A note of thanks
The boy with blue eyes came to me
On summer sunday
With a sky that perfectly matched his irises
And playfully
Clashed with brambly red hair
Forest fire
Smoke in the air just like
today
The first person to tell me that my
Armpit hair
Was beautiful, it was you
Boy with blue eyes
And untameable vigor with a
Bastard child like me
Left behind in the wake of your wild youth
Who told me
My poems were worth reading
It was you
Who first turned me on
To existentialism and kerouac and
Ginsberg ginsberg ginsberg
A sexually liberated hipster
Who would
Only kiss me in private
Because your heart
To someone else was committed
It was you
Who wouldn’t smoke cigarettes
But let
Tendrils of jazz smoke curl from your lips
That would twist
Into literary musings and stories of gutters
And spain
It was the boy with blue eyes
Who felt
The same pain as I and
Told me
That I wasn’t broken for my acrid emotions
In 40 ounce
Confessionals during foggy-windowed escapades
On the rims
Of gray industrial billings
It was you
Who gifted me with your flesh
Only once
On the day you broke your love pact
To another
And left the next without goodbye
But a smear
Of semen on my windshield long since dried
And only
Wiped away when someone else complained about
The dirty glass
It was you
Blue eyes who sidled through my conscience
Only when
It was most inconvenient with words
In prose
Expressing a gratitude for me that you never
Had the nerve
To say to my face
Blue eyed boy
Former undercover lover
Whose spell
Was finally broken when I saw you
Happy
In the arms of another at some
Punk show
I high on mushrooms and you on your own
Success
I digress, blue eyed boy
I will proudly
Wear the mark of our brief trysts into
Infidelity
On my barb-wire wrapped heart
And I am
Indebted to you for forcing me to start
Writing my stories
And showing me that we’re all just the universe’s
Trash
And that’s okay, blue eyed boy
Please
Do not forget me
Pioneer Square, 2017
I'd rather have no talk
I’d rather have no talk than small talk
Spare me from silences that cling to the
Walls and drip down molasses
Followed with hollowed sympathy
To keep up faux-cordiality
I’d rather have no talk than small talk
Do not fear the painful truths
Words that creep from your mouth
On insect legs and manifest in
Chewed fingers and bleeding lips
I’d rather have no talk than small talk
Please share with me your nostalgia
And your envy and malicious ponderings
Only written to yourself to be
Tucked into a filing cabinet behind
The left ear
I’d rather have no talk than small talk
Please tell me that I am inept and
Lay bare to me all of my misconceptions
And laugh with me in recognition that
From our respective points in the world
We are left with gaps in our view
Leaving us mistaken about it all
I’d rather have no talk than small talk
(Photo by Mary Kate Teske)