I'm a young kind of broken
I don't break easily, but I break consistently

I haven't devoted half my life to a love
Only to watch it flicker and dissolve

I haven't drowned in bills I can't pay
Handing my dinner off to my better bits of DNA

I'm a young kind of broken

I break at the sight of documentaries
Hosting hate, disease and inhumanities

I break at hurting Grandmothers
Euthanized dogs and dead Grandfathers

I break consistently, a young kind of broken
Holding in my arms love, hope and humanity
But I can't handle it all, so I may let a piece drop out
Every once in a while
And when I bend to pick it up
They all come crashing down

I'm a young kind of broken
Broken all the same

All my broken elders:
Would you let me break with you?
Will you be there to help collect what remains?

5am mornings, we lay
under coffee stained sheets
with whispered words and promises
and peppermint toothpaste kisses
leaving scars on my skin

7am mornings, we lay
my head resting on your chest
until you leave for the day
with rushed goodbyes and kisses on cheeks
your smell left lingering

10am mornings, i lay
waking to the sound of raindrops on windows
with tired eyes and a heavy heart
my arm left resting
in the place where you once were

This account isn't made for you
All these poems aren't about you
The one I like is of course not you
The one I love couldn't be you

In my head you're erased
In my heart you have no place
I don't remember our kisses' taste
I forgot about our sweet embrace

You don't love me anymore, I could only care less
I will never wear that **** blue dress
Remember the day I said 'to you, I'd still say yes'
Forget it 'cause I am a big mess.

everything's just fine
the rhymes that the poets wind
they're alright, they're platonic
and the laughs are outward
and the sighs are quiet
this time, everything's fine

no use in trying to make them cry
i ask why
but gingerly turn your eyes
everythings fine, no reason
and the feelings are there
but the feelings arent rare

if things were not
if times were hot
if we were brought
to the surface
everything would be harder, and raw and coarse and real
but
here we feel that
everything's.. fine;
you lie.

I met a man today
His eyes were unfair
For they out-shined whatever other details I might have remembered,
Except that beard
Which clung to his face
As if on that wonderless combination of complexity and simplicity it were safe

There was another
At a bus stop
Where I asked everyone for cigarettes for the long walk home
His face was clustered and shaped like a squirrels
He seemed to peek from beneath his baseballs cap
To see if it were safe to dissolve into society

He gave me a ring
With its facets glazed and cracked
Insisting it was once his great-grandmother's
She who
In rot-edged vintage photos
Wore a mink stole and flapper beads.
_____________

She pulls at seams
Takes up and brings down hems,
The stole pushed to the back
Of a web festooned attic
In a steamer trunk slapped with decals:
Moscow
Austria
Monte Carlo
Rio de Janeiro.
On cold days she wears it again
Dancing to old melodies on rough boards
And when she hears the front door slam
It's made to disappear in haste,
Her engagement ring clacking
Against the trunks flip locks.
That night as she makes biscuits
For her breadwinner she sees
The crack, the chip
Through a glaze of milked flour.

Closed like confessionals, they thread
Loud noons of cities, giving back
None of the glances they absorb.
Light glossy grey, arms on a plaque,
They come to rest at any kerb:
All streets in time are visited.

Then children strewn on steps or road,
Or women coming from the shops
Past smells of different dinners, see
A wild white face that overtops
Red stretcher-blankets momently
As it is carried in and stowed,

And sense the solving emptiness
That lies just under all we do,
And for a second get it whole,
So permanent and blank and true.
The fastened doors recede. Poor soul,
They whisper at their own distress;

For borne away in deadened air
May go the sudden shut of loss
Round something nearly at an end,
And what cohered in it across
The years, the unique random blend
Of families and fashions, there

At last begin to loosen. Far
From the exchange of love to lie
Unreachable insided a room
The trafic parts to let go by
Brings closer what is left to come,
And dulls to distance all we are.