

They
will sell you
candy cigarettes,
insulin,
Camel Wides,
chemotherapy,
God,
nicotine patches,
life insurance,
and a bronze casket
all
in one lifetime.
in death
our ribs remain skyward
like hands
cast to heaven
in prayer
in the 1990’s
your flannel shirt
was a cultural ticket
that took you
greasy haired
through a graffiti pocked
bathroom stall door
to a grunge wünderland
where herpes came standard
with every tribal tattoo
nirvana whining
about your libido
a mosquito
&
girlfriends untrue
your dreams will be
dry humped
in a Geo Metro,
Generation X,
your so-called life…
high school interrupted
…eating Pearl Jam until
Zima vomit came to the house party too
with green apple jollyranchers
attended by
your skankiest girlfriend
who smoked Marlboro Reds
with the acumen
of a triple divorcee
her eyelids
the trashiest
ice blue
he expected me
to be true
though everything about him
was a lie
the true measure
of a civilized society
are the rumors
told by its ghosts
you’re a thousand poems
I’ll never write
two trees were once saplings together
nested in an egg crate they fell in love
until a bittersweet morning when
they were planted far apart in a forest
he edge bound by the ocean
she in the land locked middle
for many years
they could not touch
they could not speak
time passed into grandchildren
but eventually
his roots found hers deep within the earth
now she holds the moon up in her limbs
to thank him