swipe left
then right
desperately seeking
mister right

******* strangers
for love and tenderness
hoping he’ll stay
make babies
raise a family

bracing for the pain
the heartbreak
abandonment
of a one night stand

why did you leave
am i not good enough
pretty enough
to be loved
daddy?

under the pale moonlight,
thinly strapped slip dress,
it's only 2am daddy,
see those bright city lights
making way through my thighs

oh, I can only wish
that you were here
swaying and kissing me,
I'd be the baby to your daddy
be your little kitten

you don’t have to do anything,
just put your sweet kiss on me,
give your sweet little baby
something to toss and turn about
from night to dawn

I lost a piece of myself, when you were taken from me
A piece never known, never understood
But you became a memory
A memory so ambrosial that it can triumph over
Millions of hyacinths and jasmines

I can still remember the warmth of your hand
As you held mine, inside the bakery
And I pointed my fingers towards the colorful wrappers
And the rough patchy skin of the letters where I poured the ink
Clamoring for plastic figurines

I can still trace your face
From the coffee brown polaroid
And the static of the VCR
To you who rests in heaven where the nobles are
I can still smell you
Your foreign perfumes
And the chemicals that they injected in your body
In the ever-shifting hospital rooms
I remember throwing blankets over your jet-lagged body

The little ephemeral stays
The little wait outside of the school
In the river with fish in your hands
And candies from faraway land
I remember them all
But I don’t remember you much
Just the tumors
And what they did to you
What they did to us

And now that you sit amongst the angels
And the birds of paradise
Underneath the ivory trees
And the prismatic skies
Beside the honey rivers running free
Just come visit me once more in my dreams
Return back to me, because you were taken from me

Aquamarine *****, another predawn start,
another day in a house
w/out adult education or my art.
A life w/out an internal life.
Sugar & screens, sugar & screens

screams Dolphine.
O unutterable folly
to fancy a morning
sans the psy-ops gavage,
3 hours of 'Ben & Holly'.

Next it's to the playground
w/ Dolphine in the doldrumming
mizzle, twice daily milling
about rainy, ****** Dogshit Island.
Tenderly I admonish her
not to mount the wiped ladder

of the still treacherous climbingframe.
Cue today's 3rd tantrum,
this 1 ploughing a woodchip angel,
wriggling supine amid the ******'s muesli.
It does not amuse me

when she scatters a fistful of woodchips
backwards straight down her pink shriekhole.
I carry my increasingly heavy lil' Calpol
Calpot home, woodchip flecks
l/ spiders w/ their legs pulled off,

bodyboarding out of her
tyrannical drool-grilled piercing pink
shriekhole. Awww,
my monotone soothes.
The woodchips & the dogshit,

the ravens & the daisies
I shall be revisiting way too soon.
Home. But home is not so homely
at the moment, no sanctuary
from the selfaccusatory dereliction of duty

in a parent's resentment.
It's taboo as correcting a transgender  
that the cuckoo's not in cupped areas, just in their
cupola; tacenda as decrying a LiKKKudnik
for a lying wolfcrying nogoodnik.

But less innocent than a baby
or the babyless, I'll say it:
toddlers are hell.
Yet to wish them gone or unbegotten is also
hell. To fail them, hell.

My jeans & tees are instantaneously
soiled by her food, her ****, her drool,
her playdough.I haven't slept more than
six hours a night or in the same bed as Dolphine's
mum for over 2 years (we're still together).

When my sugarrushing
insolent dependent,
Generalissima Dolphine,
my cherubic beast sleeps,
am I consoled

by a profound contentment
unknown to nonbreeders,
or is it just respite
from a daily dissimulation
once unnecessary hence unimagined,

but far, far more crucial
than the old juvenile game
of simply deceiving myself
or a senior figure at an institution?
Anybody get the number

of the bubba juggernaut,
pram jam in the hall of days
Papa Panther paces
l/ helicopter aces
overhovering struck down khaki crazies?

Every day l/ the 1st hour
of 'Kramer Vs. Kramer'.
Sylvia
must have been a genius to write
any poetry whatsoever

w/ 2 ankle vampires.
But she failed to master
Parenthood 101:
morbidity is strictly
verboten.

Dolphine, Dolphine,
the world's most beautiful animal
cub, your Daddy's not a *******,
more of a snowflake greybeard dad, humbug
who loves you & wouldn't ever leave you

in the park. There's 1 set of footprints
in the woodchips to prove it.
When you've grown out of shulking out,
you're gonna have to watch out for the real *******:
the men behind the sugar, the men behind the screens.

dance with daddy
wear your tutu
spin and twirl

hold his hand
arabesques

pirouette
into his arms
and heart

you’re his little
prima ballerina

Daddy,

They've been sending me sympathy cards in the mail
And
Stopping me in the streets to say how sorry they are
That
You left me so suddenly not so long ago
Daddy
They ask me how I'm doing
Like
My entire being isn't a shrine to your memory
The
Photo on the post office wall is simply my face in a crowd
Daddy
I'm afraid for what comes next
And
I miss you
And
I miss you
And
I