mind itch - no cause, no relief

Ambiguity is the ibuprofen of the writing world, a temporary cure-all for any chronic irritation. Used liberally and in increasingly higher doses, sold over the counter in broken hearted love songs from one hit wonder 80s artists, found stashed in your fathers medicine cabinet, a few hidden in the beginnings of many a leather bound journal. They don’t have a support group for this kind of addiction, really, nothing substantial would get said. Instead we’d all just pass around the bottle hoping the rattling noise of pills against plastic might drown out our over-stimulated minds. “Write”, something says in the familiar raspy voice of your conscience, wiser than its years, softened by cigarettes and whiskey. Yeah, that worked yesterday and maybe last week, but tonight trapped in the haze of a passing electrical storm everything is jittery, one word misplaced and the friction will set these fucking walls aflame. So you sit, staring at a blank word document until that 80s song comes on, pounding out of your broken speakers, cutting through the humidity, trailing out the window, whining and crying with the same alleviating sense as the sound of a pen tracing across old paper. And you take no enlightening message away, and you can't marvel in the beauty of the words or composition, and you're fairly sure you heard Prince do an electronic cover of this once before, and you're even more sure that neither version is any good but jesus, that sounds great. And with the clicking of fingers rolling freely across keys, your ambiguous advil starts to lose strength, but your hands keep flying and the words keep coming and I hardly know you, but you’re still on my mind.

The myth of the firefly

In these extended evenings as the suns disappearance starts to tell the working-men of the world to wind down and the late-nighters to put on their party pants, springtime melts into the protruding signs of summer. Unsure if whether its you or the air that has taken on a slightly discomforting weight, everything smells and tastes thicker. Greenwood doubles as a wildlife reserve in the middle of this college tinker-town and i still feel like a tourist rather than a semi-permanent addition. Maybe the fumes exuding from bent exhaust pipes or mold collecting on tossed shoe strings dangling off of telephone wires have started to mess with the anatomy of normal residential creatures. Loitering in the midst of last night's celebratory beer cans and ashes doused in lighter fluid, you can find an unidentifiable animal, found in a mystical encyclopedia crosslisted where squirrel meets opossum meet steroid infused alleycat. He/She is comfortable living the life of a vagabond rifling through 947s mistakes and memories, which eases my transitory soul. The mosquitoes have doubled and size and determination, settling more easily on my skin then i do in it. Redbreasted birds, a species i've always hated, trot rather than flap along broken sections of pavement that glitter with a confetti of broken glass. I wonder how sensitive birds feet are, resenting how bound i am to my shoes on this one way street. But last night i met the most glorious of the midwest springtime residents - the firefly. I had hardly adjusted to the idea of outside having spent the majority of the day in my bed watching Buffy abide by her birthright. Somewhere in between episodes, night's stealthy agents slipped in and slit the throats of daytime guards and a stampede of darkness filtered in. I peaked out my front door, hand still rested on the unstable doorknob and stuck one toe out into the warm waters of my porch. Leaving your house is like riding a bike - a terrifying thought if you've been out of commission for a while but surprisingly easy to pick up once you commit. So i sit and breath and sip on reheated coffee from earlier in the day, thinking and breathing and dreaming. My peripheries catch a miscellaneous light, as if the flickering streetlamps had reproduced and were teaching their young to fly. My imagination, i'm sure, i'm just not used to the unbound world. Again, it goes off, i check my cup to see if i absentmindedly replaced coffee with leftover rum. Then it bobs, closer to me, up and down like a meandering fairy with no destination in particular. My head follows its motion as my eyes track its path and i start to think that whatever toxin that greenwood gives off has officially fucked with nature. The firefly, can't be a result of natural selection, the firefly, i wonder if it ever gets headaches or suffers from epilepsy. My curiosity wins in a mental wrestling match against my languidity and i get off my seat to follow the light. It steps and i step back, it turns and i twirl - i feel its intention like a follower in a tango is meant to, and the porch turns to dance floor where the table takes the seats in arm and sends the flying across the cement. But as i step ever closer to the stairs and out into the real world i feel bound by my coffee and bed and alternative reality, so i let the light turn the stucco corner of my house alone. Not quite adjusted to the night.

Shut up

I'm losin it.



Adderall prescription. calling my name. coaxing me like a pharmaceutical siren.



I need to go to bed. once.