half a thought in half a moment

today i sat across from someone, over cafeteria trays and paper placemats, talked about oatmeal and anxiety and college majors and our favorite plants, he asked, "what are you doing here? like, why here?"
which seems to be a question i'm confronted with often
when hanging out in grants pass--

(a brief ode is in order, perhaps)
Ohhhhhh, Grants Pass,
how i love the bike lanes on your two one-way main streets,
the community-funded library you support is a testament to perserverance
and to your hatred of taxes.
Oh, let us count the NRA hats,
the $4 biscuit & gravy breakfast deals,
oh, you are exactly what you are,
this town without pretense,
rife with mysteries and interconnected like chainlink
"it's the climate" you proclaim
and i say
it's the moment
and the possibility
it's the land
and the spilt blood
and the biscuits


yeah, there are lots of reasons too,
here i am amid many webs
and also much of my time i spend alone,
not really a lot of "people like me" here
so the funhouse mirrors of every cashier's and sidewalk-walk-er's eyes
mirror back some other exciting anomaly.
i'm 18. i'm a boy. i'm a girl. i'm a hipster. i'm a farmkid. i'm in high school. i'm refined. i'm a traveller. i'm lost. i'm home.

get home,
pet cats,
reclaim self-definition,
start dancing
draw pictures
fall in love again and again

help help
my dad makes me sad
even when i try to be good to him

finna marry ma bed
nobody's gonna stop me
#liking things that are problematic

hit me with your giga-whatevs
laura dern rilo kiley jenny lee lewis juliette lewis
not so much freaky as circa-freak

listen up, baby bangs
listen up, horn-rims
listen up, radical needle point
what no one tells you
is there's too many of us
and i know that the number of atoms are
finite
and yes, i know we cannot
weigh so heavily on one side of the planet
and tip it off it's course
so
text me later, coffee shoppe

finna sleep til i'm dead
is that right?
brew in the fridge
"it's official, i'm a hater"
there's a schedule for giving up
and the straightness of your nose keeps it

what are you so afraid of?

Nothing. I don't know. My father. The town. My body,
and disease. Heights, small spaces, drowning, you,
poverty. (A little laugh.) I’m not afraid of anything.
Except loneliness, choking, stroke, anything socially-
transmitted, the dark, weakness, guilt, this, you, I
don't know, loneliness, going blind, history, this,
things like this, my father, fathers.

the flat back of your lower incisor
along with your soft flesh
what did you call it?
your armpit fat?
are my concern

i am the king beyond the feet
or just in the toes
putting my hand on the warm place a few hours a day
you are afraid
or want to be afraid
or want to be more afraid than i already make you
or angry with me for not scaring you
and not afraid at all
or just warm warm and aching
underneath my stare

the knee cobbled together by doctors
the lungs held tight by asthma and bike rides
the ass, the overextended lower back
the tummy that will never, never go hard
not like you want it to anyway

did you trust me with your neck or something else?