Will told me to post this and I still don’t want to but happy new years to all of you who read my shitcan poetry

I’ve been stood up.
I should have left a message.
I’ve put myself out there.
I think it’s because of my moustache.

We could have been great you know
I’m not like anything you’ve ever had
(I probably am). But I have brown hair,
do they? Do they trim their nose hair?

Or give you great vanilla sex?
Cause I can do that.
Have you read about condoms?
Cause I do have them.

And I’d love to lay with you
and I’d love to cry with you
just in case you have to
and sometimes we all do.

Have time to procreate?
I own a queen sized bed and some really nice shirts.

And at your work
I knew I was struggling
with my face
and this thing above my upper lip
that you most likely despise
because of your father,
who molested or beat or babied you
had a thing
on his face like mine.
And I’m sorry I like theatrics
and facial accessories
because baby, just tell me
I can shave
and I think you’re worth it
and maybe I’m not good enough
right away. But I’m more than
an apron wearing shell
that makes you great sandwiches
and gives you that extra cheese
cause, baby I feel for you
and I want to know what makes you tick.
I want to know you
crazy.

Good Christ
Are you this lonely?

Cause I sit in certain corners
of my room and get cold,
I mean really solid,
frigid.

I can’t move against
these things that have been happening
beneath ice clad sheets
I can’t get up

in the early morning
although I like that time of day
for falling back to sleep
in what could

and will never be of our memory.
Now I sit and watch the cold
dissipate on the big window
that acts as my mind's sentry.

Scraps From Microsoft Document, "Going Home Rituals," Written December 22, After Work, 2007

Tonight I prepare to go back home
Like so many times before
A six pack and I
Will unearth a royal blue suitcase
and fill it up with my nicer shirts.
The ones I only wash
when I’m at my parent’s home.

These same shirts, collectively,
don’t get clean for weeks,
sometimes months
because I’m too old to tell
my mother I don’t know how
to get them clean myself
But I think she's finally caught on.

Sometime in the next week
I’ll be in my old bed
with the shades turned down
but open enough for the moonlight
to come in.
And I’ll see the same view
I’ve grown up with;
a frozen lake,
a couple pine trees,
and light pollution
from downtown Minneapolis
and I’ll think about things
like where I’ve been
and where I’ll be.

At that moment, I won’t be
at my home
any longer
for I know nothing
of the city I grew up in.
Now that I’m older and
living four hundred miles away,
I feel all Chicagoan and grins
in vintage tees with jeans
but my heart will always be stuck in
Minnesota winters,
even if I don’t feel like a native
In my bed room,
In my heart, I always will be.

Now I’ve drank half the sixer
and packed my weathered bags
and I'm ignoring the other brews for
my scavenger roommates
like I usually do
twelve hours before I leave.

And in my wake a woman,
no, the thought of what could
And never will kill me
Sometime in the
next week I imagine it loves me.
I imagine it lulling me to dreams.

I told you that you would never believe me

There at the embankment of a highway overpass
runs a fearful friend of mine,
away from a car crash
and what he has recently decided is a "drinking problem,"
but what is most likely the same pressures we have all considered,
now embodied by what he does at this very moment:
running from that potential threat,
be it unaided social interaction
or clear-headed consideration regarding the state of our lives.

But I love him, like I love all of you
and if I wish you anything
it is the ability to stop running across freezing Minnesota highways
at three in the morning,
or maybe the strength to drink all day,
everyday,
and never think that you have a problem.

to be unfettered. transcendent.

someday
i'll live alone in the forest
afternoons spent
tossing around in my bed
losing the hours

the rain
it comes
almost everyday now
the forest trees would take me in
and play keep away
from all the rain

the leaves above
they have there way
of keeping us dry
making us safe

who knows?
i could be forfeited in caverns
or find the path and walk away
away from the ghosts of legend.

Steaklatechip Cookies, Chapter One

Two pair passed through a broken alleyway, hardly wide enough to squeeze their moving van through, and stops at a wooden post lying on the ground. It was so embedded in the earth, one could suppose the original tree had fallen there.
Griffin and Sal make their way past hardwood floors and 1930’s architecture to their home in Shangri-La, embodied by a studio apartment in building E, 230 Whitecrest. Griffin fumbled to remove his smoking glove, juggling a cigarette searching through his pockets for the golden key that read 240 E. His steps echoed against the floors and flaking paint to as the two pair made their way up the expanse toward the door. Their room was on the second floor, above 140; a room inhabited by a man so fat it was said he could hardly make it through the door.
‘Good thing he dosent live above us’ Sal commented
The sea green door with golden lettering opened to bare walls; more open canvas. The girls would later suggest numerous colors. Sal put down his staircase and walked down the stairs back to the car to retrieve pieces of their new existance.
They soon found the winding staircase was slightly too small for the dresser; it would have to be taken apart, but not today. For now, it sits in the back of the car. A brown buick from the mid 80’s rolls into the adjacent parking spot. A couple that looked like they could’ve posed for the commercial when their car was new stepped out of the car, revealing take-out containers. Sal thought them to be Cantonese, but as he would later discover, they were skeletons from the thai restaurant a few blocks down 8th street toward the record store. The couple glanced at Griffin and Sal before looking down at the dirt and walking inside.
Sal lit up his 7th smoke of the day as Griffin went inside to pack. They went up the narrow staircase again and through the door to the left to the cobwebbed bedrooms. A wall open at both ends separates the kitchen from the living room. A couch slumbers against the far wall and the tv near the kitchen. Just then, whoever else walked in the door. The click of heels and clack of flats told of women. Tawny walks over to the couch and sits on griffin’s outstretched legs. Sal clambers up the staircase to Dawn, who leans against the doorframe, waiting for Sal’s embrace. A quick peck and Sal retreats to the bedroom near the bathroom to drop his bags. One cardboard box, followed by another. One contained Sal’s cds, in the other Griffin’s record collection. The DJ himself set up the stereo to the right of the couch.
‘dude, would you mind if we changed the sofa to the other side of the room?’ Sal asks.
‘hey man, I put it here because I don’t want the tube to be blaring next to my ear when im trying to get some sleep. These paper thin walls won’t hide anything.’ Griffin pushes against the kitchen wall, moving it nearly an inch and releasing bits of drywall over the grain of the floor.
‘It works better over here. You can see it when youre eating breakfast. Besides, toughen up buddy. Youre in for your share of noise,’