i don't know butchie instead

half off nothing

seriously, let's congratulate ourselves on our snack food innovation. the choices are endless and ever evolving. it's wonderful. honestly, all snack food wants is for you to love it. it could be chips, or maybe flavoured jerky or some traditional confectionary product. is pop a snack? maybe you like blueberries. it doesn't matter. we have snacks covered.

wow. what an awesome evaluation. is that just the beginning of what you learned tonight?

fuck you.

typical. that's exactly the response half the world would have typed.

yeah? half the whole world, or half the english typing world?

whatever you fucking idiot.

yeah. you say.

ok i'm getting the air.

i'll come.

fine.

...

...

downhill is downtown

regrettin' the early hour

fold your thumb

deus ex machina

in 1998, when most of my friends weren't yet separated and i had a career trajectory, my distant teenaged cousin came to toronto to visit. things were really happening then. albums were coming out, novels were being published. we had invitations to events. sometimes, we were featured. then and now, i can't remember what it was like to be 18. how heavy it was.

anyway, my distant cousin comes to visit. she's on a pass from an institution in guelph, but she glosses over this. i abdicate any adult evaluation; fronting it's cool to let them be. kids. you want so bad to be on their side; but they are insane and unafraid. anyway, we got a pulse. the next day, as she boarded the bus back to the institute, she cheerfully hoped to avoid the urine test.

just the other day, she found me again. we hadn't communicated since that weekend. but i have thought of it often. i got a letter from her. she included a couple photos. in one, she's standing next to a Triumph, in a gravel parking lot full of motorcycles. she's got goggles up on her army helmet and she's giving a look to the camera that registers right on with me. i recognized her immediately. she's my side of the family.

tell him something pretty

bella union

keeps me young

after cecil

...booze and pills and powders

brings a gun to the temple

broke neck hoople

"i am not the fine man you take me for, no no.
i come in april to sell a string of horses
and try my luck in the stream.
what i got for the stock
i lost at the wheel,
and the flake i washed up
i drank the fuck away.
i sold my boots
and owe nine dollars to a whore.
i don't know if i'll make it home at all."

all in good time

way past ornette

i don't look.

every guy looks.

i don't look.

...

i don't.