It is said a trait of an
inadequate man is his
reluctance to admit
that he has done wrong.

You are human and that too
is a hard thing to admit. The
armor you’ve donned and
fastened has loosed at its
straps.

The English word care
stems from the Latin curae
which is remarkably close to
cure. I thought you might
like to hear Latin because it
was common for you to tell
me to Seize the day.

It was some summer in August
or something and the coarse
brown mound of dirt aside the
house had caught rain and
muddied.

We played King of the Hill
and I can remember thinking
what a waste it was to, for a
few fickle seconds, be royalty.

I am inopportunely shy.

I cannot apologize because I know this will not change. Like so many moments (in-between unusually hot seasons for instance) the sweat of ceaseless back-and-forth wears heavy on my nerves. I suppose this acts as penance.

The process of a ***** analysis, for those unaware, is as follows:
—Drive an unusually long distance
—Enter a dingy storefront as quickly and quietly as possible
—Pay your $20 ****-cup processing fee at a counter that smells nonironically of cups of ****
—1)Wash your hands, then 2) lift your shirt, then 3) drop your pants
—Put your mind on Do Not Disturb as you try to pull focus from the man pretending he is not staring at your *****
—Urinate (following an uncomfortably long drought)

When considering all possible alternatives, this is easy. It is benign in all respects. And yet, for the life of me, I cannot shake these shoulders free of worry. Too easy to indulge the mind and its vice-grip on the body.

We aren't ever really in control, are we?

It rained the whole time we were laying her down;

Plucked from earth to elsewhere, some fantasy. She left like water after a rain, running to the sun to again slide down. And it

Rained from church to grave when we put her down.

Soaked the soil, left it muddied. Someone stifled a cry but the wet and cold made it sound like a sinus problem. There was something funny about it, but not in that moment. There,

The **** of mud at our feet was a hollow sound.

I need no prompt to zone out and dissociate or become unattached.

At nighttime, creaks of wood tinker like tall tales. There is less I can see. I am too reliant on my eyes to tell the whole story. Sound is a sightless animal. The house I live in was probably built in the 1960s and I've noted it doesn't croon with the wind like other places.

Does speech require a mind? The human voice cannot be as massive an instrument as we make it. As wholly self-serving creatures, do we hear ourselves between cracks in this patchwork planet?

Is midnight just a silly word for numbers, like any other?

An empty house reclaimed by nature and subject to her laws has no want of questions and answers. Shapes are not made whole by human voice. If I could speak to my great-grandmother now, as I did six days before her death, would she tell me what she always told me? Would she wish I'd go back to church?

Raindrops paint my window a blurry gray. There is not a straight line to see through. Each ripple, and in it a reflection. I can piece it back together; I can see my small self seeing through it, and contains therein some middleplace that continues to escape me.

A full moon is hidden. Missouri is covered by clouds, like a wet blanket. The house will creak under water's weight , and when the clouds disperse and nighttime sings brighter it will creak still. This house is not a thing of nature.

It should not be here.

You smoked your throat gone.

I'll sit in bed opening and closing my Opinel No. 8 and stare at an unread compilation of a then-alive poet's correspondence with a then-and-still-dead poet and wonder at the cover art, a fishing-line-thin threaded rope that could well be tied in a slipknot. Tendrils that look like loose straw scattered thirty different ways.

He said You can't **** your life away and there are many ways to do that. I'm stuck inside a small bedroom dreaming or hallucinating an open space, streams flowing from nowhere near and flat space so full of sky it is sin to call it empty. The world can be hot and fast;  I am bad at resting. I don't sleep well. I can float a river and not once hear it moving.

You drank and dissected your drinking so it could masquerade as something under your control. We all are guilty of this at some point. In some way or another. I am lucky to sit in my bedroom and write that the next two years of my life have well been mapped. I do not pout, there is no malice here. My head is close, fastened between my small shoulders. I share no heart with Yesenin.

You can't **** your life away he said he thought. These things change. *But you can!

Outside the crop has wintered,
tall husks of green lopped over
and fumbling for sunlight.
        There are rules to the arrangement.

The limits of energy and
abundance, lost somewhere in
a fray of hot sound, cold
        Frame for the crop to weather.

Let it slip away. Humble yet
whorish for warmth, bare skeleton
of being from which to frame the
        Praying, hand scraping concrete.

Find that voice. Put it in a box.
Punt that box into oblivion, a fire
of sunlight, warmth, a burning skeleton
        Begging for life; hollow shell.

Eyes pickled and raw,
we have wasted undo hours
stealing sleep like thieves.