Procrastinating.

Perfect time to defrost the freezer.

Scrub the base boards.

Prepare mayonnaise based salads in bulk.

One for every day of next week.

Stalk Craig's list.

Want everything.

Reinvent yourself.

Create a new Pandora station.

Call everyone half way related to you.

Inquire their left over quality.

Don't understand how one could not live for mayonnaise based salads.

Change status.

Pile the articles in order of relevance.

Start with the bibliography.

Annotate it.

Work back.

First eat fifteen chicken nuggets dipped in A1.

Trim the bikini.

Crunch the abs.

Crack a window.

Stare.

Tap.

Swallow.

Mount the memories of you.

Imagine us driving back from Iowa right about now.

Tom at the wheel.

You at the smoke.

I etching the sketch.

Too young to worry about what I have caloried, saturated, not enough fibered.

Proud to be acing the middle of fourth grade.

Crumble under my seat.

Snap back to the making,

Of myself,

Skin and Toast

Radiators,

One of my favorite indy bands.

Snap.

Clank.

Sizzle.

Hiss.

Man,

Home owner's must get wasted on the power.

The internal switch power.

Jim,

I declare it,

Seventy

Six!

Every fall is a holiday all it's own,

Waiting,

Counting,

Wishing,

Wondering,

When's the old lady in the basement gonna yank that magic cord that's a gonna pulley those hot buckets of steam-- and string-- and wind-- and long john's under cotton-- up to our player Layer.

Santa is a woman in these low income parts.

There I go comparing myself again.

We're rich.

I get it.

It's just easy to point the lens back.

Easy for you that is.

Saves you a trip.

An annual trip to the soccer and the one--z.

Hope you had a thankful.

Hope you were serenaded with whichever androgynous zyphoid process you're into these days.

Hope it was warm on your corner of the island.

Had tickets and itinerary mapped out to take us both to MD and MA and back again.

Then the little kitty got hit with a block of grit.

He survived the surgery nicely cause he's a giant in the guts.

Remember when his eyes used to be crossed?

They straightened right out didn't they?

It'll be the same with this little bladder bladder chicken chicken little honey bunny in the funny chair with you and me and shorn-ten shorn-ten. Aw. Make way for the cutest Matchbox...!

Scuse me.

But, see he's recovering slowly, like a turkey brining for two weeks in a bucket on the porch.

He has a cone, and a couple medicines that you have to shoot down his face with a syringe, and then there's the catheter not attached to anything, so you constantly have to wipe his little leg, and change his little towels.

And, I wouldn't feel right asking Ernestine down the street to do that nice as she is.

This is love.

So, me and Matchbox snowed in.

Muffins too.

He's here.

I myself was in the Tylenol once the temperature dropped.

I was reduced.

All I could do to keep the towels rinsed.

But, everyone seems to be on the up and up and a hiss pop crank now finally.

It's a purr city.

Thank goodness for the lil' miss claws downstairs.

We sure miss friend boy though. He's our trunk. He stands in the middle of our parkway real stiff while we dangle off his branches till our hair stands up and people start to look. Without him we're just a couple of guppies flappen in the weeds. Come home soon.

It's for the best. Kitty needs around the clock, and I get a head start on my paper; tears, and their relation to the early monastic dessert fathers. Fascinating, makes you want to put some sweat pants on and turn it way up.

I will not say I am good at a lot of things, but administering liquids to the helpless, I could teach a class on it.

It's easy, time management.

You can't just put down the lady lovely lock tea set and say, OK, time for a dose.

That would be a melt down.

You say to yourself, OK, in forty five minutes I have to squirt this purple stuff in, Disney! The little pumpkin will want nothing more then to view a furry classic, get her comfortable, chocolate milk and a blanket maybe, and right when she's just about to fly off into never never, Can you open up for me real quick, please? Ump, there we go, all done.

I am CPR certified.

Matchbox is snoring in his cone.

Clank hiss.

We can do it,

Skin and Toast

Dear Lovers,

Matchbox has a little needle in his little paw,

That's how we left him last night in the Kitty ICU.

He was pretty sick looking in that incubator thing.

Wreck

Fast

Moan

Wait

Orange

Leak

Block

Wreck

He's in surgery right now, as we speak, that's a good thing, progress. Last night he was too sick to have surgery.

I just want to take him home.

All things need homes.

All the time.

I'm not a freak. But, I love my kitties with my whole heart. I understand that there are different kinds of loves. Don't talk to me about love. I'll out smart you in loss, I eat sentiment on my eggs, I'm a poet, I need little lives on my feet like a man needs a cave on his face, we can't loose him.

I'm not yelling, I'm fine, I'm eating my sandwich over my text book.

Say his name on an exhale,

Skin and Toast

Bricks.

Sometimes the kitty looks like he can't walk.

And then the other kitty licks his face.

And then you write this short story about a wheel barrow,

And a pile of leaves,

And a woman with a broken nose.

And the sound of the flashing lights.

And your spirituality teacher talks about sexual sins,

Like you've heard that term before,

And then you really lose it.

And it's that time of year when the chest gets tight,

And you have to stalk up on those generic inhalers that match the wheel barrow exactly.

In snap shot and mileage, in staple and moisture.

And how would you describe a lamp shade?

Could you spend three pages on a lamp shade,

A spider dangling from it's light?

A drunk matriarch in the dark corner?

Or is that all wasted on the truth?

The kitty with the infection.

The every night tea.

The Ikea lamp on the hard covered Lammott.

Into the night.

Into the how does she do that?

The thanksgiving tickets.

The dropping degrees.

The ginseng that bookends the teeth you already cleaned.

The vet appointment in the morning.

The ol' familiar in and out,

And down and through.

How does such a small chest get so heavy?

How does such a nice kitty get so nice.

Even when something is clearly off.

I could do with a tight lung.

But, my kitty,

Nope.

If he's in pain,

The terrorists have one.

Should you keep spinning the facts down the back of your unlucky pocket, but put a best selling leprechaun in the middle of your based on actual spine?

Should you bedazzle your grocery lists onto a canvas,

Shine your twenty dollar lamp up the ass of em',

And call it artifact?

Or should you pull it all out of the air all around,

The air that can't get to the chest, or the cat.

In the mean time,

Just do it.

Puncture that virgin skin.

Tell William Williams the plums were meant for him.

Write what you know while there's life in your flesh.

Have we learned nothing from Our Town?

Every Every,

Skin and Toast

REBECCA!

Just when ya think ya have a handle on the tea pot,

It slips out from under you and burns the little baby,

Kills her,

Oh, she was so cute.

Well, we all die.

Ah, so nice not to have an agenda.

Got some writing jobs this week,

Which was cool,

But,

I can't be caged.

Well, I can.

But, something will suffer.

Friend boy reads over my shoulder and comments.

I can't write a letter without him, never could.

He says I've gotten a lot better at spelling and grammar.

I say I've gotten a lot better at not crying during critiques.

And by crying I mean,

Nailing my amputated arms to the kitchen wall.

That's where I work these days.

The kitchen.

It seems to be the most finished room of the two bedroom second floor.

I don't know what it is.

The rocking chair?

No.

The only one who sits in it is the kitty.

My grade school best girl had a baby recently.

I bet she has granite counter tops.

The tea pot?

Maybe it's the most equal room.

The kitchen.

Maybe it's the widest table

Of all the elephant alley tables we own.

I've been drafting so many audience worthy stanzas lately.

It's nice to scroll like Moses down this ether sea of Amazon weeds.

The truth is there have been some not so nice people this span of ten day or so.

But, I promised myself I wouldn't platform that stuff in this place.

Humans are weird.

He's sketching something in orange right now. Thank the stars. What would I do?

Hard to notice the Saints sometimes.

And poets? Get the right set of glasses, the tightest pair of tote bags, and a pocket guide to silence--

And you too can be a gift gifted smith trader.

Have we learned nothing from Our Town?

Sometimes people ask me about the genius,

Like,

You,

Know,

Him?!

Oh, the stories I could tell.

Anyway, there was a nice dinner with the fakes, and my poetry teacher gave me a ride home, and the fat kitty licked my toes, and someone peeled an orange at the desk next to mine, and suddenly it was seventy degrees for no reason, and a piece of water on a shirt, and there was like three servings of bacon, and two Superchunk tickets.

If you can make it to act three, you've made it.

Best,

Skin/Toast/Gibbs

Nuggets

Found out his oldest daughter attends Columbia,

The New York one.

He must be so proud of her,

Doctor Un Rooley.

Wednesday before Thanksgiving is cancelled,

Always is,

Not at Columbia.

My daughter goes to Columbia.

How's she supposed to get home?

It's just ridiculous.

Anyway,

Take out a half a piece of paper,

Please.

These nuggets fascinate me.

Like Emily Dickinson,

It's the biography,

And the letters,

That really get me.

Always for an audience,

Skin and Toast