Ink-colored Ejaculations of a Scatterbrained Poet

Martingale System

Marriage is betting someone half your shit

that you will stay together until one of you

kicks the bucket. And the odds are not in your favor.

Tolstoy may have said every unhappy family

 is unhappy in its own way, but fuck Tolstoy.

What does he know, anyways.

Life is too short and sex is too fun

to be eating the purple skittles.

If you don’t love her, walk away.

Dump her. Sever ties. Hit it and quit it.

Call your lawyer. Fill the divorce papers.

Move to Zimbabwe and

change your name into Chamakomo.

Because there’s no such thing as a bad divorce.

Because divorce means the end of something shitty.

Because if you loved her, you should’ve stayed.

Because if you really loved her,

you would have remembered to lift the toilet seat.

But you didn’t.

So you call the next bet instead.

Existential Crisis.

Fixing the Roof Tiling

You stand as a desolate man

in a

desolate house

fixing the tiling of the roof

of your home

against the swamp

that threatens to swallow

all in its churning reaches.

You toil away against the roof,

fingernails chipped and yellow,

a simple toolbox and a radio

to keep you company.

there’s always static on the radio.

Run, little moth, run.

Flutter away from the wet darkness,

lest your tiny lungs drown in it.

The scent of black

rises deep

and dark from the reaches

of the murky waters

sulfuric fumes mix with yellow bile

at the back of the throat.

And you, a tired punctuation

amidst the run-on that is the endless fen,

stand and watch the ignis fatuus dance.

Run, little moth, run.

Flutter away from the wet darkness,

lest your tiny lungs drown in it.

One can almost

see the blinding flash.

Hear the roar of the thunder

that would break the static and send

the crows screaming.

Almost

taste

the deliciously inaudible sound

of a body slipping

off the broken roof shingles

and into the waters down below.

But one doesn’t.

so instead, you murmur your chant.

Run, little moth, run.

Flutter away from the wet darkness,

lest your tiny lungs drown in it.

Untitled

You are responsible for what you tame.

once said a fox to a prince with hair

like fields of golden wheat.

“But what if,” once said you, to me,

“What if we never wanted any of that?”

what if the roses grew thorns once more

and took root, and the mangroves crept up

much like how these grey clouds

tiptoe across once blue skies.

what if the heart once more

pines for the land where Wild things are

or longs to go bump at night?

Would it be too late, then,

to set the fields of wheat ablaze?

I asked

Too late to watch gold wither into

black and the fruits of our labor into chaff?

Please lie.

Tell me that there will always be

another story to tell

another apple to bite into

another another to say

tell me that all the proof

that we will have ever needed

was that we laughed and sought for sheep.

Tell me that we’ll never tire of it.

Untitled

The reason why the Moon circle the Earth

is because it sees the moonflower

that the planet has just given birth.

It’s the same reason why the Sun stays in orbit

as it sees the sunflower that has just begun

to unfurl and start its golden circuit.

The reason why the wind sways,

is to give wings to the dandelion seeds

and make sure it finds its way.

The waves will build and crash in foam

all for the sake of this diminutive turtle

who has yet to find his way back home.

But the heart—the heart does not beat.

It oscillates.

And the reason it oscillates

is not the same reason why the Moon circles the Earth

or why the Sun stays in orbit.

It is neither the reason why the wind sways

Nor is it why the waves build and crash.

The heart oscillates,

because it has found the place it belongs—

but has found it too late.