's favorite meal is not children as you may expect
it is old people, the elderly near death
they taste better to him
he fantasizes their whole lives with every bite

whose heart like bottles or ransom clinks against
itself eating the useless parts of its own stomach
rotors of bone hum about revenge
the earth clones pale enigmatic cyanide

my spawn sweat bourbon and bleed sweet milk
I'm the Tower
Look Look
let us hold eachother here until the dark blossoms

into an invisible canine snarl
crushed by feathers at a
tomb-encrusted countryside
wax swans bleed from

their eyes and bulls inside run
in circles around ancient ice prisons

Look a clock
century weary mariners
gape in disbelief
at a yawning dawn
of cadmium
on the tongue of
a bristling free roaming
continent of
gothic salt

I'm confident!* I scream.
A few people on coffee runs turn my way.
I check my watch and climb up on my chair.
I'm confident! I scream just a bit louder.
I am a confident woman!
I few more people pause from their lunch breaks
and shoot snide looks in my direction.
I climb up onto the table where I had been enjoying a Philadelphia roll
a few minutes ago. I take a deep breath.
I'm confident! I yell so the whole street can hear me.
I am! I don't care that I'm here alone! Or that I'm not my perfect weight!
I am confident!
I'm breathing heavily, glowing with the success of my impromptu performance.
I feel a tug on my pant leg, and below me is a weathered woman
who reminds me of my mother with the concerned wrinkles between her eyebrows
and the history in her eyes.
Get down here she snaps at me.
Get off that **** table. Now.
I hop down and sit at the table where I had been before my performance.
You can't just do that.
Do what?
Lie!
I don't answer right away, and I look around
to see if someone put her up to this. What?
Hunny she takes my hand You're not confident if you have
to prove it to me ok? So let's stay away from the tables and proclamations today.
As my mouth gapes open
she waddles off the restaurant patio and melts into the urban daytime rush.

“Just write,” they told me.  And I did.
My smooth cursive running over
each ****** page.
I wrote run-on sentences
without any punctuation that ran on for days without
a single breath of air and when I finished
I spleled wrods wrnog
and didn’t even try to fix them.

Then I began to write about you,
and no matter how hard I tried to stop,
the words flowed out of me
like they were meant to be on paper all along.

I wrote of the time you dragged me to your beach house
on Long Island
even though I was sick and miserable.  
You lay in bed with me all weekend until finally
I made it out to the beach.  
I went home sicker and redder than I had been before.
But you loved me anyway.  

I wrote of the time when we tried to drive across the country,
but we got bored somewhere around Harrisburg.  
Aunt Jay’s Pancake House made the trip worthwhile.  
I can still taste your buttery pancakes and
my gooey French toast on my lips.  
I wish we could go back there just one more time.

I wrote of the day you said goodbye-
the first time that is.
I didn’t get out of bed for three weeks,
you know,
wondering why you even called to see if I was ok.
When I finally pulled myself up and out
of the stuffy, black room
I was surprised the sun was still rising
and the world was continuing on without
us.

I wrote of the day you said goodbye-
the second time.
You didn’t call this time
or write
or give one sign that you were hurting so badly.
I could have fixed you.
I could have loved your pain away.

“Just write,” they told me, “And all of your pain will disappear.”
They don’t understand, though.
I’m not worried about my pain.
I want to go back and write away yours.