Crustaceans would be preferable to thee,
Omniscient, prescient, impotentheos,
A backwards gaveled book of make-believe,
When “just don’t be a cunt” is less verbose.
Convenient, to manipulate the wills,
Freebasing fallacy into their ears;
The easily impresséd imbeciles
Degraded to the front, and from their rears!

To conjure up an illusion of worth
Both yours and all the innocence corrupt
Before, after, and up until their birth,
Regardless if their hands are raised or cupped
In defense or hope some mercy might await.
Your eyes survey the table for a fork;
They beg you with their fists between the gate,
“Excoriate yourself, and spare the stork.”

To put this plainly, pedocidic cyst,
I’d hate you if I thought you might exist.

Do you remember just how gingerly
We walked the tropics in such great
Circles, and spent too much on towels,
Tequila, and talking to strangers about
Moments that belong in a velvet pouch,
In a drawer somewhere? I looked into the
Horizon and become at once aware I was
An amoeba on a dust mite of an island,
Flanked and pincered by an ocean, and a
World away that just as well could not.

Your fingertips and nails dug in,
And left the remnants of themselves
In shoulders, biceps, back and
Neck in different euphoric degrees
Of bloody destruction; I left the
Hot tub on all night, and in the morning
Almost had to fight the front desk guy
When he insinuated that the problem was
Not some cheaply made polycarbonate
Chinese pump that ran like shit, but me.

In these developed memories, I find that
I was further from before then than I am from
Now to paradise again. The skin still rips and
Shreds, but differently, and this time, and these
Multiple others, there are layers to flesh,
And there are hash marks for reference.
I could circumnavigate these latitudes, and yes
I know eventually they need to intersect, but
How can I determine how quickly to walk, and
How far to step? Our course forever’s had
Some overgrowths, but nothing too involved
To clear the roads.

Yesterday it seemed, to anyone else, our elbows
Touched in passing for the only time in what has
Felt like never ending months. “An illusion—”.
We stretched until we broke, not realizing the impossibility of overlapping antipodes.

Before, I felt the ultimate in everything, the
Peak of every mediocre, unremarkable crag
My fingers blistered on, more often under,
And the blunders I’ve survived three decades on.
I find it unsurprising, though an absolute wonder
Sometimes this blood runs at all; organic, beating
Hive, though I’ve done every under thing standing
To strike that fact, and foster futures unalive.

And then, in tinkering and failing high,
Found solace in a family, got dry, and
Put proverbial baskets around the
Appropriately chosen eggs. How
Well-deserved, it’s easter and my
Pastel yellow letters seem to, recently, be
Smudging all together. I’d call them tears,
But that would require some sharpened blade,
Or some fragment of emotion, which we all know
Is a fickle son-of-a-bitch.

I’m counting, now, the colors from the left to right,
Like reading, on the rainbow that’s exploding from
The high school football field across the street.
I’d like to say, initially, it pistons, up and down,
Perpetually a game she saw, and that we see.
But the wind hits briskly this day on the Ridge,
And I’m unsure the proper way to utilize
Such a miserably fractured fulcrum.

Sure, I’ll paint, but you can’t make me like it.
And I can’t make you anything, even with the
Ounces of pain compressed for centuries it
Feels and shines like it’s the coal whose
Neighbor is a diamond. What have I done
Or you that one would think an entity unique
In that it could take life the same, or the same way,
Or time, or day, and this is militantly not alright.
And maybe looking back I’ll be OK. But that is
Not for walks like mine, or times like this.

I squeezed your hand for five days straight,
Then after three stood up and loudly cried.
Then caught my breath, and we both went inside.

what is it about the water falling
from the clouds is mystical enough that
we’d prefer to call it something else. and in
calling it that something, give it power,
give it backbone, though in truth
there really isn’t one. and what is really
anyway the difference in it from my spit,
aside from whatever specks of shit and
enzymes make it better, or it worse?

then, following a week, a rainbow to keep
the hope alive, even though both she and
i know that the truth is sad, but secretly
much sadder; that refracted light cuts
deeper than the normal, garish white that
blankets everything in pauses. “you know…
sometimes its just a little late, but you can’t know
the exact time or date to the degree that
this is something someone would
or could have foreseen.”

oh but we can, and could, and will, when i’m
the cannon and the fodder in attempts to
be by definition an other one’s father.
lying…laying? i don’t know which is correct,
or what exactly constitutes a second chance,
but i know i don’t deserve them, and i’ve
had like seven. you’ve had to piece a parenthood
a little bit at times alone. you don’t deserve the
innocent considerate, and if i’m being honest,
fucking constant attempts to ask and Offer Kindness.
but the most observant with the biggest lens
can still confuse a symphony and smudge.

instead i’ll paint a fresco in the wax that melts
from my pores. these stippled hairs the wicks alight,
and each one signifying one of seven nights i’d let us
both be stabbed beyond the ides. what is it then
about the water falling from the sky that makes us
bow our heads in deference to a gust of air?
and who do you blame, when these elephants
aren’t white, and though you asked for them,
inferred no burden’s worth the bear?