It gets better when one can’t remember
the you that you were before dementia, 
winter fires set with diseased ash timber,
iced tea sipped while admiring the river,

the gardens you tended over the years,
the woman you carried one life to next,
tennis shoes flung onto telephone wires
hanging there like ghosts through the cold and wet 

seasons, bottles uncorked, balls kicked and thrown,
insect bites, high school heroes, jobs, and pets,
hydrangea bushes pruned, weeds whacked, yards mown, 
full-bellied moon, the Sonoran sunsets,

all the shallow wrongs you did to others,
lost in that dense fog, hope-starved, smothered.

I want to
eat the heart of you
and now I want to
cry myself to sleep

Because of you
I’m right,
and you are not
but perhaps it’s me

I want to 
eat your cat
what do you think
of that

she’s cute
and for a shaker 
of salt and catsup
a meal divine

Did you know 
I hunt at night?
Did you know
I’m feral?

I am wild 
imaginings slant
bent my black
apparel

I want to
run naked in
your arms 
feel every mystery

damp forest fatigues
your office clothes.
small desk, phone
and how we

screamed to know
more than
the times allowed
in a minute and three

feral, wild, and free
little creatures
praying for time
praying for rain

where water rests
my mind not quite 
sound, throw a line
plumb it down

then rolling 360
in my bad ass haul
ask me if
I really give a fuck

my darling take 
your devotional
take the Quran
type an answer 

and hit send
I want to cool you
and talk with you
and smooth you

into love again
no
not no not arrogant
but asking

It’s me!  It’s me!
manic and nasty
with 2 balls
in the net

stopping up
the plumb line
reaching to
my depth

           for Edwin Arlington Robinson

I never worked in a town
called Utopia, but I walked
the streets of a dying city

notepad in hand, reading
(believing) the press of its
past, which was printed

on the bricks of buildings
that gave up the souls of
their street-level stores.

I bathed in local stillness,
lamented the lost lust, yet
never earning a cent.

(Laid off reporters sometimes
write for nothing, poets
for even less.) But you wrote

dirges at the Library of Congress
compensated, eventually elevated
to knight template of pedestrian poets.

(Based off of a group of folks acting out Shakespearean death scenes)

It starts with him

Dramatically stabbing himself with a foam dagger

Losing his balance and falling to his knees

Gasping for air and collapsing

Then another poisons himself

gripping his shirt and collapsing backward

She stabs another in the back

Watching her go limp at her feet

Everyone drops like flies

Collecting on a dusty windowsill

But I remain

alive as can be.

It was so dreadfully hot the second night of summer that most of the cicadas swelled up
And died. I was suprised the blood didn’t boil down the street, But the river ran steady
Down Limestone.
They washed it off by three, the court house and I left our lights on,
Our windows stared with the same wide-eyed shock as meeting at the intersection—
The lights pooled in glistening mirrors, Abject love and terror blurred between lines.
It’s absurd, really—I had half a face of make-up on wondering if I should give a fuck.
They built a stage ontop of it the next day, crowds were dancing and singing;
It feels wrong to write a eulogy.
Who am I to claim a grief so unknown? We can only assume the same shocked
Expression—a hand over our mouth; pathetic, humiliating humanity,
Without words. 
 

She poker-faced into the bussers’ five-card stud game, toddler in tow.

Another day
I did not earn

So much can be said at a ulogy.
Some day the taste of karma 
Will lay upon the lips of those 
Whom have such a heart as thine

When my spawn stand before those eyes
And those tongues that scarred their ears 
Like swords with piercing words through the night 
They will sprinkle salt over the ashes 
With the hope that the very taste of regret 
Lay lingering on those lips forever.