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There's a pail
just over there.
Yesterday it was brimming
with things unwanted.
I empty it every morning
and it's always full again
by the time the sun sets.

A fail pail,
a ****-it bucket.

A sacred place
to where I send
all my unwelcome thoughts.
Every drip of them.
I wring out my brain
and watch the colors
slip between my fingers.

I watch the things unwanted,
I watch them puddle and fill and swirl and mix and stain and fight and **** and claim and dry and crack and steep and warm and cool and dance alllllllll together. They dance all together now, bouncing off the walls of

                                                           that pail.

Just over there.

I can always see it. Always.

Always in the periphery. Never out of my sight. I need it near me every day and all **** night. Just in case I wake from sleep thinking something that I don't want to think so I can send it off to join the rest of the misbegotten children spawned by my head.
It started with a knife,
light chopping. Hunting for a seam.
Up on the counter now,
cleaving more vigorously.

It stood fast,
hardened hairy shell
mocking me bitterly.

I went from a chop
to a stab,
the knife bent
and it rolled off with a laugh.

Away I stormed,
with one thing in mind.
I returned and in my claw
was a hammer of the same kind.

Poised again, the countertop
now begging me to stop,
I started to swing and
it was more effective than the chops.

A crack here, a glancing blow.
Water splashed out
to and fro.

When at last I found a seam
just large enough to
force my fingers between.

With a mighty grunt and roar,
finally in twain;
the fortified fruit I tore.

Sweating and bleeding I sighed,
no wonder people stranded
on deserted islands die.
Morning cigarette.
Afternoon coffee.
Evening scotch.
Midnight blood.
Rinse, repeat.
If my head is pounding
it must be a Sunday morning.

Or a Monday, or
Tuesday, etc...

Or whatever.
The pull is real,
whether explicable or not.
These things we feel.

Like a neighbor
you knew in childhood.

Like a color you know,
but can't quite name.

Like the sun
from a new horizon.

Pure familiarity.

It's something
you can't quite fight.
It's something
that you think about at night.

Whether it's meant to be
or not,
it'll always it pull us.
Fate's own plot.
Yellow socks,
they used to be white.
Stiff enough to kick rocks,
what a delight.
The beauty of a vast field
covered in rippling waves
of budding, golden grain.

Offset only by its uninviting notion.


Lovely to look at.
Hell to walk through.



Like much in life.




Like your eyes.






Like my mind.
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