Why does it seem like
the older I get the less 
I know?

I don’t know why bad things
happen to good people
I don’t know why drugs and 
alcohol exist and have the
ability to destroy lives
I don’t know why some
people are just plain mean
I don’t know why there are illnesses
like cancer, mental illness, and 
countless others that cut 
beautiful lives short

I do know that life contains both
pain and wonder and sometimes
you just have to sort through the pain
and make yourself see the wonder
I know that life often shows it’s beauty 
through friendships
and the gift of friends helps
balance the pain of life
I DO know that people were not meant
to take this journey of life alone
and an important part of life
is to cling to those you love
and hopefully help them navigate
the beauty and pain of the journey

Winter number thirty-one chewed me up

I called my mother, asked her how it felt

asked her if I too was becoming dust

just lint left behind on a suede chair when-

When I watched Jennifer’s Body, I fear

I related to the monster more, eating

to feel beautiful, taking big bites to

not hurt, but leaving them all bleeding out-

Outside ladies from the church flag me down

tell me they’ve missed me for all these long years

It’s always at Save-a-lot, I swallow

my secrets, small town, good husband, sweet girl-

Girl who was a slut for so long, I’m not sure

that anyone believes me, their eyes locked

up just like the church at night, October

rain beating our snare drum backs just after-

After the car crunched up pop-can like in

the hill it sat on, where Jesus peaked from

wooden frame, eyes on me so carefully

until the morning came so I could flee-

Flee some friends, I’ve soaked their hugs in too long

then cut them off as soon as they stumbled

from a pedestal so high that no man

could ever reach it, I knew that beneath-

Beneath the bitch I conjured was church girl,

highlighter in hand, eyes lingering on

the pretty girl at bible camp, her hair

swaying, soft curtain, across my arm, it-

It was easy to disguise when his gloss

coated eyes cast down did the very same

I always felt like I was comprised of

more pieces than everyone else seemed to-

To be scattered pebbles, no one discerns

which ones among the bank do not belong

So, I’ve laid out by the creek, mud coated,

skin pending, algae slick, ‘til I come clean-

Clean like an agate shined, displayed for all,

no longer petrified, afraid of the fall

Hunter

Sky is still dark now
Soon sun will rise, expose prey
A chill in the air
Gold and orange leaves on ground
Gun loaded, he is ready.  

Drunk

Perpendicular
Then seven whiskeys later
Parallel on filthy floor
Puke in hair, not a good thing.
Let’s get you up and go home.  

The Bar

Bar smells like urine
Cigarette smoke burns the eyes
Bar flies stare at tube
Nature this ain’t, that’s for sure.
Better go outside for air.

scrubs along the road
sashay with soft sea breezes   
bloom saffron and sage                 

Is there a graceful way to sidestep the story?

What started months ago as a slight nagging
catch when I fully raised that arm now
pops like a knuckle when I
spread my wings and try to
open my chest, a Tootsie Pop ball
jammed into a sesame encrusted
California Roll socket. 

It must happen to others, right?
There will doubtless be dutiful
follow-up questions. Yes. It was all
consensual. Just a weird angle. We were
problematic in every way but this. I just
gave my joints too much credit, thinking I could
turn the elastic tricks of my youth.

                 “48 yo divorced female
                  presents with complaint of
                  pain and stiffness in L shoulder
                 due to ‘advanced yoga stretch’
                 Anxious demeanor and
                 patient’s BMI belie
                 claim of athletic endeavor as cause.
                 Refer to ortho. Consult with psych?”

Scar tissue does not argue, just
volunteers, laying itself down, clinging to
vulnerable connective ligaments, our
thinnest layers, before we know we need
protecting, creates passive resistance to
protest reopening our chest to
future injury too soon. 

If hell is knowing what it is to touch you

Then I will burn a thousand times over

Char my very skin until

My fingers could no longer feel the sensations of you

How I would give up my soul

Just to be near you

To see the world through the tremendous 

Brown of your eyes

A ghost that follows you into the hereafter

There with you

As the psyche is separated for its journey

I your guide to the Asphodel Meadows

You and I together

Within the same embers

That is our love 

But I want to be your wild

Netflix is full of movies about fathers
in arm chair recliners watching tv,
beer after beer in brown necked bottles.

I watch the movies
loving the son and hating the father
and filling a glass
and filling a glass. And watching tv
and watching the glass. And pouring a glass.
and pouring a glass. And welling the tears
and barring the tears.

But this is not my life.
It is only me talking in my sleep
and you wondering what language I speak
to men on tv before I come to bed.

The shortest distance between two people is a story. –Patti Digh

Oh, the stories we create
Myths with which we relate
Hide the messiness inside
The times when we have lied

Oh, the stories we repeat
To keep our lives so neat
Hide the messiness inside
The times our souls have died

Oh, the stories we lament
We said what wasn’t meant
Hide the messiness inside
The times we should have tried

Oh, the stories that we cherish
Of those already perished
Hide the messiness inside
The times we should have cried

Let loose the mess already
Be wild and brave and steady
Anew create all your stories
Full of sorrows, joys, and glories

The “brilliant” minds that decided,
for themselves,
that Pluto was not really 
a planet
did so with a sample size
of nine

Nine!

Nine planets in our solar system

And the sample size
drops to only eight
if you believe them

Defining what makes something
like an entire planet
based on eight or nine examples?

Pffff

I, for one, will not go along with
the wretched hive of scum and villainy
known as the International Astronomical Union,
who so abused poor Pluto,
spinning out there in the outer solar system,
minding her own damn business

What kind of “scientist”
thinks he can define
the parameters of a planet
with only eight or nine
examples to consider?

The hubris-driven,
“let’s-do-science-by-consensus” kind

The kind that push agreement
over evidence

In other words,
not scientists at all

Poor Pluto–treated
so harshly by
Earth-bound morons

And we can say that,
because the sample size
for Earth-bound morons,
based on abundant evidence,
is, as we all know, in
(at least) the tens
of millions

And that’s us being nice,
unlike those bullies at
the International Astronomical Union