Squirt it out on the counter. Clean it up. Pick it up. Smear it on the grave.

I’m a scumbag with a taste for adventure. Watch me collect dust on my wicker chair, as my thighs grow numb over the course of hours of physical inactivity. Like Big Foot, you may per chance to see me scratch my nose, but only rumors now are circulating of such an occurrence. Cocoa Crispies are much crunchier with cockroach legs. I haven’t seen a paycheck all month, but working for a private prison company has it’s perks. I breathed the same air as Mitch McConnell. I think I’ve been turning into a turtle. But I’m a frog, see. I smoke cigars. Is there anything as resplendent as the sound of soup pouring into a garbage can? I can think of nothing. Chili tastes exceptionally cold from a long-refrigerated container, but can I spell this well while drunk. Thank you jagged red lines. I’d like to make my own jagged red marks, but I guess that’d be selfish according the ethics of my consciousness. Cocoa Puffs cut my gums, but there’s something alluring about pink milk. Can’t you see that my teeth are perfect the way they are? I haven’t seen a vagina in months, but my dreams tell me it’s harder to piss the bed with a boner. So there’s that. What is a guy supposed to do when all he ever wants is to disappear in a blood smear. Thank god for jagged red lines. The red lines don’t believe in God. god’s just fine for them. Take it from me, everything’s taken from me. I can’t unsee what I’ve seen. I’m just a grain of Cocoa Crispy in a ocean of Cocoa Puffs. Enough is enough. I’m calling my bluff. Fuck it, kick the bucket. Gravestone domino rally. Listen, pally.

Despair-ditty

In dreamland I relive my regrets
Rehearsing a strange alphabet
Each letter detailed
With every way that I’ve failed
And posted to those I’ve just met

My favorite clothes never fit
If life is a job then I quit
I’m slipping in pink
With every drink that I drink
All my roses are coming up shit

Going once, going twice…Old

Dear diary,

Much has happened since I last graced my digital archive of complaining with more than a passing photograph. I reread this entire thing last night while drinking, and oh how my life has transformed. Not really.

I have lived through my second divorce, of course, of course. All according to my plan to isolate, alienate, and completely misdirect my life from any sort of contentment or success. I am in fact back in sunny and horrible Florida. My previously noted apprehensions of moving here have all been proven worthy.

It’s not all sour apples. It’s nice to be around my family again for the first time in a decade, but closeness also means entanglement in all sorts of drama that I am entirely unaccustomed to.

Everything in Florida is older, dirtier, and more crowded than I remember it being as a child. It is a pleasant surprise to see many of the parks I liked to walk around are still mostly the same. But my old neighborhoods and especially where I live now have noticeably degenerated.

I deeply regret leaving the mountains. But when backed into a corner, unexpectedly, it was the only choice I felt I could make. Now I’m busy turning over plans to somehow get back. This is complicated by the fact that my Dad is going to need some pretty consistent assistance to go on living from here on out. Sylvia has gone completely mad again, ejecting him from his home. We all (Jen’s family, him, and myself) now live together in sit-com-like hilarity in my late Nana’s house. I at least have my own tiny apartment to hide in.

Finding work is pretty well fucked around here. I’ve joined a temp agency that functions like a unicycle with no spokes, but I’ve been working with my Step-dad in the cafe of a corporate office that owns and runs private prisons. I can’t even begin to understand just how in the hell I ended up in this situation.

Life, if anything, is unpredictable.

Oh, and Donald Trump is getting ready to be our president, and we are all going to die.

Losing Our Pulse

I can know no greater wealth, nor ever be so fortunate than to roam about the earth and go moving back and forth in it.

we have flown across the sky
and sailed across the ocean
chasing the never answered why
and the fleeting ghosts of notion
glance now through the endless prism
and abandon ye your nihilism

Put me in, Coach

Strike One

This is only the beginning, but I remember how it ends.
I’ve struck out every inning, so now you’ve gone out with your friends.
He’s stealing into second, he’s stealing into third.
The ball is still up in the air, but you hang onto every word.
I know here in the dugout my thoughts seem way off base,
but if I don’t keep up on the lookout, another player takes my place.
Put me in, Coach.

Strike Two

I know when playing pitcher, there always is a catch,
But I love to count my chickens long before they ever hatch.
If you’d just put me up to bat, I’d never fail at coming home,
But way out in this dugout I’ve been feeling so alone.
I’d love to dig my cleats deep into orange, into green,
But on this grey concrete it’s only red that I have seen.
Put me in, Coach.

Strike Three

If you’ll only let me swing it, I’ll be your Babe, I’ll be your Ruth.
Every voice out there will sing it, if you’ll only tell the truth.
I know our past is buried, but our future’s out on bond.
I’ve started sounding scary, and you’ve started looking gone.
If we can’t kiss for each other, then let’s do it for the crowd.
Our love is only smothered when we speak our names aloud.
Put me in, Coach.

Rondelet

The Devil is a great pretender
Every Devil knows it’s true
Behind the soul of sweet surrender
Does a Devil cast his view
But the soul of sweet desire
Dances blindly in the fire

See the Dog seek man’s permission
In fear against the striking hand
There lies the soul of sweet submission
As any Dog can understand
But the soul of sweet desire
Dances blindly in the fire

With all the world beneath their feet
Hear the gasping choirs sigh
Shouts the soul of sweet conceit
As every Angel sings on high
But the soul of sweet desire
Dances blindly in the fire

See the Fool; the gods abuse him
In his hands the puppet strings
Without the urge to ever use them
An eagle born with broken wings
But the soul of sweet desire
Dances blindly in the fire

Paingel

Your dream fills my
Ears nose and mouth with
Vanilla scented ocean water
Thousands of fingers squirm like
Maggots in a dragnet
Your puckered lips become
A bright red life-preserver
I reach in to discover
It is evening; we sit rapt
At a scarlet table
Your strange palmistry maps
My future without you
I thought that I’d never
Have to see you again
Now one more time

Commercial

If you try to run from me
I’ll build you prisons you can’t see
I’ll turn my fetters I’ll twist my ropes
Into my lofty music notes
If you try to block your ears
I’ll make you see what you can’t hear
I’ll take in your glance for questioning
The picture’s voice is deafening