If I told you I was dying, would you believe me?

I’m not lying. I’m just doing it very slowly.

I can feel the ceiling sinking but it’s no concern

of yours.  You’re in the same predicament.
 

Forgive my flippant reverence for the infinite.

Just give me one night, alone. I can figure it out.

I promise.  It’s of no concern of yours.  You

have your own honesty to burn you up inside.
 

I understand if you don’t have room for mine.

I called my mom.  She said she’s doing just fine.

Sometimes I don’t know who is talking who

down off the ledge. 
 

There’s a room inside my head where I try to prove

the things I’ve said.  May the best confession be

the easiest to believe instead of the hardest

to disregard because there’s a difference between
 

memory and destiny whether we pass life’s test

or fail death’s miserably.  It’d be disastrous for us

to repeat anybody’s path but ours.

The hours ask so much of us.
 

An ounce of feathers could become

a pound of flesh without a second chance
 

any minute if enough of us get famished

and can’t hold a candle to holding still.
 

We thrash and spill over ourselves like Mississippi

flood waters through the windowsill.
 

We fill ourselves to the gills with distraction

and dashed hopes of killing the last thing

that captured our passion.  Last words

are for assholes who don’t know how to listen. 

Your therapist will tell you to hate your parents

especially if you don’t already.  She’s really into Freud

and she believes childhood memories are the way to explain

the choices you make.  For example, one time you ran away

from a thicket of hornets or the other time, just last week,

when you slept walked your way into the closet and took a shit

on Tuesday.  Think back to potty training.  It was a long

time ago I know.  Your mind’s been held captive

by the actions of your ego. Or is it

the inactions of your id?  I forget.     

When lying

next to my lover

I listen to her breathe and think about the very end

of waves lapping up the sand and hermit crabs

coughing.  Their houses newly flooded

but they’ve become accustomed to gargling

salt water as my dad was

and I always wondered

why he did that

in the mornings

before he went to work and I think

of my mother and her heartbeat and how I

owe mine to her

and how without both of them,

I couldn’t begin to bend the hook of my elbow

behind the crook of my lover’s neck

and get a squeeze in

before the world

calls us out of bed and into itself.

I have a black angel

fish I’ve been trying to figure out

how to discipline. 
 

She nips at all the other fishes’ fins

and there’s nothing

I can do about it. 
 

I could starve her

but then I’d harm

the other fish. 
 

Isn’t that always

the way? Paying

for someone else’s sins?
 

As if morality had a balance

or swimming in your own piss

wasn’t enough already?
 

You know that part

in your favorite song

where everything crescendos

and you head bang in your kitchen

when no one else is around?
 

Maybe that’s the part

that’s stuck in the black angel’s

head and she only wants to be alone.
 

Or maybe the other fish didn’t know

they were in a mosh pit.  No matter.  
 

It’s all forgotten as soon as I walk away.

I’m not the boss of those fish.

Sure, I have to change the water.
 

Sure, I have to feed them and watch them

and ask them questions.  I can’t blame

them for not answering.  They can’t talk

yet.  I’m teaching them to read
 

by stacking Time

magazines against the back of the glass.

I watch and wait for the sake of the others.

Hopefully, reading will teach them love or patience.    

Old enough to know better              yet I throw fistfuls of fits                 

against a chain link fence                 to see which side I’m on.                 
 

Fallen out of love enough to consider                     it a little bit of a crutch. 

Come on.                                It’s the same thing over and over again.               

On one side, a heart explodes on its own.              On the other,

there’s no one there to believe                   the gory details of the ghost story

so does the camp fire                       dampen our capacity

to drown out the absence.                          
 

Finding bright lights in the abyss is kind of my specialty.                       

What better place to find meaning

than in the negative space?                         Sedated laughter isn’t genuine. 

I’ve been a better friend in the past                      than I am now. 

I’m too proud of how                        I break down and vent

and invent a dependency on people                      who pretend

they see a different me                    I can’t see myself. 
 

Today I crossed out the phrase                   love yourself

on the bathroom mirror and wrote                        I need help

loving somebody else                                     in its place.  

When I grow up I want to be a victim.

I don’t know what positive attention
 

has to do with anything.  Fill me full of blame

and I’ll sing an off key, woe is me refrain

softly so as to drag you down to the same

gutter where the lackluster lover’s subtly feign
 

I’ll have your back if you have mine.  Don’t ever change. 

No need to get my own, if I can use your spine.  Thanks.  
 
 

When I grow up I want to be codependent

I don’t know enough about being alone and content
 

I feel at home when anchored in the canker soar

of angry noise.  Strange décor hangs on your

boat dock.  Tie me up if I become unmoored.

Set adrift and left to my devices I’m torn
 

Between justifying vices and just defining my life as

so not where I thought I’d wind up. This too will pass. 

Feeling in love and feeling alive are often

mistaken.  Feeling distant has nothing

to do with proximity. Maybe I’m trapped

inside my own head, or maybe it would be

more accurate to say inside my mother’s head,

in the faint imagination of what I thought

she might have said?                        I once sought
 

validation externally because internally, I

wrung my hands at a sink full of dishes

after serving dinner to a silent family and sighed. 

I don’t know

was the most affirmative utterance

I could come up with.  I often felt
 

nothing, like I was an empty husk

of a person, or a solar powered robot at dusk

or the ghost in the machine without the ghost.  
 

Maybe I looked for other people who appeared

to be near puncturing through themselves

with their inner workings or lack thereof.
 

When you have no feelings, you seek out people who do.

Paradoxically so though, because if mine don’t matter,

yours sure as alarm clocks at dawn don’t either.                         
 

Two empties don’t make a full.      

Two fools doling out approval in the most

moderate of doses is no way to escape

the inner pull that we were put here

to do more than be polite.
 

To be more than contained by night.

Bad news is just as good as good if it comes

from you. Anything worth worshiping is seldom
 

confused but I wonder if when god gets tired

prayers sound like taunts.  Feeling mired
 

down and needing to unwind, on the seventh day

god said fuck it.  Somebody get me barrel of hay.
 

I’m napping right here under this apple tree.

Does anybody know any good bedtime stories?
 

I love the ones where the animals could talk,

everybody gets snacks, and the humans would walk
 

away feeling ashamed of their of their own curiosity.       

This being-on-call-24/7-jazz is not for me.
 

Instead, would it be cool if I took a few days off?

The humans could use a little slack in the rope.
 

Why does everybody act like I’m a joke?

Is there another way a bird learns to fly besides taking off?

I hate to cut you off but I have to cut you off. 

It’s 2am somewhere and you might not be drunk

but you’re humble with your sanity and I can’t believe

you’re done so buy another round for some people

you don’t know.   Take it slow

doesn’t mean keep it slow.  Just ask the horizon

for a break.  She’ll tell you life’s been no easy fix,

too straight to fake.  I look like I’m not bent,

like I don’t wrap around the earth.  What I wouldn’t

give to mend the gap between sky and dirt.  
 

The pencil lost sight of its word                 

as soon as it entered his ear.

It slipped through the drum like a wasp’s nest.   
 

The king of night is a streetlight

pulsing above a cold motorcycle

who’ll never see her rider again.

She didn’t lose him like I lost my breath. 

I’ll get it back but death is better

than half of marriages.  Death is forever.
 

The good news is as good as the bad. 
 

There are 31 reasons to believe the mad

may have not been born that way

and hopefully they won’t stay that way.
 

The birthday balloons will lose their helium. 
 

A finger gets feverish to fight off infection. 

Blood isn’t always a bad thing.   If you

could bring me an ear that’s never

felt naked before and press it to the concrete,

I assure you, I’ll give you my eye

of a needle’s chance

at dancing with death and not stepping on her feet.
 

The sun will rise. The motorcycle will find

a new rider. The stray dog will find its way home

eventually.  A family who stays alone                    

prays for someone, anyone, all of them

to get better.  A sickness will stick

to the ribs for as long as it remembers

to part ways with the harp of ribs

that float freely between the strings. 

When I grow up                    I hope I’m as cool as I was

when I was thirteen.                                     Wallet chain, ripped jeans,

purple bandana.                   I was like a Harley
 

-riding, meth-lab-having, bad daddy                      without

the bike          or the rock                 or the kids.                 And I still don’t
 

have any of those.                 But this morning                   I stared at motorcycles

for three hours online                      and decided I should start with a 250cc

and a whole bunch of leather.                   I’m taking a safety

course in July.                        I promoted myself to boyfriend status

with the apple of my happy place              but still don’t have plans

for a meth lab and I’m ok                with that.  Actually,              

I hate the word boyfriend.                           I’m not a boy.

I’m more than a friend.                    I prefer man-companion.    
 

When I was a nine I used to ride                flattened cardboard boxes

down flights of carpet stairs            just to get my adrenaline to spike.

Never mind how the baseboard tasted                or how the novacane

made the crack in my face numb.               I bite my tongue

so much more                        now than I used to                and like it

that way.                    My mom used to say                         if you don’t

have anything nice to say,                go talk to the wall.
 

I have a chalkboard painted five by eight             on my living room

wall and I talk to it                more than I talk to my mom.  

If I was going                         to have an outer body experience,             I would want

to leave through my bellybutton.                You know,                 

for consistency’s sake.                     
 

Plus,                there’s probably a greater chance             

I could make my way back               when I finally decide to return

if I leave this world               as I found it.
 

I hope so much I can fit a pen and a little notepad                      out of my bellybutton

so I can take notes                out there                    and remember

what I learn.
 

Hopefully, there’s not a security checkpoint          on the way back to my body

because I plan on grabbing everything                             I can get my hands on.