04.14.26

Early morning fog and a shuttle ride to the hospital. I forgot about the overwhelming theme of death and sickness that saturates this place. Every corner serving its master. Every outlet paying tax to the great king’s empire.

Make your peace.

04.11.26

Apple cider vinegar and I’m stuck up on the side of this mountain. Down jackets and leather boots and the kind of eyes that sink in like they’re starving. Double lake loops. Mile marker card table and a post that’s rotted from the ground up. Practice.

04.09.26

Bike ride basketball lunch break closer.

Twenty miles in the late afternoon and I can’t feel my feet.

Neuropathy tendons diabetes disorder.

Words flow together like sand through an unclenched fist.

Vacation. Dinner in a box. Coffee table shoe rack.

Waterbottle stiffness, don’t forget to charge your batteries.

04.08.26

Children stumbling out of trailer homes, backpacks slung from slumping shoulders.

Parents stuffed behind steering wheels in idling cars with windows cracked for the quick escape of the early morning cigarette smoke.

Buttoned up corporate car culture caravans by, coffee in hand, on its way to appease the investors.

Nobody rides bikes here. Nobody gets ahead.

This is America. Blurry economics masquerading as humanity and buried alongside rotting RVs just off the shoulders of decaying two-lane roads.

04.07.26

Fireworks in the parking lot of the grocery store. A raise to $24,000 a year. Newcastle in a Sbarro cup. We took more compact discs in that summer than either one of us could count.

The novelty of youth. The bliss of ignorance. The liberty in reckless abandon.

A trunk full of beer. A full day’s drive.

I wore a bowling shirt the day my family celebrated my high school graduation. There are photos of it somewhere. My friends were there and it was great. Finally, I knew the taste of being free.

04.06.26

Profane existence. Leadership from inside the toilet. Drain pipe discourse.

The man is a grifter and a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

04.05.26

Red car accident and the beauty supplies order will be written by tomorrow. A handful of long-term employees and an older guy named Phil. Mustache, bulk bins, wooden shelves and a café that leans into lentils. For all the blue tile I’d have assumed this was a fish wholesaler.

Cigarettes out back and a plan for the future. No kids. One dog. Early morning couch.

Wander through the hallways of time. Wonder through the hallways of time.

Spark.

A town the size of a nickel.

We’re back here practicing and it’s evident to us. The words don’t flow. Everything feels forced. Yet somehow we seem locked up on a particular memory tied to a particular place in time. Nothing cemented in place. Nothing tethered to an outcome. Simply a window into a couple of years that have a lot of unknowns and what might have beens.

Onward.

04.04.26

Strangers in the house a thousand miles from here. Foreigners. Oddities. Abnormalities. Agreed.

Hawaiian shirts on wooden hangers and coconut oil in the coffee.

I’ll see you in the darkness and we’ll share a seat at the show.

I can’t make it out from here because there’s noise in the background. Donuts delivered on days off. Late Spring road race missed another round.

Words. Thumbs. Practice.

04.03.26

Time is the vessel through which memory shows up and leaves in my life. Here today. Gone today. Here tomorrow. Gone.

Late in the day for practice.

Snow in the forecast. Bikes resting in the basement.

Dinner. Pasta. Chicken. Sauce. Broccoli.

Be done. Exercise. Repeat.

04.02.26

I remember my grandfather’s cigarettes. I remember the green velour seats in the Chevy he and my grandmother had. The driveway basketball hoop whose backboard eventually rotted. The stacks and stacks of boxes in the garage and in the basement. The carpeted step at the base of the basement wet bar. The antique refrigerator filled to the brim with sodas stacked in their aluminum homes. The candy jars throughout the house. The yellow refrigerator door in the kitchen. The giant Tupperware bowl of egg salad. The sheet cakes with the signature frosting. The rock garden out front. The walk-worn artificial grass that covered the front porch. The woven nylon folding chairs. The handheld poker video games. My grandfathers sobriety. The rumors about him drinking when he went to Hawaii.

He was my age once. I am his age now.

04.01.26

April fools.

Late night performance for the initiated.

Published for the privileged.

White on white on white. Phones out. Photos captured for the audience at home. Video captured in real time for the adoring fans.

Lights. Stages. Staged.

Teleprompter for the most meaningful.

I’ll give this seven stars out of eight.

03.29.26

Twenty-seven dollars and we’re all working to earn so we can pass it along to the next person welding to earn and so on and so on. Work to live. Live to work. Exchange. Repeat. Reduce. Diminish. Eliminate.

Coffee cup. Computer. Collapse.

No. The answer is no. Not interested.

A product in service of a career.

Wrap your mind around that.

The sole purpose of the mechanism is to produce products in service of the mechanism’s continuance of production.

03.27.26

Artificially intelligent.

Artificially magnificent.

Artificially incapable.

Actually insane.

The world is moving faster than the people walking on. The sun is melting everything. The alarm bells have been ringing for decades.

Make more money.

Buy bigger house.

Shamelessly adorn oneself for appearances.

Capitalism kills.

This all makes me uneasy. Queasy. Restless.

You popped up and then vanished. The van landed next to the curb. In the woods. By the river. In the old apartment. Photos in the co-op and I was on a path to stardom. Nobody cared then. Fewer care now.

Arrested for resting and arraigned for raining, the son said to the father, “Why can’t we just got home?”

Another time and another place and everything would’ve worked out perfectly.

Rain boots and Japanese cars.

I am you.

03.13.26

I drove across the city today to have a conversation about things that happened years ago.

I stopped by grocery store on my way home and it reminded me of things that happened years ago.

There were a lot of people wearing shorts in public today.

The brown dog is restless.

01.06.26

Slippery shadow slithers sideways somewhere. Sunset Santa sings songs sinfully. Sorry sucker sometimes something’s suck. Saunter sweaty slingshots summer sandwiches. Sickness. Sour. Sand. Sent. Still. Seethe. Sag. Sad. Sell. Soap. Show. Shut. Sit.

Sink. Sank. Sunk.

12.28.25

Deteriorating in a cacophony of anger and forgiveness. Understanding that what I believed to be the sins of my parents were in fact their simple shortcomings. Probably handed down from generation to generation. Running terrified through my middle-aged deep dark woods, whistling to keep myself preoccupied, when realize that my own self-imposed faults are likely identical to those of my folks in the way their likeness manifests. Self-hatred. Self-loathing. Body shamed.

All of this with no real concrete evidence.

Relocate.

Double plate omelet coffee water pancake. Exercise breakfast snow storm shovel. Hat, gloves, sneakers. Better luck next time.

The trouble doesn’t lie within your preferred gender, the trouble lies within your inability to mind your own business and avoid making everything about you.

Notes on doors. Flowers in clouded vases. Napkin. Granite. Water bottle.

Paper straws and plastic cups. Powdered sugar spread across stainless steel. Expo. Runner. Extraordinaire.

Curtain. Biscuit. Stapler. Two hats backwards and one toward the front. It’ll be a note on an aeroplane and a little boy named David. There is no record that the poem was ever written.

Eyeglass mustache. Must ask muskox. Ten times fast. Repeat and rinse. Read the conditioner bottle in the bath tub. Relish chin deep in the warm water and make sure you’re not late for school. Bathroom remodel adult money miracle. Ten jars of maple syrup and a monkey in the zoo.

12.23.25

All I really ever wanted was to fit in and feel like I belonged somewhere. I could always sort of find it for a while, but it always faded.

We come in alone. We go out alone.

12.22.25

I can remember the hospital room in St. Paul where you were all bound up and breathing through a tube. I remember the skin that looked like a waffle and the story about the person in the next room that drenched themself in gas. I remember hearing about how they broke up with their girlfriend and thought setting themself on fire would be a great way to resolve the situation. I can’t imagine the immediate regret and the lifetime of wonder that set in as they laid in the bed next door. For that matter, I can’t imagine how things went for you from that moment forward. Having your skin melt off your body must be terrifying and paralyzing and all kinds of mysterious as it’s happening.

I was a kid then. I’m not now. All I have are memories and sometimes I wish I didn’t even have those.