I tried to
write
a poem about you
but instead
I scribbled a
big, orange-ink blob
and I figured
that made
just as much sense.

I am the Queen of Broken Things

Of lost causes and tarnished rings.

Your glittering world and all its expense,

Is held fast by my rusted fence.

When all the birds have gone but one,

Every piece captured, save a single pawn,

Think of me and my lonely wings.

I am the Queen of Broken Things.

Hello sky,
please tell quietly,
how doesn't your beauty
match that of hers through my eyes?

Hello ocean.
please tell quietly,
how doesn't your volume
match that of mine
pertaining to the amount of love
I hold for her inside?

Hello asker,
I'll tell you quietly,
here in lies why -
she is an angel that fell from high
a beaming beckoning star
in your eye,
capturing your hearts ocean
&taking; it alive -
for she is the sole reason,
**You've survived.

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love --a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.

Anxiety is eating me for dinner,
Picking at my meat.
He chews with his mouth wide open
Just because he can,
And he spits out my little toenails
Counting
one two three four five six seven eight nine ten.
He counts because it drives my
Mind crazy,
It gets me counting
My breath
one two three four five six seven eight nine ten
My steps
one two three four 5 6 7 8 9 10
My thoughts
one two three
But they go too fast to count.
And he loves that.

The television announcer sprays
rapid-fire syllables
with voice booming sells
the unneeded  to the unsuspecting
while wearing a smile
which surely would break
an honest face.