It’s difficult to look outside of my my-
-croscopic lens; it just feels like a job

to never have to consider who is
an actual person that should matter to

me. It’s an almost impossible trick,
that only me and most other adults

can forget how we felt growing into
a new body, how we forget ever knowing

We're just like everyone else who also thinks they
aren’t like everyone else because they didn’t have
someone to hold their heavy lovelorn child-hearts.

all the people i know
have stained my brain
with their misery and their woe,
don't they know?
i have them too
but i would never shovel them on you
it doesn't seem the right thing to do
when i could give you all love
and give woe the shove
i work it out myself
though there's still pain on the shelf
it's below me, not above
i have pain
because all i give is love

—After Sum 41

Through your social distortion of extortion at the
most absurd proportions, I realize I need a doctor
not a proctor for when I test the helicopter you said
you’d never offer to a lowly pauper. You could say it’s my
bad I even tried that so now I cry-laugh in the lilacs while my mom
throws bombs through satcoms to lighten the weather. I should’ve
known better and left the head sever nether that continuously had
me tethered to the emotionally unfettered. I really need to find an
honest man before I enforce a plan of a 1000th trimester abortion.
                                                                                              bortion
                                                                                         bortion
                                                                                     bortion  
                                                                                bortion
                                                                            bortion
                                                                        bortion
                                                                    bortion
                                                                bortion
                                                            bortion
                                                        bortion
                                                    bortion
After all the fat lips you gave me I
realized I’m a matchstick baby and don’t
need your rabies to save me. I don’t think I want
to live in your lair with your despair share stares turning to
a bitter taste once I start to face the human waste
falling on my head when I fall in your bed instead of my
king sized comforter singing trumpeter of a simple time—
childhood confined, morality defined by design until I become
the demons as you free them for freedom until they’re just another
lover to call my brother. The hits to my lips caused a casualty
of me casually even though I was never alive actually. Of
all the fists fighting me, it’s you I’d like to remove from society.

Foot meets the metal of a cold shovel
with a sun beaming down
booted foot pushes the *****
into the soft and rooty ground

one mound of dirt
sweat forms above the brow
two mounds of dirt
salty bead slithers down
three mounds of dirt
tuned into the sounds
four mounds of dirt
birds chirp all around

stopped by a thick root
extra force must be used
give that shovel a pogo of boots
and we are at the fifth mound

six and seven are easy
as the hole starts to round
eight nine ten eleven twelve
a tomb has been found

carried your sheet covered corpse
laid you in the hole
cover you with what was uncovered
creating a man made knoll

Six years of memories
laid underneath this red dirt
many years missing
that time gone subvert

when i was little ,
dad handed me a shovel and
he handed me
a dress.

he taught me how to dress myself
and then how to garden ,

to dig each hole
in soft
           flesh and soil.  

ive grown up since,
gotten taller,
and can hold
the shovel by myself ,

so
i dig graves now instead .

ive saved one for dad ,
                               and ive saved one for me.

six feet deep ,
                        it’s a bed with no blankets
and it’s
perfect ,
and
it’s mine —

and
i want to be buried in a dress
i can button
                     all
                         by myself ,

because
dad also handed me a shotgun.

VVe vvrite words
to fill in the emptiness
as if they vvere concrete patches
for neglected sidevvalks
that nobody vvalks on
Carry on
D A R K  poets
Toss that alphabet
tovvards my shovel
let me bury it
forever