…I mean if that’s what you want to do, go right on ahead. There’s some two by fours out back by the driveway. If you need help getting yourself onto that cross, let me know. Otherwise, I’ll be in here watching my show.

His crime was that he would find people having drinks with those little umbrellas in them and he would close them.

Then he’d run away laughing.

Donate to my GoFundMe to ban drum sets because hand percussion is far superior

I decided to run for some position
on the junior high school student council.

Treasurer, maybe.
No idea.
I think we all kind of knew
it was performative power anyway.
You don’t get to decree
school is cancelled
but you can promise whatever.

I wasn’t a popular kid
and I knew this
and I knew this was really
a popularity contest
more than anything.

I had to give a speech.
I prepared nothing.
I stood up in the gym,
“Vote for me, because you should.”

When they tallied the votes
it was such a blowout
that they didn’t tell me the actual results.
Probably because they thought
it would hurt my feelings.

As a kid, for a while I was into model rockets.

Kind of.

There are different model rocket engine sizes and I think engines like “D” were the big ones.

Designed for big rockets. But in my mind, for fun rockets.

I became interested in trying to shove D engines into tiny A rocket bodies. This took duct tape and an acceptance of the fact that you will never see the rocket again after you launch it.

But this was the only way. The fun way.

When you wake up at 3am

like a shot

cause it hits you out of nowhere.

I always have some level of creativity. Like a pulse.
But sometimes I get a surge.

Thursday night I felt compressed.
My interiority felt like it was under threat.
I was in bed at 8pm and laid there until 3am.
Just - taking a break from the world.

I woke up on Friday and the world shifted.

It’s not like a lightbulb.
More like the slip n’slide of your brain that slides ideas down to you gets a bit more tilted so they go even faster.

I don’t really stare at a blank page, waiting. I don’t do freewriting.
I just kind of go into correlation mode. I sit and think about things and zoom in and out, finding interesting angles, connecting things.

Creative streaks make more associations appear on the edges when I zoom out, and makes the items richer when I zoom in.

If this makes sense.

I’m rambling.
So yeah, I write things down.
Often here.

Then I let it marinate and examining from all angles kinda happens subconsciously.
And boom, it hits.

Anyway, this streak is closing out.
The next part is to sit there and re-read over and over, making little tweaks.
Fixing tenses.
I often listen to Tool’s Lateralus on repeat for this.
I don’t really know a damn thing about their other albums. It’s just this one for me.

But tonight I’ve been sequencing. Just putting poems in various combinations.
For submission.
I’m going big this time - APR, Paris Review, etc.

Fingers crossed.

I knocked on heaven’s door, but only before I saw the “No Soliciting” sign. My bad.

Of all the things that are important right now, none are more important than this. You must be told, in as many ways as I can sneak it in, that I like black coffee and lots of it.

This is the cornerstone of my identity, you see.

When I read a poem to someone and they get misty-eyed, I do too.

Continuing your travels across the plains, you will come to the city of Juro. The architects of Juro took advantage of the local resources and sculpted a city made of donkeys. Passing beneath the ornately designed gate of donkeys, stepping carefully on the backs of donkeys below you, you will come to a wide plaza where a central fountain of donkeys commands your attention in the center. At night, you enter your house of donkeys where the walls are made of donkeys standing on the back of other donkeys. You find yourself mesmerized by the twitch of their ears and the slow swish of their tails.

Your donkey bed is soft. It brays once, gently, and you drift to sleep.

Look, I cancelled Xbox Game Pass only because it was the thing to do.

Point at things and command me: “cancel”. My cancellation fingers are ready.

They said they’d give me a hundred dollars when I reached the horizon and I took them up on it.