My Last Haiku

Naked, smoke filled room.

Wearing an engagement ring.

Loved, so lost. Sixteen.

Naked, sunshine streams.

This is the life you wanted.

I don’t write or dream.

I might be yours

I might be yours, 

dried grass green eyes

eating smoke walking miles

And yes you love me,

player fell down you

found a new game,

with one crazy

and cold-blooded as you.

Press my hands on your body

running me away,

and I might say I love you

but I won’t jump just yet-

I’m not near the edge,

but I hear you’ve been

waiting in the water.

I search to hold your hand

but nothing I say to you

will ever be complete

cupid shot you down, underground

And I might be yours

when the lights are dim

or when the cops get here

or if the sun shines right

and when I tug your hair

I no longer think of him as much so

I might be yours.

I wrote you a poem, too.

Let me lie I love you.

Let me lie, while I wait for you

Let all of my words fade to grey

like how a cold morning’s breath disappears into the altitudes.

And while I hold your hand,

let me listen to you

and ache for you, because

you love me like you’ll never live again

you love me like how I love him.

And while we walk,

let my mind fold the page over

to another, warmer day

when I was with him.

And since you love me

in this melancholy let me stay.

Wild Child

When I was ten, I told myself

I’d never bounce a check,

or light a cigarette,

or fuck a guy that I’d just met.

But something changed my mind

I wanted death for a long time,

and the day that I woke up

I wandered off those faded lines

My head unlearned to cry

I married Carolina nights

getting raped on someone’s couch

cause I just needed to get high,

Wild child wrapped in lies.

And these Carolina nights, they’re just so

mother fucking bright!

Or it’s the cop car in the back,

Oxycontin in my eyes

Hell I’ve lost my will to die,

but still to life I’ll give a pass

Drinking whiskey on my breaks,

I’ve got a rep to keep intact!

Say what happened to that kid, 

wanting her name on the plaque?

Was that in another life, 

sit all her dreams up on my rack.

You can tell your kids ‘bout Jesus

but don’t say He thinks you’re crap;

you better send your kids to Harvard

if you want your money back!

You’ll lose some and you’ll gain some,

Live gentle or just die young

I’m stuck in the place I came from

Just the womb that I done sprang from,

cryin’, Momma, won’t you hear me?

Thinkin’, Daddy where you at?

Oh just send those kids to Harvard if you

want a painful laugh!

Or love all their mistakes

and say you’ve always got their back,

they’ll come home to you on Christmas 

instead of, on some stranger’s lap!

I know my Momma loves me but

her name ain’t on no plaque,

I just can’t see my Momma cry

maybe I’ll just go and die

Runnin’ from some feeling, yelling

curse words at the sky.

But I’m not dumb; I’m just so numb.

There’s some grey mixed in the black

I’m a poet sittin’ shot gun,

wild child in the back.

At once I saw all grey,

but now my world is black and white

This circle, wild child,

reckless Carolina nights.

Just A Baby

I met an old man, walking dead

drunk and didn’t fit in the party

of mindless men, who were young next to him,

shooting cans, and the old man asked my age.

“Seventeen,” I lied, due to a promise I’d made

to seem appropriate.

“She’s just a baby!” he shrieked,

and sat next to me

starting at the edge of his own eyeball

 and slurring at me

how his wife had just died

and he didn’t want to live

and he wept a flash flood

she was fifty six

and, and, and she was his at thirteen

and, and he

just wish, just wish

his heart would stop beating

right then, right there, where we sat.

And I was frozen far away

I know it was rude to look away

and he squeezed through every cry

that I had to promise him,

I had to, he said

“If you find that one you love, don’t ever let them get away.”

and he leapt off the stair

disappeared around the trailer with a peace sign

hanging in the air.

And shot shot, rang guns

I looked up at the man I’d been playing and pleasing

for reasons I still can’t explain.

Shot shot, shot shot

he had stood to get something and

“be right back, babe,” went away.

Shot, shot, shot, shot,

Which ring shut the old man’s eyes?

Too many shots

but just at cans, right?

Not to die?

went away.

Blue Lines

Blue lines that trace my skin

Fill them up with oxogen

Stretch them out with ritalin

Blue lines that cover me

Tear them up when I can’t sleep

Watch it turn to red then bleed

Blue lines that caught my eye

My head is gone my tounge is dry

The beauty doesn’t satisfy

Blue lines, they’re always there

Poke and point, destroy repair

Breathing in the autumn air