Category Archives: Fragments
Del Valle
No one can quite grasp the specifics of my situation. This scares me. Each person I share my story with serves as proxy for a potential juror, eventually to be culled from my bank of peers, whoever they are. And as their eyes inevitably glaze over when I try to explain the nuances–critical to my [...]
Also posted in: Creative, History Tagged as: austin bergstrom international, del valle texas, early evening, east border, international trips, juror, late afternoon, melancholy, nuances, painful reminder Leave a comment
Yeah, I love you so much. I don’t need to exist.
My new favorite band. And yes that is Jack White on the drums.
This album is so good, that I want you to listen to these, but don’t steal them. Buy this album. Now.
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The-best-I’m-writing-this-love-letter-so-it-looks-like-I actually-care-about-this-meeting-enough-to-take-notes love letter ever
My love (light of my life, fire of my loins, my sin, my soul),
This meeting is boring. And my thoughts, as they often do, return to you. What a two weeks, two months, two lives this has been. Who knows why anything happens? I’m so glad you come from a skeptical, rational place, because this [...]
Also posted in: History Tagged as: aphorisms, dummies, light of my life, loins, love letter, platitude, rational place, subtext, unctuous, verbal tics Leave a comment
Sin (D Remix)
With apologies to Trent Reznor who “is Nine Inch Nails.” I found Sin incarcerated in Harris County and a phone number ending in 662. Prescriptions forged on Research, then like Peter, three times denied. Remember the lies? I do. The biases of your “memory,” the improvised duplicity, and the reckless, half-assed perjury. It’s all [...]
Posted in: Fragments Tagged as: apologies, biases, duplicity, effigy, harris county, incense, nine inch nails, perjury, purity, trent reznor Leave a comment
Monica’s gift to Hillary, and the worst part about everything
My first instinct was to prolong my ignorance. I didn’t want to know. Claims to the contrary are invented or imagined. Ignorance was lonely, but bearable, and lacked the inevitable apathy and casual cruelty that seemed to be the fate of knowing. The paradox, of course, is that the sheer audacity, once understood, brought calm [...]
Also posted in: Monologues Tagged as: consolation, deliberation, exit strategy, hillary clinton, infidelity, monica lewinsky, myths, peace, perjury, proclivities, public proclamations, rebuttal, sense of loss, sheer audacity, worst case scenario Leave a comment
Condescending asshole disorder
Intermittent explosive disorder is a behavioral pathology that manifests as anger, sometimes rage, disproportionate to the situation at hand, immediately followed by deep remorse. For something that sounds like an awesome excuse for every impulsive stupidity ever committed, I can’t quite get behind a disorder that sounds so much like what it is.
Also posted in: Monologues Tagged as: anger, asshole, diagnosis, excuse, intermittent explosive disorder, manifests, mental health, mental illness, pathology, rage, remorse, sounds, stupidity Leave a comment
Eulogy
Here, then, lay our reflections
Silent hymns to our complicity
The capricious change of heart and
The biases of memory
The rapture of despair and
The inevitable agony
Of off-white lies and furtive cries
And doe-eyed volatility
The promise of redemption
And shame at our complacency
Duplicitous omissions
That mock our claims of honesty
I burn for a reprise
Of our consumptive, common fallacy
The brief joy of our [...]
Also posted in: Creative, History Tagged as: agony, biases, blank, breakups, change of heart, complacency, complicity, duplicity, fallacy, hymns, rapture, reflection, volatility, white lies Leave a comment
The frailest of gestures
I open the door and I can smell her before I see her, that unique amalgam of Camels, Maybelline, and chardonnay.
Also posted in: Creative, History, Monologues Tagged as: amalgam, camels, chardonnay, email, gestures, love, maybelline, short hairs, urgency Leave a comment
Five feet, five inches
I had only ever heard her tell one lie before but it was a lie that she often repeated. I should clarify. There were probably other lies. But, this is the only one for which I had confirmation. Her lies were never actual commissions. There were no claims of I was with so-and-so at so-and-so’s [...]
Also posted in: Creative, History, Monologues Tagged as: communication choices, condescension, entanglements, five feet, mock debate, poor communication, prose, quarter inches, seeds of doubt, self righteousness, slow progression Leave a comment
The downward spiral
I get to the restaurant five minutes late to find her waiting halfway between the entrance and the back. I feel good and it’s good to see her.
“You look like you haven’t slept in a few days,” she says. “Are you drinking?”
“It’s good to see you too.”
“I worry about you.” The moment of tenderness is [...]
Also posted in: Creative, History Tagged as: downward spiral, few days, fingers, five minutes, gesture, grabs, prose, restaurant five, short hairs Leave a comment
à la mode
The mathematics of ice cream are never exact,
And for most of us, not easily grasped.
Like ∏, which undefined, still describes a circle,
Each scoop is perfect and unknowable.
Of course, we have machines that tell us temperature.
But none exist that calculate the velocity of flavor,
The atomic weight of preference, or the melting point of slurp.
None come even [...]
Also posted in: Creative Tagged as: atomic weight, brr, ceiling paintings, close to understanding, fall from grace, fugue, melting point, poetry, velocity, waffle, yum Leave a comment
Hidden agenda
This poem is not concerned with language,
but rather with a gesture.
Truth be told it has an agenda.
See it speaking sweetly to you?
This poem misses you when you walk away.
See how it waits for you to finish your sentences,
and acts nonchalant as you answer the phone?
It hopes you’re talking to a girl.
This poem is sad because [...]
Also posted in: Creative Tagged as: acts, chocolate milk, donuts, gesture, hidden agenda, love, poem, poetry, sentences, sunday morning, sweetness, whispers Leave a comment
The bus to county
I remember three things: 1) The song playing on the bus (yes, they played the radio) was “Gangstas Make the World Go ‘Round” and all the gangstas—real and wannabe—rapped along; 2) There was a guy in the cage at the front of the bus de-toxing from something and every time he vomited on himself the [...]
Also posted in: Creative, History Tagged as: black man, California, gentleman, homosexual, laughter, left hand, population, prisoners, prose, special needs, violence, worry Leave a comment
The Weekend
She sits alone at the plastic bench
She uses for a table
Holds a hot mug to her lips
Presses the hard bones in her elbows
To the roughly textured plastic
Of the off-white table top
This morning is softer and
She enjoys the solitude
And she, in fact,
Isn’t lonely, though
Maybe sometimes longs for
Another type of mourning
I like it best to think of [...]
Also posted in: History Tagged as: bones, elbows, email, half a mile, lips, love, optimism, peach, plastic bench, poetry, purses, solitude, steam Leave a comment
You are what you love (and not what loves you back)
She’d been gone for ten minutes before I decided to leave.
When I come to I’m face down in the dirt and moss, and I can see ants crawling over my right hand, which is still holding my phone. I have three messages.
It’s hot. Sweat is pooling in all the cracks of my body. The arch [...]
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Every minute, every hour, is another chance to change. Life is beautiful and terrible and strange.