Certain nights

On certain nights it is entirely appropriate to pick up your camera, and photo assault your girlfriend who is just steady lounging on the couch, only to post the results for all to see on the internet. Arguably any night is fair game when your girlfriend is as cute as this. I know you’re still waiting for poetry, H, but there appears to be a heap of beautiful verse right there in those eyes of yours. Thanks for all the great days and nights.

i’m not saying it’s good.

It’s when you move that the past gets stirred up, up from the bottom of boxes you’re never quite sure whether to keep or throw away.

On occasion I find something I’ve written, with no date or context, often just folded and loose in a crack of all my things. My writing style used to be quick and sloppy with full intent of revisiting the page and editing and retyping. So many of these bizarre comments from the past are indecipherable. But I found one nearly legible page and I thought I’d post for old times sake, and for a chuckle. Sometimes I wonder where this heavy thinker has gone off too.

 

Unedited:

 

When I first sat here, before my name was spoken here, before my father reached through the unnatural atmosphere to hand my name tag to my mother who would fashion it to me and speak it repeatedly, before I understood the tick movement of time the tock of the timer measuring my episodes, my playtime, my school day, my recess, my lunch breaks, my appointmens, my deadlines, my pulse, the length of my visit here — I sat here before I lusted to stand. I sat pleased laughing without reason, loving shapes that made for me nothing. I sat and stared laughing at all shapes enjoying even the plainest of squares and rectangles, panes of window glass, blades of green grass — before I knew whether my bare feet were meant to feel the grass or grass was grown to tickle my feet, before I cared. I kicked against everything, even before there was anger. I cried over my cheeks before there was sadness. I screamed with all the depth of my infant lungs before selfishness and injustice. I sat. I slept. I dreamt before ambition, before interpretation. Before there was a show, I watched and rocked.

Welcome to St. Paul

I know it’s necessary. But still a little discomfiting up close. No doubt these men and women had a long night as they packed up minivans time and again to race to the next standoff spot. In one breath I want to say ‘thank you’ for the hours you spent keeping the city mostly secure and having to deal with a certain kind of protester whose cause is to break things, and in doing so has made his cause violence. In another breath I want to say ‘no thank you’ for any overreactions, unnecessary force, or mistreatment of individuals. In a third sigh I want to say ‘thank you’ that your services are no longer needed today.