Occasionally, I'll write down random bits and pieces that pop up into my head. Three words or a sentence here and there. I figure they might come in handy. It might be a paragraph. It might be a poem. It might be nothing much at all, but I find that getting it down helps me to stop thinking about it.

For instance, a few months ago I just had this couplet running through my head nonstop:

"What's happened once, will happen again
Forever and ever and ever amen."

So I wrote it down, and I could then sort of let it go for a few minutes, since it had been driving me up the wall. Anyway, preamble over, here's some stuff I've taken down recently:

Poem:
A $28 bottle of wine is just the thing
Sitting at an outdoor cafe in the
Heart of Tribeca, waiting for the
Fringe Show to start while
My roommate talks on the
Phone to his girlfriend (in Scotland)
Well, my former roommate, I suppose

****

Line that fits into something larger that I can't quite grasp yet:
It is a scream, a primal thing, an atavistic exhalation of such force and terror that it transcends sound and becomes something greater.

****

Couplet:
On a scale of one to ten
I'll withhold judgment yet again

****

Really short story:

He runs into her on the street and isn't it great to see you and they hug to say hello. It's been a long time hasn't it and are you working on anything and how's the apartment are you still in the same place? Well it's nice to see you, maybe we should get a cup of coffee sometime, but I have to go right now I'm on my way to something. Do you still have my number I think I still have yours. By the first step apart, the first date is imagined, a mocha or a hot chocolate at a corner bistro in the Village. Two steps brings the first kiss in the rain, maybe in the center of Washington Square Park, and they are of course both laughing. Half a block and even he, hardly a romantic, is standing in the one bedroom apartment, single kiss home from work, the dinner party, the joy at just being together. A porch swing and a house in the country and the whole scope of a joyful life spent together. So he looks back to see if maybe she's just seen the same thing but she already turned the corner and, well, who am I kidding I probably won't call her anyway.