[in the past I am describing god to my attacker]

I don’t take good care of things.

I can’t even give you
examples.

~

[dead child]

the future
the past
both are ready

to talk

~

[late poem]

one can only write so long
about loss
in pencil

find my house,
dog-on-fire

~

[reading and writing]

which one of us did loneliness hear coming?

That's the thing about words,
To some they mean the depth of the ocean,
To others they're the emptiness of conch shells,
Merely manifesting ocean sounds

my neighbor was sick of living until his organs quit and he died.
the only one in the complex I could talk to.
he knew there was nothing special about the sun and the moon.
there was no difference between them.
his sky was a wasteland.
his trash was his treasure...

he would ramble to me and sing to the trees and scream at the cars when they'd go screaming by.

he would explain to me vague and obtuse times- these stories.

-how one of his wives was more beautiful when she had died.

-how he dropped his son off in the middle of nowhere,
and months later the boy had returned a man...a killer of bears in fact.

-how they had made a statue of him.
a tribe somewhere in Vietnam.
and how he could still hear them speaking to him in ceremonies.
How he could taste the offerings sometimes in his morning coffee, or a few times mid-sentence with me.

and he would really go on about the thing he loved the most.
the only thing he had ever loved;
his pet plastic bag.

he would say these things and you couldn't respond..there was no need to.

he composed a will.
comprised of two lines-

the things I own will be burned but
my pet plastic bag I leave to michael

I respected this anomaly. This freak of nature. This neighbor. This man.
so I honored his request.

I wore shoes then and I had a shoebox I kept.

I engineered the burning of his possessions.
sifted through the frowzy living conditions of mostly nothing but a few standard chairs and esoteric books of esoteric things: symbols, dead languages.
Some ancient looking artifacts which were hard to trash because I'm sure they were either valuable or priceless.

a jar of teeth.

early on I had found the only plastic bag in his dry apartment in what looked to be a canopic jar lined with copper and more strange symbols wrapped around a grueome scene of children being eaten head-first by a many headed beast.

I kept the whole unit, figuring it was the appropriate container, and kept it stowed away in my once empty shoebox, tucked away more in the back top right of my sensible utilitarian closet.

Out of sight from me as it made me feel uneasy.

Perhaps it was meant to be this way because you’re smiling while my hands are covered in bruises from punching the wall and my eyes are red with tears
Perhaps it was meant to be this way, i’m too fast or too slow. Miles ahead or playing catch up and you’re tired of being left behind or waiting for me
Perhaps it was meant to be this way because even though my scars don’t bleed anymore, it’s all you see and I understand that it’s too much. I’m too much
Perhaps it was meant to be this way, boys like me don’t get to end up with girls like you. We tried as hard as we could but some things don’t change
Maybe this is how it was meant to be but it seems like you don’t care. Like you never cared
Maybe this is how it was meant to be but that doesn’t mean it hurts any less

she promises it hasn’t always been this way
the touch which turned from kind to cruel
stripping its intended comfort away
basking in the shame it summons
when tears say what words cannot
when walking away is the final direction
the final plea not worth bargaining for

he lowers expectations
till they hang above the ground
where his legs will meet their doom
and the dirt tattooed in his hands
will suffice for a while
inside the chamber of this eternity

the they and the us
remove their definitions
realizing their expiration
the end which has gone
the you and me
existing in separate realms
identity becomes irrelevant
they will never fear death
as long as they fear life