—RABBIT, RABBIT

 

afterward

 

the wind asks me

who am I after 

the pandemic

so I draw answers 

from a worn 

Ouija board 

that hasn’t seen 

the light in that space 

between twilight 

and total darkness 

on the razor-edge of 

depression and trying 

to fool myself 

as well as 

everyone I know 

and afterward everyone 

I know thinks they 

know me but how 

can they when I 

don’t know myself 

when my lungs fill 

with black mold 

and I’m too old for 

promotion or a publicist 

as I sit and swing 

in a yellow chair 

watching the waves 

spread and weave 

like a virus that 

has both nowhere  

and everywhere to go

 —SOME THINGS JUST GO BETTER TOGETHER

 

 

—from WHAT I’VE LEARNED, Esquire

 

You can be a great singer, have great songs, be a great performer—and it still might not happen.

 

I graduated second in my class in high school. I was in pre-law in college. Then I discovered playing guitar. I finally had to make a phone call to my mom and say, “I’m going to drop out of college, sell everything I have, and move to Nashville.” I said that wincing, expecting a rebuke, but I got “If you don’t do it, you’ll always regret it.”

 

Everybody forgets it’s your personal relationship with God. Everybody wants to infringe on your personal relationship.

 

Love is being angry. Love is not talking for a day. Love is getting in each other’s face. Love is accepting that I’m wrong. Love is a 360-degree thing. It’s not linear.

 

Ego always bores me. So, I’m sure I bore people on occasion.

 

Sometimes God just walks through the room, and you happen to be standing in it.

 

—Tim McGraw

 

 

Sometimes I don’t think you should leave it to God. I think God has better things to do than get you that job promotion.

 

Trauma doesn’t go away, it only becomes manageable if we deal with the pain of it.

 

Growing older gracefully means having a keen curiosity about learning things about the world that you didn’t know yesterday, no matter how many yesterdays you’ve had.

 

I don’t feel guilty taking pleasure in things anymore. I feel guilty that I didn’t take pleasure more when I was younger.

 

The best utensil in the kitchen? The wooden spoon.

 

—Padma Lakshmi

—LET’S MAKE IT GOLD

 

…Today is the day!

Happy Birthday to this girl.

https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/len-kuntz/this-is-me-being-brave/paperback/product-4ep8g7.html?page=1&pageSize=4

 —I CAN FEEL THE SUN SHINING ON YOUR SOUL

 

 

…In order to do this post, I was all prepared to trek on over to the library or Starbucks when a small miracle happened—the power and internet came back to life after a near 24-hour blackout.

All the hype about a “Bomb Cyclone” ravaging the area turned out to be accurate.

 

Branches broke free from the trees and landed on our power lines, which then sent them ablaze despite the torrent. I went out to check on the situation, standing under the havoc but slightly left of it when the loudest BANG I’ve ever heard in my life sent me almost reeling backward into a ravine.

 

The good news is I finished two books during that span, and started a third, “Since I Laid My Burden Down,” by Brontez Purnell which I am loving as much as I did his “100 Boyfriends.”

 

The other good—no wait, it’s actually great—news is that my new book should be coming out on Wednesday! What, what? Yep, if all goes well. I’ll post about it then.

 

I also wrote a lot of random stuff while the world was swirling outside my windows last night. Writing by lamplight is kind of fun… 

 

 

Damn the Weather

 

 this weather 

wants me dead

cedar seedlings  

flying sideways like 

copper whiskbrooms 

across the frightened lake 

and all I can do is hope 

the bomb cyclone misses 

you the way I do

it’s a sentimental churning 

of the senses that makes no 

sense given our track record

but I’ll still slip the album 

on the turntable anyway

watch it spin like a reboot 

listen to Lana sing 

All roads that lead to you

as the wind blows us out

the door down the road where 

trees land like cannons and 

mother nature takes her 

meat rare and bloody

—LIVIN’ ON A PRAYER

 

arthropods

 

        my brother stays busy eating spiders, spiders of every shape and size, hairy critters, gauzy-legged, some escaping, stitching up his nostrils, weaving among his dense nose hair until they bore through both tunnels, feasting on his eyes, laying their eggs in the nests they’ve made of his sockets, so that when I ask him why he raped me, he can look perplexed, instead of stupid or amused.

 —GOAT HEAD IN THE BACK. HOW’M I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT?

 

 

Hunger

 

Mother had a hunger that scared me. Her skeleton key-eyes always snooping, her talons constantly clicking like castanets. 

Her teeth crushed glass, her lips strands of prison, razor wire.

The strays who visited got eaten. There would be a bloody toupee on the sofa, a severed nose or penis bobbing in the toilet.

When the men stopped coming by, she made her way to my room, locked the door, and said, “You were never my favorite, but you wouldn’t believe how famished I am.”

 

  

—SENDING YOU LOVE, AND THEN SOME

 

Kraken

 

I wet the bed on my honeymoon. Laid there in the dank dark, steel-stiff. The stain beneath me spreading like a wet forest fire. A raging drench climbing up my spine, down my shriveled testicles. Sour fish or Gila monsters jumping off my shoulders. The splash enormous. Wicked water, wicked waste everywhere. I stuffed pillows in my mouth to keep from screaming. I jammed fingers and thumbs. The taste was like an empty kerosene can. I puked up blood and guts, more foul foam to swim in. A kraken pulled me under the urine waves. Its tentacles like outlandishly long fingers, with suction cups that ripped off patches of my skin. Its mouth was a tarpit French-kissing me. Its lips tasted briny, like ripe piss and excrement. I held my breath for several years, while the bones of ancient pirates scraped my soles. I held my breath until the woman I lay beside rolled over and shook me dead. But I couldn’t die. I’d become eternal liquid, a jelly fish boy, shivering like the ghost of someone younger who once looked like me. The stained bed sheets waved on the clothesline where mother would hang them so the kids riding the school bus could relish my shame, then kill me each afternoon, right there on the playground, where all the best murders took place.