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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Prone to episodes.
Inclined to introspection.
More yelling, and did you get everything you wanted for Christmas?
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.
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.
I am nobody.
Detachment. Disengagement. Detox.
Writing in the attic. Writing in the zam room.
Santa Claus hats, two slices of pepperoni and Gray’s Papaya. One bottle of Coke please.
Wet sidewalks. Cold cigarettes. Your kids will outpace you.
Dodged a bullet yesterday.
Expand the network. Grow the base. Be the brand.
Twenty dollar fire cracker. Folded sheets. Paired socks. Coffee mug stack of books.
Where do we draw the line between what we’ll do and who we are?
How many times will we cross the very line we’ve drawn at the boundary for ourselves to take something that we see as appropriate in exchange for the breech?
If the person I am in the mirror does not match the person I am to others, all of us have a problem.
Bullshitting through the maze will get you through it, but at what cost?
In my dream you bought a giant house on top of a giant hill. The house had spiral staircases behind glass and a garage that was large enough to shelter school buses. There was an office off the back with empty bookshelves. There was a dining table that sat thirty, but that chairs didn’t match from my perspective. In every direction there was poured concrete.
We were all there as a group and there was pizza being offered as a celebration. The whole thing didn’t make a ton of sense, but somehow, at the same time, it did. The pizza was stored on ice in the kitchen, it was self-served. There were no beverages available. I was obsessed with the spiral staircases.
When we had a moment, you and I discussed the purchase price. I had it sitting around $100,000. You told me it was $850,000. I was shocked.
In the very next moment I walked into an otherwise empty barroom with my mother. We were there with a larger party to celebrate my sister’s wedding. My mother and I, and a couple of others, sat down at a high-top table near the main bar. The elevated chairs were round and had that shiny, faux leather stretched tightly over them. I remember sitting in the chair with my arms crossed across my chest. In no way was I welcoming.
Two gentleman entered the room from outside, they took standing positions at our table. One of them, the younger one, made a comment to me and then proceeded to spill his shot glass full of liquor on my shoulder. He had ever outward facing quality of a bully. He laughed at me and pushed me a bit. I refrained from responding. He continued. I remember the rage boiling up inside me. I remember wanting to punch him in the mouth. I remember visualizing wrapping my arm around his arm, shoulder and neck. I remember choking him until he yielded.
I remember it all so clearly. I remember not reaching any resolutions. I remember the stories jumping immediately from one to another.
I remember it all so clearly.
Pizza party heart attack, twelve beers beat down.
Bread napkins concrete landing, log jammer video collection.
Thrown of empty bottles, dirt floor bunk bed.
Gonna get a job in agriculture.
Guns drawn in the kitchen. Liquor bottle book shelf. Christmas light ambiance.
You worked there for four years and the punishment was to run the loading dock. Nobody knew that the loading dock was your sweet spot. It was the only place where all the cigarettes could get smoked and all the questions of life could get answered. The loading dock never gives up its dead. Tell that story another day. Now is not the time.
Now, however, is the time for broken dreams and scraped up water bottles. Mind made. Bed made. Hand made.
Be grateful. Stay hungry. Dog kennel day dream. Cracked ceramics basement kiln. Get em from that little shop on seventh.
Radio mic. You’re late. Don’t come in without your name tag.
All I really want to do is tell a story from start to end. Oh how I dream of locking myself in some wilderness retreat with a stack of paper, a typewriter and an endless supply of coffee and cigarettes.
Get back to work.
Early morning commute with light snow falling. Coffee lingering in the back of the mouth alongside the discontent that pours from the apps online. Apples, oranges, college football. Order a pizza and swing from the vine. Alligator, alligator, pit fall.
Seven struggles and it’ll be a weekend in therapy. Jokes on jokes on jokes.
Waiting for the bus. Hanging by a fingernail. Can I call you later?
All you do is write the same goddamn thing over and over. A couple of short sentences stapled together in rhythm, followed by a handful more than stretch out into something that more closely resembles a narrative. All of which is punctuated by some abrupt ending that leaves the reader wondering. It’s like the breathing that follows any kind of anaerobic activity in that it always seems to be fast paced, short and intense until it isn’t.
There is nothing new here and you’re nothing special and the self-loathing is aging out and so are you. Nobody is going to stumble onto your little corner of the internet and even if they did, what do you believe they’d find? More importantly, how do you believe they’d respond? Nobody gives a shit. Period. Nobody gives a shit about you or your goddamn words. Nobody gives a shit about themselves. Why they’d stop for a moment and take time to recognize you is question that will never have an answer.
Give up.
Don’t take the phone call.
Swap the garbage bags. Sweep the floor. Cut the ice. Shut your fucking mouth.
One of these days you’re going to run out of bridge and you’re going to find yourself standing there waiting for the floor to get cleaned. It’ll be the most stunning example of brevity the world will ever know. It’ll be you, dressed in your flowing gown, and a handful of others, dressed in their flowing gowns, and you’ll all be tip toed right up to the edge to look over. You’ll see it from where you are, and they will, too. And then you’ll turn around and it’ll all be gone. Poof.
Wagon wheel wire cutter.
Power line helicopter.
Baseball through college and I’m short on funds.
Leather gloves cheese stick. Run the hose until it overflows.
Cold bitter winter. Crawl through the ditch to your death. The family will never be the same.
Release.