05.30.26

marketing professional with an emphasis in artificial intelligence and a degree in business from the university of online advertising and education.

shoes greened from cutting grass and the socks falling down.

sunburned skin and a walk down to the lake.

blue coffee. brown table. fake green plants.

disjointed tables. cabinets built into the wall. summer time freedom and a thousand pounds lifted off my shoulders.

there are times during these early days where it feels like i broke free from the imaginary chains that i allowed to bound myself to the desk. it feels like i’m running away from the folks i knew and grew to love and i can hear them cheering me on and crying for their own plight simultaneously. it’s like we’re all living in some realtime run-on sentence that’s got a handful of us shackled to the spreadsheet machine and others, like myself, that broke free and scrambled into the woods. once we were all under the same roof, singing the kinds of songs that those that suffer together do to pass the time. now we are separated.

i feel free. i feel unencumbered. i feel raw and organic and on the cusp of unlocking some great worldly secret, but i know that this will likely pass and be replaced once again by the unimpressive consistency of waking up, going to work, coming home, eating and going to bed just to wake up again and start all over.

or, perhaps, it continues like this forever? the work in the next few days and weeks should decide that. do we, or i in this case, let the joys and freedoms and liberties afforded to me slip again through my fingers? or, do i clutch this moment and this weightlessness and practice to live like this for the rest of my years?

the time is now.

the decision awaits.

three frogs sitting on a log, one decides to jump, how many are left?

05.20.26

Indecision buries me under a pile of folded laundry. A basket full of broken dreams. A container full of dog food. Busted. Ended. Wondering. Coffee lingers in the back of the throat. Aches and pains. Basement music. Road trips. Wondering. Wondering why on earth the subject hasn’t been raised by a handful of others? Wondering how nobody before now has addressed the concern and why leaving was the logical best next step. Wondering.

I should come in here more often and make this a habit. I should also go to the gym more often and make that a habit. Halfway to one hundred and more active than my peers. There’s probably a reunion I won’t be a part of this year. End it all. Or don’t.

And on this roller coaster of uncertainty and broken teeth the phone rings late in the afternoon. A caller looking backward in the mirror. Echoes of ancient times. Done.

05.18.26

Box everything up and put it in the basement. Get a five pack and put em through the wash this afternoon.

The anxiety will recede.

Let it go and return to the roots that are looking at and caring for others first. No longer are we in a stage of self-preservation and conservation. The sole responsibility today is to make sure the circle is secure and that everyone in it is happy and free.

05.07.26

The pain in my face is unbearable at times and it’s been twenty years of this. Twenty years of hiding broken teeth with facial hair and never smiling. Unapproachable. In every way.

05.01.26

May Day.

Eight hours.

Fair pay.

Incentivize overtime and glorify staying until the job is done.

Do whatever it takes to get the dollar into the hopper you sad sack of shit.

Make more money to make more money.

Broken back bed rest overnights in a town along the river. Stood up again for an afternoon on the trails.

The ends do not justify the means.

04.28.26

Sunshine argument sleeping dogs noise band.

Fear cloaked as freedom and a pathway that walks the user away from the flame.

Words on paper. Words on paper. Words on paper.

Wash the car. Rake the yard. Dig a hole under the porch.

I don’t need your goddamn permission.

Seven sundays.

Seven somedays.

Seven and I’ll see you on West Second Street.

Night time day time and a pile of unanswered questions.

Paint the exterior and let the inside decay.

Christmas Eve rainstorm and a Gatorade bottle.

A sardine can full of cigarette butts.

It’s a miracle I haven’t died.

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.