alarm is set

for my early shift tomorrow

checking my schedule

over and over

to confirm the flight

is this week not next

can’t let the beauty go

sometimes

just laying here

there’s no art

to be gotten from it

necessarily

with a forearm

behind my head

laying on the couch

looking out the window

wishing i had a typewriter

on my lap

to write what i am feeling now

suddenly

not expecting to

or looking for

this tree that i can see

through the window screen

moving so slowly

in an imperceptibly

soft breeze

that catches me

here laying

not expecting anything

from this moment

that has become so beautiful

all of a sudden

that i am forced

to get up and grab my phone

and come back quickly

to the couch

back under the covers

to resume right into

what struck me suddenly

and tried to enjoy

alone and unwritten

but couldn’t

just too beautiful

and had to

start writing

robbing me

of these moments

just to be enjoyed

silently, wordlessly

i can’t

have to capture

something in me

can’t let the beauty go

and can’t see the value

in keeping it for myself

soft hills

from a distance

the hills look soft

until the hike

takes you there

in the thick of it

slipping on

jagged rocks

stepping over

spiny brush

passing by

things are passive

before you know

passing by

eyes unprepared

to appreciate

a sight gone by

this mountain sky

laying here

in the lawn

fingers laced

behind my head

just watching

what passes

short story about acting

there is a role that requires full devotion from the actor in order to act it well. the role is described brilliantly by a screenwriter. actors that read the script are moved by it and are both awe-struck and afraid at the same time of the role. they discuss it amongst themselves abstractly but they know that the role cannot be fully understood until they start undertaking the method acting for the role. they don’t know who the screenwriter is that wrote the role. they find out towards the end that the writer killed himself shortly after he completed the screenplay. it is clear that the character consumed the writer. the plot of the story itself was merely a background to the descriptions of this character. the small group of actors timidly discuss who will be the first to try the role. the main theme is contemplating what a personality can become …

off lately

a little off lately

after two

earthquakes

in san francisco

in the same week

now

taking off

and that moment

on a plane ride

when you float

just briefly

i pick up one foot

for a step

and set it down

just an

inch or two

below where i’d except

my world

shaking and flying

just a little

off lately

like i said

honesty

like seeing yourself in a mirror, not knowing it’s yourself, and judging your appearance objectively, thinking i am beautiful or i am not, and then realizing it is yourself, and also realizing what you truly are

poor fly

a fly
flies around
my face

i swat at it
trying to
stay focused
on my phone

but it
easily evades
having avoided
a thousand swats
to have lived
this long
as a fly

when i realize
these things
must be handled
deliberately

i stop looking
at my phone
long enough
to get up
and grab a shoe

and that
was the end
for the poor fly

when life gets good

it’s when life gets really good that i’m most afraid to lose it. other times i get drunk and couldn’t care less. the foolish part is thinking during the bad, that good times won’t come again; they always do.

haunted bathroom

like a loud scream from far away

whistling between gusts of wind

like you’ve stuck your head inside

a jet engine

coming audibly through

the half cracked bathroom window

that shows light from the neighbor’s

open window next door

and in the mirror

half torsos hanging from the shower rod

that are really just shirts hanging to dry after being washed

bad dream

I keep having this recurring dream that I have missed a flight that I have paid a lot of money for. It upsets me and I wake up in a bad mood. I think it is because I am so conscious of being frugal and saving my money recently. I want to make economic progress for myself and for my partner. I am also worried about my job. I have worked hard to get into this position and I don’t want to lose it. I feel conflict with my lifestyle outside of work, both my social life and my artistic life. I struggle to maintain these other lives that are important to me but could be detrimental to my professional reputation. Like my friend Lake said, everything seems to matter more now. There is more at stake and more going on at once, and everything has to be balanced in relation to one another.

lights on the ceiling from cars

Watching the lights like you haven’t before been smitten lying on my back on Saturday through the shades from light reflected off of car windows making shapes on the ceiling that entertain me before a nap between morning work and lunchtime

run around

i used to run

when i was young

to get out my energy

my mom would say

run around the house

but now

with bad knees

i have to find

new ways of tiring

enough in the day time

in order to sleep

come bed time

pink robe lady

the same old lady

in the pink robe

crouches every morning

in front of the yellow

metal newsstand

reading front page headlines

through the glass door

that you must pay a quarter

in order to open

crouching there reading

for a few minutes

the full front page

and then walking away

maybe to find a quarter

Making More of Mr. Seetner

Short story about a man who wonders on his bus rides home about making more of himself. Hands folded, elbows on his knees, hunched over, thinking as he usually was at this time—bumping along in the back of the bus.

shower thoughts

i stood here

and dripped

in my shower towel

writing

my wet hair

on my forehead

seeing as

i sprung from

the still spitting shower

with a thought in mind

and only now

with it down

realize i am standing

in a puddle

and the shower

still going

poetry muse

poetry i can write only

once

not before or after

that very moment

which gives birth

like a stubborn

truth-telling muse

refusing to repeat herself

and shaking her finger

for the ones i can’t remember

dead bird

seeing a dead bird

on the sidewalk

reminding me

that life-filled things

like this one

once flying

can suddenly

become lifeless

laying here

now dead

very dead

bus latch

standing

at the back

of the bus

looking through

the security latch

left open

getting a 6-inch view

of the city

(building tops

mostly)

wrong way rush hour

fighting the crowd

walking out of downtown

on the sidewalk

on the side of montgomery

making me wonder

if it is after work hours

like i thought

not used to

swimming upstream

when i thought everyone

was supposed to be

heading home

and making me think now

that i might have

mixed up the afternoon

with the morning

joyful face

watching the face

of one experiencing joy

as their eyes open

and a smile creeps

at the corners of their mouth

and their cheek muscles relax

when at first

immersed completely

in the joy

until the eyebrow creases

and the nostrils flare

now wondering

how long will this joy last

car shadows

shadow shapes

speed

across the ceiling

i see

laying in bed

as cars cast

their light

through the window

passing by

self-critique

if i can forget

quickly

that i am a writer

reading

my own work

i can almost

offer criticism

outside of

my fragile ego

bare wrist

pushing up

my sleeve cuff

to check the time

only to find

a bare wrist

telling me nothing

realizing both

that i forgot to wear

my watch today

and i didn’t really

need to know

the time anyway

going back

to what i was doing before

thinking i might

leave my watch at home

more often

rhyme scheme

night

rhymes with

light

which rhymes

with right

—such

is the profound

rhyme scheme

around which

all my poetry

revolves

both ways

standing

on the corner

when you have to

cross both ways

to get to

the corner

diagonal

and don’t

really care

if it is the left

or right light

that turns first

glare again

glare really gets me

gotten out of the bulb

and onto

something shiny

stinging

like the first light

in the morning

as demon hands

grab hold

of the pupil rim

and pull it tight

to shut out the light

walking

walking

a city block

you’ll see a red hand

come into view

at the intersection

up ahead

and maybe a number

beside it

counting down

or

if you’re lucky

a white man

telling you to walk

but the trick

is to time your steps

depending on when

you see the signal

slowing

if the red hand

is already counting down

and there’s no way

for you to make it

so as to reduce

your time

waiting at the corner

if arriving

just as the red hand

turns solid

or speeding up

if you see the white man

to catch it in time

and cross

playing this game

on mornings

you’ve decided to walk

instead of

taking a car or bus

sometimes

getting lucky

and catching the white man

for blocks in a row

hotel apartment

it feels like a hotel

to leave the room

in my socks

and close the door quietly

so as not to wake baby

and creep downstairs

to look out the window

at the dialog box

checking the times

to see if the bus

runs this early

bus wire

i want to jump up

and hang from that bus wire there,

holding on

just barely above traffic,

not so far away from the city,

but still safe for sure,

looking up from the sidewalk

corner at night,

waiting for the light to change

idle hand

after a while

wondering

what your hand

has been held by

hanging

off the wrist

waiting

weightless

for forearm

to strengthen

and grab hold

i wonder

i wonder about

optimizing

in the opposite direction,

for less

instead of more.

i wonder about

getting out of the city

and into the mountains.

i wonder about

tending to a garden

instead of

going to the grocery store.

i wonder about

spending my time

instead of

saving my money.

i wonder about

calculating how

to make a little last

instead of

how to make more.

i wonder if

i would get to the mountains,

and after a short period

of reprieve with less,

begin quickly again

to wonder about

having more.

such fastness

fast such

that it does not

gain much

going that way

quickly

even quicker than

what is required

of any

possible

on-time arrival

monday lunch (09/30/19)

I always have these thoughts walking to lunch on Monday after a hard morning having to reign in my weekend mind to work struggling to focus it first but eventually getting back into the routine and then finally at lunch getting back out when do you start Russian after just a brief period of being bottled

another short story idea

Imagine a bed with two lovers way up high. they cannot see how far the fall would be beneath them and there is nothing at all to see around them or upwards, other than a dull light nothingness almost like the color of a cloud. they hang their arms and legs off the side and imagine what it would be like to fall. they jump on the bed and so can understand the concept of gravity and falling. they wonder what it would be like to jump and not land on the bed. they are born this way, in love and only knowing one another and their limited mattress life, thought they don’t see it as limited, because it is all they’ve ever known. until one morning, one lover wakes up to find that the other is not there. he wonders if she somehow ascended, but is almost certain that she has fallen. then he wonders whether it was intentional or by accident. his life changes completely now, without her. he only knew life with another. he only knew life in love. now he finds himself thinking to himself instead of sharing everything out loud. he has no outlet for the physical expression of his love. he begins a relationship with himself, because that is the only person there is left to have a relationship with, unless he were to make the intentional decision to jump off the bed. he even has a passing thought that he might find her if he were to do so.

short story idea

imagine a world where every human is born into anarchy and must live the first 18 years of their life in that anarchy and then on the 18th birthday can decide which government they wish to participate in: A capitalistic democracy, a communist or socialist state, a dictatorship with a preselected dictator, or to remain an anarchy. you have to imagine the invalids, deadbeats, and criminals would either remain in anarchy or otherwise choose the capitalist or the socialist state and pose as a capitalist or socialist in order to take advantage of the system. So then there should also be tests in order to gain access to each system. Presumably the highest standards would be for the cavalier society that wants competitive and capable individuals to make the market more efficient and productive the second tier would be the socialist state that still requires work from individuals but cares less of individuals less capable, dealership would have less standards because presumably the demand for this government would be low in the first place and the dictator would need lower standards just to have some volunteers. And of course the anarchy would have no standards at all that would be the state of nature. So therefore what you decide to do with the first 18 years of your life determines in a very definite way your quality-of-life thereafter and also completely voluntarySocial contract for the government you participate in. It should be similar i imagine to preordained marriage in the sense that you’re more committed to an institution that you choose yourself.

insider

you can’t think like that

when you’re in it

wondering why

you’re not out

because before

entering in

from the outside

you decided

of your own free will

to do so

and must remember

not to think

like an outsider

once you’re in

churn faster

i feel that everything

is progressing

moving forward

as it must

in order for

space

that would be

stagnant

to churn

and turn over

turning into

something else

which

in this case

is so good

that I try

to churn faster

coffee

i expect the world

to develop faster

for me

having had

my coffee

and expecting time

to move faster

to match my perception

of space

coming sooner

morning computer work

Deep and pitted in the mental pathway digging deeper seated upright coffee keep me here elbows at ninety degree angles on desk chair armrests perfectly parallel to the desk on which keyboard rests and fingers creating on the screen what keeps mind so focused and actually enjoying with the coffee high this work as much as I would relaxing

I get giddy like a kid again looking forward and hoping excited for what’s to come like everything’s ahead and coming my way

feeling good wanting to say spread about but keeping quiet to let it be and hopefully last this feeling like a medicine spreading and making my skin warm in a sunny day at lunchtime when i am about to eat and have made plans with baby tonight

spendthrift

I am loose with my money in the early morning or late at night when the day seems like it may not come and my savings will be useless

empathy

I wonder if he is like me

I wonder as he walks by

looking me in the eyes

and then wondering

from his perspective

if he knows I am like him

the two sides of art

Is art what happens naturally? What you think on your own before it’s shared? Even before your superego can get a hold of what your dreaming id produced in the night? Or is it what is edited and curated for the masses? Brought to the table for conversation so that it may be consumed and enjoyed by many more than yourself. For art seems also to be the two sides of the same coin on the sidewalk or street no matter where in the world I walk, and these two sides are the individual and the community, the ego and society. For as much as we wish to be ourselves, we wouldn’t want to be anything if not for others; and so too for our art. An artist, like me, wants so much to be unique and one-of-a-kind. The same type as a musician that refuses to listen to “pop” music on the radio or disdains sell-outs for producing art aimed at commercial success. But if the market accurately reflects the demands of the masses, though surely not individual, it seems to me to be just as much “art” as the avant-garde off in the corner trying to sniff out anything at all that hasn’t been seen before.

a quarter after four (09/26/19)

with the heat hot like it is i can’t sleep on an indian summer morning and have to get out closed tight from under the bed sheets baking in there so i can explode and spread out in the combustion and at least spread out of my skin that the sticky sheets close in

this morning has it like i know i need last night to do what is been planning to but without any energy left over after a long day so had to sleep but now up early at a quarter after four sitting at the edge of the bed wondering what place opens this early in this city so i can get out of the studio while baby is still sleeping and get to work

friends across the street

i saw

across the street

in an apartment

which normally

has its shades drawn

two friends

sitting at a table

talking

then two more friends

opened the front door

and came in through

the long hallway

and the friends

at the table

raised their arms

and the friends

coming in

raised their arms too

and all embraced

and it made me happy

as i had just gotten home

and stood

in my own apartment

alone

sure

if you are sure

of what you say

you will say it

loud and clear

the first time

and not repeat

less names in nature

there are more

things with names

walking down

the city street

than there are

walking on a trail

in the woods

—or at least more

of the names

that i know

—being that i know

the makes

and models of cars

and names for

certain types of people

better than

the species of trees

or types of stone

—so when in the city

i can say about

the businessman

and the BMW

or the gas prices

at $3.95

but in the forest

i can only say

there are trees,

rivers and rocks

and lots of them

sagging clothes rod

a sagging

metal clothes rod

in the closet

where

the hangers hang

with heavy sweaters

too often

in the middle

—still the rod

serves its purpose

just as well

as a straight rod

holding clothes

hanging

above the floor

—until the day

it finally snaps

and we’ll have to

buy a new one

plant person in row 18

in the aisle seat

of row eighteen

on the airplane

bound for oakland

another passenger

i watch

from the window seat

holds out her hand

for the flight attendant

with spread fingers

as if her arm

were a tree branch

and the stewardess

coming by with her cart

rather than

pour water in a cup

and hand it to her

would walk by

with a spray bottle

and spray her

humanoid

branch hand

for sustenance

expensive art #2

i think of that painting

we passed on

that i liked

and stood there

looking at

for some time

on the second floor

of an eclectic gallery

until baby asked

if we should get it

and i asked the attendant

the price

which is when

we passed

and left

—thinking back now

i haven’t spent

that money

on anything else

i’ve liked

nearly that much

sunflower palm

the feeling

of exacticity

you get

observing

something

multi-colored

against

a monochrome

surface

like a handful

of sunflower seeds

in a peachy palm

car nap #2

head rested against

the rained on window

watching

the wet white line

at road’s edge

trucks passing

shocking

so close

coming the other way

on the other side

of the middle

yellow line

watercolor memory

not this one

painted on my eyes

a realist landscape

passed through

a watercolor filter

behind closed eyelids

maintained by some

abstract light

getting through

and some memory

refining the edges

car nap

a short trip napped out

with clear tucked in

points of entry

and untucked exits

while all else

dreamed between

remains unchartered

car window rain

water droplets

on the outside

of the car window

making a light

pitter patter

each

its own shape

some thin

and long

others small

and circular

each growing larger

as another

lands on top

gaining

enough weight

to slide

slightly down

like a snowball

absorbing mass

from other droplets

on the descent

streaking

faster

until joining

the fallen ‘fore

in a small stream

at the base

of the window

in the absence

only so much

to write about

in the absence out here

quiet

and mostly

staying the same

other than

trees growing

and clouds moving

surely

but so slowly

imperceptibly

nature taking its time

refusing demands

of the human world

to grow faster

unnaturally

needing

an occasional trip

like this

to step off

the giant wheel

that spins

faster than most

thought it would

big sky

they call this place

big sky

i know now

on the back deck

in a rocking chair

looking out

at the expanse

covered in complete

white cloud

without obstruction

other than

the pine trees

that form

the bottom border

of the big sky

water drops

water drops

along the bottom edge

of the wood railing

forty or fifty

along the length

each holding on

out of the corner of my eye

one drops

to splash

on the already wet deck

glancing back

and forth

along the length

trying to catch the moment

when a drop becomes

big and sagging

near the end

and loses its grip

nostalgia

suppose that some times

were better than others

remembering

and wishing to be back there

something now

reminding you

of what was then

to go off into this other place

and time

lived only on after

in a blurring

and erring optimistic

memory

vacation home

all throughout the house

each in its own corner

a book at shelf’s end

an outlet above the baseboard

a stool underneath the desk

cushions on couch

handles and hinges on doors

glass in window panes

lived in sometimes

opened, walked through

twisted, turned on

heated, cooked, cleaned

but often left

just to be a house

out here

alone in the woods

raining outside

raining outside

of the window

ripples

in each puddle

interrupted

by the ripples

of new drops

at some points

of the roof

where the flow

is frequent

there are streams

falling

from the shingle ends

at others points

there are

less frequent drops

making noise

muted

by the window glass

all this from montana (09/20/19)

knowing me on a misty morning like this in big sky Montana looking out from the deck seeing my breath the same color as the clouds the nestle down into the cleavage of the mountains like a woman’s necklaceThe soft and frequent pitter patter of rain that drops on my phone screen and the wet wood will become more frequent and harder later in the day the weather report tells us which is why we walking up early to make the drive to Yellowstone

I knows breeze in cold air in my mouth exhales vapor why I see the same trees this all last night now presumably just a little taller and a little more wet from the night rain chopped firewood place stacked at the mouth of the forest quite a lot of firewood next to two stops that must’ve been the contributors onetreeMust’ve been about twice as thick as the other judging from the chopped wood in the stumps some trees fall and naturally I wonder why those were not first used for the firewood seems like a good alternative to use a dead day instead of shopping at a living thing

on after and into what wouldn’t have been possible prior to what presently is more poignant than trying to remember

It is most often between generics and specifics choosing whether to lift off and leave earth or stay grounded in a real and present reality. The difference between being that with specifics you are committed. There is a time and place and to say one thing starts you down that path so that if you say something completely different halfway through then the reader will say wait a minute, this is not what I expected. Whereas with generics there are mostly pronouns and non-descript adjectives (the types of adjectives that could describe anything).

inward skies drift outward from mind’s eye into What was once water in the lake below now drifted up into vapor from the water surface that reflects it moving on drifting so this sky is a change of sceneThe same clouds that hide the stars at night giving a sense of soft safe protection aboveAround mountain peaks in the distance soon to return earth word in this rain

Inside painting cloud so I’d like a canvas three jobs against it clearly moving just enough to know it’s still real

edited: Inside a painting on the back porch clouds so white like a canvas the trees against it the green trunk spine branched tops defined so clearly against sky moving just enough to know it’s still real compared to trees against the forest so ambiguous seeing a forest for the trees wrapped in a blanket internally warm enough so my breath turns immediately to vapor making it harder to see through the smoke into the painting

unable to tell whether the clouds have changed or not being the same white overhead and no city noise to tell you when people are getting to or leaving work and your hunger the only clock telling you the time since your last meal and maybe tired at some point in the day napping if so in the leather sofa under the vaulted cedar ceiling waking and need needing to or at least laying my head back down and keeping my eyes open thinking as little as possible letting what happen will in the world outside this montana cabin off far away from what i will soon return to

all this from montana (09/19/19)

how to have an experience with water flooring for the white waterfall in between being here and closing my eyes and folded my hands sitting on the rock next to the river or looking up eyes open thinking trying to speak about it this caused a conflict between being realizing realizing to matter now do you talk more specifically like the clusters of white bubbles created by the base of the waterfall that float down the river over and between rocks protruding above the surface easily seen as the water is so clear and broken temper falling into the river poking out of the water lead up against the Rockwall creating a bridge tears of stone face showing years of the riverCutting through the college drone of the water creating a nice background so I can barely hear the edges of my voice just the water going down the right hitting each tear and tell hitting the water in the white

The world rewards persistence Neil says referring to the river cutting through the rocks creating the waterfall right now see it says give something enough time and it will have an impact I think the myself that’s a tragedy of it that we only have so much time

feeling with fingertips plant leaves reaching for the side of the trail here in the crunch of gravel under sneakers my friends carrying on conversations in twos six of us total three sets of two is that with the width of the trail will allow here in the waterfall still has a distance behind us one story takes over everyone listen to the laughs

The trail Narrows now conversations trail off the width only allowing one at a time so you have to turn around to talk to the person behind you so naturally talking last and looking around and keeping to ourselves more

Only so much you could write about the woods with words needing colors to get around the edges of each individual rock or each fine Pineneedle on the trail of varying length a word we’re just say rock or Pineneedle and less mathematically down on hands and knees measuring and describing to the decimal point each size a painting send all these numbers automatically to the eyes so a meditative exercise conjuring up general words to describe a pleasant for scene as if to just repeat the word tree tree tree leaves leaves leaves brock brock brock rock is what I meant to say and these doing the job of words to country up memories of your own nature scenes

creating making more being in what you are see you can see here feel remembering like this before wondering if it is the same and if New how knew where? At the edges? Just barely different? Or completely nothing ever seen before or the same using memory words taught and rememberedOr new words shouted naturally whispered maybe sounds recorded that may not fit letters

Disorienting at the edge of a cliff to look out and see and get so far into that site forgetting your own feet at the edge almost leaning forward into the picture forgetting you’re funny then to waiver and feel the wind remembering your own place and stepping backYour own body and its limitations causing the loss of the site and even more than that you saw it but that you were in it and part of it if not for your physical keeping you bodily

on a straight away sent now good golly getting into it having covered some distance heading the middle part they never seems to end on and on like try not to watch the time to get past farther faster checking stepping

you’re asking too much of your experience want to get to last longer otherwise be more when it is as overwhelms finitely as Humanizer created for Keeping the sensation of touch in your hand only as long as you hold onto what you’ve picked up when you drop it to pick up something else you can not keep what you had before the same as when you turn your head to trade one site for another or walk farther on the trail see to be somewhere else entirely so you must go and taken only what comes when it does and work hard to be taking in Nothing other than what has come

 

one another

i get into

one thing

and find out

there is another

that has come

of the one

so have to

decide whether

to finish the one

and be done with it

or press on

with the other

unplanned for

body and mind

i get more and more

up and outside

realizing

there is a mind

that decides

and sets the body

in motion

and the body then

runs along

until the mind

thinks up

something different

the realization

being that

the mind and body

though supposed

to belong

to the same

are often different

for the mind

that would decide

often does

at first at least

but then becomes

affected

by what the body does

and begins

to think a little differently

relax

it makes me nervous

to fly

when i’ve work

unfinished

i tell baby

before i go

just in case

to publish everything

i’d honestly

rather stay

and not even sleep

until i finish

but i must relax

both because

there will be

what there will

and i have

no control

puzzle

a puzzle piece

i found

fitting perfectly

between

what i had before

beginning and end

but not much more

than muddle

without that middle

bringing it all

together

excuse for my boss

tried to rise

but in that time

that i decided to wake

after i’d gotten

my head off the pillow

but sometime before

i could get my feet

on the floor

my body pushed out

of my tired mind

that waking thought

and here i am now

finally waking

but sometime after

when i first

tried to rise

bench nap (09/15/19)

an old man passed out plainly in broad daylight his arm stretched out resting on top of the bench his head laid-back and mouth wide-open add a day darker did yesterday and the leaves blowAlong the cement in a cool breeze making a scratching noise the wind in my ears as I walked bye

universal identity (09/14/19)

so long as you are yourself you must be that you cannot release completely just like the universe cannot you maybe part of it and wishing to melt into it but the same principle applied to one individual knowing that the universe at large is also an individual and some cents would cause everything to unravel so you must hold together as a building block of everythingIf everything is to remain built and not let loose and subtly  destroyed

REMINDER

nothing added to The Girl on California Street or The Speech-To-Text Experiment from this point on from September 28

diamond (09/14/19)

It’s like a diamond with the pressure from my work and the poetry gets crystallized in the middle when I thought it was all gone and was forcing it only getting out some that wasn’t really that good so it decided to take break which is when it was allowed to crystallize as it did in my subconscious and become more naturally those slightly less more quality coming from what I actually felt as opposed to what I attempted to manufactureAnd the pressure of being helpful so to stay energized and motivated working on something more of the world less creative but I have that energy mat by the equal and opposite reaction of art so the harder I work the more I create

blank space (09/14/19)

awake and into the world remembering how things are especially around lunchtime when you are reminded you must eat and go to the sandwich shop to pay with dollars that you must have kept track of and seeing all the other people eating and doing other things that they’re supposed to getting into this world all day going back to the office and sitting at your desk and doing the job that you’re supposed to that you’ve done before so keeping on this track and almost going on auto pilotIt becoming easy to keep up with your routine and home at night to rest and then wake up when there’s a chance that it’s really all new having had some time to close your eyes and think of nothing so for getting partially what is usually done and more personally what it is that you were supposed to do and not yet being so hungry nor needing more rest so being able to get away from food and shelter for a short while and left off into a blank space where could creation really a curse for me running about and waving my arms and shouting gibberish throwing it all gets the campus words that made out rhyme and notes that may be definite are attached to a world that must make senseBut here is where creation happens created being that which is new and of course must crash land at times bringing nonsense back to the real world what other times you might bring it back and others will say oh yes why have we not had this before

fake (09/14/19)

You can win because you can cheat pushing to appear like a fake plant in the store rather than one that is growing in the wild with only so much water and sunshine each day a plant that was built to constructed to be as big as no matter the materials being no cost and the builder being paid multiple builders even with green to back the world gets constructed this wayAnd sometimes even a fake plant looks real

untitled

My heart has now started to create a reproductive life of its own as I can read what I wrote before and it inspired me to write something related

private studio (09/14/19)

from this apartment inside one drape pulled over and letting lighted half the window mustering energy while music plays and water runs teeth brushing barely morning on a Saturday up earlier the first few voices outside the window generating life and momentum here just ourselves to date contained in a small studio apartment that would stay here if not for the screens connected to what is called the Internet and these keyboards with letters that constitute the English language and phones that now have computers inside of themWith photos that we took last night using the camera that is also part of the same phone baby laying in bed and editing the photos I sitting here on the couch typing about last night perfectly happy to stay inside especially with this connection to the rest of the world where we can capture art on technology and send it out to our friendsAnd even new people who have become our friendsOdd to have such a connection while at the same time being so private

never enough (09/14/19)

it’ll never be enough i know now watching my friends make their money and remembering at one point in 2005 or earlier when i was about ten two dollars was a lot for what my brother and i could buy at the corner store but now in san francisco 2019 i believe more of the stories about greedy men seeing how more made is seamlessly spent and getting used to what can be afforded but not only that but more so seeing those around you (and especially those just slightly above you) forgetting that ten year old happy with a bag of candy

baby model

baby modeling for me

taking photos

she gets this

glassy look in her eyes

like she’s forgotten

who she is

and can relax

in front of the camera

keyless entry front door (09/14/19)

buttons being pressed promptly so the system may learn you as a keeper of the code that may gain admittance here at least just for that knowledge and the ability to press it in and hear the buzz that only holds the door open so long enough to get through and close it behind you so the next must also be a keeper to get through

careful now (09/14/19)

things fall that i fumble with losing touch with reality in the particular ways that physical matter requires to interact such that it does not make complete sense to me why a coffee cup should stand still on an even table and slide in a slant so i’m cautious about putting anything down anywhere and walk carefully like a man on stilts quickly to each light pole holding on like the world might tip upside down at any moment

second dimension

i try to get the coffee high

with the weed don’t worry

and baby pushing me forward

while meditation holds me present

so ending up in the middle

of a four-direction compass

staying steady on the first dimension

while riding all the time

on the second

universal line

there is a line created

by baby’s body

when she lays

on her left side

facing me

facing the window

from which the morning light

comes over my shoulder

and onto her chest

making a shadow

where her breast

has its fullness

creating a dark line

like a fish hook

that any human

can recognize

as the outline

of one side

of a woman’s chest

i wonder if

i wonder if

feeling is the same

as being felt

i wonder if

movie actors have time

to be themselves

i wonder if

those who run the world

know that they do

i wonder if

work will go by

fast or slow

i wonder if

our landlord will finally

fix our fridge today

i wonder if

baby

really loves me

i wonder if

the company

will make it

i wonder if

my brother

will be alright

i wonder if

sleeping with baby

makes my back

better or worse

i wonder if

or when

my body will start to fail

like my dad’s

i wonder if

my dad was like me

when he was young

i wonder if

my mom

still has hope

i wonder if

i’m doing the right thing

i wonder if

i’ll feel the same way

when i’m older

blocks being blocks

big concrete blocks

from construction

clanging in the lift

mixing with the idle motor

making street noise

in the early morning

marking a new city day

with the spirit of building

and “must be done”

settling into their new

truck bucket home

before being transported

to be blocks elsewhere

violet beauregarde

nettles nay say

no regard

sounds like

violet beauregarde

a movie character

fictional

who i mentioned

to baby last night

about eating

too many blueberries

and turning blue

now creeping

this morning

into my

writing rhyming

subconscious

this one’s cheap

for me

it is like this

i know

for you

it may not be

i see

and for he

who knows

whether to be

or not

let’s find him

and ask him

hey mister

why not

midweek motivation

needing to get into

this particular place

where no one need

overwhelms my

motivation

making it easier

to step off

of the curb

and not land

on the street

but rise up

even above

the building tops

even on

a wednesday

when i worked today

and will work tomorrow

but can

still stay lifted

in a midweek

of moments like this

leaving

and not coming back

impossible shot

walking

on the sidewalk

looking up

seeing a spire

in the skyline

holding up

my phone

trying

to catch it

but not

without zoom

so i walk

further

up montgomery

holding my phone

watching the spire

grow nearer

until pine

i realize

the angle

is impossible

with another building

in the way

half a poem

my brain is always

trying to write

but i have to

hold it back

and only write

when it’s right

when it gets to me

in a moment

all at once

so i don’t start in

and end up

with just

half a poem

hanging off

screen glare

that glare

creeps crawls

shining sneaking

from the ceiling light

through open space

and onto the phone screen

that makes a cutting

bright white light

like a knife

getting into my eye

and cutting past

my cornea

into my brain

confusing everything

like a shock

all of a sudden

i can’t see

and have to turn

the phone screen

back over

oven timer

i look at the clock

above the stove

afraid to see

the time

but see instead

the oven timer

counting down

at about

three and a half

minutes left

—i am thankful

to see a time

with no consequence

for my life

other than

there are two-hundred

and ten seconds

remaining

until i need to take

the hard boiled eggs

off the burner

full bus

there are twenty

or so seats filled

when i step on

the one bus

at six in the morning

—i take my seat

toward the back

and close my eyes

like i usually do

to get some extra rest

on the way to work

—i listen for the beeps

which are each

another passenger

scanning their card

and stepping on

—i can imagine

how full

the bus has become

but i can not see

until, listening

for my stop,

the announcer says

“montgomery”

and i open my eyes

to see forty

or fifty people now

standing in the aisles

holding the hand rails

shoulder to shoulder

—standing up

i have to say

“excuse me”

and fight through

a maze

to get off

candle dance

what comes from

the candle flame

dancing through

its glass holder

and mixing with

the shelf light

together

make quite a show

on the outside

of the white

shower curtain

so standing

under the water

watching

i forget

how long it’s been

mirror image

i look at myself

in the mirror

in the dark

for long enough

that i wonder

if it is really me

or just another

dark object

in the room

—i stand still

for as long

as i can bear

thinking

i may no longer

be myself

but have become

something else

—until i can’t

take it any longer

and raise my arms

to see

in the mirror

the almost unidentified

dark object

do the same

—and so can

crawl back into bed

with less fear

of waking up

as something else

neighbor’s TV

a massive TV

at the neighbor’s

so big

i can see

through the window

all the way

across the street

—i think of

getting out

my binoculars

to watch

what they’re watching

a thing itself

less as a thing itself

more as its parts

that which is becoming

resulting from

what happens naturally

just as it would

without a forethought

for what is made

from constituent parts

more attention on each part

as if it were

a whole itself

making one by one

giving each no title

no summary

until after the fact

when it’s all said and done

and can be seen

for what it is

then can finally

be called

a thing itself

all come crashing down (09/07/19)

I worry it will all come crashing down like what is happened won’t continue or I’ll forget to do how to do what I’ve done the tower built into the sky when all the sudden the foundation and the bottom floors CampbellWatching almost to not continue to not make progress for fear that it will disappear blah blah blah this one is a good isn’t good is not not not not

honey communism

a steady stream

of honey

from the bottle

held

unnecessarily high

above the plate

forming at first

globbed tiers

like stalagmites

holding their form

only briefly

before melting

into an undistinguished

larger glob

making sense to me

as an individual

at first unique

then born into

a uniform mass

always calculating (09/07/19)

carried on counting keeping careful tabs calculating making sure amounts match up perfectly placed weights balancing so that records can be kept track of current and up-to-date figuring for what otherwise seems ambiguous and uncounted and therefore not understood or able to be made useful determining where there was too much and where there was two little reallocating and budgeting to spend just enough for a return of increasing percentage learning from numbers to make more and sometimes subtract accessTo ensure that cost your profits the numbers are put to work

independence to interdependence (09/07/19)

feeling mattering more as long as you’re all right OK enough carrying on what is actually mattering only in so far as it is connected by some formula or calculation to how you feel not being completely off the sun still generally making warm and feel good but still sometimes the opposite sun burning and turning away so what there is mattering almost not at all except for what will kill and end everything needing to pay particular attention to danger but otherwise not mattering color words shapes time and events passing having no effect other than the effect that you won’t be interpreting fact by way of feeling and giving human weight to matter only in the case that it is interpreted or thought of or felt but otherwise just being on its own meaningless almost I want to say but being so humanist and I thought nothing could possibly could possibly matter beyond or outside of us similar to the thought I have about my own ego myself mattery more so I thought until age 23 or so but now thinking at least that man matters others matter but that empathy still not extending outside my species I suppose the next step by age 50 or soOr maybe quicker that empathy will extend to living things and then maybe before dying it will extend to everything and maybe nothing as well

consume and produce (09/07/19)

looking after things differently even when extras and efficiency is often overlooked into the access that would seem to provide enough even after quite some time having consumed and consumed with an attitude of leaving nothing left but still more comes and produces even for ungrateful hunger asking nothing in return

cafe choreography on saturday morning (09/07/19)

watching a cafe work cups stacked in a six or seven towers each twenty tall newcomers falling into line as they have before knowing the drill paying with bills or more often cards nowadays that move around the right numbers to motivate the workers to show up in the morning and do their jobs well outing coffee over ice opening black fridge doors beneath the counter that reveal glowing white interiors full of milk and other vital morning sustenance putting lids on cups for to-goers and grinding more beans clicking cash register keys sliding glass doors that both keep pastries fresh at the same time as having them be on display for customers choosing pointing through the glass that one no that one to the left right there yes the gurgle of the frothy milk foam spout steam and more beans grinding customers waiting with their arms crossed waiting for their cup to be called and then smiling stepping forward the operation running smoothly like choreography for a play where everyone has rehearsed their parts well and act candid as if it were not a shower but really real life so the hunger and thirst seems real and they are genuinely excited to receive their coffee or bagel but relaxed not so serious like they might not eat otherwise knowing there is another cafe next door but casually and expecting it having gotten used to a life of nearly guaranteed survival that the world of order has created which makes cafe choreographed machines possible

care about what

i used to care about surviving, then i cared about truth. now i care about art, which i’ll hold onto as long as i can, until eventually caring about nothing, whether by death or an ascetic buddhist spirituality.

highway painter

i know a man

under the highway

on second street;

he paints all day

on scraps of cardboard

—i noticed today

that he paints white

over the cardboard

that he has already painted

with multi-colored lines

in broad strokes

and then paces along the curb

with his hands behind his back

waiting for

the white paint to dry

so he can paint again

sick apartment tree

i thought our tree,

less yellow leaves

and branches perky,

seeming to respond well

being nearer the window,

was looking better

—but now i’m not sure

it depending on the day

and my mood

how things appear

as i look at them

at once sad and drooping

and then not long after

joyous and upright

this being the same tree

that we’re talking about

which, in reality,

is just the same, all along

at the taqueria after work (09/05/19)

let it be left and lost that Which doesn’t carry on itself after anything more important then the next step looking back and seeing where it came from but forgetting to look forward and keep stepping striding even running without paying any mind to it created his legs that run as long as it keeps going and becoming the past not mattering except for its contribution to exist now

Typing a whole thing out and having it be lost the phone accidentally erasing and forcing me to think of whether it was worth it in the first place

It’s not the beginning or end of the world just eat it is good for you without becoming too hungry or too satisfied keeping on the straight road careful not to dig or fly too far

short religious story

when i went home to kansas for a short while in june, i put on a st. christopher necklace that i found in a ceramic box in the kitchen counter. i wore it for the time i was home and it made my mom happy to see her soon wearing a symbol of his catholic upbringing. when i got back to san francisco the st. christopher pendant fell of the second day i was back, and i thought that was ironic. now i just wear the silver necklace. i suppose my mom still thinks i am wearing it with the pendant attached, and i surely won’t be telling her otherwise.

the fog in the evening (09/04/19)

The fog locks you down and you were here you were going nowhere else this is it look up and all you see is white even the upper half of the buildings are cut off like anybody on the 20th floor and higher doesn’t exist walking on the sidewalk you feel safe like if the world were to tip upside down you just fall into the cushions of the clouds no hope of a son that is going to set or riser a moon that comes up at night just this eternal day the same amount of light getting through the same temperature and the same thing to be done over and over until it’s finished The fog is for working world and nothing else

loud kisses

her kisses are loud in my ear

like you wouldn’t expect

from such a soft thing

supposed to be sweet

but crashing loud, hurting even

so close to the drum

sitting in the sun in the early afternoon (09/04/19)

I was really in a good cut that riding car down the side of the sidewalk seeming wider than usual feeling good about what I had written reading it sometime after forgetting it’s what I wrote I need it just to avoid the normal rushed hours like noon for lunch at 8 AM for the commute to work if I just wake up a little earlier at six to go to lunch at 1 PM I can get out on my own and see what I came forWithout having to dodge her out so many other pedestrians and wait my turn just to see

after about it now left got up from the low but if it’s a good feeling in my chest and happy just to walk in the breeze like I forget to be thankful for so often smiling for no reason and looking curiously everywhere curiously at what has appeared to be so many times but is now somehow different seeming like an opportunity an opening at offer unless I danger less like a car that might hop the curb and kill meMore like a modern Momento of innovation of them

sometimes thinking nothing could go wrong like now sitting in the sun in the early afternoon and other times thinking everything already has gone wrong and can’t ever be changed or get better swinging like this and wondering how to stay but when I get out and spend some time and try to doctorate everything changes and can’t experience the art of emotion throwing me this way and that out of my control which being myself I love meant to a certain degree because I’m the one who asked to go through it but from the outside if I were to see it like a book or a movie but quite enjoy the art of it after all it is the highs and the lows and even the sideways that are most interesting to sit with my eyes closed and be calm is not that externally interesting like a movie but maybe if we had to take the camera they could see what goes inside goes on inside of mind and the colors and feelings that take place they’re dark and silently maybe then i would prefer that movie

holding hands

take the most

exacting and useful

appendages

of the human body

—usually

always working

doing something

un-idle—

and make one

do nothing,

for a change,

other than hold

another

of its own kind

between

i get exhausted

checking the distance between

what needs to be done

and what could be,

thinking of all the possibilities

in between

one big surge after a nap on sunday (08/31/19)

needing it all to be productive even wanting my leisure time to make more for me having gotten into this bad habit of looking at everything in terms of its value and looking at myself in terms only of what value i can produce and this value system being minimally investigated though i suspect it is based on monetary american capitalist fear-based material systems and i have let them get hold of me in an effort i thought some time ago to lean into it for a while so that at some point i would have enough to live comfortable and be released and able to build my own value system with enough “free” time — yet that time has not come and i am getting antsy but know that if i break early before my money is made then i will return to the same problem having not enough money to survive and slipping below the standard of life required for the value system i would build based on non-monetary tenets so i realize the two worlds are linked by the ends of the world’s monetary system and the means of my own idealist world i cannot yet surmise that a complete break is possible especially with the lingering suspicion that a human being animal may not be able to release from his nature whereas the monetary pursuit is an advanced version of the primal pursuit for food and shelter so really wanting to split from my nature and remembering again that this is not possible – which i would not forget except for the ethereal moments when the sky opens up and shines down on the earth in a way i want to look at the world forever or a feeling for a person i love overwhelms me in a moment which i wish would last forever such that i could exit time in that moment and have that be all there is, yet it is this trade, which we do not necessarily choose to make though i think we would choose it if given the option, where the barter for more space is always to endure more time. if you want to see, feel, hear or otherwise sense the world differently than you are sensing it right now then you must endure more time. and this goes on whether we like it or not more time always coming and brining with it subtle changes in space that sometimes you don’t notice, when you’re sleeping for example, and other times you notice very second, like the final seconds in a football match. and in those moments, in a small amount of time, we reach up to the ethereal opening in the sky, but then are pulled back earthward by our animal needs to eat and otherwise care for our bodies that might die if not cared for correctly

takes time what i want to blast all at once in one big surge like a dam holding back the largest river which breaks at only one point and the jet stream that comes forth from that small crack the force of a whole river coming through that one point but even more than that because the whole river must still wait patiently for that small opening so i want the same small opening but the whole river at once rushing through with a blast that could destroy planets the same as a thousand taxis through the entrance of one roll bridge or a thousand camels through the eye of one needle which is the same impossibility i suppose i am asking for in this case that which jesus said was impossible for the rich man to pass into heaven with all his belongings but i care not for my belongings but rather do not want to leave this earth here to pass into heaven which is what i suppose i really am trying to bring all at once the whole word into the ethereal much along with me and still be able to display it to the world as art making me realize now that the belongings which i am most burdened by are not my possessions but my attachment to others and to myself

at the hotel laying on the bed (08/31/19)

leading on after into the microphone especially when I have nothing good to say not mattering as much that the speech to text messes it up is the original might not of been good anyhow just finding time like laying in the hotel bed before going out to the pool to say something anything really into the phone thinking something and stopping myself because thinking it might not be good but then knowing Shirley my ego has a hand in it and this being the main mistake when trying to write stream of consciousness but the complete lack of self consciousness during the kids through the window in the pool outside a little after 4 PM waiting for her food to settle so we can join them another long pause that the text doesn’t pick up like music would or a live performance when someone in the crowd would shout out what the hell are you doing not saying anything up there that I would showShout back I’m thinking but really not needing to do that now just needing to let it flow but can’t maybe a swim well maybe swing will help

at the same time you still have to be listening to what you’re saying Jane not to listen to just say and let it go otherwise what is being said is affected by what was said and what will be said and what is being sad all the time can’t be gotten through without what is behind or ahead you need to close my eyes and not look at the screen as the words appear but then being conscious of the speech to text turning off after 20 or 30 seconds seconds as it does needing to fix the phone or ask able to show me howLike just now I had to restart it you can tell by the capital letter and I’m looking at my screen and conscious of that when I write best ascending into no knowledge of what I’m doing and also conscious now as talking too much about the process I need to talk about the white walls in the orange circle painted over and over on the back wall in the white drape go to bed in the window letting in sunlight at 4 PM and baby here next to me patiently waiting and listening like she always does

Leaning my head off the edge of the bed with nothing else to say at the hotel having gotten out of town working a lot recently but this negatively affecting my writing not being able to get into the mindset and create when doing the same rudimentary tasks over and over and just wanting to think of nothing when I get home and spend time with baby even now out of town but I’m usually inspired a little less so but it’s all right I suppose work going well and the art will come back I hope

neither not even having energy your inspiration to get down let’s go but I can still get something down just talking about the ceiling line always the ceiling laying down looking up in the sound outside just nothing inspired in the situation so if I say my situation and what I see which I usually am excited about relaxed enough in this case but just not necessarily excited like it’s artistic just satisfactory and making me comfortable but the inspiration idea that this is really anyDifferent than what anybody else is doing on a regular basis without that it’s hard to talk a lot and fast about it so really just mumbling right now and trying hard to no avail laying on the bed in my towel after a swim waiting for baby to finish her shower and then take a nap and maybe dinner later not really matter and I think needing to remember now just to be thankful for when I’m comfortable and not having to create so much all the time

speech to text working well now and wanting to take advantage of it when my words are worth written down clearly but at the same time becoming conscious of the fact that there is no excuse if what is written isn’t any good so the instruments of production are precise enough that the fault lies only with the producer and really having nothing to sayIn this moment other than what the technology might mess up for me

baby bringing on to me

baby brought onto me

a distracting feeling

for her and nothing

else, even the road

driving, trying to

steer straight

or the hotel, trying

to drop my bags

and take off my jacket

but can’t even

baby pulling me

through the open door

shutting out behind us

the attendant and

any other distractions

pillow fight

there are objects

you can throw

soft enough

to be caught

like a pillow

letting fly

plumes of feathers

and other

soft things

thrown

alright

until

a night lamp

in the corner

gets knocked over

or someone

grabs a tea kettle

or something else

heavy instead

driving a rental car on the one (08/31/19)

In the car driving making reality matter more whereas when just sitting shape shifting when I look at it could be one thing or another no matter what in the driver seat with a hand on the wheel what there is

In the car driving making reality better more that it does as I said with my hands folded in a chair on a bench at the park for example watching as things pass by people walk and branches blowing all of it can change as artistically create whether I want to imagine the people at something else like blobs expanding and contracting or the trees as castles so constantly re-creating the world as it isn’t what I wanted to be this big part of my heart to constantly reimagine and see differently however this is not possible and driving if you see a stop sign and imagine as a green light or see a one-way road and imagine it has two there will be trouble reality as it is needs to stay that way in order of everybody on the road to be following the same rules such that artist shouldn’t be allowed to drive I don’t think not because they don’t want to fall the rules or because they’re not capable of knowing them but because their mind will re-create and then them to be understood differently on the road to where everyone understanding things the same is the most important part of traffic working correctly so now behind the wheel on the one heading south with baby driving for the first time in a while it is difficult for me especially wanting to get out my phone and write this and also seeing a red light and thinking of all I’ve written about red lights and what they made and how they can be interpreted differently but in this case I need to just determine it is exactly what it is a red light that means stop and Nothing More no Rick re-creating it as something else especially not getting distracted and thinking about it so much that I don’t notice when it turns greenAlso this been wanting to go faster and faster and not necessarily follow in line and dodger on cars regardless of what I can’t see on either side that because it’s the right thing to do it because it will get As to our destinations faster and more so just because it’s what I feel and what I want but those are not the borders for driving feelings and desires is very much about following the rules driving there’s nothing really to do except for exactly where you’re supposed to and that is just not what I’m used to doing

The red light opens up and ceases to become a red light reaching past the scene itself as it appears just to my eyes and seeing into a submerged layer of the reality such that almost the feeling or the emotion of it gets through to me in my eyes Shirley are still seeing in the sense that they are processing the light but something deeper takesThe primary focus of my attention it is the same when I write sometimes and can imagine how somebody will read it usually one particular person when I’m deep in conversation or exchanging messages so I right now to create a grammar recording to have a sound read out loud read over again I can imagine they will skip the articles or read the verbs loud I need a few synonym verbs to really give the idea of the action one after another not separated by commas as they should be for conveying what is meantAs I feel it whether that is how it is normally communicate it or not

I love sitting shotgun consuming what I see through the windows but at the same time want to control the wheel controlling what the windows show and where we go but have trouble doing both at the same time sitting in the driver seat needing to pay attention to the road but wanting to recline my seat and watch writing the passing scenery reminding me you cannot be both god and a liver in your created world

I kind a like the headlight take such that you could pick up the pace and go for it not instructed by trees or climate clients crawling down towards the beach whitecaps ordering so blue meeting Paige

signs say call box now open etheldore st cross walk ahead chevron with techron historic moss beach distillery el granada 2 half moon bay 7 speed limit 55 driving by on the one doing about 40 just over the speedometer says signs showing me that trees i always fall the same, just tree, maybe tall or short, or green in spring and orange in fall, but mostly just tree, whereas a sign always has a name like speed limit 50 radar enforced princeton coral reef avenue el granada ave alhambra oceano hotel & spa pillar point harbor and other words telling me where i am and what i ought to see pointing in all directions other than where i am right now and way what i see right here without any sign having to tell me

she holds her lips to the back of my left hand that she holds with her right as we wait in traffic on the one merging two lanes into one so even slower now but not mattering with baby and our music here in the far feeling just fine not even noon with all the road ahead of us down south along the coast

car window theater

driving

in the backseat

(so riding

i suppose)

watching

out the window

i treat

like a movie

with the frame

of the window

as the borders

of the screen

—or a gallery

sitting in

the same chair

staring at

the same picture

that changes

expect that

the picture

is really real

and if you opened

the car door

(once the car

has stopped,

of course)

you could step out

and be born

all of a sudden

into any picture

that just moments

was only painted

on your window

untitled

all along outside even after in goes others who wouldn’t waiting need to wait to just get through the editing phase before going back again to making and benefiting from the momentum of one being surrounded by front and back to learn itself less scrutiny spread out

known city

the city is an ambiguous thing

a mass

a place to be gotten to

but not necessarily understood

or remembered

intimately

like a person living there

able to sit in their apartment

with their eyes closed

and imagine walking on the sidewalk

in any direction

and seeing the storefronts

and usual coffee shop

and even the imagining the worn chair

on the second level

where one usually sits

—the city becomes

a place lived in and known

rather than a general black mass

holding a spot on the map

that one reads

for places imagined

rather than places traveled

and even if you have visited

once or twice

and remember specific places

like what a specific room feels like

the sense of knowing the whole city

and the places you can possibly go

and how to give directions

and where to lead newcomers when they ask

only comes with time

writing poetry

when i write poetry i don’t sit down and employ a creative strategy or exercise to first get an idea and then open a dictionary or other index of words to figure out what will fit the rhyme scheme and meter—going along like this slowly spending time to think between words and building slowly brick by brick like a house. when i write poetry i’m often standing up in an experience that is making me feel or think something and start my fingers typing on my phone with what i can only identify as the energy of the experience itself that comes so fast my fingers can barely keep up and sometimes i don’t recognize what i’ve written until after it’s done

pulsing bathroom floor

the world is shaking moving

making faces at me

in the candle light

the tile floor gyrates

beneath my feet

the little white

hexagon tiles

each bordered

by gray grout

pulse back and forth

confusing my sense

of where my feet bottoms

meet the ground

mocking my

impaired mental state

more speech-to-text from that saturday that i almost lost in my text message history (08/24/19)

You just Gotta go on creating what you do being who you are digging deeper into the trench (edited, was “Trent”) you are born into past what may hold you back seeing others do something similar or different way do you like that you should or should not be looking out ahead and seeing what will come of it or looking backwards and thinking that this doesn’t match with who you are forget all of that it doesn’t matter but were you when you were in it and really beating chugging along wheels are on the rail punches are being thrown the water is boiling it’s time to go now being in it and God that’s it that present that time when it’s just you and you know you’re doing it or maybe somebody’s with you and you’re doing it together but god that’s the moment and all other times you’re just thinking of moments that I’ve been before and why it’s been so long since the next moment that’s to cut that start to come so you wait until it’s upon you and then you’re not prepared and can’t catch your breathBut have to make do with the breath you’ve got to sprint on (edited, was “spread done”) through

just make it won’t you man make more for me now while it’s here because it won’t always be talking in abstracts using adverbs instead of verbs not wanting to commit to much to any given idea right now but rather wanting to just express the feeling generallySitting on the edge of the bed now holding my Head in my hands my elbows on my knees my left finger is resting on the back of my right calf to talking to my phone I can hear the refrigerator in the apartment in the garbage truck outside in the bus that says one California to Gough and Clay looking at my phone surprised that it typed out those street names correctly and the bus takes off leaving me with only it’s Noise and nothing else to talk about the beep of an alarm and tell the car door slams still the fridge wearing onomatopoeia‘s are recorded very well by speech to text always got that word but not this out of the fridge just me alone to talk to myselfAnd being caffeinated so not wanting to do anything else

I don’t really know if it will last but it something right here now to me and that’s for sure a lot of goodness in life at large seems to be this way because it only so much can get to a size or last long enough for Manny to hear over years and in different places and see or however it may be experienced but the vast majority of things which are good seem to be experience on a smaller scale maybe only one person drinking his coffee in the morning on his usual bench watching the morning or lovers that of been together for sometime returning to one another after a brief vacation there are many of the small simple things

there are steps and rules to follow holes to slot quarters in lines to walk between buttons and computer keys to press laundry to fold instructions to read carefully emails to read and delete watches to watch and schedules to be on time for

with love, drugs, and other sorts of emotion, the main problem with getting up high enough is that you have to come back down

human body art

I think it’s interesting to compare the parts of the human body that create art and the parts that consume it. For example our hands create art that our eyes consume in sculpture and painting for example. And our mouths create art that our ears consume in singing for example.

more speech-to-text from that long saturday when baby was gone (08/24/19)

So can’t get a title to figure out ahead of time what the pieces have to get into it and it first overwhelmed reading and having more and more words come in so having to process each word well also figuring out what the thing is as a whole and make up a title on your own

I get to Ohio where it all comes out but for me at least there’s never a plateau never consider flat always a climb up and fall down sometimes it controlled climb like a hike or a staircase taking steps up other times like a rocket ship straight up into the air with a rocket boosters and cheeks flapping barely able to hold on and then a brief period with a booster stop Ingraldi starts to take hold and then come back down can either be a slow decideJust sad sometimes I meant to say dissent dissent with an ED said dissent dissent dissent I can’t get this word but to go down is sometimes like the opposite of the staircase where you’re stepping down slowly or hiking down and other times it is like the fall from having shot straight up into the air and falling without a parachute

i lived on oatmeal and the eggs that baby hard boiled for me that saturday when she was gone and i had to learn to be alone again and realized when i woke up that the bed wasn’t going to make itself

The world are not to see me as I am not at (ought not, having to type this part) As I am I can’t perform for them I can’t do this in front of people I saw Terry practice it is to close my eyes and go into it if I see anyone or know anyone is their messes me up do you ever lose that self-consciousness I can only do alone

Hearing something in the other room and thinking oh that is just baby in the other room but then remembering the baby is gone and wondering what it could be a little scared at first but then remembering what it sounds like to be in the house alone

don’t choke

things are fast and rushing frequently enough that a breath caught and soon let out makes only a momentary stop when any premature flex of muscles while inhaling will cause a choke and then it will be coughing and wide eyed slow

some alliteration in here

left now longing after looming likelihoods have transpired or not and so what was wished for has been bitten into like a bite seen or has swallowed air deceived such that shortly after is a great sense of satisfaction or otherwise disappointment but it mattering little either way truthfully for the next bite, whether real or perceived, will appear soon after and drive a stomach that seems always to be empty to carry on looking longing leaning forward

oh no, never to be thought of again

suppose you do come through with what it is that you say you do but then leaving me with it done but what is that four fridays ago leaning off holding my hand out waiting what no longer waned out of mind’s front and center finally slipping beneath and slinking off never to be thought again

more SOC not sure when or where from

almost like an expectation normally would show you what you’ve already conjured up some down swimming where what i really need to do in this dog fin situation is to open up a little and let each word have more possibility rather than letting the limits tighten and each subsequent predicate so closely on the prior there it is the sounds of the words dictating what comes next rather than the meaning but nope there i just switched back again to the meaning and still now but let’s see here if a dear so long as touched what wasn’t much mostly after long nights nevered along such that a never verb were so definitely permanent it needed and action to continue conveying its meaning

drunk 5am

a little drunk off of it in the bed at night or morning in between hour at 5am taking this opportunity with the normal connection of my brain to body to reality slightly distorted as drinking will do so laying here writing some and seeing what will come out that wouldn’t normally

pill bottle in the night light

going to the light

to the beam under the shade

brining what needs to be seen

like the page of a book

or a pill bottle label

in the middle of the night

rather than flipping the switch

and blasting the whole room

like a grenade

for a bullet’s job

a pill bottle in this case

so i can see the label

and cure a hangover

in the middle of the night

and make sure i don’t poison myself

with the wrong bottle

on the street corner at lunchtime

i can really drive like this on after what eludes me in complacent hours passed almost not noticing and sometimes just because i’m enjoy myself and not so hungry or otherwise needing to survive as i am when it is right there in front of my nose

sitting on the couch after one cup of coffee and no food around 10:30am on Saturday (08/24/2019)

feeling it better now to just talk into my phone as I was trying to edit and place things carefully and work that I had already written but up so high I haven’t had coffee and not eaten that I’m more in the mood to speak and create new things rather than shift around all things like I can try the freestyle or the stream of Koch this out loud more easily in this mood where the rug runs along the floorboards and tell up the legs of the bookshelf along the walls and tile horizontal where the top of the shelf supports a television that looks like a frame against the white wall and realizing constantly that when I start to do this stream of conscious it is first things I see that I start to say so learning my pattern for performance and would becoming self-conscious inevitably hearing my voice and thinking about that but trying to raise higher from the self-consciousness and just put out what is there what I am sensing coming closer to describing just what I am being in the moment with headphones in my ears trying also not to really hear my voiceBut just let the phone hear it and write it down so that it is more natural

let’s try to get a run along going here with my eyes closed and pulling more from just the dark nothing is in my mind rather than what I am seeing where a word rides I can almost see them typed out reappearing one by water replacing the next one not even thinking of these words really just saying what happens in my mind and that being more like preposition conjunctions because there are no nouns and verbs when your eyes are close and there’s nothing to put together other than maybe pronouns but not pronounce more like add verbs like such an ass and more this ad is this and fastness just the way things are rather the things themselves his wifeMy mind is blank except for when I pull out from the depth which is really probably just a memory or else something primordial that were born with

eyes closed or you get it in the darkness but even now seeing the slight differentiation and shades of darkness behind my eyelid some parts more misty white if you look closely and not even abstract shapes or a granularity that almost looks like sand white gradient specs in the blackness similar to the sound you hear is silence your mind still trying to pull something out of nothing and when I open my eyes to look at my phone to make sure it’s a recording of clothes that again the lights that I Saul like the light from my screen on my phone at the light for my laptop or the light from the salt lamp all become scar is in the back of my eyelidsThat it first resemble what I saw before closing my eyes but then less and less the ice can remember as the lights fade and I can only assume my pupils dilate again trying to hold onto the light but less and less coming in from the darkness now

really thanks so much now my God lifted up and out all along just really mumbling almost into my phone really barely even being able to pull the definition of the word out knowing that I want to keep making a sound but he really almost wanted to be just noise and wondering what the phone is picking you up if I were to just mumble or hum (edited, was “harm”) like but somehow as those words get out and the sound of creative self in my stomach before they can reach the phones microphone my lips and teeth and tongue curve just enough to make them into words that I somehow remember I believe that I’m still talking because this comes from somewhere that I don’t know not really even talking to someone are trying to make sense of it but it really just flowing are coming out somewhere there is a primal force in my

wanting (edited) to talk more about this concept where my energy for creating starts in my stomach or maybe below my stomach maybe in my sexual organs and drives up and in that driving up through my abdomen through my torso starts to define starts to become something at least more than the force but say that in my sexual organs it is only one one for us and then in my abdomen baby becomes defined into one of five or six things and then when reaching my trachea maybe one of 100 things and only in my mouth where my brain also seems to influence it doesn’t define into one of 1 million things or I don’t know how many words I know but somehow before it gets out and into a word and reaches the phone defines itself all most of its own accord into words and normally we are rationalizing and choosing logically and meaningfully what those words are they get out based on what we see or hear or what would be appropriate but now while trying to return to what I would maybe do as an intelligent baby or what I would do if I had absolutely no self-consciousness really the words are just polled at random but they don’t sound random because they put themselves in together and do a string of sentence so maybe there is some order in as I even try to think now really just forgetting that what I want to do is just put it out and let it go and let it be and I’ll

that is the thing I think that these words really come from somewhere else that it is only when we look out and try to find out ahead of time what is appropriate that these words actually become so tied down specific in the common words are used most often that people understand people understanding being the predication of what we want to use when we are alone and the words are closer to the guttural force that drives up for my sexual organs then the words can really be anything and left to just flow and not even having gotten there completely yet do you still these words just make sense but closer I think to the way it is that a baby just makes noises or mumbles because that’s what comes up naturally from their core and they have a largeAnd they haven’t you learned yet how to make words that sound appropriate to others

these meditations were interesting to me at first to capture just while I straight up consciousness as Dan is removing as many barriers as possible from what goes on in the mind to the words that would actually come out to get close to the fighting what goes on in the mind and I don’t think this is the only medium of art to do this words I mean definitely could hand somebody a paintbrush and have them just paint what they feel but still than having to have eyes open and dip the brush into a specific paint maybe music I think is actually even closer than words because then you can just make sounds and harm more yell or go high or low or pause or go sideways based on how you feel but the words and give it a little more definition so that you can go hi like motivated excited exuberant left it exuberant left it where is with the hi Noise there is only really the one Hein Noise where his words give it more definition but now there is the second part of this meditation or experience or experiment I mean where I am having this concept of an energy that comes up almost that reminds me of what I learned in Catholic school about the word big divine or holy something about the wordBeing divine are holy the word really is one it starts as a unified universal thing there is a word the capital W word and that starts in your midsection and your sexual organs I think in your creative area and then is defined as it comes up through organs that have to sort calories and especially in the trachea and mouth and teeth that developed to speak so humans can relate to one another by then the word become so defiant and needing to fit into a physical world that is differentiated but it comes from a universal world that is all one primordial that is why the word is W

and maybe recording this mindless meditation instead of putting through speech to text so that the pauses and the sound of my voice can be captured but also thinking then that it is only this out it is more like music that they only have the recording and there is something about putting these words down to definition where they are written and seen in the world real world that makes it more than just the sense of your own but also the sense of sight so that you can see the words and thinking that that transition is very very important but curious about the media by which those words are written because my hand cannot write fast enough these words that I’m thinking it is only the microphone I can pick up and transferred a text that captures it fast enough though not clearly enough but that is also upReally my fault because sometimes I mumble the words or say something that even I don’t understand so sometimes the technology understand me even better than I understand myself by completing my sentences

Not knowing how much longer I can go like this quite hungry now and not having eaten since early last night costly feeling that my art is best when close to my aunt getting more and more hungry and more and more delirious and wanted to keep going wanted to resist the urge to eat I just keep recording answer my phone until I wonder if I could almost go even farther and farther and if they would actually be a medical issue Shirley is only been hours since I’ve eaten but whatIf I were to go days since eating what then can I create what kind of thoughts would come to my mind what I even be able to speak that is an experiment I want to try creating art without eating

A little more nonsense now just from the urge add a little more but pretty empty it being weird how it is like a cup or anything else that feels of where I pour out of myself there’s only so much there I don’t know where it comes from whether there is like a battery where I have to wait to charge up and fill up and just by living my normal life and maybe sleeping stuff is added it to me and when it comes time for me to put out are I pour it all out and try to get it out and get it out at some point it is empty right now if you are there is nothing more to say but still wanting to say having the energy having to drive but none of the content of the actual matter like a fire or the potential for a fire but no locks no matchSo it is for art in particular the artist that only so much art can be created you cannot read the whole world you cannot see the world from all the different possible perspectives you are human only your small physical body and can only participate in your slice of that time and space I cannot expect more and so settling down into making out with the time and space you have in being satisfied with that

I got really going out can’t even focus on editing trying to think about the world will think of something but having no concept of all of the world will think anymore haven’t gotten left it off so much into my own head of my own space or wherever I’m at that when I look back at the larger piece or a book that I’ve tried to write and figure out if I should delete or keep a section of how I should edit it I can’t have any of these thoughts because I have no concept of the objective no concept of the objective to which many subject themselves so trying to average those objectives to come up with an objective answer that is what will be popular and that is my main goal would giving something to the world but not knowing that now being so drill down it’s my own subjective where it is that my art comes from which is a great irony of art that what you are bringing to the objective or the universal is truly a deep deep subjective that is only only for itself but there is some part of us objective another subject of that is that enjoy seeing one other than itself so the greatest start is between two I love our relationship a sexual act between one and the other a very very deep subjective meeting another very very deep subjective or perhaps it is a long subjective inside of a deep subjective one coming into the other that is the sexual act the ultimate creative act of one going deep into another one extending in one receiving One extending it one receiving the longer in the deeper the better and are you not so much just the space of the length and the depth but also the time being able to hold it away in that moment of ecstasy and so going as deep as you can for as long as you can and the other receiving all the link that they can draw the tide and they can both holding together and experiencing what it is for one only one to experience another it anything more than that one tried to experience to or what I’m trying to experience many or Maddy trying to understand one or any other creative union other than one and one is a perversion and even wine and wine being different than one alone experiencing itself so that I am now wondering if there is a way to many to experience each other if we all can participate in the same union and I think that is what it is to have a child for that sexual union do you give birth to something that is actually one of the long is gone so deep for long enough that the two literally become one create a third that is themselves but is it self not separate at all it is not the left off from one of the right half of the other it is one completely and so what would it be for everyone billions to write dissipate in a sexual act that would give birth to one and returned to GodMaybe that is it the whole story of life that God and some divine act obliterated the capital 01 and to Manny and it is our destiny buy some creative sexual divine asked to return to the one that we all were originally

Breathing and dBrief focusing feeling humble now I can’t fall and I guess I didn’t now have fallen back and try to scrape myself together and restart it matter how much you make there’s always more to make and you almost forget what you made before even when you are proud you forget those moments I could become not proud it all soon there after like you’ve never made anything in your life

I am going after everything driven primarily by an interesting curiosity and it all right now so eager to open or walk into a new place or hear a new sound or touch a new thing just wanting the senses to come in wanting for the world as it is shown to me through senses but other times I want to close my eyes and shut it all out right now I just go from one thing to the next and I was completing their completely forgetting the thing before and thinking now that there is so much that you never run out of things you can go on go on go on go on go even for a whole life opening new doorsHearing new sound seeing new things meeting new people feeling new feelings learning new things you’ll never run out in this way it is good we are small and limited that we can only do so much at once and be in so many places at one time is it allows her to be diversity and newness in our experiences such that by restricting the abilities of man you have multiplied his possibilities

do you want to get it all done at once and can’t barely wait for space to catch up almost exploding with all the desire in one moment that a body cannot contain in a second and to yell out or a great display of strength breaking something is the only way to express my needing to take all that energy that would blast like a grenade in all directions and channel that in between deep canyon walls that I lower the river to rush and define to a point or like a pressurized tank with only one opening and that opening is where your heart comes from but the walls of the tank must hold strong must keep the yard in and condensed so that when it comes out it is defined so the real charge for an artistIs not to keep art coming out of the opening but rather to keep it closed in everywhere else

Sometimes being more reserved and hiding it only showing some one now releasing an open the doors wide-open and letting it all be seen even my own work I think all should (edited, was “she”) get out

most creative

i’m most creative when i wake up early in the morning around 6am and have one cup of coffee and don’t eat anything and just see how long i can go before i get light headed from not eating because once i eat the creativity stops

too tired

i want to have sex with her all the time, but i don’t always want to have sex. i feel my love for her well up and i want to express it physically, but i am tired.

untitled

my severe survival instinct in this safe and plentiful modern world only had art to grab onto

coat hook

coat hook

being my favorite thing

in the apartment

whereas before

i would throw my coat

wherever

on the back of the couch

over the lamp

on the floor

on the stool, bed

back of the chair

wherever

but now

there is a place

beepy mute oven

the oven beeped twice

when’s it’s normally

only supposed to

beep once

so i walked from

the living room

under the arched doorway

into the kitchen

and looked at it

the oven i mean

and it looked back at me

and said nothing

waiting for baby

Upstairs in the apartment waiting for baby I hear the door slam and my heart jumps I hope it’s not like last night when I did the same waiting for baby sitting on the couch at one point I wanted so much to see her that I resolved to jump right up when I heard her key turn in the lock and felt all that love for her sitting at the edge of the couch cushion especially around 8:30 because that is when she said she would be home and was waiting especially for a heart full of love around that time and playing it out in my head how she would have her bag and maybe be stressed from work or happy from a good day but either way would run up to her with a big smile and lift her off the ground with a hug and kiss her face and neck and arms so much that she would giggle like she does and forget her day and just be happy to be home and be together with me and playing it out so clearly like this made me want more and more to hear her key turn in the lock and listening for the front door and even pulling the trap to the side to watch the bus stop not knowing if she would take a car but when 8:45 came and then 9:00 and 9:30 that love that welled up all at once began to dissipate and I could only sit on the edge of the couch for so long and had to get cleaned up myself and go to bed to wake up for work the next morning so I got ready and did my nightly meditation and read a few pages out of my book and turned off the lamp next to the bed and laid down so when I finally heard the key turn in the lock I was half asleep and raised my head to give baby a smile and was happy to see her very happy but not nearly as happy and filled with love as I was earlier sitting on the edge of the couch

sunrise pedestrians

one person

steps off of the sidewalk

and the rest of the morning

pedestrian crowd, follows suit

without looking up at the light

when the sun blasts and blasts

in the early morning rising

so you wonder how

can it be so bright already

so much your sleepy eyes

can’t stay open looking at it

untitled

often all it takes

is to slow down for a second

and wait for what comes

when everything else stops

trying to do

what i did before

to get the same effect

but it’s different now

staring at the art gallery wall in the apartment on august 11 at 2:53pm

clearly everything is seen right now without much to distract just being allowed to be and having my eyes work and not so much noise that the few noises are heard clearly and loud and heavy eaten just enough and enough time passed since a small salad lunch that I’m not running to my next meal but also not passing out from hunger and so greatly satisfied all over and curious about what I am sensing is the perfect formula to just be talking into my phone and having it makes sense and also taking time to pause and let it play out what I am sensing and in this case mostly thinking just staring really at the art gallery wall the baby and I put up in the apartment but not really seeing the art mostly just eyes glazed over seeing the words in my mind and seeing isn’t the right sense but thinking is really the right verb which to me has been interesting lately as I have thought in most cases art is a matter of sensing but from my writing it is largely a matter of thinking which at times like these with isaac lost over has nothing to do with sensingYet thought is mostly nonsensical without senses that at one point informed the very structure and language of thought

baby sniffling car going by outside fridge whirring another car going by and skateboard wheels and a heavier vroom like a diesel truck or maybe a sports car and starting to listen closer to the car noises and being able to hear the difference between just wheels rolling and when the engine is revving

tripping mushrooms in golden gate park on august 10

everyone looks the same like the same person

wanting my trip to be the trip and so not write just to stay here and be with moment …

being in this moment everything melted together so that I can barely feel my feet touch the ground in the sense of my stats as well as my fingertips skipping the phone as I talk to it or less potent or not even there so that whatever drives me my mind on my soul is more the focus just driving and no focus on the appendages that result from the driving just the soul moving through and seeing people inspiring a face to smile but it’s really the Saul doing all of this in the body just listens to the commands of the soul and so now it should be the commands of the soul and more clear the commands of the soul and my clear waiting on my friends thinking it’s funny that I’m talking to my phone off away from them and they’re waiting to walk back to the party so I should really go with them now baby looking so cute tying up her hair and all these people around so many people here in the music in the distance and the fog rolling in over the trees in Golden Gate Park really looking amazing not knowing whether it’s just the nature on its own or whether it’s me tripping do you need to go back now but still looking at my friends laughing and having so much fun just being together making it so happy the baby my new girl is talking to John and Krys my old friends and they getting along so long everything is good right now we need to start writing to be more in the moment and not really being the crux of this having to stop writing or having to stop being I mean not being able to be in the moment while riding and having to step away in order to talk to myself so people don’t look at me weird

Picked a good part of the forest wondering what thoughts I have a worth writing and what sites should be wet just pass so meeting in the middle by writing everything later but having this theory that it’s all good

Feeling good and great directions like for the trip now fully in it past the turbulence of the come up so just soaring and even taking more needing really just focus and be at it does pass just talking because I’m trying to write

Realizing so much more and more that it’s the self-consciousness that affects the art even just now talking to John realize the conversation we were having his art it self and so not necessarily the consciousness of the self the gist of art be created a fax with whatever not oh my god this

feeling the fear of experiencing it while not writing and then it’s gone and I wasn’t recording and I can’t get back that exact feeling that led to what could’ve been written and even now even now my phone is having difficulty recording what I’m saying with all the people on their voices around so the moment is harder and harder to capture which makes me wonder about moments that must be captured presently yet or out of reach of art forms that can’t be capturing in that moment feeling the same fear of forgetting or missing out in general but specifically applied to the art that would’ve been created in that moment and really wanting to survive and get down to it to have life be created and recorded and not lost or forgotten being the driving force of life and the driving force of art in the drive

So overwhelmed with it all feeling what is all here always but unable to live like this with so much overwhelming just becoming exhausted all the sensory inputs and empathy for others and looking at someone in the face and not knowing them but feel exact with the feeling

The same feeling I feel for something written down and then lost as I feel for life lost in life really just being time but time needing something to pass in order to be itself so life big time and space

I forget who is who falling behind in the crowd with my group it’s in the back of one head and it being a difference the back of another the trip so that everyone is the same

Looking at people and being there and not wanting to interrupt that with being myself

So much going on if I’m to be the one I’ve learned you can’t write it all at once you just can’t write it all at once it takes time life has to play out overtime even if you feel it all at once you can’t write it all once at least not with words you by feeling that one moment so much do you want to explode in that moment obliterates with Human and you but you just can’t write it on the moment

And being with the moment thinking that I want to be here but what about myself I came before that I want to keep being before or not thanks so much and see you baby far away laughing and really realizing now that I stepped out of the moment and seeing all these people that know that I’m tripping look like the same people I see your face and looks like a face from my past but really all the faces are the same and I feel more connected and more caring and more easily able to find excuses for the fault of others just like I find excuses for my own faults

front man

even one person

propped up

isn’t the one

with so many

to support him

the same many

who in idle hours

taking short breaks

from supporting

wish to be

the one

they support

crosswalk

the yellow rectangles

painted proportionately

across the street

between the parts

of either sidewalk

where the curb

slopes down slightly

to meet the street

for pedestrians

to step off safely

and cross

dead quiet night in the city

in the dead quiet

of the night

i feel so awake

and out of place

while everything else

is so dead

and there’s nothing

not even

the neighbors

to talk

or the cars outside

to go by

hands

my hands

often hold

the reminder

that we are real

as i stare at

my open palm

and fingers

stretched wide

turning my hand

over in the light

exclaiming silently

at space

in general

to even exist

and more specifically

as something

i can see

and even more

as something

i am part of

and can affect

with a body

to which

these hands belong

ketchup packet

even passersby

stepping on packets

not noticing

a ketchup packet

SPLAT!

on the sidewalk

someone must’ve

stepped on

making art

all the time

here i do know

i know here

what there is

and can expect

what comes next

after changes

and subtle shifts

in expectations

only when

what has happened

previously

continues to recur

untitled

consumer radio silence bouts between on and off priceless interactions soon after met with pressure

dark and light shapes blinking my eyes blotching abstract art over reality

the night seems nice to me tonight waking up at 1:45am whereas sometimes it seems scary

ocean air

i don’t get out

near the water

enough

where i can

breathe easy

in the open

ocean air

outside

of the buildings

standing in the wind

standing

with my back

to the wind

pant legs

flapping

leaning back

just a little

hands

in my pockets

sound

wooshing by

my ears

waiting

to warm up

between gusts

motivated by death

i am motivated most

by the fact

that all at once

it could all be over

and whatever i did

moments before

would be

the last thing

the idea is there

all people

have this energy

and it goes

somewhere

into self-destruction

sometimes

or outward

looking at others

always

or inward

but the point

is that

the energy

is there

being spent

always

like a train

that cannot

be stopped

by standing

in front of it

but can be

steered

by curving

the rail

meeeee

i feel light

like i left

my bracelet

and rings

at home

or maybe

forgot

my jacket

less

to weigh

me down

but that’s

not it

inside

more energy

maybe

circular chase

always trying

to advance

and move forward

with no time

to settle down

and pay attention

to what now

is quite wonderful

and in

a circular

way

is that which

you chase after

all the time

right here

fair

so

wanting not

more

than your share

but wanting

at least

what

you came for

return to base

everything rendered

into this form

at one point

or another

needing a base

to return to

after such varied

newness

and shape shifting

needing now

to return again

texting

wanting

immediately

for the three dots

on the bubble

to pop up

needing

the conversation

to continue

as if

in person

—this being

our only

substitute

art all at once

art

being all

and needing

to press on

into

after

overwhelmed

with

the rush

coming on

all at once

seeing

exclaiming

wanting it all

to stay

this way

knowing

it won’t

so trying

to stay focused

while it does

coming home early from work at 4:30pm on a Tuesday (08/06/19)

like this laying on my back and having it all pour out especially after days dark interspersed with tread wondering if this is it in the yard has gone like I always do fearing I have nothing to offer and will be me anymore or maybe just afraid of being worthless and unproductive and untalented really not mattering what identity Woodcalm for all identities being the same and melting into one another but really just the primal need coming through and this being what is requiring of the ego a certain consistent and persistent success whereas otherwise just to wake up and be even completely different wouldn’t matter just as the rest of the world does anyway and especially less apprehensive to become another and melt apathetically completely into the interest of anything else even unmotivated even for Survival even dying maybe and being all right with it because not coming from an ego needing so badly to live

goodness like a drug it comes to be so unexpectedly today just from having left work a little early and paying so much attention on the bus into the buildings on the walk to the bus especially and now back in the apartment laying on my back on the rug and looking at everything the off-white ceiling and the leaves outside the window blowing lightly all of it just as it is any day that I get home but on this day just a little earlier it all opens up and gives back to me the art and ability I so selfishly miss and fear to never have again when it’s gone so reflecting now while I have it on why it is that I miss it so much when I don’t interesting especially is the thought that it will never come back and believing so strongly that this is true even though for the last little while now so many times back-and-forth I thought this and it certainly does come back but I suppose the fear is Stuart still real that one time it won’t and then what will I be nothing maybe different maybe something else maybe I will be all right with that too I have been mostly all right with what I have become and suppose that I have become different things but really now thinking that this one is it and that I only have so much time and so many chances before I lose my mind or disintegrate or grow old or get killed suddenly so I want to rush all I had at once and really wish I could if I knew what it would take I think I might have the will to do it but just being in a body and mind that can’t I’m kept private and so have been taught patients as a result but still Hoping greedily for more time so that the limited mind and body I do have wind spread out can achieve what I otherwise would all at once

clearly everything is seen right now without much to distract just being allowed to be and having my eyes work and not so much noise that the few noises are heard clearly and loud and heavy eaten just enough and enough time passed since a small salad lunch that I’m not running to my next meal but also not passing out from hunger and so greatly satisfied all over and curious about what I am sensing is the perfect formula to just be talking into my phone and having it makes sense and also taking time to pause and let it play out what I am sensing and in this case mostly thinking just staring really at the art gallery wall the baby and I put up in the apartment but not really seeing the art mostly just eyes glazed over seeing the words in my mind and seeing isn’t the right sense but thinking is really the right verb which to me has been interesting lately as I have thought in most cases art is a matter of sensing but from my writing it is largely a matter of thinking which at times like these with isaac lost over has nothing to do with sensingYet thought is mostly nonsensical without senses that at one point informed the very structure and language of thought

let’s see if I can give you an example here of what it is two cents in the sea thought looking now up at the off-white drapes crumpled and connected buy black been screwed into the window cell and glass window surrounded by gray metal frame where just be on the glass is a branch of leaves that are about 6 inches wide and five or 6 inches tall blowing on their branch and occasionally pressing up against the glass window see that was site that I was sensing now if I switch to hearing I hear my own voice and close my eyes to make this easier hearing car is outside and a rustling that is rather pleasant that I cannot tell whether it is the cars or the leaves Rushleigh against each other blowing in the wind now a release of wind that sounds like brakes on the bus and the room of the electric engine in the door of the apartment building shutting heavy downstairs and now the bus taking off from the stop and hearing the chime on the phone that tells me my voice is stopped being recorded so opening my eyes and seeing again and switching to that sense thinking now of smell and taste which I have said before really aren’t strong senses artistically certainly taste is with the Colaneri arts and eating but just laying here with nothing to taste or eat my taste buds are mostly useless and tasting dry saliva nothingness in my mouth and my smell especially sensing less if I could just drive it it would be nothing this as well maybe clean I would describe it or like fabric or like air and feeling are yes I should’ve said feeling before taste and smell because it can be quite strong abstract I describe it like it often makes abstract painting make more sense to me whereas undefined things are seen with the round and rough sketches but nothing clear as you would see with site feeling now my hand my left pinky and ring finger against my abdomen and the palm and some against my lower ribs and my left foot on top of my right shin and my behind pressed against the rug slightly sore from laying in the same position for a little while and my elbow against the leg of our living room table and the fingers of my right hand holding my phone in front of my face in the back of my head also Preston gets the rug is similar to my behind and really quite a lot if I were to focus over a grade about a time I want my body is feeling just my body itself I imagineThis being sent as art

ver if you were to say my art leads to nonsense usually when I get a rush and have a lot to put down but then still the motivation stays well there’s nothing left and so results in me saying whatever comes to mind even though it doesn’t make sense and really just wanting the black great against the sky to keep going so the art doesn’t run out without much content referring back to what I said earlier about a body and mind only be able to do so much in a limited time but Pricing I’m not the last talking faster running almost out of breath and wanting the light to show like it does on the ceiling shadows really just waiting for baby to get home laying on the floor alone and all my poems out of me feeling better actually having gotten something down and leaving a legacy if in this moment I were to die which is a large part of what drives me I think to leave something if I die to make something while I’m here and preferring to leave this motivation is not so clear as to let them drive me and be human and normal without having to discover and explain everything because then as I have beforeJust getting a headache and then losing the motivation and that not being good for anyone

like a little space behind the mirror leaned up against the wall in the corner behind the radiator or dust bunnies collect and protected not so open these small spaces make me wonder of cloistered worlds where cat paws with scratch and food falling off the dinner table will get lost and marks on the wall unseen won’t get patched or painted over and light won’t shine as often if long enough turning to paint a different color

staying with an idea long enough or moving on to match our attention spans wondering what length is right between gravity and well explained so if it in the beholder that will read brilliance into one wordAnd otherwise is in patient won’t sit long enough to get anything out of it anyway and all around all story short and long playing out just depending on who is there to read them

The need to create constantly pressing on me but needing to relax and remember that what will happen well and creation happens always just by living a story is told in just by seeing a painting is painted and just by hearing music is made so all the time the heart is there and the only variable is not whether I create it but whether I am open to seeing and hearing it

wanting baby to come home so badly just sitting here talking to myself not realizing how much I miss her until now being able to hug her and talk to her and just hear her breathing or working or rolling over in bed and looking up to see her watching her live her not life as she normally does and being so interested in it and her being interested in mine and making comments and asking me things

So much art really all around just a matter of capturing it and sometimes having to decide between capturing it and just enjoying it

not knowing what was at stake

days

when i should

have stayed

and did

in fact

but wondering

frightfully

if i hadn’t

and quit

up and left

and couldn’t

have ended up

here

where

i like it so

and would have

certainly

pressed on

had i known

but could have

just as easily

not

not knowing

what

was at stake

abstract face

looking at

what was

a mirror image

of myself

that now

looking too long

has become

un-

identified

and broken into

constituent

crooked teeth

and an un-

recognizable

smile

power line frame

lines of power

across the sky

that would be

perfect borders

for buildings

only that

depending

on which corner

of the street

you stand on

looking up

at the lines

that most often

cut right through

love city work

laying

in the apartment

on the floor

during an odd

off hour

having left

work early

and waiting

for baby

to come home

stressed out leaves

green leaves

outside

the window

showing signs

of stress

blowing

on branches

flexing

in the wind

not

so calm

as it is

inside

watching

backward bus

sitting backward

on the bus

is quite odd

moving

with your back

to the progress

having to turn

to see the signs

for your stop

snake bus

looking back

on the bus

watching the inside

bend

like a snake

as the wheels

crawl

over hills

and the passengers

rise up

and down

in their seats

like kelp

on wave crests

commuting

commuting

all hours

moving

to get somewhere

maybe

just making time

seem not so spent

still

and stretching out

by step

or wheels turning

often with others

never going to

exactly

the same place

everyone

everyone

in south park

on their phones

walking

in circles

with one hand

in a pocket

and the other

holding

the phone

to one ear

talking

supposedly

to someone

somewhere else

can’t sleep

putting away

trying

to sleep

my phone

into the drawer

of the nightstand

then thinking

of another

poem

and having

to pull my phone

back out

noisy night

it’s a noisy night

with the news

from the open window

in the bathroom

and the traffic

always the traffic

and the neighbors’

conversation

through the wall

behind us

traffic light on the wall

i want for

the little square

of green light

on the wall

to turn yellow;

i don’t know

why exactly

but i do, maybe

just for something

to change

or because

i know

what comes next

so well

that i just

want it to happen

already

so when it does

the satisfaction

is short-lived

and soon after

turns to red

not safe city

think of all

the cars coming

and if you were

for the first time

in the city

unaware that

cars are not

supposed to

cross over curbs

or run red lights

and so not even

wanting to walk

on the sidewalk

or crosswalk

or other walk-y thing

that seems

to be safe

based on norms

and probabilities

but really

isn’t safe at all

world > everything

if the whole world

didn’t exist

i’d still do this

but if i had to choose

between this

and the whole world

i’d still

choose the world

pant leg monster

scary shape seeing

in the dark

groggy

and scared easily

in the dark

early morning

pant legs

on the hanger

and a shadow body

moving toward me

old glasses

i put on

the glasses that

i’m supposed to wear

all the time

but usually don’t

and feel overwhelmed

in the grocery store

from all the

extra information

on the labels

that i can’t

usually read

sitting in the cafe

like the fan blades going

and the wire

inside of the light bulb

hanging by a cord

from the ceiling

and the sound from

the speaker in the corner

just slightly louder

than the headphones

in my ears

morning light in the cafe

a sliver

of morning light

shows itself

on the left side

of the square

wooden table

where i work

in the cafe

casting a shadow

beyond

the cup of tea

still steaming

—the same

table

on which

there was

only darkness

an hour before

routine

everything

is done for me

because i’ve lived

the same life

the same day

many times before

—so my shirts

are form fitted

from having been

washed and worn

on the same body

and the same people

i already know

just say hello

and less

nice to meet you’s

and i still

remember

the way to where

i usually go

so less looking

at a map

and trying

to figure it out

and i know

what i like to eat

so i push my cart

in the same path

at the store

and only stop

when something

is out of stock

oh the morning

oh the morning

yes it is

what i thought of

last night

when the day

had become too much

and in need

of something new

pretty sure i’ve written this before

when wonder weighs

what won’t be held

it’s hard to keep it quiet

though sudden sways

in ocean waves

and wind outside the window

make it so

that even though

breaths are held

just waiting

it all will come

from a summer’s sun

that shines so all can see

Walking home on Fillmore on a Friday night

brisk cool walking feeling good and even open even though foggy and dark and windy and blowing in my face and walking downhill that up peppermint on my skin opening my nose tree leaves overhead stopping at intersections and keeping rhythm with the clacks of my heels of my weekend shoes that I wore because it’s Friday night and waiting for a car at this intersection and it goes so I can patch voices in the distance to my left

San Francisco being quite a really beautiful city and people laughing which makes me happy doors close it got parked cars that start their hinges it make me wonder why everything is plural because it was really only one car cars cars cars cars I’ve said this before but if you walk up the sidewalk in the city it is really car is at Phill most of your consciousness either listening to them or try not to get hit by them or looking at the ones that are really expensive are the ones that are not expensive it makes so much noise

I wondered why the Google maps app said it would take so long on my phone the walk I mean it was only a mile or a mile in 3/10 baby but now I realize it is because of all the stops at the stop lights and having to wait for cars those are the stops that make a mile walk take 30 minutes

So much here yup I’m sure of it now even more sure than I was when I packed a backpack and moved from the Midwest to come to the coast the people who had been here told you was great now I am one of those people that will save myself that it is great this wind blowing it’s seeming like it is not so great in the city but he thinks cold and dark but I know it is from the ocean that is not far away it’s so ISmile is just as if I were on the beach in LA

it’s quite easy now really to flow just the immediate after work hours on a Friday after I’ve worked and worked and worked and slept and woke it up and work some more and slept again so that I get into the mood of just doing the same thing over and over and getting good at it and measure the bed not being able to do anything else so now on a Friday when I finally have some time and want to make some art which is what I really enjoy doing I can’t because all my buyer wants to produce is the workI think that that I won’t ever come back but it really just takes a couple hours for everything to open up

Passing around a crowd her and I from either side had the same idea and so crossed on the left her right and almost ran into each other around in the crowd not being able to see

And so wanting to see by golly just show me what we came here for and can’t wait anymore to let her eyes have with anything but the same for it is for any of the senses sight especially just to have a change of pace

Meditative walking so not thinking of getting quite far pay attention so much to surroundings that you don’t realize how much this route exit changed and now looking up at the street side to realize you’re in a whole other part of town I should’ve known for the way things look different but the changes were so subtle that every small change one by one doesn’t equate to a big change all at once

Just capturing all of it without discussion like this and this and this and that and that and all of it so great so beautiful overwhelmed with my camera out hitting the trigger button pressing captured so many times over and over just spinning in circles taking a picture of everything up and down my shoes in the sky in the building for the people in front of me and trying to write down what they’re saying when they’re talking and trying to record my own thoughts and also what my senses are telling me converting stimuli into words and writing down the words on the street signs in the markets are the gas prices and running out of breath saying this into my phone

seeing home in state after a long walk and getting excited to see you baby having to wait for this last light counting down with the flashing orange hand and yellow rectangles across the way where pedestrians are supposed to walk I can see the apartment from here not our window but I know it’s the window right next to it and I know baby is sitting there waiting for me or maybe try to distract yourself like I am right now thinking of anything just to pass these next 20 or 30 seconds before I put my key in the door and get to see babyLike I wait for all day lately it is but every day that I weigh like this and I suppose it could be every day here after

Introduction to The Speech-to-Text Experiment

While working in the city I’ve found it difficult at times to both keep up at work while also finding time for my writing. Because of this, I started writing during “small pockets of time” like sitting in the back seat of the car on my way to work in the early morning, holding onto the handrail on the bus on the way back home, waiting for the elevator in my apartment building, waiting for a friend at a restaurant, lying in bed at night before falling asleep, etc. During these times, I was still “on the go” and couldn’t sit down to open my laptop or write at a desk with paper and pen, but my iPhone that I always had with me anyways was the perfect tool to record a passing thought. (I know this might sound like an Apple advertisement but it’s really just the authentic story. I tried my best to read into the copyright laws about using the word “iPhone.” Please don’t sue me Apple). Combined with the fact that these moments in time were when I felt most “free” to focus on my writing, while I was also “getting something done” for my personal or professional life. It started as just texting myself with the Messages app. At the very beginning, I was trying to write a novel or short story. So I practiced writing scenes or character descriptions, and then would try to piece everything together on Saturday when I had more time. At some point I realized I was better off just keeping the pieces separate. This was my introduction to poetry. I was capturing very short and specific passing thoughts or a quick snapshot of what my senses were telling me—like looking up at the buildings downtown while waiting at an intersection, or closing my eyes in the car and listening to the traffic noise. The next iteration was using speech-to-text. I noticed there was this little microphone symbol among the keys on the iPhone keyboard. I had seen my dad use it sometimes to send messages for work. I started using this feature to speak my poetry out loud, especially when it was coming too much and too fast for my fingers to keep up on the tactile keyboard. There was also a more natural “flow” from saying the words and hearing them out loud so it was easier to make a correction when the rhythm was a little off. This allowed me to be more productive and contributed to most of the contents of this book. Now that I have had the chance to think about it as a completed project, and more removed from the natural way that its production came about, I think there are very interesting ideas about how our technology understands us and allows us to communicate with one another. I have often texted a friend and thought that the conversation could be dialogue for characters in a story. Further, I wonder about the stream of consciousness that everyone has naturally, and if technology could capture it. In producing the contents for this collection, it was often my goal to let my thoughts flow as seamlessly as possible—from what came in through my senses, and back out through my words, whether spoken or typed. I wonder if the human error, of my experience being translated into words, could be removed, and the experience could be translated directly. The same could be done for other art forms: a movie playing exactly what someone sees, or a soundtrack playing exactly what someone hears. Anyhow, here are those thoughts and experiences to which I have referred, recorded and copied by the methods I have described.

for fear of being formless

why crunched so much into a form that has passed for fear mostly of being formless so holding on without realizing that it is all still there and a brief detour won’t erase the whole map as long as the journeys traced with your finger are taken at some point or another or even that tracing itself is a location or event on a higher order of maps

why crunched so much

into a form that has passed

for fear mostly

of being formless

so holding on without realizing

that it is all still there

and a brief detour won’t erase

the whole map

as long as the journeys traced

with your finger

are taken at some point or another

or even that tracing itself

is a location or event

on a higher order of maps

leaving work in a car on the bridge on friday night

left after a week worked hard in the car and my shoulders starting to relax a little as they do at least until a gradual tightening come sunday evening but just happy now to be headed out of downtown and back to where i spend my nights and the city has somehow kept the building under control and so is more natural to see the sky and easier to forget about what is other than a mono blue or white or even grey at the worst but even the fog on a rainy night i prefer much more just to sit inside and take time to boil water for tea and eat then steam or otherwise relax and spend time without having to get a return on the investment

gone for good this time

reaching into a thoughtless mind wondering again if the poetry has gone like i know i have thought before and without fail the poems return but for some reason like before i think again that this time is different—that it has really gone for good this time.

raccoon bag

a plastic bag

on the sidewalk

under the bridge

in the dark

blowing slowly

looking like

a raccoon

sleuthing around

simple things, and other simple things

building tops

and walls

downtown

against the sky

like my girl’s shoulder

against the mirror

in the apartment

—simple things

made even more

simple

and clear

outlined against

other

simple things

contrasted

by difference

so the line

is clear

wasting away

i feel myself

wasting away

when all

the attention I’ve paid

is to the out and out

on going out side

of myself

where most

meaning is made

and drives me on

but a body can only

be driven so far

by meaning alone

until physical matter

must be upkept

several waking hours

so only sometimes

several waking hours

when spent as if

time won’t pass so fast

and really left

to look deep down

into what’s always there

but often glossed over

in favor of other space

made important

by limited time

wake up

i raise my head

from the pillow in bed

as a brief flash of light

comes under the curtain

and catches my eye

just enough

to wake me up

weatherman

i talked to cloud

and sun could not say

whether we are waiting on

high, risen, or setting

today

cement crack

cement split

like a natural crack

only that this one

goes so deep

as man has made it

while a crevice

may run to the core

tag along

tip toe tag along

prancing praying

you don’t get caught

doing exactly what

everyone else does

where words get their meaning

words make you feel because you use them. if you heard a word, but had never used words to mean anything yourself, i wonder if you would hear anything. words are fat with the weight of past experience. different words are more important to different people. the reason that writing can be so emotional for me is that when i write a poem or make up a story, the words i use are inevitably defined by how i’ve used them in my personal life.

looking last

when you realize

looking last

that nothing

in the past

kept same enough

for an identity

that holds together

but instead

rubbed off

and ran through

all other parts

of the big whole

let the good build up

it’s actually the work in the office all day focused on what has answers that crams my art into small pockets of time so it becomes less like a drip which spread out doesn’t pack a punch and so means nothing much in a concise enough form that can be read and impressed upon like a flood where if you let the good build up behind a dam and mingle together creating in your subconscious what comes forth all at once after work on the bus ride home scrambling to hold onto the rail with one hand and type the poem that’s been waiting all day on your phone with the other hand

two ways to write poetry

there are two ways to write poetry. one is to write words as they come to you, somewhat randomly. the other is to try to think of what makes sense or what is true or what people will like—and then write that. even when i use the second method, however, i find that sometimes it will doesn’t work anyway. and on the contrary, with the first method, i can write something random, in a sort of stream of consciousness, and it turns out great. so with my poetry at least, i’ve given up control, and resolved to just keep writing.

sitting cross legged

i used to sit so

things felt

only contacted

out of place

like one leg

slung over

the other

sitting in a chair

looking cool

but only feeling

the leg pit

or the knee cap

of either leg

at once

and so worrying

that one leg

isn’t working

so not even

sitting cool

do i get a break

from my mania

how i feel in the morning

open free

feeling

quite alright

after some time

in unconscious flight

woken with

a bounce

or a bump

and nothing at all

feeling closed

or impossible

quite yet

creative

at first

thinking

being creative

to do

something new

then

notched down

and in

to a groove

having worn

the same path

ceasing to think

and feeling less

human

more machine

mumbo jumbo

if the writers

keep writing

on the other side

of the muffled voices

apartment wall

and late afternoon

brunchers

and bakery

line waiters

all saying

some words

that spill into

my dreams

a moment with a stranger

i shared a moment

with a woman

i didn’t know

at the bookstore

her and i

both browsing

as jazz music

played (no joke)

a little fast

and her and i

in this tight

little alley

between bookshelves

i wondering

if she’s interested

in the same stuff

and her wondering

i wish i knew what

and i stepped out

to write this

and she left

and it was over

simple world

i see it so simple

what i can’t capture

with a camera

or painting

so try to capture

with a simple world

like simple

which crams

a castle

into a shoe box

bleh

filled into

these forms

that have been

filled out

enough times

to becomes forms

cocktail poem

i write it

again and again

learning

nothing new

shaking

my head

like a cocktail shaker

with the same

few ingredients

metaphysical nonsense

in the meantime

meeting moments

that come and go

casually, often

enough so that

most space

has a great indifference

to the time

that washes over

where am i?

such

seen before

in fact

exactly

like this

before

in fact

wait a minute

has anything …

where am i?

revolutionary morning

less colors

with the lights down

so everything

is closer to black

conforming

and becoming one

until

a revolutionary

non-socialist

morning

when individual

color rights

will have

their day

under cover

time rich skin sheets

a little hot under covers

crowded to the edge

baby hogging more

than her half

so side leaning

to make space

and leaving a leg out

to cool off

rando

every time

i walk by

another

on the other side

just like me

going

the opposite direction

karma

give some of my

energy and love

to baby

and some

to my work

and even some

to strangers

remembering that

none of it

is mine to give

—i am returning it

to where

it came from

drapes like dam

window drapes

like a dam

after a flood

in the morning

holding back

all that light

wanting in

to wake up

and start the day

productive

thinking

if i can just

put out

this much

and then

i don’t know

but at least

i’ll have

put out

that much

until now

i’m realizing

there’s no end

and you have

to keep

putting out

meditation and poetry

meditation and poetry contradict because they both take you to the same place but with meditation you get there and keep going further whereas with poetry you get there and exclaim then try to take the meteorite flight back down to earth with the wonder in tow

with meditation

you get there

and keep going

whereas with poetry

you get there

and exclaim

then try to take

the meteorite flight

back down to earth

with the wonder in tow

go so cerebral

don’t always

close your eyes

and go so

cerebral

open them

and find what

our primal senses

are more familiar

with understanding

cars like waves

sometimes

they are smooth

like the ocean

sounds

of cars going by

so i sit

on our rug

in the apartment

as if

i was on the beach

in the morning

meditating

listening

to mechanical waves

like driftwood

before

you know it

you’re moved

like driftwood

downstream

with all

the other

debris

that moves

with the river

to the same end

regardless

of where

you started

present specifics

at once i think

of future possibilities

and hope forward

for the next thing

working myself up

to be let down

which is when

i try to find

a real specific thing

right now

like the crystal knob

on the bathroom door

or the semicircle

archway

over the hall

and the morning light

or even just gratitude

to see another morning

feeling myself

really sending

it strong now

feeling fast

and flowing

for the force

of momentum

that drives

an artist when

he appreciates

his own work

grocery poem

walking home

with groceries

so i have to stop

every half block

and put down

the bags

to write

some poetry

walking home with groceries

walking

with a brown

grocery bag

in my right hand

i see another

of about

similar

height and build

and a grocery bag

also brown

in their right

i wonder

is there a mirror

up there

at the intersection

fish shapes

suppose a centrifuge

of square shaped

triangle patterns

filled your sight

long enough

to render regular

seeing things

obsolete as

gills for dry land

send some surety!

so you would say

a night’s day

never left from

no time before

still needs some

surety sent soon

in order to even

consider a noon

before a dusk

when it will end

as it does daily

sprinting a marathon

it seems to be

all coming

so you almost

want to sprint

even to death

because

this is it

but must balance

with the possibility

there is more

still to come

after a rest

and a meal

so still sprinting

to get somewhere

but not so fast

knowing

there will be more

beautiful city

a beautiful city

even more beautiful

after you’ve been

away for a while

like the cathedral

unassuming

among victorians

morning traffic

stop

and go

stop

and go

at stop lights

in the morning

when

the stops

are almost

unnecessary

given

the few cars

up this early

except

for the speedster

that might

blow through

and ruin it

barely sun rise

clear cold

misty morning

white white sky

seeming all to be

the same white

from a barely

risen sun

that shows some

of its light

but none

of its color

method writing

being in

whatever

you’re writing

so when

you forget

what to say

you can

look up

and listen

to what

it’s telling you

shower thoughts

something about

having your head

under the faucet

and shower water

rinsing out

the shampoo

brings every thought

you’ve ever had

rushing forth

at once

old lines

writing what i’ve

written before

because it’s safe

like a freestyle rapper

using old lines

without courage

to risk a mistake

and let everything

come out, as it will

city routine

saved by routine

back in the city

settling into

what i know

not so chaotic

as vacation

waking up

each morning

with the full set

of possibilities

—refreshing

for the first

few days

then exhausting

and wanting

to get back

to what you know

close-minded

on there

open wise

there’s not

much more

than

a closed mind

you’d be

surprised

contrary

to

the wide claim

moonlight

in a dark room

noting the moonlight

through the blinds

that is normally

drowned out

by the ceiling light

nothing’s changed

some time ago

seemed like

things wouldn’t

ever change

like knowing someone

that looks different

over time

but you knew them

all along

so they look the same

new eyes

went

all the way

out here

just

to come back

and see

what i was

seeing before

now

just a little

bit different

seeing

an old world

with new eyes

back to the city

waiting

for the plane

to board

back

to the city

and take

a car

to the office

and resume

the life

i was living

before

commitment

with so much on the line and one step meaning disaster you end up paranoid thinking you could lose it all at once especially when you’ve given up so much to get here but there’s really no other choice some level of commitment and sacrifice required to make progress so the cure is to come to terms with the possibility that you might lose it all up to and including your survival and when you can commit to the work and sacrifice without that attachment to what is gotten then you can really chug along unhindered

sleep drug

like sleep

is the drug

that does it

between dreams

needing

to forget

one world

to see others

temper tantrum

if expecting

to write

not being

able to

because trying

to prepare

like making

the bed

for a child

that will sleep

on the floor

anyways

and so needing

to look away

and act

surprised

when another

comes

rational poetry

keeping

(or at least

trying to)

a certain

rationality

so even if

a poem doesn’t

sound good

it will

at least

make sense

extra-personal space

the space that i’m in

seems more open

like i’ve only just realized

the bubble outside of

what is sometimes

called “personal space”

and am now

in this moment

a little more aware of

space at large

dream poem fishing

writing best

between naps

like fishing

going under

to dream

and reeling

one in

above the surface

to unhook

and place

in the boat

then drop

the line

and re-enter

into

dream waters

and wake

with another

on the line

feeling

my left pinky toe

scratching behind my right heel

my right instep

flat against the fitted sheet

covering the mattress

my left ribs and shoulder and tricep flat too

lying on my side

my ear and jaw and part of my cheek

against the pillow

a slight strain in my neck

inclining to reach the pillow

baby’s forearms

pressed into my back

the second sheet against my right knee like a teepee

and against my right pinky toe too

like a second post

the back of my left hand outside and on top of the covers

folded with my other hand like prayer

holding my phone

typing this

my right index finger on the power button

on the right side of the phone

and my left index finger

on the volume buttons

and my two thumbs on the lighted keys

that i see with only my right eye open

and my left closed

submerged in pillow case

and the inside of my right bicep

slightly sticky against

my right pectoral

and thighs laid flat

like books stacked

not top of one another

dry tongue in mouth

feeling breath roll over

like ocean breeze over

a sandy beach

and slightly chapped lips

a half inch apart

eyeballs behind eyelids

closed while i think

and nose just being there

not particularly felt

other than a slight blockage

in the right nostril

and other parts felt

just being there

like eyebrows and forehead

center of my chest

and insides

and second and third layers of skin and muscles and bones

all being there

mostly unnoticed

expect for the occasional practice

of laying physical attention

any sense alone

fingertips enhanced

with eyes closed

like ears hawkish

with lips pursed

and mind sharpened

with none of the senses

any sense strengthened

without others

to crutch for

its shortcomings

stumbling in the dark

abstract feeling stumbling in the dark feeling blindly for the bed interlacing legs feeling only the warm ceiling of covers creating a home between mattress and sheets and baby’s legs on fire like a heat rock and fingertips touching my own heated chest and back reaffirmed by comfy flat mattress all this with eyes closed feeling for a simple world made up of bed time sensations and abstractly with broad brush strokes telling of a bedroom in the dark just as it speaks to skin absent light or sound

go up a floor

you go up the stairs into a building and forgot completely about the street so if you’re feeling some way just go up a floor to a different setting and feel differently

bible beater

a man holding a sign walking down broadway in santa monica past tourists and shoppers reciting bible verses into a megaphone and the sign says something about how there is a god and a man on the other side of the street shouts, get a life!

two classes of words

words to classify sort and name specifically:

Tom

Lots Angeles

Copper

Twenty-Four

and words to group evoke feeling and express generally:

love

people

movement

time

i tend to find myself using the second class when poetic and the first when story telling

sunburn

sunburn sends

and peels away

part of an outside edge

that needs to be red

and let go

to reveal

a new shade of skin

showing summer warmth

walked into a mirror almost

everything looks the same in a store with rows and rows of clothes so i’m confused when i want to walk through and take a step then have to stop when i realize it’s a mirror reflecting the rows of clothes behind me so on the next turn i’m hesitant even though it’s really a row that i can walk through this time

green mountainside vs. commercial roadside

cityscapes with harsh lines steel and objects versus brush and green overlapping trees with their trunks hidden and even the edges where the mountain shoulders would meet the sky dressed in greenery until you take the mountain road down and emerge into the first intersection where there is a sign with gas prices and boxy storefronts and street signs and stop lights that are all angular and pointed

two-way traffic

generally safe

on a two-way

if between the lines

on our side

dependent of course

on the same

coming from

the other side

and nothing

over the middle line

which we can’t control

anyhow

so resorting

to a more relaxed

focus on our lane

and what will destroy us

coming the other way

is out of our hands

upon us

several days ago a message would have been sufficient but now that we’re here and it’s upon us without warning there is nothing to be done but to act suddenly which is almost better because the natural response may be better than if we had prepared

domestic love

we feel love forcefully for the first time before it softens and quantifies itself to try and last and be a rational thing of the world that doesn’t spill over its bounds all at once but tries to become more of a lasting and domestic agreement than an all-consuming blaze

dream world

body boasting its soft round plumpness to soft sheets plush enough tilting the bed so you slide through the floor into the under dream world where you grow and sprout again into what mixes with your waking reality

baby baby

at night not mattering

anything except

i can feel baby

and her and i both

exist completely

in the feeling

(muddled by

no other sense

in the noiseless dark)

of her fingertips

tracing the same path

on my bicep,

over and over

until she falls asleep

write the naked moment

looking this

and that way

for a piece willing

and confident enough

to present itself

all at once

and completely naked

so there is nothing

left to invent

as long as i can

keep my eyes open

and write quickly

before

the moment redresses

cerebral space

into a cerebral space regardless of what the senses say where a thought can start itself like a fire without fuel telling stories with pieces from different puzzles and letting a close eyed wanderer leave the necessary time and place of a body into a directionless mind travel that starts and sustains itself even dreaming when the body rests

together

baby and i
trying to hold
each other closer
pressing harder
trying to twist
our legs together
and wrap my skin
over her bones
pressing so hard
it almost hurts

vacation with baby

earlier at the beach in the waves out deep enough so baby could barely stand with her head above the water and especially had difficulty when a big wave would come and when we’d had enough and went back to shore our heads were pounding either from there being water in our ears or from the waves hitting our heads over and over so we tried to remedy the first by laying on our sides to let some of the water out but that didn’t work so we didn’t know but by then the sun had made our skin dry and warm so we forgot about our heads and fell asleep dreaming in and out with the sounds of the boys playing in the sand castle and the waves crashing a constant background noise until i slept for a while and baby woke me up saying she wanted to go so we got back in the car and drove along the pch and the traffic wasn’t too bad except for a short stretch right before we turned into toponga canyon and now we’re back in bed in the studio with a bird chirping outside and our host running the hose to water his bonsai trees and the dog trotting back and forth upstairs

eyes adjust

like a bright light

that you look at suddenly

from darkness

and close your eyes

and look away

waiting for your eyes

to adjust

but still seeing

that scar of light

on the back of your eyelids

that is a symbol

of the actual light

you saw

but it is not

the actual light

it is just

the scarred memory

of your eyes

telling you what

you supposedly saw

and more

and more abstract

if you watch it

off in the one corner

of your vision

the edges softening

more and more

until what resembled

a lightbulb

in the ceiling

and then a circle

of light melts

into the general bright

of your vision

at large

as your eyes adjust

share some

i make a bunch

just so there’s some

to pick from.

it’s all there anyhow

in one form or another

and you can experience it all at once

if you spend enough time alone

but have to labor getting it down

one by one

and picking the right ones

if you’re going to share it

with anyone else

some more specifics

talking more about specifics like being on the pacific coast highway driving south from malibu to topanga going about forty miles per hour in a white five-seater sedan listening to electric feel by mgmt in the left lane on a section of road with construction where fines double at 4:37pm and the license plate on the dodge truck next to us is 93074H2 at a red stop light at the intersection of corral canyon road on saturday, july 20 and a blue sign on the side of the road says call box and on the other side a P in a circle with a line through it that means no parking and a discount succulent nursery and house number 24818 and a 45 mph speed limit sign and john tyler drive and now the song take a walk by passion pit the singer says i love this country dearly now to malibu canyon road and road work ahead again in a diamond shaped orange sign and the words signal ahead in all caps white letters on the road beneath our tires a sign that says sold in red capital letters for a parking lot apparently malibu lagoon state beach for which a few applies and the singer says rip apart those socialists and their damn taxes a dad running with a stroller and his blue shirt says malibu running across the intersection and a store at the corner that says food mart and car wash

back there vs. out here

back there, i’m building

out here, i look back

and see, what it is which

i can’t do while in it

like being unable

to figure out the width

of a river

while underwater

superior sense

sometimes one art is more descriptive than another depending on which sense you’re trying to appeal to – i point to three roads that are relatively close. i am trying to point to the one in the center. i would be better off using my words and saying, “the one in the middle.”

vertigo

seeing flashes and feeling

movements in gravity

or the ground beneath my feet

so i almost say woah

and topple over

unless i’m seated

then

i just get a weird feeling

actions speak louder

supposedly

just saying it

isn’t enough

when action

takes more

than an inhale

and curve

of your tongue

but rather

to spend time

that you only have

so much of

especially for

the sake

of another

is much more

than a few

uttered words

art is like an egg

just needing a good sun nap

to forget everything i know

and fry my brain like an egg

so the art comes back into the void

from all around where it lies

in wait even when i think

it’s all gone but it’s really just

because i’ve been hard boiled

and in need of a scramble

sf vs. la

after so much time in the dark shadows of buildings and fog walking fast on sidewalks always getting somewhere most often to work crammed into the bus with everyone else doing the same and so feeling the same and so thinking nothing of it or of doing anything differently or least of all leaving but staying concentrated where a desk lamp or an office light makes clear the paper or computer screen to be focused on in contrast to the dark overcast often sunless and cold where the ocean water is freezing so even if you make it to the beach you stay on the rocky sand and still think about work because it’s really not that far away both in terms of space on the coast of town and in terms of time over a short weekend and all of this contributes to quite a lot of production and ego building and economic growth until you get on a plane because your girlfriend says it’s time for vacation and drive in the night so you can’t see up to a house in the mountains and fall asleep exhausted from the work week and stress of travel but then wake in the morning to find a different world where the sun sets higher and brighter and drive down to the ocean where the water isn’t as freezing and the sun not dressed in fog shines so that everything seems to be one and the ego is less of a concept not because of any spiritual realization but just because you can see a thing other than the brightness that melts it all together and makes you want to close your eyes so your not even seeing but just feeling the warmth of the sun and then before you know it laying back onto the sand with a smile on your face and waking up hours later well rested having forgotten everything you left in the foggy working city and thinking my god i could cancel my return flight and stay here with baby and let my landlord figure out what to do with my stuff and be like one of the beach bums that live in their cars that line the pch and haven’t moved for years

zuma beach

at the zuma beach, we ask the parking attendant if she has a map. she doesn’t speak english very well. she says, no, just beach.

freeways

freeways are

too fast for me

flinging forward

hunks of metal

kept from

killing you

just by

painted on

white lines

flight to LA

sitting in the airport waiting by the window as the sun sets for a flight to los angeles the flight before us deplaning and travelers a little sleepy less apprehensive for a flight not far just to LA at 9pm on a friday maybe tired from a long week in the office and getting away for the weekend like baby and i on our way to topanga canyon and then malibu beach on saturday

burglar

there will be

one night

when i get up

to use the bathroom

at 2:21am

or some other

middle of

the night time

and check

the front door

to find

it is unlocked

having forgotten

to lock it

before bed;

i just hope

it is not

the same night

that the burglar

finds it

screwy things

i think about

screwy things

like nails

nailed into

the insides

of pipes

that touch

whatever

the insides

of the pipes

touch

like drinking

water and

anything else

that shouldn’t

get rusted

maybe

it was the head trauma at 267 N. Sumac that caused the migraines that discouraged me from pursuing anything technical like air force academy or wall street because i’d have the migraines any time i’d get too stressed even though i could handle the stress before and just push on through without getting the migraines

greased

in the night

my poetic mind

is greased

without the corners

of the lighted world

to catch it

some days

there are some days when I think the whole tree is done drilled into particulars and young resign just to breathe and think goodness until the night when I get up to use the bathroom and it open all comes back at once

edited: there are some days when I think the poetry is done drilled down into particulars and resigning just to breathe and look outward thinking of nothing until the night when I get up to use the bathroom and it all comes back at once

night hands

i’ll put my hand on baby

in the middle of the night

and she won’t wake

until i take it back

even though

it wasn’t there before

each sense has an art

Sitting waiting seeing for it all to be written even though it is always written. All sensory inputs could be described with words. Some inputs we don’t have words for. Imagine looking out at a scene and being able to describe it perfectly with words. So much so that the person seeing the words could see the scene perfectly just as you see it. Or the same for a sound. Imagine being able to describe it with words so the person reading the words could hear the sound perfectly. I suppose that is why we have music. Which makes me think that there is an art best suited for each sense. Music for hearing, painting and drawing for seeing, dance for movement and feeling, culinary arts for tasting. But what sense then is writing for? For imagination? For mental capacity?

senses 2

feeling feet

one foot

on top of the other

seeing bookshelf

black against

white wall

hearing motorcycle

outside and

baby sniffling

in the kitchen

and water running

feeling seeing

hearing feeling

seeing hearing

senses

feeling pajamas

on legs under covers

seeing paper

and pen in hand

hearing cars

and bus

whooshing by outside

tasting nothing

dry tongue until

i close my mouth

and salivate

smelling nothing

the bastard sense

along with taste

lying dormant

and ignored

until dinner

writing is like exploring

there are only so many combinations of words, punctuation, and spacing. only so many letters in the alphabet. so the set of things that can possibly be written is finite. it is like our physical earth. there are only so many possible combinations of DNA. a presumably finite number of elements present on earth, combined in different ways. the only difference is that they are already all rendered and out there and the difficulty for an explorer is to go and find them. whereas the difficulty for a writer is that some writings, while possible, have not yet been written.

a building

a building

in open sky

with itself

and no other

buildings

on its edges

allowed

to be like

an object

painted alone

on wide

open white

canvas

still true

several times it went

round and round

returning only to see

if the philosophy

was still true

stray-sayer

so long a stray says shorter than the last walk left without direction gone again to the listless less given grace to one not gone astray and stayed straight

love and sexual energy

having baby allows me to put my sexual energy into my art; my sexual energy for her is extra and overflowing, as it comes from pure love. i suppose my love for my art should be the same way. this is interesting. not motivated by popular opinion for my art. just by love for the art itself.

art is dead

i’m dead and all the art is out of it and there’s nothing to be said

(when i write this into the blog they seem kind of funny because i see the art before and after it and know it certainly wasn’t all out; but i treat these seriously because i know i was really feeling down at the time and had to push through to get the art out)

tried to stream of conscious-it

a pleasant sensation of numbness as my fingertips melt into the cement bench and my forearms stretch leaning back and looking up at the sun there is no discretion between fingers …

blurred colors

blurred colors come into vision

like the sliver on rings on fingers

and the green on leaves on trees

spinning around in the park

and the peach of fingers typing

on phone screens and blurry streaks

all of it like paint strokes with colors

that run and melt together

morning bus

i see simple things

like a hand

grabbing a yellow rail

and a button

that says stop

on the bus

in the morning

packed with people

trying to relax

before work

overreacting

one thing gets

just slightly off

and i wonder if

the whole world

has changed

and everything

i knew, was a lie

wide world

the world is wide

and possible

placing parts

where new wholes

change your view

from few

to many

busy man

like a man used to

the chore

of having multiple people

need his attention

he deals with each

in turn

bus noises

buchanan slow down vrooom

webster slow down ch-kkkk

please hold on beep vroom

fillmore slow down stop go

ch-kkkk beep beep click click

doors are opening ch-kkkk

please hold on beep beep

steiner and california click

click-click click-click (turn

signal) click-click click-click

doors are opening stop go

please hold on vroom

vrooooom (speeding up)

pierce click ch-kkk beep

please hold on vrooom

stop (stop light) go divisadero

(my stop) doors are opening

shaky bus

the whole bus shakes

riding over construction

unpatched bumps and

potholes in the road

rattling squeaking

like an earthquake

really more than

you would expect

like the whole thing

could fall apart

boat party

i close my eyes off into musical light ecstasy dancing to the rhythm of abstract shapes moving colorful behind my eyelids before opening my eyes to meet a harsh defined reality where colors are bordered in definite shapes and move again according to math instead of according to the feeling of dance

messy hair

my outward appearance

isn’t my art right now

while my aesthetic attention

is placed in painting

and moving words on pages

so i look like a bum

with my hair disheveled

and my baggy shirt untucked

one speed

nothing slows down

like you expect it to

when things get out of hand

and you can’t keep up

but you don’t worry about it

because sometime soon

you’ll have a hold of it

to put things in their places

and make sense of what

comes so fast

you can’t hardly tell

what to do or who you are

but it’s still not worth

sacrificing the newness

to stop and piece

together the oldness

the same hardwood

cars whoosh

by outside

the stop light

changes colors

in the window

the hardwood

stays put

for the most past

so one thing

in the world

stays the same

nope

peaceful placed

where restful minds

look no farther

than what might

disturb a peace

meant for this

drunk in line

drunk a little

left in line

waiting for

i’m not sure

what just

comfortable

to stand here

otherwise

inappropriately

drunk, but

here in line

perfectly

in place

self reminder

when you’re sad inside you have to get outside and live in the joy of others and the beauty of your surroundings

bus meditation

eyes closed

on the bus

feeling the inclines

and turns

stopping

counting stop lights

trying to guess

how far

and which stop

i need to open my eyes

and stand up

to get off

writing depends on my feeling

i write something

when i feel bad

even though

it might be

the same thing

i would have written

feeling good

i’ll throw it out

and only if

my good feeling self

digs in the trash

uncrumpling and

exclaiming, framing

everything that my

bad feeling self

threw out

but the point is

the lens is more

for both reader

and writer

than the writing

itself

word sex

an idea starts as a word

which then multiplies

further describing

its original self

with more words

seeing beauty

looking from one angle

and seeing no more beauty

so thinking of leaving

to find more elsewhere

then seeing from another angle

and finding abundant beauty

right where you found it

from the beginning

and so feeling foolish

like a boy with no loyalty

who can’t remember his promises

nope

a frown at face value

for sadness not looked past

facial tissue merely masked

over a technicolor soul

an itch

an itch

turns into

something else

when left

and watched

with eyes closed

an annoyance

then a pain

that calls

for attention

a bug

perhaps

that has landed

beneath

the eyebrow

asking

to be scratched

one lousy poem

i dance around the room and lift up the rug and make some food and leave it in the pot to take a shower and rub my eyes to see abstract shapes until my skin prunes and turn on music genre after genre until i’d rather have the silence and then eat the food cold and go stand outside and look at people funny and walk with my hands in my pockets and worry about how i look and sit on the bench just to find one lousy poem that starts out like this …

anything new

anything i’ve seen

or heard before

makes me

want to jump

out of my skin

and into

something

anything

new

marginal

it’s marginal

what makes

the whole

such that

a fingernail

claws the body

over the edge

sad writing

sometimes

when i’m happy

i wonder why

have i not

written any

when i’m sad

now that i’m sad

i know i can’t

write like this

forcing it now

several separate times

tend to show space past

premature dreams

really can’t

forcing myself

to write this poetry

can only paint i guess

while depressed

depressed painting

there’s no way to describe

with exacticity the melting feeling

of depression other than

the paint that i drop in globs

on the canvas and let run

by titling the canvas side to side

wasting my time

and dreading the morning

bus ride home

crowded on the bus

germy yellow hand railing

everyone looking down

at either book or phone

phones mostly

a few looking out

of the windows

the whole bus creaking

and parts shaking

crawling up

and down

san francisco hills

cars passing by our sides

stand clear of the doors

says the recorded lady

but the doors don’t open

and we keep moving

stopping and starting cars

on either side

so you can’t tell who’s

moving and who’s not

so quiet on the bus

just the ventilation

the bus stopping in traffic

and then starting

with a jolt

a dog bark

on the sidewalk

two motorcycles pass by

the fare prices posted

three dollars

for an adult single ride fare

and other ads

some peeling off

of the diagonal sections

between the windows

and the off white roof

out of downtown making

some progress now

my hand getting sore

from holding on

a beep, then two more

please give seats to seniors

and people with disabilities

says a recorded voice

a man this time

and then in other languages

the same message

presumably

doors are opening

says the woman’s voice

almost forgot

to pay attention

to whether

this is my stop

it’s not

but i better pay attention

getting off

at divisadero

everyone looking smug

to live in this neighborhood

too many arts

trying to see too much art

and your lens gets muddled

looking at a tree stuck between

being painted and written

same as between a world

being worked or recreated

scared

a light open lunchtime world

outside at high noon

with everything bright

and seeing for distance

other people around

and voices can be heard

and everyone awake

unlike last night

in a dark room

close down under covers

hiding from the abstract

dark monster peeking

through the bathroom door

from the top corner

of the mirror

giving me terrors

in the delusion of having

woken up

in the middle of the night

and being scared as hell

without even knowing

what i’m scared of

but certainly made possible

by it being dark and nighttime

inside a small room

with nobody else around

cheap art

a little cheap art

that doesn’t mean much

but is still pleasant

enough to make

an economic invalid

worthwhile

all of me

i don’t have the energy

to pour out like that

leaving nothing behind

while all i’ve got

is just enough to get on

nothing extra for art

that requires survival

and then some

traffic after 5pm downtown (7/9/19)

keep writing carefully craft odd to 17 long straightaways shooting a lock side segment Rhodes Ryan with White Dash Ally is leading into intersections that turn in all four directions and clog with cars especially now after 5 PM when everyone moves at the same time showing Salads at a commotion of a city kept under fog it it’s on Lucid glass globe Jamie world

left-leaning long time into words I will pick up whatever they want anyway pouring over loud noises heard yelling at the tight loudness until we spring in the open ducking head past people who walk bye distracted constantly by billboards and try not to get hit creeping past wall art of cars of all shapes and sizes and colors underneath bridges it over shop windows a maze of homes and places and paths to walk through so many cars in an auto shop hard to think how they got the ball in there dirty sidewalks

wondering if it doesn’t matter if my words are to change anyway if it’s really the machine that’s making the yard so I can really say anything as long as I keep talking and the successful man nowadays it is one who leads deepest to division letting most of the work be done for him without him push of the button that’s Aussie does the right button to push it’s a Holick these devices that have so much power at the key nowIs to unlock the power of the device sometimes more is in the power of the Madame self

reach up

you can’t always hit hot spots

hoping beyond canyons walls

when crevices down deep enough

that the sun could set across the whole sky

and you’d only see for one second

at high noon and even that would

be enough to notch

one more step in the rock wall

and reach up

shadows

what shadows appear

when the lights are turned off

hidden before in a general bright

appearing now from

a more focused light

framing the doorway

from the streetlight

beneath the drape

section of light

ceiling showing light

passed through from

the bottom eighth

of the kitchen window

uncovered by drape

showing a triangular

section almost white

like a car headlight

shining at night

typing on my phone looking out the window of the lyft at 7:40 on july 8

morning through car window in city watching man sip his coffee slowly and auto shop attendant sweeping out the garage yellow lights on the back of a parking patrol vehicle people waiting at the traffic corner with their dogs on leashes for morning walks man walking in one direction in his turquoise scrubs and another man walking in another direction in his vest more people on the sidewalk as we get closer to downtown trash cans waiting by the curb signs outside or storefronts some of them already open at 7:27am jazz playing inside the car giving a soundtrack to this window movie a man in a suit carrying nothing maybe going to an interview a white van coming out of an underground parking garage with its left blinker on stopped at a stop light the sign on the building to our left says the ross building turning right a dozen people waiting outside in line their backs leaned against the building one man crouching most people walking with bags over their shoulders and headphones in their ears stopped again at the intersection of market street missing some things as i look down to type on my phone and the car keeps moving now stopped by the richard stephens building mailboxes blue four of them lined up next to each other neatly trimmed small trees in large yellow pots a construction man with a yellow vest waking around in the bed of his flat truck another construction man on his phone with his hard hat on a blue bucket lift with the bucket raised a large construction site about a quarter of a square block with a large cable crane already working and many men in yellow yellow and orange vests waiting to right turn the corner as predestinarians cross the crosswalk

get lifted

i get lifted

off into where

there is no

balance sheet

or rulebook

to tell me “no”

or slap my hand

which i need

sometimes

to stay grounded

i love art

i love art

so much

on the weekends

that some

sunday nights

i think i won’t

go to work

when i wake up

on monday

but then

soon remember

the yin

and the yang

the day

and the night

the dance

and the sleep

art is the leap

but there still

must be

the landing

and the takeoff

which must

go well

before

and after

the air time

that is art

and can go

just as it will

but money

and survival

and physics

and rules

and relationships

are still there

when you land

words can’t be trusted

you read into words

too much

which is when

they mean more

than they were

meant to

limited as they are

they can only

be trusted

so far

to convey

what is trying

to be said

spending time

when dissatisfied

with the present

i look to the future

mistakenly

as the future

has no cure

for present ails

other than

to surely spend

presents

and shortly after

spend presents

that were

futures before

bus poem

i write poems

between bus stops

because i know

there is nothing

else to do

during that time

ocean reincarnation

i was born a goldfish

as much as i could

have been

born an octopus

i try to return

to the consciousness

i was before

i was born anything

muni bus 5 westbound on fulton

taking the muni bus

5 westbound on fulton

toward ocean beach

on sunday morning

to play soccer

i watched an encounter earlier

when i switched from

the twenty-four to the five

where a woman wanted

to bring on a trolley full of

recycled cans and bottles

two trash bags full

but the bus driver said no more

there were already some

folks on the bus with trash bags

full of recyclables

i figures the lady would just

wait for the next bus

but she was shouting

in a language i didn’t know

and then another woman

that was coming onto the bus

aided the bus driver

in pushing the woman

with the bags, off the bus

i felt bad about it

watching from the bus stop

at the other side of the street

but didn’t know

what i could do

the pick-up game

is normally in north beach

by the ghirardelli factory

but the pitch is different today

on account of it being

july 4th weekend

we’ve gotten to 8th avenue

in the time it’s taken me

to write this

i’m looking forward

to playing

and not thinking

about anything

i check my bag compulsively

to make sure

i brought both cleats

not that i’ve ever brought

only one before

but just to make sure

both sides

i get overwhelmed

on both sides

thinking it bad

sometimes

and other times

thinking it good

as long as i don’t

go too far

in either direction

two maybe three

things get done

around the house

and i can’t remember

whether it was

me or baby

i feel things

and can’t decide

if their baby’s

feelings, or mine

i know i can

do something

but am probably

accounting for

baby’s abilities

rolling over in bed

and feeling with

my one leg

another leg

and not knowing

if it is my second

or baby’s

making dinner

i worry about

making for baby

what i wouldn’t

make for myself

deciding and

considering now

baby’s desires too

looking for cars

with two seats

and maybe three

one day

trying not to stub my toe

stumbling to the shower in the dark i’m feeling like i’m out of mind where all is abstract without edges shown to me it is only the fuzzy loose and generally vague feeling that tells me i am still a sensing thing so turning the faucet and having the cold feel accentuated in the dark and waiting and having to leave for baby to use the bathroom and coming back to find the water hot and all this stumbling blindly with my hands out in front of me and working from memory of the apartment trying not to stub my toe

baby and i hanging art

baby and i bought art today

and argued about how to hang them

without any objective correct placement

to act as a third mediator

so left the arguments be

and all the paintings on the floor

i think baby will probably

hang them herself while i’m gone

better that way

she’s probably right

about the placement anyway

happy poet

i was as productive

as a poet can be

those months in san francisco

with baby supporting me

in her apartment

on the corner

of california and divis

on top of the wild hare

a bar that shut down

and the bakery with

a constant twenty person line

i say months because

it has only been five

or maybe a few days more

but not even a half-year

and i talk in the past tense

from the perspective of

an old poet

in another city

having lost baby

because i see that to be

the probable outcome

by no will of my own

but the will of the world

that has moved my life

up to this point

for the most part

expensive art

at the gallery

wanting to buy

expensive art

but having to

compromise

our artistic

preferences

for what we

can afford

selling my books

walking around the mission

with a backpack full of books

selling for 50% consignment

which is about four dollars

expect for the store that

told me to sell for more

so i got five dollars there

and not counting the copies

that got damaged either

in my backpack

or from baby thumbing

through the copies at home

—those copies i gave

away for free

fuck

where to place the word

fuck, or fucking

to add emphasis

is a word that means

nothing, other than

pure emotion

as if to put the word

that follows, in ALL CAPS

first step

you did a hard thing

which is getting

your first step

out there

and so now set

a course to continue

keeping on stepped

in the same

general direction

as progress

of some sort

is all that really matters

just to keep from

getting stale

and stagnant

too strong

i expected

to be met

with resistance

but passed

easily through

that point

and even

overshot

my mark

with extra

force saved

for a greater

adversary

long fast race

time is so full

and passes

quickly which

seems to me

an oxymoron

as i look back

and see not

so long ago

on the calendar

a moment

which marks

the starting line

of a race

which seemed long

yet not so

strenuous

even though

much was seen

and great

distance covered

so i wonder

which is best

to pass life

full and fast

or slow and

more empty

maybe it evens

either way

train hopping

nascent never tells me

about itself until it’s already

halfway down the road

and surely a good one

i can see clearly now

but now so far past

i wonder whether to

run on after

or wait here patiently

watching cars counting

drops from the faucet

seeing when the next nascent

will rear its head

and hopefully catch on

early enough this time

to hop on like a train bum

making the leap

just to get on board

then laying back and

lacing my fingers

behind my head

as the right nascent ripens

and i’m just

along for the ride

deeper

when to stay

and when to

float away

to some-

thing new

how to tell

if it is written

and dug out

deep down

so fully explained

and all told

so there is nothing

more here

like an empty

gold mine

for a miner

or a dry glass

for a drinker

but wondering if

it is ever this way

for a writer

or if one thing

can really be written

over and over

and never

running out

of things to say

if you write

deep enough

morning light

creeping morning light

between the drapes

into the living room

brightening the edge

of the white rug

and putting a shimmer

on the hardwood floor

giving to my eyes

information for what

in the apartment

needs to be done

and pulling me out

from under-

neath the sheets

trying to be myself

caught up and moved along like a pebble on the ocean floor stopped being myself for so long and just went with the waves that are my emotions and the luck of circumstance and the demands on me from others and ended up here now as a product of all that which is also what some people call the self and not really sure if what i was trying to do before being myself apart from everything else was any different or superior in any way or just unnatural and spinning my wheels against the way things are

city window

when it gets too hot

in the apartment

you have to choose

between sweating

and opening a window

to let the city in

with the cars and

the voices along

with the cool breeze

bookshelf

we bought a bookshelf today

i built it with the manual

following every step

so all the books

(over a hundred of them)

that were stacked

in not so short towers

on the living room table

and beside the table

and underneath the table

are now all leaned up

against each other proper

in four compartments of

the newly built bookshelf

cotton sheets

sleepy time tea

hot enough to

force a window

open to cool

the room from

hard to breathe

to open nose

inhale clear and

crisp enough to

stay under the

sheets silked over

with too much

i tell baby that

we should have

gotten the cotton

ruminating about art in the apartment while eating an apple at 2:31pm (7/5/19)

i’m exhausted by the constant need to create conversely kept inside all this time waiting to be formed into words what touch his skin and glaze his eyeballs so that there is a balance between tiredness from saying and overflowing from remembering best left Lewis to come as it willAnd I think about much other than staying alive and letting him know as it always dies and everybody just from getting out of bed and walking out the door and hearing and seeing and trying to have read enough to put that into words

me and baby making furniture together and unpacking boxes finally feeling more moved in a sense of building a life and settling and establishing it domestic existence that I am in complete control for the first time being here with baby and feeling like that scene in Benjamin button where they live on the mattress in the middle of the floor in the empty apartment and wondering if I think back years from now on this having been the start of the rest but more than anything happy to have come this far baby doesn’t like the legs on the bookshelf because they’re plastic and don’t fit the aesthetic of the rest of the apartment she wanted me to build it to see it first but I have a feeling she might see it and say it’s OK for a day but then see the plastic legs a week later and want to get rid of it but I am happy to build it either way baby laughing at me as I say this in my phone I’m also excited toMove the stacks of books off the living room tables into the bookshelf

Walking down California to the thrift store at 12:24pm (7/5/19)

leave alone so the art can recycle itself and come back to new ways of looking at things with enough time to have seen and heard novelties not yet conceptualized

talking so much in abstract terms as opposed to what is specific like the word peers printed on the curb that borders Pierce Street and the cement and the bus that says wine clean air vehicle California plus Gary in the parking it’s only for two hours from 8 AM to 6 PM in the redfin real estate company in the Zephyr real estate company at the gas station has prices of 399 for regular gas and 409 for price and the clearance for the gas station roof is 15 feet and 0 inches and the license plate number 7WMF175 on a Chevy

speech to text while pan frying flourless banana pancakes at 9:31am the morning after July 4th

The feeling that everything is going well ups and ups punctuated by self doubt and downs until a resilient light or an unexpected Bright brings you back on the up and sometimes not even and up on the net is necessary but just a change in direction from going down down and trying to get off this like the Buddha would tell you not to be attached but finding more and more that if one is to be part of the world part of the family a friend one who hopes and strive to succeed what is it in it inevitably and thus emotional because there’s the emotion sometimes that makes art (edited) good and friendships worthwhile and loves passionate so the ups are worth the downs

baby sitting in the sunlight steam from 2 cups of tea coalescing the sound of bus brakes stopping and starting always outside the pancakes on the griddle sizzling made with oats and bananas and no flour steam and heat from the griddle making my face hot This is all doling quieter until the spatula flip turns over to the other side and this is always louder a little more burn on each successive pancake as the griddle gets harder and harder and less oil

so my style it seems has gone from poetic to more storytelling which is interesting specifically used for speech to text because with poetic the misspellings and words that go in differently are all right because within the context of poetry there’s more flexibility but with the style that is more storytelling it seems to be a little more important that each word is correct otherwise the context doesn’t make any sense Like the word harder instead of hotter but even then it is not totally misunderstood and still some value in telling a story not even thought of

steam and smoke in the studio kitchen so I asked baby to open the window washing out the remaining batter in the griddle quieting down the Fossett dripping and the sound of water farther down in the sink pipes car is always car so much that it’s monotonous at this point but interesting because it was only when I started to try work writing what I hear that I realize it is always the car is the Phillies are here in the cities

emotional castle

after only hours

empty hearts are stored

with mind’s memories

racing past

logical parapets

to an emotional core

keeping sacred

time spent with those

two and many

almost becoming one

for the times that

walls and moats recede

for hearthy warm

merriment

remembered fondly

pillow case

a pillow case

soft as skin

for its belly feathers

to deliver their

plush softness

without being exposed

to contact with

the rest of the bed

and baby’s hair

especially

unplugged

a cord hanging

from the shelf

unplugged

like a fishing line

looking to hook

an empty outlet

dog on a leash

dog getting antsy waiting on a leash with her owner pulling whimpering waiting leash packed taut for the light to turn green leaning forward up on her back legs so the color pups into her neck jumping barking until her owner with a finger tells her “no!”

open window

what a window

wide open

letting light

like a painting

framed from

outside into

the dark attic

so that

the window

and the shadows

it casts

are the focus

in a diagonal

wood rafter

attic otherwise

dark and musty

if not for

this window

breathing air

and light in

july 4th

a purse full of mushrooms and cocaine from pen caps sitting near on open window in the attic of the officer’s quarters in the presidio. waiting for fireworks that we might not be able to see because of the fog. chase said last year the fireworks were just red and blue clouds through the fog and even the booms were softened. brick chimney and wooden rafters in the attic all of us sitting on the floor and hand me down furniture. people talking as loud as the music is my favorite part of a party when everyone has had enough to drink to no longer be strangers even if they only met an hour ago. all gathered by the open window in the whole wide house that has 10 bedrooms and four floors but we’ve all gathered here naturally in the uppermost corner of the house after being on the porch and in the front yard and all spread out throughout the house before. baby and i in the love. my legs rested up on the couch and her legs over mine. keeping cool from the breeze coming in through the open window

a very foggy spooky night where car lights show suddenly crept through unseen yellow light tunnel haze taken the highway to divisadero with baby’s hand in mine resting on the leather backseat radio plays softly and driver politely offers water in a river of straightaway stop and go lights and cars like ours following the rules waiting patiently having coming down from the presidio now so you can see farther than 10 feet ahead lights are really all that shows the eyes other than dark and in that way the fog is more like the dark hiding parts of the city view on the car ride home

Dark to bright light eyes adjusted so some shapes could be seen at the outer edges before but now everything information overload color all at once just long enough to get paste on the toothbrush and then light switch back off but still not quick enough to avoid peoples contracting and now in the dark even the outer edges disappear so the dark is really complete and I have to wait a moment beforeI can see the edges again and find the faucet (edited) handle to wet (edited) the toothpaste

too high

i follow my train of thought

so aggressively that i forgot

i have a body; i come out of it

like a dream and say something

that doesn’t make sense

parentheses

perfectly placed

parentheses punctuate

a thought within

another thought

impregnated

and unable to live

on its own

smoking in bed

baby blowing smoke into my lungs so music sounds better laughing laying on top of a made bed in the afternoon when we should really get out but perfectly content here with outside coming into us from sunlight pouring in through tall windows framed by drapes

what a human can do

you’re not really living

left to the devices of systems

that move without you or not

and take your humanity

and cram it into inanimate processes

of production and eventually calcify

your joints to move in certain

mechanical ways you get out

and stretch and remember

what a human can do with

some open space and time

and now on the weekend wishing this

would remain and the week

and its system wouldn’t come again

bony baby

where bone

raises skin

giving structure

to outward beauty

like fingers pressed

from the far side

of a bed sheet

baby standing on the stool

little foot marks

on the stool

where she stood

higher

last night

framed by

the storefront light

coming in

through the window

holding the drape

pull string

twirling and

dancing

smiling at me

four things

A nice car gets out to drive early in the morning when it has room to run

A night owl opens it eyes in the dark to keep from being seen

A tree grows at mid day when the sun is mostly there

A man eats in the afternoon after work is done

getting out of bed early to walk on the sidewalk (7/4/2019)

weather Waze one says shirtless stays like the nightfall walking alone talking to myself all baby sleeps keeping careless words kept unheard convalescent collected oh man the morning smells fresh and good getting out of the apartment so baby can sleep she’s tired from the long week of work going whatever way is the light turns so open on the sidewalk being able to talk just myself a walk now just to let leg stretch walking faster I realize for no reason I slow down The wind is so cool at 7:37 AM and so few cars a white fog overcast so all I can see what I look up is in Erie white consistently the same way in all directions and going up and up forever it seems Man the morning is it Great Erie odd place in the city were so many are usually walking casually strolling enjoying do still in the air wearing a shirt with a neck and a flannel and pads to stay warm feeling cozy in the secure barrier between the apartment door and the rest of the citySeems unimportant now that being outside to see him safe and at home

left a little longer like a moon drawn stare standing at the corner looking at numbers counting down telling me I only have so long but no matter for a direction this man as the numbers on the other side will start to count up after the other numbers have finish counting down and so the white man that I always listen to for fear of being hurt tells me I can crossShadows from an odd forest of the city where trees have grown to go to Hall

left lopsided lazy lake left lopsided lazy like left lopsided lazy like left lopsided lazy like a broken record who’s break isn’t all together on welcomed thankful for some repetitive NessFor a world that stays the same but we try to catch our breath from the dance

between Peers and Scott on California sitting on my favorite green yellow bench that one of the homeowners has been so kind to leave out to tired pedestrians I can just sit here in the morning when nobody else has woken up but the sun is surely out and the air is as good as it will be all day like my dad used to say; It still says it I suppose I just haven’t been home to hear him in a while

looking straight there is the empty street and cars parked all along the curb looking slightly up there is the second-floor windows and slightly further out there are wires in the tops of punctuated trees and then the roofs and more wires at the tops of telephone poles until the never ending overcast white sky that truly has nothing not even a bird so differentFrom the four-story world beneath I am Magine if I were a painter I would take the higher whereas if I was a family man I would take one of the four stories

Green leaves on the bush look classy like Willy Wonka would say you could pull one off a need it they Russell and make contact with her neighbors like they are communicating to one another that the wind has calm I cannot hear this Russell with cars pass by which makes me wonder what it is like to hear what only nature has to offer even in the city we here sometimes but all the people in cars and buses in factories and shop orders and construction workers and sirens and everything else is quiet down we hear the wind of the leaves that are more natural

breathing brisk through my nose summer starting to wake up now so I have to share the morning wonderworld not binding especially because I would like to know the others who regularly and why and where they are going on a trip or to the gym or to meet someone else to weeks early I am glad to sacrifice the clean air for some of their companionship

other pedestrians walking by wondering why I am just sitting on a bench looking at me like don’t you have somewhere to go Mr. even more odd when they see that I’m talking to my phone if I ever say something like be there soon babe just stepped outside or have a great weekend see you on Monday or something else that is normal to say to your phone but not saying poetry to your phone that is not normal

Remembering that today is July 4 and I have a greed to grill burgers and Brotz on the beach with Greg and Devon and so now having a purpose again and getting up off the bench to walk to the grocery store to buy the supplies it is a bit harder to think of poetry when you have your purpose and your mindset but one good for the other to go back-and-forth I think

it always strikes me now when I walk by another person with all their clothes on and carrying many bags talking to them selves seemingly saying nothing but no difference between them and I such that I would like to turn on my speech to text and walk with them and let them talk into the microphone and hear what poetry they have to say

 

 

dirty bird

still connected

until off

and out of touch

then disconnected

until touched

back down

spread out

in open air

while up

and away

until tunneled

and dug deep down

upon a return

earthward

left in all

directions

with wings

while met with

the resistance

of mass

that requires strength

to push away

what has taken

the space already

so needing the light

lifted wing nature

of a bird

to live a life up

and out of it only

to return and find

your wings useless

for pushing aside dirt

and debris, needing

to eat and weigh

yourself down to life

in a world of mass

heavier than air

bus poem

bus whirs outside

arms catch on wires

brakes let out a breath

rest at the stop for a second

eat a few passengers

regurgitate a few others

some stops are a big meal

swelling with a stomach full

until the stops downtown

provide some offloading relief

crawling all over the city

always demanded

and even chased after

until broken and then fixed

and put back on the schedule

born into a purpose

of making the city run on time

getting distracted while meditating

right after thinking

of nothing

then something

pops up

so thinking of it

for a while

until gradually

thinking one

after the other

before remembering

to think of nothing

back and forth

like this

until the somethings

grow shorter

and the nothing

takes over

be yourself, whether that is an individual identity, or part of a larger community

keep with what exists already

wanting after not so many other

derivatives and replicas and slight variations

that may seem to please marginally for a second

but really just bleed a strong self into boundless life

either of which works well enough

unless you planned to do something by way of “I”

and risk forgetting you are part

of everything like a colony ant

while having a higher chance

of accolades for being something like a lion king

scared of the night light

in the dark world

nothing scary

if remaining dark

only scare

for what comes

out of it

so dark forever

is not so bad

save what

the light might show

trying not to think about work on the weekend (7/3/2019)

for a fifth of the time with which was spent watching clocks counting the first four so much that when the fifth started all the time was spent remembering the four anyway a shame for the four were spent expecting the first so the only time they’re really wise when they handed some small point crossed over the four

come on over as it wanted to be my poetry dries up work having been so much recently and wanting really only to write but knowing money is needed for everything I have and so feeling this conflict at times honestly but not wanting to speak so honestly is this when trying to write poetry knowing that world is different but not being able to write anything else because this is what I am thinking ofAnd just hoping it will only take a night to get into the artistic flow of the weekend especially this weekend on the eve of the Fourth of July when we have a long weekend to really get into life outside of work which is the reason why we work now baby going to bed

naked baby (7/3/2019)

naked baby looks like all the life I ever wanted wasted lotion skin and shampooed hair curly dark on Carmel shoulders back rib bone showing through bend over breasts dressed in curls collarbone framing small neck holding throat hands twisting hair

laying in bed at night at baby’s the night before July 4 (7/3/19)

epic eventually owning what would have two lips tear their seeds away from Stamos grass cut deep in the soil without limits between roots blood into the open air that separates nothing sky from something ground offering what little color there is to take form Against a never ending blue or gray or night darkness it seems to take up all the space other than what we can sense immediately sending started to distance planets that one Shirley explodes now

same with speech to text as with the lines certain words sad but recorded differently makes me wonder if the original words were any better than the speech to text replacements and so you start to speak quite freely wondering if your word will be recorded correctly anyway and then wondering about the skill of your craft as it seems any wordAnd any line placement will do

arched doorway just tall enough bent into the lines of the apartment human size build boxes stacked between streets blocked bordered by sidewalks in newspaper stands in parking meters and light poles like tracks and tables and steps and darted lines in straight lines for things to all get going and keep going and avoid running into and stopping anything else from going jazz plays lightly across the street punctuated by undulating cars that come from far away and then near and then far away again now past I am realizing when I always listening is the cars you constantly here in the city and the sidewalk and street that you always see unless looking at the sky for long enough and then you can forget you’re in the skate city all together

it all melts away and folds apart past raised edges that all of them self just enough to be differentiated from what lies on top and bottom and to the left and right and maybe even behind and in front if you move around November 3 dimension realizing now trying to make order and say what makes sense without flowing and shadows that right circles in depth of lines that really just flow when you are trying to find words

like it ever meant anything before past poor old defined words that I wish to keep abstract not wanting to capitalize the first letter names needing it to apply to all and not a time place or person that a reader might not now let alone my future self that might look back and forget referring it to be so general that it almost comes to a point where there would be a one word poem and that word would be all or this or is or it or some other short and abstract and all telling noun for that is how I feel when everything opens up and lays it self there such that one who tries to describeFines is not more words but less that describe accurately all of existence that tells of itself all at once

some light shows what I’ve seen before trying to see news so that I have something to write about but seeing the same an apartment that I know alcohol home with baby here and plants that make it like home home that many generations ago would know stacks of books and rug and couch legs all on hardwood going together like the magazines would have it and impressing upon ourselves mostly but also just in case the visitors that come to her three times per year as long as laying in bed behind drapes that won’t open it till the sun is allowed to shine star Kadian rhythm be damned wildlife in the city is so made by man anyway

accidental style

It is interesting when the line breaks are set by a poet in a certain way, but then one or two lines are too long when put into type, and they spill over onto the next line—such that you wonder if the poet was correct in his line placements in the first place, or if it’s even better with the words accidentally forced onto the next line by the formatting.

parking homes food

parking meters

poke between

parked cars

staircases

up into

slanted homes

lights inside

restaurants that

make their money

on friday nights

painted city

trying to

write the city

but mostly seeing

and so thinking

setting sun

on buildings

and faces of

people sidewalking

would be better

painted

around the corner

store windows

show through

and out of

store windows

on the other side

so you can see

who’s coming

around the corner

give and take

You get taken a little too much

by the world that wants and wants

and never stops.

Without waiting to see

what will come to you anyway

and only going after it all the time

trying to grab what is there.

Some still to start

until less and then

eventually nothing

because you were only grabbing

and not putting any back.

So learning I get to stay still

and listen for the world

to be something again.

And then really realizing when

it is yourself that must

make the world what it is.

domestic art

the light

from between

a barely

open door

and its frame

cast upon

a carpet floor

in an empty

dark room

abstract yet

so defined

and clear

city sights

Walls of leaves shades of green

like what is inside there

must be teeming with life.

Adjacent skyscrapers

bursting into the sky

like what built these

must have been godly.

Commotion uncontrolled

in the streets of the city

like what lives here

instigates itself.

Cars constantly revving

until waiting at lights

like mufflers are talking

to one another.

Signs glowing prices

even without buyers

as if the glow itself

is commercial.

Graffiti art started

sidewalk parted

like the leaves grown

over the half of it

were on purpose.

Steps of so many

pedestrian walkers walking

like the place to be gotten to

is always moving.

Construction noise

in a new foundation

unveiling dirt a rare sight

that will soon return

to being underneath cement.

Pigeons pecking together at scraps

like city trash vultures.

spooky light

Such is the spooky light showing some shot shadows admit days straight away into the tree line interspersed with buildings more buildings than trees actually seeing only so much that’s not so different than the other times I’ve walked out what do it what else I haven’t noticed.

staying the same

just so they

can put their finger on you

is part of being remembered

or commended

otherwise they see once what they like

and then go back looking

but even when they find you there

standing in the same place

if you’re saying something different

it’s not the same to them

and you might say well look

a new crowd has gathered

but for them too

it will not be the same

when they return

so part of being remembered

or commended

is just staying the same

light tea

a light tea

actually quite bodied

pleasantly tasting

like more

than just water

and hot to boot

once worded

something so

universal

so well

explained

what so many

have experienced

many times

without words

to recall

and name

or otherwise

classify what

ceases to be

experienced

once it’s

been worded

sharps in the ball pit

i remember that

my parents said

to be careful of

sharps in the ball pit

i’m still cared

of ball pits

even though

i didn’t know

what sharps were

at the time

modern poetry

modern poetry is something different; it is not like Shakespeare and rhyme scheme. it is literature more well suited for modern thought processes that have become brief. it is micro fiction without the necessity of plot or character.

baby in mirror corner

leaned over

washing

my hands

in the sink

glancing up

through my

eyelashes

to see baby

in the corner

of the mirror

framed by

the doorway

sitting on

the couch

in her grey

morning gown

looking beautiful

as ever

words work right

say what works whether it’s a word or not working only by the music and finding accidentally that some words both sound right and end up meaning something that fits the context or at least makes you think of something that you mostly would have said but now it sounds more harmonious and adds a a dimension which brings along a new perspective

poetry for me

poetry, for me, is more of a lifestyle. it wouldn’t work as a job. i need my life to gather inspiration. it is a commentary on everything else more than a thing itself. it is a lens through which to record things and express myself. i am not so much a poet first off as “i am” and then that is defined in terms of poetry – whether that makes me a poet after the fact, i don’t know.

opening the blinds

In the morning oh my goodness all that light opening the blinds and hearing honking and all of a sudden remembering the world that goes away when you go to sleep and starts again just as sure as you’ll wake up again to find it there and be a part of it yourself

so much art

So much art all the time offering itself to onlookers willing to see what’s always there waiting with itself being as it is only the onlooker changing and choosing to see depending on everything other than the beauty of the art itself though that beauty is subjective to being seen

slotted like a coin

you get up and away until you get pitted and slotted and eventually spent; up and all over and capable of being anything until alluded by the relational quality of being something and having a name that you can say to others and have a hand to shake and a personhood to pass on but at some times so defined you want to lose it all and spread all over again if only to experience a brief relief from identity that is not necessarily a natural form so the coin minted and made from metal and placed in the slot for a machine made to operate melts and might even rally the other coins to jump of the track and burst from the bank that the machine has collected so those who slot coins start to question what they were spending all along

taking a walk out of the office to talk to my phone (6/28/19)

You have to rev (edited) up like an engine chemicals mixed just like muscle is it possible to go from cold to hot but instead cold to less cold to warm to hot So slowly starting instead of jumping from bottom all the way to the top And getting your wits about you before you’re fully in it and needed that time to see all of what’s going on and now at the peak of knowing that the rest and slow start were needed for having any sense of a fast life lived past all moments that make up what is first pinchedAnd then exploded as you experience it and then pinched again as you try to rememberAnd in evitable that neither dreams nor memories can match the visceral large exploding overwhelming all that is the present

extra-terrestrial

tabbed out taken a trip from terrestrial to extra in a flash of color changing shapes known to new ways of seeing things melted into each other so a painting palette where blotches mix makes a world more than usual

in k’s bed writing by hand

touching and thinking

something I would have

thought on my own

baby says to me

and i am confused

about whether my mind

talks like a girl

chase on after

hold on tight

know no master

need not quite

going into a

sing-songy seven

which may interlude

waiting for the pause

to pass pick up

per usual places

standing out from

the stars said

the universal bound

press on dear space

keep carefully creeping

so that after some time

having crept inches ‘come miles

been back in blasted

corduroy off-season class

come conflict with hot

days threatened sweat

soft and plush palace

put aside per usual

malice for miles

at no comfort’s refusal

so sense

turned over

and time

turned back

so truth

got twisted

like a

bottle cap

given size

and so few

focus deep

down low

might make

the far

my muse

waiting for my car in the morning (6/27/19)

everything is related and interspersed and overwhelming and excessively showing the other that it is what it is stretching to the balance of itself and risking becoming something else just as we thrive on dividing and packaging and parceling and putting together to make money and be proud and push forward all Intel the night comes and we look for a release to dads to sing to hunch over a drink and a quarter in the bar and dance in the crowds are individual steps can’t even be seenAll to lose the selves we built up

trying not to stub your toe

reaching out

expecting to have

touched something

touching nothing

stretching farther

and still nothing

wondering if

there is anything

anymore

but really

just grasping

for the wall

in the dark

laying up in bed at 5am needing to sleep and now wanting to (6/27/19)

awake in the night at five dark clouds move screen sliding doors painted over just barely blue from our son Scott barely waking mumbling saying words spell out wrong on the screen needing to talk louder for not having the strain i’ve been after it spent a night sleeping leaned forward moving into an exciting yet elusive future for their cubs the corner keeping Street walls that are willing to wait pausing thinking more with my dream brain less attachedTo the waking world and facts and figures that are no help if you talking to my iPhone in the 5 AM (edited) dark cloud barely blue sky nine

forced and needing sleep but not wanting to stop creating producing taking advantage of life and the time we have and being afraid of death constantly mainly as an equal and opposite reaction for being lean forward and wanting life to come and not stop it being good right now and hard to remember what is tonight when I remember what nature service about one moment making a whole lifetime worth it more sober the side thoughts that spell out correctly and they look at the screen and talk slowly and tried to say more correct last stream of consciousness more editing being done without marks but still filtering my thoughts before they get to my mouth

seeing what I can’t capture with Camera wanting someone else to see it with me wanting for it to be more than for my eyes only wanting to capture it and save it wanting to feel this way again by looking at it wanting everything to stop so it stays the same not even so it stays the same to you enjoy it but more so to stay the same so I can take a picture or write it down or otherwise capturing like a bird in a cage wanting everything except for watch for the actual thing that it is right now and graciously for me onlyBut I give it away to other wants

just now honey I didn’t one word this I wanted that one word to be what it said so much so being honest and telling you the reader that sometimes there are words that I’ve gone back and corrected but now realizing this undermines the whole values of peace so leaving that one word that I’ve already corrected but try not to correct anymore to maintain the whole point otherwise it becomes an edited piece just like anything else in all thereOther mistakes are undermined

value

it’s weird to talk about

a valued thing

in terms of its value

in a valueless world

eavesdrop

As a writer I hear words very loud; by “loud” I mean clearly no matter what else is going on. Like everything else disappears and I live only through my ears and sometimes see images that the words create. I can’t help but listen to conversations that aren’t meant for me. Because I think of words constantly and describe all of my own experiences this way, I can’t help but eavesdrop when other people are talking.

plot twist

falling in love

with everyone

and everything

for the time being

while the world is grand

and clear

and nothing hurts

and everyone smiles

or are at least not suffering

not visibly

now i wonder

oh hell

there i go again

making a good

thing bad

city silence

the closest you get

to silence in the city

is sitting alone

in your apartment

and you can still hear

the air moving through

the ventilation system

car-phobia

walking on the streets

i’d wondered when

it would happen

without noticing

the headlights

maybe at night

and the pain

probably none

if hard and

fast enough

and nothing

but curb

keeping me

and all these

other innocents

from meeting

the machine

stream of consciousness = mind reading

people often answer the question about what superpower they would want to have with an answer about the ability to read minds. stream of consciousness is close I think. based on language of course, and therefore as limited, as it is revealing. I wonder what is the stream of consciousness version of other art forms?

On the sidewalk home from work on a Monday briefly stopping at the grocery store a little after 6 PM (6/24/19)

walking home on the sidewalk staring looking down people looking thinking about what I am saying graffiti PG and E bricks and more graffiti dirt and blue and orange paint for the construction workers and trees in squares planted so perfectly outside of Major parking fuck me up with “self and leaning against the wind and with the wind let up lets up a little shouting you can hear myself say oils Rush Limbaugh and gets me cars going past the opposite direction waiting now at the stoplight having to talk quieter because there are people around looking at me weird

caught something in my eye rubbing one eye open trying to see where I’m walking talking quite the same under the highway bridge by Perry Street and third nice waterfalls in the flower baids fuck and the white man that tells me I can walk and now the redhead with numbers telling me soon I will have to stop and the wind really really blowing like a tornado and a loud voice and almost getting hit by a car and I think they can turn on green but I have the white man so there is a conflict and I think the pedestrian windsUnless the car goes and then the pedestrian never wins

Horn honking in car alarm engine revving quiet now all of a sudden car is in traffic at standstill me having to talk quieter when I passed people on the sidewalk still not so brazen as to just keep talking nonsense with people around the buzz of a parking gate lifting one of the ones where car is almost drive straight into people out of the garage I have a walking through an alley made into a wind tunnel

Limping from the blister on my big right toe that I got playing soccer on Sunday today is Monday and the blister is still big and on popped so walking like an invalid and the right outside of my right foot has started to hurt is the big toe is on the inside

Steam from an apartment laundry room smells like clean clothes still limping the screech and squeak of sneakers and basketball bouncing a squeaky toy too confusing maybe a dog a park after all cars of course always cars everywhere you walk in the city cars other man on his phone looks like he actually talking I am sure saying something different the scrape of a shovel on asphalt a truck louder than cars trucks are more rare here hey mom with her two daughters I am assuming the Skweek of bicycle tiresThe rapid tech of a chain circulating through gears a motorcycle revving my ears being the dominant sense while I walk as I switch to my eyes a pigeon trash weeds pulled his car is still still cars I can see and hear the cars

You can stay as many of these as you want to the only rule is that you cannot edit them so go back and sift through and talk as much as you need to believe them as they are and keep moving forward making instead of backward changing save them and leave them but keep saying

Mistakes matter, I realize as I read these texts interesting to see words that are not what I intended but still sounds similar and so in someway makes sense and even makes more sense in some cases showing me what I had said from a different light the sameWords said but written differently almost like having a conversation with someone else having a conversation with lines of code inside a computer phone that can actually be a pretty good poet sometimes

this is it

at some points

i scratch my head

and wonder

how things have

ended up like this

and other times

clear as day

it makes

abounding sense

that things are

the way they are

banal statement about poetry

“Poetry is the closest language gets to feeling” – a statement like this is banal because the person stating it is claiming a truth which barely belongs to him. An eight-word statement comprised of common words could almost be said accidentally, such that there seems obviously to be little skill involved in crafting it, and by extension, little mark of the crafter’s identity. It takes something wider and longer to truly test a statement so there is more room to make a mistake.

nostalgia

so now waiting for what has passed wanting to go back knowing it is gone but looking forward now which is really the problem for not looking right now

karma

its all good and flowing and what comes in goes back out shortly thereafter so that nothing can stay stagnant for long before it’s refreshed like enriched air with oxygen to come back to me

burnt tongue

i was rushing

to make it

to soccer

on time

the first game

starts at 8:50

and it was 8:20

but i had just

made oatmeal

and tried to eat

but it was too hot

so i forced

a couple bites

and burned my tongue

then packed it up

to take it with me

to the pitch

looking for data

i look around for data

for something to process

to let me know i am

where i should be

catching a glimpse

of the driver’s clock

on the dashboard

and looking out the window

at street signs

to make sure i’ll get to

where i’m going

or putting

my hands together

for one to tell the other

that they’re both

still there

or waking up

and looking around

to make sure

i’m in the same bed

i went to sleep in

or answering a question

with another question

to make sure my friend

is still here with me

wonder what day it is

and how old i am

to make sure that i am

behaving appropriately

looking at my

business cards

(that i never use)

to check my title

and see if i am

in the right office

trying to remember

a memory to see

if it was mine

or just a dream

or something else entirely

stop light square

a little square

of light

on the wall

above the bed

from the

rectangle

between

the bottom

of the window

in the kitchen

and the shade

that covers

the rest

shined through

the doorway

to the living room

split in half

to become

a square

by the plant

leaf hanging

in the doorway

changing from

green then

quickly yellow

then red

a pleasant

light show

on the bedroom

wall above

the bed

at 5:13am

all the way

from the stop light

at the intersection

of california

and divisadero

in it right now

We’re just in it right now, I say out loud, sitting on the couch, next to her in bed. This is the moment for sure, I say. This, right now? She asks. Certainly, I say. Thinking of what all will come and wondering if we’ve really reached the peak.

if you really pay attention

feeling high

my breath comes

smooth through my nostrils

my skin feels warm

from the sun

my eyelids make shapes

for the entertainment of

my closed eyes

like a movie if you

really pay attention

to everything that

is always going on at once

if you really pay attention

sun and shadow

at 2:53pm the patio

is covered in shade

on the far side

of the cafe

so we take our chairs

closer to the curb

to sit in the sun

that barely peeks over

the building top

shoe poem

loose laces left hanging

outside white shoes

at the bottom of jeans

white washed and baggy

cover legs crossed over

one on top of the other

so the left shoe protrudes

stream poetry

two chairs pulled aside

from the coffee shop sidewalk

to sit in the June soon

as a car sits engine idling

and older men compliment

each other on their clothes

while young men walk by

holding their chins up

and their shoulders back

so i take off my long sleeves

with my baby sitting next to me

and the engine still idling

until the brakes let off

and screech for the car

to pull away and no more idling

replaced by a garbage truck

stopped at the light revving

hot almost sweating now

and leave pieces blowing

in circle together with trash

bottle clinking on the cement

that trash man dropped

golden dog with owner

waiting to pass until after

trash man is done digging

out the bottom of the bin

and baby sitting here

being patient with me

trying to write listening

to what i read in the bookstore

on the back of a book

by a critic who said that

this man did well to write

not about the man that writes

but about what he sees, hears

so i try the same outside

of myself for once

all this good around

in a bookstore

getting inspired

and feeling worthless

myself as a writer

picking up books

and thinking about

how much

there is to learn

god there is so much good

all over and i wonder

how do i go for so long

doing the same drudging thing

while there’s all

this good around

off the cliff

out ahead of me is open air and possibility leaving

behind a railroad track bolted down

and pointed between parallel rails

a train from the past shoots off a cliff

in the present and becomes a bird

that can fly in any direction for the future

up and down over and sideways

or hovering flapping its wing

just looking down at everything below

saturday

this saturday seems sent

to hold its place before sunday

and after every other day

from last week

though i know a day

only lasts so long

saturday is the one

i would choose

left alone by itself

just to be a normal day

where anything can be done

because that’s what

a normal day should be

not like friday

which is the end of the week

or sunday

which is the beginning

or any other day

which is just the week itself

and the week is boring

but necessary

but if i didn’t have to

eat to survive and make money,

i’d want everyday to be saturday

where you’ll find poetry

Somewhere between novel and song is where you’ll find it most often. But beware of anyone who reads anything and says this is or is not poetry. I found some poetry right in the middle of a Hemingway novel once.

how i started writing poetry

Honestly, I tried writing a novel. Tried a couple times actually. But I was too young and impatient. Even now that I’m a little older I’m still impatient.

I kept trying to write scenes and character descriptions in short amounts of time. When I was out at a bar in between conversations, on the bus on the way home, in the middle of cooking dinner. And then I’d sit down on a Saturday and try to put all the puzzle pieces together into a novel. But it wasn’t working.

Until I realized the puzzle pieces were actually pretty good on their own. So instead of trying to cram them together into a novel, I just left them alone and started calling them poems.

skylines

you see all skylines

and they’re all the same

you see one skyline

a hundred times

and it’s different every time

words fail

i’m just awash in it

torn in every direction

my heart tugs

through my eyes

at the same time

my mind pulls

through my eyes

and everything

makes me want to

laugh or cry or

i don’t know

just overwhelm

good god words fail

banging modal mad

ah fuck forced for me to come on need it now grabbing at the art i want to ring but banging modal mad common sludge so gosh god gurgle wanting to curse only for an exuberance of emotion and want for it without the means or in this case words to nail down border and deliver an escaping rain cloud and flame that ceases to be itself when tied up and choked and delivered like a flower that dies in transit from the lover that picked it and the lover that never received it if only they could have been the same person in the garden in the first place and just left the flower there unpicked

six or seven letter words

common enough

to be just barely beyond

possibly accidental

or universally replicable

but not so esoteric

as to be inevitably alone

or impossibly accessible

so picking words

with six or seven letters

right in the middle

for the masses

to know just enough

continuing on after

lagging barely behind

satisfied enough to stay

but still wonder about

what one doesn’t know

history one time

as if history

would repeat

when things

are never really

the same

so long goes

what lasts largely

as shorter still

matters mostly

in the near life

that only ever

perceives at once

seeing things from the lyft window

curbed corners

crack carefully

so cement

can breathe

sewer gates stay

open all day

without any trust

for weathermen

razor wire works

around the clock

protecting empty

fenced in car lots

highway bridges

criss crossed

in all directions

sending riders

all over the world

trees planted

right in the middle

of cement sidewalks

reaching some soil

beneath the city

right direction

i spend all my time

trying to keep everything

moving in the right direction

when all along i could’ve

let go and watched it all

move along just fine

all by itself

ornery edge

only if an ornery edge

dares to extend so

the original can grow

will a wider world

worry less about

over stepping

artificial bounds

A little after 8pm laying in bed in the apartment at California and Divisadero

it seems so easy to lay here in bed all day satisfied without any green a.m. to get my melted body out from one of the sheets baby cooking in the other room sun kept out by shades in the 8 PM longest day of summer nobody knows how long to stay awake Orbis melting there late into the cracks into the hundred thousand apartments curated for mankind to invade a peninsula with their buildings and restaurants and cars and stoplights and commerce

letting words just run as they will waking up the mass of clay as haphazardly as thrown on the pedestal from bank to open late but not mattering just to have a starting point and at least get something out in the open deck and then be shaped and refined by careful eyes needing just something to work with and doing the refining no matter why so better to have it out haphazard and just get a start rather than nothing at all and refining thin air and making the mind sick by refining itself for lack of anything else

slipped into the corner where two walls meet the ceiling the most comfortable place in the room if not for where the same two walls meet floor and all dust bunnies eventually meet on their way to the broom Like Travellers going along in the wooden floor cracks being born from a gathering of the shedding rug and meeting other masses form from the same place but having traveled different journeys  

baby playing music in the next room cooking dinner chopping peppers I can hear the blade on the cutting board I can hear your music L being nice to me well I still try to sleep lazy in the next dark room hangover from being high all day and surprisingly napped a long time but now I can have energy to lean up And talk to my phone about baby cooking in the next room

everything I am feeling right now actually felt by the five senses and I thought up or redefined on my stomach pillow thing textile covering from my bellybutton to the bottom of my ribs and the bed covered by a sheet slightly depressed based on the shape of my body supporting my whole body perfectly comfortable mattress designed to be supportive The back of wanna go more so my heel on top of my other foot inside of the elbows keeping the pillow in place on either side index finger and middle finger of left hand and pointer finger and thumb and middle finger finger in the back holding my phone in front of my face I was taking in the words on the screen watching the bars of the speech to text bounce up-and-down as I speak looking at at the blue and black and red and pink and a different shade of red and a different shade of blue and gray and white and blue all on the phone screen and shapes rectangles mostly in some circles and a few triangles that are really arrows and the time on top with too much information already even in addition to the battery life with 79% left in the time ETA 7 PM and the music in the next room. in my ears hey Slobey sounding like a part in my own voice in my ears as I speak this into the phone the noise of trashcan opening as baby throws away while cooking dinner and now the sound of the sink running over her hands in the water gurgling in the drain and the ripped paper towel crunch between her hands drying her hands a package opening maybe the meat. maybe a baggy to cover the honey container that she said was leaking this morning and the rest of the room in my eyes really so much to describe the light coming in early between the shades still light at this time because it is the longest day of the year June 22 in the bed beneath me and the pillow over me like it’s on my vision below and the light coming in to the doorway the visa the kitchen where babies cooking and books out of the left corner of Mayeye not moving much. to try to keep the experiment the same experiencing the same thing really so much all at once is the point so much to keep noticing and keep talking into the phone and never run out of things to notice and talk about if you really look deep down like the rug underneath the table that holds the box or the couch before the table that is gray and woven with some white threads to be a lighter gray in the ceiling that is painted the same color beige but maybe different colors by the light a glare just to the left of the ceiling light and darker colors of beige where the shadow is  more thick and and even in almost blackness where there is a ledge between the walls and the ceiling that keeps out the light giving a border black to the beige ceiling and an archway to the right where you walk in from the front door and barely a scene of the bathroom door with shadow through the archway through the open door of the bathroom and a light switch around the corner of the Archway right next to a mirror that reflects what I saw on the left side with the table in the books and me in bed riding covered with a pillow on my stomach and all of that being just what i see. using my eyes this whole time adding Noring what I could say I feel like myself and my trousers or my thighs against each other or even my bones inside of my muscles if I really focus enough reason my stomach and intestines inside my belly and my arms where they crease to hold my phone in front of my face or my hair is against the pillow and the backs of my ears just barely touching the pillow and not even what I hear now like the brakes for the truck breaking outside as it stops for the stop light in the rubbing of a motorcycle engine like a chopper and still the voice of that singer a new singer now I think more acoustic and baby quaking a spoon against glass in the click of a lighter lighting a candle I move my head to look at her breaking the experiment but seeing her have a good body making it worth it and I am moving my feet too and rubbing my skin together and have you forgot spell being one that I really notice. unless there is something wrong or something good smelling like food or flowers it mostly smells like air and the taste is also one that I pay attention to last more the feel of my tongue in my mouth in this thick saliva after having woken up from a nap and having smoke before I fell asleep but the tasting not much other than thinking of the food baby is making for us and how that will taste like it has tasted before and feeling being pretty powerful so I guess in order at his site and sound first and then feeling and then smell and taste last and then also there is thinking only about senses if you can manage it but also a Over a whole other world of thinking about other things and creating concepts that are mostly derivatives of senses that one point but also another world where language keeps itself and mix it itself so that I wake up with phone sometimes or feelings faster and mix together and make actions at some point and unknown ideas and creativity‘s come from nothingness so there must be something there other than just the senses And a whole other exercise could be done just in the thinking

A piece of art it would be to have everything on edited and Mia just talking into my phone about real things and leaving it just as it comes out first of all the way I say it but also the way the technology interprets it which has something to do with our modern times I think and what my results from human things rendered into technology but in someway still being human and even made more human by the speed and efficiency which which technology delivers things like language and art and connections between people so that practically this piece. altogether by the way pausing now to know that when there is a period like that it is because the phone stopped using the microphone and I have to click the button again and the inserts that. Which just showed up as punctuation when I said the word for the grammar or the punctuation point for it. I mean back to what I was saying about this piece altogether is a 24-year-old man from Kansas talking into the speech to text function. and his iMessage with the screen cracked on the left side and spiderweb being across but if you are the type to read into things more there are many things to be right here about a life and Art and how those two are rendered through a piece of technology but that not being the point for me to pigeonhole your experience of almost feeling bad for usSo in the interest of leaving things on edited I will leave it there but wishing now that I would have just said this is me talking into my iPhone and left it at that and let it be whatever it will be for any reader because me and her been my own art makes a very lonely world rather just make it and let it be and see what happens so here you go

almost not wanting to stop now talking so much and getting on a roll having it all out but not knowing what is good and thinking there might be a limit order so much becomes an editable and it would’ve been better off trying to get something good at the start rather than throwing out a mediocre mass in hopes of refining to good just so that there’s something to work with but really needing some good to start for anything good at the end but still cathartic at least and good to have it all out so talking still and letting it flow so the only reason to startJust start is to get up and do something else I make sure baby is it mad at me for making her cook while I sit here and talk like a madman on my phone

this guy piecing all together just to try to get it all out at once so to be more honest and divined into one time that doesn’t change as much I was dragging it on over more time that makes different man making the heart and so I charged you or blessing you are to have the maker rendered overtime and so change the peace and making it impossible to create a whole piece of a whole feeling all at once like one big red splash of paint or one I know just how they’re the same as a moment That doesn’t change unless drive down overtime like all the world just been one point and one thing without any differentiation if not for time that stretches out space and devise it in color is it in shape so it gives it sound and other food for senses but really starting this just to stay that I’d rather write 100 pounds all at once and get it out into this book so it is actually an honest snapshot of a man rambling on and hopefully having something good out of the mass but as long as the mass is made in a way that keeps to the same point that shows something not shown before that it was done it’s job

So many words can be sad like this after and after each other just on and on I keep yapping and make me so much that I do before when I sit down and really react my van brain and toss out so many options just to find something good and then when I have something that I think in my mind there is a password from when I put it down the paper and some is forgotten and then it becomes different when seeing it on paper and affects the next line is that this is different to just talk on and on and let it go completely unedited coming out of my mind and letting it affect it in different ways without fear for being able to follow

getting out of bed to talk to baby while she’s cooking dinner for me just to make sure she’s all right and also telling her about this idea to keep talking to the phone and keep this project cohesive and hopefully make something modern but also telling and revealing of how I can get us closer to an honest form of art with stream of consciousness and really into what her mind is thinking and she said OK so thankful for her to be cooking and now me back in bed continue to talk to my phone like a madman like I said earlier and hoping not to run out of things to say but wanted to stop this one together my thoughts little bit and think about the next one

thinking a little too much about it now. Something I do with my family tree anyway which is just to let random words together like creeping back quietly into the fire alarm ceiling sky keeping in the dark and blues outside and cons wearing in a depressed chest underneath a concave pillow kept inside sheets and walking down the stairs outside where is the last safe as of the apartment but also if the other possibility which is the theme for life to leave safety in order to get something good like an animal that must leave it’s habitat or cave rather for food like a bat we saw on the TV show that leaves. It’s a cave to catch bugs at the risk of being caught in itself by a hawk. Admittedly use my fingers to edit a hawk there because it’s at our and somewhat regretting it but now including in the peace having said it that there I made a fax with my fingers

self-conscious of how they sound and if there any good but thinking also that I might be kept shallow by these thoughts so trying to think deeper again about the feelings and the site and the sound that I started with like the water boiling in the kettle for baby not knowing really what she boils water for being that the rice is already heated on the stove maybe she’s making tea but I digress from my actual feelings like my hand on top of the sheet and the sheet on top my stomach and my feet still crossed over so my physical feeling stays relatively the same last I go into my mind and close my eyes and think about grass and nothingness above the grass and ends. my eyes closed so not saying that the phone had stopped recording I was talking about Winnie the Pooh and a beach ball baby calling me hold on maybe Rakesh me talking about him yeah let’s use all of it it’s only like less than a pound she asked me about how much steak we should use for dinner which reminds me at the grocery store when we asked for it it was precut stirfry steak and when the butcher put it on the scale it was only .87 of a pound and I asked for a pound of .87 was enough his baby and I are trying to eat less meat like a lot of people in San Francisco that I’ve caught on to it not being so good for you or for the environment and hearing the meat see you’re now on the cast-iron skillet that baby is fond of it you don’t have to wash it and it retains the flavor of past meals and closing my eyes again but worrying about the phone not typing no matter what see how far we can get with the tree but this I think for us by me trying to think of something really seeing the black of my eyelids and light shapes that fill the black me opening my eyes just to check that the phone is still typing needing to stop this one to start a new one so that I can be confident it will go for a while and really catch with my eyes closed

OK now I’m starting a solid stream without self-consciousness with my eyes closed seeing the black in no shape yet but noticing a texture in the black are there on the small white Dodge that make it more light and there is a difference with how close my eyes at her and how light the black is but really just seen black if only looking at the physical until I realize I can look into my mind Zai and see other things like a rope swing from the tree or some store or a light tower or things created by fours but somehow not being able to control what comes up opening my eyes now to check sending this one to do another

eyes closed again now focusing through my mind Zai and not just the physical violence like I said before seeing a plane or rather a concept of a plane not actually seeing it but thinking of it and wondering where that thinking happens trying to see you now actually a canna Plato with an orange lid and a hand smashing the lid and a hammer come out from the word smashing on the workbench that reminds me of my dad and my association with a hammer and a workbench and now my home in the basement door that was next to my dad‘s workbench that leads into the basement and there is stairs on the right. to go up into the living room or continue through the hallway and be in the basement with a bathroom immediately to the right and my brothers bedroom door in front of you and the rest of the basement to the left with a small workout room for me and my four brothers or the TV that is really the centerpiece of the basement where we go to relax and I’ll lounge around on the couch and so reliving being in my childhood home I heart beating with blood now as I try to think of something else looking like a kid and even not that I know much of her organs look like a deer thinking of it looking out as I have seen in videos when they hear the crack of the gun

Good smells now like I mentioned earlier about smell not being a dominant sense but becoming so dumb it when one is hungry and baby is cooking something good in the other room the steak I think or maybe the range that I’m smelling not having a defined nervous but knowing for sure when something smells good especially when I am hungry

back into the minds eye to see what we can conjure but getting to stay active he is wanting to be with baby and getting hungry and hearing the skateboard outside but also wanting this piece to exist with enough content to be what I imagined it to be so thinking in the mines dying of a scooter maybe because of the skateboard wrapping on sidewalk cracks and feet with sneakers pushing it in the cost of the chains on top of the sneakers at a bus stop where the senior citizens way like baby has told me about when she travels back from work through Chinatown in the bus wheels on the cement imagining the big white rectangle is painted between sidewalks. To give pedestrians a place to crash through street where cars pass and traffic lights keep everything orderly so people don’t die from car crashes every day with so much going and amazing that it can be kept orderly and a city has so many peoples with her own emotions stacked on top of each other and kept in line by Ruisch and paper and money and lights separated by so little as a red that means stop and a green that means ago that we were all agreed-upon

Getting somewhere now really achieve inquired ever received from Lange so I’m in bed I miss spoke there now I lost my train of thought having misspelled oh yes I was going to talk about getting somewhere from just a start as long as you can start with anything whether it be a color or any word or anything at all really like the fire alarm on the ceiling that I was talking about earlier and now thinking about fire and imagining the fire that Ford and I had by the river maybe shouldn’t have said sports name maybe should’ve called him baby or no baby because baby is baby but maybe a friend or brother bear or brother to protect his identity so calling him brother now me and brother by the fire next diversion over in Utah where we sat in the river all day and really a hot day on the sand of the beach by the camping resort where we stayed in the river really rushing and saying before we started the day in the morning that we should not get in the river but by noon both of us chest deep in the river having the greatest time sitting on the stones in the middle talking and letting the water rush over our backs especially with the sun being so high and high in the sky the river was the necessary counterpart To keep us on the beach all day from sunup to sundown and really now thinking more of concepts as opposed to having my eyes closed and reliving the senses that experience

Maybe it is not necessary to have this all done in tonight maybe I can let it go for now realizing that the piece might be more wine if I take the same lines to different moments rather than just laying in bed on this one night but maybe still keeping all these pieces together to give the piece of*it’s of the ideas there and notating the times but still having separate pieces that need not run on all together but can be marked by date and time and still certain time and place by my words if I’m careful to explain

keep after it keep after it keep on keep going like this since I got hold on baby calling meantime your food is ready see if it will capture how many more minutes baby veggies are still seeming she says seven minutes OK do you mind if I keep talking for seven more minutes yeah she says just giving you a heads up but now I’m back to thinking to keep after it like the trip by the river when the sun was out and we really thought we were after some thing crunched over notebooks writing onto the pages staying as long as we could on the beach and resisting the cold cool river Just to keep writing this is like that we’re here it is in this moment in this moment will only ever be right now a little after eight on June 22 and the 24th year of my life with baby here and everything going good and having been a little high all day in this moment seeming to matter so much driving my hair with my left hand and almost being overwhelmed with that but still knowing that I need to keep talking to keep Cab Shane in order to have a drill down into one point like I talked about earlier otherwise it could spread out and differentiated like everything else and is an allowed to be itself because of time and space and everything else that changes what is actually having the in religious and ethereal if left to be alone in touch but everything else like this

Good God or after eight now getting into it and really seeing past what really makes my eyes were talking straight into the a Bolivian that exist when I close my eyes usually and now needing to keep it in the words and not almost go crazy and talk about too much other stuff where if we really takeoff now the word start to fill fail I mean and I really am only just feeling in so get too far away but what can be worded and almost dying to stumble with my words and just mumbling now because I feel it so much and really don’t have anything to contain and then gripping the hair with my left hand Tyler and really like a train off the wheels now going after a good God there are no words for this or maybe my vocabulary lax and I’m really just trying to talk so fast just to get it out but even the speed of my language is an enough now good God the climax oh my goodness like being on a drunk high right now or you’re really

Keeping it on going in singing in starting in China to artificially keep the emotion but just let it flow even though I had to stop there to start a new text and press the microphone button and that someone interrupted but now I’m feeling the engine start to read it again with only a break or five seconds or so I can pretty much keep up with the same stream of thought that I had before but still not feeling it as much so slightly returning to the word world where I start to pay attention again to the base ceiling with the fire alarm in the dark practice between the ceiling and the largest of the walls that keeps a shadow black ordering the beige healing and not wanting to talk so much about the design of the room but get lifted back into the space where I was going after it and talking so fast and sewing down a little bit now. and realizing I have to let things be what they were in the moment and just let them be and not try to re-create them so shifting the legs and letting my pastor relax and sit back and be a little more calm and open to whatever might come close in my mind Zai to think of a leprechaun which is the mascot for where I went to university but now seeing a darker polygon I think it is like a square with its two side shifted Way over and opening my eyes to make sure the phone is still typing and recording what I’m saying probably four minutes left now as baby told me seven minutes probably three minutes ago for dinner is almost over and I feel bad because I told her I would help her cook but didn’t get on this mad rush talking to my phone through speech to text and wondering if this will be the same as the charger and also I’ve done before and where they feel to be so good in them. To have this all out almost too honest open and on edited and if people will like it and being self-conscious about it but this being the real art I believe to have it so naked and so honest and true the on edited for everything else is just like the rest of the world and not Erich because the rest of the world also starts as art as route human emotion and motivation to survive and love and fuck and succeed and gain power and hope and be together and all these things in the real world crystallized into economies and papers and edges and words and computers and bills so letting it really exist outside of that world and be on edited and non-commercial and not even Really meant for another to see so keeping it so honest

The messaging app in my phone is starting to malfunction I wonder if this is more taxed and more volume than it’s used to handling and hoping that the memory won’t run out or delete all the tax but still keeping going probably only two minutes left now since baby told me five minutes ago that it would be seven minutes before dinner is ready and so talking on to capture everything I can before a deadline closing my eyes now to see a frog on a Lillypad croaking slowly rolling over the water not green more of a concept I guess that is a Fagge but I can’t really see it and now thinking of an umbrella on the beach and reminding me of my trip to Cabo with other friends whose name starts with cheese and other friends whose name starts with you and being out on the beach and the man trying to sell us some drugs and the security man from the beach talking to him about it and keeping them out on the beach and not coming into the resort after us and being self-conscious now anything I might see a natural stream of thoughts that is not appropriate for public or should not be sad but wondering what conversations that would create if everyone really just read into speech to text the actual thought so that we came to the table to discuss and decide what is best all her thoughts were out there and sad and we could really have an open honest conversation about what should be done about it rather than only half the thoughts of even less than that being said that one actually feels and so having a conversation only about half the things that need to be talked about to really solve the issues at the root

Phoebe says it’s ready and I can tell her voice so be mad at me if I don’t find out so I better go leave this for now hopefully it’s enough

About 2:30pm outside Peet’s coffee on Fillmore

so much god and all my nothing explains or contains this what word have i really none at all to hold on to what passes staying long enough only to overwhelm me and fill its space with the same poetry that Schopenhauer claymores after with his philosophy for existence is beyond what physical lens we have that emotions break from another world that collides for the two lenses we’ve got goodness ethereal sublime words that contain every other word

walking away from dirt in the cracks sewer metal pole up into the sky squares of dirt for trees to sit in that don’t belong here for the shade trees cast on sidewalks walked all the leftover leaves scrambling to make it back out their trunks for flowers in pots that preferred domestic lives two gates open in neighborhoods safer than 10 miles to the west or the east I don’t know cars parked along every curb making curbs almost unnecessary

The accuracy of the noiselessness almost uncanny to have my words not buffered by assuming mistakes a helicopter overhead walking on the sidewalk so hearing so much the wind and the leaves that isn’t as loud as the motorcycle revving but light that paints houses not as colorful in the dark quiet now in a nicer neighborhood focusing without fear as my hair blows and my shirt sleeves blow

higher up closer to my subconscious mind uneven like the steps sideways on the side of the house the nearest to stay straight and 90° on incline sidewalks remaining normal according to gravity and all else that ties the physical world down into what it is staying the same for us to be able to predict and go on living without making dying mistakes

her waiting for me to walk away and talk to myself so as to avoid the self-consciousness that comes with the writing out loud in front of other people and hoping the spoken word stays natural as it comes to your heart when your hearts right and your mind did not do any of the writing except for getting in the way and trying to edit prematurely but really not helping the heart right after what it surely knows

struggling to get past this/old into that color list colorful non-physical dream religion God drug night other besides a world where things just flow and melts and go together and don’t choose sides or decide or define but just leave things to run as they would have without any help anyway such that the world would be without

pushing the limits now past having too much to even make sense of any part of it without seeing the trees for the forest or the clouds for the sky or any discretionary part of a modeled mass large enough to be itself and then goals everything else that would’ve been another but now only contributed a part not even recognized though not all together uneasy at least to belong

writing speech to text like this letting it go as it naturally would without having to take time to let my editing mind wonder about what is right but really just saying and being alone and letting her mind go as it always goes and goes and goes without stopping unless they hear about stopping in so I was still thinking in someway but give it an hour if I can only keep talking in writing maybe I’ll empty it all one day

So sleek similar to shampoo rinsing out of your hair like this on between your fingers and the rubber tire patched up against the cement curb trying so hard to be where it belongs as long as his car stay on the roads and people stay on the sidewalks and everything remains in its place and nothing unexpected or Turner to quickly then we can all get along with an order an expectation of things

Nonsense so consistently I wonder if it even begins to mean anything or remains just as it is everything outside of sens like to? Beyond the supposable outer pound of the ever expanding universe universe

Standing on the street corner she asked where do you want to go I stand there and think of all the possibilities and then say to her i want to stand right here thinking of all the possibilities

Leaving her to write is a theme that extends beyond just the practicality avoiding her presence to let my self consciousness dissolve but also stands between the conflict of letting everything go into my heart versus being with her and focusing and settling down

Sleepy somber sweet time notes leaving longer knee-high modes making mostly meager half times seeking timbre needle thick lines Needing no more they say her lies sending after chemical half lives

shadow rug

an invisible night light

in the apartment dark

shadow stretching

straight across

the floor rug run

with floorboards

and resting underneath

the living room table

moonlit window

an open window

in the dark

shining moonlight

into the apartment

like a rectangular

entrance into

another world

an escape

out of space

an accidental opening

of the day in the night

oddly geometrical

just the light

of the window

with all else

to the sides

and behind

black nothing

and the light itself

also nothing

except being

other than the dark

and therefore

the clear choice

i step through

waiting for wit

when walls close in

on art subjected

to a real world

sitting thinking

drumming up

something

or trying to

words a while

waiting for

wit to hit

sitting alone

sitting alone

at a table for two

with my eyes closed

and hands folded

listening to

the noisy restaurant

looking like

an old man

fallen asleep

but truly a young man

listening intently

in a place meant

for seeing

and tasting especially

but so much noise

when you really listen

multi-directional

so slowly says

solemn west

for fast setting

eastern folly

no more north

than southern

shores stretch

so deep down

or high up

was all that

was left

three sources of poetry

there are three sources of my poetry: my surroundings and what my senses are telling me about them. myself and what my mind is telling me. or nonsense that comes from my subconscious or somewhere else.

feel vs. think

people will always remember how you made them feel, long after they’ve forgotten the particular information you’ve told them (read this in a blog post, so true)

lunchtime sun

sitting outside for lunch

the cold motivates me

to stand up and get going

until the sun comes out

and i sit back down

to fold my hands and smile

enjoying the warmth

give back

you are only taking from the universe lately; give back to the universe. give unconditionally without expecting anything in return

Mr. Havermore

haver havermore

having more

than most

already

wanting

more still

to have at least

more than three

times he who

has least

v2:

haver havermore

having already

more than most

having more still

until he has most

or at least much

more than three

times he who

has least

crossed

thinking with mind’s

crossed eyes

between worlds

that see and

worlds that think

not knowing what

separates a dream

misremembered

from a reality

recently forgotten

black hole

so much goes

into the non-night never

knocking over naysayers

lying in the short run

letting out times

meant to be finite

moved past the black hole threshold

where light no longer escapes

somewhere left alone

to die spaceless

and sucking oxygen

constant joy

find your joy in the little things that won’t go way: sleeping, breathing, working, all five senses, being grateful, giving love – these make happiness within your control

furnace

she is

constantly

running hot

like a furnace

taking in

and burning

everything

for fuel

saturfoggydaze

wondering whether

which trail

will wind inland

and switch

back to the beach

where we started

low fog over

headless hills

hunkered

down and into

the valley

dirt trails

like scars

where

humanity

cut into

nature

natural stone

stair steps

in the trail

that refused

to grade

in some

pleasant

purgatory

between

dirt trail

blue sky

up high enough

into the fog

white nothing

lifted off away

from it all

hiking here

wind in the thicket

green and gold hills

contrasted with white fog,

locking the world down

inside of itself,

making our steps matter

with attention,

normally drawn upward

bad habit

had to beat

that bad habit

holding on to me

like a leach

leaking out all

my muster why

wherewithal

being myself

being myself

staying

more or less

the same

so pitted down

and normalized

so small steps

make pivotal sense

in place of

large leaps

creative climbing

up and

creative

higher

ascending

peaking

pushing

never more

than this

holding on

trying

to stay

though now

sliding

down going

losing

left over

let down

down down

let it go

seasonal effects

you get drilled down into who you are in the winter overcast cold dark fog and keep your head down to add to the world and build up with what stays together and the same so you can make sense and move forward though a structure can only stand still and so focused for so long before forced to change so might as well start to change it anyway by your own hot hand in the summer as a heat wave burns off the fog and lets out all that stayed locked down and into the sky letting go some that didn’t belong anyway and only spoiled by having stayed so long and pulling down other forces and stars from beyond the infinite sky and sun that mixes new moving pieces in the open blue cloudless warm until the clouds return and lock in what the summer has newly brought down and allows to focus like a pot of only certain ingredients from a whole grocery store and letting some identity and certainty be beautiful amidst a world of never-ending other interesting and beautiful moreness

duality

building up

and tearing down

are two

sides of life

to construct

an ego

or destroy

a construction

to build and build

or let it all go

mr. moon

what else

mr. moon

what else

is there

so soon

so night

you are

tonight

so far

bright night

soft light

so slow

moon’s glow

so say

to the day

where’s my

quiet time

farther futures

thinking of the future is putting pieces of yourself in the future such that when you get to the future there is none of yourself left to experience it after having placed pieces in even farther futures

spent right now

i’m spent right now

emptied and over

unable to push

no strength to create

head down

shoulders slumped

scowling

trudging

neither energy

not creativity

visit me

stranded

waiting

to start

again

only

a matter

of time

all i can do

is rest and wait

travel self

in the morning

sitting at my desk

in the office

after a long

weekend

out of town

is is difficult

to remember

who i am

and what i do

i pull fragments

of my travel self

left in chicago

to reconstitute

my working self

in san francisco

signs of slumber

a banal

blue gray

foggy sky

lit by

your eyes

wild nights

wield signs

of slumber

saying

sleep

is for

the weak

hold on

language art

half of being a poet for me was unlearning the rules from grade school language arts; knowing just enough about words to feel how others will feel but also knowing nothing at all so as to not be afraid of putting words together in new ways

jump

looking down 13 stories, down to state street in chicago. they installed bars so you can’t jump out. it’s rainy today. the door also only opens about 6 inches. i think i could slide out though. the rain would help clean up the mess. enough people on the sidewalk i’d have to time it so i don’t hit anyone. scary, so close. nothing seeming to matter, far away from the sidewalking and stoplighting that keep me grounded below. up here, not quite skycraping, but high enough to feel between two worlds, not close enough to either, a body smashed on cement bounces a soul.

i love you

to wait to say i love you

until knowing what it means

balanced with the tragedy

of never having said it

quarter tab swim

on a quarter tab

laying on the beach

the ocean called me

taking off my jeans,

flannel, shirt, socks,

and shoes

there were other people

on the beach;

lots of people actually.

it was a nice day.

i took off my clothes

and walked toward the water.

tripping, not conscious

of other people

watching me.

in the water, freezing,

didn’t bother me.

out to waist high

a wave came

i dove in and

under the water

everything ceased to exist. the ego already disassociates on acid. the body can still remain lightly with a subdued awareness of the senses. under freezing water, however, that awareness is obliterated.

there is only the freezing all over. and the roar of water forever. waves crashing above like the world is falling apart.

forgetting to breathe because the art of being underwater takes precedence for my attention. even when my lungs shout, return to the surface, i cannot hear them.

the art of nature at large overwhelming my individual need to survive. it making no difference whether my body, a small part of all this, will rise to the surface and swim back to the beach, or drown here and sink and become one with the ocean that i am part of in one way alive or dead in another.

building people

chicago skyline

scattered sprinkled

with shapes

stretching high

to reach cranes

that then stretch higher

a city stretches

like its habitants

higher longer

more here more

a tourist can see

in a new place

seeing new

everyone old

doesn’t see new

not old

like wrinkles

old like

here for a while

having seen

again until

not seeing

new anymore

a tourist

like me

can see

everything

four city high

four men

three and me

walking nowhere

meatpacking

chicago brick

rusted steel

lazy walk

looking up

wonder walk

glossy eyes

deep sighs

feeling high

everything

is art

right now

beautiful girl

a girl

wearing a white top

and pink pants

a gold watch

two inch heels

leaning back

with her coffee

on a bench

she smiles

at me

i hope

i smile back

she looks away

beautiful

banal i know

but god

so beautiful

wide open road

walking across

a wide open road

feels less like

your pinched down

between buildings

like a narrow street

or a trash can alley

in a jungle concrete

green street meats

brick and metal and wires

and chipping paint

feels like cuba or spain

cobblestone sidewalk and steps

rust on marble tabletop

in the meatpacking district

now made vintage and hip

voices in the distance

surrounded by restaurants

and light music

folded hands in conversation

heads back laughs

barely brisk enough for jackets

joy that needs cigar smoke

brick walls

stove pipes crawling up

weeds between cobble stones

old packing labels

newer graffiti

on warehouse doors

years of paint

painted over

steel bars on windows

i am therefore i should

i am what i am.

i am human.

of all things, ideas and intellect are highly human.

language is our tool for communicating ideas and intellect.

writing is the art of language.

i am a writer.

god fragments

imagine that every soul starts as the same undifferentiated fragment of One or God. then they are introduced to a physically reality of time and place. like a perfectly spherical and colorless marble. there is an alley of nozzles spraying different colors in different patterns in both directions. the marble is loaded into a gun and shot through the alley and then caught at the other end. this process is repeated for millions of marbles. every marble will look different after being caught at the other end. some marbles will be mostly unmarked, having luckily (or unluckily) escaped most of the color blasts. some will be completely black, hit by almost all colors. and others will be shades of one color. and this is just colors, without mentioning the patterns. the point is: people are like these marbles. sometimes we have a tendency to look to a poor man or a criminal and say that they are lazy or evil. saying this, from the perspective of our own lives. consider, however, that every marble was the exact same before being shot through the alley of color. like a blank canvas, each person is introduced to a world of change, much more powerful than their own will. we are the same, if not for our different experiences. if the marble cannot change its course, why would we blame or praise each one for its color and patterns? why would we not gather all the marbles together and wonder at the beauty of color and pattern. from the human perspective, fragments of the universal will, subjected to the art of time and space, and the story of a human life.

writing when

writing is best done

when doing

whatever it is

that you’re writing about

only that

stopping to write

about the thing

would stop the thing

from being done

280 to the airport

pastel painted houses

shoulder to shoulder

on up the hill

bordering 280

headed out of the city

an overpass

hills and trees

to the left and right

now the wide open

ocean on the left

and rolling foothills

on the right

white frothy specks

are all that keep

the dark blue black

stoney surface

from smoothness

now buildings

ugly, compared

280 turns inland

into hotels

and complexes

windy today

the trees blowing

even the car

blowing

dirt and construction

under a graffitied

overpass

power lines

connecting

metal frame

skeleton towers

a plane overhead

we must be

getting close

a billboard

for enterprise

something

the cars into

the city

more congested

than the cars

like mine

going out

to the airport

or further south

shorter faster

in a pinch

i am nothing

in a spread

i am all

in a bed

i’ll sleep

in a desk

i’ll learn

in a field

i’ll run

for you

i love

for them

i fight

for ours

i sacrifice

for now

is enough

for when

it’s over

for this

i pray

being yourself

part of having an identity is constantly choosing to forego other identities. the same goes for success; succeeding in one opportunity is largely dependent on committing and therefore passing up on other opportunities. successful people often say, just be yourself. it takes time to learn yourself and improve at being yourself. the same as any skill or profession. if you started with piano, then switched to flute after six months, and then picked up violin after a year of the flute, and so on—then you’ll never be the best at any instrument. you’ll just be mediocre at a few. the same goes for being yourself. if you are constantly seeing other la and saying, oh, i want to be like that. and starting to model that person until you see another person that you want to be like. then you’ll never be the best at being yourself. you’ll just be mediocre at being like other people.

the more i mature, the more i see the value of commitment. at its core, i think this is a deep issue. there is a competing duality between being ourselves and losing ourselves. we read self-help books and meditate to be ourselves and then get drunk or have an empathetic conversation to lose ourselves.

tin can man

the clack clack

of the tin can man

transporting cans

from one black

trash bag

to the other white

mesh bag

city poetry

poetry

is sensual

in the dark

and quiet

i am nothing

in the city

i have

something

to write

always

movement

and noise

from

life forms

both

organic

and

mechanical

all

crammed

together

bodies in

buildings

buildings

on streets

streets

with cars

cars with

bodies

apartments

with beds

bodies

in beds

and on

and on

in the city

sidewalk

walking home

i try to talk

with the sidewalk

and take a break

from myself

watching

my feet

orange paint

marking

electrical wires

underneath

so that

jackhammer man

won’t knock out

power

for the whole block

like last week

shadows

from the black

wire fence

that borders

the ball field

where young

players play

most days

not today

in june

weeds in the cracks

surviving

somehow

giving the city

some life

like the fallen leaves

half of

a ripped ticket

a pink slip

turned over

so i can’t see

what it says

old chewed

bubble gum

black now

stepped on

unchewable

or maybe

you could

black rocks

ran away from

the asphalt mass

covering

the hole

in the sidewalk

surrounded by

orange cones

other foot steps

in cement

that hadn’t dried

now dry forever

pink paint

and white paint

cigarette butts

feces

plastic bag

mayo packet

splattered

beige paint

that missed

the fire hydrant

gum wrappers

broken zip ties

water bottle cap

rustic metal

sewer gate

dirty napkin

crushed

water bottle

navy canvas belt

with metal buckle

looks to be

in good shape

crushed

cardboard

beer case

sidewalks

are alive

scarred

cracked

stepped on

supporting

without asking

for much

just to be

useful

is enough

change

there are many

unknowns

changing one

will offset the other

stepping carefully

trying to step right

holding one

to let the other go

balancing

like a teeter totter

still one fulcrum

but many beams

everything

in motion

always

moving

other things

that move

other things

and us being

part of it

trying to be the same

or at least

have a name

amidst change

allowing change

when it is right

or good

or perceived that way

so really not minding

the change

and new names

as long as they

are good and right

so floating

and touching lightly

pieces

that touch others

and make up

ourselves

listening to the city at 9:21pm

standing on the balcony
listening to the city
at 9:21pm

the security man
saying something
to someone
indiscernible

a small truck
that sounds like a car
if not for the tarp
hanging, flapping
from the back

a dog’s nails
on the sidewalk
leashed to a late
night walker

the swinging
of an ungreased hinge
down at the lobby
of my apartment building

a scooter
to weak to be
a motorcycle
maybe a moped

a skateboard’s wheels
that rap-rap
on sidewalk cracks

a semi, sirens
farther off

the clink of metal
on a collar
another dog walker

swinging, a heavier
exterior metal gate
more well greased

woosh, woosh
more cars go by

mostly cars
cars and people

vroom-vroom
a rice burner
farther off

and the sirens
still going

and a motorcycle
this time for sure
stronger than
the scooter

the keys of the security man
thrown and caught
on a lanyard
clink, clink, clink

the squeak
of his sneakers
pacing back and forth

a plane, like a propeller
not like a car
but maybe a car

a big semi
this one closer
brakes squeaking

it is early june
and brisk

my screen
sliding shut

as i step
back inside

vote for poetry

what bleeds from poetry
when meaningless, rhymeless
for what do you read
other than newspaper, novel

the same that is drunk
and wordless yet brilliant
a light show in the dark
incomprehensibly telling

how does a word
read without pages
how does a lyric
sing without song

in the night’s light knowing
what you can’t see or touch
in the dream’s dark hoping
after such ethereal much

it is all here saying
what you swore was said before
in wordless ways soft spoken
like light knocks at your door

softly

say it so softly
says the nay gone night
leave it for the day
whose job it is by light

leave what livened mind’s
sparks forth flow from
not here, tired eyes
need know doldrum

commit

you must give
and let it grow
commit and stay put
care enough
to stick around
even when what
you planned
has changed
hold on
double down
breathe deeply
lean forward
a little longer
not just for yourself
commit and risk
long term loss
for short term gain
trust
after trust is broken
work
without longing
for future gain
commit
and stay steady
growing older
is committing
standing
when you want to run
work and love
work and love
give what you can
all that you can
while you still can
work and love
work and love

rest now

hardwood stretched
on lawns like leapt
floors for fed well
hungry mouths still
leave long lights
on after hours slept
in beds made
for dreams return
only after days
lived enough to tire
finally sleep here
rest now

god that youth sings

go go
while you are still
young and driven
beat after
beat on
hunger forward
hope haughty
lean into the never ending
see past no near desire
open after all of it
my god the youth
that we jeer on
only after past
that yoke of possibility
burns on the inside 
driving on the outside 
with elders expecting 
inching forward 
after all of it
enlivening
suicidally overwhelming
its newborn bounds
god that youth sings
and bangs and births
god that youth sings

z-man

my friend zack is currently a couch-surfing musician. he said, “i go through moments of creativity then moments of reality.” he goes through moments of binge-drinking and then crazy sprints of health.

cloud shadow

a cloud shadow came up to me today, 
wordless and dark, and covered me completely. 
it was bright out at midday and i welcomed the shade. 
i breathed deeply and we had our moment together 
and then the cloud shadow was gone.

light like this

it is a light like this 
that keeps me lifted, 
lazy and floating, 
hoping after songs 
and young hearts, 
flying low below 
the dark sky

change

i can feel the change at first
but then i completely forget
what my life was like
before the change occurred

oxymuman

the human desires to explore and succeed

are at odds with the desires to be at home and belong

habitable

a bird may feel more grounded in a ground-like nest

a fish may be better able to breathe in aquatic air

a man may survive in a city constructed like nature

three tree

I asked the tree and he said he feels like he’s the one that’s really three—even though he has wind-broken branches and fallen leaves everywhere, and one day he’ll be a stump.

using speech-to-text walking home from work on tuesday at 6:08pm

I see the same orange needle cap on my walk home from work every day resting against the curb the same bouncer standing outside the door wearing the same navy sportcoat I figured it was a little early for a Belcher to be standing outside a bar around six in the afternoon so what day after passing by and seeing him for weeks I asked if this is a bar and he said no it’s a start up past the gated construction area that makes me nervous because you have to cross out into the street and the only thing that separates you from traffic is a thin metal fence nobody walks the same pace so you’re always passing or getting pastPeople scala at each other here that used to smile where I’m from speech to text is a kind of art that messes up what you’re thinking in the most serendipitous Waze.

A great Dane sprinted right down the street at me it’s owner had already passed by and I hadn’t realized I fell for a second the fear of being chased down by stop in large animal and before I could react the big dog was passed me already if I were in the wild I would’ve died

Crossing the street talking to my phone like this if I were to be hit by a car I wonder if whoever would pick up the phone would laugh at the unfinished message

Slow down, it’s alright

My flight from San Francisco to Kansas City is delayed.Tthey said our plan is delayed from Everett because the FAA regulates the amount of planes that can arrive at SFO when there is low cloud coverage. Looking out the windows, I can’t see a thing, except gray foggy mist—so I don’t really blame the FAA. It must be hard to be a pilot in this weather.

I don’t really mind the flight being delayed at all. It’s been a stressful week at work, and I’m headed home to see my family. It’s like a pocket in time has opened up. So I just have to sit here and write poetry and read and wait on the plane. There’s nothing I can do about it. My boss knows I’m taking off work tomorrow already anyway. And my sister’s graduation isn’t until the evening tomorrow night.

I love the parts of travel where there is nothing left to do. When you’re hurrying out of your building to catch a car, and you press the elevator button and watch the numbers going up and down—there’s nothing you can do. You’re in the queue. You’ve already fulfilled your responsibility of pressing the button and earned for yourself this small pocket of time. No matter how late you are, or how important the meeting is that you’re going to, you can’t do anything but wait and relax, and the burden of moving fast is lifted from your shoulders.

second street coffee shop

you don’t see old people here
you don’t see beer bellies
you don’t see kids
you don’t see dogs
you don’t see people walking slowly

you see perfectly slicked hair
you see people walking with their headphones in
you see jaded, determined faces
you see backpacks and handbags, probably containing laptops

looking out the window of a coffee shop, 
watching people walk by 
on the sidewalk of second street at 8 a.m.

Planetary weight

The weight of the world strikes me all at once. In fits of anxiety, I fear death the most, trying to hold onto what I have. Hungry and leaning forward, I try and wait to eat, to take advantage of my dissatisfaction. Food sickens me, even—as a threat to what I am right now, adding anything might change it. Like everything depends on this moment, and there will be nothing soon after. I become more serious and careful about my survival, thinking now that it is important to go on living, if there is to be more in the future of what I am experiencing right now. I think of going outside, but worry about what dangers lay in wait there.

Editing poetry

They are subtle the things that make a poem good. So when you edit for something like grammar, you can take away the good thing by accident. Like when someone is healthy according to all physical standards, but their mind or soul aren’t in it—so they really aren’t healthy at all.

The rules of poetry cannot contain the idiosyncrasies of human taste for interplay between words and rhythm; this interplay, at its most subtle depths, can only be felt. You can hear it in the crowd at a poetry reading when everyone says “ah” or lets out a sigh at the same time. Words said differently—slower, choked, quietly—mean something different. This is why, when I try to edit a poem that has come to me in a dream, by applying rules of grammar, it loses the beauty that I don’t completely understand, which has come from my subconscious.

A poem is like a complex math problem—instead of two variables, an independent and a dependent (like all the two-dimensional graphs that we learned in grade school algebra)—there are hundreds of dependent variables: the complexity of a thought, the amount of syllables in a stanza, a natural pause denoted by a comma in the middle of a line, the formatting and how it looks on a page. All these, if independent, might be solvable. But they’re dependent, and changing one changes the other.

If you were a very smart mathematician, you could figure it out. Or you could take the musician’s approach and get blasted drunk and feel your way, stumbling to the solution. These are two separate ways to arrive at the same place. I believe the musician is doing the exact same thing as the mathematician by different means. I also believe that this is a duality which applies to more than just poetry.

delete

GROWING UP

Younger, I was less afraid
to chase a tadpole downstream
or throw rocks with my brothers.

Since the sides have flipped,
I eat my vegetables
and take care of myself—
finding adult ways of having fun.

I think of having my own boy
when he’ll invite me to play catch.

I’ll do it partly because he’s my boy
but also because I want to play too

and it’s just been a long time
since anyone’s asked me.

Hand writing in the dark

Return to the passions of sea that shape your soul / Drink from the plentiful water there and even drown and lose yourself if you need to / Leave some strength to swim back to shore where wild water passions find direction in river banks / Stand on land that holds strong and firm without moving in the short term unless you really dig your shovel in to separate the form it clings to

Where water takes only the small sleight of hand to empty a glass and have it all splash or spill out / Let the water hydrate your soil and birth your plans without drowning all life there / Passions of water that know no limits in nature, but in human form can only excite so much before we remember there is a code to survival

We can dance in the waves and swim out but only so far, not beyond a possible swim back to shore / And not so deep, longer than the rope that tethers us to the surface

We are amphibious creatures of both passionate waters and structured lands / Completely without one or the other, we would die

Passions of a dream, a dance, a night love in the dark—are beyond our defining / (illegible) that move and inspire action it has nothing to do with what we see cosmetically everyday—the buildings erected, cars driving, people going to work

—man living and doing what he needs to survive. None of this would exists without the dance in the dirt that we came from and the desires for more than just to go on surviving but to live in the moment in passions of ecstasy

—these are the short ephemeral moments that cause us to go on living and also to give our children the opportunity to do so; otherwise what would be the point?

Selfish

Look outward more, no more writing about yourself. Readers are bored of it quickly. Write about the world. What you see. What you sense. Not these derivative ideas that fill your mind only when you forget to meditate. Float up above your ego and take in what’s around you and put that into word.

Grit

I have K and my job now but I’m stuck on go-go-go and be excited about everything more and can’t just settle down and enjoy what I have; I want to throw it all away and go travel to find myself. But i’m not really finding anything, just throwing it all away to begin again. I need to learn to build consistently and commit to long term goals even when they stop being fun.

Additive and Subtractive Personalities

I feel good and want more of it, more and more until I’m fat and gluttonous and only looking for the next thing to satisfy me, so I start to slim down and focus and delete excess until I’m thin as a stick and hold a lamppost to not blow away in the wind, and hold there and look for something to weigh me down and add one thing and then catch again the fever for adding and forgetting why I ever wanted to take away anything and so again start adding.

Banal

Sometimes it’s not the words that matter; it’s how you say them.

Partial book review for The Chosen

Potok uses two events that could each be described in a half-page and magnifies them to the first 100 pages of the book—namely, the ball game and Reuven’s hospital visit. This allows the reader to quickly get up to speed with characters and setting in the context of two pseudo-short-stories that immediately grab your interest.

Stable tenants of self

Do not build your self with glue from a world that does not hold together—ideas of who you are, how you look, what people think of you, how much money you make. All this will pass and often be beyond your control. Build yourself with a stable foundation like your breath and unconditional gratitude and love. For as long as you live you will have your breath. You can always be happy and grateful if you choose to. These are the stable tenants of the self.

A Return to Form

“Oh no, I’m feeling impulsive again. I want a croissant,” K says.

I laugh and say, “I love how you happen upon your feelings like you’ve tripped over something and say, hey, who put that there?”

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LIKE BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

Walking along in the city,
talking with street signs that glow
even when we don’t see,

or sitting in the apartment
and having a conversation
with the dishwasher that runs
even when we don’t listen.

Otherwise we are closed off
from the rest of the world
that’s always trying
to tell us something.

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TALKING TO TREES

I ask the tall redwood,
What’s wrong grumpy tree?

He turns his back to the trail
and says, Don’t look at me.

With his branch arms crossed
and stump chin pointed to the sky,

refusing to acknowledge us passersby
who hike the trail looking at our feet.

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APPLE WHITES

Apple whites
in starry nights
that fickle fights
do fumble.

Up and all
the leaves do fall
that tear my heart
asunder.

So please do pray
that all these days
in the end
have meaning.

Otherwise
my solemn eyes
might find a reason
not to.

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THE GRASS IS HERE

White roofed
in green tall trees
I wonder about
who lives there.

So when wonder weighs
what won’t be held
it’s hard to keep it quiet.

Why don’t you lead
with what you see
and please just let me follow.

The grass is here
the water too
so nature's sights will wile.

when you feel sad

A few things to remember
when you feel sad and lost:
you are part of everything;
you can think of nothing;
and be grateful always.

delete

Cooking up
some good mind
like stirring a pot
full of thoughts.

~

Once you have seen the trick,
it is only by great effort
that you fool yourself again.

~

Doing what you’re told
can be useful practice
for when you start
to tell yourself.

~

I don’t remember
what changed about me,
but it’s been who I am
ever since.

~

The most depressed men
must have too much desire
and not enough ability.

~

The theoretical man
was never born.

~

The same question,
asked more accurately,
becomes the answer.

~

I was really enjoying
quite an ordinary day.

~

My fear of
death takes over
and I stop thinking
about the future.

~

I dream and die
and remember
life is precious.

~

On a beautiful morning like this,
I wonder how I could have been
so depressed last night.

~

I forget what I can’t do nothing with
until I catch myself in the double negative
and remember it’s good for something.

~

She has the strength
to weaken me,
and the weakness
to strengthen me.

~

He moves about
like a man in a home
built with his own hands.

~

I like to read
fiction characters
as possibilities for lives
I’m not yet living.

~

I like to be sick
and lay in bed all day
and escape the obligations
of a healthy person.

~

Any good writing
is an ode
to the language itself.

~

Puts words in some ways
and leave silences
where they’re due.

~

There are only
so many combinations
of common words.

~

There’s a little
of everyone
in anyone.

~

How a shadow
can hide
just the right
part of a body.

~

A piece that discovers
the meaning of meaning,
held together by itself
and nothing else.

~

The difficulty is not to decide.
You will decide no matter what.
To sit still, even, is a decision.
To do nothing is a decision.

~

I think of
just how easily
it could have been
any other way.

~

I think up absurd things
and wonder if they’ve ever
actually happened.

~

A lot of the time
I leave it out loose
and just let it be.

~

I’ve seldom time
to look deep down;
I’ve cared about
what I can.

~

Sure, you save some now,
but how much have you
wasted before?

~

Why worry about war
if not to rest
in the peace between?

~

Everything is out of sorts,
says my control;
everything is all right here,
says my peace.

~

When it wasn’t what was wanted
by the violent crowd
my knees began to tremble
and I wondered who I was.

~

In my eyes
in the mirror
are my selves.

~

So we get caught up
in chasing something new
until we chase that down too.

~

Some things to remember
when you feel sad and lost:
you are part of everything;
you can think about nothing;
and be grateful always.

delete

IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE DIFFERENT

Here is what we need and what we were meant to have, until the order that was supposed to give frame for the beauty, actually ended up corrupting what it was meant to protect, rounding its soft corners into edges for the advancement of a frontier that we thought was in line with our needs, but really just served to trade a lasting happiness for ephemeral pleasures.

delete

LITTLE SPECK THAT STAYS

Creep back coyly, cut past the pride
with which you stepped out,
shrink into what you were
before your evolution hoped for all this,

dash your tiny leaf on a wave of oppression
that was always stronger than your Will,
loose what little motivation you mustered—

except for that speck, that little sliver,
that all alone is no match
for an adversary at any one time,
but as time passes, as everything else
that was so strong in the moment fades away,
this little speck holds on,
it stays, though small, it remains,
so that when nothing is left,
there is this speck, hanging on.

This little speck is the last of you.
It will carry you to the end.

delete

COOKING UP SOME GOOD MIND

Cooking up some good mind
like stirring a pot full of thoughts

that mix and mingle
and make a whole thing
that’s different than any of its parts,

turning up the heat
and then turning it down,

melting to allow joining together,
cooling to solidify that joining,

waiting with the oven light on
watching a thought arise
and probably satisfaction

for you and your friends and many more
if it’s really good and big enough,

waiting to see what it will be,
like what you picked out of the cookbook
or something different with your secret sauce.

delete

Here alone it hurts me
Herald hairpin lies
Hoping during the worst we
Hold on for goodbye

So it leaves me like this
So it goes they say
So and sew it lightly
Duck darkness into grey

Even the one world
where you create your
noose out of thin air
doesn’t end up hanging.

One of the hardest
things about making art
is forgetting what it’s like
to be a consumer.

delete

HOT AIR BALLOON

It’s only sometimes when I’m like a kid again, I get so silly high that I forget about everything and blow so much hot air into my own balloon, until there’s no breath left in my lungs, and I start to fall—

like I imagine it is to jump out of a plane that’s very high up. Terror in the beginning, yes. But then boredom. And after boredom, curiosity for the clouds and the air around you, for what you can see and what it is like to fall now that the fear is commonplace.

Having gotten used to the fear of falling, the trauma upon impacting earth is surprising, and brings with it a new pain upon the hard crash landing.

My impact drives me so deep that at first I know it is temporary but at some point so far beneath, I start to wonder whether I’ll ever rise again. So much time in the dark, and deeper, darker all the while,

I start to think I’ll never summit, I start to think that I’ll never return, I start to think I’ll never be the same—I can’t really help it, thinking like this. But boy, when I’m high up there, lighter and higher all the while, I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

delete

WHAT IS NOT

Now I know I always come back. Nothing seems so bad anymore, knowing there’s always a bounce instead of a crash at the end of these falls.

Like I imagine it is to jump out of a plane that’s very high up. Terror in the beginning, yes. But then boredom. And after boredom, interest in the air around you and what you can see and what it is like to fall now that the fear and pain are commonplace.

So I’m sick with dread and a split head but really just thinking what is it for a head to split while I wait for everything to put itself back together and redeliver me to the paradise I can only stand for some time until the same effect takes over. Nothing is anything really, at least to you, until you make of what it isn’t.

delete

HARDWOOD FLOOR

Wallets I would have had if my bookshelf could have kept from toppling. Empty bottles full if they weren’t so full to begin with.

Laying on the hardwood floor hurts a little bit, neither of us will admit. We even roll around before confessing we’d rather be in bed.

Shoes and rolled jeans; I like her dressed up as much as not. Honestly don’t think it’ll last much longer, but at least it lasted this long.

Even just that it lasts right now is more than I can really ask for. God, I’m thankful. I forget too often.

delete

WHETHER I REMEMBER OR NOT

So that in times like these, when I’m not really processing anything, both for being overwhelmed in this moment, and all the moments just before, with which I haven’t quite caught up, but the dirt picks up under my feet just the same, and supports a body that houses a mind in a universe, that moves regardless of whether I remember it or not.

delete

IN BETWEEN COUCH CUSHIONS

Split down the center of a formerly indivisible line, these become two sides of your wonder wall. Not too far apart, as their magnetism still draws the two sides together, you nestle yourself deep inside like a child in between couch cushions. It’s not long until, something from the outside world catches your attention. You look up to see, a symphony, for you and the other split cushion dwellers. So you start to say, with less dismay, this really isn’t that bad, what with the music that echoes inside your comfy canyon walls, as the same magnetism that sucked you down and in, spits you back out, into the world that welcomes you home.

delete

HEART’S CENTER

Let’s go through it, unsure of how we’ll come out, this is all we’ve got. One direction being no different than another, the only real difference is our speed, if we are to control how much ground we cover.

So that the only choice we ever really had was to hurtle headlong into the furnace. The sun mooning up at any distance we charge into. And the moon sunning from the source. Your heart’s center was really the only thing that ever beat for me. No matter how much sense school ever made to me as a boy, I was always bound to chase after your heart.

delete

THE NEXT SCARE

I don’t suppose
there was anything
really like that
where we came from

so when we saw it
we were scared
but not just
two minutes later

we were looking past it
and not even noticing
anything other than
the next thing to scare us.

simple writing

simple, straight-forward writing is more naked. it can’t hide behind misunderstandings and words unknown to most readers.

a writer’s work

it’s a writer’s work to articulate the forces that move us implicitly and wordlessly in our daily lives. while our economy works to answer for everything that is worth something and our religions seek to answer for what means something and philosophy seeks to answer for what is true; art seeks to answer for whatever is left over—just what is.

it’s a writer’s work to name what hasn’t been and to sometimes challenge what has.

not being myself

sleeping, doing drugs, dancing in a crowded room, looking deep into someone else’s eyes, meditating on nothing, meditating on one thing, dreaming a dream I don’t remember,Slipping and falling accidentally into a daydream, or otherwise not being myself, even if only for a short while.

.

that your opinion is the popular one is not an absolute defense.

dryer

the dryer stops running
having done its job
and lets go a click
which is the door unlocking

—this is my cue to get up
and fold the dry clothes.
i don’t, however, or at least,
not right away. instead,

i sit and enjoy the silence
in the apartment now
that the load has run.

but then i hear, another click
which is when, i look up confused; 
because there is only
supposed to be one click

and it is always the same
after the load has run
for thirty-six minutes

on the “Mixed Loads” setting
—I don’t separate darks 
and lights like I should—

so that now,
upon hearing
the second click,
i am perplexed.

a dryer is a mechanical thing
and can only click as it is made to, 

and just then,
as i had this thought,
there was a third click!

as if the dryer not only had developed the ability to speak, 
but now also the ability to read minds, 
and could hear me degrading it as just a mechanical thing

i listened closer and heard now not only the clicks 
but also the subtle rgg’s and prrt’s 
that are the same as an athlete saying ahhh after a race 
or a lawyer saying phew after a case.

so i said alright alright and got up off the couch 
to open its lid smiling smugly 
and then see its happy belly lit by a dim yellow 
and displaying for me a perfectly dry mound of clothes.

thank you, i said. and just then, 
two clicks in quick succession, i swear it.

talking to myself about sobriety using speech-to text at like 4:37am according to my iMessage

in such sobriety everything is clear as it should be similar evening to the drug that distorts reality such that with the drug around you need edges but I’ve seen show shark sobriety sharpens the edges 13 so round allowing me to see wrinkles the hardwood floor in the end it screws noticing things I wouldn’t have before stopping on my walk home to start something I walked by $100 but not noticed is beautiful being myself as a human should be but losing touch with something more that being human prevents us from accessingAt least not consistently only allowing to see as recluses like a drug guy but in the case you’re going to give that up so Briody allows your godly version of being human.

dreams within a dream

I had a dream that I was sleeping coming in and out of dreaming and after each dream it would appear good to me like something that should be in writing and I would think of how to write it But I was so tired so I would fall back asleep before I could get up to write anything down and then wake up again having had another dream that seemed to me like it would be good in wiring – Only sometimes did i know, in my stupor, that i had forgotten the dreams before, while other times i would unconsciously descend into another bout of sleep while conjuring up the thought in words to be written and at the same time mustering the energy to get out of bed and grab my phone from the kitchen counter and having something to write it but not making it and falling back asleep.

all of this, happening and wondering – one, why could i not formulate the thought and get up to write it before falling asleep again, and starting to feel loss and disappointment that I could capture none of it while feeling that some of these dreams should have been captured; two, and this was a particularly peculiar part, upon the fifth or sixth or seventh or maybe 100th dream and really feeling A frustration at this point having forgotten so much and if it it had just been forgotten no worries fucking van combined with the fact that there had been something good that I had missed either because I could not write it and share it later on or because I could not even remember it myself and maybe relive it for even having seemed to have lived at once if only just by remembering it once; but now, I digress again, because what really happened is this.

I awoke this time differently still laying in my bed and trying to think of the words only to realize that this time I had awoken into my actual bed and a reality that is more real in each of the times and walking after the sixth or seventh or hundred dreams for you to realize that this time was the first time then I actually work in all the times before were dreams within a dream of me sleeping and going to sleep and dreaming and experiencing something that is very familiar to me which is living a dream wanting to write it and then forgetting it over and over again so now is the only time that I am in reality real enough where I can actually get out of bed and grab my phone off the kitchen counter and actually write it only now I can write nothing specific about all the changes and dreams and can only write generally – not specifically about any of the six or seven or 100 dreams that were each stories or ideas or things that needed to be put down into words that people have not found yet to formulate ideas that are you and everyone would explain are yes I have thought that before I just didn’t know how to say it this is what a writer really tries to get after after all. So explaining my disappointment for having lost all of it and feeling this to be not unlike living mini lives and dying and not remembering your former lives and not only having lost the memory to recall the life clinic 30 but sometimes not even having remembered it in the first place such that it is questionable whether you can even say what it was lived at all if you can’t remember it or another words if you never met entered your mind with any clarity at least once there is a tragedy here that is at the core of my motivation to write in the first place and that is the desire that things should be written down, recorded, preserved, allowed to live on, or in some cases allowed to live at all even just once.

Conversely the tragedy I feel as a writer is having lost. Having forgotten, having never gotten something in the first place having let something pass by or die or not otherwise made something live and be shared in touch first my own mind at least once but then many other moments and have lived in many other lives caring on it written word And creating imagination, fantasy idea, story, ideas the minds of others that are in someways each lives that are given the hour to need to live again again with each reader.

don’t think like that

Don’t think like that, like you can’t go on, or it won’t be much longer, or it’s not true, or the end is near, or nothing matters, or anything else that might be true, but doesn’t help you by its truth.

Because you can be illogically happy or illogically sad – those are the only options, humans are not smart enough for anything else. So push out of your mind any thought that might be true but isn’t useful.

sculpting writer

The writer is much like a sculptor, gathering a mass of stuff to begin with, going out and living to get the mass. Then sculpting, removing excess, shaping, defining—all away on his own. Until a lesser more defined thing is revealed out of the mass. And he can show it back to the world from whence it was gathered.

trick

Once you have seen the trick, 
it is only by great effort 
that you fool yourself again.

trick yourself and get going, 
then forget the trick;
that’s how to get on.

dead things

walking to lunch today I saw a dead bird on the sidewalk. It seemed gross and unusual to me. Certainly not something I’m used to, seeing dead things. where does everything go to die? I always see all this living all around me, things growing up and sprouting in learning and moving and getting stronger but where are all the things weakening and shriveling and shrinking and becoming less. I know that things die. I know that things living will pass on. It must be because I’m still young and surrounded by young things. As I get closer to dying, as my friends die, as I’m more sensitive to dying myself, then I suppose I will see more death.

fear together

I used to fear dying insignificant, without having achieved anything. i used to feel the weight of this fear like it was important and i was bearing it alone. as i grow and find myself in others, i talk and even laugh about this fear, realizing that it is shared by everyone. while it is still real, it is lighter and less serious, realizing that everyone shares in it.

dim light

i turn on a dim light;
dim at first, then bright
once my eyes have adjusted.

so i look up at the bright light
and say, “who are you?”

and he says in reply,
“i am the same.
it is you who has changed.”

i search for a dimmer light
to achieve actual dimness.

finding none, I settle
with the bright light
aforementioned.

write fast, edit slow

you don’t want to do too much of your editing at once; you need to space it out so you can become as many different versions of yourself, closer to the general reading public.

if there’s too much ego in writing it can be bad, just because it’s not inclusive enough for the general reading public.

the (not so) good life

some would say the good steak is what melts like butter in your mouth, but i like the tough stuff that you can chew like bubble gum and savor the fat; they say it’s for peasants, but bah, what good is a steak that melts and is gone? what other luxuries do we misinterpret?

they say the good cheese stinks and the good wine tastes like metal, but bah, i want a cheese i can eat and a wine i can drink.

they say the good life is sitting around doing nothing all day, but bah, i’d be bored in the first second. give me the yolk; let me work up an appetite.

they say the rich sit way up high, but bah, put me in the dirt where i came from.

 

none

I have no ability to edit my own work; it has everything to do with how I feel.

cooking up some good mind

cooking up some good mind
adding in quality ingredients
shaking, mixing, stirring
heating, cooling, letting sit
tasting, testing, adding

cooking up some good mind like stirring a pot full of thoughts that mix and change each other and make a whole thing that’s different than any of its parts, turning up the heat and then turning it down, melting to allow joining together, cooling to solidify that joining, waiting with the oven light on watching a thought arise and probably satisfaction for you and your friends and many more if it’s really good and big enough. waiting to see what it will be, like what you picked out of the cookbook or something different with your secret sauce.

dark and light

The dark closes me in and keeps me pointed, the light opens me up and lets me out.

It even makes sense at a molecular. When matter is hot all the molecules are bouncing around. When matter is cold everything is slowed down.

losing color

things lose their color as they tend to, all depending on your memory of what came before, specifics combining into unnoticed generalities.

the feeling of need for something new, the feeling of having been here too many times before, eyes narrowed and blocking out the periphery, focusing only on what is expected.

delete

EMPATHY (unedited)

Seeing from a door knob’s perspective,
from the sun’s eyes looking down,
feeling what it’s like to be a sound wave.

Running like rain water doomed for the gutter.
Sleeping like sacks of potatoes in a farm truck.
Kissing with lover mouths outside of the café.
Hanging like a handle waiting to be useful.
Competing like cars on the freeway.
Remembering like an epic told over and over.
Hurting like alcohol in an open wound.

Feeling with fir tree fingertips.
Loose and flow like a river
and crumple like a chip bag,

Loving with the dying heart of a soldier,
thinking with the desperate mind of an outlaw

We fall apart and swallow up all the time anyway, 
losing ourselves and becoming something else.

delete

COME IN EVERYONE

As I walk around the city,
and people pass by.

I like to catch their eyes
and live their lives
just for the moment
that I look at them

—people I don’t know
or at least can’t remember.

My ego opens up wider,
while my physical body
remains the same,

and my soul,
with its larger grasp
opens to a broader swath,
and lets everyone else in.

delete

I made several mistakes today. I can’t stop thinking of them. I am trying to part ways with the anger and learn from them. Mistakes are relative, I suppose. The worst are when they seem, in hindsight, as if they could have been avoided so easily.

delete

This afternoon I ate a cashew
like I was a prisoner in a cell,
pretending it was the only food I had
—the things you notice with such focus!

I turned a page in my journal
that was full of reminders, little poems,
to-do lists, and notes to myself.
I turned to a blank page and
felt a sense of freedom.

Not only the page but everything is blank
and brand new, like all I’ve written here
is all I’ve got—which is nothing.

My memory is terrible lately
and I’m a little worried,
but I’m really just a sieve.

My only function is
to have things flow through me.

Even the page in my journal
full of reminders and lists
was starting to stress me out.

When I’ve caught too many big rocks,
I need to be turned over and dumped out.

delete

The difficulty is not to decide.
You will decide no matter what.
To sit still, even, is a decision.
To do nothing is a decision.
The difficulty is deciding rightly.

Especially because with every decision
there are so many options,
and if you have not studied,
you will only know very few of them,
a few which may not include
the most right one.

delete

I look up on a tall building
and its wall of windows;

I look at the lights that are on
and the lights that are off;

I wonder about who is awake
and what they’re doing right now;

a thing about cities is just
how many people there are.

I wonder about the neighbors
on the twenty-seventh floor;
to me, they are just shadows
in adjacent windows.

I see a couple dancing
and a couple fighting;

I see dark windows
where I can’t see anything;

All these different lives
stacked on top of each other
on the corner of Folsom and 3rd
at about nine o’clock at night.

delete

Openness tells me there
is still more to be gotten
from a week that's either
over or just beginning.

Wide stretches of road
when city cars are still
sleeping in their garages.

Weekend-waiters wanting
in between still hungover from Friday
and already working for Monday

another delete from the book

I wish we could
have come and gone
without the kite strings
higher with the wind

and higher until there
wasn’t any turning back
and we were closer to

another planet than we
were to the earth that
we left from and so

began a weird alien life
where, as we got farther
away from ten fingers
and oxygen, we got closer
to another life we didn’t

recognize, but this was
the risk we ran when
we cut our kite strings
and we knew that before

so we swallowed our
situation and put on
alien suits to play along.

Like I have some control

Sometimes I think I’ve done something, made it different than it otherwise would’ve been. Like I have some control over small things that aren’t quite set. Other times I think no matter what, it would’ve ended up here in the same spot.

In between seasons

On a sunny afternoon in March, on a bench in South Park between second and third street in downtown San Francisco, this occurs to me. That it is never in the middle of a season that I can discern its identity. In the middle of a season it seems to be just the way things are. But in between, when two seasons are still deciding whose turn it is to play, playing tug of war, winter and spring, so that the days before this were all rainy, dark, and dreary, and the weatherman said this morning that the days after today will go back to the same. In this back and forth it is clear to see what the seasons are like. On a sunny day like today, I am open. I can see more. Like shower water, hot opens up and cold closes in. In the open hot sun, the brightness shows to me finer features that are hidden in the dark, as parts of general dark masses or concealed in ambiguous shadows. In the light it all seems open. More to take in, overwhelming almost. Also more to keep your attention outside of yourself. Whereas in the dark, like at night with your eyes closed before bed, you think inward into yourself, with lack of senses outside to keep your attention selfless. Hibernating in the winter, adding to and bolstering your ego, to warm up in the spring and let it all go in the summer.

old man

before the old man was ready to grow up, they started treating him like an old man, so he became one.

same for the happy man, unlikely to be grumpy, treated like a grump, becomes one.

and an outcast, treated as such, becomes even more so.

deleted from the book, leaving here

I walked by a beautiful church on ninth street and saw, through the stained-glass windows, the high ceilings. I stopped there on the sidewalk and thought about it to see if I could come up with something.

I thought to myself, “There is something about those high ceilings.” It is something similar to this that I think right before I write, usually.

“There is something about …” But I am stumped, sometimes, as I was when I stood on ninth street trying to write about the angels in the high ceilings or the music that echoed from the choir

—ideas from my childhood of churchgoing, which are like splotches of oil in artistic waters,

as if the divine words I was looking for were tucked into the missals (that I refused to open) in the pews (that I refused to kneel in).

I could not write about anything other than how I could not write—and so I wrote this.

in our love, we intersect

in bed, i wonder why, my leg will not move. i try, in the dark, to pick it up, with my mind; it will not move. even though i can, feel it with my hands. i realize, it is hers.

in our love, we intersect, when we are both feeling the same. thinking the same thought, in the same way, laughing, saying, “i was just thinking that.”

other times, we empathize, to become the other. the same object as before, now subjected to the same eyes.

later on, as we become one, none of this is necessary anymore. to say that one is this or the other is that, and then devise how to get them together, is nonsense; they are one, and one is together with itself, always.

i know i shouldn’t

i know i shouldn’t but i do it anyway – what really goes into this thought? do we know that we shouldn’t? or do we do it because we’re not really sure? and some feeling in the moments tells us to do it. so we go ahead without really taking the time to flesh out whether we know that we should or shouldn’t. partly because we don’t always have enough time to think about it. and even if we did maybe we still couldn’t know.

odds of survivial

you’re always playing the odds, i think at some point you have to release attachment to your survival, plane taking off, you’re playing the odds, but you’re better off just relaxing, if it’s time it’s time, and you’ll return to what you’re part of

 

bow and arrow

how much do you get out
for what you put in
especially when homeward
arrows beckon stronger bows
for a target that exceeds
in space the hunger of
the archer's quiver

green mint tea

watching steam dance from the rim of my white tea cup swirls that hold form and then break and crash into each other

sundays

wide stretches of road and opportunity
when city cars are still sleeping in their garages
openness tells me there is still more to be gotten
from a week that's either over or just beginning
blue skies without building obstructions
invite levity to the soles of my steps
eyes that can see farther 
start to dilate and take in more

all this stepping out of the car on north point
all this on a sunday morning that seems new

the story of a brain going down a rabbit hole

i was lying in bed

at 12:45 at night

and my roommate had his TV playing just a little too loud

and i started to think about the type of people that have TVs in their rooms

and i said to myself i’m not that kind of person

but then i thought maybe i’d like it, to have a TV

so i started to imagine having a TV in my room

then i wondered what if i were to get sick of it, what would i do with it?

and i imagined throwing it off my four story balcony

but you would have to be careful not to hit someone bellow

and there might be a blast radius

so i thought about how wide that blast radius might be

and i thought about whether it mattered from how high up the TV was thrown

and then i thought no it doesn’t because of some physics lesson that everything falls at the same speed

but no i said that’s momentum’s that’s the same for everything (even though i was wrong)

and even though the momentum stays the same the speed increases because the momentum is adding to it

then i thought about the symbol for momentum from my high school physics class

meters per second squared, but why the squared

then i think about how it’s the meters per second of change in the meters per second of speed

and i thought of how the units cancel out to get the squared

and then i said woah

and that was the end of the rabbit hole

empathy

empathy is the key to seeing more of the world. not just seeing through human eyes, but seeing from a door knob’s perspective, from the sun’s eyes looking down, feeling what it’s like to be a sound wave. loving with the dying heart of a soldier, thinking with the desperate mind of a prisoner breaking out. hundreds and thousands and millions of viewpoints. why just live inside your one?

i look at others and say, wait, is that me? my empathy stretches that far. when my ego explodes. everyone, everything even, becomes myself, so that i want to flex with my tree branch arms and kiss with my lover mouths outside the cafe across the street. i loose and flow like a river and crumple like a chip bag, anthropomorphisg—without any need, i might mention. if i truly become “every” thing, i can drop the anthro- prefix.

 

man-made man

think of how much in the city is man-made. surely at some point we were god’s creation. now, if we assume that our environment influences what we become, how is man affecting the creation of each subsequent generation. especially for those who grow up walking in paved cement, surround by steel buildings, and street lights and planes overhead. the city creates a whole other species.

what goes in these nights

what goes in these nights fighting age
the malaise of youths eldered
and all the seeing of light day
consumed by nothing dark night

fight these nights dark going
elding youths no malaise not yet
not while hope of the days light’s seen
still beyond night’s appetite for nothing

still beyond gnashing dark teeth like shadows
inching elding into the day’s light at dawn
these nights that fight the dread dark coming
fight while youthful hope still lingers

fight the night bring light here lighter
hope the hope that brings near wishers
dream a dream beyond night’s nothing
young dear sweet bedmate keep beauty

in these nights whence light once rushed
hoped in hearts as youths tend to
kept in sight of the day’s touch
hold me hear dear sweet young beauty
tell me what goes in these nights fighting

 

halfway love

i'm into you
i'm also partially
not into you
whereas if i was
into you all the way
i'd cease to be me
and become you
so that saving some
to stay myself
keeps our love alive

change

things change, 
why resist them so much, 
holding onto what they were, 
thinking that is the only way 
that they can be, 

when the new way 
has come about for a reason, 
give into the reason, 
let go of what was

spending time for no reason

i continue to have this sense that the way i am spending my time is not good enough, or maybe, rather, just that i have nothing to show for what i’ve spent my time doing, especially for enjoyable and ephemeral things that had no utility or productiveness.

thinking of this in terms of spending time for pleasure and then judging that time spent for output of some material or otherwise utilitarian gain, as opposed to being grateful and thankful for the pleasure you enjoyed.

sounds like space

sitting on the rooftop, so much around us, k says, all the cars on the road and all the people in the buildings; here it just sounds like space.

rent in sf

living in san francisco, there is a tension between: not wanting to leave the apartment because you’re paying so much for rent, and wanting to leave the apartment to go out and experience the city that is the reason you’re paying so much for rent

succeeding all alone

most of the time, 
we do the same thing 
as everyone else, 
completely unoriginal, 
if not our contemporaries, 
then someone’s done it before, 
but sometimes we break through, 
and really get into it, 
and hoot and holler and say, 
i’ve done it, 
and revel in the sense 
of pushing the frontier, 
all on our own, 
until we look around 
and realize that 
we’re all on our own

writing outside of myself

when i’m sober and anxious, things are more specific and less hazy and time slows down – i realize immediately that i made a promise to start writing “outside of myself” after this last book. i need to start looking outside of the feelings of my ego and into my experience of the world around. i think this will be therapeutic but also full of more material.

intense

she says, you’re intense.

i look at her, intensely, i suppose; aware of it because she said so.

why yes, i say, because things are serious.

what do you mean by that? she asks.

well, for example, if we were in a war.

but we are not, she says.

hmph, no longer looking intense, she is right, i suppose.

light switch

a light switch
in the dark
after sleeping
two light switches
actually
one on top
of the other
lighted barely
in the dark
not by themselves
of course
but also, not even by
the light they control
in the bedroom
but from the light
in the bathroom
controlled
by another switch
that I now see
when I wash my hands
after sleeping
which drives me to write
about a light switch
after some time
unproductive

fridge talking

such silence
after the noise
of the refrigerator
working to freeze water
or whatever a refrigerator does
whirring in the night

making noise
that you don’t realize
is noise

until the click
that turns it off
and then real silence
at 3:25 a.m,

no cars outside
oh, there went one
on California street outside
but now silence again

just the low hum
of nothingness
that makes me wonder
if silence has a sound

oh, there went a plane
I think, something above
it is gone now

and the hum again
no, her breathing
against my chest 

always a noise
to fill the silence
if you really listen

feel better now

pushing over boxes
to sit with my back
against the couch
in the morning light
that comes in
through the window

something changed last night
i feel better now
noticing things i didn’t before
appreciative for small things
for no reason

this is what i forget
when i feel sad and lost

less editing

funny how many times
i’ve deleted a much edited poem
and just supplanted the original
messy as it was;
after much editing
you end up removing
its idiosyncrasies
that make it what it was

Time spent for pleasure

K: Do you see value in time spent for pleasure?

C: Yes, I didn’t use to.

K: When did that change?

C: When I realized that I was going to die no matter what, and nothing really matters.

I’m the opposite of you. There are times when I indulged more than I should have. Times when I did things in excess, e.g., spending too much time doing unhealthy things, investing emotionally too deep in someone.

As I get older I try to find balance and be present in doing non-pleasurable things. I don’t really enjoy it but if I’m present I can benefit from it both in the present and in the future, like washing my face—even if I don’t enjoy getting up out of bed in the present, I feel a lot better in the future if i do it.

I think about what I would remember right before I die. I think I’d remember times when I felt connected to something bigger than me, because that’s what I would be about to cross over into.