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