Out the window
(Speckled glass)
Lives being lived
(I'm sitting on my ***)

On the kitchen clock
(When will I paint these beige walls?)
Time being ticked.
(So it goes, after all)

And even on the street,
That kitchen clock does tick,
Madly, furiously ticking-too fast
As a life quickly fades
(But not mine this time)

We (and I) don't care
'Cause we weren't there
We(I)'ve no idea
How to feel.

One life's a tragedy
Two lives are jaw dropping.
A sports team is urban terror.
Fifty lives, a massacre,
And at one hundred it doesn't matter anymore

Rest in peace,
Dear lives seen
(On speckled glass)
I'm not afraid to die|
           Because humans are bad at counting.

Your breath on my neck
So warm and welcoming
You started to pull away
Further and further
Suddenly
You were gone
An empty spot next to me
So cold
So empty
Mixed emotions
Unsure of what to do
Stomach turning, flipping
The urge to cry
The stronger urge not to
Stay strong
Stay strong
Stay strong


I'll try

I always do

I.
daffodils creep at the cusp of May
and your shadow glides beside them.
they want to know
why i do the things i do,
who casts the spell behind these symptoms.
they arouse with the purr of questions
and derail with the burn of exposure.
why do you leave through the front door
of even the most crowded bus
just to say "thank you" to the driver?
why are you crammed with receipts
when you are so afraid to spend?
why do you still drown in the cascades
of the one who did this to you?
why? i don't know why.
if i long for those places
punctuated with laughter,
why do i choose the last train car?



II.
we meet at a stairwell littered in the signs of a dying hour.
nothing.
you manufacture mysteries at the blinking of your eyes,
you unfold in sunny patterns at the dancing of your lips,
dangerous, but nurturing. yet still,
nothing.
i want to say that you are like a dream,
an assemblage of cells and concerns
into something more than what my reality can afford.
but instead, i only sigh, and you start to leave,
and you take your shadow with you,
your sleeve indulging in the gap swallowing mine.
nothing.
love, lust, loneliness--they are nothing
but the language of the human sigh.
the daffodils are nothing
but the symmetry i don't have access to.
May is nothing
but a crater behind April curtains.
and we are nothing but Pandora's pet,
the last on the list
of Aphrodite's errands --
a still life study of human beings.

In the early dark of the morning,
dark inside the crypt of my bedroom--
you sparrows came to me there.

I had only said in mind these words:
a forgiveness of sparrows

And there you were, feathers
all fluffed out, and I
searching inside myself.

I think now to tell the better truth -- to say
that mixed in with my need for calling you
was Brueghel, his painted picture with the crushing board,
trip-cord, and feed for bird killing

and my imagining snapshot young Hemmingway
capturing pigeons in Paris to eat them

and feeling the presence of
the one small bird I'd shot as a boy
out of the apple tree
falling falling falling

Sparrows, forgiveness flies all around me!
The world cries out, everywhere!

A police car slides down my street,
as I hear your first chirp in the morning.

It was 1p.m.
When the sun came up
when the sun came out of the sky
It was 1p.m.
When the world was shaking
when the world was breathing and talking and moving and
happening
The walls in his living room were sad
He must have fallen asleep on the couch again
Listening to the neighbor's Vinyl Player from the other room

He looked at his watch
He looked at the window that was on the wall
He saw the sun
streets
the world
He said aloud to himself
and to the sagging furniture in his living room
“The world is a big place, and it fits in my window.”
He smiled
Then looked at the couch and noticed it didn't smile back

So he got up
Looked into his mirror and decided the half-grown beard looked okay
and that his hair was decent
and that the oil on his face
gave him color

He pulled out his ironing board
found the Iron underneath the kitchen sink

And began ironing his blue button up shirt
Making sure the sleeves were straight
Making sure the color was crisp

He kept on ironing
Then he imagined what his funeral would be like
“What would they say?”
He imagined a hairless priest towering over his coffin
“He was a good man, a quiet man, He was loved, not only by God, but by his family, his mother, his brother.”

His blue button up shirt was ironed
It was now 1:30p.m.

He looked at the oven's clock
The clock on the oven must have been wrong for years
Even when the apartment complex was forged by the poor for the poor

The oven's clock said “8:21a.m.”
He was not sure why he ever checked the time on the oven
But he always did
He then put brown socks on his feet
Pants that were a faded Tan
Like an old photo of sand
Then his shoes
Tied them
Put on his Button Up Shirt
buttoned the buttons

And walked out the front door.

She said,

"I am happy with the occasional dash of rage,
anxiety, or depression.
In the end,
it makes for a beautiful portrait,
and you've been here
to witness the brushes of my past six months
painting something incredible, "

and I was in love.

it is so much easier
to sit here
and pretend
i am the erratic
pattern
on this chair
rather than be
the weird
cat-eared
gingerbread cookie
that i am.