The More Heartbreaks The Better
(September 2024)
I care less about the possibility of failure
so I learn to know the truth
that I am both the evil and the good.
I learn to stop dreading heartbreak
and start seeking it out.
I start playing outside more
and stop taking a single minute of sunshine for granted
and the fear of dying in your eyes turns to something lighter than air
and it floats away
and I start to move only from love.
Porn Bot Retweets My Philosophy
(November 2024)
published by Do Not Submit
I emerged with my father’s strange eyes, mid-range jumper, and his tendency to wander. His teeth are crooked, mine are not. I often find myself at a wooden table on a cold day as one of two people who want to talk but don’t know what to say. “Did you catch that Sixers rookie last night?” Usually it is more polite to stay silent. I have a hole inside of me that I want to fill with the words I imagine to be caught in your throat. Our love for dirty leather causes me spiritual hunger so I eat mujadara for now but do not fry the onions myself.
Sister dreamt that fascism came quickly. I was bleeding, she didn’t know from where. No one could be bothered to worry but her. This happened once while I was painfully awake and busting open my chin on the concrete while big brothers continued their baseball game. Sister called for help. I was too young then to know about fascism or divorce. Not everyone has someone to always pick them up when they fall, let alone someone who prepares for war in their dreams. God looks at me that night and thinks I am so alone but I am so full of blood.
Porn bot retweets my philosophy four thin books I am 69 pages into each lay next to me while I sleep clutching the empty air and my pulsating killing-machine of a ████ that pumps out dead egg after dead egg while I sleep alone in contorted positions divorce is near my wife doesn’t look at me in the eyes anymore in fact she never did and we were never married we just used to play basketball on different teams in different courts for different schools I just used to follow her home from work in a fake mustache and ski goggles but either way now she’s leaving me. Some of the music you listen to lies to you about how everything is suffering or love is light but I have never let a song lie to me because I know that two things can be true at once like I can be dancing to my ████ ████ song and I can be listening to our ████ ████ song while we do the drive but I can be happy we are both home even if it’s because of the reason the song got made. You wouldn’t have come home for thanksgiving either way but the music would have and your mom will still make 5 servings worth of turkey and she will force them down my gullet and then oil up my fingertips and my face and my meaty calves (I have been biking alone in the basement because my body is filled with ████ ████ ████ █ ███ ███ █ ████ █ ███ ████ fishing wishing you would come back ████ ████ ████ █ ███ █ ███ █ ███ ██ ██ your ghost threw my painting of you face down into the wet brown shitpaint as a final act of self destruction ████ ████ ████ ████ █ ███ ████ ████ yin and yang form a perfect Yummy Yummy circle) and then she will stick me in the oven three hundred seventy five degrees it will feel sooooo delicious for me to get a good crisp on and be eaten by my hungry extended family.
Mom, dad? There are baby bluebirds that carry me through underground tungles to where I am from to where I am going. Divorced mom, divorced dad? I can’t believe I’m just like you! All I did was love her it’s not my fault I got all kicked around in the musty bunker. I am a little guy. I’ve always been the baby it’s not my fault I didn’t love her quite right. How do you write a birthday card that says I’m sorry for not talking to you about our dead friend for two months but I thought you might get a kick out of this british children’s police propaganda book and also I haven’t decided whether or not to ████ ████ ████? Mom says I do my best and if he brings his friends Anger or Meanness to the table I can build a brick wall to protect my dear tender self “with all our support”. That would be easy and simple see Anger and meanness build a wall see anger build a wall build another one once you get to four you have built yourself a house now the anger flies above you build a roof it tungles below you build a floor it gets bored of torturing you you build a door you step outside and smell the grass that has grown taller than you while you were hiding and you try to remember why you built the walls in the first place. Then Meanness comes bumping down the road on a seven-horse drawn carriage and boom! You have an addition to your house! This must be how mansions get made!
We are twenty years older and our wars are mostly in our heads for now. Sister helps me still. Trains are sacred and so is my body and they are not to be used to serve the agenda of weeny newyork pussyboys. I want to not feel things but I do. I feel fully and soberly. I don’t know how it still feels like the first day we met every time I see you. I have an inkling of an idea that you will grab my heart out of my chest and juice it like an orange. Sister will still be there to help me.
I hadn’t thought about how I looked in many many days so when he told me you were staring I tried to see myself through your eyes but I couldn’t see anything particularly worth yearning for just someone who was curious about fire and wondering how to make everyone around them feel equally loved. So I relocate the hedge, I transform the house. On Sunday mornings I find serenity in late morning nightmares because I prefer to start my day right, whatever the cost. They always told me divorce is a game of life and death, just like Go and pickup basketball.
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Peas and Beef
(October 2024)
published by Do Not Submit
Yaoharu Grocer / Give or Take
(September 2024)
published by Do Not Submit
Hereafter / Flying Over the Ocean of Tenderness (a.k.a. Lake Michigan)
(September 2024)
I rode hard and fast up the hill
but I braked on the way down
just to watch you all speed ahead of me with nothing but awe for the fact that I learned to love you more every day
and I don’t much fear losing you anymore
because we change every day,
but I know you will always have the same shoulders
and I will always have the same fingertips, too.
Spent 3 years straight with my head screwed on not too tight
I tried every vitamin
broke every bone
ripped up every letter and put them back together again
I played basketball and yes I even got tackled at the football game and missed a few steps
but my head was just running through worlds where you left me in this way or that or worlds where I left you I think I tried every combination until there was no choice left but to go back to living because a life spent thinking about death is no life at all.
No matter how much I thought and how little I spoke, I kept growing taller
Until the bracelet you gave me fit well enough to wear on the plane home
but probably not well enough to madly paddle to the middle of the lake without it sinking to the bottom—
and hm yeah I think I could live with that.
You could mess up again every day for the rest of my life
but the door will stay open
because I am the one with the house
with two babies playing monkey,
a mother who apologizes,
and a father who does the work
even if at the last minute.
My palms are big enough.
I know yours are too.
Bermuda Triangle Blues / My Heart is Feeling Invisible Things
(December 2024)
I would love to come to your Friendsgiving dj set office potluck christmas party new years transition ceremony but unfortunately I have to go represent Earth in a tournament
I will die for these children,
For in my past life we all grew from the
same tree.
If I belong to what I understand
I surely do not belong to you, to the Pennsylvania sky, or to my elected officials.
I surely do not belong to the way this creek knows its way to the ocean.
They’re trying to defund us again but there’s nothing I can do for today at least not from New York (blackmail city council member? Come back to that)
Self immolation I will bear this whole planet on my shoulders
I’m back on YouTube putting out perfect images
My heart is back to feeling invisible things
My mom never picks up my phone calls even though she loves me so much yet you don’t love me and you’re in my phone every day.
Every night while I sleep my brain discovers new ways to refuse help from everyone who might love me
Finally my shoulders have gotten to a point where I dont want to carry this heavy box of books to the pitch alone anymore so I am going home Saturday to my sober seaside town to jump into my sober ocean and let my sober mom run me a sober bath
While I fax you pictures of being wasted in Maryland where we were too far from the clean water (it was not your fault)
You gave up, but I know how to surrender to the creek
So I worked for many hours every day I became like animal
clearing debris until my back ached and my nose dripped something that was not snot and my ankle may have snapped again
When the water finally moved with the force it did before it was like--
they asked me to do it at the memorial
but letting that water flow again is the closest I’ll ever get to eulogizing you.
Ever since then I have been small in the way a leaf in the wind is small
I have no regrets about how I ever handled my love even when you probably would think I should.
I flew Jun to a past not far away
Jacob’s cousins are more like brothers too
Aliyah's uncle is without a catsitter
I will be away for Christmas
My heart is feeling invisible things
All kids are much closer to god than I am
but if I can dance like that again I think I am starting to belong to the way the creek flows.
Porn Bot Retweets My Philosophy
(November 2024)
published by Do Not Submit
RUSHA MOON PRESS
CLICK TO BUY THE BOOK I MADE
Tug Boat
(April 2025)
Mosey up 3 bag Broadway
sweat enough here to shake a dirty martini
one road left down alchemy and meddling mothering martyrdom
two road right down kicking and screaming bloodgushing violence
hm, I will say “yes” to both!
find my way up the middle of this hill
bring my own black shovel concrete and unbreakable back
Oops, I run ahead of myself in hopes of always being the first to fall
I try to spring all the single-use traps your demons set for you.
Veer right, fully-conscious canary in the coal mine
You broke your yesterday’s promise of avoiding martyrdom
Try again tomorrow?
Oops, I magnify 100x a hairline fracture, consider my leaky self out of commission
take a hammer to the whole thing, Connie, she’s done for!
Veer left, spiraling marble on a spiraling marble slide
you broke your yesterday’s promise of avoiding the rush.
Try again tomorrow?
See, I could be like sisyphus,
but I could also one day realize you have always been my home, rusha,
and I will come back to you.
Peas and Beef (Snippet 3, Being Clay)
(March 2025)
If everyone was clay I’d pour water on some people
Who?
I remember thinking as the turmeric jar fell from top shelf “I need to slow down” then immediately knocking over 2 more things in the rush to clean it up
My ex roommates stole my fantastic planet record
But is there anyone you’d like to melt to submerge urself into?
melt into?
after the turmeric incident I’m officially having a problem in the kitchen. Would it be temporary or forever?
I just need to start being a human again, bless this mess, etc. Id like my roommate to come home and ive torn up the whole apartment and im sitting in the middle of the piss soaked floor w watering eyes
and I say bless this mess?
torn it up like a dog would
What if you took off one piece of yourself at a time and submerged each one into a different person?
id rather 100 ppl submerged into me
I dont want to be spread out so much
Never been nervous about anything in my entire life
But I I made a film called spaghetti with a chance of zombies when I was 14 and left in charge of my little brother. resulted in a broken glass Let him lay on the counter and pretend to get drunk. Addy for dream tn?? Anyone got dream tn? Does anyone know if we have to bring our dreams to school tomorrow? I’m Lowkey feeling the weight of all those around me rn
Al Heimers
w a chance of skeetonmyballs
Everything’s coming in 2s recently:
Daniels family thinks the little prince is his favorite book. Kaitlyn brought up the little prince today said it was her favorite book. Jun showed me “petal games” mural as he calls it, she loves me she loves me not. Last night at the garbage show Erin’s piece saving me from infinite garbage was called she loves me, she loves me not. Generated flowers out of wishes!! I had just one wish.
if theres too many coincidences that means u have to yell out the truth in ur heart
because it will be accepted
thats what I learned
Don’t know my truth yet
How long do I have?
Ash and Always The Rats
(April 2025)
Coors banquet boxers
Criminally void of work I get paid for
Criminally full of painful imaginations
Reward me in 2-3 years
Cunt stink
Fuck me over the bathroom sink
Always was a bit unlikeable
Characters lived as wolves too
I love you I’m sorry
I love you ash and always
Call them the rats in search bar
Cut sleep shorter
We call them the rats in search bar
Camino for a concrete killer whale
Would be crawling under bridges
When you said the sun is free
I really understood
How this planet came to be and how it fell apart
Peas and Beef (Snippet 1, Bloody Vomit)
(October 2024)
When did you start drinking? How did you stop? Do you still cheat on your girlfriends? The answers are as follows: six, bloody vomit, and not applicable (celibate). Boy is seriously building his own house in Long Island (by seriously I mean he isn’t joking). He dreams about kids and a woman to love and I can’t help but giggle before I remember he’s not the narcissistic_drunk I used to know anymore. Together, we remember things we had both forgotten–like him showing up to my house in Seattle madly in love with a friend of my friend (she snuck down the stairs of her parents’ house to have sex with him every night)–or things one of us had forgotten–like him stumbling into my college dorm room, time and time again, while I was sleeping naked. I was usually the remembering one between the two of us, and he was usually the apologizing one. I have been acquainted with addiction long enough to not need those apologies. But the more I remember, the more he apologizes. It goes on like this for a while until I have no memories left and there is only our futures staring back at me. I never know how gentle to be. I’m practicing walking on my tippy toes less, but I’m not sure if that is the thing to practice around someone who is still in bandages.
Boy lasted three days at his dad’s house, back in a new inpatient program. He hadn’t responded to any of the 12 texts, 5 calls, or 2 voice memos I left him. Too busy bursting at the seams, stuffing himself full of flimsy lies and brain bleeds. I had already forgiven him for everything.
Boy is raw inside and everything is fucked up. I understand but I don’t really because I haven’t felt that way in a long time but I nod because I don’t want to say out loud that I am craving the comfort of the chaos I just escaped and I wish he could pass it on to me. That’s my problem, always wishing and hoping and begging and bitching and moaning for people to pass their suffering on to me. As if I’m stronger. With no real words to hold on to I am knocking off work early and worrying less about the repercussions, spending hours looking out the window with my legs up the wall, wandering the perfect streets waiting for someone to offer me a new path, especially if it ends in a dark alley.
2025 World Peace and Breakfast
(January 2025)
get olives at grocery
and delicious meat
make chicken and rice
7 spice chicken grilled lemon + mujadara
for breakfast lunch and dinner
especially breakfast
this year everything is breakfast
there was a month of my year last that would have killed an ex
it was a time of a million failed revolutions inside of me
but this year everything is breakfast
cereal 12:15pm january 1 aliyah
my feet get weird each time i leave the house
i do not trust computers
i trust them even less than i did last year
some people are unsure of what to expect this year
i am sure that i expect nothing
but for today i will work my muscles until they have
sweat out every last bit of fear they hold
and then i will be wet and dirty and
i will fill myself back up with chicken and rice
and a love i have never been very skillful at before
i will never be perfect
i will be the opposite of it
initiate citizen martial law arts
"shut up more"
shit or get off the pot
rather than complain
dream harder of solutions and fight with guns and fists
thank you december 2024 for all this weakness
blow you up with unamerican missiles
im still wondering how to move
but thank you lady in red car for hitting me slowly
my broken bone is sore today like tomorrow it will be stronger
and your 6'11 sneaky link will teach me how to dunk
because everything is a matter of the knowledge
and my body knows no limits
(February 2025)
Good morning,
I’m sitting here looking out on a very foggy ocean that just consumed me. This is usually the time of month I run away to take care of someone who needs me hundreds of miles away (instead of my complicated interesting friend who looks back at me through the bedroom window). After I read the story I wrote to my brother he became very quiet, then said “you really think you could beat me in a race?”. He won’t stop tackling me. He’s stronger than I thought but it’s my own fault for thinking him weak.
My boss has called me 5 times, it’s not even 9am. There’s pneumonia and there’s a cocaine addiction and there’s a time for rehab and maybe that time is now. “I’ve been through it with everyone else’s sons, just not mine.” I’ve been through it with everyone else’s sons. I’m a remote sort of worker, physically but not emotionally, so my skillset involves crying on the phone and sending emails. Around every corner there is someone waiting to embezzle from a system like me. I am not a computer but I am a system . My own fault for having too much trust and too little time to get caught up in details of the character of fools.
I have been hoping that wishing is basically prayer because no one taught me to pray and mean it. You’re waiting to tell me you love me until you have a job and your mom is better and my dad stops painting his nails black. It’s the last day of summer and I’m 16 and I live in the suburbs, except I’m 23 and I only ever skinned my chin on concrete jungles. And I never learned how to drive. This bullshit means more than it should.
Sleeping night one in a Steve-sized hole might remind me of how lucky I am. I might wake up finally ready to dedicate myself to something bigger than me. Until then, I am fumbling on a perfect path made just for walking, hoping to get fired. I’m fishing for tragedy again. I’m bored. It’s time to destroy.
I lost my battle to Jerome because I didn’t come prepared with the right armor. I lost my basketball game because I can’t focus on anything but rejection. I lost every wrestling match because I just don’t have the testosterone you people do. Whats the point of these pills I take if they don’t make me stronger? I took every vitamin you told me to and I can’t even pull up the dead weight of my limp body without help. I can only be a winner when I’m flexing in the mirror. Maybe it’s time to admit I’m a loser just like you.
Jumped in the 40 degree water and I still didn’t feel anything like a shiver. I told my dad about the new project with ****** but I did not tell him about **** or addiction. I can’t be a loser because no car can run with 4 squeaky wheels. My grandma is addicted to pills, my dad the alcohol, my brother the fear. Me? Maybe it’s the impenetrable fog. Maybe I’m practicing acceptance. Or maybe im just sitting here drinking gatorade, trying not to die of a heart attack thinking about your disease’s wide net of confusion and how because of me you had a good chance then. A chance, but a good one. Everything I was afraid of happening happened. My heart is still beating. I will not regret trying, but if you’re going to relapse, I just can’t be around for it.
Lone Ranger, I envy your persistence. This city is painted alive like the people in it. I know what you’re after, but I promise I’m not sure that I maybe do or don’t or shouldn’t have it right now. But actually I’m not so sure I can say that for certain.
Goodbye?
Rusha