so you're not going to follow through with the piano stuff?
naw.

in that peculiar fall from grace that comes creeping at the end of every semester, i'm on my back on the russet-colored floor of the concert hall between shows, taking a moment to let my spine open itself up again. i gulped that coffee so quick the mug is still warm. me and my mug. ringing like empty mixing bowls on a monday night. we are half off the edge already.

whatever note is printed on the cellist's score is not the one he's playing.

buzz through the floor of that, that note, the rumbleclatteringrack of music stands through the hallway, a locker unlocked and locked again, and a heartbeat, oddly biotic, sweetly mechanical through the mumblescreams of metal and wood and horsehair. heat billows out of me, the mug grows cold.

i could publish a series of method books: loeffler piano method for alternate and deteriorating lifestyles. for the older beginner with advancing alzheimer's -- the font gets bigger the farther you go back, lesson one starts to repeat. the "cuff" method, for little beethovens -- comes with a pair of handcuffs and a railing one can easily retrofit to their piano. packets of lead sold separately.

i could move to the city and start up a professional streaking business. do you have a wedding? funeral? baptism? any event that needs a hearty dose of jazz, you give me a call. the big city part is important; it becomes truly anonymous. the person who commissions the streaker can feign innocence more thoroughly, and the streaker doesnt have to worry if anybody recognizes them. okay. time to start working on my sprints.

a rainjacket crinkles metallically, a mechanical pencil is clicked several times in nervous succession, a sandwich with the entire history of a meatbrick wedged between the pieces of bread with the same ratio as book:shelf in a library is eaten and the scent of the meat (and the history of the meatbrick) slithers about the stickysweet reminder of pink lillies from the memorial last friday. the dead and the dead. being eaten or scattered in hawaii. and the living are tired and hungry. spread like cards on the floor. let's not have a conversation.

this is my mantra that goes:
i am, of myself, enough. i am, of myself, enough. i am, of myself, enough.