i feed my fish four times a week
four orange pellets and watch
it swim and ambush and float
through murky, low waters

i feel guilty for not giving it a proper home
surely a 5"x5"x5" tank cannot be so comfortable

everyone was real emotional at 5pm on a sunday drinking their unfinished shower beers 

cause no one could get what they wanted and now i guess they wouldn't try anyway

but even if that sounds like giving up it can also be seen as living in paradox 

which is a complex and difficult thing to do. so don't be so harsh to those people

when they are trying to find a better way to look at whatever thing is right in front of

them. plz include your comments below because that is a thing right in front of me. 

wow oh boy lets keep going, can i keep going on you? can we all keep it to 

ourselves in our time of need. a time that is better for the duration of (it will end 

soon! so laugh and cry while you can) a place that we could invent together

between the aisles six and seven. i think walking will be our form of running away. 

kite

my father says you died when he
was 17. you were his closest friend. you fell from the

 edge of a canyon, hang-gliding. your head cracked
open on a rock just like eggs against the counter.

your obituary was the kind of joke he thinks you
would have liked. you pissed him off, he says:

you were too nice to his mother, you combed
your hair always the right way, you were always
over for dinner when he wanted most to be alone.
“What can I do to help, Miz Reichelt—“ that’s what you
always said. you had too gummy of a smile.

my father says all these things on the way to
another funeral of another friend, this time
a math teacher with bone cancer. he looks
so tired. he says, Every funeral is that
first funeral. he says, Stupid prick.

my yearly phoenix death poem

this place
where all the buildings look the same and the
grid system is like counting blessings
43 44 45th avenue
the gender roles locked in tight and
the sexual energy as dull
as the dead air and as authentic as
the palm trees imported from
who-knows-where somewhere maybe
perhaps they gave shade there instead of
a complimentary view
included with the air conditioning and football
games

millions of people live here and yet
I've never heard of a single one of them

Sagas of rapture and loathing

he masons his sword of molybdenum
and shatters his garment of rock,
his owls and peacocks are all at the ready
beards drawn long and fewer atop.

his threadbare financials are void of an ending
the boundaries volunteer themselves thin.
dusty dim-witted advice vies attention
but the elephant fits cozily within.

colleagues collectively file coffins
and carve the soap into walls
his masons forgo his swords of molybdenum
and go swimming all through the halls.