--COME AND BLOW ON THROUGH.  COME AND DO WHAT ONLY YOU CAN DO

Drinking

Drinking to forget

Drinking to remember what’s been

Spent or lost

Drinking to slur the remaining muscles

Shame the voice into a ludicrous

Pin of silence

Drinking on lay away

Labor Day

Any day

Every day

Drinking because the moon said so

Because the glass has poured

Itself full again

Made itself so big-breasted

Boastful and sultry

Drinking just to drink

Drinking because of you.

 

--I JUST SHIVER AND SHAKE

Gray Everything

Today there is gray

in everything,

old wounds and raw scars,

collapsible joists and bones,

broken sails and leaky boats,

smoke, always smoke,

slaking through the bleak brine

of another otherwise bright day

while a charcoal canvas,

wide as any ocean,

flops across the brittle spine

of an animal without name.

My eyes go on with their

blind man’s vacant groping.

My fingers knit themselves

a needy corpse.

This room wants me dead,

same as any other room

or loamy future.

Outside, the famished vultures

swing in haze

as the ceiling pounds

its tantrum fists,

the windows weak as rotten teeth,

relenting and imploding,

shattered away,

shattered day,

shattered life,

glass to sand again,

the plumes thick enough

to blur and swallow

what should have been

buried long ago.

--SORRY TO BOTHER YOU

…Sometimes the word real is a real problem.

…I am a terrible _____, but it’s not because of what you think.

…Anymore, if I smile wide or scrunch up my face, it turns into a galaxy of wrinkles, all those stories laying in the ravines, some already told, some needing to be told.

…You’ll be sorry if you ask me to take a survey of this place.

…Who’s idea is this?  Who is kneeling there, praying for a better future?

…Sometimes I want to feel something, but today is not that day.

…You can want the flame without the burning, but it doesn’t work that way.

…Inside, ashes of an actual life, tucked in a corner, in a gray husk, covered by a stained wash cloth.

…Sometimes not even the memories are enough to get you through the night.

…Sometimes what you hear is, I’m not your mother, I’m not your therapist.

…Things were uneven, unexpected in my house, so I never invited friends over if I had any.  Once I did, and it started out badly, and ended worse.  Makes a kid gun shy.

…Sometimes the wrong play is the actually the right play.  Or vice versa.  Or maybe not.  I mean, who can really know for sure?

…Dear paper gown, my nakedness is not yours to protect.

…Some turns are sharper than others and there’s nothing you can do about it.

…My cabernet says, “Bestie.”  Sometimes that’s all I have.

…I think this keyboard is very hungover.

…When my back cracks, I call it honesty.  When I hit my funny bone, I call it a coincidence.

…Someone said, There are things in the stars we’ll never know.   I thought it was you.

…Time, which is so impatient, which wants to go on, is lying there stealthily in woods, like an sickly animal that needs to be fed.

…And isn’t that enough?  To love, and not expect any consequences for the love that was given freely?

…Most people dig the pomp, but not the circumstance.

...“I know that I’ll be a mess and you won’t be surprised.  It’s nothing new.”

…Writing this way—maybe that is the problem.

…In my defense, I meant everything.

…Call it a century of longing.

…What matters is that you’re happy.  Truly.

—A LITTLE INSOMNIA

…Insomniacs are true accountants; they are smug about the time they keep.

…I can be dumb sometimes.  I don’t always know what I’m thinking.

…The reason you think you’ve been there is because you have.  Your memory’s just fading a bit.

…Me, a hole, a gap, a breach, a space, an absence, feckless. 

…What could I be thinking of when I scissor through the plugged in cord?

…There is nothing we can do about the howling.  Walls are only so thick.

…I took them and tossed them.  I didn’t care where they landed.

…The light is a salt in my eyes, but I keep blinking into it nonetheless.

…I remember the impulse to kneel.  What an embarrassing story.

…People seem to assume the best of me and I’m like, why?

…One of these days I will get around to it.  I’ve been meaning to do everything for a while.

…Yes.  Yes, please.

…“There must be some way out of here, said the joker to the thief.”

…Why not just use some kerosene?

…When you tell me the worst thing I can do is (…), I think, you have no idea.

…You are holding onto your beliefs and I am holding onto mine.  We’re just different people, after all.  There’s nothing malicious about that.

…Nobody wants a lecture about how they’re not good enough.  Nobody wants a lecture, not even the student who paid to get one.

…I’ve been told I’m fragile.  I hear I’m a lot to handle.

...I'm strong, I'm a coward.  I'm cruel, I'm kind.  I'm thoughtful, I'm thoughtless.  What am I really?

…If you haven’t noticed already, times running out on the clock and there are no more get out of jail free cards left.

…There are many things I cannot put into words, even though I’m supposed to be good at doing that.

…Today the lake whispers her secrets, the sound like a soft cloth on cloth.  She looks green and insistent, pleading her case to whomever will listen.

…You do not know my kind of loneliness.

…Think about it.  I do.  

—THANKS FOR BEING HONEST

…Hate is a pretty strong word.  It’s the bloody footprint at a crime scene.

…I can count the number of people who’ve said they hate me on one hand.  Maybe one finger.

…Honesty begets trust, and without trust you’re just floating down the rapids, going wherever the current wants to take you.

…I wrote a few terrible stories because I was trying to be like somebody else.  And then I realized the only thing I could speak on with authority was something I actually knew about because it came from an honest place, even if that place was quite dark and chilly.

…It’s good to do things that make you uncomfortable, so long as you’re confident in the end game.  Otherwise you could have a trapdoor waiting for you.

…I keep trying to make my bones blossom, but that takes a hell of a lot of booze.

…Here’s what I’m asking myself today: where is my place in the world?

…As with anything, the dose makes the poison.

…Not to be a sad sack, but I am carrying a cargo of sorrow on my back.

…Everybody knows the war is over.  Everybody knows the good guys lost.

…It’s one thing to see a photograph and another thing altogether to see the real thing in person.

…Doubt is good.  We all doubt when we set out to do anything new or challenging.  That’s a motivating factor.

…Oh, those sad country songs, sharp as surgical scalpel knives they are.

…Everybody knows the dice are loaded.  Everybody rolls with fingers crossed.

…Not one thing’s gone the way I thought it would, so I won’t make another prediction.

…Childhood is a different time.  One sees things differently then.

…Were you here when they dug the hole?  Did you notice how deep it was?

…If you don’t find the answers, I hope someone else can help you with that.

…When you’re down in the dumps and everything’s shit, it’s nice to have a dog to snuggle.

…I love wind puppets.  They always make me want to shimmy and shake my shoulders.

…Death is a hopeless resolution at best.  The soul separated from the body at last, but still retaining memories and having hungers.

…I’ve been sleeping with my eyes open, like a scarecrow on ice, and that’s no way to sleep.

…When you’re reeling with causality, it’s best to look in the mirror.

…I caught a train that was backward bound.

…I may veer off in different directions, but I’m still here.  I’m right here.

…It’s going to be one hell of a noisy night around here, different from all the rest.

...Is the sun shining there?  I bet it is.

…Yes, I’m talking to you.

 

—I THINK YOU’RE FORGETTING SOMETHING

…I miss.  I miss.  I miss, again.  I am missing.

…I don’t want much.  I just want to be a better man.

…Sometimes you have to use whatever’s available to get you through the night.

…It’s by accident that I live.  I try sometimes to live just so I’ll have something to say.

…It’s pretty hard not to root for an underdog.  It’d be like not loving your mother.

…My mother, well that’s another story.  That’s a mini-series that never ends, and that no one should watch.

…Sometimes the best thing is being anonymous, being lint in a cloud, lint in a belly button. 

…It’s strange, the things you remember about someone, about something they did, that they couldn’t recall even if you pointed it out to them.

…You could say I put a chip on my shoulder.  That used to be my softest body part.

…“Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right…”

…Sometimes you have to invent new ways to look at a day, to assort those fresh twenty-four hours looking you in your bleary eyes.

…Manufacturing insults is okay.  I get it.  It’s about tomorrow.  It’s about seeing the sun again.

…If you make your way here, I’ll give you something to lean into.

…Even at the bottom of the barrel, you’re still shining bright, looking like a million bucks.

…How about that?  A revolving door inside a revolving door that spins forever, going nowhere.

…This coffee tastes like it hates me.  Hard to blame it for that.

…The only way to make it is to turn the page, or fake it, or pretend that the book never had any pages to begin with.

…Time heals, they say.  I don’t know.  I’m a skeptic.

…How can you not love hamsters?  They’re so freaking cute.  I had two when I was in college—Moses and Booker.  They were a lot of fun.

…I guess now’s the time to embrace the darkness, the power outage that’s killed everything.

….Dear Melancholy, you look good in black and blue, but I wish you wouldn’t stand so close.

…I’ve never met anyone who stood still, waiting to be hit on the head six or seven times.

…How people react to your vulnerabilities tells you everything you need to know.

…That’s why I keep telling people to never look on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday.  Keep your eyes on the prize instead.

…“Sir, you don’t always tell the truth, do you?”

…That’s right, it’s not true.  But it feels true.

…Sometimes what we find out is intuitive, and sometimes it’s counter-intuitive.  You just never know.

…When people make you out to be silly or ridiculous, you remember that.

…Knock, knock.  Is there anybody in there?

…You can tell a lot about a person by how they handle unpleasantness.

…What you think you believe can change the course of everything.

…That’s a bottle and a half.  Is that really your answer?

…The difference between a glass of wine and your opinion is I asked for a glass of wine.

…Yeah, I’m a tall drink of water.  That’s what my Dad used to call me.  But much of the water comes from rusty pipes.  Still, I’d like to think I’m worth it.

…Worth is perhaps the biggest word there is, maybe even surpassing love.

…I don’t like looking terrified.  It’s not a very good look on me.

…Do you think I’m being foolish if I don’t rush in?

…I don’t know.  Maybe I’m just a human train wreck.  Maybe God is experimenting on me in order to see how much a human can take, kind of like what he did with Job.

…Strangers paired together forever.  Sounds like an interesting story.

…There’s no one left to carry these leftover pieces.

…My head’s a little cloudy, a little dusty.  Time to get out the vacuum.

…My first thing is the same, is the same, is the same.

…I’m not really talking to you.  I’m just talking myself out of talking myself out of things.

…Perhaps this all has something to do with survival.

…I think it does.

—YOU’RE MY FAVORITE BODY OF WATER

…How cute is that?  To believe in one’s self again while staring at a sunrise that isn’t really there.

…I called you to come carry me up, but you swallowed me whole instead.

…I’ve left my panic everywhere, faint traces of it eating away at everything.

…I’m tired of abstraction.  No one says what they mean anymore so that everything becomes an unsolvable riddle.

…There’s a special edition of TIME magazine with the title “The Science of Happiness” sitting on my office floor next to me.  I bought it, like a week ago.  I wonder why I haven’t read it yet.

…I want to suffer for as long as I can, because it means I am living.

…We’ve all seen what bodies can do, and it’s not pretty, but it could be.

…I never know how stressed I am until I realize how much damage I’ve done to the insides of my cheeks from chewing them.

…Sometimes people can’t even agree on why they disagree.

…Please do me a favor and fall in love with distance between you and the next person.

…I like to eavesdrop.  I like being a voyeur.  Other people’s lives always seem so much more interesting than mine.

...“I have the New York Times, and fourteen dimes, and answers to the most profound nursery rhymes...”  Robbie Benson and I are probably the only two people on the planet who know that lyric, and he could well have forgotten it by now, but it’s presently running through my head.

…Right now there are two people standing up in boat, fishing.  It looks about as fun as jail time.

…I’m not a big fan of “Love ya.”  Either say it and mean it, or don’t.

…I wrote some very strange things yesterday, strange even for me.  I wonder if I’ll be brave enough to post them here someday.

…Yesterday the house was so quiet that I thought it was talking to me.  I didn’t answer back, though.  At least I can’t remember doing so.

…I’ve never met a bridge I liked.  They all seem like they want to kill me, collapse right when I get to the middle of them.

…When I was in the corporate world, I was a lot more decisive.  I’d have to make fifty to a hundred decisions a day.  (Really, I’m not exaggerating.)  Now I can’t even decide what day it is, or if I’m glad that it’s that day.

…If I’m sad, will be sad with me?  Your answer will tell me a lot.

…People think I have an eating disorder.  Maybe I do, just a little.  But it’s not like I never eat.  I eat if I’m hungry.  I’m just not hungry very often.

…Some people have complicated relationships with their body.  Maybe I do, too.

…This is not a safe alternative to cigarettes.

…There you go again, sitting on the fence when it’s electrified.

…I don’t believe in ghosts, but I’ve felt like one plenty of times, and wished I was one lots of other times.

…I wonder if everyone has secrets they’re too afraid to share, or if it’s just me.

…I wrote a story about secrets called “Written In Stone.”  It’s (shocker) pretty dark.  It’s my son’s favorite.  The other day I got two separate notes about two different stories of mine that people really liked for some reason.  They weren’t even close to my best stories.  I guess that just means everyone has different tastes.

…One of these days, on a long run, I might not make it back.  But couldn’t we all say that?

...“God is great, beer is good, and people are crazy...”

…Roadkill is like the sun: if you're smart, you never look directly at it, you look around it.

…My brother had an ant farm in an aquarium for a while when I was young.  It was like staring into a fire, so mesmerizing.  Those little guys are sure industrious.  They never stop moving.  They make me look like a total slacker.

….Christine Schutt…. Wow.  And people tell me I write dark stuff.  Sheesh.

…It’s been a lucky couple of weeks.  My depression’s been out of town.  I hope it hasn’t been hassling anybody else.  Fuck you, depression.

…Tomorrow I’m going to run to the moon and back.  I’ll try to catch you a star or two.

…Dear God, give me clarity of the mind, and take it easy on me, if you can.