Slipping slightly sideways 

Suffering is a skill. I am
downstairs in the cold,
balancing deformed feet
on the scale, throwing up
water. I don’t need to paint
my nails, they are already
this fascinating cyan. I am
blanching at every touch,
a preview of a ghost, pressured
to dissolve. I stopped blinking,
my pupils expanding to catch
the visual snow, ice blue irises
burning. The supplements
mimic salvation, there is no
real bypass to avoid this 
devastation. Its devotion,
entrenched by image catalogs
and spreadsheets, these white
hands grip each digit tighter
as months pass. I am dedicated
to misery, locked in rituals, fingers
clamped around my upper arm.
The skin pales with the imprint
of a shackle, my own claw marks.
When the blood doesn’t return
it heralds something malign. 

I become so enamored
With the pot that I address
It anthropomorphically:
My dear pot
Your enamel is a bit chipped
But your soul seems intact
Your lack of bacon
And portly shape engender
Only a smidge of R E S P E C T
Though that slice of ginger was nice
And your bottom line of brown sugar
Carmelized with garlic wafting
Through the air like hookah smoke
Sent me half way to heaven

But heaven is only a lonely place
Without a friend, so Mr. Pot & I
Spend the evening in the warm embrace
Of human intercourse and, of course,
We become occupied with the scarlet life
Of the Octopi

It’s a feeling
a power
a shower

a wind
a storm
a sweet

a treat
sudden hug
my feelings for you

a sudden halt
that says
too wild for me

Are you busy?
Can you talk?

Do you feel
emotionally catered to?

No, no. It’s just me asking. 
I’ve had a few to drink, eaten 
less than I should’ve. 

Do you keep a 
regular journal? 

Does that feel good,
that emotional release? 

I wish I were more a writer,
like you. The way your brain works. . .

No, I couldn’t do it. It takes more,
means being emotionally evolved.

Honesty? 
Yeah, I would struggle with that. 

No, no, I’ll let you go. You’ve got
better things to do. I won’t bother you
any longer. 

Yeah, talk to you soon. 
Bye, McKenna. 

Since you,
    the man who showed me how
    to fry an egg over-medium,
    no longer knows how
    to chop up a zucchini,
    to your wife’s liking anyway,
    then I will show you how.

Since I,
    a man who has resisted
    confrontation since he was a boy,
    even earlier, if you count coming out
    when my mom wanted me to,
    not quite when I myself was ready,
    is now being asked
    to be a villain,
    then I will be one.

Since we,
    as a group, a family,
    wittled down
    to the core essentials,
    have decided to put our collective
    head in the sand, hoping against hope
    that the wave bearing down on us,
    in fact does not exist,
    then please excuse me
    if I step to the side and watch the carnage,
    refusing to believe that I’m not
    also drowning.
    

It was the middle of Kansas

        Pain under my right shoulder

        If you read
        my poem
        about being 
        in the Sinks,
        in darkness,
        discovering
        that Old Seventy,
        in it flow,
        is poetry.
—–
         If you were there,
          with me,
          come outside now,
          into the light
          and see life,
          smell life,     
          touch it,
          hear its singing,
          and feel its pain,
          do not doubt it is
          a poem unborn.
—–
          Fescue has endured
           rain until it is 
           overripe.
           Yesterday
           and today the sun,
           begged to be the poem
            of hay.       
   

You were the wind,
breathing life into my ice-cold body,
after a long winter of darkness.

My fear was like the frost on the ground.
In the morning sun it slowly melted,
while my heart dared to beat cautiously.

You came with spring.
With flowers that sprouted,
and birds that sang.

With hope as a compass,
you became my light.
Winter was over,
and the midnight sun lit up the sky.
Finally I could see again.

A fly on the pigsty
gave a little hop,
trying to get a peek at what
was in the piggy’s slop. 

A wasp flew over
and the fly fell in.
Now he’s a-swimming
From the chinny-chin-chin.