you wanna take a guess? you wanna take a guess at this? guess nice long and hard. take a second guess if you need one. it’s ok to second guess. in fact, i insist you take another and keep guessing because guessing is smoke. in this tight circle, we’re taking guesses.

i am an educated guesser.

bummed guesses for awhile. bought my first guessing glass one July. play the guessing game all my days and guess my days away. they make guesses into the same thing as candles and its spiritual. it feels like taking an infinite number of guesses in one breath.

your guess is as good as mine.

drop to the next level. it is the doctor’s thesis of guessing. It is conjecture and formality, but with the fractal reasoning of a true American pack of guesses. they’re the guesses at the end of something replete. the last guess you have left.

out of guesses.

There is a string of panic tied to the last guess, which we tuck, flip, hide in the bottoms of cardstock caverns. when the time comes to draw the last straw,

B. there is nothing to guess at but a missing paycheck. These are the only answers we ever get.

A. she is there, all smiles and fresh questions with a bunch of guesses. she is my best guess yet.

you heard me correctly darling when i said i was

going camping in the witherness. look in this bag i’ve already

packed sun strokes, swill trunks, an array of emptying

books and a flashlight that projects white moving dogs.

in the witherness, we stack silent burning gavels, achieving

the balance of a permanent new moon. we are arriving

by cheap chernobyl trucks and we’ll know when we’re there when

the engine dies and we open the hood to find a blanket-less

girl. don’t worry, she is environmental. made of mist.

we stomp on her sisters, **** like holy anorexics,

steady our foreheads on the ancient bark of

the witherness (dark hallways in a house of leaves)

Quiet now. lay your spine on eggshells so that your joints

may hatch asterisk chirp double asterisk something

akin to what asteroids do, but with a murmuring whistle

the only noise you can hear at the edge of the witherness.

Silence is now. The sun is risen 5 hours where you are. It is the deepest twilight here, traffic lights disrupting. My window is playing a videotape of an invisible sunrise. It was directed by viking film students. They included your paintings in the credits. i hate to spoil the ending, but i leave you. The soundtrack was going to be radiohead, but Yorke’s record label yanked it. So silent film. Silent students acting like they never learn for my benefit. If it isn’t already obvious, the film is me. And you’ll never read this letter, as i’m already loading it into the movie reel and projecting it into snowy pine trees somewhere in Canada that i’ve never been.

Previous Lover and Grateful Friend,

i keep two buttons in either pockets

they’re part of my usual pocket cluster, wallet phone keys headphones matches

both hands in my pocket now, i run my finger along the ridge of the left button on the hard days

i roll the bridge between both buttons before sneaking out back and pressing the right button

but like all psychoactivities, relative direction, cardinal hand eye, the right button looks identical to the left and I left them both on the table in between tobacco pouches and empty beer bottles

things that press the left button: ominous psychosis, soma mania, fire flushes from ******* not listening, an empty checking balance, an empty emotional balance, an emptiness

things that press the right button: herbal breath in the nice chair, glassy eyes and extra papers, a quiet hour in surround sound

I stare at the left button while my dad calls and hover over it, pausing mid drag to weigh the consequences, weighing the empty balance, feeling an overdrawn surcharge to my soul, taxed in tension, fumbling headphones

the left button sometimes makes me yell, dissociative silence or telling strangers to go **** themselves because I can’t afford the time for anything else

It’s usually the left button I smash against the wall, slaughtered, obliterated, my friends hand me broken batteries and shattered screens and say things like, “press the right button, stop pressing mine”

things that press the right button: not me, usually.

things that press the left button: the left button presses the left button, leaving me with a locked right button, pressed permanently and I fidget with a flathead trying to pop that ****** back out

why can’t I hit the right button?

why am I stuck with the left button, ad infinitum, added insidium, snarling and suffocated, shaking it out in the center of my bed

it might be easier if they left me in a blue gown, *** exposed, *** laid down, pressing that ******* button by the hospital bed, pressing that ******* button like I know how in the coward’s way out

irregardless of what button I press, or what gets pressed, or what’s pressing me and pressing against me, they find their way back into my pocket cluster

pockets with my hands, fingers that get skinnier until my fingers are thin lines or circles or buttons themselves and I have nothing left to do but give them to you and have you press every button, drugless and dampened

things that press the right button: you when I need you to

and when you press it, the left button and the right button are one in the same

they are you and you can withstand being pressed or being there to be pressed

out of my hands and a little lighter

An acephalic poet felt the demiurge from a field of orchids and sunlips

Tapped on the shoulder by a nagging crastination -

the immediacy of putting off both before and after now

From the soil grew daymares that bloomed into ultrasight - the undervisible beauty that comes into view when feeling soft red

I was distracted, and retracted

(cw: kidnapping, ****** assault)

being paranoid is just being extra prepared for red dots, laser sights, red lights, blue lights. every

cigarette in the hands of passing strangers is an open flame and I dread like the pavement being burned and tread on, on the pavement, my feet walking

burned on the pavement, my feet tread

the cracks are inside dreading being stepped on

I test the walls by tapping on their shadows and humming over my shoulder, and without moving,

I imagine my escape at a circle of angles and determine the difficulty of each. the shadows merge and produce a man from a faceless corner

a shadow that had questions for me about a circle of angles

being extra prepared and protractor armed I scan and calculate for firearms and ****** features, hands in pockets, sharp objects, the signs of maybe a weak kneecap.

visions of epinephrine heroics, karate out of nowhere, super saiyan strength or sleeper cell ninja

the thoughts that come through tell me to stand my ground

in kind fashion, he asked for directions and left me disarmed

but once the dreams were done, the nightmare crawled out of the exhaust and the shadow grabbed from below

within seconds but feeling the eternal nature of prison cells, I was almost forced into the back seat, where I saw the scratches on the cushions as notches in hell

when the shadow stopped being a shadow I stopped being prepared

prepped and dreaded, treading in a circle of angles, desperately quiet,

the sound of rubbing nylon and heavy breathing to indicate conflict, cries for help escape after I do, looking for blue lights, sharp objects, red boxes and safety nets, threaded

light to knit out the shadows, weak in the kneecap dialing in

“Please give us your current location”

Myles Hall. Miles below, looking for my head in a circle of angles

you are not an impostor

**** those bastardly sons of ******* you are not an impostor

i know that you curl your toes under your shoes

hold your breath before you speak

check your laces twice before you step

out on tightrope 8 miles above ground

when you swallow a sentence and chase it with whiskey

trying not to choke on the sharp edges of “not enough”

your stomach bile will vault through your esophagus

in perfect lingual trapeze

stick the landing with ease and say ta da

say everything except what you need

when you rise from your knees

those itchy words will drop

into the soul of your shoes

with which you curl your toes

hold your breath

and check your laces twice before you remember

that you are not an impostor

in front of you are jesters and clowns

and a circus of whistles, bells, and frozen sounds

your shoes will grow three ******* sizes

because a) the grinch ain’t got **** on you and

b) you can do the Charlie Brown to space funk and

see(c) that you have all the room in the world to move your feet

tumble from your tight rope

let the people around you string together bridges and safety nets

go out to the carnival and win some bottle caps

take the stuffed version of you from the prize rack

and sleep well with it at night

In a field of concrete bunkers,

The left from the middle is guarded by a charred garden gnome

With a necklace of battery powered light up flamingos

And Cheerios

The hat of the gnome sits by an open hatch

The rim of which wears

Teal chains and hula fringe and

Cyborg rhino keychains

The ladder is cut from a sheet of metal

That had a ******* poster on it

And a mural of a man screaming

White and black lines

With a meeting seaweed mustache

And empty picnic baskets

Line the hallway lighted with fireflies and Christmas spirits

I drop a smoke down the hatch and wait for it to bloom

my reincarnation is that of a treasured cup

i’m almost entirely certain that my death will play a role in the cup’s creation

whether it be the clay I molded my alien hitch hiking signs into

or its maker lays back and reads in a hammock the same hours I do

just half way around the world

once my soul has leaked and drained through hell’s piping system

and what’s left escapes through condensation

the clouds will carry me to a bazaar

where the ceramic painting class is struggling to use oils

with rainy weather

in ******* up the work of most attendees

several of them will hide me in backs of cupboards

until they move or my soul dies of dust

one, if god allow two

painted mugs

are repeatedly stacked with layers of sediment

coffee, *****

tea, *****

coffee

tea with *****

a cigarette accidentally

my father should feel proud to know

his son’s vices followed him through the afterlife

that i got a nice home

that i accepted leaving parts of my soul in old cupboards

(Dad), i didn’t mean to contact the aliens so recklessly,

and i feel like I have to get off my *** if i read too much

i’m sorry i thought smoking was non-conformist

you’re right, i lied a couple of times

it cost just as much integrity as you said it would

i know i will do much better as a treasured cup

i keep my pride under house arrest

tied to an enema of ***** soda

that stops at the border of the premises

what a great laugh crawls from the nailed headboards

and sips from my resolve

i try not to show my subordinates the pressure points I worry about

but the maintenance staff knows too much

the maintenance staff keeps us up the most

they read the cracks in the plates

silverware scratched from being thrown around

every shard is collected

the professionals recommend 3 square meals a day

my pride is offered for breakfast

3 eggs, potatoes made one way, a dragonball shaped pancake

with 5 chocolate chips, and an apple skewered sideways

coffee is poured over top soul

my pride is offered for lunch

grilled cheese, something plain and boring, chips, something also plain and boring,

Gatorade, or overdone redemption

my pride is offered for dinner

grease, a good burrito with grease, an IPA,,,toast to mix things up, a joy ride with Cassidy, a waterbed of folk music, (zero ***** given), pesto penne, another IPA, a timeshare just south, and sometimes dessert

after yelling at the neighbors some

and a few reruns on adult swim

the ***** soda kicks in with a little extra

and puts us all to sleep

in 25 years

when the sentence is over

I don’t think it will find the same 3 square meals a day