lxxxi

"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you."

 -Ray Bradbury

I found a new spot to write on campus and so, for the first time in a long time, probably brought on by the itching sense of betrayal in my heart because of...something, I wrote.

Writing Again Again

My left thumb is nervously shoved against my pointer finger,

as together they grip the too-often-chewed black Pilot G-207 pen,

a final, dying artifact from the high school years of my life.

And now my head is racing and I think I know why, because

I’m putting my inky thoughts to fresh paper for the first time in months.

I’m so used to letting my thoughts, eager and barely matured,

run wild in text boxes and HTML digital spaces

that, now that I have to herd them into quirky tiny verse-squares, I can barely contain them and

this is just pretty counting as long-form prose, and not very good ones at that.

This run-on, out-of-control train-of-thought will be ­eidi edited I swear so

that the words on both ends of these now-unseen red margins will cease to be

nonsensical

and start to be

real.

The cooler winds and the new zipper sweatshirt

are the physical reminders of a summer gone by.

And a bundled-up, front-bitten newness which can only be from the fast-approaching fists of winter are

nature’s reassurance that, I may have gotten used to my new bed

                                                                                                my new friends

                                                                                                my new clothes but

I will never stop missing...

The stone bench lifting up my khaki shorts is pressing against the black leather wallet that my father gave me before I left home.

This uncomfortable is forcing me to pay attention to the scrawled nonsenses I’ve been forcing myself to illegibly jot down for preservation.

I’ve been steadily writing for the past twenty-eight minutes,

still avoiding the reason that I even got myself out of bed, put on my worn, comfortable, familiar tennis shoes and walked around the quiet Sunday campus.

And I will continue to avoid it. I don’t want to even think about my life for maybe the next week

or four days

or tomorrow

because I’m perfectly content to write this free-verse-pretty-much-prose for another thirty-four-minute forever.

And then maybe I’ll take a nap.