—I WANNA GET BETTER

 

…“In March, I’ll be rested, caught up and human.” Sylvia Plath

 

…I put a helmet on a helmet.

 

…“May we keep looking for beauty in unexpected places.” Sam Davis

 

…No one gets tired of hearing someone say they love you.

 

…If you say it’s poetry, it’s poetry.

 

…“Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living.” Catherine Drinker Bowen

 

…I started collecting rejections again. Got nothing else to do.

 

… The thing I love and the thing you love can be completely different but sit side by side.

 

…I tried to pull up my sleeve and accidentally punched myself. Pretty sure I had it coming.

 

…We look at our faces like we don’t know who we are.

 

…The back stroke is the hardest one of all. Especially without water.

 

…I hear people get better with practice.

 

…Don’t forget to float.

 

…This is a game you should never bet on.

 

…“It’s so rare to have someone take care of you, to feel like nothing is going to run out.” Grant Faulkner

 

…“I would rather my suffering have a name, my pain have a face, a chance for familiarity.” Amy Marques

 

…The thing about a highway is its always going somewhere.

 

…Let’s do something we’ll regret.

 

…A gift is a hope.

 

…How does it feel to always get what you want? 

 

…“We’ve mistaken being in touch for being connected. It’s possible to text someone five times a day and still have little idea what’s happening in their life. It’s just noise we make at each other to maintain the illusion that we care.” Keisha Saunders-Waldron

 

…You’re a much better actor than me.

 

…It’s never as bad as it feels. 

 

…If you’re not prepared to listen to the answer, don’t ask.

 

…Change my meds, change the flight.

 

…Let’s just light one more sparkler.

 

…Don’t you dare touch the dial.

 

…Some expectations can be even worse than the real thing.

 

…Too late. The bullet got you.

 

--How was your day?

--Good.

--Same old, same old?

--I hate that expression.

--I hate when people just say “Good’ when I ask how their day was. 

 

…“Old people are not the other. They’re you. If you’re lucky.” Joan Price

 

“I hope you’ll come back someday, say something pretty to me. I want to hear something pretty. Even if you have to fake it.” Grant Faulkner

 

…You can shake your head, you can shake your ass, but that’s not changing anything.

 

…The US spent $11.3bn in just the first week of its military assault on Iran.

The cost of the first week of the Iran war would be more than enough to fully fund the Environmental Protection Agency this year (at $8.8bn), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ($9.2bn) or the National Cancer Institute ($7.4bn).

More than 3,000 people are believed to have been killed across Iran so far, the Pentagon says. A girls’ school in the south-eastern Iranian city of Minab lies in rubble, with about 175 children and teachers killed in a strike that the US is believed to have carried out. 

 

Pentagon seeks more than $200 billion in budget request for Iran war, administration official says

 

…At a rally in Kentucky, Trump mentioned how he tried to avoid slipping down the soaking-wet stairs: “I do it very slowly...because nobody cares if you set a speed record.” He then said he “admired” former President Barack Obama’s ability to walk downstairs — but then disparaged him, claiming that Obama’s “bob down the stairs” was “unpresidential.”

 

 

….Let’s take a look at “unpresidential” (in just a week), shall we?:

 

--Donald Trump Nicknames White House Correspondent 'Maggot' and Threatens to Sue Her, Along with The New York Times

--News Alert: President Trump threatens Iran leaders: ‘Watch what happens to these deranged scumbags today’

 

--From “Grand Theft Auto” to “SpongeBob SquarePants,” the White House has turned to memes from pop culture and video games to sell President Trump’s war with Iran

 

 

--A cellphone video captured Trump, who was visiting the Ford F-150 plant in Dearborn, twice mouthing “f--- you” as he pointed to someone calling up to him from the factory floor below. The president subsequently raised his middle finger toward the heckler as he continued walking. 

 

--In recent days, Trump has been road-testing attacks on Newsom’s dyslexia — which the governor recently wrote about in his new book — trying to portray Newsom as “a low IQ person” and “dumb.”

 

Trump has a history of seeking to define opponents — even Republicans — through repetition and ridicule, in an effort to distill political rivals into bite-sized caricatures.

During the 2016 Republican primary, he described Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) as “Lyin’ Ted” and Marco Rubio — who is now his secretary of State — as “Little Marco.”

During his 2016 race against Hillary Clinton, he dubbed her “Crooked Hillary.” During the 2020 and 2024 elections, he called rival Joe Biden “Sleepy Joe.” He called is 2024 presidential opponent, Kamala Harris, “dumb as a rock.”

 

 

--After Iran’s Kharg Island is demolished by missiles, Trump says US may hit Iran’s the island again ‘just for fun’

 

                               "Only twenty-one more years.”

…Last bit of “political” news and then I’ll be done for now—

This is how evil some in Isreal are, how little regard they have for the lives of anyone perceived to be their enemy somehow, even peace-loving protestors—

Senior Israeli officials have told U.S. diplomats that Iranian protesters will “get slaughtered” if they take to the streets against their government even as Israel publicly calls for a popular uprising, according to a State Department cable reviewed by The Washington Post.

The document’s authenticity was verified by two State Department officials.

In a televised address on the first day of the attacks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country “will strike hard at the terror regime and create conditions that will allow the brave Iranian people to cast off the yoke of this murderous regime.”

 

…Here’s the thing—you have to stop on time.

 

…I’m not sure about this.

 

…Sometimes it’s best not to read back what you wrote.

 

…Dude, don’t fall anymore.

 

…Do you know what that is? Dangerous.

 

…Next month Willie Nelson releases his (true story, no typo) 159^th studio album.

 

…I think it’s bad juju to root against a friend, but someone needs to tell my “friend” that.

 

…Okay, well, I’ll fix it. I promise.

 

…I probably sigh more than any person alive. Don’t ask me why.

 

…Those trees are really shaking right now, doing the Bossa nova. If one comes down on me, I’m going to go with fate.

 

…You can find symbolism or signs anywhere, but reading them the right way is what matters. 

 

…If you’re whistling like that, in that way, to yourself, well, you might be in trouble.

 

...Maybe I should just turn in.

 

…I hate when it says there’s something there but there’s nothing there.

 

…I have no reason to complain, or whine, about anything. I really don’t. And I feel guilty when I do. I’m a first world country person. I have more than enough, way, way more than I ever thought I’d ever had. So why should I bitch when something is missing in life?

 

…I can’t cook, other than eggs or cold cereal. I admire people who can, and who actually like doing it, like my best friend, but isn’t it just easier to eat out or type in Uber Eats?

 

…Those trees are really rocking again. You can imagine them falling on you while you’re sleeping, or you can image them dancing. There’s almost always a choice.  

 

…I’m learning how important it is to be mindful, to be present in the moment, and yet there are moments when I still think—Fuck that.

 

…You can’t believe everything you think because if you did, like in my case, you’d be in big trouble.

 

…I work at being happy like some people work at being sad.

 

…If it’s 2 in the morning, 3 in the morning, 4 in the morning, and you still haven’t found what you’re looking for, it’s probably time to go back to sleep before someone thinks you’re insane.

 

…The thing about being up at 2am is no one judges you, no one cares.

 

…“I used to think it was silly or sappy to write down the things that I love. But once you start doing it, once you start deliberately taking time out of your day to write down things that are good, you start noticing them everywhere.” Melissa Kirsch

 

…A hurricane only holds together for so long.

 

…Just stay right here, dude. Don’t take another step.

 

…Good luck making sense of this.

 

…You won’t know what I mean unless you’ve been there, too. 

 

…Now I’m on a wire, no trick in my sleeve.

 

…Doesn’t this guitar sound so good?

 

…I don’t think I ever want to catch up to the letting go part.

 

…It was letting go of everything, but you.

 

…Well, it’s probably too late to knockoff a drug store, so might as well go to sleep.

 

… “And in case I don’t see you, good afternoon, good evening and good night.”

 

—GONNA GO ROUND IN CIRCLES

 

The Bear

 

I forgot to tell you about the circus bear, how I thought he was fake, a man stuffed inside a fur costume, how the bear rode a large unicycle around the rink, sun glare stabbing through the tarp down on all of us, the bear swatting horseflies away with his paw while the crowd went crazy believing the bear was waving, his mouth beginning to foam, the bubbles perhaps irritating him, so that he licked at the edges of his mouth which made it seem as if he was grinning, which made the mob thunder with joy, until that boy, your older brother, leapt the stubby fence and dared the bear to ride his way, the boy holding out his arms as if preparing to clutch a bedtime pillow, everyone screaming now as the bear pedaled furiously before coming to a coast, then scooping your brother over his shoulder like a sack of bones, holding him that way, carefully, steadily, until the trainer aimed and hit him square and the bear let go. 

 

—ON ANY GIVEN WEDNESDAY, YOU CAN PAINT WITH CHARCOAL

 

Ossuary

She spends mornings looking into empty mirrors, numbering her bones, tinkering with their arrangement. She has no need for skin or anyone’s false prophecy because time is a too-tight tunnel now and she’s been claustrophobic since birth. 

She remembers her mother gleamed once, on prom night, saying, Why, just look at you!

Now, two years on, her mother says, Just look at you, and pushes through a fence of broken smoke, leaving the girl crumpled like a stack of twigs, a kettle drum smoldering in an alley littered with spent needles, all that ripe damage pleading, all those unclaimed skeletons chanting in unison.

 

—YOU’VE BEEN SKIMMING FROM THE TOP AGAIN

 

…I think I may be telling the truth too much lately. Not everyone wants to hear the truth.

 

…It seems stupid when you hear it, and silly when you say it, but really, You do the best you can and that’s all you can do.

 

…You can’t die when you’re laughing.

 

…Life’s a lot more fun when you find the next circus.

 

…It seemed so simple then, even though we didn’t know it wasn’t.

 

…“I think that when I’m falling, I need to know that, if I were to hold out my hand, someone would be there to take it.” Jamy Bond

 

…I guess we all hold onto emotional stuff that would be better thrown away.

 

…Late, and always due.

 

…If I could tell you how this feels for me, I would.

 

…When the door is open, you have to run through it.

 

…It’s incredibly hard to believe there are still 44%--

In the NBC News poll, 44 percent said they either “strongly” or “somewhat” backed Trump’s job performance, down from 47 percent in March 2025. Fifty-four percent of poll respondents said they were “strongly” or “somewhat” not in favor of his job performance, up from 51 percent last year.

 

...We. Are. Being. Lied. To.  

 

…We can cut badly needed social programs, but hey, when it comes to a pop-up war, who cares about how much it costs?

Early Iran strikes cost $5.6 billion in munitions in first two days of war, Pentagon estimates

The Trump administration also is expected to send Congress a supplemental defense budget request as soon as this week — potentially totaling tens of billions of dollars — to help sustain its campaign, officials said.

 

 

…. Pentagon says about 140 troops wounded, 8 severely, in war with Iran

 

… U.S. Tomahawk Hit Naval Base Beside Iranian School, Video Shows

The evidence contradicts President Trump’s claim that Iran was responsible for a strike at the school that killed 175 people, most of them children.

 

…Fuck that guy.

 

…You gotta love a guy who is so Christ-like:

Trump tells Latin American leaders “I'm not learning your damn language.”

 

…U.S. was only country in a worldwide survey to say most fellow citizens are bad people

A striking survey released Thursday finds that 53 percent of American adults describe the morality and ethics of their fellow citizens as “bad” (somewhat bad or very bad). In the 24 other countries polled by Pew Research Center, most people said other residents there are somewhat good or good.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is Canada, where Pew found that 92 percent of people say their fellow Canadians are good, while just 7 percent say they’re bad.

 

 

…A couple of cows were smoking pot and playing poker.

    The steaks were high.

 

--Why do we see two different stories?

--Because you’re always wrong.

 

…Anymore, it’s a lot to expect someone to reply.

 

… "In a way we are more whole when something in us is broken." Steve Leder

 

…There’s no right or wrong way to say Hello.

 

…God knows your life is on the brink, and your therapist's well-fed. --Harry Styles

 

…After lunch on Monday, I saw an eagle in Everett and wondered if that was Pete out for a stroll.

 

…It’s hard to know better when you don’t know what you should know. 

 

…“It’s miraculous how normal you can seem on the outside when on the inside you’re nothing but floating shreds and itty battered bits of sawdust.” Jamy Bond

 

…SHOOTING REPORTED LESS THAN .9 MILES FROM YOUR HOME

 

…ARSON REPORTED LESS THAN 6.7 MILES FROM YOUR HOME

 

 

“There’s always something in between—skin, stories, worries, hopes, battles, defeats. Touching is trying to touch and never quite touching.” Scott Garson

 

We get farther and farther away from our ankles the older we get.   

 

--How can I be sure this is true love?

--Do you think this kind of thing happens every day?

   -- The Princess Bride 

 

…Keep your shirt on. Let me write some more.

 

…70 percent water makes sense when you can’t make sense of anything else.

 

…It’s better than a kick in the head. 

 

…I’m going to do more stupid things. Even now, I am.

 

…For the record, I’m flunking technology, math, science and anything have to do with automotives or handyman repairs.

 

…“As you get older, you need your longtime friends more than you ever thought you would.” Billy Crystal

 

…Conversations tend to end the way they begin.

 

       “Because 

 I have known despair 

    I value hope 

         Because 

  I have tasted frustration 

       I value fulfillment 

          Because  

   I have been lonely 

       I value love.”

              --Leonard Nimoy

 

…I can’t even begin to remember how much I’ve forgotten.

 

…But I did forget how good that feels—winning at something.

 

…Somehow, I forgot yesterday was yesterday.

 

…Some People I actually talked to at AWP:

 

Robert Vaughaun     Kelli Short-Borges    Joani Reese

Amy Marquez           Francine Witte          Michelle Ross

Kim Chinquee           Scott Garson              Jamy Bond        

Brett Pribble              Annie Pluto                Michael McGinnis

Tommy Dean             Josh Gaines                Benjamin Drevlow

Kelli Agodon              Ellen Weeren             Ellyn Reese Fautsch

Matt Bell                    Aaron Burch              John Woodward

Rae Cline                   Michael Martone      Vallie Lynn Watson

Alina Stefanescu        Luke Rolfes                Angela Woodward

Sarah Chavez            Helen Rye                  Michael Czyzniejewski

Chris Allen                Gloria Mindock         Renuka Raghavan

Kim Magowan           Dylan Kreiger            Stephany Austin

Sarah Lippman         Nicholad Freeman    Melissa Flores Anderson

Brenna Kischuk        Chelsea Stickel          Kathryn Silver-Hajo

Grant Faulkner         Sarah Freligh            Drew Coomer            

Exodus Brownlow     Thaddeus Rutowski  Ki Russell

Andrew Bertaina      Linda Wastila            Dawn Steffler   

Tara Whitehead Stillman                             Benjamin Niespodziany

Robert James Russell                                   Kelly Foster Lundquist

Avitus Carle              Kenning JP Garcia   Roberto Carlos Garola

Natalia Trevino                  Julie Bouwsma          Lee Desrosiers

EC Lawrence             Bronson Lemer         Lindsey Royce

Chelsea Stickle          Janee Baugher           Kristen Millares Young

Bronson Lemer         Ellen Weeren             Melissa Llanes Brownlee

 

—I’M SOLD, I’M GOING ON CLEAN    

          My mother is afraid for me, but my stepfather says, “He’s going to be a man soon.  If he wants to go, let him.”

       So I’m on the plane alone.  A stewardess with white skin and orange hair keeps leaning around her work station to smile and wink at me.

       The man in the middle seat has gas and smells like cow manure.  He wears a smudged ring and I wonder if he’s someone’s father.

       Where I’m flying to is flat farmland.  Acres of wheat.  Tractors and combines.  In the winter the snows get so deep that locals drive snowmobiles on the streets instead of cars.  I’ve never been, but I know because my blood father wrote me long letters that I’d find torn up in my parent’s trash.  

       When I tell the stewardess I’ll be nine in June, her smile lifts like it’s a hard trick she’s doing.  “I’ve got a daughter just your age.  You’re pretty brave to be flying by yourself.”  I don’t agree, but I don’t say so either.  I just think I’m maybe desperate.

       I saw an old film reel of a man walking across the wing of an airplane as it flew in the sky.  After a while it got boring, but then the clip changed and he was pedaling a unicycle while gigantic gusts threatened to toss him off.  My stepfather called the man a jackass and said, “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen.”

       The stewardess brings me a ginger ale.  The bubbles won’t stop popping over the rim of the plastic glass.  “What are you going to do in North Dakota?”

       I tell her my real father lives there.  I tell her I’ve not seen him in person that I can remember.  I don’t tell her that my stepfather hates me and I hate him back.  I tell her lots of things, except how I’m on this bird and I’m never returning.

       I’ve lied to my mother about this trip.  She thinks my father will be waiting for me at the airport when we land.  She thinks he helped plan everything and that I’ll only be gone a week.  Lying’s not as easy as people think.

       The man beside me pulls out his laptop.  He holds it close to his chest, flat over his huge belly.  There are all kinds of naked women on the screen.  How he thinks I can’t see them is a wonder, or maybe he doesn’t care.

       After a while he gets up to use the restroom, so I take his cup of coffee and pour half of it over his laptop’s keyboard, then set the cup back.  If he asks, I’ll say it was the turbulence.

       When I look out my window, it’s a wall of white and the clouds are threatening to suck up the wing.  I imagine that I’m out there, riding a unicycle and that people are watching, that they care.  I pretend they’re cheering and shouting my name and this makes me the happiest I’ve been, maybe since forever.