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Loves hang off fish hooks.
They spin like tops and beg
to be noticed. We're all broke
and pretend to be fixed
ready to be loved again.
Fill my heart with yearning.
This must be what forgetting is.
   Erosion of memory year by year
   until the landscape is barren now.
   I remember your ******* but can't
   find my way home. I taste you still
   but forget my child's name. I still
   remember tall grass with virginity
   lost and we created what's her name?
If I could love what I should
instead of bent lines and curves
going where they shouldn't
I'd be the perfect insect for
society and spend my life in
glass jars with holes in lids.
On a frozen creek we skated through
   the snowy woods to the lake of ice.
   A bonfire on the edge kept us warm
   and we kept each other warmer still.
   Youth is full of promise and hopes,
   forever future and endless horizon.
   We trust love is forever and there's
   always a bonfire to keep us happy.
*** of tea and bottle of Absinthe, onions and the letter.
   Theo, my dear brother, I'm happy for you marriage to Jo.
   I expect to fade into pastels and soon light grey mists
   when you have children and Vincent is not affordable.
   I hope to sell my own paintings, children to live on.
   Kind girls help me. Don't worry. Be well, Dear Theo.
My fingernails grow like claws
the older I look beast like crooked
and bent in age. I hate my destruction
against my permission. I lost control
so long ago when I broke your young
honest heart. I set it in motion then.
four jobs in two months

and it wasn't even his
fault. He just
left because they didn't pay him

"Nobody works for
free," he said as he closed the
fridge, the
last can of beer in his hand,
not too cold

"Hey, leave some for me," his
girlfriend said

He threw himself on the couch,
careful to avoid
the spot where
springs poked their rusty
silver heads out

He opened the beer. "I keep
tellin' you I should
just open
my own business."

"Um-hm."

"No really, you know what this
town has in abundance?" He
took a sip

"Poverty?" she said, already stretching
her hand for the can

He handed her the can. "Yeah, poverty.
And poverty means homeless men.
Men nobody gives a **** about. Hell,
everyone wants them to
vanish. I was thinking,
maybe I can cash in on that. I could hunt
them down at night and
use their meat in a fast-food restaurant. It can
pass as pork. Everything passes in
this town.
What do you think?"

She took another sip. Handed
the can back to him. "Yeah. I know
where you can
begin, by the way. Tonight I'll show
you the alley my dad
and uncle sleep in."

He raised the can. "Cheers."
I let my shadow go today.
I set my youngest free to be
herself with her own shadow.
She will call me less now but
she'll be in love and I won't let
it matter. God, I'll miss her.
I just keep dying a day at a time.
I want to write a symphony.
I need to cure my cancer.
If I were running in Summer
grass barefoot at 10 again I'd
tell me to just do it the same.

Atoms. ***** and egg. Lovers
lost in lust and sleeping as your
miracle ignites into a life that finds
itself dying a day at a time wishing
to write a symphony and not ever
changing the script. Our lives.
***** and Eggs sounds like a breakfast special.
An invisible force that pulls
objects toward each other.
We were magnets and apples
falling from trees. Two planets
trapped in love's gravity kissing
in a photo booth universe.
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