tandem bike
Will you ride the tandem bike with me
It’s no fun by myself
It’s no fun by myself
I promise i won’t tip over
I’ve practiced
But it’s no fun by myself
Circle the lakes
Make meaningful gestures
At drivers letting us cross
Hoot and holler up the hill
Don’t hit any kids or dogs
We can chat the whole time
You and me are going places
Such as over there
Over here
And in between
As many of us as we can fit
On this tandem bike
I like riding with a pal
It’s no fun by myself
(I’m wanted)
Its like a big beautiful horse
(Steel horse i ride)
On two wheels with two seats
(Dead or Alive)
moonkey
Wayne the monkey moon
Gibbon in the sky
Has a glow around it
I swear i never seen before
But I’m no moonologist
I wanted to stop in
Because it was on my way
From where i was
Thumb over shoulder
To where im going
Pointing thataway
But it was too late so
I moved on past
In the direction of finger
Had a mental cigarette
(This is when i go outside
And breathe real deep
Pretend that smoke comes out
Pretend I’ve become relaxed)
There’s so many fucking people
Hundreds probably
They all have names and ages
And more traits than that
I think about being someone else
But if i was I’d just worry
Over where the old me was
What kind of trouble they were in
I’m having bad dreams
When I’m not in my bed
Like a child
And i can only guess why
I don’t like the guesses
Occupying superpositions
Like that damned cat in a box
Where I’m fine, thriving even
Where it’s all coming apart
And it always feels like that
Regardless of where i am
I’m in the fucking box with the cat
So i have to use my other senses
To sort out what’s going on
Looks like it’s the first one again
Everything is fine
I’m doing really well actually
Good
One of these days I’m sure
It’ll be the other one
I could drop that box anywhere
I’d either be fine or not
Both ways I’d feel
Kind of funny
Funny haha
Laughing at the monkey moon
birds and stones
Killing two birds
By exploding the entire earth
Build your beach house
Fifteen miles inland
And wait
Build your beach house
Down south Antarctic
Where it’s still sort of green
Build your beach house
Atop the ruins of
Other beach houses
Atop the ruins of
Yet more beach houses
Worn into peaty grey clay
Start losing weight
So it will be easier to carry you
Start losing weight
So we can buy less eggs
Those things don’t grow on trees
Tighten your belt
Tighten your wallet
Tighten your butthole
It’s going to be a bumpy ride
The thing about heaven and hell
Is they are both very real
But the sign on the door
Is faded and peeled to all get out
Leaving only the first two letters
He he he
Heaving healthy helpings
Of last nights frozen dinner
Into the mouths of your baby birds
Orphaned by a single stone
Getting to the place you’re already in
By taking the long way round
Spinning and orbiting and such
Through the solar system
A simulation of the universe
The size of the universe
Two birds in a nest
Waiting for a stone to hatch
Die waiting
Come on in already
The water has temperature
Something you could feel
Hot spot hot spa
Cold lunch cold plunge
Luke’s warm place
Good enough
Three little birds
Kill em all
Let god sort them out
Loop de loop highway
Saying weeeee on the train
And everyone getting mad
Driving your car to the car store
To buy more cars to store
In the garage or on the street
Pile them up in the yard
Like it matters
Do your stones hurt
Because they’re killing me
Animatronic birds animatronic stones
Forty seven dollar sixty two cent dinner
Like being a child
A scared child with no money
Empty handed in a shrimp storm
Deadliest catching whatever floats by
Feeding two birds with one scone
And going to bed hungry
mover okay i know her
Im going to move to
Every city in the world
Becart that’s whar the people are
I have one hundred houses
All of them fully furnished
And decorated cool as hell
Don’t ask about my job
Jesus Christ don’t ask about my job
It’s not relevant right now
I’m signing another lease
I live on a boat in Lake Michigan
I have a big penthouse apartment in Chicago
I also have a nice little house there
I have a big house in Saint Louis
It’s huge and centrally located
Fenced in back yard
Country home too
Big house in the woods
Big porch all the way around
Rocking chair and all
I own it
It’s mine
Just bought two houses in the twin cities
One for each city
I live in every city in the world
Such as Detroit probably
Somewhere in Des Moines
Uhmmm where else
Milwaukee
That’s probably it
I’m scared to leave the Midwest
I don’t know what else is out there
But i don’t need to find out
Probably monsters and ghosts
Ghouls goblins and gargoyles
Nothing mid about this west
It’s cool and good
And i live there
egg hunt
Sulfur spills
From the vent
Spoils of last years hunt
Forgotten in the
Plastic green grass
Chocolate bunny
Of it all
Who laid this egg
And how much did it cost
Best bet is
Some kind of chicken
Can you find it
Behind your ear
Under your tongue
Moms gonna say
It’s green eggs for breakfast
For the next two weeks
It’s untenable
You have to hide it somewhere
Like up in the vent
You don’t even like eggs
Too visceral
As in related to
The viscera of the unborn hen
Or rooster
Hard to tell from
The chalky yellow of the yolk
Evidently incomplete
Otherwise we’d have chickens now
Hatched and free range
And the taste is nothing special
Feel better if
It was a dinosaur egg
A predator
Something that if hatched
Would stand a chance to eat you
This seems unfair
Born into an open mouth
Hard boiled or over easy
Hardly even given a chance
To be a chicken sandwich
Or nuggets even
Unprincipled stance
Just a matter of taste
God I’m getting old
Too old to hunt eggs
They can’t even run
Where’s the sport in that
bug belly blues
I ate a bug just because
I’m big and he’s small
I didn’t think anything would come of it
But down in my belly
The bug laid eggs
And here come a bunch more bugs
Who start chewing up
My half chewed food
Pooping straight in my stomach
Hunting and gathering and such
And the bugs beget more bugs of course
And each generation
Their bug minds grow
They bury their dead
In the folds of my stomach
And in the sediment
They sow seeds
Inventing agriculture
And before you know it
They’re industrializing
Which i can tell
From all the smoke filled burps
I’ve been having lately
I know they’re gonna kill me
Burn a hole right through my stomach lining
But i don’t have the heart to snuff them out
I heard about an old lady
Who swallowed a fly
And then a series of other things
To try and fix the fly problem
And i think she died
I’m not going out like that
I’ll die with dignity
With my stomach on fire
crab theory
My friend is giving me a ride
They hold up their arms
The right one
Is getting bigger than the left
That’s called being right handed
Is what i say laughing
But they’ve been practicing
Writing with the other hand
Lifting with the other hand
To balance back out
They’re a dancer
So it’s all about
Balance and symmetry
For them i guess
Me I’m built like a damn crab
Big meaty claw on the one side
Little shrimpy guy on the other
The crusher and the slicer
And i don’t dance
But i still pay attention
Too close maybe
To the way my body changes
Like Theseus’s hermit crab
Who changed crabs and shells
So many times
That it started this big fuss
About who’s the true crab
And why
My bride from my brothers dream
Spells her name different
From how it’s pronounced
It’s called Gaelic she tells me
It’s the same letters
But different sounds
I’m still working on
A joke about gay licking
That she’d punch me in the gut over
I wish i could ask her
What she thinks about crabs
losers
Snot nosed
Sniveling moron
I spit at you
Short sighted
Dim witted
And generally
Just a big piece of shit
Is what you are
In this big fat fuck of a world
There are two kinds of people
There are winners
And there are people like you
Whose grubby hands
Grow grime grabbing
At the pockets of others
Can’t hold a tune
To save your life
Can’t hold a job
Can’t keep a wife
Always late
Never wanted
Always whining
On and on and on
And even on
About what ails you
When you are the ail
The fail ail that ails all
We do not like you
And we don’t pretend
But here you go
Growing like a fungus
Under the toenails
On the foot of life
On the great glass window
Before gods green garden
You are a smudge
That smudges moreso
When wiped
An infection
A cancer
An annoying thing
Which
Annoys
Ugh
This world
Which is fundamentally good
But has a bunch of bad filth
Griming up the top of it
Reminds me of you actually
This world
Has winners and losers
I haven’t got a clue
About who the winners are
But i have a pretty good idea
About
The losers
boycott girlcott theycott
We’re organizing
A one hour boycott
On Monday
From 10-11
Don’t buy anything
But if you do it should be small
It should fit in your hands
In one hand if possible
We’re using collective bargaining
To protest against
The way that things are
And our demands are
That we make them be better
We’ve spent the last five weeks
Crafting the perfect infographic
To go majorly viral
In the circles we run in
Who would have seen it anyways
I’m going to the store
Right at 9:45
If you need anything
I’ll be quick
Don’t worry
If it doesn’t work
Well that’s okay
It’s a start
Maybe next time
We will set our sights higher
It’s not easy
To get people to care
And even then to
Do something about the caring
I wish it was
crash
Crashing at a friends house
She’s doing me a favor
Because I’m the sort of person
Who can call in favors
I’m sleeping on the couch
Wearing my blue jeans
Which aren’t blue but
It sounds better when you say they are
When i wake up
I go to take a shower
And it’s one of the ones
With three knobs
That’s too many knobs
I turn the Nothing Matters knob
And the nihilism scalds my back
Dial up the Everything Matters knob
Shiver remembering
Everything I’ve ever done wrong
Equilibriate somewhere in the middle
Ahh this one’s just right
The third knob is just water pressure
Which i turn up pretty high
I use the special shampoo
Because she told me i could
And it smells nice
I dry off with a purple towel
That is smaller than the towel
I am used to using
Look at myself in the mirror
Caring the exact amount i should
About all everything going on over there
Get dressed from a duffel bag
Lying on the floor
Get on with the day already
Kick the duffel in a corner
And go out to call in more favors
Because that’s something I can do
William Henry Harrison rolling in his grave
It is a tragic day
In American history
They lowered the flag to half mast
On Monday the 24th
After the president and vice president
Both simultaneously
Took too big a bite of their burgers
One of those big burgers
That is way too tall to be practical
And choked to death
Because last week
They fired the last guy
Who knew the heimlich
For being woke
Then on that Tuesday
They had to lower the flag to quarter mast
After the speaker of the house
While speaking at the ceremony
Where they make him president
Tripped over his own untied shoes
And cracked his damn melon open
Live on the damn news
Wednesday was completely normal
The guy from the senate took over
And everybody took the day
To discuss how they had never heard of
President pro tempore
As a position that existed in the senate
And the news tried to explain
Why it was called that
On Thursday they had to figure out
How far to lower the flag by
And if they were going to lower
Once per guy
Or once per tragic event
Due to the unforeseeable gas leak
Which resulted in
The “brain death”
Of the man who had been president
As well as four of the secretaries
Of such and such departments
On Friday
The next two secretaries
Became so paranoid
Of one another
That they each arranged
For the other to be assassinated
Which would have been funny
If it wasn’t so damn tragic
They lowered the flag
The guy who took over Saturday
Was so old they didn’t even bother
Waiting for him to die
They just lowered the flag
And seeing this
He passed on
Sunday is the lords day
So said the next guy
Who was really religious
In the bad kind of way
He became convinced
That this was a form of rapture
From the top down
Slowly a day at a time
So he poisoned himself
And a group of loyal followers
And of course
The flag was lowered again
The guy on Monday
Began to suffer complications
From bovine hormones
That he’d been injecting into his calves
They took him to the hospital
And his successor took over
Just for the day
During which he declared war
On a country that hasn’t existed
Since the late nineties
And somehow still lost
He died somehow
From the war
The only casualty
Then mister bovine joni returned
With skin so red
He looked like the devil
Evidently he was not
Because the following day
He exploded into
One billion pieces
Splattered really
Right on the White House lawn
They said he had too much blood
When he went to the hospital
He kept saying
Put more blood in me
Right now dammit
So that was two more flag lowerings
And it sort of went on like this
Lowering the flag halfway each day
Infinitesimally approaching
The bottom of the mast
Without ever reaching it
They sent out strict instructions
Every morning
With the ratio of mast height to flag height
For the day
People would find out
Tomorrow was their turn
And just flee the country
Kicking it down the line
Until somehow
And nobody really knows how
It ended up that
The mayor of one of those towns
In Massachusetts or Rhode Island
Where they make a dog the mayor
Well he was the damn President now
And he stuck around
For some reason
Everyone was so relieved
To have a president alive
For long enough to know his name
Which was Buster
That they didn’t really mind
That he was a dog
And not a person
They just interpreted his barks
As best as they could
And the country got along fine
His approval ratings were very high
And he got reelected in the fall
Because nobody wanted
To go into all of that mess again
Eventually they raised the flags back up
All the way up
warm
Robert Fobert Kennedy
Has a worm in his brain
And they put him in charge
Of the FDA
Fobert’s Dumb Administration
The man had a worm in his brain
A damn worm
In his damn brain
And were meant to sit here
Stand here and say
Oh that’s a normal type of thing
For a man to have in his brain
Who’s to say they ever took the worm out
Listen to the man’s voice
Tell me that couldn’t plausibly be
The voice of a worm
He does all that stuff with dead animals
That’s fucking worm stuff
Wake up people
The worms are taking over
From right underneath us
They’re in the fucking soil
Dear god they’re under us now
Inching ever forward
With their menacing pink bodies
Squirming
It’s fucking sick
Cut them in half
And we just double their numbers
Crawling all around
Legless freaks
You think they’d stop with one man
With one single Fobert?
Not a damn chance
That’s the king worm
Laying worm eggs
If that’s how worms reproduce
He’s going to put them in the food
He’s going to put them in the drugs
He’s going to put them in the administration
He’s going to put them in you
This is an all out war
War of the Worms
Trust no one
Ozzy Osborne
Last Sunday probably
Or actually the one before that
There was a guy acting crazy on the train
That happens on the train
Five nights later
I locked eyes with a girl i dated
For like a month when i first moved here
But still find I’m hung up on
For some fucking reason
Probably that she didn’t want me
Which hurt my feelings
But before the not wanting me
She told me not to say crazy
She out-woked me
And fair
But for a couple reasons i disagreed
For one i think positive change
Can’t start from shifting vocabulary
And work its way outwards
Maybe let’s just be nicer to crazy people
Like this guy on the train
Back to him now
He’s smoking something
And yelling and pacing
But really he’s not hurting anyone
Just scaring people
And a guy like that
You leave him be
In whatever crazy place he’s in
I had just gotten home from the funeral
And had my bags with me
A couple got on at the same stop as me
They had their bags with them
And about the fifth time
The guy who was acting crazy
Came walking by yelling
The man from the couple
(It was one of those man-woman couples
You hear about on the news)
Made eye contact with me
Briefly but enough to say
Hey pal
If this guy goes from this type of crazy
To the kind that hurts people
It’s you and me
We gotta protect my wife
And i made the look back
Because besides being
An All-Time Fella Moment
It was just true at that time
We two were the ones on the train
That if anything needed to be done
We needed to be the ones to do it
But nothing needed to be done
Because this guy was just on the train
Doing his thing
Worked up about something
We’ve all been there
I cried my whole way home on the train
Just a couple weeks ago
I’ve got no ill will towards this man
And I’m sorry for calling him crazy
If that’s something that matters
If being more verbose
Would soften the blow
Of acknowledging that he was scaring folks
And being erratic
I wish there were words that could fix things
If there are they aren’t in my vocabulary
I’d learn them if they helped
Or just if they made
A girl that doesn’t want me
Change her mind
About all that
Crazy
But that’s how it goes
check this out i think you might like it
Double you
Double you
Double you
Dot
Youtunb
Dot
Corn
what i say
Not my baby
Not my shoes
Stupidtown
Mayor of Stupid Town
Chewing on his necktie
Stamping forms with his name
Because he never learned cursive
Of all the Stupids who live here
You must be the dumbest of all
Sat here in his office
Trying to get through to him
Midway through your conversation
He interrupts you
To ask a generative chatbot
With some snappy corporate name
If he should be worried right now
It says no
And recommends him
A mobile game
Called Royal Blast Rush
One of those ones
Where you have to pull the lever
To release water or lava
Or a sum of gold
To save a king
Or so says the ad
You clear your throat
But he’s tapped on the ad
To take him to the store
Can’t remember his password
Sir it really is important
It’s about the power plant
It’s going to explode
Mayor McStupid brushes you off
He says it hasn’t blown yet
Come see me when it does
Then he puts headphones in
And goes back on his phone
You think of saying something
Like you made your bed
Now lie in it
But the problem is
He made your bed too
Before he was mayor
He was the owner of
The only mattress store in town
Mattress Emporium
So all beds
In this region at least
Were all made by him
You tried telling your neighbors
They stared at you slackjawed
Asked if you saw the new Marvel
You don’t want to feel jaded
You aren’t better than anybody
But you are less stupid
And that makes it hurt
Watching all the stupids go
Like lemmings tossed
By documentarians
Off a cliff
And you’ll be tossed too
Sooner or later
Almost feels pointless trying
Almost
life
When life gives you lemons
You make lemonade
That’s just what you do
What is to be done with the lemonade
It doesn’t really matter
Drink it
Or sell it for a quarter
That’s not the point
The point is
The turning of lemons into lemonade
The process
Life is all about processes
I’m working on a unified theory of life
And what you should do
When it gives you things
Based on this lemonade business
For instance
When life gives you a dog
You should feed it
When life gives you apples
See “Lemons”
When life gives you pancreatic cancer
You should treat it
When life gives you a hammer
Everything is a nail
When life gives you a pot to boil
Don’t watch it
Same for when life gifts you a horse
When life gives you baby shoes
Sell them before you try them on
You know they aren’t going to fit
When life gives you an ice cold beer
Drink it with a friend
When life gives you raw meat
Make burgers
When life gives you rice
Fry it
When life gives you pink lemons
Make pink lemonade
When life gives you an eye for an eye
Make the whole world blind
When life gives you first
Make First Aid
When life gives you ingredients
Put them in a stew
When life gives you anthrax
Make anthraxade
When life gives you seeds
Plant them
When life gives you cigs
Smoke them
When life gives you shit from a butt
Flush
ask not for whom the trolley problems; it problems for thee
I think we should kill that guy
Said my friend who i do not agree with
I folded my arms at him
And shook my head firmly
I said i do not condone your opinion
But please tell me more
So that i can disapprove more strongly
He said
Well that guys a nazi
And he’s doing Nazi shit
So we should kill him
And i wisely chastised him
As i personally do not believe in violence
And if i ever did advocate for it
You will see it was a parody
Non actionable offense
We cannot kill the Nazi
Or we will be as bad as him
My friend says
Nazis kill many people
And will keep doing so unless stopped
We would only be killing one
Check out this graph
And it’s not a graph
It’s a picture of train tracks
With all my friends tied on the tracks
And Adolph Hitler on the parallel track
And a really handsome guy in front
Of a big tall lever labeled
Nazi Killing Lever
He said would you do it
I say hmm let me think
And i scratch my chin
This one’s a thinker
He pulls out another picture
It’s the same picture
Only the train is closer to the switch
I hmmm even harder
As he pulls out a third
And then a fourth picture
And finally a fifth picture
Of all my friends and loved ones
Pancaked flat by a big train
I wipe the sweat from my forehead
And say
Well
At least nobody got hurt
space poop
We’ve got basically seven billion years
To get off of earth
Before it goes bad
But all these guys
These poop guys from butts
They’re in a big fucking hurry
Because they clogged the toilet
So fucking bad
And they want to get away NOW
I say get a plunger
Let’s take it nice and slow
We gotta learn not to be assholes
That poop all over the place
Before we go out to space
Otherwise we will embarrass ourselves
We will get to aliens
And go to shake their hand
And they will say ew
You have poo on your hand
You stank
And you ugly
We’ll have no choice
But to cry and go home
Or
Wage intergalactic war
Fling poo between stars
To try and even the stank
And the neighbors will hear us
Smell us
Nobody will want to be our friends
Space is a lonely place without friends
Space is a lonely place
To live with your disgrace
Nothing to do
But play with your poo
And spread it all over your face
jupid
Boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider
They are crushed under the massive gravity
And their flat brains are so very stupid
The end
i put the fun in funeral and then i take it back out
I thought about killing myself just to get out of that conversation, i tell you as i walk back over to you standing in the doorway. You say that’s pretty dramatic and i look at you and shrug because i have learned that i can look at you and shrug about this sort of thing and you won’t do anything back. Sometimes I wish i was five years old and i could just stand behind you when someone tries to talk to me and refuse to make eye contact. I don’t say this to you because you will not like it and I already do something pretty similar. If you’re close enough I’ll pull you into any conversation to save me by when they ask me a question i answer but i act unsure and then i look at you and say right? And then you have the opportunity to save my life or you can just say right and i have to pick up where I left off. Another good tactic i have is I’ll just start saying We when I’m talking about myself. This one works even when you’re not there because i get to feel like you are.
I’m thinking all of this while staring into the middle distance while you talk to somebody’s aunt from New York. Then you look at me and ask me right? And i look at you and i say that’s right. Then i go to get a water and i ask you do you need anything and no matter what you say im going to bring you a water because i need you to do more talking for me and you’re gonna get thirsty. I get cornered at the fridge by the most normal guy i ever met and i hate his fucking guts for it. He tells me he’s sorry for my loss and i want to spit at him. I say oh i need to go deliver this water to you or else you’re going to die of thirst and i get out of there thinking maybe im just a mean person what did he even do wrong to me other than be sorry. Being sorry is my thing. He wasn’t even very good at it. I hand you the water and i look over your shoulder at where my dead guy is. Or his body. I really don’t think he’s over there because if he was i would be laughing right now and i just checked and im not even laughing a little.
I put my hand on your shoulder and take a breath then i walk over to the other end of the room to talk to people about how sad this all is and how it sucks that a guy that we all like is dead now. I check in on people sadder than me and make that face i make that is trying to say way more than a face is capable of saying. Then i go over to people less sad than me and fold my arms and tap my foot like isn’t there a face you want to be making at me? Then they make it and i walk away after.
At some point later they pull us all in front of the body of one of our favorite guys and start giving speeches that make me cry so hard. Tears are shooting out of my eyes hard and fast like bullets and i am shuddering while also feeling like maybe i am making this about me a bit too much. You’re holding onto my arm and i thank god for that because i probably would explode or something if i didn’t have you holding onto my arm. Or more likely i would just be extra sad. If that were the case.
There’s a tent outside of the funeral home where some of the more alcoholic type guys are drinking beer during the service. It’s a cold 35 degree February day and the rain isn’t even falling it’s just hanging in the air. I think about how much I’d love to be drinking beer and then i think that’s not even true plus I’ve been trying to drink less lately. And it’s been good for me. The guys from outside put a beer in his coffin with him and there are mixed feelings about it but nobody really wants to go up and take his very last beer from him. I think a little bit about this and that and then i mostly stop thinking because I’ve been going quite hard at it for a while now. Eventually we all leave the room and he doesn’t come with us. And it feels weird but i bet it would feel much weirder if he did come with us. On account of he’s in that damn box.
We’re driving home and you ask me how I’m doing and I’m mostly honest with you and say this shit really sucks and I’m sad about it. I tell a story about him that makes me cry and laugh at the same time. Then i say it’s just so weird. Went through the same thing a couple years ago and it’s just so hard to know what to say. I’m not very convincing with platitudes and what do you even say other than shit I’m sorry and i guess heaven is real and everyone gets to be happy after they die. You say it’d be way weirder if there was something you could say that would make them feel better. Then we imagine walking up to a sobbing person and whispering in their ear and then they start cheering and clapping and skipping away. And that’s funny.
I unlock the door after the long drive and you’re checking the mail and making sure the dog didn’t piss on the floor or anything. And she didn’t but she did get into the trash. I clean up the trash then i walk into the kitchen and clap my hands and say welp now that’s all over with back to normal back to work back to work. And you say you know you don’t have to joke all of the time you’re allowed to be serious. It’s just me here. And i ignore what you said and put a big phony grin on my face and stare you down until you laugh. Then i drop it and come over and hug you, putting all of my weight on you and letting out Worlds Longest Sigh as recognized by Guinness World Records 2025. I wish everyone lived forever except for my enemies who i wish died right now. Then i cry again and i don’t even try and hold it back. It wasn’t the world’s biggest cry but it was not bad by my standards. I go to bed and sleep 100 years. And when i wake up everything looks exactly the same.
i suppose i am angry about this thing
I have crammed myself onto a train
On my way to the other train
And this train the first one
Has decided it isn’t going to my stop
It’s stopping one short
Such that i have to run
Hauling my bags
To the second train
I am headed home for a funeral
And i have nothing to wear
That you would wear to a funeral
Such as something black and formal
I try to rest my head on train number two
Because my head is heavy
From all of the stuff in it
It was so full of stuff already before
And now all this funeral business
All this grief business
So my resting head is disturbed
By the teams call in my headphones
From fucking Lisa
Who doesn’t know Ctrl+F
To search for info
In a document I’ve sent her seven times
She’s asking my can i dig through
And answer her very specific question
I do not pick up
I’m having trouble pretending today
That i am not upset
That i am not angry
That i care about this when i do not
That i don’t care about everything else
When i do
That i am not scared
When i am
This pretending is exhausting
And in moments like this i slip
And stop
Then i take a breath and say
Yes Lisa right away Lisa
Whatever you want Lisa
I’ll send that right over
Lisa
Then the train WiFi stops working
And i guess im pissed off about it
carmen
The train pulls farther forward
Than i am used to at this platform
So i pep my step to the caboose
Empty seats at the back
Just me and an old woman
Who smells just like my dead neighbor
Who i only ever saw at her kitchen table
Sat to the left of a life size stuffed E.T.
Who never left his post
Except for once she had me come around
To her screened in porch
Which is all a pile of rubble now
I think it’s fitting now
That she was holding that whole house up
And when she left it went with her
She had this long steep driveway
So i would go over and rake leaves
Shovel snow, lay salt
And afterwards she would call me in
To chat for a minute
I would tell her about my life
She would tell me about hers
She had some favorite stories
Like the one about her son
Being found up twenty feet in a tree
When he was very very little
And how he flies helicopters now
When she repeated a story
You’d get extra little details
And they became three dimensional
But every so often she’d hit you
With a never before heard tale
About an exorcism she performed
Or when she consulted with the FBI
As a psychic
She had so much to say about God
Not even in a hokey Christian way
She was just very spiritual
And you could feel it
Hanging next to her door
As long as i knew her
Was her sign
The Witch Is In
She was funny
And i miss her a lot
Sitting on the last car of the train
With a woman who smells like her
i can fix everything with unlimited power and unlimited time
There is no trolley problem to me
Only a trolley solution
Stop the trolley
With my big huge muscles
Untie everyone safely
Find the man who tied them there
Place him on the tracks
Tie him down
Resume trolley operations
I walk into the room
And everyone is scratching their chins
Over whether they will have their cake
Or eat their cake
I simply cut the cake in half
Eat half of the cake
Have half of the cake
Happy birthday to you
Make a wish
It comes true
The egg came first
It was not laid by a chicken
But by a chicken-like creature
Species only exist
For brief moments in time
Chicken evolved from non-chicken
Someday chicken will not be chicken
They will look back
At the fossilized Ur-Chicken of today
Give it another name
They will hold up neo-Chicken
And call it the original
But it tastes the same
Release the cat from the box
Dispose of all radioactive material properly
Grab that poindexter Shroedinger
By the collar of his lab coat
And sock him right in the jaw
Take the cat home
Give it a cool name
Like Gizmo
Love and cherish it
Forever
The swamp man of the marsh
Is as much the man he was yesterday
As i am who i was yesterday
Time makes bastards of us all
Nothing is stagnant or constant
Least of all identity
The ship of Theseus
Is the ship of Theseus
So long as i identify it as such
Let the guys out of Plato’s cave
They would like it out here
In the fresh air
Walk not away from Omelas
End the suffering
If not now when
If not you who
baby genius theory
I’ve grown obsessed
With a photo of me
From when I’m baby
I have a bucket on my head
And there is so much behind my eyes
I have knowledge and wisdom
Well beyond my years
I likely know
The secrets of the universe
As posited by the documentary
Baby Geniuses
Then i forgot when i learned to talk
I believe this now
something i want to say
I set my guitar down gently
And i pat it when I'm done
I say good morning and goodnight
To my fish
I always check on my stuffed animals
And make sure they’re comfortable
Sometimes i talk to trees
If we have anything to talk about
I try not to step on pillbugs
While I’m walking down the path
I talk to my dog like she’s listening
And ask her what she thinks
I always say good evening
To the little bunny in the courtyard
And bring him baby carrots
I nod at people and their dogs
And smile to myself afterwards
I collect little totems
Items with faces
And in some way they are alive to me
I care about them
I feel
If you cannot see humanity
In the inhuman
You will not see it anywhere
what they say
You know what they say
You learn something new every day
Well not me
I learn something new
Every hour, on the hour
And I’m working on speeding that up
Someday soon
I’ll be learning something new
Every second
So watch out
Or I’ll learn you too
old flames and melting plastic
Oh brother what a mess i have made
In this hearth of mine
I have been burned before
Reaching my hand in the fireplace
With something not for burning
But for melting
The way that plastic burns
Is black smoke
And dripping bits of molten plastic
It does not feel good on the skin
But a burn feels like a burn
From metal or wood or plastic
Or all three at once
Flesh doesn’t burn or melt
It cooks
phil
Do not worship false idols
Do not bear witness to shadows
Do not listen to their lies
Whisper words of winter in your ears
The groundhog is a rodent
A hog of the ground
A chuck of the wood
A pig of a whistle
Lest we forget
Rodents cannot change fate
Whether the cold winds
Will go on blowing
Or part for an early spring
This damned hog has no say
I will abide this foolishness
No longer
I have infiltrated his inner circle
In the town of Punxsutawney, PA
And when my gloved hands reach in
To lift the honored pest
I’m going to wring his neck
And end this for good
And i will flee into the shadows
Glancing over my shoulder
In the morning i will sit in a diner
The waitress will turn on the news
And nothing will have changed
They will lift a different groundhog
Call him Phil just like the last
And they will pretend he told them
Six more weeks of winter
And i will sob into my pancakes
kid named planet
Call the cops
I’m being killed
This guy is stabbing me
Knife in my gut
Slowly pressing in
And the pigs show up
Fold their arms and say
Well there’s nothing we can do
He hasn’t killed you yet
So we all stand around and wait
For this guy to kill me
So he can get in trouble for it
big news
Thought about goku while i was at the gym today.
Something has shifted.
strange dreams
Strange and vivid dreams last night. Don’t know what to make of them really, but i got a lot of blood drawn yesterday so I'm chalking it up to that. This first one sounds like a nightmare but i never felt scared in the dream in the way that i do in a nightmare. It was just contextually something scary happening in the middle of a dream.
Had another dream about machines made of flesh. This one was some sort of automaton which had lost its mind and was killing people and slicing them up so it could cover itself with their flesh because it was scared and wanted to hide from another robot that was in charge of supervising it. It was a satellite so the automaton thought that if it covered itself in flesh it wouldn’t be able to be detected and it could be free. It was sad and grotesque and horrifying. It became more human looking as the dream went on but it never stopped being monstrous. It eventually tracked down its creator who was an evil rich man and killed him to take his face. In the dream i was an enemy of this rich man and i had defeated the machine in order to escape from this facility i found myself locked in, after which the machine lost its mind. So in some unfortunate way i was responsible for what was happening. I was aware of its actions and knew another confrontation was inevitable but by the time i woke up it never happened.
Outside of that core plot I spent a lot of time lighting these big candles i had found, i went to France to buy a cool poster, and then i got in a huge fight with a girl i went out with a few times years ago. I had hurt her somehow and she hated me so much. She ripped up my French poster when i tried to hang it on the wall and was so angry with me and i was trying to make it right. We communicated mostly through song.
the looney tune
His name was bugs bunny
i saw mars tonight
I saw mars in the sky tonight
Glowing red next to Orion
I know Venus by the time of day
It’s faint yellow around sunrise and set
Because it’s nearer the sun than us
I’ve seen Jupiter and Saturn
But i couldn’t pick them out of a lineup
The others are up there too I’m sure
I know the Dippers
Sometimes Taurus or Libra
If only i was outside
Lying on my back more
Maybe I’d know them all
big ol coin
I’ve got this big coin i flip
When i feel uncertain
About what i should do
It informs my decisions
Big metal coin
From some casino
I got from my next door neighbor
Before she died
It doesn’t have heads
Or tails really
But the sides are different
So I’ve taken to calling them
Heads and Hearts
When it comes up heads
I listen to my thinking brain
Rationale and reason prevail
When it comes up hearts
I listen to my feeling body
Emotion and intuition guide me
Lately it’s been coming up hearts a lot
So I’ve been feeling my way around
It’s working alright
mister business as usual
God christ
Everything is falling apart
Going to shit
And I’m so worried
It seems to me
There’s only one possible recourse
One possible solution
For us to dig ourselves out of this mess
We need One Brave Man
Who will stand up and tell it like it is
Who will set it all right
The only way out of this crisis
Which was brought about
As the natural consequence
Of maintaining the status quo
At any and all costs
Is for This Brave Man
To set us back
To Business As Usual
Then we can calm down
And it will never happen again
Sure maybe we’ll need to concede
A few points to our enemies
But just to make the transition smooth
Above all we don’t want to rock the boat
Above all else we don’t want change
Above all continuity prevails
Where oh where is our brave hero
Who will tell us all is well and normal
And that the machine
Is functioning as intended
I could have sworn he was just here
Wherever he is we have to find him
He’s our Only Hope
clocks and spoons
They moved the Doomsday Clock
89 seconds to Midnight
And so what?
Have you evern seen a clock afore
It keeps going around
It doesn’t stop at midnight
Even if it did
It’d still be right twice a day
Why are you so scared of tomorrow
I just moved the clock to 88 seconds
Does that scare you too?
Wait til you find out about 1 AM
And even more scary times
Like 7, 8, 9,
Midnight happens once a day
Doom! Ahhhhhh
Toughen up
Don’t be scared of the dark
Because here it comes
plastic free
Knowing what i now know
About the nature of this world
I have resolved to go plastic-free
No more of that plastic stuff for me
They ask me at the grocery
Paper or plastic
And i smirk and say
I brought my own actually
Heh
I don’t drink from straws
Because my lips work fine
I don’t buy beer
If it comes with plastic rings
Save the turtles
Save the whales
Save the ocean
Save myself
But it can’t all be avoided
Most things you buy
They don’t have the option
To buy without plastic
So the things i need i buy
And then i hold onto the plastic
It’s not going in a landfill
So it doesn’t count
But as time goes on
My little pile of plastic grows
And suddenly it’s a big ball of plastic
That fills up the pantry
So i move it to the garage
Since i dont drive my car anymore
But it keeps on growing
No matter how careful I am
It keeps on growing
And when you walk up to my house
From the street
You can see it peeking over the roof
From the back yard where it sits
I don’t know what to do
If i chop it up
That leaves microplastics
Which will get in the soil
And probably destroy the earth
If i burn it
It goes up into the atmosphere
And makes everything worse
I can’t put it in the ocean
That’s the whole reason i started this
So i stand in the yard
With my hands on my hips
Having no better idea
I unhinge my jaws like a snake
Swallow it in one gulp
Immediately die painfully
My family and friends
Gather to honor my last wish
Viking funeral at sea
germ world
I think instead of Elons idea
Of sending rich men to mars
And before that poorer men
To pave the way for the rich men
I have a pretty good idea
Of what we could do
It would be easier
Just put a bunch of germs
In a rocket
And fire it out at every planet
Eventually something will evolve somewhere
And then life survives
Even if we kill it all here
On purpose or accident
But that doesn’t scratch the itch
Because to a man like those men
Who dream this dream
They don’t care about anything
That is not themselves
Or something they own
And to them their offspring
Is one or both of those things
That’s why Elon has all those kids
Despite being a horrifying slug/pig amalgam
He wants to live forever
I for one
Don’t want that
For him to live forever
Forget forever
I don't want that
But i haven’t got a say
So instead im going to
Start making friends with germs
So that maybe
When this earth is barren
Someone might remember me
Off on germ world
nickels
I’ve had a nickelback song in my head
For nearly a week now
And i haven’t heard that song
In so long
I don’t know where it came from
In the folds of my brain
But i wake up humming it
And i don’t notice right away
I don’t know what it means
If anything
But I’m listening to it now
To see if it reveals anything
Other than
I used to fuck with this song
When i was thirteen
projections
By the year 2050
All of the polar ice caps will have melted
All of the polar bears will have drowned
And you will have gained
A new gland in your brain
Made specifically to forget that it happened
So you can go back to work
By the year 2065
All people will have grown
An extra heart
Just for mourning
That way you can
Push aside all that grief
So you can go back to work
While the second heart pounds away
No grieving on company time
They will all start to say
By the year 2074
Humans will have evolved
A special little extra finger
For scrolling on their screens
On their phones
By 2090 it will have grown vestigial
As we stopped using screens
By the end of the 70s
And switched to retinal displays
By the year 2183
All humans will have grown
An extra lung in their chest
Just for smoking cigarettes
And when it ruptures
You just go to the doctor
So they can take it out
And then you don’t smoke anymore
By the year 3000
The Jonas brothers will have arrived
And they will note that
Though we all live underwater
Not much has changed
And they will check in on your family
If your family survived
Odds are they didn’t
But that all depends
By the year 4507
They invent a new kind of pringles
That come in an extra tall can
And all the underwater people
Have adapted long tongues
So they can reach the crumbs at the bottom
By the year 15,039
They will have forgotten you
Over and over and over
Until they forget the forgetting
Your monuments are dust
And the dust has blown away
Jeggings are back in style
For the mutants underground
By the year 89,015
It will all still be here
Just rearranged
You wouldn’t recognize it
Any more than it would you
But somewhere on the ground
In the sky or in the sea
There’s a little piece of you
Which has been
Ripped and stitched
In so many ways
But for once in your configuration
For once in the tissue of your second heart
By the year 600,000,002
They won’t still be using the same calendar
But the last plant will have died
So too anything left that ate plants
Or anything that ate anything that ate plants
And earth will stand still
But the waves will keep crashing
The wind will keep blowing
And by the year 7,500,000,000
The sun will swallow it up
And then the sun will blow up
Whatever happens next
Is anybody’s guess
cap
Every time i open a bottle
I find myself pocketing the cap
Part of me says it’s because
I’ll throw it away later
The other part of me
Has a tin can on top the fridge
Full up with bottlecaps
There’s something I’m trying to save
Many mini mementos
It’s the same as
I can’t throw away that ticket stub
Mark the passage of time
The occurrence of events
Else I’m just lazy
I don’t like throwing away
I saved the last four pickle jars
But i haven’t got a use for them
Save for holding bottlecaps
And ticket stubs
Something in the lizard brain
Tells me I’ll need them later
So i might as well hold on
Just in case
severed
Watching severance has been good and bad for me because i hate my job so much and watching this show makes it so real. I’m so pissed off at my piece of shit boss right now. FYI. I hate him so fucking much. I have a call with a recruiter tomorrow and plan to send out some more applications once I’m off work. Fuck this place.
updates
Reorganizing my flounder for my own convenience. Bear with me.
Still need to set up my index page, but I'll do that later.
I'm on flounder and I'm swimming.
Mostly this was spurred bc I was telling a friend about flounder and I was going to send them my page and felt like it was disorganized. So I'm putting that off until I set up my index page. Make it more of a landing zone/directory, try to compartmentalize a little more on here.
offline
Sometimes i think it’s really not good for you to format all your thoughts as posts (talking specifically Twitter here but applies broadly). It’s reductive. Nothing more stifling than a pithy little quote says I. But then i think of a particularly stimulating pithy quote and i want to get my rocks off. Basically what I’m saying is I feel im good at posting, but i feel it’s bad for me. And so i stopped tweeting but ive been lurking a bit still and i really would rather not be. This is not the forum i would prefer to be engaging with or perceiving others on. I think i want to be the type of person who says they’re not really online. Disengage with the whole brain pickling process to the extent it is possible. Maybe I’ll post here more, or become a good texter. I used to be good at texting. Not sure what happened or when. I don’t want to be uninformed or uninterested in what is going on culturally or socially. But i quit smoking last year even though i really liked it (and still dabble every so often) because i knew it was bad for me. And that part feels good. The knowing. Not going digitally sober, but learning my limits and trying to scale back. Try reading a book, jackass. Okay, jackass, i will.
Online post on the online microblogging site i use.
Shit up
today
Applied to some jobs today!
Turns out all i had to do was overcome the insurmountable mental barriers to thinking about my career and my future and just start clicking on things. I think i will apply to one million jobs now. We’ll see how it shakes out. Sent a bunch out for positions all over. Maybe I’ll move to Montana or something idk. Probably not but you never know.
Wanted to watch severance but already used my free trial so unfortunately had to pay apple 9.99 only SIKE i didn’t i was able to scam a free 3 month trial out of them. Im genus.
Feeling pretty good today despite the fact that im probably somewhat depressed (seasonally) and we’re down in the single digit temperature days. Trying to go to the gym today and tomorrow bc i wasn’t able to go while i was sick last week.
For the last few years i keep discovering things that if i had allowed myself to enjoy earlier would have changed me. Not necessarily for the better or worse but like. Nothing hits like a tv show or a movie or a song that speaks to the core of your being when you are young. I’m still being hit, but i can feel how much stronger it would have been if i had been taking it in when i was a teenager or even younger. This week it’s been Dragon Ball and Mulholland Drive. I could have really absorbed those into my heart from a young age and who knows what id be like now. But I’m absorbing them now nonetheless. It’s just that I’m fully formed now, so i bring a lot of myself to the table. When you are little there is still so much empty space inside you waiting to be filled from outside. If that makes sense. I’m 25 years old in other words.
dragon ball
Watching dragon ball z still
Just finished the Cell arc
Really loving this show
It’s so charming
This most recent bit
With Gohan in high school
Being a superhero
It’s so great
I love him
I watched that boy grow up
Just like Goku in Dragon Ball
It’s crazy how much it works
Just a great show
dream gym
Went to the gym in my dream
Because
I went to bed thinking about
How i need to go to the gym
When i wake up
Duh
But here’s the dream part
The gym had all kinds of wacky contraptions
And they were intermingled
With arcade machines
Bench press
Skii ball
Claw machine
Then some machines i made up
All on my own
There was a rowing machine
One of the kind that has the water inside
But instead of being at the end
You sit inside of it
So it’s just swishing water
All around you
And you get all wet
Then another one was
This big web of elastic bands
That you would stand under
And then lower onto you
So they all pulled you downwards
And then you would just stand up
I was using this one
And the bands were running
Right across my face
So my face was all distorted
Twisted up
And i was trying to impress some girl
So i was doing them really fast
And it was really funny
That was about it
I woke up and went to the real gym
And it was normal :(
burner
I slip my slippers onto my feet, as they are intended for, then i shuffle from the bedroom to the kitchen, where the kettle has started whistling. I’m steeping the tea in the kitchen doorway standing in the room between rooms. I let it sit for a minute while I light a candle. Pacific Cypress is the flavor and it has a wood wick so when it burns it crackles a little bit. An ad has come on the tv, interrupting the 3 hour Jazz playlist I’ve put on YouTube. But i am focused on getting back to the tea so my higher brain ignores the advertisement while my lower brain files it away for later in case I want to buy something. I look out the window at the snow. I try to read my book. But I can still hear the kettle screaming. So I go in to turn off the stove and it is already off. The screaming is coming from somewhere else. Must be none of my business. I turn up the 3 hour Jazz playlist for chill relaxing cozy winter evenings and go back to reading.
water puts out fire
Having taken the time
To sit and reflect
I find myself
No less panicked
No more profound
In thinking about the fires
And the people who put them out
And the people who cause them
Thinking about water
The infrastructure it requires
The money it costs
The people who own it
The people who cause it to be owned
Thinking about my place in it all
Should it exist
In setting fires
And putting them out
In owning water
And dishing it out
I don’t feel good about this
I don’t even have something novel
I can say about it
Water puts out fire
And we need it to live
So of course
Someone is going to own it
But i don’t think it should be like that
Too bad
new years
The good news, flounder, is that I’m making good on all my resolutions. I’m having a really good start to the year and i think I’m starting to feel like January is my favorite month. I rearranged my whole apartment right before the start of the year and threw my back out hauling furniture by myself. And i scrambled to make new years plans last minute. And then shockingly it all just worked out. I had a good fun time at a house party with my ex and her bf who I’m working on becoming friends with and we went to the bar after and they were both very nice to me. I’ve been getting a lot of this lately. People being nice to me. Which is good because i need it. Got brunch with a new good friend of mine (the friendship isn’t that new, but this is the first time im adding the “good” adjective) and exchanged gifts and it was very sweet. I’m very fond of them and I’ve been trying to be more forthcoming with my emotions lately. I’ve been trying to do a lot of things and succeeding at most of them. Good feeling. I’ve been working out and doing yoga and trying to be more present in my body. That’s new for me but I’m finding it easier. I got suckered into going to a sports event with coworkers and i don’t really want to go into the details right now but I’m being repeatedly sexually harassed by my one coworker i have mentioned before and im starting to realize that it’s weighing on me more than i let on. It doesn’t make me feel good. Speaking of my job they gave me my raise and it’s still far less than starting salaries for other people at the company in my same position. Specifically i know this because the coworker who is harassing me has told me. Just more reason to get out but i still think i might stick it out til March so i can get my bonus. Gives me some time to plan which i really need to do. Other than that my life is going very well right now. I’m feeling very fulfilled personally on an emotional and social level and I’m keeping my apartment clean and organized and developing some better habits in regards to taking care of myself and it all just makes me feel good. I was sick this past week a little bit but it didn’t bring me down too much. The snow is healing and meaningful to me in a way that is hard to describe. Something feels right when i am walking in the snow. And this morning it snowed again and the flakes were so flat and glittery that it felt like the inside of a snow globe. I’ve been having many quiet beautiful moments and trying to take time to appreciate them. That’s what I’ve been up to mostly.
resolve
-Quit my job
-Get a better one
-Quit my loneliness
-Get a better one
-Read more
-Sit and be quiet
-Get off the damn phone
-Listen to new music
-Listen to better music
-Take time to finish things
-Commit harder
-Yoga
-Gym
-Cook more
-Eat better
-Walk more
-Talk Better
-Get serious
-Make a plan
-Make one hundred plans
-Draw
-Sing and play guitar
-and more and more
/tributaries/