November 13, 2025

my mind chases ideas
races miles a second
when there’s nothing to occupy it —
story ideas from every fleeting thought/
a line of a poem repeating and repeating and repeating/
all asking questions of me:
could this concept turn into a play?
could this plot twist be startling enough to entertain?
could this mulling be the next
great
american
novel?

[i gotta say, as exhausting as it is to have all these ideas all the time,
and as disappointing as it is to never remember them when i’m near
pen and paper/screen and keyboard,
it is so much better than the alternative i dealt with
for decades
of every time there was any sort of quiet
and my mind wasn’t 100% occupied
it just told me how much of a horrible, terrible, inhumane person i was
and how i should probably go die
or something…so yeah…would definitely prefer
this
to that]

September 20, 2020

there is a silence
in the country
in the backwoods
that unnerves me

any creak of the house
or wind in the trees
sends my anxiety rising to levels
far above those rustling leaves
simply because it is outside the norm

in the city, there is a collage of noises every night
and you never know where anything is coming from
and you just learn that it is part of the auditory landscape
and it lulls you to sleep, like a very unique kind of white noise machine
the lullaby of the city
of sirens
harmonizing with three different genres of music
blasting out of un-mufflered cars
and the steady hum of the downstairs bathroom fan
somehow melding into the far away helicopter
distorted by distance
and they all cacophonize
into one quiet whisper
of ‘you’re safe
you’re safe
you’re safe
now go to sleep’
and you sleep better than
you have in weeks

(it feels so good to be home)