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.