Let them commence
feasting. Plates overflowing with
potato salad, meaty hot wings, bones
****** dry;
mugs overflowing with beer
as they revere the TV like a pole
and dancer

Let them commence
exhibitions in masculinity.
Colored banners flying ostentatiously
as they beat their chests, grunting,
shouting with near ****** fervor
other men’s names.

Let them commence
fantasizing, to lust
for the field beneath their cleats
as the old pig skin is tossed around,
jersey worn proudly
as they pile themselves on top of
other men

This is not the first time
but it always feels as such,
always feels like the worst it could ever be.

It’s been so consistent lately
that I go to bed with the light on
just so I can see Death coming.
I stay up expectant of his arrival
like a child waiting for Santa
except I didn’t bake cookies.

It’s not that sort of visit.
But he’s not really coming, is he?
I’m not really dying am I?

I just don’t know anymore.
Logic has taken a vacation,
my heart has been left to the helm.
But he’s so preoccupied
banging furiously on the walls of his enclosure.
This ship is behaving erratically.

And then the alarm,
that **** infernal alarm.
A new days begins
when the previous never ended,
they just overlap, blur together
and I don’t know what’s really going on
or if I can continue living like this.

Don’t interpret that to mean I want to die.
But isn’t that what’s so awful about this?
You are just ripped from nothingness,
birthed into creation, never
allowed to make the choice to exist
but on days like this
you have to.

You can love the art,
but not the artist
and she says she is fond of
everything I write. She is,
perhaps, even my biggest fan.
But what she really means is:
“Tell me again how I’m beautiful
in ways the other boys won’t.
Tell me again how you’ll be here,
no matter how much I hurt you.”

Unrequited love is the best muse, right?
If I can’t be what she wants,
at least an extension of me can.
Some days, though, I trample through gardens
hunting dandelions with heavy breaths
wishing for nothing to say.