Saturday alone on a love seat
for two with my roommate
plucking away at twisted nickel
across the room.

Unshowered, unmotivated,
a maybe Monday.

My clean laundry's a footrest
for ***** feet fresh off the
almost autumn asphalt.
Come visit us.

Be unshowered and unmotivated
on this maybe Monday.

Don't worry, the door's unlocked.
There's just a few hundred
flamingos waiting to get in,
but they should move

at the sound of your unshowered,
unmotivated, maybe Monday footsteps

With a fallen branch,
I drew a line dodging pebbles
in the path, but I haven’t
the will to cross it.

Bleach out the blush wine in your sundress,
bleach the walnut from your hair, bleach the coffee outline from your teeth,
bleach the gray grout in the kitchen floor, bleach the teal sky.
Everything is pure,
*everything is nothing.

I'm studying real poets.

Shelley, Sandburg,
Frost, and Wordsworth.
Coleridge, Blake,
and William Butler Yeats.

Do you know why they're
considered real poets?

Because they made art,
not hashtag trends.
Wrote from Experience
with black quill pens.
Sure, they got high,
but wrote on instinct.
And The Road Not Taken doesn't
mean what you think.
They wrote about about life
and the world that they heard,
not ******* in the margins
of Microsoft Word.

East Hall Coop purrs, caged
in tough chicken wire. Third story Beta beaks cluck from their nest, threatening crickets nestled
in the humid grass finding shelter
from rowdy farmhands marching
the birds to slaughter. Cattail stems, moonshine bottles, even colored gloves straight from the box lie in the grass.

Our box fans inhale and puff smoke,
blanketing the couch like a carcinogenic throw.
The lung cushions decay beneath us.
We fall.
We dissipate on the sidewalk with one
thumb sweep of the filter.
Stashed luggage beneath bus seats.
Springs puncture the faux leather
like we're sitting on quills dipped
in bloodwells writing poetry by several
haphazard candles. Wicks crackling
with each lap of the flame four inches
from our faces momentarily relieved
of windburn by scrawny fingers desperately
flicking to keep the spark caught.
We're caught.
Caught in this couch wrapped up
in a carcinogenic throw burning.