Those are some wide belt loops and an even bigger pant size to fill there, novel chap. The shoes, however? Ah yes! The shoes. What ho those are of even grander width and height. Length and promise. You’re going to need a leg up at a good clip and feet like dinner plates my dear. Not to mention, your taste must be nothing short of persuasive for when we happen across the diners over the state border this time today. Pancakes for me and coffee cake slices for you, coupled with a panoramic view out the nineteen fifties glass windows.

Inspirations:

Quotes (whether they be accredited literary sources, magazines, one liners, lyrics, things people say to me or I happen to hear in passing). The Paris Review. Herb Reichert. music. art. Aunt Nise. Aunt Cheley. people & their personalities. psychology. my feelings. who I am. train rides. quiet walks along Millbrook dirt roads. vintage clothes. family trees. tin photos getting on in years. ads & clichés. how society acts in general. my generation. fabrics & colors. needles & pins. fears (my own & otherwise). shoes of others. how people choose to present themselves to the world through clothes & vernacular.

And…there they go, kicking the crap out of each other again. It’s a kick and stick, kick and stick repetition. We are forever encumbered, capped and limited by our intertwining existences, you do know. Do you? I’ve very nearly forgotten. I’m forgetful enough for the both of us these days. Chary & privy to your newest endeavors I have ceased to be. I’m sorry for that love. I owe you one & it’s yours if you will have it. I’m sorry….if that’ll cut it. There’s silence to be had for this. Silence; like a curtailed receiver in a sidewalk booth.

Pick yourself up off the side of the road, put away that thumb and please, decide carefully before sliding into this passenger seat that I’ve got as open as a sultry sky in a summer rain storm. For you. It’s for you. Hello? Yes. This is she. We drove somewhat carefully. Yes, we hit the turn but avoided the sign. I suppose. It’d sustained a repainting. Try me on tonight. Slow, slow. Quick going like an ambulance on call through this smokey room. No, can’t say I do smoke. Though they sure shone those shoes while we were somewhat under.

Actually, it was quite devastating to wake up only to realize the paintbrush had gotten stuck under the bed. What were we to paint with? How was I to wake you up, first of all! Right. Surely. I’m certain she had left it there and while your at it, you might as well insert an eye roll here, for I positively hate the egg rolls that you so charmingly deposited under there in the first place….which was the whole reason why the brush found its way under there in the first place. If you had only put the food down…

Maybe I will really be a liar for this one. No. Make me. I simply reject your reality in favor of substituting it with my own. Sorry. I’m a bit outspoken and I like my head where the reins are concerned love. Alright, a bit? Understatement of the year, yes I do digress. Light that match under this here hay pile, would you? While I go in search of an… Aha! A bit. I have far too much fun. I can make stories of anything. Adventures from verses and odysseys take root in song. This world was made for us.

Though I do worship the earth you just so happen to walk upon. You know how peacenik earth keeper I am. Litter me not. Off on another tangent. Tangerine. So serene. Rhythm is methodic and rhythmic and so….regular comforting and familiar as it gets. It won’t come any further prepackaged than that. Though, thank you for keeping the packaging biodegradable. I’ve nothing left to say. Running down on time. It’s out of line and lost again to the winds like the grains in the hour shaped glass. Funny how it all pertains to counting. Sixty. Thirty. Twelve. Like canter strides.

Seventeen and a half! That’s sixteen plus one and six months, mind. If I’ve ever felt my age, boy it’s now. I have been so simply short minded in my disregard of the fact that you are all leaps and bounds ahead of me on the time scale. Yet, I so steadfastly refuse to give up the preference to those twice and thrice my age. Maybe I’m stuck in some sort of mud puddle with a resident giant sucking sound that refuses to turn me loose into an environment where people my age actually have something, something left to say…..

...aside from drugs! Sex! Chase the dreams of rock and roll! Chase it if you can! Rip off your clothes and roll through the pot fields in the process! In hot pursuit! Processed minds the lot. But it isn’t really rock and roll. It’s not that essence you’re all after. You’re not into what it really says, only the picture they so eloquently pinned along with the sound and soul. Why thank you very much but I’ll buy the real deal. And you can keep my share and a half of the pot for yourselves. Stick that to your man.

You must be able to discern the naïve, young & inexperienced from the darling meatheads, who will never have it. Their sole leadership role being carrying the h.s. football team to victory circa 2008. You will have worker bees, who uphold society with their menial, necessary roles, but never have so much as an inkling to open their minds. The ones who go through life content to the confines of their minds, the Stranger Than Fiction main characters & Mark Curtises of the world. Any way you have it, you don’t need money, just one person who believes in you.

I’m sorry. I blatantly fail to see the draw to this. What’s the hype? Attraction? Last time around (my preferable days. The best of days.) drugs were done to escape society. Now you sit there and do them to integrate in. Not into society, but into the quote on quote cool group. Fail to see it. I’m also sorry I can see further than the next kegger. In fact, I’ve never been and couldn’t care less. How can you expect me to put up with all of you drunk, when I have a fine time of dealing with you sober?!

Sober fun my ass. Oh, sorry! That was plastered to your ass last issue of dose of trash weekly, wasn’t it? Sober fun. Ha. I’ll take my pillow forts & sidewalk chalk over your DUIs and rehab any day. More I see, more contempt I hold against this society, similar to how you would hold a match to the pilfered surface of an ex’s love letter. Treasure me once. There they go screaming bigger picture on the other end of the swimming pool, waving arms, mouths agape. How about just a step outside the milk crate? That’s all I ask.

A jump from the start box and then we all fell down. Posies aplenty and stars ahead. Balking from the beginning, reluctant to the onward march of things. More like stray away. But a stay is asking an overly large sum. As it is all too much for us to keep still and remain. For all that remains is but evidence to the definitive qualities of our characters and the very natures by which they rule. Rule of thumb for that one. And a big thumbs up for those who break trend. Though keep time. Stay in step. Count. Aloud.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. Corruption. Excess. Distastefulness. Debauchery. Dissolution. Lack of culture. Effortless expenditure. Depravity. Profligacy. Rakishness. Dissipation. Immorality. Wickedness. Self-indulgence. Tactlessness. Recklessness. Wastefulness. Licentiousness. And thus, everything that is popular is wrong. And living with my eyes nothing short of opened wide, it tends to be a bit problematic occasionally. Though even with a few drops of soiled water harbored in our vast expanse of sea front, it’s important to remember that the whole body is not deemed dirty. Still fit to swim! Bottoms on & bottoms up.

Can we ever truly be sorry for the little things we don’t regret, but that somehow, anyway, find a way to pester and nag those we tend to care something about? Or at least, those our hearts have proven to us to harbor affection for. What if I’m not remorseful in the least for something so insignificant? Something slogging away through memories and past tense pretenses. Fallacy. Parody. What of today? Though, is it any wonder I get too excited when under the impression that you are about to grace these streets with your presence….porticos, porches and scalable fences. Luck.

What do you mean I have transient amnesia and therefore couldn't remember my job? Two hours of entertaining ball-breaking children later and you try telling me the former. Yes, that was two hours in its entirety. Two ball-breaking, ruminating children fluent in balderdash. Ha! I have transient amnesia….no; I have a bloody canoe full of amnesty and two cornfields harboring meticulous fugitives. Now tell me I don’t work hard to keep this company held in nothing less than two halves and greater than one single unit. Precisely. I am. I will. I do. See me in my office lickety split.

Back & forth and back & forth. & back and forth & back and forth. Back and fourth and back and forth & back and fourth and back & forth. Back & forth and back and forth & back. & forth and back & fourth & back & fourth and back. Back & forth & back and fourth & back & forth. & Back and fourth and back and forth and back. & Back & forth & back & fourth & back & forth & back & forth & back & forth. A poet can survive anything, save a misprint.

Some dramatic ending to an altogether uneventful beginning. Is this what it takes to get through to you, dearest? You desire far too much and are sadly under the impression that the world rightly owes you everything. Though the way I’m swayed to seeing it is the world was indeed here longer than you and I put together and multiplied by the number of our combined past lives, so yes, dear, the earth was here longest and therefore wins by superiority, if by nothing else. Pre-eminence has been driving for as long as we care remember. Get your gun, dear.

I’m far too nostalgic. How can I honestly quell the feelings I get when I comparatively think back to the past? That would be like asking Capital G to deliver us one fine speech. Deliver us indeed. Just one. I wish it could have perhaps turned out differently. It was too soon, any way you cut it. Kaleidoscopic views pertain here. Funny to think of myself as sixty plus, should it have turned down a different end. Unlike those choose your own ending books, we very well can’t dictate our finales all the time. Should they be anything but grand…

Quaint. I do not fear death. I’m oddly at peace with such notions. I went too young last go round the merry go, but this time? Yes, this time I just know I’m here for at least half past a decade and five. I know I’ll outlive what I clocked in at in seventy-one. Though I’m somewhat far off from that age as of late. I fear not the reaping, but I have far too much to accomplish here and now to take leave and close shop. Retirement’s a long way off. Retirement from living. I sure do love life.

I just want to let you know that I am not as good a person as you think. I rack up bad karma through my incessant viewing of gruesome eventing falls. Agh. Aside from that, I don’t take vested interest in me seriously. I can’t. Or won’t. Or am not equipped enough to deal with your hearts and strings and things subsequently attached to them. I can’t altogether open up to you all the time. Writing is the time and the place for that, though I certainly never go about showing this to anyone on the inside. If that counts.

Je suis un peu triste. C’aller sans dire que ma meilleure copine Isabelle est un gachis et j’ai dit au revoir a elle pour le temps finalement. Elle est mal pour moi. Elle est un menteur et toxicomanie. Isabelle, ma chere, qu’est-ce qui vous prend? Ecoutes-moi! S’accorder avec les adolescence populaire? Cela n’importe. Ne similaire pas de sa tasse, cette aimitie est cul sec. Je suis desole, mais je n’en peux plus. Tu manqué a sa parole et maintenant, prenes gardes de ne pas tomber. Tu fais de la peine a moi. J’en ai par-dessus la tete! J’en ai marre!

Horrific. Formidable. Fearsome. What are afraid of? I am deathly disturbed by needles. She, nervous regarding the dark. Still a lingering haunt, harking back from childhood days spend better in daylight hours. Mine stems from a past existence, another experience, a lifetime ago. And he? Uneasy in the face of betrayal. So much so it shakes him to his very soul, works him up wild eyed. Close lipped. One friend too many stumbled this path for him. Not to his liking, and now it’s set in. It adopted nothing less than a deep seat in the house of the heard.

We misplaced the change in the sofa cushions, so we had a bit of a time scrounging together the gas money for this morning. In fact, on the way down we actually did happen to find (in lieu of pocket change and misspent dimes) quite the pea soupery of a fog descending upon the intersection. Well, no, actually it was bearing down something akin to the paces set by those tissue tigers you set loose at the dinner table these nights….yes, these past few nights. Something to do with the gas prices…they can’t find the change necessary to order takeout.

Can’t you see the sky there in front of you? Laid out as proudly as your Grandmother did upon shaking out her first handmade quilt on the marriage bed. Bits of lace it had. Might have been a tinge blue, come to think of it….. Ah, it’s no matter now the details of the colors. Colours. Collars. Yep, there were collars present. In full bloom. And anyhow, what good are those lovely down wings of yours if you can’t get out there and test them out? What say you? Heavens, no. You can’t run aground. This is the sky dearie.

Well, this is the method that keeps me going. Drives me, if somewhat crazy, but it maintains that impulsion and forward motion that is so imperative to me personally and crucial to my existence. I have to list all options. It bothers you to hear some, but I must lay my cards from hand to table at times like these to effectively assess all options. And to choose. It’s hard for me to imagine you wouldn’t do the same, if the situation involved the very epicenter to your existence. It’s not about what you don’t want to hear. Save face.

Sometimes, I just wish I did not stand for anything. How inexpensive that would be.. Pardon? I beg to differ. Slice right down from the line in the back of your hose. Of the panty kind. No, not garden. Panty. If we remove the tibia we’ll never awake to see you stand. Stand, stand, stand your ground! Stand it down, don’t stand around! If you sit, I’m sorry, but you will be forced to relinquish your seat, and therefore your identity. Can’t you see the sign they’ve posted so clearly for you? Hm? No? It’s as big as the E.

"Stop talking about love. Every asshole in the world says he loves somebody. It means nothing. What you feel only matters to you. It's what you do to the people you say you love, that's what matters. It's the only thing that counts. " I very nearly agreed with him aloud. I can’t stomach much more of your feelings on the matter. However, I didn’t have the heart to break it to you, and thus go about breaking yours. I suppose I’m shortsighted, as I fail to see how you are so dependant upon each other. No time to breathe.

And I felt traitorous. Treacherous. Deceitful as the Cheshire Cat, grinning until hell’s beginning despite the unfavorable circumstances. False as the teeth of the elderly. As artificially forged as the faces gracing the covers of our publications of sustenance. Spending nothing less than 350 days a year with you for 4 years made me so utterly loyal, that I didn’t realize it until I climbed aboard another horse. It’s true I can only take you so far, yet I still felt like I was handing you a disservice on a silver platter by agreeing to take the other 2 on.

Everything will be okay in the end. And if it isn’t okay, then it isn’t the end. I truly believe in this. It holds true. Or if nothing less, it holds you together at times. Keeps you on the knot at the end of your rope. Although this end was somewhat less than favorable (ah, I’m being much too modest. It was the worst end that could have been, yet somehow we found the okay. We made it into that). But isn’t it better that life doesn’t always appease or please us? She doesn’t pander to any individual; you’re aware.

Films. Hm. Where’d they come from? Why are they bothering me today…..flickering across the inside forehead of my skull, screaming, “Ah, wait! This is imperative! Imperative I say! Sit and see! Pause and watch! Rewind? Again?” No, I’m done. I shake my head sadly, as if truly sorry to cut short the viewings. Though reliving the could-have-beens serves naught, save to work you up all over again. As if getting worked up through the first 100 or so performances wasn’t enough. Through this one projected to the darkened back now, you are dancing away with that hint of clavicle showing.