Sometimes the mornings are restless
and the hangover is heavy
and the heart is heavy

And everything goes quiet
The body goes quiet
Maybe the sheets rustle
But the body is quiet
In silent prayer

This headache a revival
Back into existence

She has awaken already
She does not even leave her scent behind

I am thankful
Mostly for the quiet
As the sun illuminates the blinds
Like the beginning of light
exploding through a wall

And I am thankful
That no matter where these nights take me
Every morning
feels like home

His hat says
I Remember Pearl Harbor
He asks me to put the wine in the basket
Hanging behind his motorized wheelchair

He smells a little like ***
His sweatpants have dark stains all over
Like a leapord who has gone old and grey

"They can put a motor on one
of these things
but they can't make them comfortable"

"When you're an old man like me
maybe yours will fly
but I bet your *** will still fall asleep all the time"

I tell him
that when I am old
I hope they make wheelchairs
that feel like a father's shoulders

He shakes his head after I say that and laughs
"That sounds like it might be nice
But i couldn't say I know what that feels like"

Me neither
I tell him

"I am leaving to see your mother"
He tells me

He hums
But it is not music

The doctor says people in end stage COPD
make noises like that

I hope that when I am old
my body will uncontrollably make music too

"Dad," I say

"Hmm"

"You know you ****** up at being a dad right?"

"I know" hmm hmmm hmmm hmm

"I'm proud of you anyways though"

"What for?"

" Time I guess. I couldnt say. Can you tell me just once that you love me?"

"Will it change anything if I do?" Hmmm hmmm hmmm

"No"

"I'm going to see your mother."

"You've gotten so tall"
she says

"It's only been a few months" I tell her
She looks directly into my mouth as I speak
Her face is different
Hair
Even the way she smells
I can't place it
but it is ugly

"You're taller"

"You drank yourself blind. I haven't changed"

"You know you were a c-section
Cut out like a tumor?"

"I know"

I remind myself
that forgiveness
and being cordial
and finding peace
can often be different things

She holds her elbows out
and my father helps lower her to the couch

"I'm coming home soon," she says
"You're going to have your mother back."

I am leaving soon I tell her
and I am never coming back

Sue tells me that there used to be
a railroad
a few streets down

The shopping center was just a big dirt feild

"When we were kids"
she says
"We would put our hands to the windows sometimes
You'll never know what that feels like"

I imagine her bones
As railroad tracks
No one traces the topagraphy of her body anymore

Her hands shake as
She picks up
her saucer and tea cup
I hear a train coming

This poetry is bad art now
As fragile and as tasteless as a communion wafer
In the mouth of a murderer

I thought this poetry would make you love me
But your body stands like a marble statue
In a Stendhall suicide exhibit

Looking away is easy

Maybe I gave my heart away to easily
That flattery is bad manners
When everyone is a subject

Forgive me
For I have sinned poetically
Lived solely for the stories I want to tell later

So that my chest might be a campfire
And voice the gravel trail that slips beneath your feet
You listen to maintain balance

So yeah
I ****** up
I feel ****** up

Like poster board
Covered in Jackson ******* blood spatter
And called an "Homage to the ****** of Failure"

It's lazy

This language is lazy

My heart is lazy
Pulsing with the same low voltage of the moon

I don't care anymore

I don't care

After reading my first love poem
And misunderstanding my first love story
Romanticizing your bleak hope
I knew I was ******

And in trying to explain this
I am left feeling like a schizophrenic Walt Whitman
Scrawling poems about your beauty

As if love is something you can actually seek outside yourself
While inside you there are walls
Mine fields
Trapdoors leading to deadfalls
All to keep you from it

I want to stand at the entrance to myself
And be baptized in my own sweat
From the work of this deconstruction

There is heaven and peace in the rubble
Blueprints for a home without safeguards
A simple place you can rest your head at night
This chest

Love is not something you seek
But you tell that to these hands
This pen
This mouth
Tell these eyes without losing my gaze
That it is not hiding somewhere behind you

It is not
I know this now
I know that love is this
Your heart is this
Your body is this

A spare room in a small house
You had intented on living alone in

And everytime someone comes to your door
Know it is always nicer inside
And be grateful that someone came to it
Let them in with your smile
say
"I have been expecting you"
Then let them leave if that is what they must do
They might

Just remember to be grateful for their presence
Everyone who sought your door
Sought it because there is something good there
There is always you