haha…DEAD!

i’m not stupid but i feel dumb
i know all the answers to stupid questions
that i’m starting to forget
am i stupid for knowing the answers to stupid questions
or am i stupid for not knowing the answers to stupid questions?

i think i need to disappear from everyone for a while
but i don’t know how
Walden isn’t real
when you’re gone you’re really gone
there’s no going back,
no pretense in solitude

The moon is like a fond memory, following you everywhere you go because it’s so far away

The man in the moon is just the face of a friend.

There are at least two clocks in this empty house, ticking the same competing interval. And I am living slave to my ear, caught listening to time in relation to time.

ti(TICK)ckti(TICK)ck

“hello?”

“hey, sweetie i know this is probably not the right time to say this but it is the right time because it’s midnight and i can’t stand up i can only listen to what my brain is telling me to say and that’s ‘call val and tell her you love her and only want to be with her’”

It was 1:13 a.m.

“that’s…so sweet”

“baby?!”

“wait but i have to tell you this is not val, this is sam”

“oh, sam from the shop!  heyyy buddy hahahiiiiiii’m so embarassed.  dude, trashed ::garble garble::”

“nope, i don’t think so…”

“wait, are you fucking with me?  who is this?”

“this is wrong number sam.”

there is a pause.

“uh–why would you say what i said was fucking sweet if you’re not val or sam from the shop?”

“because it was sweet, and you should call val, actually call her right number, and say that to her if you feel that way.  are y’all close?”

and then we talked about his relationship with val. apparently she’s a grocery clerk that’s seven years his senior; they met after she’d had to void his grocery order because all of his cards got rejected.  after the manager came and voided the order, she slipped him the only thing she surreptitiously could, a walmart gift card he’d wanted to buy for his niece for christmas, behind his receipts.  he slipped them into his pocket, went home, and came back with fruitcake his grandmother made, and a card with his phone number inside, thanking her and inviting her to coffee.  she called him immediately after work, they went to starbucks, commiserated about her recent divorce and his waning marriage.

and even though in retrospect i maybe should not have recommended he call her, it was too real of a story and besides i’d already told him to before he told me his story and i was pretty drunk and this was the only call i’d gotten; i was not sure if this was actually love or Love Actually (i don’t know it, only heard good things), but it wasn’t my place to say, anyway.  The only thing i was supposed to say was “oops, wrong number, dude.”   i wasn’t sam from work, i was just some wrong number.  who takes advice from wrong number sam?  this guy:

“sam, can i call you back when after i call her back?”

“sure.  good luck, happy new year.”

Still haven’t heard from him.

‘lasting but one day: an ephemeral flower

lasting a very short time, short-lived, transitory: the ephemeral joys of childhood.’

i can still remember the cycad we had in my yard, spikes in the middle and sharp leaves all around;
‘the oldest known plant’
my brothers and sister and i would play games trying to jump over or

run through it–
life, some ancient green gauntlet–
without getting cut.

thanks for being sweet to me.

what do you feel?

i don’t mean to intrude (but i wish i could be sweet to you, too)

and the moon got caught in a tree like my mind got caught in a dream i thought that it was where it was not i thought that i was when i was naught

awake now, i realize
this queen-size was only a cot.

king me.

me: when i used to be at lunch at duke
i used to count the wood panels of the dining hall ceiling
find ways to expedite the counting, grouping methods, etc
socially awkward
Hailey: haha
6:11 AM me: but it was dramatic as usual
i was waiting for someone to notice what i was doing in some ways
“oh, you’re counting them, too? 584″
Hailey: haha!
me: but instead it was like “wtf sam you have sheep brain on your shirt”
Hailey: hahaha
6:12 AM me: “oh that’s why i smelled it still”
“i thought i was crazy”
“well, you are. i saw you counting the panels”