My mind is a thousand rooms lit on fire,
a fuse crawled on every window,
pins and needles holding up posters of blank faces,
for the person that belonged in that body is not the same as the memory.
My mind is the intersection at dawn,
lazy cars drowning thoughts,
red lights on all four corners,
until the light turns into a green frenzy.
My mind wisps like tendrils of coffee,
sweet bitter dreams,
that never does quite come alive
when it only leaves a faint taste.
My mind cannot erase the doors you walked in,
or the smiles that blew my way,
and the air you scented in your perfume
of hay and horses from your Saturday hobby.
My mind likes to pretend that I hated you,
that I despised how we sat two desks away and we never said hello, even though it’s been three years since we’ve spoken a word.
I’m doing all that I can to not crumble when I see you have moved on.
My mind constantly replays that night at the football game,
and the conversation we had a week later that said
“I don’t want to say it. But we can’t be friends anymore.”
It broke me like a summer hurricane.
My mind doesn’t know how to let you go.
It, and I, are having a hard time
finding something to fill the space
you have left
in my mind.

You'll live your life from grief to grief:
   Rarely you'll be relieved.
But, fear not, your strife will be but brief
    Till you yourself are grieved.

O.O

.
Slight words and mumbles
Mount, quiet walks together,
Arriving places unwelcomed,
Cooking for one in a kitchen
Together, over filling glasses
Of wine and wordless smiles,
Leftover stories, stale company
Endless invites for new friends,
Road trips without bend, song,
The black comedy of dull, plain,
Platitudinous days.

You smelled of life
And hope and a future ahead.
I smelled of ennui instead.

You took me to your bed
And ****** with my head.


F.Z.**N

A plain woman in a checkered dress
Trapped on a windy hill with a man whose every thought
Was crops and cows and bad weather coming,

You cooked every meal on time,
Served lunches exactly
When the hands aligned.
At the stroke of noon.

You drove "flagger,"
Moving trucks and tractors
From field to field,
Raised two boys and two girls...
Buried one in shock and disbelief;
And then moved on.

I know your secret.

On that swept-neat farmstead
Under the green roofs
Beside the red barn
In your white walls,
The rational order,
The unnatural neatness
Belied you.

Lydia,
Woman of the Romantic Heart,
You of the secret desire and passion...
Beside your chair in that sparse house
Stood a stack of novels,
Romance in easy reach,
An escape from harsh reality.

Ahhh.
The stolen moments!
The bliss of passion!
Handsome strangers ready
To rescue you from wind-blown land.

What guilty ecstasies you stole
Came five miles from the post office,
Ninety-five cents a copy,
Wrapped in brown paper,
Tucked in a galvanized milk pail.

I’m tired
tired of trying to be strong
of not being allowed fall
on the ground and cry
for as long as
I need
working and living
with those who are thinking
everything that’s wrong is so right
leaving me to look forward to
alcoholism and depression
in no particular order
the powerless letters I carve glow in inappropriate spaces
withered clouds humming a fluttered contribution to naught
I wear a jacket, once loose and hungry, begging for release
from the corrective lumbering of my contrived conceit
this is not the girl I was looking for but
this is the girl that I found
my tumbledown baby
waiting to drown
beneath my warm butter breath
a half sunken death
of drunken larceny
and all the while I am growing
out of the conventions of relationship
the paper smoothed, green,
drink and drugs exercised
in a push for contaminated revenue
maybe this is why
the coffee tastes like **** today
and all I write are
three white wisps
the smile wiped off a blue faced sky
ignored by the Berghaus couples
matched down to their laces
each distraction disguises the bestiary that is civilisation, ironically splashed upon an earth that, like me,
has no interest, that grows bored waiting
for the next great extinction
the helium has already had enough, every party breath inhaled in jest lost to space forever,
it won't be back could I un-dream it all
I would, in less than the spurt of my heart,
and wrap it all in the bloodied rags of
your disgraceful god

Rain, thumping down,
Pressing grey prints,
Ocean, tears the sky,
Drowning with drinks
Of blue eye and salt
Taste, rude earthling
Song, takes too long.
Must I go on walking,
In gurgle paths spray,
Soaked, silted, ******,
Drabs colours running
In days raging of rain?