Poor Poet Rag

My throat makes one more attempt
at swallowing its ballpoint Adam's apple
but the poems keep coming up
I soak the notebook
in milky acid syllables.
A body can't just digest itself,
you need the words for consumption.
Without a howling alphabet
your squares are slashed in half
& every meal falls into hungry triangles.


The rules are emptying my cupboards right now.
I am eating out of the kindness of my roommate's heart right now.
my wallet folds into a set of empty eyes right now
the blinking gasps asking: & then;
& then;
& then?

Singing Cedar Memories

(image sourced from Magpie Tales)

The geometry has tilted,

our eyes slide too fast and too far down,

gravity gets hungrier with the years.

When the body takes a moment to remember

our legs make bruises on the sidewalk.

And when those cold footsteps crest,

we pull that deep red nostalgia beneath us

and slide down on singing cedar memories.