twelfth

"The whole element that maybe I was going for in this one short story that I wrote about this guy who was named after an alias of my father."
This whole process
is changing for me
like it did that one summer
in the UP
when I realized it was what I wanted to do.

And I think
maybe
it's becoming something I have to do.
Does that make sense?
Is that a realistic concept?
Huh?

I really don't know if I'm just being
too melodramatic
so I'm willing to hear other theories about
these thoughts in my head
but
I don't expect them,
so pardon me for judging myself at the moment.

You know,
someone has to do it.


"Calvinism"
As far as I know of it
it's an easy way out
right?

It's like determinism?
Or at least kind of?
You know
they both put forth this idea that
what you are doing right now
doesn't matter.
Or did I misread it,
as I've been known to do?

Well,
anyway,
I'm not so sure
I like this nihilism
that came to me
one day
as if I were Dewey
opening the bathroom door
on a pot party,
but still
I guess it's the best you can really do these days

when you can expect
sixty more years ahead of you
on this earth
and you are only just recently not-a-child,
and you aren't sure you enjoy it yet

like the taste of anchovies,
the first time you ever had them on a pizza.


"I hate what I do just a little bit"
too drunk at your open house
he starts hitting on your mother
and she asks him why he writes books
and turns her nose up at him
but you still think he's sort of profound
when he's fresh out of rehab
and hasn't found his next fix yet
and he sure is kind of cute
in his abstract depression
and inability to not cry
at least 47 times a day
so one day you ask him the same question
at this dinner that he's going to pay for
and then go home alone and sleep for twelve hours

he pushes up his glasses on his nose
and looks for a moment
like he's going to spit into a potted plant
near your table
but doesn't
and says

"well
you know
it beats slamming my head into a wall several times a day.
which is,
i think,
the alternative."


"talented people"
Musicians are just beautiful things
in how they can play on my emotions so easily
and no matter how good I may be with words
--sometimes I feel like I'm not good at all--
I'm never going to be able to have the same effect on people
that a good album does.

I don't like rereading novels
that often
but I can listen to the same
LP five times in a row sometimes
and I think that says something for
the meaninglessness that I feel
some days
for what I do
or what I could do, will do.

I've been writing for so long now
but I'm just letting myself dig into that bag
with the label of catharsis on it
and
I'm not sure I like what I'm pulling out
and throwing into the pond for the birds to eat.

There are a million things
that I want to say
to a million people
but that are going to go unspoken,

aren't there?