I'm on my worst behavior
like Drake

These ****** leaves in fall
and I'm a rake

You know how I am,
but you don’t know why.

My mom would probably say something like
“Two unno fight like **** an’ dog,”

And I would agree, and quarantine myself
away to keep you from getting too sick of me.

I never thought it mattered if we agreed on
anything, as long as we said “yes” to each other

I keep having
dreams of Okie
coming back, like
he was never gone
and I just didn't look
close enough, and I
wake up like maybe
he'll be there,

but I
don't bother checking

I wish you didn't
have any problems

Which is why I don't
tell you about them

What is it? What's wrong?
It must be me.

An inability to think or speak
directly except a certain assertion:

Do not write poetry about him,
do not write poetry about him,

do not write poetry about him,
do not write poetry about him,

do not write poetry about him,
do not write poetry about him

Tossing words like Serta sheep over fences
to force the eyes back into sleep

It's a strange feeling
not wanting to be pretty and approachable

but wanting instead to be
celestial and vaguely menacing

A mother bird sat and
sent another mother bird at
some other burning tent

So away she went

Moon princess
always- too volatile
for a prince or king-
stranded in a cold crater
created from some flaming
tongue lashing then leashed.

Some stupid *** quote says:
"If you can't handle me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best"
But it should really be:
"If you can't handle me at my worst then maybe I ought to go the **** away until you can tolerate me again because I'm not in any position to foist my shitstorm on anyone"

Or maybe I should stick to the original

I don't need
you to be completed

I need you
because I love you

Need like water upon waking,
not quite dehydration, just thirsty

Ten fingers
went to tend her
garden of buttons:

The right hand kisses cheeks
with Mr. **** and then greets
The Twins with a tender twist,
as the **** on the door when

He comes,
and we lay atop each
other to be a team—of beams
of light strobing across some sheets
of ice, maybe—with steadily raised stats

Bitter pill picnic
tables set to
prepare the
banquet

Pilgrims gorge until
pillow stuffed
full of itself
and doubt

Doubled over tummy
ache: dummy done
did to itself
-regrettably-

Pillow fluffed and
mattress flipped
to fight the
mighty itis

Closely, closely
quickly it comes
to K to control
elsewhere the
singular second
in a syllable
can canned
cancerous
a critical component
computing which
muscle

God **** it all
if everything with
you isn't some form
of instinct or reflex

My world hasn't crumbled like
a granola bar. I'm ok.

All you had to do
was take your head
out of your ***, give
a **** for ten minutes,
and give me a decent  
apology

But I'm not worth that

I trusted you because
you told me to, and
I shouldn't have

Now, almost all the balloons
are cut and gone already,
So I guess...

It's a good thing you
were never afraid of
losing me

I feel the heat
combining and
multiplying to
achieve no higher
purpose:

Like that virus episode
of Jimmy Neutron

or

Like your furnace
abdomen and its
other appendages
broiling my back

There's something about
you, and your function
in my society

The kitchen timer and the
baby monitor's feedback
are like a rock and globs
of aimless wood spirals

Spiraling into that olden age,
samurai slicing through
some molded cage

I ain't drinking
nothin but that Molly water

Blow the beat up
like its canon fodder

See these sons?
I'm they father

Bless em up nice
like my name Jehova

Are you really not afraid of losing me?
At all?
Kinda *****.
A little?
Kinda hurts.
Not surprising.

This is no time
for sweet potatoes!

No more pre-digested meals,
or mistaking excess for freedom

Let us grind, like *****
teenage tectonic plates

Love is just a chemical
like aspertame or
sulfuric acid

I goad the goblin
bee into stinging

I harden my heart
to harshness

I want I love you
to be enough

Arms and
sleepers
lurking amongst
us:
happily
and unaware

You don't put
a gun on
stage if you
don't plan to
use it

Trigger words

And then
gunshot wounds

I **** the game, like
I'm Frankenstien's Monster

Tack the ***** to this rocket,
then I launch her

Distraction establishment
making lawful constraints
for what is and what ain't

Deconstruct to reduce:
both oath oat at t

I kiss the sun
into your lips, and
the warmth from it
sinks into both of us

The moon is happily
indifferent without its
own light or heat, but
I warm you anyway

I spit bars
like a pharmacy,

Got a ***** preachin,
like a homily

Friend that had been
kidnapped and paid
the ransom in a
*** of cash

The Big Guy called
and called but His
angel's on lunch,
not answering

Warming
amen -rarely-
to the things that
live outside of you

Warn to you,
armed I
Warm to you,
worn I

At times I think
to write you some
dumb love verse like:

...to feel you pull me closer
in our sleep, as if you were to
keep me for more than the night...

And in that pause I see that it is
indeed some dumb love rhyme, so I
decide to **** my words swiftly with a
sharp, definitive line

There was no hope
for Dubliner Dedalus:
a shift from naturalism
into the bizarre

Not enough to effuse
or diffuse: a hero
in the firmest sense

Again I find
my heart twisting
instead of pumping,

again with that steady
wrenching *****-****,
****-****, ****-****

The code shook
loose from the text
—buried in the text—
compressed with
pressure

poetry is a
pressure cooker:
words thrown in a
*** and condensed
into mush —like potatoes
and curry chicken left in
too long—bit into and
the bones too brittle
breaking, aching

a poem aches,
the code aches
within the poem

My bed is only
big enough for
just me,

three pillows,
my phone, and of
course my sheets

Ashtray astronaut
drifting around the
nautical stars

Knots in his stomach
and shoulders for naught,
he sticks his little flag in slots

God, this stupid thing
language! and what of it
anyway? What pleading sounds
can it make, as
no one listens
to poetry anymore...

no, though it turns
letters into cities
and cities into salt
and salt into
oceans and gold.

And from them:
what dumb sounds
do they make?
but a susurration, a murmur
that everyone knows:

one spiraled shell
on a beach like all spindly shells, same
thrumming thrush, rush
of blood in the ears echoed
from the heart —some string
of the loveliest of sounds—  
yet one
is enough.

One is enough, so
of course,
no one listens to poetry
anymore.

I write the same
old, nothing new,
like:

The sky is blue; not
how the ocean is too.

My melodic tune, and
yours a harmonic half-step
shift flows,

going brightly—as sunlight
glows into moonlight

Love or free
who you want,

they're gonna
die anyway

I've not been myself
lately, I've been some
other archer firing off
blanks at a wide target

What's a poet that
doesn't write?
A thing that jot
down drivel before it
got down off its pedestal

While I
try to find
some peace
of mind that
could be mine,

the roots of
weeds tangle and
twist inside;

And time
goes by

Van gogh said
there's no orange
without blue

My bed says
there's no sleep
without you

We hit
the hay,
you hit
my face

I am the ghost
-of chemicals-
in the air that
slow and
turn to rust

While the droplets
in the air rush to
turn to dust

Winged migration
to flee from migraine
irritations:

I was the shadow
of the waxwing slain,
flung and flew through
wire flues on the roofs

To be some happier
glove, not on hand

To taste you is to slip into
that Freudian pit, and
turn a baby still
****** fixed:

To tongue out
the parts that might
identify you fully

I felt a
flower
in the sun:
like feeling
without touch

Slip slap
*** clap
tip tap
*** hat

Ante added up
in a slipshod
sweatshop for

Permission to hanker
on some buttermilk
slopwork with

A frump finery of sorts
laundered nicely:
a down gown