for pennies, an app
to do the heavy lifting,
rhymes, pentameter,
all the quatrains ya ever needed

strained fever, emotions rampant,
insufficient and unnecessary conditions
for poverty poetry evocation,
even autocorrects insipid
really bad tiresome love poems,
après endless generation (degeneration?)

who needs you

you think
no such animal

you be write

for the art of life
cannot be mechanized

wrote a poem,
a wistful sad lament
on mothers losing children,
a prayer, a yelling, a condemnation,
the app was,
on this subject
uncommunicative,
un étranger
of silence
in all languages

you can buy love
but you cannot buy pain

too costly and
3D printers
give you plastic, disingenuous
wholly unsatisfactory

for a lousy $1.99
I'll write you customized,
supply the situation,
a few descriptive phrases,
60 minutes later,
et voila!

am you app,
am your scrivener,
don't do roses or violets
but yes to
rhythm and blues

will take
PayPal
PenPal
but no credit cards

you may take my words
as you own,
take my credit,
but I won't take yours...

I am app human,
bring me your lush, winsome,
plain vanilla, tutti frutti,
all acceptable,
for where the real stuff
comes from

I have only mined
the surface,
the veins beneath
richness for the asking

i still can’t say your name.
not because, the sound makes me sad,
but rather because
the way the letters sit on my tongue and,
the way the syllables leave my lips
simply don’t feel as comfortable as they used to.
i wonder if you can’t hear my name.
the way you told me to add an accent to the end.
the way I made it sound like the ending to a love note,
a love note my diction could fold into a paper crane
that could fly to your heart.
i remember how you recorded me saying my own name,
because, you loved the way the vowels
dripped off my lips one by one,
the way I could curl the four letter nickname so gently
it sounded like a cursive word,
wrapped and tucked behind your ear.
i hope you can’t listen to those recordings,
because I can’t listen to my favorite songs.
i hope one day your mouth opens to say her name
and closes knowing it said my own,
because any time I type another man’s name on my phone,
it somehow autocorrects to yours.
i hope my paper crane name has made a nest in the back of your mind,
laying eggs that will hatch whenever you touch her,
so when you hold her hand,
the little crane in your skull says that only word it knows infinitely well:
táti.

I'm trying to be happy
And positive
And glow
But it is not for me
I'm trying to be good
And write about happy thoughts
And not write about how every time I smile my face autocorrects it to a frown and I can't help it because that is just me
I'm trying to be happy because that's what people tell me
I'm trying to be me because people tell me to be myself
But myself is sad
Sad is me
I am sad

Theres this little tiny bird
Thats been flying and existing
In the heart of my spine
To coo and whisper
As the day filters and becomes harder
Or flies in a flurry of colorful motions and waves
Depending on if I'm having a good day.

A pitter patter as she hums a magical
Or sorrowful tune
It circulates and changes through out my days
I painted every bit of the walls white last night.

We scraped the firebird mother earth from it all
She came off in our hands
I saw her body parts in singular tiny pieces
In the trash can
My production designer sent me a photograph
Of her broken and resilient face
And the voice in my head autocorrects me
And tells me to shut up and be smaller.

My hair is a rainbow
A friend said I look like a watermelon last night
I think she meant to poke fun
But I could care less
And as I grow older,
I care less and less
I take things less and less sensitively.

A transformation, rebirth
A few wonder and skeptical remarks
As to my need, desire
To change, reformulate, adapt
But its because I came from the land of plenty
Molasses covered cocoons of commitment
And I retrained my mind and my body
To sleep and exist in the crevices of newness.

I guess secretly I fear destruction
Death heaves and sighs its weary head all around
In the coming summer months
I fear my own morality
And fantasize just how I would
Sprout a cape and combat it all
With my quiet inner strength.

Moon sisters fighting through their own fights
I get caught up in thinking I reside so alone
Caught in the middle of a constant whirlwind
I ink my feminine thighs
Dye my hair to look like a secret fantasy
Meetings, always working
My mother surrounds me with the negative
Details of what occurs in the world
Walking away but giving love forward
Theres a man across the street in Alabama
Abusive and deceptive
Snipers meant to take his life
If he bore arms
My mama told me
And described the physical damage to his wife
I interrupted her and said
ENOUGH.

I wear it all like a badge
Or my lady bow ties
It clings and rings my neck
Like a house on the back of my shoulders
And I should be running right now
But I needed to cry
And write it out.

Ex lover and I talked on the phone
Things escalated
He sounds well
We got sensual, been so singular honey
But by the end
I didn't care.

I don't know.
I never seem to
But I write in my notebook
Spend money I don't have
Surround myself with artistry I've always wanted
Theres gotta be a path within it all
I feel so lost sometimes.

But I sink my teeth into the lostness.

LET'S FACE FACTS

The mind is like a sponge
absorbing the spilt ketchup

of the moment gone
horribly wrong.

Or if one were
to rub two atoms together

they would burst
instantly into a poem.

Or
not.

Words go to jail if
they fail to capture

the state of mind
of the person who

believed writing was merely
putting pen to paper.

The writing untangles itself
and word for word reenters

the tip of
the pen.

The brain is made from
papier mache

but can be cast in bronze
or set in stone.

Some people don't even know
they are host to a brain.

A man whose name escapes
me now

but was an anagram
for toilets

cried that he could connect
"nothing with nothing."

I envied him and
was jealous of his seeing.

**** my doppelgänger who
autocorrects everything I

(dognapper leg
engorged palp
glopped anger
"Grapple Ogden!")

have strived to
manifest here.

I am an atom short
of a universe.

LET'S FACE FACTS

The mind is like a sponge
absorbing the spilt ketchup

of the moment gone
horribly wrong.

Or if one were
to rub two atoms together

they would burst
instantly into a poem.

Or
not.

Words go to jail if
they fail to capture

the state of mind
of the person who

believed writing was merely
putting pen to paper.

The writing untangles itself
and word for word reenters

the tip of
the pen.

The brain is made from
papier mache

but can be cast in bronze
or set in stone.

Some people don't even know
they are host to a brain.

A man whose name escapes
me now

but was an anagram
for toilets

cried that he could connect
"nothing with nothing."

I envied him and
was jealous of his seeing.

**** my doppelgänger who
autocorrects everything I

(dognapper leg
engorged palp
glopped anger
"Grapple Ogden!")

have strived to
manifest here.

I am an atom short
of a universe.

**

Yet another "thing" brought forth from me by or rather cast out of me by the wonderful Kim Moore at her Cheltenham Poetry Festival writing workshop. Don't even ask! It was to get us to write and write I did and this...is...eh...what came up! Jaysus!

It was a 7min. exercise...just write with no taking the pen off the paper hence when I stalled I started anagraming the word doppelgänger in order to keep the words coming. And as it was my doppelgänger who was shapeshifting all I was saying I thought it was only poetic justice that doppelgänger itself should be the word to get anagramed...serve it ****** well right.

Decaying skin like mushy black tissue paper
Pull some off and stick it on the wall

I have brain damage I can't find the walk
And I can't find my tongue
But I love to talk

Stare with acid eyes at the wall
Write another poem to Dearah
"Dearah" autocorrects to "search"

What a strange coincidence

I have become strange
My skies have become brown and gray
But I'm still ****, I guess
What a mess

**** me now
**** me now
**** me now

No, god ******
It has nothing to do with her
Yes she is ******* lying.