Asbestos infected living;
I am the saddest ******* earth.

stuck, sprawling from the city, making tracks
still calling.  the speed lights have stopped,
now their just stalling as the moon on the back
traces a drawing like pencils
experience the feeling of falling.

i've corrupted youth far past use,
and it was only for the thought of you
one last hit, a final fix or two
as i tried to find your love in
a melting spoon

i've got my dose, i can get some sleep
but without you I've lost my dreams
and tomorrow, as the sunlight screams
i'll start all over, and not remember anything

I am no dark little girl with
her pretty little
eyes

but I harness
my own
darkness,
from time to
time.

i seem to have lost words again.
the sense of desperation i feel over this is palpable.
i wonder, where did they go? who can i blame?
and will they ever return to me?

oh muse, you are an unfaithful lover
i gave my heart to you and you've taken
it and skipped town.

"Mom, I think in poetry."

Now she thinks I'm insane.

He asked me,
"Who is in control
of your smoking?
You or your cigarettes?"
and I thought
that both of us were,
that it is a mutual habit,
that I know
when I am smoking
and when I am about
to light one,
but cigarettes
have this way
of talking you into it,
or is it the mind?

Creek
I call it a crick
when I was ten- no eleven

Maybe ten and a half

My dad worked as a mechanic....like I do now

I remeber he came home one day and kicked off his ***** workboots by the front door
His hands were always dirtier than a *******

He always had grease and dirt under his nails when he got home
and would run them under hot water and glo-jo like I do now

Them hands were COVERED in scars
....mine aren't that scarred yet
and I'm hoping they never will be

I got out of this town once and made it half way around the ******* planet

But I came back when aunt mary-lou died
the only thing I remember from that funeral
....the girl across from me was wearing a red thong
her name was Megan (I had a dog with that name once)
She was aunt mary-lou's friends **** *** stepdaughter

She had that look like
"I am way too good for this trailer park *******"
And I smiled and thought
"I know you are"

Well my dad came home
To find out that I had broken the bb gun he got when he was fourteen

And instead of yellin' at me
or beatin' me
he told me to go get him a beer
and he let me have a sip

I thought he was gonna tear me up and down like a red headed step-child
Or put his cigarette out on my palm

But he didn't
He just sat there
and still to this day I wonder why I didn't get the usual


Truth is:
when I came back from getting his beer on that fateful day
I thought I might have seen my dad wiping a tear from his cheek

A poem falls short; I'd like, instead
to draw a single line from me to you
and watch it curl into a word
so beautiful it's still unsaid –
or press paper to the window pane
so that the day might saturate
a note that brightly warms your hands,
spills birdsong from imagined trees
and buzzes like fat bumblebees,
but I am bound by language, love; I can't.