I can sleep in jeans.
I can sleep
anywhere.
I just close my eyes
and
I'm gone.

I wear jeans to the moon
and to the mall.
I put jeans on my legs
and on my arms.
Jean socks and jean hats,
I'm a blue fellow.

Some people get upset
when I'm a bit too honest.

Sometimes my grandfather
(known to me as my Pap)
will ask me
if I want to go to a toy train convention
at 8:00 AM on a Sunday,
and I'll say
"I don't want to, but I definitely will"
and he'll tell me
to just
forget it.

It's like this for other things too,
with other people.
Usually loved ones.

My cousin Jake
is sometimes late
for a birthday dinner,
and I'll say
"If you don't want to come, then don't."
Then I'll smile
because I'm hearing my Pap's words
coming out of my own mouth.

Pap.

He doesn't want someone to tag along
just because it's the right thing to do,
he wants someone to be as excited as he is.
He wants someone to want what he wants.

What do I want? How does anyone figure that out?
I feel like I've lived a life
wanting the wrong things.
Not wanting what others
have wanted for me.
Throwing away opportunities
to make others proud,
people like my mother.
She wanted me to be a man,
but I've lived these wandering years
as but a man-child who squanders
the days away with menial hobbies.
Lazy and unfocused I am,
I've been.
Always wanting the wrong things.

...
If I had a grandson
what would I want him
to tag along with me for?

What would I want my child
to want?

I don't know.

Do you?

The color of the slow sand
dribbling through this hourglass
is every shade of pure.

A second-hand secondhand
ticks away, rhythm eroding,
yet building tenure.

Treacle treat,
tricks are neat.
Show me your glimmering memoir.

Brightly pale
Hunter's moon
turn midnight
into noon.

Beseech beset
beside myself
put upon you
up on the shelf.

Talks and tales
told not too soon
sunder underneath
our Hunter's moon.

Sticking a tre-flip off of that three stair behind the bowling alley.

A suicide bomber strapped with C4 running into a crowded building.

Carving up the powder, bombing down the mountain on a freshly waxed snowboard.

Shooting up a movie theater with a 3D printed, fully-automatic 9mm sub machine gun.

Catching a gnarly ten foot wave off the coast of Hawaii and ramping off the lip to catch some air.

Indoctrination of uneducated children and young men to serve as soldiers for an unending holy war.

Landing a backflip on a Haro BMX bike while a crowd of onlookers chants and cheers.

Subversion and subterfuge within a foreign government in order to topple the current president.

Dropping in to a half pipe at the same time as someone else and hitting a high-five in the air.

Starting fires across a city nightscape to purge the neighborhood of vacant buildings and houses.

A quite quiet little tapping.
A tapping on the window.
Glass shivering and shaking.
Brittle bones are breaking.
Wishful whispers in the dusk.
Distant voices muffled and hushed.
Tapping, time is ticking away.
Tangled tongues clicking in pain.
Furled fingers forced inside.
Shattered shards all pushed aside.
Hangers strewn across the room.
A shadow, a hymn hummed true.

Tapping. Tapping. Tapping. Fright.
Unknown noises in the night.

Stood up again by sleep.
A sickly fickle friend, indeed.
Should the dawn ever come,
then let it ******* come
like a blessed loaded gun.

The waffle god never taught me to swim
through his crashing waves of authentic maple syrup,
and my butter pad hat slowly begins to melt
and blind my eyes
as my thoughts run fiery hot
with pulsing liquid rage
for the contempt I have
about this futile trial.

I'm happier dead and drowned
afloat face down
atop the vast, vacuous,
and viscous liquid sugar
that has thoroughly coated
my lungs and my throat.