and future self, “hello and welcome.” We are an interesting crowd. How one looks back and smiles while the other nods. Who holds this many things? Too many to carry really, should’ve grabbed a cart. We don’t have exact change either, have to spark up a conversation with everyone we meet because change isn’t exact, it’s messy. Constantly looking backward and forward. There’s boxes and dirt all over the floor, was that me? Am I the harbor of lost sailors? “Little ol me.” I’m just here making it all up as I go, a sentence whose ending was never planned. A question with no answer. What is the story of my life? Where do we go, and how did we all get here? I like to feel all textures, and cradle the children of all celestial imaginations. I am medium rare, rare enough to up the value but obscure enough to be unknown. I am a lazy perfectionist. I am the dog on the other side of the fence looking toward the dog in me. I think I’ve just wanted love from all angles, like one of those fancy showers that sprays from every direction. Who even understands me though? I don’t blame them. I present pieces of myself like framing only the corner of a puzzle and saying “ah… complete!” I want to kiss the sky and the earth. Everything is a garden. Mine’s kept and wild all in one. Belongs to the earth but is born from my hands and sweat. The best days are when there are no words. Like a dream where images dance and speak through form and color. I’m an emotional zealot. What I feel is the forest I trek and live. I chip away and build back onto myself like an indecisive sculptor. Freedom calls my name but it gets carried in the wind to the next town over. I leave my name everywhere, on sign posts and aluminum cans because I want the world to carry me. Back home or to a place that’s neither in front or behind me. “I would like 2 of everything, but complete opposites, no in-between.”

and hot, it asks “am I too overbearing?” There is never not enough forgiveness to have. The whole world destroys itself as much as it sustains itself. Sustains on what? On itself! So then destruction and sustenance are one in the same. I can feel the sunlight pouring on the left face like a Caravaggio painting. Everyone talks about light but whoever talks about heat? Heat is light’s way of saying “I’m powerful beyond belief.” Shadow says “I will protect you.” The shadow casts long to my right, it sings my songs and says thank you, thank you for absorbing and leaving me only with shape and the ability to forgive. It’s time to switch sides, the loaf is crisp on the edges but cold in the center. Sometimes I let the shadow pen do the talking. Everything is cramping up and I need jungle-gym energy. Playful buoyancy and clairvoyance. Diamonds and rubber bouncy balls in the same jar. It doesn’t matter. We can contain multitudes. We’ve got enough words to fill the dictionary of the soul. We have forgiven the sun for its brightness. We are happy. Glad for the color of things. The creation of every creation of every creation of every creation. The brain is an extension of the soul and we act like its some elevator operator. “Fourth floor please.” Please, you think we aren’t living walking breathing miracles? Who needs to be convinced when so much as waking up and sighing is a song of angels. Who is the composer to my song but myself? I’m not here to convince you you’re okay, because I don’t know that. I don’t know the theater of your existence, the heroes journey that feels all too unheroic. All I know is my affinity for the world as a giving thing. An asking thing. An insecure bundle of energy and color. If I knew a world only of pavement, maybe I would love the pavement and forgive it for its hardness. When I was a child I would poke a finger as deep into the earth it would go. I would feel the temperature change. I would hear the conversation between wet and dry dirt. I wouldn’t think that there was an end. That if my finger was long enough, it could travel through all unknown realms of existence. I only know what I know. Who gave all the worker bees LSD? Culture is a beautiful thing . Culture is an oppressive thing. Culture asks for forgiveness.

That’s all I thought I had to say but there must be more. No period is weighted heavily enough not to allow stragglers. I sometimes feel that way, like a straggler, forgetting if I missed the bus or if the bus missed me. I miss enough when I stare too long at lifeless shadows that trick me into cognition. Cognition – what a funny word that is, it’s the ignition of thought, left it right by the credenza and never really cared it was gone. I’ve got too many dreams to be awake and afraid. I let them leak out of my pores and drip into the sewer. So I can’t get it done – that’s what the voice says, I’d have to believe at least the sentiment, but death is a scream in the far distance and I’m just not ready for that, for yellow, for blank pages with nothing but yearning for surrender, for parties with ghosts, no, that’s not for me, not yet. I’d rather feel the warmth of bodies and the sun finding it’s way on my skin, a map, a jagged rock in the knee to remind us life is pain and joy, it’s alive, it’s ice cream and creativity and too full of activity to be dreading what’s around the corner. I have to speak as if the soul gives dividends to the winners. I love centering what’s in the catch-all brain as if it was the pen that wrote the Universe book. I love breathing the sky as if we are the lungs that power the wind. I love love, and its many dresses. I can’t speak for only myself, I’m not a maniac, I’m a small man with an appetite, I will live like my life depends on it. It does, I wasn’t born with a clue, I found it under the rug of my lonely infinity. Someone said, “why don’t you just make sense for once?” – when did that ever do me good? Production, capital, how many fruit did you pick today? You test tube boy? You teacher’s pet, martial law indoctrinated. We’re all here together right? Grab a glass, pour a full and unforgiving pour to your neighbor, two sips, pass to the right, repeat – I think we’ll be okay.