—THERE’S MILLIONS OF PEOPLE, TO OFFER ADVICE AND SAY WHO I SHOULD BE

 

 

…All I had is what I gave.

 

…Your toes are perfect.

…Anymore I don’t recognize my feet at all. Fred Flintstone might have had these. In any event (an expression I loath), uglier feet have never been seen. Nope.

 

…This whole thing mostly seemed like a disaster, which probably meant we were supposed to be together all along.

 

…I’m just saying that luck, and timing, are usually everything when it comes to being alive.

...Even if I don't totally understand it, I appreciate it.

 

…I can’t believe I’m writing all of this with a pen in my hand. Yay, for miracles. If this is you, God, thank you. 

…The ocean is such a wonder in so many ways. How does a person even describe it?

 It may be the most beautiful thing on the planet.

 

…I’ve yet to figure out the logic behind a “Tramp Stamp,” though I’ve certainly seen my fair share of those, of late.

 

…When you finally decide to suspend disbelief, that’s when you know you’re onto something that is, or should be, taken notice of.

 

…I guess I’m better at small talk than I think. I did it for two hours, remembered everything he said, and didn’t even blink once.

 

…No, you’re not that patient, thank God.

 

…When you grow up poor, even if you’re not now, in your head, you think you still are, which is probably a good thing.

 

…I have a lot of opinions, God knows, but not that many answers.

 

…I have a lot of opinions, but as to who the most terrible person is in this country, I will not concede my stance. Not for a second.

 

…I wonder how many Pulitzer novels are just sitting there in a computer file, or a Manilla envelope, unpublished.

 

…It really doesn’t take a hell of a lot to smile, say, “Hi. How are you? Who are you?”

 

…Some of the finest people I know don’t even speak the same language as me.

 

…Aren’t immigrants just people, too?

 

…God, help us next year. We really need your blessing or covering or whatever you want to call it. Me, I’m scared shitless.

 

…It’s in the morning when I’m blow-drying my hair that I see the boy in me, but I never get sad then, for some reason.

 

…Don’t have to say, Good night, if you never wake up.

 

…I know I so often sound sad here, but I’m not always that way. It’s just sort of my go-to for some reason. Most days I recognize the joy all around me, me and my profound privilege.

 

…Do you ever wonder if your friend circle mirrors your personality? Wouldn’t that make sense?

 

…I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to that other guy on the subway who can’t seem to hold his chin up.

 

…When you ask your 16-year-old nephew, who is like your second son, “What group or who would you most like to see?” and he says, “Stevie Wonder,” well, you know that kid is different, is something speial. 

 

…I wonder if people have forgot about George Floyd already, the way the NFL forgets about Domestic Violence once a player takes a knee during the Anthem so they then trot out all of these veterans before every game.

 

…Do you ever wonder what we might have been?

 

…I haven’t seen a butterfly in months, and that’s kind of sad.

 

…Call it whatever you want, but you have to at least call it real.

 

…So much wasted time.

 

…I often wonder how many people say, “If only I’d become (the thing I was always going to become), things would be different?”

 

…Do you kill the angry ant or the hornet constantly buzzing on your arm, or do you just let it be?

 

…When you’re unsure, tip your head this way.

 

…I only feel dumb when I’m alive.

 

…You hit a kid at a certain time, and enough times, and he might not ever forget it, even when he's an old man.

 

…Everybody hurts sometimes. Everybody hurts someday.

 

…The thing you do is you just start writing and don’t care if it’s awful at first.

 

…The story of my life is going to be a good one, I’m pretty sure.

 

…I swam almost 20 laps today with (unwisely) my eyes open in the chlorinated pool. My eyes burned like fuck afterward, but I’m pretty sure I saw Bud the Beaver and The Loch Ness Monster, dolphins and sea turtles.

 

…“We live in a world where it is more dramatic to lose your phone than your virginity." Megan Fox

 

…Fucking Kuntz and Leatham are like…

—HOW COULD I POSSIBLY KNOW, WHEN I WAS ONLY TWENTY-ONE?

 

 

…In a way, everything is ironic, if you think about it enough.

 

…Hot mess? Not hot, but a mess, yes.

 

…Buckle up, Sparky, this is the last ride.

 

…Sometimes just getting eggs into my mouth is a feat.

 

…Sometimes I get a little tired of being a white person. And male. And straight. And Christian.

 

…Shaving this morning was shaky. It felt like I got into a catfight, and that the cat, or cats, most definitely won. Just take a gander at my face.

 

…You may have forgotten to attach a file.

 

…Whatever POV you take, I’ll always try to see it your way.

 

…It’s no one’s fault. It’s just the way things work.

 

…Writers are a strange, needy group, but I love them all nonetheless.

 

…Gotta keep an eye on those corners. They’re such sly MFs.

 

…Introverted much? Every day, it gets harder not to be shyer.

 

...Kerfuffle—now there’s a word.

 

…There’s that, that thing you can grab and claim, and there’s all you can’t.

 

…I don’t think I need another reminder that I’m dying.

 

…The danger in reading the news is that all they print is the current precarious situations we’re in, like everywhere around the world. Is there really no joy anywhere worth reading, or hearing about? Like, really?

 

…I could be so many places, yet I’m here again, staring.

 

…You’ve got to let love rule.

 

…Here’s a serious question: Do you think I’m too damaged?

 

…Last night I woke up with someone squeezing my hand, only to discover it was my other hand.

 

…Listening to Queen B’s new song, it seems like she’s playing to the T folk, and I’m not too keen on it.

 

…Whenever someone asks, “What happened?” I just shrug and give them your number.

 

…There was something amiss in your apology.

 

…Is “train wreck” one or two words?

 

…How about “badass?”

 

…It’s hard to dodge the sun and bitch about it when that’s all you’ve ever wanted.

 

…“And when nobody wakes you up in the morning, and nobody waits for you at night, and when you can do whatever you want. What do you call it, freedom or loneliness?” Charles Bukowski

 

…This luck’s gonna run out eventually. I hope I’m fully prepared for that day.

 

…I really don’t think my phone could be anymore fucking obnoxious. Now it wants me install all kinds of things, and, “No,” I don’t know every last password I’ve ever had.

 

…If I blinked, would it all disappear? Probably not. Probably just me.

 

…“It’s not enough to be nice in life. You’ve got to have nerve.” Georgia O’Keefe 

 

…It’s sad to say this, and I know it sounds crass as Hell, but we live in a country with very stupid people. Open up your fucking eyes, and ears. I mean, God Lord, come on.

 

…I know, you never intended to be in this world.

But you’re in it all the same.

So why not get started immediately.

I mean, belonging to it.

There is so much to admire, to weep over.

And to write music or poems about.

Bless the feet that take you to and fro.

Bless the eyes and the listening ears.

Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.

Bless touching.

You could live a hundred years, it’s happened.

Or not.

I am speaking from the fortunate platform

of many years,

none of which, I think, I ever wasted.

Do you need a prod?

Do you need a little darkness to get you going?

Let me be as urgent as a knife, then,

and remind you of Keats,

so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,

he had a lifetime. 

~Mary Oliver

 

…“Check your rings”  = ’s  “Get off your flat ass.”

 

…Somedays you just feel like dying, even though you know you don’t really mean it.

 

…I got asked to blurb a book yesterday, which felt really good. It’s been a while.

 

...A neighbor in Virginia once told me that if I was any more mellow, I’d be dead. I guess I let him see that side of me. And this was when I ran a store with 600 employees. When what poured out of me was energy and charm. Yet there I was on the stoop that day, staring into the sun.

 

…I don’t expect anyone to have what we have. How would that even be possible?

 

…"I always entertain the notion that I'm wrong, or that I'll have to revise my opinion. Most of the time that feels good; sometimes it really hurts and is embarrassing." Anthony Bourdain

 

…I’m too tired to count sheep anymore. They just keep floating around in oblong circles, floating away forever and ever, searching for somewhere else to land.

 

…I’ve actually never seen a real grenade, but it very much feels as if I’ve heard one.

 

…I don’t believe Miranda July or Eileen Miles are ever going to blurb a book of mine, and I think I’m okay with that.

 

…We all have a different script. Sometimes just reading it is hard enough, but you push through, if you can.

 

…I’m not going to get it back, but then, maybe I never needed it in the first place.

 

...Young boy, young boy… Why are you still that young boy, after all this time?

 

…“Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.” Oscar Wilde

 

…I think I might need a French Exit, or else I might need to get as good at it as my best friend is. 

 

…My stomach sure has a lot to say these days. It talks to me more than anyone I know.

 

…“It may have been in pieces, but I gave you the best of me.” Jim Morrison

 

…I’m sorry to say this, but sometimes it all looks ugly from here.

 

…Sometimes you just need a better reason.

 

…These seconds, they fly by like bird-shot, like pepper. Poof!

 

…You could be losing a lot of things without even knowing it.

 

…I’ve lost plenty. But really, who hasn’t?

 

…“Laying” or “lying” has to be the biggest conundrum ever.

 

…Yesterday the walls didn’t even want to talk to me.

 

…Paula just wanders aimlessly, from yard to yard, and she doesn’t even realize what a wonder she is.

 

…I hope this is true, because then it takes a weight off—“The buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching toward infinity.” A. Edward Newton 

 

…I forget more than I remember anymore. But what I remember is pretty worthwhile. 

 

…A lot of the time, I don’t know what I’m doing, but I keep doing it anyway.

 

…That didn’t last long. Too bad, Chad.

 

…I was never a huge Soundgarden fan, but being a depressive myself, and knowing all Chris went through, this struck me as exceptionally powerful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuUDRU9-HRk

 

…A little bit of pain goes a long way in the scheme of things.

 

…Co-worker: “Why do you call everyone, ‘Fucker’?

Me: “It’s gender neutral.”

 

…“We are so lightly here. It is in love that we are made. In love we disappear.” Leonard Cohen

 

…“But luxury has never appealed to me. I like simple things—books, being alone, or with somebody who understands.” Daphne du Maurier

 

…Ginger…

—DO YOU REALLY WANNA LIVE FOREVER?

 

 

F   r   i   d   a   y     #   10  

 

 

The rain sounds like mocking laughter, as if all my dead friends have gathered to snicker and sneer, and I’m not sure why they’re wearing Kevlar, or what’s in those backpacks, but something just clicked, the sound like a grenade pin lifted, and instead of running, each one merely approaches closer.

—I CAN EAT MY DINNER IN A FANCY RESTAURANT

 

 

How to Survive Age Nine

 

1.   Sleep opposite-fetal, with two daggers tucked up under your young boy wrists, sharpest blade out first.

2.   Make your breath softer than a whisper, even less than the hiss of a snake, or the wind rippling through a sail.

3.   Pray hard, and try not to choke, or laugh, at the outcome.

4.   Control your imagination—It’s your most potent defense. Create a monster that’s bigger, stronger, and hairier, even more brutal than the one that’s coming for you.

5.   Wear spurs to bed, detachable spikes that can be used to gouge eyes out, if you’re quick enough with your slender, shaky fingers.

6.   Be still as the ice cubes that are stuck in the tray, in the otherwise empty freezer, where nothing else goes, other than skulls, or your step-dad’s after-booze.

7.   Make a bedsheet ladder, tie it to a hinge, or a flange, and fall where you may, remembering the refrain, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

8.   Break a drinking glass and swallow each shard until your throat and belly say, “Enough. God, enough. I’m done.”

9.   Make a homemade garrote out of your underwear, and stand ready, alert, both arms up in the air like a victor who’s about to win his first big thing.

10.  Scream like the owls you see, but never hear.

11.  Become an owl, and swivel your head in all directions, noticing everything and nothing all at once.

12. Don’t become a Boy Scout, whatever you do.

13. Remember DNA is now traceable.

14. Forget about those thumbprints on your neck, how they stay there for days, like stoplights, or bruised daisies that never die.

15. Pretend what happened never happened, that the moon didn’t see it, that no one did, not even Jesus, because He was busy napping.

16. Lastly, tell someone. And not just a therapist. Tell someone you trust, someone who’ll believe you at least this once, even if it makes you feel less than, even if it makes you feel nothing at all.  Tell someone. Someone.

 

—BUILT A HOME AND WATCHED IT BURN

 

 

Kite

 

She is waiting for time to change, the day and years to change, the numbers on the scale to change so that she can be someone else, unrecognizable, thin as a groove or a butterfly that can slip through air unnoticed. Yet she stays standing on the bathroom scale, heels bent back, looking for a different set of numbers, ones that won’t excoriate her. Her mother said, “Too much sugar turns a girl into a pudding whore,” and all these years later she’s still trying to decipher that warning, if it meant anything at all, other than contempt or the bee sting on her cheeks that day.

In the bedroom, even this late at night, her husband is swilling from a bottle, his breath a blow torch, raspy and ripe like kerosene. They haven’t touched, not like that, in months or years, and she’s certain her rolls are the issue, their sponginess and hanging.

After an hour of staring at the digits that never falter, she steps off and walks out the door without even grabbing a coat. In the chilled darkness, she can see no birds, but she feels their eyes on her nevertheless, alert and expectant. She hums the remnants of a song she once loved as a young girl, something fairly buoyant, when a coven of starlings shoot out from the evergreens, lifting her by the shoulders, sending her flying like a kite with no tail, like an angel that needs no wings, yet knows precisely where it’s headed.

—WENT TO THE DOCTOR, AND GUESS WHAT HE TOLD ME 

F   r   i   d   a   y      #   9 

  

Friday is an ugly thug, hunched over, thumbs hooked in jean pockets next to the finger holes of a matching pair of brass knuckles. Friday wants to bust something, break something, likely bones. Most days, I’m a lover not a fighter, but right now I don’t have a lick of either in me. Maybe I never did.

—GIVE ME A SECOND, I NEED TO GET MY STORY STRAIGHT

 

 

…Somedays all I want to say is (…)

 

…I think most people just hope that someone else cares about your life almost as much as you do. And when you find that person, hold them close.

 

...I guess we’ll always be opposites now, going in different directions, hoping we never run into each other. But how juvenile is that?

 

…Someday, things are going to be different. I promise.

 

…We can’t all be as smart as the next guy, but we can certainly be kinder than him.

 

…Stevie Nicks seems awfully lonely today. That makes me kind of sad, if I’m being honest.

 

…Being shakey when you’re out to lunch, or at dinner, with friends, is tricky and not that fun at all.

 

…All you have to do is take a look. I mean, it’s not that hard.

 

…I wish people wouldn’t hate on Taylor so much. She’s really never done a single thing wrong, and who among us, can say that?

 

…Do I need to throw rocks?

 

…I need to be around other writers pretty soon. Otherwise, it’s all going to wear off, the luster and the vibe.

 

…The only vivid memory I have of my birth dad and mom together is them screaming in the middle of the night. I was close to five- years-old then, living in a trailer in Bismarck, ND. I still can’t reconcile the idea of my dad screaming. I mean, he was as docile as an antelope.

Back when I wrote rhyming poetry, I composed a poem about those nights called, “The Fight Between Three,” though I don’t remember the lines of the poem at all anymore, just the title. 

My 6^th grade teacher said that poem made her cry, which made me want to write more, and so I did.

 

…Worrying is no fun at all. It’s actually kind of insidious, like cancer that’s spread throughout your whole body, and isn’t anywhere near stopping.

 

…And Daddy doesn’t understand it. He always said she was good as gold.

 

…I often wonder if people wish they could do their life over, or differently. Maybe most of you didn’t make the same mistakes as me. Bravo. Brava.

 

…COVID or not, one of my very best friends, Jack, is getting two new grandbabies in less than a month. And he ALREADY has two. Am I jealous? Fuck, yeah. But he’s a really great Grandpa, as far as I can tell. Maybe he could do me a solid and drop one off here.

 

…Those regrets that float up to the surface, well, you have to either drown them while you can, or live with them, or else they’re constantly staring up at you from your lap, like a babe that hasn’t been fed in weeks. 

 

…It’s not even 9am, and yet the bolts have all come off of this rusty truck already. You’ll find them on the street somewhere, most likely near a gutter.

 

…We all view love through our own prism, so it’s no wonder that there are so many versions of it. But True Love, that’s pretty clear. 

 

…I wonder who I would be if I didn’t care about politics.

 

…Or art.

 

…If you’re not careful, a turret can feel precisely like a prison. 

 

…What I really mean to say is (…)

 

…Hey, what happened back there?

 

…Stevie Nicks must have a really sore throat today, what with all of her endless barking. I wish I knew her better. We could be friends, and I could use another friend, canine or not.

 

…It doesn’t take that much just to say something, to type a few vowels and consonants, say “Hi” or “I’m thinking of you,” and yet most times all you get, even from the ones you love the most, is (…)

 

…I’m not good at a lot of things, but I’m one hell of a hunger-striker. I mean, sign me up--I’m a regular-day Bobby Sands most months.

 

…North Dakota is a hard place to visit, and an even more difficult to live in, if you’re Blue.

 

…Maybe my diary should be an automatic shredder instead. Like Banksy at the auction. 

 

…Who can talk that much on the phone, like for hours on end, and not want to jump off a high place? 

 

…These ducks on the lake, they frolic and dunk underwater. It’s like having a rambunctious fish tank just outside your window. Free entertainment. Ask, but Don’t tell.

 

…I was a (Teddy) Kennedy delegate in 1980 at The Washington State Convention. Though it was a tremendous experience, I’m kind of embarrassed about that now. I even have a button that says, “I’M READY FOR TEDDY.” How subversive.

 

…It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.

 

…Take a minute for yourself.

 

…It’s hard to explain to someone how you can write every day, then send your stuff absolutely nowhere, only to let it hibernate and wither, like dry twigs, kindling or detritus.

 

…I suppose that’s where the idea of therapy should enter in.

 

…I used to think Lincoln, or Raymond Carver, were the famous dead people I’d most like to have lunch with, but now it’s changed to Mary. I mean, who wouldn’t love to have lunch with Mary? It’d be a laugh-fest. Plus, she’s hot as hell, dead or alive.

 

…“I wouldn’t marry me either.”

 

…I hate when I look at the time and it says 9:11. As superstitious as I am, I always figure that’s just plain bad luck, and something terrible is bound to happen.

 

…A guy who carries a straw around in his coat pocket is either an addict or a derelict.

 

…But at this stage, I’m just trying to be pragmatic, and prepared.

 

…“They love you so much when the clock is ticking.”

 

…Don’t lie and tell me you don’t want it.

 

…This is the real jewel, tarnished and all—a life in crumples.

 

…I see Pete several times a day, but Bud, where did you go?

 

…Social media is often a tapeworm that eats you from the inside out. I feel like a fraud every time I’m on it, even if I don’t punch a single key.

 

…I want a new drug. One that won’t make me sick. One that won’t make me crash my car, or make me feel three feet thick.

 

…Why should anyone care about The Royals? Not that they’re bad people, but, I’m just asking, “Why care?”

 

…I’ve been Blue all my life. And by that, I mean, a Democrat.

 

…Who would have pictured me here, all those years ago? Not me, that’s for sure.

 

…Whatever you do, don’t hate me. I couldn’t stand it.

 

…If I wrote everything down that interests me, I’d never stop writing. 

 

…So many stanzas, so many lines.

 

…Time for a re-set. After all, it’s Wednesday, step-sister of Friday. My first and least favorites, though what does it matter?

 

…When was the first time someone said, “I love you,” to you, and where were you? What did it mean? Does it still mean something?

 

…Talk about a tome… Can’t you just shut the Fuc% up for once?

 

...If you want to hear/see the most romantic song of all time, well, here it is:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPT3nwORbQk

 

,,,And your head is on my stomach, and we’re trying so hard not to fall asleep.

 

….No matter how old, or young you are, you need good people around you. You need a Bllllll!!!, if you’re lucky enough to get one.

 

…Trust me on that.

 

…Tie me to a tiny wooden raft…

 

…Lastly, please take care of your feet. You need them, and I need you.