I run with the rough and tumble.

Misfits, mighty and bold.

Scraggle cheek, wrinkle feet.

Dutifully crooked.


Sweet.

Old.

I walk with the rough and tumble.

Those who've licked streets

and chipped teeth on curbs.

Sometimes not their own.

I frolic with the rough and tumble.

They protect their fold.

Thunk.

The leather satchel popped open.

His eyes widened.

Messy contents on the floor.

A buried brother, boyfriend, parents, people.

More.

A divorce, a couple of kids.

Broken hearts and dampened souls.

All things touched.

All things stained.

His eyes strained at the sight

and the door slammed tight

in his wake.

Thunk.

She straightened her slacks,

scooped up the leather sack,

and fastened the dead bolt behind him.​

Thunk.

I've got nothing for you.

Dead knuckles scraping

scarlet bubble tiles

while scrubbing shadows

off my soul.

I've got nothing for you.




I try. I gasp. I want to.

I want to give myself.

But this girl who tried

more times to count,

is stuck on a shelf.




In the shift.

In the divide.

In the outcrops.




Lacy serenade.

Wafting perfume parade.

Smooth legs in the bedroom.

A daydream gone boom.

I've got nothing for you.

I will devour you.


Just like my whiskey.

I will infect you,

just tryin' to be me.

I'll cry to my God

and wish for no rivers

for her to drive in.

Seat belt buckled

like good moms should

I'll wish I could

just devour you.

Long lay the wait.
Frantic layers stripped,
years in the making.
She took the bait.
Soul-starving,
carving out her niche.
He, with pretty boy bed dreams
iconoclastic puritan screams
juxtaposed in a soul
twisted, broken.
Long lay the wait.
Ghosted.
Unspoken.
She with hopeful trust
and a lust for connection 
wanted to hold the line.
In good time.
Blocked.
Barricaded.
No detour in sight.
Ghost in the night.
Baby cries,
mental anguish.
Other fish.
​What would Jesus do?

The chill had set in early; before the checks came, before the trees were chopped, drug inside and bedecked with paper maché memories. Food banks couldn't keep up. Struggle was growing as fast as demand.

Neighbors were dropping like flies amongst the heavy coughs, wheezing, and complaining lies about how the cloth coverings were killing us all. It wasn't Aunt Minnie's nimble-fingered stitchings that were to blame.

Some thought it was in the rain that trickled down from DC, but all wise knew nothing ever trickled down from there. Dry spigots don't do such things. Hoarders don't share, do they? Naw, man. The only thing trickling from absentia was pain.

Anyway, like I said, the cold set in. Christmas wasn't the same after the grid flipped, and we all took to burning the furniture. Evergreens don't flame as well as box springs and end tables...unless it's April, and they've been dead since Autumn. Just like the neighbors. But grandma's rocking chair? That kept us warm and fed...in the dead of winter.

Hey you, the torn one. The shredded one, glowing in your tattered form. Yes, you. The broken and bruised. I see you.


I want you to take your sad, bereaved heart, throbbing cadence with your soul, and I want you to grow. Grow it into an angry flame, burning, yearning and birth yourself anew.


I want you to rise from these unbalanced ashes like the badass, bitchin' she-devil, motherfuckin' Phoenix you are and take this life by its horns as though you own every damn corner of this town, state, and province of vicinity. Rise for me.

She just needed to do the dishes. And the laundry. And let the dogs out. And make sure everyone eats all of the meals. The breakfast. What's for breakfast? Eggs? Again? UGH! She hopes it's ok. Is it ok? She's sorry it's eggs again. She looks at the dishes. Now there's more dishes. The kids should wash the dishes, but the kids have school work, and YouTube, and games, and she's ok with that because the kids have been as resilient as possible in this Covid mess alternate world. Ok. What was she doing? Yes. The dishes. No. Letting dogs out. No. The breakfast. Eggs again. Yes, eggs again.


She just needed to do the dishes. 

There they were; stacked like a wobbly, colorful, miniature, overcrowded Stonehenge of funk. She'll get there. But first she flicks the laptop open, and let's the dogs out, and checks all the emails, and permissions, and parameters, and tries to find some coffee. She finds the coffee and faces the dishes. She bumps into laundry, and sees the clock. Almost lunch time. What's for lunch? Mac and cheese? Again?? UGH! She hopes it's ok. Is it ok? She's sorry it's mac and cheese again.


Now there's more dishes. The kids should wash the dishes, but the kids are distracted in books and that was ok because they've given so much up in this Covid mess she wasn't about to take their mental vacation away. What was she going to say? She glances out the window and strays to the riverbank, the woods, and the beach.


She opens more emails and spreadsheets. More scrolling and flipping screens. More coffee. She finds more coffee and faces the dishes. She bumps into laundry, and sees the clock. Almost dinner time. What's for dinner? What's for dinner? Wait.


She just needed to do the dishes. 

Plucking strings while the moon rings
low colors by my bedside.

A pillar of strength skin side out
while crumbled interior mess shouts
dismembered tones
unequal to her appearance.
Chords drown out the clearance.

Just keep plucking.
Just keep strumming.

A day will come to acclivity
and her naivety will expire
simultaneous to her desire
of finding herself reflected in another face.
Untidiness of life will dissipate
like a friendless ghost exhaling.
​
I just keep wailing lonesome strings
while the moon rings
muffled colors by my bedside. 

The clock ticked and tocked so loudly.

It always did when the long, annual wait ensued.


His nimble fingers brushed the side of her silent face as he sighed. It wasn't time yet. But, soon. Soon he would don his favorite mask as neighbor kids trotted up the sidewalk.


There was sure to be the usuals; a ghost, several witches, a clown, a devil, a Trump. None would surpass his one, true love, though, and he knew it.


He clutched a mug and chugged down the last warm remnants as he stared at her face, lying on the table. They would be together, once again. They would be one, like before.


Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.


He reached for his mask. As he pulled the fragile skin over his head, he noted how dry she had become, especially around the stitching. She wasn't the young, fresh face from yesteryear anymore.


"I told you to stay hydrated." He muttered as the doorbell rang. "Now you'll get the lotion, and like it!"

"Stop whittling away at me!"


"But if we just take a little out of here..."


"Stop!"


"...and a little from over there..."


"I said STOP!"


"...and a pinch from here..."


"I can't take this anymore! You're hurting me!"


"...and then put this there..."


"Hey!"


"...and this can go right over here...


"What?"


"...and this should go up over here..."


"Wait, what are you doing?"


"There. Oh, what am I doing? Well, can't you feel what I'm doing? I'd think you could feel that."


"I CAN feel it! I've been screaming at you to stop!"


"Why would you want me to stop?"


"Because it hurts!"


"Ah, yes, growing can hurt."


"GROWING? I'm grown! Why are you doing this to me?"


"Oh, dear, I'm just building you up."

She rises up a little dark.

Opaque
and
Scratchy.

But inside, she is mush.
Blessed with a voice
no silence could shush.​
And I love her.

I'll tell you this.

You were right.

I am not the one for you,

for you do not deserve me.

I shall neigh lay with a liar

nor squash the tones

of my voice to bring comfort

to a belly so yellow.

So shallow and devoid

of foundation.

I know the bedrock

of which I was raised

and will rise my kin upon.

I am gone.

Like whispers betrothed

in visions of wind-battered leaves.

You do not deserve me.

              ​“Look, I don’t need you dying of cancer when I’m an old man” he tapped out the text response and watched the Dorito powder streak across the screen of the phone his now ex-girlfriend had given him the year before. It was just an excuse, really, a gas light. He was already an old man, and battled high blood pressure with medication, cheeseburgers, and Pepsi. Plus, she was almost a decade younger than he, time was on her side. But he was upset and had been caught totally off-guard.

                His concoction of lies hadn’t fermented exactly as planned. It was his hope that she would just swallow his excuses like cough syrup. Her ingestion would have bought him time to see if maybe the grass was greener elsewhere. He wasn’t expecting her to show up at his place for breakfast before he’d left Lé Hotel Michélle. She’d never been so brazen before. He had underestimated her. Oops.

                She’d been a morning cigarette and coffee girl for more than twenty years at that point. There was no hiding that fact, and it was, indeed, a fact. She’d suffered enough loss to last a few lifetimes, paid her bills with well-earned money, and ran a household single-handedly. Morning caffeine laced nicotine helper her focus on the trillion things she tended to daily.

                She knew it wasn’t an endearing habit, but there were far worse things to crutch, so she refused to beat herself up about it. Consequently, she refused anyone else to do so, either, including him. Who was he to judge, anyway? He had his addictions.

                A smoke with her coffee every now and then was not about to equal a cancer diagnosis. They both knew that. Well, at least she knew that. She had studied the genetic and environmental factors known to promote cancer cell growth. Maybe he hadn’t had that opportunity.

                He was just pissed that she busted him out. He’d been caught with his pants down, as it goes, and her morning habit was the only dig he could muster. He tried to slant the story and accuse her of lying about her ritual, which was laughable at best, since it was no secret. She held no secrets. She lived life in a way that disabled such a thing. Life was messy enough without the lies. He knew that about her, too.

                She had shoveled her life story to the man from the word “go” and it was not all sunshine and roses. Nothing ever was at their age. Every divorcee and single parent past the age of thirty carried their fair share of baggage filled with individual histories of heartaches, scars, and damage. It just happens. Life is messy, after all. But this was a mess he had chosen to make. This was his choice.

                The day before she caught him off guard, he had fed her full of bullshit. It was storming like crazy all day, but he was still to go hiking with his estranged teenaged son. The one kid that had been ignoring him for a full year. The one kid that refused to get to know his dad’s girlfriend, for reasons that seemed to change with his underwear. It was a not-so-perfect lie, but one certainly designed to keep her away while he investigated other opportunities that could make his life easier.

                She had caught on to the subtle hints laid out by his adult children. He just wanted to ignore them, and wish for her to absorb such things, even if it meant looking a fool in front of her own children. His grown kids were crafty in their defiance, and mostly, she couldn’t even blame them. They were each a product of an unhealthy dynamic displayed by their now divorced parents. They were the kind of divorcees who weaponized their offspring; each one disparaging the other to each of their kids. They treated the affections of their children like property. Each parent wanting to steal those affections in any way they could, just to hurt the other parent. It was spiteful, and ugly.

                His ex-wife had remarried to a man with money, and no children. That was ok with his kids, as it was the perfect mix of a possible inheritance with no one to contend with. No new people to accept, aside from mom’s new husband. That was tolerable. But dad had found a lady with two kids of her own. They didn’t care for that scenario. So, instead of opening their hearts out of respect for their father, they decided to lay inconspicuous traps meant to divide.

                He grew tired of her discussions about how to bridge the gap. Bridging the gap meant that he would have to confront the situation and lay cards on the table. He didn’t want that. There were cards she didn’t know about. Hell, there were cards his kids didn’t know about. Like the card where he expressed how in love he was with her, and about how he envisioned building onto his house so everyone could live there, or how they might purchase their own home together; a home with room for them all.

               A whole year into their relationship, and he hadn’t even tried to express those cards to his kids. Not to mention the cards that showed how he treated her children when his own weren’t around. It was all too terrifying for him. She understood all of this and had been quite patient. She had her own kids to look out for, too. She wasn’t in a terrible hurry anyway, but the dividing games needed some attention.

                She held a point of view that if light was spread onto everything, then there would be no room for darkness, no room for confusion, and only room for growth. Light helped everything grow. Plus, who were the adults in the relationship? She never wanted to run his grown children away from him, rather it was quite the opposite. In fact, when his son decided to bugger off, it was she that would mention various ways for him to bridge that gap, too. She often encouraged him to set aside time for his son. But there was obviously something in those cards he didn’t want her to know, so he would shut her down with more bullshit. It was all very unfortunate.

                 What would make his life easier would be to find someone else. Now that his kids were recognizing him and wanting more of his time thanks to the jealousy brought on by dating someone with kids, it would just be easier to find another woman without kids. Or another woman whose kids were already grown. Hell, maybe a woman with more of a financial windfall. So, when an old friend messaged him that she was currently separated and coming to town for a visit, well, that provided an avenue worth investigating. But he didn’t want his girlfriend to know, just in case that avenue was a dead end. That’s when his concoction of lies began, along with the underestimation of her intelligence.

                 Instead of going hiking, he went out to the bar to meet his aspiring possibility. Of course, he had his eldest daughter come, too, to make it seem innocent enough, just in case things didn’t pan out. Or maybe it was just to get her opinion. Was the new lady/old friend worth pursuing? At any rate, the next morning was when he was busted out. He wasn’t home when his now ex-girlfriend showed up. She texted him, then went in to let their dog out, the dog she had helped raise from a pup. That poor dog hadn’t been out to do his business in quite some time, as he had his legs crossed. She had never seen a dog piss and shit simultaneously until that very day.

               It took 30 minutes for him to respond with lies to her text that morning. By then, she already knew that she’d been betrayed, and that he apparently held no respect for her, or for her own children. If he had, she wouldn’t have been sitting at his kitchen table constructing a “What the fuck is this?” letter. His concoction had soured. It was ironic, though. His attempt at keeping her in the dark had helped to spread the light. He needn’t worry about her dying of cancer anymore. 

​She’s a bad ass, and she doesn’t need your love.
She’s a power house and needs no approval.
She’s walked the terrible, crooked line
and has dined on fabrications meant to stifle.
Meant to suffocate her words.
Meant to blemish her self-worth.
But that dirt just rolls right off her back.
Because she’s a bad ass.

She’s toted the note for years.
She’s toiled the spoiled garden
that grows your petty fears,
and her soulful skin reflects the work,
the sweat, the tears she’s shed to get here.

She’s a bad ass, and she doesn’t need your love.
She’s a power house and needs nothing from you
to survive what she has already lived through.
She keeps walking, she keeps talking, and her songs
drown out the soggy menus you wish she’d order from.
She is the culmination, totality, and the sum
of everything that equals strength.
She is a bad ass that carries everything,
even the kitchen sink if she needs to.
And she needs nothing from you. 

Dr. Stephen Parks enjoyed attention.
He grew leaps and bounds
whenever his name was mentioned.
Bee-bopping amongst the people,
fake smiles flying; feeding his ego.
Dr. Stephen Parks liked to park his face
in places incognito, and lie a fool
whenever anyone questioned his M.O.
His modus operandi was to use
other families to make his own re-known.
Sleep with the moms, tickle their fancy.
Shower with gifts, take them dancing.
Treat their kids to chocolates,
fuzzy teddy bears on Valentines.
Love, Stephen Parks, fine and dandy.
But Doctor Parks kept dark secrets.
Information he would omit.
The clients can’t make informed choices
all because of this one small fact…
Dr. Stephen Parks was all an act.
He wasn’t a doctor at all.
He had no PhD.
He held no degrees,
except for separation.
He kept discussions in his pockets,
and other women in his lockets.
Deceit and trickery.
Foolish gains and fuckery.
Stephen Parks could spin quite the tale.
Until he haphazardly let the Queen Mary sail
off into the sea of light
where his lies were fleshed
for all the world to see.
Oh, that Queen Mary disembarked,
set on a voyage to torch the disguise
of one Doctor Stephen Parks,
who loved only himself. 
​

She's the whole package
laying in the wreckage
of a half century landfill.
Do your will.
Do what you want.
Tell her what she wants to hear.
Tear her apart in the search
for whatever the fuck quenches
the thirst you suffer.
She'll do just fine.
Wine and dine.
Stuff her coffers with invisible coins.
She doesn't need 'em anyway.
She's the whole tattered package.
Testament to the old adage
of what does not kill us.
She is victor, victim, and witness.
Testimony of a thousand voices.
Picture show of a million choices
hidden in the shadows and crevices
of where you've never seen her go.
She's the whole damn package.

​“We just do our thing, and if the kids go along, then great.”

                “And if they don’t?”

“Two incomes and one house sure would be easier.”

                “It would. Would you like that?”

“That’s the plan.”

                “What plan?”

“Did I ever tell you that I was in a movie?”

                “Yeah, back to this plan…”

You kiss me.
You kiss me again.
You run your fingers through my hair.


“I’m in love with you.”

                “That’s a good thing. I’m in love with you, too.”

I kiss you.
We stare into each other’s eyes.
Everything melts away.

                “You know. You should know.”

“Know what?”

                “She adores you. She adores yours.”

“Ah, yes. Well, most kids do.”

                “No. You need to know this. It’s important."

“It is. I need that. I need that love. I need your kids to love me.”


You needed it for a reason.
You needed it for a season.
Now that season has come to pass.
The leaves have left their branches.
You’ve moved on.
All I hear are crickets.

A grifter of affection.
Sweet, facade infection.
Dilerious intention.
A stain on the family name.


A user of people.
Church AND steeple.
Collector at the pew.
Twisted pulpit stew.


A black box of messages.
Unlock the vestiges.
Shun the answers in light.


Redirection is his course,
veiled uncertainty his horse.
His mask a white knight
Questions asked -
his kryptonite.