On Art and the Inherent Preoccupation

Making bundles of balloons out of white price tags
colored with pink and green, inked with wandering chicken feet
and bouquets of flowers and wise words:

Live
Rinse
Repeat

What good advice I gave myself when I drank until six AM
and pieced myself together enough to get to class by eight;

I boiled the eggs and bought the milk and la-dee-dahed the day away
unable to get it off my mind, even tried a nice salty float
but had a hard time --
she's weird about things in her ears --
and my mind kept going back to that stuff;
plagues every train of thought
every avenue of existing comfortably in my skin
and comes back every time
like it did back then when I used to drink a lot
and make things --

What is different?  Have I changed?

I'm still me, pretty sure,
I have the same ailments, same mental emotional retardation
and latent anger I keep thinking is destructive a little
but GOD DAMMIT it feels good sometimes;
I drank some wine and that made it worse or maybe better
depending how you look at it,
maybe better like it used to make it,
but J. Chanandler Bing would say it's fucking awesome
'cause I think she wants to drink the wine with me too;

I feel in love and alive and level and clearer than I've been in a while
even though my dreams are nuts and grossly epic,
I still love when Bear ponders the emotions flitting across my face --
'cause there are thousands, just thousands of them --
because it lights up his and I love
when his face looks like that, so sweet and eager,
and damn that fucking charming beard.