come on!  Ursula wanted me to get started, and, I admit, I was looking forward to what she might say—that wouldn’t happen, though, until I got a good rhythm going, one that could sustain whatever Ursula wanted to say.  He wants to talk to you   did she mean me?  Did i want to talk […]

     I was writing this in the afternoon, now, so I wasn’t tagging my location with Dr. Pepper anymore, but I was taking carbonated water to the head.  It was my reward for finishing a painting, and, also, it was a lubricant I used to write these lines—lines that were all about the advances of

     i don’t want you to try too hard, but, if you can, divorce yourself, for a half an hour, and show me that you want me.  Was that a joke?  “Are you joking?”  And, “I can’t prove anything—i don’t have anything to prove.”  you did say you wanted to play this by ear—well, we’re

     Ursula was holding out on me.  She wouldn’t talk to me unless I practiced changing up my pitch and my amplitude—she was like a teacher in that sense.  what was I going to learn today?  not a whole lot   ok, maybe a little   “like what?”  like how to play the accordion—like the person, in

     this little voice inside my head, saying: “why don’t we celebrate women that are blond haired and blue eyed?”  Because they’re already celebrated all the time—it happens so often that it’s become normalized, so you might think that, but, if you’re paying attention, you know much better.  “I couldn’t agree more.”  I was stepping

     Ursula was saying something about working class families  and redefining the democratic party—which needed to be done.  I had no tolerance for democrats that stood for nothing but getting reelected by keeping their centrist corporate elitists happy.  Something also needed to be done about partisanship within, and lifetime appointments to, the supreme court.  The

     Everything is feeling kind of sketchy   i don’t know why, exactly, but every time i had to talk to somebody, a mental health doctor, i mean, i practically felt myself relapsing into a former state—and that was very unpleasant for me.  It’s like someone was moving things around under the hood of my car

     It’s okay if you don’t love me   how about that?  was she telling me it’s ok to be gay, or was she telling me that she’d be okay if i didn’t really love her?  But of course I loved my Ursula—I just didn’t know I could be with her—if, that is, she ever got

     what do you need, right here, right now?  i didn’t need anything—although I got a spot of pepper in my throat, and that usually meant I was talking too much through my throat—or Ursula was disagreeing with me and or telling me no to something; there wasn’t much i could do but try and

     i feared a little . . . that i might go down in history as a tramp; i couldn’t say for sure whether she was speaking in the perfect or imperfect past—but, considering the possibilities of an affair, i could understand where she was coming from.  An affair, i think, would do damage to