Ocean(floor)liner

At a traffic light tonight
I scrambled for a pen
to jot something down
that seemed worth it at the time.

I brought the bill I wrote it on
inside when I got home to transfer it
to the digital one-liner database.
I'm reading it now:
"The difference between a squirrel
and a rat is only a tree."
It sounded better at the time, I swear.
I should've run the little fucker over.
I suppose that only would've yielded
an even worse outcome here.
I decided to spare you all.
All twenty-five of you left.
Cheers.

To really make this hobby
what I want it to be
I'd have to dedicate more time--
time that I simply don't have.
The short story, the novel
the decent poem for once;
they elude me like people
who accept hand-me-down mattresses.
I left on the last S, savings be damned.

That's why it's a term I use loosely
and never about myself.
I know a girl who posts many pictures
of herself on the internet.
Does that make her a Photographer?

I never won those reading contests in school.
Hell, I always came in last.
I was the only one dumb enough
to actually finish the book.
The same mindframe gets me no further now.
It makes for funny exchanges, though.
Verbal and otherwise.

He heard me crashing down the stairs
then heard me in the laundry room.
"Oh, you're turning the dryer on again.
It must be bedtime."
My first reaction consisted mostly
of four-letter gems that'd keep me
from getting published in those free 'zines
my mother keeps pawning off on me.
Then I came to grips with the fact
that I had it coming.
"Don't write about it if you don't
want to be made fun of for it."
He was right.
"It's fair game," I told him.
I shrugged my shoulders
even though he couldn't see
the gesture of surrender
from where he was upstairs.

Mockery: the only thing remotely fair about life.

The smell of propane on Amateur Night.
Stories that go nowhere.
Oceanic finger food too rich for my blood.
The swarm intelligence and snoring cadence change.
You see, it was funny because they were...

If I took myself so seriously all the time
I'd look as old as I feel, or maybe that's backwards.
Like the first girl to break my heart told me:
"Go with the flow."

(Did this sound conversational?
It was supposed to sound conversational.)