remember

I don't remember meeting you,
I'm sorry what was your name?

I don't remember greeting you
on a walkway on a Sunday.

I don't remember anything /about your wedding day/
especially the way you looked in your wedding dress /whispered white and glowing/.

I don't remember you laughing or singing
as I passed you on the roadway

I don't remember meeting you
I don't remember when you showed up to party
I shouldn't have been at.

I don't remember anything
about tears that coursed
down your cheeks when he said goodbye.

I don't remember seeing you
one block away and giggling
late one night and I...

Certain don't know
why my numbers on your phone.
Nor do I have a small collection
of everything you ever wrote me.

The man who says fuck loudly.

I did not write this. I jotted it down as I observed it in a bar. There was an initial exchange that was so weird that I wanted to capture it on paper so I pulled out a pen and a notecard. I never got around to writing down the first bit. Here is what followed.

I am trying to mind my own business but this overtakes me. I am in a bar drinking an oak aged red imperial stout dubbed "Big Hoppy Monster". Two men begin talking at the bar beside me.

"Did I tell you my mom has a new boyfriend?"
"No, what?" calmly disinterested the man who likes to say "fuck" loudly is texting.
"He's like sixty-five with no legs."
"I don't understand"
"She's forty-five and he's sixty-five and has no legs. Have you met him?"
"No. Wait," looking up briefly, "what do you think ..."
"Well he's nice but he's sixty-five and's got no legs. My mom's forty-five ... and has legs. I mean .. well he's got legs but they're plastic."
"So do they fuck?"
"I ... I don't know," obviously uncomfortable with the question on several levels. "I guess they .. are like any other couple."
"I mean we're sexual creatures right?" his phone now closed he is being more attentive perhaps realizing what he has said or how he said it.
"Right, I hope they fuck. But I don't think about it."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, do you think about that?"
"Your mom fucking?"
"No, yours."
He, this man who like to say "fuck" loudly, opens his phone again, shaking his head slowly and says "My dad has legs."

procession

I wake as I am
I am undone
I see you
bathed in light

are you the thing?

I wake as I am
you are the thing
my past gone
my future is not
I am now

I kiss you
you move
just enough
to hold me in balance

I am you
we are "we"
you see the sky?

you're distant
I'm vacant
you look the other way
when I say I need you

I am not
thinking clearly
I walk the other way

We were just
so perfect
I wonder
what became
of
every
thing.

wrecked

my ankles crossed and bound
my feet in a see-through plastic sack
splattered from the inside
red

the tiny bones are beaten and broken
they no longer make straight lines
they zig-zag a crooked mile
the purple skin burst
and tearing

at some point I must loose consciousness

Blistered

Rising thin skin
Stinging fullness
A needle pulling thread
through yesterdays wound
I tie a knot
remembrance

Lifted

What words were falling from my lips? Plagiarizing myself in an anxious moment I slipped into an explanation, one that did not apply but sounded insightful. These were my own words but from a more honest moment. And now have I lost it?

uneasy

I see
the lights
blinking in time
I struggle
with the feeling
how long
will they remember
this mistake
some part of me knows
that it is long forgotten
but still
I'm stuck
in the moment
like mis-speaking
there is so little
one can take back