The collective failure of ethical standards
you quit wearing pants loaf around your yard in hole-nipped panties
You let the yellow glow from eye sockets. The building up the street is burning faster and faster.
Long after midnight, we’re talking about our first time
my father holds his favorite drink
I have an axe with hearts gashed
Gravel-scatted hell & we were blessed to be able to hold on for even a heartbeat
four-thirty a.m.
I like to think I’m also sprung, released from the furnace knocks, done with the heavy meat stews and salty soups.
anger, like you can sink teeth into, candy apple
We stop doing dishes while a mile unwinds from the tree outside.
we drove on through the blue seal of morning as the turbines turned and winked out their hearts
Her brown eyes, how a fig considers itself.
a folksome, gruesome opera of gauze and malcontent.
Lights on the dashboard spell out “You still can’t kiss me”
and apples, mackintosh mostly, but any kind left in The Pub at the Assisted Living Place
I slumped in front of a massive desk, a passive patient corroded with failure and dread.
the strands of your hair on the bathroom tiles aren’t sketching defeat. that’s you spitting disease in the face with another day you’ve woken up to.
I am not a guide for every traveler of loss.
Part of being a good sad person is always painting the shadows in the right direction and knowing what sorrow to art with.