1.

Look on the back to see what this is. Or save that question. Listen.

This one’s short.

This one has no words.

This one comes like vanishing; once you think you have it in your head, you’re somewhere else.

 

2.

I have problems.

I gave a guy a twenty in the train station for weed, and he keeps calling. Wants to rectify what seems to be the case: I’ve been ripped off. He has the weed, he says. He just needs forty bucks.

This isn’t a song. My Visa bill isn’t a song.

My terrible indigestion.

 

3.

This one cedes to the following one like they have made a deal. Last note kind of doctoring the beat that times in silence.

I worked on that!

Cleaned seven records, placed the needle.

Seven possible songs, till I heard the yes.

 

4.

Once, I left my car on a street in a neighborhood. Vague, I know.

Vague was the problem.

Three or four apartments we’d been to, each with parking snags. I couldn’t remember where I’d left the car.

I didn’t really mind the thought of my being a massive fuck-up. It seemed grand. I walked the city streets like I was in the frame of an art-house movie. Like you could feel something. The fire escapes were zagging by. The song was about to start.

 

5.

Someone’s going to die today.

I woke up with that thought.

It’s like statistics.

Some person who’s tying their shoe. Or sweeping the dust to the dust pan.

Not that you need to be doubled-over, to qualify for death.

You just need to be breathing.

Everyone qualifies, everyone’s pre-approved.

 

6.

This one—it is so, so good.

This one—

I mean, listen.

What’s that word the poets have, for when you reach beyond your reach, when you’ve broken through?

 

7.

And now I’m stuck. Cause how to follow that? How to work back from that place?

I rewind. Listen.

What’s that word? For this relinquishment. For when you’ve slipped outside of your life and feel—like so alive.