Everything you ever saw
Everything you worked for
Everything you ever knew
Every love you found
Every friend you made
Everything that you hold dear
Everything you needed
Will one day
All be gone.

A lot has happened lately
I've had my heart broken
Torn
Sewn back together by unfamiliar hands
Torn and worn out
But the moment I saw you
My heart healed itself
I let out a sigh of relief
As if I've been holding my breath this whole time
I felt safe and secure after feeling vacant and misplaced
I saw you and I couldn't hold back
I saw you and an ocean of tears streamed down my face
You will always feel like home to me

to think of people the weeks or months before they died
and what they were to you at that time
what they were to you
and then to think
what you are right now
at this moment
on a scale, how much you are trying for
you friends your family the stars the universe
who would be the one to think of how you were?

as the father lifts his toe from
the starting block of his 75th year
and the son stumbles and gropes
past the midpoint of his 41st lap
toward an individual century
it is doubtless that neither of
them will make it to that
particular finish line.

no, it is certain that both
of them will come up short.

not a shame or a sham,
a slight or a shortchanging
just a statement of fact.

the father might come close
and for the sake of the son
it is hoped that he does.

The click and crackle of knee,
hip, and lumbar fill one’s ears
and thoughts with the rumors
of one’s mortality.

It is known that the father will
one day fade as sure as a sunset
and the son will melt into the floor
and stay there.
*

-JBClaywell

© P&ZPublications

Gimme the dregs
the sludge
at the bottom of the coffee ***
in a twelve-ounce paper cup
Give me snowmelt
Give me the bile in the belly of the earth
Give me good, clean american dirt
and half-remembered dreams
and I'll show you what it means
to live honestly.

Gimme the sun
up on high
on the other side of nightfall
to tighten the bags under my eyes
Give me dandelions
Give me a candle for warmth and light
Give me the mist in the sky
and a spoonful of rice
and I'll show you what it feels like
to move a molehill.

Pink walls outline the hormonal oceans
To peel back the secrets of wet
flesh against swimming pool corners
through waves of swelling libido
that crack the senses against the reefs of water-love
--
invitations on the silk sheets of evening
anxious to fold itself into letters of perfumed language
which absorb the night of its juices
leaving an imagination soaking wet

© Matthew Goff

morphine. i found ashes in the pages of the photo albums under
my bed yesterday, leaves turned red pages to the colder chapters
and i thought you could still grow a rose this time of year but then i
remembered when we used to make flower crowns in sixth grade so
i took some morphine;
it helped with the pain

the night is younger than ourselves and we run through breakspears road shattering the lampposts with our bare hands, yes we are the new generation! everybody knows we aren’t scared of losing the pieces in our own, we just want to see the skin pulled off the tips of our fingers! (when you’ve been feeling the blunt edges of scalpels and needles all your life walking on glass starts to feel like heaven)

codeine— hell is getting hotter! she took to the clouds and the glass
shards wrote crimson sonnets on the bottoms of her feet, marietta i
trusted you i really did, i made you promise
that you’d stay; not with me, of course
(some things are more important in the end)
i wanted you to stay here.
but you wanted to see the stars so
i choke down the cough syrup;
one ache distracts me from the other

dear marietta,
the light distorts so strangely here in the water.
this is how i want to leave this place