November 27, 2023
Don’t Go
November 20, 2023
Potatoes Are Back
It’s a simple spell were you never second in line,
And so much of wrestling is retraining your reflexes.
Habit is to habitat as Barbara is to barbiturates?
That ain’t right.
How’s’about forgetful Sundays and sunbeams shuttled with care?
Fending off fright with complicated confection?
Drumming up support for collective action to counter a century of bad ideas?
Better us than them, as we shuffle into the shadows.
But that which was and will be will be that and that and that again.
But the sky is above you and beside you and below you because the world is round and we’ve known that a long time.
But we’re all tied up with exceptions upon exceptions.
But most tables and chairs, but fingers, but the seasons, but surely more.
There were so many and we make it fewer so you can deal with it.
Will there be ease? Will there be whipping?
November 15, 2023
All the Threes
Sometimes, sometimes.
I’m still not processing the still loss.
The breakdown of things broken down,
Forgetfulness in the face of horrible times,
Leave behind, leave behind, leave behind.
There’s the one that won’t go on.
There’s the interruption of what we should’ve done.
There’s hindsight owning your ass.
We spot it up again and again.
Sometimes it’s a drain and other times there’s a garbage disposal.
Here’s what you were aiming for, only flayed, thank you very much.
Drift is real.
A hole in the ground is real.
What I mean to say, is I miss you.
November 13, 2023
What Have
Frequent floating session IPAs seize opportunity
So many how many like ten but no like six more like
Why isn’t there a White Sox Nation?
After the whole spectrum is liberated and every last field stormed and you get a season and you get a season and you get a season
We all look under our seats
Reflexes are a stemmed thing and we’ve remained trainable
All the pandas were sent back to China
And there’s a card with your name on it.
Amazing
Even while so many other things are a choice and so many choices are being made right now
Tear is a choice
Lead is a choice
Cleave is a different choice
Which brings us back unexpectedly to seize and we’re down for travel
Put it up, put it up
Kit, kindling, now you’ll have them, kinder, kinder, kinder still.
November 5, 2023
Different vs. Differently
There’s fruit and there’s conflict
Their mess doesn’t need to be your mess
They’re different, they’re better, they’re off to market
Initially, togetherness, publicly before communally
This circle made of dots, that circle made of string
And then the Great Uncertainty and the even greater dissolution
But what was lost when we smashed so many myths?
The sun rose and we continued with a little less but hearts full of hope
We’d had clean water before and we had clean water now
We were all here, well, almost all
And we found the New Beginning just as quiet as heat loss
We found lightness to be frightening and some wanted to run and some ran
But we found just how easy it was for everything to get heavy again and quickly
A better heavy this time, but surely not the last
November 2, 2023
Sanders Again
It’s jobs all the way down I mean it’s a job the sanding
Ranks come in all sizes and learning how to spell “Wednesday” does a thing to your brain that’s an important thing
We spin and we make do, yes. We catalog joys and harms. We see things repeatedly sometimes to the point of unseeing them.
I mean, governments come and go, as do their styles, their pressures, their presence.
What you pry from what, paying attention to both, the start of something.
Another year and gravity’s still with us, it’s ok, you can exhale.
Another year, another year, another.
What they say about siblings. What they say about heat death. What they say about well water.
When you get a feel for it you’ll risk forgetting something important the rest of your life.
I don’t make the rules.
July 3, 2023
Somewhat Fixed Broken Sonnet
What spill(s)
Whether which willing
Vapor, vanishing(s); and ever more villainy
There was a Duchess made King
There was a Shepherd made kinder
Smoke from fire(s) as fire(s) from kindling
This is how we proceeded
How we survived the change(s)
Cities still stand and men still fall
We can talk the while
We can remember the way
Reject the closing door’s closing
We are here, we are here, we are here, we are here
Jay-Z once said, “We might half get kicked out the buildin,” or something like that.
June 4, 2023
May 21, 2023
Punch In
Punch it in it up up above your weight punching punching down
Third year options and asks and wants and needs
Like hopes needs dreams
Like hype and hype man man oh man
This would be summer
Bass from beds and trunks
Sunscreen but usually not
Strings braided ‘round wrists
Rather drinks rather french fries rather much
The sun keeps going down later and later
May 2, 2023
Trying
Try try try try try
Teee-rye try try tee try try
Trying I’m try try when tee
Tetherest whether weather weatherest try
Try no try not try try try
Day try try tee tee tee tee tee tee
Teeeeeeeeee try tee try trying I’m
Wednesday try try almost what which try
Terrible trying
Terraform trying
Triad trying, a second language trying, second skin trying, second after minute after hour trying
Epochs trying as myriad moments try
They try they try they try
Every size, everywhere trying
April 29, 2023
Together with Celery
Yeah, darkness would be sexier
Dress it all up in black
The end of the world would at least offer some tension
You think
And then you’re living through this
Climate disasters daily paired with
Mass shootings daily paired with
Lurching toward government and societal and cultural shitshow upon shitshow
And I’m just skimming off the top of the roiling stew of injustice, unfairness, absent kindness, bureaucratic inhumanity and human inhumanity
With all these convections cycling violence, closing minds, and bring the horizon way way way down low.
I hang onto stories of little kindnesses and little triumphs but at some point I feel the ratios all around me — but maybe I’m not gonna pretend I should trust one of my brains anymore than the other.
Today I feel like a big aging chassis with a little wounded woodland creature piloting it all from the inside.
That’s a little trick I play on myself to pretend this me-scaled me is somehow able to protect anything.
I do like the rain.
I do like turning leftovers from the week into a pile of breakfast tacos.
I do like coffee.
The thing about the path to enlightenment is that it sucks.
That’s another trick I play on myself. Damn it.
Thinking about the universe is some comfort.
Thinking about life after all of us. That’s some comfort. And probably just one of those ways I let myself approach life after me.
Dinosaurs became birds. People will become something strange and interesting, maybe something to do with all these robots.
Don’t forget you have a drum machine at the center of your being and that that drum machine has a soul.
Don’t forget we all depend on each other all the time, even when it doesn’t seem like it.
Don’t forget to feed your pets and be kind.
April 17, 2023
You Can Dance 2
Roman vs. Arabic all the way down, but it’s the 80s and we’re so young
The space between numbers and/or ranges that are inclusive
I don’t like to think about the limits of intuition
I like to think about spiders
I like to think about the relationship of mass and time
I don’t like to think of the plight of light
I like to think like spreadsheets
I like to think about relationships of people and numbers and things and sounds
I don’t like to think about everything’s local, but everything is still local
What is red? What is green? What is indigo and how did it gets its place at the table?
I know and you know.
April 13, 2023
Open
Sometimes a song’s just gonna let you down
And the sun will keep doing its thing
Some guy walking along thinking
Seriously no lightning and crashes?
And other times untold repetitions will pave a path from nothing to wow
Folding napkins, snapping your fingers, eating breakfast
Because life’s gonna do what life’s gonna do
So everything else moves outside.
But one foot in front of the other takes me forward
And/or it can take me up
And it can still be tromping and trampling
These are the times you just have to believe in something anything.
That’s how breathing air happened, too.
That’s how we’re going to get to the end.
April 12, 2023
Where to Begin vs. Where We Begin
If you have this guy and he’s brandishing a folded metal chair
If you have time despite the World’s worst intentions
If the sun is rising like it always does, but this time you catch it sitting on top of the neighbor’s fenceline
If you’re still expecting that phonecall and still hoping it never comes
Or you have the votes but lost the will
Reproach, resonance, recapitulation, reticular
That is that is that is that which
Walking the side of the road on the side of a forgotten town and wondering
Then every force will be met with its opposite
Then the wheel will do its best to keep turning
Then heat will arise and cast down all suffering
Then time will be on your side, but also everyone else’s
Zero has been a number since it was created and not one day longer
Like white horses or arrows bent on targets and a couple other things I won’t have time to share
April 9, 2023
What Means
In this story
You know where you are going
Or how fast your are getting there
But never both
Because these are greedy times
And we weren’t built to make it
Tell me about those days
Tell me about all the colors and the sunsets
The flashbulbs, the lazy rivers
Tell me about coats on layaway
And the price of cigarettes at the PX
Where I’m from
By what means
And how I’m letting us all down again
April 6, 2023
What You Do
I mean I when I say these things
Granted we are in this together
A collection of useless thoughts
Another distraction
This neurosis, that news event
We carry on
April 3, 2023
What Words
What words
Travel you
Travel time
What distances
Curve
Slope and rise
Selvedge spearate
Tear whatever
Lead whatever
Read whatever
Picture points picture on
The second leftover
Signals the apocalypse
The candy-coated afterthought of our barreling age
The one you wanted and what they wanted
And just enough fuzzy logic for everyone to win this time
Listen for the laugh track