When the stars fall down on top of flipped cars,
there's always some guy thinking it's just some molotov.

That's the thing about gravity;
It's so easy to take for granted.

So this is what it's like to be alone.
It's not so bad, really,
but I can see how it could get old after awhile.

I never really got to know you before building you up into an emotional vortex.

I could argue that you ****** away the best parts of me,
but we'd both know that I was really just looking for an excuse to shed excess weight.

I tried a trick that I half-remembered learning during that short eternity when I lost my mind.

It worked.
We were both surprised.

I love storms,
but not strife.
And, for sure, lightning strikes.

Freak out.
Sprint far from the start.

Realize you're just a caterpillar,
but then turn into a moth.

Attracted to the flame that's always been burning in your heart.

(But this is the part where the wings fall off.)

Walk the earth as a snail,
with your home on your back.
Leave a shining trail wherever you go,
but don't ever look back.

I want something, maybe.
A day or two with someone who gets me.
An escape from the same old day-in,
day-out, common place pattern I've been living in.

An adventure with a kindred spirit whose soul is willing.

Are you down?
'Cause I'm up for it.

To whisk a batter of secrets and spine-tingling stories with or without glory.

We can make it up as we go and/or leave it up to fate to guide us on our way to escape from a place we've been dreading waking up in every single day.

What greater miracle can there be than to just see your face?

I want real love baby,
won't you hit me up?
Let's take straight punches to the head until we finally go to bed with the most amazing dreams running through our minds.

I'm somewhere up and to the left of where you're currently headed towards.

Come find me.

Made a big splash by playing their out-of-tune upright in the spare bedroom,
with the kids all gathered around.

I can't play any songs that you might know,
but I can make this thing sing if I really wanted to.

"You should make soundtracks for movies or something,"
says an impressed parent.

Meanwhile I'm thinking:
*If this was my way of making a living,
it'd ruin all the fun.

The Sad Boy woke up and thought,
"Something feels different . . . "
though he couldn't quite be sure what it was.
Whether a lessening of one thing or an increase of the other,
he simply turned the pillow over then went back to sleep,
wondering.

There are three kinds of writers in this world:
Those who write from a positive place,
those who write from a negative place,
and those who haven't figured it out yet.

The fake said to the phony,
"I'm hip to your jive and the smell of bologna,"

Meanwhile, homegirl still pronounces the L in salmon.

Somedays are deep fried and pan seared to perfection.
This is not one of them.

The bonafide bonerless guy cried aloud that he wished he would die,
so we took him out for ice cream.

Springboarded into the future,
and now I can finally afford a decent piece of furniture.

But the disassembled futon in the unused bedroom looks as if it's been manipulated by some angry spirit whose soul doesn't know any better than to linger.

My oldest friend and first girlfriend gave me a tarot card reading while I stayed at her place when I was midway towards my new life in this strange state.

It was vaguely upsetting.

But I can't remember the trappings of a mind that I've taken every endeavor to leave behind.

The thing about a banana bar is that it's really just banana bread with frosting; banana cake, really, is what it ought to be called.

Banana fish can only be caught on a perfectly banal day, but it's the kind of thing one shouldn't wish for, ever.

Rewound into the past,
and for just one moment I can finally relax.
Stretch out the tightly woven brain matter and let it splat into ink blots that sort of remind me of that one time that we had a great time while expounding on our little personal explorations into emotional forefronts where all judgement was either suspended and/or explained in such a way as to not affect us at all.

Pioneers of living a life without societal fears where we were free to steer the wheel of progress in any direction we saw fit . . .

Aw ****, I have to work tomorrow.

While staring at a moon that looks like it's been scorched.

Maybe the worst thing is not realizing you miss it until it sinks in after you're 15 miles in toward the only place that's open within a 20 mile radius at 3 o'clock in the morning.

Sometimes I wish I still lived in a place where it felt like magic exists in an oppressive way,
but I did 6 outlandish things already this week, and that's not even counting today.

The lights on these tractors late at night are twice as blinding as any car's high beams. I don't know why yet. Maybe to keep the rabbits away from the machinery?

I get an almost perverse satisfaction out of seeing the weeds in my yard slowly wither since I've sprayed them with the toxic concentrate mixture that the guy at the hardware store recommended I hit them with.

The brand new mower is anxiously awaiting its moment of glory.

Sometimes it bothers me that we don't say things to each other like we used to, although it's also kind of a relief.

The thing about the girl in town who I think I might have some chemistry with is, she's a fantastic listener.

Warning signs can't be read from inside the womb.

Long all you want to go back to that warmth and goo,
but your stuck out here for keeps.

Don't worry though;
Life is brutal and cold and ends too soon,
but for now just go back to sleep.

Three is a
magical
number, sure,

But I've my
doubts about
this structure.

Sounds stuttered
and vaguely
Robotic.

Your alternate universe is full of plot* holes,
but at least you're the star.

Though I can find and buy the perfect glass to fit my fingers while I relish in the past regrets that linger in a shape that's vague enough to haunt me for the rest of my days,
I still can't help but wonder if all of it was just a vain attempt at trying to live a life that's been prescribed.
I mean, in the commercially acceptable sense.
I mean, in the romantically cinematic glimpse of what romance is supposed to be.

You know, heavy breathing and sepia tones.

What is it about hearing people having *** in an adjacent room that makes me feel at the same time both incredibly alive and also incredibly alone?

For everyone who's ever lost the all important parts of themselves,
only to find it decades later on some long forgotten shelf collecting dust.

The thing is, it was the best pasta salad I've ever made.

I can't remember a single thing that I said, except for the really generic stuff like: "I'm going to go find Emily,"
And whatever else I may have said in order to break the silence.

I wish I could remember it though.

You were in my dream last night, which I also can't remember.

Much like the In-Real-Life scab on my arm.

But I can recall throwing up in your front lawn. And wanting to leave immediately after, but not going.

Resting my head against yours on some miraculous bench. Trying to shut myself up and just enjoy the shared silence.

When everything goes sideways,
it's the diagonals that make the most sense,
But whether they're rising or falling -
well hey, what's the difference?

I know you.
I like you.
We've similar parts inside our heads.

But I know it's not like you
to ever want to share a bed.

You're ilk as folk,
cracked the egg to its yoke,
as the dyslexic kid couldn't help but laugh at his own joke.

The ice hit teeth,
but the bite bit deep underneath as the asphymatic kid fought for every minute of his sleep.

I woke up in a sweat after having a dream about being so misunderstood that it swept the world clean.

But here's the part where the bristles start to scrape away the dirt that's been left unattended for too long.

Missles out of mole hills,
shot into the long arm of the smartest kid in your advanced placement lit class,
who's been busting his *** washing dishes ever since.

The current bet is that whoever wears the gilded hat is as sure as **** to live in its brim.

I'd just as quickly double it on the off-chance that he'll win.

In a pinch, the picnic table can double as a shelter.
Nevermind the would-be athletes vaulting over it.
The lyrics of our song are carved underneath.
Sometimes, late at night,
I stand on top and remember how to breathe.

Sarcasm's beat,*
is the word on the street,
and those in the know are attempting to grow
something a little more sweet.

Rising from the ashes like a phoenix,
Or a fiery **** that won't flush.

I've never understood the phrase:
*Sweet Irony

Then I would wisk away all doubt,
Which is to say,
That I would mix it in with all the fears I'd rather forget about until it congealed into some edible manifestation of my whole life's worthless purpose baked into some half-crusted pie.

Eat it half-heartedly or else starvationally die.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,"
Said the blind cyclops in his customer review,
which is filed in the Physically-Disabled-Yet-Still-Insightful folder of our Customer's Reviews.
A folder seldom perused by our super,
who seems to prefer deferring all menial mentally-unstable issues to those who are new to the feild.

I hesitate to inform them that "field" is the type of word that I've always been notorious for misspelling.

The thing about being cool with everything is that sometimes people will try to chill you into freezing a frame that you've only ever enjoyed in motion.

Ideally, I'd've gone home already.
Done the dishes.
Wished that all of this had never'd happened.

Anyway, I've a feeling that I'll feel ****** tomorrow.
About it.
And this.
Bliss is offset by unpreferred circumstances.

Meanwhile, the Peter Pan version of myself who lives in the back of my head is mockingly bleating like a sheep.

An ode to all those lower-middle-class kids raging against their own insignificance,
romanticizing their circumstances and chasing cheap bliss.

An ode to all conversationalists,
who kiss each and every sentence with well read lips.

Here's an ode to those who,
while watching a meteor shower,
remember to make a wish.

Only to realize that the roses smell like bile,
because some ******* threw up all over your garden while he was black-out drunk.
Two days later,
you connect the dots and realize that ******* is you.

Pretty much sums up the conversation we had earlier.
The one about how you knew that I thought your pretentious pretty friend was more interesting than you.

Ford and folded to the river bloated.
For whom should we give thanks that our liver floated?
I'll bet three shanks that we'll hit the banks of the gold coast before we'll ever be able to afford it.

The odds aren't in our favor.
Cashed out and half-cocked but still fully loaded.
Goaded into a rhino's bargain for a goat whose milk has already been exploited.

I told you this was a bad idea.

Left the bar to run home real quick because I couldn't shake the thought that maybe I'd left the oven on.

I didn't.

1: Ah, I'm not ready yet.
2. I'm still just trying to get situated, you know?
3. Also, I ******* hate dating
4. I'm totally comfortable with being alone at the moment.
5. Maybe too comfortable! (Hahahahahahahaha)
6. I'm probably more of a loner-type, you know?
7. I've never been very good at relationships, and they almost always don't end well.
8. Oh god, I can't even tell you the last time I was in a serious relationship.
9. It's been a long time since I've been with someone.
10. (Maybe too long! (Hahahahahahahahahahaha))
11. Ah, just the headache and heartache and having to answer to someone else all of the time. I prefer to just only have to look out for myself.
12. And I have enough trouble just doing that, most days . . .  
13. In a relationship, it's almost like you have to split yourself in two.
14. And in my not-so-humble opinion, when you add the two parts together, they still don't exactly equal a whole, you know?
15. I don't know. I'm just too selfish I guess.
16. Are you kidding? Yea but no, totally. She's beautiful, and seems really nice.
17. But beauty and kindness kinda freaks me out, you know?
18. It's been too long since beauty's been nice to me. (Maybe too long! (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA))
19. I'm ******* mental, really.
20. Anyone who tries to get close to me realizes that before too long.
21. No, not the interesting kind of mental; more like the annoying/intolerable kind.
22. I don't think I could handle it, honestly.
23. And honestly, it's been so long that just the idea of becoming emotionally involved with someone else scares the ever-living **** out of me.
24. Alright, **** it. Sure, why not? What's her name again?

I wish they had an app where you could record yourself making vague responses like:
Oh yea?
Mhmm.
Really?
Uh huh.
No kidding.

And then could answer a phone call with said app, which would play all of these pre-recorded responses intermittenly while the person on the other line blabs a bunch of ******* drunken nonsense to someone who they believe is listening.

Your rough edges have all been ground down.
Calm little pebble, you're so smooth now.

Easy come and easy go.
Things used to be hard.

Feels like forever ago.

"Do you remember when we used to be sad?"

"Oh man, some of the best times I've ever had . . . "

The reasons I stopped talking to you had more to do with my own personal shortcomings than with anything you did.

There's a certain kind of silence here.
The profound and total only-in-the-country type of silence that city folk fear.
(The kind that my poor mother back home staves off with television and beer.)

So heavy and complete that even with your head under the sheets it's impossible to keep warm enough to ever get any decent sleep.
It's the kind of silence that pierces dreams.

The kind that a tortured mind can easily fill with demons of every type.
The kind that keeps you on edge all night with wide searching eyes and adrenaline rushes flooding in behind any foreign sound,
followed by a slow winding down of blood pressure and panic and heart beats.

The kind that when you suddenly wake up in it and glance at the alarm clock,
you hope like hell the first number isn't 3.

*

*It's moments like these that make me wish there was somebody else here with me,
if only for the reassurance that a nearby body can bring.
The sound of someone else's steady breathing.

And maybe, a naked back to trace the subtle valleys of while half-asleep,
thinking little epiphanyish-type thoughts that'll be forgotten by morning.
The kind that usually start or end with: "This is it."

Not everybody is interested in everything.
Everyone's got their own particular sphere and multi-limbed web of general interests.
When one goes on about a topic that another finds uninteresting, then their listener is bound to get bored, (and boredom is the precursor to annoyance.)

This is where tact comes in. Tactfulness is the ability to read boredom (as well as uneasiness, embarrassment, and any other general anxiety-inducing feelings) in your listener. Someone with tact knows when to change the subject and/or shut up altogether. It's a subtlety.

However, the more passionate one feels about a subject, the harder it is for them to show tact when talking about it.

This explains why nerds and drunks get such a bad rap for being annoying. (God forbid, a drunken nerd . . . )
Because they feel so passionately about the topics that they're interested in that they'll often talk at great length about them without any regard for their audiences' boredom. (And prolonged boredom invariably leads to annoyance.)

This is why the nerdiest of nerds is often regarded as a god amongst their peers (with "peers" in this sense really just meaning people of similar interests.) Because they have such vast knowledge of such a particular subject (which is often of very little interest to most Others. ("Others" in this sense meaning people who are outside of this particular circle of peers.))

The same may or may not be true for drunks.
(Although, there's something to be said about both of them being the most likely to have conversations with no one but themselves.)

This also explains general aloofness (a.k.a. coolness, i.e. "being cool.")
The types who seem so disinterested in everything that people often become interested in them if for no other reason than to simply find out what it is that they actually do find interesting.

This is why cool people tend to be so popular. Everyone trying their hand at gaining their attention by drawing it to this thing or that thing, with a weird need of validation being thinly-veiled beneath it.
(This might also explain why "cool" people tend to be such *******; often dismissing these constant attempts to grab their attention as either pathetic and/or depressing.)

Then, of course, there are the word-smiths. The Salesmen.
Those who fancy themselves so intelligent as to be able to twist what their audience would otherwise find disinteresting into something that they can't live without,
often through some combination of communication manipulation and nonverbal tricks.

But just don't listen to them.

If your face were on the moon,
then the world would be nocturnal,
because you're gorgeous
of the drop-dead variety.

If heaven exists, then it's within seven feet of wherever you are.

You're what people wish for when they see a shooting star.

There's something to be said about a whole lotta nothin',
but I'm not about to say it.

Jungle boots work suprisingly well at keeping feet dry in snow,
but they sure as hell don't keep them warm.

Some people are too quick to tell you that you're being a ****.
Meanwhile, there are others who are way too polite to even think of mentioning it.
If you're the type to give a ****,
then this could be a real problem.

"It's awfully hard to lead when your veins are full of lead,"
I said.
"At least, that's what I've read."

"You read too much then," she said,
then dove off the deep end like some kind of bird.  

I'm having trouble with compiling a digest of everything I've ever heard.
Which is to say, I find it all hard to digest.

Converse with one to get some kind of outlook,
only to desert those notions for the exact converse.

The answer's buried somewhere in a desert, underneath a billion minute grains of other answers,
but the words still flow like leaves in water,
and every minute of it just leaves me feeling number.

If luck be a lady, then I've got her number,
but who be the drawer?
And which drawer did I file it under?

"With the birds and shed it's a lonely view."
- Scar Tissue   The Red Hot Chili Peppers
(My brother, I think. It might've been me. Maybe both of us. Still a great song, either way.)

"I came in like a raiiiiiiiiinnbow!"
- Wrecking Ball   Miley Cyrus
(My sister. (Honestly I like her version better.))

"***** deeds, Dunder chief!"
- ***** Deeds   AC/DC
(My dad. Easily my favorite of all these.)

"There goes my hero, watch him as he goes.
There goes my hero: sergeant Harry!"
- My Hero   The Foo Fighters
(This was all me. For the longest time I thought this song was about a real guy. Good ol' Sgt Harry.)

"The boys of Becking town! The boys of Becking towowooown!"
The Boys Are Back In Town   Thin Lizzy
(My dad, again. (He's deaf in one ear.))

"With the birds and shed it's a lonely view."
- Scar Tissue   The Red Hot Chili Peppers

"I came in like a raiiiiiiiiinnbow!"
- Wrecking Ball   Miley Cyrus

"***** deeds, Dunder chief!"
- ***** Deeds   AC/DC

"There goes my hero, watch him as he goes.
There goes my hero: sergeant Harry!"
- My Hero   The Foo Fighters

"The boys of Becking town! The boys of Becking towowooown!"
The Boys Are Back In Town   Thin Lizzy

Medicine is all relative.
The trick is to find something that makes you feel okay by the end of the day.
I think I've found one that works well,
(with a slight side-effect of sometimes making the next one a living hell.)

But I've found an antidote for this problem:
Bacon, eggs, toast and coffee.
Though I can't have more than three or else I'll get all jittery,
and start saying really weird things,
which may drive me to self-medicate a little more the following night.
You know, just to feel alright about all of the weird things I may have said and end up regretting later on.

Luckily, there are medicines that can erase regretful memories,
but you probably shouldn't have more than six of these,
or else some really weird things may start happening.

Like remembering where you parked the opossum car in that one dream you had when you turned thirteen,
while forgetting that today is your nephew's fourth birthday.

Here, I got you this.

"Hey, I don't think that's really an appropriate gift."

"What do you mean? I would've been thrilled to've my own taxidermied bobcat's head when I was six."

"There're so many things wrong with that sentence that I don't even know where to begin."

Medicine is all relative.
Subjective, if you will.
If what works for you doesn't work for them,
well then, who gives a ****?

We've all got our own illnesses to deal with.

A liquid thing.
Somewhere between melting and floe.
A shifting thing,
separating sheets that shroud the unknown.
A spiraling siphon that grows as senses heighten.
A quickening pulse that gathers and glows.

"Man, I thought I told you the show doesn't start til eleven."

No man, the show goes when I do,
to wherever I'm headin'

He glides down the street on free swinging feet.
Slides through the scenes in this ballet of dreams.
The only audience he needs is watching from heaven.

It's a burning thing.
Somewhere between an eruption and candle,
with sizzling skin left behind by things too hot to handle,
and footprints singed into the sidewalk.

It's a shifting of plates inside the brain.
A breaking up of the saner parts.
A typhoon of thoughts and a flame in the heart
that hits the body like an earthquake.

"Why are you telling my any of this?"

"I don't know . . .
I can't really afford a therapist."

He started stringing dollar bills along with his words to increase the odds of someone picking up what he was putting down.