i made a fool of myself today
because tom petty died before he did not die
after he died but before he didn't die

i completely gave up at work
my plans to get my **** together
fell through the minute i overheard tom petty had died

i walked home needing to get ******
and delay my plans of cleaning up my act

and now here i am
******, paranoid, and frightened
i didnt realize, i didn't realize
how much i've thrown away
or how much i had to throw away

i just kept right on chasing the ****
then i landed some place bad
and tom petty just died again

i don't remember the title of the last one i read
just when i read it i was living it
and it was a really bad trade

for the better life i could have had

dark lights never shut up
for a purpose they don't serve
everything for the wrong one

the cost of living costs
the cost of living lives

in my own time
there is no more time

two swollen feet
two bad knees can not go far
bad news on bad knees
put more space in the wrong place

karen dalton died of aids
in a trailer
i live

by doing as close to nothing as possible
then looking around for someone to blame

there's a few names written on the wall
who do i think of first
what am i afraid of most
looking around the ***** room

there's a drink called sweet burgundy
and then another drink called hennesy,
a ****** fine congac

as she sat down
with a glass of hennessy
waiting to die
and typed out her last livejournal entry

where she counted out the pills for us
and told us the names and colors of all three

names and colors i can't remember now

after Ohran Pamuk

Everything just rushes by  me now.
There are no longer the ritual pauses:
when I held a cigarette between *******,
I could hold Time itself.

I could pluck two stills
from the hurried film of my day –
one of what had just happened,
and the other of what might come next –

and I could stand, quietly alone
between those two frames,
holding time still in my hand,
and just look, and think, and smoke.

She hates the children because they are not her own.
Her smile forced, her hands crooked with some secret defeat,
and the children pay for it.
From the back of the classroom, she looks beautiful,
but it is an illusion.
She has a mane of red hair framing her face like a lion’s mane.
But that is the most remarkable thing about her.
She is gaunt. She is very tall. She is unmistakable.

She is awkward when she relaxes. She fidgets and trembles.

In the playground, she has Yard Duty.
She resents the students in grades 2, 3, 4, …
because they have outgrown her, they no longer need her.
She must be in her thirties, you can tell by her hands.
And there is no ring there.
That might be the thing. There is no ring.

Her bed sheets are white.
She curls her long body up into a ball at night.
She works hard. She can’t help herself.
Yet she knows there is no reason to admire people
for working hard if they can’t do otherwise.

She’s absent from school today.
She is never absent.
The words that blow through the air in the playground
and hallways are: She is getting married today.
She decided to get married today.

She already hates her husband, though she hardly knows him.
She hates him because a person, a man,
needs to be attached to the ring that she wears
and the baby she will have. And why should there be?

He calls her name from the other side of the bed.
She curls herself up into a ball.
Perhaps she will hate her baby, too.
She might not be able to help it.
But can you blame someone for feeling
something she can’t help but feel?

i was delighted
when i first heard
michael jackson had died

men who sleep with little boys
and spend copious amounts of time
with them are always pedophiles

that is generally how it works,
but only all the time

soon after, people were posting
about this great loss
on a website i used to post at
they were sad that the *******
was dead

i always thought it was stupid
how he named himself the king of pop
that was a title he gave himself
and pretty much everyone went along with it
even the parents of the little boys he molested

i told the people who were grieving the loss
of the king of *******
that when a man molests a child,
it cancels out everything else
he does in life,
but no one listened, they just got ******* at me
because albums like thriller
are more important than protecting children from abuse

then i told them that "people" who abuse children
are unfit for human life
they told me i was a sociopath
then turned  the conversation
back to how much they all loved thriller
and pepsi commercials

jeff bezos had the tip jars removed
from the amazon cafeteria
because an (overpaid) amazon executive
was told by the cafeteria workers he couldn't use the change
in the tip jar to pay for his order
(after he tried to pay with change from the tip jar)

he then complained to jeff
and jeff decided that the cafeteria workers
who make minimum wage shouldn't have a tip jar
if the tips weren't going to be used to pay
for rich amazon executives lunches

so the next time you place an order with amazon
because you love price fixed counterfeit merchandise so much
go out and apologize to every child and middle class
person that you are personally responsible for displacing
because you owe them a huge ******* apology.