Boiling water

Watching the water boil I realize I am usually doing something else like cutting the onion when the first bubbles rise to the top. Now that I actually take time to watch this event, when bubbles cover the pot’s floor, before the first few crawl up the sides, I feel a little fear, like an explosion is imminent. Silently and drawing you in until the surface explodes and then comes the noise that usually draws my attention away from cutting the onion and so then I start to see what I’ve seen so many times before. How many other small explosions do I miss? Simply because I am not paying attention.

sense and nonsense

like things make sense that don’t normally when you are under the influence of drugs, but not when you’re sober; or when you’re in love, but not when you’re out of it; or in the early morning, but not at night—though the sun can be as overwhelming and drunk as it can be Apollonian and precise—there is some Dionysus in the sun, when it is its most powerful.

pat yourself on the back

who can compliment a man as well as himself? not only for what he knows but also for what he would like to hear you say. if he could whisper to you and erase his memory before hearing you say it, then he would be the happiest.

sitting on the overpass

how much goes 
in between cars

as we sit on
the overpass

dangling our legs 
over the highway 

counting 
the seconds 

sometimes much
sometimes little 

until the traffic jam
during rush hour

when our work day
is done too

and we get up
off the overpass 

to walk on the 
sidewalk home

writing for them for her

she makes me write poetry 
that the world can read,
so she can see
what they think of me;

otherwise i would write
only for myself,
and go off alone. 

i wish she would
see it one her own,
what only i see;

but this is expecting
too much of her;

she will see it
through them,
so i write
for them.

deciding

the difficulty is not to decide. you will decide no matter what. to sit still, even, is a decision. to do nothing is a decision. the difficulty is deciding rightly. especially because with every decision there are so many options, and if you have not studied, you will only know very few of them, a few which may not contain the most right one.

adverbs are heavier than nouns

adverbs have more conceptual weight than nouns. for example, the words “much” or “more” – if you make them into nouns, muchness and moreness. those concepts are much richer than any noun, say, “flamingo” or “teapot.” those nouns are very much themselves and just themselves.

fear as an argument for god

darkness isn’t just red and devils, it’s your identity breaking up, life having no meaning, and other more metaphysical fears. from where do these fears come? if not from our animal selves just trying to survive, from where then?

sex is

sex is the heights so that’s what you chase after when you’re overwhelmed and can’t take it anymore and rather than continue to contemplate yourself, you seek for something in which yourself can be reborn, but you’re really just trying to escape from that need to describe – that’s what sex is, escaping the need to describe, putting your obligation to live into your seed for the next generation to take up your burden for you. avoid this if you can. describe yourself. describe what there is. stay pitted when it’s uncomfortable. use words to describe like now as you’re in the club and you were thinking and you thought it was all too much so you said to yourself, why even try to write? but here you are writing it and you’re getting it with your words.

theories about yourself

you create these theories about yourself and take them as truth before they’re tested; with only so much time to test, however, you don’t really have a choice. but you do have a choice to remain humble and remember that most of your theories are untested, especially when someone challenges you with good intentions.

Some more

in a hungover life 
of fragmented realities 
which is real if any?
even the the one world 
where you create your noose
out of thin air doesn’t
end up hanging