A collection of prose poems

If you want to explore my work further, check out my substack.

art
i’m not good at drawing. when i was a kid, i hated using crayons because the lines that they made were incomplete and ugly and waxy and not what i thought a line should be. it was the same with pencils that had big soft fat leads: they made ugly lines. but i did like using colored pencils and mechanical pencils. sharp edges made nice sharp lines, even if the lines lead to nowhere. i’m better at painting, but not precise painting, more crooked where errors look intentional and the grand sum of all errors looks less a mess and more a story. i’ve always felt like i had an artistic eye but my brain could not get my hands to do what they needed to do. i could see what i wanted in my head, but i couldn’t get it onto the paper or the canvas or the wall. the canvasses inflicted by me tell a story of casual ineptitude. also i have always held my pencils or brushes so tight, even when just writing on a notebook. so tight that my hand cramps very quickly and i would shred the skin on my pinky. no matter how hard i’ve tried, i cannot stop this. this may be, but probably isn’t, the reason why i drink sometimes.


tunes
i’m a pretty good singer. i’ve done it since i was a kid but i haven’t had a lot of proper training, and even that came much later in life. even though i’m pretty good,i am super self-conscious about it and if i don’t do as well as i think i should, particularly in front of other people i get very embarrassed. i also don’t take compliments very well. basically, i’m pretty insufferable to be around when singing is involved, but at least i can admit it i guess. i need to calm down about it and just have fun. just have fun. just have fun. if i repeat it enough maybe it will take root. just have fun. does that repeated mantra thing actually work? i don’t know, i’m just having fun.


intimacy
i become obsessed with certain songs and then listen to them on literal repeat for hours. it’s a lot like falling in obsessive love but without the potential for stalking, which is great. i hear it and i am intrigued by the rhythm and the tone of voice so i listen again, each time trying to uncover the next layer. the bass line. the drums. the synth. the emotion. the hidden. and once i feel like i have heard it all, i keep listening because i know i will never hear it all. it’s more intimate than sex. it’s more profound than philosophy. it’s happier and sadder than i will ever be on my own. i think it is the same thing that makes me sit in art museums and stare at the same piece for an hour, trying to uncover ever single bit of meaning; admittedly i completely stole the idea of doing this museum thing from a friend of mind. though, it’s weird to me that i don’t know many other people who do this.


klonopin
i was sitting at my desk at work and my eyes began to droop. fuck, i thought to myself. how did one pill make me this numb, this tired? as waves of calm-dizzy-lethargy come over me, i smile. i’m waiting for some sauteed vegetarian thing and some fried spring rolls to be delivered and i desperately have to piss but i have no craving to get up. hell i may just topple over if i tried to stand. so i sit and think about whether or not i could get away with pissing myself here. it would feel warm, at least for a minute or two. babies get away with it and i am kind of a baby these days. so, i use a pill bottle instead of a pacifier because it works better and i’ve never been a fan of adults with binkies in their mouths. not to say i shy away from a mouth invasion from time to time, but never a binky. not always, but sometimes i’ve enjoyed the larger mouth invasions. the kind that stretch the bounds of the imagination and make you feel like the corners of your mouth will rip apart with heavy glee-pain. i probably wouldn’t really feel it right now. just a numb hole. just a numb hole. perhaps i can make a game of it with the delivery driver. you swirl it around like an airplane propellor and i will be the hanger.


taste
if i ask about the spice level of something i want to order and the person serving me gives me a long steady look, i know i am going to enjoy it. it has to be somewhat terrifying for them to serve it to me or i’m probably going to think it’s bland. my friends tell me that i have burned away all of my tastebuds but i know i can taste just fine because no matter how many times i try it, i cannot stand bourbon. i mean it, it’s fully disgusting. and it’s not even one of those: you-got-drunk-on-it-and-threw-up-and-now-you-cannot-even-smell -it kind of things. it’s more an i’d-rather-put-my-head-in-someone’s-sweaty-crotch kind of thing or a thank-god-it’s-not-essential-for-life-because-i’d-die kind of thing.


haircut
a chemical hellscape filled with conversation and strange hands that have permission to touch me. i pay money to a stranger and i must give them permission to run their hands through my hair repeatedly and i must either be rude and tell them i want silence or else i have to listen to them tell me about very personal things in their life, like the lady who told me how she had dated four separate guys named josh and how they had all been terrible to her and i am not allowed to say what i really want to say, because my mother would somehow find out that i was rude and she would tell me off, so i don’t get to say that perhaps she should avoid all guys named josh, or perhaps all guys for a while because it seems she isn’t ready to be with anyone at all and of course i would be projecting. look, i can think of very few situation where i would feel comfortable paying a stranger to touch me. really, if i could afford it, i would be more inclined to carry around just-in-case-money on the off-chance that someone wanted to touch me and i needed to give them money to get them to go away. of course i can’t advertise that, i’d be inundated by the desperate and the evil, which is beside the point because i don’t have the money anyway. so instead i stay home and i let my hair grow and i don’t even tell people off online anymore, so i bottle it all up and hope that one day it replaces my need for food.