Are you content?
Not happy. content.
There's a difference.
I want to know if
You can get
Through a day
And get by with
Enough gumption
To rest your dark, Irish head
And not think about my last words:

******* ******* *******

I didn't mean it like that.
I WANTED to *******.
I SHOULD HAVE.
But it came out
I hate you
Please don't contact me ever again.  

I didn't mean it like that.

I didn't know what to say.
I mean what is there to say
After he tells you

1. I don't want to marry you.
2. I don't love you anymore.

Are your gray suede shoes in tact?
Is the freckle on your hand dancing with anyone else?
Do you think about my dog?
Have you learned anything?
Are you content?
Not happy.
Content.
There's a difference.

I liked the way the bourbon on your lips
burned mine stop
I had to keep drinking stop

Sometimes I get drunk enough to
remember the smell of pomade,
the way the muscles in your back flow
across an anatomically perfect skeleton stop

I can hear you breathing through
your mouth, your heart
that always seemed to beat faster,
more sure than mine,
until it
stopped
altogether stop

Everything was
all together
until it
stopped stop

If I am Earth then
you are sky.

I met a man a year ago
who was so sad
he said he'd **** himself
if he couldn't find
a reason to live
when they let him out
of the ****** bin
we both inhabited.
I check the obituaries
every day
for a little town called
Coffeeville,
and I haven't seen his name
yet.

Sounds like crucify.
My hands are bound by his grip
on the plank perpendicular to my toes
that start to curl backwards now.

I binged on memories
of the words words words
and when my ears burned
I imagined you cradling her
on your chest
softly brushing her hair back
and talking about me.

At the summer camp where
Jesus saved me
I picked up a pre-packaged
cereal sealed in a factory
long before my selection.
I peeled away the plastic film
and there where my bowl
of cereal was supposed to be
was a colony of silkworms,
squirming around like
a bunch of tied hogs
in a swimming pool.

I threw up because it grossed me out.
I had no control over it.

When I think about her hair
around your stubby, little fingers
I throw up because it grosses me out.
I have no control over it.

I'm no Will Shortz, but this poem is about you.
There's your clue.

Call me already
set me straight
do what you have to do
to get me to
notice
you
from across the room
with your
perfectly manicured
sideburns.

Out of all the thoughts
in the world
you had to occupy mine.
We're the difference
between holding hands
with fingers interlaced
or platonically placed palms.
I want you to know, though,
that I would leave
Victor Laslo's sorry ***
for your alcoholic one
in two seconds flat.

I
will
never
forget
the
time
you
bought
me
orchids.

Tonight I am missing:

the attention
that comes along
with I love you

the smell
of his neck

and the strength
to get over it.

I've never been impressed
with a member of
the opposite ***'s
Member ever since
I was six years old.
It was just a hunk
of soft skin that I never
liked to keep my hands on
for longer than
ten agonizing seconds
but I had to do it
twice because it wasn't
right the first time.

If he knew
my first love
my first kiss was
My First Cousin
he'd never touch me
Again
And again and again.
Come on, baby, you can do it.

It never ends.
It's cyclical.
I haven't said a word
all day because if I opened
my rouged mouth
I'd moan for
Sorrow and Pleasure.
Those weepy, little *******
go hand in hand,

Don't they?

The room starts to spin
and there's not enough
gin to get the taste
from my mouth
of your slobbery,
miserable kiss.
Too much.
Too much gin
too much love
too much of a terrible thing
can be detrimental to
the objective.
To survive.
To overcome.
It's hard to do when I'm
the reigning Queen of Crazy.

I loved him once.
I loved him and would do
anything for him,
but now I can't be in a room
alone with him
without wanting to
throw up
and up
and up
and up.
Please, God,
let me pass out before I can feel.

Will it ever stop
raining? The streets are flooded
and so is my heart.

I walked down my front steps
this morning on a
sweltering January Wednesday,
and across the street
a mean hawk
had in its grip a truly unremarkable
run-of-the-mill pigeon.
I couldn't tell if the bird was dead yet
but something told me
there was a life yet to be fully realized,
so I made sure not to get run over
while crossing the street.
When I got too close that feathered dinosaur
squawked at me
for interrupting his breakfast,
but his breakfast was still alive,
and I couldn't sleep at night
knowing this.
The hawk cursed me one more time
but I had taken a step too far.
He let the poor thing go and
I have never seen any living animal
fly so fast in 22 years.
It was something like watching
a man being chased by another man
with a chainsaw,
the anticipation and uncertainty
of whether or not
Herr Hawk caught up
with the unlucky *******.

I've never eaten a salad so fast
as when my best friend and I
went to a restaurant where
a man with one leg
and a loud voice
squawked about
something artistic,

and since I'm still a little girl
in body, soul and mind
I sit on my feet.

My friend and I stopped talking
about something artistic as well
and listened to them.

"I gotta take a ****,"
said the one-legged man,
and though my back was turned to him,
I could hear how tall and broad he was.
As he passed me-
that's how I saw his one leg-
he stopped at my table,
noticing my insecurities
and said,

"I wish I could still sit on my legs like that.
Hey get a load of this,"
he said to his friend with
blue eyes and no teeth.
"hah," said his comrade
and the one legged man
hobbled off to take a ****,
I guess,
but now I'm left wondering

Did he mean before he lost his leg
or before he was that small?
I thought it was a relevant question.

If I could I would
If I could I would
says the most
sedimentary broken record
and my record player is
broken

someone tore the
chord out in the back
like someone tore the
piece out of your heart
and took too much Hope
from this little light of mine.
Hope is what is left
when he tells you he doesn't
love you anymore.
Hope is the smell of a campfire
on the coat you let me
borrow.
Hope kept me warm and
it will keep you warm
when you least expect it.

it's a namesake, not a joke
don't forget it

Hope doesn't live in Graceland
or in Ianville or in Joetown
but in your precious, little broken heart.

bird's wings will heal and so will you, Hope.

The flowers between our yards
were bleeding pink from their white petals

as if the pink were dripping onto the
dry leaves under my feet

when I plucked one out to remember you.
I told Brother-man it must have been

the most beautiful color I had ever seen.
Surely this has to be a joke,

you, God and his paintbrushes must have
hurriedly whipped up something in the dark

when I was up watching shows about
husbands and fathers who ****.

Then I spilled my tea in your chair
on Christmas Eve. How appropriate.

I even let out a yelp, not uncommon
for you, you dear, sweet old woman

who couldn't hear her own thoughts,
too stubborn to hear the thoughts of others

but always willing to listen.

When lightning has struck me
eighty-two times
I want to hear everything
and on the eighty-third
hear nothing but
the most precious of memories.

I hope I can recount stories
of our embarrassing proposal
and the angry Presbyterian ministers
performing the ceremony

because in twenty-two and a half
years I have never once believed
my grandparents loved each other,
but last night the second Julian
recounted he and Lavern's saga
of a marriage that ended in
four ****-ups and decades of
disappointment
with the most agreeable disposition-
even for a man dying
of too much salt in his diet.

I only hope someone will love me
enough to eat bland food
and our grandson's vegetables one day.

You can sleep at night.
I have to take tranquilizers
to stay asleep and
I'm not the one
proclaiming to be
"The Jerry Sandusky"
of the correctional facility

and I can't sleep at night.

Lately I toss and turn
thinking about the
deafening silence
after a single shot
and the dogs
left in the house to
clean up the blood
before anyone else
finds him.

Congratulations,
that you are happy with
yourself.
Congratulations,
that you are comfortable
in your
pederastic, putrid
wrinkled and washed up
skin.
Mine is white and soft,
and I can't stand
to be in it on
Mondays, Tuesdays,
Wednesday, Thursdays
and Saturdays
because half of that skin
is your skin, your brain
but
like I said,
congratulations that
you've declared your
noble head
"Grown Up" at 60, old man.

Here it comes again
the water moccasin my mother shot
when I was playing in the lake
has come back to bite me in the ***.
She stands, there, in the photograph
she had framed to sit on a table
between two big, uncomfortable chairs

my brother in boots on the wrong foot
Maggie, precious little bird, was even
too young to have to wear a shirt
in this picture

and there in my mother's fingers
dangling feet away from my
warm, little body
was a five foot snake
who still wiggled a little
when his nerves
kicked in.

When we dance to no
music the freckles on the
backs of our hands match.

So goes love. That's how
you know the scales are balanced.
Come back now, you hear?

She drove from one coast to the other
with her contemptible co-Captain, Kenny.
One time in Colorado,
she saw Bambi looking for
berries in the dark
on a concrete highway-
stupid thing-
and all of a sudden

she felt a bump in the road
and kept ******* driving!

Kenny was passed out drunk on ***
in the cab of the ship
like the piece of slimy ****
he is,
and he didn't want to stop until
he could find some more heroine
by God.

A few days later at some half-star hotel
they smelled something rotten under
the front of their tag-teamed semi

and there was Bambi
with two x's for eyes
and his tongue sticking out
like the joke he became
to two pirates looking for
treasure, or pills and tequila
in this case.

I knew a man
with eyes so blue
you'd think he was blind,
and he had done
so much heroine
that he couldn't flex
his arms out all the way.
He had four teeth,
one in each corner of the front.
His name was Charles
but he went by Tripp
because he was a III,
but he's really a trip.

She says I have a "damaged goods quality".
He kisses her right between her blue eyes
and says

"you are not damaged".

Before that they had martinis
and fancy French fries
and watched a sunset so beautiful
it would make a
grown man weep
and she had never felt so special.

There's a freckle next to his
left eyelid that she likes to kiss
every time he takes one of
her stitches out.
The scar is healing, and it gets
swollen from time to time,
but on this day she is grateful
that he is there to help her
when her heart gets
a little sore.

I want to ride a train.
I want to sit in a passenger seat
(do they even have those?)
but the driver can't talk to me.
I'd roll the window down
(can I do that on a train?)
and stick both arms out,
cautiously though,
I don't want to lose them
going into a tunnel.

I think I can,
maybe.

That's the problem
I can't put my big toe on.
There are no rooms for maybes
anymore.
Maybes stand tall,
challenging the train,
until the last second when
they chicken out and
stage dive down the hill
where her friends are
waiting for her
waiting to see if she
waited too long.
Chug-a-chug-a
chug-a-chug-a
choooo chooo.

He wrote me a letter
filled with puns

what a joke

and then he told me I
was not my grandparent's
favorite but
His Little Girl.

Sometimes I worry that
the only job my dad
will ever be able to
get is a buggy pusher
at Kroger.
I'm afraid he'll sit in
a recliner for a week
before anyone notices.
I know that's what
happens when people's
hearts are too full or empty
to stay in that recliner, though.
I can't be mad because
one day we'll all just
be sitting in our recliners
and then go.
I just hope I have someone
who looks for me
before I get juicy.

I
am
one
rejection
away
from
softball
tournaments
and
flannel.

When I was little
the hair on my neck
would stand on end
when I dropped my
pencil in the hopes
that I would discover
a hole in the floor
for me to crawl through
and discover something
better than the first grade.
Every time I was disappointed
to find tile and hairballs.

My Daddy, ******* Him,
loved me so much
he used to pick the raisins
out of my Raisin Bran.
Every morning he'd sprinkle
the flakes onto two paper towels
so he could spread it out
dense enough
to catch any raisin scoundrels.
After sufficiently flicking
the cereal to-and-fro
he'd put it in a bowl for me,
with just enough milk
so as to make it tasteful,
and not soggy.
(Anything for his princess)

Well ******* Him again
for the second time
in these lines if I don't still
pick those little raisin turds
out of my cereal 22 years
out of the womb.

And ******* him for
biting my pretty red heart
in two giant pieces
and leaving me with
no way to sew them up
except a handful of joints
in one hand
and a bottle of prozac
in the other.

Know what though?
I was eating raisin bran
last night and I bit down
on a sweet, gummy
treat I had sworn to
despise among
all things
and I didn't *****.
I didn't gag.
I didn't do anything
but swallow it
and take another bite.

My tastebuds must be
changing.

How difficult to
give a child
a name!
I am sure that
when I have
babies
they will never
have a name
because there's
no way I could
just look at it
and tell what
correct
variation of
letters best suit
the poor things.
And they will
be poor.

Who was the first person
to sing and was it a
rush of ecstasy or
melancholia that
came upon them?
Think about it.

Let's play hide and seek
in the dark.
That's why I prefer
to sleep with the light
on if you want to know
the truth.
Because if I leave the
light on
maybe they won't come.
Please, don't come.
It's not your fault,
but it's certainly not mine.
The woman in me
died a long time
ago when he shoved
my hand down his pants
and she hasn't been
back since.
The wound still
drips ****
when you squeeze it
just right
and it's starting
to stink like a hunk
of meat left in the
sun too long.
Too long, I say.

Hush brain hush
he's perfect.
Stop trying
to make
him into
inmate
number
L1267.
L1267
is a long way away,
and they took
his wings
ten years ago,
thank Science.
It's the only
place he exists.
Everywhere
else he is absent
and always
has been and
will be.
Rot, you egg.

There's a poem in my soul
and if I don't let it out
I'll spontaneously combust
all over my living room.

oh my god I'm so sorry

I just threw up all over you!

How silly of me,
how utterly absurd
that boys make me
throw up and up and away.

Stop it!

When one gets too close
I shake like a
kicked puppy
and I know it's because
a monster crawled under
this little girl's bed
and never came back out.
He waits to grab
my ankles with his
boney hands,
a matching freckle
in the middle of
our palms.
He is part of me,
this angel's kiss
(as my mama calls them)
and so long as he has it
so will I.
Me and him sittin
in a tree
until one of us
falls off the branch
first.

the girl in the red skirt
is starting to get a cold.
her nose runs in her sleep
now and the sheets
are soaked with sweat
from the nightmares
she can never remember
or the fevers she's trying
to break.
she's a helpless little
elephant's child
and she'd give anything
to be beaten
by her family
again
and
again
and
again
until she's finally
had enough
and decides to
search for the answer
of what crocodiles
eat.

Tonight
I
am
chasing
the
sunset
to
get
to
you.

My very good close friend said
his legs were trying to be
as close to mine as possible.
He wanted me to run
my fingers through his hair
one more time,
but I can't oblige him
with this condition
I'm in and am.
A light brush of the arm
here and there to tell him
I'm still interested in his
story.
I'm jumping to the end
of it already, ******,
leaping practically
to the end of the
fairytale when
Cinderella says
**** it and
files for
irreconcilable
differences.

SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP

The record player was left on last night.
It's almost broken, but nothing a little
duct tape can't fix.

SHUT UP I'M NOT LISTENING

He's calling and calling and calling
but I'm too busy to answer, I'm sorry.
You can call back when I get out of these diapers.
For now, though, I'll just sit in my
filth.

If I was a candy
I'd be a sour
warhead.
Pink.
The longer you
let me sit,
the sweeter I get
and at the very
center
is a gooey bit
that goes down
easy.
Everybody loves
a peppermint,
but I'm not that
plain.

I found a dime from 1967.
How many people
touched it before me?
How much time
did it spend
in my wallet or
the register before.

Which register?

What did I buy?

How many people
will hold it now?

Is there a word
in the english language
for the moment
you finally realize
there's no turning
back and things
are going to change?
Swollen, it's not him.

I can't.

Watching a grown man
weep in front of a
church full of
hypocrites
is the hardest thing to do.
Sometimes it really
isn't worth it
and I can't be mad
about it anymore.

He will always be the one who got away.
He will always be the one
who occupies my thoughts
more than anyone else because
he will always be the one who got away.

He doesn't even know.
Or maybe he does and
wants me to suffer.
In that case,
I still deserved it.

Edit:
I am
still
deserving it.
Present tense because
I put him through
hell and back, and
he will always be the one that go away.

I
hope
I
was
one
of
Tina
Turner's
backup
dancers.

God here it comes again,
sneaking up on me
like a snake-*******
just waiting for
my bare, unshaved
ankles to make
their ashen presence
known.
It coils around
my neck and
my eyes pop
out of my head
one at a time.
It's done with-
his arms are
outstretched and
he's climbing the floor
for the gun
his hands still
rest on.
I turn to run down
the stairs like
I'm in the pitch black
field, running from
a monster who died
a long time ago.
What else is there to do
but fall to your knees
and ***** all the
butterflies and
chicken nuggets you can
hold?
That's where I'm left.
I'm getting off my knees,
slowly but surely,
so there's that.

We can sit and listen
to cello concerto's
for hours with no one
to bother us,
and I think her
lipstick is
one-of-a-kind.
I wish more people
wore gloves like
she did
and all this smoking
is giving me wrinkles.
I'm too young for those
I tell myself,
but the guest
who tans too much
says otherwise.
Her skin is painfully
taught and could
rip apart at
any given second.
The book was slung
off the shelf without
a moment's notice and
now it's really starting
to bleed onto the
bed we never slept in
and God ******
if I don't still sleep
in your t-shirt.
My soul is too old
for love.

Nothing stirs in my heart.
The paper sculpture was
held together with
spit and glue
gobs and gobs
of it.

Three blue candies in the morning.
One blue, one yellow, one white candy at night.
Keeps me regular

You rolled off of me
and I felt nothing.
You wanted to keep
it casual,
and I felt everything.
A simultaneous relief
and destruction in
three words.

I don't want that.

I want to be loved
unequivocally and
there is nothing
casual
about that.

The old man
laughed at everything,
even when it
was never
funny,
and his hair hadn't
been combed for weeks
or more.
With a bald head on top,
he looked like some
exotic, near-extinct
bird.
He kept poking
holes in his styrofoam
paper plate with
his fork-fixing
something probably.
He doesn't know
I'm his granddaughter.

I'll throw up if I don't write this poem.
I'll lose my keys again over and over
until I throw up some more.
If there's anything left, you can have it,
but right now if I don't tell someone
about the 6 foot 5 woman with the
blue penciled eyebrows my brother
saw at work today, I'll toss my cookies
I really will.
I I I I I I I I, she bellowed.
me, she answered back.
Selfish *****, I repeat
focus on glasses,
focus on anyone but yourself,
Mrs. Maneatin' Butler.