a list, or Manifest, of things you might need on your way

a. love

let’s collect things together,

little elephants

lnd metal kitsch

that catch our eye

in some far-away market,

some road-side distraction.

let’s have a place to put things together,

a mutual space.

like a house,

let’s have a house

where we dance and make love in every room.

let’s christen this house with beer spills and homebrew in the bathroom closet.

i’ll knit beer cozies and you’ll make dinner,

we’ll compost and snuggle under down-filled covers we find for cheap,

in a big wide wooden bed someone gives us for free.

let’s find art and poetry and magic in everything,

playing house by our rules and

building forts in the living room if we like.  

let’s argue about rent until you realize we share everything anyway.

oh, and let’s find a place we both love,

a warm and cozy place with a library and a sunroom,

in a city we both love and care for,

with plenty of friends we have over for tea and beer and pastries.

this remains not-to-be-published for a while.

for now, I will stay in bed after you leave for work

and remember where your silverware is and

try to love the cats as much as you.   

i have to be frugal with all of this sentiment,

doling it out in rationed bits that

remain safe for me to lose.

i’d like to tell you

today that I would like to live with you,

but that is too much and it

might be a lie;

i can’t predict the truth anymore.  

b. an outrage

I Don’t like You.

your schizophrenic punctuation offends me.

i have no rules,

but you have no logic.

unacceptable.

and I would feel bad,

but it’s your own fault.

no one needs six exclamation points.

no one needs the insensible vicious combination of

two question marks and a comma and another erect stick and point—

that’s what it is to you, isn’t it?

a penis you can play with on the page,

a stick you can wave around in

place of definite, defensible standards.

christ.

don’t people believe in anything anymore?

just penises, waving penises on porches of punctuation and victory?

false victory,

false hope,

a child’s dream of scattered playthings on the beach,

the exclamation point with no reason and too much repetition.

but maybe it’s a disease,

maybe it’s a psychological condition,

maybe it’s communicable.

maybe I’ll start talking in haltered,

awkward phrases,

littered with flatulent and immature grammatical tools,

devices,

wrenches in the system of adaptation.

this is not adaptation.

this is not even slang.

this is not the natural progress of a language.

this is sheer, utter, terrible slutty ineptitude.

put down your dicks.

c. a cleaning

i cleaned you out of the house this morning.

put the sheets properly on the bed,

changed to white because it was pure

and not blue,

burned sacred  incense from a tourist trap in spain,

fluffed the pillows,

changed the sheets,

changed the sheets,

cleaned the bathroom,

cleared the scotch,

washed the dishes,

gathered the beer bottles,

gathered the goblets,

gathered my thoughts,

scrubbed the sink,

dusted the tables,

blew the dust off of the tables,

shook the mats,

vacuumed the rug,

vacuumed the little rug,

vacuumed the persian rug,

sat in the chair.

masturbated.

or at least wished i would have felt like it.

dusted the tables.

vacuumed.

thought about cleaning you out of this house.

sneezed because of the incense and the dust.

cleaned the vacuum out.

piled the dirty clothes.

piled the clean clothes.

put the dishes away.

tried to cry a little.

realized i hadn’t taken out the trashes with the condoms in them.

neglected to take out the trash.  

wrote this poem again.

trash poem

i cleaned you out of the house this morning.

peacefully hummed a little song,

a new song,

as i cleaned the bathroom,

cleaned up the dirty clothes,

washed the dishes,

dusted,

vacuumed,

scrubbed.

and as i sat on the couch,

trying to cry a little,

i realized i had forgotten the trash cans with the condoms in them.

surely that’s what was keeping you on my mind.

d. a quest

being mildly depressed is like premature ejaculation.

no one quite gets it,

but everyone suffers.

it’s like a hairline fracture–

doesn’t quite deserve attention,

but without it gets worse.

like a ballpoint pen,

leaking a little

into your favorite pockets.

like a kite,

missing a tail.

the impotent force of mild depression

means you can’t have fun,

but you can’t not have fun;

you feel just good enough

to squeeze yourself into happy,

but just bad enough to feel fat doing it.

you’re not in a psych ward.

you’re not on meds.

and the six days between therapy is

a numb quest for wellness, endless.

it would almost be easier to fake suicidal thoughts,

to check in some where.

to be that person.

but that would mean it was all real.