Blog Archives

dreams

12/1/2023

Upon receiving
her final treat-ment
she opened her mailbox
to find
a card
from a billionaire

"Follow your dreams"
it proclaimed
on paper made
of elephant tusks and
Dodo shells

With two grinning
mannequins
showing her how
easy it was
to
not be poor
or sick
or ugly

only
morons
follow
nightmares

smartest girl

12/1/2023

You’re the smartest girl
I ever dated
you said
As you handed me
A pile of shit

And I took it.

mortar

12/1/2023

You kept stacking bricks
in our wall
10 feet high
Without enough mortar to hold it
up
(I asked you for more
and you nodded that you heard me)

I could barely see the top of your head at
one point
And I realized then
You weren't
building
a wobbly ladder
but rather
A sturdy disaster

With more and more
mortar
added
to ensure
the explosion
would shatter my bones
but not enough to crack
the hand mirror
that you had taped
to your wrist

the edge

12/1/2023

The turtle
At the end of the world
Watched
As everyone disappeared
Over the edge
One by one

“Why aren’t you warning them?”
an old man said as he watched
Another vanish,
Oblivious to the fall

“Because my voice
Can’t be heard until
I’m already there
With them,”
the turtle said
As she moved one
Leg forward
closer to the ledge

“But even then,
No one listens to turtles”

holes

12/1/2023

When you try to avoid
Falling into holes
You think are too deep
to survive
You spend all your time
in the
void
surrounding them

And the same holes you stepped past yesterday
Become good
Hiding Places
To stick your head into
When you are asked to explain
Why you had
A spaceship parked in my backyard
For decades
That looked promising
But the door was welded shut
From the inside

the ship of theseus

12/1/2023

That tiny bit of metal
that we could have used
to forge a ring
was turned into
a bullet instead

To remove it
would rupture
my aorta
so we leave it in place
and avoid
places where I'll
set off
metal detectors

Maybe that's how
androids
start though -
one automated piece
at a time
until you're more ore,
less flesh

And you're no longer lying
when asked if you have any
foreign objects
in your body
as more shrapnel
displaces any chance
of staying human

fangs

12/1/2023

your fangs
prevented you
from
chewing
your food

so i pitied you
as you watched
me eat my sandwich
with my head in my hand
and legs crossed

a malnourished ghoul,
wasting away
in a funhouse mirror
with an overbite
and me reflecting,
on the misguided idea
that old monsters will
die of starvation
in the
everyday world
when they
stop
being fed

incline

12/1/2023

Only as we were going up
An incline
Did I realize you only had one arm

How had I not noticed that
When I shook hands with you earlier,
Repeatedly?

I wanted to ask
How that happened
But it didn’t really matter
If you were born that way
Or if you had lost a battle with
An alligator
or the boys at boarding school
sawed it off

From a distance
No one could see
Your prosthesis
So everyone thought you
were capable of
Strangling them
With ease

But you found other ways
Of killing people
Like getting them
To climb mountains
On icy ascents
With frozen feet
And suicide doors that wouldn’t
Open

pools

12/1/2023

Jumping off the concrete ledge
head first, down
without goggles this time

When I got there,
I saw the others
sitting cross-legged
with a finger to
their lips
imploring me
not to make a sound
or people would start
looking

the chlorine
ironically
preserved them
quite well;
some
had been there for
decades
still dialing rotary phones
and trying to solve
broken Rubik's cubes

in a junkyard
of stuff
just under the surface,
soggy and preserved,
people
who couldn't decay
and now me
too
hiding just
under
the surface

the suitcase

12/1/2023

In lower concourse B
There is a suitcase
Going under everyone’s nose

Looked over then overlooked
It’s looped the belt 47 times already

Scrutinizing eyes assess
and discard it

There’s gold dust inside
Or that’s what I’ve been told

But everyone’s more focused
on the man
being wheeled out
of the airport
in cardiac arrest
who the suitcase
once
belonged to

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