Gangling ghosts cause trouble inside
this meaty microwave--
I am on these streets and don't know
how I got here.
I'm carrying 2% milk, in my left hand,
and a carton of extra-large eggs in my right--
I drop the jug and it bursts. I joke about how
I still have 2%, but no one laughs because
no one has ever really been around to hear me.
So, I'm scrambling eggs and wishing I had that
milk because who doesn't like voluminous eggs.
I stop whisking and ask who is there.
Why am I afraid of you, Why am I afraid of you
the raw scrambled eggs on the floor, touched by
ceramic seashells.
And it's you.
You are the Lord, a naked lover, that absence
caused by my auto-pilot parents
Forever,
right here.

I gave them all of my faith
because the alternative
was death.

I was afraid of God because
he loved me and I was his
- his imperfect child, in need
of divine intervention.

Did he watch
when stress caused
my hair fall out,
gathering on the drain,
by my eighteen year-old
feet?

I have been spiritually mugged;
giving up my faith to a
weaponized religion, created by
men, who wish to enslave.

The roaming rebels smoke their pipe-dreams
by the eroding wall.
Their pockets are as empty as their hearts
and they know it, and know
that you know it.

Her hairspray is a mist around her
beige-caked face --
and she swears she used to look good.
She swears that things used to matter;
that words once made sense;
that her boys won't forever stand by that wall;
that her boys won't forever stand still,
swept by the grains of time.

And you, in your desired attire,
in your calculated speak,
will never know that they know you don't know.
And you, well-adjusted and forever fluent in their inability to be temporary --
in their heartless self-awarness, with no ambition --
will sigh with sympathy
unneeded for the ******.

I know the horror
how you can't undress
without feeling like
a ******* mess.

There's got to be something
more than this,
just write until
your thoughts aren't as heavy.

Everyone glances
but nobody reads:
Pour your emotions
into a glass that
nobody drinks.

There's got to be something
more than
vulnerable words in vain:
a medicine
that increases the pain.

I know the horror
how you can't reveal
the fullest extent
of how you feel.

There has to be something
more than a glance,
to help you feel heard;
to validate your world.

Just learn to write
and let it all go,
even if nobody notices
or nobody knows.

Because there is something
more than this.

Slumping over their shopping carts
like porpoises on parade.
Baskets overflowing with
fritos, doritos, and sugar-ade.

Reckless the dream that changed
what they couldn't,
to swim through foil bars
soaring from cash to vein.
Girl with scissors, cutting hair,
to reach a new brain.

Sofa-living, so much thwarting
thoughts of inadequacy.
Streams of image, money
-- and American Honey,
I think you are fine
the way you hurt.