i’m sure you’d hate me
like i hate me mrs.
brodhead
because you were always
better than me
and i was a step behind
and probably am
and all i can think
the moment i almost
touched you
among the dead
and the dying
grass of the cemetary
where i came
so close to being
better, like you
are
in radiance
mrs. brodhead
when you used to
have a different name
fresh like the fallen
snow

i’m sure you’d hate
me for my shitty
tendancies and give
more than just a nod
as i do —
mrs. brodhead
doesn’t think of that
trudging up the
mountain with
beauty all around
and inside,
too
a place where i once
dreamt of being
warm and opposite
your intellect
ever devouring

a fearful hush is felt
as a blanketed pressure
of extra gravity falls
upon the suburbs
as everyone tries to hold
the same looks on their faces
whenever the law sulks
around

but count yourself lucky
if you have forgotten about this creature
the law

who started innocently
as homework, chores
but has grown with you

now with eyes that pierce the night
like spotlights in the sky
like magic
walls can materialize around you
cold and thick
thrashing you around
the law will grab you by the neck
sudden and deadly

the law exists to traumatize
those who do not fit the mold
whose faces cannot hold long enough
when the spotlight is upon them

i must confess i still see you often
well, parts of you
that is
in other women
whom i dare not talk to
selfish
embarrassed
i feel
that i wish those parts were whole
and backwards in time
always backwards in time
like out of a cannon we would go
on fire, too

i think
if you could see me now
able to lift both feet to walk now
and quickly,
even
you would smile that
hungry smile
for a cut of meat deeply within
and i’d have no choice but to smile back
i never had that choice

when a man’s an empty kettle
he should be on his mettle
and yet
i’m torn apart

just because
i’m presumin’
that i could be kind of human

if i only had a heart

i’d be tender
i’d be gentle
and awful sentimental
regarding love and art

i’d be friends with
the sparrows
and the boy who shoots
the arrows

if i only had a heart

picture me
a balcony
above a voice sings low

“wherefor art thou
romeo?”

i hear a beat
how sweet

just to register emotion
jealousy
devotion
and really feel the part

i could stay young
and chipper
and i’d lock it
with a zipper

if i only had a heart

(Originally written by Edgar Harbug)

i left her
writhing there in
my rear view
feeling all the pain
of a dying nervous
system

pointless, severe pain

caused by the meeting
of an innocent
young
squirrel
and a man too tired
to care

it will all be over soon

in the moment when match
strikes for flame

that i saw in the deep
of your eyes

and where there’s smoke
there’s fire i know

but i am high and the
air martial says

that now is not the time for
a smoke

as i thumb the lighter
in my pocket

although my soul is an overgrown
jungle
where both the smallest and
largest things exist to eat you
wholly
you perservere there, in the middle
carving out a home and making
friends with the monsters hidden
by shadow
you are a great adventurer
and what’s more, you are still beautiful
even as the vines encroach upon you
while you sleep
to hug you in a deathly way
your smile is the only light around
as you carefully trim your way through
looking for me

i don’t know where i am and why
you would look for me
and it is my confusion that grows the
jungle, anyhow
yet you search for me
with a warm embrace
you, a great adventurer
whose heart is warm like a million suns
whose beauty shines beneath layers of
jungle-trash
and i love you very much
for searching
for finding me
and so much more

up ten stairs
through the bare wooden
door with no handle
and around the 180 degree
turn passed the small room
on the left and the attic
door on the right there
is a white door with an axe
mark just up and left from the
fading gold doorknob

on the left there is a big,
wide bed and on the right
a CRT tv sitting on a
flimsy wooden stand with a wooden
facade and broken plastic wheels
next to maybe sometimes an equally
flimsy corner-desk with similarly
broken wheels and ugly wooden facade

i can stand here whenever i please

in the middle of the room
with two windows facing
west raymond st
and maybe a 6 foot ceiling (if that)
a converted attic room with strange
stucko patterns scraped carelessly
on a ceiling that feels eternal

there is a large, wide, white bookshelf
in the middle
of the two windows where so far
all i have are two pictures inside
one manilla envelope
one of myself, wearing the vicksburg
bulldogs junior varsity soccer outfit
at 16 years old, young dumb and athletic
and the other of my two parents before
they hated one another
holding me in front of a tractor somewhere
my mother was pretty with big hair
my father had bleach white sneakers

the newest addition to the room sits
in the right windowsill
he looks black but in the sunlight you
can see that his dark fur is brown
he has big, loving green eyes
and although i used to come here to sit
and contemplate things and store away
memories in devoted silence

i now just sit with tiny

his purring so loud that it clicks
as he rubs his head against my arm
and licks me a few times
as he is happy to see me
frozen in time

flies live so long
on excuses to stay
with crooked flight patterns
both pointless and unique

oh flies live so long
and yet you can’t kill
them  fast enough
for more will fill
in their place

is it best to just wait
them out?
until there’s nothing
left for them to eat?

and do your best
in the meantime

but why do flies
have to live
for so long?

in my apartment

there now is an aching, negative space

where you used to be

my dearest friend is gone from me

my soul has been subtracted from

time may never touch a final loss

like a burning, phantom limb

that the mind looks to for comfort

now left there only the aching, negative space

i will forever miss you tiny sinclair

i will remember you in sun beams on windowsills

at 5:30pm when you would wait for me

when i just can’t take the silence

and when i am consumed by helplessness