5/25/26
There is some Thing that follows you around, from room to room, from the gas station to the party. You’re not quite sure if you’ve seen Him before. Maybe He’s the skinhead freak who followed you down the road in His red 1990 Ford Econoline, who was cracking glass bottles behind the gas station as He drank them, with blood in His eyes.
You feel Him everywhere you go. You swing around the bend of a mountain road at midnight, with concerning speed. He’s right behind you.
You feel Him behind you as you wander an empty section of house, filtered music blaring through the walls as you search for a bathroom. Grey-brown walls, the loneliness is obvious by the sound of laughter, crying and music down the hall, and it reminds you of you. This feeling floats around and drenches the walls of this house similarly to the earthy rancid smell of already-smoked blunts coming from upstairs. Still He follows you.
You feel Her as you sit in your bedroom alone, longing and horny. Maybe it’s You. Did I forget You along the way? I don’t remember Her name, face, but I remember how She dressed. I wonder if She’s still alive? Maybe haunting me for forgetting? Of course. In your narcissism to naturally infer that Her existence revolves around you, and that you are the bright center star to every story. She’s nowhere to be found.
You feel Him in your jacket as the cold wind howls through the city street. You thought He was behind you. You thought He was above you. You thought He was below. How did He find his way in here? Is He Cold? Is He God? Is He your dead childhood friend who you think about less often with each passing day, coming back to remind you of something distant and gone that you ceased to remember, to wake you up from the sleeping and the living of meaningless life?
At last. You have wasted time, lots of time. You can’t even remember what you were supposed to be doing here.
7/4/2026
In a little southern California mountain town, a house fire burns violently in the distance. The deep smoke of burning plywood, rubber, and fond childhood memories plumes over the evergreen summer pine forest. As the smoke escapes the terror of its origin, it is blown east by the wind, growing less potent with each yard, seamlessly integrating with the few grey summer clouds, and coating the great pine trees with dust. There is a 4th of July parade.
Red hats, revving engines, expertly controlled tires screeching, spewing smoke into the crowd. The Soldiers of Jesus controlling their sliding, gliding motorcycles. Everyone is here, just as planned, to celebrate the birthday of a nation. In this town I have never seen so many people gathered. Usually a Saturday consists of driving through empty streets and sleepy antique shops. It’s a great display and could bring any sympathetic person to tears. Old docile veterans being sported around in a ribbon-wrapped trolley truck. Weathered souls who wave slowly, with red eyes gazing out to a crowd of cheering patriotsm throwing candy at kids with big bags for scavenging. The Chamber of Commerce and Forest Services sporting their wel-equipped gadgets and trucks. Construction excavators and cranes, stuck with large American flags in every orifice and available quarter, trotting horses, a wrestling rink, marching bands, cavalry, politicians, everything under the sun, bumper cars from the local auto shop, everything covered in red white and blue.
The flame burns in the background. We are used to this. With any celebration there is always the bitter underbelly. The thing we must temporarily ignore in hopes of witnessing something beautiful. It reminds me of Christmas. The fire department comes by in their big trucks, sirens blaring. We howl a little extra loud for them on this sunny 4th of July. Really it is a beautiful moment.
I start to feel increasingly strange. The wind howls and the narrator of the upcoming WWE-lookalike wrestling match skips on the side of the road, screaming into a wireless microphone. He sports a dirty graphic unintelligible comic book shirt with a suit jacket on top. Covered in dust, belt strapped to his jeans. His plad boxer shorts puff and escape the tyranny of the scrunched and sagging Goodwill jeans. A USA-flag-covered-Santa Claus comes into frame. He takes the stage (a crane truck with a full band setup on top - Marshall stacks, 4 PA speakers, a drum set, a crane fully extended 30 feet high with a flag rigged, hanging from the top), and begins to sing the national anthem. Hats come off and the hearts get covered. The silence begins. The PA system struggles to handle the gain, so the entirety of his sweet rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” is distorted to oblivion. I feel like I am receiving tragic news at a birthday party. When you must pretend all is well, as to not bring the mood down. Who can I really trust? The wind howls. I hear a whisper next to me that the fire on Ashlar has yet to be contained, and that air units are on the way.
Be Strong
If you can be strong
Then I won't be long
It's alright to be mad
Dress Again
20 years from now, when the kids start wearing our clothes
and we know
and they think it's new
I guess it'll feel alive to them
I guess it'll be me and you in that dress
Thank You
I’ve spent so much time with you. I stand in line waiting for God knows what and I am talking to myself. Here comfortable with you. We’ve talked so long that the concept of you and me has melted together into one, and as I say thoughts to you and you speak to me, it is an inner dialogue, a series of neurons firing out loud from one organ to another. We are linked. Communicating, but we both know at all times what we are saying as we say it. So compatible that the two beings become one, yet still sharing their independent motion and incentives. This is not loneliness. Somehow, me being alone wouldn’t feel different, but you would be missing and I would withstand for the moment but feel the missing. I would long for you my love. It almost feels like if you died, I would almost know what heaven is like. Like you could communicate it to me, as if the tangible piece of me left in you could report back, but it wouldn’t. When all of this is over I am left with nothing. ‘Til the next life they say.
If the goal is autonomy with another being, and true love is the linking of two beings into one, to feel intrinsically connected, for loss to ensue inevitably, to be left with the original equation, why try? I know why try. Because of you.
You are brilliant and absolutely beautiful, yet a mirror image of me. I judge you deeply. I trust you deeply and you are me, but you are absolutely beautiful. I view you with a grace and admiration in which I spare myself. I suffer my own judgement and inner turmoil, hearing the death and darkness that lurks in my mind, while understanding with profound accuracy this pattern in your soul, recognizing the flaws, and not wanting to change a thing, and loving you, and admiring you. I think you are a genius, truly.
You are teaching me how to love myself, and admire life. May you be here forever, but if not know that I will pitifully try to view myself in a similar way that I watch you, with great appreciation. Hopefully I will learn by then, how to view the world through your eyes, even just a little bit, in order to love myself and witness true beauty.
Thank you.
7/26/26
Gets away every time
Lucky bastard
Bouncy ball bounces
Closer sound travels quicker
You’re spitting shoe gaze politics
Unapproachable ethics
Unreachable by nature
Keeps you tucked away from love
And mystery
Your worldliness
Is showing
You’ve flown to many countries
And purchased many bags of air
But you still can’t seem to make anything
Of this aggregation
I’ll show you a good time
Once you touch this bouncy ball
Your little stacked trinkets
At home in a house fire
Are fucked and you will
Abandon God
The sun is rising
The birds are yelling
And inside of us, a good thing is dying
What a shame
The morning never waits
Pretty soon you’ll be a rider
In the heaven’s gates
