Psilocybin silly when the
cops arrive.
Sitting on the couch naked,
laughter, aching jaws.
They ask where my wallet is?
I ask, where are my pants?
Even they laugh.
I can't say mushrooms are
all bad.
They are the catalysts that
brought me back to the
hospital to deal with the
real killer...
*****.

~
The boys of summer.

Johnny once sat under the bleachers, the scar on his tongue, a reminder of the time he bit it after falling from a treehouse. A sack full of yesterday's news in a red wagon, the first and last clues.

Eugene ... the other kid who dropped out of sight on Sunday morning, now the evening edition; now a black spot on the sun.

Why the two-year gap?

Departures and landfalls. But no explanations.

Mom and Dad never comfortable peering into the camera lens. Big brother breathing out vapors until something sparks and all
the old questions came back.

A detective's paradox. No bone. No fragment. No evidence. In his home garage hangs a poster of Eugene to remind him every day.

-- for Johnny Gosch and Eugene Martin
~

It was another strange dream
Suddenly I found myself looking out an upstairs window at people arriving below
Then I thought "Wait a minute, where am I ? What house am I in ?
I don't have an upstairs, I live in a bungalow (only a ground floor)"

When I went downstairs there was this big Christmas tree up
I thought to myself "But I...I didn't put up my Christmas tree yet

And there were lots of people there and some familiar faces
And they all seemed to be smiling at me, as if accepting me there
As if there was nothing unusual, as if I belonged there.

It was like a party was going on
And then I seen my brother sitting amongst them all
One of his hands was bandaged
I didn't think it polite to ask him about it
Beside him was another younger relative
I was amazed astounded because this relative he had died a few years earlier, in an accident
Yet here... here he was right here before me

I thought to myself "This must be some kind of... some kind of Parallel
   Universe I'm in where things turned out differently"
It made me wonder was my own world  then just an illusion
It seemed so far away now... so distant

Suddenly I started to get a little afraid, I thought "But I don't know this world...this place
I don't... I don't belong here
How do I get out of here
How do I get back... back to my own world....  

Soon after this I awoke...again back in my own bed...back in my own world.

I rollover on the bed
face the wall
stare at the lines and cracks.

I give the wall a talking to,
tell me lies. I'll tell you my lies.

and i'm telling the wall,
the future looks bright. i'm planning
my own crazy, this time,

i use a black magic marker,
draw a wide rectangular
picture window across the white wall, then

sand, seashore, and sea stacks in the ocean.
can you smell the salt air?
i'm asking my wall.

don't look at me cracks,
like that.

the wall sighs,
and the bones of this old building
reply with a moan.

i'm inventing my own madness, so

look,
the sand pipers
are darting here and there
across the sand
avoiding the gentle lapping of the waves.

and the long wing shearwaters
flying low, gliding,
just barely above the tips of waves.

i'm planning my own foolishness.

some loves last for so long
like a song without a name
and you never know
when love will walk into a heart

and I'm going to run
far away
from sidewalk ledges
rooms with cracks in the wall,
far away from here.

and, Oh, wall, hang not the albatross around my neck.

It was dark and cold night. Looking back and up, the moon
was a thin and useless crescent, barely visible.
‘What a wasted moon,’ I thought.
“A stupid moon,” I mumbled to myself as if to finish a conversation.
It looked deflated, artificial, soulless, and cold. Not poetic at all.

I’m coping with tough decisions
a victory and perhaps one martini too many.
Peter (my bf) called, when I was at Toads (a local bar).
We usually talk on Tuesdays at about 11.
It was noisy in there
I was a little tipsy.
He became a little irritated.
It didn’t go well.
Martinis and authority don’t mix.

I handed my thesis in today, 80 days early.
I've been working on it obsessively.
finger to lips, like a secret  I can be obsessive.
It’s a 60 page ‘first draft,’ theoretically.
“Can I turn in a first draft for your review?”
He looked surprised, “Sure.” I handed it over, and that’s that.
Every ‘first draft’ I’ve ever handed in has gotten an A.
“You’re CrAzY,” Sunny chuckled, “We gotta celebrate!”

“Please don’t hold the door open,” the librarian said.
I jumped, I hadn’t seen her sneaking up on me.
How long had I been standing there?
I’d been lost in thought.
I focused on her now.
She was 50 maybe, or a hundred—who knew?
Her face needed moisturizing badly,
her wrinkles were like cracks in marble.
She looked frowny.

Why is everyone frowny tonight?
“Sure,” I said, facetiously, throwing my arm up like the door was hot.
The door was now free to close.
And the world was a better place.
Once I’d turned and stepped into the library,
I decided It was too bright and too hot there.
So I left.

The second I was outside, in the refreshing cold, Sunny appeared.
“There you are,” she said, like she had lost something.
“You walk too fast,” and the girl with her laughed.
Sunny can always pick up a girl—it’s like she’s magnetic.
"Let's go home,” she added, “we’re going to pay for this tomorrow.”
She hooked my arm in hers and we followed the path,
the three of us, like the yellow brick road.
.
.
A song for this:
Drunk On Love by Basia
Data & Picard by Pogo