Violent Men Are Best, Violent Women Even Better

Bloody my eye,
push my head through those glassen doors.

Or better still,
paint me the deepest black, the most blue.

With your elbow, then knee, then elbow again,
I'm askin' for it. Really, make some ink stains on this face. Or these feet.

They deserve it, certainly.
Bee-sting my top lip, then my bottom for good measure.

Break a rib,
grey my lungs,
rust-color some teeth.

I mean it when I say,
wreak some hell around these parts, boy.

Clara is, was, and will always be

Outliving her children.
In two years, her brood has dwindled. To her,
and to the 6, I mean 64-year-old child.

Nancy has ancedoted me on her childhood,
about pushing a kid into hot tar,
about stealing quarters from mom,
about being the one to mother, and do the afterwards work.

I know it is not a bunch of falsehood,
but it makes me wonder what Clara's done,
to piss the almighty off. Maybe just nothing.
Maybe Nancy was never supposed to be birthing babies.

I think things just got all jumbled up,
A whole mess of pinks and stuff.
One kid got the yellow cancer gene.
Oh no, wait, all the kids got that one.

Dead kids make life pretty messy,
hang in there Clara.
But I'm afraid you are,
you were,
and you will always be an orphaned mother.

Miss Nellie Helen Boroughs; or 1879-1961

Did you school them?
Or better yet, learn them?
Did you make them say a-men?
Did you give them the good news? Your gospel?
And ask for a million or nothing?

That's how us kids get jobs these days,
get free,
and get right.

We Are Only 11 Days In, and I Hate June

And Nena agreed.
It is just not the day for dads.
This, we were all sure of. And Michael would agree, if given the chance.

It's not like she forgot.
Her memories don’t have a fighting chance at 12.50 an hour.
Animal hair in the tinest of hands, red skin on the tinest of bodies.

An office built for crying.
A not-yet mother built for mothering.
These days I’ve been picturing unruly fires, raw skin, and a little thing called cancer creeping up the bones of a cabinet maker’s legs.

Never Say It Fails To Do "X"

Remember I courted your sweat.
Slept with lesser loams of methadone.
And no, I won't capitalize. I don't have that much respect for it.

Let's talk about half-lives.
And how I checked your pulse every morning at 8.
Every night at 5.

Occasionally, I think about the origin of dolophines.
And I want to kill Eli, Adolf, or that scientologist with the mouth.
But they are myths. So my anger honors that factory in St. Louis.

I spent 8 months screaming.
And I have the bloody stomach to prove it.
Really, opioids are not that funny.

Everyday I waited for you to die.
But, then my diagnotions never meant much to you.
It was more like, when I say crash, you crash.

And now I sit shirtless.
And I'm tired.
And those 3 years just plain hurt my feelings.