Today I wanted to buy the copyright to the process of hallelujah
******* in joy the same way whales eat krill
You just bottle it up inside your lungs until you have enough

Inside my fridge I have vacuum sealed jars of hallelujah
There’s nothing religious about that
Jars labeled things like
Loss of virginity
Rob lived this time
The homework is complete

Hallelujah

It’s the same way prayer works
Backwards
Pulling bits of god like an inhale

I want to hyperventilate on your hallelujah
Like a gospel choir on speed

It collects
Over time
For instance
It was maybe a month in to sleeping at Delia’s and Toffer’s house
Before I realized
I didn’t have to sleep in my car anymore
You go into the bathroom to **** and realize
Hallelujah
A jar labeled
Found a Home for now

I know science can do this
For the sake of all that is a monument to a single life
So that on your death bed, or at your funeral
Everyone there can hold a jar

Cold and warm at the same time
Vibrating in their palms
In violent joy
Like mozzletoff cocktails
They are thrown
And when they shatter there is a song
That has been collecting for years

The same word in different tonal joys

Your life

Every good moment

Hallelujah

If god were real
When he’d appear

It would be out of nowhere
In mysterious ways

God would be dressed as a clown
His front top teeth are missing
And he slurs like a drunk
Sometimes you can’t understand him

He does this on purpose
God was never cryptic
He just had trouble enunciating

DON’T BE MEAN TO PEOPLE
JESUS CHRIST

You have trouble looking at his face
It is hard to take the message of a clown seriously

So you look down at the globes of the tip of his shoes
Red shiny bulbs

Inside the reflection
You are ant sized
You feel small in that moment

God says something but you are busy looking down
You see other ant sized people walking behind you
Towards work
To get food
To go to school

God makes you a halo
Out of balloons
It is white because he ran out of yellow

Before he puts it on your head
Turned sideways
It looks like dangling handcuffs

He makes you a sword and belt too

You have just been turned into an angel
A human angel armed with the necessary tools to fight on his behalf

You don’t feel strong in that moment
You still feel like an ant
God gives you a holy water balloon
Just in case things get hairy

You decide you might be able to surprise baptize someone with it

Then god walks a way
But you totally feel better because he just gave you a halo and a sword

You cry that night
Because you have never felt so small and helpless in your entire life

You never felt so silly
Wielding you faith as firm as a balloon sword
Wearing your blow up halo as a badge

So you throw them away

Not your faith

Just the balloons

DON’T HURT ANYBODY
God says
His tongue pressed to his gums to prevent lisps

Then he begins to pump up another balloon
He honks his horn
And you are so confused

I didn't find the time in the months I was around you
To ever say, "Hello,"
Or learn your name.
Angela S.
I didn't know it until today.

I didn't know that you were thirty-six until I read the articles about you.
I knew that you were late to choir sometimes,
And you wore shorts even when it was cold.
I didn't know you lived in those apartments until the police were investigating them.
My sister lived so close to there.

I didn't find the time to know you,
Angela S.
But I found the time to judge you.
You stood between seconds and you were a first.
You didn't know your parts very well.
I was annoyed.
It's concert choir, no audition.
I shouldn't have been so bothered.
I'm sorry.

That was the last time I saw you.
I didn't know you had a son until after he found your body.
I knew next to nothing about you until you were shot.
We sang the same music for months.

You lose her when you don’t notice that
she notices everything about you

You lose her for every second you make
her feel less and less of the beauty that she is

You lose your love for her
& you lose her.

i am alone today
ben has taken lazlo
fishing... not so much
as to catch anything
but to be away
from the crowds
of condolence
and to be quiet..
within one self.

i suppose i could look up
old friends......
or shop.....take in a movie
or buy a book .......
and read it cover to cover

but the reality is i am a mother.... so this day....
....stolen from the world...is
to be spent.. in the luxury of
                  sleep

             good night all

leave the tv on switching channels every minute
for something you have not seen,
then lose the remote somewhere in the bed,
now, you stuck on an infomercial for fulfilling
a need you did not know you were needing

play ka-glom, an older version,
of candy crush
while not watching tv,
but hearing the sounds as warmth, comforting

read poetry, write some,
trivial sit puff stuff,
like this or
stuff about suicide - argh
and every pandora ballad
rhymes with everyone sad

poet up to take a ****,
visit the vast emptiness
of the refrigerator cause
you ate it all, and was
consumed thereby


The two concessions to
Pretend
is you leave her side of the bed
undisturbed
and the lights off

and when she calls
and asks how ya sleeping,
you say fine, for what else
can you say,
you already wrote
so exquisitely,
re life without her here,
sad mad bad

the boss knocks into your chair,
around three in the sleepy afternoon,
thinking
"that boy, what a party animal!"

*ain't that the truth...