That bubble of a moon is 
playing peek-a-boo behind
the wispy night sky.
Confirming to me
everyone's lunacy.
Words stick to the
roof of my mouth
like peanut butter.
It could have been 
a better world,
I should have been a
better man.

January snowflakes
are like guilt falling from
the sky.
little frozen starfish...
cold and raw on 
the soul, and tongue.

  

.

I take the remnants of my
childhood OCD,
and I put it to
hard work at my
custodial arts job.
Janitor to be PC.
All the initials make
my BP rise.

And the pounding
of the basketballs attack 
my eardrums in
a mad staccato
beat.
The blue toilets, and
the chemicals assuage
my nasal cavity.

Leggings and tight shorts
get my Nabokov mind calling
******, come, let me
touch your pink flower.
I'm wet now at
the head; can they see
it through my pants?

How many times did
I touch the light switch?
Do I need to blink
my eyes two more times?
Ah, if I could only
swim to heaven in
the blueness of the sterile
chlorine in
that big cerulean pool...
wash this
wretched disease 
off, once and for all.

The mediocre march into oblivion
while watching Tik Tok videos
and never reading a 
book or writing a
poem.
They don't know 
the difference between
an orchid or an iris.

The mediocre march into
madness sleeping until
noon, while neglecting
Bukowski and Mozart.
They don't know how
to play an instrument.
No idea what a C
major chord is.
But they know all
the emojis.
The sad sheep masses
don't
know the difference
between a Van Gogh or
Monet painting, and a
digital reproduction on
a coffee cup.
Their phones look 
like grotesque growths
attached to their ears.
Everyone should
contribute to the
cosmic dance,
Carpe Diem
*******!

There were times
that I floated; almost flew.
The wind tasted fresh,
as the clouds hissed by.
My sweat kissed the
hot sidewalk below.
I dunked any
basketball that
I could palm.
Seventeen years old,
and a sanguine grin
the powerful legs,
and a 
skinny frame.
Life was mine, and I
knew it.
I spent more time in
the air than I 
did on the concrete.
The sky and
tree lines were
my home.
I was Icarus and a hawk
soaring above the
common folks.
Now, I never leave
the ground.

This sickness has
derailed me.
I've scaled back on
the things that
matter most.
Life has become
askew.
I'm tangled up in
blue and red lines,
back against the
fence.
I'm frozen and febrile.
Insecticide burns on
my spirit.
Pesticide in my lungs.
I'm sick of all
these chemicals.
They are in my dreams,
and in my bones.
Maybe, she is the infection...
Never mind, it's just Covid 19.

A tenderhearted rage flows from my
pen, like the Mississippi river after six
months of a hard rain.  
Suffering released, I long
for peace, as I grab the pen like
a ****** grabs the syringe, like my
very life depends on it because it
probably does.

The passion that flows within
my veins give a voice to my
soul when the pen vomits
words on the paper, like a
drunk the morning after a
night on the town, trying to
drown the memory of her.

I'm bent on writing because the
world's dim lighting cast shadows on
everything that mattered to me.
I'm shattered you see by
circumstances beyond my control.
Life just seems to roll right over me,
but I take my plight with the fight of
a soldier, whose battle cry is:
furor scribendi, a rage to write; because
in the revealing comes the ultimate
healing and that ******* light will
never die.

She wanted the
pans handed to
her a certain way.

I gave them to
her the wrong way,
and in her superior
voice, she said,
"I'm tired of telling you,
handles lined up,
pans facing down.
I will give them
back to you if it's
not the right way!"

I made $5.15 an hour,
my pants and shirt
were dripping wet.
I bit my tongue.

I knew she was no
chef.
Cooking is an
art, but she was too
bunched up to
understand that.
I could have outcooked
her, no matter how she
handed me the pans.