Talking to Dogs
I’d be pretty durned crazy if I talked to my dog, wouldn’t I? I mean, talked to him like he was a person?
Pretty… durned… crazy!
But it would be crazier still if I thought he could understand, if I believed he was actually responding to my idiocy. Wouldn’t it?
Like this morning, when I whispered, “That woman on the bench there sure is hot. I wish we could meet someone like her!”
And Jolly immediately trotted over, sat at her feet, and shot her dead with the sad eyes.
That’d be pretty crazy, huh?
Yes, Sir-ee.
Pret-ty… durned… crazy!
Lines and Confines
Where is my future
Without you
Looping in black and white replays
Our time together
I am shattered
Each and every time
I think of you
Yet
How can I not?
I’m a waterfall
No one pays admission
To see
No one admits
They see
Too raw
My emotion on display
Running from their empathy
Because it hurts so beautifully
I can hide in plain sight
This way
This is the way
Forget me
Remember the feeling
Feel me
Forget to remember
It’s Monday
It’s time to drink
Everywhere
Raleigh Retardation and Detoxification
Thorn bushes in Raleigh were something that I knew nothing about until I decided to spend the first ten years of my adult life making alcohol the sole purpose of it. I had been walking around after shirking the homeless shelter cold turkey detox for the street for what seemed like a long time in the cold. First, I had gone to the nature trails behind the nearby gas station and laid there for a while after wrangling up my last few dollars to buy a tall can of 4loko. I looked up at the stars and felt the old twinge and stirrings of the spirit of adventure that I originally had found in my booze laden escapades. It was a mere glimmer, or gasp now. Compared to the comet, and roar that it was in the beginning. I couldn’t pretend that this was a scene from a Kerouac novel anymore. I was not Neal Cassidy and nothing about my life was worthy of much more than a pre-emptive obituary and a pathetic one at that.
Eventually as the reality of my situation crept in to such an extent that I was beginning to feel the inklings of a rational decision come on, I got up off the wet, short grass and looked around as I chugged the last of the first 4loko. I decided this was not where I was going to sleep and set out to figure something else out. I walked into a neighborhood that had a little convenience store on the main street of it. Upon walking into the neighborhood, on what I believe I remember to be called “Savage Street” I found a church and figured that behind it was probably best to lay down and catch a few drunken stupor Zs. I wandered back into their property, found some bushes and essentially threw myself into them. I fell asleep shortly thereafter with little difficulty as I was exhausted from the walk and the 4loko in my system.
I woke up a few hours later and it was daylight. No one had disturbed me or otherwise messed with me or my belongings. A great fortune for me at the time and I celebrated a bit too early as I realized I had lost my ear buds in the bush. Oh well, I proceeded down the street back towards the convenience store which I saw was now open. Upon entering I attempted to locate the booze and discovered it was too early to buy booze in North Carolina. Phooey. I was offered a cup of coffee by the store owner, and I took it, gulping it greedily. Eventually I realized I should probably give that indigent, homeless shelter, cold-turkey detox another shot as I had nowhere else to go and nowhere to buy alcohol as well as dwindling remaining funds becoming a statement which carried a severe degree of understatement to it. Leaving the convenience store, I headed towards the sidewalk in the direction of the indigent detox shelter. By the time I arrived, I was very ill already indeed. I stood up right next to the intake desk where volunteers manned their stations to process the broken, weary, tired and roofless masses, of which I had become one. The first thing I did in relatively quick fashion was to puke the neon red and green colors of the contents of my stomach into the nearest trash receptacle. This occurred multiple times until they stated that I was too sick for them to handle and needed medical attention.
One of the volunteers took me to the hospital – WakeMed in Wake Forest, an affluent area outside of Raleigh where I was admitted for seven days due to my heart rhythm and need for detox.
Коли бажаєш зірки
Коли бажаєш зірки
May 17, 2025
Once
Just once
I wish what I wish
Would come true
What I ask
Is what all would ask
To live
In a world not as blue
A sunrise
Displaying the warmth
A mild wind
Originating not from the north
Butterflies,
Hummingbirds, and crickets
Sounds of life
Not sounds of strife
A walk to a school
That actually existed
Not in a ruin
In which someone resisted
One night
Where silence is adorned
Not every night
From explosions forlorned
Коли я бажаю зірки
Коли сподіваюся на допомогу здалеку
Лише одного бажає моє серце
Це припинити всі війни
Connections
I still remember receiving
the first message.
The brick phone
that Nokia built.
I’m certain that phone
still works today.
I’m certain that phone
will remain in working order
long after my bone dust
has returned to Antares.
And I remember thinking
upon message receipt
"Why didn’t you just call me, dude?"
I could see
from that first moment
how our social thread
would degrade.
Decades later
and my conversations
have largely reduced to signals
closer to Morse Code.
Doing_fine__stop
Cool__stop
Work_sucks__stop
Today_sucks__stop
True__stop
The_world_sucks__stop
Yeah__stop
How_are_you__stop
Maybe_one_day__stop
Love_you__stop
Standing in the Nike store,
adrift in Black Friday shoppers,
my sister says I’m not alone,
she’s watched conversations
with friends and family
whither, too.
Underneath her neutral
expression
stares a frustrated woman
wondering what will be left.
We blame children,
we blame marriage,
we blame the job,
but we never give much credit
to the convenience
of being left alone,
sinking into the subscribed comforts
of our privately mediated Idahos.
The great irony
of communication technology:
We will connect you to the world at the cost
of your connection…
Rich conversation
is now a luxury belonging
to stand-up comedians
selling ballsack razors,
conspiracy theorists hugging great aching jugs of vitamins.
Commentators, careerists,
and the collapsed individual
whose slow soul decay
we secretly celebrate.
They will speak for us.
They will have friends for us.
They will have families for us.
They will have lives for us.
What a service they offer,
free of charge.
Simply enter the promotion code at checkout.
And yet, from time to time
I meet someone
filthy stinking rich with words
diving head first
like Scrooge McDuck
into the grand Art Deco bank vault of their diction.
Swimming
in rhythmic breast stroke,
spraying forth speech
like a blue whale surfacing
from a journey in the depths.
And it moves me.
It moves me to speak once more.
It moves me to think once more.
It moves to feel once more.
There are connections
running in circuits
hidden to the IT specialists,
hidden to Verizon
or Time Warner.
They are the sort of connections passed along by sparrows
in the parking garage
or crickets at the roadside,
hopping around the litter.
Connections that will outlast
the next iPhone update.
Connections that will survive the collapse
of communication towers.
And like my old glory
Nokia phone,
will still boot up
long after we have gone,
ready to transmit
the heart’s voice
once more.
Who Writes the Books
You write it.
It sucks.
So you write it again.
Still sucks.
You wonder who you’re kidding—
calling it work, calling yourself a writer.
It feels like a joke.
A hobby playing dress-up.
But you’re still here.
The world didn’t ask.
It’s not waiting.
There’s no audience.
No prize.
Just that thing in your gut
that keeps hauling you back
like a bad habit you can’t shake.
That’s the hinge.
Not love.
Not talent.
Not some myth about "calling".
Just return.
Dragging your sorry ass back to the page.
That’s the hinge.
And the lever?
It’s your hand moving
when your head says don’t bother.
It’s typing through the static,
scraping at one dead paragraph
until it bleeds something half-honest.
Knowing no one’s watching.
Knowing it changes nothing.
But doing it clean.
You thought belief made you a writer.
But belief fades.
It always does.
What matters is
who shows up
when it’s gone.
That’s who writes the book.
-
Hemingway called his work shit. Celeste Ng rewrote whole books. David Foster Wallace drowned in doubt. Every writer you admire thought they weren’t good enough. Hell, they still think that.
They wrote anyway.
A Tale of Two Little Leaves
Once upon a time, there lived two little leaves. The first leaf was perfect - beautiful, green, thriving. The second leaf was far from perfect - decrepit, spotted, struggling. Yet their feelings were seemingly antithetical. The first little leaf felt a strange, subtle, lingering sort of angst and disgust knowing that the tree to which it belonged was not nearly as perfect. So many other leaves, so much imperfection. Such ugliness. Such an unfortunate mess for the tree as a whole to not be so beautiful, green, and thriving. The second little leaf felt a similar feeling for a very long time, but then realized that there was no leaf, there was only the tree. And while that tree might be flawed and ugly in some ways, as a whole, overall, it was magnificent and consummate - and all its imperfections made it ironically more perfect. Time passed, and the first little leaf had a similar insight - and a lasting, full sense of bliss and content. This leaf noticed a spot on its otherwise perfect form - such a tragic blemish. But soon the leaf reminded itself that there indeed was just the tree, and many other leaves, many leaves with far more blemishes, many leaves with far fewer, but overall, all in all, the tree was the tree, and that meant the purest form of beauty and wholeness one could possibly imagine. The leaf was all the leaves - all the brilliant and dull ones, all the green and brown ones, all the whole and tattered ones - everything. How silly it is, thought both little leaves, to get caught-up in such little feelings of imperfection and lack when all that really existed was the utter opposite.