—HEAVEN AIN’T CLOSE IN A PLACE LIKE THIS

 

 

…I give.

 

…If you can be anything, be kind.

 

…I used to be good in a crowd, but that was a long time ago.

 

…If you wind me up, I can still shoot bullets, or what John would call, “Golden nuggets.” 

 

…I haven’t woken up angry in a long time, or maybe ever. So, for this, I’m sorry.

 

…Hey, quick question: Are you fucking kidding me?

 

…What do you think? We should probably head back in time, right?

 

…I’m a bit of a mess, but I think most people are.

 

…“Is there no way out of the mind?” Sylvia Plath

 

…All most people want, is a second chance.

 

…You forgive, you forget, but you never let it go.

 

…A lot of times, this space is the problem.

 

…How strange, that I don’t even know where you are right now.

 

…The day begins with what we’ve left behind.

 

…You only know what you know until someone tells you something differently.

 

…I suppose we’re both looking at parity about now.

 

…I’m a clock with thirty-six hands, and every one of them is wearing rubber gloves.

 

…At the last moment, we might give in. Just a knuckle of us. 

 

…Oh, Bllll!!! How about another short one?

 

…“Aren’t waiters great? You ask them for things, and they bring them.”

 

…I’m pretty sure my love language is Cabernet. 

 

…I reckon it’s more me than you.

 

…I get it if you can’t stay. It’s awkward.

 

…I could definitely use better self-talk. For instance, constantly telling yourself you’re an idiot, isn’t helpful. And calling yourself a “fucking stooge” may not do much to raise your self-esteem.

 

…The difficulty is, I don’t know what to do with you.

 

…Sometimes it’s hard to fathom the truth. There have been more mass shootings (565) than days so far this year. 

 

…When my friends finally convinced me to watch, “The Walking Dead,” I soon realized this wasn’t a show about zombies, but it was about survival. Here you had an apocalyptic world, with billions of dangerous zombies, and yet the scariest motherfuckers were humans, the biggest threat to other humans.

 

…I’m walking a tightrope and the soles of my feet know it, slit clean in half as they are.

 

…It’s a conundrum: the missing, and the hoping by some unreasonable measure, that you don’t.

 

...The whole battle is finding someone to love, who loves you back without judgement.

 

…I never thought I’d be thinner than I was at 19, but here I am.

 

…The only time predictability is preferable is when you’re smiling instead of throwing knives.

 

…I’m still learning how to hold regret tenderly.

 

…The number one order of business is always: pay attention, silly boy.

 

…I can’t change the past, though I sure wish I could.

 

…When you get angry for no reason, there’s usually a reason rooting around somewhere.

 

…Friday, who knew I’d dislike you this much when you’re probably the most popular day out there?

 

…In telephone conversations, my dad would always say, “It’s okay. you’ll come visit me when I’m dead.” I always thought that was morose, and a copout since he could have just as easily drove to see me. But, ultimately, he was right in a way.

 

…As far as I know, I’ve never hung up on anyone.

 

…The way the light is coming through these windows right now shows all kinds of spider webs. Most people are freaked by spiders, but if you watch them, you’ll see how industrious they are. I mean, they’re really crafty fuckers.

 

…Saying, “I’m sorry,” is only hard when you think you’re not.

 

…Desire is a strange concept.

 

…My kid likes his music loud, as if the mountain goats can’t hear it, bouncing off the hills.

 

…It’s easy to feel like a dolphin when your limbs are always falling asleep. But just try walking.

 

…You don’t really need a reason to hate me, but an explanation would help.

 

…If you think I’m writing this to you, you’re quite correct.

 

…I should have a lot of explanations, but I’m pretty empty-handed.

 

…I need to get a grip, because everything feels slippery.

 

…A day without laughter is a sad one, even if the day wasn’t actually sad.

 

…I don’t know what I was thinking, reaching beyond my grasp.  

 

…Oh, Friday, you’re such a tease. Don’t tell me you love me if you don’t mean it.

 

…When all hope is gone, you should still floss.

 

…I think I had something to say, if you would’ve listened and not judged or compared. Just sayin.’

 

…Hate on Taylor all you want, but she’s still the cutest 17-year-old ever, and I love her.

 

…“it is a serious thing

just to be alive

on this fresh morning 

in the broken world.’

--Mary Oliver

 

…Every bag, every bracelet, comes with a price tag.

 

…If I don’t stop talking, I’m going to ruin this episode.

 

—IF LOOKS COULD KILL THEN I’D BE A DEAD MAN

  

F   r   i   d   a   y  

 

 

Friday is a bloated toad 

ringed in gloom, 

stagnant with too 

much desiccated air. 

Cones of gnats 

hang outside the pane 

like paper lanterns. 

Spiders dangle like 

window washers from 

their frayed rope. 

Dread is a patch of gravel 

that shuffles from my brain 

down my throat, 

tasting ancient and earthy. 

Ghosts sweep in, 

soft as gossamer. 

One asks for a light. 

Another for a name. 

One wants my passport.

The other my soul.

—I WIND UP COUNTING SHEEP

 

Sweetheart

 

One of us would die too soon. Another should have, several times over, but didn’t. 

We were dregs, ragtag royalty, if only in our own minds. Clinic was doing a Ricky Shroder thing, and Ling was Gallagher without the smashed melons. Oz, he had a grip on us all, thank God. But we were so young, man. Life was a ripe peach then. There was juice everywhere you looked, enough to drink for years, feeling invincible, as if everyone would get older soon enough, but not us.

—FIFTY PERCENT’S HARD TO HANDLE, AIN’T THAT SO?

 

 

…I had an amazing writing day on Friday, ten pieces, like old times, only to somehow end up deleting the entire effing document. WTF? Big time bummer. 

They say no writing is wasted, but that sure felt like it was.

 

…I’ve been living in a fog. I mean, who picks four receivers who are either also on bye, or have already played? Dumb ass. 

 

…But 20 days until Jeff Lynne. How is that even possible?

 

…“A Good Person”—I found that movie to be wonderful, introspective, illuminating. Yet it did so poorly at the box office.

I wonder how much of the best art dies a quiet death.

 

…What’s hard is not knowing what to believe.

 

…Unicorns may not be real, but jetlag sure as hell is.

 

…It’s a little unnerving when you can’t even trust your own computer.

 

…When I was a kid, we took pillowcases with us Trick or Treating, and we ran from house to house until the things were stuffed full. That candy had to last an entire year.

 

…For the next many Fridays, you’re going to see a series of depressing pieces, so you might want to take a pass on that day.

 

… It well may be that in a difficult hour,

Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,

Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,

I might be driven to sell your love for peace,

Or trade the memory of this night for food.

It may well be, I do not think I would.

  --Edna St. Vincent Millay

 

…I worry that I shouldn’t want the things I want.

 

…I recently re-learned what an introvert I am. I hope it didn’t pull people apart.

 

…It’s probably not ideal to be wide awake at 2 a.m.

 

…Tomorrow is not today, if you know what I mean.

 

… “Remember the sky that you were born under,

know each of the star’s stories.

Remember the moon, know who she is.

Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the

strongest point of time. Remember sundown

and the giving away to night.”

– Joy Harjo

 

…You’re an alpha female or male so long as you know the way home.

 

…It’s incredibly easy to judge other people who aren’t like you.

 

…So maybe it’s me, is what you’re saying?

 

…Sometimes you receive a box and it’s not at all what you want.

 

…I have already lost touch with a couple of people I used to be.

 

…“You just showed your flaccid penis to the whole college, so I figured you wouldn’t judge.” Sex Education

 

…Did I say the wrong thing again?

 

…I often forget how old I am, that is, until I bend over to tie my shoes.

 

…We suffered a lot, you and I. I try not to dwell on that.

 

…Why does anyone come here? Sure, I have a lot to say, but most of it can only make sense to me.

 

…There’s enough guilt to go around, but if you need more, I’ve got plenty on hand. 

 

…I have a love-hate relationship with sleep, food, and H.

 

…“Maybe we could still be friends?” is enticing, but if you have to ask…

 

…Sad is when you badly need a re-fill and there isn’t one.

 

…If you’re that eager to kiss someone, chances are, it’s not actually love you’re feeling.

 

…Everyone wants to re-write this thing, or perfect it, but I rather enjoy greasing the pig.

 

…“Let’s go make art,” is something I miss hearing.

 

…I’m living on a cloud, or nowhere else.

 

…I’ve never minded dirty fingernails. To me, they’re a sign of being industrious.

 

…One day I took a closer look, and the hair on, and under, my arms was gone, just like that.

 

…I get why people like The Beatles, but I can do without them. Same as with tomatoes, onions, peppers, melon, garlic, olives, cottage cheese… 

 

…You can fuck up, and fuck up some more, and still be all right. Just remember that.

 

…“what if war 

is just a male version of dressing up, 

a game devised to avoid 

profound spiritual questions?”

--Louise Gluck

 

…I’ve got a dentist appointment today. She’s always so serious, constantly suggesting improvements when all I’m thinking is, “Does she not know how fucking old I am?” 

 

…One thing I know is how hard it is to keep it all together.

 

…We could be here for days, and you’d still not know what I mean, and that’s on me.

 

…10,000 steps a day, every day? You’ve got to be shitting me. That’s impossible.

 

…Any sentence that starts with the words, “If you’ll recall…” sounds a wee bit arrogant, if not also defensive. 

 

…To survive, you need a meal ticket.

 

…No one needs a Shylock in their life.

 

…FOX News can FOX off. That’s not news, it’s idiocy. 

 

…Maybe what you’re thinking is what I’m thinking and we should talk. 

 

…When things go on longer that you expected them to, that might be a sign.

 

…Tomorrow’s gonna be rough, but at least it’ll be tomorrow.

 

…Right now, I just want enough space to lie down and die.

—IT’S JUST SOMETHING FOR THE LEGAL BOYS, BUT NOT THAT MUCH FOR US

  

 

Transformed

 

On the window sill, a moth-colored butterfly twitches with a broken wing, struggling for balance, flight no longer an option. From the bed he is lying in, he reaches out an index finger for the butterfly to cross onto it like a bridge of sorts. There seems a shared knowledge between them, one of endings, finality, though the butterfly stitches across the man’s knuckles like a paper fleck traversing a taut mountain range.

Beside him, she stirs, rises up on one elbow. “It’s beautiful,” she says.

“It is,” he agrees.

She kisses his cheek and bites down roughly, erotically, playfully. “I love how much simple things fascinate you.”

“A wounded butterfly is not so simple.”

“I suppose not. Can you help it somehow?”

“I’ll let it have the run of my body.”

“Trying to make me jealous? I thought I had the run of your body?”

On the roof there is a sudden ruckus, like boulders and rocks crashing, the room convulsing from an attack.

“What is it?”

An enormous stone, or some other object, batters the roof and it collapses inward, opening up to a sky gray with thick haze falling like snow.

Within minutes, they are blanketed by the ash. The butterfly is gone or unseen. The man and the woman cling to themselves, petrified figures being buried in more heaps of ash. He pictures the woman transformed into a butterfly, healed and warm against his skin. He rubs its powdery limbs that are now uniform and straight. He takes a last breath of gaseous air and thinks to himself how lucky they are, that at least they died a beautiful death.

 

--August 24, 79 A.D.

—YOUR ACCOUNTANT CALLED THIS MORNING, THERE WAS SPRINGTIME IN HIS EYES

Bellflowers

 

She fed me bellflower after bellflower, as if each leaf was an elixir, some kind of magic mushroom, an extraordinary deliverance, and so I sat stunned and bewitched until alas I twitched and twitched, like a scarecrow struck by lightning. 

I was a knave then, on the cusp of something more, orange-ripe sunrises perhaps, while she was accomplished, wise as tides, or the sea cliffs above them, watching through a window as each wave crashed like glasses among the soldiered boulders below.

I was young and dumb, but I still believed in love, beauty and hope, all that sappy stuff, for the longest time I did, because it felt nourishing to bathe in such thoughts, and because she’d made it seem true and obtainable, and because, for a spell, I actually believed in her.

But then the lava came, the flames and the fire and the furnace, everything smoldering and discombobulated, my mouth so dry that I choked on a stalk of bellflower, no air, no hope, only anguish. 

In the end. In the end, she could have lied better, could have painted the future better, could have not stolen my soul. But the bellflowers fell nonetheless, a fatal shower of them—plum and purple stuck in my throat. Mauve leaves. Mauve stems. Mauve, all of it.

 

—THOUGH THE CLOUDS ARE ALWAYS CHANGING, AND THE WIND IS REARRANGING, A PART OF ME WILL ALWAYS BE IN LOVE WITH YOU.

 

 

THE WHALEBONE THEATRE   /    Joanna Quinn

 

 

Without love, there is no dancing.

 

“I’m never sure what you think.”

 

She came to him with a frankness, with a blunt and welcome ease, like dropping your clothes on the beach.

 

Words are inadequate, such a lot of the time.

 

Romance is risk and passion and all things that make a life.

 

Sometimes he woke in the dead of the night, wanting to tell her something dreadful had occurred, to shake her and say, “You simply won’t believe this.” But there was no one there, only the whistling walls and the empty dark.

 

It’s pleasant to drop in on yourself unexpectedly.

 

“Not in the business of proof, mister. I gives you what they gives me.”

 

Outside, it is becoming autumn and the wind is running through the trees like a rumor.

 

He finds himself to be a heavy load. A sandbag man.

 

There is a power, Flossie realizes, in saying nothing at all.

 

You shouldn’t worry about what other people say about you. It gets in the way. It’s like walking through life with an umbrella up.

 

The sound of shattering glass can, after a while, cease to be startling.

 

She is getting better at waiting.

 

Even when you’re standing in the rubble, you can convince yourself that it’s habitable, that with a good rug you could make it a home.

 

“You say such awful things so charmingly.”

 

Art is the only sane response to an insane world.

 

Oh, this unimaginable life!

 

Anger is only useful if used strategically.

 

“There. There you are.”

 

“Hello there. How do you do?”

—TOO MUCH TOO LITTLE TOO LATE 

 

 

More Randall Brown…

 

 

How did the hipster burn his tongue?

He drank his coffee before it was cool.

 

Steak jokes are either rare, medium, or well done."

 

“I invented a thought-controlled air freshener.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“It makes scents when you think about it.”

 

What do you say to a Llama that loves picnicking? Alpaca lunch.

 

Cartoonist found dead in home. Details are sketchy.

 

Did you hear about the mathematician who’s afraid of negative numbers? She’ll stop at nothing to avoid them.

 

Bring me a crocodile sandwich and make it snappy!

 

As I get older and I remember all the people I’ve lost along the way, I think to myself, maybe a career as a tour guide wasn’t for me.

 

What vegetable is cool, but not that cool? 

Peas, don’t tell me. Let me guess.

Radish.

 

If I got 50 cents for every failed math exam, I’d have $6.30 now.

 

I told my doctor I heard a buzzing, but she said it’s just a bug that’s going around.

 

What made the cranberries go red? They saw the turkey dressing.

 

What did the baby corn say to the mama corn? “Where’s popcorn?”

 

My son was humiliated when the teacher showed the whole class that he failed the test.

I told him he didn’t deserve to be D graded like that.

 

What do you call two monkeys who share an Amazon account? “Prime mates.”

 

I called my pet termite Clint, as in, Clint Eatswood.

 

So I called my wife from the shop because I’d forgotten what kind of orange juice she wanted. She said, “Concentrate,” but I still couldn’t remember.

 

My new collection entitled REVERSE PSYCHOLOGY is now available on Amazon. Please don’t buy it.

 

I've been thinking about what I can do for the environment—and then I noticed all these piles of used tires at different places around Philadelphia. So, I started a drive (ha, ha) to get people to use, instead of brand-new tires, these used ones for spares. But so far, the idea has not gotten any traction.

 

What do you call a fancy fish?

So-fish-ticated.

 

I was going to tell a time-traveling joke, but you didn't like it.

 

Where do boats go when they're sick?

To the dock.

 

Why do peppers make such good archers? Because they habanero.

 

What's the difference between the bird flu and the swine flu? 

One requires tweetment and the other an oinkment.

 

What did one plate whisper to the other plate?

Dinner is on me.