—GOD I FEEL LIKE HELL TONIGHT

Yard Sale

 

My body is having a yard sale tonight

but there are no takers
even though everything is free.
My gently used fingers tap
the table they’ve been set on
Morse Code or the beats to Let It Be
making a curious granny nervous.
I don’t blame her.
These feet have walked miles
like everyone else’s
but I’ve been too frightened to cut the toe nails.
My neck looks so much longer from this angle,
so much stringier, like a loaf of beef jerky.
The eyes are still brown and bloodshot,
two mini-moons bobbing in a jar of gazpacho.
Everyone wants what’s in the locked box.
They shake it and listen for clues
surprised by the lightness and lack of bounce.
I haven’t told them there’s no heart for sale.
That it was ripped out long ago.
I haven’t told them there’s
a ghost of me inside that box
365 breaths for every day
you ruined me.
 

 

Just Look

Soon it will be too dark to hold you

and owls will rule nations, bats on dialysis.
I’ve learned how slippery that makes things
but there are reasons fate is an aloof prom date.
Just look--even the moon has become impotent.
Colors melt like sugar-free snow cones.
Trees experiment with self-mutilation and
the mountains are suddenly into anal.
You said Before Anyone Else
as if you actually meant it
as if you’d invented it.
Have you noticed how
an icicle can become a weapon?
How anything can?
Need proof?
Just look at this pillow pressed
over my mouth,
so fresh and clean
right out of the dryer.

 

 
If I Was A Better Liar

Inside me there is

a smeared window.
No one’s to blame.
Or someone is.
My mother said I
make too much of rejection
but some of the most
complicated men among us are
boys inside their head
looking for a prom date
or pistol.
If I could shoot straight
that’d be one thing.
If I was a better liar I
might not be on my knees
confessing to an orphaned moon
about the  unfinished poem
I’ve become.