how to be comfortable with one's self...

First of all, maybe you should admit that you've never been comfortable in your skin.

Maybe you should look back and think about the things that happened to you when you were young. When you were forming your views of the world.

Maybe it had something to do with the time when you were in preschool and you were all playing with a frog on the ground, and over-excited you accidentally stepped on it.
And when you pulled away your foot you and the other little babies saw the frog's insides coming out. You remember how you cried later, to your na-na. You know you are sorry. Why don't you go ahead and forgive yourself.

And that time that you were playing live-action Star Wars with yourself one night when it was just you and Mom at home. I guess you were acting sort of official as you pretended to be a Rebel Commander walking around the base giving orders. And your mom who must have finally got so fed up with your games yelled, "Stop walking around like your so high and mighty!" Don't you think after all this time, looking back, she was just a tired mom. She was younger too, back then. She didn't mean it, is what I mean. But also, don't you think, for maybe once in your life, you could be proud of who you are, or of something you've done? 

And the time you heard your uncle call you, "a boring pain in the butt" behind your back to another old guy. Don't you think he was just a grumpy old man? Don't you think he just didn't like you because you didn't play sports like all of his sons, and you only played pretend? Don't you think though, after all these years, that playing pretend is much much better than being an asshole?

...go ahead and forgive yourself, be proud of who you are, or of something you've done, and playing pretend is much much better than being an asshole.

that's okay

If you don't love me that's okay.
Just tell me so I understand
and can adjust to the set reality.

But that's the problem for me, reality is never set.
It flows and rushes and rolls and falls...
with your feelings.

Your feelings that come from your thoughts perceptions and beliefs.

If only I had known. 

People pass through us and add to us like inspiration, that floods in, and we're in over our heads, but floating, weightless.

There are angels with us on this earth.

On a January night after work, freezing with snow on the ground, I rode up 18th street to the bar district. I knew there would be people there. I ate at the empanada shop, sitting at the window bar and watching the people go by. I crossed the street into the giant coffee bar and found a couch in a well-lit corner. I realize that the server for my section is a beautiful girl. She delivers a menu and a water. She is one of the most beautiful girls I have ever seen. I order a rye with bitters and a cherry and open my sketchbook. I listen to a couple behind me talk in another language. The drink comes, delivered by the beautiful girl. She looks foreign. I watch her walk away to the other tables. I start a sketch from one of my photos.

A girl sits down on the other side of the couch from me. I watch her check her bank balance on a tiny laptop. I draw the two girls from a photograph I  took last year. The beautiful girl comes back again and again. She looks like drawings I have drawn all of my life.

When she isn't there I can see her appearing around the room. She moves like an apparition, and when she materializes again it is always in a monumental pose: reaching, leaning, stooping, bending, looking back. (Did she look my way?)

She is an angel on earth.

The girl next to me on the couch often looks my way. I don’t look at her, but see out of the corner of my eye that she is doing a crossword and drinking a white wine. I wonder if she is a lonely girl and just wants to get out and see people; kind of like me. I wonder if she sat next to me and looks in my direction because she would like to get my attention. And I wonder if that’s just how it always is in life, that someone who loves someone else always finds that that person is looking far away… at a beautiful waitress… or whatever.

I don’t think so really, I think we’ll all find out match. I think we all get what’s coming to us.

I wonder if that is the only reason this girl next to me comes to the coffee shop… to check her balance and do the crossword. I don’t know why anyone comes here, but just to sit and do their thing in between looking around at the other people. I really don’t understand the ones who don’t look around, knowing myself that there are angels with us
on this Earth.

that always does it for me

I realized I had fallen asleep and it was now 11 o’clock on Friday night.

I was like, “shitty” under my breath.

From bed I started texting to see if anyone was over at Billie’s going away party. When I  got up I dressed in double layers and left my room into the cold house. Drowsy, I washed my dinner dishes and took some beers and the mountain bike to find the trail to Billie’s.

On the unfamiliar path I had some moments of doubt and worry that I would have to take out my phone to look at the map. It didn’t end up being necessary. I picked out the trail as I went, most of it up a long curving alleyway heading north along the cemetery. I looked at the silhouettes of graves up and down the hills to my right. It was dark and cold and quiet, like there was no city to my left.

Near his place I passed a Cadillac parked in the middle of the street, lights on and engine running. My eyes were blurry but I could see that the back passenger-side door was open and there was a guy standing next to it. I couldn’t tell what he was doing, but as I got closer I realized he was turned towards me, staring at me, and pissing in the street. He didn’t move as I passed by, just kept on pissing.

I was like, “okay, I’m ready to find this house about now.”

When I made it to Billie’s, the party was sparse and awkward and unlike usual… somber. There were very few of the usual crazies there, but there was a group of very normal, well-adjusted kids that I didn’t recognize. I went straight to my usual crowd who was standing together in the kitchen: Lillian  Love, Navid, Stella, Noah and Natalie Michaels. Billie was going around toasting scotch and putting on a show of grave resignation. His greatest concern was for Kellie, who was staying behind.

I was like, “C’mon man, Afghanistan will be fun. Kevin Kado is having a great time.”

“Kevin!” He yelled in his twisted Brit accent. He was put-off.

“Kevin, doesn’t know what’s going on…” “That guy….”

He couldn’t find the choice words.

“No, it’s going to be serious dood.” He said.

I was like, “I don’t know man, I mean, you’ll be fine. You’ll probably get to buy a motorcycle and hang out with lots of internationals, have adventures.”

“We’ll see dood, we’ll see,” he said, gloomily.

That’s about how we left off. He moved on to continue mingling. I was still in the kitchen with my friends who were all very into a big conversation and had no intention of trying to mix with any of the other groups at this party.

I could see from where I stood, over the room divider, in the dining room was this girl who was apart of the well-adjusted kids. She was fantastically gorgeous, was gorgeously dressed in a cool skirt, tights and boots; and had a gorgeous ass. She obviously did not belong here and I really wanted an explanation of her existence. I had smiled at her earlier, but there was no way to casually approach her with our two, small groups across the room from each other in different rooms.

Stella was energetically going over her new part time gig of reading books to some rich triplets. It was indeed a crazy story, and everyone was rapt; I would just have to wait it out.

In the midst of the conversation Navid, bored, started to whisper to me under his breath. “There’s a big tittie girl downstairs in the smoking room.” He said, completely unnoticed by the ladies.  “She’s not your type though, you wouldn’t like her,” he said, making fun of my tastes.

“What about the one behind me there?” I whispered back only motioning w/ my eyes. Interested now, he popped his head up. “No, I don’t see who you mean. Behind you? Where?”

I’m like, c’mon. “Right behind me… You see her,” I said.

“Ohhhh, yeah, that is your type.” he conceded (as if she wasn’t hot at all.)

Stella was saying that this part-time gig of hers was for a very wealthy, high-power gay lawyer and his lover who shared these triplet two-year olds. They lived in a mansion with fresh cut flowers every day, two Christmas trees and a life-size electric train set that was large enough for the kids to ride on. They had a bimbo nanny, a super gay butler and they had decided to hire a white girl to read to the kids who had started to pick up bits of the Jamaican housekeeper’s accent.

The conversation, like the party, dragged on. My friends never budged but eventually they all decided to take off. I ended up wondering over to that girl anyway, when her group had dispersed. She was French, and she said her name was Emily, but it was hard to understand because of her rich, thick accent. Her face was so beautiful that it was hard to look at her. Her eye lids were like slabs of sculpted clay over  idealized orbs with painted amber pupils.

She was only in town for another week, she was on business from France to Maryland. She was an accountant, and sounded very unenthusiastic about that. I was like, “That must suck to be stuck in Maryland.”

“Wha.. Huh…?” She said with her big eyes. I repeated myself slower.

“It’s not so bad” she said, “as long as it’s only for a short weeks.”

We were separated when her group returned from the smoking room and the French guy (who must have had a crush on her) started standing next to her again.

A short time later I could see that she had her coat on and was out the door w/out a look back. It figured that the hottest girl at that party would be such a complete random, never to return, and it figured that she was an amazingly beautifully European, because that always does it for me.

I said my goodbyes and grabbed my drum that had been at Billie and Kellie’s for two years. Outside I packed it in the side bag of the mountain bike and made my way back along the long, dark, quiet, cemetery, alley  trail.

why don't you pull up to be great?

Since when have I lost my mind? Itchy eyes.

Breathing is tight, blame the pollen.

Sent out birthday invitations,

had no yes responses.

See everything I from above, not there, it's not me, and I send out anything.

She wasn't there to proofread it.

My question where she goes and how I can find her.

And how that voice comes from her insides,

and how the insides fit in such a small thing.

And where does she go when she's silent.

My voice is silenced by her presence,

My life is changed by her presents.


Riding my bicycle is a sublime dream. 

Trapped in this feeling

And I find, that I'm there again.
Where no one can touch me
No one can hear me or get through.

I've been here before. Again and again.
I wonder, will it ever end?
Or is this the end of me?