I used to attempt to capture in writing all of the times I never thought I'd have the time to recall later in life.
To capture a moment I thought I'd never have the opportunity to live again.
To cage a thought I thought would live wild and free for the rest of my life.
To say farewell to a moment in a way that was gracious, but final.

auf wiedersehen, dear moment.
Au revoir, sayonara, so long.

I thought I'd never see you again.
Boy, was I wrong.

Somewhere someone I love is not thinking about me right now.
Somewhere else is where my mind lives most of the time from now on,
and I have to write this to a song I haven't listened to since the last time I lost my mind in some nowhere town,
thinking of no one I've ever loved.

It hides in the everyday now,
buried underneath.
It waits for us to pull back the veil that reveals the truth we spend the rest of our time longing for, loathing, hoping for, holding on to.  

It rides on the wings of the things we forget to say, that we only think of an hour later, or the next day.

It hides in our heads until we go to sleep then presents itself in our dreams with such pristine clarity.

It's everything you've ever wanted life to be when you feel too weak to put in the effort.

It's everything you've ever wanted life to be when you're too tired to think about how to best spend your next free hour.

It sleeps inside us all,
but we're exasperated by its power.

Mysterious poet with the obscene pun as a name, what is your game?

Sensitive artist at odds with her own sense of shame, are you doing okay?

Drop me a line or remind me that sometimes a stranger can be less than strange.

I'm struggling with change.

Or just hold it down and reach out to the void of your favorite stage.

I'm willing to pay.

These days are so crazy but we're getting too lazy to process the pain.

It's only making it worse.

Gonzo girl with her absurdly relatable way of reading the world,
let's hear a new verse.

Then I'd say that there's way too many Mustangs on this godforsaken base.

Life is so friggin' weird, I'll tell ya.
The older you get, the weirder it gets,
and it just keeps on getting weirderer.

Grossly weird.
Wrongly and disturbingly weird.
Upsettingly weird.

But then, now and again,
pleasantly weird.
Delightfully, excitingly weird.
Weirdly endearingly weird.

Then weirder still.
Off-puttingly weirder.
Over-sweetly weirdly weirder.
Understatedly, low-key weirder to the highest degree contradictory weird.

Maybe weird isn't so weird after all.
When it's the only constant in life,
then weirdness becomes the only reliably normal thing, oddly enough.

You're like a unicorn in a world full of mules.
You are a treasure in a room full of tools.
A patch of bright color in a washout of gray.
Whatever "it" is, you've got it in spades.

Poked and prodded
'til brokenhearted.
Now the game's *******.
The stomachs knotted.

Pushed and pulled;
Together, alone.
The game's not over . . .

(Pick up the phone.)

I always expect the worst from people.

You can't rebuild schemas without breaking them first.

I don't want to annoy the few people who don't annoy me.

But at what cost?
Holding back.
Biting tongue.
Sitting out when I could be having more fun.

Oh right, fun. That became a problem. Having too much fun makes things fray at the edges.

So here I am, all proper hemmed,
and a bit lonely for refusing to annoy a friend.

People can't read minds,
even if it seems like they can sometimes,
but at least a few can read between lines;
what do they find?

Surprises.

(I doubt it.)

People can feel all kinds of things
without saying a word about it.

This reminds me of home.
The smell of wet pavement and damp grass,
the sound of a chirping toad mixed with rain dripping off the rooftops and echoing down storm gutters.

If I close my eyes and take a deep breath, I can almost believe that I'm back in the swamps.