summer in the park
kids hopscotching on pavement
dad checking email

the oldest known song
carved on a lover's tombstone
- “pretty much YOLO”

digital tombstone
her face no longer ages
she is immortal

relaxed at the beach
at home - panicking mother
phone dwells in the lake

so long out of touch
childhood friends reunited
- thank god for Tinder!

huh, what time is it?
phone slips back into pocket
huh, what time is it?

a bear with regret
making its bold confessions
from behind a meme

life in the future:
computer in my glasses
yet still no jetpacks

ancestors hunted
only ate what they could ****
now we have WalMart

flowers were once wild
bananas used to have seeds
- how we shape the world

hiding in plain sight
a moon-flower in full bloom
gotta share this -click-

hey there, i am a
Buddhist existentialist
ask me anything

the little bird shouts
in a sea of other birds
all we hear is -tweet-

Thumbs
anxiously poised
slightly above the qwerty
like little frustrated court stenographers
with other places they’d rather be.

Head
full with more memory than words
worlds away
dancing naturally
in the synchronized but broken
rhythm they used to call love
in a time before they took away its name
and comforting rules.

With broken glasses,
thumbs stumble
frameless
into awkward silence.

Nerves
trembling,
close the phone.

everybody’s angel bodies
find happening midnight
on Kansas pavements
hipsters’ motherwords are wholely robed by time
instant everything is ordinary
buggered city  immortals --
annoyed, parentless, marijuana everymans
swiftly digging unknown eternity
groaning strange in the long mysterious night
roaring, vibrating kindness
from their holy tongues
blazing inner hideous human gold
draining ***** forever
draining everything
forever -
Moloch, Buddha, Abyss
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Once a **** is given, one can not get it back.

I heard somewhere recently
that people are the most creative
at the times they think
that they are utterly useless:
like in the morning before getting coffee
or while surrounded by ******* co-workers who won't shut up about their stupid gun collection
       (cause seriously, no one cares about how big your **** isn't, Phil.)

The amount of ***** anyone can give in a day varies based of many factors - the amount of sleep someone has the night before or if they ate breakfast that morning, for example, can determine how many ***** a person has to spare.

It is in that spirit - despite my better judgement -
I am writing to you at four AM.
Sitting in my underwear,
Forcing my eyes to stay open, licking my dust-dry lips.
and realizing that I forgot to brush my teeth -
I'm writing that tid-bit that down
in hopes it will embarrass me into making a proper oral hygiene choice
sometime in between when I finish writing this and before I pass out from exhaustion.

If someone deems a person or a situation not worth their emotional effort, they can choose to not give a ****, despite having ***** they can give.

Today at work:
Everyone kept asking me if I was alright
I told them that I think so -
because, that's the truth.
But also because it's easier to say than
"I don't want to be here, and your face annoys me"

A **** is approximately two damns. A **** is two *****, and a **** is two rat's *****.

I don't have much to say in this piece
So I'm hoping that self-deprecation
and artsy-fartsy stream of consciousness
still passes for decent poetry these days.

Taking a **** is morally objectionable.

She lied to the nice man
told him
I'm fine
and kept walking
he was swallowed seconds later by her insecurities
never to be seen again.

I wrote a poem.
A long, healthy, glorious poem.
It started as a tingle in my gut.
The longer I ignored it, the angrier it got.
Until I could not hold it in any longer.
So I sat down.
I worked it out-
I stressed and pushed myself
harder and harder
until finally -
Release.
Catharsis.
Expelled out of me and into existence.
I looked down at my newborn poem
and became overwhelmed by a putrid sense of shame -
It was ****.
I flushed it.
"It's April."
I tell myself.
"They can't all be winners."

To poetry
guarding chickens
and chronicling crisis in Cleveland

To poetry
fighting back sleep
in a factory of miscarried dreams

To poetry
fighting for justice
with hashtags and cameraphones

To poetry in caves
gathering people like fire

To poetry in Halls
gathering children like home

To poetry
that is loud and activating,

To poetry
that is quiet and contemplative,

To poetry
that is honest and brutal

To poetry
that is tongue in cheek

To poetry,
in all shapes, colors, sizes
forms and meters

To poetry,
and to all of us
who are full of it

They sat across the table from one another. One girl staring at her notebook. The other’s eyes fixed on her classmate. On the broadside of the table sat a dark haired woman, the only smiling face in the room. The shy girl’s crimson hair hung out from under her hooded sweatshirt as she sketched axes on the front of her notebook. The other girl’s golden locks hung in curls around her face. Her beauty was undeniable, as was the disdain in her eyes.
“So, can one of you two describe to me what happened today on that stairwell?” asked Mrs. White, the guidance counselor at Jacob Grimm High. Despite the gossip floating around the school about her, a smile was always plastered on her face. Most of the children found this unbearably creepy. “Nothing ma’am. We were just having a friendly conversation, when that pig came along and insisted, very forcefully, that we come here,” the blonde said, sarcastically, her eyes never letting go of their gaze on the other girl.
Mrs. White chuckled “That’s not how it happened, Goldie. C’mon, tell us your side of things.” Goldie rolled her eyes. “Well, Mrs. White, it’s like this: my bio class was just letting out, and I was heading down to calculus. She comes flying UP the DOWN stairs, like a maniac, slamming into my shoulder. I hit her, she hit me back. Now we’re here.”
“Is that true, Ms. Ridinghood?” asked Mrs. White, turning her head to the other girl.
“Not entirely,” she answered, finally joining the conversation. “Ms. Princess here was going up those stairs before I even got to them. To be honest, I was zoned out, just following the sheep. I’m not having the best day, so a friend gave me something to take the edge off this morning. I was following her up the down stairs, apparently and she turned around and started coming at me, shoving my shoulder as she walked past, then got offended – like I did something wrong – and hit me. So I punched her back. We wrestled for a minute before the rent-a-cop came and broke it up.”
“Hmm.” Mrs. White turned to Goldie, who was looking down the floor. “Goldie, why were you going back up the stairs?” ,
“I don’t wanna talk about it.”
“So you did go back up the stairs and come down a second time?”
“It was actually my third time,” Goldie admitted, embarrassed. “The first time I went too fast, the second time I went too slow. That time would have been just right. I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder . Go ahead, laugh it up.”
“No one’s laughing,” Mrs. White assured her. Although Red was a little, until Mrs. White turned to her. “Can you tell me why it is you needed to be ‘zoned out’ today?”
“None of your business, that’s why,” Red snapped.
“I have read your file, I know what day it is.”
“Then why did you have to bring it up?” Red was now agitated.
“For Goldie to hear. So you can better understand one another.”
“*******! What kind of understanding am I to get from this preppy ***** with a silver spoon up her ***? I’ve spit puddles deeper than her!” The two girls rose up, over the table. Mrs. White was able to get in between them.
“Now, both of you need to just calm down and talk this out like civil adults. Keep in mind, this is your only alternative to expulsion. “
Once everyone regained themselves, Red spoke again, this time directly to Goldie.
“Six years ago, today, my grandmother was murdered.” Goldie began to see Red with new eyes. “Remember The Wolf
“That guy who went around vandalizing houses?” ?”
“Yeah. He was hiding out in the woods. I was going to visit my grandma, who lived out that way. I saw him. He’d shaved so I hadn’t recognized him from the news. I told him I was going to my grandma’s place, dumb idea—I know. He suggested a different route, said it’d be shorter. By the time I got there, grams was gone. He was in her bed, dressed like her, waiting for me. His eyes…were so…big. If it wasn’t for Larry, a woodsman working nearby, I would be dead too.”
“I heard about that! That was you? Wow…I’m sorry. ” Goldie shook her head in amazement, then added, “Didn’t the woodsman chop off his head?”
“No. He shot him. Larry carries a gun when he’s working in that forest, because of all the dangerous things that happen there.”
“No doubt, that place is freaky. I got lost in it once, when I was six. I ended up at this cabin. I thought it was abandoned. Imagine my surprise when the family came home. I was sleeping in the kid’s bed, and I’d eaten their food too. I think I even broke something.”
“How’d that play out?”
“I did some time in juvy for property damage and theft.”
“Wow…that’s so messed up. At least you learned your lesson, right?”
“Oddly enough, no. When I turned eleven I started breaking into people’s houses. I mean, I didn’t take anything, just slept in their beds, or watched TV. I never got caught again.” Goldie sounded mildly disappointed.
“You know,” Red interjected “we are a couple of freaks, aren’t we?”
“Yeah. Hey…where did Mrs. White go?” Goldie said, finally realizing that Mrs. White had made an escape somewhere in the midst of their discussion.
“I don’t know.”
“Oh well…did you hear she has seven midgets living with her?”
“That’s just a rumor,” Red said.
On that note, the bell rang, and the two girls left the room giggling like old friends.

He has crows feet, and gray hair.
He's got a scar just under his cheek, and arthritis.
All of it looks earned.

There's a slight breeze,
you can tell because charmed snake of smoke
belly dancing off his cigarette drifts a little to the left.
He takes a drag with this intensity
like he's in a movie
and he's about to say something cathartic
to our young protagonist about the meaning of life.

But he doesn't say anything.
He just flicks the ashes to the ground
and keeps staring across the steaming asphalt of the empty street
at the now vacant lot
like something's supposed to be there
and he can't for the life of him remember what.

From behind your canvas
you peer up at me taking in the details of my body.
Your scientific eyes studying  me
cold
with neither lust or disgust
as if I were a vase
or a basket of fruit.
Not long before this we embraced one another
in the throes of passion.
You've never been more into me.
The skillful motions of your lips and tongue,
throwing my body into religious convulsions
and praising your name.
It intrigues me how you can turn that off.
How you can refrain from smiling
as you draw the outline of my ******.
How my naked body so near and ready
doesn’t cause that animal I’ve come to know so well
to overpower the artist in you.
I’m truly fascinated, filled with both admiration and jealousy
for that woman you are creating.
I know that In your mind,
we've never been closer
but you look so far away
hiding from me behind that easel
cheating on my body with your interpretation.
No doubt, she will be flawless,
and have none of my ugly imperfections.
She isn’t even finished being born and I hate her already.
Although, I’ll lie when you reveal her to me.
I’ll tell you that she’s beautiful
that I really like her.
Then, I’ll make love to you
right there on the floor.
Forcing her to watch.

I glance out of my driver’s side window
and see a boy
trudging miserably down the sidewalk
his essence radiating awkwardness
this long haired kid, maybe twelve years old
or just turned thirteen
wore hand me down boots that are too big for his feet,
ripped jeans, and a bookbag slung across his shoulder
in the dying days of July
whispering under his breath
maybe reciting poetry
or telling himself a story

And I honestly think
if time is fluid, like the oceans
like the monks say
then maybe I’m glancing over as a wave breaks
and I’m looking at myself
I couldn’t tell you how many times
I made that journey on foot
my heels throbbing, my legs begging to be broken
my hitchhiker’s thumb, had given up all hope at that point

I think about giving myself a ride
to wherever I may be going
but then I remember all the lessons I’ve learned
from time-travel movies
the one universal rule being not to meddle with the past
something about a butterfly’s wings flapping in Beijing
and a tsunami in New Orleans
or whatever
so, instead I honk my horn
and the traffic light turns green

I watch the boy, who might have been a younger me
in some distant past,
look on with curious anger as the cars pass
for a moment
then return to the story already in progress

he grows tinier and tinier
in my rear view mirror
until he is yesterday again

If experience has taught me anything (an unlikely assumption)
it is that if a woman ever tells you
-straight up-
that she’s a *****
she is not lying.
this advice is not at all useful.
at least; it hasn’t been for me
since every single time it happens
I insist that she’s just got low self esteem
or she’s  joking
or she’s just had one of those days.
But a few months to a year later,
I find myself on the blindside of the road
bags barely packed
rushed out with the trash
in shock and agreement.
But see,
at least for me,
It’s hard to believe someone
when you’re in love -
which is not unlike losing your glasses
and sort of seeing blurs of people
not nearly as clear as you would with sober eyes.
I don’t expect anyone to heed my warning
I believe it even less than you do
to be honest.
I’m just a little drunk
and in a funk
and thinking way too much,
as I’m prone to do from time to time
in bars like this.
So, don’t pay me any mind
or do
I don’t care, really
how’d we get on this topic, anyway?

There was a beauty in her brokenness
the way an abandoned church is spiritual
beaten in the fight against her nature
submitting to the ivy
She was self-destructive and potentially poisonous
but she was my punk rock goddess
and I, her poet-slave
muse and mistress
I knew I was doomed to heartbreak
nevertheless
I took the bold steps toward my apocalypse.
Her name is Catharsis – the Sun.
I am Icaris’s wax wings.
I can’t get too close or she will burn right through me.
It’s a defense mechanism, she says
she’s crazy and I should fly far away.
I should heed the warning
but I don’t.
I’m drawn onto her -
inked by something more than animal attraction.
I am a blood-lusting mosquito
and all I want is a little bit of her inside of me.

She makes me want to write metaphor heavy poetry.

My eyes are pulsating
surrounded by redness
from the overuse of my tear ducts lately

Pain radiates throughout my chest
in perfect cadence with my breath
in go all my plans and dreams of living for living sake
and out comes the remains:
shards of a self that was not whole to begin with.

It sort of looks like a painting I saw once
on the wall at a café
where I frequently perform
or whatever it is that I do

Whatever this is
a living, it is not
as I am all too often reminded

“What do you do for a living, Josh?”
I breathe
in go all the things I hate about myself
out comes everything else

I feel as though I’ve poisoned myself
and I feel as though I deserve it
but this is not a cut-myself cry about my feelings -emo *****-poet
lying in this bed, crying to his father
because someone hurt his feelings
these are not proud words

I am not that pathetic
am I?

I feel like a water balloon
pricked with a pin
not at the bottom
bursting all over in a two second eruption
but at the top
trickling
ever so slowly

Out  go
in comes
another moment further  from breakdown
one more breath closer
to laughing at myself in the mirror
and telling myself I’ll be okay

“What do you do for a living?”
I breathe
“Very funny, Josh, but how do you make money?”
I don’t

I couldn’t tell you when I started doing it
Or why.
As far as I know it’s always been a part of me
My parents were certain it was a phase.
That this, like my nonexistent terrible twos,
would come and go
and the people in supermarkets would stop staring.
I know now how odd it looks.
I don’t blame them.
Imagine a miniature me, burning a hole in the floor
pacing back and forth
Hands clenched around an action figure
Mumbling nonsense to no one in particular.
Perhaps, they’d assume, to the toy in my hands
that my eyes were strictly fixed to.
“Talking to myself”
They called it.
Like I was crazy.
“Quit talking to yourself!”
My step mother would slap the toy out of my hand.
“You’re a big boy now, stop it!”
Maybe I would have if she took time to talk to me without screaming
or if my father were home enough to see how much she hated me.
How she Isolated me from her children,
the very ones who grew up to hate her more then I ever would.
But to me, it wasn’t something strange or crazy at all.
It was – is – kind of like watching T.V.
only more interactive.
I would tell myself a story.
The action figure, or whatever, was like an actor – a template.
For anyone I wanted to create.
The world around me would melt into static,
and I’d play both audience and performer
Putting on shows full of fantasy and magic.
Adventure and romance.
Tragedy and madness.
My own private little theater of distractions.
The older I got,
the smaller my actor,
and more private my performances became
until my action figure became a pair of toenail clippers.
Small enough to be hidden in my pocket
If I had to descend into the real world without any given notice.
The way I acted,
when someone walked in on me
You’d assume I was doing something naughty
and maybe I was.
Maybe it was wrong to indulge in the imaginary,
to live for fiction
but I didn’t care.
It was the one world I didn’t have to share.
I eventually would,
But I liked that I didn’t have to.

When I started writing these crazy stories down on paper
English teachers took notice,
and saw in me,
an apprentice.
Someone who could live their long forgotten dreams of being…
I don’t know.
I don’t think they did either.
They taught me the mechanics,
Putting names to the concepts I had known and used for years
that’s how I came to writing and to poetry.
How I became what I always was,and never will be again:
A little kid, telling  a story,
with indifference to the audience,
or lack thereof.
For no other reason,then to escape everything
If only in the moments when no one is watching.
Every now and again,
I still like to slip away from the crowd,
pull out my toenail clippers from my right front pocket
and see what’s playing.
I know, I may look and sound crazy
talking to myself over here,
and maybe I am.
But at least it’s not a boring conversation

8 .
I hear bullets
in the thunder of the storm
and wake up, fist balled
clenching onto fabricated memories
the only things I have
aside from the haunting neighbor kids’ taunts
and the hearsay of my mother:
the murderer

10.
someone told me this once
- I forget who -
but they told me that
my father picked me up
the morning after the shooting
- although he didn’t know it then -
he carried me over the corpse
as I slept
it slept under the porch
freshly painted
- a thick red

12.
seat across from me is empty
the killer’s chair
I walked into this building like an ant
(so small)
Its tall gates like sharpened teeth
opening wide - consuming me
and my insignificance

a long line of hair tangled
and miserable looking
women in orange enter the room
like the life had all but melted from them
and all they had to look forward to
was mashed potato Tuesdays
and cross-stitching classes
I know her from across the room
I don’t hate her
as I think I should, or imagine I would
Instead, I am overcome by heavy understanding

I am soon to be face to face
with the vessel that brought me into this world
and I could ask it any question
yet all I can think to say is
“hi “
she smiles at me and tears up a little
tells me she’s glad I came
and we stumble over small talk
still in awe
I wonder how it was that I just knew

she asks about me
I don’t know who I am yet
is the truth she never hears

13
I’m told that the gunshots
haunting my childhood dreams
were never fired by her
I believe that
she doesn’t seem like the type

the story I hear these days
is that she did what she had to do
to keep us kids alive
I like that much better
my mother:
the heroine

15
their drug of choice, dad tells me
was *******
and I’ve also learned some interesting
but hopefully forgettable facts
about the night I was conceived

17
they let her off her leash
she came back home
tail wagging between her legs
Got back with my father, and took
(another?) half-hearted jab at motherhood
She didn’t know how
Or me
And I felt bad for her

21
I wish I could tell you
that this story has a happy ending
but life is the shattering of people
and sweeping together of what falls on the floor
nothing is ever completely swept away
and the microscopic slivers of the past always
find their way into our feet

my parents were never built to last
not calloused enough to walk
barefoot in the kitchen
dad still calls me nearly every day
even just to gossip or complain

She hasn’t called in months
but she only calls when she wants something
so, I guess that’s a relief
Still, its times like this
I wish I could hate her

I hate to admit it,
But I kind of miss the time in my life
when she was made of stories
and I never knew her from across the room
or learned what she is:
another shard on my kitchen floor

I can’t remember
exactly what we had been fighting about.
All I know is this was the moment I started to ask myself
why I had fallen in love with you,
or even if.

I think I was complaining about algorithms
and how I didn’t understand them
and how math must have been invented by sadists.
You looked over my shoulder
and laughed at me.
That’s college math? That’s so easy. You must be *******.
Ok, that’s not exactly what you said
but that’s what I heard.
So I shot back with an
If it’s so easy how come you’re not doing it?

An hour later,
after egos and knuckles were bruised
upon the basement walls
and things were said that were meant
but not to be heard aloud
and we both had time to calm down.
I came back down stairs
and heard you sobbing in our bathroom.
I opened the door to see you
naked and shamed -
razor blade in hand
and your left leg
leaked thick and red
hiding the pattern of
horizontal slices
what would become ugly set of scars.

I felt many things in that moment:
pity, anger, guilt, and confusion.
Mostly I was just asking myself
why I had fallen in love with someone so clearly wounded -
and I hated how repulsed
I was by you that night.
I couldn’t stop thinking about how selfish you were.
How you clearly overreacted -
and how there was no way I’d win this argument.

Under the mask of the comforting boyfriend,
I sat beside you in silence.
I held your hand.
There was an itch in my throat
from uncomfortable words.
I swallowed them
and kept rubbing your back,
Instead I lied:
I told you we would be fine
that this didn’t change everything

that I didn’t hate you now.

We are a generation
raised by children
raised by children.

Growing up *****.
Maybe that’s why,
we’ve been avoiding it for so long,
and passing down lessons
on how to fake it.

He was seventeen.
His mistakes were still somewhere down the road
he so relentlessly trudged through the heavy weather
after storming out of his father’s house,
eager for independence.
Unsure what that meant.

He is my father -
responsible for all that I knew for sure as stable.
Yet, our table was held up by coasters
and we had a few too many late nights
sitting on milk crates
around a kerosene heater.
Things were never steady enough
to worry about them falling apart.

No one is perfect.
Although, I thought he was,
and he wanted to be
he just didn’t know how.

No one does.

This is the man who signed me up
for an in school group therapy session
in second grade
because it would get me out of class for a half an hour -
good lookin' out, Pops.

I learned from him, that life is about those little things.
There was this rule in his car about not leaving
until a good song is done playing on the radio.
It doesn’t matter what you’re late for
the world can wait.

I also learned from watching him
that life will **** your spirit.
That debt will eat you alive
only if you let it.
If you wait long enough, it’ll go into collections
eventually they will stop calling
and that’s all you really want.

I learned that no matter how bad you have it.
You can always afford to show compassion.
I learned that people will walk all over you.
That doesn’t mean you should stop.

But compassion takes its toll.
Years of chronic depression skewed my view of him.
At fourteen years old I became comfortable with the idea
that I might one day walk in on my dad hanging from a ceiling fan.
My only reassurance
was when he told me
“I won’t **** myself…I’m afraid it would hurt too much.”

I learned that love fades and sometimes stops cold
but that doesn’t mean you should give up on it.
I learned that sometimes there’s a good reason
to suffer through a bad marriage.
But once that reason doesn’t hold true
it’s time to break away, for your own sanity -
even that means breaking a heart in the process.

Then my Mother came back into the picture
slashing through his Achilles’ heel.
Watching my father fall was not an easy thing to see
but this wasn’t just my Mother’s doing
this was years in the making.
This was a poorly built Janga tower.
This was just a matter of time.

My sister told me,
in a rare moment of bonding
on stormy night,
while stuck at a Denny’s,
that she thinks it started
when his best friend died
a whole lifetime ago.

She shared stories about her memories of him
She got to see him play
and laugh because he felt like laughing
and not just to forget he has reasons to cry.
I envy her for that.

To me this was the man he'd always been
but in these weakest moments,
I saw myself.
For the first time in my life,
I truly don't want to be like him.
It hurts to admit that.

A man once said
that once you realize your parents aren’t perfect
you become an adolescent,
when you forgive them, you become an adult,
and when you forgive yourself
you become wise.

I feel no need to forgive my father.
I accept that he is human
and that he didn’t teach me the things he didn’t know.
What I did learn from him are the important things:
the value of compassion,
the pain of regret,
the unconditional love of a parent,
and most importantly
that stability is an expensive illusion
and bad things happen
to those who take theirs for granted.

I stare at myself in the mirror
decomposing.
The taste of decay still lingers in my mouth
like a hangover
I reach in
and yank out another rotted tooth.
I toss it in the cup with all of her other little trophies.
I peel what’s left of a layer of skin
from my shoulder.
Remnants of what my bed took last night
as I tossed and turned and screamed for her
to come back to life
and make mine whole again.
I ache
I dare not crack my knuckles
for I may break loose another finger.
My friend says to get out
but I’m unready to set foot in the sun
not like this.
Not when I should be dead.
I feel like the milk in my fridge
passed my expiration date
but still here
because someone’s too busy
or lazy
to throw me away.

My love,
today they found you in the alley,
an abandoned porcelain doll.
Your cheeks flushed and lips stained from the cold -
left shoeless in the snow.
Fist wrapped around your empty matchbook -
burnt out - used up - dead.

Those tight jeans and rag of a shirt
looked uncomfortable
even in repose.
At first nobody noticed.
Much to do, this New Year’s Day:
resolutions to be broken.  
No time to stop and smell the corpses.

They get younger every year
One cop coughed to the other
a cough of disgust.

They made you a nameless number.
A statistic doesn’t feel the burn of frostbite.
It lends itself to jokes -
and forgets humanity.

In death you are
The Jefferson Avenue Whoresicle
and sooner or later, forgotten altogether.

I can’t forget you,
on display –
hiding in that most undignified uniform.
Your eyes stabbing straight though me.
New Years Eve,
you tried to sell me a warmth.
I ignored you,
avoided your dagger eyes like the sun


I walked away,
Not after I saw how lonely
how frightened
how cold you were standing there
alone.
I can only image your visions
as you burned through those matches
and prayed for some John to come to your rescue.

You can finally rest
in a bed of your choosing.
No judgment passed.
No cold nights on the street.
No home to fear going back to.
It’s all over now.

Blues for the bluejeans
with holes that are worn
but not earned

I
The phone was screaming in my pocket
its voice was muffled by the pile of clothes
on top of it

The hotel water was almost too hot
it blushed my scalp
and cascaded down my face
in a way that should have felt like baptism
but didn't

After what felt like an eternity
the call went to the black hole
that is my neglected voicemail
now at over a hundred missed calls

I didn’t want to talk
not to Dad, not to Mom,
not to my fiancé,
and definitely not to some reporter
trying to make our ****** up family
the topic of the nine o’clock news

II
The pipes in the wall
clunked around for a second
as I turned the ****, cutting the water off
I stepped out of the shower
somehow feeling less clean than when I entered

For a moment I stood there,
towel over my head
in complete darkness

I closed my eyes and saw him
standing across from me
his eyes, locked with mine
dad’s gun in his shaking hands -
pointed directly at my head
unblinking, full of hatred, anger
and fear

They’ll call him a monster
and knowing what he’s done,
I won’t be able to say they’re wrong

III
Sympathizers will say that the divorce
messed him up somehow
or that he inherited our mother’s mental illness
or that he played too many first person shooters –
which is just ******* stupid

Lying on the hotel bed,
I nakedly examined the ceiling
mapping out the distance between water stains
like a cartographer

The last time he called me
he was in tears,
because some ****** from his school
beat him to a pulp
and shoved his face in dog ****

I can’t help but dwell
on something I said to him that night:

“People like that don’t change
they become ******* adults
and keep kicking people around
because they can
Because they’re rich and we’re poor
and they don’t want to see people like us
we remind them that the world isn't perfect
and doesn't revolve around them”

I don’t want to believe
that I planted the seed,
that the one time he listened to me –

IV
Six people died
most of them, kids no older than seventeen
one teacher, and a janitor - tagged by a stray bullet
two kids have been in critical condition
for the last three days

He must have been terrified
in those last moments
before the cops riddled him with holes

He must have regretted it
or at least regretted
not having an escape plan

He never did think things through
unlike me,
connecting the countries on the ceiling
drawing imaginary lines
of cause and effect
and trying to figure out what it means
to be a big brother
in the absence of a little one

My ship
drifts swiftly,
slowly sifting
shifting,
lifting,
split ting,
sprouting wings,
and finally
flying

free.

It's long drive on this highway
The window creaks its jagged way down
I breathe in the new air
for the first time in months

George Watsky is building
his Cardboard Castles in my stereo
On repeat-

I think of Emerson
On repeat-
Skip-
On repeat-
I think -
I feel like his transparent eyeball
Repeat-
His eyeball-
I  begin to understand
what has always seemed
a clumsy metaphor

I begin to feel -
one with everything
Skip-
everyone is love
Repeat
Love
Every-Everyone is me
And you
Skip-
Everyone is all I need.
Repeat
I am all I need
And you -

I don't need anything
Except for -
-more road
-more time
-more gas

the CD starts skip-skip words
Hopping - lines
Reminding me
Of finite fuel
Repeat-
finite time
with work looming just hours away
Repeat-
death, just decades away

Then, as if responding to my overturned thoughts
My ****** speakers belt out:

Hey ******* -
The sun is shining

"I saw you eyeing this"
       I wasn't.
"It's my writing journal. I'm a poet, In case you were wondering"
       I wasn't.
"I don't know if I'm any good. I mean, people say I am"
       Probably not.
Finally, I handed him the question he was fishing for:
       "So what do you write?"
"Oh, well, I did recently complete a poem
 comparing life to a game of chess"
        He had the smuggest most punchable face ever.

                      ...seriously?
You and every other 8th grader who got that prompt in Language Arts.
                        *******.
                                           Is what I should have said to him.

I don't know why he ****** me off so much
Maybe because he reminded me of a younger version of myself
       Always pushing my writing in people's faces
       demanding they have an opinion on it.
Hell, I still do that from time to time.
       Who was I to judge this poor guy?
                 but I did.

After a few years, I forgot about him entirely.
I couldn't recall his face even at gunpoint,
and all that is left in my memory of him
       is that stupid comment about life and chess...
                                         Chess takes strategy, and skill.

If you're gonna compare life to a board game,
It's more like chutes and ladders,
         pure chance
Like Battleship,
         dumb luck
Like Solitaire,
         all too often you're playing with yourself.
But when you aren't it's Charades,
         you're always trying to guess
         What the other really means
         and it's always simpler than we're making it.
It's Clue
         In that no one has all the pieces to the puzzles
         But if we work together,
         maybe we can solve the mysteries.
Scrabble
         It's a bag of incoherent consonants and vowels
        Having no inherent purpose,
        Developing all meaning through your design.

And yes, a little like Chess,
          In that I never learned how to play it.

I am a mosquito on your holy-massive windshield.
You knock the air from my lungs and surround me in enough of it to crush my body.
It's all bigger than me,
all bigger than my eyes can see,
or my hands can hold.
All bigger than John mayor's body gives him credit for.

I explode my **** mixing with the blood of millions from which i drank, and you see it like a rorschach test and the results are in, you're the holy mary ******* what killed by brother, and all my brothers, and our souls are in your brain screaming ****** and pain

All bigger than all I know the universe to be, you are lightyears ahead of my understanding,
but nonetheless I strive to get passed your windshield.
I see what you have inside there and I want it.
I want to be with you there. Crushing the souls of bugs like me.
Wiping them from the glass, and not thinking twice.
But since I can't, I'll make sure to bleed for you,
so much that I leave a good smear that will take your wiper blades at least four swipes to get me off.
I'll make sure you remember me.

is that Vera Hall on your stereo, singing out from beyond the grave, singing Death Have Mercy? Vera Hall from beyond the grave hatin' on John Mayer. Vera Hall the old sooth sayer. Vera Hall with one last prayer,
Oh Death, have mercy.
Vera Hall, in a dream but lucid.
Oh Death, you're out of wiper fluid.

When she was little,
she tried to count the stars,
lost track at 236,
and started over.
This has been a recurring trend
throughout her entire life.

She would search for four leaf clovers
not because she believed in luck
just for the challenge of it,
like hunting for needles in haystacks
just because – why not?

She loved to challenge of impossible tasks.
She was never angry with herself
when she failed -
because she wasn't stupid
she knew what impossible meant.

But every time she did find a lucky clover
or counted even just one star more than last time
she’d smile to herself,
having beaten the impossible.

All she wanted was
proof that she isn't doomed to fate -
proof that she is more
than a infinitely tiny speck of carbon
living on a mite larger speck of carbon
floating in a vast sea
full of impossibly massive specks of carbon
that too, are infinately tiny
when compared to the sea,
in which we all swim.

So when she made it her mission
to steal this boy’s heart
it wasn’t about love.
Not that she was intentionally cruel.
Just that she didn't see the world that way.

It was the fact that he was so distant,
so out of her reach,
like the incountable stars
hanging above her head
every night
taunting her.
She couldn’t help herself –
she had to try.

She took her victory
and his virginity
in the back of a Dodge Neon
parked in the shadow of an abandoned factory
on a dead end street.

Afterwards, they sat on the roof of her car.
With eyes soaked in that teenage sappy first-time kind of love,
he gazed upon her glory,
like she was some sort of angel
sent to save him.

She was too busy counting the stars to notice.

"Humpty Dumpty was a metaphor, I think."
"What?"
"For the human psyche."
This man's skin was inhumanly pale and dusty.
He looked sick -
like he was carrying something heavy no one else could see.
"Think about it. An egg, beautiful in it's frailty."
"Teetering on a wall, ever in danger of the fall that will break him."
His eyes were lost in the thought. Cloudy.
Everything about this man made my bones want to run away

"and all the king's horses..."
He whispered. A calmness that stabbed like an icepick.
"and all the king's horses..."

There once was a man
So hopelessly in love
that he cut off his ear.
No one knows what to take from this.
I guess, it’s just that love
makes you do crazy things.

That being said,
it’s not hard to believe
that there once was a man
So hopelessly in love
that he stowed away on trains
riding them from Ohio to Arizona
just to barge in
on an ex-lover’s wedding and scream

“I OBJECT!”

There once was a woman
so hopelessly in love with another man
that she left her husband at the altar.
Although that’s not the woman at this altar
in our story.
This woman tossed champagne
in the man’s face
and screamed that she never wanted
to see him again.

There once was a man
with a heart so broken
he once considered suicide
but then he read something
about this painter
who cut off his ear
and mailed it to this *******
that he was head over heals for.

Today, there’s a shell of a man
in New York City
with a stub
where his ring finger used to be.

And somewhere in Arizona
in a box she never opened,
is the rest of him.

Dear Reader,
Run away.
Run as far as you can.

Board up windows.
Burn all your books,
dear reader.

I am poetry.
I will **** you.
You will let me.

Run.
Run far away,
Tear off your rearveiw,
Just go!

Or don't.
It's too late for you anyway.
I'm already eating you
From the inside out,
dear reader.

I'm poetry.
You will starve to death with me
inside of you.
And you'll love it, too.

It's not you, It's me.
No - you know what, it IS you.

You can't keep coming around like this.
It was okay at first, but we had our fun,
had a couple snowball fights, and hot coco nights
but you and I both know it's run it's course.
We're over.
In fact, honestly, you overstayed your welcome this time.

What do I mean?
I mean, you're cold, you're bitter, your relentless and pushy.
I couldn't take it anymore.
And when you coming back like this every other week, honestly,
It makes me consider moving.
You're like a stalker.

Oh her? Yeah, that's my new season.
She's nice, warm, and beautiful.
But she's shy,
she's not going to come back out until you leave.
So, you should go.

Look maybe we can try this again
In a year or so - maybe.
Just give me some time.

I don't miss you yet.

Want me.
Love me.
Desire me.
Choose me.

I need you

Ignore me.
Avoid me.
Disdain me.
Destroy me.

I love you.

Somewhere out there, there is someone
who had a Creative Writing class in college
with E.L. James.

He remembers her
as that annoying sheltered Mormon girl in class
always telling people about how great a writer she was
and reciting her bad poetry
to anyone who pretended to listen.

He remembers fondly
the time she sobbed to her friends
because of the D she got on her final project
and the time the professor told her:
"Sometimes passion just isn't enough.
You've got to have talent too."

He knew that if he never made it as a writer
at least he could take solace in the fact that
wasn't as bad as that Erika chick.

After college, he cried weekly
over his mountain of rejected manuscripts
and eventually abandoned the pursuit of his art altogether
in favor of work that pays the bills.

Years later,
he comes home from work
at his 9-12 factory job
he finally, reluctantly, gives in to his wife's demands
to take up ******* in the bedroom -

- and Mid-****** she calls him Christian Grey

So, what I'm saying is this:
Somewhere out there, there is someone
who killed their loving wife in sudden rage -
because of poorly written Twilight fanfiction.

“One thousand words.” He said “that’s the going rate.”
I looked down at it in my hand.
Taken back to the day it was first shown to me.
“What if it’s burned?” I asked.
“Burned?” He asked. “How burned?”
“Not very, just around the edges.” I explained.
“Like, it was saved from a fire. Would it be worth more, then?”
“Well, no.” He answered, matter-of-factly.
“What it it’s old.”
“Old?” he asked. Leaning forward, now engaged. “How old?”
“What if what used to be white is now turning yellow.
and what used to seem new now looks antique
and she looks so young that you think it can’t be her.”
“Well…” He paused, thinking it over – or pretending to.
“No.” He finally decided, leaning back into his position of power.
“One thousand words. That’s the going rate.”
“What if…” I searched it for any other idiosyncrasy “It’s autographed.”
“Like – half in cursive and half printed – and the ‘I’ is accented by a tiny heart.”
“That’s tempting, but rules are rules, and rates are rates.”
He smiled, enjoying my pain too much.
“It’s worth a thousand words. No more, no less.”
“What kind of words, I mean do I get to choose them?” I said
“Mostly fluffy words, not very heavy handed words. Not five dollar words.
Just our two cents worth.” He said through his grinning teeth.
The thought of her being reduced to one-thousand two-cent words made me ill.
So I left and took the picture with me.
I wandered and pondered and got lost
finding myself
at that pier she used to talk about, where she first met my father.
The sight there had to be worth twenty thousand words, in French.
I don’t speak French.
So I did not understand why it was beautiful
only that it was.
So it was there and then that I decided I would set her
priceless and free.

Drifting
somewhere between sleeping
and waking life

Dipping
in and out of the fuzzy lake
of my subconcious mind

Straining
to keep myself on the surface -
losing grip, (here i go again)

Waves a blue and white
painted like the sky in that Van Gogh
Starry Night.

Paintied in thick blue tears
and yellow splocthes of infinity.

Snoring
snaps me back
to barely awake.

Tripping
up the stairs
I make my way to my bed,
Wrap my arms about my Love
and let myself fall into
Van Gogh's heavy tears

Silver-bearded ex-hippie
endless pony-tail
fedora and wise eyes.
I wonder if he writes
like Ginsberg -
or at all.
I decide that he should.
He has stories to tell, this man.
He looks like a professor I had one semester
a lifetime ago.

It's the first good day in a month.
After two weeks, bedridden
I finally have the energy
To take the dog around the block

She stops to sniff
Every single tree,
Patch of grass,
Stop sign, and telephone pole.

Normally, I'd be annoyed
Angry even
"****** Anna!"
With frustration, I would bawk.

But not today.
It's fifty-five degrees outside
And I'm not in pain
So sniff up enough
- to fill your little doggo soul

Just don't pull so hard.
I know, I know. You don't wanna stop.
Ok, Ok. Just one more time
Around the block.

Sort through it all
a box for the good
a bin for the bad.

Set the boxes in order
in a safe space
on a high shelf
in the back room,
in a spot you will remember
for when you need to remember.

Make your space Shine
sweep the dirt away
replace what is broken
scrub the years off of what isn’t

Standardize this practice:
Every day find a way
to sort, set, and shine.
This is how you Sustain yourself.

Follow the fireflies
Eager to show you something-
A stillborn bunny

The lack of poetic tongue
in my response
is sure to disappoint.
But I have a headache,
and my life *****,
and the baby won't stop freakin' crying.
What do you want from me, people?
I can't **** you out a masterpiece every time!!

...and I'm a little drunk.

My father made me a makeshift dollhouse
one year for Christmas.
It sits in my room now, having been untouched for years.
It's cheaply made from a recycled dresser's wood
The insides are bare, lacking furniture.
When it's obvious flaws are ignored
it's sort of perfect.

Like it's patheticness has some charm.
I can't help but think that it is the perfect metaphor
for my family.

Semantic satiation
is when you repeat
a word or phrase
so much that it loses
all sense of meaning

Grim Milestone
sounds like the protagonist
of a paperback thriller series
by Patterson
or one of his ghosts

Grim Milestone
sounds like the title
of a Goosebumps book
about a killer street

Grim Milestone
sounds like a gloomy rock
on a lonely corner
whose only purpose in life
is to tell people
they’re on the wrong path.

Grim Milestone
Grim Milestone
Grim Milestone
Grim Milestone
Grim Milestone
Grim Milestone

I keep thinking
that maybe, if I say enough
my heart will ache less at the words
when we pass the next one

From the prompt: The End Of Monsters

“Nobody asks why the chimera needs killing.
It’s a lone thing – a wrongness,
a distortion wandering in from elsewhere
burning the straight plowed fields of us”
- E. Rose Sims (On Cartography and Dissection)

He took his vorpol sword in hand
and with it, slayed the last Jabberwock.
Claimed its head, and placed it on a mantel,
in between Grendel’s arm, and the Minotaur’s horn -
Trophies of his conquests.

He told himself that he was making the world safer.
Still, that didn’t stop the nightmares.
The memories of the screams let out by the faun
as he plunged his dagger into its neck.

The way the chimera begged to be spared,
in is best human accent, before he thought to cut out its tongue:
“Please, no ****. Who will look for my family?”
“No mercy, not in this world.” He tells himself.
“Monsters need to be killed.”

He told himself that he was the great Dragonslayer.
The adventurer.
Eliminating the native threats
so that his people can safely claim the land.

Now that his deed is done,
the final monster, slain.
Our hero hangs his vorpol sword up on the wall.

Yet, he lies awake at night
unable to sleep,
he stares up at the stars.

He dwells on a bone chilling thought -
that maybe somewhere in a distant land
there is a map being made of his home town
and some undiscovered other
has labeled it -
“Here Be Monsters”.

Her eyes are so deep set now
that in a certain light
they are just holes in her face

She is so thin now
from the chemotherapy
her skin seems little more than
an empty balloon stretched over her skeleton
and tied off at the scalp,
to keep what’s left of her from falling out

She shakes so bad now
that she needs assistance
to cease the drought
on the jagged landscape of her lips

Now, her days are spent
in an endless sleep
punctuated by a waking sleep
in which she does a lot of staring at walls
and vomiting

That waking sleep, or living nightmare,
is itself punctuated by the occasional friend
come to mourn at the gravemarker
that is her hospital bed
She now has sympathy for the zombie
knowing what it’s like to be dead
and alive at the same time

She thinks, if she had the energy,
she might bite people too
just to remind them
that she’s still here

Mid-April in northeast Ohio.
She’s bitter at the cold,
for overstaying its welcome.

The snow obscures the line
between the sidewalk
and the Devil’s Strip.

There’s a long line
of determined footprints
punched into the snow behind her.

Halfway through a song and a cigarette,
the CD skips -
figures.

These library disks never play for ****.
She ***** her fist
and whacks her Walkman.

Across the street,
in a wifebeater and sweatpants,
he people-watches from his front porch.

Sipping ***** and orange juice
from a chipped mug -
World’s Greatest Dad.

In his driveway sits a ‘97 Cavalier
with a plastic wrap passenger window
he’s hoping holds up to the wind.

Will this ever stop?
he says to himself, toward the falling snow.
A passerby might think he meant the weather.

Next door, she’s been up all night
with her newborn tornado siren
fruitlessly singing lullabies off key.

Six cups of coffee
keep her from collapsing
into a pile of ***** laundry.

She thinks about herself as a kid.
Thinks about how she used to like to
walk with her eyes closed.

How she used to like the thrill of it
the uncertainty and doubt of it.
This is like that. She tells herself.

She almost believes it.

How lonely it is
walking toward the sunset
my cell phone is dead

Society detests innocence
Often shaking hands with ignorance
Exchanging phone numbers with bliss.
We hate it cause we’re jealous.

So we send loaded words their way.
Our mouths, like pistols
shooting bullets full of hate.
Someday we shall see the error of our ways.
Until then,

******.
We call him.
He who has yet to be used,
Or more so, use another for pleasure
******, and then leave a woman and a ******
on a Hotel’s bathroom floor,
alone and broken.

Square.
We say
To she who has never felt the itch.
Needed so badly to scratch it
and get her fix
that she steal from her two month old daughters college fund
so she can fly away and forget….

Try as we may, we never forget
How it feels to fall from the sky.
So, we know how to make a mockingbird cry.
We know how to make a mockingbird cry.
And we know how it feels
to **** one

You say
“If both she and I were dangling by our feet
over an active volcano
and you only had enough time to save one of us
which would it be?”

“Well…honestly?”
I ask
You nod.

“Neither of you.”
I answer bluntly.
“I’d freeze up.
I’d start thinking past the choice,
because the choice is too hard to make
I’d recite what I’d say at your funerals over and over
and I’d  just deal with the responsibility of my inaction.”

You leave a red hand print across my face
and do not speak to me for the rest of the day.
I learn that you don’t want me to be honest,
you want me to choose you.
I’ll make you breakfast and apologize
in the morning.

For now, I’ll sit here in self-pity
maybe finish the book I was reading
before you interrupted me
to ask that stupid question.