Hey, you.
Yeah, you. With that cigarette in one hand
and your 4 month old in the other arm.
Blowing smoke right in the little girl's face
and slapping her in the mouth for saying "daddy".
Yeah you.
What the fuck's wrong with you?
Can't you see your other child is running around
screaming like a demon, pissing on everything?
He's five years old and can't speak any better than his 4 month old sister.
Don't you see a problem with that?
Can't you smell the shit-soaked diaper right beside you?
That's not a fresh shit smell.
That's half-a day old shit smell. That's had time to ripen.
You could probably get high on the mushrooms growing off that shit.
Everyone around you can smell it.
How could you not?

You can't tell me you've been so busy
the last 6 hours you couldn't stop for a second and change your kid's diaper?
That's like being a parent 101.
You got 2, and you're pregnant with number 3.
You should know this by now.

You do realize that you're ruining people?
Human fucking beings.
Just straight handicapping them right out of the gate.
Those are fucking people.
Mini-people who will become bigger people
and their lives will ultimately to some degree
reflect how you are treating them right now.

Do you remember at all how hard growing up is?
That shit's terribly awkward and difficult
even when you're family is "normal".
Why would you want to make it harder for them?
Why?
Seriously, why? That's not rhetorical.
I can't wrap my head around how anyone can be so monumentally selfish.

Get your tubes tied,
have your boyfriend wear a goddamn condom.
Do something to clog that slip and slide up
because you really really shouldn't have kids.

Seriously.

Just stop.

No doubt, you have you heard the tales.
About a time before dragons and airplanes shared the sky.
When witches and sorcerers were only the stuff of dreams.
Cyborgs and Vampires, only the stuff of nightmares.

No doubt, you've heard the tales.
About a time, when we old folks still had our youth
and no interest in sharing stories.

No doubt, you've heard the tales.
About  The Moment it all changed.
The Moment trees ripped
through people's floorboards and grew into fullgrown oaks
destroying everything in its path in a matter of seconds.
The Moment tiny Elven settlements appeared
in the middle of busy city streets-
causing traffic pile ups all over New York and Beijing.
The Moment children were slaughtered on a playground
that was all of a sudden part Orc Village.

That moment, 30 years ago
when a man corporealized in front of me
Half-human, half-something much stranger.
One eye, kind and familiar.
The other, hissing and clicking
- analyzing me.

That Moment we all fell down the rabbit hole -
and never climbed out.

He held out his human hand.
Helped me to my feet.
We both looked up at the taller than tall oak tree
that had seconds before
grown through my bedroom floor.

We were all strangers in a new land.

The only thing I like
about nights like this
is that it gets so dark
and the skies are so clear
that they look like
the little boy who trapped us all here
decided to have mercy
and pin-prick little tiny airholes
in the lid of our mason jar

but there aren’t enough
to make a difference

Her lit cigarette burns
so brightly from the porch
against the darkness
it reminds me of a lighthouse
...or a bug zapper.
Which makes me wonder:
Am I lost, or am I doomed?
Or am I both?

I don’t see how anyone
can smoke at a time like this
when the air is so heavy
it’s like breathing cement.

The campfire is whispering
something about...memories?
I can't hear it very well
and I don't speak it's language.

The fireflies are out tonight.
I watch the children chasing them
they blink in and out of existence
like little teleporting fairies -
Proof that the little boy who trapped us all here
has not yet succeeded
in snuffing out all of the magic.

One child is sitting away from the group.
swinging alone
carving imperfect circles
with her toes
into the dirt below.
She is staring up at the stars
she looks - concerned.
I cannot help but
wonder what she's thinking.

The campfire is dying.
I watch it gasp for air a few last times
before putting it out of it's misery.

Somewhere out there, there is someone
who had a Creative Writing class in college
with E.L. James.

He remembers her
as that annoying sheltered Mormon girl in class
always telling people about how great a writer she was
and reciting her bad poetry
to anyone who pretended to listen.

He remembers fondly
the time she sobbed to her friends
because of the D she got on her final project
and the time the professor told her:
"Sometimes passion just isn't enough.
You've got to have talent too."

He knew that if he never made it as a writer
at least he could take solace in the fact that
wasn't as bad as that Erika chick.

After college, he cried weekly
over his mountain of rejected manuscripts
and eventually abandoned the pursuit of his art altogether
in favor of work that pays the bills.

Years later,
he comes home from work
at his 9-12 factory job
he finally, reluctantly, gives in to his wife's demands
to take up bondage in the bedroom -

- and Mid-orgasm she calls him Christian Grey

So, what I'm saying is this:
Somewhere out there, there is someone
who killed their loving wife in sudden rage -
because of poorly written Twilight fanfiction.

The only thing
that can be heard for miles
is the screeching of the metal ropes
of the playground swing

and the laughter of the little boy
whose feet are just barely long enough
to push the ground away

Every step you take
is a step
Forward. There is no backward.
Not until They invent Time Machines.

I don't trust myself with time machines,
so there is only Forward.
Maybe
             sideways.

"I saw you eyeing this"
       I wasn't.
"It's my writing journal. I'm a poet, In case you were wondering"
       I wasn't.
"I don't know if I'm any good. I mean, people say I am"
       Probably not.
Finally, I handed him the question he was fishing for:
       "So what do you write?"
"Oh, well, I did recently complete a poem
 comparing life to a game of chess"
        He had the smuggest most punchable face ever.

                      ...seriously?
You and every other 8th grader who got that prompt in Language Arts.
                        Fuck you.
                                           Is what I should have said to him.

I don't know why he pissed me off so much
Maybe because he reminded me of a younger version of myself
       Always pushing my writing in people's faces
       demanding they have an opinion on it.
Hell, I still do that from time to time.
       Who was I to judge this poor guy?
                 but I did.

After a few years, I forgot about him entirely.
I couldn't recall his face even at gunpoint,
and all that is left in my memory of him
       is that stupid comment about life and chess...
                                         Chess takes strategy, and skill.

If you're gonna compare life to a board game,
It's more like chutes and ladders,
         pure chance
Like Battleship,
         dumb luck
Like Solitaire,
         all too often you're playing with yourself.
But when you aren't it's Charades,
         you're always trying to guess
         What the other really means
         and it's always simpler than we're making it.
It's Clue
         In that no one has all the pieces to the puzzles
         But if we work together,
         maybe we can solve the mysteries.
Scrabble
         It's a bag of incoherent consonants and vowels
        Having no inherent purpose,
        Developing all meaning through your design.

And yes, a little like Chess,
          In that I never learned how to play it.

Autopoiesis.
Autocorrect: Autopsies?
Such a pessimist.

My ship
drifts swiftly,
slowly sifting
shifting,
lifting,
split ting,
sprouting wings,
and finally
flying

free.

This is the year of the leaking sun.
This is the year of the blood soaked chrysalis -
The hard won change.
The beautiful crows feet.
The paintinted canvas.
The bedbug and the bloody nose.

It's the year of the adolescent novel
The year of the cock and cunt
Born again
In the abandoned church of Yeah Yeah and FioRe
Baptized in booze and laughter -
Hand jobs and energy drinks.

This is the year of breaking free and growing up
Getting hard -
Spitting in the face of life.

The way the light shines through the wings of the Buttercock
Reminds me of something...
I forgot.

I don't know if you remember me
I was on the jury two weeks ago
When you were being tried.

Our eyes met for a moment
As your lawyer went on and on about
Crimes of Passion.
You smiled at me.
and bit your lower lip,
all sexy-like - like those women in the movies.
I smiled back.

I can't get you out of my head.
All I keep thinking is -
do you have to be married to get conjugal visits?

My first memory is of dying.
I felt like I'd lived a full life
And now I was gladly fading away.
My first last words were
"Tell Elizabeth I love her"
I don't remember knowing Elizabeth.
I love her though, or at least I did in that moment.

The next thing I recall is being twelve
Sitting on the toilet in the girls' room,
thinking to myself:
"It looks like there was a war in my vagina"
I sat in there by myself until the last bell
Too embarrassed to face the classroom of sharks
With their hungry eyes fixed on me - bleeding in the water.

Which makes me think of another first -
I was eighteen, never smoked weed or even drank booze before.
"Son, there's a time and place for everything - and that's college"
my dad always said. So I took his advice.
I ate like 3 of those mushrooms.
I saw music, like music notes, coming out out the stereo.
They tasted like stars - like longing and hope.

Like how felt outside of that reststop in North Dakota.
When I ran away from the boarding school with Sofia.
We sat there on that bench in the rain.
Hand in hand - a truest love we would let no adult tell us wasn't real.
We were whole in that moment.
A wholeness I'd never know again.
One time, after going down on me
She told me I tasted like music.
I laughed out loud
I didn't know why.

She broke my heart.
I was a business tycoon,
A man of great wealth
I could have anyone I wanted,
but not her.  
She didn't know what she wanted. She needed guidance.
So I found her, and we both got what we really wanted.
I always get what I want...
...I don't like this memory.

I was one hundred and thirty seven
Days sober.
When I got the news.
My only daughter -
Barely a woman.
My fragile little doll -
Was ripped to pieces  by monsters.
No reason.
Just evil being evil
No one can deny who they really are for too long.
Some people are serial killers,
Some are heroes,  
Some are alcoholics.

I don't remember much about that night.
I woke up the next day,
and I was 21 - officially.
I'd probably have felt better if I wasn't so hungover.

I'd puked in the store's bathroom.
My nerves were shot.
My body was shaking.
I couldn't believe what just happened
- this was just a part time job to pay off student loans.
This Is not the shit I signed up for-
The guy came in - skimask and all, like out of a fucking movie -
His gun pointed directly at my head.
demanding all of the money in the register.
I reached for the panic button, all subtle like they taught us in that half hour seminar...

"You press threat button kid, you die today - now give me the money and this will all be over soon -"
I recall saying in the most macho voice I could muster.
I didn't want to shoot her. Hell, she looked cute, I'd rather date her.
But that would be another life.
One I can't afford to ponder.
This was the reality.
I had to do this -
She had what I wanted - what I needed.
It's dog eat dog out here.

"Good girl"
Shadow dropped the bone at my feet.
I picked it up and tossed it back into the endless grass
As it spun like boomerang in the air -
For some reason, couldn't tell you why,  I thought about Frankenstein's Monster.

Some parts are really fuzzy,
I hold it close to me - the fuzzy parts against my skin.
It's a quilt blanket, stitched together of pieces and parts of found cloth.
My father made it for me.
My very last first birthday gift.
I cocoon myself in it like a womb.

He's too quiet.
Not calm-before-the-storm quiet
or zen-mater-monk quiet.
He's more awkward-pause quiet
but all the time.

He lives in a motel
two blocks from the factory where he works.
He rides his bike there everyday.
Works overtime and never uses his vacation days.

He's a curious man.
There are lots of theories as to why he is that way.
They range anywhere from
"He's in witness protection" to "He's just crazy and he's gonna snap one day."

The Supervisor, once theorized
that he lost everything and everyone he loved some time ago
and now he was a man with nothing else to live for...

I left you
scrambled on the wall
naked for all to see.

I called it art
poetry
even, honesty.

but it was only brutality
only ill-informed and unformed mess of ideology
only the reaction of little boy
to a trainwreck.

I won't say the word regret,
because I don't
I won't say the word sorry
because I'm not.

I will say that with age comes perspective  
and with perspective
comes introspection and --

well, we've all had too much of that today.

A soul?
No, I don't believe in it.
What do you mean 'what to you mean?'
I mean, as a metaphor, sure.
but not one that's a literal reality.
Yes, well no.
I wouldn't say we're just the result of synapses firing
but I don't think we are more than that either.

What I mean is-
Do you realize how amazing that is?
That electrical impulses in your brain connect and pathways develop
over time into a complex and amazingly beautiful person.
At the same time, you're growing physically.
Chemicals and hormones reacting
in a almost cosmic dance with outside stimuli informing how you see
smell, and taste the world, and vice versa.
You're self emerges from all these processes happening at the same time.
It's magical really.

We're blobs of matter and bacteria and electricity
roaming around collecting experiences
only to eventually fall apart and join back with the earth and forget it all.
But that's okay.
Nothing great lasts forever.
nothing this brilliant and amazing can be eternal.

So, no, I guess I don't think we are just electrical impulses and neurons and whatnot.
We are a socio-biological concert of self.
And that's something.

Once a fuck is given, one can not get it back.

I heard somewhere recently
that people are the most creative
at the times they think
that they are utterly useless:
like in the morning before getting coffee
or while surrounded by asshole co-workers who won't shut up about their stupid gun collection
       (cause seriously, no one cares about how big your dick isn't, Phil.)

The amount of fucks anyone can give in a day varies based of many factors - the amount of sleep someone has the night before or if they ate breakfast that morning, for example, can determine how many fucks a person has to spare.

It is in that spirit - despite my better judgement -
I am writing to you at four AM.
Sitting in my underwear,
Forcing my eyes to stay open, licking my dust-dry lips.
and realizing that I forgot to brush my teeth -
I'm writing that tid-bit that down
in hopes it will embarrass me into making a proper oral hygiene choice
sometime in between when I finish writing this and before I pass out from exhaustion.

If someone deems a person or a situation not worth their emotional effort, they can choose to not give a fuck, despite having fucks they can give.

Today at work:
Everyone kept asking me if I was alright
I told them that I think so -
because, that's the truth.
But also because it's easier to say than
"I don't want to be here, and your face annoys me"

A fuck is approximately two damns. A damn is two shits, and a shit is two rat's asses.

I don't have much to say in this piece
So I'm hoping that self-deprecation
and artsy-fartsy stream of consciousness
still passes for decent poetry these days.

Taking a fuck is morally objectionable.

The doctors told me I should abort.
But my mom convinced me this was for the best  

I told them I wanted a closed adoption.
They said that I'd never see you again.
I was okay with that.
It made things easier.

You have to know,
I never wanted any of this,
I never thought I'd be one to abandon my only child
That's monstrous.
Please believe me,
I am not a monster.

But he was.

Your eyes are the same.
Dark and hard...
but sort of empty too.

Your smile
is soft and gentle - like his.
A practiced liar's smile.

Your hands,
they look just like the ones he wrapped around my mouth and neck,
long and thin, but surprisingly strong.

Your voice -
Identical to the one that whispered
"no one will believe you"
into my ear that night.

You even kind of smell like him.

I don't know what you expected to get out of this:
Money?
An apology?
Closure?
Love?
I can't give you any of those things.

I will tell you this:
I could have spared you this moment,
And not doing so, is my biggest regret.

It was found today
An old leather-bound journal
All its pages – blank

It was found today
The body of a woman
Killed softly by life.

It was found today
A leaf, crumbling the sun
Scattered by the wind.