Comeback

Comeback

I don’t mind that my lip is thick and bleeding.
Maybe there is a sagging blue welt
Beneath my left eye, but who knows;
The thick murky taste of blood
That is running down my esophagus
Is enough to have to soon pump my stomach.
The knuckles of my right hand
Are shaped like clumps of dried clay
With bits of embedded porcelain jagging out.
I might have heard them crunch
When you smashed them between your car doors.
But now all I can concentrate on
Is the pressure of my foot crushing your airway
While you lay unconscious in the dirt.

Looking Up

Looking up

A gust of velvet cloud
Floating, wrangling, twirling
Like shadows of the flowers
Mashed by children’s feet.

Sick

Sick

Under a comforter that is damp with sweat,
My body shivers as if I was lying nude in an ice box.
My throat is full of steel wool and cotton.
I can barely swallow the herbal green tea
Sitting beside my bed steaming in a white pirate mug.
There is a tar-like murky pus dripping down the back of my throat.
It’s green and yellow when I cough and hack it up.
Sometimes there’s a brick-red in the crimped up tissue, too.

I should go to the doctor.

Swimming

Swimming

My friend Kevin
Is twenty four years old
And doesn’t know
How to swim.

So last summer
I tried to teach him
After hours
At the beach.

He didn’t want
To be embarrassed
By having people
See him flail around.

It was a bad idea
To wait for everyone
To leave
The beach area.

The lifeguards weren’t there to save him when a wave
Knocked him off my grip and swept him out passed where I could do anything.

I can still hear his exact words from last spring
Confidentially asking me, “Can you teach me how to swim this summer?”

And then when summer came gurgling, “Please… don’t let me drown…”

Unrelated

Imitation of Srikath Reddy’s “Everything”

Unrelated

She was swimming in the high tides
Through the husky moon-lit ocean crests

When he moved away.
He found an old dollar wedged between the leather seats

On the day her breathes dragged on
With her father. Then he finally chose to travel

And she decided to roam to her oasis
Made of water and sand. They dealt no goodbyes.

So they never really knew each other at all.
So she swam back to shore.

& he spent the dollar at a rest stop in Ohio.