Mistaken for Play

A reminder: we can chase dragons

without needles; disappear

into holes once mistaken for play.

’Twas neither fun nor game today.

That version of me still lives

behind the Ethan Allen sofa

without a cushion cover,

twelve years old and capable, briefly,

of empathy, sympathy, kinship—

god-awful hours in digital depths

we are warned of yet never heed.

God damn how that spirit gripped my wrist,

wrestled me to the dirty floor, dog hair

matted into the shag, and as an adult

I can still be there

when everyone else is dead.

Totally Cooked.

Do you think in 1797, when early feminist icon Mary Wollstonecraft and journalist William Godwin welcomed their child into the world, they thought, yeah, look at this ultimate nepo baby?

Then, when their beautiful child Mary married Percy Bysshe Shelley, major English Romantic poet, were they pleased because their grandchildren would be the ultimate, ultimate, major, major nepo babies?

Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, essentially inventing science fiction after Lord Byron—another giant of the Romantic movement—dared a group of friends to each write a ghost story.

But Google’s AI summary of other people’s questions says this is all just nepo baby shit.

I suppose no matter what you do, who you know, or how you live, you’ll never control how people interpret it. 

Eventually every complicated life gets flattened into discourse.

You might as well like yourself; just consider all the time you are going to spend with you.

flexi-sexual

Want to be high all the time,

Cherry sucker in my mouth,

Poppin’ out with that wet, loud

Smack, like swatting the nose

Of a bad dog. A downward dog,

Ass up in the air, invitation to make

A happy baby, legs up, misbehavin’,

Breathing that fire breath,

Kiss lips stained red, sticky-sweet with cherry flavor,

a 99-cent cherry sucker

I was sucking and sucking, my cheeks hollow,

Hallowed as the Lord’s name, which I have said

More than once.

banana bread

hovering close

No matter how hard my day is, I remember there is a woman on Facebook who posted:

“Win: I’m learning to be more Christ-like in my suffering.”

Her husband, parents, and in-laws all fucking liked it.