You're my favorite
Libra, and always
will be.
Anytime I hear that
song about peaceful,
easy feelings I will
think of you.
Anytime I feel like
no one else knows
what in the world
is going on and
think about how
you're the only
daisy on earth
who sees everything
for exactly what it is
I will miss you.
But most importantly
anytime my blood is
pumping and your
blood is pumping
I will love
your curly head
with all the blonde
in mine.

I
am
one
rejection
away
from
softball
tournaments
and
flannel.

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.

Remember that time
at the beach.
You were the first one
with your clothes off.
I think you were already
a little drunk
but you would have
stripped down
regardless.
You never had anything to hide.

Because of you
I had the strength to stand
bare-breasted and unafraid
to all of the Atlantic Ocean
and sing about sunshine and having life.
You gave a number of people
the courage to take their shells off that night.
A bunch of naked hippies on the beach
like a flock of seagulls with a little
more heart.
We thought we could change
the world back then,
and I guess we still can.

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.

I
will
never
forget
the
time
you
bought
me
orchids.

I found a spoon in my garden.
Could you even call this a garden?
The planters are all full of
pine needles and stagnancy.
Even the bench I'm sitting on
is rotting and covered in ants.

Anyway this spoon was barely visible
among the dead leaves and dog ****.
Not rusty, save for the edges that had been
knicked by a lawn mower at some time
and then bent perfectly
down the
middle.

A memory of playing superheroes
disrupts my study.
Someone was trying to prove their
strength by bending it
"with their mind".

Eventually we tired of our
mind's lack of capabilities
and used brute force to
bend the dreaded spoon
but the celebration was nonetheless
sweet after being able to bend
our mother's cutlery.

Back then the garden was tended.
My mother put us to work
and my
"secret garden" was born partly
out of my imagination and
a lack of reality.

My mother called one plant
"lamb's ear" and I didn't
argue because it was the softest
thing I had ever felt or ever will feel.
Did she make that name up?
Surely, she wouldn't lie to me.

And now that lamb's ear, like
everything else is covered in
a thick, itchy layer of pine straw
and stagnancy. To let the plants
even begin to heal from their
prolonged exposure to cold,
mistifying darkness I would have
to scratch through the
allergy-inducing tentacles.
Push them out of the way.
Dig up the dead, dry earth,
plant new seeds and tend to them
arduously--all while wondering

why couldn't my family just
take care of what they had?

but then I notice this spoon.
I've gotten carried away again
and now I forgot to write about
what I meant to write about in
the first place.

It's not healthy to let things rust.

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.

Sitting at the counter waiting for my cheeseburger and fries, I noticed her.
It was the first time I felt like really eating a cheeseburger and fries
Since you looked me square in the face
And told me:
You didn't love me anymore.

She is beautiful, I'll give her that
But she's sitting at a table full of men
Burly men, not your kind.
What did she see in you?
What did I see in you?

What was her name?
Surely I remember that.
It was this name who caused the break up heard round the neighborhood.
She with her long, sun kissed-hair
(mine is short and black)
And her skin is bronze like a native Brazilian  
(I am translucent, save for my many freckles)

Come on, you know it.
But then my food came.
And then it didn't matter anymore.

She got a drive from her mother
and culture from her father,
but when you mix the two
together, what comes out
is a ****** little ****
with a bleeding heart and a
nervous disposition.

She'd rather paddle-boat across
the Atlantic Ocean than be
in a room alone with God's Adam
for one second.
A shark is a welcomed death
compared to one excused
trip to the bathroom.

On my way home
from a wedding
the road was playing
tricks on me.
I couldn't tell if I was going
u
p
  h
   i
    l
     l
or just p l a t e a u i n g,
never really going
anywhere of any
particular importance.
It was so dark.
Miles from streetlights
and greenlights and any other kind
of lights, I turned my shoulder
to yield, but there was no
sign of another car
to make me slow down.
I rolled the windows
down and sang a song
to you at the top of my
lungs because I hate
the way I feel when you
grab my hand in your
passenger seat and
my stomach free-falls
because of your touch
and the fact that you
won't be my boyfriend.
It's a junior high title,
but humor me,
I didn't get enough
love in my childhood.

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'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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

One of my favorite
pastimes back when
Spring was Spring,
and not a death sentence
of epic proportions,
was tying a piece of string
to a Junebug's leg.
The hardest part was getting
the restless creature to lie on
its back long enough to
slide the miniature noose
around him in such a way
that when you let go
he would fly around
like Bonnie Blue Butler's
show pony as far as you
allowed his string to take him.

I feel like a Junebug lately.
The process of looping that noose
around my leg has left me
weary and ready for a rest.
My ankle has third degree rope burns
and my wings are getting tired
of flying in exhausting circles.
The child at the end of my rope
is ignorantly unaware of her
imprisonment of my principles.
Or perhaps she knows what she's
been doing all along
and just doesn't have
the heart, guts or brains
to cut the string and let me fly
like the shiny little
Junebug I was born to be.

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.

Fat, sweaty men
in ill-fitting suits
during the middle
of a scorching
Leo August
are the most
uncomfortable,
but not as
uncomfortable
as me when
in the presence
of a Leo who
makes me
sweat, but for
all the wrong
reasons.

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.

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.

I guess this means its over.
I told you not to contact me
if you were haply and happily seeing someone else.
I haven't heard from you,
so I guess you are making a go of it
wherever you are in that big District.

Does she know your affinity for public restrooms?
Does she love your little hands like I did?
(Maybe mine are just big?)
Do you call her darlin' when you hang up the phone
and does her stomach fall out of her bottom
when she catches even the slightest glimpse of you
in that dashing tuxedo you're so proud of?

I still have your cuff links.
Those stupid pieces of silver mock me on my bookshelf
next to the copy of your favorite book I still can't
bear to pick up and read.
You said to read it to understand you, but I don't know if I want to-
understand you or read it, that is.
You told me to return them when I was ready.
I'm ready, but you're nowhere to be found.
What happens now?
I'm convinced you're the one I'm supposed to
put all of my money on, and
You've always been a betting man.

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 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

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.

I will stay at peace
with myself this time.
I will be able to stand
myself and you
after a rough day
when I've played
Cinderella on the
porch swing one
too many times
and sang too many
Eliza Doolittle
songs in the
tape player in my head.
I can put them
back on their
shelves, newly dusted
like a fond, old read
when I'm feeling
particularly thick-skinned
and deflective.
Good riddance and
good morning.

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.

You
are
such
an
*******.
I
am
more
than
****.

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?

When I was a child,
I never fully committed
to a cartwheel.
My feet being so far off
the ground unnerved
me.
Supporting myself
on my own scrawny arms
did not appeal to
me.
Instead, I rolled.

I should really learn to do a cartwheel.

Imagine my shock when
a delicate little red bird
flew almost hesitantly
into the bay window of
my mother's house and
childhood home.
Shock isn't the word.
Because I knew the bird
had broken its neck.
It's inevitable.

Nothing ever deserves
to die alone, so I went
outside and looked for it.
Squalling, that if you didn't
know any better,
would sound like a rousing
bird refrain.

The remarkable thing
about a bird's song is that
as humans we cannot tell
what they are singing, but it
sounds heavenly
regardless of whether
or not it just broke its neck
on a window.

Remember that time when somebody
died and somebody else brought us food-
all the people are irrelevant-
but you complained that the tenderloin
wasn't up to your standards.
Hearing you say such things about
a perfectly acceptable meal
sent me to the place that makes
me a barbarian to my most intrinsic core,
so I grasped the smoked log of meat with
my bare-heads and hurled it into the rain.
Say something about it now-
now that you have nothing to eat.
People say drugs killed him.
You killed him and you still haven't learned.
You killed him because you never
told him you loved him after he ran away from
home that one time or the time after that.
And I believe that the reason
your photographs are always
tinged with a hint of
the most aching and indescribable regret
is because deep down in the
pit of your greasy, swollen gut
you already know this,
so I don't have to tell you.

i can't tell if you
have green or blue
eyes or one blue eye
and one green eye
but i do know that
you make me want
to jump out of an airplane
with and for you.
and now it's 3 AM
and i can't sleep
because you're blue green
eyes burn a hole in my eyelids
when i close them.

I go dress shopping
for a dress I'll never wear
to that gala you
invited me to where
Meryl Streep wears
ribbons around her neck
and we call it Patriotic.

I wonder what dress your new date wears.
I'm sure it's plain
and will make do.

You know I make a sweeter
piece of arm candy
than the cure to cancer.

My namesake went to
"The Big Kitchen in the Sky"
on Saturday.

She "passed in her sleep"
(thankfully).
She was tired and
the look on her face
suggested she was
quietly disapproving of
a boy I had brought
home to dinner
that one time in high school.
I know this look because
I probably slept with it on my face
as I dreamed about
a boy I had brought
home to dinner
that one time in high school.

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.

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.

Because when I went in for supper
Blonde #1 gave me a look
like I should be ashamed of myself.
Something in the way
she studied my body
made me think I wasn't worthy
of the seat next to her,
you know what look I'm talking about
right?
When someone stares themselves
into x-ray vision and they notice
how much I love myself
(I'm pretty self-conscious about it)
and they're mad because
they don't love themselves
as much as I love myself
so they look at you
funny.

We're
all
just
grease
spots
on
a
back
woods
road.

I'll never forget her as long as
there are motorcycles.
When I pass one I offer a quick
prayer to the Harley gods
hoping she stayed with her new
beau, and divorced the sorry
SOB who prayed, yes, preyed
over her helpless body and
foggy mind.

She is sick! Leave her be!
You only hear about that kind
of nightmare on the scrambled
90's ****.

(She has ways to **** him, though,
she told me so herself.)

Swear to my higher power,
sure as Dizzy is the
Queen of the Road,
she'll have a way.
She always finds a way.

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.

what can you do
with a broken heart
but sit and listen to mendellsohn

and wonder about why
they didn’t love you anymore
or why they can sit three feet
away from you on the porch
you used to canoodle on
and see you are
crying and not say
anything.

who the **** am i
anymore
that i actually write poems
to you

It is 7:58 on August 6
and I am in love with
the world.
I tell myself this
because one day I
will feel like
the world has
left me
for someone else.
When that day comes
I'll have the poem
to remember him by.
Everything
is washed in
pink light
like some old
masterpiece.
"If I were an Impressionist..."
I muse, smugly
patting myself
on the back,
knowing I'll never
be able to
paint.
As I'm writing
it's fading into
some unchartered
purple, and
by the time I
finish, it'll probably
be dark,
but the sun
will be back up
tomorrow.

Too much of a good thing
can always end up
throwing you off.
For example: I've been reading
entirely too much Bukowski
lately.
I wanted to write a poem
about a family sitting down
to Thanskgiving dinner,
and the crazy uncle
whips it out.
Instead of writing a dissertation,
I'll just remind you,
dear reader,
to be thankful for
every single daisy
and every single
beer.
That's the Bukowski talking.

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.

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.