Plywood windows

If I could wear soft and loose clothes
every day
                and be taken seriously,
forgetting for a moment
that comfort is for lesser creatures,
I would be less ill
                              at ease
and more sensitive to
zippers and seams.

I lost a drinking habit years ago
and found every thing
                                    sharper with age,
which does not clot the
bleeding, or numb the
site                     I remember I last had it
with me,
my cups are bone dry since this thirst
has all
but evaporated
making the air thicker around me.

If I found a diamond encased
in every silver lining,
                  carbon acting under the pressure
                  of those that have convinced me
                  to forgive
                  in these conditions
                  with sparkles on top,
I would have tasted love
                  on the rocks,
and choked on the hardest facets.

Time is our only personal property.

In-kind, community property
has foreclosed upon the pearl gates.
These lips have been boarded up
to deter any passer by's
                                       from dwelling.

It may not be safe
to live this way
without proper uniforms,
window dressings
and with naked wrists,
lacking a steady leg to pivot upon       
                             in order to see things
as they are
and find slighted contentment
enough of a shelter and shield
from monsoons and bad moons rising
every weak day.




Photo credit: Carol M. Highsmith, Kinney County, Texas. 2014 [Public domain].

Call me Callous

I must be sick.
Nothing sounds good.
Everything tastes suspicious.
Something stinks-
and not in just one place.

And I am switching on and off
like a light, from flaming heat
to icy sleet.
I shiver at my ashen image.
All is muted in grey,
like that one fat cloud
shorting the light behind
that does not desire
to move
me, but instead
hovers in hauntology.

I must have thrown out my smile,
I haven't seen it in a while.

Denial is a thick word
that extends in all tense directions.
And when I look back,
it was there and here.

I cannot speak right.
It is not your misunderstanding
it is my bad, I prose,
I left out the important details.

All my forgotten failures
have been waiting for me
to give up,
to add them up,
to throw up
the shit in the fan
and splatter the walls
with my acidosis.

Etching insults on my skin,
wretching my brain,
I am stained with vile regret-
yet, it may be a nasty infection
of my excommunicated ego,
though -I'm still -I think
I must be sick
of myself.



Image of painting By Artist Edward Prentis [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.