just three words
set upon the desk
a slight lean reflects the back
side in the mirror
I want to get drunk for the first time
Just so I can stop this feeling
I want to come to your house
Just so I can argue with you
I want to breath in
Just so I can scream it all out
I want to feel it all at once
Just so I can never feel this pain again
I want to let you take advantage of me
Just so I have a real reason to cry
I want you to be here
I want you to see me
I want you to love me
Like I’m your child
The produce aisle told me
About society and it’s tendencies
Every apple smooth and without blemish
Perfectly crisp and sweet
Technology rapidly improved
To bring lavish to the feast
Indeed, they were bred that way
Clones made by grafting branches
Genetically, deliciously identical
Their wild sister is tart
Spotted with hyperpigmentation
She is small, uneven
Food fit to rot
Though she is the source
Of all the flavor we’ve bought
The same came be said
For every fruit I scrutinize
As I push my cart along
Beautiful, perfect and
Genetically weak
Disease prone, cloaked in pesticide
And erosion to survive
Indeed, they were bred that way
Not only in magazines do we see
What we think beautiful means
No wonder I am unhappy
With my mirror image
The truth is hidden
By a disease we cannot see
And that no pesticide can reach
Just like in the fruit we buy
We crave perfection
Our own infectious blight
Indeed, we were bred that way
Bliss forgot how to bury
people I left. Someone’s dreams
kept the lamp full blue. They say
I vanished into laughter—
a closed river, caught water.
I still wait at the event
horizon in the moon’s dark.
Never alone, out of hope.
Out of blame, I no longer
hum between unopened glass
panels. Always the same, I
still wait at the warning shaped
like a kicked-in door, my room—
pictures without walls, a ceiling.
Poetry was the silverfish I took the life of a few minutes ago
that paralyzed me with a fear of realization that I was alone in this situation.
2am, everyone asleep, no one to call,
just me and a bundled up shirt
letting out a war cry as I lunged for my white wall
cringing at the idea of a squashed bug imprinting itself on the paint
It’s not like the little guy has ever wronged me,
but intruders are intruders.
I’m still shaking
尚も (Naomo) * * *
* * * Japanese (adv.): yet even now
I love it when her quiet hands tend the broth.
I drop in beans,
and Ryuichi invites her with the sake wine
warm, fruity, sweet—
a katana for my head.
—and birds flown drop seed for forest green kyūri,
our cucumbers bobbing in the bubbling donabe pot
for our nabemono, a group-soup swimming
with beef, noodle, and cabbage.
He has eyes for her.
I am still with her silence, it is moonlit
where each player-flavor in the pot will savor—
distinct, planted, sitting as planets
in free fall, orbiting the sun where
her mouth rests
surrounded by silky towels at center.
We roll out wide, swoop closely
as herons scooping fish.
She falls through space, we follow.
Bad Luck And Lousy Scripts
-After a line from Killing Moon by Jo Nesbo
Of all the Tiki Bars I’ve inhabited, this is the most adored.
Under the thatch of the lanai, my heart,
blasted in the storm of summer’s children,
chewing on choral pedestals where sea creatures
sun themselves in the cove.
I drank rum from a coconut through a hole bored into it,
sucking out every last bit of pulp blended with pineapple
until silky smooth and deadly.
And I took a hand in mine
and I said something like
– Yes –
And he said something like
– Yes –
And we hummed a song
– Together –
and the most frequently asked question in town
answered with bad luck and lousy scripts
all written at the drag show on the strip
after a couple of doubles down
and a beer goggle babe who left you hanging
and empty in the back seat of your own sedan.
after Shaun Turner
draw a Lithium bath
hot as you can stand it
stream a brain-easy show
fill a fresh bowl with popcorn
make a plan
a list
an omelet
a poem
wash the moss off the patio rug
let it cure and stiffen
on the driveway pavement
all the infernal afternoon
read just the headlines
watch news with no sound
spanish subtitles might
read more gracefully
shift the balance of the laundry load
for the fifth time, drape yourself across
the washer to see if you can coax it
through the spin cycle to the buzzer
or throw it out the window
to smother the dumpster fire
spit-roasting the world
while fascists make s’mores
