

Brewing Coffee
Often I live a life of otherness. Each thought, fleeting. Each choice, brand new. I am dancing poorly and alone in our kitchen. Space 101: Northwest Music Radio. Holding an unread, paperback Dharma Bums in a right hand,
I think of dipping instead the skin of it into the coffee's boiling water. Just to see something. Books and people say they do shocking things just to feel something but I know better. They do it to see something.
See if they can, see if they mean it. Mean something, mean anything. I wrap my hand around the hot mug instead and hold it there. A dampened alternative that shouts into a hollow stump, "You never meant it!"
She comes in, giggling at the sight of me. Goggles hiding my eyes, boxers hiding my scars. Lounged about our kitchen stool in the dark, holding barefoot my mug. She kisses my nose and leaves me there.
I ponder this, if only for a moment. Predictably fleeting. I wonder if she is okay. When I kiss her I often miss her lips for it is teeth she truly bares.
10/15/21
I showered the stiffness out of my hair this morning. Seattle hit a record October cold and you're playing on your phone again. I can't help but yearn for the things I do not know. What am I blind to today? Who will I be tomorrow?
Surprise will not devour me this time. A digital gift to a wave of chronically bored recipients, you capture the beauty of your face in one hundred single moments. Maybe I should write about something else sometime.
There is an uncertainty rooted in my shaking hands. Am I to start preparing for a predictable hurt? Am I to stop? Both are naïve, drowning or wanting. Show me middle ground so I may know peace.
I'll find comfort in the sound of the space heater on the hardwood. We don't have toilet paper so we use socks with no mates.
10/14/21
We didn't go to work again. You're baking hearts into sandwiches in my Toxic Monkey hoodie.
writers block
the bits of scrap metal left in my chest aren’t enough. the gears of my skull grind and hinder.
it is not enough
indescribable
crunching on memory
like cubed ice
turning a Ruger
on myself,
flinching
at the empty
click.
(fuck)
no money but not poor
im living off orange trees
in arizona
dumpstering trash bags of
krispy kreme at midnight
dreaming on cold concrete
smiling big
with an outstretched thumb
the dog will wear a coat
i’ll pray for rain
the owl
we meet in the caliginous frost of small hours.
he is preconizing a ghost that will never dawn
i study his woe.
it is a lot like mine
on loving
I AM HEART
AND ENGINE
PLACE YOUR OFFERING AT MY FEET
TOKENS OF INCUMBENCY
TOKENS OF EXPECTATION
DRINK MY WARMTH
UNTIL YOU ARE FLUID
AND CURED
ASSUME ME INTO FACELESSNESS
I WANT TO BE DEFACED
WE’LL PRETEND I HAVE A CHOICE
AND WHEN I IMMOLATE
YOU REPAIR ME
LESSER THAN I BEGAN, EACH TIME
DO YOU FEEL GOOD ABOUT YOURSELF YET?
DO YOU FEEL LOVED?