A cheerleader
once wrote me a
love song
and it had lots of
horse imagery
and it turned out
that she had lifted
the song from some kids
tv show
but none of that mattered
because she wasn't a cheerleader
quite yet
and I wasn't educated enough
to scoff at plagiarism
when someone was trying
to show that they cared

how many idle landscapes
and unturned stones of fancy
have dissolved to into light
at the sight of the rising sun?
pull back the curtains of your phantasy
then pull back the curtains of your window
and let the dreams melt until
the night is a somnambulant pile.

the thoughts of your skull being pounded by morn
the unborn remains of the musings of muses
eyelids drooping and, with hesitation, rising,
and then your body does the same.

"you are dust!" said the tortoise,
chewing a leaf, the one it chewed for a couple centuries.
and i twisted my head and scratched my dandruff-littered scalp,
"why?" i said, my pondering genuine, as it tends not to be.
"because!" it said, clearly annoyed, "death is something you can't avoid,
and someday you shall rot, and be a feast for fungus,
and then your bones will wither away, eroded by time's merciless decay."
i was not impressed (though slightly scared), "i realize that," i replied.
"but how are you seeing me at this time as anything other than flesh?
i know that i will pass, and that my body will be deep underground,
worms will mate in my eye sockets, and the less said about maggots
the better. but here, in this moment, time has not run out for me, so why are you using the present tense when cursing entropy upon me?"
it stopped and slowed down chewing, eyes gazing back and forth.
"do you think my sense of time only lies in one direction? mistaken.
it can go backwards, yes, but it may go forwards too, and
some other directions you will not comprehend. divination is no delusion,
it's only logical."
the tortoise turned around and crawled away. this took a few decades.

let's go home then, both of us,
in a stride we found in asylums,
shaking, burning for above.
let the windows crack and doors snap shut,
never to be opened by hand again,
on the earth where passions sleep.
one day we will return there,
a world that we have never been,
our feet ache to ache after walking.

I would stop the
invention of aspartame. I would
stop my own
invention, just to defy
my defiance
of aspartame.

i'm writing to you because of circumstances beyond our control. the universe just decided to make me scribble down this epistle. my head rains, or perhaps it's hailing. regardless of what it is, it never snows.
i have jumbled, broken, fragmented consciousness, full of drawing advice and some stupid youtube video about a cat playing the keyboard, looped on repeat for eternity.
i was at the arcade the other day when it occurred to me that the world was a blank piece of lined paper and i was the pencil. but have you ever actually had to write from your mind alone? words flee you, coming and going and not sticking to paper.
during that trip i talked to strangers as they crowded around the cabinets, despite my mama's advice to be careful in the world. some looked at me with an awkward smile. maybe there i did write something, the prose of yesterday.
only the rain in my head never becomes a storm, i suppose. just bring an umbrella.

Partially cloudy, 85 degrees low, 90 high.
Sunny, 87 degrees low, 94 high.
Apocalyptic, 213 low, 224 high.