please tell your ghost to stop following me
and whispering in my ears
that i was not good enough
please tell your ghost to stop following me
and calling me sweetheart
and putting his hands all over me
please tell your ghost to stop following me
and watching me while i cry
about how i miss you
please tell your ghost to stop following me
and laying in bed with me
keeping me from closing my eyes
please tell your ghost to stop following me
if i can't have you
then i don't want your
ghost

it's not easy being the superhero
in fact
it's hell
because while you're out there
saving the whole ******* world
who is going to save you?
nobody
those selfish ******* need you
but you need them more
and they'll never know
that
sometimes the superhero
needs saving too

sometimes i go off
about these worlds
that i make up
in my head.

because when the world
is so messed up,
don't you
want another?

i spend
so much time
just living
in these worlds,
     just thinking.

about
trivial things

     like:
how come clouds
get to be so high
that it's like they're flying,
when all they do is bring rain?

     or:
why do we spend
so much time
obsessing over the fact
that we don't have much time at all?

but i think
that maybe
in these worlds i make up,
it's not so bad.

sure,
there are bad guys
but when are there not?

the thing is,
in my world,
i'm not one of those
bad guys.

i'm the one
with the cape
and the mask
and i am the one
     who saves the day.

Some days I have to remind myself
That it is hunger, not grief
Gnawing at the pit of my stomach
That my head aches from forgetting
To grab that bottle of water
When I woke late
Not from the million memories
Made and unmade
Of my little girl
who never took a breath
Outside my body
Of her sweet uncle
whose breath was
Crushed from his body
Three months to the hour
After my baby was born
eternally sleeping

These days
are so much longer now
Like their hours unlived
Have been folded into mine
Phantom hours that
make the minutes
drag on and on
Make me want
Just a few more hours sleep
Because six or eight or
twelve or fourteen
Is never enough
Leaving me wishing
That I could live
Forever with them
In my dreams

If we could but die one million and one deaths
To be aware and assured one million new beginnings
To have the freedom to revel
in our failings and false starts
To have the time to be swallowed by our emotions-
to float serenely in pools of delight
when in those lives of joy,
to cast ourselves headlong down wells of sorrow
when in those lives of grief
A million lives to spend or waste
Infinite opportunities to grow and discover
No longer held to who we hurriedly decide we are
Driven instead by probabilities
hand in hand with impossibilities of
who we could be
Instead we struggle in the web
of this single life's imagined deadlines
unable to escape the one-lane
tunnel vision trajectory



this time.

Someday this will end
maybe tomorrow,
a month from tomorrow,
years and years from tomorrow

When this ends
I hope it is with a stop sign
and not a slow cautious yield
I wish for last moments
like the end of a film reel
the smallest flicker after the final frame
but no grand production-
none of the grasping, reaching,
begging for more
Just an end that ends, simply.