AN ODE TO NINETIES TV COPS

Oh poor boy in blue, New York's Finest, There's nothing you hate more than doing your job. There's no clue you won't fumble, No case you won't obstruct, No sunglasses left unworn.

You stand around crime scenes, Mill about chewing toothpicks, Sipping coffee from polystyrene cups Soon to be discarded.

Your natural enemy is the detective That or laws against police brutality. Sleep in your car, eat at your desk, Misfire your gun, lose face.

The best part about nineties TV cops is they never win. The case gets solved, They're proven wrong, Fools made of all.

I prefer this story to the one I see in the news.

Orpheus and Eurydice but fuck Eurydice. Orpheus and Eurydice but another shade made him look twice. Orpheus and Eurydice but Alive Orpheus and Dead Orpheus aren't the same person, have never been the same, will only diverge and diverge. Orpheus and Eurydice but at the mouth of the cave he runs back into the Underworld, doesn't look at her, looks through her, leaves her to die and die or live again, he won't see either way, he chooses the labyrinth, the princess, the minotaur, too big for his own myth, steals someone else's.

Elsewhere; Eurydice scrabbles towards the light Grave dirt under her nails She had always been Dead Eurydice, Ever since the first note on the lute. She wonders what it'll be to walk in the sun, never seeing a single white wall. She'll doom only herself if she looks back.

i miss my mother.

don't tell her that in case in my longing she hears a plea to return to how things were before.

do i love my husband? his queer laugh? the smell of dry earth?

i love earthworms and their dependence on mercy after a cool spring rain.

Patron Saint of Nostalgia. Patron Saint of Neighbourly Love. Friend to Orpheus, Friend to Street Cats.

I love you for it. For the chin to shoulder, For knowing a road goes two ways, For being unable to walk away without bearing witness.

You walked those streets, Bought food in the markets, Paid alms to beggars.

It was here you bore children, watched weddings, wept at funerals.

How could you not love those sinners? How could you not strive to remember? In part of your heart, were you not destroyed with them?

Saint Lot's Wife

The Equinox Institute

My skin is soft and tears easily. This isn't a metaphor.

My body has problems clinging to itself aims to dislocate and dislodge wherever it can likes nothing more than a bruise, a rip.

My nerves are no help, crackling with phantom pain, haunted by the ghosts of traumas past making a haunted house of the electrical lines that criss-cross my form.

Sometimes my muscles cramp so hard I lie awake rubbing them, as if I could take the pain into my palms, roll it into something small discard it with more common rubbish.

I am still trying to love this body of mine. That won't stop the hurting, but it might make the mornings a little easier to bear.

In the book, Carrie was fat. That never made it into the movie because How could we possibly root for the fat girl? Nobody thinks the fat girl deserves to go nuts To get revenge, to let it all out Despite the fact she might be the sole person in the world that has earned it.

You can't hide fat under blusher. You can't hide it in a new dress. You can't straighten your hair and get away with it. What I'm saying is Carrie White Would always look like Carrie White and carries that in her hips, her thighs.

Do it for us all, Carrie girl Burn the whole damn place to the ground.

my mother doesn't text me back. which is worse than the time my therapist didn't text me back. middle aged women have a history of disappointing me, clearly.

i could spiral about it. wonder if i was a bad son, a bad patient. but mostly i wake up and do the laundry. i drink tea and don't check my phone. i laugh with my friends and don't look at them when they answer theirs, apologise for the intrusion of a worried mother, unaware of the lack in others.

there's nothing wrong with me. i love my cats, i read all sorts of books. i pick up worms. what i'm saying is that i'm not being punished for anything.

when i sleep i sleep with my lips to god's ear.

so you died. big deal. so you wasted your earth-walking, pissed off the wrong girls, now you're here.

am i supposed to forgive you? is my dust supposed to mix with your dust? it doesn't matter that i love you. it doesn't matter that your frame blocked the light of the living from my shaded eyes it doesn't even matter that you loved me

what matters is this: my footsteps in your footsteps until we fell out of sync and only one set got to walk away.

on the late night train, out of the dark window, lights stream to you like moths.

this late, there are no tracks. we could be floating in space.

later in the night, i will stand in the hallway, looking at the orange lampposts, all too far away.

my cousin was saved from being crushed against a metal fence bodies pushed in and in by the police

because he overslept.

so it goes.

my grandfather went and saw an injustice that would echo through decades happening in real time.

so it goes.

how many atrocities do we miss by a step, by a breath, by a broken alarm clock.

I have funhouse mirrors in my head. Just don't send in the fucking clowns. I've heard all of their jokes.

and i don't want to be here spilling blood all over the internet. i'm as embarrassed as you, honestly.

if there are better days are coming, i have yet to see them. if there are better emotions waiting, i have yet to feel them. i have been here before; my footprints are in the mud.

ocd means never trusting yourself it means 'just one more time.' it means a house fire in your head arrest warrants in your heart car crashes in your bones.

i try to be like the tide i try to ebb and flow i try to let my sharp edges smooth away.

it only lasts until i need to lock a door turn off an oven take a pill.

i count apocalypses before breakfast. tally my mistakes. i would love to sleep without reciting a litany of fantasy penance. my fingers are a morse code tattoo against my thigh tapping out my imagined sins.

the banshee just wishes she could scream an hour earlier. the god just wishes she could be killed. the wolf just wishes for half moons.

i guess all monsters have dreams.

tell me when the lightning struck did it change you or did you just go to ground.

did the thunder clap did you hear the voice of god in the ringing of your ears?

Lord of the Butterflies Prompt, Number 8: Write about two intersections of your identity

I'm queer as in crooked. crooked as my spine is crooked, also.

i am queer as i take my morning pills. as i look at the doctor looking at me. as i ache, burn, and twist. my lover loves my disabled body. and my queer body loves them.

on the days i cannot get out of bed she crawls in with me pressing her soft skin to mine

i would not want this love, this touch, to be anything but queer, anything but crooked.

Lord of the Butterflies, Prompt 7: Write a poem for someone's wedding.

you stopped hanging out with us right around the time she got knocked up. an adult overnight you put away childish things such as me.

the rest of us couldn't grow around your absence. we drifted dandelion seeds scattered to different cities, different lives.

now you're married. i imagine she proposed. i imagine you distant weighed down with all the accoutrements of a settled life.

once, we slept on a mattress in an empty house having stayed up to see the sunrise.

once, we were young. i wish you well.

Observation Practice