He drove to work in the evening. He worked third shift; it was shit. He lived for the time outside his work. Spending time in a big red building overnight surrounded by TVs, beds, cereal boxes, graphic tees, ice cream, adult diapers, board games, celebrity designed dresses, self checkout lanes, and fellow people of the red shirt and khakis can really fuck you up. The people were nice, except for that douche who never does any work, but he was sure no one would choose to stock these objects while most people on this side of the planet sleep. The time he spent in the car was a form of meditation. He had to purposefully prepare himself for that night’s set of unexpected crap, fussing with handheld computers that know little about the store but run your life, and trying to survive until the sun came out and his real life would begin anew. Other drivers were not often helpful in these moments of gas pedal, brake pedal, gas pedal, brake. People ran red lights, because they were too nice to honk at those who believe green lights give no feeling of necessity to accelerate forward. He once was rear ended by a woman who thought he would continue through an intersection rather than stop. Her car took the brunt. It occurs to him that driving on public roads is a large game of trust with fellow human beings. You must believe that everyone will stay in their own lanes, go on the green, and stop on the red. That turn signals will be honored, and the death we all readily encourage on a daily basis will be put off another day. All because there is a sentient animal at the wheel of every carbon burning contraption in your midst. To maintain his calm, he would turn on the radio. Today was no exception. His usual choice was the local public station with the announcers who were always too calm while reading about death, destruction, and the moral turpitude of political leaders around the world. They soothe the body while beating the mind with awfulness. Recently, the President announced that drones accidentally killed hostages in a strike earlier this year. He was so outraged that he almost broke the driver compact of civility. He had to stop quickly, because he was thinking about the world soon having drones of their own. What is to stop world leaders we don’t trust bombing our country because someone might be a terrorist. Collateral damage could be my wife or my son. Is there a terrorist in my neighborhood? Anyway, when he turns on the radio today, they are reviewing a movie he will never see, or a band he wouldn’t like, or discussing which political party will guarantee large corporations their monetary stranglehold on the world. So he changes the channel to his second choice: an oldies station. When he was a kid, oldies meant music from his parents’ childhood and older. But now oldies includes music from his own early years. That he can hear his favorite suicidal grunge rocker on this station never ceases to confuse him. Rather than smelling like his teen spirit, or thinking about a box that is heart shaped, he hears a song he knows for sure, but cannot remember the title or the artist. Is it sixties? I think so. This is music his parents would know. Or would they? This song isn’t that famous. It’s one that doesn’t use the title in the lyrics. He has tried learning the bass part. His bass chops suck, but he can at least keep time. His arrival at the large archery sign prompts him to turn off his radio, and pull into the parking lot. The song will disappear from his mind for days, and someday next week he will remember this moment, and think What was that song again?

After leaving her house that morning, she decided to never return. She was done; it was over. He never treated her all that well. That prick. Why did he always have to smell so bad? His bathing schedule was so irregular that he sometimes looked as though he was growing moss in his armpits. Algae of the inside of the knee. He grew moisture enamored organisms everywhere his skin regularly met other skin. No wonder tongue kissing him tasted so bad. Like licking a gym sock after being doused in barbecue sauce and sweet relish. Unpleasant, really. He treated her like shit. Acted as though he owned her. What a douche nozzle. How do you know when to leave a man, really a boy, after all that time? Why was I willing to put up with his abuse for so long? What kept me willing to live in that dump? We didn’t have a marriage license. He never asked me to marry him. Would I have even said yes? That’s the problem; I would have. We had been together so long, that it was becoming the assumed result of our coupling by all our friends. Both of them, that is. We hung out regularly with this married couple a couple of years younger than us. We knew them from work. That is, my fuck of a boyfriend and I worked with the wife. She is awesome. Doesn’t scream or yell. Is a cool customer. And always knows the perfect cutting remark for the customer who just left the store. She always makes me laugh at a time when I need it. The husband’s a good guy. Not particularly interesting, but he seems to make her happy. He’s one of those guys who is a person you never think about, but apparently in private is a wonderful person who is loving, funny, and kind. Way better than this fuck I’m leaving. He is unbearable all the time. He takes his unburdened honesty as a mark of moral achievement. He is willing to say mean things at any moment, if it occurs to him during conversation. He knows when to not say things, but chooses not to. Right, that kind of guy. Anyway, my life is way more interesting than this asshole that stole productive years of my existence; so I won’t mention him again. She hated how her life had turned out. She had spent nearly half a decade in this town next to the middle of nowhere. You could see where the nowhere started in the morning as the sun rose. If you drove in your car to the edge of town, turned the car off, got out, and sat on the hood, you could watch the sun hit the desert in a peculiar way that demarked a particular bump in your vision that said, here it is. The beginning of the end of where. Across that shining moment was where where ended. But if you stayed in this town, like Moses on the mountain looking at the promised land near death, you would never know the bounds of life, never see the possibilities, never have fucked more than one human being in your sorry life. You wouldn’t know what it was like to experience snow in winter. So, she left. Wanting to experience the snow she had seen in movies where children looked happy, dumb men failed to get the hot girl in Aspen, and where Santa struggled to get presents to believers around the world without the help of some grumpy nonbeliever turned saint. Her life began again that day. The day she went north into the middle of nowhere.

He stood up. He was ready to leave. He could only take so much of this crap. Spending this much time on this antisocial social website hurt his mind. Then why couldn’t he go more than one hour without returning to this stream of shit? It is so important to know exactly what his professional acquaintance said about random news story that riles everyone in their mutual grouping. This time it involves a decision in a state neither of them live in that will forever change particular human beings’ lives neither of them know. But still it matters to him. A piece of legislation extending religious freedom and discrimination simultaneously. Another police officer not being charged after murdering an unarmed black man. Some improbable choosing to waste their time and rich people’s laundered money to run for president. Another person to not live up to expectations to oversee the badly needed change. But he has managed to pull himself away for at least the next hour. He moved to the kitchen to make himself lunch. A morning spent on the internet always seems like a magnificent waste of time. You can and often do learn many things as you stare at one of your many screens. But this morning was in the company of videos. Atheist cartoons, a public intellectual decrying US foreign policy, an iconic eighties music video where the lead singer ascends two and a half octaves during the chorus and a woman is pulled from a diner into a black and white comic. He decided to make himself a salad. Decided is a strange word, because everyday includes a lunch salad. It is bigger than your head, but you still will be ready to eat again before dinner time. He contemplates his morning of screens while he cuts up carrots, celery, tomatoes, lettuce, and bell peppers of multiple colors: red, yellow, and green. Stop light peppers, as they call them. They each taste different. All from the same plant, but change their colors and taste based on how long they ripen. He usually distracts himself with the internet while he does this task, but today needs to be sound and video free. All he hears is the knife splitting the orange carrots into small slices that will make loud crunching noises as he chews. He places one in his mouth. It always surprises him how sweet carrots are. You have to be away from processed sugar for a while to notice this fact. After a few minutes in silence, that is, with chopping sounds that carry no linguistic meaning, he decides he actually does need to include the internet in this task. He marches a room over to select something that will keep him from thinking about how much he hates the internet for being unavoidable, ubiquitous, necessary, and superfluous. He has recently spent the previous few days binge watching the political drama made by that movie streaming subscription service hated by the company that owns the pipes that bring him his loved/hated internet. Net neutrality. What a strange thing to name the concept that makes his life without boundary between career and leisure possible. Now hated cable company cannot slow down the internet to hurt the subscription service competitor. One should note that although this is a great victory for freedom of access, it does nothing to solve the problem of when the major internet companies (Goober, Nile, Macrohard, Buttnovel, Orange) decide to throw their political muscle behind things that will help their bottom lines but hurt internet users. Some say they do this already. The imaginary President slash murderer does not make him feel any better about this. Although he knows he will watch the most recent season at least two more times. He chooses a video recommended by a friend. This friend regularly gives him interesting hip-hop music videos to watch with helpful phrases like: amazing! and watch now! and holy shit! This one comes without a moniker, and he hopes it will be something by that young rapper who calls himself the creator. He was really taken with that one where he blurred the intellectual conversation before bouncing on a gigantic ass. Instead, he has been pranked. This friend also has a tendency to dredge up old internet memes for his own enjoyment. So, when he opens the video, he is met by a pompadour, a voice not usually heard from a white man, and the music is unmistakable. The synthesizers place this music in the same time period as the one previously mentioned. Actually, I am a stranger to love.

She tripped on the chair. She was walking through the room and mistakenly placed her right foot too close to the back right leg of the chair on her right. It was an open question whether or not her beer and glass would survive her unplanned horizontal meeting with the hardwood floor. When she woke up that morning, she had no idea that her day would take a dive in this moment. Her future would involve ice packs, a trip to the hospital, medication, self medication, and yelling the word fuck over and over again to deaden the pain. Weeks earlier, she had read about a medical study that noted that cursing upon injury was correlated with participants giving a lower number for their level of pain. They felt better because of yelling shit after they hit their thumb with a hammer, kicked a door, cut themselves on a knife, or hit their head on a door frame. She will milk this new knowledge for all its worth in a moment. Her date lost count of the flying fucks after twenty-five. It is an odd thing for someone to count curse words while another is hurt. This must be an early date in their relationship. Maybe they will get closer after the hospital visit to come. Her head will hit the floor so hard she will lose consciousness for a noticeable slice of time. And then cuss as she awakens. People bond in stressful situations. Bystanders on the other hand think she is a vulgar woman of no taste. For her, these disapproving glances will make her want to swear more. And she does. But not yet. We have not arrived at the point of contact. She is still in the air and will be for some time. That is, if time is still passing as we watch her lose her balance, as she hangs in the air unable to control all of the directions her body is traveling in. Let’s leave her here and go back in time. Press rewind on your mental VCR, like the actual one you might have had decades ago, and let’s return to an earlier point on the magnetic tape where she is meeting her date. Should I make this other person a man? That would be the assumption. I have tried to avoid pronouns, and actually typed he a few times and removed them. Would anything be gained by having a man appear in this story? No, not really. Alright, so she hears a knock at the door. She yells it’s open and another woman enters the apartment. They greet each other with a hug, and I’ve just written myself into a problem. I now have two women without names and one pronoun to use between them. Anyway, she hugs her female date. They both look awkward but hopeful that their evening together will turn out well. The answer to their hopes is yes slash no. They will become closer through this trip to see a movie about a conscious robot that tricks a man into freeing her and leaves him to die and then dinner at a bar the second woman enjoys just a few blocks from the theater. But as they walk from getting their preferred alcoholic beverages from the bartender to their table now free, the original woman, while discussing how disappointed she was that this new take on robotic amorality didn’t live up to a previous movie of similar construct that involves hunting down robots who believe they are human, she loses track of how the chairs are shaped in the surrounding tables as they walk. She places her foot underneath one supporting another customer, and when she raises her foot automatically in her usual gate, her leg hits the chair and she begins downward towards the floor. The glass survives. She gets knocked out. The beer is half gone. She wakes to pain and screams fuck fuck fuck etcetera. The other woman is scared, but after a few fucks begins counting. She finds this behavior humorous, and endearing in a strange way. She calls nine one one, and knows that their real life together begins now.

He tried reading poems. They never made sense to him. He couldn’t slow his abnormally slow reading speed down enough to pick up the scent of their metaphors, their similes, and their imagery. This doesn’t mean he didn’t want to get them. He spent many hours reading poems. He subscribed to magazines, purchased collections, even memorized them. But he always felt like the pace of his mind was like a car speedometer. There is no measurement between zero and fifteen miles per hour. He guesses the poems he tries need him to go seven. But whenever he taps the accelerator, he is already passed fifteen. He needs to learn how to glide. To develop the ability to pause his mind midstream to notice the well placed word, the interior rhyme, the time it takes to find the three-way pun buried deep under the surface of the enjambment of thoughts on the page. He continues to fail. Each stanza he approaches holds its meaning away from his understanding. It is a masterful game of keep-away. It is as if his mind is blank after reading. He sees the poem, notes its title, tries to place the poet’s name, and then the poem is over. It’s gone. If we went to the replay booth to find out if he stepped outside the line, we will see him reading each word. The visual of his eye movements like the machinery of a typewriter, (do you remember what that is?) move sideways slowly and then snap back to slowly move on the horizontal again. The referee signals an amnesia penalty, which requires a replay of first down and a loss of fifteen yards. Years ago he memorized one of the major poems of the canon. This one sends the old man from Yale into raptures discussing the four-fold pantheon of Night, Death, the Mother and the Sea. It took twenty minutes to recite without stopping. He mourned the loss of this country’s great President in this confused meditation incantation. The poem isn’t confused. He is. There is music in the words. The way the unmetered lines pile up in celebratory listicles. Commas enumerate the visual spectacle of a coffin passing through lanes and streets, and a lilac sprig placed upon it. The poet and the man remembered by him live for those minutes in his mind as he speaks. Three quarters of the way through the poem, a song appears in italics. The bird and the poet sing to Death in beatitude. The beauty of this music after a slow build of visuals that joins the internal and the external brings tears to his eyes. He has rarely met language that moves him this much. This is why he keeps trying. His continued poetic failures gave him the way into a music that was beyond his comprehension. A man speaks over music. It’s not really speech. Is he singing? It’s not really that either. It sounds like speech, but the pitches are too accurate. The cadence, rhythm, and intonation are too precise for it to just be talking, but I don’t think I could write down the notes he sings. But he calls it singing, so I will too. A man sings over music. There is astounding improvisatory piano joining his song. It is at once over the top, stunningly beautiful, and unbelievably banal, as asshole art critics use that word to describe art that doesn’t meet their upperclass twit of the year award requirements. What this really means, is that the chord progressions and the musical phrases make sense to normal human beings and make an apt space for the man’s song to live in. This song is meant for television. It has episodes like a sitcom. They fit an old version of the televised half hour. That is, if some douchebag executive ever had the intelligence to beam this early eighties brilliance into American homes. Sadly, the networks never did. You have to find this music on your own, from your weird friend, find it described in a book by a scholar of the American experimental avant-garde, who is also a practitioner of having your cake and eating it too. And when you do, you couldn’t understand how you lived without it. He didn’t feel that way at first. It was odd. It felt as though it had a purposeful screen to keep out the bugs of his mind. It just passed in front of him without leaving anything more than a huh. But that twenty minute poem made him reconsider this opera for television. And he attacked it via memorization. It took him years to learn it. Many early mornings at five AM before work with pencils to count the repetitions to drive the words into his brain. The words reformatted the hard drive in his head. He learned to take the lack of understanding as it came. He still doesn’t know what some of it means, but he does know that it moves him deeply. Somehow, the description of counting breaths makes him want to do tai chi as he says the words. The purposeful placement of curse words shows him the way forward. The verbal tics that make the song more human, more approachable. He feels as though he owns this music, although he knows it is not his creation. This music has changed his life. It helped him out of a dark time by becoming the scaffold upon which he built his new existence. He knows about the bank heist that is only the setup for the narratives that constantly change narrators. That insert personal biography inside a plot outside of his own experience. How to sing words fast enough that they come out like speech. His experience with learning other’s extended verbal art gave him the impetus to make his own. Rather than poetry in books, or television operas, he chose the medium of today. He tells his own stories through videos he posts on a website owned by the largest search engine on the planet. After a decade of trying to find his voice as a creator, he finally found a way to connect his serious nature and his absurdist sense of humor with his musical imagination. If only he knew how to make better animations.