perhaps is a word i use sometimes
perhaps is a crutch of a word, yes?
it however allows me to write with honest
perhaps a true lack of certainty
perhaps a fear of conviction.

Don't be just pretty
      Be a gallbladder
Functional

It strikes me that I have never written about you
Well everything I write is about you

It strikes me that I have never written to you
Well I have written a dozon letters, never sent

It strikes me that I have  never used your name in my writing
That is still true

Lust is a selfish, carnal
Thirst, it can only be satisfied by
Engagement in ****** activity

Illness has an odd way
Of ordering affections
sorting priorities

Nausea is illness
But the unsourced kind
it is a warmth
an unpleasant heat

An indication of error
But what?
Is Wrong?
Nausea is the stubborn sick
Refusing to disclose its root

It fills and sloshes
Like a coagulating soup
The only cure is to here it told
“Your mistakes are forgiven”
“Your body will be made new”
“Your grieving is heard”
“I am listening”

Nausea is a stubborn captain
of a leaky ship
O bail my ship
O captain
Make all things new.

There is a worm behind my eye
And it wants, it wants, it wants
Sending telegraphs down my nerves
Begging to be noticed
There is a worm behind my eye
And it wants out.

You are not the only person i’ve loved looking at that light
Green, blinking over the water
in fact, i said goodbye to my first staring at it
i soared with my second in its glow
but each one, each one
faded, or crashed, either by my malicious hand, or my incompetent rudder
i have pulled so much from so little
i knew that light meant everything
now i have learned, it is just a light
in reality it exists only to demarcate the left side of the safe path
not to me, not to me, to me, like one before me, it was everything
a green light blinking in the Distance
every future i could hope for
each time filled with a different You
i’ve sat in the same spot on the same sandy shore and said the same things the same way
the only difference
You
god, i hope You are different
i hope i feel differently about You
but i do not, i can not know
i hope our ship will not sink like the rest
Illuminated by my kitschy and distracted heart
always looking for the next metaphor
Blinking, noiselessly but immutable
i am sorry
**** me and my poetry
i am sorry
in the fall there will be a fourth.

He used to walk back and forth across overpasses
You would too
When I met him he said to me,
“Have you ever been in Chicago in the middle of the night?
When the whole city pauses in between breaths
In between screams
Day by Day
We ******* scream
Every ******* day we’re ******* screaming
And when there is no more breath
When there’s no more light
We wait and we simmer
All the while the hungry commuters flit back and forth under the auburn aurora of our hopeful solipsism.”
I did not answer him.
He was not asking a question.
And then I understood why he used to walk back and forth across overpasses.