words
are
sacred salty plush
******
mean
divine.

they escape me.
they elude me.
these innocent, cosmically
granular,

words.

i’d lick the noble chalk
off the board of
Bukowski and Hughes,
Whitman and Sexton,
Ginsberg and Wilde,
for the privilege to
spit

life comes with its bitter calendar,
shackling you to a bloodsucking propagandist, always asking for your time

you take your pills of coal and lime -
a father, a worker, a man, a lover -
a tyrant over a narrow scope of existence
called you

and you live
and we live
and i live

a paralysis of carbon and function
together,

a baffling empire of fire and ankle socks,
destined for a hearse that someone else will pay for

before we eat the dirt
we wear these perverted hats
that say

i’m this
they’re that
and you’re…

a writer
i’ll never be