Hold your breath and float. Think of love. Or maybe
just sex. This isn't the best day for decisions.
What would happen if I don't rake these leaves,
and I just let everything alone to do its thing?
There was going to be more. I had it in mind
and was waiting to finish drinking a cup of coffee to say it,
but now the coffee and it are both gone. It's that
"drop everything when you have an idea"
that we keep getting told by people we pay to tell us things
that we already know, but we play along with, as proof
of our growth mindsets, with a picture of a puppy
or explosions of neon and ka-pow fingers. Take hold
of people's elbows with your free hand
when you shake hands. It makes them feel hugged.
*
Be bold. Think of yourself as a marshmallow thrown
by a tornado through a stop sign. The single pebble
that starts the avalanche. The killing of Archduke Franz
Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
What am I afraid of? Place a jar on a hill in Tennessee
and get a $50 fine. I've not been to Tennessee in years.
All I think of when I think of Tennessee
is a joke where it becomes "The only 10 I see" which
is halfway between a sex joke and maybe love. Somewhere
in there has been my mistake, so now I'm holding my breath.
I'm thinking mason jar. Is that what you're thinking?
You meet your fallibility this way, and your fallibility
could use a shower. Stand up straight.
This is no way to handle the fall of civilization.
