holy ethiopian palm sunday.
it’s…. finally…. over.

praise the Lord.

Blessed be the LORD,
for he has wondrously shown his
steadfast love to me

Senses fail me
when I dangle myself from
the second story of our
red and brown house

Could this be when
everything comes out?
Worms with bats and
wicked little smiles
pummeling my mass with
joy(?)
As I swing on a line like
an empty pinata?

Your protection comes
you think
from your sticks in hand
and my feet off the ground

But be sure:
When I climb down I
I climb down to my feet.
You, contrarily, will
crawl back to your favorite
holes, again.

the bed holds you
like it did your grandfather
it helped take his leg, too
because you sleep with your enemies
so i now lie awake staring
worriedly at my leg
surrounded by my vices
who want to eat me alive
i must move or do
something.

Yesterday I cut myself on a piece of paper

But what a fool I was to forgo a bandage

I never should have stained blood
on your pretty white dress

Sometimes I wander to a river
rife with acids and oils
from refineries and other such
machinations and I sit and
watch the fishes float
and the sickly fawns
and coughing foxes lap
begrudgingly from its murky
surface and they choke it down
because it is all they know
and they ignore the taste
of the acids and oils
and sometimes the high-floating
fish is a low-hanging fruit
but in truth this is naught
but poison and given enough of it
every single one of you
will die without hardly living
at all.

The difference between agony and suffering is the subject of the pain.
Suffering is when you’re the one in pain.
Agony is when the one you love is suffering before your eyes

and you’re helpless to intervene.

my anger feeds off of your happiness
errant emotions you force into the moment
stupid unfinished lovesongs written to strangers
to every stranger you see, every day
whose frequency is innumerable
to which you profess, each is as important
nay i see entropy with each guffaw
i see desperation in the face of mediocrity
i see another dopamine junky
a sociopathic one, at that
licking the floor for happiness
in the form of laughter.

I found a truth in a bathroom stall

I cut corners and arrived in a cornerless position

I was left waiting once when the tide came in and everyone forgot I was drowning

My best friend is an animal

and if I’m lucky I’ll die in a plane crash before cancer eats me from the inside

But at least I am happy in my big blue hat

and now one brother
has been released and
the other remains under
devils thumb. and we wait
some more for an endless
coming, for our God who
doesn’t experience time
in the same way we do
(or so we’re told), for our
God who experiences agony
in much the same way we do
and we beat against the air
in a (hopefully) winning-but-
not-even-one-satisfying-blow
battle.

as i wait helplessly by for my
sons. to embrace and finally
not have to let go.

let the loneliness penetrate
i deserve it for the
mocking of the birds
which were chirping
i was
annoyed
damn me to loneliness
i deserve it for what
i said,
for the moments trapped
in selfishness
for the moments
which i strangle
the air
let the loneliness get me
like the cold
it’s what
ever.

say what you will
but i aint letting
go of this thing
which i’m slightly
abusing in the
name of freedom.

you think all
tobaccos are
created equal
because you
were taught
of the evils
of paper-wrapped
crap.

it is evil.

but briar wrapped
heaven is a gift
straight from
above.

it’s sad really
but that’s how he ended
up on the warm side
of luke,
(not to be confused with the dark side)

I knew a man that claimed
to swim with Dragon-kin,
to have met the lords of
all Creation

He was a tall man,
and broad,
but not so broad
to have trouble with doors,
nor so tall
to take issue with
tree-branches

He was an old man,
too.

His voice was strong,
yet rasping.
He wore fine boots
and his other clothes
were well cared-for.

He was wily.

And when he said
he had swum with legends
and supped with God,
though it could never
have been so,
I believed him.

They were metaphors,
I’m sure,
his old exalted friends,
and he was truly
just as great.

And all of his stories
were always the best,
anyway.

like a four year old getting their first brain freeze and thinking the ice cream has turned on them, you just don’t understand.