some guy on the corner, living like his third world relative, wearing a shirt that says “the only cure is kindness”

a woman on the subway, fattened up on consumerism, flipping through the pages of her first read in three years-

“you are enough: and other ways to avoid overeating”

the shocks come in the form of niceties

bloodied, invisible war faces dishing out the l-word

drying up the n-word with their own iodized vocabulary.

places to go never served much for me save for the literal change of scenery

something else for my eyes to melt onto.

Columbine High School right off Pierce

If you squint hard enough,

I bet you could still see the linoleum sticky with blood and

feel, not hear, the primal screams bashing themselves against the walls

Fear smells potent enough that most of us can recognize it, and some of us crave it,

like a shark.

miles of ocean is nothing when your life wavers in the heat-

survival becomes nutrient-rich

don’t let me catch you salivating over it

I might just destroy you too.

Hope Cemetery

eat the rich

**** the dead

pass by the living in all their

sun-******* glory.

Dithers attempt to wrestle the silence cast out by a thousand stones

inscriptions lost all purpose, dates scuffed away by wind.

at night, each night past the full, bleeding moon,

he gets on his two bad knees and prays to God that his unloved family might become lovable,

that his mind may be forever closed to the idea of sin,

and that his throat may never feel the hot rush of alcohol again.

because who could judge the people who were victims of life’s potential?

who was to blame?

not the kind-men

not the prayers not the seekers

not the midnight drinkers

it was only the ones whose anger arrested them

and then the law

and then their own guilt.

summer was a severance

some time to grow too warm in the sun

disregard the ******* who leaned on faith with all their weight and pointed their skinny fingers at every disobedient child.

**** the cookie jar.

if it wasn’t me, it was the Noah’s ark worth of people that shuffled up and down that spiraled staircase each summer.

last full memory i was there

i saw some blue birds with balding spots, tethered in their concrete cage

which i opened silently as silent as my own breathing

as my rage.

and as i was scolded

the scorch of hot breath against my gooseflesh neck

i smiled, a fluttering one


because that freed one was kissing my eleventh winter.