The sun sets on Southgate Boulevard and the bookshop across from the convenience store. People are coming to the bookshop for deals—the shop is going out of business. Everything is forty to eighty percent off. The convenience store has brought out bags of candy corn. Two bags for three dollars.
Hello! My friend A.J. and I have started a blog where he tells fantastic stories and I doodle things to accompany them.
It would be totally cool if you followed us through our endeavor to create something beautiful.
(psst, click the image)
(via abandonedrocketship)
I can catch you in the storm with pipe cleaners in my pocket.
I can sneeze into my shoulder without Steve Martin in the car.
I can look at blue squares and think about brown rhombi
simultaneously.
I can trip up the stairs and fall down to hell,
and then wake up in Pennsylvania underneath the most wonderful clouds.
I can catch the chicken pox before they hit the ground
and toss them to third before the guy can get a run.
But can I predict the weather or remember your birthday?
Not a chance.
Can I stop the wheeling of wayward wagons
coming to a crash?
Never could I.
No more pondering,
I look to the hills
under which
water sits:
Should I bare the infinite poundage
of every phrase I can remember
in conversations with immense minds that
bring covers of early nineties
songs to my ears like
scent brings memory to attention?
Must I ravage the day
to feel as substantial
as the stone that hides away
the notions that others grasp,
the same that my fingers can only brush?
The hills say nothing—
I have forgotten that they no longer speak,
or, at least, not to the likes of me.
It is a thing that they simply
cannot do.
When the apocalypse arrives, I will wring my cat’s neck from mercy and bury her broken body in the Foothills. I will put on my blue summer dress and sandals, I will curl my hair and my lashes. I will wear the dangling gold earrings that clank and rustle when I walk, but I will not walk, I will…
If the world was ending I would scrawl some poems in the concrete with my found crowbar in case the future want to know what we did for fun, assuming fun would survive. I would toss sneakers and Great Georgian Literature and cans of tuna out of my window to see how they fly. I would nap in the crevasse between the wall and the dresser and try to remember a dream.
I would wake up and stare at strangers.
I’d climb the McDonald’s and shout, singing the praises of them that are too far away to kiss before this. I would borrow a bike and ride. I would come back and eat all the bread in the apartment, flavoring it with hot sauce or sugar or potato chips simply to enjoy it. I would drink all the milk out of the carton to cool it down. I’d shave the middle of my goatee and leave the sides long so I could look the way I feel.
I’d ask my roommate to punch me in the face, because it’s all been too easy.
I would find my beloved and make her moan so that she wouldn’t cry. I’d draw adorable and vulgar portraits of everyone I could remember and I’d call my father and ask him to be honest. I’d simply send everyone else all the love I had left in my thin blood.
Just before it all went dark, I’d take chocolate from the store and not pay for it. I’d feed it to a dog so that it could enjoy it and not have to pay for it.
Grounds in my coffee
soggy bread
dollar signs—
sick as a dog
in heat, hemmed in
by flags that face
no wind to warn of
life.
Varying interpretations
of what is meant by
“why am I here?”
make for confused conversation
desaturated descriptions,
fears of falling
that snap one awake
before slipping into the sleep
of small talk.
No rest for a man in the road
in springtime with no breeze.
No sleep for a man with skinned knees,
no way of remembering
his dreams.
Dusty streetlights
lukewarm soup
magazines—
hot heads with
cold feet can’t see
any time of day.
A wise man can tell a lie
almost as wide as the sea.
Even a man without much mind
could likely fool me.
But what is a man
without trust?
He is not much more than a gavel,
a camera, and rust.
The specter of my truths
lay heavy in my bed.
They moan, in my head,
because of what I’ve said.
I wake to their whispers
to each other in the night—
what useless lamp
no benefit to my sight!
Staring at Pringles
I haven’t done one of these audio posts in a while, so I thought I would. This one is straight out of my journal. I like it, I might try and do something more with it later.
Goodbye, old friend. You were good to me.
Hello, new friend. Let’s make the others jealous.
The sun sets on Southgate Boulevard and the bookshop across from the convenience store. People are coming to the bookshop for deals—the shop is going out of business. Everything is forty to eighty percent off. The convenience store has brought out bags of candy corn. Two bags for three dollars.
But now the day’s ending, and the sun has mostly given up to streetlights, lit-up storefront signs, meandering cars, and whatever starlight can pierce through. People standing at bus stops have their hands in their pockets. Some stare at the convenience store, which has windows that serve as the brightest lights on the whole street. Brighter than the moon.
