From the archives: Bramble Tamble Poetry Slamble, pp. 9-10

From the Poems for People Who Have Empty Lives collection, c. 1998:

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Don't question me. You're not the one
who witnessed all the love letters falling
out of my crown.

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So I've been exposed for what I truly am.
I admit it - that's just what I am.
If you still choose the path that I hope you haven't,
then could I have my pictures back?

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Here's a list of songs that he's burned out on,
but I bet that he'd give anything if I were
there with him to hear them.
So would I.

(About the Captain. He probably still can't listen to Brendan Benson's "Maginary Girl" or that Lazy album or any number of other songs without wretching because I would play them repeatedly at top volume in Bart Villa right before this time.)

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True love bears all things.
Believe it!
Love me! (for what I am.)

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What the fuck is a Jug Rock, anyway?

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(Page of poems I don't remember writing) - p. 10

She keeps on bitching about a "plan."
"Do you have a plan?"
No. My plan, as it were, is to persist
and subsist and survive as long as I can
Till it comes time to leave
And I can leave
And I can say, "This was my plan. Are you happy now?"

(My mom was ready for me to move out because I'd sit up all night and drink beer and write poems that I don't remember writing. [Shocking, I know.] "What's your plan?" she would ask. The above was the result.)

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Hey, rock star.
Can you play that F# chord again?
That was awesome.

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Oh, No I Don't.

I hope that Amy is happy.

(And in 1998, I didn't. But I do now. I hear her life is an ass, though.)

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It was our song, but I'd guess that you've
never heard it.

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Hey, bitch - it's not like I wanted to
get in your pants. I only wanted to dance.

(In a desperate attempt for any sort of female companionship at the town's only tavern - this was before there was a Mrs. Bramble Tamble - I asked a woman I had known a long time before if she'd like to dance. She got offended. We danced, but I may as well just have stayed sitting at the bar drinking alone. I believe that this was also the night that I came back to my mom's house afterward stumbling drunk and peed on the stairs. These were inside stairs, mind you. What's that about a "plan"?)