yesandthen

Yes

and then

I put my head on

 the arm of the couch

Yes

I put

 my head down

 for a moment

I

write a

word in this fake

 journal

I

space

the words just

 so

Yes

and then

I put my head on

 the arm of the couch

and then

I dream of

 carems kissing

of

cranky criminal caressing

Then

I

Yes

I

Then I

am

 the

space 

survivor update

all words are truth, even when typed at odd ours. even when the power went out on the holiday, leaving me a day behind, so tonight kicks and sazerac, spy shows and survivor: the sad kid won, his mother gone now, the cast cries as he says "i can see how this, from an outside"

i am not willing to contemplate my own sad victory, my family sobbing in the audience as i recount those final moments to jeff probst's smiling dimples, throwing to an outdated website on the bottom of the screen, timing his dialogue to hashtags. It approaches, of course, as as all sad ends do. but without the camera there to capture it, who knows if the impact will resonate with the masses? Who knows if, decades from now, some other nitwit will relive my pain from his couch, sipping a cocktail, pretending tonight was last night?

in other news, the 2023 blog streak stands at one, there is a lit city on top of my record player, and this room does not really actually need three carpets though.

the end of knowledge

oh the ache of an 11-year-old imagining his life at 12 the
body bigger but the mind somehow the same.

this is the start of something, yes, but i'm not sure where it goes tonight (survivor in the background and a laying dog on the couch slowly falling asleep to the sound of these keys tacking). i am stuck on the word on which word follows and how words make something new. can i put words in a new order and discover something about us. about the chat robot writing essays for people and ending the possibilities for new knowledge. about the known world being all we can.  the man on the show is 71. the man on the shows wins food for throwing bags.

oh the ache of an 11-year-old imagining his life at 12 the
body bigger but the mind somehow the same.

Sap

Digging through a box of old files, I found this poem I wrote during my first year of teaching. Despite the obvious ripping off of John K. Samson, I still like it. Revisions made today are in italics.

Let's fold up our bad days and shove them in the backs of textbooks,
Hide our fears in the bottoms of lockers, and throw anxiety away in the blue bin by the door.
Let's embrace "how are you's" and recognize how much we really mean them.
Let's hold hands with tomorrow, and let's realize how cheesy that last line was.

Let's forget the things we find in textbooks:
Forget the theorems and Pythagoras,
Forget the scraps of paper,
Forget the meaning of this poem.
Let's forget everything we know except that we know each other.
Let's learn instead that there's so much to learn and that we should be students for the rest of our lives.
Let's be students for the rest of our lives.
Let's learn from each other.
Better yet, let's learn that we've been learning from each other all along.

Let's realize that every breath we breathe ins the most important

In the car in the Northeast, we owned one tape and we listened to it end on end. Now

They say losing love is like a window to your heart: everybody sees you're blown apart. Everybody feels the wind blow and we

Better Off Dead

Most people

They protect what is theirs