That Soldiers Do Terrible Things During Wartime

Alcohol Is The River We Sit On The Banks Of, Contemplating. Sometimes We Watch Ourselves Float Past, Sometimes We Watch Ourselves Sink.

In My Experience, Whatever Happens Clings To Us Like Barnacles On The Hull Of A Ship, Slowing Us Slightly, Both Uglifying And Giving Us Texture. You Can Scrape All You Want, You Can, If You Have Money, Hire Someone Else To Scrape, But The Barnacles Will Come Back Or At Least Leave A Blemish On The Steel.

By The Time I Make My Way To The Border Of Mauritania, To The Edge Of The Sahara, I See No End To Being Lost. You Can Spend Your Entire Life Simply Falling In That Direction. It Isn't A Station You Reach But Just The General State Of Going Down. Once You Make It Back, If You Make It Back, You Will Stand Before Your Long-lost Friends But In Some Essential Way They Will No Longer Know You.

I Became An Electrician After High School. But I Always Had This Thing In Me To Write. But It Was Always A Little Shameful. To Say You Were A Poet Was Saying You Were Kind Of Crazy, And I Carried That Around For A Long Time. I Still Kind Of Carry That. And I Think It Might Be True, Actually.

Sometimes I'd See My Father, Walking Past My Building On His Way To Another Nowhere. I Could Have Given Him A Key, Offered A Piece Of My Floor. A Futon. A Bed. But I Never Did. If I Let Him Inside I Would Become Him, The Line Between Us Would Blur, My Own Slow-motion Car Wreck Would Speed Up. The Slogan On The Side Of A Moving Company Truck Read Together We Are Going Places--modified By A Vandal Or A Disgruntled Employee To Read Together We Are Going Down. If I Went To The Drowning Man The Drowning Man Would Pull Me Under. I Couldn't Be His Life Raft.