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for Jude.

you can’t tell but i’ve really tried hard to be myself in photographs and full length mirrors sitting on the shoulders of the patron saint of lost causes like the hero of a football game have i had it so good that now there’s nothing to recover from? it may be the most offensive day of the year and i am boycotting all things with pure intentions to prove that life is trivial an exponential suffering, testament to all my unfounded doubts! meanwhile the moon is melting like a giant prayer candle i can only see one moon from this planet emphasizing that whatever i’ve done here, i’ve done alone. maybe this is how it ends: me in my unmade bed no one by my side some slanted light coming through the window to prove that the Earth is tilted will someone be on the other end of the telephone to tell me death is awful but the silence after is golden?

eulogy no.22

the graveyard closes soon and you can’t bring balloons so you leave prayers on my pile of bones drinking blood in your Sunday best and hanging your head you cross yourself and laugh a little-- there is no science big enough to prove you wrong

how gray can clouds really get? when the ominous milemarkers of our less-than-holy spirits decide to rise up like regrets while you try to sleep i’ll take the blame you take the shortcut

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blissful.

its May-- maybe the first nice day of the year they’ve just announced the local 16-year-old murderer will be charged as an adult and the town is blissful

a man next to me on the bus is similarly ecstatic-- he tells me he’s just secured a $400 payday loan to get his lady bonded out which leads me to think of mistakes I’ve made

when I dream of old friends that night, my legs kick at the bottom of the bed somewhere in my subconscious I’m running free from all the grudges I still hold

#creative writing #poetry #spilled ink #alt lit

eulogy no. 21

1. buy a new mantra carve it in the walls something from STEPS or one of Ted’s sonnets keep a hammer under your bed 2. someone holds the door it doesn’t snow all winter you don’t hear the sirens you don’t understand your rights

#spilled ink #poetry #alt lit

aluminum foil in our shirtpockets, big thoughts in our heads plastic utensils ‘til we pay the library fines

cover story.

on beaches of dystopia where the horizon is a psychotic break dilapidated ceilings of my imagination the fire is always spreading from my house to yours I continue on this tour bus of just enough comfort through the mediocre neighborhoods of 2012, 2015, 2017 still in wrinkled shirts, still with plastic cups, a pendant of a savior for the barely good, the Patron Saint of Falling Short-- as if you could earn a medal for continuous disappointment. I wanted to be famous, filthy rich on the Forbes list of sorrow. I wanted to be the cover story on Murdered By The Government Monthly my list of regrets rolled out like a marathon red carpet-- my crown is cracked, the secret police are closing in who will share a casket with me? I drive off the road reciting what prayers I remember, I die just before I reach the altar, I’ll no longer need to write-- you all know everything about me. my funeral slideshow will be nine hours long, my posthumous hair will be displayed in museums, I’ll never ascend.

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11pm knife.

i like to start sentences with “if and when i die” it really freaks people out in my dreams i’m trapped in a house where the floorboards are made of snakes, you are a famous jockey in donkey races- the snakes don’t affect you you’re always telling me “just get the words down, we’ll talk about it later.” you’re not going to like what i think i’m reading Steps everyday, I can’t be brought down tall, distinguished, sometimes bearded, (i have a knife) recipient of many awards when you speak of what is important to you i die of boredom

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two dreams.

there are spike strips all over the highway we are weaving through them successfully for awhile but you hit one I get mad and the cops come to question us. next, I’m at a mechanic’s shop and I know I’ll be waiting lifetimes.

there’s a fight between two groups of people about to go down one of the groups are railroad workers I keep telling you this you want to get video of the brawl but it’s important you get the settings correct on your camera I have to use the restroom and I miss the whole thing my urine is neon green.

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montana.

nothing that occurs in nature is turquoise you say in an oldsmobile with montana plates

i get the creeps and look around for something blue

but the moon is a giant sac of blood i hate when it’s like that

the radio regurgitates various warnings we must live always in vague fear like children in darkness

you say you’ve been living different swam through troubled water, drank a little of it

stop staring at me i say, god is the dumbest thing i’ve ever heard of-- what about turquoise?

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confession no.43

a week ago i listed my feelings in a want ad you told me the good news is that this won’t last forever the good news is we’re here together now they say not to talk about it but the moon is the weirdest thing going second guess the names of constellations and remember you’re just as useless a horizon of illuminated vacancy signs a heart that hurts like skipped rocks here’s to the edge; we’re definitely gaining on it

#poetry #creative writing #spilled ink #alt lit

confession no.41

idle the car this is a song from far away but if I say it’s for you then it is raise your hand if there’s a ghost in every empty chair driving around at 4am that’s when I’m poetic sometimes I think god’s just out here in the woods like a clumsy dad trying to gather enough firewood to live forever

#creative writing #poetry #alt lit #spilled ink

eulogy no.20

feeling less everything if you wanted towers i would have shouted them from windows

you were the guide these are the forms you breathed into being

look at the way your limbs leave to hold grudges against songs we listened to together

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Bruce Springsteen's working class themed golf course

my house revolves around a huge star that lights up the whole backyard for hours i went home to dance in the sparks of old traumas sometimes mistaken for joy and drank in my blue mechanic's shirt on the 15th green an empty parking lot in the middle of the night there's crude oil in place of a water hazard on the 11th hole of Bruce Springsteen's working class themed golf course he's been popping up in a lot of poems lately we're not mentioned by name in the ones he writes about us

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personal meaning.

the way to start a poem is a list of things you miss or simply, "we have ignition" the motel across the street is on fire again, the neon sign looks like it says "open wound" it's hard to admit the ceiling is collapsing or god is the yellow scribble in the top left corner if all he have are outlines "i miss winter" vacuuming bones out of the closet your alarm clock weeps someday you'll hear that sound and cry personal meaning is a jesus doll stitched from carpet remnants six cans of budweiser and a .38 behind the nightstand when it's time to leave

#poetry #creative writing #alt lit #spilled ink

anti-moon poem.

i think your eyes look like yellow moons or when you're on a plane and the lights are far away but you know what they are 'cause you're the only one going home

i tried to omit yellow moons from this poem but they showed up anyway there's really nothing i can do about it

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after graveyard poem.

the buildings are enormous in this dream our eyes are photograph red (from ghosts i guess) we see an epitaph like this: 'i hope we were happy even if it didn't last long' goddamn life is joyless but it's over quick do you ever dream? i forget myself in public all the time everyone has taken my name they want to touch your hair and sink into your curtains someone is under the bed saying the world goes on as long as it has to we're out of whiskey will anyone ever reach us?

#poetry #creative writing #alt lit #spilled ink

to the previous owner.

there used to be blood on these pages the emotion i felt then was both headlights going out at the same time i drove until my eyes were television static your dirty raincoat says goodness flows downstream-- we don't need to try so hard in another life you won't have to sell all your old books, you'll find this in the margins of one of mine

#creative writing #spilled ink #alt lit #poetry

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