The certainty of seeing your face
When I arrived in the hidden place
Was gone forever in a split-second
Head down on the table like
You were sleeping, an eternal rest
Great sadness in the center of my chest
Those days are gone now
Pictures in storybooks
Cemented in my mind’s eye
No need to cry any longer
Your spirit is forever with me
(Photo by Suzy Hazelwood from Pexels)
I’m the type of person who puts my entire heart into everything I do
Love pours out from me like a tipped over water glass
Drenching everything on the map in front of me
Lines get blurred, everything mixes together
All aspects of my life live in harmony
Until the day that a sinkhole appears
The water rushes away from all areas of the map
And vanishes into this black abyss
Leaving only my tears to water to the desert my life
(Photo by Eric Muhr on Unsplash)
I. Alienation
I’ve lost track of time too many times
What am I doing here?
No one was there to answer
The streets were so empty
And there I was again, lost
Lost and not found – the story of our lives
Trying to find purpose amid the ruins
Of late-stage American capitalism
And cycles of market collapses
So, I kept wandering
The sky was charcoal but, despite that,
It was so hot the concrete sizzled
Is this what they predicted?
There’s nowhere left to turn
Everyone else has burned
And here I am, lost again
Today I wanted to bring you a photo of my family’s old farm. These 250 acres of the family farm land in Pelham, TN, is where I spent a lot of my time growing up and where I learned a lot about food. My Mutsi had a tiny vineyard where we could pick the grapes to make jam. My Papa had a little garden out front where we could collect veggies for our salads and other side dishes.
Continue readingAmid the wasteland, I am broken.
to say we were lost boys would be cliché
but clichés have ways
of cementing truths into language
like hard red suns that scorched West Philly & warm beers we guzzled ‘till we couldn’t walk straight & time went missing like a thief
who stole my innocence
& we packed into an old sedan on a road to nowhere &
perhaps, if time is not linear, this had to happen &
if free will is a myth, we had no choice in the matter,
merely swigging, smoking, fighting in adolescent wastelands
Continue readingin psych wards, they take your belt, shoelaces
anything you could use to hurt yourself
when I’m there, I fear the world will kill me
so, I give them my belt, tell ’em to take good care of it
& I talk to others there
& I feel damaged & I identify with compatriots –
Continue readingFor my father
in the dining room, action figures were imprisoned in a green vase, and you returned from prison with my uncle, looking slimmer
from pushups in sunbaked yards
mustache and dazed look gone, down on one knee, arms open wide & smiling with teeth I learned were fakes
I thought you were fake, too
unrecognizable, a stranger from a blurred past we no longer spoke of, only at grandma’s house, when we opened letters decorated by your brother with cut-outs from Marvel comics
& were told you were away on business –
Continue reading
