i think i keep seeing you because it helps me write these poems
i pick you up sunday and it’s hot we drive to walgreen's
i wear lennon sunglasses i let you do the talking wonder if i
look cool one hand on the wheel drape the other out the window
and kind of know that maybe definitely i do not
you stand at the photo counter and shuffle your coupons--
oh my god you clip coupons just like my mother you never did anything
just like my mother your mother or his and her mother
with their button-up blouses and vanilla cakes
suddenly i have two limbs too many
i wander sideways like an awkward elk steal a toothbrush
from the dental hygiene display crawl through the candy aisle
one day i ate m&ms; in the car with another girl
and didn’t think of you, that was a good day of not thinking of you
and now you are paying the man at the counter
for two sets of photos none of which will include me
but some days i wish they did --
today has a 50/50 chance of being one of those days.
i will give it some lunch money and wish it the best of luck.
we are sitting back-to-back on a merry-go-round
i can barely finish my thoughts i take them to-go with a plan
to eat them tomorrow and you demand that i just finish my fuckin sentence
but i couldn’t finish my fuckin sentence if you climbed
down my throat on a ten foot ladder sawed it out of me
and offered a fudge sundae to help with the swelling
i would like to rent a time share in the dust of your back pocket
in the last forty minutes we could’ve crashed a tv drama you know
we could’ve had deliberate belated temporary sex in the third act
like waiting for the train to come & nothing better to do
we are on a merry-go-round & we are on a merry-go-round
& we are going round yes but what’s so merry about it
is this out of convenience
is this out of habit and rhythm
and the cycles of a city that we both would like to leave now, please
when i leave you in the parking lot of a bail bonds store
under the 101 you take charge of my shoulders slowly and your
body is still an amoeba a tiny planet a microscopic joy that i
once tried to discover but have since sold my findings for the benefit of science
i would like to set up house in the space below your neck and mouth