I’m Out Here Testing the Maxim 

Now Playing: God’s Favorite Customer: FJM

I broke out the Freewrite tonight. Seemed just right for writing poetry at the cafe, even if my name isn’t Chad and I don’t smoke cigars. 

Word Raccoon was just messing around, socializing, but when I opened the Freewrite, her eyes got huge. She hadn’t used it before. 

Let me say, she liked it.

A friend of mine stopped in unexpectedly and ended up sharing a table with me. After we chatted for a while, she read, I wrote. Ideal.

(Okay, we did laugh at a raunchily, unintentionally mistyped text I received, and other things. The laughter just drove away the seriousness in me for a minute, which was good.) 

I was kinda worried I still wouldn’t be able to settle down, but when I channeled Father John Misty, Word Raccoon got to work. 

FJM ended up in a poem, but I don’t have it handy to tell you how: ye olde Freewrite needs to be updated. Until then, I think it has full custody of most of my poems of the night. 

I will be using the Freewrite again for poetry, and soon. 

A few I took pictures of and uploaded to my email to be sure I didn’t lose them.

Somehow, and honestly, IDK how, I wrote two flash fiction stories about Bonnie and Clyde: B & C Go to Target, and B & C Go to Therapy. I meant it to be writing poetry, but when I saw that ragged, long right edge, I realized it wasn’t poetry, and I laughed.

In the first, Bonnie asked Clyde to grab her a pack of Twizzlers while he’s in the Target NOT knocking it over.

Spoiler: he’s totally knocking it over.

Word Raccoon was on full display this evening, starting with the Twizzlers. 

Then when she threw the two of them in a therapist’s office, you can imagine how Clyde liked that.

See, Clyde brought back Red Vines, not Twizzlers. Which meant they argued, which meant Bonnie didn’t take right off. Which meant they got caught.

That’s how they ended up in therapy. 

Maybe I shouldn’t have spoiled it, but it was unintentionally written anyway. 

There were a couple of poems that were not so much. They still reside, as I said, on the writing box. 

Actually, one featured Corpus Christi and lipstick, along with Goodwill bedsheets, so I might like that one, too. 

Then there were two short little A-bombs that made my throat squeeze and WR began packing up our things saying it was time to GOOOO!

And it was, anyway.

On the way home, I found a painted rock. Those haven’t been a thing for a few years now, and I thought it was sweet. Is the trend coming back, because I think Word Raccoon could get into that, instead of painting them, writing poems on them and putting them out in the wild. Or doing both.

Maybe she’ll do it regardless.  

Once home, I found my new earpods in the mail slot. Yay! When I wrote about them the other day I asked myself why I hadn’t bought new ones. I told myself it’s because I was attached to them, that the struggle was funny and endearing. 

Then I had to admit I was being ridiculous and overly sentimental. So yay, they’re here now. 

Remind me to upload a pic of my grungy old ones another time. 

I submitted four poems earlier, but I’m thinking I’m a living chapbook. Do I really need to publish them except for giving to others? 

It’s kind of like giving people your strange little pets, or the things that live under your bed and going, hey, look at this weird thing. 

It’s raining again.

I don’t mind. 

It’s cooled things off, the plants, I’m told, are happy. 

I’m writing on my own porch now, wondering what Bonnie and Clyde might do next. 

Really, WR, Bonnie and Clyde? Haven’t they been done to death? I’m not even particularly a fan. 

But the raccoon is in charge tonight. 

Where shall we take them next? 

I’m thinking La Sagrada Familia. 

You know, it just occurred to me that there are multiple meanings to the title. 

Oh, in Spain, when one of the women in the group asked me for a quip (apparently I was “a quipped.”), I sang La Sagrada Familia to the tune of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.

Try it sometime. You can make it work.