I try to be distant.
Detatched.
Drink a 50 cent Mountain Dew.
Dressed all in black
on a blistering day.
My back is a waterfall.
Pop two more quarters in the machine.
The mass gathering makes this funeral home
feel more like a sweat lodge.

"It's cooler in the chapel"
but that's where the body is.

I enter the mock church house,
close my eyes in passing the casket,
and sit in the back,
where everyone obstructs my view
of...
it?
him?

Eulogy delivered.
Songs sung.
Get up and take your last look.
My pores become geysers.
He's too still.
Too quiet.
Too peaceful.
Three observations
in a third of a second.

I remember his voice,
the way his palm felt on mine,
shaking hands.
Shake the preachers hand.
Remember.
Pull away.

Pop two more quarters into the machine.
Wash my hands.
Twice.
Go out to the car
to try my best to calm down.

April's flames made the friendliest fire,
although I feared they would
char and consume my life
and leave it but smoking cinders.

Friendly, fragile...
a single tear could put them all out.

April's flames shone brighter than the
sun.
They shed new light.
I could see things that
the shadows kept to themselves,
disguised as if some kind of treasure,
but the truth was that they were only
burdens.

April's flames lit two packs of cigarettes,
thirty-one thousand candles,
and a cozy fireplace
for thirty-one nights
where I would sit and rest knowing
the fire had not gone out.
I could feel it back then.

April's flames were lit in  March
and snuffed abruptly in mid-May,
but if I have some lighter fuel
I'll rekindle them some August day.

Ms. Disappointment stares out her window,
aware she's crushed a heart today.
For the millionth time
she gets on the line;
tries to make up some excuse
but I know she's a good liar.

Ms. Disappointment "can't stand it anymore";
tries to make me turn my head.
"Just one last kiss?"
Can you kiss my fist?
Someones got an anger issue,
but it really comes in handy.

Ms. Disappointment doesn't know where she went wrong.
She thinks I was her "one last chance".
But the idea went sour
passing through my cell phone tower.
Tone does not reflect through words,
so love turned out to be the birth of hate.

"Oh, can't you just stay a little longer?"
My dear, why would you want me to?
"Because I love you!" Oh, don't feed me that ****.
My heart's done callused
and all's gone to hell.

I took a walk down the road that marks
where the outskirts of town begins.
I don't know where it goes.
All I know is that it's a straight line
and I'll end up somewhere if I keep walking.
So, not wanting to end up like
one of those stupid kids in the scary movies,
I walked back home
a little faster than I had come.

There's an overcrowded pool in the center of town.
It's a wonder nobody's drowned yet.
I went to the dollar store and bought a Snickers,
the rest you can read about in the paper,
front page.
Most interesting thing that's happened here in years.

Flipped off the old ***** who thinks
people shouldn't be free to express love...
just for the hell of it.

I sneaked out at night just to see the town-
dead after 8:00-
and to pretend the world was mine
until the cops showed up.
I didn't know there was a curfew.
Who cares, that was a great feeling.

Time in the summer is like a kidney stone,
because it's hard as hell to pass.

The following is a true story. Regular words are the teacher, the quoted, myself.

-----

Today we are going to play

a word association game.

I will say a word,

and then you do the same.

Yellow.

"Yellow."

Blue.

"Blue."

That's not what I want you to do!

Say something different than what I say:

Cup.

"Up-cay."

Plate.

"Late-pay."

Book.

"Ook-bay."

Pe­ncil.

"Encil-pay."

Okay...

God has an iPod
that syncs prayers.
It's a miracle he ever gets to
listen to any.
But he does,
and over eternity
he has become a little more
deaf.
He even issued a new commandment:
Thou shalt pray louder.
Did you not get the memo?

Well, he can't turn up the volume anymore
so pray louder.
There's the memo.

But praying louder now
probably won't do much good.
He's deaf
and his headphones are busted
and- last time I checked-
he didn't leave any guidelines
for submitting prayers in writing.
Welp, I guess we're *******.

Intimacy framed
and hung for all to see
by none other than me
put you to shame,

and I fell off my ladder
hanging our moment
and you allowed me to
hit the cold ground
face first with a smack.

I kiss the ground.

I would have rather kissed your lips
but you can't trust me
not to tell.

Our hearts aflame
once with passion and desire
until this situation dire
burned them in a different way.

They're now charred forever
when you look in my eyes
all you see is a liar,
all I see is ice.

And to the man I credit this whole charade to:

Your mouth is as big as mine.
You should have known when I had said
my secret that it should go dead
to you and everything would work out fine.

And I laugh about it with you
but on the inside
I'm stabbing you with knives
as hot as her eyes were
when she found out I had let it slip.

That's pretty ******* hot.

Believe me, I know.