Day Two of 3:AM's Tao Lin Week, and we are pleased to offer you six unpublished pages from Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, published by Melville House.
an interesting group of small children
became exponentially less interesting
until finally they approached to solicit my poetry
in manhattan a brief description of homeless people
includes the rhetorical question 'can we stop at jamba juice?'
enthusiasm over 'the perfect therapy' increases in february
i was very emotional that day and even fell off my bike
then i crossed a distance neither temporal nor physical
immediately i began to cry
i first noticed this behind my forehead
written on a billboard above east houston street
look! a perfect diagram of my contorted face!a massive amount of confusion arrived in my brain
like an obese man exiting taco bell with a twinkle of ingenuity
in both his eyes at the same time
so maybe i am the problem and you are OK
i first noticed this phenomenon on the discovery channel
then i turned off the light and made a high-pitched noise
that was the day i created an enormous distance between us
in the area behind my forehead
which i immediately began to crossa homeless man lays frozen in his giant coat and no one cries for him
so at midnight he rises to solicit my poetry
an enormous animal floats ass-first through the universe
then it notices taco bell in both its eyes at the same time
i've constructed this massive thing that probably doesn't make sense
but appeals overwhelmingly to our melodramatic sensibilities
concerning 'how to live'; like the interesting woman who kneels nightly
to touch the frozen, contorted face of 'the perfect obese man'
i sometimes have an overwhelming urge to confide in you
that i fear i have been exhibiting psychopathic behaviorthat is possibly ruining both our lives—
an accomplishment that puts a twinkle in my eye
using expensive gold-inlaid tweezers
if desire is a form of possession
and possession isn't good, then
what? i believe in the healing power
of focusing on other people when sad
i've distilled my novel, short-story, or poem
into its embarrassing, aromatic essence
but i've also diagrammed my thought patterns
and discovered a structural correlation with the lord of the rings trilogy
i observe myself from a distance neither temporal nor physical
to cross it would be potentially best-sellingit can take months of concerted effort to replace an irrational thought process
the exciting thing about cognition-based therapy is that it actually works
at taco bell your mother is OK, i'll cry tears of joy
if you cry tears of joy, and there is no such thing as insane destruction
all instances of sad crying are actually carefully rendered exhibitions
of 'sad crying'; my face is actually a highly instructional message
in the form of 'terrible contortions'
to observe this is briefly satisfying
then i realize i'm probably experiencing some kind of anger or discomfort
i once asked a professor of particle physics to diagram my massive confusion
he showed me his literary magazine
but did not solicit my poetrya loose rendering of my thought patterns into easily communicable ideas
almost always includes the sentiment 'i am writing some of the best poetry of my life'
early in the morning the sun's light reveals
that a homeless man has murdered an obese man
in the distance my doppelganger emerges with both eyes frozen
his approach exhibits that he has just watched five hours of the discovery channel
i think he is coming to solicit my poetry
then i emailed the file to myself
and walked to the bus stop
i watched you briefly from a distance
before approaching to hold your hand
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