He says he misses the days when we used to do nothing.
I said those days are dead.
She says it's like a high-pitched whirring noise way back in her head.

Everyone's so salty now, trapped in a can of mixed nuts.

She says his stasis is driving her insane.
He says she's already wasted the better half of her brain.
I said it seems we're always caught between two extremes,
but I could give a flux.

Either way it is wasting.
Claim your right
  to keep copy from pasting,
thereby laden these words beneath stone
where they lie as they rot, still unknown

Or to say
  what to speak is sweet tasting,
each frame recite
              liberties; terms replaced-
                                           -til the thing
doesn't resonate whatsoever, like it had, let alone
retain echoes of intention from initial undertone.

Incubation of thought from at best a guess of hue...
Distraught by more; eventually confessed
and we implore
what is repressed must we explore,
attest the vast extent this mess was misconstrued.

              Til to not adore much, lest
we curse what bless us as we grew.

she calls me
she calls me & I don't answer
she calls to say her grandma
is failing fast & the twins
aren't sleeping & they're angry

come on over I say
I only have two calloused hands
& a sixty hour work week
bony feet & a bottle of
chocolate wine & I ask if she's ever
slept four on a full sized mattress

the boys will be fine I say
bring both elmos
a set of pastel paints
& you can run your fuzzy-sock feet
up my legs & warm your small hands
on my space heater heartbeat

grandma will see good Friday
& easter sunday I say
& probably even her own
late April birthday
barely audible as the boys snore
like miniature sawmills
through peppermint toothpaste
ringed open mouths

the last thing I feel before sleep
is her smile stretching across my
bare chest & her hands catch fire
& wander toward a cooler spot of skin

the dog moves from sun to shade

its master writes of the beating
a woman
takes

I saw
I can prove it

the size of that tick

does anyone
remind me
to eat

silhouettes running down brick walls like

flashfloods clinging to ***** mascara
where starstruck children run in mud
call me the eve of original sin
for the things I have seen and the places I've been

for ridges of ink etched in landscapes of skin
for heartbeats in hoodies saying lest we forget

in the valley of the shadow of death
they rest with hands crossed over their chests

I could hear the images being steadily streamed at me by sattalites of unknown origin saying the war is coming so be prepared

I went out on my front porch and saw a black cloud approaching my direction filled with foreigners and locust and black flags waving intentionally decrying "the end is nigh" as butterflies with black wings landed on the unattended garden in my front yard

I knew I was meant to be a part of this war (as indeed we all are; pick a side) so I went and got my weapons of destruction: my bazooka, my Gatling gun, my Bowie knife, my furious intentions

The war was reaching my doorstep, and I decided I would join it, but not before I sat down and ate a slice of carvel cake

I guess I have to let it be
Or let it be the end of me

the boy
whose first
computer
was pain

they put something in his food
to make
him drink…

-

one animal
out of how
many

-

marries

-

to avoid
god