Wrought-wide eyes from catching clouds on the safety of our backs
Who's lifting who dried-up with the fossils, tucked away at Jack's
Can you capture the oily maze of Perla, Gary, Glen AND Dee?
We should cap the treasure trove. Just one shell. Alright... three.

Passenger mats drowned long ago in quartets of sandy shoes
They're coming around to dukkah, but beetroot's an ongoing feud.
We'll find our way back to purple-brown after art class in year nine
Until then just squeeze my hand when they see "****" every time.

Curse words stowed beneath our necks, cellared with the red wine.
Pull binoculars out in twenty years to seek parrots in sun spines.
Trick them into dusking walks, the promise of ice cream at Kateri
Squealing across Eileen's golden grain, I hope they pick Rasberry.

He swirls the sand beneath him and burrows his sweet brow.
She builds bridges for fairies and writes names in stick-crayon.
I'll say they're just like us, one day when they can stand it least
Until then their just like you dreamboat, floating down my east.

I met this girl at the bus top across from ironhouse condiminums on west broadstreet, and we started talking and I took the wrong bus just to talk to her. I didn’t even have the right amount of change to give to the bus driver. I needed $1.50 and I was thirty-five cents short. So I walked up the asile and asked the cute girl with raybands and lavish brunette hair if she had some change. She smiled and gave me a quarter and a dime. Excellent, I’m in. After I gave the bus driver the bus fair, I leaned back in a chair and I talked to her about literature, writing, reading, poetry. Her name was Anna and her favorite book happened to be “Catcher and The Rye,” she had stacks of notebooks from grade school until now, and she journaled each day in the morning.

We stopped at Willow Lawn and I said: bye. I recommended to her some novels and I wrote down my email on a ripped out pocket book journal page. I passsed it to her, saw her hand close over the note. And then, as I got off the bus, noticed she crumpled up the note.

Later on, I came across a free sandwich, some bowls, a coors light, and a deep tissue massage (my friend is a massage therapist in training; half black; half white; #winning). So imagine being twisted and getting a deep tissue massage with creamy oil lotion. She had this cushioney tan bed to lay down on and relax.

The two girls Rachel and Rachael sang with perfect pitches these great lyrics. We smoked sticky icky *** from a bowl and a plastic orange ****. I pulled up on the carbueretor and vacummed the mushroom cloud of smoke into my lungs, sending radioactive pleasure into my body. A bowl and stem apparatus. Mouth piece. A water pipe or a **** was smokey jazz brass saxophone. The black gas washed by murky water and condensed icecubes sent me spiraling down.

So, I ended up riding on the GRTC bus, smacked sauce, and I wrote all these great ideas, and weird *** descriptions of the bus interior. Went home, changed clothes, swag black VCU shades with neon yellow sides, and a fresh Kanye West Bear shirt with Japanese eyes and shutter sunglasses. I walked down Shafer street and came up to the compass and Hibbs hall. Outside there was a crowd of people freestyle battling, and I enterered the contest. I became a compeitior and I was the challenger, there was no champion yet. I won one round, lost a round, and then went O.T. sudden death overtime. The whole time I was still high, I was carrying around a VCU Cary Street Gym aluminum water bottle with a black insulated sleeve. So I ended up losing, my friend tapped my shoulder and I said whatup and we walked to subway, and I got a foot long Buffalo Chicken sandwich.

We went to his friend’s townhouse on Main and North Harrison Street. I drank a cup of Pineapple and Rasberry Burnetts *****. We went down Cary street, and took a right on Pine Street and then we went to this Delta Chi Fraternity House. There was a kalidescope discoball with rainbow lights. A bar serving jungle juice from an orange gatorade water cooler. I silded my way into the dance floor and turned around and say this girl who I knew. She was someone I taught tennis to when I was an instructor in high school. Needless to say she got extremely attractive. So I was dumbstruck and trying to process all this **** in my mind, and I told her straight up, “Aiight we’re dancing.” And wow. I taught her to stroke the ball well from the tennis lessons. She wore these pink ******* bunny ears and a white dove cardigan and a black halter top, with a dark mini skirt.

Remember how it started...
Rasberry mocha
....Postcard from Chicago
Making love on the lifeguard tower
How we we soaked the sheets
.... in your apartment...that
Blistering summer

Pedaling through sunshine
To find the largest brews
...Reading in bed
Making a home...

Our kitten burrito
...Lazy afternoons
Spooning to football
...on the sofa

Your Masters show
Sundays in the print room
...The giant press
It took both of us to turn the wheel

My favorite friend
My favorite laugh
How I fell so much more in love with you
...each time you sang to me...
{****** voice}
......'Mon Cheri' Amore'

Our nephews...so tiny in our hands
... Christmas gingerbread
And quarters on the living room floor
Standing in the rain for hours to help a stranger;...78 bites later

I never felt more beaUtiful than
that day// in that dress// I do and I did
How we fit so perfectly/puzzled
...but we still fell to pieces

I used to hear her in the night, screaming from her nightmares, wandering around downstairs, watching TV with her mixed drink(s) on one side and her orange salt rock lamp on the other. That salt rock lamp was supposed to give off “good energy”, but I wasn’t really sure how much of that was true considering the circumstances. A salt rock lamp can’t free you. Neither could medication. She used to tell me; survival, is just getting through the day. I listened. I tried to save her myself, but alcohol is more powerful than I am. It’s more powerful than anything I could have said to her. It was a year from last semester, when my best friend started spiraling out of control. I had lived with her for the past three years, this is my fourth. We became instant friends when we both saw each other at UVM. She always seemed so happy on the outside, but I soon started to see the hollowness inside of her. She had gone through so much in her life, and I thought of her as strong. I still do. But for her it wasn’t that easy to call herself strong and just let it all go, she didn’t know how to handle it, until alcohol became her way. I never understood why she did the things she did that year. Did you know she drank a whole handle of Rasberry Smirnoff in two days? It was sickening. I didn’t know what to do, because at a certain point I couldn’t even look at her. I know that sounds harsh, and maybe I shouldn’t have left her alone in the apartment to be swigging even more of yet another flavored handle of *****. I just couldn’t talk to her without hurting her feelings. She is really sensitive, like an open wound and everything hurts her. I wasn’t trying to, but she was so uncovered and vulnerable. Everything I said either went one ear and out the other, or stung her like salt in a deep cut. It got hard to live with sometimes. I love her so much yet I was uselessly sitting there watching her drown in her invasive misery, destroying herself and leaving me to watch her ashes build up more and more in front of me. She isolated herself on purpose, lost a lot of friends for a while. I tried but I couldn’t stop her, no one could. She was so far gone, like I lost my best friend whom I couldn’t recognize anymore, and I missed her. It became a routine, coming home to her drunk and sometimes crying hysterically on the floor or on the couch, or in her room, whether there was even a reason or not. She fell apart. I told her my thoughts, gave her my advice, but if words helped everyone all the time, no one would feel the pain that you sometimes have to feel. I wanted to tell her it was okay, but then I didn’t know how to anymore. All I could do was shove my phone in her face already calling a school therapist for her. At first, she looked at me with a blank stare. With tears dripping down her cheek, I knew she didn’t want the help, but she knew she needed it. She didn’t deny it. To my surprise, she didn’t fight it. She took the phone, made an appointment, and started her journey to recovering.

Pulpy and juicy
to the touch

Rasberry to the taste
it bleeds

down my chin
and blossoms on my shirt

as my heart bleeds
for you

similar to this pen
that bleeds bad verse

all over the pages
like fall leaves

brittle
and ephemeral

Whit Howland © 2020