Hear those Friday beats drop
from hard to soft
as seconds elongate,
minim rests to pause
until all too belatedly
you are freed to remember

I had a full head of hair and you.

When I woke I had neither,
as the grey frost light
scoured my eyes true awake
I found other lies of the subconscious
hadn’t taken as hard
as your pretend shape

no real surprise, I guess,
but that doesn’t make me hate it less

The limited palette of the January riverbank,
#nomakeup #nofilter
just the burst capillaries and thread veins
bare

A tired earthy visage,
still allures the blackbird and wren
who never truly got the hang
of saying when
and feast past decency

The idea is to recuperate
and re-emerge fresh and green
but truth seems more like this molasses mud
that hold boots firm

Today I began to hem,
rein in the threads that grow free
when left unstitched

I ticked a set of books
and, though I love my charges,
my heart hurt

My language is another,
my experience of this globe
unutterably different,
though geographically the same

And I want to help them play the game, I do,
but I don’t trust those
telling me how to

My instincts,
honed by humans I trust, unless
I’m lost in my own Truman Show,
show me the right way to go,
divergent  from this current shitshow

The pedagogy of care
is somewhere way, way
over there

The fat, the grease,
of these in between days
stills my pen a little

So even if I wrestle
with another monumental year tick,
like the crack of doom

I look at the stuff in the fridge
and shrug

The existential crisis can wait
til the brie is done
and the crackers
have gone soft

What’s in your glass, huh?

What’s your poison
with the noise and the noise
in and out of the head?

What swirls, has legs
and kicks like a mule?

Fool juice, nana called it,

but **** me
I could use some fooling

Today’s slow cooked ragu
has a lot of familiar ingredients
but spun a little different

The devil in the pork grease
gave me such a wink
I lost my place in the recipe

Liberal with salt, chili flakes,
zest and anything,
this quixotic cook’s hand
throws much freer than weekdays

I only lack the fat slack
of pappardelle for this,
as they were out at the supermarket

Penne will have to do

Red is the rose
and the polish on my toes

Red is the kiss on my cheek
and my dress– truly chic

Red is also blood
and bodies in the mud

Red is red
Love and dead.