What to do!

Had I thought of this earlier

A massive headache would have been prevented.

Tick tock.

Error.

Violin playing in the background. And I dreamed of

Ernest Hemingway.

Rather odd. Still

The trees stand.

Had I only thought of this

Earlier.

Perhaps this is just to say

Everything I couldn’t.

No.

Do I dare?

Even

Cut a pear?

I very well may cut my finger.

Death.

Everything is

Silent.

Tick tock.

Once I lost a continent.

(Write it!)

Rise and fall and rise and fall again does my pen

I am nearing

The

End.

Don’t blame yourself for what happened

That night I died such a tragic death

Driving from Chauncey to Amesville

My Fiat Spider was hit head on by

A drunk driver. My boyfriend

Felt just as guilty as you.

I don’t feel like I wasted twenty years,

And it could have just as easily been you-

So you can go on and live your life,

Free, happy, and pleasant

While I stay up here in heaven,

Watching over you, it’s really not so bad.

It’s always spring here and I feel soft wind

Against my neck. I just wish you wouldn’t feel so

Dirty. What happened to me could have happened to anyone

Do not put a price on life. People only live a short while

You understand to appreciate what you have.

She hurls me into the machine,

not asking me if I’d like to go.

I see different stains and various

colors.

Whirl, Whirl, Whirl.

The door slams above us.

We’re caged in.

I listen to the

beep

                beep                     beep

of the machine.

Footsteps walk away as we’re

inundated with freezing water.

Whirl, Whirl, Whirl.

We’re throw this way and

that.

I’m choking with water, and I hope

she appreciates what I’m doing for her.

Whirl, Whirl, Whirl.

I’m dizzy now, but it slows down, replying

back to me, “We’re down now.”

A loud,

earsplitting,

 piercing sound shakes me.

Footsteps come down, and she opens the door, smiling.

Whirl, Whirl, Whirl.

She punches, folds, backstabs,

and lunges at me. Placing me on top of my friends from the neighborhood,

the human grabs us, smashing us together.

It wasn’t pleasant.

Whirl, Whirl, Whirl.

She slams us into our houses, one by one,

not caring if it gets too dark for us.

I know what will happen now.

It will happen again.

Jimmy will come in,

put me on,

go to soccer practice, and then

I’ll be in

that dreaded place

again.

Whirl, Whirl, Whirl.

made my girlfriend feel unappreciated and lonely.

 the next night,

while she was leaving from her friend’s house,

probably complaining about how awful I had been,

on the road to Amesville, Ohio, she steered her car

head on into an on-coming truck. I identified her uniform, getting a visceral feeling.

Not because of her damaged features

that I had once admired,

but because I was the cause. I was the one who told her that I wasn’t

going to take care of the baby. I was the one who was responsible, yet

I backed out. What I exactly had said to her was too harsh and draconian

for words. You have my permission to hate me, since I even

hate myself for it,

writing her name on every wall of our was-to-be future home,

savagely clawing the wall, trying to bring her back. The wall slaps me,

snapping me back. The furniture

that I had once held her as she slept

mocks me, laughing, calling out to one another, What a fool he is to have

left her.

Her smile appears on everything, even this paper, on the wall, furniture,

TV, kitchen counter, my head. She’s gone. Forever. Because of me.

It takes time and loneliness for a human to become the animal he really is.

I once stated to you,
‘My favorite superhero is Wonder Woman!’

You scoffed, and replied,

Being the Marvel fan you are,

‘Rogue is so much better.’

We argued,

And then we laughed at how weird we were,

And about how close we’ve become,

Like sisters.

Later that night I had a dream,

I won’t give details,

There was too much spandex,

And far too many capes.
But I will inform you,

My dream made me realize,

What a hero you are to me.

You don’t fly around,

And you aren’t radioactive,

But you have some other superpower,

One that I take for granted.

You save my life daily,

Just by being there.

I change my answer.

My favorite superhero,

Is you.

Papa left me and Mama

in a dark cave, alone. He’s coming back, though.

Mama said that Papa wishes to marry another woman, since

she denied his faith. He’s going to marry the woman Mama

once was. That’s what she says,

but

I know Papa is coming back for me. He loves me.

My baby sister rests in my sleeping Mama’s hands.

Mama’s been asleep for days. Her chest does not move

like it used to. I think she is gone,

but

I don’t like to think about it. Instead, I think

of the day when my Papa will come.

The day he left us here, he threw at Mama a book.

It was the book I had seen her read when he wasn’t at home.

At night, sometimes, she would leave with her secret friends with the

Book.

I don’t understand why Papa hates Mama. A Book? Maybe it’s bad.

My baby sister creaks, weeping. She’s awake, and I’m not her

Mama. What can I do?

I reach for her,

but

a white human appears in front of me.

No longer is the dust in the air stomping down on me.

No longer do I fear.

No longer do I feel a need to be found and loved.

No longer am I Papa’s girl.

The white human looks like an angel.

Mama told me about them.

The angel touches my Mama, and I see

her breath

come back to her.

Her chest is no longer is dead.

She starts to nurse the baby,

but,

once the angel is gone, he takes my Mama.

I scream, trying to grab my Mama from him.

He says that He’ll be back tomorrow, and that He

will give me light in the darkness.

Day in and day out, the angel appears.

He talks to me, while Mama

feeds my sister.

He tells me that I’ll be saved, and that

my story is

special. And

that it will make people believe in

Someone higher.

He told me that no longer will I have to

fear,

be hungry,

or cry.

For He is here

for longer and forever.

on a ripe line of sky

that’s where I was going.

Following him through the ocean,

country roads, cities, and mountains

to find him again.

I had lost him once,

because I was not able to follow him through

the ocean, country roads, cities, and mountains.

I wasn’t about to lose him again.

Waking each morning, I find my

angel

is no longer there.

Picking up the phone, not knowing

who to call,

because he was gone.

He had followed me to find me through the deep oceans,

the dirty country roads, the turmoil of cities, and rigid mountains.

Why couldn’t I do the same?

I stand, knowing that

if I did lose him again,

I would be a human, alive, but not.

I would go to work, telephone my friends, go to parties, meet new people, and love all over again, but

I would not be alive. My heart would

die.

To keep it pumping life into me,

I will swim through the oceans, stomp through the country roads,

jog through the cities, and hike every mountain, because their pain

wouldn’t be half as what I feel right now, without him.

He was my north, my south, my east, my west,

my working week and my Sunday rest.

Kennedy is a grave man

Staring blankly out with his painted green eyes

A pair of Eckleburg eyes

Glaring down from an advertisement on the side of the road

The smooth crease of his cheeks filled with black

It fills the air in an occupied disposition

And, suddenly, Hister’s crying in the back

The hair flops with the wind

The sun glistens off the darkened Wayfarers

And, suddenly, Giancana’s crying in the back

His mind’s shaded in the cave of a pillbox

Enter the totem of the aboriginal

Enter the ego of an I of a pillbox

The shadow lifts and flows to the brain on the back

The canvas is cracking with age

Can the Roman Catholics save you, boy, blue moon?

My sweet plum pudding

What will you do for the health of the world?

Blue moon, eye, pillbox, dog morgue

Mark down the 22^nd

It’s like a hallucinogenic meeting with the National Assembly

Will God save the Russians now?

You took a beautiful, rich woman in Turkey

She led your nose like lady liberty

She led you and the res publica to ruin

Khrushchev likes his Cuban mistress in rags

How you float off the two-dimensional surface like an autonomous ghost

It was they who poisoned you

Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast

Why do you stare down at me like a play toy of Dobrynin?

Babushka, red, birthmark, red, celibacy, and all

Who stormed the grounds like a faerie queene?

What’s with the smirk, Jack Kennedy?

Nearly graduated from a ‘school’

I have come to realize I understand nothing at all.

The understanding of understanding nothing

Is what they call ‘education.’

It is not the nothing, but the understanding of nothing

That makes a man ‘enlightened’

I want to show you myself. I want to bring you into a world

Of spinning glasses and crystal memories

Of amber shadows spinning in the dust

And papery old photographs with coffee stains from the beans’ dark roast

And the cedar chiffarobe relaxing in the corner

As I watch you saunter in

Glass in hand, loping through the eaves like a dangling envelope filled with stamps

And Renaissance paintings adorning the halls.

You’d remove your glasses and smile almost sadly

Only because you’d forgotten all but the melancholy smiles that we deceived the whole world with

And the disguise would peel away like an orange or a chestnut

In the wooden boxes on the table.

The crust, the mantel, the layers of cold stone

Would give way to the core of the matter. Living in the details

Resigning to infinity. Embracing the cosmos

From the row of corner windows in our library.

defunct

that used to

eat some semi-sweet-chocolate

brownies

and read onetwothreefourfive poemsjustlikethat

Jesus

there were some awesome times

and what we want to know is

how do you like your shortened break

Mister Mac