Happiness

Happiness dresses in silly sparkling robes and wears a hat. It changes to fog to slip your grip. It bleeds to the margins.

Sometimes it is liquid. You can distill it from life's rinds if you put it before everything else, including and especially yourself. You might lose everything. You probably will.

You'll have to be vulnerable, your heart left open. Be willing to suffer, bleed, watch someone else bleed, endure ridicule, have bad teeth or a terrifying smile. You will deserve it, you foolish ass. You'll give marathon effort and fail. You'll be poor, your world a ghetto.

And then in a tidal wave of glitter you're free, you're above it all, you're naked and beautiful. And belly laughing. And not concerned about what belly laughing will do to your naked body, what will come out of it. Unconcerned. Ha! Ha-ha-ha!

(ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha)

Me? I'd settle for contentment. Contentment is mild, pleasant, like liquid hand soap and warm water. You can smile when you're amused and look grave when something bad happens to someone else, or vice-versa. Just float right through life. Ahhhh.

Ah! But somewhere in me there's a crazy notion stirring, like a living Glo Worm, and it won't be easy to quash. It's in there. Happiness is out there, pure.
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Let the drinker beware

Certain bars in my neighborhood have blacked-out windows. A few of these are not actually bars, but rather just a man standing on the other side of the door who stabs you and then drags your body in back with the other bodies.

"Why do people keep coming into this bar?" he asks his friend the pigeon.

The pigeon pecks at the floor.

"I guess I wouldn't have a job otherwise," he says.
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Hey Doc

Some days inner weather obscures the creative sun. Directionless, I stumble around, sometimes to discovery, but mostly down dead ends into trash bags. Wet trash stinks like rotten cabbage.

Other days the creative sun burns so brightly that it illuminates everything. Words race. I laugh because the path is so clear, almost too clear, and why didn't I see that before? A spill is a waterfall. Nature is a wonder.

Does this require medication? I don't think so, Doc, because there's balance. The median day is a happy mix, you know, partly cloudy or partly sunny. Happimix? Yeah, I would support that as a word, but not as a drug brand name. Who do you work for anyway?

You know what, Doc? I will consider your opinion. You are a medical professional, Doc, but I am weather.
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Sun, sex

Sun worshippers at least can see and feel their God. Also, they get what they pray for, as long as that's improved mood, brownness, skin cancer, and to be forsaken in winter.

My friend, drunk during the middle of the day, despite my empty threats, insists on calling me a heliosexual, which he knows bothers me because my penis is only ninety-two million miles long (and, as you may have guessed, a fraction of a millimeter wide). I'm deathly afraid of space junk and Venus.

I love Spring. And Sun, if you want to move a million miles closer, I think you're really hot. And I'm not just saying that. It's science.
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Conversation after Church

"Do you know her name?" Ed asked me.

"What the fuck, Ed? Why do I need to know her name? Or she mine? I can see by her mouth, hear by her words that ours have been completing each other for millennia."

"I know her name." Ed smiled.

God I hate it when Ed smiles. He has a pedosmile: all lips, no teeth, predatory eyes.

"What is it?"

"Why do you need to know? Yours have been completing each other for millenniums. You know what's been completing mine for millenniums?"

"No."

"Your grandma. Your grandmas. Both your grandmas."

"What's her name, Ed?"

He smiled again. I fought the urge to curl up, my lips curling down.

"Lilia." Tongue flick.

Lilia. Nice. Even when Ed says it while flicking his tongue.
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My Friday

Today I went to work. I sat in front of a computer and put numbers into the computer, and the computer liked it. It purred from all those ones and zeroes. Oh, did it purr. I massaged its binary soul.

I walked home from work, squinting into the setting sun in my corduroy jacket and New Balance sneakers. I think people call me "corduroy jacket guy" and laugh. I think that because that's what I'd do. Would I laugh meanly? No, not mean straight up...like affectionate-mean. I think people should always mix meanness with affection, but not vice-versa.

Yeah.
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