WHERE IS EVERYWHERE

MAYBE YOU HAVE A PROBLEM

WHOLE

the shorts were shorter then

and my chicken legs

stuck to the bus seats,

flesh spreading out

like shiny cutlets ready

to be dragged through flour.

“i’m fat,” I thought.

“you’re not,” mom said.

i started banging my head

against the bus windows

on the ride home, wanting pain
to prove i could take it. 

older now i no longer seek

to suffer and when i break

i know enough about looking

whole to fake it.

TIME

when we talk about loss
we invent things that were

once here, thought to be
possessed, yet now

somehow
gone, left.
fortunes.
spouses.
hope.
innocence.

behind every great loss
is an illusion of time

that never erodes,
always arrives.

nothing can be
owned, least of all

time.

ESCAPING

more and more my core i tries
to find someplace to hide as the body

survives a noisy bazaar of pains
and mismatched parts, this shoulder

firing false alarms down that arm,
this old spine no longer aligned,

and degradation arises as cottony
constellations of suffering, emulsified

silver that whispers of my dark slide,
breath escaping from the inside.