words

this is a summer adventure: a trip through under-explored woodland areas, rafting in toxic waters, a night or two spent in over-heated garages, swimming in alcohol and liquids not yet known to most 4th graders. this is forced, let's make no qualms about it. fact is it's been clear near a month of fractured thought, the most of which, at this present time, gets scribbled down in a forgotten notebook on years old paper next to doodles of fish and coral and an unfinished self-portrait of a cow next to a windowsill. to be perfectly frank, and tim will agree with this to the limit, nothing comes near the apex of what is motivating to a man with little-to-no self worth nor appreciation for the misgivings around him than the feel of a cool hand against his own. to be perfectly honest, as i mentioned before and, again, tim can attest to the true severity and honesty in these words, this is forced, straight away. nothing in a nutshell save for that slight hint of warm spirits and methane mixing in the fluorescent light of this place. we had to put it down to paper - the trips to the moon, our concerns about what may and what could have been, that unsettling aroma between the sofa and the fern, a matchstick's duration in a vacuum, what i had said on january thirteenth, piano keys and what the strokes meant to not only you, but the older gentleman we purchased it from, single-syllable words strung together to make beautifully awful poems about past misfortune. we put it all down. to remember. to preserve.

i recall sitting near the back of the room. it gave off a sort of normalizing feeling, the walls, the ceiling, the armchairs and the table towards the center. this is where it took place. i sat there, coffee in the left hand, a book, the illegitimate fowl meets mother self-depreciating goat, clutched in the right. this was something else, i thought. sitting in the leather chair, it's arms coming up higher than a normal chair would, nearly as high as my shoulders. i feel like a child, i said...i thought. did i say it? the older fellow to the left seemed to hear me say something. his reading glasses removed, he shot me a curious look, as if to say, don't you dare think about even thinking about fucking my daughter. he wasn't even with anyone. crazy old coot. he turned away just as quickly as he began. for the best, i thought, i'd be a shame if i'd have to make another example out of a foolish old man. but that's what i get. i suppose that's what we all get.

gigawatt

i dreamed my finger landed on cookeville, tennessee.
"this is where i'm going," i said, dragging the syllables through the thick of disappointment.
"i don't know where that's at."
"consider yourself lucky."
"why are you going there?"
"because i have to."
"because why?"
"because that's where the finger landed."
he paused and studied the globe, the great decider resting reluctantly still on my new found destiny. i watched him as he placed his tiny hand upon the deep blues and dark greens, tracing the lines of the rolling mountains with such precision, a skill uncommonly familiar to this three-year old soul, like some master craftsman creating and molding a fine piece of art, or even something more magnificent, something beyond this young child's imagination, infinite and pure as it may be.

dear fran,

you were right. this isn't going to work. why i thought it might, shit, i really don't know. i mean, it seemed to be a good idea, in theory at least. right? it was simple enough. but i don't know. i'm just tired i guess. tired of trying to come up with different ways, different answers, different...

i woke up this morning and there was a rat in my bed. a goddamn rat under my goddamn sheets with me. what kind of shit is that? well, it was the last kind of shit i'll tell you that much.

you understand right? it was doomed from the onset. i see that now. but what does it matter, right? i mean, somewhere someone is sitting down and writing or typing or whatever the fuck, painting, these same exact words in some same exact self-deprecating, fucked up tone like what the fuck is so wrong with my life? right?

kip says not to send this letter. but that asshole took my last beer so screw him. the fuck does he know anyway, right? so...well, heh. adios then.

-den


i read a line in a book today. something to the effect of the best love letters being encoded for the one and not the many. something like that. you think that's true? but what if you don't know that it's meant for you?

varnish

i started five lines and then stopped, then took an eraser to them a moment later started again, this time only four, and again i took up that eraser.
we stopped believing
in all things
in man
in brother
in neighbor
these were the unwritten words. four more, as i had mentioned.
paul abbott stopped believing in god.
he recalled his initial feelings in a
letter to his sister annette who was
backpacking through the swiss alps.
there was a lack of rhythm, i thought. or maybe just a lack of emotion. so again to the paper i took.
the sun came out today.
for that i am thankful.
as i write this there is
if your mother could see you now what would she say? there she is on the porch, sitting in the wooden rocking chair your father built for her years before. he had sanded it down and gave it a varnish finish. it fades now in the morning sunlight but that doesn't stop your mother from using it. she loves that chair, just like she loved your father. but your father was a man tempted, wasn't he. you remember. the whole god damn block certainly remembers.
she was never that way.
none of it was ever that way.
none of it was ever true.
it was all just a
dream.
what does it feel like to dream of fear? in your worst nightmares are you dying? is something terribly, terribly awful happening to you? to your family? to your friends? is that the fear you feel? or is it a different kind? we'll see in the end that there is no end at all. a far more dreadful fear? a fear of the end? a fear of there not being an end? does it haunt you to know there is none? do you dream in truth? is that the fear far too horrible to dream?
we see you
in.
the.
ground.
six
feet
below
your family

is
not
there.
with you.
in the ground.

superball

at first i didn't really know what it was i was looking for. but i had this feeling, this urge to find it, something!, but what? it was strong, too, the urge i mean. like a powerful, invisible force that came from nowhere and forced me to look. to just look. so i started looking. i began under my bed. i pulled out everything from beneath that rickety, worn-down twin frame, an old pair of tennis shoes, the box for that old pair of tennis shoes which was actually one of those diorama-like constructions i think i remembered making back in the first grade. there was a man, small and brown and made of clay, sitting at a table made of popsicle sticks with a single candle on top and in the corner it looked like there may have been another clay figure, i couldn't tell, only guess by the two, faded oil spots across from the man and the candle. this isn't what i'm looking for though, i thought. i don't know why i thought that. how could i have known! but it didn't feel right, that much was certain. so i kept looking. an old binder filled with baseball cards, a superball, a couple stranded socks. i pulled out everything, but what i was looking for wasn't there. dammit. but i couldn't stop. there was a nudge, a soft, little push, forcing me to continue. keep looking. why? because you have to find it. okay, so i kept trying. i don't know why. i really don't know why...(i really hope to finish this one)

balls

aaron fucked up once. fucked up real good. never really was the kind of person to go and do stupid shit and get himself into a situation, but i guess they do say 'go big or go home' right? the perfect summation to a terrible experience. it's funny to think about now, for me at least, looking back on it as the two of us split another pitcher. never the hard stuff, he always says. and then what does he go and do? you guessed it.
no, this time i mean it, don't let me fucking do it again, he says. sure, i say as i watch him suck down the last of another beer. i know it won't last and next time we'll be sitting here looking back on something that hopefully doesn't involve aaron in another police car. well 'wish in one hand and shit in the other' right? that's another thing they do say. come to think of it i never really explained what in the sphincter hell actually happened to him.
it started with a shot, that much was certain, although it could have started much sooner than that. of that i'm not really sure. could of started weeks earlier come to think of it. shit, well anyway, for me and him and that night it started with a shot. aaron's situation was straightforward, really nothing much to it, just enjoying the life. but one can only do so much, you know, before it all comes crashing back down. 'burning the candle at both ends' well there's another fucking thing (speaking of which, i always found it a bit condescending to always be using the same goddamn cliches all the goddamn time. patronizing assholes. but then i realized, well shit, they're cliches because it always happens! obviously. can't begin to tell you how long it took me to come to that realization but fuck me if i don't use them all the time now. and balls to the people who think otherwise. sorry, something of a sidenote) sums up perfectly what aaron got himself into that night.

some are better than others

i read a short story, and then another, and then decided i didn't much like quotation marks anymore.
why? someone said.
i like the way it looks.
really?
i think it flows better, too.
i suppose.
you don't think?
makes it kind of hard to tell.
tell what?
who's talking.
seriously?
yeah.
you really believe that?
yeah, sure.
that's a load of bullshit. i'll tell you right now any thinking person, any person with a sense of perception can tell the difference between two people talking. besides, i told them, why should i be creatively confined by some stupid rule, if it really is a rule, when one could argue that operating "outside the rules" (notice the quotation marks. what a goddamn hypocrite!) is definition of writing creatively?

for the record, that sort of thinking is a load of shit spewed by some would-be writer who's nothing more than some hack who read a few good stories by a few good contemporary writers suggested to him by a few not-so-good writers subscribing to the same hack writer's philosophy and decided that he'd do right by the rest of them to best replicate whatever goddamn story some pretentious asshole in borders said he saw in the latest issue of the new yorker because that'd be the best place to start. honestly though, i've no fucking clue what i'm talking about.

the beginning though is all true. i can, and prefer to, function without quotation marks. i do like the way the words look, out in the open, floating in the white space of unused paper or, in this case, word document? those single words forming ideas, the beginnings of thought unrefined, free flowing, unedited. the things we truly mean to say before we rethink and reload and tiptoe around the unspoken barriers that too often prevent any one from truly communicating with another. the things we want to say and the things we never speak. just words. thoughts. emotions. secrets. desires. admissions. reflections. the truth spilling out into the open.

"just a one minute messiah..."

when scott and the rest of them left for the mountains and they left you sitting on the floor of your room, leaning back against an old, metal fold out chair, and the tears began building up in the corners of your eyes because they didn't invite you, it wasn't the fact that none of them really cared to extend any kind of olive branch your way, and it wasn't because scott went with tanya, that girl from the grinder shop who wore her hair up every day you and he went their for lunch after bible study, with those glasses that trapped the little wispy strands of brown behind her perfect ears, it was because you realized that no one really, truly liked you. period. that was it. was it because you would never close your mouth every time you ate that cold cut sandwich? was it because your nose arched in a funny, unnatural way that made your eyes look like sunken treasure chests in mounds of sand? was it because sometimes you laughed when you weren't suppose to laugh, at the fucked up things that certain people cherish with a passion that you could never comprehend? you were cold, like that chair. it was sad for people to see. for people to be around you it was more of a chore than a joy. sweetie, it's okay, she says. no one is more important than you. no one is more special than you. god has a plan for you. you're in good hands. her words are soft and soothing. they envelope you and hold you and warm you. this is good, you think, this is okay, and you start to believe it too. you share a prayer with her and she says, god give her the strength, give her beauty, it is your will, lord, it is your plan, god, we are in your hands lord. and again her words hold you up and cover your face and wipe your eyes and you feel clear and quiet and motionless in the blanket of her words.