they say a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down
so we bought my mom some cookies
to help the shots of morphine slide down her throat

they say pain is never permanent
so we all and hope and pray
that she'll go in peace

they say we should live in the moment
so we all sit around her bed and laugh
hoping we'll make a better memory than the last

they say it is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all
but every time i watch her struggle to breathe
i think it would've been easier if i had never loved her at all

then i think losing her wouldn't be as hard

That I always saw you in a white studio apartment
In the big city with its slanted houses surrounded
By the crooked, recycled fences;
That walls as big as mirrors can make your shivering
Thighs come off like sophisticated weaponry, or
That I had been on drugs when I begged you.

Did you know that the square root of any number
Is less real than what we saw on the television, or
That I believed in numbers and you taught me
Where the alphabets could never agree upon anything, or

That I’m not writing this for you. I can assure that you are
Dead and gone, the way hearing Snow Patrol for the first time
Can never be revisited.

Did you know that my drapes still moved like your body
Danced ruefully beneath them, like a ghost in the machine
Or a ghost machine, or a breeze, perhaps a spot of indigestion.
Did you know that I could never let that specter go, or
That I have now.

The silence of solitude
sings to me at night;
soul-satisfying
words whispered
for my ears only
while the house sleeps.
I draw from the well
of my self, and savor
each drop thirstily.
The starving beast within
gnaws at every fresh
crust of aloneness,
melted butter soothing
scalded hands,
until my rumbling gut
is sated, and is at peace
with itself and the world.

My pen just won’t translate clichés
For one reason or another.
It would rather ****** the page
Than aid in the smothering
Of youth, bridge the gap of old age,
Take mass graves and cover them, and
Would rather fade into disgrace
Than find a remedy to the blubbering.

Because this pen was not designed
To draw rainbows from hurricanes,
It would rather commit every crime
Than sketch new hues to the stain glass
Windows of anarchy and rhyme;
Rather commit arson daily

Than dig up the past for all to see
But none to find.
And one day soon you will race past the
Apple Store with its blaring screens,
The calamity of another mise en scéne
With nothing new to say but alas,
You can always find my pen in dreams
That make burning sense
Before they come to pass.