It's been drilled in every poor man's head,
by a man only slightly less poor
"money cannot buy happiness."
But I disagree!
If you say that,
You have not watched your father scream at God at 7 in the morning,
questioning His existence,
as we get kicked out of
the second house that year.

I no longer find excitement
in new places.

You've never waited for the first of the month.
Every month.
In order to eat something other than spaghetti
and dollar store hot dogs.

You've never had your power shut off for an entire month
And watch as your family rips apart,
boiling water on the stove just to bathe.

Your parents owe everyone money.

You've never worked in order to buy your cleats, yearbooks, and school supplies.
Only to have your parents take that money, too.

You can send your vibes,
and tell me to think positive.
But the world is distorted!
Our lives are only better now because my family got jobs.

Before,
I watched a bulldozer
go through the house I grew up in,
as the bank sold our home
and built an auto-parts store over dirt
I used to ride my bike on.
The last pieces of my grandmother, crumbled.
My father stayed up every night
and slept through every holiday and birthday, since.

Is that happiness?

Sailing through the
midnight sky,
Sailing through the
midnight sea,
in a boat of moon.

Fishing for my dream,
so far
Fishing for my dream,
so near
My rope - a single moonbeam
and my bait- one silver star

You have forgotten God,
but somehow somewhere deep within
                    still you know
you are His prophet.
spraying holy graffiti on the abandoned midnight walls
of the eternal buildings of the city,
up in smoke the dreams of your yesterdays,
crushing emptied beer cans against railroad tracks,
screaming as the whistle blows,
longing to be,
               longing to be…
just not quite so **** infinitesimal,
driven to insanity in the obscene love for now,
     until your mind collapses into castrophic silent reverie.

Now,
                            now,
                                                   now.
i love you,
     I love you,
           i love you,
you are the prophet,
o lovely singular soul of everything,
               you know what must be.

why have your eyes gone dark,
         why are your visions no more,
you long for the starry magnitude of infinity,
and yet can only make it to the door.
you search in the sounds of the night
in the threads of your carpet,
in the creaks in the walls,
in the hum of the air,
       in the sad blue jazz soul of the yellow-light sidewalks
that cry to the sky, “why this eternity,”
therein lies the mystery of everything,
you know it,
but where is it.
    o prophet, o soul,
why have your eyes gone dark?

i don't want to immortalize you,
i want to keep you in a tiny box
with a handsome photo of you
next to each and every thing
you write when you feel whatever
it is that you feel when you write

i don't want to work hard at this,
because i know what that yields
and i'm pretty sure neither of us
has the capacity to grow much
of anything other than ourselves
into what we're destined to become

i don't know who she is,
this woman who talks to you
without fear of rejection or
retribution despite the fact
that i'm saying things i never
thought would roll off of
my disciplined tongue

i don't want much from you,
other than words and long looks
and touches and carnal attraction
and time when you can spare it
despite the truth of how little
excess either of us seem to possess

Some Kind Of Sadness

I seem to have a mark of sadness
I don’t see when writing.
But when read again,
Plain as the nose upon my face
I see it and I say:
Am I that doleful soul
Whose miles of smiles
Make each day,
An inner and an inner, inner
Spurned when I’m awake?
A Janus or an understand-er of existence,
Real both?  Real or both?
I know-eth not
And do not care.
I’m where I ought to be:
Here always.

Some Kind Of Sadness 6.25.2017
Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

The thousands of grey hair circle my hairline
matching the wrinkle lines on my aging face
They came with pain and hardships,
and not enough love to go around;

Suddenly, an expressive emoji of my younger face
came to surface, happy yet sad, yet no crack
but this all came about when time had relapse :
so many heart-break, so many mistakes,

Like humpty the wall breaker, or was it the dream crasher?
Time has treated me like a step child.