Her mind is as loud as a whistle blow
I can see it in her smirk
As we talk over dinner

I hear her silent sarcasm
I’m not psychic
But her wheels turn quickly enough
That I know to be ready to dive into the dirt
And out of her path

I hear her train comin’
See the coals burn in her eyes
The way her eyelashes flicker flakes of cinder away

I feel one fall on my arm
It singes my arm hair
It smells like the square-root of burning bodies to an over exaggerator

This feels like

People who have prayed in silence
And caught fire
Because they were begging for the answers
Before the bomb went off

They are souls who have been told
Praying is a waste of time
Wondering is a waste of time
You don’t always get answers when you ask for them
You don’t always get answers when you ask for them

Sometimes you’re lied to

Souls who have to learn to accept
The helpless agenda of living

Whatever happens was supposed to happen
If it wasn’t
We wouldn’t be here

Ready for the fire
Ready for the whistle blow
Ready for the hog-tie train track love she has to offer

I ask
Do you still love me?

She picks up her glass of wine
Sips it
Leaves a stain of lipstick on the rim

She says
I do

She says
I do

I have been breathing deeply lately
trying to find permanence I think

Because the money will not stay
and the car will not last
and the days turn to nights
and I sleep for tomorrow
and not for the dreams

I have been lost in wonder

And I wonder if there is a sound
for the breath of the spider
that Delia has just sprayed with raid

Or if there is a sound
for the parting of clouds
that reveals the sun

Or if there is a sound
for roots breaking a seed

And if that sound might be similar
to what my bones do sometimes

And right now
safety sounds like the click of the lock in the frame

and peace sounds like the hiss of the can seal breaking

and happiness sounds like the suction of lips
to my neck
to her neck
to our mouths

Each sound is a second
maybe less

Like being under hypnosis
snap
snap
snap

And as far as permanence goes
I have enough

Ps. I also have to take a ****
He says

It’s what best friends do
They tell you things you don’t want to hear

Like
Ps. You’re being a ***** right now
We both know how badly you want to
Just ******* kiss her*

You are sandpaper laughter
So much grind in my double over we both tear up

This is the stuff I’ve been trying to tell people
For at least 12 years now

How we are so good at following each other’s lead
We get lost in the process and crash into a heaping mess
Of what the ****

Like when I pretend to be gay Christopher Walken
And you are his best friend some Australian guy
And the whole room laughs like this was a joke

I have stenciled SAFETY in microscopic letters
Around the outside of your mattress
For the days I can’t sleep at home

For days where rest
Is the warmth of 3 blankets and a room heater inside your freezing granny flat

You satiate my soul
Like the 12 packs we **** alone in one sitting

Inside your throat
There is a harmonica exhale
Tuned to the key of gritty

It was designed by people who have learned
The true definition of lonely
And It calls to them a song that has only one word

FOUND

I feel found in your ***** harmonica voice
It gets me
Plays my song when slow dancing alone
With my beer belly is all I need for company

You so much an ambidextrous best foot forward
That you occasionally forget which foot is your best
So you remember where your heart went
Always the right place

We might be a cacophony
Of whale farts
and silly accents
and ***** mouthed prayer
to everyone else who meets us

But I have only ever loved amazing people
And I love you

Ps…………. I hope you pooped well

Her ceramic mask hid everything I already knew
It's a reflex keeping her soul alive

Smile girl
Smile girl

Laugh when your head hangs heavy
When you never thought you'd breathe deeper than this

It's amazing I've been saying
All the things you're capable of

She might not be as pretty
Might be early aged
Might dance decietful
Making people look more graceful than they actual are

But she can't be any more human
She can't be any more human
than me
or you

She wears a mask
statue hard
and beautiful

Her neck is strong from the weight
People want it to shatter

People who don't wear theirs as well

You've gotta be low to keep people low
You've gotte be willing to be *****
To make others *****

She is better than that

I know this
because I've seen her naked

Flayed her smile
like breaking a clock

She ticks a metronome of humble heartbeat

Is a wonder woman
that makes women wonder
How it is
that she can smile
when being kicked in the mouth
by her own feet sometimes

How she swallows sadness in beautiful breath
palms miming
exaggerating the air in her chest

She knows she can breath deeper than this

I see her for who she is
and who she was
I accept her broken beauty

Relax
we're human
and I don't want to keep you low

Stand up here with me

Where the both of us can see
how our angel wing footseps can keep us light on our toes

I look at her
after the overflow
and I know she wants me to leave her alone

No one wants to be seen
after stepping of scene to change costume

I see you

She steps heavily back into her boot straps
Slides on her angel wing shoes

I tell her I think she is beautiful

She puts on her mask
and says

Thank you

Underneath the burning building in my gut
So much is preserved safely
In the memory where you are smiling
I find peace
I want to be lonely in private
But there is no space for that

Under the rubble
Compound fracture of bitter jawline
That same smile a photo
Warping in fire

I want to preserve you
Like a wasp in amber

But we are not as slow as that
Not as gentle

The theory is
Two objects fall at the same speed
Regardless of mass
Except for people
We do not fall for each other at the same pace

I felt like the man with the rescue dog
That heard your heartbeat
After the cement settled
And the wood grew cold
White ash
Black cinderblock paperweights
Your body preserved under
Layers of broken building
But you felt safe
Because you set the fire

And I was the man that found you
Some secrets can’t stay buried

We were cave people
Found and revived

I’m not new to this
Just rusty
Just dusty
There are burn marks on our bodies
And I have almost forgotten how mine got there

There were things you thought you should go back for
Things you wanted to leave behind
But in the saving you took what you could carry
There was baggage in your desperation
To save what you thought was important

When you burnt yourself to the ground
You forgot that fire is a funny thing
It lives too
And you can’t control it

There were some houses
Left standing
Whole acres unlit for no reason

Not everything gets burned

And there is a photo of you
Cigarette hole dimples
A smile that brings me peace

And you brought with you
Bits of burning ribcage
And smoke filled lung
To hide your heart minimally

I brought nothing
Mine is slightly weather calloused now
But it works just fine
It’s just rusty
Just dusty

So take this
What is left of my burning breast plate
Carved message on the inside
like an oversized locket
Underneath the black and white negative of your film strip

“Thank you for trying”

As we walk to my best friend's house
My brother and I cross a bridge

He suddenly walks slowly
Like a penguin with a hunchabck
Closes his eyes a little
Steps towards the street

Tells me he is afraid of heights

I hold his 711 bag
And press my hand to his boney spine

We cross

When I can read
I am going to move to New York
Live in an apartment til I can buy a house

Toffer lived in New York
You should ask him about it

It snows there

I don't ask him about how he'll pay for it
All he need is to know how to read
Everything else falls into place after that

I have forgotten how happy this makes me
But I am grateful for it

Grateful for the mistakes
For the learning that comes from the ****** up things my mouth does
When all I wanted was for you to laugh

I am thankful for the laughter
And the overwhelming smile that I am normally self-conscious of
When the laughter makes me think how much I love you

Come sit with me in the middle distance
Between the times I want to remember forever
And the fast approaching future
That I don’t want to miss without you

It’s not gay when we hold hands in public
Unless we’re being gay about it

Look around
Who is staring?
They’re just jealous of the love

Thank you so much for getting me
When I feel no one else does
For understanding me so perfectly that
You can stop my stupidity mid-sentence
Just by saying my name

Say my name again like a double negative

Let my mouth slip a little further into absurdity

Thank you for the dancing
On dimly lit dance floors
Slick with sweat
And scuffed with heel-heart grace

I want to remember my awkwardness like a scar

Your smile is a scar reminding me of us
When I begin to tell these stories again

Like that time I broke into a car to steal him a pack of smokes

Or when we sat in her car after class til 2 am just talking
Just laughing

When I remind her how much I like kissing her
Especially when we’re drunk
Sloppy and passionate

When I pull my face from yours
And you smile so beautifully

When I slept on her couch because I didn’t want to go home that night
So I treated her to pho the next morning

When I held her after drinking
Under blankets she warmed in the dryer

Every time I tell them I love them
I mean it

When they taught me how to dance
When grace is something I never needed
To move like this feels good

The beer
And the tears
The laughter
The mornings after

I am grateful because of you
And because of you
I am full of greatness

Full of can-do-fire
And won’t-quit-cliché-heart
Full of first attempts with the goal to fail
Because I want to experience it all

With you

So thank you
For the laughter
And the dancing
And the awkward scar smiles
That reminds me how worthwhile living is

It is worthwhile
Because of you

After the sweat cools on your now
***** neck
it changes the scent of your skin

I want to place my mouth there
And taste you like the ocean
Filtered through a cloud

I get so mad at the sky
Pulling itself inward overhead
I swear that it is a breathing thing

Then rain comes
And it's breath is now laughter

It pleases the sky to keep us here
inside

But I am still a child
Man sized
Holding you

I suggest we walk in the rain

It is not cold
But we are getting wet

The rain changes the scent of your skin

Your neck is still a little *****
I want to put my mouth there

Sue tells me that there used to be
a railroad
a few streets down

The shopping center was just a big dirt feild

"When we were kids"
she says
"We would put our hands to the windows sometimes
You'll never know what that feels like"

I imagine her bones
As railroad tracks
No one traces the topagraphy of her body anymore

Her hands shake as
She picks up
her saucer and tea cup
I hear a train coming

"You've gotten so tall"
she says

"It's only been a few months" I tell her
She looks directly into my mouth as I speak
Her face is different
Hair
Even the way she smells
I can't place it
but it is ugly

"You're taller"

"You drank yourself blind. I haven't changed"

"You know you were a c-section
Cut out like a tumor?"

"I know"

I remind myself
that forgiveness
and being cordial
and finding peace
can often be different things

She holds her elbows out
and my father helps lower her to the couch

"I'm coming home soon," she says
"You're going to have your mother back."

I am leaving soon I tell her
and I am never coming back

In a sea of lost souls
I can’t believe you haven’t found me yet

I mean
I’ve never seen so many people
Get so close to each other without touching

And I want so badly
To tattoo in thick black letters
Over my heart
The word

FOUND

This is for the people who
Are still waiting to be found

For the boys who thought they had her heart
and lost it

This is for the bravery of trying
For the bravery it takes to let someone hurt you
On a chance that they won’t

This is for the bootstraps
Caked in the dirt that you fall in
For how white your knuckles get in the rising

For the ones who have something to give
But think they have nothing to give

For the ones who have nothing to give
And try and give anyway

You will always have something to bring to the table
If you are willing

This is for the ones who’s walls of strength
Are so thick
They can’t feel the touch
So it doesn’t have to hurt when they see you leaving

Press harder
Press until you hit the soft
Find something worth holding

You are worth holding

The game of tag and all its variations
Were just preparation
For the time you spend hiding your heart diligently
Until you see the joy in being found

Know
If you are reading this
I found you

Which means it’s your turn
To find someone else

I know it takes courage
To touch someone
In a world where no one touches

But you did it once when you were a kid

I know you have doubts
I have doubts

I don’t see in me any of the things people see in me
I own a mirror
I mean ****
I shave me
No one knows how ugly this mess gets better than I do

But *******
We have got to be found

Know this is the year you do everything right

Ask someone to dance
Show them how they’ve been swimming all wrong
In this sea of souls where everyone feels so lost

Even Christians have to find Jesus
A man who can only save them
After he is found

I challenge you
To write a letter to a stranger
Telling them you’ve secretly loved them
Remain anonymous
Only send one

Hold a door open for someone

Smile like you do when you read a message
From someone you care about
And don’t realize you’re doing it
Until one of your ******* friends asks why you’re smiling like that

Smiling is ****
I promise

Do stupid things every chance you get
You’ll become a good story teller
It will make you interesting

Shake the dust from your tired shield
Let your walls fall like the crumble was healthy
You do not need walls in wide open places

Know whatever you have been made to believe
You should always love like you’ve never been hurt
You should not be afraid to be hurt

Know
Love is yours
If you want it

Want it
I dare you

Tag

I found you

Now find someone else

This is a true story of ******’s ally

The old man carried a cello and a stool
Bullets divided wind
So many straight lines he could see them like sheet music

He sat the stool down in the middle of the street
Held his cello
And played under the gunshots
Until everything was quiet

And in the outdoor acoustics
Made by apartment buildings and the morning cold
He played a fifteen minute rendition of heartache
On a cello tuned to the key of thunder

His high notes were so much screaming
And the deep low notes bellowed his hunger
It was the simple sound of savagery
When people needed another way to know what pain sounds like

They could hear it in the way that the strings
Absorbed the rust from his arthritic fingertips
Scraping the sound of struggle

It was the most painfully beautiful music
He played to the soft continuous metronome click of reloading
Beauty like a rose that dies in the hair of a girl
Whose own rose is a blooming ****** chest wound

Thought maybe he could replant her
Like the earth might give her back

Anything plucked from the root dies shortly after
He played for her
He played for courage
He played like a prayer to be shot doing what he loved

We all wanna die doing what we love

She was shot picking roses

He played cello
On a playground of bullets
A song that begged
**** me

Where is your god now?
When all you wanted was to be a casualty of love and music

He finished
Beads of sweat like ***** diamonds
As the morning sun mocked him for living another day

Some of us get to walk away from this
Without a single scar
Even if we wanted one

He walked away

And shortly after

The bullets began to do what bullets do
When they pierce flesh

There must have been at least a couple hundred pounds of it
All trash
All things to let go

I find pens
A glittery black heart shaped paddle from Halloween
Old poetry
Stories
Photos
A set of drums

This how you body-bag your excess
Give your heart fat a proper burial

It is shedding weight

Take what you need
Take what you need
Enough so not sticking around is easy

I have a runaway pipe-dream
That in the telling
I have whiskey lung
And a voice like carnival gravel
Like semi-ground teeth in a bag you hold on your tongue

A comic strip hobo
With a stick and a red rag

Fresh starts imply shaking dead weight
That includes people

So much **** gone
**** I never needed
And was never going to use
But I was living with it

These are the angels of bread

They fill my guts like cotton just thick enough

To hide the rumble of my hunger

They find their ways into the empty spots that you made when you

Stopped talking to me

They soften the longing

Their crusts just crunchy enough to substantiate

The desire for the texture that’s somehow gone missing

They get stuck in my throat so that it sounds like smoke

When I speak

Soft enough to remind me not to place so much anger in my words

Speak softly

So the world listens carefully

So when it finally speaks back

It is soft too

Like the angels of bread

They rise slowly from pools of fungus and warm water

They give life from things as simple as flour and heat

And patience

It takes patience to bake bread

It takes that same kind of patience to want to be around me

Catch me at the wrong temperature and I don’t mold so easily

So go ahead and give up on me

These are the angels of bread

Who tease our hunger

With the smell of something good

And always manage to come through

When I was little

I slathered them in peanut butter and jelly

They satiate my soul

Like the idea of Georgia

It’s a place I’ve never been

But it always sounds like home

These are the angels of bread

Kind enough to silence the earth so

All I hear is the click of my jaw when they hold me

Working out the memories you left behind

Couldn’t pack up everything when you left

You had to leave me those

And this recipe leaving my home smellin’ like a bakery

Only now it smells like Georgia

A place I’ve never been

A place that reminds me of you

Home

I picked up the pieces of my shattered heart
and put them into my jar of fireflies.

Only way now to keep my heart-spark alive
To live healthy in the glow

I've left the lid open
Living with the fear that this light might leave me

I have to remind myself some days that dust still rises
So I walk like an oil well to keep your memory alive

I watched them bury you
and realised my biggest fear come true

Heaven can't be real

And coffins only trap our dead
I need to let you go

When I die I want to be naked
wet
and covered in seeds

Heaven is the transfer of energy
into new life

I don't wanna be a goddamm tombstone garden
I wanna be a real garden
With ******* roses
and lillies

And weeds
Weeds are hard to ****
Make me something strong again

Give me a reason to keep on going
Help me kick my own dust

I wanna make life
even after my life

and

I want you back
I want you back

Because I miss you so much some days
I drive sixty in suburban neighborhoods
Prayin the fire finaly takes me
and
I can't do it

I know I will wake up in the morning
and you still won't be here

Sent you an e-mail the other day but purposely got the address wrong
I just wanted your name in my inbox

Someone already has your cell phone number
I called them and cried
because when they answered
they sounded exactly like you

They've asked me to stop texting
Saying I have the wrong number

Did you know all the people on tv sitcom laughtracks are dead?
It is ghosts reminding us to laugh

Remind my smile
Remind my dust
Remind my firefly glow
To get bigger

Remind me that you're not really gone
Not gone gone
Even if you're just plant food
It means something

It's why grass itches your bare skin
Reminds you it's alive

I don't want to itch like your nightmares anymore

Just know
I am picking up the pieces as best I can

And I ******* miss you

Punch today in the face
She said

Today you will make a stranger happy because you can
Today is your day to be charming
Don’t waste it
I said

Just so you know
That wasn’t a sunset you saw
That was bruises on the face of the ending day

And I smile
Every time I think of you

Charming is a birthmark you just found out you had
You find you like its shape

Be charming like a birthmark
It makes people trust you
You can have oodles of charm
When you want to

So often I feel like you are fruit
Placed gently on me, a sandpaper offering plate.
I do not want to hold you so roughly,
But there are things I am still learning

Placed gently on me, a sandpaper offering plate
My rough rubs you slowly,
But there are things I am still learning.
How we are unto diamonds.

My rough rubs you slowly,
Until we are evenly raw.
How we are unto diamonds;
I wish I was that soft.

Until we are evenly raw,
This feels like the devolution of beauty.
I wish I was that soft.
Something similar to dying fruit.

This feels like the devolution of beauty.
Soon you will no longer be sweet.
Something similar to dying fruit.
And I am a sandpaper monster still learning,

And so often I feel like you are fruit.

I’m not sure there are words for this
It is like suddenly finding out your heart is hard and hollow
Like a shell
And the heaviness in your chest goes without explanation

It is like these arms are revolving doors
For bodies that will not stay

It is like phantom limbing lips that aren’t yours
And maybe you kiss your own shoulder to remember the feeling

It is telling a chat-room ******* you love her
And almost meaning it
But you could never tell anyone else about the relationship
She says she loves you back
To everybody

There is the silence
In the spaces between sleep
When your thoughts take you places that are not calm

There is the mirror at the gym that you sometimes look into for too long

There is you without the words to be honest so you come on too strong

On the non-tattooed side of my chest
Are childhood surveys
Check if you like me
Check if you don’t
Please leave a 500 character minimum explaining
Your reaction to your most recent encounter
Thank you and remember
I only aim to please

There is this fancy worded poetry
With bits of her body tucked in between lines
So that when I speak them I might get to taste her

It is the broken record of your confidence
And no one has moved the needle

Sometimes you separate yourself from it
But you can’t even name it
It isn’t lonely
It is speechless
It just sits and feels
So you try to feed it
But it doesn’t eat

Sometimes you come close
But the words sit awkward in your mouth
Fall out like blocks

But they have no weight
So they don’t hit hard enough

All I know is that when I look at her
I feel the exact opposite

But there are no words for that either

The snow crisped to your eyes made me giggle
Made me wonder
About the lightness of snow

How the white in your lashes made them seem more wet
And how much heavier they would need to be
Before they bent

How heavy can your shoulders get
Before the shiver shakes the weight

I want lie beneath you
And catch your cold

The doctors asked me how long I’ve been feeling this way
I told them I didn’t know

One in particular
Gave me a mirror
Told me about actors
And how they would practice making different faces until they could completely control their emotions

When you feel sad practice happy
Practice angry
Practice solemn
Practice confused

With this much control I could be held accountable for everything

When I was 14 I learned what living looks like

In the mirror

It is that jaw dropped gasp for air
After the rope breaks
It is smiling at the neck bruises
It is being thankful for ******* up
Again

And now it is forced breathes of air
Visible in the cold
It is you smiling
Carefully wiping the wet from your eyes

The weight is building
White wet and heavy
But thanks to you
The bough is not breaking

It is slowly shedding
You collect it
To make a man
You make me

I ask you not to break branches from the bough
To give my man arms
I am afraid of the collapse
Maybe I can’t hold you the way I want to
But you have fixed me so much already

You have fixed me so much already
Flakes fill your lashes again
I laugh at how cute you are
When you fight to let them stay
The slow flutter
The pursed smile

I wonder about you
And am thankful at how much you have done

To fix me

She struck a chord although off key
She heard the beauty

So much noise like an overly passionate remix
Of a song that should have said one thing

To her there was language
In the rough off key finger press of her piano

To the rest of the band class
She was noise

Even after the teacher explained
She would never learn piano
How some people can’t be good at everything

She still showed up for music practice
With a song in her heart
So heavy
It made her consider opera
And Latin as a second language

Some of us will never learn some things
Like how to give up
When all we ever wanted
Was to make enough noise
For people to notice

So after practice
As she walked home
Her teacher picked her up

Explained to her about wasting time
Left out how secretly he wanted an entire successful band class

Explained how the truth hurts
But better learn it now
Than discover it later and feel like a failure

“You’re the only one who feels like a failure”
She said

And the next day
Her bench was empty

Though every note was perfect
And the music teacher was smiling
What happened was a tip-of-tongue beauty
Like something was missing

Even without her
They all felt a little off-key

If you arrive here
You will show up laughing
like a sigh
Headshake and shiver

It tastes bitter on your tongue
The last poem you will ever speak
When catching your breath is like praying backwards
Pulling heaven back inside of yourself
A struggle for composure before you lose it all

There is a man or woman
That looks like you
With a chest like a tree trunk
So heavy
And a stomach that rumbles
A body so empty

It asks of you everything
So you place before it
All that you have
Which it devours
Bits of all you’ve ever had
Confetti burst from the corners of its mouth
And then it asks for more
Until there is only you and it

With nothing left
You place its fingers into its mouth
It eats its own arm
Then the other arm
Then both legs

You watch it eat
Sounding so satisfied
It hums and drools
And bleeds to death

You catch your breath
You are alone in this place
So you laugh
And the sound of it startles you
An echo inappropriate
When you find this funeral funny

You pick it up
And sling it over your shoulder
Limp like a flower sack
Like a bag of potatoes

You tell yourself you are just going to bury it
And at the same time wonder
Why you didn’t walk away

I know I’ve always said
I’d make a better puppy than a man

Run your fingers through my face fur again
You sweet demon

I always walk away like the ending of a bad movie
With a dusty roaded hitchhike thumb

Only I can drive myself home

I know I am so much smiles
And bad words

I like bad words
They feel good

So much passion in them
Like a Tourette’s prayer

Let me sing your song of profanity
Like a compulsive howl at the moon

I mean,
This poetry is so much sound

That I might make a better wind instrument
Than a man

My lungs feel like a one way accordion
When you smile because of me

You perfect pedestrian
Dressed in slow moving smoke signals

Push all my buttons again

It won’t matter what keys you press
I am always loud, obnoxious, bitter music

Off key like the ***** twang
Of my harmonica exhale

Nothing pretty comes from this

Even the music

I’ve read between these lines
Enough to rewrite paragraphs and pages

Each version
There’s still you in the middle

Still you at the end

And If I were a man

A good man

I’d pick up the confetti
That falls

All inked up bits of paper
From words I chewed and choked on

Trying to tell you

If I were a man

I’d love you like one

Rhyme in my poetry is the kid in me

Having fun with the things

I’m supposed to take seriously

Since when was anything sacred anyway

I’ll let you watch me bathe

If that is the kind of naked game you wanna play

Like *** is sacred

I mean your body is no chapel

I’ll pick your shrapnel with my teeth

And yodel in the caverns of your canyon

Till your hips jive-talk my mouth a mountain

I mean you’ve got the youth-iest fountain

Woman

This is ***** talk

Why you laughin’?

No I don’t remember last time

I slipped myself the roofie

Didn’t think this’d happen unless I was loopy

Not that I’m a catch

Or that me getting you’s a stretch

Or that thing I asked you to do

Is really all that far-fetched

Just don’t ask me to take you seriously

Because like this ***** rhyme

And what we do on any given night’s a crime

And because when these clothes come off

You meet the kid in me

Who can’t take you

Or anything else all that seriously

Show me your pastel shades in water colours

And hide your laugh lines in candle light

Please

Keep your grimace in your sneer pocket

No one wants to see your teeth

I know how sharp they are

I know your growl is so guttural

It is hunger

This canvas soaks up everything it touches

But can’t force anything to mix

There is no texture in your vibrancy

And too much in your shading

So much green in your jealousy

That no one is debating

I know what shades of orange to be

When I need to light a fire

What shades of grey to fill my mouth

When I need to be a liar

But you

Dear model

Airbrushed to centerfold

Show me

Your pastel shades

Where your humanity should be

Watercolour your water colours any hue of blue and green

Picturesque my sunset

And lay me on the grass

Between the fading of your daylight

And the dying of my earth

And don’t dandelion my locks

Because

I won’t turn to face your sun

Don’t dampen my clay

With whatever colorful tears you drip

Some things just never mix

Even though

They look so beautiful

Together

On paper

The movement of her body was entirely too loud

She is desert throat gasps
When the water is so good
She doesn’t stop for air

Can hear her comin’
Her rusty train wreck tremble
On loose tracks

Her collapse is a cinderblock rain
The crumble is so much quieter than the crash
Her crumble is so much quieter than the crash

Her hands shake as she swipes her EBT card for the fifteenth time
She puts back the bacon this time
Throws down 5.50 for the Marlboros

She talks to herself
Angrily
Slams ever door she enters
Every door she exits

Her children think she is crazy

She is crazy

She is a body built
On passive aggression
And the threat of a shaky foundation
When the earthquake hits

Any day could be my last day you know

Her son turns up the tv
Her daughter plugs her headphones into her cd player

Do you all think I am talking just to hear myself talk?
And if you don’t stop sleep talking
Telling me you’re going to **** me
I am sending you to the hospital

The boy mutes the tv
Dries his eyes before they’re wet
He shakes his head
Begs her not to do that
Says he doesn’t know he’s doing it
Says he doesn’t want to **** her

She walks away
And he is left wondering

I remind him later
That we were not raised on truth
So it’s hard sometimes
To trust people

I put a lock on his door
Tell him to shut himself in at night

As for the mother
We don’t talk anymore

Like I said
She’s crazy
And I’ve got too much of that myself already

Somewhere a door is slamming
Somewhere cinderblocks are crumbling quiet
There is a sizzle like slowly cracking glass

I feel it crawl my spine
It crawls his

The girl misses it
Head buried in pop culture
Going deaf in trying to drown out
Her mother’s noise

Do you think I am talking just to hear myself talk?

As a poet I ask myself the same thing

Ask how far the apple can fall from the tree

If any one of us are lucky

It will be just far enough

My love looks scintillating on you my blue

With just a hint of black

When my rough love meets your tough love

And the two wear us smooth again

I mean

There has to be something to justify how ugly I am

Be ugly with me

And grind sandpaper skin

Til we can shake the shavings away after the sheets dry

You’ve always wanted to know what it looks like when ugliness leaves you

It looks like dust illuminated inside beams of light

After you’ve decided you’ve collected enough

How good did it feel

When you notched my bedposts with your vampire teeth

Dulling them down so that you couldn’t draw blood anymore?

Not even with your words?

You said that becoming human never seemed easier

Let me second chance

Your too tough tugs

With my lizard tail laughter

And I have two cheeks to turn if you need a third

My shoulder is only cold

Because neither of us know how to hold the other

Being

Beautiful

And Nice

And Capable

Take practice

So I am sorry I rub you the wrong way sometimes

Just that

This kind of black and blue

Looks good on you

And these faded bruises means

We’re healing

Trash bags climbing

Curbsides like vapid spiders

To me now

Everything is a ghost

Helpless to the current of the wind

I watch the bag collapse like an exhausted lung

And fill with the next breeze

There has never been a day where I don’t

stand like a windmill with my mouth open

Praying that I will finally get to catch my breath

I’ve stopped eating so that I might stretch myself so thin

The wind will take me like a kite

And

If I land in a tree

Please

leave me there

The leaves smell so sweet

They rustle in my ears the song

Of tiny feet scattering

In all the right directions

Can feel them tickle down my spine

Like an epiphany shiver

I got this itch to move

And I’m begin’ god for Dorothy’s tornado

To come and take me away

‘cause these legs walk me into all the wrong places

I want to be helpless to something more powerful than myself

Say

“I’m sorry I ****** things up

But this tornado

it planted me here in your lap”

Show you how it’s not my fault I’m not perfect

Nobody is

Doesn’t feel right though

The fire that made my heart

And the ocean that salted my tears

The wind that’s beggin’ to whisk me away from here

Is telling me otherwise

I think

Helium

Think

Feather

Think

Kite

Think

empty trash bag on the curb collapsing like a dying jellyfish

You look like a fire escape in a dress
Flower patterned
Sunday's best
I don't have to fall so hard anymore

The first night I held you
I dug your neck into a trench
This body was not at war with itself

Your shoulders are battlements
Your chest a drawbridge
I am waiting
Horseless
For you to let me in

I know you are so much softer than that

Lay across me again gorgeous
Let me sleep under your strength

Never realized your lungs were a cannon

Spittin’ words back in my mouth

Keepin’ me tongue tied and twisted

Never realized how the lead in my feet

Kept me neck deep in your sorrow

Never realized giving up

Meant handing over my pride

I gave it over willingly enough

You kept its backbone

And returned it

So I ate it

Tasted like envy and heartache

Slithered like spaghetti into my gut

Kept my voice breaking during songs of tomorrow

And took out my knees on days I decided to run

I found my voice

Buried under the rocks that I threw at glass houses

I ate that glass and the rocks

Built boulders of bone

Crushed from inside of myself

Now

My voice is made of scar tissue

And my heart is made of rocks

I got a train inside myself

Hellbent on breakin’ daylight

Whistle blowin' the sound of home

I have seen

Nights beggin' to break the sound of lonely

Rustling in bed by myself

And dreamt of days

More meaningful than this one

I’m done waiting for people to save me

I’m done trying to keep a tune

I am done eating my glass houses

And picking up the pieces when I'm through

In the darkness of the living room
the street light breaks through the blinds

He sleeps on the couch
A flannel blanket so small
every night is a decision
Shoulders?
Or feet?

I give him a fresh diaper
and light him a smoke

Tonight
before bed
he tells me a story
the only one I have ever heard from him
about the war

His best friend was named Mike
Mike got sick
Fever and blood in every cough

"I kept telling him everything was going to be okay"
He said
"but he kept asking me to leave him
Said to just send his wife a letter.
I never found any letter.
I wrote one later as if were him"

"I found him one morning
Cut his own throat"

My father's gone through five cigarettes by now

He lays down
covers his feet tonight

"When you're a burden to the people you love
it is okay to give up
That is what I am trying to tell you boy"

Just like that
he gave up

I am not saying my father was a good man
But in the end
I forgive him
for everything

I tell the rain beneath her eyes
A story I know

With my forehead pressed to hers
I can feel her thunder building

She is still a natural disaster
Beautiful and dangerous

I know some things you can’t control
Like who comes and who stays
Or the moments you do everything you can
not to cry
And you burst like a balloon
Caught in the rain

I speak a story into her mouth
About a boy living in a hospital
who wouldn’t let go

So a woman came to see him
The doctors called her a specialist

She was dressed in
A calm riptide

It ****** the air outa the room
But begged everyone to stay
And drown


She rubbed his hands

Rubbed his boney kneecaps

With her index finger
She ran circles over the giant bump in his chest

The chemo goes there?

The boy nods his head
She asks him to close his eyes

He is seven
Already has grown in his adult teeth
because his child’s ones have fallen out

He smiles like a man

I want you to imagine
You are jumping on this bed

She pats the bed
Her riptide coats his skin

He imagines it

Now imagine you’ve jumped to your own bed at home
You jump so high

Now you’re on your parent’s bed

You’ve been jumping for a long time
You’ve been jumping for seven years
It will be your birthday soon
You can’t jump much longer

So you jump off
You jump off

The boy falls asleep

I tell her I slept for two days
before I woke again

Nature does not take orders

I tell the rain beneath her eyes
To fall warm, wet and heavy
I rub it away with my thumbs

There will be days when tears aren’t enough
To wash things away

You need a riptide
You need a flash flood
You need a natural disaster as beautiful as yourself
To make the dam break its promise
To never let you flood again

Sometimes even god needs to be a liar
In order to rebuild

You need to be helpless
Then when all hope is lost

You need to accept
You’re going to survive this

If only to prove that you can

It was like the time our cat died
And we buried it in a shoebox
And made a wind chime out of the bell
Carved her name in the tree we buried her under
Just says Beans

I imagine this confuses the family who now lives there

Coffins shouldn't exist for things that small

I asked a friend to sew you a quilt out of her clothes
So you still might know her warmth

Babies grow fast
So much clothes from the shower
It will be a big quilt

Your belly still a bulb of life bursting
But hollow
In thick black sharpie you wrote
                MORGUE
Just above your belly button

You maker of life
Giver of the good stuff
Holder of the second heartbeat

You can only make good things
Your body is a mess
Genuinely ugly on the inside
But it creates good things

Remind it of that
When it rebukes its purpose
And lets go

The next one will stay

Because there shouldn’t be coffins
For things that small

You said I could be Uncle Jon
I have never been given that
I’m not allowed to see my own nephews
Because of how the past eats us

The past is a morgue
Of heartbreak festering

And forgiveness is not a time machine
Set to 10 minutes before regret kicked in

When my own children bury me
I hope they do something with what I leave behind
So I know that I actually have something worth
Leaving behind

You did not leave her behind
Even though you named her
Ellie
Elizabeth
But we knew it would be Ellie
She is not how you will be remembered

You do not make mistakes
You make life
In everything you do
As long as you are living

You make life

So when your body forgets this

Remind it

With breath
And tears
And sleepless nights
And anger
And happiness

Make life

Why must we destroy language with abbreviations?

In my phone

And on my computer screen

The words lack worth

Lack depth

Lack the luster

The way they taste on my tongue as my jaw works the syllable

ILY means I LOVE YOU

See also: If I had to choose between holding the world up like Atlas or holding you

I’d hold you till the earth shattered.

BRB means BE RIGHT BACK

See also: I am not leaving forever and in a few minutes

You can once again have my undivided attention

*** means WHAT THE ****

See also: I can’t believe you left me like that

I mean WHAT THE ****?

BFF means BEST FRIEND FOREVER

See also: I don’t care if it takes forever for you to say that

Take all the time you need

DTF means DOWN TO FORNICATE

See also: DOWN TO ****

See also: For an evening

I am going to leave my best friend forever

For a girl who makes me wonder

What the **** I am doing with my life

For the chance that she may actually one day tell me

I love you

But the first morning after

As the breeze cools the sweat off our naked bodies

As she finally wakes up

Looking like the safety of bad memories

I kiss her on the forehead and say

I’ll be right back

Only this time

I won’t be

It is summer
And the wind presses the thin fabric to your body

Every woman’s *** looks perfect in a sundress

You have been sweating
And the fabric sticks to you in the next breeze

In stillness you are a Greek statue
With wet folds of fabric outlining your frame

There are wrinkles in some places
And I think that you might look like this when you are old

We are brutally beautiful
We are
The soft red glow of a nuclear sunset
Pooling like blood
From wounds
Like that one time I cut my forearms open

Oh so that’s what a heartbeat looks like

It is sign language after a fist fight
When I’m so angry I can’t speak
So with my hands I tell you
No one should talk to you that way

It is the assbackwards way we allow ourselves to heal

For instance
When I had cancer
My parents took me to church when they could
Asked people to pray for me
And I thought drinking holy water might help me

It only made me sick
And I spent three days in the hospital

This life is *****
It is ugly

We are ugly
Like
Crime scene photos of bathtub suicides
Shortcutting life
And still getting into heaven

How after so many years
Just to make things interesting
Peter takes bribes now

And we are beautiful
Brutally beautiful
Endearing in our passion
Because it’s just a little too conscious to be animal
But we try

It is shotgunning a dove
And the rain of feathers
Even when damp with blood they are still soft

I wanna hold you tightly
You coarse cut angel
Your jagged edges rub
But neither of us wants to fall asleep alone

We will never be perfect
But we were supposed to be

Remember that
When your ugly rears its head
Like a mental mirror showing you only the things you notice about yourself
Know
nobody sees you the way you see yourself

Just remember
To smile more
And laugh when things are funny
Make love when you can

These things are good for you
Balance out the brutal
Because you

Are brutally beautiful

Our bodies are dumb
but we use them well
Like last legged engines
Like ugly cars you drive into the ground

This is how we live

Moriah Carter dances diligently
A body of prayer
Til all she has are heavy heaves
And the choreography of a long lost language
Leaving the speakers speechless

Kelsey Martinez is a ball of energy building
And he’s begging some beautiful woman
for an angel fist of light
Punched right into his dark side
An eye bulge duet of disgusting duality
But this **** feels good

We just wanna feel good

Janelle Gibson ***** like music
***** like a jazzy slap bass in a dark room
Like gritty distortion during a slow jam
Like this has the potential to be so much harder
But it won’t be
Even if you want it to

Kacie Brumley knows how ******* our bodies can get
She never forgets the importance of her own breath
Even when she’s holding it
Here
Hold her breath she’ll be right back
She is gasp and knee buckle praise for
Awkward types of beauty

Jennifer Smith is embracing fragile
The fragile ties that link lives to other lives
As if she were a knife
Sharp enough to sever
But patient and still enough not too
It takes patience to stand that still
And she wants you to know
She doesn’t have to

Amanda Lee Van Zatten wears her rose colored glasses backwards
Because she’d rather be naïve beauty
than see naïve beauty
So she dresses up in childhood
And still does things
Like wish on wells
And stars
And people that break

Tim Pagaard teaches English
Respects the breath that speaks like it has something to say
Knows that all this poetry and language is just practice for our mouths
So when it comes time to actually speak for something
We can
He believes we can

We’re all in this process of becoming broken
And in the short time interim
Are learning how to live
It takes a long time to learn to live
And I feel like I’ve been here for that long

I think you should live like you’ve got aids
Not so much that you are going to die tomorrow
But you might
But you don’t have to feel so bad if you like rest a day
But then you gotta get back out there

I fall asleep in other people’s beds
So often I am too drunk to go home
Not that I’d want to
I am clumsy bear hug boney
Begging my roughness to rub people the right way
Am broken and fake toothed smiling
Because I believe even when you are unattractive
Smiling is beautiful

And Christoffer Jones is man still finding ways to fit in his own skin
Not that he feels he doesn’t
But there are more ways to fit than one
Is obnoxious in the mornings after
He lives
He lives

Life isn’t short
Seventy some odd years is a long time
It’s just not long enough

We know this
And this is how we live

Willie has an awkward gait
Looks like a man
Who can keep steady under the table
Wipes sweat off his face
With a spare shirt hanging from his back pocket
He walks heavy on one side because of calcium deposits in his knee
He’s a veteran he says

Still has his New York accent
He’s a man who looks like he’s seen some ****

You think you were living in a slum
Only two people stayed at the place I lived at
In New York
People prove they resilience

I help him lift a dresser

Gimme a sec man
Not that I don’t have strength
I’m jus getting old

We take our time
Paced steps
I give him a beer

I thank him for his help

When I heard the story and saw your brother and dad
My heart broke
Then I saw you
And it gave me hope

I am just glad things got a bit better
I say

He shows me his hands
He holds them like he is miming half opening a book
It is “Boat” in sign language

You’re always in good hands

I laugh

He wants me to believe him

It’s time to move the couch
I say

I dropped her off on the other side of the city
Lights blur past my window
And I lose focus
A different kind of space travel

I don’t know why I drove here instead
The house on Ellen

I had always imagined it as a sad thing
Keeping the shape of comfort
Waiting lonely for me to come back to it

The shattered window
And the holed walls
The singed edge crop-circle in the living room carpet

I broke in
The place smelled new
Like fresh paint
And good credit

I am not a vandal
But these places don’t feel like home
Unless something has been broken

Tonight
It was just a lock

My tires hugged the road like it didn’t want me to be there
Like hydroplaning without the rain
And every red light turned green
Just after I hit the breaks
Like a bully placing a hand on my chest and then saying
“Nah, I’m just ******* with you. Keep on going.”

There’s this place I sleep most nights
Only
I am still in the parking lot writing this
And I don’t want to go upstairs yet

By my parking place
Frogs ribbit
They sound content
Though they live along the water drainage line that seems like a stream
Only there are more flies and crickets to eat here

Home is a funny place
So I have decided this

Not that I believe in God but
I’ve decided
His hands are as big as the world
So big it is easy to feel like no one is holding you
Even when you're being hurled a million miles an hour

And maybe that is why I feel I have no home
I mean
Hold me like you are small too

Just in case you didn’t know

You are perfect

You are a freak of nature

A happy accident

So fragile

Like some old century vase on a pedestal being thrown across a room

You

Have a voice

A voice that when you speak all I wanna do is stay

You put me in awkward situations

Like how sometimes we sit close and I just wanna put my arm around you

No reason

I just get this urge to do it

How I sometimes just want to tell you how lonely hallways feel,

And how empty the ballrooms are

Why don’t they have those anymore?

‘cause I’d dance with you

Hold you in my arms nothing short of forever

You

are perfect

Because you have eyes

Eyes that see better than most of the blind things
And feet that help you move, but never take you far

When we walk away from each other it always feels like slow motion

And there is strange music in the background that makes me feel like the Beast

I stay up nights just waiting for you

You are perfect

Like shallow breathes of air

After almost drowning

Reminds me life is short

Can you hear it?

That music?

Must be getting ready to leave me again

Just know

before you go

You are perfect

Perfect like

Hands

And old people

Perfect like awkward situations

Like those silly sad reminders that life is short

Just

Perfect

It sits nearly weightless in your palm
Hold it like a bible
with the page already marked in your head that you want to share
Like that page contains the only truth that you know

The closest to a magic wand you will ever get to
The only spell your voice
Speak honest
While words are still meant for this
Your mouth a shotgun for my tracks

Now dance

Follow my lead
Pick up your phone
And call someone

Pick one

1
While you were still earth
And I was still earth
And the thought of us
Sounded like a 4 year old learning to whistle
We had no stake
Just a note in the background of breath and baby teeth
You make me so happy
Your parents ****** on the day they did
2
If you were to die in any way
I want you to know
I have already planned your eulogy
It is simple
My name is Jonathen Hal Tobias
And this empty case of skin and bone
Formerly housed
The best friend I have ever had in my life
3
Your belly is a blackened furnace
Full of soot and sawdust
It is love the way it keeps me warm
And I will leave my hands near it
The distance of a magic spell for fire
My skin
Until there is no more sawdust
Until there is no more love
Until I have to warm my hands with breath
And press them against your cold black
Do you feel that?

4
Whatever you say
Through satellite
Over airwaves

Know your voice passes through stars
And metal
And microchips
And speaker

There is tongue
And breath and lips
Your heart when you’re honest

When words were meant for this
And your mouth a shotgun for my tracks

I am as tasteless
as the boiled chicken we are about to eat

Her hands tremble
as she sips her beer
The glass taps her teeth

She exhales like an ocean
made of bone

skeleton secrets
and rolling clatter

It is not cold in here

I don't remember what I said

But I do remember something my grandmother
often said to me

"Whatever man has been here before
and whatever man will be here again
Do not let him speak for you now"

I don’t feel like playin’

People already confuse me enough in person
Now there’s trying to convey emotion electronically
I know there’s always static in my nerves when you touch me
And the guy sending all these texts messages is trying desperately
To make you understand

Games are for people who have something to lose
You don’t lose people
I don’t want to lose you

Game is bar talk for getting your dress off

Keep it on
Why don’t you

Let me be me
And you can be you
Let’s not pass go and not collect 200 dollars
Let’s just sit here a while

Yes that is a pawn in my pocket
But this was checkmate the moment I saw you
And my battle ship is sunk
And if you let me take you home tonight
I promise not to yell

“King Me!”

So don’t send me signals
Radio or Smoke
My receptor is off
You obviously have been missing the Morse Code
I’ve been nervously tapping onto the floor

“Just Kiss Me”
“Just Kiss Me”

Right up front
This one card stud
Always plays the joker
And will play tag if you promise to touch me back
Might get nervous and make it freeze tag
But I won’t jump ropes
And half the time I’ll catch half of the things you’re trying to secretly tell me

So if you could
Let me be me
And you be you

No games this time

If loose lips sink ships

Then this buzz has unanchored the foot in my mouth

And now I really have some **** to say

Because the only time my mouth might look like it were about to launch torpedoes is

Now

Similar to blowing a bubble

Or anticipating a kiss

I aim to sink heavy metal devils with this drunken word stumble

I am done feeling lost in your sea

Waiting for your wind to take me away from unrequited

To simply sunken

Bring on your lovely devils

And apology notes

I’ll grit my teeth and bear it

I mean pretending not to care has never really been easy for me

I mean if I were an ostrich

I’d have my head in the ground right now

But thank god for beer

And best friends who owe you money

And the silence and patience it takes to decipher

The mental drunken slur of

“Stop hurting me like that”

Like Frank Sinatra said

“The best part about waking up with a hangover is

the only thing you have to look forward to

is feeling better”

I can’t wait to feel better

So bring on your jazz and work me up

And trumpet your lies

Mock love forgiveness

This headache was worth the trouble of forgetting

Sea foam

Beer foam

Either way I’m drowning with this ship

And either way I’m waking up

Missing you

And regretting everything I’ve said

I am a bear inside the church of bees
There are people in here I am in love with

They are covered in bees
They tell me that the bees hurt

I am hungry
The pastor tells everyone it is god’s gift to them
This sting

I want to hold you like honey
I have been eating daffodils
There is sunshine in my belly always

I am not afraid of the bees

The buzzing is loud
If you listen carefully it is god sending you a message through white noise
Listening for it is futile
You are in pain

I begin to pluck the bees from the bodies
Of the people I am in love with

Though I try to be gentle
I hurt them still

There is honey and blood on their skin
I want to lick both

Too much change
Is bad for your heart
Weighs heavy in your thin places
Like locking your throat
While the bags under your eyes
Pull their draw strings shut to keep all that trash in

No one wants to know what your ***** laundry smells like
Not even you

And so much this feels like stepping into yesterday
Wearing brand new shoes
Where no matter what
The only thing I could have done differently is walk away

You give yourself lists
Of I can leave after
I fix the car
And throw away all our old stuff
After mom comes home sober but still broken
There will always be something or someone
You forgot to fix

But you will walk away from this
It will feel like heaven
Leaving all the dirt behind

Only heaven is more or less a line of people
Wondering if they turned their stoves off or not

After a day of unfamiliar faces

His eyes are glad to finally settle on mine

As we walk though the mall

He keeps his head down

   Tells me he is afraid to look at people

How they might see what he is thinking

   Spelled out on his face

He always looks cold

     always looks tired

    walks like he is trying to remember that life is as simple as

Placing one foot in front of the other

With his head down

I know he counts his steps

He can only count to 100

Between this morning and now

I don’t know how many times he has counted to that

When I ask him why he doesn’t count higher

     He tells me

I’ll just lose track

And I just wanna tell him

You got a heart bigger than the best of us

So pure you got water coursin’ through your veins

So golden you shine like the sun

And it’s a suckerpunch to my gut

  To see you bow down to gravity

‘Cause if there was anyone

   And I mean anyone

Who could stare you in the face

And not see the light

  Then ****’em kid

There are days where I pray

The world could be as simple as you

Days where I pray that you might fight gravity

  As simply as

Placing one foot in front of the other

To slowly rise on steps of air

  Counting them as you do

And know it’s okay if you don’t come back

   ‘cause

There’s nothing wrong with going home

I never meant to look like a ***** floor

I bend the laws of physics when I ask mirrors to change my own reflection

Have this ugly soul

pushin’ all my ugly buttons

Doubled  back on my last straw so many times

I’m pullin’ splintered strands of yellow

From my backstab wounds

Got prickly bits of blonde  

Sticking out from the places I missed

They healed there

Got shards of my own teeth in my tongue

Puncture holes in my lungs

Makes it hard to breathe sometimes

‘cause I am still healing

Don’t call me good

Or handsome

Or patient

I do everything I can to sabotage the love you give

Not that I don’t want it

I am just not ready

One time you told me I should love as often as I breathe

So I starting breathing as often as I love

And I almost die in the intervals between our phone calls

Grace is you lightening the pressure on my drowning head

Patience is me staying under when you do

God is a child with a finger pointed at my heart and laughing

And you are an angel when you turn out the bathroom light

So that I stop hating my own reflection

Remind me that we are defined by more than the choices we make

That I might still have all the scars from the cancer

And the fistfights

And that one time I tried to end it all too early

But this heart beats more than just a war drum

It beats a ******* army

Can hear it like giant rumble footsteps

Can hear it finally change directions

Away from all the chaos

Shattering mirrors below my heart feet

So much glass glittering

Looks like a river

Too many pieces to reflect anything but the sky

Reminds me

I am not done healing

First draft of a short story. Check it. Lame title. Having no internet ***** until you use your new found time to do stuff like write. Who'd of thunk? Should have time to perouse soon. ;-{)

http://normanshine.wordpress.com/2012/08/23/new-heaven/

Is what I am doing the plight of my existence?
She asked me

Sitting on her lap
I notice the beer on my breath
Heating my mouth like a furnace

In giving answers I always feel like
A hundred Schizophrenic Walt Whitmans
Scrawling math problems on walls
With bits of coal
And we keep saying to ourselves
“But I am a ******* poet”

And what I wanted to say was
Probably
Or what are you doing exactly
Or if you are truly honest with yourself you won’t be

Here is how to truly be honest
It will feel like words in the mouth of a toddler
Learning how to speak to its mother
And you just keep saying, “Yeah” and “Wow”

Only this time
What you’re hearing makes sense
And you turn white
And you want to puke

It is the secret things we say to ourselves
Like
After my mother almost successfully killed herself
Well enough to be gone forever
I now secretly bank on my dad dying soon
So my aunt can take my brother and sister
And I will no longer feel responsible for anyone

Walking away
And feeling good about it are two different things

There is plight in our existence
In the monotony
In the repetition of sorrow
But that feeling fades
the fear of being alone
And unloved
and lost
and whatever

Like being in a nightmare
They all go away
As soon as someone touches you

Now be honest about what makes you happy
Do that
Do it well
Make others happy with it

“And if it ends in flames
At least we’ll be warmed by the fire”
She said

And to be honest
I don’t remember what I really said

When I lived in the hospital

Once a week a woman came and read to me

Then I read to her

And every week she asked me

what I wanted to be when I grow up

I always answered

With all the seriousness of a little boy

Who wanted to one day be a man

Could muster

“I am going to be a super hero”

The kind that can control the forests

so I could build everyone houses

Or be like Jesus with the fishes

so no one would ever be hungry

I wanted to be strong like my father was

I wanted to be brave

I told her how I was happy for the chemotherapy

Because  nuclear radiation usually only makes villains

Told her

How after the nurses injected me

My body felt like fire

And how I hoped

it would give me the power to control my body temperature

That way

If I ever held anyone

They would never have to be cold

And if you asked me now

What I want to be when I grow up

I’d tell you

I still want to be a super hero

I want to fight back the darkness

With all the strength of the sun

Or wrestle your demons

Or talk to animals

Even if it was just bunny rabbits

I’d find use for it

But I can’t do any of those things

I know we never become what we thought we would when we were kids

I don’t have a skylight calling me to action

Or extra senses alerting me to danger

I barely have my normal senses

I do have this though

A super power I call a cell phone

It’s always on

And I’ll always answer

Because

I at least got enough presence

To keep you from falling asleep alone

And enough spark in my heart to set my words on fire

Enough soul in the songs that I sing

To keep you from leaving again

Enough fat on my bones that I’m comfy to lay with

So if you’re lonely

Or tired

If you need a ride home

Or want me to back you in a fist fight

Or just need a friend

I have this magical thing that I call an ear

Mine

It listens so well

So pick up your super power I call a cell phone

And call me