I like to think I’m also sprung,
released from the furnace knocks,
done with the heavy meat stews
and salty soups.

Do not say anything anybody else has said ever. Things are not “bleached by sun.”

Ma wrings
a wet world
of colors

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.

Now that the Israeli has left, it falls
on me to make the salad.

Gravel-scatted hell &
we were blessed to be able
to hold on for even a heartbeat

a folksome, gruesome opera
of gauze and malcontent.

Any still figure at mid-late evening, when the long shadows make even crumbs appear arranged like furniture.

you quit wearing pants
loaf around your yard
in hole-nipped panties

the man is stayed bent over the canvas
of my sofa. the man is me the man is him
self and I bring down the whip…

and then her eyes fully opened — blazed through with strands of mud

Just starlight and some small scribbling across vinyl.

The sin is existing.

Every so often, they add a tattoo
in honor of some long-forgotten love.

I would always rather be happy than
dignified. Rather held than held
in awe.