"do you think you truly know me?"
i hear you ask through the thick air surrounding us.
and i’m scared to say that,
to me, you are that small space in time before
the *** boils over the last cherry is picked
the first raindrop drips from the sky.
you’re the suspension that could be lived in
always hoping for perfection because
once occurring, the what could have been is broken
and that’s when i’m scared we’ll crack.
eggshell on tile floor and brittle dried clay
we wouldn’t be sharp glass but
a plaster wall with a single tear through the middle.
and i’m scared to tell you that when i saw the way
the cement under the bridge turned brown from the ruin of the rain,
the iron bleeding,
i thought of you.

People only ever want to ask me about
the poetry -
those verses about
busted up noses in outer space;
about the pros working
way down passed
the corner of Broad and Main;
about fistfights and hard, hard drinking.
But I built a flowerbed this weekend...
Twenty two tastefully irregular stone blocks
in a crescent moon shape,
filled with the blackest of soils.
The sweat of toil.
The digging.
The planting.
Exotic grasses. Asian maybe?
Purple and yellow flowers.
Zinnias or some **** thing.
All covered in a thick blanket of brown mulch.
It's a fine thing to have dirt on your hands
instead of blood.
No one ever asks me about flowerbeds.

Have you ever felt
you loved someone that
you hated the person?

Have you ever felt
you knew everything that
you knew nothing?

Have you ever felt
the overwhelming happiness and grace that
you manifested signs of sadness?

Have you ever felt
the burning heart inside
though you are soaked outside?

Feeling feelings,
i do not fully understand
what they are
but they color the blank sheet of life –