Excerpts      HOME

 

From PROBLEMS AND MIRACLES by Ryan Davis:

 

C H O C O L A T E   A N D   C R A C K E R S

 

 

I’m not exactly sure

if it’s that Dimebag Darrel was shot dead tonight

along with his band mates while on stage

doing what he loved most,

except for maybe

smoking marijuana,

or if it’s because people keep insisting that I am gay

just because I wear the color pink

and like Aimee Mann

and have an admiration for all things especially cute,

or if it’s my diet

which, on a daily basis,

consists of little more than chocolate and crackers,

or if it’s the fact that I really have to go to the bathroom

but have not gotten around to buying toilet paper

in over two weeks

and do not feel like traveling nine floors

for any reason at this particular point in time,

whether it be to move my bowels

or to receive a handsome sum of cash.

I’m not exactly sure

if it has something to do with

my wanting to destroy everything that I create,

whether it be a photograph or a friendship,

or if it is the knowledge that I must wake up tomorrow

and be an “artist”

when all I will probably feel like doing

is sitting in this civil war zone of a room,

eating chocolate and crackers,

and listening to Aimee Mann

until it is time to go back home for the holidays.

maybe it’s just because it’s three o’clock in the morning,

I’m laying on a couch that has been tipped on its side,

and have been sleeping every night

about as well as a child on Christmas morning,

a child who was good this year,

but I cannot speak for myself,

nor can I figure out why,

exactly,

I miss my mom so much tonight.