Spit the small words stuck
between the gaps of your teeth.
Before too long, they will begin
to decay the bones of your mouth.
Your smile will be stained
with things hoarded behind your lips-
Those little bits of bitterness
spread sour on your tongue.
Take a string drawn taught,
or a sharp stick
and carve out those nasty thoughts
and see just how much
your gums bleed

I feel as light as light itself.
Not as fast, not as constant-
but weightless
as if the only way to feel
like I'm anything at all
is to illuminate
everything in my range

Nature, too, is self-consuming.
Even the grandest oak
of all southern Louisiana
will be uprooted in a hurricane.
The moss that grazes the water
with gentle finger tips
from those weary branches
will be swallowed by the water.
An old man's life spent in Houma
is reflected in the river currents;
his house built on stilts
across from the cemetery
where is wife is buried
next to her eldest son.
It meets the Mississippi
not surrendering,
returning

Tiny ankles hang down from a wooden bridge over the bayou-
and my friend and I stare at the black water
and point at all the furniture legs jetting out of the blackness
as if they were Cyprus knees—
and he says to me  “Someone said there’s at least a hundred bodies in there”
and without hesitation or a moment of silence
for the uncertain yet forgotten Dead
I say, “Bodies float, so we would see them if that were true”
and he replied,  after a brief moment of thought,
“Maybe they’re tied to all the couches or stuffed in the refrigerators”  
and I couldn’t believe how many house hold appliances
have been repurposed to host all these passed souls
in the bowels of the swamp
and with a swing of my leg, too swift—
my left shoe dropped  and hovered on the water
where lily pads should have been

in the small town land marked by it's single gas station,
teens skateboard through
the Walmart 15 minutes away
smoke cigarettes
in the baseball field of their high school rival
spend Friday nights at waffle house
after football games
the hospital near Walmart
is being closed down
history replaced by
churches and banks
patriotism and school pride
is sewn into the school
t-shirts
a memorial for the boys
who drove drunk and died
it's a community
built on family values,
everyone recounts their
blessings and after years
of collective prayer
He even
bestowed upon that town
a Dollar General

Everything still exists,
and will continue to exist.
Every ruin, illegible or destroyed or altered
is here-
Not alive, but present.
Today,
we have heritage sights and landfills.
History is a Waste of our time.
It sticks like tar
in the Earth’s lungs.
I stood before the Great Pyramids
and I wondered if my
great grandchildren’s great grandchildren
will do the same when
our past stacks as high