maybe some of us
are still holding on to this idea
that things can go back to the way
they used to be
but I am not one of them

when the dead
take up residence in your house
just to tell you to prepare 
for how bad things are going to get
you know it is over

dead war veterans telling you about
world war 3 and crying
     yes ghosts can weep

the world should be weeping now
but they are in shock
bioweapons
nuclear war
water shortages
food shortages
death and more death

presidents are just presidents
always men in offices
hiding secrets and pretending to be strong

we are all weak
we all make mistakes
we all pretend that things are better
than they are

the reality is that we all knew
this world couldn't be sustained
and now it is too late
so we argue with each other

but that one stoner from college
is still standing on the corner
holding up a free hugs sign
he is an oddity now
we don't know if he might have the virus
if he secretly loves trump or biden
or if he is vaccine or anti-vaccine
but we know enough to know
that the love he gives
isn't allowed today

just hate
and the economy
is important now

nothing is free anymore
our souls are paid for
our rights are just thoughts
that have been bought
our feelings have been regulated
to the land of fantasy

so now the fantasy is death

I have bottled my grief
and put it on a sunny windowsill

which made it all seem better for awhile
sunlight shining through years of tears
the sound of rain in the background
but nothing has changed

my haunted self
is tired of the pretenses of life
beating around the bush
talking to rocks like they give a shit
my inner child used to need a hug
but now her teeth are razor sharp
and those windowsill tears
we once worshiped 
only burns our skin

in some abandoned basement in my mind
I hold her dirty hand 
while she reminds me how
my rage should be sharper now than her teeth
her scabs predate my scars

our eyes are the same
she said she has found a way to peace
and I watch her in the dark
scratching her scabs on some
abandoned mattress

well what is it then?

she scratches at my wrist scars
like they are bug bites
it is her version of a hug
we are afraid of basements
and the dark
and ghosts
but we are past that
now that our only constant is the dead
who throw us into the dark
like that asshole dad
that threw you into the pool
when you didn't know how to swim

we can hide out here
with the dead until its all over

the ghosts cling to us like moths

my inner child sits crosslegged
surrounded by them
an old lady ghost braids her hair
my ghosts are standing beside me
like they are at a 7-11 wondering if they should
even bother

I don't know
it seems pretty bleak

she gives me a hard stare
my dead childhood cat baby 
is purring in her lap

I remember being you
but you haven't lived my life

what makes you think
I would want to?

and here we are
both still here living amongst
the ghosts
my inner child ready to eat popcorn
with the ghosts while the world wars
itself to destruction

soon, I tell her
​
and she flicks a scab at me
while our cat purrs
our childhood bedroom window is broken
I see my daughter searching for me
pretending she can't hear the ghosts

my inner child is smiling 
her teeth glinting in the dark

you have already lost her 

no, I say

lost is when you don't bother
searching anymore

I climb through the broken window
cutting my legs on the glass
it is dark and I am bleeding
the ghosts surround her in the distance
I hear her calling for me in her mind

I am coming, I reply

the darkness swallows 
every step I take
her light keeps calling more spirits
my inner child sits sullenly in the basement
wondering why no one did that for her

my daughter has her headphones on
trying to drown out the noise
that quiet brings
she is in a stranger's house
I wonder if I am already dead
​
she looks in my direction

I am here, I say
mommy is back

the liar is still lying
so full of himself 
he can't see the cards laid bare
​
while I use divination
he covers himself in half truths
hides in a corner
hoping no will notice
he is scared

I have become used to
everything falling away
at night I commune with the stars

close my eyes and remember
everything he did to me
the pain that seemed never ending
is reversing
in this candle light
I ask the universe to make things right

his wrongs are the dead skin of corpses
his words are vinegar on wounds

as our daughter weeds through
his lies to find out who she is
I keep pulling at his barbed wire roots
​to make sure
she won't get stuck  like I did

I part the clouds
to reveal the moon for me
and the sun for my daughter

tonight
I summon the red lightning
to cast out the man
​who silenced us

I keep thinking about the world now
maybe it has always been this way
and I am just now seeing it

how people take and take and take
holding marvelous things in their hands 
only to crush all that is too beautiful
to comprehend

we are just pulverized messes 
 pasty lumps of paper mach'e
some perfect idea printed long ago
torn and torn again to make
something new

we can mold ourselves into
something different
for we are our own creators
but we are stuck in
 outdated ideas

so we subsist as mush
bleeding water
onto
a perfectly good table

mourning as we
search for something outside
just tearing piece after piece
again and again
only to make
 more broken things

lord of the powers of the moon
supreme lord of waters
you have made yourself known

your sigil a sign
​in the night
only you know
how I open in the darkness
my mind always searching
for some other realm

it was you that gave me that dream
the one where I was falling
and you who whispered
pretend it's a roller coaster
and I will take you for a ride

I forgot to imagine
the rails
so I fell to the green sea
I laughed before waking
and heard your voice
telling the others
not to confuse me

so you want me
to let go and drift with you
in your astral travels
just promise to keep me flying
because I can't swim

I will give you offerings
on monday
when the moon starts to show
I will keep space in my head open
for you when I sleep

the light of the moon 
is enough light for me
​
shine in my window
take my hand when 
time is out of my mind

​

a dead war veteran
warned me several months ago
about the taliban
taking over afghanistan 
he let me feel their fear
as he slipped through time
I saw them in the airport
as he tried to comfort them
as invisible as me

he said it was the beginning
of world war 3
he told me to shout it
from the rooftops

but I didn't want to be that person
on the side of the road
holding up a piece of cardboard
that says it is the end of the world

so today I did normal things
when nothing is normal anymore
I looked at all the discarded masks
flung about the Target parking lot
and I wondered
where my dead war veteran friend
was now
if he was mad at me
for not starting a revolution

he told me something else
about a train derailing
an attack or a take over that
​is going to happen
soon

I just keep thinking about
those masks 
laying everywhere
trodden with footprints

how careless we are with everything
we are the human stain upon the earth
we look the other way
and keep saying everything will be okay

maybe death will make us smarter

from now on
I am going to imagine
all the things that can't happen
so they will
because the status quo
is misery

watching the world
obliterate itself
is too fucking depressing

so come with me
on this ice cream brain freeze
while we roller skate
down hills on acid

it is summer
and I am a kid
my pockets are filled with candy
and rocks I have found
in the shape of things
no one else can see but me

I am walking small town streets
smelling ocean air
my fantasy is laced
in the latest book I have read,
charlie and the chocolate factory

everyone's favorite part is when
he finds the golden ticket
but my favorite part is how
all his grandparents lay in bed all day
and how grandpa joe
imagines all these wonderful realities
for charlie
while everyone else 
sadly subsists on cabbage soup

that was the real golden ticket
because we all know 
​willy wonka was a crazy asshole

there was a time
when I blew on
dandelion fluff
making wishes
that would never 
come true

hope was enough
to sustain
my ignorance 
my innocence

and it was pretty
and I was a child
in some fucking meadow
where birds were singing
like a disney movie

it is grimm now
like those fairy tales where
if you wore slutty red shoes
and liked to dance
you danced yourself to death

my patience is wearing thin
on this bullshit world
and all the cloudy confusing
lies that aren't even as good
as opium
lies that smell like shit
on the hottest day
and are written 
by journalists that flock
to whoever feeds them

we are all starving
for truth 
I keep imagining
those scrawny baby birds
sitting in a nest
with their tender beaks open
for worms
 blind baby birds
just waiting and
tweet tweeting away

as the world dies

this propaganda shit
isn't like growing a victory garden
it isn't rosie the riviter 
making a muscle

it is men in suits
scrambling to cover a lie
so take your medicine
the latest fashion in bioweapons
now that it is leaked
we all have to take it
or we all will die

don't bother praying
this is man made
humanity is the source
​and humanity will pay

an old friend sent me a link
to this house I used to rent

it is all gutted 
nothing but walls and floors
for sale now
this husk of home
on long island

even then I was sad
living on the street
marilyn monroe
used to vacation on
a newlywed in
this tiny cabin

it was supposed
to be a beginning
but all I can remember
is the black mold
growing in the basement
and the silent days
of endless longing

in the spring
tiny worms fell from
the trees and caught in my hair
and covered the street
I tried to imagine they were
silk worms but it didn't work
so I stopped taking walks

I tried to get a job 
at this place that made
grave stones
because it was beautiful 
in a way I couldn't describe
but ended up working at 
trader joe's instead

all the customers were mean
and I cried in the stock room
during my breaks
I made a friend who hated
it there as much as I did

one day while I was 
sitting on an empty pallet
smoking a cigarette
day dreaming about being
a famous writer
she pointed out a dead sparrow
in the parking lot
and asked me to save it
​
I held it in my hands
 imagined it was alive
and it flew away
she smiled and said
I knew you could save things

at night I went home
to a man
who didn't speak
his stony silence 
was not the wedded bliss
I had imagined
so I started writing
to kill the the loneliness

I wrote about a girl
that was a changeling
with a fairy mother
and a demon dad
that was never around
I never finished it
I never finish a lot of things

when we moved
they told us the house 
was going to be torn down
I kept finding these baby possums
under the porch
I saved them in a shoe box
and took them to an animal shelter
they didn't want them
but took them anyway

I bet they died
because I never found
their mother
I looked and looked
but she hid under the porch
I bet she died too
from sorrow



​

as summer comes to its end
bringing forth more chaos
and death

it reminds me of another time
when summer was ending
my best friend was dying of cancer
I was on the brink of divorce
still in denial
that change was coming

those years
when I was still my daughter's world
I was reading her fairytales 
in my bedroom on a summer afternoon
when we heard a cracking
whip of thunder

we went to the window
to stare at the black clouds
when the thunder got louder
I remembered to count
to see how close it was

we saw the red lightning
as we were turning away
to go downstairs
a lightning bolt hit a group of trees
in the yard
a burst of fire
blooming on a branch
one tree split

I took her downstairs
a warning of a lightning storm
was coming through on my phone
we sat on the basement steps
waiting for the noise
to quiet

when he got home
he hadn't even known
about the storm
he looked at me as if 
I ought to be tied
to a hospital bed

from that day on
I looked at that tree
split down the middle
remembering the red lightning
how only me and her saw it

some signs are meant 
for just one person
other signs are meant
for the whole world

this has been the summer of signs
a summer of lost hopes
way more obvious
then red lightning

but still we are at war with reality
pretending that this reality
can be sustained