08.26.10
Pure Filtered
Drinking your own urine has its perks.
-No one will talk to you
-Get in your face
-Ask for a drag of your smoke
-Solicit spiritual advice
Personally, I have never tasted my own micturate but the homeless man who sleeps in the surprisingly lush foliage near my house regularly partakes.The first morning I bared witness to his full circle supping I was on my way to the train. Two jogging women shared the view, their faces contorted, OMGs shat out of their mouths.
I was intrigued.
Sure the act of peeing into a large McDonalds cup and tossing back your own release could be relegated to a mental imbalance, but; it may just be an act of ingenious pragmatism.
If you are homeless, begrudged, and want people to leave you alone; disgust them.
Plus, bottled water is expensive.
07.13.10
Free food
Is better than cat food.
03.12.10
Totally Dating
01.24.10
Dream,
Big woman in cellar happy to be in the damp.
01.04.10
Lottery Tickets Keep Letting Me Down
11.03.09
My Birthday:
What I like:
What I don't like:
10.13.09
Ice-pick.
That was liberating.
08.25.09
Primogeniture
I always thought you were old, even when we were young and in trees. The wrinkles on your forehead seemed too many, your voice scraped on the ground, and those knees and their cracking loud.
We talked about baseball cards, you talked tax returns; two lines of us made red rover, you sat out, calculating its merits; the boys hightailed away from cooties, I heard you muttering about child-bearing hips.
At our high-school reunion I didn't see you. It had been twenty years since we'd been in the halls, I was told you died in ten.
08.23.09
It's Probably Not Magic
Nice follow through.
08.20.09
Trouser Rake
That is a really big dog. Seriously, it's up to my shoulder, give or take some hyperbole.
06.09.09
My Friend The Pugilist
Leaving the theater she thought Tom Hanks was her high school custodian, not the lead in the terrible movie. He knew he liked her when she asked who Tom Cruise was.
05.08.09
Tentacles of Distraction
You wanted to put a coaster under my feet, bare and gritty on your coffee table. Talking to me, your face faced me, but your eyes kept trained on my ends, smudging tight circles with their heels. We laughed at inane jokes, drank too much tea, and never addressed the bee-line of your sight to my toes. When I got up to leave I squeaked on the treated oak and you sighed. As you bid me farewell from the door I stepped on a rock in the drive and cursed.
You said: Cut your toenails.
04.27.09
Ten Times Fast
I am fucking cordial.
He told her.
04.09.09
A New Antiseptic Spray.
Please forget I told you. Your eyebrows raised so fast I knew I'd made a mistake. Your mouth fell open and your ears pulled back with your scalp. Then your arms stiffened at your sides, and I think you clenched your butt.
I shouldn't have told you.
04.09.09
Reduce, Reuse, Reincarnate?
I threw the ball to you, but it didn't seem to register, and I hit you in the face.
04.01.09
72 Candles
It's your birthday.
03.31.09
What?
You talk too loud.
03.30.09
Ardent Astronauts
I can't help but wonder why you left without paying.
03.08.09
Choking On A Piece Of Meat
I gave her a bag of water because I thought she was thirsty. She twisted her face, held it to her eyes and shrugged. She paced around the bag sitting on the coffee table, taunting her with thin plastic transparency. The shuffling of her slippers followed her in from the kitchen, stopping in front of the bag with a can opener in her hand.
" Hey."
I shook my head. She dropped hers. We sat on the couch and watched the bag perspire onto the table. I dug through my pockets and found a pen. She raised an eyebrow. Standing up I held the pen in both hands over my head, ready to deliver.
There was a tug at my pant leg.
She shook her head. I sat down. My armpits were sweaty and my mouth was dry. She coughed. The bag stayed taught. I went to the bathroom and came back with a curling iron and a lazy fly. "Plug it in." When the iron burned my finger it was time. The metal kissed the plastic and it hissed. I flung the iron. We sat down. She got back up. She sat on the iron.
"Fuck."
Sulking into the couch I sighed and swung my feet onto the coffee table. My feet were wet before the pop.
02.24.09
A Technical Knockout
You smell better than I do.
Why do you have to do that?
Can't you just let me be.
02.17.09
I Found What You Were Looking For
02.12.09
Sunday
I made a fool of that horse, walking on all fours, having to be lead to water it may not even explore. I heckled its mane. Harangued its shoes, stressed the point that someday it'll be glue. I spurred spuriously, extending my Yeeha's, trying to rustle from my mates a guffaw. In the saddle I shuffled, turned, bumped and prattled, while we looked tirelessly for our tired lost cattle.
Morning came and I lay drunk, tired and lame, when my mate informed me my horse got away. I leapt up and prepared to balk, but I looked, it was true, my horse made me walk.
02.11.09
Leverage
I pulled out a lawn chair.
I pulled out a glue stick.
I pulled out a cactus.
I pulled out a horseshoe.
I pulled out a starfish.
I pulled out a gymnast.
I pulled out a forklift.
I pulled out a plunger.
I pulled out a magnet.
I pulled out a heart.
The string from her mouth I may have pulled to hard.
02.10.09
Your Nick Name Stuck
I went back to your house because I forgot my car keys, then you reminded me that I don't have a car.
02.10.09
Delegating My Responsibilities To Minors
Light from the television played on Doug's face. A man with an aerodynamic blender diced carrots and potatoes in a series of flashes under the eye. Race cars chased one another in a tight circle around the face, one veering off into a receding hairline. Yawns swallowed the racers and spat them out in different orders. Women in bright spandex leaned against the nose and stretched to straining synthesizers. Airplanes looped and spiraled along the forehead, tiny people standing on the upper lip craned their necks.
Coyotes fought on the cheek.
Lights flashed at the man on the podium broken in two by the nose. He spoke with an urgency that ruined his mouth's symmetry. Hockey players lost the puck over the edge of the face, diving after it. Two men spoke to each other from across a sharply severed table, their heads lost in the blue of the eyes. Words of stock market vicissitudes leaked from the pupils. The men found their heads when Doug started snoring.
02.05.09
Cynicism Helps
If anyone looks at this site, and you would like to be consoled by my self help book, Email me.
02.05.09
I Have A Problem With Sincerity
02.04.09
Sensible
The map was a winding line through triangle trees and fluffy rocks, ending in a large "X" that was scribbled over in four different colors. According to the map, he was by the isosceles tree, with the frowning bird on top, half way to the "X". The path was narrow and dirt, the trees deciduous, and there were no frowning birds. Doug was lost. He kept walking, the sun winking through the thick veil of leaves. The stick he held drug on the ground behind him, giving his wrist a little flick at every root and rock.
She said to meet her at the "X" at 4:30, his Rin Tin Tin wrist watch read 5:15. She would not stand for him being late; she had a horse, butlers, swimming pool and a dad who took airplanes to work. At school she had told him she was an equestrian. He said he was too. Doug didn't know what an equestrian was. She asked him if he wanted to look at her book with equestrian stuff in it after school.
It took her five minutes to draw the map to where they would meet, she spent two minutes drawing the frowning bird.
The sun was getting low, hanging under the foliage, throwing itself in his face. He kept walking, squinting from the map to the path, trying to find the same triangles in both. When Doug had gotten home after school he asked his grandma what an equestrian was, she said she'd tell him if he'd shut up.
It was almost dark when he reached the clearing. It was quiet. The grass was tall, but not enough so that he couldn't find the two long branches stretched over one another. Rin Tin Tin told him it was 6:00. Doug rummaged through his pockets, through the bubble gum wrappers and kleenex, finding the little horse. He had taken the cavalier from his army set and broken off the general.
The little girl went to the clearing a few days later for a tea party. Under the "X" she had made was a little horse with little boots on its belly.
02.02.09
Warm Broth
He couldn't think of anything to say.
When she entered the elevator she returned his smile with what he thought was enthusiasm. He had said hello, asked her how she was, and then silence. For two floors she stared ahead, watching the buttons glow. She exhaled loudly. Three more floors passed and the only sound between them was the hum of the elevator. Doug felt like he needed to forge some type of rapprochement between the them five floors ago and the them now. It was three more floors before he told her liked her hair.
She was wearing a hat.
There was a soft chime. She gave him a queer look and walked out into the hallway. The door closed.
01.30.09
Give Me A Hoola Hoop
Doug was running. His sneakers hit his ass, every step landing in the centre of a sidewalk block. Sweat was running between his eyebrows, falling down the bridge of his nose. Under his bottom lip was red from biting, teeth prints smiled. Hair splashed on his forehead. He thought he heard his feet, but it was his heart. The chili he'd had for lunch surfaced, leaving a kidney bean between his teeth and cheek. Sweat met at his chin and left in streams. He slalomed through a crowd, a fallen triangle growing darker on his back. Change rattled against keys in his pocket. Sweat crept through his eyelashes into his eyes. Squinting and panting he ran.
01.28.09
Calculus
There are eleven things that Doug won't do.
Number seven takes after number four, number ten can only be done on the sabbath, and number two needs yeast and ovens. One time number five gave Doug the clap, which subsequently gave birth to number six. Nine is the reason he can't be around large crowds. Mr. Harkinen used to do three with Doug as a child, and shortly after he and his parents moved to Cold Lake. Eleven was added to the list after he received the return to sender in the mail. Eight has five speeds.
Doug won't use shampoo.
01.27.09
Mermaid
There was a certain warmth about the superintendents daughter. The way she would stand in Doug's doorway, her shoulder between him and solidarity, her heavy breathing when telling of the shouting man in line at the coffee shop that Doug cared nothing about, how she would stroke his hair as his head lay in his hands in defeat on the kitchen table, and the way his hands got lost under her sagging, disobedient breasts as she huffed above him, her wheezes finding a sick simpatico with the bed springs cries of exhaustion.
01.27.09
That was great, I don't feel a day over 100
His dad taught him to wet the toothbrush before putting on the paste, when he asked his mom she told him to wet it after. Now Doug needs a root canal because he doesn't brush his teeth.
Doug walked to the dentist. He walked past Old Lady Baker's, with the wide, sad garden, where the peas climb short fences to nowhere. Old Lady Baker used to pay him in hard candies and stale pleasantries to weed her garden. Now the weeds bully timid tomato plants into remission. He remembered her face, like weathered corduroy, the wale keeping deep shadows in her cheeks.
A truck with wheels too large sped by, a can floating out of its window.
Tiny bells jingled above the door when he got to the dentist. The receptionist looked up, her hair not moving; a hair spray stalagmite. He sat on a squishy leather chair and read Reader's Digest like the lady with the numb hair had told him to. It was many jokes from enamored parents about their children's quirks before a pair of sweaty eyebrows carried a set of squinting eyes around a clouded glass door at the end of the hall.
"Doug?" They Blinked.
The damp eyebrows poured a large fluorescent light into Doug's eyes and pulled a hissing plastic cup over his mouth. Behind a green surgical mask two amorphous dancers performed to the monologue of a sons soccer game, where no one keeps score but we all know who won, we did.
When he left tiny bells twittered their farewell.
01.26.09
Why Can't I Get Paris, I Love Cheese
His neighbor's dogs stand in his yard. They come up to the window and watch the legs of the kitchen chairs, their noses smudging sharp seismographic signatures. His dad's dad told him to shoot them, over the phone. He studies the way they step over their legs, in an anxious stationary two-step, while reading the newspaper.
The cat he inherited from his Greek aunt steps softly around the window's sill, back and forth, cajoling mutt's tongues to hang and wave. She's an inside Kitty by condition. He wants the dogs to be French; they have generalized, pompous attitudes.
One of them shit on the stoop.
Sixty-eight minutes it took him to make the meat loaf. The Draino ate through the metal cooking rectangle and the tomato sauce burnt. He went back to the stoop later and found a bite missing from the loaf, his aunt's cat on the walk, a woman poking it with her foot, and two dogs heeling behind her on leashes.
"Doug, your cat's dead".
She shouted.
01.20.09
Grandma tosses the salad
We should all be more laconic. Less words mean less presumptions to stumble over.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6839699448154980871&hl=en-CA
01.06.09
Nevermind
I hear things are better when left strictly platonic.
12.30.08
New Mexico
His cheeks glowed and his crowning teeth shone as he stood and shared his Cheerio's with the floor, pontificating with astute infantile garble from his high chair.
12.24.08
Yule Tide Carols
I don't have mittens 'cause I lost my socks.
I eat the snow 'cause the waters cut off.
I named my kid Flake 'cause he stutters like he's cold.
I smile today 'cause Clause's snowshoes I stole.
12.22.08
Flash Cards
Whenever my memory fails me, I try to place Ray Liotta's name to Ray Liotta's face.
12.16.08
Going Green
I believe in a collective unconcious, I just hope its name isn't television.
12.13.08
In Flight
I'm tired of listening to the airplanes.
That slow, distant drone resilient in its cause, hanging onto the tops of buildings to perpetuate its hum. Sometimes they pass overhead, and right out of cartoon laden goody bags those mutant noisemakers purr. At night I watch their lights burn out into the distance and wonder how long before I can pretend to sleep.
I don't care where they're going.
Lately I've been trying to hold my breath the entire length of their passing.
It's not going well. The phone rang while I was working to best a plane and I didn't answer. A couch fell on my brother. Now I start getting light headed when it reaches the far end of the skyline, and if I stand up quickly I pass out.
I've started dreaming of an airplane on a bright hardwood dance floor, looking resplendent in a snug two-piece lime suite. It offers a pasty steel wing, its brake flap beckoning to me. Taking the tip of the wing in my left hand I throw my right around its backside and we start to waltz. We step slowly, describing long staircases around the floor, the plane dousing me in its shadow, its nose occasionally brushing against a pearl chandelier.
I found if you whistle while a plane is overhead it sounds like it's going to fall.
Sometimes I imagine it falling onto me, tones of steel crashing about in a splintered orchestra of shrapnel and complementary peanuts.
Thursdays are the loudest, as if they are working harder so they can get off early tomorrow. When I brandish my staunch middle finger through the window to the sky I think they pass a little faster, but it also starts raining.