A Broken Clock Is Never Late

I wanted to kiss you goodbye but I didn’t want to wake you and I want today to start ok
I wanted to kiss you goodbye but I didn’t want to wake you, you had a rough day yesterday
Yes I’ll miss you but don’t know what I’m supposed to do
Can I do anything at all?

A Broken Clock Is Never Late

Santa Claus

It's cold.
Yesterday was spent recovering from hangovers. A lot of them. I laugh at myself, at the ridiculousness I create every damn second and none of it's intended to be funny. Coffee, cigarettes (ineffective recovery methods but ritual nonetheless) and I'm off on my way to do something else somewhere but not there. On a mission, I say, so I can leave without feeling too guilty that I probably won't get to the things I intended to. I'm consumed with thoughts of now, of yesterday, and tomorrow seems so damn hard when today's already dying alone. The ones I wished to share it with are preoccupied.
My preoccupation is them.
Theirs is other people, places, things. So busy. So involved.
The internet. Saw a picture of a future girlfriend to someone out there. It wasn't me.
See how this doesn't work?
I think I need to get a dog (strike that) I think I want to get a dog.
I put too much faith in some, not enough in others, and I'm disappointed all the time by behavior of those so newly placed on my good list.
Santa Claus, Santa Claus, Santa Claus had the right idea.
Always check it twice (spell check Santa, too).
Can I be a word inventor? I mean, is that possible? I invented a lot of them last night being a blithering idiot, recovering from information, from sentiment that left me speechless. I plug my ears; sing la la la, everybody! It won't hurt if I can't hear it.

(Santa Claus isn't real)

Fell into disbelief of love and those little things that won't work in the long run, it seems, because right now it's already tainted. I am shaking my head at myself, preventing my vision from focusing on the reality I thought I constructed pretty damn well. Theme songs, names that don't matter, creatures I've yet to identify, pictures of faces – they're all stuck in this wheel, the man keeps turning it and pulling out letters, numbers, calling them out to the crowd to see if anyone's really listening.
B-I-N-G-O.
I want to find the one that's listening.

Sarasota Short Story: Bry(i)ans

Went to play pool somewhere, location is irrelevant I guess. Was unsuspecting walking in, but that soon ended when one of the 267 "Bry(i)ans" I've met in life came up to hug me. I didn't recall knowing this particular Bry(i)an and had no desire to make him more familiar to me. My non-Bry(i)an friend pretended to be my boyfriend to prevent said familiarity. I loudly called him dear, as if this well-calculated plan would somehow make my life easier.

Met "Will." Will was with his ladyfriend. She was never introduced but I refrained from labeling staggering Will as poor-mannered. I'd give him a chance to right his wrongs.

"See that woman over there? I love her, but she drives me crazy sometimes. Ask her something she doesn't know. I can't ask her anything she doesn't know."

I'm not much help in these situations.
Will, however, was of very much help to me.

"The ball is like a bull. Wherever you hit it, that's the way it's gonna charge. You gotta take slices of the angles, you see, like swiss cheese. Slice slice slice slice slice tiny little slices of the angle, offer the cheese to your opponent. Don't rush it. Just like swiss cheese."

Ladyfriend is sitting at her table, smirking. I am sitting as well, trying not to lock eyes or stare at Will's earring. It is very gold. His eyes are very red.

Love in Three Acts

Love in Three Acts
I.
Dogs with shrunken legs jingle on the sidewalk, rapid breathing oblivious to toxins we put here for him to inhale. We didn't mean to do it, of course. But the only thing I can think about is
"Where did I lose you?"
Where are your footsteps, less rapid than mine but reaching further into the future with each fall?
Where is that place I liked to go to, encased by the simplicity of notes pounding, resonating underneath your fingers?
"I don't know."
I want that again, so fleeting are my faculties to catalog new memories, because I just want to live in those moments that already existed prior to each passing second I breathe in the same air as dogs, cats, criminals.
We all share something (blood?) warm, subzero, pulsing, stagnant, racing, frozen, present, absent, and I can still see. My eyes still function to follow the fall of this pen, the traces of your footsteps that now just walk further away.

II.
I guess you could say I'm in mourning of something still alive but gone from myself. It's the demise of lessons learned in spite of everything I ever to wish to forget.
"Can I have a do-over?"
Because I've learned how to torture, forgot how to love.
I've entangled the best intentions of someone naive, unsuspecting, unspoiled, optimistic, into the twisted pockets of a former misery I'm slowly extracting myself from.
And he was willing, undeterred, because of some unexplained magnetism - love - he felt towards me.
Where did I learn all that?

III.
"I learned it from you."

FIN

nonsense.

I am lost in a fever of gypsies
Selling their wires and candy ropes
I am hoping to buy a boulder
To steady my telescope
I’ll magnify the heathens
And shower in the morning light
I hope I’ll undiscover the traces
Of where I might end up tonight

Sarasota Short Story: Bicycle Ride

I'm in the open air, heat reaches my pores and bounces off. A car rolls to a stop. The driver, a smoker, has a missing front tooth and an artist's beret.

I'm thinking: I wonder what he did today.

He smiles at me, moves his mouth, and makes the ok sign with his pointer finger and thumb. I can't understand him over the smells of summer.

"Nice legs," he says.

Again, I am bewildered.

I've found these holes
where sunlight is sinking in spots here and there
wherever did my sunshine go
i put it on a milk carton
but it never returned.
It must have found a better place
someone to bask in its growing heat
cause here the light is fading fast
and my mind is fading with it.

the rain is coming with valiant flair
i cannot swallow toxic air
if I escaped away from here
would I ever see your face again?