i’m not jealous

when a poet dies
their books go to
#1 on amazon
& their words
stay locked
between pages
in countless
shelf shots
on instagram
& if luck
is in the air
some tiktok
college girl
attempts a
cold read
to vaporwave
or ambient jazz
in a cool edit

& still the dead rage in unmarked graves
churning under pockmarked fields of hundred-rows

where grass & politicians shift shoulders & widows
& mothers breathe names the world too soon forgets

while another fighter strafes a presidential palace
& spreads the joy of freedom with muddy boots

as if to say bullets are always cheaper
than a thousand thousand lives cut short

& the man freed from beneath the prison blanket
stumbles into light & shakes & shakes under open sky

4:30 a.m.

the hospital cross
stabs the moon
like a jaded lover

snaked with IVs
the old man
asks for ice

at desert dawn
camelback shrugs
toward the new year

another day
the uber coasts
into sky harbor

wings, wings
caught in currents
scattering home

chickens dart around
the mobility scooter
bathed in desert light

the bears drunk
on grain fight
trains in rain
& what remains
is grizzly brains

a big chief tablet
& a jumbo round
pencil & I’m back
in kindergarten
writing letters
over & again
& even now
my handwriting
loops & scrawls
& bounces above
the line as if
my fingers never
learned to foxtrot
with words as
fast they come

so many Nissan Sentras
in the community college
overflow parking lot