Desmond Tutu died.
Not left behind in Afghanistan.
He didn't drown in a comet induced Tsunami.
The lava flow from la Palma didn't fry him.
Aids, Corona, measles, small-pox or Enola didn't infect him.
World fires didn't **** the oxygen from his lungs.
He didn't dehydrate in the Sahara.
No plane fell on him, nor did he fall out of one.
His size indicates it wasn't a self-imposed hunger strike.

Desmond Tutu just died.

A two year old with his father's handgun didn't do him in.
He wasn't struck down by a falling tree, or speeding car.
I'm sure he fell lots of times, but he always got back up.
He doesn't hang from a cross; he wasn't tossed overboard.
And he wasn't lynched, electrocuted, injected or shot standing.

He died,
Naturally, on St. Stephen's Day, when stoning is popular.

It's a **** good thing he led such an exemplary, meritorious life, or we wouldn't know
Desmond Tutu died.

I have stared
Far too long
At this blank page.
I've come to the hard realization,
Like a refugee raft,
This poem won't write herself.

Yours isn't gentle lunacy,
It's hammerhead insanity.
Great white crazy.
I'm not even safe walking on
the sand.
You ******* learned to graze on
the land.
Evolution is a *****.

This morning
I woke up late like always and there was almost no time To
Comfort your crying
I thought it was a nice weekend and I wasn’t hungover
So I made you breakfast
Of the breakfast you made me when we were feeling so good
Potatoes and cinnamon rolls
You said the alcohol sugar kept you up all night
Hands in your hair.

It’s a poor paraphrase of I think Maya Angelou
that when people show you themselves, you should believe them the first time.
What if all you know, all they show,
Is what they’re not?

Tomorrow morning if you’re crying
It’ll be the same thing
I’ll wake up late
As I wait for you at 2am to join me in our bed
After coming home to an empty bottle and you
Feeling better

I don't have a problem
Sharing with my kids
All the privileges
I strove to achieve,
As long as they don't
Feel entitled to them.

He lifted his leg,
And ****** on
The Tree of Life,
The Tree of Knowledge,
And the entangled roots
Of all humanity.

A good liar
Is a bad liar,
And I was the worst.
I lost your trust;
Gave rise to sorrow
And a life of regrets.
I don't ask you forget,
But forgive, with peace,
Lay it to rest.

Here I am again
Cracked and broken
Heart ripped open
By the claws on the ends of my fingers
They are never coated in blood
A tidy sort of chaos
A mess-less, gutless dissection
Hollow space resides within
Emptied of everything
Shall we count the scars
Or will that bore you
To hear of the surgeries that came before
The operations and treatments
Self directed and self prescribed
By a med school dropout
Disgusting derelict defect
Split neatly into near halves
Tethered by a final pathetic stitch
That I am longing to rip
Free

My words don’t have arms big enough to hold these great and growing feelings.
They stay in my insides
Crowding out
Grinding down the subtleties
That reside near the edges in the used to be,
that cushiony soft berm.

It was comfortable in here once

The Room for Interpretation,

now lost,
now over-full,
balloon-bright and tumbling one voice and many into and out of supremacy.

These great and growing feelings
and my insufficient words
that fall from me one-by-one into place,
the thudding truth in basic blue.