The Obvious Life

Sure

You won’t

I was impressionable
a drunk child high off of scent of melodies in toxic waste
the head rushed
it was warm and cozy
on the couch at paul’s bar

struggling juggling fugging up and waking
Nefertiti showed me what light there was
because I told her to quit with the overwhelming thoughts of a terrible finish, that the sadness in her eyes would go away because we are all one big giant pool of love that would never die, that we are all god and we all have the possibilities laid out in front of us, you choose, you choose, you choose, or go back to bed, I knew what to say as we walked down north street in stained shirts arms around each other’s necks. . . she asked me how I knew, and i said I just did. . .
the beginning
the quad
eating cardboard
I sat by the window
and thought that i knew it all

The music was shaking my bones without reason
It was after me, It had entered and seemed to be reviving
gunning for some goal
shooting from the hips
around and up they went
biting at my neck

Now I’m waiting on a train to come
What I’m gonna do?

You know what I felt like doing
In this moment
right before i sat down to type something
I thought i wouldn’t finish
right after you read your words
of dreams and romantic demons
I felt like punching bricks in the cold
I felt like throwing my computer on the floor
I felt like ripping down posters
I felt like smashing a banjo
and kicking out the window
screaming
this is MINE
I WANT THIS
I WANT WHERE
I WANT THERE
I want here
for now
and not a moment later

Visions of her dance
Visions of her sleep in my corner of the room
on the floor
near the window

nude
arguing about reality
education
naked
about quotes
flesh and grazing fingers
about you and me and futures uncared for
sex
silence
sweat
reading aloud our breathing
panting
moaning

time blurs
and we are back
let’s go back to space
where just
me
and
you
exist

she is moving my fingers
showing me the way
back home
to all of her

it’ll be more than i could imagine
I may jump out of my skin finally

yawn, jerk off, yawn
you can’t tell em anything
they do not care
nor do they need to care
they are lost and so are we
we just put our sails up and found our own place
in the sea

buddy
i couldn’t give you a piece of mind If I needed to
but you inspired this dragging of pens and fingers across keyboards
I won’t give you any thank you’s and I won’t repent my regrets anymore
I’ll burn them like words in fire on paper with wood from my old tribes in mind

missing
shirts
off
riding bikes
with dogs barking
red faced and breathing
outside in the light of distance
inside thoughts of nothing but
and savannah, my drug of choice,
pumping her tires
before our rides
to uptown circle
answering every question

I swear she knew the words to my songs before i played them

I need silence
I want to walk out and feel everything ready to pull me in
healthy young man tall and strong
never been in a fight in his life
thinking he needs one
pumping all he knows and all he knows is honest bullshit
that comes from love

Friends, I am love, I am love
I am something
preach somewhere else, not in my ear
heard it, arranged it, figured it out
misplaced it
figured it out again
and still i am not the wiser

helplessness nesting in my corner of the room
on the floor
near the window

Quit it Alex.

Shut the fuck up and quit it.

Sentimental Moment or Why Did the Baguette Cross the Road?

Robert Hershon

Don't fill up on bread
I say absent-mindedly
The servings here are huge

My son, whose hair may be
receding a bit, says
Did you really just
say that to me?

What he doesn't know
is that when we're walking
together, when we get
to the curb
I sometimes start to reach
for his hand

Steps to Quilting

1. Pick out fabric. Take pictures of each one.

2. Go home and design what you want it to look like.

Start with the size you want it to end up being

Add extra for seams

Figure out how much of each fabric you'll need

3. Go back to the store and buy it, and some matching thread

4. Cut all your fabric into the pieces you will need to sew

5. Sew them into blocks

6. Measure each block to make sure it's the right size and cut off any extra

7. Sew the blocks into strips

8. Measure the strips and cut off any extra

9. Sew the strips together to make the facing

10. Add a border or two

11. Add the backing and the fluffy bits

12. Quilt it all together

13. Add binding, sew.

The Hidden Significance of Lavender

Growing up, I found that I always related lavender with Grandmas. The thing I never understood was why. Lavender. Pastels. Softness and lace and good skin. Quietly making cookies and drinking tea that's mostly milk and perhaps a dunk of two of a twice-used tea bag. These were not MY grandmas. Mine we bright and full of color, nosy - I discovered later - prone to overfeeding and underlistening to your protests about how, no, you didn't need a bath yet, it was only dog poop in the yard, even if you took a bath like they wanted you to, you would step on some right away when you went back outside, which is where they wanted you anyway, as long as you stayed in view of the house. Grandma Munca smelled like Catholic mass and crispy line-dried socks, weeds and earth and smiles. Grandma Carol smelled like new vaccuum cleaners and cabbage soup, and Thanksgiving and the lotion my grandpa always worked into her back before they went to bed in the winter. There wasn't room for lavender soap except to display in the guest bathroom on porcelain. They were baby blue and teal and 70s orange. So old and dry it would scent the air only a few millimeters away, and you'd inhale more dust from the outside of the packet than you would the raspy scent, but there it was. They each, hidden away in their unused drawers, secreted in the dresser holding the old board games at the cabin, or with their Sunday stockings, had a sachet of lavender.

Investing In Your 20s

1. Have an emergency cushion, which should equal about 6 months of living expenses
2. If you don't have access to a 401(k) through work, get a Roth IRA. Set it up so that you contribute an amount automatically each and every month.
3. Pick an investment camp and stick with it. If you lose sleep when you've got a lot of risk, go for a more moderate stance. But youth means there is a lot of time to weather the ups and downs of the stock market, so overall you can be more aggressive than your parents or older coworkers.
4. Set a target date retirement fund. It is risky early, then as you approach retirement, becomes more conservative. If you are cool with risk, set a target date slightly after your target retirement, if you want conservative sooner, set an earlier date.

Movie Speech from "Network" - Howard Beale

Beale: I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it.

We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat. And we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be!

We all know things are bad -- worse than bad -- they're crazy.

It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, "Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone."

Well, I'm not going to leave you alone.

I want you to get mad!

I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to write to your Congressman, because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.

All I know is that first, you've got to get mad.

You've gotta say, "I'm a human being, goddammit! My life has value!"

So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell,

"I'm as mad as hell,

and I'm not going to take this anymore!!"

Poem by Justin Mosery

I wrote you a poem
quickly scribbled
on a mcdonalds napkin
as I was enjoying a
breakfast sandwich
that, like everything else,
reminded me of you
I put the poem in my pocket and
imagined your little elf face
smiling as I read it
I was quite proud of the poem
especially the part
where I likened you
to the universe
or something like that
but more importantly
I would like to apologize
because I accidentally
used you poem to blow my nose
sorry.