Laura Wants Me to Write a Poem about Walking in the Street

But I want to write about how all of time has gone by and

suddenly through our fingertips we look down and spy the

world coughing and spitting blood on the pavement and

all the ghosts we’ve kept locked in the basement

broke down the door and swallowed the sun and everyone

has nothing to do in the dark but scream

Trapped in this meme two-eighty character reduction

what instruction is there left for how to be when all

imaginings before this imagined we could see

or imagined we could breathe the way you imagine a baby could

teethe it’s instinctual a given a right a relief and we’re starving for one

Clawing over bodies and black mommies and dying Dotties

for a taste of the sea or the touch of a hand or a line

of unease and we please ourselves with good intentions masked

and ready for the invention of the cure to all our ails when these

travails are just a rattling final breath and much like death

it’s never pretty when it ends

On This Side

In California it is spring

The robins sit on dead trees

and breezes blow polluted air through dirty hair

Traffic coughs to a halt and on her bumper

the sticker says 

honk if you love earth

And I do

I’m so lucky to be here with you

If it’s the beginning or the end I can’t

pretend to know 

anything but that the grass grows 

greener than you could possibly imagine

right here on the shoulder

They Grow Up So Quickly

The notes I once played now sour and rotten

time ferments even the heartiest fruits

slowly they become mushy

decay

I say

to my empty room

And I imagine sometimes growing bigger and bigger

until I can no longer fit in my house

I'm consuming all the street and all the city

my head a satellite floating 

too far above everything to perceive

my body as vast as the continent

and I can see for miles

but I can't find myself

What Am I Doing

I can’t milk you out of a picture

even the ones where you weren’t paying attention to the camera

and didn’t know it could see your sadness

I keep trying

I can’t conjure you with a search bar

back into my life

I can’t hear your voice

by rereading the article about your academic awards

I can’t hear you saying the words

anymore

I don’t know

what I’m doing

anymore

Do you think about me

in your hypnogogic hallucinations

Do you dream I talk to you about blood

about love

about death

about feeling nothing

now but bereft

Do I complain about your theft

of my motivation

Do you say

it went with you of its own accord

I don’t remember you

anymore

What would you say

I’m not sure

What would you say

I’m not sure

I’m not sure