The Ballad of Dave and Sally

Post-isolation, Dave met his match—
Sally was grateful for someone to latch .
They said some things quite publicly
and together scrounged for property.

Promising their fervid testimonial
would not descend into a chimerical
quest, they agreed that they would raise
the best and lavish them genuine praise.

What you take beyond costs nothing,
though to remain you must make a living.
They held cabinet meetings over how to eat
while the kids belched Olly Olly Oxen Free!

Finicky months passed, fingers grew long
and the sustenance kept down.
This did not assuage Dave's concern
that the happy wage could not be earned.

A sea of books, or digital sprawl:
He felt that they should have it all.
He strove to win the intra-marital war
of I love you more, I love you more. 

Sally trusted him—the less they said,
the more doubt swelled inside Dave's head.
‘Till he quietly took out an insurance policy
that grew quite popular in the 21st century.

Purpose twists and beckons.
Dave slipped and, relieving his pension,
snapped his neck on their wooden fence.
The family lived off the interest.

rug sale

I browsed the bizarre stall
after getting my bones seen,

and touched the green,
blue and crimson patterns,
the shredded tassels
of bourgeois ground
obfuscators,

and thought of the life
we would one day have
to drop $700 simply
to have an art piece
we could walk on.

The songs we like don't make us cry

or— we cry our lives
out— no compromise.
No composition
of sunrise to whet
the spirit, or
daisy-chain of dimples
to admire— no.
We harden:
iron hand in iron
hand, hanging
our sanity
on scalding wire
as if hope's retaliation,
getting our digs

dug in.
I may be wrong—
each song grips
us falling, untwisting
the root crafts cause
for continuing.
But the songs we like
don't make us cry—
they empty us of leaving.

nurse's notes

September 15, 9:15am

Patient is pulled from the lobby, after just three deflating

           minutes overhearing the front desk at the family clinic,

Patient is shepherded through the hall of the drained aquarium.
Patient says thank you for the hope you must carry.
Patient throws a dirty look at the sharp-shooting scale.
Patient wrings his hands like rags left too long in the sink.
Patient learns that the doctor is running behind, that some patients
            are more difficult than others.
Patient says it's good to get some answers.
Patient's legs are wrapped around each other like Jack's beanstalk.
Patient plays patty-cake to keep from shaking.
Patient wishes he hadn't sprung for the second cup.
When asked about sexual activity, he asks what counts.
Patient fills out the form as accurately as he can.

Doctor enters and reads the history of this stranger,
Stranger patiently waits for him to catch up.
Doctor says, explain this part.
Patient senses his own blood in the water.

Patient articulates the guilt of wanting to die,
              tension between a life of ease and the dark patches of days,
Patient remarks that you cannot see darkness if it arrives without approaching,
              wonders when it all got so heavy, and useless, and lean,
his voice dropping when recalling how bad it could get,
              when the days would sink unfathomably deep,
when extra-creative thoughts grew appendages to carry out their mission and crossed the boundary                     into nearly real end-of-it-all planning,
when the only thing holding it back was the logistical nightmare of how to make it look like an                          accident, as if that would smooth the shock of going,
         when by 3pm life was only botched pixels and the porcelain holding cell,
Patient admits to being no good at asking for help, finds struggling alone to be a certain kind of             irresistible, but when he could no longer resist wanting to die, he turned to his best friend and cried,
confessing he could never really hate himself, but that loving himself makes it worse,
Patient doesn't drink anymore after that night, for fear of waking the slumbering architect of his death,
as of last week doesn't smoke any more cigarettes, and knows his chemicals cannot possibly keep up,
smokes a bit of weed at the end of each day, worried what will become of him if he doesn't have                   something, but not really desiring anything,
briefly complains that everything he owns is breaking, his computer kaput, phone's got a mind of its own, has a hole in his underwear the size of, well, you know...
notes that once you've seen the hole, and known the hole, and held the hole close while falling asleep,           you start to notice the movements— the kicking, stretching, tightening— that ripped the hole            into existence, one torn thread after another,
Patient had a dream last night that his Father showed up with his nomadic crew of eleven, and while                  they all went to sleep in the basement, Father set up his sleeping bag right next to mine, fixing         the TV to max volume to make sure that neither of us would be getting any sleep,
and woke up in the dark missing him, missing him, missing him.

Patient carries a history that cannot be put down,
and schedules an appointment for November,
says I'll be around.

my future

drowning
in the oxygen bar
at your wedding

Eponine

Oh my Eponine!
Wherever it is that you lay your head,
whatever keeps you up at night
or in the morning gets you out of bed,
whatever dreams keep you locked
out of the communal drowning pool,
how many years you've been content
or how many years you've been to school,
however many borders you've crossed
or great works you've helped to build,
now that you have looked my way,
I make my preparations for the highest bid.

Oh my Eponine,
I wince at language that should try to possess you.

Who could even want, I ask this empty room,
to contain your warm, unbridled vivacity? 

the president of peace

his advisers advise: war is mighty unpopular,
people get squeamish when we bomb children
and play god with governments and of course
their disgust evolves to outrage once they learn
that they're the ones footing the bill.

so he promised peace
lifting the people onto his shoulders
showing them that the horizon line
isn't so far as we'd believed

and the people believed in peace
and the people argued for peace
and the people voted for peace

so the president of peace wins
and is sworn in
and the warmth of peace
perceived fills the body politic
like a soothing serum

then the president goes through
those doors, the doors which
all presidents have passed through,
into the enclave of maps and missions,
where the globe in the center of the room
spins furiously, never stopping,
and the president of peace pausing,
absorbing all, advice and threats receiving,
sees the intelligence gathering,
hears the masses whispering,
on his tongue the taste of bombing,
in his head the sweep of mourning,

yet when the president emerges from the room
you can see in his eyes
that what was promised is slipping,
that our war is perpetually continuing

A Mother's Burden

Here is something I want you to hear, white people.
You... are free. But we... are loose.

These are the words of a mother,
whose daughter crossed the sea
to lay down her life
for a wretch like me.

And she's conflicted.

Conflicted that we print the
swim times of the kid who
raped an unconscious girl
behind a dumpster,
but when a black man
is shot for owning a gun
and uhh... well, he looks
a lot like our suspect,
with that wide nose,
we print his record
and mine his lifetime
for proof of his errors
to justify state-sanctioned
execution.

Which is another way to say,
we comb for clues to their humanity
so that we may fully dehumanize
the dead.

So yes, she is conflicted.

She puts her life second
below the nebulous crib of country
and risks for
all names, sorts, types, tracks,
all religions and notions, occupations,
all strata, all shades, all distortions.
Though they call the same place home,
she comes home conflicted.

Majored in psychology,
been serving overseas,
and still I can feel that 
they hate me.

And in the supermarkets they follow me.
And in their homes they chastise me.
And at traffic stops they are allowed
to kill me.

That confliction, I cannot grasp,
laying your life down for folks
who can't look past your skin,
while somehow still refusing to see it.

I have not wrung this out
to counter guilt, or feel better about it,
though I'm not convinced that
writing is ever anything else.

I am sharing a story of a woman whose name I missed,
who spoke with the strength I know comes from
living and battling a life that I could never measure,
about her selfless daughter who could someday
die for us conflicted.

and some, i assume, are good players

A racist has entered the game
and there is no counter-play

except to tilt, tilt, tilt
the screen from your humanity.

The bastard plasters obscenities
and loathes Peru in particular.

[insert furiously typed diatribe]
[a copy-pasted hate sermon]

Dude, what did Peru do to you?
Did it steal your determination?

Did it ruin your white life?
Ah, we will never play again,

but it comforts me to think
of you in the brooding dark,

brow contorted, slick fingers
flying over the keys,

squinting through the fog
of war, counting your enemies.

You make nine of them each game.
Your world is getting smaller.

And wouldn't it be nice, you think,
if the river was ten feet taller.

emptyhead

walking barefoot carefully
avoiding what's left of the ant war

counting up my days remaining
calculating what it's all for

caving in to what gets me through
wishing this empty felt more like levity

hoping you guess at what I mean
from all the way across the sea

binge-watching that show you love
with your ghost audibly sighing

letting every good one go
though not for lack of trying