Sing, you said, of the happy path life will take
Of carefree, languid days and party-filled nights,
Of endless summers at our home by the lake,
Of Paris and Milan to take in the sights.
So (my arm around your waist) I tell you this:
Cinderella and Snow White both lived a lie.
There’s no fairy godmother or prince’s kiss,
No carriage ride to some castle in the sky.
I will sing of liverwurst and fairy tales
Of hopelessly clogged sinks and vomiting cats,
Of threadbare lime green carpet and hidden nails,
Of overdue bills and heated, pointless spats
And how a smile from you will make any care
Vanish like the dew into morning’s warm

it's not the large things that send a man to the madhouse

a woman, a
tire that's flat, a
disease, a
desire: fears in front of you,
fears that hold so still
you can study them
like pieces on a
chessboard...

it's not the large things that
send a man to the
madhouse. death he's ready for, or
******, ******, robbery, fire, flood...
no, it's the continuing series of small tragedies
that send a man to the
madhouse...

not the death of his love
but a shoelace that snaps
with no time left ...

The dread of life
is that swarm of trivialities
that can **** quicker than cancer
and which are always there -
license plates or taxes
or expired driver's license,
or hiring or firing,
doing it or having it done to you, or
roaches or flies or a
broken hook on a
screen, or out of gas
or too much gas,
the sink's stopped-up, the landlord's drunk,
the president doesn't care and the governor's
crazy.

light switch broken, mattress like a
porcupine;
$105 for a tune-up, carburetor and fuel pump at
sears roebuck;
and the phone bill's up and the, market's
down
and the toilet chain is
broken,
and the light has burned out -
the hall light, the front light, the back light,
the inner light; it's
darker than hell
and twice as
expensive.

then there's always ***** and ingrown toenails
and people who insist they're
your friends;
there's always that and worse;
leaky faucet, Christ and Christmas;
blue salami, 9 day rains,
50 cent avocados
and purple
liverwurst.

or making it
as a waitress at norm's on the split shift,
or as an emptier of
bedpans,
or as a car wash or a busboy
or a stealer of old lady's purses
leaving them screaming on the sidewalks
with broken arms at the age of 80.

suddenly
2 red lights in your rear view mirror
and blood in your
underwear;
toothache, and $979 for a bridge
$300 for a gold
tooth,
and China and Russia and America, and
long hair and short hair and no
hair, and beards and no
faces, and plenty of zigzag but no
***, except maybe one to **** in
and the other one around your
gut.

with each broken shoelace
out of one hundred broken shoelaces,
one man, one woman, one
thing
enters a
madhouse.

so be careful
when you
bend over.

DREAMS

I was an ice baby.
I turned to sky blue.
My tears became two glass beads.
My mouth stiffened into a dumb howl.
They say it was a dream
but I remember that hardening.

My sister at six
dreamt nightly of my death:
"The baby turned to ice.
Someone put her in the refrigerator
and she turned as hard as a Popsicle."

I remember the stink of the liverwurst.
How I was put on a platter and laid
between the mayonnaise and the bacon.
The rhythm of the refrigerator
had been disturbed.
The milk bottle hissed like a snake.
The tomatoes vomited up their stomachs.
The caviar turned to lave.
The pimentos kissed like cupids.
I moved like a lobster,
slower and slower.
The air was tiny.
The air would not do.
*
I was at the dogs' party.
I was their bone.
I had been laid out in their kennel
like a fresh turkey.

This was my sister's dream
but I remember that quartering;
I remember the sickbed smell
of the sawdust floor, the pink eyes,
the pink tongues and the teeth, those nails.
I had been carried out like Moses
and hidden by the paws
of ten Boston bull terriers,
ten angry bulls
jumping like enormous roaches.
At first I was lapped,
rough as sandpaper.
I became very clean.
Then my arm was missing.
I was coming apart.
They loved me until
I was gone.



2. THE DY-DEE DOLL

My Dy-dee doll
died twice.
Once when I snapped
her head off
and let if float in the toilet
and once under the sun lamp
trying to get warm
she melted.
She was a gloom,
her face embracing
her little bent arms.
She died in all her rubber wisdom.



3. SEVEN TIMES

I died seven times
in seven ways
letting death give me a sign,
letting death place his mark on my forehead,
crossed over, crossed over

And death took root in that sleep.
In that sleep I held an ice baby
and I rocked it
and was rocked by it.
Oh Madonna, hold me.
I am a small handful.



4.MADONNA

My mother died
unrocked, unrocked.
Weeks at her deathbed
seeing her ****** herself against the metal bars,
thrashing like a fish on the hook
and me low at her high stage,
letting the priestess dance alone,
wanting to place my head in her lap
or even take her in my arms somehow
and ****** her twisted gray hair.
But her rocking horse was pain
with ***** steaming from her mouth.
Her belly was big with another child,
cancer's baby, big as a football.
I could not soothe.
With every **** and crack
there was less Madonna
until that strange labor took her.
Then the room was bankrupt.
That was the end of her paying.



5. MAX

Max and I
two immoderate sisters,
two immoderate writers,
two burdeners,
made a pact.
To beat death down with a stick.
To take over.
To build our death like carpenters.
When she had a broken back,
each night we built her sleep.
Talking on the hot line
until her eyes pulled down like shades.
And we agreed in those long hushed phone calls
that when the moment comes
we'll talk turkey,
we'll shoot words straight from the hip,
we'll play it as it lays.
Yes,
when death comes with its hood
we won't be polite.



6. BABY

Death,
you lie in my arms like a cherub,
as heavy as bread dough.
Your milky wings are as still as plastic.
Hair soft as music.
Hair the color of a harp.
And eyes made of glass,
as brittle as crystal.
Each time I rock you
I think you will break.
I rock. I rock.
Glass eye, ice eye,
primordial eye,
lava eye,
pin eye,
break eye,
how you stare back!

Like the gaze if small children
you know all about me.
You have worn my underwear.
You have read my newspaper.
You have seen my father whip me.
You have seen my stroke my father's whip.

I rock. I rock.
We plunge back and forth
comforting each other.
We are stone.
We are carved, a pieta
that swings.
Outside, the world is a chilly army.
Outside, the sea is brought to its knees.
Outside, Pakistan is swallowed in a mouthful.

I rock. I rock.
You are my stone child
with still eyes like marbles.
There is a death baby
for each of us.
We own him.
His smell is our smell.
Beware. Beware.
There is a tenderness.
There is a love
for this dumb traveler
waiting in his pink covers.
Someday,
heavy with cancer or disaster
I will look up at Max
and say: It is time.
Hand me the death baby
and there will be
that final rocking.

Quail eggs, duck fat
Liverwurst at its worst
Pâté is passé
Bulgur is ******
Shellfish emulsion
Widespread revulsion
Giblets and gravy, soured and skinned
Simmered, steamed, fried and ******
(order up)

I smell cookies baking
There are no cookies baking
What do I smell?

A childhood memory to a
Time and place of comfort?
Wanting the past to last?

Other triggers:
Grilled cheese sandwiches
Campbell’s tomato soup
Breaded fish sticks
Polka-dotted Wonder bread
Liverwurst and catsup
The tasty tang of tang

The nose knows; I’m
Olfactory traveling
Memory meandering

Still, I really smell
Those cookies baking…
I want to go home again

chapter three


June 4th. 1980;


The day, it’s the morning of June 4th.  It’s Wednesday; I go up the block to be with Kelli; her friend Lynne is a sleepover guest, this day. I and Lynne have never got along but if I want to be with Kelli than I’ll have to hang with Lynne for the day. We’re watching “The Price is Right” on television and Lynne went inside for a while. After a time she comes in laughing!?
“I was just on the phone with Barbra B. and she’s off and running…  Let’s go down by her house and see what’s there to watch!?”  Kelli and Lynne get into the front-seats of Kelli’s White Buick Electra 225
I was in the backseat; the two of them were laughing up a storm! Kelli drives up Calamus ave. until she nears 74th. Street; this is where Barbra B. lives. Barbra is frilling a most extremely large kitchen-knife; it must be the biggest knife in her house?! Here she comes with her father chasing up behind her?  He’s trying to catch-up and stop this girl from getting to whatever place she is so hard-pressed to get too???
Lynne slaps onto the side of the door, Kelli slows and Lynne rolls down the window then sticks-out half her body; she waves over to Barbra B. and screams, “Hey Barbra, what’s going on?”
Kelli says, “What are you doing?”
“Where’re you going? You need a lift? Come on there’s plenty of room in the back!”  The door-locks pop open… “Come-on we’ll take you where-ever you’re going!”
Barbra heads towards the car; Kelli, grips the wheel, laughing; I know this laugh… Kelli has no idea what’s going on?! Barbra takes hold of the door as her father reaches her; he grabs her arm and pulls her hand away; Barbra’s father yells to Kelli, “Get out of here; Leave!”
Kelli steps on the gas and drives off!
Heart’s racing… ‘Holy crap, that crazy ***** had her hand on the door? She was about to be inside this car, she had a knife; she, she, she be sitting next to me?! What the hell just happened???’
Kelli drives back towards the house; the two of them seating in the front seat… laughing?! Not the same laugh but…, laughing! Lynne’s, an all too familiar sort; it’s a kind I heard in the silent-times unspoken about; a delight to a well done of what just happened.
Kelli’s, her laugh is also all too familiar, hers, is the kind that reassures. It’s the kind I’d feel deep inside me at three in the morning while swinging, inside Little Bush Park, on those swings beneath moonlight knowing, oddly enough, I’m safer there at that moment than I’d be anywhere-else.
Kelli parks up on the corner, on the side of Tootie’s house; she runs across to store for soda, cigarettes and stuff then we went upstairs.
“What the hell was that…?” Kelli says, laughing, while she slaps the bag onto the table; bag brakes open and as liverwurst, cheese, bottle of soda and the cigarettes flies off to all parts of the kitchen!? “What did you do? That was f----- up!?” Kelli starts to fix us lunch as Lynne tells us about what she was doing in the kitchen while we were watching The Price Is Right.                    
  
Lynne calls up Barbra’s gay-lover and tells her she’s Barbra’s (formerly) ex-girlfriend and that she’s calling to let her know Barbra and she are back together so she’ll no longer be needed or wanted in their lives!  
Afterwards, Lynne calls Barbra’s saying to Barbra, she’s Barbra’s ex-girlfriend’s newest lover and she’s calling to inform her,Barbra, that Barbra’s ex and this girl’s new lover are bopping the sheets with each-other and the two of them are being played as fools; as one could imagine and as we saw for ourselves, Barbra went into a high-speed tailspin. Barbra snaps?!  And now she is out there trying to go end these two women in a pool of their own blood!?  
Unbelievably, Lynne still thinks what she made happen is a big fat hoot???
Kelli, “What the hell were you thinking???”
Lynne looks at Kelli, and with this snide tone and smirk on her face she says,” What… I was bored! Did you see Barb’s father’s face?” laughter erupting from her as she turns to get her stuff out of Kelli’s bedroom; “Hey it was fun!”
Kelli,” Oh brother; you’re…? Hey, get ready and I’ll drive you… home.”
Kelli looks at me and we both put hands up with baffled looks?!          
It’s just around 3 pm. as Kelli rolls up to Lynne’s to drop her off. She asks Kelli to drop her down at the bar she hangs-at so she could find-out what’s been going on there.
Kelli did and on the way back she stops by Julia’s, her mom’s, work; Julia gives us a list and we go over to key-food to shop.
While we’re shopping Kelli keeps, “I can’t get over what we saw???”
I kept thinking how did Lynne know so much of Barbra’s love-life??? She knew names, places and everything she’d need to get that girl Barbra to to such a point and state?’ I think Kelli and I were both shaking from this for the rest of the day.
  Kelli drops me off, goes parks and goes into house.
I remember this date so well because later that night at around 2:30 in the morning I was at my father’s door knocking?!

” Dad? Dad? Dad; you need to get… You have to get-up!?”
My water broke??? My due date’s not ‘til September 18th. I first thought, ‘Oh no not again?! This can’t happening; … not again?! But, there was no pain, no blood, and no sense of dread like the other times?
I went into my room and grab onto my bag and what-ever-else I thought to take; I figured, by this time my dad would be ready to bring me up to the Boulevard and we’ll cab it to St. John’s. He wasn’t in the middle-room; he wasn’t in the kitchen I knocked on the bathroom door and… He’s not in there? Maybe he went up to call a cab to pick me up at the door?? I’d think he would… He’d have said something…,  like when you have what you need I’ll be downstairs I’m going up to get a cab??? The hall-door’s closed?!’
“Holy crap?!”
No, no, no, I go back to my Dad’s bedroom door and knock. “Dad…? “
“What?” My eyes nearly pop out of my head!
I try to open the door but as usual the lock is on? “Dad?! My water broke???” As one could imagine my voice is no-longer an indoor voice?!  “Never mind broke it’s like the dam broke here and there’s water everywhere out here! Come on you have to get up… you need to take me to St. John’s?!”  
Pin-drop silence…?
“Dad?”
This low soft moaning whimper comes from behind that locked door, “Can it wait until the morning?”
  ??? Bang! Needless to say dad needs a new door-lock.
“Nelson…; Get up!”
“Ok.” Slowly he gets to his feet. “I don’t know why…, now? Why can’t you wait ‘til morning?”
“No, now.” In my head,’ Maintain: Four six-packs… I’m lucky I’m going alone?!’
“I need coffee? What the hell is all this water on the floor?”  
   “Dad? Dad; … that would be me?! It’s why you’re up?  We need to go… St. John’s?! Let’s go!”
Ever notice how when you need… there’s never one to be found??? Phone-booth! Lindy’s cab come and picks us up; not one yellow-cab? We get there and they check me out.
The doctor, “You have had what’s called a premature rupture of membranes; you’re being admitted so you can continue to be monitored. Your baby’s vitals but…; we want you to understand the baby’s condition is at high-risk it’s holding its own.”
“Doctor…?” My eyes begin to whelm-up…
“Miss Rose…” The doctor places his hand on my arm, “You need to remain claim; I have the nurse come give you something and I’ll come check on you when they put you in a room; for now remember the vitals are good.”
“Thank you.”
“Ok; your father’s outside, I have him brought in to you.”  
I told him I’d have to stay and he should go home.
“You have money for a cab?”
“My bag is under there, Dad.”
You know, it’s strange; he has no problem asking me to give him money so he could get home!? He doesn’t know where I get money… But, he couldn’t care less?! And, I doubt very much even if he knew it would bother him; hem, he’s lived off her all these years…, knowing that I’ve been signing Elaine’s name and cashing her checks from the checkbook I took and packed in my bag the day I left that place in Brooklyn would faze him?! Well maybe if he was aware I only cashing $50. to $100. At a time out of an account which has $33,000. In it would?! I stopped writing checks after I bought everything I needed for a baby until a baby is one month old; after $1700. I didn’t take anymore. Till the day my mother died neither she or I ever said a word about that checkbook. And, I know she knew… every time a check was cashed.  When I cashed them at Manufacture Handovers Bank would confirm with a call before any check cashing; they did it since my brother, Kevin, cashed out a $12,000 check and left town! A signature that was in no way like my mother’s! The bank made a deal to replace half?! I’m sure she could have had ever last penny back but the bank would have had police-case opened and a warrant out for Kevin and she never did turned her back on that boy?! That check wasn’t even, close-to, the worst thing that boy had done. The day he died I smiled, enough said.  Well, I think she thought I would have felt bad and come home and I’d do what she wanted me to do that day.

The sun’s coming up… They just put me here in this room, room 410; I hear the Doctor down the hall. I hope he has good things to tell me!? I pull the drape to see him when he comes in the door; a circle of people are out there with charts. They’re coming in…,”Miss Rose, these are the team who will be watching over you.” Doctor was saying their names but I wasn’t hearing him; all I want was for him to tell me the baby’s going to be alright. “Miss Rose I spoke to your GYN and he informed me you were already aware of this being a high-risk pregnancy?
“Yes.”
“The chart says you been pregnant before?”
“Yes; never over five months.”
‘Well, you do have that in your favor; although, there’s still no… Miss Rose? What wrong?”
“There’s… No…”
“Listen!” he places his hand on my arm. ”Understand what I’m saying; we’re monitoring the vitals and you and your baby are, for right now, fine. The longer that baby stay in there the better be the chances of survival. Do you understand this?”
“Yeah”
“Good; in order for this to be we will need to keep you in the most sterile environment possible. Do you understand what this means? I can see you’re not; Miss Rose you’re going to have to stay in the hospital until the baby is born. And you’ll need to be on complete bed-rest so we can continue to monitor the baby. This means no wondering the halls this is a private room and you have a bathroom all to yourself no getting out of bed just to walk around, no unnecessary movement you need to stay pregnant for as long as you can. Now, you understand what I’m telling you?”
Crap! I look at this doctor like he just grew three more heads??? “You want me stay here, and to sport this bed? Until, September 18th?”
“No… Miss Rose September 18th Is full-term an ideal time for the baby; we already know that won’t happen that date’s gone and is impossible now. But the idea is to now get you as close as we can to that date. Let’s just take this a day at a time. I come and check in on you later. Remember, no getting up except if you need to use the bathroom. Ok?”
The bathroom only; got it!”  
The doctor leaves my room… Its Thursday morning 7:12 am. June 5th. 1980
Mind this point, it’s still 1980?! You can smoke inside a hospital; and, if you’re in a private room without Oxygen Tanks in use.
The date and time of baby’s birth is...; Friday, morning, on June 6th. 3:54 am.
They took him right away from the delivery room I only saw him from the mirror up in the corner of the room; you know the kind where things are closer than they look type’s… they put me back into my room. It’s 7 am. I know, I have had a baby boy but I haven’t met him? Three hours not one word; not one word to me by anyone here?! Did something happen? Again.
It is 7:10am. Door, to my room, opens… The doctor steps in… “Miss Rose?” he walks to the side of my bed. “Has anyone been in to talk to you?”
“…no.”
“We need to talk to you about what is next for your son…”
“My, son…” I thought sure… he was going to say???
Yes, they are ordering transport for him, now; our hospital isn’t equipped to care for his needs we need to rush him to another hospital that can give him the best chances to survive this early most… we’ll do best we can. They’ll bring him in a moment I know you hadn’t had a chance to hold him.”
As he said this four people enter the room and my baby, my baby.
The nurse walks around to the left of my bed and hands me this itty biddy blanket holding this little face.  I look at him and thought ‘His skin he’s so purple; his face… he looks just as she did. But he’s here. ” Hello Joseph! I’m your mommy. I’m grateful you’re here. “
Big hands; the nurse who handed my baby to me to hold is now on my right-side to take him away from me.
They rush my tiny boy out to the neonatal ambulance He’ll be at Long Island Jewish Hospital when I leave here on Monday.

Keeping what I have inside to hide my true self for others to benefit without throwing a fit

'cause I'm useless and getting sick of it...

useless is a new feeling like an empty thought revealing to people that I am less than them...and to make them feel good about themselves...

high on their pedestal like trophies on shelves earned by greatness I don't even have a medal...

though I'd settle for pats on the shoulder...Or smart *** commendings....but I am useless..

my pen feels my pain....but I remain my strong witted ordain...sleep the same and stay a sucker in the love game...

I am useless like a soldier without a gun...

nothing to show for my gain closer to my own head fame....RUN!!!...

I wear my war face outside to hide my battling pain inside...bite my tongue and take the strikes of a tongue lashing being insulted destroying my strive driven pride

intelligence I seem not to possess...my heart is filled with stress....hanging my head in shame wearing a hood to hide my face for I am useless...and I'm to blame...cause I let it happen...

I am useless and show that I cannot be counted on...but I struggle strong and will 'til my life is gone...

invisible gun..BANG....my head can no longer hang...dang...what to do now...it's a **** shame...but I am to blame...

I am useless like a gun without a soldier...as I mature much older my shoulder becomes brittle...mind shrinks little...hop becomes a wiggle..shakes become worst

useless like liverwurst...

like dirt I am walked on looked upon like I'm incompetent...

but I am content at being useless like steak to someone with no teeth...eyes open to disbelief for a brief second...listen to me when I am useless...

By: Peter T. DeSpirito December 23, 2011

It's a bit of laughter, that goes a long way to just you
If it comes as no surprise, it goes a long way if we, you're you
Looking for canvases of fruits, and tapedecks of Japan, dying pretty hard
My life's in misery, but, I don't what, does it fear to live?
My life's in inescapable fear, and I don't know what it means
Oh doctor, tell me why will my thy will open to the eye of sun and heaven and earth, red earth I'm bleeding out in these rags forlorn for the lost feeling
Hold my high hopes, in the kite running skies that leave my thoughts dry as long as the picture is finding innocence in your reasons, two simple reasons why this in spells of manic depression
Trapped in a young man, and old and dead that spurs madness
Doesn't the piano chime with the murderous hope in my skullduggerous soul, I don't deserve this madness
Dreaming up of skulls, suddenly realizing the death of thine light in my eyes very dubious, beyond false compare
He said I'd just write you free-prose poetry, but, I'm looking for another letter of the Hades Gate, who heard him leave
I'm blowing in the wind, but, I'm drowning in madhouses
Raging with innocence, innocuous and capricious caveats, and talk of the passion without immediate conscious experience
I'm a body without consciousness, and I hear you in the starry skies of your loveless dust ordered in the years of rag ***** and talk of artichokes artistic, chokes me to tears to see what we've become
In a generation of hysterical madness, and I saw the best minds in the yearly bestsellers written by droning bickering pretentiousness, looking for childhood, they found their flickering peace in their cooked up courage in the collated document of liverwurst and hog tails that promised the empty soul to offer its confusion in a soup of surly murmurs in this silent sky, what ideal do I love to choose, adding two and two?
I'm forgetting everyone when I realize I should have forgotten them a long time ago, in the centuries that repeated in the song
Dancing with repetition, in the mayday of restoring heaven
How about I tell you that I couldn't talk to my doctor?
'Cause **** was the disease
How about I tell you, that my house smells, wishing it could make love to stylish artists and teddy bears with adorable aromas, fragrances of time and my mother can't read me, I just read her I write about the battered suitcases wanna travel the swirling minds of childish about desultory blues on the Ray Charles blues in
Playing in the back of a phonograph, in the corsets and flowery eyes that spell danger if I pluck a star from their supernatural darkness in hand-churned ice cream sitting on a desolate understanding of the homes of the lost souls, and I talk of the ceramic ashcans that process the changed minds
That had understood the changes, in the wind wondering what hit them or in videos of gapes of bad mouth in stammering broken lips
Drama is the art of success, and thunderous claps and the noise wants me to cut my life into half measures, and half hollow men
Some of them now kids, we are the studied men with the ignorant looks searching for the light
Understanding that a child can accept the light, the real tragedy strikes when we realize that an adult is scared of us
Sovereign in slavery, talk of the broken lip in white pallor that cries tears of emotional tears of cottages that sail in Morocco in Tangiers
On the ***** streets of hunts, and jousting verbal catatonic piano brilliant hurt, balancing on the fire
That I can't see, and the fall feels cold as hell, and the terrapin stays in the recesses of the doves flying above them
Falling into the side of the dark moon, and the colored literature in the stammering men was a white, well that's how we had the grapevine in this haven
Lend it's heralding living, in the clothes exchanged for jazz, and talking about jazz like it is, for the black men forgiveness
White men are afraid of black men because of expression. And black men are afraid of white men because of the lack of oppression, or the means to tell it like it is with their white lies and white fears of the black man sitting on a bench with his hand in ice creams, it's freezing outside...

White men fear black men because of depression, dedicated to cause and effect
Ghostless towns of the crossbones soulless towns, and following the logic that makes common sense, to avoid the ghosts of their past in the ideas that need to be kept in the past
Maybe true love waits, but, it's not my barking neighborhood
And I hate women with attitudes, and dogs that don't latch the reciprocated greed in a bit of chalk and white flame, green platitude, because happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing
Where's her mom?
She's crying?
Where's her mother in the neighborhood suburbia?
Cashing in, and cashing out without her looks of financial fickle frenzy going into the cries of the howling crummy apartment, doesn't tell when the broken tears stop before they are complete
******* single torn child, an ultimatum for no limitations if your whiplashes the dashed chair, in the undulating tumescence of buildings in howling midnight in the secret garden
Sunflower you look toward the time, identikit caress these battered feelings in that we all know that ought to be found in the hearts that have lost them glow
We are lost in your glow monarchical, we are writing writhing souls looking for offensive erosion
And defensive simplicity in oil and water
In oil lamps burning midnight lamps inscribed in speakeasies, crowded in a quickie
Affixed I'm free to taste the reality of the hydrogen bomb, the best defense is the strongest offense

My dad is an enigma
He’s getting older but is
Healthier than guys 30 years younger than him
I’m convinced it’s because he drinks white wine from sun up to sun down and is performing a ritual of slow embalming

And his fridge has an assortment of salad dressings and Clamato juice
That were good in 2008
And he eats it saying
“It’s fine, best by dates are just marketing”

And god ****** if he doesn’t wake up kicking and content every day

A solid mass of boxed wine and 6 year old salad dressing
All over confident opinions and ***** jokes
Feeding foxes kibble in the backyard
Feeding his dogs liverwurst and chocolate ice cream
Crying in front of strangers at documentaries about people in countries he’s never been to

An obelisk of weirdness in a sea of pale mediocrity

And he’ll let you know
He wouldn’t want to be any other way.

happens tomorrow. I said it
and I meant it. But how many
times have I swallowed my words?
They taste like onions
and liverwurst. They go down
hard like a leather shoe. And twist
my uvula like a Rubik’s cube.

Submit

You’ve written your manuscript. You’ve figured
it out, all the key players you want. You’ve revised it
over and again, until it is covered with coffee stains. But it
still has more wrinkles than your mother-in-law. It will

never be perfect, fourth time over, more flaws! So you
stop what you’re doing and go take a walk. Maybe if
you get it out of your head for a day you might be able
to pull it together, make it look professional. Because once

you submit it, it’s in their hands. And they can reject all your efforts, the years you put in, the early mornings of coffee and sleepless nights, the bags of liverwurst that hang on a string
under your eyes, not to mention your dream of the Pulitzer Prize.