Sometimes I
fucking hate a Hammond Organ
but that’s an off-day
mostly

An average human being
can spend
without food
(as long as he
remains hydrated)
approximately
forty-five days
if the weather is
alright,
before his body
runs out of
muscle
to absorb
and starts in
on the organs and
such, then the
brain, when he
will probably
suffer
irreversible
brain damage

An average human being
does not need
to experience
this for any
reason

For Tara

Before you,
and before this,
I was a wool sock
full of lead bricks
in a clenched fist
I was
stone.
My favorite books;
those love stories whose quotes
I had once etched into my
eyelids
had moved
to the bottom of the stack
had
slipped under the carpet
my eyelids
were erased
and replacing these quotes
were notes to myself
saying
Keep these lids closed.
You can’t miss what you pretend
you’ve never seen.
So I spent one month
this past summer
sleeping on the floor
And I always locked the door
and I never bought a bed
Instead
I focused on
turning myself in to bread
With the hope
that enough people could
pull pieces from me
as to make me feel needed
I needed that.
Meanwhile
I laughed
as I gracefully slipped in to cynicism
like a robe made of glass
It’s a lot easier to
say you may never fall asleep
beside anything but the wall
if while you do, you laugh. I
wish you knew
how few things I believed in
before I believed in you.

But I could already feel
these fists unclench
the night we met
I changed my pillow cases.
I didn’t need to erase
my eyelids again. They’re
wide open now
I can only barely remember
what they once said.
The robes I wore
are burnt and
forgotten
The first time I got dressed
after meeting you
it was all linen. Soft
like I had forgotten how to know.

I was writing poems to
pray that you existed
before I ever knew you or
knew this
I knew I was looking for your eyes against mine.
I just didn’t know
what they would look like.
And I don’t believe in resurrection
but I do believe in redemption
and you pulled out of me
the man who needed to be saved.
So I renamed love after you
It’s a small thankfulness
for reminding me
that it existed.

i wrote a poem twenty lines long
with repetition, alliteration,
and a few other fancy elements.

but then in a move so poetic,
my words can’t describe

i erased it because it sucked
and saved you the pain of reading rubbish.