just a man
drag off a cigarette smirk
a walking shell game
snake in a can
so backwards in life
one questions
reports of his death
yet
he would crookedly smile
calling it
legend
just a man
drag off a cigarette smirk
a walking shell game
snake in a can
so backwards in life
one questions
reports of his death
yet
he would crookedly smile
calling it
legend
my parents were screaming
at each other
in Baptist curses
doors slamming
phones torn asunder
sounds of a home splitting apart at the roofbeams
my father throwing the floor model television out the front door
and one frightened sister
smuggling me out a bedroom window to another protective sister
that may not have all happened on the same night
it was so long ago &
this wasn’t constant
not your average weeknight at the Young’s house
but it’s always the first time
that matters most
bravado poet he was
and i dumbly followed
fully knowing
his titles were shit
with a snake oil smile
performative assholery
but it took a near death
blood loss event
near wild boar swamps
in an Arkansas tar pit
to see
the true excrement
was the content
of his character
a woman’s life
is too tenuous
delicate
billowy
spider web
close call on I-75
in preterm labor
on the way to the
Paris airport
in the rain
fragile
beautiful
precious
sacrosanct
finite
for bad friends
bad family
bad coffee
bad shoes
bad mattresses
bad jobs
bad husbands
bad debt
and bad dick
learn this by 30 for maximum
enjoyment
future
female
conquerors
of a dying planet
thank you,
writer,
hep cat,
antisocialite,
for not being
a novelist from Oregon
penises are haunted
by ex-girlfriends with perfect legs
the redhead who stalked them in college
a brunette who got away
catholic school girls who said no with their hips
but said yes with their eyes
a fucked up credit report
back seat chevrolet encounters
one woman who liked anal
and betrayed first wives
you could see
my hands
grasping a
headboard