pick at the nail polish
pick at the skin beside
pick at your lips and the inside of your cheek
with your teeth
as they glide over and over and over
searching for purchase
searching for purpose
searching for something to quiet the mind
and never admit to having anxiety
ever
ever
ever in your life
[a poem for someone
maybe someone
other than me]
today is Computer’s birthday
turning two
on january 2
sillily pouncing on plastic bags,
wild-eyed licking her treats she gets,
sadly lying under the table
in her cute yellow hoodie
matching with her kips
just another day…
and yet
a big one too —
a grown a-dog
[that’s a grown adult dog, if you
didn’t know already]
but she’ll always be
Puppies
to me
[to both of us really]
getting used to the
new spacing/
new calligraphy
of the four
at the end of the year,
promising myself
i’ll give grace to my own mind/fingers
for inevitably forgetting
during the first three to six months of this year
and letting myself have patience
with my own soul
as i get used to the inevitability
of the passage
of time
i am trying to write a poem
to collect and examine
what 2023 meant to me
but we still have one more day,
and so much can happen
in just a few hours
so i guess i’ll write a little now,
and a little tomorrow,
and asses throughout these next 48 hours
[minus 9:19]
and see where it gets me
during tomorrow’s
twenty-four
and for now —
breakfast shall be at hand, i believe.
seeing my
[zombie]/[dead] name
doesn’t necessarily bring me pain
it’s really just the expectation of
family
or spam mail of each variety
[either way, i kind of just roll my eyes
and get on with my day]
i need projects
in my life —
creative outlets
with other people —
a collaboration
feeding a conglomeration
of creativity
otherwise
i’m just not me
swirling in my mind
worlds and stories and epic tales
i cannot find
i can’t even look
for fear that the search
is what makes them disappear
so i seem, from the outside, like a normal
everyday
human
maybe a little weird
maybe a little queer
but otherwise fine
but inside…
inside the roiling mess, the boiling mass
of tangles of plot lines
and whole universes overlapping
to the point of chaos
and i want to pull at one solitary string
hoping
it’ll un-loose
and unleash
a story-worthy ~something~
but
i’m scared
it won’t
and i’m even more scared
the harder i pull at one
the farther tangled
the other ones will become
until i’m
all out of opportunities
maybe a modicum of gibberish will help this morning poem come to fruition
a conglomeration of vocabulary i may or may not know the actual definition of
a plethora of words, used correctly or incorrectly
a whole ass menagerie of meaningless syllables somehow bringing meaning to something
in this morning poetry tradition
pie for breakfast
on boxing day —
a day of refreshing,
re-establishing
yourself to the regular world
but still thinking of/
still recovering from/
still dreaming about
the holiday time
from yesterday
and the day before
so keep the spoils and
hold them close at hand
and have
pie for breaking fast
on the morning of boxing day
i’m ignoring
feasts
and presents
and snow
[there’s none here anyhow]
and instead
concentrating on
peppermint
and hot cider
and mulled wine
and good friends
kipventures 