in the dingy cigarette browned interior
of your childhood home town double wide
sits your brother in a tattered brown lay z boy
with a CPAP machine that is always on to
assist with his labored breath
“oh god” you say as the stale tobacco molecules
that yet linger in the air provide a subtle contact buzz
following the smell of whiskey aged in a rotten barrel
the constant rambling of the weather channel
and the machine humming and swishing in and
swooshing is slowly replaced by a loud
ringing between your ears as buried below what
sits before you barely awake is the smile
of a young blonde haired baby boy brought
home from borgess hospital, the one that fucked him up first
before everyone else got their licks in
ah, this familiar pain in your chest lives
with the dust bunnies beneath your bed
like the foundation of your home atop a burial ground

and how dare you want to cry
you machine cog of a man
for who do you ever cry for
but yourself?

it is not strength that you muster to walk up
and touch his hand with but profound guilt
and now aware of your presence he squeezes
out a smile behind his plastic mask because
he still loves his big fucking brother
and he reaches out to touch your hand
and for all your talk talk talk here you have nothing to say
except “i’m sorry,” but that would be too on-the-nose
and meaningless

so instead you talk about nothing
except what he wants to
and you turn off your phone, the sun goes down,
you sleep on the couch next to the chair
and you wake up to a machine pushing air
out of the sides of a tiny plastic mask
with nothing else looking familiar
except the anger that stains this land
where even after they empty out the
double wide and do something else with it,
the anger remains.

and you find yourself
buried
and you’ve tried it
all
screaming crying
hoping praying
cursing all gods, and all men

but all you can do is dig
and keep digging

it would have been nice
to have help getting out
or to not be buried at all

i agree

and i hope you don’t
for one minute forget that
when you finally
dig yourself out

and count the tombstones

even if you move away
and change your hair
they will come knock
on your door

all i ask is that you
love me, i’m not like them

and remember me fondly
even as i write this in
the dark

i’m afraid things are too grim
to believe you’re there watching
but not yet bad enough
to plead to you for help

in space
where humans get
deconstructed
down to their basic parts
lies knowledge that
is not worth knowing

it has no practical application

but on the journey
there you will likely find
a firm foundation for
forging future thoughts
a skeleton key which
unlocks many doors

which is why i bid
you must go

i’ll avoid the fears
and push them down and just hope for
the best
that this change isn’t actually happening
it’s all going to be just fine
if i ignore the problem it will go away
or maybe i was just overreacting in the first place
give it a few more days. a few more weeks.
everything’ll return to normal in no time
it happens to everyone. no need to panic
i could but i won’t but i could

I’d like to grab my chest, short for air, as i stumble down the bottom of the stairs
and I’d like to cry for help and wonder if I will disappear before it comes

I’d like to wonder at my unrealized potential as the fluorescent lights dance around my hospital bed

i’d like to be a rotting tree trunk whose thoughts are manifested termites

I’d like to search my whole life for happiness in silence only to desire someone to talk to when i am sad and alone

I’d like to feel a misdiagnosed lump grow larger and notice pains coming from somewhere new

I would like for there to be no meaning in the hawk picking away at the bones of our children

I would rather go slow and reserve myself to it, to wait for it every morning, to feel labored breath and beat, to chew away at my nails hoping for a new day

I’d like to wave goodbye as a stampede of cars rush through the veins of the high way

I’d like you to forget about me like you would deja vu, a confusing thought, close to reality, yet estranged from it

her body is trapped behind
a pane of glass as the birds
chirp and feed on the overgrown
vines of our back patio

i drink my morning espresso
and watch the hunt flicker
in her eyes

the walls we build may keep
us safe and warm
but we are never to hunt
again

a moment of silence to help
me prepare for death
as i think
maybe heaven is being
disconnected from your brain
and hell is having to come back

give me long enough in go mode
and i’ll lose my ability to do anything but go.
i can put my head down, i can crank.

with the right attitude i can produce anything at breakneck speed

anything but art

she says its especially hot today

i try and respond honestly
but i’m wrong again, about what i think

i mean its not that i’m wrong its just
the way i said it apparently
and i regret saying anything at all
or even anything ever again

i say “i’ll be in my office”

in the dark conditioned air, though
it’s a balmy 90 degrees outside

i smirk to myself because
no one knows and no one cares
and no one understands about
what i’m thinking but me

she makes animal noises

and i’m basically crying in a couch pillow
and saying mean things to who ever walks by

the mail forwards and piles up from seneca drive
from friedrich avenue, from siddhartha blvd
and i’ll do it again and again until the
expiration date

and the rise
lacks shine and polish and that’s
okay for me because I can’t
realistically brighten everyone’s
day when for some of the folks on this
call it’s very late in the evening

now he’s not looking its my chance
i can finally plan it all out,
the perfect way
and then its just a matter of doing
but he always comes back
and i lose my place
so all’s i can get out are these few
lines, buried deep inside
ways of overpowering him long forgotten
i live in moments of lucidity
till he comes back
the brain fog man
who lives across the road

whatever it takes
to get closer to space
and out of this maze
of this meaty cage
gotta stretch my legs
across the universe
ever hungry for the
taste of infinity

park the bus and checkout
to narrative not mine, distracted by comedy

you are making these
choices and decisions and
holding these values you don’t
actually want to believe in because
you’ve surrounded yourself with people
undeserving of respect and you’re building
a fortress of sadness unsure that a shack
of happiness is a thing that can exist
because the long you’re in the
company if these people the
less clearly you see

how can I thank you enough
for what you have given to me
what was taken from others
which is what I would have done
if I were in your shoes
or at least that’s what you
tell your children which
I suppose I may never know
the truth

the impossible truth
hidden somewhere in an ever-growing
book of lies which i am to
read with my own eyes and discern
with my own mind and you
coincidentally gave those
both to me and taught me
how to use them

but i think
maybe i should not have accepted your gifts
and maybe you lied to me
and maybe i don’t need stolen things
and maybe the truth doesn’t have to be hidden inside a lie
and maybe you taught me how to use my eyes and mind wrong
and maybe i should not thank you
at all

maybe there is a better way

i hope they’ll say “his prose
was better than any of you fuckers
dared to appreciate in his lifetime
so do your part in his death”
and then stare with a straight face at
the audience who came to mourn
and giggle on the inside as one
last
terrible
inside joke that wasn’t really funny

they fed them to the wolves in uvalde
for a sum of cash
and they’ll do it over and over
because we all want a taste of that
sweet, sugary American pie
with the ants all crawling all over the pan
jealous of our glucose response
and we’ll all be dead by sunrise
the workers, the children, and queen

one more cop one more gun
the children are free to run
if they want to or
if they can

i never got your bonzai
in the mail or otherwise
but i’m gonna put you on paper
in great detail, too
just how you were before
you were taken quickly
instead of draining away slowly
like the rest of the group