Try not to see your own predicament in every fucking thing.

Ghosts for hire, whispers in her mouth,
cysts to feel, the symmetry of a gift.

Listen to me: I know
the winter gloom in
mid-summer…

here is the sky in stop motion, flickering,
a still shot in monochrome

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

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.

The storm passes without snow.
The car waits loyally in the back lot.

a folksome, gruesome opera
of gauze and malcontent.

I am not a guide
for every traveler
of loss.

my father holds
his favorite drink

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

how does an afternoon turn
on its axis?

and apples, mackintosh mostly, but any kind left in The Pub
at the Assisted Living Place

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…

I imagined a cascade of slow death for all / that mattered…