in everyplace, having gotten used to the wind, i'd close my eyes, not so i could sleep, but so that i could see. this is how i traveled to you in dreams worth more than most porches generations sat on & spilled sweet tea on. i thought about your conception of little creatures and how monsters came to be in the dark, "it was from thirst and hunger that their names and faces changed." in the peak of night and the pit of hope, you fed them and gave them water to drink like the clothes off your back. too shy to look me in the eye, you said to me in the same visceral way you would to anyone, " this is how i found you and myself."

the roots, like most visionaries, can start at fela kuti and end up somewhere like : we knew from the start that things fall apart. i really l o v e them.

a little morning lullaby is a hollow reminder full of tunisia. nuh-nee. nuh-neee. sleep has come to you. your mother is a moon and your father is a star. nuh-nee. nuh-neee.

freedom. free`dome. free do me. free do me still.
freedom est (il) liberte.

in this particular july stritch in time, i walked around in circles, in my head and in the street and in the past and took the same shortcut to the future over and over again. i woke you up and you walked with me too in all the same places. my parents followed us in a black truck and like the cusack brand of the silver screen, it started to rain. we kept walking and i kept yelling about the wild west and medical things. & i remember you walking next me like water. you had that same beautiful kind of calm strength that you have, the kind that can slip through fingers and hold up a ship & it was exactly what i needed. the street lights cast our bodies onto the cement street & we saw the same shadows we've seen on those streets since we were 16 years old. isn't so nice to be met with that kind of consistency? the shadows mourn and worry and laugh at absurd things and laugh more at more absurd things for us, like we do- & like we will for eelternity. jenna, thank you for your friendship and your love. happy birthday, my dear friend. i want to be as dependable in your life as midwest club cul-de-sacs and our shadows under the first summer sun and the tan lines that follow. you've talked me down from so many little ledges \\\ & you are the prettiest, miss.hindi. teach your students just a hundredth of what you've taught me and i'd say they're going to do just fine.

3 parts mahmoud darwish, 1 part water from the sea, 1 part joey tribbiani.

on a scale of one to ten, it's a 4 or a 5. the feeling doesn't radiate anywhere and i don't know how to describe it today. nothing makes it feel better or worse & it just started this morning- there i was just a regular ol' would-be peacock feeling insatiable and eating everything when some guy with forceps had the audacity to be this tediously happy person- he wasn't warm at all and certainly had no charisma. you see, doc, it's just that i know a charmless smile when i see one & my god, did he have one...you would have felt angry just looking at him too, but that's all that happened this morning- it wasn't unusual for this place- i know you wanna call it a trigger doc, but it doesn't fit. yes it was the worstttttt being stuck in a charmless moment and all, but it's so expected, after all. charmless with an element of surprise- well that's the worstttt.