Trying to think of them before they left the house

Looking into the mirror

evaluating at their skin

figuring  out what angles

their blemish can be seen 

(can anyone ever really notice?)

calculating the effects of their previous meal on their bodies

channeling the direction of their hair

checking for signs of growing older

I imagine a bitter sweet sigh

sounding like a guess

“that will have to do”

it’s a kind of a decision

to have love 

These days I buy my vegetables
from one old lady
who sells vegetables
by herself in a shack
close to my house

She asked me if I was a foreigner
and that’s how we started talking.

She said I was a good kid
I think because she knows my eating habits

One week she wasn’t open for a whole week.

I didn’t eat well for that week.

The next Monday she was back again
and I joked with her
“I didn’t eat any veggies for a week maam!”

She told me her husband had passed away.

 I didn’t know what to say to that at all.

The next day I brought her a big basket of rice cakes.
She replied, “Why are you giving something so nice to me?”

From then on she started giving me
little discounts all the time.

Now I want to repay her by giving her more things
but I think she would
retort by giving me
more discounts

It’s  like the total opposite of a war.

I saw you guys on the road.
I drive for a living too, so I know how it is.
When you drive too fast the company gets complaints.
You were going the speed limit exactly.
I could see why.
Your car was painted camouflage.
And written on its side,
The United States of Eagleland.
An employer like that is pretty big.
I bet they get a lot of complaints already.
They don’t need one more about you.

There’s one more time where I throw it all away. It should be a big step in my career, except on my way to the podium the exit to my right opens from the outside. There’s light coming in from the sun and from a girl I once knew. She’s waving me to come. I look to face her and I don’t turn back. They start to talk, but stories like this don’t travel far.

It takes me 30 minutes of ringing to realize I’ll never want to answer my phone again and I throw it out the window. If she has one, I haven’t seen her use it yet. We’re driving south until it’s warm enough to swim. We stop somewhere for gas and I’m already far enough away to be a stranger.

I had known John since his days in med school. I think he wanted to be a surgeon, then. At some point his heart had taken a turn, and he was specializing in emergency medicine by the time he started his residency. I looked on when he saved his first patient, smiling as he rejoiced. I nodded as I watched the tears fall down his face when he couldn’t save another.

He’d been put through a lot, working in that big city hospital. I know he was attacked at one point, battled an addiction to some pain medication after that. He’d had countless frustrations, a few romances. He went to work in Africa for a while. He gave a lot of his money away. Through it all, I hadn’t missed a beat.

He asked that I call him doctor, but I just couldn’t. “You’ll always be John to me,” I told him.

He dropped the package of printer paper he was holding. His head shook in frustration. He laughed in that nasally way that meant I didn’t understand and I never would. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but then didn’t. His hands raised at his sides, spread outward, and slapped down to his waist. I’d seen him do it a hundred times, maybe a thousand.

I saw something then that I didn’t recognize, though. I saw the back of his head as he walked away. I thought, from here he looks just like anyone. He could be anyone right now and I’d never know it was him. But just then, he turned around. “It’s one thing to know something,” he said. “It’s another to get it right. You can memorize all the steps, but it doesn’t mean you’ve done it.”

I let his words rest as he left, a woman in a red polo shirt and khakis motioned for me to follow him as the lights turned out around me. I turned my head down to the hundreds of kinds of ink and sighed. This is not why I came to the mall today.

It’s been nearly a month since I had a dream about space. I’d wake up floating. I’d try to make it last all day. I’d float to work, and I’d pick something up. The people all seemed light. I’d pick them all up.

Lately, I dream about Earth. I wake up and I feel late for something. I am the mother of the kids I didn’t have yet. They’ve got me worried.

When people move to the big city, they have something in mind.
They have some goal, some dream to fulfill in the big city.
People get busy in the big city: It’s a busy place.
They get caught up in the hustle bustle.
They don’t have time to think about their goal 24 hours a day.
They are waiting for a bus, and then riding a bus.
They are stuck in traffic.

You start to learn about the big city.
You saw the river on the way in.
It flows in the middle of the big city.
People like to compare things based on sides of the river.
In River North, they’ll say, things are like this.
But in River South, they’re like that.
That’s how people talk about the different sides of the river.

The big city is around a few mountains.
There are people in the city spending their free time walking up the mountains.
It is a good way to get away from the hustle bustle of the big city.
It is a good way to get to see the big city, too.
You can see all of it from up there.

In the big city, there are large buildings.
They could have just about anything inside them.
They’re there for different reasons.
Some are for sleeping in, or eating in.
You can go shopping in some of them.
You can have fun in some of them. 

My friend invited me to a party in the big city one time.
It was up on somebody’s roof, pretty high up there.
I was looking at the river, at the mountains, and at the big buildings.
They all looked pretty nice from right there.
The weather was good, too.

Someone at the party said to me,
“You’re a normal person.
I’m a normal person, too.
We’re both living in the big city.”
It was the nicest thing I’d heard in a while.

The big city has a lot of people in it.
The number changes.
It depends on who you ask.
I heard someone say ten million one time.
I heard someone else say fifteen.

The big city has a lot of people in it.
I just never felt much like one of them.

Even before we met,
I had heard about you.
Walking around my town,
People would talk.

They talked about the girl who could talk to people;
Far away people, people she didn’t know.
The girl that worked at a preschool, had a way with kids,
The girl that had a fan or two, made friends easy.

People would tell me these things.
I acted like it didn’t interest me much, but
Really, I thought you sounded pretty cool.

When we finally met,
It turned out you were in trouble.
It turned out we both were. 
We decided to stick together, and
We decided to put an end to our troubles. 

I’m not sure how far we had to go to do that,
But by the time we got there, the land
Didn’t look like land any more.
It was made of something else,

After all that, we felt older,
Like we’d lived longer than our friends,
Like there was something we knew,
But we couldn’t explain it.

In the end, though,
We were still kids, so
I had to go back to my town, and
You stayed in yours.

Now, I guess, I’m back to walking most of the time.
I bought a house near the beach up here.
The realtor  didn’t ask me where I got the $7500.
He just took it, and he went.

The house is a little run down.
It needs some work,
But I was thinking you might like it.
I do that a lot since I’ve been back:
I see something I think you’d like,
And I remember it.

I figure, if you come up to my town,
I’ll have a lot to show you,
A lot to take you around and do.

I wonder if you keep a list like that for me.
I wonder if you have in mind,
Some things I might like to see in your town,
In case I go back there. 

I heard about you again the other day.
I said, yeah I know that girl.
She’s my friend. 

it came to me once

1 = 0

there is no such thing as absolute truth (1)

but for me to say so
would be attempting

to say an absolute truth (0)

it’s a push and shove

every blessing I have makes me lazy
and
every hunger I have gives me wile

so which should I be thankful for?

have you seen a picture of North Korea
from space
at night?
Its pitch black
because they don’t have
electricity after dark
we do
but out bodies
can’t make melatonin
(hint- we NEED that melatonin)
when we sleep near light

I dread who I would’ve been
if I had gotten what I wanted
before now

There was a time when we all had money, and no worries. We would go to the store, each one of us together. You would remind me what I was craving not too long ago, and I’d find the thing you wanted after you thought they didn’t carry it. We’d joke with the guy working the counter about frequent shopper cards and cheap romance novels. And when the time came to pay the man, we argued about how to split it — only because we knew it didn’t matter.

That was what we did one day, and I think the next we just sat on the porch instead: reading our books to ourselves; occasionally sharing a line or two when we thought it was worth it. And if we got bored, we’d take a walk. If we got cold, we’d jump in the tub. And if we fell in love, we’d write a song about it. Problems like those can be fixed easy.

I quit drinking around when I was 26 years old

It wasn’t like I was an alcoholic or anything
where I had a moment of clarity
and vowed to escape the bottle
in which I lived 

I simply grew out of it
like how I stopped playing with Legos
I never technically quit playing with them
I just slowed down
til I wasn’t playing with them anymore

When I stopped drinking
I started doing more daytime activities
but I still wanted to find
new things to do at night

My girlfriend looked through the papers
and found a show at a theater
featuring the famous hypnotist
Ravine the Impossiblist

The show was entertaining
and we were both having a great time
watching him interact with the crowd
and hypnotizing the audience

one guy became
stiff as a board

another guy became
a quarterback

There was a saucy act where Ravine
convinced an older man to
seduce a wooden chair

Then he picked me from the crowd!

He proceeded to hypnotize me
into thinking that I was a mouse.

Snap!

I thought

I was

a mouse

My heart was vibrating
I scurried around the stage
avoiding the bright lights
trying to find a dark corner
to get away from
a room full of giants
thunderously clapping
and shouting at me

I just wanted to get away

Ravine’s predatory assistants caught me
and pulled me on stage where Ravine
humorously, instantaneously
snapped me into not being a mouse

Becoming re-human took longer

I fell into a living catatonic state
reconciling my experience as a mouse
my mind  shattered
my eyes with the 50 yard stare

I’m trying to get back on track even now

I find myself wanting a stiff drink

“It’s my point exactly,” he continued. “If I or Mrs. Johnson in there want you to think we’ve had a life of routine care, of avoiding that which might have been bad for our teeth, and of regular dental check-ups, then we only have to spend the requisite dollars on a product and apply nightly for some given time. After that, you’d have no way to disprove our assertion. You’d have no argument unless you gave a thorough inspection. And why would you? Unless you wanted, for some reason, to get to the real truth?”

Of course he was right. He let me ponder this a minute and tossed the ball into the air, catching it with a swipe of his hand.

“And in the same way, you only see our life as we want to show you. Until you’ve spent the time, done the research, who are you to know what we’re like? How you can begin to write this article and then sleep at night is beyond me. As of now, you’re only seeing the front of our teeth.”

He dropped the ball this time, rather than his previous careful placement.

Re: Missed Connection — twinkle in your eye at the farmers market

People are seldom who others think they are, and trust me when I say that I am not either. You say you saw a twinkle though, and I can’t deny what you saw. To tell you the truth, I’ve been waiting for someone to find that in me for some time. Now that you have, I started to doubt everything. Maybe I should start at the beginning.

I didn’t have much growing up. No toys, anyway, but I did have the blue uniform I had to wear to school. On weekends, I’d wear it and pretend I was a police officer. I’d arrest my dad and the cat that hung out around our house. Mom says she knew then what I’d be doing when I grew up. I don’t know, though, I feel like I enjoyed the acting more than the enforcing the law.

I wasn’t an outgoing kid, but when I was 15 I started selling vacuums to make some money. I wasn’t outgoing, but I could act like I was. I could go up to someone and I didn’t care too much about the dust in their house but I could really make it seem like I did. I sold a lot of vacuums. I’ve always been good at what I do.

These days I act strangely. It’s amazing how few questions people will ask you if you just act strangely.  People keep their distance as long as you don’t bathe. They’ll never get close enough to touch you; never feel around enough to find the wire.

Continue reading →

The first thing I noticed about winters
is that it was cold
cold in a literal way

It wasn’t like I was in the Arctic
in epic frigid weather
or anything like that
It was just cold enough
where I never felt any heat

I mean ever.

I chalked it up to cultural differences

It was just that heat
was never invented here
so it wasn’t ever missed
by the people of Winters.

Everyone walked around in
casual jackets
ate cold foods
pickled vegetables, cold soups,
cold cut deli meat, cereal, salads
(actually the food was good!)
washed in cool water

it was not like anything
that generated heat
was outlawed or censored
it was simply never considered
nor ever wanted

It took a while to get used to
and soon enough, the coldness was something
I never even thought about

too busy working at the Ice Mines
with barely any energy left to go home
and make some cold soup for dinner

Occasionally I would meet up with friends
to drink an “ice cold” beer”
but here they would just call it beer.

One day the coldness was something
I stopped complaining about

Then one day,
out of the sky

Came a hurtling piece of space rock
I’ve only seen maybe 2 or 3 shooting stars
in my entire life
so I was completely blown away
when a comet landed in my vegetable garden

I rushed outside
and immediately stood
over a small crater

inside the crater
was a spherical meteorite
on fire

I felt that fire

for the first time in a long time
that melting sensation
when heat softens your skin

I thought to myself
“what the hell am I doing in Winters?”

A couple came into the restaurant.
They came in quickly and either were thinking, “hmm it looks like this place is serving food,” or they said it out loud. I noted that they asked about the different fish on the menu, so I decided that they were new to the place.

The man had a pinkish complexion which gave away:

a) he did not abstain from alcohol

b) he had a drink or two that very night

However, he was not loud, verbose, or boisterous. Instead he had the look of a man who was not around a lot of money, nor was he around people that had a lot of money. He had the look of a man who was gentle, yet suspicious as one couldn’t tell whether if he had a good nature, or was too afraid to act upon his darker tendencies.

The woman was equally quiet. She had the feminine version of his face, but the same suspicious look garners more sympathy from a woman. Maybe it’s because I grew up with a single mother.

The woman’s signs that she was not rich was as follows:

a) The face as described above

b) A sweatshirt of a flat purple color, adorned loudly in a meaningless slogan in white font

c) She had a purse mimicking the ubiquitous Louis Vuitton bag, but instead of many  interlocking ‘L’ and ‘V’s , I saw ‘K’s and ‘B’s.  

The couple made me feel in an unexpected way. I’ve never felt any negative feelings either about myself or another person when around and ‘affluent’ person. However, when I am near a person “down on his luck,” I feel a certain something. Is it survivor’s guilt from my own escape from my own humble beginnings? It feels like the strange mix of reactions, like when looking at a clumsy puppy.

Were they treating this meal in a more thankful and genuine way than how I was eating it? Treating one thing casually while another sees it as precious…

I hoped that I was not experiencing sympathy, as what is more pretentious than sympathy? I wished for certainty in my empathy.
I recalled my original plan to eat a second,
more obligatory meal after my first dinner.

in quantum physics
electrons behave differently 
when they are being observed

I follow a schedule 
in my life
on most days

I see the same things
at around the same time

One thing I never see is the
back of my head

The back of my head is
pure from the manipulation
that my eyes spew forth

but whose observation
is affecting my reality?

I should see
who is behind
me more often. 

First you got your smarts
This is what you learned.
Never saw much difference
In being worldly wise
And having book smarts.
I just mean
Some things you know,
And others you don’t.

Then there is some cognitive sense:
How fast you can go from seeing it
To your head doing something with it.
And also how fast
It can go back out the other way.

You also got your wisdom.
It’s how much you realize
How dumb you were
When you were younger.

They’re always changing,
The things that you have.
Seems like you never have enough of all of them,
At least not all at the same time.

Keeping these things in mind,
It’s pretty hard to blame anybody
For being the way they are.

Some people have just enough of one
To know that they know a lot,
But not enough of another
To know that
A lot ain’t that much.

By the time you’re old,
It’s really hard to believe
That anyone knows more than you.
But it comes out all wrong when you try to say it,
Or maybe you leave out the important part,
Or maybe you just forgot it.

You keep figuring it out,
And I wondered if you ever had it wrong or right.
After you die, maybe someone told you.
Hey, you really had it figured out at 53.
53? At least now you know.

There was this guy I knew in grade school,
And you’d notice him pretty fast in winter
Cause he always wore t-shirts
Not under his jacket or anything,
But he wore
Just a t-shirt and nothing else.

I’m not sure if I thought much about him then,
But if I did, it was probably to think:
“That guy is crazy,” or
“Why would you choose to be so cold?”

But now I don’t know.
I live in a cold city.
I could have lived somewhere else.
I guess no matter how many times
You see the MASH episodes where it’s winter,
You just think,
“Yeah no big deal.”

And then you’re in it.
And it’s kind of a big deal.
But really I’m not doing anything differently than that t-shirt guy.
Really were all like that t-shirt guy.
There’s a warm place, but were not there.
I’m always wondering why I’m not there.

See the rest of my birds

I’m imagining a sidewalk 
from my memory

I immediately think of one

Its one on a hill
between two blocks
well, maybe more like
an avenue

There is no one on it
as I’m picturing it

Its light out, I would say around 4:00 
in the afternoon on a warm day

I wonder why I thought of this sidewalk

I remember that the sidewalk was 
a fragment of my route home 
from downtown

I picture the people in my life
when the sidewalk was a part 
of my routine
It feels pleasant to remember this sidewalk
and soon images of other memories 

of different sidewalks
appear in my head

I never would’ve thought to remember
these things
if I wasn’t thinking about sidewalks
just now

I hear strange sounds
in the sky
a metallic groan 

The past couple years my to do list has looked like this:

1. Think of something to do.
2. Do something.
3. Show them what I can do.

Every time I finish number 3,
I go back and start again at number 1.
It’s worked out pretty well.

These days, though,
I’m wondering a lot about number 4.
I’m wondering what it will be and
when I’ll get around to doing it.

You know,
if there’s one thing that this world won’t do for you,
it’s the things on your list.

But if you’re doing it right,
you never do feel done.

I have one recurring dream that is my favorite dream of all time.

I don’t know if I ever been tellin’ all ya’ll about my boy Coop, but
this time now seems about as good as any. Coop’s one of them types of
guys who’s big on muscle but not on words. He’ll sit around thinkin’,
contemplatin’ his next move for a while before he stands up and makes
it. You and I might make three moves for any one of his, but you best
believe he gets farther on his one than we did in a few.

I remember we were all up on this island for a bit, and while the rest
of us be puttin’ back a few and bustin’ out the hits for all them
older folks hangin’ around, Coop just sat there, laid back. When it
comes time for Coop to say somethin’, you get to listenin’ real well.
He shows you his idea and you don’t so much as think. You know he’s
done enough thinkin’ for both you and him, and you just go right about
followin’ whatever he’s got in mind. He came up to us other boys on
that island and he’s all like, “Thinkin’ it’s high time for some two
hand touch,” pigskin wrapped in one hand so tight you’d think it was a
tennis ball.

And, man, if that wasn’t the best game of two hand touch any of us
ever did play. I always thought it was a little humorous, how you say
you touch down when you score in football, and then astronauts say the
same damn thing when their capsule be hittin’ ground. But let me tell
you somethin’: runnin’ into that in-zone that game, sun burnin’ my
bare back, being chased by whoever — there was no difference between
the two. I got six points, but it felt more like I just got back from
the moon, man. I straight up went to the moon on that drive. And I
came back.

But that was a while ago. I guess you could say that each and every
time I been runnin’ in to Coop, it’s been right along them same lines
as before. I can’t say he’s been takin’ me to space in all those days,
but damn if we haven’t gotten close most of them times. We were
rollin’ deep the other night, had a crew of about twelve goin’ for
some birthday celebration. We wanted to hit up some place with some
activities for everyone to partake in, let everyone get a little more
acquainted and all, so we set our sights on Friendship Bar.

Continue reading →

Last autumn I was taking a drive,
not to run an errand 
or pick up groceries
I was driving to go on a trip

I felt that relief and excitement 
of getting past the city limits
past the traffic
knowing you can drive for 
hours without any 
interruptions in speed 
the only care, 
being not going 
too much over the speed limit

When I was driving past the trees
that surround every
highway I’ve ever seen, 

I remembered my classic desire
to get out of my car and walk into
the woods and go straight

You see, I’ve always had this dream
to go into the trees and just go straight

Just keep going straight for days and months
because we are after all
bipedal creatures with ‘all-terrain’ built
into out biology

Was this desire 
a male biological symptom? 
Like looking at girl’s butts
and being slightly afraid of the dark/snakes?

If I went straight would I
eventually reach shore?
I suppose I would.

The beauty of going in one direction
for a really long time doesn’t just
end on the road.

Whenever I look up at something in space
Like a nice moon or a planet I recognize
I always dreamt it would be great to just start
floating in that direction
the moon getting smaller and smaller in my sight
and keep on going til I landed.

I have to admit that when I think about dying 
I think my ghost body will actually have the ability
to do this.  

When I was a teenager I had acne on my face
Nothing debilitating, but I wanted  smoother skin

I tried different creams and lotions, and for the most part they either

a) didn’t work
b) only worked when constantly applied

At some point, I began the practice of asking my friends 
about their daily habits to look for some sense or correlation in the world

I specifically remember the first time I did this.

I used my Instant Messenger and asked all my friends how long 
they took showers for, and how hot the water they used was. 
Then I compared the data to who had clear skin and who had pimples.

Aha!

What joy I found in making a small bit of sense!

Now my process is a bit streamlined:

1) Coming up with a hunch or theory

2) Asking everyone I meet, their thoughts and practices

3) Testing it out on myself

4) Seeing the results and applying it to my life

This is a daily thing for me and here are examples of  things I do
or don’t do based on my research:

- I stay away from dairy, meat, and sugar

- I don’t use shampoo or conditioner, instead using vinegar and baking soda

- I do oil pulling every morning (you should google it) 

People’s issue with TMI (too much information)
cuts our legs out from under us!
I wish everyone were totally open
and had no shame on any topic

If empathy is the highest ideal of humanity
Then censorship has to be the lowest.

I had a near death experience

During a minor surgery
I opened my eyes,
and saw the doctors
operating on my body

Well if you think its weird
to hear your voice on a recording
or see your self on film

seeing it in real time,
opened up like a car hood
is really something else

Then I saw the light!

I walked towards it too.
When I got to the end
I saw what I ought to be
the walls of heaven.

But the closer I looked,
it was more like a reception desk.
A very majestic looking reception desk.

The reception seemed to be saying,
“Hey you are here a little earlier
that we expected! Anyways,

CONGRATULATIONS!
YOU DID GREAT KID!”

(its always what I wanted to hear when I died)

Then I had to choose :

1) Be born again (if you hadn’t had enough)

2) Be ecstatic and one with everything 
as the boundaries of time and space will
cease to exist. Become
a part of every molecule from inside a
prehistoric rock to your wife’s cornea 
to the cigarette but buried under New York
in the year 4000 AD 

I said , “Can I have a little bit of time 
to think about it?”

The answer I got was,
Alright if that’s what you want.
Keep up the good work!

I heard this guy in the cafe the other day.
And I guess he wanted a new york bagel real bad
Because
He said, “Man I would fly to new york right now just to eat a bagel.”
And I thought, “Well, yeah. What are you waiting for?”

I guess he had something else to do that day,
or maybe he was just exaggerating.
Because he stayed there for a while
And when he left
It wasn’t in the direction of the airport.

Now, I’m kind of busy.
I have a lot of things to do, but
If I didn’t, I’d probably fly somewhere
With the intention of seeing you.

There’s a way I used to laugh a lot.
I have it on tape if I want to hear it.
I don’t laugh like that much any more.

Instead, I do this or that
On the out side of the door,
And I wonder,
How much more or less I would do
On the in side of the door.
If I go through the door,
If I could go through the door,
Maybe I’d do less but it’d be better.

It’s not that what I do now is bad, but
I end up throwing a lot of it away.

Sometimes, I find myself thinking about doing the casting for a movie
And I need someone to play the rising sun.
The one line this person would say is,
“Good Morning.”

Juicy, I’m not sure you’d be the first person to come to mind,
But I like to think that, if someone said,
“Hey, you should get Juicy J for that role”
That then I’d say,
“Yeah. That’s a great idea.”

And I think you’d really get into it.
I think that you’d really do a good job,
And that you’d have a few conversations with the director,
And that you’d have a few questions about the way things should be.

That’s just the way you are,
And that’s one of the reasons I admire you.
You really try at everything you do,
But it’s just enough that no one would ever say,
“That Juicy’s trying too hard.”

It’s a really important thing
That a person,
When given a chance to leave his mark,
Really leaves it.

I used to live in a town where
Everyone who saw me
Thought I needed a drink

I’ve been to a town where
Everyone who saw me
Thought I needed help.

One thing’s for sure:
None of them thought
I understood a word they said.

When they speak my language,
They sound like Mr. Saturn.

When they speak theirs,
They sound like Yoda.

Actually, I spent a lot of time
Learning their language
Only to find out
They spend a lot of time
Talking about mine.

And I’ll never know
If it’s because I’m there,
Or not. 

I got attacked by these two guys,
it was the bad old days in Brooklyn 

I had a reaction that I would’ve
never predicted in my entire life

I just started throwing punches
I don’t know why I did it,
I think the adrenaline overtook
any sense of judgement I had 

Soon we were on the ground
pummeling away
I bit a hand

I really don’t think me or either 
of the two muggers understood why
this brawl was happening

But soon I was unconscious

All I remember is this woman
with blonde hair came and broke it  up
and told them “enough.”

One thing I wonder about 
is how people who mug people feel

If I had to guess, I bet they have to 
kind of force an aggression 
out of their system

I don’t think they necessarily feel
bad about what they do
but i’m sure it messes with their heads

but I really wouldn’t know

One of my favorite shows I’ve seen
live was a Bill Callahan show

I went with my friend Sarah
and she said to me,

“I can just tell,
that this guy is an Aquarius like me,
because I really understand him.”

Even though I don’t pay much attention
to astrology, aside from reading
sextrology sometimes for fun,

I said, no I think I get him,
he must be a Gemini (like me).

After the show we saw him loading up,
and we went up to him and asked,
and he confirmed that he was a Gemini.

I felt inexplicably proud.

ps

My spirit guide Bob Dylan is also a Gemini.
We also she the same birthday.

pss

My other spirit guide Andre 3000 is a Gemini.
The other half of Aquemini.

Let me tell you something

I’ve heard before about not knowing much about
the things you have
and then one day
losing that thing, and
at that time suddenly
knowing what you had.

Let me tell you something

I knew full well what I had.
I knew some day 
it would be gone, and 
how I would die a little inside.

It would be a fluke, I know,
or a miracle,
if I ever have it again.
I know full well
it was just as much that
I had it at all.

All the others will be used up,
or they’ll leave without much thought on my part.

Their inks will run dry, or
They’ll be left behind.

I have my time with you saved in some ways.
I’m not sure where you are now, but
I have the notebooks where through you, I wrote.

My signature is there and it is who I was then.
It is who I was when I was with you.

A little bit of coffee is good for your health
A little but of wine is good for the old circulation
Mostly it seems like a little bit is a good amount of anything
So I am happy about about how much money I have
Thank goodness I don’t have to worry about being rich 

One time I read an interview
featuring my favorite singer
Bill Callahan

I often read interviews you see

I think its interesting to see
my favorite people to watch or listen to
giving answers as themselves

If they give really cool answers,
I think I try to emulate them or
at least channel them when I’m
speaking.

I do this with Harrison Ford

I guess I am not alone
magazines always seem really proud
of who they got to talk to that month

In Bill Callahan’s interview he talked
of the importance of solitude
because if you let other people
take too much of your time
you lose sight of yourself

Now I am thinking this guy sure must
have a lot of people dying to hang out with him
because I don’t really find that
I need to remind myself to keep away
from people at all

because no one seems
that excited about hanging out with me
or I’m too tired to chill
or I just have things to do
these days. 

its like complaining to a homeless man
about the lack of airflow in your apartment

Luckily though, 

My one friend is made of gold

My girlfriend is made out of diamond
the real deal, gem grade 
not  industrial 

Alternating between extremely hard
planes and spaces in between the spaces
that are brittle and can be cut
with a single blow.

She doesn’t refract light but like to breaks them
up into little shards and pieces
to make beams

that makes the whole thing look better 
than what it used to be
like an arrangement of prisms 
but many of them.

Sometimes I like to move around her
to see the light sparkle, 
and sometimes I let her move around me
making the mundane lighting
become little fireworks
in their movements around and through
each other.

I wonder how she does it, 
as I hear I am a carbon being as well,
but molecular formation
is more elegant and sturdier than mine 
I guess.

Today I saw a cat

Making an escape from an apartment.

It was a daring escape

Involving a tree

And a balcony.

But I forgot my camera.

So I was thinking

What if some computer just

Randomly filled a screen with colored pixels?

At some point

The computer would produce

An image like the one I could have

Had I taken a picture of that cat.

I guess you could say,

Boy it sure would take a long time before the computer randomly generated the picture you were looking for.

But I’m not so sure.

There would be a chance,

However small,

That the picture would pop up

On the first instance,

Or maybe the second.

Relaxing in the hot spring
made you feel alive again

When you are sick
It is essential you have
a woman at your side

Sometimes a woman can
be the one who got you sick
in one way or another

and sometimes she seems to
enjoy you being being helpless
a little too much I say

You can’t do much about it
because lets face it, you are
already too sick to move!

And its not like you are going to
complain when someone is
making soup for you

There’s also no magic healing
butterflies fluttering about
that cures you when you catch em

The good thing is that I think
she already knows all this
and is being kinda cool about it 

I see you guys and
I try to think about you guys a lot
And also see things from your perspective.

I try to imagine walking by this house
And being really hungry.
Inside the house there is a really huge, yummy looking pizza.

This pizza is really big.
It’s actually more like the size of a house.
And the house is more like the size of a house relative to a pizza that is the size of a house, I guess.
I mean, the pizza and house look normal in relation to each other but really both are extremely large compared to myself.
Actually, I myself probably look out of proportion compared to these things as I’m just my normal size. In fact, to properly imagine this I may need to be even smaller, possibly the size of a pizza.

Okay, back up a second.
Just for the sake of explaining it to you guys, here is the scene I imagine inside my head to get myself inside your heads:

1. I am about the size of a pizza.
2. I am walking by a very large house. It is so large that on its (also large) dining room table, it can comfortably hold a pizza that is the size of a normal sized house.
3. Also, I can fly and through this means I can fly and get inside the house.
4. Inside the house, there is a pizza. This pizza is about the size of a normal house.

Man,
That pizza looks good.
(Also, I’m hungry)

But the pizza is alive.
I have to wait
Until that pizza is sleeping
Before I can hope to eat some of it
Because last time I tried to eat it some slice of the pizza extended up towards me and tried to swat me and I’m glad he missed because I probably would have died.

As I’m waiting there,
I’m hanging out on the wall
And I see some other flying people like me.
I guess they came in looking for a piece of that pie, too.
But actually, they’re all smashed up.
They’re all smashed up on the wall.
And all around them there’s pizza sauce;
Like they just ate some pizza
And then they got smashed
And the sauce all came out of them
It’s all around them now.

I wonder if I would stick around
And if I would try to still eat that pizza
After I saw that,
Or if I would just get out of there,
Back out the way I came.

I really do wonder this
As I’m hunting you down.
As I’m smashing you,
And then leaving your carcass
For the others to see.

I really do wonder
If I would still try
For a bit of that pizza.

Today I overheard this conversation where
This guy in a military uniform was getting thanked by someone
For his service and for protecting the country.

I was thinking,
Wearing a uniform in public like that
Is kind of like inviting everyone
To come up to you and have a chat, and to thank you.

I would guess that
How you react kind of depends on your mood that day.

I also think that
In basically the same way
Wearing that Abbey Road shirt
Is an invitation
For anyone to approach you
And to talk in-depth with you about Abbey Road.

It seems like
Abbey Road has so many lyrics that
The two people could talk and,
Maybe not every time they speak,
But a lot of the time
They could drop in quotations from the album’s lyrics.
“Get back, Loretta!”

As for me,
I kind of wonder why I don’t see more Rubber Soul shirts around.
Because in my opinion
That would make a better shirt than
Let it Be.
(of which I see shirts from time to time) 

When I was a kid I learned in a spy
book that you can make invisible ink
by squeezing a lemon and using the juice
to write on a piece of paper.

Then the receiver of the said note
had to sort of fan the paper over a 
candle and the message would slowly
appear.  I now am wondering why I 
never tried this experiment.  

Maybe the lemon was hard to get as a
kid if the kid’s parents are at work.

Its sometimes really easy to feel happy
as an adult, if you think about how easy
it is to get things that were hard for you
to get when you were a kid.

I guess first off, I should mention something.

The bus ride from where I was to my house was not very long.

But really,

A lot can happen in a short time.

If you add up the things you did today

They didn’t take you that long.

It was the same with me.

I was on the bus

For just a long enough time to know

That music wasn’t playing.

And then,

From no where and every speaker at once

I heard “the macarena.”

It was a hit a while back.

Now, the way the bus driver got into the song a bit,

The contagious way he started moving ever more slightly than could be explained by the bumps in the road,

This really made me think.

I thought about a while back when my friend Lon told me about a similar bus driver enjoying “walk this way.”

And when he told me about it, I thought

Man, I want to be on that bus.

And I thought about that on that bus today,

And I was glad I was there.

And trust me,

You want to be there too.

But I think what’s worth noting is that

For a precious few seconds,

I wasn’t sure if

What I heard

Was “the macarena”

or people

Pushing buttons on their Ipads. If you just think for a second about what an opening to “the macarena” sounds like, and what an Ipad application sounds like, I think you’ll know what I mean.

This is a picture I drew

The human body needs
to sleep at night, as our bodies only
make melatonin if we sleep in the dark.

Medical uses (of melatonin):

Circadian rhythm disorders
Learning, memory and Alzheimer’s
Delirium
Stimulants
Fertility
Toxicology
Headaches
Mood disorders
Cancer
Gallbladder stones
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
Obesity
Protection from radiation
Hair loss
Fatigue
Other

This is my friend Jumi
 

We used to work together and it was rough.
Not because of her, but just the amount that
I was working. I actually got really sick
from the crazy hours.
It kind of was the most sick I’ve ever been
and made me reconsider all my habits.

Jumi is cool, likes horror movies, and reminds
me of a turning point and melatonin.

Her boyfriend is Doraemon 

These are my pet mice.

One is name Shala

The others is Lala

One has all fingers

One has one missing

Their tails were both cut shorter by scientists

I saved them from a death by freezing

they make it nicer for me to come home