Some people hope.
And you?
Some people dream.
And you?
Some people laugh.
And you?
Some people try.
What about you?

Me, I cry.
And you?
Me, I trip and graze my bone.
And you?
Me, I walk and hurt my feet.
And you?
Me, I live on a spectrum.
What about you?

You, you chuckle.
You, you accept.
You, you wait.
You, you absorb.

You are not a person.
You are a sponge.
And when you do not squeeze yourself,
All you will do is take in,
Until you saturate
and split your sides.

You, you do not live.
Me, at least I try.

so I brought my writer wife
(prominently pregnant)
to the hospital
and on her bed, she screamed:
"weren't" "hasn't" "couldn't" "shan't"
"aint" "hadn't" "you're" "isn't"
"aren't" "didn't" "wasn't"
"who's?" "what's?" "he's" "she's"

The doctors were confounded
and they turned to me and they said:
"What the hell is she doing?"

And I replied with double speed
and a violent sense of urgency:
*"Don't you know?
She's having contractions -
she's a writer"

At the last minute a word is waiting
not heard that way before and not to be
repeated or ever be remembered
one that always had been a household word
used in speaking of the ordinary
everyday recurrences of living
not newly chosen or long considered
or a matter for comment afterward
who would ever have thought it was the one
saying itself from the beginning through
all its uses and circumstances to
utter at last that meaning of its own
for which it had long been the only word
though it seems now that any word would do

The wind is rejection.
I live on a hill.
The night is cold lonely.
A bittersweet chill.
I wander the hillside.
I plan my demise.
Then light through the clouds
brings relief to my eyes.
The moon is a magnet.
I can feel her sharp pull.
My blood tastes like metal
whenever she’s full.
I stand still in wonder.
I look in her eyes.
My worries are scattered.
The wind slowly dies.

I've been running
through the night like
a schizophrenic ghost,
looking for the angels
that used to hang around
here, the tarnished ones,
the ones that lost their shine,

and all the while
I keep bumping into walls
that aren't even there.