I listened to my younger brother
on the phone.
He told me
a friend had killed himself
shotgun under chin.
There was an open casket at the funeral.
They'd patched him back together
as best they could
but
some things you just can't fix.
My brother said he looked like an alien
foreign
misshapen.
Without thinking I responded
"You're at the age now brother
where people will start dropping like flies
for no good reason
and you'll have to learn to deal with it."
My brother is nineteen.
What is wrong with a world
in which that statement
is the truth?

what a shame it is
i dont know a ******* thing
about you mama

cough syrup
drops: from your sullen mouth,
gapes and invites the flies to make their
home. Your mind is a maze
making me yearn for it,
How do you tick?
What lyrics stick in your head?
Where do you hide your dead?  
Flies flicker, stuck to the sweetness
of the syrup bottle
I am similarly enamored
captured, struck by your
****** in, by the potential for sin.
for the taste of the sickly sweet
cough syrup on your skin.

flipping the pages
of my battered up
journal, i read the
words that we used
to say, smiles that
we had exchanged,
stories that we told.

life looked bright,
wonderful but then

everything disappeared
in front of my eyes
when you told me that
we were 'over' and you
didn't love me anymore.

you left, without a goodbye,
                without any explanation

nothing.