dear reader,
I don’t care
if you read
these words but

the demon
riding my back
whispers fuck you
every time I

scritchy-scrabble
the page &
so I write
lest some angel

shows up
to ruin the
whole damn affair
with insufferable joy

I said
one day
my poems
would be
taught in
colleges &
my prof
said yes
as examples
of what
doesn’t work:
hard truths
are hard,
damn it

god I miss cigarettes even
though they’re right there,
how the drag filled my lungs
& stained the callus on my fuck
you finger with sweet nicotine
but the callus is gone now:
I no longer grip pencils for hours
penning missives & my damn
index finger is tappingly numb

With Apologies to Richard Brautigan

I am sittting at the kitchen table,
drinking a mug of Earl Grey.

An ant is crawling
on the refrigerator handle.

I have to disturb him
so I can get some milk.

There’s a bowl of cornflakes
I want to eat.

With Apologies to Brautigan & Bukowski

At 3:15 a.m. a beer shit
smells like a marriage between
inspiration and desperation.

I had to clean my ass
in the shower before
I could write this down.

But before I did I looked
in the toilet and said
“Ahah! I made that!”

hot tea, old mug, good book:
just me & tinnitus
ringing in the new year

not much depends upon
the black mailbox glazed
with freezing rain but
dammit the car door is stuck
& the driveway is a deathslide
despite two bags of ice melt
so what was the point
of pretreating when winter
clearly doesn’t give a shit
about my weekend plans?