poems (2019)

Not for children

I published this collection in 2019, back when I had a lot of ideas bouncing around in my head: work, school, Taoism, zen, girls, Spanish, jazz, mortality.

Whenever I had time, I’d sit and type out my thoughts on a 1950s Remington Rand typewriter that I call “Earle.” I found Earle one day in 2016 while browsing Village Antiques in Dearborn. I bought him for $27.

Anyway, Earle and I would hang out sometimes and I’d hit him and hit him and knock him around, and after a long night of manic revelry, I would gather up the wreckage and sort through the scraps and sometimes, deep in the thickets of my nonsense, I would find a string of words that shortly but sweetly managed to express exactly what I was trying to say.

Those strings of thoughts became these poems.

from poems (2019)

CRAZY

Sometimes I wish that certain people were dead
And others would live forever,
That I could torture my childhood bullies
And redo lost fights with past lovers.
Sometimes I hate strangers on sight
And sometimes I love them.
Sometimes I talk to myself,
Sing in the shower,
Cry for no reason,
Skip washing my hands,
Squash bugs and smile,
And ogle sexy cartoon characters.
I wonder what dogs and birds are thinking,
Why mosquitoes bite,
Why I snot,
And why “goose” are “geese” but “moose” aren’t “meese.”
Sometimes I’m terrified but I smile
And I’m happy but I hate it.
Most times I fear or worship myself.
But craziest of all is not that I know I’m crazy,
But that you think you’re not.

ALONE

I am
Most
Alone
Among people.

HIDE

When it’s all too stupid out here,
I hide in books.