When life is all about fixing whats wrong

Then everything right, good, and strong

Won't stay, pass by, or come along.

He brought spiders to the schoolyard
      to crush them
He attended Julliard
      to learn Bach's partitas for violin
He pays women to undress for him
      and beats them
Knowing culture is a game
      we play
The boy and the man are the same
      composition
Performed in various ways
      the notes stubbornly remain
What's born cannot be changed
      one musical phrase
Nurture is Nature's
Dais

Her pantry is starting to look bare
once full and abundant, back wall now visible

She rues what is missing
selection not yet bland, but it is becoming dire

Her weary eyes notice a jar
Not the largest by size, but it has a presensce

She checks the label
a ‘humanity-mix’, estimated 7 billion pieces

Her mind tries to focus
the dates can’t be made out, what do they say?

She realises it’s not that important
it may not have reached expiration,
but it is certainly past the best-before-date

Rapid warming bursts open his polluted lungs
Flies and maggots spill while wilted flowers have sprung
Sickly eyes and perverted form
Chaos and death revel in the man-made storm

Tears pull at the corners of my mouth
With his misery, we can both drown
He wants the sinners of this world to burn
This is a lesson I've yet to learn

Mourning with blue irises in my hand
A cold silent distance between where he and I stand
If I move an inch closer, I will have to overcome my fear
That it is of little matter that I care

My throat grows tight, dry of words to say
I watch our friendship slowly decay
Secretly I make a wish, my selfishness arising
To say I wanted to meet him, well, I'd be lying

the thing is
you never know
if
you'll be
smiling
or cursing

at least for now
i'm smiling

let's be honest;
there will probably
still
be sunshine
when
          she's
                   gone

you speak like glasswork--
hot, measured, and fragile.
empty promises and murky
depths, opacity that chills
and stuns.

you speak of love
as if you know it,
but you've never let it greet you
at your door.
it knocks and you freeze,
pretend it's a stranger,
though you knew its name before it did.

you've stolen more
than you can ever repay,
and brevity in stillness still stings.

you will do well
without your opaque glass
and brittle words,
but I can't promise the same.

I walk through the park every day.
Sometimes I squeeze through the crowd and toss a coin into the fountain, longing vibrating through every molecule of my body.
I’ve done it maybe twenty times now. I wish for the same thing each time.
(I can’t say what it is, though— then it won’t come true. And I really need it to.)

Amid a cluster of intermingling people, I stand almost-alone;
Me and my coin and my one wish.

I wonder, sometimes, how much it matters.
If I’m just deluding myself and tossing  
pennies nickels dimes quarters
Into the water, emptying my wallet splash after splash in naive pursuit of something I know I will never have.

Small children join me in tossing nuggets of wishful thinking, their parents laughing at the naivete of it all.
I imagine a world where I don’t rely on a coin to shift my luck.

I wonder if I know somewhere beneath this self-deception that it doesn’t matter.
That no matter how many pennies I toss,
No matter how many stars I wish on,
No matter how many dandelions I blow into the wind, eyes squeezed tight with desperate desire,
Sometimes wishes just don’t come true.

But I know I’ll toss another coin in tomorrow. I don’t have to wonder about that.

Every year ends in darkness and starts in darkness.
Why does that seem like a revelation?