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Step by step;
And stroke by stroke on your painting;
Throw it away
Word by word on your typewriter;
For every broken glass,
and the sound it made in your ears
Glass, so fragile
Shattering into thousands of pieces
So small and
so insignificant
For every breath you hold;
For every time you pull on your sunglasses and hope they won’t see;
For every time a branch pinches your legs when running and the little pain is a reliever;
You want more
You always want more
Breathe out;
But it doesn’t matter to anyone
You don’t matter
The pieces of you are scattered
and no one could hardly care
You’re so close to that fine line
You can’t help it
But you are almost crossing the bridge
You’d much rather fall over
But here you still
sit
writing poems
as if everything
was alright

**17.07.14
Trying to fill it. The emptiness. But pain creeps into that hole every time. Too bad.
Ever had an itch that won't scratch.
Its under your skin, in your blood stream or bone marrow.

That feeling walks down your skin.
Your brain fights back by slamming hand down trying to break the surface.

Your nails turn a dark screaming pink.

All you're  doing is clawing at a crimson red.


You're red handed because that itch wouldn't scratch.
One of my first poems
I shall never get you put together entirely,
Pieced, glued, and properly jointed.
Mule-bray, pig-grunt and ***** cackles
Proceed from your great lips.
It's worse than a barnyard.

Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle,
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.
Thirty years now I have labored
To dredge the silt from your throat.
I am none the wiser.

Scaling little ladders with glue pots and pails of Lysol
I crawl like an ant in mourning
Over the weedy acres of your brow
To mend the immense skull-plates and clear
The bald, white tumuli of your eyes.

A blue sky out of the Oresteia
Arches above us. O father, all by yourself
You are pithy and historical as the Roman Forum.
I open my lunch on a hill of black cypress.
Your fluted bones and acanthine hair are littered

In their old anarchy to the horizon-line.
It would take more than a lightning-stroke
To create such a ruin.
Nights, I squat in the cornucopia
Of your left ear, out of the wind,

Counting the red stars and those of plum-color.
The sun rises under the pillar of your tongue.
My hours are married to shadow.
No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel
On the blank stones of the landing.
I used to take pencils
And throw them at the dotted ceilings
Of so many classrooms
Never knowing that the lead
Drew a picture every time

I used to purse my lips
And smirk
Before I knew that
I had a voice with which to speak out

I used to be enveloped
In the freedom of naivety
Before I grew up and smelled
The allure of knowledge
Behavior is ******;
   Bodies are *** objects.
      Persons are more than bodies.
   Sexuality neither invites,
nor licenses, violation.
End of story.
Life may not go as planned;
the worst kind of fool extrapolates
from a heap of thwarted expectations:
"Life is over because I'm upset!"

Emotions out of control, roiling,
demarcate that which in human is animal;
the worst kind of fool loudly insists,
"Life should gratify my ego!"

Disappointment becomes license,
a weak excuse for calamitous disregard;
the worst kind of fool dares to think,
"Others are responsible for my actions."

Cowardice thrives in this heath of weeds.
The worst kind of fool gives up early,
quick to resume safe, familiar weaknesses:
"I should never have dared to try."

Wallowing loves abundant company,
the likewise-dead who disavow all power.
The worst kind of fool supports other fools:
"We are special; this world is against us."

Self-absorption and delusions of grandeur
conspiring with fashionable self-derogation.
The worst kind of fool achieves impossible vampirism.
"Value me; reassure me; therein I feed."
The stink of entitled vermin.
you always said it
reminded you of
coming home after
your fiancée cheated
on you. today it
reminded me of your
fingers and my favorite
ring. i listened to take offs
and landings the whole
way home. i pinched my arm
through the entire distance
of edwardsville. i drove
in the center lane and
went through smog of
me saying i would have
waited thirty years for you.
i wish there was a
different way home
from lawrence.
 Jul 2014 Page Seventy Three
Omi
#8
 Jul 2014 Page Seventy Three
Omi
#8
Curiously, I follow the trail
Until it forks in two
I stop and sit in the middle of the road
And contemplate directions until
I grow very
and feebly old.
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