Regular Poem: Memo

To: You, a Person I Hardly Know Yet Delight in

From: Me, a Person Who Is Bad at Things

CC: The Part of My Brain That Weighs the Costs and Benefits of Social Interactions and Analyzes Hasty Decisions about Same Later When the Exciting but Stupifying Rush of Having a Stimulating Conversation Has Dissipated

Re: You and Me

Compose Email

Good evening,

This
is just a word of caution and apology
to inform you–
perhaps I’m
calling your attention to this for the first time
or perhaps I’m
verbalizing
something you’ve secretly suspected–

that I bribe myself

with people,

and you are

one of the unfortunate few
my attentions
have tripped over and subsequently
fallen on top of.

(I sincerely hope
my attentions’ knee hasn’t connected with
your windpipe in the
ungraceful process.)

Don’t be alarmed
if
when
I bound toward you,
propelled bodily
by my rather frighteningly
powerful urge to say things to you
and have you
say things to me.

I will be unable to stop
the momentum this energy source
provides
as it is
an unstable energy,
one spark away
from catastrophe.

Fission is funny
that way.

We collide,
and I split,
and part of me is
carrying on with you–
probably idiotically, mimicking
genuine
human discourse in a verisimilitude
just a hair’s breadth
(a proton’s mass)
away from
your thinking me either an advanced robot
or
crazy person–

and part of me
is just burning
or collapsing
or dividing further
into parts that might
reanalyze this interaction
at 2am
until I fantasize about places
to wear my tuxedo
enough to go back to sleep.

In summary,
I was weird with you,
I am weird with you,
I will be weird with you,

but

know that
I know that

and that
I would certainly
change that
if I had the chemical, physical,
metaphysical
capacity
to do so
instead of just
being weird
and wishing later I hadn’t.

Thanks in advance,
Me

Regular Poem: Thursday and Friday Take Too Long

by the time
friday
slumps into existence
emerges from the shadows
its fangs poorly concealed in the full moon light
strikes a match and lets it burn between its fingers
so long as to make you
beg for it to
light its cigarette already and be done with it
but friday smirks and waits
another millisecond
just to show you
you’ve been waiting
and it will make you wait

yes by the time
friday
slips an icy hand
around your wrist
and urges you along a dark alley

i’m not fit for the public
too wound up
too loud
too rough
too overstimulated
too understimulated
too lonely
too much

and i just explode into the day
the weekly supernova i am doesn’t
have the patience for shadows
or subtlty
and i can feel the vibrations

behind my eyeballs mostly
but also others’ vibrations
their fight or flight or freeze responses triggered
(i expect and suspect
different responses than i get
sometimes

i expect
horror
i suspect disdain incredulity

i don’t know
who am i to them
when my face is not in their face
and i’m too
much
in the moment
to contemplate
until much later
when i second guess all the crazy stuff
that was flung into the interstellar medium)

and everyone laughs with me
cackling unhinged
maybe everyone explodes into friday
we’re all our own massive stars
just itching and pulsating
for our chance to
contribute to the creation of new stars
with our dramatic demise

i don’t write poetry because
i particularly enjoy it
i write poetry because
i don’t

keep a diary
see friends
exercise
practice good coping strategies

i write poetry to inflict things on myself
to pick scabs
to poke bruises and ask where’d that come from

fridays are good for that sort of thing
starting with a bang ending with a whimper
all the modernist self-loathing you could ask for
but dressed up for 20gr8teen
in clothes bought from a dying chain store
and cheap lipstick

i shut down the fantasies
i shut down the plans
i shut down
restart me monday

but that will be fuzzy
like an old tv that has to warm up
its cathode ray tube
or like searching through static
on a radio

i hum and squeak
and then explode

Regular Poem: Controlled Burn

Refining by fire
testing a heart
by metaphorical heat
leaves one as silver
pure
and able to reflect
(that’s when a refiner knows
silver is refined–
or so I’ve heard–
the impurities
burn
and what’s left
is like a mirror,
shining
and showing
something above.)

Metals refine,
but proteins
denature–
molecules stripped
and changed,
chemical makeup
altered
from its natural state.

And that’s also the point,
isn’t it?
To free us of
our nature–
base and greedy,
wanton, ravenous–
to free us
from the furnace.

This metal–
or protein–
says ouch
for now
and
hallelujah
for later.

Regular Poem: Blood Moon

yesterday
the moon wasn’t even bloody
it wasn’t even
big just yellow
kinda bright i guess

tonight though
i watched it rise
from a huge orange slice
barely creeping over the edge
sinking its teeth into
a wheat field

it must’ve had
a gluten allergy

as it clawed its way up the
black blue sky
with no clouds to even tie a rope to
it became oranger and bigger

and then shriveled
as it got higher

venus knows how to use
an epi pen luckily

Regular Poem: In the Metallic Evening

In the metallic evening
when the sidewalk glimmers silver
and the clouds are a sheet of thinly stretched gold
          like the kind they use to do experiments
          with electrons
and the sun peers through that sheet of gold
shimmering peekingly as if it's shy
          but it's a ruse because the sun isn't shy
and the air is heavy with
          all the electrons from the celestial experiment
          or maybe just
humidity

and the little lead flies careen to and fro
          not sticking to anything but not 
          repelling anything either
          just bustling around like shot 
          blasted from invisible 12 gauges
and the smell from the grass and the trees and 
the hot wet air is
not organic but acrid
          not unpleasantly so just noticeably so

and your mouth is a copper kettle
         shining red and hot and tasting of metal
and your brain is mostly arsenic
         metallic yet only semi-conductive
         and almost always poisonous
and your limbs are aluminum
         soft malleable durable abundant
and your sweat is somehow not
salty but ferrous and you can smell it and taste it 
all over
mixing
in the air and seeping into 
the burnished bronze of your clothes

and everything glints blindingly in the dimmed
but phosphorescent light from
the sun that's pretending to be shy--

in the metallic evening,
everything is metallic,
especially
you.