a nice moment at the park

Lately as the weather has warmed I've been walking to the park by the beach and sitting on a bench watching families picnic and people walk their dogs. It's never as warm as I think it will be so I can never stay as long as I want. As soon as the sun is blocked by the apartments and trees I feel the chill in the wind a little more. But what can you do, you don't want to overdress.

The other day I saw two guys sparring with the masks and gloves and everything. They stopped pretty soon after I sat down though. Most of the afternoon I was watching this dad play with/coach his two sons. They were playing baseball. I liked watching them, the dad was an almost perfect dad. He was strict and encouraging in all the right ways. I kind of knew (know?) that those two boys would become wonderful beautiful young men. I was eating a bag of 79cents Salt + Vinegar Kettle Cooked Potato Chips from 7/11. A squirrel, probably hearing the rustle of the plastic bag jumped onto the bench, very close to me, as close as a wary cat would get. I shooed him away but I immediately wished I'd given him some chips. An old lady clasping newspapers to her chest was walking down the path. She was talking to herself, muttering about someone named Jacobson, the variety of cereals, dentists. She stopped directly to the right of me where I couldn't see her and I knew she was looking at me. For a minute I was afraid she'd come up to me and I'd have to humor her, I hate humoring people. She didn't though and went on walking down the path. I rolled a cigarette and smoked it. I didn't enjoy it as much as I'd thought. That's been happening a lot lately. I was kinda trying to write a short story. It was about this guy, Simon, who was sitting at a park bench, probably the same one I was sitting in. He meets his friend Amirah, who is an obese black lesbian, and he helps her look for her keys. I wasn't sure if Amirah was black, but she definitely was obese and lesbian. The only part I really had in my head was the ending. Simon sees something shiny in the grass, but I wasn't sure if it was the keys.

a nice moment after work

I met two Southerners a while back. Well one was from Colorado but they both lived in North Carolina, where the wife was born. They were doctors and they were trying to get to Fullerton. I was sitting on a bench on the el platform and they were sitting next to me. They recognized me from Sears Tower, where we all just were. I asked them about the differences between the city and the country. The wife told me the city was busy, very busy. She told me that where they lived one could go running nekkid in their backyard, there was no one else for miles around. I said that's crazy, I've never known anything like that, I can't imagine I said as I imagined it. I pictured a wide field of undulating grasses, a full moon but the sky intense with stars. I was naked and the breeze swaddled me as clothes would, but it felt like I was wearing what humanity wears, or at least it seemed like it. The train came and they thanked me and I thanked them too. I said don't let the city, well whatever, have fun and they said don't worry we'll be back. We shook hands and they got on the train. When the train left I went back to reading my book.

i am drunk

god when we were younger we spat on our hands 

and on the moment that we were to press them together

i got grossed out and wiped my palm on the grass

later we skipped the hand part and exchanged hungrily

late at night you realize you 

are just that locus where stupidity memory

and lust orbit haphazardly

nothing more than a gravity or a 

sticky spot where you somehow got caught

its so good to have tears and spit semen and blood

so good to remember that this is me and this is you

so good to have fluids fill where breath only sustains

how to be positive

oh god it's impossible

appetite

"Appetite, with an opinion of attaining, is called hope; the same, without such opinion, despair." - Hobbes

on the day of the picnic we were panicked.

ominous clouds, check.

sudden shortage of clean underwear, check.

absence of suitable blankets, check.

a positive and two negatives.

i'm not sure what it means.

feeling stupid, holding the evian bottle full of orange pop & vodka.

you in your underwear, black and lacy, victorian but sexy.

at that point i was tempted

to reinflate the air mattress and sleep,

but i thought about the creek we saw,

and how the leaves made you say

it was like the first time seeing green,

and us on our knees,

scooping water to our thirsty mouths,

not worrying about anything.

if you leave me a hundred times, a hundred times i'll take you back

in missouri that summer

the boy went crawdading
with his family. his little brother
got his finger cut by one
and the crawdads hid
in a pink watery shroud.

the girl said

i feel like i'm increasingly

defined by the things i hate

and the boy nods thoughtfully

tearing his beer's label into tiny bits.

hackneyed as it is,
the first time the boy ate
mushrooms he knew what
things were inevitable.

the boy listened to that song
over and over again
until he felt pathetic.

magnetism was never an issue,
although he tried many times.

warm feet

When he woke up he was happy because he saw that it was 10 45 in the morning. He made some noodles and put them on a plate and sat on his couch. He ate the noodles with the plate balanced on his knees and thought about girls and poetry. He thought about how they were both alike in many ways. He thought about writing a poem or writing a poem about a girl or writing a letter to a girl or writing a poem about a girl and sending it to a girl via letter.

He rolled a cigarette and smoked it and ashed on the plate because he couldn't find his ashtray. The night before he had done ecstasy with some friends and he reflected on the fun times they had. He felt a bit sad because real life wasn't as fun as life on ecstasy and naturally he missed the fun. He put out the cigarette on the plate and thought about bringing the plate to the kitchen but instead he laid down on the couch.

The sun wasn't at its peak yet but his apartment was on the sixth floor clear of all other buildings and the sunlight came in unfettered. His feet felt warm and he felt a lot of feelings and shit.