if the shelves of hell are lined
with all the books
that should have been written
please know
there’s a big gaudy ass pink satiny lace volume
of poetry i didn’t write about you
sitting quietly in the
damn, but didn’t we have fun
section
if the shelves of hell are lined
with all the books
that should have been written
please know
there’s a big gaudy ass pink satiny lace volume
of poetry i didn’t write about you
sitting quietly in the
damn, but didn’t we have fun
section
It’s ordinary…
mundane, absolutely nothing special.
Part of a set that was purchased in the late 80’s
or early nineties would be my guess.
This brown, plastic 1/8 cup scoop
that came to symbolize our every morning
spent sharing coffee
no matter if we were 12 inches
or 1,200 miles apart. We always had coffee.
It is special because he sent it to me
in a care package when I was aching for him.
I still ache for him,
so it’s my coffee scoop until my dying day.
he loved me completely
he had the sweetest, big dumb bear grin
honey dripping even
when he looked at me
he smiled the length of the eastern seaboard
crooked loving sunshine in smiles over 5 o’clock stubble
whilst buying me tiny lobsters made of chocolate
took 1,001 pictures of me drinking coffee, eating lemon Italian ice
marveling at hermit crabs wearing ornately bejeweled shells
navigating social media oceans and long distance romances
from Neptune City to New York Harbor
we nearly sank together
we never truly said goodbye
we never stopped wanting
we never stopped feeling
but he never trusted himself
he never trusted me
though he had many names for me
baby gurl
angel kitten
alicia honey
sweetie poof,
and sometimes simply,
mine
he lied
and then abandoned me to coddle
his comfortable failures.
He once told me the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference.
How’s that working out, jack?
I knew he would never have the courage
to call me the one thing he should have called me:
his wife.
Hosted by the hilarious Eric Lawson, Make Your Own Fun is a series where writers of every ilk are interviewed, but mostly freegin’ poets.
it’s never quiet
in the city at night
however i’ve found
if my boots are planted quietly
amidst 3am lamplight
standing in space once occupied
by a storied brick house where my
great grandfather aged 90
lived and died
i can hear elm street recalling sadly
that he left for the hereafter
decades before i arrived
Hell
is conveniently situated
between Ohio
and California
i blame robert frost
his cold methodology
his need to fill disused graveyards with
death’s dazzling white snow glamour
a slow creep crystalline across
an already shattered windshield
i blame robert frost
as i cannot blame
my father
my friend
or an absent god
for them forgetting
they had promises to keep
it’s frustrating
when you’re trying
to teach your offspring
to fly off
from the nest
when
they are pigeons
the size of bowling balls
with no desire
to put aerodynamics
to the test
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