SO SIR, I HAVE NO EXCUSES LEFT

Describe your childhood.

I remember a red boat. Oh, I've already talked about that. Well, let's see... I had four wings for a while... Shit, I've already gone through that too. Well, there's that whole sexual preference thing that I never got sorted out. I used to wish I were made of wood. Do you think that's something sexual? A pun, maybe, some kind of cliché deeply ingrained in my psyche? See, wood floats. And hope floats... Oh, I hate to say something like that... because of that dumb movie with Sandra whats-her-ass.. it ruins everything, you know? But I like the idea of hope floating to the top. I mean really floating... bobbing up and down really fast, ducking under the water when the current gets too quick, coming up again when you least expect it. I don't know. I guess that's kind of cliché too. That's just one of my ideas. I have a lot of ideas. I learned, very young, that wood floats. My mother had wooden birds. I would watch them bob in the lake for hours.

Tell me about the birds.

Oh boy. I have a thing for birds. Fetish, maybe? Is fetish the right word? I think birds remind me of my mom. I started a poem once about my mother being a bird. I decided that she was a blue bird, dissolved on a blue sky. Is that a dumb image? I thought it was quaint and simple, but now I don't know... I just wish the picture were more interesting. Maybe I could make her a starling or a crow or something eccentric. Maybe a paper bird. Or a blackbird. Everybody loved that poem about blackbirds... Do you think I can change the way I love people in order to make my writing/thinking more interesting to the readership? Do you that that's superficial? I don't know. But I definitely associate birds with my mom. Oedipal, maybe? I also like the way bird rhymes with word? Glossomania? Doctor, do you think I'm stupid? I want to know. Honestly. Am I full of shit here?

What did your mom do when you were bad?

She told me to say "I'm sorry."