I feel too big

Too sad

Too ugly

Too different

Too hurt

Too much an outcast

Too stupid

Too annoying

Too much like a fucking disappointment

Why am I like this?

Why?

I want to feel normal

I want to be able to see normally

Why?

Too many thoughts

Too much blood

Too little pain

Too many scars

Why?

-A.E.T.

At the beach again

My second home

The sun is rising gently

Yet something feels close

I don’t know what it is

So I look towards the sea

And see something magical

It seems like it’d be

A goddess, or a sign

Like a star that's fallen

So, I walk over to it

It lays there sullen

It opens its mouth

The most beautiful song

The siren calls me over

My conscience tells me to run

I get closer to it

Half fish, half man

Teeth as long and sharp

As razors, and

Its nails are like rusty ones

Bloody from its prey

It issues me over

I walk its way

It tells me to come closer

It has something to say

I’m inches from its face

And it starts to play

A song out of nothing

It grabs my neck

I grab its wrist

Im trying to check

Am i gonna make it

I get dragged into the sea

The sunrise and bubbles

Are the last things I see

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was a prominent Irish poet, playwright, and a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival. Born in Dublin on June 13, 1865, Yeats spent much of his childhood in County Sligo, which greatly influenced his later works. He is renowned for his lyrical and evocative poetry that explores themes of Irish mythology, folklore, politics, and spirituality.

Yeats began his career as a member of the fin de siècle London literary scene, publishing his first poetry collection, "Crossways," in 1889. He co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre, which later became the Abbey Theatre, in 1899. Yeats served as its director and contributed several plays, including "Cathleen ni Houlihan" (1902) and "The Countess Cathleen" (1911).

As his career progressed, Yeats's poetry shifted from romanticism to modernism, reflecting his evolving artistic and political sensibilities. Key works in his oeuvre include "The Celtic Twilight" (1893), "The Wind Among the Reeds" (1899), "Responsibilities" (1914), "The Wild Swans at Coole" (1917), and "The Tower" (1928).

In 1923, Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation." His later works, such as "A Vision" (1925), delved into mysticism and the occult, reflecting his lifelong fascination with esoteric subjects.

Yeats passed away on January 28, 1939, in France. Today, he remains one of the most celebrated poets in the English language, revered for his deep connection to Irish culture and his innovative contributions to modern poetry.

Yo boyfriend so nasty, he gets off to your yearbook photos.

More people peel bananas each year than bananas peel people.

There are more planes in the sky than in the ocean.

When the sun goes away, it gets dark. When the moon goes away, it gets bright.

Fish swim more than you do each and every year.

At least one in ten people across the globe live on planet Earth.

Every time you eat food, food enters your body.

Every bee that stings you knows how to fly.

There will be a day when you’ll smell something you’ll never smell again.

You can tell if someone is a bad driver by if they cause accidents.

If you cut someone with scissors, you can fix them by cutting them up a bandaid.

Crabs are caught and served as a delicacy at many restaurants because they’re too slow.

Lobsters live forever until you kill and eat them. You will then live forever until experiencing a similar fate.

There is an undisclosed amount of cannibals that get pranked every April with beyond meat foods.

The natives were so native to America that the colonists hired Woody Guthrie to convince them to give up a share.

Every year, people die from unknown causes because if they knew how to get out of it, they probably wouldn’t have died.

The most bullied piece of musical equipment are guitar strings which get picked on quite a bit.

More seagulls fly through the air than through the sea.

Yo mama so seductive, when yo dad cheated on her she got engaged to the sidepiece.

I mailed a bag of shit to my landlords. I didn't want to do it. I felt I owed it to them. I was living with my younger brother and his new wife in this apartment complex, my own first marriage having just imploded a couple years prior, and I was working this late-night, boring, cubicle job, and I guess I needed a bit of excitement in my life.

The thing that happened, the property managers of this place, they started letting tenants have dogs in there. Now, I love dogs. But this just wasn't the place for them; especially not the way these tenants were letting their dogs shit all over the little communal grassy area right below my brother's apartment and not cleaning up after them. I had to walk across that grass to get up to the apartment after work. I got home late at night. I couldn't see the little landmines to avoid them. So I was always tracking in dogshit into my brother's apartment. He's a lot neater of a guy than I am. HE'd sure notice. And he did. The next day, I'd always catch hell. This made me feel like even more of a loser than just my marriage imploding, and even more of a loser than not knowing what the hell to do with my life other than work this boring-ass, night-shift, cubicle job.

So one Saturday after I'd just been yelled at by my little brother, I got the brilliant idea to mail some of that dogshit on over to the landlord people to let them know: Hey Folks? Dogs? Not a good idea. Not here. There's shit all over this lawn I gotta walk across.

I suppose I could have just called them--but what fun would that have been?

So early one Saturday morn, I dug through the kitchen trash and got out a used popsicle stick, I had a bunch of bubble-mailer envelopes from selling my gag cartoons out to magazines back then for a few extra bucks on the side, and I got one of those envelopes with me, and in my longjohns and slippers or whatever the hell I woke up out of bed wearing back in those days, and I walked on downstairs and out to that little patch of dogshat-upon grass, searching out some fresh, steamy coilers.

They weren't that hard to find, not when it was daylight out. I soon found a few, bent down, whipped out my trusty popsicle stick and scooped up some of that fresh, brown goodness into the envelope. I tamped it down in there good. Then I got some more. When I felt the heft of it grow to a meaty fullness in my hand, I tossed the stick in the outside trash bin over there--and I almost licked the damn thing closed before I caught myself and did a "Wait! What the hell am I doing?" So I went in and dabbed my finger under the kitchen faucet to close it, and I put a piece of tape over it just to make sure. I didn't want want that thing busting open in transit; I wanted that thing and its contents open and scattered all over the cubicle of some wage-slave, underling lackey over at that property management company. I wanted him or her to suffer. I wrote the property management company''s address on there, and for a return address I put a fake name--Jim and Betty Salisberry or whatever—and I made sure I gave just enough description to know that this envelope originated right from that little community, grassy knoll right there that they'd know about. And I mailed that sucker out, making sure the postage was adequate, and all the rest of that weekend and on that next Monday and Tuesday I felt so giddy in my outstanding cageyness and aplomb. Several times over the course of those four days I broke out in a sort of mirthful reverie and lost track of whatever it was I was doing, imagining what it would be like to be that guy at that cubicle to unwittingly open up that package and have that dog shit spill all over that desk of his, and who the heck poor bastard was gonna have to clean THAT up?

Come the very next Wednesday, when the landscaper-gardener guys or whatever came again, they did a real funny thing this time. They actually picked up the dogshit, too. From the Grassy Knoll. And from thereon out, they always did remember to pick up the dogshit before they left.

And so that was the first day ever that started me off to thinking that I was, after all, a genius. I had solved a big problem. Just like that. A unsolveable problem that was negatively effecting the lives of everybody in that community. No longer was I a loser whose marriage imploded, stuck in a dead-end job, stuck living with my younger brother and his new wife, stepping in dogshit after work each night, having him yell at me next morning. Thenceforth, I had made something of myself in life. I had really arrived.

You stoop down and pick up the child, holding them safe in your arms. Their eyes peer up into yours, sad and full of tears, you whisper to them, "it's alright now, I'm taking care of you." They cling to you. You knew they were crying for so long, knew that they kicked and screamed when you picked them up and shoved them in a dark place. You knew that they hated it. You knew their heart broke a little more everytime you insulted them, everytime you slapped them, everytime you told them you were disappointed in them. Every single time. You saw the tears streaming down their cheeks. Yet you did nothing.

But you are now. "It's okay, I care." Holding them tightly you say all the wonderful things about them. All the things that you love about them. You feel tears drip onto your shirt, but you continue listing all those things that you adore about them. For they are part of you. They're your mind. You kicked and slapped and screamed at them for years. But now you're hugging them, holding them close and whispering how much you love them. How much you love yourself. You hold yourself tightly on the bathroom floor, tears rolling down your chin and dripping onto your shirt.

"It's okay, I care."

The thing in the mirror clawed at the edges. Its black fingers scraping and cutting along the sides. But the mirror didn't crack. She stood, with bare skin exposed, head tilted to the side

staring

at the mirror like it would shatter at her command.

Its hollow eyes crawled with centipedes, each leg reminding her of her own fears, scuttling down her spine.

Skin dragging along a freshly washed glass.

Grit between your teeth.

A single invisible stone in your shoe.

A price tag that scissors refuses to cut.

The only pen in the house, vacant of ink.

A single drop of black falls to the floor

Muttered words that hung on see-through threads

Who is in control

No hate, no anger, no sadness,

This feeling transcends words

You ask for an embrace but disappear as I turn the corner

I wonder if you know how I feel

A rose that has been diminished by a blade hacking at its hard-earned roots

How can you do that

Let me lay in pain

Life is a funny thing, it comes and it goes, you can watch it fade from a person's eyes in a matter of seconds. When I try think of something good, my mind always brings me back to a tree. An apple tree. It stood at the back of my house, shielded from the house by an old wall. I had tied rope around it, allowing me to climb higher into the top branches.

One time it was frosty and my foot slipped, I remember not being scared of landing for some reason, like I thought I wasn't going to land. At the last second my hand caught a rope and it stopped me falling. I wasn't scared of landing, I was just scared of falling.

This apple tree grew the nicest apples, I'd pick them and press them in the kitchen, making the sweetest apple juice ever. I'd sit up the tree the rest of the day, reading my book and sipping my apple juice. Only coming down when it was getting dark. Pushing even that. Saying that a kind firefly would light my page for me.

I knew every inch of that tree. From the moss to the leaves. From when the flowers would bloom to when the apples would fall. I knew it like I knew myself. Inside out and backwards. Could climb it in the pitch black. Could find parts of myself that I wanted to when I wanted to.

But now it's gone. Withered up and brown moss. No more apples and no more flowers. Branches have fallen and twisted. Shaping the tree differently, I don't know it this way, would slip if I tried to close my eyes and climb. My mind has changed too. The way I knew it twisted and turned. Now instead of a meadow, it's a long corridor with locked doors. I'm running out of keys.

So I'll enter the door which leads to the back of the garden. I'll sit up that tree and look at the familiar branches, I'll sip my apple juice and read my book. But it's not the same. Just a memory.

This is my last note. My last attempt to relearn that tree. 377 words. Not much. It had more leaves.