now my mother at fifty sighs
at the dinner table
says
when we were children this
is what we call old
and i thought it nostalgia
speaking
before the sight of my father
lenseless in the low light
of that diner
like a fist to the chest
greying man growing heavy eyelids
folding up into something like grandpa's

               he says
               he is not afraid of dying because
               when the time comes his flesh will
               fall apart
               and in this gilded chrome future of ours
               the spirit stays pumping cooling fluid through rubber veins
               and this brain of his
               will keep spinning away

when did he stop growing up and start growing old?

here is something that
mother told me
about god complexes:

“everyone believes themselves
to be gods among men:
even that hideous monster from your
half-remembered Hellenistic dreams
will retreat back to
his craggy hideaway and continue
with his hedonistic ways.
the poor creature:
he will don a halo,
iconize himself in caricatures
pretending that if for a moment
his veins flow ichorous that
Icarus may have envied when his wings
beat in tandem with the footfalls of
the sun chariots’ horses.

“the sun shines upon
hallowed ground, though Polyphemus
will avoid Helios’s scornful gaze.
he herds sheep––his only acolytes––
an unabashed king in his realm,
like a god plays war, or as a child
would play house,
humming hallelujah,
veins running gold-blooded.
when moon rises,
he will hang his weary
shadow at his door and retreat
to his fire-pit. perhaps this will be
the closest he will be to the gods,
basking in the heat of Hestia’s
humble hearth.

“in the end,” mother said,
“Nobody will end up deified.
Icarus may have rained down wax and
feathers in godlike fury
before tilting his head to Helios once more;
Polyphemus waded into the sea,
eyes clouded in godlike fury
before resigning himself to fate, head bowed.”

ignore the faceless children pretending they never made the same mistakes
while you hover over the edge--
trembling from the weight of guilt like gravity pulling you down

some days the weight of the world
sends us tumbling from our apartment windows
too fast for regrets to catch us
but the concrete will cradle you and
rock your fluttering heart to sleep

i am a salesman
my pockets full of sand i call
gold dust
standing at the street corner
your pipe dreams done up in
glitter, chrome, and steel

i am a wishing well
as empty as my promises
bone dry
throw your pennies down
copper against cobblestones
mocking the hint of a sound

empty yourselves into me
i'm exactly what you wanted me to be

i want to split this skin
and hold my skull in my hands
a graveyard souvenir from
someone i no longer am

i'm stalling in these slowly sinking weeks,
seeking question-mark validations from the backs turned to me.
these are abandoned bridges i wish i had burned;
boards that break before i try to walk on them.
i hear them creak in your wake when you walk past.
maybe i could find my hammer and nails and try again,
but you've made sandpaper out of my heart and
my throat's scratched raw.
don't ask girls who hate paper cuts to build you rome.
she'd rather build you gallows to hang herself from.

there are aches in the joints of my automaton heart
and i cut circuits just to forget about you.
she stared me dead in the eye and i tasted acid rain.
hate smells like rotten petrichor.
i forget my midnights in hopes of sleeping through the sun,
but we're haunted by our daylight ghosts.
i must smile and say hello
before these puppet string frowns pull further down
in dread and dreariness.