This is no place to find the answers.
The answers are hidden somewhere inside of us.

This is just a desert of people digging for them.

When they say vulnerability is ****,
I always feel awkward about wanting to argue the contrary.

I tell people I'm a hipster before I'll ever admit to being a poet.
Seems like a less pretentious compromise.

I can handle being disliked for my personality-type better than being loathed for my hobbies.

Self-centered hedonism is a good defense mechanism against social awkwardness.

The people who are always so adamant about not giving a **** always trip me up.

If you really didn't, why are you trying so hard to project that narrative?

The people who really don't give a **** are so preoccupied with escapism to even recognize the social consequences.

Those are my people.

My brain is awash in budding friendships and cephalopods.

I think at this point it's safe to assume that all of my favorite ones are those who develope intelligence on their own, spineless or not.
Less of a social impetus than one of sheer simple survival.
An adaptation to life-threatening and serious impacts.

And the awkwardness invariably involved tends to tickle me various colors.
And the people who judge might as well be a den full of sharks, bodies going taught at the sense of fresh blood.

They can all **** right off.

I'm not the one to see how you'd warn them off. I'm more interested in seeing how you'd react to fun.

What would happen if one of your many limbs reached out towards one of mine?

Would our color-changes clash,
or would they match?
Would we play off each other until a new spawn was hatched?

It took millions of years for us to find the courage to leave our shells.
Now we're out here constantly shifting/adjusting/conforming by ourselves.

Would it really be so crazy for us to occasionally help each other out?

I find myself longing for something I used to be able to do when I was half my age. Something that now seems way more complicated than it used to be.

I miss lying on the floor of a dark bedroom, staring up at the ceiling while listening to songs on vinyl.

Such a simple recipe,
one would think it'd be pretty simple to recreate,
but they'd be mistaken.

I miss lying on the carpeted floor of my best friend's bedroom, listening to beautiful songs while watching her ceiling fan spin slow circles in the dark.

Sometimes, we don't realize how rare certain ingredients are until we find ourselves without them. Something that used to seem so abundant, so easily accessible - now gone. Long gone.

I miss lying on the carpet next to the one I thought I was in love with, the tips of our heads nearly touching, feeling tempted to just move my hand over ever so slightly to grasp hers, while listening to her records in the dark.

Such simple things that used to seem so close.
Now, so far away.

___
1. Verb
2. Adverb (must end in "ly")
3. Adjective
4. Noun

A day full of retail therapy
punctuated by anti-capitalism posts on facebook propogated by a person I've known since kindergarten.

Life can be funny in a way that doesn't make you laugh,
but at least it tries.
Isn't that enough?

I got mean-mugged by a stranger's bulldog through a window-front while folding my laundry on top of a surfboard that'd been repurposed as a table.

Purposes can be rearranged.
Full moons can rise over days that were strange, only to turn them into stranger nights.
But the strange can make things interesting sometimes.
That's got to count for something, right?

First day off after a month and a half of long days at sea.
I blew off every single plan I'd half-heartedly committed to on the smoke deck without feeling the least bit guilty.

Feelings can be unfriendly sometimes.
Sometimes you just have to choose "Me."

Some people are so egocentric
that you have to knock them down a peg or two before they'll be your friend.