Courtship In The 21st Century
Dating sites. Dating Apps. Pick up lines. Facebook (Meta). Instagram. Tic-Toc. Literally thousands of places to find the love of your life.
Write a paragraph or two about yourself in hopes of snaring the person you've waited a lifetime for. I've never bothered with any of that. Face to face physical contact via words and actions are my preference which today would be called outdated I suppose.
I will just plod along with 19th and 20th Century ways. Although,the older I get, the more difficult the odds are of finding a hot and sensual 60-something woman looking to be swept off her feet and taken to paradise like never before.
Nope. Not going to happen. Can't take someone to paradise when even I don't know what the hell paradise looks like these days, yet alone a sensual 60-something woman.
Besides who has the energy to start courting on a ship?
First Impressions Count
“Howdy?”, “Hey?”, “Hello?”
Jesus, no, no, no!
Too youthful, too casual, too slow.
Is my hair alright?
Is my top too tight?
Check my teeth. Do my eyes mask fright?
Is the bus running late?
Do you think she’ll hate
My daft laugh and my clumsy gait?
“You I’m here to see?”
Christ, she’s talking to me.
Throat dries up, shuffle nervously.
“Will we take this booth?”
“Are you getting food?”
Am I chatting about what I should?
Am I chewing enough?
Or is this too much?
Should my eyes be on hers, further up?
I collapse in bed,
Breathe, pulse in my head.
Lie awake hating everything I said.
“So, how was last night?
Was your date alright?”
My friends crowd around, eyes bright.
Then I strangely find,
That to her I'd been blind.
Did I like her? Who knows? Never mind.
I Said No
Hey Prosers. I've had a few totty's. So that's the drunken mood I'm in to tell you that I quit my job. I could take a vaccine or leave. Since I left, they've called me twice requesting my return. My old boss said, "No vaccines. Same seniority just as you left. You could just work one day a week. It would benefit both of us."
In the meantime, I've been hired at the local bowling alley bar for Thursday-Saturday. Wow.
Today is my fourth day of training in a field I've known nothing about. The cash register was new.
Keeping up with liquor is not all that hard, but learning how to do it is tough if you are not educated about it.
What I want you as the reader to understand is that I "jumped off a bridge." I had no other job lined up. I was not going to be told to inject myself to get a paycheck.
Tonight, all I had to do was tell a few guys how handsome they were and "boom!" A twenty dollar tip on a few beers.
Bye Bye, you stupid corporations. At no cost will I give up my freedom, including death.
I might really do it this time.
Why should i see another sun?
what is wrong with me that no one wants to be around me?
why am i even here.
and even when people like me
i spend too much time trying to figure out why.
i Just hate how slowly the moments drip by.
like molasses in Alaska.
even if the plan is “dystopian nightmare”
or “utopian daydream”
I’m losing the sense that any of it is worthwhile.
the socks are stuffed.
I’ve had enough.
just like that time we road tripped
and the dogs slept so peacefully in the backseat
you were so tired yet you got us home safely;
time to lay down to sleep in the passenger side once more.
Take me home.
Stuck
He collects stamps because that’s the closest he’ll ever get to traveling the world, these little pieces of paper that have crossed oceans and traversed mountains while he’s stuck walking along the same cracked streets, sun to moon. His mother once crossed an ocean to get here, from a place he’ll never see, home to cousins he’ll never meet. Thailand exists only as an idea, a space in his mind where everything tastes of sweet rambutan instead of the salt of his sweat. He was warned, though – they call it the American dream, and everyone knows dreams aren’t real.
Dreaming
The older I get, the more I realize it’s all a great strange dream
Just like Keuorac said
Sometimes I try desperately to read between the lines
Interpret every person, place and thing as a symbol of something larger
Searching for a pattern or direction that will make it all make sense
When the truth may very well be
That there is n o t r u t h a t a l l
No grand plan where the pieces fit together just so
But rather
Life is a great strange dream
Like the one you have after eating street meat
You walk on the ceiling and see your long dead dog
And wonder if the buzzing in your ears is a swarm of jolly bumble bees
or just your alarm clock
janky hoes
you awaken me from dreams
with the most beautiful light i have ever seen
then you coax me back to sleep
with the knowing that you will never leave.
you present yourself in times when i am challenged,
at a crossroad or
feeling damaged.
i feel your embrace,
hear your words repeating themselves
until they resonate in me,
that i am good enough and who cares what anyone else thinks,
fuck them janky hoes anyway