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The Rites of Spring
Days like these, I hope that fifteen thousand dollars I’m about to spend teaches me something.
The kids aren’t getting along these days. This afternoon the children were in the gym playing freeze tag, while I stood off to the side, playing catch and trying to keep my eye on everyone. The inevitable fight erupted and one boy stalked off to a corner ( Read more... ) -
up next: the education of education
I'm reading a book which is meant to be read by teenagers and will never be read by a single teenager ever again. It's about how stupid teenagers are, or at least how stupid the author was as a teenager. He talks about how he wasted his young life, and that he was only private secretary to a Senator at the age of twenty-two, and how his exploits ( Read more... ) -
Agricultured
Beneath my spade the colorless strands dodge
And grip the gritty clay. A hundred grandfathers'
Wisdom slips through my vulcanized fingers.
A poor painting with expensive oils
Unhappy little trees
Seeds harvested in Connecticut, packaged in New Jersey
And brought to me by diesel truck
To die far from home.
Life conducts its business, oblivious
Of my toil, ( Read more... ) -
The Story of Spider-Man
(as told to me by Antonio, a seven year-old boy)
Chapter One.
Spider-Man jumped from building to building.
He fought a bad guy.
He won and the battle was over.
Chapter Two.
Spider-Man fought another bad guy.
Chapter Three.
Spider-Man thought he heard something, so he used his
Chapter Four.
spider senses. But he didn't hear anything.
( ( Read more... ) -
Stature
There is something people of stature seldom realize about physical presence. Size contains its own potential energy, a fist or a foot waiting to act. It infers its own rights, like a pistol or a family name. Many times this power goes unwielded, but it is never truly absent. This is something every small boy grasps quickly, and purely by ( Read more... ) -
Goofballs
the book was born in 1959
but it didn't exist until eighteen years later
a receipt between the pages
reads The College of Idaho
balance due: $3.40
I found it twenty-eight years after that
in a thrift store outside town
and paid sixty-nine cents.
i guess some ideas depreciate over time
read it in the break room
just to be an asshole.
it was the kind of place ( Read more... ) -
Task Lists Are Just Bad Poetry
with half the words crossed out.
Cellophane for the windows
Yogurt
Waterstained paper
Overwater the plants
Three things do not make a shopping list
The varying force with which people swing their arms
The identical detail of the fake logs in gas fireplaces
What an age we live in. Our children will pity us. If I can afford to have one
Go to work
The use of ( Read more... ) -
Blank
Why I'm invisible:
When light strikes me
It sees no reason to go on -
Flagrant
His red hair a pool of blood on the wooden floor
An echo-squeak his Wilhelm scream
Lips and eyes screwed shut, fortifications
Against tears and laughter both.
A moment of silence
Before the puzzle of rage solves itself and
Karma resurrects him, gasping, shuddering
Leaving no answers, no balm
Only two free throws at the line
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It's not contagious
Humility, like chicken pox, is safest when it develops early in life.