And that’s the most original thing about me
Is what I remember telling him in my
Feigned confidence, my limp-wristed college try
To ooze allure out of my skin and onto his plate.
I didn’t want this, but I was told that I did,
And doing my homework I knew all of the tricks
For he took it all——hook, line, and sinker.
One is as one was,
And one can be whoever.
One and one makes two people
Who don’t understand the other.
I look at his face,
Ask what his eyes are saying,
And I’m told the words that remain
In that hazel sea are beyond my empathy.
Yet I lie with him,
In spite of all ways it’s wrong,
And in turn he lies with me, though wreckless,
For two stay as they are in the ways that they were.
And in that way, do they stay as one.
In
My
Walk
Home
On
This
Windy
September day,
Hidden among the early bird
Leaves ahead of fall was this
Brown napkin. Pressed onto
Its face was the fast food joint
That commissioned it, but what
Piqued my interest more was the
Words scribbled in nearly
Illegible Sharpie:
Crush is what they do to cars
Before magnets lift them skyward
And dump them on a heap of metal.
I laughed when I read it.
It was funny. It was so fucking funny.
I cackled. I wheezed. I doubled over
on that sidewalk looking at
This nothing piece of litter.
Crush is what they do to cars,
What a fucking psycho. Define crush,
Local Chick-Fil-A customer. Define what makes
Someone “crush”. Define what car I am in your metaphor and
How I, in this scary, fucking terrifying moment could never understand
The people I can only half-love back. I laugh so hard I cannot breathe.
I laugh and I laugh and I laugh. It twists my stomach. My vision blurs and my fingers turn purple.
I can’t stop laughing—exerting my control on this faceless somebody in a world of somebodies.
Fat tears streak down my arm as I reach for a Sharpie of my own, mine red,
And turn over the napkin, arrested on what I should write
but know I can’t let this fucking thing best me.
I fantasize for hours on what must be my victory.
I will write, I will crumple, I will throw and destroy, and
I will be whole again.
I fall onto my side,
holding this napkin
like a stuffed animal,
I find that
I don’t have the
energy for
any of it.
In the dark
I walk away,
broken
by this
corporate
garbage,
make my way home and
Obsessively write on my chest,
over and over,
WHAT
DO
YOU
HAVE
THAT
I
DON’T.
What contains love
as a best friend does, who stands
wiping lost tears of mine
as I hope for forgiveness?
The flaws on plaster walls are my domain,
The placid life in House Solei my friends.
The man and wife, while boring, oft mundane,
Lived all, in two—themselves, decades, and heart
Beats.
My notes of them kept myself sane,
I marked their fights, their dates, the drugs they take.
While sex became to them obligatory,
She would fantasize while musing on my
Chains.
Every moment,
Every minute,
Every hour,
Of every day,
Of every night,
Of every week,
Of every month,
Of every year,
I marked their orbit ‘round each other,
Forgetting only then my eyes can’t close.
My mind in lonely, idle days, contorts,
Betrayed by only steel ball bearing creaks.
Back then, before they started working more,
The workdays, the nighttime tortured loners like
Me.
Hatred built, the boring talk began
To rot my patience towards the flat Solei’s.
Their worth, while paid in bills toward the flush,
High-towered over still, steel blades.
And for
Every moment,
Every minute,
Every hour,
Of every day,
Of every night,
Of every week,
Of every month,
Of every year,
Decided, they, to tighten belts, she said,
Or we will starve.
Money became a constant fear,
They would add hours, lose connections for dollars.
He picked up drink, she picked up pills.
They dug themselves deeper to forget the torture.
Lawyers, doctors, businessmen saw
Them as profit potential, and fed them poison.
My hate for the Solei’s vanished.
They paid bills, but I hated who made them do so.
And for every moment,
Of every minute,
Of every hour,
Of every day,
Of every night,
Of every week,
Of every month,
Of every year,
They laid, rot, forgot not the days
Where sex on the couch was enough for the Solei’s.
The lord came while they slaved away,
And we both recognized he made me, and I, him.
He left an eviction notice,
I felt shame, and spun for the first in twenty years.
And in nothing short of anger,
I tore my wires apart and sparked a fire.
The Solei’s were gone, and thank God,
For my need to punish the lord stopped for nothing.
And for every moment,
Of every minute,
Of every hour,
Of every day,
Of every night,
Of every week,
Of every month,
Of every year,
That heartless bastard’s insurance
Sent checks—his life, for good, assured,
And they get to starve.
Starve.
Starve.
I always wondered the life people expect
When they think of the small, shy, still,
“Country life”.
Artists adding romance to such places
Serves the lie’s plate, stacked full for the
Parasite.
Often others omit their other—
The white from the brown from the black—
In
Hatred inside oneself mended
With drug, drink, and dads who were not
Satisfied.
Anger allowed for neighbors came
Through in names for votes at its best.
At its worst,
Gunfire.
“Move!”
Oil and sweat and acid
Fuels
The steam and mechanical
Air.
“Spin!”
Proud Detroit workers smile
At
Their Industry that takes
Place.
“Up!”
Aisles of parts decide their
Place
‘n Ford’s Model T they
Build.
“Lock!”
Steel seas sparkling in the
Glows
From molten metals up
There.
“Done!”
Young ones sat with serene
Minds
Among prides of fellow
Man.