There was a vine
A flowered vine
Growing on a fence
Poking out the cracks

Someone cut them down
Wrangled them together
And tossed them
In the trash next to mine

Days later
In the middle of the night
Our garbage cans contents
Were pulled out
And scattered next to the ally

Night owl me,
Brought another bag
Found the mess outside
And put the 'waste'
Back in its place

The lid says "NO YARD WASTE"
So I left the abused plant
Where it fell
On the cold concrete sidewalk

With no sleep to show for
The sun rises
The tangled, cut,
Unwanted fence ****
Lay there in the light
Smiling purple blooms
In all their glory

They told me to tell their story

"you're trash"
you would say
as you smiled my way
with a look in your eye
that said
"boy, what a guy"
a wonderful look that said
"you're wonderful" instead
a look that froze time
and stopped my heart on a dime

"you're dumb"
you would mutter
and cause my heartbeat to stutter
with a look in your peeper
that said
"my, what a keeper"
a stupendous look that said
"i want you" instead
a look as powerful as it felt
that caused my cold heart to melt

My friends and I
are forlorn fabrics
haphazardly stitched into a quilt.

Comprised of different textures and fabrics,
frayed at the ends,
rejected pieces meant for the trash,
not good enough for made-to-wear mall clothes.

My friends and I
fit like a puzzle
consisting of pieces from various other puzzles--
found under coffee tables,
between couch cushions,
tossed into the bowels of forlorn toy bins--
forming a collage of something
disoriented and ambiguous.

Crammed together,
smashing our appendages,
leaving crooked gaps,
wrinkled, torn, ****** up,
but feeling better here
than in our small contribution
to the bland image of our factory's design.

My friends and I,
outcasts, rejects, punks,
convening in the junkyard heap
where we dance and laugh among trash
that makes us feel clean.
Pure when we're filthy.

Quilts and puzzles,
to instill and befuddle;
****** treasures.

Hello, you
Yes, you
Go to hell
In there you're well
Here's a finger
hope this lingers
For a person like you
destroying mood, all you do
Talk behind
like a coward blind
say small talks
trashing and stalks
Have you seen the trash can?
Oh, over there you stand
Say it one more time
Your breathe smells like swine
Go to hell
In there you're well
Goodbye to you
Yes, you

Our daily life and its trash,
Our shadows and secrets in a stash,
One day we'll be ancient lives,
Not strictly business, once did thrive,
All lost in the translation
to trash, our sacred institutions,
The mixed views of the robots,
For humans, they'll have soft spots,
All our shadows in a stash,
Secrets of daily life in trash!

I woke naked atop a sheet lying on the floor
next to a pile of plastic hangers on one side,
her body pressed to mine on the other,
and the faint scent of *** and cigarettes on the air.
Although I doubt you could call it waking
when she and I had such little sleep.

Her alarm was going off somewhere in the haze
and I could feel her skin peel off of mine as
she got up to silence it and call out of work.
I took a deep breath, reveling in the stale air,
and sat up with my back pressed to the wall.
My eyes closed and flashbacks came to the
forefront of my vision from the night before,
my mouth full of her neck,
moans in the dark,
her face leaning out of the window above me
as I smoked outside in my boxers.

I shook myself awake
and the goddess strode her way back in
slowly and salaciously, in a dance with
my tired eyes as they traced the faint figure
that shone through her loose shirt
in the morning light.

I could feel the little time we had
slipping through the curved
hourglass of her body,
and I stood to meet her smile
with a kiss, pulling her against me
with one hand and losing the other one
somewhere in the oceanic waves of her hair.

The flashbacks came again, but differently now.
Years of memories coursed through my mind,
all the times she'd been right in front of me
yet I was too blind to truly see her as I did then.

We dressed slowly in the din of the busy street outside,
gathering the last of her belongings in the empty apartment
and taking them down to her car.

I stepped into the sunlight and lit up a smoke,
it was going to be a hot day,
and she locked the door behind us for the last time.

The car welcomed us as she turned the engine over,
and I buckled up whilst cracking a beer.
The wheels began to spin, I took a long slug,
and she smoked the last three drags of my cigarette,
flicking it carelessly out of the window.

Trash can, wastebasket;
the place we throw it all away.
Used tissues--soggy mascara, dried *****,
or the babies that would never be,
and the heaps of food waste, human waste.

Wasted human.

Why do we take ourselves and the people we used to love,
toss people and our person deep within a hole of shame,
darkness, misery, guilt, worry, frustration, fear?

If someone only said to you, or to me, when we dig deep
into the ground and find the place no one will find us
or them, the people we are burying--
if they only said,
"You are not trash."

Our emotions refuse to become refuse, the remains of
being unwanted, as we perceive ourselves to be.

But we is just me, and even though I can't hear the voice
I long to hear above my own, the sounds reverberate in my chest,
next to my heart, where I heard them last.

The last time we spoke your fingers did not reach for mine.
Your jeans did not rip in the same one spot.
The dog that I picked that you picked after you went back,
his tail wagging all the way on the ride back to his new home,
did not kiss my face and my eyes and ears like he loves to do.
Even though you didn't still love me, you did before,
now thrown hastily, yet decidedly in the trash can outside your door.

I dropped off the last remnant of your physical being,
an old rabbit-eared antennae.
I didn't, couldn't look in your trash can,
or stand in the driveway longer than was needed to drop and run
the hell away from crumbling gravel, a window newly aluminum foiled, and the motorcycle kept under surveillance at all times.

I hope he looked on his camera screen and saw walking,
talking, feeling, breathing human trash gliding
down the sidewalk, feet pattering into a jog.
The grass licked my feet and tangled in my toes on the way
to the one place my sighs could sink lower than my feet,
deep into the warm upholstery of my car seat, the grandma car,
the dented, imperfect, but mostly reliable car

away, far away, to a place where someone would look curiously,
pick up the trash, my trash, me, and say,
"It's beautiful."

go take out the trash, a little voice says
no, you reply
I'm comfortable right now
lying here on my bed in my pyjamas
but you have to, the voice insists
not now, you reply
I'll do it later

it goes on like this
it happens every day now
but you always answer
later
later now becomes much much later
you're getting more and more skilled
at ignoring the little voice

every once in a while it pikes up again
take out the trash
but you don't listen
you're too comfortable
too lazy
too tired
too anxious
too hurt
too anything
too everything

you never take out the trash
until years later
you have to vacate the space you're living in
and the suffucating amount of trash you've accummulated
becomes quite obvious
and now
you have to take out the trash
so you go and take out the trash
and you go
and you go
and you go
no end in sight
until you start to wonder
if it will ever stop
or if you're now trapped
in some kind of eternal hell
of taking out the trash

and you start resenting that little voice
that now utters something that sounds a lot like
I told you so
you should have listened to me
yes, you should have listened to that little voice

so now you start resenting yourself
for not listening to the voice
but the one question that now insistently nags at you
that won't leave you alone anymore
if you managed to hoard such a huge amount of trash
by just never taking it out
what does your mind look like
you've never taken out the trash there either
and you nervously ponder
how it will end
the day you will have to vacate that space