midsummer night's press conference

Here comes the round of applause. "Hello, hello". I almost always see you going, but never coming. "Hello, hello". We almost never say good-bye.

This is where we go wrong every time: I say, "Hey, what gives?" and you say, "Soup kitchens. Mothers. The Federal Return." It's a figure of speech. But you---broken-backed, literal beast that you are---come home with your hammer and your copy of The New York Times and you break down the house with both. Literally. 

I say, "Hey, dear, what's the scoop?" And you say, "Vanilla ice cream. Mulch. Cat food, and by the way, we're running low, dear". It's a figure of speech. It's an idiom, and you can't translate it into French or Japanese because that's how different we are; that's how beautiful we are. That's how colloquial we are. You don't understand the simplest forms of simile or verbal abuse. I've never been kind to you, but that's because you told me to never water down gasoline or pray with my eyes open. You told me, "Don't write your name on your math homework and don't leave your receipts on the counter"; it's because you love me, you jealous little coward.

These are the shinyugly days. These are the saltygritty, headyripe, bendybreakable days of almost-summer. Windywarm. Brittlebright. I have a whole fleet of little soldiers who bring me snacks and kill my enemies. They say "Who makes your bed in the morning?" and I say "The queen of England".

I have a confession: I don't want you to fly in airplanes because I'm afraid you'll get too close to heaven and God will just take you back, right there, right over the Great Salt Lake. So stay grounded. Stay here and I promise, I won't be the one that corrects you when you blunder your way through every single one of Shakespeare's litanies. I won't even capitalize your name.

When I say "How are you feeling?" and you say "Thirsty", I'm still going to leave, but I'm going to leave the doors unlocked and the car idling because I've never wanted to abandon you without you. And that's where I'll leave you, that's where I'll desert you: right here with me. I am Judas.

Everything is trite and untrue. I long for summers away from suburbia and salty fries. I am Judas.

This has been The Devastation Diaries.

     

slow dance music by tom c. hunley

  

Hey. Read this.

Slow Dance Music by Tom C. Hunley

I can’t explain the rain’s attraction to my head,
though I’m touched by its will to touch me,
and I don’t understand how I got here any more
than a lobster understands how it ended up in a tank
next to a Please Wait To Be Seated sign,
but both of us can read the faces of the cruelly beautiful
women pointing at us. I always feel eyes on me so
I apologize to insects after I kill them
and to the salmon on my plate, caught being
nostalgic for home. Everything makes sense if
you squint just right, and at least once a day
I realize that whatever I’ve been saying
isn’t the point at all. Like yesterday, I heard myself
say “Nostalgia” comes from Greek roots meaning
“painful return,” which is why your childhood
home is paved over, a bump in the commuter
path of your old classmates, the ones who have
never gone anywhere. And so instead of leaning
in for a kiss, I give my beautiful wife the umpire’s
signal for “safe.” And when I say “I love you”
she becomes red-faced, hits me with the back
of her fists, and calls the cops, because those
words no longer mean what they once did.

..I'm very obsessed with it. Poetry is cool.

This has been The Devastation Diaries.

(And Tom C. Hunley)

  

 

newsprint

pocket lint

 

 

Places that you forget about:

• Behind the fridge.
• The baseboards.
• Bottom shelves of closets.
• Winter coat pockets.
• The building you used to go to church in.
• Attics.
• Old friends' bedrooms, and the beds in them.
• Slovakia.
• The corner in the garage where the brooms are.
• The backs of photos where someone had written "Los Alamos, 2002".
• Under the deck.
• Old art classrooms, old computer labs.
• Last year's bird nest.
• Furnace rooms.
• Linen closets.
• The last parts of notebooks that you never bothered filling in.
• Cookbooks that you never really liked.
• Hat boxes.
• The top of the bookshelf where you keep the key, and the dust up there.
• The cupboards you fit in when you were that small.
• Your tenth grade locker. You remember the combination, but not the location. 
• The booth you always sat in when you used to go to Denny's all the time. Remember that? You were so tired, lit up in the florescent dusk, and you never finished your tea.
• The hamburger shop on the way to work. You never stopped by there like you said you would.
• Wednesday afternoons.
• Under the sink.
• The glove compartment.
• The spaces between your ribs.

This has been The Devastation Diaries.

 

i like movies

I can't pick just one favorite movie because (A) I watch too many movies to just choose one and (B) I am very indecisive. 

And that's why this is a list called "My Top Five Favorite Movies In No Particular Order" instead of "My One and Only Favorite Movie that Beats All the Rest Even Though That Sounds Like Blasphemy".

Introducing...

MY TOP FIVE FAVORITE MOVIES IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER*

• Scott Pilgrim vs the World
• The Social Network
• The Breakfast Club
• Romeo + Juliet (the '96 one with Leo DiCaprio and a lot of Chevrolet Monte Carlos)
• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
  
  

*This list is subject to change any time I wake up in the middle of the night and say "What was I thinking?!" and feel the need to edit.

A FEW MOVIES THAT ALMOST MADE IT ONTO THE LIST (LOL JK):

• Solarbabies
• Rosemary's Baby
• Scent of a Woman ("hoo-ah!")

This has been The Devastation Diaries.