Artisan

I wish I were an artisan of sorts

That way I’d have something to fall back on and make myself something of use

That way I could say I knew my father and his father

I build-up their legacy and sell it to feed myself

That’s the way it’s supposed to be I think

To pass things on to the next world

Your starter dough

Your craft

Something…

What will I give beside carbon dioxide?

I could use my bare hands 

Just to fucking tear something down

Waifu

Why do you obsess over your made-up story ideal in your head?

You should obsess over your delusions and how to be here now

The stench coming from your mouth 

J-pop in your head can’t save you from that

How does this happen to a human

Creating fictionalized women and superimposing them into this temporal plane

It won’t help you face the pain

You have to face the stench and wash it away

Clean out your mind

Embrace reality

Your fantasy life will fuck you

But you will still be alone

Amish Confidential

I ate among the Amish

They called me a cripple

It was jarring but true

They had sexy cologne in the bathroom

You would think it wouldn’t make sense but it did

We paid them money as tourists so they showed us their buggies

They had a trampoline outside of a door to nowhere

We  each took turns leaping 

I couldn’t tell if they liked that or not

I remember the pickle vinaigrette dressing

And brown sugar meatloaf

Chicken noodles and biscuits

All the damn pie

Most of all the corvette tucked away in the barn

Your secret is safe with me…until today 

The Joy of Baking

I never tried baking because I know I will fail

Fractions, cups, and spoons

Letting me understand that I don’t know heat and convention

You can’t hide from the lacking

Those who can’t rise don’t have enough leaven

But I know all about slipping and scoring

I am incomplete like lattice

I burn much too easy

If I could just find a way to make the sum of this whole

Even improper

Find a way to taste sweet

Although you are bitter

I Never Meant to Leave You, Susquehanna

You called my laugh rusty

Now every time I laugh you come up in my mind

I felt so stuck and alone when we met

It felt so good to be adored and talk poetry

You were much more talented than me

You still adored me and I will never understand why

We shared cups of tea and imagined the Susquehanna

Your lazy eye, and my pain searching for the sky on the ground

I always knew that you fly away to be more talented and become more beautiful

I just thought we’d still be connected

I thought we’d still have tea stains of us on each other

I flew away before you had a chance and you never talked to me again

I suppose I deserved that

I still laugh rusty and dry like a leaf on the front porch

I still think of you

I think of you and the bends of the Susquehanna 

Like Clooney

You don’t like untold stories

The heat of my anger reveals the ink

Written in tear tracts

I know it looks silly

I could have a son by now 

but I drowned him in a stream of consciousness

It’s for the best

The earth eats the poor for fuel

I imagined my ethics in beating hearts

Knowing that this probably means I will die alone in a state home

I just need to lose my utility

It shouldn’t be too hard 

Blood Oranges

Carry my body to the sea

So you won’t have to worry

Divert my blood to the soil

Blood Oranges in your bowl

Hello girls, I am sorry I never met you

Take this lemonade 

It’s all I have

It doesn’t need sugar

Search for the family I left behind

I never found them

I don’t think they ever existed, to be honest

I’m glad my body has allowed the juice to run down your chin

Salt and Sweet

I have such a long way to go

To prove that I can move

I just really want some fucking pie

Just a bit of the sweetness

Just to wash the mud out of my mouth

I’ll drink saltwater just to fill my belly

I know it will make the journey less likely

I’ve just been so hungry

It will be years before they let me move

My insides are dry and cracked

I’m not going to make it

I’m just dreaming of strawberries and cream

Quitting Dying

You smoke cigarettes to prove to yourself that you already dead

You created me out of smoke rings

I live like a wisp and an apparition

I smell of tobacco and I am  stained nicotine just like you

When you left I had to learn to breathe oxygen

I coughed as my lungs turned pink for the first time

I didn’t know I was meant to grow and expand

I feel brittle out in this world without you

Now you ask to bum smokes out of the breast pocket above my heart

I can’t, I am saving my fire to burn down the house we lived in

So you’re dying now

I think I have always been dying, I still can’t breathe

Gears of Midnight

Could I bring enough to make the world stop?

I want to throw an ax right in the gears

Just to make the spinning come to an end

Although I think only my world would be affected

I would take it.

Just to know that my life would’ve been of some consequence

Stopping is so sweet

Rest

Water and air stuck in the sky.

The elements feel me now

Stuck in place like a mobile over a cradle

Finally it’s okay to cry out into the night.