The More Heartbreaks The Better
(September 2024)

I care less about the possibility of failure
so I learn to know the truth
that I am both the evil and the good.
I learn to stop dreading heartbreak
and start seeking it out.
I start playing outside more
and stop taking a single minute of sunshine for granted
and the fear of dying in your eyes turns to something lighter than air
and it floats away
and I start to move only from love.
Porn Bot Retweets My Philosophy
(November 2024)
published by Do Not Submit

I emerged with my father’s strange eyes, mid-range jumper, and his tendency to wander. His teeth are crooked, mine are not. I often find myself at a wooden table on a cold day as one of two people who want to talk but don’t know what to say. “Did you catch that Sixers rookie last night?” Usually it is more polite to stay silent. I have a hole inside of me that I want to fill with the words I imagine to be caught in your throat. Our love for dirty leather causes me spiritual hunger so I eat mujadara for now but do not fry the onions myself.

Sister dreamt that fascism came quickly. I was bleeding, she didn’t know from where. No one could be bothered to worry but her. This happened once while I was painfully awake and busting open my chin on the concrete while big brothers continued their baseball game. Sister called for help. I was too young then to know about fascism or divorce. Not everyone has someone to always pick them up when they fall, let alone someone who prepares for war in their dreams. God looks at me that night and thinks I am so alone but I am so full of blood.

Porn bot retweets my philosophy four thin books I am 69 pages into each lay next to me while I sleep clutching the empty air and my pulsating killing-machine of a ████ that pumps out dead egg after dead egg while I sleep alone in contorted positions divorce is near my wife doesn’t look at me in the eyes anymore in fact she never did and we were never married we just used to play basketball on different teams in different courts for different schools I just used to follow her home from work in a fake mustache and ski goggles but either way now she’s leaving me. Some of the music you listen to lies to you about how everything is suffering or love is light but I have never let a song lie to me because I know that two things can be true at once like I can be dancing to my ████ ████ song and I can be listening to our ████ ████ song while we do the drive but I can be happy we are both home even if it’s because of the reason the song got made. You wouldn’t have come home for thanksgiving either way but the music would have and your mom will still make 5 servings worth of turkey and she will force them down my gullet and then oil up my fingertips and my face and my meaty calves (I have been biking alone in the basement because my body is filled with ████ ████ ████ █ ███ ███ █ ████ █ ███ ████ fishing wishing you would come back ████ ████ ████ █ ███ █ ███ █ ███ ██ ██ your ghost threw my painting of you face down into the wet brown shitpaint as a final act of self destruction ████ ████ ████ ████ █ ███ ████ ████ yin and yang form a perfect Yummy Yummy circle) and then she will stick me in the oven three hundred seventy five degrees it will feel sooooo delicious for me to get a good crisp on and be eaten by my hungry extended family.

Mom, dad? There are baby bluebirds that carry me through underground tungles to where I am from to where I am going. Divorced mom, divorced dad? I can’t believe I’m just like you! All I did was love her it’s not my fault I got all kicked around in the musty bunker. I am a little guy. I’ve always been the baby it’s not my fault I didn’t love her quite right. How do you write a birthday card that says I’m sorry for not talking to you about our dead friend for two months but I thought you might get a kick out of this british children’s police propaganda book and also I haven’t decided whether or not to ████ ████ ████? Mom says I do my best and if he brings his friends Anger or Meanness to the table I can build a brick wall to protect my dear tender self “with all our support”. That would be easy and simple see Anger and meanness build a wall see anger build a wall build another one once you get to four you have built yourself a house now the anger flies above you build a roof it tungles below you build a floor it gets bored of torturing you you build a door you step outside and smell the grass that has grown taller than you while you were hiding and you try to remember why you built the walls in the first place. Then Meanness comes bumping down the road on a seven-horse drawn carriage and boom! You have an addition to your house! This must be how mansions get made!

We are twenty years older and our wars are mostly in our heads for now. Sister helps me still. Trains are sacred and so is my body and they are not to be used to serve the agenda of weeny newyork pussyboys. I want to not feel things but I do. I feel fully and soberly. I don’t know how it still feels like the first day we met every time I see you. I have an inkling of an idea that you will grab my heart out of my chest and juice it like an orange. Sister will still be there to help me.

I hadn’t thought about how I looked in many many days so when he told me you were staring I tried to see myself through your eyes but I couldn’t see anything particularly worth yearning for just someone who was curious about fire and wondering how to make everyone around them feel equally loved. So I relocate the hedge, I transform the house. On Sunday mornings I find serenity in late morning nightmares because I prefer to start my day right, whatever the cost. They always told me divorce is a game of life and death, just like Go and pickup basketball.

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Peas and Beef
(October 2024)
published by Do Not Submit
Yaoharu Grocer / Give or Take
(September 2024)
published by Do Not Submit
Hereafter / Flying Over the Ocean of Tenderness (a.k.a. Lake Michigan)
(September 2024)

I rode hard and fast up the hill
but I braked on the way down
just to watch you all speed ahead of me with nothing but awe for the fact that I learned to love you more every day
and I don’t much fear losing you anymore
because we change every day,
but I know you will always have the same shoulders
and I will always have the same fingertips, too.

Spent 3 years straight with my head screwed on not too tight
I tried every vitamin
broke every bone
ripped up every letter and put them back together again
I played basketball and yes I even got tackled at the football game and missed a few steps
but my head was just running through worlds where you left me in this way or that or worlds where I left you I think I tried every combination until there was no choice left but to go back to living because a life spent thinking about death is no life at all.
No matter how much I thought and how little I spoke, I kept growing taller
Until the bracelet you gave me fit well enough to wear on the plane home
but probably not well enough to madly paddle to the middle of the lake without it sinking to the bottom—
and hm yeah I think I could live with that.

You could mess up again every day for the rest of my life
but the door will stay open
because I am the one with the house
with two babies playing monkey,
a mother who apologizes,
and a father who does the work
even if at the last minute.
My palms are big enough.
I know yours are too.
Bermuda Triangle Blues / My Heart is Feeling Invisible Things
(December 2024)

I would love to come to your Friendsgiving dj set office potluck christmas party new years transition ceremony but unfortunately I have to go represent Earth in a tournament
I will die for these children,
For in my past life we all grew from the
same tree.
If I belong to what I understand
I surely do not belong to you, to the Pennsylvania sky, or to my elected officials.
I surely do not belong to the way this creek knows its way to the ocean.

They’re trying to defund us again but there’s nothing I can do for today at least not from New York (blackmail city council member? Come back to that)
Self immolation I will bear this whole planet on my shoulders
I’m back on YouTube putting out perfect images
My heart is back to feeling invisible things
My mom never picks up my phone calls even though she loves me so much yet you don’t love me and you’re in my phone every day.
Every night while I sleep my brain discovers new ways to refuse help from everyone who might love me
Finally my shoulders have gotten to a point where I dont want to carry this heavy box of books to the pitch alone anymore so I am going home Saturday to my sober seaside town to jump into my sober ocean and let my sober mom run me a sober bath
While I fax you pictures of being wasted in Maryland where we were too far from the clean water (it was not your fault)
You gave up, but I know how to surrender to the creek
So I worked for many hours every day I became like animal
clearing debris until my back ached and my nose dripped something that was not snot and my ankle may have snapped again
When the water finally moved with the force it did before it was like--

they asked me to do it at the memorial
but letting that water flow again is the closest I’ll ever get to eulogizing you.

Ever since then I have been small in the way a leaf in the wind is small

I have no regrets about how I ever handled my love even when you probably would think I should.

I flew Jun to a past not far away
Jacob’s cousins are more like brothers too
Aliyah's uncle is without a catsitter
I will be away for Christmas
My heart is feeling invisible things
All kids are much closer to god than I am
but if I can dance like that again I think I am starting to belong to the way the creek flows.


Porn Bot Retweets My Philosophy
(November 2024)
published by Do Not Submit