Broken Heart Loved: a poem

Just like my old Ford Crown Victoria
What an absurd name
Henry, bestow this gold hat on the Queen of England
Always joking, now let’s get serious

Thirty year-old piece-a-shit
Cigarette-burned upholstery
Spill-stained seats
Scarred, scratched surface

Flaws and all, despite the odds,
That engine keeps ticking
Some how, some way
That old beater gets me there,
Each night, each day

Many miles and years in radio silence
Broken
Seemingly unfixable

Til one day a slight crackle
A faint melody building
Soothing strings
Passionate piano
A most beautiful concerto
Rising and falling, filling the tired, beaten car
With love, joy, and hope
Thought it could never be musical again

1993-2024: a poem

Now I was born on an August Saturday morn’ in 1993
The doctor who delivered me, funnily enough,
was named John Kennedy, that must be tough
Sharing that name with that man

I was over ten pounds at my birth,
made crying sounds my first day on Earth
My older brother, who was learning to spell,
called me “P-I-G”
The insult fell on untrained ears
He was older than me by over than three years

All the same, I couldn’t complain,
I didn’t know how to yet

____________________

The President’s name was Bill,
and he told those folks on Capitol Hill
that he never had relations,
just standard, normal conversations with that intern
And, in turn, Congress let him stay

I didn’t pay any attention
I have no retention
of this period of national tension

____________________

No, my first memory of the world around me,
Family gathered ‘round the TV,
listened to the sound of a newsman speaking
about a thing called Columbine
I didn’t fully understand it,
but two teenagers planned it,
the annihilation of their classmates

They showed their faces, made them famous
Everyone searching for where the blame is
Was it the violent video games?
Or the bullies calling them names
Again and again, this same conversation
These two young boys unleashed a shameful curse on this nation

____________________

I went to school, followed most of the rules
Learned to read and write
My left from my right
Learned about what’s wrong and what’s right

I liked baseball and climbing trees
Lived with ease, it was all a breeze
Occasionally fell and scraped my knees
Til one big fall, and my arm snapped
Then I snapped,
screaming for a past where nothing hurt
My arm in a cast, stretching my shirt
All the other kids signed
Some people are still kind.

Now I remember, on a Tuesday in September,
A lot of my class members got sent home early
Surely this was somethin’, not nothin’
It was a televised mass homicide
Mom would decide we wouldn’t watch TV
I played outside quite happily

By then the President’s name was George
He wanted to forge a new American century
with complete global hegemony,
stronger than any empire in human memory

My parents seemed okay with it
I guess that’s just the way it is
I never heard them weighin’ in
on anything political

____________________

When I turned thirteen, I received an electric guitar
Surely I would go far with this
Started with the twelve-bar blues, then forty licks
I practiced and practiced, playing faster and faster
on that red Stratocaster
I was in a band, and we would stand on stage
Just a few teenagers expressing our rage
I for one thought it was great fun

In school I liked to joke ‘n’ fool around,
Make people laugh off their ass
In class I did well, and the staff
gave me a GPA of three and a half

____________________

Went to the movies with a friend
We sat way at the end
She put her hand in mind
Pressed her lips to mine
I felt a divine sense of euphoria
It was the best thing ever, by then

____________________

In 2008 the money went bad
Don’t you hate the funny system we had?

Too big to fail, but guess what?
They failed, and we bailed them out
Only one single guy ever went to jail

If only those guys had made
760 billion coffees at home

____________________

The new President’s name was Barack
Said he didn’t like the war in Iraq
But let me be clear:
He kept it going for three more years
Just in case

And remember those guys from Citi Group and Chase?
Who fucked up the whole economy?
Now they’re directly running the country
Eh, they kinda always were, anyway

____________________

After eighteen years of “Go to a Christian college,
Go to a Christian college,”
I found myself, predictably, at a Christian college,
I didn’t know how to think for myself just yet

They had a guest speaker
Felt almost like a coronation
for a man who once lied to the United Nations
about anthrax, which led to half a million deaths in Iraq
I guess “thou shalt not kill” was just a recommendation

____________________

One student went around and stalked girls
He walked to their dorm rooms
Knocked on their locked doors

I wasn’t aware of this at the time,
but years later some female friends of mine said
They had informed the school
of his cruel flouting of the rules,
hoping they would perform some discipline or reform
One even warned he’d kill one day
Of course, he did

Perhaps if he had received more than a slap on the wrist
It wouldn’t’ve ended up like this
Anyway, let’s continue to reminisce

____________________

When I was eighteen,
I met someone with the darkest and prettiest eyes
I had ever seen

She was a vegetarian and a humanitarian
I came across as a bit of a contrarian
We wrote each other letters,
and I always felt better when we were together
Plus we liked the same music

A creator and appreciator of art,
She captured my heart, my whole heart, and nothing but my heart

____________________

I studied physics
Wanted to know what was goin’ on
Learned about one or two phenomena
Learned about many situations
Like time dilation
Quantum mechanics and its odd interpretations
This all gave me a sense of consternation
Then the realization that
The universe is under no obligation
To make any sense

____________________

At age twenty, went to the cafeteria to eat
Some guys took the other seats at the table
A young woman walked by,
in a low-cut dress
And this man next to me started to confess
That if a woman wore that outfit
out with him, and didn’t put out, he’d figure out,
on their next time out, how to sneak
a special surprise in her drink
I don’t think he meant something nice,
like more ice, extra sugar, or a bit of spice

He nodded to another woman,
who was dressed a bit more plain
He then explained,
“Some girls are too ugly to even fuck unconscious.”
He seemed bereft of conscience
Some guys laughed, and I left, nauseous

Couple weeks later, you can imagine my surprise
when I realized,
out of all the guys
the woman with the pretty eyes could’ve picked,
It was this very same, disgusting guy
I needed to know why

I recall, that afternoon in the fall,
at Handlebar Coffee
She looked at me as if to scoff at me,
to taunt me and flaunt to me

She looked me square in the face and declared,
she was aware of the terrible things
he’d said and done, but she didn’t care
I just sat and stared. Stunned.

I had never seen someone throw away their morality
with such totality
So much for empathy, so much for humanity
Guess she felt, well,
As long as it’s someone else and not herself, then oh well!

She’s spent the rest of her life exploiting
the people she pretended to be a part of
Guess she really had a heart of stone
I should’ve known
Enough people said as much

Now I freely admit,
I did not handle it well
I was angry and upset, and I fell apart
Didn’t know what to do with a shattered heart

I drank like a fish
Had an unspoken wish
that I’d wake up dead one night

I’d drink and wander along a cliff
Hoping I would stumble and trip, and that would be the end of it
Then it wouldn’t be my fault
Just an accidental fall to the asphalt
How humble of me to think
I could make God fall for this little trick
As if!

Man, I was pathetic,
and not particularly sympathetic

A friend from Wisconsin saved me
Woke up the hopeless, depraved me
For that I’m eternally grateful
Pulled me out of the spiral that was dark and hateful

So I made it out okay
What was that old cliché?
Even a broken heart beats 100,000 times a day?

____________________

Anyway, it called itself a Christian school, a safe space,
but only a fool would call it a moral place
There was another case
A young woman taken advantage of
Without her consent
A truly horrific event
And this meant the case went to the resident advisor
Someone supposedly wiser

But you know what?
She was spineless
It was that timeless, complete bullshit
He was an athlete
We can’t take everything away from him
just because of one mistake
Plus, our school’s reputation is at stake
After all, boys will be boys, for goodness’ sake

What annoys me is how
Often the person bringing up the crime
Is treated as the one inventing it
And those tasked with duty of preventing it
Always seem to be circumventing it

Looking back, that place was all outta whack
They’d throw you out for a loving, consensual act
But when people were actually attacked,
They’d cover their eyes, plug their ears, turn their back

____________________

I found myself with a girlfriend not long after
We made each other burst into laughter
She was funny and sweet as honey
And she looked so pretty as we explored the city
Voice of an angel, and I’m grateful
We had our time together
She took me by the hand, you understand,
and made me, well, happy

We fell in love fast
But it wasn’t made to last
What did that one Beatle say?
All things must pass?

Wish her all the best
Stay blessed

____________________

There was a new candidate on the TV,
bragging about grabbing women by the pussy
A large swath of the country said,
“Yep, that’s the guy for me!”
I felt a sudden twinge of familiarity

So the President’s name was Donald J.
And if I wanted to say
all his scandals and crimes,
and to do it with rhymes,
why, that’d be five times as long as the book of Psalms!

____________________

Wasn’t sure what to do
So I started driving a cab

On my first day as a driver,
my friend became a survivor
of the deadliest mass shooting in US history
That one was a mystery

I was shocked at how freely people talked
from the back seat, about how much they cheat
on their partners, wives, and husbands

Now look, in my free time I wrote a couple books
Sold a fair few at a fair price
One was just me giving advice
on how people could be a bit more nice
It was a bit stupid and concise,
But I guess it sufficed for a first try
The next one’ll be better and brighter
What did that other Beatle say?
I wanna be a paperback writer?

I theorized and criticized
One of the days I’m gonna get organiz-ized!

____________________

Now listen here,
I can’t remember the month or year,
But I was playing a sport that takes place on a court
The ball bounced, and I pounced,
reaching out to block it
Collided with an opponent
Shoulder ripped out of its socket
Occasionally that shoulder still brings me pain,
even as I’ve gotten older
Now I’m attuned to the rain
I thought time was supposed to heal all wounds?

____________________

I felt it might be time to grow up,
get a “real job,” work out, have some kind of glow up
Had an interview, got the job, and decided to show up

Great big job at a great big company
[made me a decent amount of money]
Won’t say the name, but it was owned by a gecko
With all those claims, I was forced to let go
of my humanity
Treat people as numbers and policy.

It was my job to advise,
but when I realized we were the bad guys,
I quit
You can still do that, you know.

____________________

Thought about becoming a pilot
Took a few lessons just to try it
Though I absolutely loved flying around,
I didn’t have a hundred grand just lying around

Plus I was reading about climate change
Thought that I might change my path in life
It may have been financially foolish,
but I decided to go back to school,
this time studying the environment

Started writing about it
Going to protests and fighting about it
Making cocktails and igniting…
Oh wait, I shouldn’t be highlighting that

____________________

I heard of another person of increasing fame
So now let’s play a little game
Here’s a riddle, guess my name:

Popular island that no one’s been to
Troves of files that you can’t look into
I travel the world to every location
A billion dollars but no vocation
I know every single celebrity
But not a single one knows me
Friends with presidents, princes, actors
I consider myself a science benefactor
I have dozens of clients, but none of them exist
Some nice little flight logs, but no other list

I have the power to make guards fall asleep
I can force cameras to stop, without making a peep
I can edit video in Adobe Premiere
Several years since I’ve disappeared
I left this world in twenty-nineteen
You guessed it, Henry Eckstein!

____________________

Got working in the algae field
And what appealed to me was how
There was now a sense in my heart of satisfaction
No longer on the fence, but doing my part, taking action
Reducing methane emissions
That’s a noble mission, if you ask my position
Not that anyone would
I think it should be a global ambition

I loved it
Hard workin’, sun burnin’
All these hands-on skills I’m learnin’
But I was yearnin’ for another adventure after a while,
Plus I felt the U.S. was quite vile,
so I figured I’ll sell all my things
and move five thousand miles to the Emerald Isle
A new life with a new lifestyle

____________________

As I was preparing to go,
the new President’s name was Joe
He never seemed to know
what the hell was going on

The U.S. Presidency, as an institution,
as if by some demented resolution
as predictable as Newton’s laws of motion,
always gives arms and ammunition
to the state of Israel

No matter its use for persecution or execution
Might as well be written in the Constitution:
“the right of Israel to receive U.S. munitions
shall not be infringed”
Zionism is deeply unhinged

____________________

Before I leave town for the Land of Saints and Scholars
Let’s take a trip down memory lane and ponder
I’ve gone around this country where I could
The bad and the good
North, south, east, and west
Some of the natural beauty was just the best
Like the Grand Canyon and General Grant
I can’t believe my eyes at the size of that tree

In Tennessee, went rafting along the river
Popped over to Elvis’s house for dinner
He wasn’t there
Just left the building

Before getting stuck in a snowstorm,
I saw the Colorado Rockies in both its forms
The mountains left me awestruck
But the team sure did suck

I’m a wanderer at heart
Always looking for a fresh start
Been accused of acting mysterious,
I just think life is unbearably serious

Camped around, near and far
Slept under the stars when it was pretty
Went to plenty of bars in the big cities

____________________

You might think I’m a misanthrope
But nope,
I’m filled and fueled by hope
One oughtta be,
And I really gotta be
It’s a life or death matter
I choose life, not the latter

But the state of the world is a bit subjective
What did that other Beatle say?
Society’s run by insane people for insane objectives?

____________________

Now I’m in Dublin
Inspired, new writing ideas bubblin’
Love the country
Its culture, people, and history
Not to mention the whiskey

Forklift driving, whiskey pouring, seaweed farming
Some people say it’s a bit alarming,
the way I live my life
No kids, no wife
But I feel better and freer than ever before
What’s more…

Never believed the key to be happy
was found in a show that was a bit crappy
It was on TV in the nineteen sixties
They said, “Farm livin’ is the life for me!”
Love helping with food security
And trying to do it sustainably
So serene to not be stuck behind a computer screen
You know what I mean?

____________________

If I can use the word,
I’ve been seeing this new bird,
and she might be the one,
if there is such a thing
Such joy, such fun
I’ll let you know how far we’ve run
Some time in two thousand fifty-one

____________________

Not sure why I started to recount the years
I suppose one of my fears
is that, in fifty years, I’ll be old,
with weak eyes and half-deaf ears
My memory won’t be quite clear
So I’ll just leave this here

____________________

I’ve had my share of friends, enemies, and lovers
One or two have been all three, at one time or another

I think I’ll be all right,
Long as I’ve got a pencil, paper, and something to write
The only thing I miss from the U.S.A.?
Fahrenheit.
What did the final Beatle say?
Now it’s time to say good night.

Wandering: a poem

Nine billion people wand’ring around
Searching for answers that can’t be found
Does it ever start to make any sense?
Should we just throw away the whole pretense?

Nine million species throughout the biosphere
Yet only one questioning why it’s here
Did something go wrong?

Why is it all so stupid?

In 1949, George Orwell released a book called Nineteen Eighty-Four, sometimes published as 1984. It is widely regarded as the greatest dystopian novel ever written, and it’s so commonly read and known that people can just say ‘1984,’ and it’s understood that they’re talking about dystopia. “Orwellian” is also used to describe dystopian things in our world. Many of 1984’s concepts have made their way into our society’s lexicon such as “Big Brother,” “2 + 2 = 5,” “Doublethink,” and “Thoughtcrime,” among others. 

While I do think Orwell gets overly romanticized as a prophet, I do see similarities between elements of his story and elements of our society. The Patriot Act echoes the surveillance of Big Brother. Israel joining the Board of Peace while committing genocide echoes the “War is Peace” contradiction. Orwell’s Ministry of Truth destroys truth itself. It chooses what is true and what isn’t. Donald Trump, who has done the most in the modern era to desecrate the concept of truth, owns his Truth Social platform. 

There’s a lot of horrible shit out there, and we should raise awareness, and resist it, fight it, and so on. But what I’ve been thinking about recently is just how stupid so much of this is. That’s what I’d like to rant about.

Let’s take George W. Bush, for example. In October 2001, he signed into law the Patriot Act, which, as I said, committed the US to massive, massive surveillance. That’s a bit dystopian, and it seems to violate the 4th amendment to the constitution, but hey, I’m no constitutional expert. It was bad, but it was also stupid. First of all, we call it the “Patriot Act,” but really it’s the “USA Patriot Act,” but actually it’s the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism. Now, if you follow those bold letters, you see that it spells out USA Patriot.

Seriously? Are we serious? Is this what happens? We turn this dystopian project into a cute little acronym? What a fucking joke. “Hey guys, I know we’re gonna spy on all of you, but look at this adorable little acrostic poem we wrote. Isn’t that sweet?” Fuck you. It’s really crazy to me how often this happens. In 2017, a bill was introduced called the Communications Over Various Feeds Electronically for Engagement Act, which spells out COVFEFE. Covfefe was a typo from a Donald Trump tweet. A fucking typo. What a stupid world we live in. Some stupid ones from Democrats include the STABLE GENIUS Act and the ZOMBIE Act.

But that’s only part of the stupidity of the situation. This is a horrible act, yet it was ushered in by an absolute buffoon. It’s all about technology and surveillance and tapping and all that, yet it’s signed by a guy who says “Internets,” and “the Google.” Now, we all misspeak, we all have gaffes, but as far as Presidents go, there was no one more prolific than George W. Bush, at least at the time. 

Bush’s Iraq War was built on lies. Several, several lies, including their desire to not have the “smoking gun come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” They all said this again and again. The nuclear threat was a key part of the rationale for this horrific war. Yet George Bush himself couldn’t even say the word “nuclear.” He doesn’t know how to say it. How stupid. It’s maddening to have someone capable of causing so much destruction at home and abroad, and yet have so much stupidity spewing from his mouth all the time. It seems like his “Bushisms” have whitewashed his regime. Another stupid thing from the Iraq War was that the US tried to convince other nations to join in our illegal invasion. They convinced their old ally, the UK to join, but their other old ally, France, said no. So in response, the US changed their congressional cafeteria menu from ‘French fries’ to ‘Freedom fries.’ That’ll show ‘em! How petty and stupid.

Let’s move on to Barack Obama. Obama didn’t have nearly as much personal stupidity as Bush. But he still deserves regular criticism for continuing the war on terror, his drone strike campaign, maintaining the torture program, bowing to Wall Street, and so on. Those all deserve condemnation. The stupidity came from what he was actually condemned for.

In the first year of his Presidency, he committed the unspeakable crime of ordering a burger with dijon mustard instead of good old-fashioned, true American yellow mustard. What a disgrace. Just imagine if he did that on a plant-based burger too. That would truly be a Leninist/Maoist gesture. A few years later, he did something so scandalous that it definitely needed to be talked about on Fox News. Barack Obama wore a tan suit during a press conference.

Republican representative Peter King literally went on national television and said, “There’s no way I think any of us can excuse what the President did yesterday.” INEXCUSABLE! That’s the kind of shit I’d say about Watergate, not a tan fucking suit. I mean, think about suits. There’s gray, black, blue. Tan is right up there. It’s not like he was out there in a purple suit and green vest like the fuckin joker.

Lou Dobbs, some right-wing commentator, went on TV and said it was “shocking.” I’m shocked that anyone fuckin talked about it. There’s serious shit going on, and we’re talking about a tan suit. Everyone on Fox bemoaned that it was “unpresidential,” they loved using that word. Now, I think  Presidents, generally speaking, are rotten, but let’s just say there is some ideal concept known as being “presidential.” It involves being formal, smiling when appropriate, giving firm handshakes to other dignitaries, being diplomatic, accepting your own mistakes when you make them, having some sense of cordiality in disagreements and not resorting to personal attacks. Right? I mean, if a tan suit is so unpresidential, I’m sure Lou Dobbs really hated the next guy, the most unpresidential guy in our fuckin country. Right?

It was around this time, the mid-2010’s, that I became a young adult and started to take an interest in politics. I thought, “I’m an adult now. I’m gonna look seriously at this serious world. I’m going to read books about history and politics and I’ll follow the current events, and I’ll listen to perspectives and be serious about my thoughts.” So then I start following the news, starting with events covered by the mainstream media on YouTube, and what do I see in the comments? DemoCRAPS, DEMONcrats, Lyin’ Ted. CHEETO MAN. Drumpf. He’s a Cheeto man. He looks like a Cheeto, that snack food. Is it a chip? Anyway, it’s orange, like him. He’s orange.

I just couldn’t believe how stupid it all was. And I get there’s always gonna be some stupid, but the amount of people that just loved this kindergarten level shit was astounding. And it was not just the people. It was led by the fucking main candidate of the party! My first impression of politics was how serious and stupid it was at the same time. 

This Tump-Biden-Trump era has felt like one long nightmare, and it has been. Trump was incredibly wild, and Biden was clueless. Trump reversed even the basic environmental protections he had. While doing that, he claimed that the noise from windmills causes cancer. He talked about airports during the Revolutionary War. He claimed magnets would be deactivated if you pour a cup of water on them. He says, “Nothing bad can happen, it can only good happen.” He claimed to decrease drug prices by 1000% or 600% which makes no sense. It goes on and on and on.

Trump is fulfilling some of Orwell’s “predictions” in the stupidest way possible. Orwell had the Ministry of Truth, and Trump has Truth Social, which he uses to post A.I.-generated video of him shitting on his own country from a jet. Very cool. Very sane. Orwell had the Ministry of Peace, which, of course, is all about war. Trump has the Board of Peace, yet he supports this genocide/eradication so his son-in-law can build luxury resorts or golf courses or whatever the fuck. You know, Hannah Arendt talked about the ‘banality of evil,’ which basically posits that the great evils of the holocaust were not committed by sadists or psychopaths or ‘monsters,’ but rather mundane people. I guess I’m saying that it doesn’t take any particular intelligence or sophistication to not only commit those evils, but to lead them. In fact, it’s common for those to be fucking stupid.

[I know a lot of that is from the second term, but whatever] And the Democrats thought, “All right, we gotta get rid of this guy, who’s our best bet? I know, how about a guy that can hardly speak? Because he has name recognition.” So we got stuck with this old man who hardly had any idea what was going on around him, it seemed. If anyone was as incoherent as he was doing any job whatsoever, you’d have to tell him he’s not up for it, and ask his family to consider putting him in a home. Yet there he was, the most powerful man on Earth. He always looked like he was trying so hard to form sentences. So, for me, it was less of him being stupid, just old, but our country being stupid for having him as President. Listening to him try to speak was painful and embarrassing.

Yet, all the while, rent goes up, wages don’t, mass shootings keep happening, medical debt increases, police keep brutalizing people, mass incarceration stays steady, the military budget balloons, foreign interventions keep happening, emissions skyrocket, etc. etc. etc. and so on. Lotta serious, horrible shit, yet so stupid at the same time.

It’s not just politicians, though. The ultra-wealthy are also fucking stupid. For years and years I’ve been told about how much of a genius Elon Musk is. While I never really cared or bought into it, I think his stupidity, at least the stupidity I’m talking about, escalated a lot in recent years.

He’s the richest man in the world, and in some sense the richest man in the history of the world. With that comes so much power, so much ability to do things. What does he do? He buys Twitter because they banned his favorite satire page, the Babylon Bee. Whatever, that’s not that stupid. I don’t use Twitter, but Elon and his team made a bunch of changes really quickly, and it seemed like it kinda sucked. So then he put up this poll which said, “Should I step down as the head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of this poll.” And, of course, people voted “Yes,” and, of course, he didn’t abide by it.

This is just so stupid. The richest man on the planet, one of the most powerful men on Earth, and he’s acting like a fifth grader with a crush. Like he’s passing a note in class to a girl: “Do you like me? Yes or No.” What a joke. And then he did a Nazi salute and all the right-wingers had to pretend it wasn’t. And then he, the owner of the website, made antisemitic tweets, so then he bitched to Andrew Ross Sorkin that they’re [the advertisers] killing the company, not that his shitty behavior was making them not want to be associated with him. Whatever happened to personal fuckin responsibility, huh? 

Then this supergenius, who’s just like Iron Man, by the way, tweets, on the platform that he owns, that Donald Trump is covering up the Epstein files because he’s implicated in them. Now I don’t necessarily have anything against that in particular, but after that, he decides, because he’s a genius boy, to go and have a nice formal dinner with the guy he just accused of covering up a sex trafficking operation. He said it was a lovely dinner.

This is what really got me thinking about the stupidity/evil situation: Jeffrey Epstein. He was one of the most horrific criminals in history, and many [not all] of his files have been released, with inappropriate non-redactions of victims and inappropriate redactions of potential collaborators. What’s the word for this? Uhm, stupid? Anyway, it gives us a slight glimpse into the shadowy, dark, evil world of the super elites. While many of us suspected this kind of thing, I guess I just expected a little more, I don’t know what the word is, sophistication? 

I don’t know, maybe I’m just as stupid, but I assumed they’d have all these crazy alternative email accounts and dark web stuff and untraceable cell phones and sophisticated terminology. But when you look at it, it just looks like a bunch of dickheads sitting around, texting and emailing each other from their phones while committing the worst shit imaginable. It’s very fratboyish. That’s what this feels like. These are the fratboys of Earth. Really rich, love partying, have absolutely no empathy for anyone else, hate women [in this case women and girls] intensely, yet are attracted to them and want to control them. Only in this case it’s like ten million times worse. And I get that the evil acts committed and who committed them are the real story, and they’re worth continued examination, but it also is just the culmination of this growing feeling I’ve had that the world is just stupid. 

The investigation has been stupid too. The files are real, no they’re not, they’re on my desk, never mind, it’s a complete Democrat hoax, actually it’s kinda real, but there’s phony stuff in there, if it’s about Trump it’s fake, but if it’s Clinton it’s real, but we won’t release them to protect victims, but then when we do release them, we’ll reveal additional victims who didn’t want to be identified. 

Then they throw Pam Bondi out there to answer questions about her lackluster investigation. She’s the Attorney General, by the way, which means she’s the head of the Department of Justice. So they’re like “Hey Pam, what’s the deal? How’s the investigation? You gonna arrest anyone? You gonna unredact those certain parts?” And she starts talking about the fucking DOW Jones. The economy. The fucking stock market. Then she whines like a baby, like a five year-old, about why they didn’t ask Merrick Garland the same thing. Like, YOU are the Attorney General! You’re in charge of justice! You’re the Attorney General right now!

Just imagine Pam Bondi’s in history. Like, “Hey, Pontius Pilate, did you just wash your hands while that innocent man was killed?” And he’s like “What about the 50,000 denarii that Tiberius brought in? That’s the real story. And a lot of Roman Governors wash their hands too, why don’t you ask them?” Or, “Hey O.J. did you kill your wife?” “Why didn’t you ask Henry VIII the same question, I never heard you ask him, and he’s accused of killing multiple wives. I didn’t hear a single question from you back in 1542 about the same thing.”

So fucking stupid. If you’re in charge of justice, and there’s a giant sex trafficking investigation going on, the absolute bare fucking minimum you’d do is set up some communication with the survivors to try to get some amount of justice, but she can’t even doing that. What a fucking disgrace. What a stupid world.

A Dog and Its Vomit: a short story

Jack placed the pen down on the desk and started his day. Sunlight poked through the window as he opened the refrigerator. He pulled out the carton and cracked two eggs into a small bowl. He yawned and beat the yolks. His hands moved without much thought. Oil in the pan, little butter, eggs in the pan, sprinkle a little cheese on top, throw a bagel in the toaster, get out the cream cheese. It was so automatic, being the same breakfast he ate every day, except Sundays.

He closed his eyes and pushed his hair back, trying to remember what he dreamed about the night before. It was so close, but he couldn’t quite bring it back into his mind. Perhaps it was for the best. He sat at the small dining room table and ate, sipping on one glass of orange juice and one glass of water, alternately.

He used to drink coffee but he had to give that up. Coffee gave him an energized feeling, and sometimes it would help him work at a high pace. However, coffee, with all its wondrous aromas and warmth, produced another effect in Jack that he didn’t figure out for years. Normally, Jack thought thoughts. And those thoughts usually took the form of words. His internal monologue guided him throughout the day. But after two cups of coffee, a curious thing happened. Jack’s mind would get fuzzy, almost like television static rather than a clear image. His thoughts would shift from concrete words to abstract feelings. And when he didn’t think in words, his mind was liable to make bad decisions. Bad decisions often lead to more bad decisions.

When Jack made this discovery, he tried to switch to tea. But the same problem arose. It just took five cups instead of two. And he somehow always managed to get to five cups. No. Caffeine had to go altogether. He felt pathetic when he came to that conclusion, but, well, that’s just the way it was.

Jack stepped into his workshop and inhaled deeply. He looked at the bulletin board, where he pinned all his outstanding orders. There was just one paper hanging. It was for his piece called “Retro Sleek Vinyl Organizer.” The hardest part of his job was to think of stupid, catchy names for the things he built so he could put them on his stupid website. It was a simple end table that housed a person’s budding record collection. It was simple, but popular, so he set to work.

He measured and sawed and sanded and drilled and screwed. He had a tendency to get into a kind of zone when he built things, especially when he worked with wood. In fact, when the business first took off, Jack had a tendency to work on pieces for hours and hours, forgetting about lunch. He’d notice some time around 4PM, and suddenly he’d realize he felt slightly lightheaded, and his stomach ached and growled. To solve this issue, Jack bought an alarm clock that rang every day at 12:30, telling him to eat lunch.

The bell rang, and Jack set the piece, almost finished, on its legs on the workbench. For lunch, he prepared a tuna melt, a banana, and some almonds. He washed it down with a large glass of ice-cold water.

Now it was time to exercise. He jumped rope 500 times. When he first started, he could barely do 200. He’s increased slowly but surely, and maybe tomorrow he’d try for 550. After he caught his breath, he performed various sets of curls with various weights of dumbbells. After that, he put on some gloves and punched a heavy bag for ten minutes. When he was thoroughly worn out, he showered.

He finished up the piece and gave it one final look-through to ensure its quality. It was a simple piece, and it looked perfect, so he packed it up in a cardboard box. He started his drive into town towards the FedEx shop. It was just after three o’clock by now, a warm, late-spring day.

His business was fairly steady now, and all the FedEx staff knew Jack. A man in his early twenties, with freckles, curly hair, and a consistent appreciation for energy drinks stood at the cash register. A twelve ounce Red Bull can stood at his work space. He smiled as Jack entered.

“Jack, my man!”

“Hi, Elijah.”

Jack placed the box on the scales and handed over the order paper. Elijah clicked and clacked on the keyboard.

“Sticking with the Red Bull?”

“Oh yeah, you know how it is.”

Jack did know how it is.

“You’re keeping busy, yeah?” Elijah asked.

“Yeah, I’d say so. Business is steady.”

“Good, good. Always good to keep busy.”

Jack sighed. “It really is.”

He remembered that he was running out of toothpaste, so he pulled the truck into the parking lot of a CVS. He kept the motor running and spoke to himself in a quiet tone.

“Okay. I’m gonna go in. I’m gonna buy some toothpaste and nothing else, even if I see something else I need. I’m not gonna wander, I’m not gonna get a soda or a Gatorade or even go to that section cause it’s near that other section that I don’t want to go to. That’s it. Toothpaste only.”

He followed his advice exactly. He walked determinedly to the oral care aisle, picked a box of Colgate toothpaste, then scanned the item at the self-checkout. Once back in the truck, he spoke to himself again.

“Easy. Done. In and out, no wandering.”

Jack’s final stop for the day was always the library. He pulled out a stack of DVD’s from his backpack and placed them in the return bay. He sat down at one of the desks and logged into one of the computers.

Jack did not own a computer, and he did not have any internet service at his house. He used to, but he found the problem with computers is that they can be used to see pictures and videos of naked women. When Jack would employ this feature, it produced a similar effect as coffee. His mind would get fuzzy, even fuzzier than coffee, and it became incapable of forming coherent thoughts. Of course, when the two activities were combined, the effect compounded. It was better to just get rid of the computer altogether.

The same problem occurred with his cell phone because cell phones are computers now. He hadn’t gotten rid of his cell phone. Jack felt that, as owner of a small, growing business, he needed to take pictures of his products and post them on a social media site, so he did that occasionally, writing tags to lure in potential customers. It worked. Whenever he did this, he would turn the phone on, use it for this purpose, then immediately turn it off.

Two more orders came in, and Jack printed the order sheets from the library computer. Work was now done for the day, so he leisurely browsed the DVD section for fifteen minutes. He compiled a sizable stack, enough to last him one or two weeks, then he took them to the counter, where the nice older librarian, named Mary Anne, greeted him.

“You watching Julia’s boy tonight?” she asked.

“That’s right, ma’am. Every Wednesday.”

“That’s mighty nice of you.”

“Oh it’s nothing, really. She’s taking some night classes, and ever since… ever since, you know what happened. She wants someone to teach him about fishing and using tools and throwing a baseball. All that.”

“He’s a curious boy, isn’t he? He’s in here most Saturday’s checking out a new book on a new topic. Seems every week he’s got a new favorite thing.”

“Is he? Yeah, he’s a good kid.”

“And that Julia,” she started, looking up at Jack, “She’s a pretty girl isn’t she?”

“I never noticed. Thanks ma’am, I’ve got to go. Have a nice evening.”

He smiled, put the DVDs in his backpack, and left.

He drove off to Julia’s house, and she greeted him at the door.

“Hello, Jack.”

“Hi.”

“Come in, come in. Teddy’s finished his homework already so there’s no need for that. He’s got a big bucket of baseballs out back, so I think that’s… well, he’s been talking about how much he wants to strike you out.” They both smiled.

“We’ll see about that,” Jack said.

“Well, I’ve got to go, I’ll see you later tonight!” Julia walked out the door.

Jack stepped through the cluttered house, facing down to avoid stepping on any toys. He looked out the back window for a moment, watching Teddy throw baseballs at a wooden object. He opened the back door and walked outside. When Teddy noticed Jack, he ran over.

“Hi, Jack! Can’t say that on a plane, can you?”

Jack smiled. “No, you surely can’t. Have you ever been on a plane?”

“No, I surely haven’t. Look at this, I built a strike zone!”

“Wow, look at this!” Jack walked around the wooden strike zone, examining it. A rectangular frame made from two by two’s stood on a wooden stand. A tarp was attached to the back of the frame, to stop the baseball from rolling away, if a strike was thrown. “You’re gonna put me out of a job!”

“It was all cause you taught me,” Teddy explained.

“You’re quite the carpenter, aren’t you? A regular Jesus of Nazareth, or Harrison Ford.”

“Or you! Wanna play?”

“Sure. Do you want to pitch or hit?”

“I’ll pitch. I’ll be Cy Young.”

“Cy Young? Where’d you hear about him?” Jack stood by the strike zone and started waving the wooden bat.

“At the library. I got a book on baseball facts. Cy Young won the most games.”

“He certainly did. I’ll be Cal Ripken Junior then, how’s that?”

“Who’s that?”

Teddy bent down and squinted, staring at the wooden strike zone. He shook his head while an imaginary catcher gave him pitch signals. He settled on one and started his long, dramatic windup. He whipped the ball forward as fast as an eight year-old could. Jack swung big and missed.

“He played the most games in a row without missing one. Two thousand, six hundred, and thirty-two.”

“That’s a lot of games.”

Teddy grabbed another ball from the bucket and fired the second pitch, which flew outside the zone, missing by about a foot. Jack held his swing.

“It sure is. All right, one and one.”

The next pitch was the fastest yet, but it was much too low.

“Ball two.”

Teddy, or Cy Young rather, took a long time deciding his next pitch. Once ready, he fired one at the zone. In one smooth motion, Jack swung and crushed it. The bat made a large cracking noise and the ball flew out of the field and rolled into the trees.

The pair switched, Jack pitching to Teddy. Jack tried to pitch in such a way that it was a challenge for Teddy to get hits, but not impossible. After a while, they played catch. Once Teddy decided he was tired of baseball, they went inside, and watched a superhero movie. Jack sipped on some herbal tea that Julia had. The superhero in the film kissed the woman he loved.

“Jack. Do you have a girlfriend?”

Jack smiled. “No, I don’t. Do you?”

“Ew, no. Girls are… gross. But you’re older. Why don’t you have one?”

“I used to.”

“What happened?”

Jack took another sip, wondering how much he should explain. “Well, I didn’t treat her right, so she left me.”

“Well did you say you’re sorry?” Teddy asked innocently.

Jack chuckled, recalling the moment she dumped him. She yelled and yelled, throwing his possessions out of her second-story apartment. She unleashed her pent-up tirade of insults for the neighborhood to hear. He just stood on the sidewalk with a violent hangover, saying nothing. He only moved to dodge a bottle she threw at him.

“No, I didn’t. I should have. I learned my lesson though.”

“Hmm. So if you got a girlfriend again, you’d treat her good?”

“Of course.”

The two sat and watched the movie for a long minute. Jack knew what Teddy was going to say next.

“You know,” Teddy started, “my mom doesn’t have a boyfriend.”

“I know, kid,” Jack said as he stood up. Teddy watched him as he walked to the kitchen and fixed himself another cup of tea.

Before long, Julia returned. She told Teddy to start getting ready for bed.

“How was he?”

“Good, yeah,” Jack said. “We played baseball for a bit, Hot Wheels, and watched Spider-Man.”

“Dream day for a boy, isn’t it?”

“Sure is.”

“He likes you, Jack.” She reached out and touched his upper arm softly.

Jack’s brown eyes searched Julia’s bright green ones. She met his gaze without wavering.

“I hope he understands that I can’t be a, you know, a full-time father figure or anything.”

“You do what you gotta do. I’m grateful for you watching him every week.”

Jack nodded.

“It means a lot. I know we’re all broken people in our own way, but we do what we can to put each other back together, right?”

“I suppose that’s right, miss. Have a good night.”

Jack nodded to her and walked away. She watched him get in his truck and drive off. He didn’t look back.

In bed, he lay on his right side, breathing slowly, deeply, and intentionally. With each breath, he imagined a number in his head. His mind also said the number. Inhale slowly. One. Exhale slowly. Inhale slowly. Two. Exhale slowly. He did this all the way up to ten, then he started over. This was Jack’s method to induce sleep. It didn’t always work, but that night it did.

When he woke up, seven and a half hours later, ten minutes before his set alarm, he did the same thing he always did: he sat at his desk. He grabbed the same black pen and wrote the same sentence: As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly. It was the seventy-sixth day in a row he had written that sentence.

Final Pages: a poem

Taking shelter at the bus stop
Bitter rain pouring down
Streaking glass

Pull the novel from my backpack
Reading final pages
Minutes pass

Characters say their last goodbyes
Fallen brothers buried
Heartbreak stirs

Story finished, and so am I
Bus arrives, pay my fare
Engine purrs

Personas: a poem

This is my secret invention
Not sure why I mention
But I made it special for you

This is my top secret meeting
Can’t believe I’m conceding
Discussions of characters lost

This is my hidden agendum
You really oughtta commend ’em
For following through on the plan

This is my mystery training
I’ll walk around while it’s raining
Selling my words for a price

Four Swedes: a poem

Boy, oh boy,
Could those four Swedes play
Chords, beats, and words of pure euphoria

Again
Again
Again

Now I myself have never wanted a man,
Before or after midnight,
But during those 4 minutes, 51 seconds,
Gimme, Gimme, Gimme!

Sometimes You Fuck Up, But Does That Make You a Fuck-Up?

Sometimes you fuck up. I do it, you do it, we’ve all done it. My boy St. Paul knew it when he said “for all have sinned…” The great Hannah Montana knew it when she said, “Everybody makes mistakes. Everybody has those days.” Nobody’s perfect, you know?

To me there’s two kinds of fucking up. One is when you make a mistake. And it’s usually a bigger mistake to warrant the use of the words “fucking up.” If you spill a glass of water, you’d be like, “Ah, whoops,” but if you gamble away your grocery money, and now you gotta survive on cans of tuna for two weeks, you’d be like, “Ah I fucked up!” So there’s a threshold that needs to be met in order for a mistake to be considered a fuck up.

The other kind of fucking up is doing something that is negatively affecting someone else. It’s not just you any more. There’s someone else involved. We’ll call this fucking upb and the first kind fucking upa. Sometimes fucking upb is just an honest mistake. You agree to pick up your friend at the airport, but you think it’s on the 15th when he’s actually arriving on the 14th. So he’s waiting around at the airport, wondering where you are, calling you. Meanwhile you’re at the bar watching a baseball game. So you go, “Ah, man, I fucked up. I got the date wrong.” So now he’s gotta take a cab. Honest mistake, and not the end of the world, but you fucked up.

Then there’s the other side of fucking upb, which is where you’re just being an asshole. You’re being rude, you’re being a jerk. It’s not a mistake any more, it’s just bad behavior. I’d like to discuss my thoughts on fucking upa and fucking upb in relation to being a fuck-up.

Fucking Upa

We only get one shot at this thing, so you’re gonna make mistakes. You’re gonna fuck upa. You might fuck upa by not studying hard enough in school so you get bad grades. Or you fall out of a tree and break your arm. Or you go on a big shopping spree and get into credit card debt. Or you break up with someone, then realize you shouldn’t’ve done that. Or you get married to the wrong person. Or you take a job that ends up crushing your soul. 

So clearly there’s a lot of ways to fuck upa, but if you do one of those things, does that make you a fuck-up? I would say, almost certainly, no. There’s almost no single fuck upa that can make you a fuck-up. There’s big decisions to be made. You might’ve been a young adult thinking, “I could either go to school and pursue this field I’m interested in, or I could try to get a job right now to make some money.” So you pick the latter and many years go by and you think, “Ah, man, I fucked upa. I’m stuck at this dead-end, low-pay job that I don’t like, scraping by. I should’ve gone to college. I’m a fuck-up!”

Now that’s a simple story, and maybe that person is a fuck-up and maybe not. Let’s just say they are. So it looks like one fuck upa can make you a fuck-up, right? Well, no. That’s not really how life works. You don’t just make one decision and then the rest of your life just plays out automatically like a Rube Goldberg machine. You continue to make decisions. Things continue to happen. That person may be a fuck-up, but it’s not solely from their biggest fuck upa. That person had many decisions to make. They could have reversed course after realizing their biggest fuck upa and gone on to pursue their interest, but they kept choosing not to do so. 

Even with a very big fuck upa, like marrying the wrong person. Ten or fifteen years go by and you realize the person’s not for you, or they’re just a horrible person in general. You realize you’ve fucked upa. Again, a lot of things happen in those ten years, and you’ve decided to stay with them every single day. Usually people don’t wake up one day as a shitty person. There are signs. But beyond that, people who marry the wrong person and realize it too late are simply not fuck-ups. When people see someone who’s divorced, trying to put their life back together, they say ‘Oh, they married the wrong person, now they’re moving on,’ they don’t say, ‘Wow, what a fuck-up.’

Fucking Upb

What about the second kind of fucking up, what I call fucking upb, involving fucking up other people? Can you fuck upb in a way that makes you a fuck-up? Yes, you can. But that’s very much the minority of cases. People fuck upb all the time. You’ve fucked upb. Your friends have fucked upb. I’ve fucked upb. I actually fucked upb recently. I was being an asshole. An inconsiderate asshole. I was making people feel bad. I was in an uncharacteristically strange and bad mood. Essentially, I fucked upb. Now I don’t think that makes me a fuck-up for life. I apologized for my fuck upb behavior, had to forgive myself, and now I’m trying to do better. It happens. 

We can even think about this beyond the terminology of “fucking upb.” Think about lying. If you lie to a friend or partner, and they catch you in the lie, they can accurately call you a liar. You’re a liar. You just lied. But does that make you a liar, as a person, for your whole life? I’d say no. And I think most people would say no. It follows a similar pattern. You gotta lie a lot to be a Liar, with a capital L. Like George Santos. That guy’s a Liar. 

If you lie, I picture your status as a liar like this:

Right at the point of lying, you’re a liar. You’re well past the threshold of being a liar [blue line]. But if you continue on for a long time without lying, your status as a liar dissipates and fades away. You’re only a Liar, in the permanent sense, if you lie with great frequency. Like this:

The same can be said for many fuck upsb. In the moment, you’re a fuck-up, but your status as a fuck-up fades away as you continue on without fucking upb.

But there are other things that are well beyond fucking upb to the point that once you fuck upb, that’s it. You are the fuck-up. You could hardly even call these actions “fuck-upsb” because they’re so bad. These are things like murder and rape. If you rape, you’re a rapist. You’ll always be a rapist. Brock Turner, for example, raped. He’ll always be a rapist. Once someone rapes, they’ll always be a rapist. There isn’t that same fading away effect like there is with lying. Murder is the same. Either way you’ve taken a life, in one way or another. You’ve passed the threshold, and you are those actions.

In that case, it looks like this:

That person has crossed that threshold, and that’s it. That’s the end.

Now, we’ve discussed certain fuck upsb that follow the fuck upb curve, like lying and stealing, which don’t make you a fuck-up, unless you commit them with frequency. However, there is also the matter of severity. One does not become a fuck-up if you lie to your dentist about flossing. It’s not that big of a deal. If, on the other hand, one were to lie, say, to the United Nations about anthrax and other weapons of mass destruction, to use a random example, well, then, you just might be a Liar from a single lie.

The other interesting thing about this whole situation is that people’s reactions to their own fucking upb are so varied. Some kindhearted, sensitive people beat themselves up when they fuck upb, even if it’s quite minor. They can’t stand it and it makes them feel gross and guilty. Now I’m not the world’s most sensitive man, but I really hated myself for my most recent fuck upb, hence the writing. Sometimes I’ll just use a slightly impatient tone with a co-worker, and then I’ll be thinking about that all day, condemning myself for being rude. 

On the other hand, there are people fucking upb all the time, and they don’t give a fuck. They just go through life not giving a fuck how their actions affect other people. They’re assholes. They’re fuck-ups, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve known a few in my time on this here Earth. And when you call these people out on their shitty behavior, they often give some answer like “That’s just who I am,” or “I’m not gonna apologize for how other people feel,” or “everyone does it.” You see, assholes think everyone else is an asshole, so they don’t see anything wrong with it. They’ll fuck upb everyone else for their own benefit because they think everyone else is trying to do the same thing. 

It’s the same thing with smell. The person who worries a lot about how they smell usually smells good, because they’re so worried about it, so they do all this stuff to prevent smelling bad. But people who don’t really worry about smelling bad are generally the people who do. Ain’t that fucked?