my grandfather Edward
left home when he was a boy
and changed his last name
in his teens he was arrested for stealing a cow

then he joined the Air Force and became a photographer
smoked ***** with fishermen
photographed bombs being dropped

then he married my grandmother Evelyn
and they had 3 girls
one of them died as an infant
and one was my mom

i remember him as a quiet man
i was very little
he smoked a pipe and carried a pocket knife
he twiddled his thumbs which had no thumbnails

and in 1994 when i was 7
he shot my grandmother in her sleep
then himself

and i will never forget him.

post it online
while you hold your wine
hold your whine
why don't you
tell me?
tell me about it
about ****
and girls with *****
about how you read Vonnegut
how **** makes you feel weird
but you snort coke
and you're trying to grow a beard
and your broke
and wish you lived in Europe
or in the 1920s
tell me *******
animal mothers
about your great luck
how you don't give *****
and your jokes are like minorities
poor and unappreciated
defeated
i'm bleeding
delete this.

You and 12 friends like this.

The eye at the bottom of the glass
why don't you ******* blink
you stare at me like you've been there the whole time
but I know you haven't
good for nothing
Nothing for good
Beer wish you were here
You ******* *******
I taste the tongue
Wasted young
Dumb
As ****

Lucy is so electric
Her skin is paper perforated dripping with her liquid blood
Her love is like the world hard and true
Deep black eyes and lips are plumes of color that bleed through themselves and back again
She is restless in my skin and pulses through my flushing face
Smiling and connecting all things
When I kiss her
It all melts
I can't see and can't spell
I can't tell time
And I'm okay with dying

in the sticky summer months
the daylight smells like burning sand

hot air blows over the green creeks
where the flies are born
and the little squirrels leap
from limb to limb

dead dogs lie asleep
on the warm black highway roads
and when the fire of the sun settles down to dusk
the moths bounce against porch lights
so the crickets can sing all night long

the bath water was warm when i got in
i still couldn’t see anything but i felt the nurse holding my arm too tight

i couldn’t talk but i knew
that this is the best it can be

god didn’t put me on a short leash

i did

when a man puts a gun in his mouth
the last thing he’s thinking about is being an invalid

i can’t remember how long it has been
but the water is cold now

Whiskey, you're my night friend
but in the morning you turn your back on me.

I held you in the winter
even when my fingers were cold.

But in the summer when you hugged my neck
you almost broke it.