—I’M AFRAID I DON’T KNOW HOW TO SAY GOODBYE

 

 

…Come on, Ramona, church bells are ringing. Everyone’s singing. Why do we feel so all alone?

 

…“I started being really proud of the fact that I was gay, even though I wasn’t.” Kurt Cobain

 

…Bigotry is just a watered-down word for hatred.

 

…Hatred has always been something I’ve been fearful of, even way back as a child. But I’m starting to grasp the concept of it now. Doesn’t mean I’m less fearful, just that I sort of understand its genesis, how it starts out and blooms.

 

…I’ve never worked on a poem as hard as I have Wednesday’s, and yet it’s still a very long way from perfect. It was one of those that felt really important to me.

 

…I get torn. On the one hand, it would be nice not to feel things so strongly that they rip me to shreds. On the other hand, I’d miss out on a lot if it didn’t hit me the way it hits me when it hits me like it hits me.

 

…I’d probably be able to write something happy.

 

…“Why do humans need to be thieves of joy? Just let others have their own little slices of happy. There's enough to go around.” Stephanie Clark

… Dear Len,

Thank you for sending us "Waiting for the Light (and other poems)," but unfortunately, we’ve decided not to publish anything from this submission. We work hard to consider every poem fairly and carefully, but we're narrowing 100,000 poems a year down to the 100 that we publish.

 

…I think it was “anything” and “100,000” that both struck me. 

 

...You might even think I’m a happy person.

 

…People shouldn’t throw the word love around like it’s, “Please pass the salt.” I think you need to take a couple of seconds and think before you say the word love, that you should treat it like a nugget of gold you somehow found in your backyard, or a baby that was left on your porch. I don’t mean to make too much of things, but the word love has never been trivial to me. Please don’t tell me you love me unless you really mean it.

 

…This is a familiar song but—I could be in trouble.

 

…If you keep your expectations low enough, everything comes out smelling like roses. But is that any way to live your life?

 

…This is the one place I’m never shy. And I don’t know why, because I’m pretty introverted and awkward everywhere else I am, and it doesn’t matter who I’m with.

 

…If you’re full of shit, you should at least bring a sense of humor along for the ride.

 

…You don’t get points for trying, but you should still try.

 

…I’m trying really hard, though I know I could try harder.

 

...Maybe second place is just the first to lose.

 

…Who gets all the blame? I guess, it’s up to you to choose.

 

…I’m really sorry if I didn’t hold up my part of the bargain. And also I know how lame it sounds with me saying I’m sorry again.

 

…I’m not a fan of tattoos, but, you know, if that’s your thing, so be it. Like my kids have them and even my mother in-law got a cat tattoo at age 70. 

I just don’t like the idea of something being permanently on my skin that defines me. 

Even though I don’t like them, I’ve come to see how having a tattoo is actually a kind of bravery.

 

…“Beauty becomes so heavy sometimes that it looks like sadness. It's not.” Jay Halsey

 

…A friend of mine was struggling with a friend of hers who she said was really “tough, like a bitch-tough” and I said, “Just remember, in her head, she’s probably still seven or eight years old, and what ever happened then is still playing out in her mind, which is why she comes across so tough. She’s just protecting herself, because she’s an eight-year-old child trying to figure out the world.”

 

…I can pinkie-swear this: no one hates Goodbye more than I do. Okay, maybe Gracie.

 

…Watched the sun set over the Hudson

 

…How does someone turn down a publisher who wants to put out your novel, which was perhaps the biggest dream of your entire life? How does that even happen?

 

…I don’t know about that, but then, I don’t know about much.

 

…“It’s a kitchen. Its curtains fill

with a morning light so bright 

you can’t see beyond its windows 

into the afternoon. A kitchen 

falling through time with its things 

in their places, the dishes jingling 

up in the cupboard, the bucket 

of drinking water rippled as if

a truck had just gone past, but that truck 

was thirty years.”

Ted Kooser

 

…This is where it gets dumb and I don’t know what I’m doing.

 

…The whole day was waiting for me. Right there, it was. Like a perfect, shiny apple.

 

…Okay, just one more time. I promise this time.

 

…It’s hard to let people laugh at you, but if you can endure it, something important happens.

 

…“At this point, I have a request for our fans. If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different color, or women, please do this one favor for us—leave us the fuck alone. Don’t come to our shows and don’t buy our records.” Kurt Cobain

 

… Something I said to my son, the other day, after sharing music again--“I guess this is a case where we hear it differently. And that’s okay.” 

 

…Is it, The tracks are off the rails, or The rails are off the tracks?

 

…It feels like I should have learned more when I was younger, when I had the time and wasn’t so stuffed full of opinions.

 

…Part of me says, I sure hope there’s something left in there, but then this other part, the hopeless one, says, I hope that glass is bone dry.

 

…“I'm not sure I got to see the best of you. Or the worst. But I saw enough. And I love you still.” Barry Basden

 

…At this point, it’s stupid to get unnerved when you AFib, yet I still very much am.

 

…The thing about mistakes is they’re really easy to make. Fucking mistakes.

 

…This might be an overly bold take, but I think, when I’m gone, someone’s going to read all this back and go, You know what? That guy had something to say. 

 

…Between you and me, at this hour right now, it doesn’t seem like there’s another soul alive, or if that soul is even trying.

 

…Boy, what a bad idea that is, waking up just minutes after midnight, thinking that’ll hold you for the rest of the day.

 

…I know I talk about friendship, and friends, a lot on here, but I really didn’t have any friends until late in the game, so I think they mean a lot more to me than they do other people, the people who are naturally gregarious and glossy and might take the friends they have for granted.

 

…I almost never edit Friday’s post, but I sure did this time around.

 

…If there were no more books, I’d read the stones in the gully where I pick berries and sometimes trip, holding a couple of Tupperware bowls in my hands.

 

…When you have a blog, or a thing like whatever this is, it can create problems you never wanted. 

 

…Oh, boy.

 

…You think you know one thing, then you talk to someone else and it’s like you know something different.

 

…The thing to remember is everyone comes with a past.

 

…Let’s just get through this thing.

 

…“What are you so nervous about?”

 

…A lot of brilliant artists—painters, singers, writers—were really bad people. How do you reconcile that—the genius with their flawed humanity? I guess you hope that they changed, even if was on their deathbed asking for forgiveness, when no one heard about it but God.

 

…You have to be careful with excuses.

 

…All right, okay, we can go to bed now, can’t we?

 

…Someday this will all be funny.