I'm a teacher for forty three years,
Does that make me an expert dears?
It's a rocket science yet,
Teaching reading to the pets,
Some folk are born to teach,
Educating our students each!

I clean toilets
with no gloves on
my two tone hands.

I wondered why
I was born.
She told me this:

"So I wouldn't be alone."

I clean floors and
change a commode.
**** fills my nose.

I offer time
in an exchange
for my wage.

"I'm a ***** and
      I was born for this
         companionship."

I wondered why
I was born.
She told me this:

"I really wanted a kid."

Free agent, here.
I'm a bang for your buck.
Want a bargain?
Then you're in luck.

I can change a bed.
(Please take me in.)
I can tend a heart.
(It's what I was taught.)

I swallow.
(Oh, oh.)
I swallow.
(Oh, oh.)

The only thing I want
The only thing I want is for all the tears to stop
The only thing I want is for everyone to smile
The only thing I want is for people to love each other
No matter race
No matter gender
No matter size
Because at the end of the day we are all born and we all die
Might as well make life the best of it

born from a splitting
ache in the back-left of my head
like a drill bit whirring in an empty paint can.

i'd give you pearls for hands my love,
ever-winter washing over our foaming cerulean eyescapes.  

inside your drums I hear
a pulse that cries for
hips and thorns entangled
under your
navel.  

one more summer breath from lung to lung
exchanged
under moonlight for the promise of elevation.  
you are not
who you say you are
my dear - you are a
future memory
stalking sweetly today under the guise
of novel pleasure , but time will
reveal your skin to me
under the electric lavender
of my
eyelids.

you are wood grain
and strata -
born too, it seems, from a splitting.