dear dumb deer,
gentle though I am
I wish the worst for you

When you jolted my car,
you set fire to a flame that
even Smokey can't contain

Like a stone cast in water,
your effects reverberated
loud through my house

your innocence
your ignorance
caused me many tears

cosmetic costs the least of my cares
You hit me way worse
echoes of him curse, curse, curse.

I feel trapped and,
It's not yearning anymore.
Because a little bit of yearning is at least healthy.
It's just the hours,
That we have to face.
Before and after.
The ones that require effort.

And the songs that just break your heart.
My god who knew that he first three chords,
Could bring you back two years.
And completely rip out your insides.
I'm trying to force myself not to press play.

But oh my god,
To feel something passionate once again,
Even if it's sadness.
I feel free for a second.
But then I have the hours after to face,
Trapped.

Sometimes i think what
Could have happened if we were
Capable of love

Something I wish I had.
I can only watch
And pretend it's real.
Laugh along with them,
But they don't see.
Are they even real?
Maybe they once were...
It happens before me,
I see their lives play out.
Life goes on.
They will never understand,
I mean nothing to them,
But they're everything to me.

oh inherited hair,
why do you kink and twirl
straight is in, smooth the curl
your twists and turns are rare
with the popular, you'll never compare
Thanks to you, I look like a little girl
humidity helps the whirl
never mind the cut or care
Lebanese in pedigree
no reason to change yourself in shame
textured, strong, full, wavy, and dark
don't wait for vision and reality to agree
owning it will make a mark
let it shine - the real you - don't tame

I haven't slept in three days
There's a hole in my sheets
I still love you like an incurable virus

If I painted a picture of you
I think I’d call it Daniel and his Favorite Cigarette
and I’d delay passing the sugar
because you couldn’t wait four more seconds
for your daughter to finish her story.
I would buy all of the newspapers in town
with the crummy headline Fauster & Brown
Up in Sales for 3rd Week Straight and burn them
all the way through to the sports section
just to watch your favorite team’s numbers
go up in flames. I would rewrite
all those Father’s Day cards, remove the empty seat
in the third row on the left from my poetry reading
that I had reserved, stop putting new batteries
in the remote when you complains. But of course

I won’t. I’ll just make a scene at Sunday brunch
after we finish saying prayers to my dead big brother
at his grave, that dash like a tattoo on my bones—
Yes, Dad, I could have worn a tie
but I like the fact that I still smell like yesterday
cause I know my brother will never know
the scent of tomorrow. I will only curse
between sips of coffee and I’ll stroke my sisters hair
so she knows at least someone has been listening
these past ten years.

We are not quaint.
Deformed and distant like beaten up mementos -
Echoes of tired dialogues.
We are tendencies of aspiration.
Saved by an abundance of correlation.
Dancing along to the frantic motions
of the perils of self-help.

The scripture is loud.
Revised as we drive through drenched tunnels -
Vying for admiration.
Praying for the jubilant ******* -
Into stale dimensions of all that is
Worthy of a second-hand perception.

We are not selling.
We are in the business
of craving to perspire.
Tasting and testing
the competence of turmoil
and exchanging fragments
of our being
for profitable desolation.

We are growing up,
in slow motion.
Drunk on trajectory interactions
of the menial day-dreams.