Intake

If a tree goes hungry, everyone notices, so it happened.

If a tree is well fed and mild mannered, though, and never falls, what happens to the forest's GDP?

A rest, to cry, to forgive.

_

Somewhere in Mangroves

Somewhere in mangroves I saw you say,
I want to sail and would you smile for me.

Because the wind is like a smile
And tears are just the ocean.

And stories are just what sleeping children
tell their parents with nightlights.

And parents are just what sleeping children
float across like the ocean.

Somewhere in morning I saw you say,
I want to burn and would you smile for me.

Because the world is like a smile
And everything else is just black and cold.

And one-legged seagulls are just pretending.
They are not children sleeping.

And one-legged seagulls are just pretending
To dream of things like gravity.

Tortoise

Sometimes you walk and sometimes you run. Sometimes you stand still and sometimes you crawl. Sometimes you fall over or trip.

Sometimes you stop thinking about your feet. At that time you no longer walk or run or stand or crawl, or fall or trip. This is because you have arrived.

A free bird leaps

Chelsea K. walks the street of a familiar neighborhood--blue, charcoal, brick--the order of houses she remembers in her muscles, the chortle of birds on the wire soothing. Billy who is six waves from behind the sprinkler. His sister grinds the wheels of a pink car along the driveway, her concentration heavy. Chelsea walks for many blocks, passing neighbors and cars and street signs, on her way to meet her future self.

Chelsea K.'s future self, she thinks, will be quite nice. An accomplished college graduate with steady work and maybe one daughter and no husband; that would be preferable.

Upon traveling one block further, Chelsea K. reaches an end in the road where the asphalt drops off into the center of the Earth. There is nothing past this point except an expanse of sky.

I hadn't expected this, Chelsea K. thinks. What shall I do now?

Though the telephone wire had broken where the road ends, there are several birds still nesting atop the pole nearest the edge. She looks to them for advice, and of course when they speak the answer is simple.

Life

Which is the correct path to follow?

a.) b

b.) a

c.) 7

d.) b

You have 100 years to complete the exercise. You may answer as often as you like. Time may be deducted for each incorrect answer, or for each correct answer. For each incorrect answer you will be dropped two letter grades. For each correct answer you will be dropped one letter grade, and another letter grade to be determined later.

here.

I can't help but think, these might be our best days. Something to fight for. We own nothing but ourselves. We are stupid, and thus we love too much, maybe. Try too hard at the expense of time. The value of seconds is hidden from us. It makes us turn against the clocks, turn towards us, each other.

I can't help but think that. Because you're here. And because I cannot believe that days exist when you are not.

About Thursday Night Football

Laundry
Day and I can see
Why a friend says these
Games don't matter.

He watches the
Sunday squad who play
Clean.

I watch the
Saturday cowboys (not
McNeese State or
Dallas), all the
Ones who play 4 years
Then graduate.

Their dirt seems
Dirtier. Their plays more
Legendary.

But,
Their laundry,
They bring their dirty
Laundry home and that is
Why?
My friend says what he says about
College ball.

He chose a
Self-fulfilling prophecy to open
Commentary against, Smart
Move.

And tomorrow is only
Friday.

(To be fair Saturday feels more Legendary than
Thursday.)

Books

She once read a book about this sort of thing, where nothing much happens unless you lend yourself, just a bit of yourself, though you must lend completely, away.

The trick then was finding the right kinds of books to read next.

Nothing

In another life, Joseph might have been an astronaut, a pole vaulter, a doctor in South Africa.

He might have been what the world would call something.

But Joseph was not in space and he was not pushing into the sun and he was not facing death, Joseph was shit-stained and scrubbing a portable toilet.

When he was done, Joseph walked into the afternoon sun and let the caked shit dry and crack on his sanitary suit, and he watched the sun until it burned him deeply.

Then because Joseph lived in a corner of the park that was dark at night and unused and rangers rarely checked there, he laid quiet on a rusted bench and watched the stars until they surrounded him, fireflies.

Joseph fell asleep and wondered what it would be to die, to finally rest, but then he woke, and the sun compelled him to stand.

He walked off, to clean shit, to be nothing, and to understand everything.

A Poem About Frustration

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