Just Pretend You Have an Agressive Brain Tumor.

1) Seriously. Say to yourself, it's inoperable. There's nothing anyone can do. Say it. It will help you to stay in the moment. It will keep you from crying all the time. It will feel like a release. It will feel like a fuck it, I'm dying. Might as well just do this. Just do this. Just stay right here and be here. For me anyway. That's how I feel about pretend brain tumors. I'm not the sell all your possessions and live on the sand for the next six months type. I'm a sandwich on a couch in a church with a warm cat type.

2) Poetry is dead.

3) You're not going to get anywhere turning in these long prose poems to your fiction workshops. There's nothing really to critique. Class will end a half hour early and you'll cry.

4) You're just going to have to write a novel. Or something. A collection of short stories?

5) It shouldn't be so excruciating to write in a different genre. If you're studying writing you're studying all writing.

6) I got Tylenol 3 and muscle relaxers for my headaches.

7) Professor fantastic writes in lots of different kinds of forms. She does it. She's nurturing. She mentors. She's not mean. She believes in second chances. Right? Write.

8) Do not mix with alcohol.

~Skin & Toast

Am I Still Awake?

Because I'm not mad.
It all really runs together doesn't it?
Didn't mean to imply that there was ever a reason to be angry.
It gets so late.
It's so late.
Sometimes you find yourself in the middle of a thing that is changing rapidly.
If only you were on one side or the other, am I right?
No.
That's what I mean.
You are never right.
There's nothing to get.
Sheesch.
It's like talking to a wall.
Am I still awake?
I've had a headache for three days.

~Skin & Toast

I Have To Say

Professor man is the man.







Thank. God.

















I told myself I would not be angry at anything Roosevelt related.










Opposite of Angry,
Skin & Toast

Friday Notes.

The waitress went to work.
The writer went to her restaurant job.
The artist has a day job.
On Wednesdays the artist works from six thirty in the morning to three thirty in the afternoon.
At a restaurant east of Wriglyville, just west of hell in a place called Lake View of the privileged.
Usually takes the artist about forty eight hours to recover from a Wednesday.
The waitress went to work Wednesday morning.
The waitress has Clariton for breakfast and Bennedryl for supper.
On Wednesdays.
The waitress is keeping up with the reading.
The writer is tired.
Her chest is covered in cheese cloth
and
a
thin layer
of
cooling gel.
The writer is stacking her pages next to her chest.
Neat piles.
Sharp corners.
The waitress likes meeting people.
The waitress likes to describe sauce.
The writer recommends the quiona porridge always because she likes the loops of the vowels and the soft hooks of the plosives.

Day Off,
Skin & Toast

Boardwalk Notes.

Went for a visit to fake mom
and doc
they live
together
on a dock.

Life raft was with me. Together hysterical laughing mad. Mad fever sandals. Martinis. Stripes. Cameras. Points. Pickles. Tokens and shells. Easy.


It's like a post card. The candy spins ice into gold. The wind combs your hair into waves. The lanes marked in bright long sticks of chalk. The shrimp sleepy and fried. The sheets damp. Brother sturdy. Mother sturdy. Madly hysterically laughing. Stomachs gone. Taffy gone.

The summer gone.

First half of every class is lit with the final thirty minutes of that day's allotted fiery ball of light
in a school for the working class.

And the board is green. And the chalk is short and dull. And we are tired and famished.

And hysterical laughing mad at the people lagging behind us in surreys and tandems.

Know the answer,
Skin & Toast