I was about to start writing here to just write something. I feel, given the fact that I’ve been singled out, that I ought to be writing, now more than ever. But I keep drawing blanks, wishing I knew someone who could act as a kind of guru to tell me that whatever it is that I write is true to me. I don’t like to be misleading. Even worse, what if whatever I end up reading is completely awful. What if it isn’t good. I want it to be good. I want people to be sobbing by the end. I want everyone to stand and clap slowly. I want someone to come up and ask me where it all came from and if they can just talk to me for awhile. but wait. thats not altogether true. What I want is to attach paper snowflakes to paper clips and string from the panel ceiling and wait for my parents to come by to pick out mine. I want to show them around. I want to be kissed by that girl in my third grade class while pretending to detest the idea. I want to be pulled over by that cop and I want to be nervous he’s going to drag me out of my car and beat me to death and leave my body on the road. I want to be with my little brother in that massive field of dandelions with our matching mason jars catching bees and holding the glass to our ears to hear their warm humming against our cheeks. I want to be hiding in the tomato patch on the south side of my childhood house, avoiding that sinking feeling, that lonely ache that tells me I’ve done something wrong. I want to stand up there and clap my hands until, one by one, everybody leaves their seats and gets in their cars to drove home, wondering what the hell they just saw until its just me in the room mumbling to myself.
***********************************************
This is the only place I just write and leave whatever it is that comes out exactly how it came.
***********************************************
I developed film today and it stuck together on the reel. I knew it was going to stick. I still developed it and waited for it to dry while a girl who I didn’t care to hear speak told me stuff about her dress-up photo shoots. I cut the negatives. I put them in the negative sleeves I had purchased just a few hours before and thought about how stupid I felt for half the things I said today. I’m going to print that shit anyway.
***********************************************
Sometimes when I think there is some really great stuff to be thinking about, or something to be doing or something about myself that is good and worthwhile I find myself alone and there, in my head, I fall apart.
***********************************************
When did it become attractive to know nothing beyond the cost of ones adornment to the power of just one change of hands. The hand which paid last. However, even that statement is hard to pin down because, you see, the cost are like a train which has begun to stop. The cars begin to pile up but not all at once. The train is quite long. Before it even finishes piling up the conductor begins his travel anew. The cars are separating. It is a wave. Cost fluctuates and we can’t have any idea what is happening in the wake of our choices. Until it’s no longer about the merino sweater but about the emaciated body of a child, or the degradation of the family, or the fall of Rome or the last thread of hope slipping from the eyes of a once believer. Or maybe that’s too histrionic and everything is alright. Who really knows anyway? I don’t in case you were wondering.
***********************************************
Sometime, when I’ve got a son or a daughter or a wife, they will look at me and ask me a question and I won’t know I know the answer until I answer it. And I won’t remember something until there’s a context to remember and maybe the only reason I know at all is because of the inevitable question.
***********************************************
Sometimes I want to disappear into a jungle or a city full of wild people
sometimes I want to forget my name, my family, every person I ever met
I would divide my time between forgetting and learning until I was balanced
but then I remember faces and intentions and words and it stops me from
fixing the things that are broken, the things that cannot be fixed
***********************************************
There are people who are good at something, the best
but they might never know it like you know,
you the guy immortalized by typing in the initials
into the Namco game at the pizza joint in your neighborhood when you were just eighteen
the one you went over to check one night when you were visiting your parents
with your wife asleep in the other twin bed.
You snuck like a cheater down the stairs, holding your shoes
wincing at the creaks
You stole out and started your mid-sized sedan and drove
the two and a half miles in silence, windshield wipers full blast and pulled into a parking place
you listened to the rain drum on the roof
The blazing red neon of Lucadio’s bouncing off the puddles, the glass, your wire framed glasses
You cupped your hands on the glass
and there it is in the back corner,
in a halo of red from a burst of your breath on glass
right where you left it
***********************************************
Three sacks were placed on the dock. Inside each was a person. Each person thought he was going to die. Each person was the sack. Each sack thought it was alone. Three of them. Not one made a sound. Not one ever knew there were three.
***********************************************
I began sifting through the bag of flour which is my mind.
I would dig a hand in to the wrists and let the white thought
spill from between my fingers
or the edges of my cupped hand. I marveled at the whiteness
feeling proud and industrious. It made me smile for a moment
before realizing the bag must be packaged chronologically,
I must have opened the bottom first
meaning the rest of the bag would be mixed with dust and chaff,
in alternating layers.
***********************************************
I think I have more in common with Dwarf Caimans than people. But no, that couldn’t be. I don’t really like to swim…
