He had lately been spending as much time as possible in the company of animals. No animal had ever ridiculed him, nor regarded him with pity, scorn, or disappointment. Well, possibly disappointment. He could live with that.

The older couple at the next table, whose lingering self regard stems from the memory that they were considered beautiful three or four decades ago.

One warm summer night when he was fifteen years old, he lit a cigarette on a dry hillside near San Bernadino, California. After all these years, he still couldn’t bear to confront the  destruction caused by that simple thoughtless act—yet he did, unceasingly. How many times had he gone to bed hoping to not wake up? But dying wouldn’t help; he would need to have never been born.

Messages on walls or mirrors, invariably perceived as more urgent than those typed on a computer.

This incarnation wasn’t in the cards.

Such beauty that the only suitable response would be to no longer exist.

All music will eventually be drumming.

If one more subscription card falls out of this magazine, I’m going fucking ballistic.

Woke up this morning and nearly wept at how lifelike everything was. Picked up a handful of dirt and just looked at it. I picked it up for you.
Every day I wake up to eternity. Tell me if I should keep writing,

Thirty years of thinking have emptied you out. Finally, you know nothing.

The house is quiet and cold. The washing machine has stopped working, joining the dead car battery, the leak in the roof, and the broken back window covered with cardboard. You sleep in the dark in the blue chair where, in happier times, your cat once joined you. You are a joke variant of a Hank Williams song, as interpreted by BJ Thomas.

Do gorillas throw shit in the wild?