My heart is a doormat

She had the carpet for years and didn't ever really pay attention to it. It got kicked around, blown in the wind. It took tracks off of shoes, mud off of feet and never complained. The hard winters had made the deep, vibrant red go pink with age. Now, it just looks threadbare, worn, tired. If anyone ever empathisized with a carpet, she was a good candidate. A lot of feet had been around, stepped around, maybe even stayed for awhile. But it'd be nice if a set of feet just stepped over or around the carpet. Or even better, took notice of it.

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One was flying north. The other, south.

But somehow, this is where they ended up.

They sat and talked. Mostly about nothing.

It was just nice to stop flying for awhile. Take a rest.

The wood felt good against their claws. Soon, it'd be back into the air, hurrying away for their destination.

It's always hard to say goodbye and fly away. That's why birds don't stop all that often.

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Everything was locked up tight, for the longest time.

Sometimes, they crack the door a bit so that I can get a peek.

Outside, it looks bright. I can smell the sun, if you can believe it.

I worry that my eyes would hurt if I walked outside this door.

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It's the best parade I've ever seen. No floats, no tickertape, no marching bands.

Its still an awesome experience.

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The fish's name is Pedro the Attack Fish

Does the fish remind you that you feel trapped some days?

Or does he make you feel better?

I'd like to think that all fish are happy. And that by extension, we can find it, too.

Maybe we just need to swim more often.

Postscript - This is a fish of many names. And many owners. But only one person feeds him. So he belongs to her.

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I love my dryer, but I miss the smells of my grandmother's laundry.

When I visited her last time, I saw it all hanging on the line.

She wasn't home, but her laundry was.

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I like swings during the day. But at night, swings seem so much more mysterious. Magical. Under the moon's watchful eye. Maybe I'll be drunk and on the swings. My own lopsidedness will be the only push I need.

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The sound that puts me to sleep every night is cicadas.

Did you know that every species of cicada has its own unique song, so that each cicada may find their perfect mate?

It also helps that the song they make keeps the birds away.

Some even have two songs. One of calling the mate. The other is the courtship song. The wooing song, if you will.

They don't rub their legs together, like this cricket. No, they move their ribs together and pulse and vibrate.

At night, if you can't sleep, listen for them as they call out for their perfect lover. If you don't hear them, sleep well in the knowledge that they have found their happily ever after.

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Point blank, she asked me, "Why? How could you live through that?"

Because it was a movie. I was only in it as an actor, so I never needed to watch it.

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When I was a teenager, my biggest dream was to make out with a girl in the dugout of the ballfield.

I can't explain this to you. I never played baseball. It has nothing to do with the first, second, third, home analogies that many apply toward physical love.

It just seemed like the right place to be. But I never went there.

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The keys hold my words. I am able to say them more freely when my fingers do the talking. To you, I can't say what I want, when it's eye to eye. It's too hard sometimes. If I had my keyboard with me, I'd just type and hold it up and show you, because that'd be a lot easier. I'd be able to edit my words and think them out. When you say things, those words are alive and exist and can never be taken back. I miss the ability to hit delete or undo.

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You can do a lot of things when you go camping, but you should not try and bring your cat. They do not take well to tents.

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When you get this glance from Stella, you are in a heap of trouble.

Don't make her make this face.

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Down my throat, the webs constricted and congealed and took my tonsils for a two-step.

My tongue was left to feel like it was in an Irving Klaw movie.

All I wanted to do was speak but the words turned into dessicated insects by the times it reached your ears.

I never wanted you to know about dead bugs, I swear.

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This is something from nothing. Sometimes, what you did not expect or what you toss aside is given new life.

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After the attacks and the horrible gnawing, this was the only survivor of her wrath.

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Today, I want to stretch out and touch the sun.

Because tomorrow, there is a lunar eclipse.

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Sometimes, I say never with my mouth when in my heart, I say always.

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Stella the dog feels that preseason football is a waste of time.

Thank you for listening.

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Summer is almost over.

Soon, the greens will be replaced with grey.

Everyone that complains about the heat will have the cold to complain about.

But in my heart, its always late July. The time of the year when anything can and should happen.

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How do we celebrate the holiday of you? I think everyone should get some gummy bears and make them dance to "Let the Music Play."

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5:30 AM on a Sunday morning.

No one is awake, not even the cat next to me.

Right now, life makes sense, if only for a few moments. I listen to the sounds of my house and a car here and there. The night is as dark as it gets before the first secrets of the morning start their day. I will go lay down now and not solve problems or seek solutions. Only sleep. Sleep and amusement parks that have long since closed and have decided to reopen for the ghosts of long gone lovers.

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Rain drips down making sure my face stays a mask.
I listen as you pop in and out of dead zones.
I need soy milk and snack mix, I say.
Someone pulls up and looks at me like I was a ghost.

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This is where I sit and work. Watch the rain. Wait for pixels to say hello.

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Can I just put life on pause for a week?

That's all I ask.

Just everyone stop everything for me.

Thanks.

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You think you got problems?

Aleister Crowley runs my grocery store.

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Buddha of the yard, show me the way through the tall grass.

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This is Buffy. A girl's name for a boy bird who turned out to be a girl. Years after he moved in, it turned out him was a her.

No one judged.

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Oh how I miss a growing up in Ellwood City morning:
Death report with BJ Thomas singing "Morning Has Broken"
News
Paul Harvey. Good...day!
And then, just call me Angel of the Morning, baby.

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I have a new goal.

This will be my haunted house. I want to buy it and make it seem real. I want little kid's toys to land on the yard and disappear. I want people going to the bar down the street to be freaked out when a dragon head comes out of the window at 1 AM.

The police will come and check. I will answer and say, no, this house is not haunted.

But when people visit, the walls will drip with blood. And I'll be like, "I don't see anything."

Who is with me to make my haunted house goal fact over fiction?

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I want a car I can drive into the water. It has always been my dream.

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There are two feelings I cannot explain to you.

Hope and hopelessness.

They are the enemies of one another but will always stay a mystery to all of us.

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I was nervous. Careless.

I forgot, never cut with a wooden ruler.

I had so much on my mind that it just all spilled out at the wrong time and place.

My finger spilled too. All over everything. When water cleaned it, it split sideways.

They fixed me with super glue and liquid cold.

It hurts to type. And really, it hurts. And it hurts to tell this story.

Ouch, ouch, ouch.

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Start to end read all at once.

You see where we come from.

Where do we go?

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We see where we want to be.

We know the ending of the book we are writing.

We know that the steps, the middle, well, we don't know.

There is a giant blankness between the start and where it all finishes.

I confess.

I have no idea where I am.

I am lost.

There is a giant hole inside me.

If faith is our gasoline, God, give me a sign.

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When you are on fire, is it easier to go down the steps or back into the fire?

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Station Square was once our home.

Or maybe we spent time there and it just seemed like home.

I don't miss it at all.

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Inside the grey skies, she kept on pumping out blue skies.

Even when her world was black, she made it look like a rainbow, every day.

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I will reach out and my hand will be impaled.

I will reach out and pull it away.

I will reach out and watch the blood trickle.

And then I will hide.

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For all the ways to say you care, raw meat is not one of the best.

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I always wanted to rush here.

But now, I think it's time we just slow down.

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Everyone yelled at the bug. But not me. I just watched him, in his bug world, and thought, "I wish I was a bug."

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The song says, "I'm not expecting to grow flowers in the desert." I sang that song at the top of my lungs as a child and never knew what he was singing about. But if you ever sang it, I'm sure you completely understand each and every syllable.

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The neon people swore, restaurant and lounge would never see each other. They'd never come close. They'd never fall and rise and touch, sending neon dripping into the night sky.

Of course, the neon people are morons.

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Who knows how an idea gets started?

What if you didn't tie your shoes in 1996 and slipped and lost your mother in a store? She didn't find you in time and you missed an appointment, where you would decide what you would do for a living and where you would go to school? What if you saw something else and you stayed where you were? Or moved somewhere else? Or chose not to even wear shoes that day?

What if you decided to take the long way around and missed work? Got fired. Weren't there when someone else wanted to hire you. Moved to another city. Or quit what you did.

What if the phone had never been invented? Life would be different then, huh?

What if we just stand still for a week? Will things change? Will life improve and man walk the moon?

Ideas have to start and be worked on. They need honed and shaped and formed.

Do you believe that ideas are destiny? That we aren't here just to live and die and rot? That perhaps great things can be aspired to and happen? That life doesn't have to just slowly grind you to bits?

Can we all just stop our cars and stand up on them and scream joyously that we have free will?

Ideas are power. Somedays, I wish I could believe in them all the way.

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I always wondered why people live in an area where they know a hurricane or earthquake can come at any time. Why would you stay somewhere, knoiwng that someday, you will have to be hit by nature's fury? That you'll have to rebuild, only to rebuild all over again a year or two years from the day everything seems normal again. I wonder what the day after a storm or an earthquake feels like. Is it like this? Does everything seem calm and the world seem OK again? Or does the sky look different? Is it possible to pick yourself up again and again to repair without feeling like you just want to live in the rubble?

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Seeing this, I imagine you sneaking under bridges, camera in hand, black and white thick coat on, green gloves.

Snapping away.

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We wished that we were alive when gaslight lit the city.
We wished that we were alive to listen to the radio shows in the dead of evening.
We wished that we were alive in any time but now.
Maybe we were.

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As one of the few people who still uses pay phones, I am always surprised when they work.

One day this week, the entire ear piece came off and fell. I had to talk holding both parts, like an old school Alexander Graham Bell like device.

Hello, hello?

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Sometimes, you float.
Othertimes, you sink.
And other times, the rocks smash your brains in and you leak all over the place.

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