"Adore me!"
"You bore me,"
and I am not like that.
Domestic goddess take a hike;
please get off my back.

"Ignore me!"
"No problem,"
I said into the wind.
So much for happy endings;
now let the truth sink in.

"You're on the precipice of something, and soon you'll be left with nothing but memories and time."
"Sounds like a recipe for disaster."
"Sound's like it'd go good with some wine."

I know it's New Year's Eve,
and that I should be out partying,
but I have a very strong desire to stay in and read.

Some nights are for writing.
Some nights are for reading.

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.

I cried inside my car today.
I cried while I thought of the things I would say when the one that I love questions me about the one I made love to.
(I didn't want to do it. I'm crazy about you.)
"You make me feel like a little kid again."
"You make me feel like magic is real."
"It kills me that you have a boyfriend."
It kills me that this isn't real.
None of this is going to happen.
I cried inside my car today.

I slid down the tunnel like a morsel down a throat.
It's true what he said:
Down Here They All Float
I felt all my hair rise up in static.
I almost forgot that breathing was automatic,
and in between breaths I felt so close to death.
Suffocating as I wondered if I'd ever come back.
A sound like a freight train shook my whole frame.
A hive of cicadas roared in my brain.
It's true what they say:
This Is How It Feels To Go Insane

I climbed a tree.
Earlier this morning.
I mean, yesterday morning,
I think.
There was this person on top of a tree.
He had climbed up it himself.
That person was me.

and some people will, but most people won't.
I think that you might. Do you though?
I'll wish that you would.
I really do hope so.

The craziest thing about a bridge is how it connects two things that have no business being connected.

It's interesting, the informational and cultural exchanges that result from such a bridging.

("Interesting" is an antisemantical word: void of meaning. Just filler, really. It doesn't mean anything.)

A bridge is a tool of conquest: allowing one land access to another, so that it may be subjugated.

A platform for seemingly well-meaning goats to impale and destroy any gatekeeping trolls.

Get to the car and run for your lives.
Hit the deck and call it.
Slippery when wet;
this floor's too dry for me to mop it.

Oceans deep,
and seas do swell.
How will we ever survive ourselves?

Fell into chasms devoid of light.
Provided a ladder to climb our way out.

No one ever asked for life,
but given what we've got,
we're obliged to make it right.

So send me a soul with its pieces awry.
I'll find a place for my own as I try to assemble these feelings into some sort of grace.
Break us again and I'll chalk it up to an obscure determination of fate.

I never asked for any of this.
Please send help.
Give me some bliss.
I'm drowning myself.
Come rescue me, quick.

All of my quests have left me diminished.
Leave it to me to start what I can't finish.
On to the next one to pick up the reigns.
We've only got so long before we're driven insane.

Slowly realizing that life moves too quickly when compared to the rate that we're dying.

Slowly learning that the only lessons worth knowing are the ones that take a lifetime of trying to understand.

Quickly tiring while waiting for some mysterious seed to grow into a full sized fruit-bearing tree.

All this time spent wondering how best to spend my time will surely be the death of me.

Wait, you mean I have to actually relate to these cretins?

I thought I was falling for you,
but I was really just falling.
I thought you could catch me.
I was wrong.

Quick and in short order,
we slid back to our separate sides of the border.
But it didn't feel that way at the time.
Every second an eternity spent drawing the line.

Who drew first?
I couldn't say.
I ran through my entire playbook on the very first day.
From there on out I was making it up as I went,
and you went along - every now and then -
until the last of our words were spent.

A penny for your thoughts?
I'll give you two cents.
(With my heart in my throat after every text message sent.)

Now all I've got are handful of songs I find too hard to listen to anymore,
and a nagging guilty conscience.

Everything I like in a poet.

I can bend this phrase three ways til next Friday but the fact remains that I'll never escape this cage without finding the bravery to make some serious changes.

A hope-filled faerie springs fully-winged from a flower planted in a bed of misery.
Her movements are mesmerizing but forgettable,
but oh how she sings.

The kind of haunting melody that plagues your dreams for the rest of eternity.

The thing is, I keep seeing ex-lovers and could-have-beens in mine.
They're always condescending towards me.
Telling me how I've wasted my life and/or ignoring me completely.

"Please," I plead them.
"See me for what I am," I bargain.

Sometimes, they look behind them while they're being dragged forward by their offspring and/or great achievements of their lives.

"I do," they say,
thus conveying that they want nothing more to do with it.

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

If I told you how many hours I've spent alone on my back porch
just smoking and thinking,
you'd probably think I was nuts.
But I'm not crazy.
You could join me if you want,
but I probably won't say much.

Never look down on a man with a dream,
for he is master of his own destiny.
His path in life may seem clandestine,
but he knows what he wants and he knows what he means,
and he's willing to sacrifice everything to make it happen.

"I think I ****** that one up,"
he said to the ghosts in the room.

We get where you're coming from

I wish I would've been looking up when the moon fell on my head.
(How rare to find a crater with these exact dimensions?)
I think I can hear an ocean's longing for the echo of a lost tide,
like a billion and one tiny grains swirling through my insides.

We get where you're coming from

No you don't.

Crashing on top of my bed,
I'll just lay down for a second
while in the middle of doing something important;
fully clothed,
light still on,
door wide open.
Beautiful dreams of madness.

Several different approaches,
but which to go with?
Past experience reveals the best angle.
Line it up, just a bit off-center
in an attempt at proper English.
No time for second guessing,
it's all for nothing if you don't follow through.
That hole is home. It's the fate of this sphere.
Send the others spinning,
then get out of here.

This poem should not be written.
These thoughts should not be thunk,
because I'm a little lost right now.
I think I might be drunk.

You're the one who hides beneath every thought that I do think.
The cause behind my highs and lows -
you're the reason why I drink.

Please leave me alone.
You haunt all of my dreams,
and turn me out until I'm coarse -
I'm splitting at the seams.

I didn't want to love you.
It was just a game.
Elaborate revenge for calling me "cute."
I underestimated the heat of your flame.

Big mistake.

Now I'm burning for you.
In the smoke, I see your name.
It repeats through my head as I writhe in bed
again, again, and again.

I haven't packed my bags, but my mind's already gone.

I threw up into the dark and wondered why the monsters wouldn't eat it.
I folded myself into complicated origami shapes
and wondered why nobody tried to unfold me.
I surfaced through a swamp full of muck just to take a deep breath.
I spat oxygen into trees and remembered that they prefer carbon dioxide.
They don't love me.
Nobody does.
I once chewed on bark and spat out blood.
I once swallowed sap and lost my taste for syrup.

I hate it. I hate it. I hate it so much.

I fell down wrought-iron stairs once.
I wondered why my friend didn't find it funny.
I was hurt and out-of-breath, but he didn't even laugh.
He should have laughed.

I hate him. I hate him. I hate him so much.

On my last night in the state,
his friend told me that they ****** each other's ***** once.
I promised not to tell.

The next time I go on a date,
I'll feed my date dates,
and I'll hate it.
I hate it.
I ******* hate dates.

If I ever fly a kite again,
I'll try my best not to think of every smug ******* who told me to do so.
I'll just let the string go,
and count all the swirls on my fingertips.
Squeeze the sand between my toes.
Kiss some innocent know-no-better
with the taste of salt-water on my lips.

I swear to God, I hate it. I don't even know what it is.
I hate it though, I hate it so much.
I hate it, anyway,
I don't even know what it is.

"Hey, thanks for the cat by the way. Thing doesn't want to leave now."

"The poor thing,"

"My nieces even named it."

"I'm not trying to take care of this cat right now."

"Ha, you're kidding. Well now you're stuck with it then."

"The girls gave her a bath, but she still smells."

"Man, just bring it here and let it go. There's all kinds of strays here."

"She ate a little, but she sneezes alot and won't stop shaking."

"Most of them end up finding their way to Galva."

"There's a shelter in Storm Lake, but they're closed til Monday."

"It's like a chemical smell."

"****, I don't know. I went in to grab a beer and when I came out he had this cat in his jacket."

"I'm not sure if she'll make it til Monday."

"Hey I'm stuck at work til like 3. Can you go by my place and check on the cat when you get a chance?"

"They've got so many strays that they put out bowls of anti-freeze to deal with them."

"Hey, are you awake?"
"Yeap, just haven't gotten out of bed yet. What's up kid?"
"Your cat. We gave her a bath."
"Aw, that was a nice thing to do Lib. She needed one. Thank you."
"Also, we gave her a name."
"Oh yea? What is it then?"
"Disney."
". . . you're kidding."

"Yea I was researching it earlier. It's a pretty common thing really. An awful way to go."

"I thought about just driving somewhere out of town and letting it go there."

"Well, would you bury it?"

"You know, pulling 'a Dad,' but I just couldn't do it."

"The poor thing."

"What? No way. I'd probably just, I don't know, put it in the trash or something."

"Well, it's a good thing you didn't. At least she's comfortable and not just out there in the cold, dying."

"I guess I'm not cold-hearted enough, or whatever."

"They know she's sick but I think only Libby really understands how bad it is."

"It's a good thing that you're not. Believe me, it's a good thing."

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.

He'd probably say,
"*******!"
Then follow it up with,
"Not in my father's house!"

Why are you so wacky?
Why can't you just be sane?
You've done a number on yourself
and the inner workings of your brain.
Take a deep breath, you'll see, for sure;
all is not so lost.
Make a path back to the shore.
Our light will guide you through the fog.

You don't understand,
I'm homeless in the sand;
my castles only ever crumble.

Then don't build them so big,
or so close to the tide.
Tame your pride,
and learn to be humble.

I'll share no reefs with bottom-feeding things.
I'll use no shells only fit for a hermit.
I'd rather spend my days in the melodic waves.
I've  got what it takes;
I know how to endure it.

If you are who I think you might be,
and if you're actually reading any of these -
if you're not just an offshoot symptom of my paranoid descent into insanity -
then I want you to know
that I've got something to say:
FUCKYOUFUCKYOUFUCKYOUFUCKYOUFUCKYOUFUCKYOUFUCKYOU
Go away!

Only instead of staying up all night talking on the phone,
I spend it writing to strangers.

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

I guess they knew it all along,
though I never let on.
Games are much more fun when no one knows they're playing.

Beat this one before,
but I'm not keeping score.
You can only make so many points with what you're saying.

So tell it to the wall, babe
cause I'm not staying.

I look onto the world,
and all that I can see
are tales of woe, success, heroes,
love, loss, pain, and tragedy.

I look back on my life
and see it just the same.
All of it so beautiful,
yet commonplace and plain.

I look onto the world,
and it looks back on me.
All that I can see,
all of it and everything;
nothing more than poetry.

The madness that started in March
is traveling into May.
I didn't even watch a single basketball game.

Won big to lose bigger and now the whole thing's a forfeit.
The ones who were in the back are all moving to the forefront,
and the worst bit is that I don't give a ****.
Not even a little.
In fact, I'm glad to be rid of it.

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?

Keeping it together in front of my uncle,
but I'm not though.
I failed.
I'm a wreck.
Look at what you've walked in to.
I don't care though.
I don't care what you do.
The feeling is mutual.

Aw crap, I mean fins.
No wait, fence.
Fences!
Do you wanna be fronds?
You know, you and me.
Just a couple palm fronds,
floating down the pond.

Wait, that's not right.
Ponds don't have currents.
No, see the problem is I don't currently have any frans.
I don't even know a Fran!
Do you?
Not even a Francis?
Ha, we have so much in common.
Let's be Frances!

"How was your weekend?"

"Oh, I wouldn't even know where to begin.
Just full of ups and downs;
very high and really low,
with absolutely no middle ground."

Lately I've been letting the smoke out
before I **** it all in.
The taste of it.
It makes me feel nostalgic
for the days when I didn't used to inhale;
those glory days back in high school
before addiction felt real.

Your wasted potential is just an issue that people who've wasted their own will pick on you for.

Surely, whatever you're doing right now should be worth at least thirty times more than what you're currently doing it for.

But if that number is zero then it doesn't make a difference.

It doesn't take a mathematician to know that smims maflori hindrance.

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.

Aw ****,
I'm gonna get fired for being drunk.

I get drunk, then I get weird.
It's kind of what I do.
Sometimes,
I'm weird when I'm sober too,
but only around those who never do.
Get drunk, is what I mean.
I deal with them best when I'm hungover;
Half-awake and half-asleep.
Maybe it'll be easier when I'm older. It's true:
I'm filled with doubt and dreams,
and hung up on memories that I can't keep,
but that's nothing new.

Still awaiting the day when the poems saved as Private outshine the ones posted for the Public.

Go slow;
There wasn't snow on this road forty minutes ago.
The factory's closed on account of inclement weather,
and the wind blows as if it's got a grudge against the trees for standing together.

I get home and go back to sleep to dream of sandy beaches and palm fronds waving in a warm breeze,
beckoning me to return.