i force down days upon weeks upon years,
of regret, pain, shame.
In one mouthful
And you wonder why it takes so little
For my stomach to be full.

With a body temperature
Below 96 degrees Fahrenheit,
Wrapping yourself in bed sheets
As translucent as your skin
Seems so nice but
Every minute you spend
Shivering is more calories burned,
So you try to ignore it
Or maybe you do two hundred more crunches
Because being athletic is healthy,
Right?

You open the pantry only to
deny yourself sustenance because you
are unworthy of
These simple pleasures, and
You almost let yourself
Eat an apple but
When you remember how
Good that girl in
the thinspo you have
Hidden on your phone looks,
You stop.

You flinch when your mother
Calls your skin porcelain,
Because that word means
You failed to restrain yourself
And you have always been taught to
Resist temptation, and
This is the ultimate test.

Poetry is a disease
Words sit in your gut like rotten meat
You hold onto your stomach for dear life
'Cos it's full of knives
There's no choice but to stick your pen down your throat
And bring it all up

Yeah, poets can't tie knots
And they don't own a pistol

And all that venom just stifles and stinks

But you can close the book
And close your eyes
Ready to hate yourself tomorrow

I am destroying my body
With every purge I take
And the sickest thing is
I am perfectly fine with it.

some say we should keep personal remorse from the
poem,
stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,
but jezus;
twelve poems gone and I don't keep carbons and you have
my
paintings too, my best ones; its stifling:
are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them?
why didn't you take my money? they usually do
from the sleeping drunken pants sick in the corner.
next time take my left arm or a fifty
but not my poems:
I'm not Shakespeare
but sometime simply
there won't be any more, abstract or otherwise;
there'll always be mony and ****** and drunkards
down to the last bomb,
but as God said,
crossing his legs,
I see where I have made plenty of poets
but not so very much
poetry.

don't feel sorry for me.
I am a competent,
satisfied human being.

be sorry for the others
who
fidget
complain

who
constantly
rearrange their
lives
like
furniture.

juggling mates
and
attitudes

their
confusion is
constant

and it will
touch
whoever they
deal with.

beware of them:
one of their
key words is
"love."

and beware those who
only take
instructions from their
God

for they have
failed completely to live their own
lives.

don't feel sorry for me
because I am alone

for even
at the most terrible
moments
humor
is my
companion.

I am a dog walking
backwards

I am a broken
banjo

I am a telephone wire
strung up in
Toledo, Ohio

I am a man
eating a meal
this night
in the month of
September.

put your sympathy
aside.
they say
water held up
Christ:
to come
through
you better be
nearly as
lucky.

I met a genius on the train
today
about 6 years old,
he sat beside me
and as the train
ran down along the coast
we came to the ocean
and then he looked at me
and said,
it's not pretty.

it was the first time I'd
realized
that.

i will wade out
                        till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers
I will take the sun in my mouth
and leap into the ripe air
                                       Alive
                                                 with closed eyes
to dash against darkness
                                       in the sleeping curves of my body
Shall enter fingers of smooth mastery
with chasteness of sea-girls
                                            Will i complete the mystery
                                            of my flesh
I will rise
               After a thousand years
lipping
flowers
             And set my teeth in the silver of the moon

If freckles were lovely, and day was night,
And measles were nice and a lie warn’t a lie,
Life would be delight,—
But things couldn’t go right
For in such a sad plight
I wouldn’t be I.

If earth was heaven and now was hence,
And past was present, and false was true,
There might be some sense
But I’d be in suspense
For on such a pretense
You wouldn’t be you.

If fear was plucky, and globes were square,
And dirt was cleanly and tears were glee
Things would seem fair,—
Yet they’d all despair,
For if here was there
We wouldn’t be we.