early evening early in the death thinking about death all day the video game deaths I played the music death all the death TV shows the same even if they try to death it my back still sore but better death than the dog deaths her new toy

and no I never did get around to that I gave up on connection and went down paths they warned me about to make blurred photocopies of those same mistakes my hands stumbling fat then thin leaves fell and grew the early sun in winter faithfully rendered in Minecraft reddened the tips of things in a neighborhood or that or this heavy frenemy in my chest sometimes makes his strange will speak

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Sonnet

what prize did you hope to hold in those smooth
hands for the plan sketched in cloud and unbuilt—
what melody might have flown forth if you
freed yourself from petty politics of
the boardroom and tested those scrawny wings—
but you sat with a job safe as socks and
a single number near the cold solstice

now in the damp the aches where you bend while
those black glacier teeth topple in tepid
tea you mumble to the cat it wasn’t
all bad these bloody feet could still march this
hand salute the lurking shadow who smiles
at the coughing cubicle dwellers soon
to be churned into cheap fertilizer

Sonnet

sweet voices in a mist-filled wood like a memory of the moon just a few drops of blood from your yearly broken back and you can play until fat with all the things this difficult crossword puzzle doesn’t attract me now that some grey has snuck in so why not stay I lost my train of thought again but with the mental gps installed it was no problem to rejoin and then pick from one of the available choices and at last enter new star city

Sonnet In Which the Last Two Lines Have Shipped But Are Running Late

do you clap when it arrives in crumpled
corrugated cardboard dropped on the steps
of your demand and expectation—me?
I long to hear the soft song of
the box cutter the little sigh
as light uncovers the gifts of darkness

but enough of my many weaknesses
let’s upgrade our kitchens hats and bookshelves
lounge in the recycled air gulp supplements
unthinking of the debt and folks living
in fire and try to laugh since we never
got the hang of writing protest songs

Sonnet

since the selfie came out blurry
giving that mosquito my cheek
to suck its snack while the old crows
guffawed my self-promotion by
the abandoned railroad tracks may
not have been my finest moment

so in this phlegmy rain I wait
for the final ferry and this
may be the encephalitis
talking but I feel I grow fat
or waste on the food of strangers’

thumbs as I grope
in the dark for
a light so you
can learn my name