home for sale

---we go home, you dazzle of home, you advertise it. the father owns the mother---

owns me. but i own something that cannot be kept, by anyone. it has no quantity. i hear laughing downstairs, a joy that sounds like a threat.

---we laugh at you so your shell will harden and compound in value. your treasure is ours. we'll keep you kept. your body has agreed to the sale of an organ. the price is the price. the sales/death process commences.---

and you purchase nothing for the cost of nothing, a vast fortune of costume jewelry, a string of pearls of atoms with a half life of my lifetime that cannot be worn or sold. it already decays. i will not discard what discards itself.

homebound

pacing animal
selfless hermit
i regress to evolve
550 sq ft is more than enough for every human stage
am i blessed
i am
i drink
i look
out the kitchen window
a lone woman on a desolate sidewalk
takes a selfie in front of
HOPE by robert indiana ✌️
alone together
i raise a glass,
"cheers to the past,
and death to the present"


----


all the nights i spent waiting
cash up to less than nothing
more immortal debt

touch my heart
with a needle if you have to
being hurt is at least
being something
by anyone

i cannot pretend anymore
to be adept at living
who knows what it's good for
except for dying
and coughing myself to sleep

Accuracy

I said
"We liked walking in the woods"
and caught myself

Now is it more accurate to say

"I like walking in the woods and you used to like walking in the woods"

But you are not you anymore, you cannot used to like anything

You are not, anymore
No magical thinking here, just the legalese of reality

"I like walking in the woods but less so now..."

"...and Julia when she was a living person used to like walking in the woods"

Do I like walking in the woods, now, still

No I despise it

"We liked walking in the woods"
was accurate
is accurate

when i see you
i want to die
or to not be, me, and you, not be you, now, or to be blind
and not to want to die now to see you later without the wanting


a tub
the rails
a bridge
the pavement
reunion with




your eyes are dry from seeing. we consume your vision so you can see yourself. we are betrayed in betraying you, the dagger is passed from hand to hand. when father falls, the children laugh because he always rises, and then he doesn't, but the children are gone. the egg is empty. it was always empty and when you crack it open it will not even be that.

the tablet

i present to you a letter of woven reeds that spells the names of all your children and their children until the last child of this universe. you discard it on the ground in favor of an apple of the tree of apples even though i gave you a more bountiful tree of knowledge from which to eat. you shame yourselves with superstitions about seeds of trees and seeds of snakes and rules about women and what women consume. my letter to you is ground over eons into ground and groundwater unread and unreadable anymore. you build cities from the trees of apples and ships from the roots of ores and make more rules about what to consume. unreading, you long to write, searching for a way to create an indestructible tablet that states your names and the names of all your children.

aphorisms of the worm

cleanliness is next to godliness, i.e. down the toilet
where there's a will, there's a way, i.e. six feet under
home is where the heart is, i.e. ash in the wind
follow your dreams, i.e. to the void

man's best friend

death wants a master
to belong to a tribe
but i ain't a leader
or the sociable type

death needs attention
to know he's got worth
and harden his resolve
in the bleak face of birth

sure

i'll throw death a bone
if't means he'll quit cryin'
so long's he can serve
in the hunt and in dyin'

who's pullin' whose leash
is it prey or a whim
will he follow me?
or am i chasin' him