at rochambo, waiting for millie to get done with capoeira, 022719 Color and light spills in sluices down the corridor like some mad painted river careening between boulders we’re an airplane that doesn’t move; the rest of the universe hurtles past these black windows the neon the vertical lines of the old painted radiator the tall floor lamp the angled line of the cord the perfect little rectangle of the outlet it’s plugged into people’s faces absorbed in their devices or in each other hair bobs as assent is nodded exchanging information gossip research affirmation enouragement everyone here is completely lost someone’s fucking iPhone alarm is going off and they’re just fucking oblivious it repeats again and again nobody acts like they can even hear it am i crazy? some of these kids are just kids, just starting out, there’s so much they have yet to discover my heart is sick, my heart sings for them for me for time lost time wasted time passed time drunk like coffee after coffee wasting away in cafes like this one when your time is up, what are you going to wish for? ache for? yearn for? will poetry still be necessary? or sufficient? does your head hurt? your body hurt? do you have to piss? are you invisible? do you take up space? have you heard the music they’re playing a million times? do you have nothing to say or contribute? what are you still doing here? time’s up can’t you hear the alarm? oh, it was hers. she finally noticed, took the earbuds out of her ears and turned it off. someone else, a guy in a bulky jacket and wool hat, was just standing to my left for several minutes, until his phone told him to move and then he went downstairs. the girl puts her earbuds back in and goes back to looking perfectly normal. false alarm. but some of us are still stupidly, pathetically vigilant. not that it makes any difference. I’ll stay here another seven minutes, and then my phone will tell me to go and i’ll go. the wieuyrfhdsdfgsi people use empty dried corn husks as lsdkfgjhdfkgjhd. I am that husk. Imagine being a rock. Imagine being a wax statue. I don’t have to imagine it. I can tell you. It’s honestly not that great. Everybody’s so well behaved. This place used to be weird. This used to be a place where a muttering schizophrenic could look you in they eye and say God can see through a screen, buddy. That screen you’re hiding behind. That was when there was still some spatial-temporal distance between our screens and our brains. That was when snow was still made out of water, when snow wasn’t a zillion nanobots reprogramming the streaks of wet neon in the streets to be too perfect, mortally perfect, soft-wired into our amygdala and neocortexes and hippocampi and oh i fucking don’t know. i’m so tired and i so don’t give a shit. i’m so lazy. i don’t have to think anymore, so i forgot how. i don’t give a shit about anything because i’m lonely. OK. There. are you happy? There’s no artistry to any of this. It’s just raw, unmarketable reality. I’ve got nothing left to sell. I never sold anything to begin with. I pretended not to want to, and now it’s too late. You can’t rehearse a play forever. Sometime you have to put it before an audience. But what if you already shot your load before you even realized you were doing that? Some random conversation you were having on the sidelines—that was it. That was the play. You missed it. Sorry about that. I hope death isn’t too prolonged. I hope you have a little dignity left while you’re still cognizant enough to know the difference. —— At third thursday drumming, february 2019; my thing about airplanes and pilots — “until that plane *hits the ground!—* then sova’s thing about her dad who was an air force pilot and was in wwii and did the berlin airlift and all this crazy shit, but was helpless in the face of a scraped knee—she said she just now realized it was just that he *didn’t know the next thing to do* and then ann’s thing about how she was thinking about “do the next right thing” and that she was thinking of getting her pilot’s license and then her later telling me, oh btw, you don’t land the plane; you get it in the right position and the plane lands itself. An`d she said, and you know what this one astronaut said? When they were in danger? He thought, “OK, what’s the next thing that’s gonna kill me.” Because you get so caught up in one immediate goal, you forget that something else is coming after that, and after that, and after that... and she said but hey, it gets you into the mindset of even thinking there’s going to be a next thing! and then picking up millie and she’s holding roses but so so so sad and forlorn; she’s in that thing where she thinks no one loves her and no one likes her and they’re all just putting up with her and she doesn’t feel good enough at anything, and i didn’t know how to fix it—it was like the scraped knee only a million times more heartwrenching—and i just said if you need me, come get me, it doesn’t matter what time it is, cuz i love you, you’re my big screaming yelling little millie that i held in my arms and walked around and around back when this was still a circle until you fell asleep, and i would do it again if i could. and i would. —— early feb 2019 do something precious and dorky, the dream voice said. say and do something dumb. it doesnt have to be macho. it doesnt have to make your daughter a jealous possession. it just has to safeguard your art, the dreamvoice said. its tagline was something like chaos in the service of good. dont give up on your art. fade away and wither into an autmn leaf and blow away leaving only a puff of smoke, but hold on to the strange and wondrous until the day or night when you literally die. don't make a purchase in my name. use whatever you have. the signal started breaking up, i started waking up. but i think i got most of the gist, before i forgot it all again —— And on top of everything else, now (again) the bathroom vent is puking out the smell of cigarette smoke. If I didn’t feel trapped, it wouldn’t be a big deal. I was reading a book—an actual book—using my big dumb brain in that good old way—and then here comes this whiff, and suddenly my attention is decimated. I want to get out of here. I’m about ready to get out of here, even if it means I can’t stay in Muskego, whether the kids like it or not.