Fred Aiken Writing

I have a bunch of note cards in my pocket that I carry around all day

to remind me to act normal and not be so standoffish,

they give me advice that I’ve written down over the years

from self-help books and seminars,

sometimes just random phrases I thought sounded cool at the time,

or buzzwords that I read in a blog about becoming less misanthropic,

but they only work whenever I check them every fifteen minutes or so,

less my resolve tears down and I retreat

to the cavern of my mind,

so I can take my shoes off,

and relax

there’s some coffee still left in the pot,

there’s still some ketchup on the plate,

there’s a shit ton of words left unsaid,

and despite what the news says,

there’s still life to be wasted for another array of decades

made to facilitate the images, words, and creatures

of an estate gone wrong and rotten, for the eldritch to sing their tune

gas station sushi tastes a lot better

with homemade bbq sauce that some twentysomething hipster

made in their bathroom accidentally while trying to make moonshine

but getting the proportions wrong and so they salvage what they can

by dumping as much ketchup and white vinegar and other spices

till they get moonshine bbq

leaking through their tub,

into the foundation of their Airbnb house

they rented for the summer

while scrounging enough money to go to Whole Foods

for some better sushi

to make the whole damn thing make sense or die trying