life gets so busy
and hard to control
so you continue your absences
you’re on a streak, on a roll

5, 6, 7, 8
does this effect my fate?

I know the answer, I know the truth
i always say I’ll work on it
ive said it since my youth

it becomes a hassle
a tough way to live
but you chose this life,
“oh what I’d give!”

but now you’re stuck
hanging by a thread
and your time is consumed by this
and the thoughts in your head

you can’t remember the last time you went to get coffee with your mom
or the last time you held sand in your palm
by the ocean waters, feeling the breeze
but now you’re here, killing yourself for your dream
and all you can do is remind yourself to breathe
and think of the things you want to achieve

push past your body’s limit
and start a new day
with affirmations
that don’t feel the same
as when you started to say them
you recite them anyway

scrunch your toes in your sneakers
and ballet slippers
my contemporary socks
and **** in my stomach,
under my tights and over my liver

the baby pink
so soft and sweet,
your teachers tell you “better turnout, is what you need”

sing to the radio
in your mother’s car
she takes a risk
and drives you so, so far
but god knows
your feelings are tightly kept
under your bed
in a glass jar.

they rot and rot away
until you open them up
and spill them into your notes app
or onto a blank sheet of lined paper

Those days when you just can’t wait to go to bed.
Not to slump down onto it in yielding surrender
or fall into it in tears, face first and meat red,
but to gently pull back the pillowy quilt
and the sheets, with tiny blue flowers,
flannelette, like a fresh work shirt,
so that when you slide in carefully
and make your cave in the sheets
the hug is work-arm strong
and reminds you of soil
and wheelbarrows
and gardening
and building
in the sun
as it sets…
and rises…
open eyes
still hugged,
you stand lightly
then soft pad to warm,
dark, sweet, pitch-bitter
coffee, and lifting the mug,
you pause before the first sip
of bliss, flooding deep in waking
flavours from magic beans grown
in ancient Ethiopian forests, noticed
by folk when curious goats turned zestful,
becoming a helper for evening prayer, to allow
hard work and intentional presence to earn well
your tiredness, so that you just can’t wait to go to bed…

The bed only knows the weight
That leaves it for, unknowingly, the last time;
The warmth no longer pressed to its quilt,
The down that will never sink again

I speak not of the sun neither speak to her for the winter it has left in my care. My conversations with the cold snap and the polar vortex had gone stale.

The sun and I had our falling out and if these words should find their way to her doorstep, let her know I don’t miss her warmth. I don’t leap out of the bed to tug the curtain and let her silver light fill my room and let the motes dance in her rays like I used to.

I shudder at her supple shadow swirling, flowing and flitting about, and the halo she wears petrifies me. Her pestilential disposition burns through my walls fortified with years of heartaches. For these, we must part ways.

Mountains of pillows,
Soft sheets,
and warm covers,
couldn't bring you into my arms.

Wrinkles and sunken silhouettes,
remind me of what we once had.
Now you only **** me
when the calories and lust hit your gut.

I hate sleeping alone,
you won't help me resolve the issues
that block my way to you.
What we once had.

Washing machines drain the fabric of you
in every cycle
One more day my body forget the tenderness of you
and your loving arms.

day after day
time passing through,

thought after thought
they're all about you.

Mr. permanent resident
inside my head

I built you a castle,
made you a bed
and each night
I watch you
laying your head
on or memories and you cover yourself
with my love

what a bed to inhabit in
when the illness strikes the body
there’s no caring mother to nurse the health back.
what a bed i set up
a sunken-in *****
a ***** to sink in until the seasoned chill sickens the soul.
there’s a body next to me, but he lays still, rarely speaks a word
and when he does,
the answer does not find him.
i lay in wonder all night long until the moonlight dwindles
and the sun starts singing its choruses.
the body beside me, he listens,
until my swimming legs cast him aside,
the noise drowns out in this swimming pool cage.
every sorrow that has laid claim on my terrain
every dagger pointed and aimed at my skull
is digging itself into the mattress.
i just sit and wallow
on the sinking bed
and the boredom teems until the man beside me
starts sweating.
i have to throw the sheets off and sob and carry on until the morning comes.
again and again