A Still Life

My mother told me that Big League Chew® was

in no way more fun

because it was shredded, plus

it was too expensive anyways,

why are you crying,

I sit on the monkey bars, and climb to the tops of the red plastic towers

It was the first time I asked what if my foot slipped.

I saw everything, and had everything, and had nothing

as wind blew through the little league game happening in the twilight,

at the best playground in town.

I got too angry in fifth grade

and threatened to burn down our

(crap) house (that nobody cleaned and didn’t hold the presence of Our Lord and Savior, amen) my dad took me upstairs, dropped me like a cigar; or a rose,

onto the carpet of that steady room

leaving me with the only bruise

I ever cared about.

And the streetlights glared at me,

with the melancholy-bittersweet-bipolarity of being placed there twenty seven years ago

They see this a lot.

An English teacher,

with a special lamp on her desk

for the ambiance, some students are sensitive and I want to be Original.

She had bigger dreams, with more

gusto, approval, impression

but this one was quick ‘n’ easy, maybe

I didn’t like school as much as I said, thought I did. (a difference?)

The lampshade had steel airplanes on it.

students prayed to the Atheist god(s) to do better than a

graying braid, twins, a old gradebook, and peace of fucking mind.

You don’t want this.

Lust, a voice that just won’t fade away with disuse

But it's all a circle, my soul doesn’t have corners or angles or even a point, and

the same song over again, from a different naked and orgasming body.

The blood stays, the poetry stays, but make sure you change the curtains with the season.

Convincing them to stay,

while pushing them off of the cliff:

it’s an art. Like literature,

broken vinyl, complete with a sloppy, teenaged signature from each:

You’re beautiful and perfect and beautiful and perfect and beautiful and