four

DEPRESSION

Is it programmatic
Or morally basic to say
There’s a fucked up glow
Inside me my friends
Don’t really seem
To understand

Don’t they see her.
In commercials
They show a somber
Dog or a cloud
Following you around
But she’s a poet

An energy, she looks
Like me and you
Like our daughter
A future I couldn’t
Pull off
Giggling on a swing

She looks like my
Mentor, my mother
Everyone I ever failed
Come to forgive me
For what I wish
They could help me

With. What soothes her
Is to go around the dead,
To bend my body
Tell me I’ll never
Love again,
To leave me

Suddenly good and free
Then come
Back like the bad
Results from the polls
Like the first hard
Rain of the fall

And yeah, she can be
Kind of beautiful
In the mirror
And I love to be in her
Body when I’m
Lucid dreaming

I know why she wants to
Break through
To this side,
She brings with her
Galactic winds
And sometimes

I just want to ask her,
What is it? What is
So sad? And can the living
Help rather than be
Haunted?
How can I help.

Am I missing something,
The most important
Thing
Some
Key to healing,
Maybe her name...

THE GIFT

I strayed from
The road to town
Walking to my wedding.
I became lost
In the woods. Wandered
Through untold
Old acres of deep
Rooted trees trying to
Find a way out for years
While my beloved
Believed the lies
They told about me
Believed our last
Fight
Frowned at
My memory and let
It fade. What if,
While she was forgetting
I wandered on
My white dress
Now gray
Blonde hair turning gray
My lung blue
And white from the sun.
What if at last
I found a way out of
The woods and walked
Into town
Up to her house and
She looked out at
Me. What if I looked
So much now
Like my grandma, whom she
Once loved. “Ms. B?”
She says, hesitantly.
I smile and hold out a
Small mushroom

GOD IS DEPRESSED

God was let go
God is on unemployment
God sits around in sweats
And binge-watches
“Are you still watching?”
I’m always watching
From the beginning
Of time
And I still see
You my child
I’m just too depressed
To stop
The world I made

EVIL TWIN

The time I snapped at mom for ugly-crying at Love Actually.

When I stand on the subway full of men and feel I am surrounded by stronger enemies.

The time I developed a whole dialectic around why you suck for not loving me.

When I postponed replying to an email until the person died.

When I didn’t visit my grandparents and then they died.

I won’t tell you I love you and we will die.

Or I tell you and you don’t care and then we die.

I didn’t apply to my dream job.

I didn’t finish the novel or the album.

I let the one I love leave forever and then I didn’t even love them anymore.

I didn’t care if I lived or died. I cried all the time.

I thought people were staring at me cause there was something wrong with me but really

It’s because I’m so tall and handsome.