how do poor people produce so much garbage?
dream sleep daughter
and in my sleep i try to toss and turn but my daughter claws onto me desperately and i fall back into exhaustion and i want to be that edge of warmth that gives her comfort and i want her to be the anchor that keeps me steady the dream that denies all the monster that i’ve become
pawing trace
the phantom limb traces over her cheek. he traces over her lips. the ghost, the echo, the wind pushes against the pane, rattles the door. she turns over and draw the sheets around her, buries herself. he feel the phantom limb touch his arm as he moves out of each room. how useless that extra limb. the house moves through the night and the moon stops it cold. outside a cat huddles behind a tire, paws a leaf trapped beneath the tread.
bystander
I lack the eloquence to untwine out of bounds and unmarred but find myself instead with rope burns and chaffed lips, splits in the skin between fingers and the delusion that I had seen her between clouds bursting into weeping grey sheets of rain.
I inhale ravenously a cigarette drenched in gasoline.
the stealing difference
there’s stealing, the shape of an echo, the mimic of a stance, the yearning to ascend, transcend, that’s pleasing, amiable, soft on the eye because it’s a certain kind of nostalgia, an homage built out of respect and love that serves as a springboard for something different.
then there’s outright thievery, the stabbing in the dark, the punch in the face while the other hand tears away the chain, the foot on the neck as two hands yank out the solitary gold tooth, a mean, vicious taking that screams in your face, nothing can ever be yours.
all things i took i tried to give back somewhere else, someone else, at any given point in time. everything taken from me was always blindsided and in the dark.
chewing on knuckles
the compression of that
slow thing into a snowball
fist of hate and rage from something
beautiful like the shiny points
a fork makes plunged deep into the belly
of forgetting. i had said once
in the beginning, i know
how to disappear,
and the curb stretches even further
away from reaching it. i chew
my knuckles to keep them
from breaking
at any given time
you have only one chance at this at any given time. the moment has left before you have even begun to comprehended it. hence the ghost of the stairwell. the haunting that comes after when you suddenly realize what has truly happened. the mind takes it all in too late, too sourly, too slow to spit back the proper response. there is no response but the one you made without thinking. it goes on like this. constantly, not stopping. how horrible. not stopping. without stopping. no room for it, gone just like that. to be in the moment, to be present, to be conscious of the how quickly it all goes and to take it all in. to empty the mind so that it is filled with the moment you are living. too soon, too soon, just like and it is gone.
fake it
the beautiful thing about children is they simply cannot fake it.
in all this noise
there just isn’t enough to keep up, for the up keep, daughters breaking games for attention, newborn sons mewling for their bottle and the day goes by just like that, and you have to put this desire away and that yearning away and that bit of frustration that would normally have you put your fist through a wall you set aside to show your daughter this is how you hold a slice of pizza to eat it like a grown up and you tickle your son while his mother makes him a bottle and you feed your wife while she feeds your son because her back is broken and you push the rest of the day further back into the night until you can finally get here and jot down the remnants and even so even so despite it all it takes your mind off everything else it takes you away you from yourself you find some peace in the midst of all this noise.
unkept beast
the beast within me is never asleep, it does not know slumber. it always only muzzled and chained, it growls through the night. it makes me restless and angry without cause. it drips hungry saliva as it paces around. it is mangy and unkempt, its teeth yellowed but still sharp, gnarled claws scratch the floor. it sniffs around for escape, it perks its ears for any sign of exhaustion. it is beautiful and desperate. relentless and cunning. it is all the things I keep myself from being.