between coming out and going in

Plums are called prunes in French
and prunes are made of plums
and just like everything gets lost
in translations, in transitions,
I have lost myself again.

baby blues

smoking newports by the pool,
we felt so grown but were barely babies,
with boys in bands, small apartments, and
keg stands waiting for us.
but the real joys of life
were right here, between the 
chemical mint smoke and
chlorinated sweat and us and
the saddest moments of my life
were the years of silence between us.

girlie grapes and carbon dates

Do you ever eat grapes high,
zooted out your brain,
popping sweet, juicy globes
in your teeth
and think-
It's all the same stuff,
from grapes to eyeballs to girls,
and the girls smells just as sweet,
taste just as good?
Even if they lay in the sun and get golden
or when they are cold from the rain?
Then, do you lick your sticky, dripping fingers
just wishing the carbon atoms would reorganize
just this once, from
grape to girl?
Have you ever felt that way?
Please tell me you've felt that way,
so I am not alone.

contagious in 2022

He says

diseases can be

Swapped

Thru the phone

Videos

Like a virus passing

Mouth to mouth

Electric currents between

Your neurons and mine

Connect.

He says

I have more

Wrong

With me than

alcoholism

I can't help

But agree.

wants and needs

I want to swoop down from the sky

Pull you from that trailer in the snow

Wrap you up away from the cold

Dark space you reside

The tentacles of men

Sucking you dry

Theyll rip you apart

But you frigid and stone

Froze

Wouldn't let me save you

It's your way

Even to the bleak end.

as the banjo dies

She's always been small and meek

but now she grows demure and weak.

Our little pygmy, bonsai girl,

rolled in a ball, hidden in the drawer

like a tiny little pearl.

When she dies, we will grieve and

smash her bowl on the floor.

Scattered pieces like scattered ashes

the mass fire she seems even smaller,

cremated with all the others

in the industrial bowels

anonymous and nameless

how we do the animals.

her ghost still visits me 12 years and counting

Her harmonica sounds pour out the speakers

as coffee pours in cups, it's early morning rise-

Sun rise. Hoosier trees shrug off their leaves

as I shrugged off her whispering songs.

We sit ear to ear in the car. Our split hairs 

holding hands, fragile touch across time.

Please don't let go. Don't leave me.

 

We drive through traffic jams of

International Harvesters and drunk drivers,

passing the flags of our home:

Don't tread on me, thin blue line,

air force, trump 2024, and mia/pow.

 

I bleed cause there’s no baby in me and

You bled America till you lay dead.

No purple heart for those left like me.

No award for being alive and alone. 

Set against a pastel Indiana sky

my winter sorrow counts down to Spring:

1. What happens?

2. What happens?

3. What happens when all the witnesses are dead?

Or I move far away to garner more accolades, 

papers of worth, out of my original context, 

set the scene, actors and roles. "Places, People!"

 

Do West Virginia mountains know my fears

as well as the molded stock room of a then restaurant

now demolished, now a vacant parking lot,

but rich with my memories?

Where does the history that only I know go

when everything else is gone?