I'd rather
talk at you
of filth than
speak to you
like a man

I — (03/18/2025)

I thought I might be able to
revisit this tonight. No,

     &

II — (03/23/2025)

There are brief moments where
the thought of you whistles by
and I'm reminded of the time
we spent spitting **** abreast
your apartment door, exhaling
lungfulls of this and that,

     &

III — (03/24/2025)

I hope you when your hand
met mine in awkward cordiality
and your pupils dilated at
my skin-stretched smile
found some sage and cedar
peels tucked in the cheek of
some future me,

     &

     —

Your tenor can't quite
     land pitch right. Feckless warbles.
The songbirds' been choked.—

My father is dying a snail slow death I think.
I don't quite know how to tell him to kindly stop dying.
Once I had the flu at 15 and he cleaned the sick off me
and said nothing of it after. That was kind of him.

There was something of a man in him. Hard to find,
turns out of men. Decency rattles and bites and burrows.
I wished at one point I would find on him that would
figure it out for me. Heretofore is sorry luck, love.

He bolted from me
    like cannonshot powder torched
  and full of fury

I was left of left
                    &
            called up as typical

    widespread panic metered
            your forearm.

    I was left with my ebbs
                     &
              in admiration

    of your gentle smile; kind as
               you **** me.

******* of suckling cheeks
taste of wine gone vinegar
left out too long exposed
to sunlight

twice ways between nowhere
we drank a bottle or four
before resigning ourselves
to defeat

we woke so many mornings
in drawn shade sunlight
with our heads split twain
by buzzing

we'd never known what it
was to taste hurt or defeat
until we likened our arguments
to chemistry