You’re having a Saturday night
On a Tuesday morning
Artist pacing
Union Station
Red eyed wanderer plucking
Pencil lines from the air above you
Coffee dripping
Atoms ripping

A painter sits, sipping

My morning feet ponder the pavement
Lonely eyes saluting the clouds
And the skyscrapers that grasp at the sky
The Tower of Babel
We reached god, and we branded him
Profited on his grace
So now we must build towers that shoot towards the sky
Like the twisting fingers of a falling man

I hate purple
But our sheets were plum
You love seasonal things

I love pink
Lips kissing someone new
While the trains whistle blows through the station

I hate purple
But our sheets were royal
Thinking you’d sleep like a king

But now my world is pink
Hands deep in new soil
Pink flowers growing in the garden you’ll never visit

O how you feel like
a ship docking in the port

When I loved the open sea

In some ways we all are
Mosaics of fragments
Of the people we loved

We fill the holes
they leave in our chest
in their absence

With colored glass
That fits exactly, somehow
In their place-leaving gape

So now you listen to R&B
And have strong opinions
On a brand of apple juice

And you didn’t before, no
But now you do

I watch you spin your words
like taffy on a taffy puller
And I, a child,
remain in the window staring
At the spun sugar
Caramel
Lamenting that I don’t know
what you taste like
Fascinated at the way
your world turns
your words turn
Sugar sweet
Caramel burnt

My friend who isn’t one
Said being a starving artist is a new aesthetic
Like brunching at farmer’s markets
Paint drips, dropped on, white shirts
No shows, at art shows, in SoHo
Exotic meds, white dreads, still fed
Living in your bed head

My cat, she knows the truth
Napping on a pile of wet cat food



Actually, it’s
Calling your chef friend Michael again
And asking him if he knows a different way
To make ramen taste better
Because last time it still tasted
Like you forgot to pay your light bill