when i say

when i say i need you to come with me all i mean is walk next to me and tell me about something that happened to your friend once, please, while i look for butter in the store so i can go home and be alone and make cupcakes and when i say i need to be alone all i mean is it takes four hours or so in a dark quiet room before i am awake and can enjoy the life i’d been living before in all that time i wasn’t alone and delight in plans for future times when i am again not alone but please if it’s after nine and i call you it’s urgent that i not be alone right then but don’t worry because all i mean by that is just say some things to me while i dehydrate myself to sleep and all i mean by that is, look, i just cry a lot, it’s okay, i always will, probably, so just tell me about what you ate that day or who you saw or if you got anything interesting in the mail today and don’t worry too much because crying is what i do when, whenever, but please when i say i need you to sit with me please sit down next to me and be patient still like you have been on occasions before because that’s all i really am asking for when i say i need you to sit with me, again, in the same way, when i am in need.

meritocratic misconception

if to be beautiful

then to be free

if to sing to ears

then to be free

not to discover the freedom of

“being myself,” of singing

meritocratic misconceptions

don’t be ashamed of having bought in

it is just the age

the perverse dream

the wage

the bolts and perfected seams

bad son

“It was nice to be with my family”

bad son

bad daughters sleep around but come home

that’s why I am a bad son

it was nice, it was nice

it was nice, people who

understood

you know, it was nice

not to have to try so much

it was nice to

be taken care of, to be

understood

which is the same as

not being

alone

with spite

these words

that’s why, again, I’m a bad son

for being selfish

a bad son

it was nice, it was nice

it was never nice

There is a soul I've found

There is a soul I’ve found leering in at

through the windows while the TV goes on about

and to speak its name cheapens it, while making it live longer to live more cheaply,

but was I born with a mouth in the middle of

I have protected it by never opening the door

or only opening the door on Christmas

to give it Russian tea cookies

and then making it

spectacle on the outside of the pane

Most of the time I send it on

conquests, which are most of the time errands disguised as conquests,

and although it knows it is satisfied to be away from

Meanwhile it is before 5am and experiences, as though on a mobile,

sort of entrance an nauseate

taking the place of real dreams

Every hand shaken has not touched

and meanwhile the soul I’ve often found

tapping on shaken hands’ windows long after the fact

singing to while shaken hands’ ears are bought off by real dreams

Apology

Been busy being social, and it's killing the parts of me that fix me to a window facing a neighbor's wall so I can keep away from the poetry while it happens, always between dark and dawn. Here's something from tonight.


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Apology

be satisfied

be satisfied

be satisfied

I will it.

the food on the table

the man in your arms

the rain and the trees, and the trees and the river

and the rain and the trees and the river and everything

be happy today

be happy today

be happy today

I will it.

a day’s work

a dollar earned

a woman with her compliments

a place to go home to

be content

be content

be content

I will it.

snapped twigs

a way to go by

having your forest

and your open field, too,

the food on the table and the man in your arms, a day’s work and a dollar earned,

and the food on the table and the man in your arms and a day’s work and a dollar earned and everything

the will residing, 

residing, 

residing,

residing in the passions’ suburbia

considerations

scholarship

college

independence

mindscape, 3:44 am

It has been a few months since the things belonging to him,

mostly soggy wood beams in rain filtered afternoon bedding,

fell from my dreams and collapsed in a loose pile here when I stepped here.

The details of his face are now obscured,

but I linger on the idea of the comfort of tracing in my mind

the details of his face.

He was a fun house mirror.

They all are-

different, distorting.

I traverse the wreckage which is mostly the aftermath of mist.

I am also hesitant at the river banks anymore.

It is almost like I live east, inland, land-locked.

And then there’s the paper mache landscape half digested by a mouth

that lays like a thick paste across a few lengthy years

so that they are one grey masticated pulp,

and what to do with them,

and who to pitch in there,

and where to run to next.

Hims are heres are new,

until they suffocate you,

and then they suffocate you.