Scratch
Scratch. Scratch. Scratch
away at the page
with the edge of a knife
of a pen,
and draw black blood
from the wound
and the word becomes a womb
that all life crawls from,
glistening dark in the moonlight
and shining across the eye lid
she can’t speak,
she can’t say
she can’t believe
and yet she scratches.
Scratches.
Scratches away.
Love Like a Kid
I want to be in love like a kid again.
I want to scrape the last of my change off my windowsill,
my last ten dollars,
and buy you a movie ticket;
not to scrape it together to pay my rent.
I want to steal you a flower from my neighbor’s yard,
and not worry about the cops
or buying a collection of name brand wilting roses.
I want to climb a tree and make out in the branches,
and not worry about the medical bills for my potential broken clavicle.
I want to kiss you secretly,
naked
and under your blanket,
hiding from your roommates
or your mother,
or the world.
I want to write love poems on your arm in blue pen,
and not be told I can’t get a job
because of the ink on my bicep.
I want to steal you late at night,
to walk and talk and walk and stare and walk and hold hands and walk and silence,
and not need to worry about being too tired for work the next day.
I want to fall asleep,
accidentally,
with your head on my naked chest,
and wake up in the twilight to run back home
before my parents wake up.
I don’t want to give a shit like an adult.
I want to be in love like a kid.
The Great Ant War
Sadly but surely,
the ants all killed themselves with
nuclear War that was so subtle that our fragile minds never observed.
And the lady bugs and flies were all casualties,
in a senseless war
that no one ever asked for.
And fleas and bed bugs went to war,
until one by one every caterpillar and grasshopper was dead.
And sadly and soon, the smallest birds were unable to feed themselves,
and the larger birds beyond that
(except for the carrion birds, who were fit to feast).
And the small animals of mice and mention,
were left to be the only fuel to the mighty hawk,
and were thinned and decimated, first
and then lost twenty and thirty and half and eventually all,
and so the snakes lost their way as the frogs died,
and salamanders,
who had once feasted upon the fleas we knew.
And the spiders and the bats and ant eaters and the fish
found themselves without memory of fending for themselves
without what they had known for generations.
and eventually the eagles fell from the sky
(and this was when we finally took notice),
and the wolves died in infancy
and eventually adulthood,
and the crocodiles
and alligators
and dragons of our worlds
passed.
Eventually the bees passed away,
from cancer, a nuclear side effect from the Great Ant War,
and the flowers withered and passed due to their lost love,
and so the cows and the pigs and the sheep and the chickens and the rabbits
and the owls and everything died.
And we were left alone with the carrion.
And humanity thought, for a moment,
that they could survive by growing children for death,
born to lay in a box until they were large and bulbous things
so they could be harvested for their meat.
But we didn’t know about the enzymes,
that when consumed,
reacted with our own minds
and left us feral things,
until,
eventually,
we died from malnutrition,
leaving the carrion birds for a time,
feasting upon our remains,
until time rotted out our flesh and left
even the vultures to starve and die.
And the world was returned to a dark stone floating without purpose in space.
And it all started with a war
between the ants.
Unbecome
If you stop long enough,
(and enough is a very long time)
you can feel the tiny threads sewing you together
down your side and along your feet
and through your throat
and around your heart
and in your eyes
and your tongue
and mind.
It is a tiny thread,
almost nonexistent,
as thin as angel bone,
but all the same you can constantly feel it
tugging and tugging and tugging away.
You can feel it now, can’t you?
Some call it energy. Others religion.
Others simply say that they don’t care.
But they do.
They cover it with alcohol.
And pills.
And love.
But it’s still there,
that string,
and one day it will finally pull free
and you will unbecome.