- Stop pretending to be good at social politics.
- Stop pretending to know what that word means.
- Dig a little deeper into my warm pockets for the bell-ringers.
- Be less hostile toward the ideas of my friend sitting to my right.
- Grab her by the arms and ask her how she is today, this week.
- Apologize.
- Refuse service to anyone, as I have the right.
- Watch the weather every morning and predict the future.
- Buy food not acidic teenage benzedrine.
- Attend class but probably not pay any sort of attention to the textbook stuff, replicated.
- Go to arts classes and pay every sort of attention.
- Quit being hurt.
- Don't let late night hours dwindle to action-strategy venues of super-fun.
- Remember the ducks.
- Turn that idling spider into eight-legged mulch.
- Apologize.
- Think of the road, think of that inexhaustible road.
- Listen more to the feel-good songs of, what, last week?
- Tell it like it is.
- Apologize.
- Find my way out of this groggy, snarky desert of ineptitude.
- Swim through an endless river of paperwork.
- Ask my sister how old she is when I already know the answer.
- Scale the grey facade of the Eco-Lab, to change it up a bit.
- Tear down the black cloud of applications covering the sun.
- Clean my room, all the Cokes, Vanilla, Cherry, Regular; Skittles, Mint Milanos, Saltines; Popcorn and Oatmeal bowls; Coffee mugs a bit untouched; insulted sheets and an overflowing basket of dirty laundry.
- Change my underwear, something a bit more festive.
- Find only the forgiving friends.
- Have only one modest plate at Thanksgiving.
- Apologize.
- Forget Christmas.
- Pray for Easter.
- Maybe find God, if I could get more sleep.
- Kiss someone, unperfect and perfectly nice.
- Apologize.
- Kill A Vicious Square.
- Apologize.
- Come up with something new before I lose my head.
- Keep it a secret, or keep something a secret, keep a secret.
- Un-write everything I wrote that went unnoticed by you.
- Regret, tremendous.
- Cut right to the very quick of my soul, with you there, ruining everything that was pretty much gone to begin with.
- Apologize.
- Pretend I know what every word means because that's all I have, y'know.
- Apologize for being everything.
- Apologize for being arrogant.
- Apologize for all this affection.
- Get a car and several dozen CDs, and go out and find everyone who has nothing to do with this list, pile them in wonderful and insane, collect the dimes for gas, and hit that fervent road, drive out of this grey city, into the browning fields, past the shivering cows and corn, between the drifty gateways of Denver, blast through the breathing desert, hit the bridges of 'Frisco, haunt the northern highway-mountains of California, pick up the Old Man and save him from himself, and skim that silver coast, hear the ocean wail and taste smoke at every cliffside road-stop, until we've hit the end, the end of it all, in that shining Astoria, find the beatest hotel and burrow in those rickety beds, and stay there until I feel like writing again, ever again.
Kaleb,
ReplyDeleteYou are an old soul with a gift to give the world. You have so much love to give too .... I enjoy reading your writings..... i see a book of some sort or maybe forty in your future...... why don't you write a book?????
Jen
I just got your chapbooks in the mail! What a lovely gift, Kaleb. Thank you for remembering an old teacher who wishes you well well well in your new adventures. I'm very proud of you. :)
ReplyDeleteDid I ever tell you that, when we lived in Boston, my ex-husband worked at the Bull & Finch? At the time, it was almost exclusively staffed by Emerson students . . . fond memories.
TF