Well, let me begin my announcing to the HP community that I just pulled my ex-best friend's child's mother's hair out of my mouth without realizing how it got there since I haven't seen her since Saturday. Yeah, good luck pondering that breech of physics. Also, I realized that I've been breaking the magic rules of drinking at work as laid down by Cracked.com with impunity since before that majestic article was written, which kind of makes me feel like a badass and also like a terrible alcoholic whom the gods will eventually strike down. Or perhaps, everybody at work with me is also drunk and/or high all the time, a suspicion I've had for about a year now, but have not been able to prove, despite careful observation. Sure, the typically WOW playing awkward dude gets a box of not one, not two, but three bottles of beautifully crafted wine delivered DIRECTLY TO THE OFFICE every month notwithstanding. And does our supervisor say anything even remarkably reprehensible....no, not while she's on the clock. But she did steal my Don Corleone hat, and by thunder she still owes me for that thing, since I'll bet all the money I made this year that she got some fantastic head because of that hat. There are minor arguments in the breakroom over how ****** the coffee actually is, whether it's police station or AA meeting detestable, and on slow days people are chucking gigantic medicine ***** across the room while laughing at the destruction they cause. Then, Monday through Friday, woe unto you if you call the 24/7 line between 10 and 12 at night, since you will be picked up by me, the 3-midnight guy. If you're an idiot, or loud, or from New Jersey, or can't seem to be able to wipe that bleached ******* of yours without assistance, DO NOT CALL. I will be drunk, and while drunk I will take whatever ****** excuse you have for being a worthless and pointless human being and very tenderly, very politely, shove it up your *** on the end of a very thick nine iron. This is real life, and this....this is where I work.

What she said to me sitting at that bar
sipping God's own overpriced whiskey
was the truest thing any one has ever
managed to tell me about myself.

And the drive up to town after
the ribbon of freeway stretching
on into forever and the radio full
of Bukowski's guts blaring with
her feet on my dashboard.

That room with wine colored
walls and a taste reminiscent
of some novel I know I've
read somewhere, somewhen.

Tiny bed I'm constantly trying
to not fall out of sweetly
forcing me closer to her
in the early morning grey.

Something unspoken and
something unseen but somehow
un-needing to be clarified
for once living on feeling
only what there is now.

Fire in one hand
liquid in the other
clutching these crutches
with feelings to smother
the pill
the powder
the *****
these people
my heart on my sleeve
soiled by the deceitful

In Dwimordene, in Lorien

Seldom have walked the feet of Men,

Few mortal eyes have seen the light,

That lies there ever, long and bright.

Galadriel! Galadriel!

Clear is the water of your well,

White is the star in your white hand

Unmarrred, unstained is leaf and land,

In Dwimordene, in Lorien

More fair than thoughts of Mortal Men.

To Flammifer of Westernesse.

I found all of my Army papers again tonight,
and revisited who I was then.

I searched back a little farther,
and found some things I had written before.

Amongst the buried rubble of a person
that I once may have been.

Piles of books and notes and scraps of
memories peeling away from reality as of now.

Sifting through old photographs
taken 10 or 15 or 20 years ago.

I wish that the person I was then
is who actually loves you now.