My uncles are good men.
They can run businesses and
fix air conditioners, but they
lack a certain compassion.

For example:
My uncle-the small one
is angry about a problem
only encountered in this
land we call free.
He had to tell 100 people
not to shop at a certain
store because he is a
spoiled little brat.

Suddenly my brain starts
to drift into the other things
I could tell 100 people.
I could tell them I love them.
I could tell them there's a sale
on at the mall, but why do you
have to tell 100 people that
they shouldn't buy anything
here because you have
Napoleon's problem.

His mother is dying in the back room.
Tell 100 people about all the things
she did in 82 years. Tell them
she should be sainted for all
the injustices she faced so you
could tell 100 people how little
beauty you see in the world.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Does
anyone
else's
father
remind
them
of
Bill
Murray?
Weird.

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.

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?

When I read you
my poetry
the words sound
like they're not
coming from my
voice.
It sounds foreign,
barbaric and German.
Plath's stuck tongue
ick ick ick's in my
bleeding mouth
and I have no tissue
to wipe the blood,
so as usual I make
an *** of myself.
If it was anyone else
I could stand to
read it aloud,
but now it's all
Cling-on and
tongue clicks.
I sound cliché,
an amateur, but
isn't that what
we all are?

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'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?

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.

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.

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

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.

If I like you enough
you might just
end up in my
poems some day.
It's my way of saying
I think the voice
you use to talk
to stray dogs
is sweet,
and you have a perfect beard.
One cowboy killer
right after the other,
but it's becoming
for you, endearing,
and not a 100
because I think
there's some positive
vibes underneath
that broken rib of yours.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Tonight
I
am
chasing
the
sunset
to
get
to
you.

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

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.

I am
the way
I am
because
that's
the way
I am.

You are
the way
You are
because
that's
the way
You are.

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.

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 *******.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I play a game with my
beast of a dog.
I say, "Squirrell!"
and she bolts down
the perfectly landscaped
avenue of trees after
the soot colored
critter.

It's tail electrified in
the socket of fear scuttles
up the nearest tree
except this morning
it got slowed down
and my killing machine
clamped down and
before I could beat
the poor animal out
of her locked jaw,
it crumpled to the
ground broken in a
way so inhumane,
the sight of the blood
curdled my stomach
like a glass of cool milk.

None of this is true, mind.

I'm a spineless poet.
Because instead of
saying what I mean about
not being able to save you-
about all your blood-
about those merciless
and invisible jaws
of death clenched around
your throat making a
mess of all things.

One day I'll stop writing in metaphors.

I am 22 years old
and I'm scared of
the dark.
Not regular darkness-
the kind that makes
you question
whether or not
there are people
under your bed
waiting to
grab your ankles
when you run
off to Mom's room.
The shadows on the
wall ******* you
too much to
get out of the bed,
but when you finally
get up the courage
to reach out
and flip the switch
they end up being
kittens and flowers.
How silly of me.

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

There was this girl
in my poetry class
who always asked
"was that true?"

This is, I swear to God.

A man was working
in a place called
"Pleasant Valley"
and a tree fell on him,
and he died.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

With a belly full of bran
and home on my mind
I look to my left.
The contents of his notebook
and the scribbles tell me
this man is sad.

Probably the saddest
I've ever seen, and that's
saying a lot coming
from me.

I want to shake him!
I want to tell him that I am
in this voluntary prison
because someone succeeded
where he failed, but hopefully
these failures will be a success.

He can't see this now.
He won't take his hand down
from his eyes long enough
for me to look at him.

To see that all is not lost
quite yet.
To see that Scarlett O'Hara
was right when she said
"tomorrow is another day"
after the love of her life
walked out on her without
giving a ****.
Tomorrow's tomorrow is
just a day after that.
And a day after that.
They're just days.

I want to smile at him.
Look at me!
I have life.
You have life.
We all have a little life.

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
am
in
control
of
my
thoughts.
thanks
for
that.