and the water’s poisoned.

so today I’ll pray for new rain.

and constitutions

stronger than mine.

where time doesn’t exist.

seven months is a hundred lifetimes

and syllables forming sounds like “twenty years”

rain without meaning.

where misfits are prophets

with eyes like solar flares

that speak in urban slang.

where prophets who wear mostly ironed

blue Puerto Rico t-shirts.

live with God-sized holes.

a little bit of laughter.

usually not for me.

I’ll just hang with my albatross,

with shoes about to drop.

I’ll just sit here and anchor

against storms.

a sociopath.

a gift for smiling when others do.

I’ll breathe later

when it’s safe

and no one’s looking

and the chatter stills

and the tide goes out

and i drift

on gypsy currents.

could be mistaken for the smell of abstinence.

I dreamt that last night.

I don’t know what it means,

but I’m sure it’s a universal truth.

a compost heap.

waiting to break up

or break down

over the next thirty or forty years.

sunlight amplifies,

green, through empty bottles

in air that turns

and smells like wet dogs.

sometimes you say “I love you” and even though you mean it, you say it out of habit. My youngest daughter replied “I love you too” during homework one day, and then a moment later, “I really do.” It was so heartfelt and honest it made me want to take back all the “I love you’s” I’ve ever misspent.

one day my daughter and I were trying to figure out why there weren’t more worms on the driveway considering how much it had rained lately. She gave me the first lines to this poem. It seemed as logical as anything else.

Later that day she and my other daughter (they’re twins) were holding their breath as we passed a cemetery. Evidently, this keeps you from being cursed. Lately I’ve felt like I should start holding my breath as we pass cemeteries as well.