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Elder cocoons
Crysalis Hospice
Heaves pounding war drums
Fables of eternal bridge
Bingo and television
zombie horde lunch hour
Tennis ***** play race car
down halls tarred with lost children
Abandoned wither liver spot wrists
Silk wrinkles
Pull like neck folds lifted
newborn simba kittens
casted into this kingdom
scientists culture control

climate but not the yellow wall
It's too high for a fit cyborg
intravenous barbed wire
Cathader Penetrating
illusions of escapism
except the prison wealthy
classically conditioned

trading ice cream like cigarettes
trading blood diseases like ramen packets
There is no planned parenthood
in old folks homes
There is no distribution of free condoms
In a facility where they without medication
When you're about to win the lottery

His last day requested to bed Nurse Christine
Wheelchair ridden fumbling to open
A shaker of Mrs. DASH
I reach to help him open the spice.
Growling and Sadistic he festered:
"Let the little boy do what he can do."

I sat down in my chair.
he had his nurse ala mode.
no one will fund a ****** dispensary for old folks home.
they wouldn't use them.
https://youtu.be/QFueL1nNT6k
"He can't walk, he's on decline."
I was briefed as I clocked in.
an anxious robotic voice says
You have clocked in at 9:40pm
"When I get back from vacation He'll be dead"

I stand awkwardly at the landline phone and stare at him.
between us is the Clients bedroom doorway
The Client is asleep.

"When did he go to bed?," I say after a silence.
"Oh about a minute ago"
Breathing becomes fast and heavy from inside the room.

"I think it's a good time for you to go now"
I say, "It was nice to meet you."
"I'll be relieving you tomorrow morning at 8:30"

He leaves,
There is nothing relieving about this man
eager to back into each parking space
Lusting for his vacation in California
Caring for this helpless old man when I leave.

Architecture rivets as he walks down the hallway.
footsteps echo off the empty fireplaces and yellow wallpaper  
no tumbleweed in the darkness outside
only snow wet and black tar.
as he looks in the mirror his wax smile fades into his hairline

I shiver in the recliner at my journal.
I look at the man sleeping past the doorway.
This is my job now.
That man is my future
Destined for a Hospice Heart
4/4/2017 "day 4"

"Used to?
Isn't being a father permenent?
What, did she die?"

Yes.
Tragic accident
I prefer not to talk about it.

"I'm sorry..."

I'm better now,
it's been four years
She gave me lots of poetry to write
Gave me lots of happiness
when She was mine.

"She'll always be yours."

No.
Okay she didn't die.
She's still out there
somewhere
but she's not mine.
I fell in love
with a nerdy irish woman
We were both fifteen
When I said her one year old daughter
Wasn't gonna scare me away
I was in the trenches love.

"That's powerful
To love someone so much
That you are willing to raise a baby at fifteen."

At fifteen
I didn't even know what love was,
not when I met her anyway.
I was in lust.
I was blinded by a beautiful woman
who was so pretty
I didn't care what baggage she had.
I was willing to risk my life
to spend it with her.

"That's what love is."

No. That's not love.
Love is waking up to someone
staring at you
from over the edge of your bedsheets
Because that's as tall
as they can get in their tippy toes
Love is Mashed potatoes
on your nose
giggling at toppled over snowmen.
Love is not just
putting a bandage on a boo boo,
but knowing someone has always
and will forever kiss and bandage
every single boo boo

"So You can never love someone
like you love a child."

Well, You might.
But I'm broken

Always nuture or abandon
Usually both
While I wander around
praying for a ******
to pop.

"do you really want another child?"

Yes. I am ready.
I have wandered four years
with no purpose of life
other than to provide
for my own baby
I need one,
can't you understand?

"Can you even support a child?"

I could make it work, find a sitter.

No... I can't even feed myself
regularly. ..
There's no way I could
support a family
when I am as sick as I've been.

"who was the real father?"

You all ******* ask that.

She wouldn't tell me okay?
Slept around,
never asked for names.

"But she must have told someone."

she lied to the government.
It was a pack of men
who ***** her.
Wearing masks.
Never got a dna test,
never got ANY testing
Do you think I know?

"I do."

look. It's the only gift
I have left to offer that little girl.
I will not tell a single soul.
It was someone her mother loved very much.
Someone she would never be able to love
without being judged.
someone who must be buried
beneath old corpses
Hidden at the bottom of every bottle
carried on her shoulders
until the day she dies
And even then if she is very lucky
he will never know it's his.
She looked him dead in the eyes and lied.
she was dead in the eyes and lied
she is dead in everyones eyes
because she lied
she can't drink enough to forget
That her family regrets her
And no matter how many
strangers she *****
She can't make up for the ones
she lied about in the beginning
back when he was
the only one to touch her
She compensates
to unravel the web with her body
But the silk is woven so thick now.
as thick as it is

it still won't keep her baby warm.
He says "Geek Poet!
Leave the politics alone
Stick to Pop culture"

Cousin.
Politics ARE Pop culture.
don't you see?

in a world where businesses
buy natural disaster insurance
In fear of presidential tweets
McDonald's burger vending machines
You think this isn't dystopia?

We play games to escape.
where can we go
when the "real world"
is just as scary
upside down?

Tell me, Cousin.
Where do you write your poetry?
is it safe?

Do you surround yourself with muses?
back turned to a naked woman?
is there whiskey on the bar,
A journal,
your favorite pen?
Your cell phone,
clentching in the public restroom?

because no matter where you are.
that sanctuary
is a ******* pillow fort
compared to the Fort Knox
of an artists imagination

politics ARE pop culture
China is throwing unfathomable
amounts of money into Propaganda
targeting millennials though memes.
Fish don't see water, remember?

You are telling me
I can't write about politics.
There are Americans
who have never voted,
Radical left and right facebook profiles
protecting and attacking A Racist,
selfish, blemish on our history.
you wonder why we are scared, Cousin?

You want to know why I am so loud?

I watch Men step alligator shoe
out of Boston limousines
Slicked back hair straight
from wolf of wallstreet
belligerent screaming
"I do what I Waaaaaaant!"
"She does what she waaaaaaaaaaaaants!"
"We do what we waaaaant!"

This is the world
we're escaping from.
Excuse me if I break
from the zombie jokes
The vampire romances
Focus on the dead bodies
in our own city, Cousin.

Our demons are real now.

dystopian literature
called for the 2017 election
as far back as the 1930s'

Senator Buzz Windrip
from "It can't happen here"
by Sinclair Lewis
makes promises
to "return America to a better time".
back in 1935

buying validity for his ideas
in airtime on the radio,
tarring those who disagree,
as tools of mother russia,

dismissing woman,
as silly socialists.
naming the press
"a lot of irresponsible wind bags."

In the book "Parable of the talents",
Octavia butler Predicts a "Pox" In 2015
Wiping most of the population.
President Andrew Steele Jarret
promising to return the country
to an "Older Simpler time".
She wrote this book in 1998

Want to learn how to defeat Trump?
Read "Our Twisted Hero,"
by Yi Munyol

Read "In the Heart of the Valley of Love, "
by Cynthia Kadohata

All of these Dystopian fantasies
Prepare the Geeks
to rise up and fight.
Pop culture is the only thing saving us
Knowledge is the only thing saving us
Standing up,
Making art,
Being loud
is the only thing saving us
from the red button
in the orange hands
of the man who NEVER Had
the best words,

Because we do.

Repeat After me:

We The Artists
The Geeks who shall inherit
Swear to protect our words.
We will not bow,
bend,
or break.
Ink is the blood of prophets
The voice is a weapon

Excuse me if I fight
For education over distractraction.
Forgive me for preaching
Art as our gospel.

you can't Incite Revolution
by throwing dice at ghosts.

I am sick of being tall
because my friends
are too busy crawling
I'm putting all my stat points into
inspire

Let me incite placebo healing
for a small fraction
of the tortured
anxiety pretzels I walk along
each day.

I will spit
on anxiety paper-cuts
from this paperback of bigotry
in our future history
labeling myself neosporin prayin'
God,
PLEASE
let me be charismatic enough.
I love like every tree leaf is a miracle.
I love like when leaves fall, If I look away they will never have been there.
I love like the ground doesn't exist unless I love every blade of grass that tries to catch the leaves.
I love like I am allergic to grass
I am allergic to grass.
I love like I worship each pill that stops the itching.
I love like the Itching is self-inflicted
poison which I am responsible for
finding the antidote.
I love like all leaves fall,
but only because I watched the first leaf fall.
I love like this is my tree
but not my leaves.
I love like I hold piles of dead leaves in my hands and cry
I hold piles of dead leaves in my hands and cry.
I love like there are particles of dead Leaves in everything.
The wind.
Herbal tea
I love like I need to find a leaf that will be an herbal remedy for my allergies.
I love like I found that herbal remedy and Sit by her tree all day.
I love like This tree loves it's leaves
letting them go, Growing new
Providing shade for words to be read while it lives.
constantlly Growing taller
Telling stories in it's rings
Only to be read when it
is Chopped down.
But I will watch it fall.
Or I'll never leave this spot.
Where it grew.
I'll rest beneath my pile
Of dead leaves.
Leave particles of myself in everything.
The wind.
This Herbal tea.
No, seriously
it's ether this or Oatmeal you guys.
These options are terrible.
I wanna re-roll my character.
Don't ask me how I got here, kid.
unless every time your College head hears the 20th century definition of "Awesome" or "Adventure"
You can hear "sandstorm" instead
wrap the lust in caution tape.
don't want you finding out
Our feet
are the same size.
you're anxious

can't you sit still?

What,
you afraid of bein' caught?

Let me tell you a secret.
nobody is watching you.

If you really wanna learn how to get here

live by that.

I assumed you wanted something?
Follow me.
don't be afraid of that cloud Over there
He just plays guitar
for cigarettes
So he can smoke 'em
Simple man, that Smokey
Not in the kiddy selling business,
Or a mercenary, or part of the
in and out
and in and out and in
and out
Of jail crew
he just plays guitar
and smokes cigarettes.
marlboro reds.
how many did you want?
$60.
Would you stop talkin' so fast?

remember not to take more than two.

And you're eating?

See,
I take care of you...

how about a kiss?
No?

Oh, **
** And you were scared of the clouds.

Light it.

put your clothes on kid.
good luck on your finals.

remember to eat.

remember who takes care of you.
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