living underground is
a drag, pulling levers
for knitting
gray sweaters
for the workers
that pull levers

if i were a poet
what would i write about

you?

if i were a poet
what would i possibly say?

would i talk about your

eyes?
your hair?
the way you use your words?

i wouldn't
all i would say was
the way you made me feel

but i ain't a poet
can't put this into words
but i feel great.

1.     I have to stop when I catch myself mentally titling poems about how you and I do not belong together.
2.     Doomed like your mother, doomed like your father—don’t think it, don’t think it—loneliness is my birthright, loneliness is my bride.
3.     This is a mania, this is a phobia. Tag your neuroses and track them, keep track of them.
4.     Remember  _, think what happened to _.
5.     You speak of your friend like she’s dead.
6.     She is dead, though, only wakes up now and then to bury herself.
7.     What do you mean?
8.     I mean she reaches out with one arm from her shallow grave, and she buries herself. Great fistfuls of dirt.
9.     But?
10.   But she was not a huntress.
11.   And so?
12.   And so it got the best of her.
13.   Well, you tell me what I ought to see
                when I self-perceive
                       Would you lie to me?
14.   No, you’re a truth-teller, heart-sweller.
15.   The Age of Huts, man, I never had it in me. I’m all ravens and bell-jars.

for the first time
I can't wait
until the morning
comes around
to
pluck me
from my idleness