Sopping sorrows
In drenched trench coats
Droop
Drop
Drip
Like
A shivering spine
Quivers, slithers
In a crafty coil
Spoils spit take smiles
Nothing about this in your files
Lurking lies of lullabies
Plaster flaccid ceiling stares
Glares
Inward turn
Nail biting churn
Thicker than the tired tracks
Rolling robbery
Wrings a pathetic apology
Out of a gum wrapper
Nothings new

She wasn't raised by wolves
But she could have been
The way she howls at the moon
And chases away all men
She wasn't raised by wolves
But you must believe
If you try to get too close
She will bear all of her teeth
It isn't she doesn't trust you
Except it is exactly that
She wasn't raised by wolves
So there's no pack watching her back
She wasn't raised by wolves
But she might have been
To watch her claw and bite at life
Every time she remembers when...
She wasn't raised by wolves
Perhaps she should have been
Maybe she'd sleep more peacefully
Alone inside her den.

I get goodbye glimpses
When your voice is like an exhausted father
And mine, relentlessly stumbling over apologies
Premonitions
Of a cold current
I'm paddling behind
Can't keep up
I'm sputtering,
Choking,
Watching you wade away
Without worry
You're only 21
How don't you worry?
I am 19
With ducks
That form more of a m o b
Than a row
I know
It's far easier to blame the tide
Than the self
******* it
I'm trying
Shawn, I promise
I'm trying
But, you see
Adulthood is the branch that taps on my window
With the storm
To shiver me awake..
I hear you two have tea
In tangled talks of a future
That doesn't include me
Well
If it's so
I need the definite
The finalizing punctuation
It's like the cigarette you toss aside
Unfinished
I get it
You don't like endings
And
I smoke mine to the filter
It's like the book
That sat on your nightstand for months.
With a chapter to go,
Past due
Is the means to an end
You chose
The sentence that trailed off
Into an all but empty stare
(Wait, I was listening)

The book
That sat on your nightstand for months.
With a chapter to go,
Past due
Is the means to an end
You chose
The sentence that trailed off
Into an all but empty stare
(Wait, I was listening)

I am 19
With ducks
That form more of a mob
Than a row
Far easier to blame the tide
Than the self

Adulthood is the branch that taps on my window
On a windy night
Shivers me awake..
I hear you two have tea
In tangled talks of a future
No longer including me

Say hello to poetry
When I say goodbye to you

562

Conjecturing a Climate
Of unsuspended Suns—
Adds poignancy to Winter—
The Shivering Fancy turns

To a fictitious Country
To palliate a Cold—
Not obviated of Degree—
Nor erased—of Latitude—