Every morning I microwave myself

Reheating stale words on my lips

As I shuffle toward the inevitable

Sleep that never quite takes

In the vain hope that tomorrow

There exists a new "me"

Who is finally ready to become

My mother eats music like chocolates
Consuming sweetness and sadness slowly,
And always in moderation.

Too many Adele songs, she warns,
Might cause the heart to bleed
And the world to become less solid.

She revels in austerity;
Proud that her life is clean
Even if it is sterile.

But I want to feel it all for myself!!
I want to scream a tornado from my lungs
And crash the moon into darkness...

I want to love and hate and die and ****!
To live without dread for a single second.
To squeeze the sweetness out of every pop song.

I want to kiss a boy that I like so much
Without a voice in my neck
Choking my ambitions.

I want to live without a howling past.
To die without a fettered future.
To dream without a present tense.

To eat the madness of the world
In a feast of fancy
From which I cannot return.

What the boastful fail to say
About “a man at every port”
Is how a soul can crack
Between the vast distances

One beloved in [redacted] who feels
Like smooth liquor and cries
So softly when I rub his back
Because I cannot touch him much

To be greeted by the too-slim smile
Of another in [redacted]
Who screams my name with a vigor
As if to remind me I’m still here

A third to the West
Who I visit too infrequently
But whose spark is still bright
When I darken the door

One more is a ghost
Whose visage travels with me
Who’s made the living look pale
Since the day that he ghosted me

A painful plight to be totally free
To hold someone in the night
And to flee by late midday
Never whole or fully held

I'm wading in a gentle love
(One that texts me every day)
A love that flows but never pushes
While the sun shines on my face
                                          .
Not too deep but no less lovely

There's no thought of what's below
                       .
Not a thought of what's unholy
           .
                                   o
No violent storm where we once fell
                         .
      o
                 .                                                 .
No engulfment nor impressions

        .
                         o

Of a monster deep beneath

                          .                          o

­   o
                             O

            .                                                 ­   .

No more dire premonitions   .

          .                                  .
O
             ­                      .

                     O
                                    

                         ­                    o

o

             O                .

    

     .               o




                                     .
As you swept me off my feet

I'm sorry that I'm not enough
Or maybe, babe, I'm just too much
To ever gently linger in your touch

And babe, you know I'm just too rough
To treat you like I've got the stuff
To heal the broken love that you've got

So tell me that I did you wrong
Tell me that you're moving on
And that I'll cry forever when you're gone

And you're not wrong.

I can't bluff.

But I'm not strong.

It is a very human tragedy
That we can name more lengths
Of waves of light than our eyes
Can or will ever comprehend

To know that something exists
And is very likely beautiful
Just outside our grasp, forever
Is the most human thing of all

At least to me.