We look at a statue and feel uncomfortable. I am backwards light, which isn't as cool as it sounds. Later, after I watch him eat his fake meat, he decides that he already knows everything there is to know about me based on a conversation we had about third grade. Because I'm afraid of change, I wear the quilted pants emblazoned with pale peach skulls and crossbones. From a distance they look like geometry. From up close, well, you can see what they look like up close. |
Time is a series of pellets. The gerbil that sniffs them reacts by scratching his neck ferociously. It's my own fault I'm anywhere. When the rain in my mind begins, I don't run for cover. The pellets get wet and form a death paste. I stand there holding a cardboard box over my head. Or, more specifically, I have been standing there for weeks. Since after it rained. |
I said a marsh of words a swamp which brings me back to the pants arranging knick knacks on a sideboard while I defend my rebound relationship with a sex addict from Tucson do you know that there are caverns in here tunnels trap doors labyrinths I won't make a porn with you won't discuss a thing by candlelight |
Do they not have those dogs anymore? The neighbors with the toy dogs. The new season meant they'd yip when I walked by, exploding out their tiny door like cannoned rats. The green mattress of spring with its calling trees, its antidote to heartbreak. But I refer rather than believe. I have faith that I'll keep thinking the same things. Spring tries to sweep my shadow into its maw. The good people of earth want to help me but I don't believe in this anymore. |
People I can't stand get drunk in sport sandals or make old-timey photographs of themselves in costume as if anyone cares about who they want to be. I leash and coddle baby rabbits for a living, feed stranded earthworms with a bottle I make myself from a hollow needle. Curl up each night with the world's favorite books, lead the talentless on a covert crying mission across the Midwest. Coming to a mediocre city near you. Every fucking thing about me is designed to melt your heart. |
You stretch your arms out to crucify yourself but then change your mind. There is little to no weeping. I've made a pact with myself to not be crazy, but then there is that tree in the distance, clinging to itself and solid as a leg. Small dogs creep around the periphery of foliage. The nun in my head is of little to no use. The sounds of her lilies are like paper hands. When I wake up, it is to the white new air, no curtains, pedals outside spinning a cathedral. |
Acne forms a delicate design, like pins in a map. It's important to know where stuff happened. My Nissan is broken. My dog won't stop barking. Everything would be ok if I could just rig up some paper lanterns and find a long extension cord and had the right kind of birthmark: a map of where to find you since the day I was born. |