You are the way you think you are.
Exactly that way.
On a rope
Gripped tight—white knuckles
Tension sawing through the bone.
Seeking to loosen
attachments.
Fighting,
To stay suspended
In the space
Above
The snapping jaws
Of some ill-timed
convention for
half-starved crocodiles.
What you think,
you are.
Eventually.
Let the teeth
and the frenzy
rise up.
do the Lord’s work.
Leave the bones
Splitting at their ends
as a monument
to knowing
Thyself.
You
are,
you think
You.
Lift the arm
To accomplish basic tasks
And let the right hand
Ignore what the left is doing.
Let it indulge its deepest desires
To claw a piece of happiness
from between the couch cushions
While the right scrounges for quarters
To buy another vape pen, turn the living room into the parlor of smoke where decisions are made.
Where futures are broken and sliced up and taken apart for fingernail filings.
Let the left feast on old, hard candy. A grape-turned-raisin. Forgotten indulgences.
A momentary taste of sweetness.
Before it is put to work.
Sweat drops into the gears of the machine
clogs and gums up the timing.
Locust clouds on the horizon,
Dim the light of the heart of the summer.
Sky, a blank space peppered with smog-fine point accents of haze.
Humidity cloying-
Chafing against a skin refusing to dry.
A rigid attachment to feeling
Good.
Those Wild-Wild-Wildwood days.
The stable has burst open.
Each horse on display
Riding proudly out into
The sweltering world.
Replete with those 4 riders
Dressed in heavy, body-consuming cloaks
to stick a thumb in the eyes of those prepared for the weather.
Behind them, a parade forms;
Even an ending deserves a celebration.
Still clipping away over here with weekly posts. Share with someone you love, or tolerate.
New month-
Less new me
Aged like rusted metal
in an old backyard,
Forgotten.
Covered by overgrowth.
I have value to the scrappers.
Boil me down
To sell me
For pennies.
Copper is forever,
So is mud.
And, so is death,
I’m told.
After the rain, I tip myself over and let the excess water I’ve accumulated out. I do it in my backyard, in the small, gated corner where the grass has grown unabated, next to the trash cans.
I crouch and twist my head, let the water leek out of my ear in a flush-stagnant, ripe with mosquitos and hangers on.
I tilt my trunk and bend in a complicated yoga routine:
Cobra
Downward Dog
Warrior 1 or 2?
Tree Pose, but while tree is sawed in two
I let the lukewarm water, tinged with old scraps and flavored with the remnants of earwax, drain from me. Small pieces of eggshell and coffee grinds scratch and pull at my inner ear. They are begging to stay.
I contort myself again, letting the flow of water shrink to an uneven drip. On all fours, I shake my head-an agitated dog trying to release the last drops.
The yard in front of me is soaked through. It’s lined with the junk and earstuffs that have plagued me. The mosquitoes, now good and angry, patrol this new world, looking for a still puddle or sweet, new blood-Maybe both. I take a deep breath to center myself, drink in the odor of the foul soup at my feet. Fighting the urge to gag, I step away and close the gate, clinking the locking hinge shut to lock in what I have cast from myself.
Now the day can begin
