Paul was a collection of personal items that are not yours. FOUND. & what they reflect.

 

As in the vein of This American Life episode #70: Other People’s Mail.

 

Ultimately a documentation of everyday.

 

“snapshot of a moment of an average person’s real life”

 

Not art created for art, but just, creating.

Paul was a ceramic coffee cup with four motivational sayings printed on it, one reading:

 

“Teamwork: Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.”

Paul was

Paul was echoing back on himself. Pens in a small cup, desktop. Phone feedback. Squeaky chair for sitting in. A bus sound when stopping. Secondhand dreams. Next to a yule log fireplace. Small notebooks define sentence length, as in, in my pocket the writing must be contained. Ice Storm. Nickelback.

What is the form of fiction online?

Sending out catch phrases, terms that will be netted, or hot topics. Boxing Day. Long lines at department stores returning gifts. Images increase traffic. How to use your new pressure cooker. Listserv. Left a trail of children across the country. A guide to quick cooking.

Does space serve a sentence better?

The reason for founding. Couldn’t get close as there were no parking spaces anywhere. Mild sexual content. Nutrition Services provided an Elegant Dining experience, including special request food items, linens, & formal place setting. Bring it back. # of graphs. An unhealthy addition to internet gambling. Long lines at department stores retuning gifts.

Does text blocks serve a sentence better?

Wound woven rugs; the lighthouse; English gardens; top toy of 2008; inset image here; ice tea made from a mix; how to recycle paper; the Polar Express; some assembly required; no need for a tie; out the window row houses, but the kind you could almost picture yourself in; political signs; muscle memory; tea time; all the items in Aunt Lori’s kitchen; insert image here; sem;colons could go on forever; A small narrative here, about nursing a bird to flight.

Can this be considered discourse on how to write/read/[de]form a poem & still be a poem?

A question, a pause, a pant size. Enjambment with spam. Creating a list of most searched words could increase “hits” but not actual readers. Quoting song lyrics. The most read post being “Paul was Chris” followed by post #429, “Paul was a Christmas Toy.” Adding the “ny” to John makes the singer more friendly, approachable. If all words | terms | search phrases | tags | are said, will the post continuously be retrieved when searching, or, as there is so much other websome floating around, be less likely to be found?

This American Life episode #121: “Twentieth Century Man,” a full hour dedicated to the story of one wandering man taking up the trends of his lifetime; Paul was a preacher-in-training; Paul was an aspiring Hollywood actor; Paul was a self-styled Beat writer; Paul was a man in a gray flannel suit; Paul was a member of the New York literati; Paul was a hippie; Paul was suburbs; Paul was born-again.

The resolution for founding. A guide to quit cooking. Layered. A picture of a perfect family. Allentown. A Christmas Story. Railway tracks. Staying overtime. Place the picked item in the plastic cart, & check off said item on list. Adding length to stop reading. A technique I read about somewhere from Geof Huth’s blog http://dbqp.blogspot.com/, in the review of the alphabet section.

Watch time fly. Pioneered the technique of PET-CT virtual colonoscopy. What is the force of fiction online? Running out of steam. The idea was to spread the long thoughts & ideas around with some loverly interjections. Counting words (six-hundred) & look to January.

The jumps take over.

Pulled from the past. Art. Snack Sized. Network. Paul rode his bike round town every day. Hospital waiting room. Radio. No “authority.” A playground, defined as such despite the lack of equipment such as slide, see-saw, swings, and jungle gym. Use of the Oxford comma. Books. Business. Family. Fashion. What is the farce of fiction online? Life. Music. Politics. Writing. Administration.

There are no drafts at the current moment.

Paul was “simply having a wonderful Christmas time.”

Paul was Christmas Eve

last year

& the year

before & the

year before

& the year

before

invented in 1822, or rather the idea of Santa Claus defined, by a poem. pajamas for such events, special & new, itchy on the skin the unwashed material new & special

Presents still

In iambic pentameter, a formula still
not fully focused, the potential in waking up
breaking out, special & new, the mirror
to walking, a beating heart, bells ringing

still

wrapped. Cookies & beer setout, untouched. Blankets made into small burritos to wrap around new uncomfortable pajamas. Sounds say everything. A type of campout with Lori in the attic. Cookie crumbs in the blankets. Itch, or new pajama feeling.

Noises in the night they would later attribute to reindeer.

Trying to cut through the paper thin. Formula equal to. Detrimental as it was not editied, though it would be recorded, mimicked on video

last year

& the year

before & the

year before

& the year

before

are charging the blankets, or cookie crumbs, an itch; what TV special is ending right now? They were fighting that night, the kids tucked in. What is a sugarplum? Was there ever snow on Christmas in this town? How could it stay white more than fifteen minutes with all the cars coughing past.

Paul was the Hess truck’s back & it’s better than ever, for Christmas this year — the Hess truck’s here.

 

Paul’s favorite version being the 1992 Hess 18 Wheeler and Racer.

 

This vehicle featured a truck with a loading ramp for a small racecar. A racecar with real working headlights!

 

Paul was under the tree making ramps out of present boxes, tunnels out of crumpled wrapping paper, roadways along the weave lines of the throw rug.

Paul was a ceramic coffee cup with four motivational sayings printed on it, one reading:

 

“Perseverance: Barely hanging on and ahead by a mile both mean that you’re in the game.”

Paul was

Paul was not motivated by the container of his morning coffee, just by the contents.

Paul was The Christmas Toy. Before the age of computer graphics puppets were king. In this case, Paul was a playful tiger, Jamie’s favorite toy & top Christmas present from last year.

It is Christmastime once again & Paul wishes to rekindle the joy of Christmas morning. He must sneak under the Christmas tree, but when he gets downstairs discovers in what should be his box Meteora, Queen of the Asteroids.

What a strange creature she is — a toy who does not believe she is a toy. Meteora begins to cause mayhem round the tree. There is a singalong of some variety & a Christmaslike resolution of the whole problem.

Nevertheless, a distinguishing feature between The Christmas Toy & say, Toy Story, is the peculiar natural laws of The Christmas Toy Universe — in this land, when a roaming toy is found by a human it freezes forever! No more life for the toy, it is a plastic shell of the smiling life that was once inside. So, for Paul to be found out of his playroom place under the Christmas tree would be suicide.

The happiest moment of his life, his first Christmas reveal, can never again be created.

 

Paul was a cup of coffee in a Styrofoam container. Always sipped before activating his headset. Just sitting & staring into the creamy morning wakeup.

 

Morning jitters & an uncontrolled body spasm brought teeth down into the white foam.  Indents of the mandibular central incisor, mandibular lateral incisor, and mandibular canine punched through the cup in a cresent shape. The thin holes from the bottom teeth dribbled café down the side of the small cup forming a ring round its base.

 

A stain that would remain on the desk long after Paul left.

Paul was the muzak piped through the phone system whenever a customer was put on hold. Only once or twice would it ever be heard in a day, as most people hung up with a quick:

“I’m not interested.”

Though, when he got to hit the hold button Paul let the songs linger, for if he had gotten a caller along this far they were buying. & now holiday themed tunes were played to reflect the season, though in saying they were holiday themed Paul never heard a Hanukah or Kwanza song.

Mostly White Christmas.

 

So he changed his script with a swift pencil mark to remind himself for these weeks that while putting someone on hold he could say:

 “Please enjoy this holiday music while I process your request.”                     

Paul was

 

“The mood is right
The spirits up
We’re here tonight
And that’s enough…”

Paul was a ceramic coffee cup with four motivational sayings printed on it, one reading:

 

“Determination: Even the tallest mountain is conquered one step at a time.”

Paul was the organizer of reindeer games. Monopoly was their favorite game & Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer their favorite movie. So intertwined were the two, new rules had been adopted into the game, & cues from the movie changed play. New pieces were tiny & misshapen handmade clay lumps representing their favorite characters, a white ball as a tooth for Paul to be Hermey, guy’s favorite was a little gold snake shape for King Moonraiser, the winged lion king for the island of misfit toys, and a red blob as Rudolph’s nose for Lorraine.

“Go to Jail” was “Go to the Bumbels Cave” and the property spaces had new paper names tapped to them, like Rudolph’s House, the Island of Misfit Toys, and Yukon Cornelius’s Pepermint Mine.

Set out in his living room with looping Christmas movies playing, Paul, Guy, and Loraine would spend days in these matches rolling dice & drinking sodas, snow flurries falling outdoors.

Paul was telemarketing response tree

Paul was the marketing machine known as XMAS. The word itself the poorest abbreviation for the busiest of times. Commercial splendor, product placement with song & television tie ins & the idea of full display cases, though Wal-Mart is not a main street nostalgia, just a big box holding & exploding all of the above. & this year’s hot toy. & long lines.

 

This is where the true meaning of Christmas would be inserted.

A list with a bicycle on it. Digging though stockings last. Endless loops of Christmas carols, old versions revised with today’s pop stars. & then your favorite song. Driving through town looking at decorated houses, Paul yelling “Christmas lights on my side” to drown out his sister Loraine’s “Christmas lights on my side.”  

 

So this is Christmas.

Paul was a ceramic coffee cup with four motivational sayings printed on it, one reading:

 

“Confidence: Believe in yourself and you’ll always be on solid ground, no matter where you are.”

Paul was a jolly happy soul, with a corncob pipe and a button nose
and two eyes made out of coal. As the song says. Though the cartoon image stuck in Paul’s mind as a defining icon of Christmas.

 

Paul remembered watching a tapped-off-of TV cassette, complete with holiday commercials for Coca Cola & Hess trucks. & while the song certainly was jolly with its “thumpety thump thump,” Frosty was a sad tale to the boy.

 

On his journey to the North Pole, Frosty is being pursued by the menacing Professor Hinkle. After a narrow escape via bellywopping down icy slopes, Frosty and his human companion Karen come upon a greenhouse filled with poinsettias. As Karen must be kept warm, Frosty and the girl step inside the humid house. Frosty promptly melts as Professor Hinkle locks the magical snowman inside the temperate hut.

 

All that is left of Frosty is a puddle.

 

Curled up in a fortress of blankets Paul wept at the death of Frosty. Christmas will pass, & your snowy dreams will all melt.

 

The story continues with Frosty coming alive again, but the blow was struck to Paul. It was the loss that remained.

Paul was a call bank. Row after cubicle row stretching out in the converted warehouse space. The high ceiling & open airspace served as a large echo mechanism bouncing the consistent sound of scripted speak about the bank & back.

 

 As if someone was whispering behind you all the time.

Paul was a cup of coffee in a ceramic container — unlike coworkers who used Styrofoam cups as Paul had multiple issues with these white vessels. Paul stared at his cup each morning before activating his headset, a bit of wakeup reading much like the paper.

 

The cup had four motivational sayings printed on it.

Paul was once asked about how interesting his job was, by a potential sale. This line, this human interest not scripted, & Paul had no colour coded sheet to respond with.

Paul was

 

“I don’t think it is very interesting, & the work just winds by, passes the time, it becomes a counting game of minutes to hours to weeks to dollar$. Each day pulled out, unwrapped, eaten, & forgotten.”

 

Paul was a child’s chocolate advent calendar.

Paul was collecting dust.

Paul was as in, a pause

 

 

thoughtful, perhaps contemplative

 

a sales technique

Paul was wore a tie the first day to work.

Paul was spam are the internet’s telemarketing.