The Old Friend

Hopes and dreams were as good as it got, he believed. I wonder whatever happened to that guy.

What if?

What if one day I fail so completely that I do not succeed?

What if, the next day, I succeed so poorly that I fail completely?

What if, the day after, and the next, I am afraid to try because I have failed twice and so my choosing to remain static is, in its very essence, failure?

What if the next day I try again and I fail? Then what shall I do? It is not easy to fail and fail again.

What if one day when tossing rocks because there's no goddamn better thing to do with myself, I come to think that failure is fallible, that the whole shitty idea has holes big enough for a big first-down play, and maybe even with some spice and a juke I could go all the way with busting down the god-forsaken limerick. What if the seed of doubt is planted?

What if the next day I doubt my failure, and I still fail anyways? What if I don't accept it, what if, for fuck's sake, failure's such a shoddy concept in the first place I have no real choice left but to call it something else.

What if I call it success? What if no one accepts this new designation? If I am the only one who accepts it, does it exist?

Does it not exist?

And what if it does or does not exist? What then? What if I resign to do nothing about it? What if I do everything I can to change it? Does it matter?

What if everyone and everything fell into either a category of failure or success? And what if failure was success, as I now believe?

What if you failed to succeed?

What if you failed first in order to succeed second?

What if you succeeded first only to fail in the end?

What if you lived a shitty life filled with successes?

What if you lived a great life wrought with failure?

What if you asked every one of these questions and recieved no answer?

What if you didn't?

In Response to a Poem I Wrote One Night, Alone as Fuck, On a Bench at USF Sucking On the Future (I Later Married the Poem)

I think, I think I can still look through the branches and touch the candles of heaven with eyeballs wide and stupid.
The horizon has grown dim: I remain.
The night has grown wintry cold: I remain.
The streets, empty, the ivory tones, faded: I remain.
The horizon explodes, each morning. I sleep beside her. Fuck the sun.
I am entwined.
Complete.
Is it okay, I wonder, to be lost in me?
Am I okay?
I think, I think so.

Sex and Gunpowder

Steel melts me up, melts so hot triggers pull quick! bang.
It’s all on your shirt now.
It’s all on your hands now.
Pump it out, let it out, we fall down.
Rings around the Ashes.
Fuck the sun I have kelvins in my smoking fist. A smile ablaze and it’s arson.
You can’t make me eat. But I can spit, watch but don’t blink.
It’s all on your shirt now.
Red eyeballed white of hands.
Breathe breath out stop.

The Time of My Life

Played the Lotto yesterday.
Cried.
Slept.
Got no reprieve. Tossed. Turned.
Went to work today.
Got pissed off.
Went home.
Worried.
Ate dinner.
Felt sick to my stomach.
Then I had a second left with my day.
So I inhaled. You were there for that part.

On Talent and Lightning

"I do not know if I am talented or handsome, or untalented or unhandsome; I have no propensity to worry about those things," said the writer. "I will write because I desire to write, and I will reach for the cores of all of you and rip them out and show them to you because that is what I want to do in this world."

He said, "I do not give a fuck for talent. Those who are concerned can keep it."

He cared about heart, and he knew he had this because he felt the lingering silence between beats, the sound that has stayed with us for some reason. And then he pushed that sound outward.

"And that," he said, "is a story about lightning rods."

The MTV Video Music Awards in a poem

Christopher Walken
Hosted Saturday Night
Live 7 times and then
He leaped from a
Balcony and then
Fatboy Slim lost
The Popcorn man to
Three hookers, literally,
And then I stopped watching
The VMAs until Kanye proclaims
Beyonce empress of the endangered
Music Video and Taylor Swift chews
His arrogance,
What
A
Fucking
Douche.

Pleasure of Waking

Roger looked at Veronica, looked at the hard shell of her face and listened to the hum of the airplane.

"Roger, you are a nice man," Veronica said en francais. "You say you want to marry me, but I do not believe in it. I believe we should spend time together, for as long as we wish to, but make no promises."

Roger shut his eyes and saw their nakedness in the Abbeville hotel room, but he was sad because when he opened his eyes a profound thing occurred: their nakedness was gone.

He spoke in English

"I can't," he said. "We are from different places. We do not understand each other's languages."

She shrugged. "C'est vrai."

Roger decided to blink as little as possible for the remainder of his flight, though he was growing tired and knew soon he would have to shut his eyes to sleep.

Veronica walked to the bathroom stall and never returned. Perhaps she found an empty seat in another row, or perhaps she disappeared altogether from the world. He would never know if either were true.

Roger drifted to the constellations of distant lights crawling along the blackness beneath him.

As he transitioned from his window seat to a dream, Roger understood that this dream would return each night and would sadden him, but he took comfort in the inevitable fleeting pleasure of waking.

Blind Mice

Three blind mice. Three blind mice.
See how they see. See how they see.
They all snuck up on the scientist last night,
Who put retinal stem cells in their eyes,
He never saw such a sight in his life,
When they ate his eyes.
(The Government wasn't surprised.)

Personal Effects

By my desk I keep a jar of skin, in case I am not in concrete.

The Motion of a Broom at Sunset

Her cheeks cut into her face, and they met with the edges of her lips which, like hydrogen and helium, violently cradled fragility.

Then night fell, first from infinity, then from Milk, then from the moon, then from clouds, buildings that scrape, treetops, then from the curves of our brows and to our lids. Then, behind the lids, it was day.

When we woke we hammered until our differences were shattered garbage, and we swept with them the rest of us, too.

A verse

I am on your side.
I am all ears tonight
We are infinite,
just like Charlie said
in the pages of
us.

Gravity

"I ate 16 pecan pies and I'm still not full," said Gregg.

"Maybe it's guilt," said Nancy, who knew. "No pecan pie will fill a hole like that."

He frowned, sticky, then thought, then smiled, and cried when he said, "Tomorrow's your birthday. Maybe we'll have cake."

B is for Bouyancy

The blackbird Flies and the eagle Soars and the woman dreams of walking away.

A is for Apple

The dog goes Woof and the cat goes Meow and the man cries.

Clubs

No! Woosh, ck.
No! Woosh, ck, thump.
Woosh, ck.
Woosh, ck.
ck.
ck.
ck.
ck.
Huff. Huff. Huff.
Gurgle.

Hearts

Thu thu thu thu thu thu thu thu.
Thu thu, thu thu, thu thu.
Thu, thu. Thu, thu.
Thu, thu. Thu, thu.
Thu. Thu.
Thu. Thu.
Thu. Thu.
Th.

Spades

Dig, dig, dig.
Crunch.
Dig, Dig, Dig.
Crunch.
Sweat, wipe, wipe.
Dig, dig, dig.
Crunch.
Dig, dig, dig.
Crunch.
Tumble.

Diamonds

Jingle, sparkle, sunshine, wince.
Calm. Warmth. Full.
Bloated.
Nauseous.
Bile--gralg! Strings of vomit, gag, gag, gasp.
Sob. Crying, crying, sob sob sob.
Fist, trickle sticky between fingers, stinging palm.
Open fist.
Jingle, dull, red, blurry tears.
Tilt palm like cloud.
Rain.