An American Killjoy

“An American Killjoy” is a longform poem written over six months, moving from the backroads of Wisconsin to the sidewalks of New York, from grief-soaked kitchens to wild acid visions in the Midwest. Part travelogue, part confession, part eulogy for lost innocence (and lost cigarettes), it’s a messy, funny, sometimes brutal meditation on family, addiction, self-invention, and the weird, heavy feeling of being alive in America right now.

It’s a poem about trying to quit things—smoking, running from your past, the habit of disappointing yourself—and mostly failing, but trying anyway. Along the way: Catholic priests, methadone travelers, fathers who loved quietly, mothers who call you out, and the ghosts of pandemic parties. There are trains, rivers, billboards and a search for meaning.

If you’ve ever felt like a stranger in your own hometown, if you find yourself making jokes in the middle of heartbreak, if you’ve ever carried grief around like a secret you keep in the back of the fridge—this one’s for you.

Wisconsin

Wisconsin shocked and sobered me.

I'm not from Wisconsin. This is important to me. I was born in Wisconsin. I did not grow up in Wisconsin. I did not share fond memories with friends in Wisconsin. I did not begin a new life in Wisconsin. The only memory that plagued me in Wisconsin was one where a 24-year-old took 17-year-old me out to lunch. We ate at HuHot. I did not like making out with him in his car.

Now I'm back, trying to quit cigarettes. When I'm too broke in New York, I pick up half-smoked "jewels" off the street. Here in Wisconsin, I survive off nicotine patches and coffee. My younger sister is 12. I don't want her to smell the smoke on me. I don't want to be that kind of example. My father would have parked far away from the entrance, given up his coat, let others ahead in line. I try to teach lessons quietly, without ego, just as he did.

Along the Mississippi River is a working city. La Crosse, Wisconsin (you guessed it). The air smells like beer and the price of entry is enduring the many "child leukemia" billboards lining the highway. The pride of the town was the sport in which the city was named after. Smoke stacks sent invisible signals up to God. Eagles circled the skies, lazily. It's as if they also knew America was hopeless; this dour year, in this dour month of December.

My family's here now, wrestling with grief. My nephew died in September. Three months old. I've become what my father was - a killjoy. The kind who puts others' care before anything else. The kind who stops for a seizing man on a New York street, letting God lead my hands and voice, even as his blood stains my memory.

Wiscoso-nauts, as I have called them only on paper, surround me like aliens. My first contact with these cheesers was at the hospital in 1997. I was born in wisconsin and yet I was a human among martians. I told them I was actually from a little planet called new york city. "It's an easy new world spin on Minneapolis."

The wisconsonauts disregarded my home and continued to do experiments on me.

If wisconso-nauts see the sun they make a brew! If they see the sunrise they make a super-brew! The martians like a morning with no surprises. New Yorkers like a morning with an everything bagel....well, I've got one strapped to my holster and no money for a rocket ship home. I'm a space wolf.

1

1912 sank the titanic much like 2022 sank me.

I don't like talking about what happened that year. I like thinking about that year very much. I'm sure someone could equate this to narcissism. I'm obsessed with my own memories. It's only because In my memories I can tuck myself away in a corner and read.

Now, sitting in front of a computer, I am a container of grief.
I'm in the back of the fridge and believe me I stink.
If I opened the container
I would stink worse.

It must be why I keep it closed.

The nicotine patches on my arm are another kind of container. They hold back a different kind of stink. A craving that would have me hanging around bar room doors waiting for falling soldiers (cigarettes), desperate for someone else's leftover comfort. But here in Wisconsin, I'm trying to be better. Like my father would have wanted.

When I read in the corner of my memories; I can witness myself screaming and I can just shake my head. "Ha! Ain't life funny."

Like all of you, I couldn't read for a time. It might seem strange now but i miss that time. I couldn't read. My twin brother could read very well. He buried his face in encyclopedias as I watched, fascinated. He made faces and I determined how i felt about the things he read. Just like now, watching my family's faces in Wisconsin, trying to read their grief through their expressions.

I thought I was a phoney back then. Still kinda do. I knew that somehow all my doubts about myself would pile up. I was certain that life knew my weaknesses. I shivered under blankets and got strep throat three times a year. I barely slept. I wasn't a child of golden behaviour. My twin brother and I broke my mother's things a lot. An accident of course...

I learned to think for myself when I was young. I couldn't write for myself so I would ask my mother to jot things down. I couldn't read or write but I could make up stories. I could be an engine driver if i wanted to. There weren't a lot of girl engine drivers so I became a man engine driver. My mother wrote the words on paper and I recited;

"my name is larry, I am an old engine driver."

Ha! To my surprise my parents never called me larry. They never called larry to dinner or at cross country meets. They never ran to tell "larry" anything. He was an old engine driver. Gara on the other hand had an ear infection. Gara was running around with a pen screaming "Write! Write". Thank God my parents could hear through my rhotacism or else they would think I was a old, racist engine driver named larry;"White! White!"

Kidding. Jokes may be my forte but lying is not. I am not named Larry. I am not even named Gara. My name is Gabriel. I changed it just before I hopped on an amtrak train for Wisconsin. I missed the bus too tragically in my 20s to miss that veined train. I didn't. I almost wished I did but I didn't.
  

2
 

The train; It was long but manageable 27 hours and all that got me through was a 16 oz bottle of Fire Ball Whiskey and HBO Max. Though if you twist my arm I will tell you I had a cigarette on the platform near poughkeepsie. I'm quitting smoking to give myself something to do in wisconsin. Something to control when everything else feels beyond my grasp.

I glance out the window of the train at a lonely stadium. The world looked cold without my father around. A container labeled grief cracks open slightly. I clasp it shut again. Safe and sound. Now we can talk about other things...

My life has been a series of wins and losses that i can't seem to recognise. I used to worry I stole my own childhood away. I was dedicated to my own day dreams. I began acting professionally when I was 11 years old but would not appear onscreen again until 23.

No cigarette could compare to the rush of those spotlights, just like no patch can quite replace the comfort of my father's steady wisdom.

No friendship, no love, no sunshine, no amount of money, no possession of things, no chocolate cupcake, no spontaneous kiss...

Nothing could compare to my love for performing.

This is the first thing wrong with me. Don't worry, I will reveal more of my downsides.  I wouldn't want you thinking that I have a fun story to tell. I just want to tell you the truth.

The truth is, It was on that train to wisconsin I changed my mind about my pursuits. Nothing could stop me from chasing down a little girl's dream. Strange to tell you that now I am a 27 year old man nearing my next birthday. The train people saw me as a man. I cried across Ohio like a little girl, wiping my tears on my sweatshirt sleeve like my dad used to. I used to pray for people to leave me alone. All those dizzy prayers answered to a lonely lad with dying laptop.

3

I met Bella in Chicago. Bella was a "former" methadone user heading home to Seattle from New Orleans. My new shipmate. Her squat got busted. She told me some story about a snake in the grass. Some girl's boyfriend who got to the cops faster than she could get to his slimy face. Bella and I were fast friends because (as she put it) "us lowlifes had to stick together".

I never told her where i was going. I just said I was from New York City. Bella told me how she planned to get through the ride, "I'll be feeling good soon." I must have looked totally plastered when I spoke to her in Chicago. I wasn't plastered, I had half a bottle of Fire Ball left. I looked like i had slept on a train, only i didn't sleep for more than 30 minutes at a time.

Bella was cool. She had only two working teeth (that i could see). She seemed queer in a queer way. We shot the shit. It would be the last time I "shot shit" until i arrived in Wisconsin. We gutted the Amtrak service. Bella said she was glad The State of New Orleans sent her on Amtrak instead of a stinky airplane; "I don't think they would have let me through" "hahaha". Bella pulled up her pants for the 20th time in 2 minutes. I remember she was in good spirits. I remember I kind of was too. I'm sure my New York neuroticism was palpable but I really tried to arrive at the station looking "comfortable." I thought we looked dirty. "what's your name by the way" "Gabriel" "Cool".

The line moved and I succumbed to my own head problems. I didn't have the heart to tell Bella my home was busted too. A shitty landlord wanted to jack the price. Modern physics offers us a lot and yet we don't have a solution for landlords.

"Train to Seattle!"

The game was on!

Yankee doodlers the two of us were. We both pulled out our journals and jotted some things down. Western boys soon to be. Bella and Gabriel; the rotten apples of America's eye. I chuckle to myself. It's as if contemplatives who always find each other. Representatives of the freedom this country so willingly forgot a few days prior.

The United States 2024 election. It was as visible to the passengers as the sweat on the universal patriotic brow. More red signs. More cops. Bella and I turned to see the Amish. She made some crude joke. I made some lighthearted rebuttal. I could imagine the civil war between methadone users and the Amish.

A group of party girls waited in line with two quart containers of Bloody Mary Mix like watermelon on a vine. Train service intercom sounded like an ice cold bitch through the voice of a child smoker.

"this train is going to seattle!"

I got split up from Bella. Though My spoiled breath could find her in a pack of peace seekers. What if she got on the wrong train. I had a fondness for our bond. I looked and looked. I whizzed by two rows of passengers, not seeing her. Finally I shook my doubt and passed her quickly;

"Bella! Have a good ride"

"OH! I plan too!" She patted her bag.

I cackled. I took out my notebook and jotted down "Former Methadone Users - funniest addicts."

In my father's voice: "Everyone's fighting their own battle." But he would have laughed too, quietly, kindly. The container of grief shifts in the back of the fridge, and I let it.

tame shapes

Green houses

In a sleepy town

tear every

(fucking) fascist down

"Forgive me, Mother for I have sinned."

 I'm in Decorah, Iowa. This is much more my original speed. The speed I was raised on. I am reminded that I am similar to the Iowan Hippies that laid down roots there.

 A battle in my brain about where I belong. Between New York, Wisconsin and Iowa, I don't know if I really came from anywhere. 

Decorah, Iowa... I'll meet you there sometime. It's a hopeful place with a lot of character. There is a Norwegian museum and a very very good Mexican restaurant. There are a lot of people who like it a lot there. There are a lot of people who don’t. The high school has a cascade of bluffs behind it. I sang in choir and loved it. My father worked at the college there.

I laid my soul

... bare before a priest who squeaked.

11 AM Mass at St. Benedict's Parish. The church steeple is one of the tallest structures in town.

Me to the priest, "I'm trying to be nicer to my mom"

The Priest to me, "Mmhmm."

He had a short homily. Something about written letters during World War II. He approached all of us sinners with the same attitude. He didn't need to straighten us out, he just wanted to tame shapes of holiness. 

He told us there was confession after mass.

I had sinned and therefore wen to confession. For anyone who has never confessed their sins to a priest, it's a darling terror. The gentle wallpaper lifted at it's edges. The incense was a comforting reminder of "the end". The under-utilised sin-closet. 

The sin. It was tearing me apart. The priest let his shoes do the talking.

"I want to suggest for you psalm 139"

The confessional booth smelled of orange and cinnamon. A boombox played the sound of bubbling creek. I followed his commands.

The truth was, I flipped a half a lick of acid on my tongue the day prior. I should have asked the priest to forgive my sincerity in loving acid. I should have asked to fix my insanity…like the acid should have done a day prior.

My Iowan hometown. A little more than a tab of some psychedelic stuff with a cartoon of the cat. Dr. Suess stuff. Pearly white teeth now that I hadn't smoked a cigarette in two weeks. Another beautiful day, replaced by visions.

1

I stayed with my good pal. A good pal. We walked for miles on the edge of a left-sided conversation. "I don't want a future where I conform to what others see for me" I decided on being different on this grassy day. I ran across a bridge just to make it true. I didn't want sympathy from the ones who put me down. I wanted a symphony of those whose lives inspire me. I was a lavender soul, slicked on a laid-back prayer.

I never question God's involvement with psychedelics. I'm sure you don't question it either. He brought me assorted flavours of childhood memories. I spent 16 years in nature in Iowa. I wanted to escape. When I brush against acid in NYC I am transported back to Iowa. Away from NYC, I wanted to hop to Paris...or maybe even Rome.

The icy blocks floating down the river reminded me of giant boats on the Hudson. The geese showed me their shield from the harsh wind. A shadow of a man laughed in the dead prairie. He wasn’t there. I knew I was seeing things.

I believed in lore and so did my father.  I believed in sasquatch. I've never seen him but whose to say. I believed in God since I was old enough to listen to stories. My dad could spin a Bible tale into a loveable life lesson. I trusted in him. He lead us down the upper iowa in a metal canoe. A menagerie of memories waiting for me on that water basin. The kiss that nature brings to the soul. I could never die on this very day.

Red footprints walked beside me. I had a Holy Spirit near me. A left eye marvel. Bright as the sky, I saw a couple waltzing naked in the twilight. Clear as the moon, a Goslings seal drank a beer on a crystal ball. 

Once we were done walking, my pal and I, we took a rest at a new coffee shop.

“If we had this in high school, we would have torn this place up.”

I eased back in a chair combing my hair with my dirty fingers. .. Ol' Pal laughed at that. He knew my dad well, even had a picture of him on his desk. My dad was not well liked but that's the job of a Killjoy. He changed the lives of people but he didn’t stick around to hear a 'thank you'. He followed his Catholic heart. 

The world changed against his ideals. His ideals relied on a Catholic God. His life was all about raising kids. He lost all his friends from fatherhood. He liked his kids better. He liked it that way. I'm choked up again for the millionth time. Something isn't right today. All I can hear are raindrops down my throat. Squeaky words.

 I liked the visions on the LSD we took. A black cat's eyes pulsed in a driveway. God brought the gorgeous weather and we brought "Lithium" by Nirvana. God probably gave us Nirvana too. Kurt and Jesus Christ could be together again.  We took the tabs on a wooden kitchen table with a flamingo on the tablecloth. I had no hopes to reflect...I did anyway. 

I panicked for a total of 5 minutes. I had a broken computer. This LSD told me to let it crash. It’s part of the experience. My trip to the midwest made me wonder about my vacant love. My pal and I took our hearts to the cleaners. We should know better than to talk about lovers while on LSD. There was a portal to a universal kissing booth.

I put all my emotions into a broken computer. Great. LSD told me Every change I made in my twenties would lead to more change. Great. Great.

Pal lived in the town we grew up in. The people told us It was Iowa. The sleeping trees told us it must be the North Pole. We could skate on a river of ice to Rome. On LSD A highway through the heart's eye could lead to a discussion to the door to the cosmos. 

I talked about God. My pal, He didn't seem to mind. Good pal. I couldn't think of anyone better to witness me, free as a horse on a summer's day. It was winter. December 8...50 degrees. Geese flapped in the wailing river while we blasted "Lithium" by Nirvana (again). I bought a trench coat at goodwill. $7. A bright pink scarf called to me on a brick wall.

I was on easy greenery. I wasn’t a man on the acids. I wasn’t woman or beast on the acids. I was the outline of a glittery rose. 

2

On my way to confession I pondered what it meant to me. The Age of Forgiveness. I didn't want to fear my faults. A whole lifetime left after the death of my father. I wanted a lifetime in the age of forgiveness. A figure sat shadowed in an orange light. "you say, forgive me father for I have sinned" I was mr. guilty, gold-less, gutless sucking up to some stranger. Psalm 139. That's what he gave me to read. No longer would I ask if he was wrong.

I cried for the nation of Palestine. It came on quick. War weighed on my weary mind. Genocide on phones. I didn't need to see it to see it. Lavender water rising. Dawning was a new future for my former fears for destruction. The lips of freedom kissed the sky. Lavender hands on hands. I was one in a million of a million of a million but God could find me in the grass. Mother Nature was kind when all she could do was cry for loss of life. I needed priest. I needed water. I needed freedom...now. I stood on a rock. I laughed in death's face.

My mother smiled when I came home. She isn't a cool parent who lets you smoke inside. She likes to operate like a horny narcotics officer.

She stopped when we got home and spouted "Hey! You smell like pot"

"I think I just smell..." "Oh." "Like,
I think i just smell like pot."

I lie to my mother and myself. The priest listened and told me I was forgiven. I wonder what my father would think about smoking weed and lying to my mom.

The container of grief in the back of the fridge rattles with jealous laughter.

3

if the guy knew the government 

He could disappear

If the guy knew the people

Damn bodega man 

or the damn people 

He would know the son of tension

 no less

If the guy knew of yellow

or Blueberry pancake skies

He would Row row row your sins away

Be he can’t stand the lemon He doesn't live in light

He Hammers over nails…

The damn people's plight

The power to the guy

 if he knew the man inside

Good Hue

Let me spill for you.

Art was slick. I was sick…with colors. Orange was how I spent my last year. I had an artist residency. Pink, The face of my menacing youth melting off my 27 year old body. Yellow meetings and open studio visits. Green met with the curators at the MoMa and the Brooklyn Museum. Red doesn’t believe me but I had to mention it anyway. Blue had his name on the door and everything. My Purple family still wonders where I went for 365 days.

Once upon a lifetime ago, I was a vision of happiness...

Ayahuasca grabbed my birthday by the throat in 2024. Reality's sidesplitting cousin for three days, spinning like a broken family. An angel with shoes for wings whispered prophecies into my ear — I'm brave enough to tell you this. Not a dream but a nightmare wearing dream's clothing.

Afterwards, I tried to become a painter but haven't sold a thing. On October 7, I worked at a gay bar. Earlier that day 1200 lives were lost in Gaza.  Heartfelt little pieces of the universe. Gone. Polite lights, patient destinies. Gone. We eventually must save them Or rather kill the monsters of our own judgement to discover our own worthiness to life. Let the love in so those surface monsters can go down. Let the fear go down.

1

So the anti-weed enthusiasts prepared me for the avid ADHD-deniers. They're all here aren't they? The ghosts of covid's lost party years. You can see that they are all sad. The figures and friends of NYC's covid years are sad. They are sad patchwork details of now-broken-up-cliques...the trivial kind. Conversations with silly animals remind me I am silly but I am not an animal.

2022 with Truths truer in blue. Outward hatred toward this group is false. I cannot not doggie paddle in blue bubbles forever. Moments of my happiest; years ago in my new york beginning. Waist-high dinner libations conjoined banter for hours. The after-after dinner report baked in lentil smooth on the tongue. Barnyards with fencing. Masters of goodnight texts as delightful as cake. Like I said, outward hatred for this group is false. I'm just in mourning for the old house. 

His spotless behind. A canned lilac jam across the way every Saturday. We hit it off. We had a lot in common. He's so much bigger than I am right now. I speak him now and make him real. He was beautiful and amazing. A Waxing soul released. UP here. I still see him DOWN there. Take me home, mountain mama. His fingertips making a straight girl perfect. This hour at night for the freaks. The carnies, "Hey! Good to see you!" Deli guy seeing action at 4 am. Video stores should open their doors again to see the lovely thing. Someone like Us or Someone we know. by the east river again. A diner on a conveyer belt. Pho soup! Here we are!

I couldn't keep him. I'm sure he has a name but I couldn't keep it. People taking the excess skin off their life by knocking the fools off their life. Loads off. A couple blocks make a different to my bones. Lickety banana splits. I didn't disappear. I went for a long walk. No such obligation for my own custody could be identified before my father passed. Dad died and suddenly I owned myself. My interests went back to bed. He granted me change. My history...my best judgements...they are special to me and mine. He looked wonderful. My dreams They were figurines of sorrow. Finally loved the afternoon. 

He was like a flu shot

Nine and half fingers. Sound effects with emotion. Seedy eyes right on top of me. Fascinating. Better on the floor these days. I should have asked his dermatologist. No one came for me anymore. I was right. It was March, Everything was green like a carpet for easter. Walking by an elementary school on the west side. 10 year olds should be lucky to see us kiss. Something wonderful all year round. Singing a common part of the song. 

Purely, new york was my greatest stranger. I knitted a sweater sidewalk empire. Graffiti gratified my small-wall township. The mayor of that wall was working all day and night. I'm the kitty let me tell you he was beautiful. My imaginary boyfriend born to nap. I should have gone for a cheeseball.

My rights, I lived  on them. Chose urban suffocation over suburban death, slashed my social life open on Instagram like performance art. Dating or dying? I chose me, fled to Manchester's grey embrace. England opened its arms like world's love.

Ripe 2023. Bold and bare. HE looked wonderful by the way. American boys can DANCE. For so many years I was a drag. Safer worked for me. It was what I could bare. I lost myself in an enchantment. I designed my hustle and met a lovely man in my apartment. He wore a silly looking scarf. We should have gone to a jazz festival. 26 years old. A little blood-orange. I said "I love you" he said "I love you back." Remarkable, Swinging my legs around his head. I left and I knew he would never forgive me. I got tan lines from a feburary rabbit.  I left three months later. Stalks of a pilot's green socks. Aer Lingus on a first journey day. June rising meant hell was certainly awake. Color splotches, a breakup by an old shelf. This passage shouldn't just be for people with microwaves. 

It was 4 in the morning. Flexing for entertainment. A babbling brook in Scotland. A babbling New Yorker in a downtown bar. Ferris wheel of misfortune. Memories turn to empty bottles of beer. 

Surfing hair with A sash and a crown he was very sophisticated. I tended greatly to myself. I was crisis prone. I'm an entertainer...i guess this is why. I have sung to myself in airports. 

Amber! Amber! A part of my life when I liked to sing. A face like a country politician is my level of sex appeal.  A pool table with the planets. Glass Pluto. Glass ball balls. Gas planets. Pal hit a ball! and said

“Here goes nothing” the planet split in two. The universal big ball bang!

My mouth started watering. Bring me some chocolate! Two balls go in. The universe swells with possibilities. I’m positive. My hair sticks up on my thigh which tells me a Holy Ghost is close. I ask it to help me with my guys…the pool balls…

“Cure my sadness! Cure my ache!”

Dark and depressing. Like a giant fake glass of wine. I don't need to kiss and tell. . I could picture the terror of war instead. I can picture terror. I can picture it. I'm sure you can google terror. Oh! War on acid! Oh! War on solid ground! How horrific. Google the war of our time. I see it when I close my eyes. Red. A spinning wheel of Bodies in the street.  Dread…This brings a sobering feeling to spirituality. 

If you're just joining me  this will be exciting. He was made in a lab in florida. Some 14 year old girl's phone. Lighters and paint samples. Corners of my mind go beyond the border of a messy romance. I saw him standing there, "I do, I like you". We cut back on the kitchen touching. His body baptised with breath from my lungs. Wendy and Peter on the floor of my bedroom. Should have grabbed olive oil. Memories now dull and useless. Cleaning old dice reflecting my owner. Provocative charm and talent. Every moment he was a rich haze of magic. 

I wish to be sober. This is so real. I knew I should be sober but Perhaps the beer brought me closer to human reflection. I didn't need to see my loved ones die to visualize the pain in Gaza but I saw that too. Talking in the street with strangers, I began to make art and learn how to fight fallacies with truth. 

Arts and creativities are kept a secret from my family. A method to my madness. If I can steal a look away from organized sports I somehow think that I have won. Tony award for a twinged  smile I copied with ink blots on my page. What a wonder it must be to be someone else .

I can't wait to have a sunny room.

This is a modern version of running. Writing as fast as i can about my ex before I turn back into a sour pumpkin. My imaginary ex boyfriend. Any big bowl could catch a cat. Was that too profound?

Anything to make me laugh. collection of American souls in New York (always engaging) requires a depressed-happiness look behind the lens. All of the depressed people in the city lack this levity and all the manic people in New York lack the simple solution of isolation.

I HAVE missed the long hours perched at my old New York bedroom. My Bushwick window belongs to me like a California porch. It was Brooklyn on the second floor and yet it was taken from me. 

Icy drifts calm my head and feet. If any work was to be done here it would have to be in my own mind. After all that worrying, I turned to the cure of meditation. I go to the church for meditation sometimes. This is a reoccurring practice for me as I round out to 28 years of age. I am surprised that my heart and hands accept it. 

Singing to myself in airports. 

The Faith and Confidence in American Daily Meat

Confident energy. Wrestlers with the right stuff. I reach for a clean glass but we’re not in a Brooklyn bar. We're in a gym in Wisconsin: Eu Clair to be exact. 

Making eyes across bar wood is nothing like a locking eyes with actual wood on a college wrestling mat. Under law i am to tell you I did not wish to be inside one: a blue wrestling singlet and skin tight shoes. I certainly haven’t had new shoes in awhile since arriving in Wisconsin. I have met this rotunda-tundra with only two soles-the ones on my feet.

Obligatory opponents guide away from my soggy hot dog in my right hand. A better way to distract from the hedges of male generosity is to focus on the treble tune of my mother's voice. My mother is a pink tinted lady with pretty big tits. Her and I, we're both black sheep in wolf's clothing despite our differences. We engage in activities while I live in her basement. We share some interests though she ruined my life every day in my youth. I was close to the youngest and she was first born. We find common ground when we can.

The meat.

Widowed Mother and (new) bisexual son. 

We skimmed snowy gravel roads to get there.  

The meet. 

We played it cool just to be together for the day. The smelly gym was an instrument in our precious meaty moments. 

We would have to work together to meet the meat at the end of the meet. We did not converse with men naturally. Organic conversation was reserved for riper bananas. We were a bruised couple of loose ones.

The meat finally removed their over the ear headphones and fake eyewear. A bus ride to a wrestling tournament was a formative experience for a wrestler. At least my father has said so. He was a wrestling man himself. A former coach and the reason for my mother's sudden widow-ment.

Sound is shelter from the silence storm. The college wrestlers' house was equipped with entourage. Men behind other men in uniform. Chairs with cushion for the blow of bloodless body horror. The air was stale, as if you could see the babble bubbles mid-sentence but there was no babbling. The wrestlers were quiet. Naturally, I drew them as new subjects in my Wisconsin journal. I fed them green grapes from the mush of my mind while I sketched. 

*

Wisconsin is the great american intelligence experiment. I can’t say I have grasped it though I do admire it. Muscle mannered lineage without Irish to Norwegian openness. Conversational word play just to get "talking" out of the way. 

Cheese heads with Parents who were teachers. Teacher heads with parents who were republicans. The parents all moonlighting as Amateur sport aficionados. Home owners salvaging the last of their daylight hours just to watch a their spawn play sports. 

My parents with parents all the same. Freedom folk. Former Bar families that can’t be home bound anymore. The afterschool highway scattered with signs about drunk driving. 

They all pointed to sports. 

No drugs around to wander in the sunlight. No punks around to introduce the insta-cool music. No parties around to merge the two in perfect alternative matrimony. Still all pointing toward sports.

Sports. The ultimate test of my girly intuition. Putting my best foot forward on white chalk line, never to see my after school hours again. The girls. Controlling ponytails with oxygen in their lungs reserved for running and gossiping. No free time and no free headspace. A section of my brain reserved for mile counting. No time for self discovery. No time for candle burning. No need for journals or sex. 

My trans identity, my simple twisted fate, A Purely misplaced Wisdom from my tenure within Girlhood... lost to a runner's reflection. My long haired pony tail pounding across a busy highway. I didn't want to die too often but only when I bled in my spikes. Running sad and weeping to the sound of turning time. Counting miles in my head just to keep me from hating the woman I was becoming.

A shame she couldn't stay longer. I didn't want to have to hate her so much. 

*

Now, my Spirit’s Integrity is in tact. All that's left to remember my "girl-self" is enshrined in my American girlhood collective thought. 

I couldn't point to what really bothered me about it. I remember dancing a lot. That didn't look like disdain. Dancing while I was in uniform. Even when I wasn't in uniform I was still in uniform. The straight lines passed the time until the time didn't matter. All the toughness gained while looking at the white chalk race marker. I lost it while picking out my camisole the next day. I built her and then I hated her. I straightened her hair and then I chopped it all off.

The Man-Made-Mad-Man; my father. He elected himself as head chief sports officer. I'd win anything just to get him looking at me. Shitty Loopholes through God gave me grace of running well. There's no excuse for being good at it. All my 3:30pm American free time lost to sports.

*

My mother is halfway through the wrestling meet and spread out like a lioness against the Baltic Sea. Awesome. She doesn’t actually vacation, she is pale like a fasting Swiss woman. She doesn't try tea or coffee. She uses the word "dope" to refer to something you could smoke. Her wisdownment (widow wisdom endowment) is her recovery. She is a mother today as she was 38 years ago. I am thankful for her enemy. It pushed me away from the "beauty of womanhood". 

May the world protect this woman but let it also cover her eyes through my resentment. It was her who tried to reason with me about the changing hair. It was her who framed the "changing" in the first place as my mistake. Now I only see her once or twice a year.

My eyes stay fixed on her Facebook fingers. Her perfect Grammar proving her age cannot be genetically reversed despite her clamouring.

“I think he thinks you’re a guy”

No surprises in her responses. She knows I split my own atom. No obstacle after the filthy white gloves of girlhood. I learned to run and I cleaned up the mess too. 

If you saw me today, you could bare witness to a man making his own history. Proof. Nothing is impossible when you do it with science. Proof. You couldn’t kill me if you tried. Fact. It is me who trusted this delicate thought with your ears. I hope you appreciate it. Every year forward is the greatest year of my life. I make my case and I promise you I will never accept a loss like this again. Not with all the exceptional suffering. My father built a winner and unaware to him, i am now a man.

My mother and I bump knees. They're loose like they're made of water.

“I have gotten so many compliments on this sweater” “okay okay” "It's nice right?" "yeah yeah"/ Only 5 other people can understand this conversation type with my mother. They’re all my siblings. I feign disinterest. I did think the sweater was nice. The meat distracted me and loud stereo music made me flirty (without a beer). 

The men on the mat; passionate advantages of being so close looking like one. If only I was a foot taller, I would be a shoe in for a college secret. A crow cocked his head at me the same time I cock-crowed mine. I tried to seem experience. The troubling truth was I was muddled, grieving and lifeless. 

I was the genetic code I can only see when it's dark out.The grain bin of girlish corn teeth that surrounded my shame. I could count my pain and it was only about 13 tattoos.

Thoughts over tattoos. Today, the wrestling match. A headache of distance sits between my meat and all of the top heavy wrestlers. the mat rats endure. The the mat before the American mouths of passion. Good guys called to greatness. To discuss lust for long awaited moments.  Alone...together. Alone together in a half nelson. Flavors of human basket weaving. Put me in coach! Nothing dull with coaches. Exciting tales spun to each their own lie. All just so they will notice you. I wasn't looking against knowledge but I’m sure my mother could agree. If coaches were honest they wouldn’t win so many championships. If I was looking for an honest man to walk me back to my mother’s car in Wisconsin, I wouldn’t look in a college gym. I would move to a remote part of England and adopt a very giant dog and never step foot on American soil again. 

I'm growing to fight it. A plain pain of angry voices. They don't understand that at the rate I am going I should look like a man by the time I am 30 years old. 

My soft girl eyes can trickle out my own ass from sea to shining sea. I'm out of love with my own reflection in Wisconsin - the un-alternative universe. My age calls me to better bedtime. I dream about my lucky number. 

The sports matter don't matter. Suppose I know when girls are checking me out on a cross country course. Suppose I know when wrestling guys think I've got a dick. I'm still not sure if I'm certain. Everyone likes spaghetti and everyone thinks their hot garbage until they get ghosted. The wrestlers probably like no strings attached. 

My mother talks like a broken cartoon clock. Good luck to me I sound like a cartoon clock and I look more like a 5 in middle America. Every second spent flirty with a wrestler there is an automatic "ding" of atrocities. I'm too short, too gay, too lonely, too shy. Each day I bare witness to my own homo-neurotic insanity. It's entertaining and exhausting. 

While we drive. I participate in Chatter for chatter sake. My mother can't seem to hold anything in her head. Her brain punishes her. She can't close her mouth long enough to apply lipstick. 

"We need gas!"

"We're running late!"

"Pass this guy we're running late"

The corners of her pink-pink lips rub off while she moves at drum roll speed. Da da da da. Ba Ba. Da Da Da. And Ba! A smirk pierced my skin by mistake. The smirk only inspired her further.

 "Da da da! da dadada!"

We stop for coffee and not a cigarette. I haven't told my mother about quitting smoking. I can't. It would make her too pleased. She is funding my cigarette quitting by buying me a gas station coffee. I am taking her kid to school but she is paying for the gas.

I didn't give her the satisfaction. Instead we listened to "Dirty Deeds Done Dirty Cheap" by AC/DC. 

Purple singlets indicate our guys. I could boldly say. As the kid of a hall of fame wrestling coach; I had never been to a college wrestling meet. 

The meat, a tempting reason to never close my eyes again. The backbone of my primitive thoughts, faded red until my vision is clear. Guys with beefy shoulders grazing  their cauliflower ear. Guys with quad muscles. New to me. All created equally content. Pilgrims with their own reality. They are free to get high on a Monday when it's all over. Right now it was about fighting folk style.

So many half naked men, this must be Hell's Kitchen. It wasn't. It was Small town wisconsin meat stretched behind a stretch of fabric. The wrestlers and I. My mind was free to play and I never once got bored.

I didn't like big muscles in my youth. What was the point of them. The manly physique; i didn't buy it. I didn't even want to try it. The bodies of men confused me as much as the bodies of women did. I didn't need a man to take off his shirt to make me horny in high school. I needed a man to sing or dance...sincerely.

Now, something else talks for me. A lesson in how humans are much more like animals and yet we think we are just big men to them. I've got a paint brush between my legs. It blends my heart and my mind into perfect shapes. I try to strike a balance. I wanted lean strokes like Van Gogh, not splatters like Pollock. Wisconsin knows Van Gogh, I'm not sure if they would be ready for Pollock.

The hair stuck up on the back of my neck like a challenge. I imagine my wrestling coach father poking me from Heaven. God as our witness, he made this Collegiate Wrestling World for us to wraith in. My mother and I fanned ourselves as lobsters on a rock. We were too peachy and cooked. The mercy of the meat of the human body creating peach cobblers of spectators. 

 A quote of his was painted on the gym wall after he died.  Grief is a little like gold. It tarnishes over time. 

Palette

Eggs snuggled up to unseasoned hashbrowns.

My experience with grape jelly is probably as much as the average person. My mother was gifted a few jars from an online connection with a man. The dark substance didn't even need a knife to get on my english muffins. Grateful to be a sinner with such a developed palate. Grapeful to be hostile enough in the morning to sit down and write. 

It's well-known I soak in the tub to think. I take baths. Even though I know my mother judges anyone using her tub. I think she just dislikes something so time consuming. I'm rigid. I'm in the oven for about two more weeks in wisconsin. A charcoal mask outlines my growing upper lip "stache". I didn't know how to party before this thing grew under my nose. How exciting to grow facial hair and have no one talk about it. 

I learned how to be a farmer of my thoughts. I plow the positive and scare away the crows. An hour before my day, I beg God to water my crops. I crease my fingers across my own hands and pray for rain.

Introverted fingers. I dip them below the water's surface and think about stealing.

A couple years ago I stole. I stole everything. I don't remember. Much shame from stealing. I do not worry about doing it again. So much shame from stealing. The guilt fragments in the soap like my hardening face mask. The grey changes Opal while it dries. 

If you want to know how to steal, you must first become completely dependent on stealing. I have encountered too many people stealing for fun. This was not my fire. I didn't want to witness my life change with my loss of money. I pictured God pushing me to rob. I was wrong. I experienced no security while stealing. Even when I was walking out of grocery stores with fashionable tote bags with skin care and produce, I never witnessed my stem cells shift into place. I was wrong. I was wrong.

I'm sipping on coffee back at my mom's house. I'm being as candid as I can. I'm not sure what you all with laugh at. The nooks and crannies of my mind just know I must talk at the table, laughing and crying. Poor people understand rock and roll and therefore you should be able to understand this.

I’m 19, my mother crossed her name off my list. I was all right with it. She didn’t see my way and I didn’t see hers. She was a nightmare but we got by. I now, sit before you sacrificing my belly laughs to understand a white woman in her 60’s. Her dream is to NOT become renewed. Speaking of her 60’s, she expressed to me she feels “21”. I wished I could cry with laughter! I am not to move my face while she talks. She must not know the truth. She is living in a haunted house of her dead desires. She’s got a projecting plan for her days. It’s her process! 

A perfect recipe for a response to poverty is the internet's menu for the day.  A man shot a healthcare CEO in broad daylight in manhattan. My father: He was bubbling over with his response. I'm planted on the couch just to see a guy around my age get shoved out of a cop car.

I was knees in my face; terrified. I had just been saying bullshit about this very bullshit. Im a Glutton for internet rage in the third degree. I wait for a friend to tell me about the stories on the World Wide Web. It’s much more entertaining that way. Their faves make rancid remarks and I fall for their side! My friends are expressing themselves. All good gifts from friends come in the form of an engaged conversation. An ex lover treated his friends like diamonds. I have not forgotten. 

There aren't many lines you can draw between murder, warfare and my love life: though a trip through grief will have you thinking about them all…

 could be the salt on my own wounds. 

He went to an non-ivy league school, he performed stand up for the first time in front of me. The rewards of being told that you "have control". He had to do what he was told. His journey wasn’t laid out for him like it was for me. I’m not driven by fundamentals of life. My drive is easier to access through grief. I love by the fundamentals of death. I Saw him by the light of his own memories. I knew I was in love with him. I was in love then as I am still with comedy. I’ll thank you all of you for judgement but I really did love him. 

 I am controlling with my words onstage. I am not convincing as a poor performer because I am not trying to convince you of anything rich. The power of humor cannot be my only effort in making an audible manifesto. At my core, I know that someday I will be faced with the fallacies of the college graduates who speak out against American Kings and Queens of Drama. I hadn’t known them to and therefore wwwouldnt try anymore. 

I never worried about brushing against the wrong people. I always worried about brushing against the write people and them turning me down. I have been poor in personality at times and rich in personality at times. It doesn’t matter when that is. I don’t change based on the people, I changed based on the time. Midnight roles around and I’m around coworkers. and therefore I tend to hang out with poor people. My coworkers and I are broke but we are laughing around a table. The broke are anything but broken around the table.  We don't sit around a set table of our missing wages and discuss industry. We wander the table of streets and remark on the window displays of our frustration. 

My dad worked as an uber driver when we moved from Iowa to New Jersey. He enjoyed it. 

Almost Rome

water my crops. crease my fingers across my own hands

 pray for rain. 

This is not the day for disdain.

 Introverted in ethos. 

I dip conversation below the earth’s surface and I think heavily about stealing. Introducing the love endeavor. 

A couple years ago I stole everything. I remember it all. I'm jealous of my total freedom during this time. I really do have this. I have a certain kind of regret from the drama of how much I stole but I do not worry about doing it again. The guilt fragments like the soap bubble atop a hardening face mask. Something I’ll never buy myself but swiped from a Whole Foods shelf. The grey changes to Opal while it dries.

 If you want to know how to steal, you must first become completely dependent on stealing. I have encountered too many people stealing for fun. This was not my fire. I didn't want to witness my life change with my loss of money. I pictured God pushing me to steal. I was wrong. I experienced no security while stealing; guards or soothing. Even when I was walking out of grocery stores with fashionable tote bags filled with expensive skin care and random produce, I never witnessed my stem cells shift into place where they belonged. I was wrong. The face mask clogs up my bathroom sink.

I'm sipping on coffee back at my mom's house. I'm being as candid as I can about this. I'm not sure what you take interest in. The nooks and crannies of my mind just know I must talk at the table, laughing and crying as poor people tend to do. Poor people understand rock and roll and the rush of hotel swimming pools and the dedication to "good stealing" and therefore you should be able to understand this. A perfect recipe for a response to poverty and the internet's  menu for the day is in fact: stealing. 

A man shot a healthcare CEO in broad daylight in manhattan and the flavor of web flirtation was gothic. On my mother's couch, I wash knees in my face and let out a noise that was both giddy and terrifying. I had just been saying bullshit about this very bullshit. Im a Glutton for internet rage in the third degree. 

Totally enwrapped with my own obsession with danger. Cool, I am acknowledging that I am obsessed with danger. I’m obeying that obsession and renaming it as my day-ruiner. No matter my expertise in staying alive, I've copied my shaking subconscious into a sense of reality. New York is like an adult playground with a snake filled kiddie pool. There is sign telling me the snakes are safe but it's unreadable. An intercom encourages me to connect to the snakes but never film or touch them. 

I've got a mouthful of degrees right now. I've a master in exquisite lying with a minor in confidently choosing a booth at a seaside diner. I've been taking acting classes on how to say "no" to weed offerings. Relentlessly studying everything "free"; free coffee, free smells, free bathrooms, even free thoughts. 

I plan to send an IOU to myself in 2 years to remind him I went through hell. He somehow climbs out of this late 20s paradoxical comic operetta. I want to be treated well while experimenting with life's hilarity. 

There was something so funny about being 21. The same goes for 24 for a different reason. 28 is me standing on one leg while taking  chewing calmly on a root vegetable. If you told me at this age I would be talking about tantric potatoes, I would ask "who is the president?" 

That orange cat trapped in a brutalist baby swing. The scratchy, moaning creature we trust with our nation's most sacred lies. Now more than ever I can picture him. Walking outside on a cloudy day, placing his hand to his forehead, blocking a sun that isn't actually there. What a useless sigh of leather. It's fake leather too. The country would be better off having a tiny cup as leader. His running mate could be a tiny spoon. It would just be an excuse to eat and drink even tinier food. See, even you forgot tr*mp was president for a second with peaceful thoughts of tiny kitchen ware. 

Hey, Indifferent sally. It's not like you also woke up this morning working on crude presidential roasts while you should be gnawing on a stonefruit. Instead you're rising in old new york wondering why the 40s had 6 dollar bagels. 

The changes to new york life currently are emotional. Your indifference is waging a wage war on yourself while your wages wage war on your waged work. 

I'm easing out of my indifference, I'm brave enough to say I am combing through my selfish opinions. I lasted through the game more focused on my access to personal care. I was looking to brew a few chances at a new life. I just didn't have money for about three years. A three pronged fork to my leg could have troubled me more than not having money did. 

I abstained from subway fares and useless ad clicking. I day dreamed about being a janitor and living in a school closet for free. I worried less about my bed for the night than what colour pens were in my backpack. That backpack was my whole life. I managed to live internally while brushing my teeth only once a week and sitting in comfy office chairs for fun. I fought my year long battle with anxiety by throwing caution into the wind, stealing everything I needed to survive. I bit myself a new slice of the pie face down on the sidewalk. Nimble to what i was holding onto. 

There was another name for what i was going through but I couldn't finger it. I caught fire standing still. Another person on the street could have thoroughly crossed with fine intention to see my state. I was blacked out, Singing "i shall be released" while rocking back and forth on my heels. My shame couldn't make it fast enough to stop my obvious mental break. 

Never was it an option to float without flotsam. Half an armchair made an elbow for my tired plans of the future. I mean I was keeled over on curbs with my fist halfway down my throat just to stop my crying. Blinking lights like cawing crows across my head. The only fading memories of worser interpretations of what life really resembled were of the life I lost through death. 

The grief had me stealing glow sticks on the soul. The rave spot just park with a bench and me. 

Do not worry, I'm no longer reciting my own obituary at empty bus stops. I'm on my way to claiming this war path. Just in time for my own righteousness I believe in buying more ice cream.

I plan to travel the world

But Milwaukee is fine for now

“An unusual flurry of death and taxes”

Transgression quiet in pink

My disease is 28…self contained

Oppression through my own boredom eyes

Eggs should go down before the earth dies

Turn blue

Nourish The Soul When The Earth Is Hungry

Milwaukee! Milwaukee!

Souls idle bravely at the stoplight of spring. A family of oysters slimming... just to show off their new pearls. Milwaukee was where we would get together. The hands of a family tragedy pinned to a weekend in March.

When I left New York, my brain was vacant but cordial. In the flesh of day, I boarded the plane to Wisconsin. I flew a thousand miles to ponder my issues in a sort of "Pomodoro" technique. Twenty-five minutes spent thinking about my commitment issues. Twenty-five minutes spent on my hesitation toward true euphoria. Twenty-five minutes spent pondering my triumphant fear of the ocean's depth. If a submarine could go lower than most sparkly fish, then what hope did we have for a glossy future? My mind sank to a dark sea floor as I rested my eyes on the plane wing. Future dinners with no dad. Future accomplishments with no feeling. A steak (stake) through the heart after the grill-master is long gone. Smoke under noses as stinky as the body that was torched. A reminder that carbs aren't the only things that burn.

The day I arrived, I wanted to write happy. I wrote "happy" in my phone and waited. Not a molecule of joy came out of me. I boarded a bus to the downtown area as a forced excursion. My body could only wrap around painful poetry. I had brought a Vogue magazine with me for entertainment. Printed models qualify for decent distractions. I had wished the magazine was a cigarette, but it qualifies. It qualifies. Damn, if only I could smoke Gucci perfume samples.

I was in the rain on this bus, writing somber memories as if they granted ephemeral jubilation. There was a fire in my stomach, only growing richer in irritation. That's the grief I know: anger. This sinful porridge can't be eaten quickly. Oh no, griefy grits had to be indulged slowly. Additionally, anger around family was not like anger safe in your apartment. Anger around family was like the claw marks in your fifth-grade bedroom. Somehow the marks didn't go away after new owners. Familial emotions were like an elevator accompanied by a child who pressed all the buttons. What a smelly, slow elevator. What a wicked twelve-year-old. The top floor is a tiny, stupid ball pit.

I screamed in Milwaukee but refrained from dancing. At least as a screechy child, I danced more. Nasty are the aches in my ankles from nearing thirty. A choir of repression exhaled out of me, directed at my family. Unfortunately, I was a total cock to them. Fuck. I conducted a series of tantrums accompanied by a tuba. A symphonic band of a hell that wasn't there. They were so kind, as if they were my family. Never a sweeter moment than when a hum of forgiveness granted me new freckles. The bumps and bruises are not from them; the dimples and widow's peaks are. Fuck.

I chewed my thoughts like gum while white flowers poked through the earth like a fucking joke. It was March and windy. Such an insulting wilderness to greet an anniversary so grim. The house we stayed in was gorgeous—like a Cinderella music box... gorgeous. It was designed for summer weddings and bachelorette parties. Weddings: evil little things. Conventions of shared joy. Evil. Nothing like the black-tie events we had attended in our past. Funerals had almost become swanky to us.

Emotions tied to basketball games and Catch Phrase. We were in a living room with hardcover books for audience. It really was a handsome living room. There was attention to detail along the wood trimmings and a place for everyone to sit. Exotic birds along the wallpaper and the pillows were needled hope to courage. More akin to a fragile folk museum than a soured soul summit. I believe that the prospect of joy has terrorized me more than sadness actually has. When I find a weightless moment, I wait anxiously for an event to bring me back down. It takes a flame to raise a hot air balloon; shouldn't it take only a stray ember to bring it all down? Sorry to be so negative.

"Come see the sick sad family! Stricken with grief! Mangled in their memories!"

What do I lose when I'm in New York? It's not fair for my happiness to be so torn between freedom and family. In New York, I'm not so short of being a fish in my own pond. I walk dogs in the daytime and write in the night. Yet my heart is still with a school of one thought: my family. I cannot live where they are. In the Midwest, I'm salty but not alive. I've got butter in my gills. I could say I am delicious but far too envious of the other fish still in the pond. New York. In the city, I'm always checking to make sure my fishy scales are still shining. I'm constantly forgetting to breathe, forgetting that what's around me is water.

When I touch Midwest soil, I release but flop on my side. Damn, I want the illusion of New York to match the romance I had for it for so long. It's romantic, sure, but so are my dreams.

I make plans in my notebook:

"New York... There needs to be more friends." "There needs to be more neighborhood parties and less stuff." "I need to meet the parrot on that random guy's shoulder." "More shaking hands and teaching each other new words."

In the Midwest, I am a word. I don't need to be the full sentence. Just my word and that's enough. My family is the full novel. They're the manual, the manifesto for who I am. I'm one note in their scale, and they're the entire standard. I'm the weird fish, the swear word, the naughty phrase, the angry email. There must be a way to resist being such a stranger to my own muse.

I am angry still.

tribute to 100

Watching the jimmy carter funeral from a hotel room in chicago. I missed my connecting train last night and got plopped in a holiday inn. "It's a sad thing but you know...he was 100." I admire how much respect Jimmy Carter gained over the years. He lived a long american life and is widely expected to be promoted to presidential heaven. It's a golf course.

This holiday inn doesn't have a full length mirror but the kuerig is a very nice touch.

Stability. My revelations on 28 should come quick. Safety and stability, I hope. Don't judge me. I'm an older man after being a young girl. Tears for a life that could have been spontaneous. I can't slow my heartbeat after missing a 21 hour train ride.

Pissed. Crying on the bed. I'm ready for a change. Now. Sorrow. I have worried. I have wasted my life worrying and i really meant to spend it adventurous.

Clicking through channels. I paused on a movie called "A Few Good Men" with Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise will live forever, poorly. His face will resemble sour dough at 100. Rich people can buy eternity but not adaptability. 

A midnight channel surfing session casts a long shadow on my pain. Virtually i could hear my father begging me to calm my thoughts. I pray the year 100 wants me.

I am a single man.

 The police officer at the amtrak station called me a woman. My face was already scorned from missing my train. I was a man in front of a cop and it was crying time. What a silly man with a silly gun. 

 I hold myself between clean sheets with respect to whomever held me last. Love has not called my name in awhile and yet I cry for it. Some ruthless people would call this pathetic. I only recently decided I could be trusted. My mind should settle for someone a little shorter. Less than 6'5", slightly larger than a holiday inn body pillow.

One minute after "a few good men" was the film "paddington." A family comedy with a british talking bear. I felt sorry for him; He had no kids, no husband, no home,  and no one to love. The Brown Family took him in anyway. Puddles of pear shaped globs on my pillow. I could cry and watch paddington alone in this Chicago hotel room forever. I pictured how they usually pry a stubborn hotel guest from their room. Maybe those cops would have guns too like the one at the train station.

I'm dating again to rank my thoughts. Connection is the only way to rate one's sanity. It's an honor to just be a picture on someone's phone. I've begun to hope I meet murderers. Not the men who murder, just the ones that look like they might. 

It's sobering cold in Chicago. I have wine in a starbucks cup. I can't be stuck in chicago another night. This trip has been a dog race. Someone should have made traveling home while Trans a tax write off. 

I'll be all right if I can attend this train date. The first train I missed like a fool yesterday. The chunks of water across my nose. I'm sure it has nothing to do with my dead dad. That's a joke for people who are grieving. It always has something to do with that.

If writing be my work then why can't i get paid for it? If letters on a page be my love language then why won't my past loves write me? I don't serve myself well when anxious. Now I have a full day in Chicago. Bored to tears like Elvis. Every deep inhale is choppy like lake michigan waves. Big shame chicago. Climbing my own wall.

11 days after Christmas- happy holidays.

3 hours go by and I look at my train schedule again. Delayed. The lightheadedness. I could create a head in my heart. It would look just the same. There is work to be done there in my skull. Funny. I almost talked myself into calm.

Chuck the city of chicago in the river like dave matthews band poured 100 pounds of pure shit. I was so desperate to call my mother. Something I would have never said before my dad passed. 

There was maternal guidance and then there was Kealy guidance. I always feared her intelligence could jinx any situation. My punctuality has never failed. I wasn't known to miss a train. She was actually fairly kind to me. I would never miss a train but Kealy could. She probably would have also cried to a cop. They would have been right to call her a woman. 

Shivering old style. I was conservative in my packing for winter but picked up a coat in wisconsin. Thank God I did. I'll probably use this puffy coat for a pillow while I softly imagine the words I left on this page. If I get on this train, I must get a grip.

"all passengers are reminded to get a grip"

I remember the bean with my father. I'm sorry to say I can't talk about this. He was fun. He filled our lives with laughter. I crave his company as I make my arrival back to the big city. I have almost started calling NYC "the states" as I am not sure if I'm even in the same country. 

• Gabriel