I went to the art museum today
to become worldly and cultured
not by appreciating the art
but by surrounding myself with the intellectual reflections on the art
of my fellow museum-goers

I went to the art museum today
and here is what I heard:
—"Why aren't we doing anything?
—"I graduated college in '93, dawg."
—"I eat sushi all the time!"
—"She looks like you, ha ha ha"
—"Everybody thought I was a girl, 'cause I had crazy long hair."
—"I love Japanese culture; too bad we bombed them with a nuclear bomb."

I don't think I'll go to the art museum anymore
to become worldly and cultured.

Thwack
Hockey stick against street hockey ball
echoed almost eerily across the flat,
empty
parking lot

He waddled over to retrieve his ball
eyeing me
He would wait until I passed

I passed, and then
Thwack
in the distance behind me
only his ears were there
to hear it echo across the flat,
empty
parking lot.

It is like a machine
It rumbles, roars, and sputters
It grunts, growls, and thunders
It beats you over the head
          Invades your lungs
          Pummels your kidneys
And makes you like it,
This machine

They are an open invitation
They beg to be caressed
By the tip of my pen

What truth will this line hold?
What twist might this one deliver?

The line above this one asks to be left blank.
"I represent a change in thought," it says.
The one below cries,
"I WOULD LIKE TO STAND OUT!"
And I obey.

See, I am not a writer,
But a transcriber.
These blank pages dictate to me
And I happily indulge them.

She never let me inside her head, but I wish she had, because she seemed so interesting, like when she cried over Requiem for a Dream, and when she lectured me for ten minutes for making fun of that homeless guy on State Street, and when she would suddenly get quiet and then get paranoid that I'd noticed and try to act normal and fail miserably, and when she chuckled bitterly at the Pink Floyd line "I don't need no drugs to calm me," and when she'd grab my hand for no apparent reason and we'd walk around looking like a couple even though we were just friends--always just friends--and when she looked sympathetic rather than congratulatory when I got that job last month, and when--especially when--she dressed in her best clothes and took her own life last night.