The good ole days were enjoyed with ease,
There was less to enjoy because of disease;
There were fewer people to dress and feed
Thanks to childhood mortality.


The middle-class were few and greedy,
Thanks to needs and poverty;
We could find work and be employed,
But tenure turned to workplace injury.

Illiteracy was common,
Innumeracy, our fate,
Due to the high school drop out rate.

Polio and smallpox kept in check
The burgeoning growth of the unelect.

Minorities knew their social place;
Jim Crow was voting in black face.

Heteros ruled the ****** race,
Alphabet people were an outlier trace.

In summer and winter we were outplayed and beat,
With no Air Conditioning nor Central Heat.

Let's leave the past in the past,
Where history belongs;
Where hunger and sickness
Lasted all life-long,
And the poor and ignorant
Were subdued by the strong.

We can agree times were simpler then,
As time came rushing to an end.

There once was a little snail,
That wondered why It didn't have a proper tail,
She asked all those that passed her by
If there might be a rather simple reason why.
None proved to be that kind,
Which put her in an awful bind,
Until one fateful sunny day
She met a hare along the way.
My friend he said, looking awfully smug,
A tail Is something others often tug,
That's why I run faster than near most,
Never resting coast to coast.
You instead are blessed indeed,
As you I know can get good sleep.
With a house over your head,
You're never far from that great bed.
So even when you dont feel well,
Isn’t it better than my hell?

For Hannah

She's sitting at the
kitchen table,
Full of strep and forced
to read a book
by a mom who believes
the mind can continue to flourish
while its carrying case
suffers.

Forcing fluids,
killing biotic enemies
She sits silently
while I listen to the
Happiest Music I know,
Linus and Lucy;
She frowns,
more from pain
than distaste.

Mom cooks lasagna
and brother scouts the fridge.
Nothing looks good
She thinks.
She says.
She feels.

I've had this
sharp piece of bark
between my throat
the back side and the front.
It would close my throat
if I sang.

I had to sing.

I would feel my throat
closing
feel it hurt
make myself
believe that it would be fine.

I had to be fine.

I wonder how people yell
do their throats not close up?
I hear my mom yelling
over the phone
a different kind of sickness.
She's unhappy with a life
she is not living.

She's living here.

With me. But her rage
shot through continents
found it's way back where her mind lives.
That's a sickness.
Your mind and body being in different places.

Sickness is living here.

I can't tell her about
how my throat closes
how loudness
isn't possible for me.
For I must have swallowed
every tooth pick
to feel the abrasions in my throat.

I swallowed every toothpick.

I let myself swallow further.
Let that bark fall farther in to my stomach.
Wake at night when it hurts,
when it begs to wake.
Let myself be hurt.
I don't tell her how I close.

I close my eyes.

I dream that I am living elsewhere.
I am sick. My mind is living where my body
is not. I am dreaming
of a world where
I can be sick.

~
Sleep, no sleep
No making plans
New bed linens eat my dreamland
And settle in the wilderness of my ever-opened eyes

I see you
I see me
I see everything
I'm a play with no final curtain
The story continues unabated
And the ridiculing light of day
Is as sacrosanct as an unused blanket
Nonetheless, I'm checking in
Sleep, O sleep, swallow me
~

I hope you will be there with me
In the long winter without spring:
Ever green, star bright, true north.

The pines bent under the weight of snow
Are glad of the long-awaited rest.
We will tuck beneath white sheets.
My roots tangle with yours -
Lean your limbs on me,
I will hold your hand.

I will love you as you cough,
I will love you as you fall,
I will love you in all sickness.

In our autumn we will gather harvest,
A wealth of sweet golden years well-ripened.
When the storms come
And night darkens our hearth,
I will keep a fire for you.
My black coal-heart burns slow.

Because you are mine.
Because I belong to you.
Because when we return to earth
And become good loam,
The flowers that grow on me
Will bloom for you.

days crawl by
and humidity stills the air.
the black flies are late this season,
though around here, most things are.
below the gnat line, girls like me
seldom get to die easily,
perfumed powders
masking the scent of illness,
flushed cheeks and damp foreheads donned
as our feeble bodies recline on fainting couches
to delicately languish away. we know that
there’s a certain beauty to decomposition,
to fungus gnats invading potted soil,
to fruit flies nesting in sink drains. we know that
rotting is a clock that never stops,
tallying each unflinching, humid second while the
days crawl by.

Brown temples
Avid, too sore for sense?
Background music, finding what will...
A look of devotion, for a tooth called suspense?

Black wishes
Turmoil is a vaguer clique
Of comment's, sigh's make God's fishes
Just a rue to understand what is...

Grey orbit's
Of miasma, found in a suggestion's field
Known by sight, a bird has wit's
Another bird has seen the sun, and it's yield

Green future's
Vicinity to unity, the poor
Is realm to *****, word's of impurity
Set amid tree's, worth their wars

White death's
Would we save a child's shadow?
Regret as hot, as marvel's lead
Meant only with yesterday's yawn, are we that we are, mellow?

Enamoured by sightly existence
clinging to every glimpse
though nearly impossible to track
she was lost amongst a crowd of infinity

So captivated my mind races to the future flow of the current of bodies to where one would be in step and time to pace rhythm and flow and know ones whereabouts in premonition

Where my meditations meet reality I've dreamt love into existence even if only one sided her smile made me think otherwise

Who's to say that the love I found within just a momentary lapse in endlessness isn't an energy that persist through the age of ages


and feel as if they were made for you and you in turn for their moment of hope and possibly

one could find the cure to all sickness experienced