Nostalgia Hurts


Sometimes it feels like time stopped
and the only thing still changing is me.

My family is turning into phantoms,
yet I’m the only one who disappeared.

I wonder if this life I chose is selfish,
I’m afraid I changed too much this time.

Seasons became years and soon those years
will be decades of ghosts locked in time.

Nostalgia hurts and the home I miss
is filled with graves. The long-distance

daughter cherished for the space she keeps.
I guess my boundaries became sacred,

but everything has a cost and I traded
the home I came from to live my dreams.

My mom has always been selfless
and that’s the one thing I’ll never be.

I’ve got one life to live and I’m living it for me.

Hindenburging

 
I’ve dripped and mad-ripped 
out the other end of this affair, 
grey-haggard and high as a sprocket. 

In the Bible there’s a woman 
named Hagar, the concubine 
of Abraham and mother of Ishmael 
who’s kind of a write-off 
right off the bat ­– illegit and all that.

What does this say 
about infidelity? 
Fealty? Fiddlesticks?

God fuck the ego 
of affairs, unfairness, 
the fare extracted 
from my worth, net worth,
self-worth and worthless, ripped
open and stripped, unpacked, 
unwracked, all wrecked 
and reeking like leeks 
and wires. 

I met that man (my lover) 
as Chief of Security at the mall 
where we both worked – huh. 
He caught me unguarded. I sucked 
and fucked and finished 
him off, and that started 

everything. Don’t come again. 
I’m going 
down graceless, grab-handling,
hindering everyone and heliotroping 
down in hydrogen.

The Hindenburg, that German airship 
claimed 35 souls.
I’m 35 years old and oldering 
daily, while the sky 
brings the clouds to a boil.

The ICE Man Cometh

I wanna be an ICE man.
Kick in doors and make 
Children scream.  Root
Out heathen immigrants
Eyeing my cat for stew.
Break car windows in
The street just because
I can.  Local police and
National Guard both be
Pussys.  The Russians
Have Siberia for their
Dissidents.  If the Boss
Has his way, soon we'll
Have Camp Greenland
For ours.  Love and big
Kisses to Satan's ass. 

Wolf Man

The old man appears to be well past his use by date. He’s as wrinkled as my nut sack. Often he’ll say things out loud other people don’t even dare think. His children are grown and scattered, and despite his being there for them when they were growing up, they just step around him now, as you would a hole or a puddle. From a distance, he helplessly watches his young grandchildren become hypnotized by the glow of digital screens designed to ensnare and control them. It’s a myth that a wolf will gnaw off its own leg to escape a trap. But you knew that already, right?

Wish

When that Martian girl
comes around hunting for
men in her black
leather cat suit,
you better lock up your uncles
'cause you know
somebody's gonna get
a little too juiced
and jump in her
saucer looking for
snacks

Here they come like cattle
with tickets in their hands;
showing that dominatrix smirk,
she drops a pocket guide to
sex positions in zero gravity,
and you know
you wouldn't wish some
of that on anybody

Fair Enough

 
When researching
potential homes for orphan poems
three primary points of interest
come to play:
about,
masthead,
and current issue.

If “about” starts
with apologies for
occupied land, melanin levels,
and confessions of oppression
to indigenous people who
oppressed their own people;
and “BIPOC” and “queer”
writers walk on red carpet
while straight white men
are forced to pay
for the privilege of rejection,
I begin to wonder.

As “masthead” bios
reflect female personalities,
Subaru ownership and a
right to child sacrifice,
my wonder increases.

And when “current issue”
reveals the few men included
share the middle name of
“castrated,” I realize
it’s time to take my balls
and my ballads
and look elsewhere.

Imagination


All the things that i have
All the things i have imagined

Those things can fill books movies
Netflix series

All these things i have imagined

You said and did but didn’t really didn’t do

But all those conversations and emotions

And situations 

The laughter and the horror stories

The energy i put into them 


And all those untrue things

And unreal things 

All that time living in those worlds

I have killed myself with the 


The snowflakes of imagination


And breathing in those worlds 

I always like to make people smarter dumber 

Than they really are

A Refuge of Self-Deception

Everyone reaches for a shard of immortality—
a gleam to flash in the cosmic audit.
Some chisel their names into monuments;
others whisper them into the seams of the universe,
hoping the wind files the message
in the correct eternity.

Most get routed through the usual channel—
a granite placard, dates stamped
like misprinted batch codes,
telling passersby:
here lies a carbon temp
whose contract dissolved quietly.

Lower still drift the poets—
the graceful write-offs—
crafting metaphors no one requisitioned,
reciting sonnets to drifting dust
and one baffled housefly
clocking overtime.
They get no graves.

They’re rerouted to a containment district—
Amazon Books—
a cul-de-sac of forgotten language
where paperbacks arrive like stray birds
and gather in gentle piles,
murmuring their unread lines
to fluorescent skies
that never look down.

A soft-afterlife warehouse,
stacked with abandoned imaginings,
each book aware of its fate:
to fade with dignity, in print,
aligned beside its silent colleagues
who never cleared the ledger.

The Only Reason

You stand in line at the job fair
amidst all your counterparts,
their jeans just as ripped,
their hair just as unwashed,
their dreams long since dead,
drying out on a line of hopelessness
for some future boss to chew on
like a pointlessly idle snack.

You stand in line at the job fair,
and the dude in front of you,
what with what’s left of his teeth
brown and folded in,
he somehow is both tweaking
and reeking of stale pot
and staler cat piss.

You stand in line at the job fair
waiting for your number to be called,
because as bad as these prospects are,
they’re at least a few rungs up the ladder
from where you currently reside,
constantly paying for gas
with rolls of nickels and dimes.

You stand in line at the job fair,
and the lady three or four bodies back,
she’s got a crying infant on her hip,
and she looks so tired;
the bags under her eyes
have their own carry-on luggage.

You stand in line at the job fair,
and finally they call your number,
and you’re under no delusion
that you’ll ever be anything more
than those disposable digits,
and you sit down across the table
from a graying man in a suit,
and he asks you why you want to work,
and all you can think to reply is:
because I don’t want to die.

What a pickle

 
I chew pickled carrots beside the toilet, 
waiting for the bath to fill. 
Each carrot is the length of finger – snap. 

I lick the vinegar off my thumbs.
My cold sore is a nibbling imp.

How do I annul this marriage?
I don’t hate my husband. I only 
want to shit in this toilet 
audience-free.

I cycled to work today. I cycled home.
A Civic glanced my handlebars
on the corner of Harvey and Gordon.

I’d only had two shots – Captain Morgan – 
before cycling home. I don’t think
I was in the wrong. 

I must be sleeping with that driver
– according to my husband –
because why else would someone hit me?

I envy these carrots their spines. 
How they take the edge off hunger
while leaving you empty. 

I’m half-reclined in half-warm water, 
half in and half out of this marriage, 
the bag, chewing
garlic from the bottom of the jar.



Urine: Thought Police # 8

 
You are among the worst, the pressure
that dogs me everywhere.
I piss in the pool and don’t tell anyone.
I piss in the men’s washroom
at work, after everyone else 
has gone home – a power play.
I rush to the bathroom at 2:00 am. 
My husband sits up in bed. He wants to see
my phone. My urine 
is a barbed canker worm, filling the space 
between heart and cunt. I can’t
wear fitted dresses, fitted pants. I burst
under pressure. I jog up onto the ridgeline,
smoke everywhere, but I still
drink and drink. My mouth
is a wasteland. I piss
in the middle of the trail. I piss 
on my shoe, my brand-new Nikes, 
and don’t wash it off.
Welcome, I tell the laces. Here we are.