Anxieties at 9 In the Morning

Is my youth gone?
Were those my glory days, and these my other days? Were those REALLY my glory days?
I live in terror of finding out how many triangles there are.
Why is my stomach making those weird sensations? What have I done to deserve this?
Do I need to order coffee for the shop today? What if I forget?
I get paid today. What if it's not enough?
IS IT EVER ENOUGH?
What if I do dare to eat a peach? One time, I ate an apple and contracted an allergy. It closed my throat. I went to the allergy doctor, and they tested me for a lot of things, besides apples. They said I could go either way with peaches: happiness or death.
Maybe I woke up too early today.
Maybe not.
I think today could go either way.
Today isn't a poetic day. Today is a clunky and endearing today. Today fell off the shelf on top of my head, and I thought Oh, what a dust jacket.
In some ways it's nice to have lost my youth. I have an excuse to sit around and stare at the cat. I have an excuse to ensure my consumption of breakfast.
Lonely, lonely, my life is boney.
I have an excuse to say no to that next drink. Except I normally don't. That's not a function of age. That's a function of sourness.
Turn down the loud! I'm souring in here. And clutching my aged limbs to myself. If I wrap them tightly enough, they'll mummify and quit aging.
I should probably go out to Ann Arbor today.
I'd much rather just stay here on the couch. This couch used to belong to my Grandma. She grew old, too.
Growing old guarantees at least one thing: death. But it can go both ways. It can never go either way.
Death is as mysterious as peaches.
Hello Death, you sly peach!
Was hast du jetzt gemacht?
I might be yet tired.
Why do my words always hump the left margin?
They're clinging to the left margin with their scraggly finger nails crying out OH GOD DON'T DROP ME.
It's 9:22 and the bells rang 5 times.
That makes less sense. But in making less sense, the bells make sense. Whenever they establish a pattern, I get scared that my queries have been in vain, and I've just been observing a completely normal pattern of nature that some other scientists figured out long ago and I was simply too lazy to read the report.
"Ding-Dong, Bing Bong: An Exploration Into the Bells of Ypsilanti which Ring on the :22's"
Yes. That will be my report. I will be famous. Makin' so much moonnneeeeyyyy.
Dolla dolla bill ya'll.
Pat, fat, sat, rat, mat, gnat, hat, bat, cat, eat.

I think I'll go back to bed for a wee sleepsies. My anxieties weren't as bad as I thought they were going to be. Except for the one where I thought I'd lost my youth. Oooeeee...that was bad.

To Tampa and Back (or Lines Written a Few Minutes Before and After Flying a Few Miles Above the Earth)

As I set about to recontextualize my travel experience and drink coffee at the airport as I think "hey, I can drink beer at the airport" if I'd like
and I'd like except its 6:45 in the morning
I watched a man grope the fountain and felt a poem-like diarrhea coming out of me.

Recontextualizing the Airport in the Wake of My New-found Adulthood

1. Airport travel is no longer besmirched with carrying bags that belong to my mother.
2. Travel is no longer confusing. Either I'm less panicky, or we always had complicated flights, or my dad was teeming with questions.
3. Travel is lonelier-like.
4. I can stop and look at the damn fountain as long as I like!
5. TSA guy who I gave my receipt to instead of my boarding pass, who scoffed at me - what a hottie.
6. The Detroit airport doesn't have smoking rooms. But if it did I could smoke. Except I quit smoking.
7. Only go to the bathroom when I need to go - which isn't nearly as often as the female conglomerate and male stronghold of my family.
8. No loud almond-crunching while we wait for our flight. The airport doesn't play loud enough music to mask that sound.
9. The Atlanta airport had smoking rooms. They were sick!
10. The boy standing in line to the desk is adorable. He is also five. He can't see over the counter as daddy talks to the lady behind the huge silver wall. What do they talk about? Boring stuff.
11. The lady across from me is drinking Big Joe's coffee. I'm drinking Starbucks. I'd rather drink anything else besides Starbucks. Maybe she'll switch with me.
12. I just ate delicious buttered bread. There's more in my bag - I'll eat it soon.
13. If THEY ever made a movie of my life, I would want them to have a 3 minute static shot of me eating bread because that is so much more of life than the time I saved a tribe of babies from imminent peril in the Ozarks. In that moment, one would know just how much I like bread, how I hate crumbs on me, and how I have a bent against airport food because my parents never ate it.
14. Start eating airport food.
15. Big Joe's lady looks like a depressed sleepy bird. Poor lady.
16. Sad Bird left me. Now I feel a little sad. Fly away little birdie; find better poaching ground.
17. Big News! I just got paged! Over the intercom! No, and this time it's not terrorism. I got moved to a window seat so that a baby can sit by their parent. No kidnapping for me. Or parent napping, for that matter, under the watchful eye of the baby. I might be able to do some windownapping!
18. Sad Bird came back to find her seat filled by a besuited man with big, jocular eyes and too little hair for his age. He stares bravely forward. Sad Bird drifted to a new seat, and sunk into despondency.
19. Now the lady behind the huge silver wall is reassigning the shit out of this plane! How big is this baby?
20. If the plane was hijacked by a tribe of Ozarkian militant babies, do you think people would be less likely to defend themselves? Hell I wouldn't want to beat up a baby.
21. I'm not sure this is a poem anymore.
22. The airport is a roaring poem.
23. Standing on the moving walkway is really stupid.
24. That lady had red hair! I didn't care for her boots. The man with her probably cares for her boobs. They have to be cared for like waxing a car.
25. A bigger boy just tackled his smaller cousin, and they both fell. A lady screamed Cousins!
26. I think we're boarding now onto our drastically shifted plane. Here's to infant militantism.
27. I never want to forget what a big deal this is. I'm staring at the top of clouds, watching the sunlight dance through their stringy membranes. Dare I turn a cold shoulder?
28. Recontextualization may be complete: I'm drinking at the airport. The magical threshold has been crossed and it tastes like Sam Adams.
29. On my way home now. I was reading Frank, but decided writing could be better. Oddly enough I'm the only one reading poetry at the Jose Cuervo bar in Tampa. Does that make me awesome or an asshole?
30. It's funny to stereotype people at an airport.
"Damn Tampanian hicks."
"But I'm from FRAHNCE."
31. Bartender keeps staring at my Frank book. Closeted poesyphile?
32. When I walked in here, she said:
"Hello there, welcome to Jose Cuervos. Know what you want or do you need a minute?
What I wanted to say:
"Wow, what a creative name for a tequila bar. How'd you think of that?"
What I said:
"Ooh! I'll need a minute. I've always wanted to drink at the airport!"
I'm fuckin' adorable.
33. Have to fly in 15 minutes. Gee, so much beer to drink. Hope I don't miss it!
34. Well, I guess I'm boarding in 15 minutes. Quite different than flying.
35. Only near attractive man in this joint (enjoyed use of word joint) is wearing a nice scarf and has squinty eyes. Maybe he's tired? Lonely?
Lonely, lonely, my life is boney.
Bonely.
36. I think he's drunk.
37. Lady next to me is one of those hot 41 year old types. She's drinking Michelob Light. Bottled.
38. Yeah, I think I'm an airport asshole. Is this what I grew up to be?
39. Or maybe everyone is cynical at airports - sitting around judging all the nincompoops.
40. How odd that we would be that way. It's a perfect place to make friends! A playground of weapon-free waiters who are BORED.
41. Smile! I'm bomb-free!
42. My favorite is that the government strips us down to our stockings as we walk through the metal detectors. How cozy is that?
43. Well, need both hands now. Is this the end? This part really was just the epilogue.

Poem

I am a sort of cloudy day sadist
unmoved by the shining sun

I nod my violent approval to the frigid breeze
that renders impotent none but the cloudless sky

The quivering alleys fill their potholes with rain
for my triumphant yellow boots to disembowel
I slosh through Cross Street
and cast a perverted gaze to the gray

I ignore the sagging blue pectorals of sky!

How I beg the clouds to drape their curtainous bodies
over the sun and darken
the golden veneer that crops on the brick

Let this puddle be the sky

and my yellow rain boots be the sun

I am the screaming demon of this day
and will beat the joy out of its bleak hips

the Earth will sigh today
Gloomy Thursday shines for no one.

Hung-over from Halloween #1
I will show you fear with my hand full of pencil.
I would like you to remember this
The gloaming sneaks on the thrashing boardwalk to usurp my happenstance

and it would be really nice
if you could remember that

My hair will float upward in the breeze
see my tender flying locks as a sign of hope
a flag floating

That all boingling bongaling boinkle brings safety

and harmonious memory
to all skywalking midget farmers
float float float little hairs!
hope is left in your capable follicles

As you wrap me in your romance
I'll ask "hey - rowomance?"

Hung-over from Halloween #2

I am filled to the brim with impermanence
and by I I mean I I mean I mean I mean I mean I
like your legs but not those tiny shorts on them
I either like the performance or the thing itself
not some awkward peep show of all your extracurricular yet equally exciting parts
I saw a reflection of a biker up a hill
I saw that
I saw that reflection
I saw a reflection of that
He biked that hill good.

Hung-over from Halloween #3
I will show you fear with my hands full
of many miscellaneous objects
that they never said were frightening(theytheythey)
but I will show you fear in them
with my hands full
of them

Now now now now wait a minute there mister
Their gaze the gaze they gaze and they just watch
me trot myself past them in my little shorts

they're just so tiny

I'm not sure they care much for them
Perhaps I'll go change into something bigger

October is the cruelest month.

Ugly Mug Breakfast Poem - Tuesday Morning

The world was all a bluster and

the wind was painted with smiles
Frankie called it an Eeyore morning

But we were happy!
A happy Eeyore morning!

And I was happy amidst

the swirling yellow pillars

the umbrellas lifting their skirts
to the wet aesthetic Ypsi was wearing

Eeyore held us under his dark donkey paw
We liked it and grinned on the way to class
'til the wind whisked our smiles away

Note: On a far more important note...
After a year of working at The Common Cup, I've finally seen the Men's Bathroom. This whole time there has been a green pillar, and I had no idea! We don't get a green pillar!

Aubree's Dinner Poem - Wednesday Night

If this is your bag, then this is your wallet.

If this is your table, then this is your waitress.

If this is your coat rack, then this is your fleece.
If this is your picture, then this is your face.
If this is your daughter, then this is your family.
If this is your hair, then this is your hijab.
If this is your urine, then this is your problem.
If this is your cubicle, then this is your work.
If this is your house, then this is your party.
If this is your sock, then this is your smell.
If this is your empty beer glass, then this is your drunken walk home.
If this is your spider, then this is your pet.
If this is your hand, then these are my cold fingers.
If this is your butt, then these are your pants.
If this is your friend's, then this is all just a big mistake.
If this is your oyster, then this is your world.
If this is your education, then this is your career.
If this is your garbled speech, then this really doesn't make a lot of sense.
If this is your dictionary, then this is your language.
If this is your long, pensive glance, then here is my coy, heartless dismissal.
If this is your jaw dropping, then these are his secrets.
If this is your floor, then this is my ceiling.
If this is your roadkill, then this is your car.
If this is your death, then this is it.

Worms and Other Such Fantastical Creatures

Life never keeps you just sitting there - in a figurative way. Literally, well, yes, sometimes. But at least my experience with this "Life" guy is that he generally pushes you out of your Lazy Boy and onto the carpet, off the carpet and onto the rug, off the rug and onto the ottoman, and from there the sky is the limit.

Sometimes, you're checking your bank account, to see how much you overdrew your account this pay period (because you're a huge moron, and that orange shirt was just so damn cute), and your friend that mysteriously left the area a few months ago to become a rock star, calls you from Chicago to tell you that he is becoming a rock star. You then sit, wondering why TCF Bank's Online Banking system makes no sense whatsoever, and how Mr. Life managed to sneak this one up on you. I mean, this time you were paying attention.

We're growing up guys, and our lives are becoming excited. In the next year, I'm going to be graduating, trying to open a tea shop, and having to figure what exactly it means to be a "real adult" (as opposed to a mythical one) and how much I need to "give up in order to make that happen." Friends are going to be moving away and coming back. Relationships are going to start and end. People are growing and changing, for better for worse, and the world is this big undulating wave pool where everyone is floating around trying not to sink in their cute little orange elbow floaties that they still wear because they're too scared to take them off ever since they almost drowned when they were nine years old because they "Abandoned Kayak!" when their sister told them to because she forgot how to steer back to shore and they figured they were heading to China.
But really, undulating wave pool was what I was going for there. Nothing ever stays the same.
Sometimes, it's very exciting. Your friend calls you to tell you that his life has become a fairy tale, but he's still your friend, and his life is still real, though all evidence is pointing toward otherwise. He's finally getting to live the life he's always wanted to, and everything he's been working for is seemingly falling in his deserving lap.
Who ever expected that to happen to anyone? Are my dreams going to come true? What about yours? What are they?

Well, I'm over the top excited, baffled, and well, excited. I probably overdrew my bank account, but we'll figure that out later.
I'm 21 now, by the by. Buy me beer.