John Paul Francis

The Wizard of Oz and Thoreau’s stretched-out coat
Faux prestige and the space askew from conditioned thought

Cashiers that don’t know distributive math
That news is news but olds is history
That asking why not ‘her’-story would be
Pedantic

Why we understand instead over overstand
Whether that has anything to do with the cardinality of heaven
Why the name Lucy does not connote Lucifer, and is actually kind of nice, although not as nice as Mary

How we accept without protest that our technology doesn’t quite work
The certain guilty rumination unique to submitted text
That dreams are defined by impending death
Whether that’s why they glow symbolic

That I can’t remember which shoe I normally put on first
How I haven’t truly liked my toothbrush since I was 5 years old
That my favorite ice cream is Strawberry
How that sincerely makes me question my sexuality

Why the backside of a coin is called a tail and not a foot
Who the druids were and what relevance, if any, they bear to Stonehenge, Haitian voodoo, and people who use the word “fortnight”

The minutiae of conceited recollection
The franticness of bad sex
Things that are discretely less-than-infinite
The uncanny exhibitionism among the pathologically shy

Topics that could be addressed but are in no sense
Prudent
Misanthropes and the laziness of subtle humor
The mystique of other people’s solitude
How 7 billion different drummers might not sound like shit
Confluence

Old text with astonishingly modern language
Examining the unbearable lightness of being
Why drugs are not the missing jigsaw piece
That ‘dim sim’ is an obnoxiously specific way to find out that people are eating dumplings without you

That adults play dress-up way more often than children
How God died in the 19th century
Why modesty is, interestingly, still a virtue
Whether or not it’s ok to masturbate

How fantastic it is to overhear dramatic things
How most personal essays are underwhelming
That you shouldn’t tell anyone you’re a genius because it’s very difficult to prove
Run of the mill splendor and monotonous beauty

That most art is rubbish, but not garbage
How most breadcrumb trails get eaten by birds
That being conditioned to believe in a magic time where everything will work out is not inherently bad
Why nobody seems to use brannock devices anymore
The slang that parents slip into

The drift that can be caught following a weak example
Plucks grass out of the ground, sometimes common, low simmer, and other stupid phrases
Why we should, in fact, say “fuck that” to anything philosophical
That you should never write with your shoes on

The ill-will of mediocrity among good friends
Why people don’t seem to chant or enchant anymore
What we talk about when we talk about love
Who am I, what the hell is that, and how do I get there?
Couples much like us, except they’re laughing
Whether or not kids still make clubhouses
Sports, beer, and girls
The curious reluctance of some Yoga students to say “Ohm”

That we are worried about being either weird or boring
That you better agree with me or else I’ll get depressed
That Australian accents are actually kind of annoying

And that we are, undoubtedly, what we walk between