Lyricizes

Here.

Take this.

Break this.

I must hear it

shattering.

Now.

Stand on it.

Grind into it.

Make the goddamn

dust sing.

I knew a boy

who puffed and passed on the roofs of higher education

with women who did no good for him,

who had his open heart shat in,

who then faked it because it was just harder to be real,

who dreamt too big for his head,

who did too crazy for us all,

who grew up

to become a father.

I put poems

in your pockets

for you to find

when you are cold.

where there is love

there is God

where there is love

Crepe paper, your hands
batter your ears with the telephone.
You’ve not heard from her in so long.
Your voice quivering as much as your fingers.
She can hear your years, your frailty
betrayed by nerves dead to connection
by the paranoia in your thoughts,
by the planted pain in your knees and back
and it’s a dark place
a lonely place.
an old place.
And it scares her to know
that the irritation she feels,
the helplessness she grasps,
is only because one day
she will be in that place
dark, lonely
and old.

The way in which my genes are writ,
has wired me with my mother’s wit,
and tears that run just below my skin,
a surface scratch and I’m bawling sin.