MY FAVORITE PARTS ABOUT BEING ALIVE TODAY
signing up for a pool membership that scans my hand and makes me feel like I’m on The Jetsons
fantasizing about long swims that start with a shock of cold water and slowly warm up to become meditative
questioning whether empathy is more continuity or change, some internal ability to empathize [...]

A song is stalking me. About a week ago I was all kleenex and madness…and I asked my roommate Jason to play a song, any song… I was just so desperate for a distraction, something to get my mind off of things…and of all the possible permutations in the endless playlists one could rummage through, [...]

“That last half an hour of studying was fucking pointless.”
I kept rereading about crimes against humanity and missing the subtle differences between various definitions and switching back and forth so frequently between that and writing really terrible breakup poety that at one point I was confused about what I was looking at, notes or confused [...]

I just wrote a long blog about the purpose of life, at the repeated requests of a friend, and alas, the internet gods have destroyed it…I have no idea where it went.
I was pretty happy with the original, and I have no time to rewrite it completely so this will be the purpose of life [...]

“The first Pruitt Igoe performance of the year!”

Ola Hadi, September 25, 2009

Please,
I.
I begged you
to take an hour
and go down the street
instead of to a war zone to escape
your inner battle
for me
for you
for your worried mother
to see someone who can help you
see you though this low valley
that’s got you going in unpredictable
directions, self medicating,
and aiming cut-throat questions of what is it
that makes you [...]

I’m proud of this one (because it has been so much fun) and looking forward to performing as part of SDMA’s Joaquin Torres-Garcia’s wood abstractions (including his Aladdin toys) exhibit. I’ve written a series of poems as a teacher, father, and little boy in a grown man’s body. The poetry is in dialogue [...]

“Warning you in advance.”

©ted washington 2010