Bring Me a Valentine

Bring me a Valentine,
sweet and full of pulp
Slightly thick pressed tree,
pale pink, like my gums when I smile
and no one sees

Send it or don’t
I remember the smell of the forest either way

Loose-leaf valentines
licked lovingly, punched through
Declarations can’t be crumpled up
and thrown away
Don’t spit on my grave

Anonymous love stamped on
Laced, frayed edges cushioning such weight

Bring me a Valentine
even though it’s sticky and won’t fit
I sit in the dark and eat chalk candies,
pale pink like on the inside
drying up all my vanity

The Last Time

Who’s taking me
to my father’s funeral?
I know I’ve asked at least
five of you
Drunk
One night or another on leftovers

In death there is peace but
what if it’s not like that at all?
What if you can feel the earthworms
eating your flesh?
What if no one comes to say
goodbye to you?

Who’s taking me to the moment
I will never be whole again?
Let the last time I am myself
be my best
Occupied with smiling and touching
another living thing

In death there is peace but
Love gets ruined by losing time
Memory laughs
and changes the song
You forget how it felt to argue
and dance, and stare

Winter Fever

What you are feeling
is the reason I listen to nothing
but
doo-wop

Sorrow and Apathy
Fevers that get in the way
of trying to learn
how to be free

But it’s there, dormant
To sit down
and rest at the same time
That’s it, right?

Yes but ghosts are boring
and tricky
Don’t trick me, please
I’m so tired

On Thursdays
I eat a sandwich on the bus
I ask for the raw red onions
to be left off because of heartburn

When you feel what I feel
will be the moment we can be mute
and listen to doo-wop
and be free

Some Things Only Happen in Spring

How about that
exquisite
exhausted glow of unremarkable love

red-rosed sonnets,
demented
That sort of thing

Romance is such sweet manipulation
Affliction not to be trifled with
while I can’t stop thinking about death

Syrups, glowing,
clogging up
Hold still please

Give me your regional dialects
You all smell like sugar
Even when I don’t need you

To My Five Year-old Son for his Birthday

Curious, stupid
and always
queasy from love

Every day
Not all day

I remain petrified
after
One thousand
Eight hundred
Twenty five
Everydays

I am not immortal
You are not

There is no terror more pleasing
than the sound of your laugh
unblemished

Every day
All day

Macbeth Ditty

Macbeth fell in love with the wrong girl
A whole forest ran at him

Spooky homicidal love sonnets
Out, out brief candles

Cursed love, throwing away forests
Being laughed at by witches

Cursed forest, secrets hidden in bark
Murder only exists if someone else knows