studious study school

Japanese beetles
Hitting a tin roof.
Like hail in the afternoon,
They swarm away from a shaken tree.

whisper to sleep

Hush, voice
Your tiredness is in my throat
Your softness at my ear
Almost inaudible.
You deny
The possibility of a blurry similarity
The possibility
Of humanity’s inkling:
Attention must be paid—
It is necessary.
In the gathering dawn
Hush, voice
Ignore that rasping whisper
That weary wrinkle of crestfallen cords
The disappointed murmur
Of acceptance.
Hush, voice
Away from the world of waking!
On to oblivion,
Where you can lisp slippery syllables
Until a glass-soled slipper
Worn on the pale foot of dawn
That chimes like silver bells—until with a soft crumbling,
It breaks.

Don't Slide: An Apology to Myself

There is nothing that I can say that will make it up to you.
What can I say?
Sometimes I just fuck up.
Sometimes it’s minor, and sometimes it trashes everything you’ve worked for.
You worked so hard.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
I messed up: I was an arrogant, selfish, thoughtless idiot.
I was wrong.
I can’t make excuses, even though they are on my tongue. I long to blame someone.
But I’m to blame.
I will try to make it up to you, even though I know you will never trust me again.
I will work to right this wrong the only way I know how.

And I reply:
You fool.
You don’t have a chance.
All the other times you’ve betrayed me—now this!
You’ve ruined everything.
You acted like a rich spoiled brat; a thoughtless piece of shit.
You didn’t think!
I worked so hard—didn’t I teach you better?
I have to live with these consequences. You do too. You didn’t think of that!
Now I have to start all over.
Get out of my life.
Forever.

I’ve said my piece.
I can’t take it back: everyone messes up sometimes.
I must go on.
Try to forget it.
Maybe some unlikely day,
I’ll forgive me.

always eight

ALWAYS EIGHT YEARS OLD/ TWELVE YEARS OF POETRY

the sun is rising here,
but it's setting for me.
Setting on a world that's
not all it's cracked up to be
woke up this morning, i knew
something was wrong
the blue bird stopped singin' his song...
the world was orange, the sky was green
a thief had murdered the queen.
oh don't tell me, no more no more,
oh don't tell me no more
that the world is good
that everything's right,
cause it's not.
it is setting--
the world's all right.

they say the world is ending

Dad wakes me to close the window;
I reach forward out of sleep to bullets of cold night
beyond the screeching screen.
I fall back into the eventful heat, the long-awaited oblivion.
While I sleep, careless—carefree
The years’ weight drops with
heavy rain, a deadening battery
and, so
falls
the maple tree.
Through three-pointed leaves’ dappled shadows
I swim in buzzing summer
Naked-warm, I am suspended
A small, green fruit
Strung between the thick trunks.
Hammock, leaving diamonds:
A camouflage of lines.
And, so
Falls
The maple tree.
A fabric rends—a great gaping blackness of sound
Spinning swing
Laughing sickly dizzy spinning.
Then the fabric tears in
An instant of flying breathless dusk.
The first branch has fallen
On me.
And, so
Falls
The maple tree.

My hands are heavy
Filled with sand
Bloated weights
They hang at my side.
A surgeon’s glove has split
Underneath my skin
Soaking every pore
With shards of glass.
Isn’t that the way
The formaldehyde tastes
As you petrify
In your repetition.

Vanished, in a flash
Those hours
In another world, I was
Called to paint my own

Speak
And notice
Again
This weary world
Has paused
To see.

yesterday

Last day
A sheen of sweat
On my shoulder
Stitching lungs
From the flight of instinct
Don’t catch me!