I mark my wedding anniversary
that’s my most successful failure yet.
With poems and songs
That delay the inevitable mistake.
When my partner realizes
they should have never signed the paper.
That licenses lifelong disappointment
And guarantees resentment.

I mark my wedding anniversary
that’s my most successful failure yet
When old signs and unkicked habits
Stoke like pernicious coal fires
perfect for cremation.
Too much time together
Reveals that we can’t be together
And spend all our time wondering whether
Our lives were nothing more than ether.

I mark my wedding anniversary
that’s my most successful failure yet
With affection turned affliction
From isolation on borrowed time
That makes me wonder
how long will I have
love and life.

I mark my wedding anniversary
of my most successful failure yet.
A few more words to save things
A few more chances to be better
And then I will have a book full of failures
Penned for the cops to find

I am a bicycle in the rain
Everyone has given me a turn
Chains rusted
Rubbers busted
Frame still desirous
And a seat well-used

All that’s left
Are gaping holes
Wore out tires
Abandoned, locked to a parking meter

Who are you?
A bike mechanic?
With a can full of needed lube?
Here to junk me
Or make me your fixer upper?

Always,
I am rusted in the rain
Delightfully broken from all the rides

Hey, Fuck Up

I am talking to you, reader, author, everyone alike.
And I don’t mean that in the drunken uncle sort of way.
It’s not that same Budweiser tone
Shouted from a vinyl arm chair
Submerged in a leaky kiddie pool

I mean the collect we. The special fuckup.
Ever notice that? “Species”, “Special”
We the people who evidently fuck up.
Why are we like this?

Why do we act the way we do?
Why do we practice anonymous violence?
Cling to outdated and exclusionary ideologies
Try so hard to make everyone else different

It’s not the homeless woman
Trying to score whatever necessity makes this life bearable.
It’s not the trans boy or girl or non-binary
or whatever combination of forces and factors they are
It’s not the downtrodden, the lame, the destitute,
The unwell, the insane, the malfunctioning or the
dysfunctional.

It’s the rich people.
It’s the ones with the money and the power and the say and the platform
And the means and the privilege and the education and the connection
And the alma mater and the 401k and the trust fund
And the summer house.

It’s them.
They’re the fuck-ups.
But so are we.
We let them do it.
Hey, fuck up.
I’m talking to you.

It was an alright day.
I bought a used wheelbarrow
There’s no rain water or chickens.
Nothing depends on a spent morning.

Trying to patch the slow hissing tire,
I give up because the whole thing is rusty and second hand.
It makes a better decoration.
A little dying Americana chique
Where pastoral dreams meet unexpected ends.

I won’t ever use it.
So I gave up and took some acid.
As I fly like a humming bird,
I realize my arms won’t ache
beneath indolent layers of sun screen.

The truth serum says I am lazy.
I lay here slathered minerals that keep away select cancers
As new ones, the unplanned demises, bloom in twisted cells.
I realize I could die here. Sudden. No safety precautions required.
There are things more fatal and exclusive than a pandemic.
There are those inevitable ends monogrammed in our honor.
A bird drops out of the air.

Its feathers suddenly inert by an explosion of its heart.
A prefabricated anomaly born out of an unlucky lottery.
It falls dead among the the pink flowers
Next to my dilapidated barrow.
As I am reminded of my own mortality
And the sunset coming for us all.

He went away for the holy day
He took a Hajj holiday
But he never got there
He never got there
He never got there
He never got there they say

The NSA took the Imam away
They put him away
They put him away
In Guatanamo Bay

Now we don’t know
Where the Imam has been
They took him from us
They took him from us
We don’t know
Where the Imam has been
They took him from us
They took him from us

Ringy, ringy, ringy
Up the President
And remind him to close
that illegal residence
Ringy, ringy, ringy
Up the FBI
And ask them to stop
Making Jihad

Yeah, yeah, yeah
No no no, no no no
No no no, no no no

He went away for the holy day
He took a Hajj holiday
But he never got there
He never got there
He never got there
He never got there they say

He went away for the holy day
He took a Hajj holiday
But he never got there
He never got there
He never got there
He never got there they say

The NSA took the Imam away
They put him away
They put him away
In Guatanamo Bay

The NSA took the Imam away
They put him away
They put him away
In Guatanamo Bay