Portfolio

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genes

oh, God!
don’t let me get old 
with the bar on my chin
and smoke in my heart.

don’t let my daughter call
to find me on the floor,
cans empty with nowhere to roll.

i don’t want to get old and drown, 
choking on the 
distance between us.

the fields will cut me 
with the edge of love
i never gave, 
and i will blame it on my baby
if it means i can’t be wrong.

i beg You, spare me 
from the life i’ve already seen
lived out.

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mississippi

I met the river 
when I was 13. 
My jeans fit loose in the thighs 
and I wanted to be dead-

I had ashes in my eyes
and some amount of
existential dread-

But I digress.

I met the river 
when I was 13.
She had silt in the covers 
of her bed-

Sucks to say, but
I don’t remember 
what she said.  

Where was I?

On her seeded sunken hand,
I stained my knees-
they began to bleed
humid, dripping green.

I think I hit my head.
Anyhow, I don’t 
worry myself sick about it.

These days, all I bleed is red.

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twain

if you're gonna get out, then you better get going. you better hop the next freight and call it an adventure, or you'll never see what those signs at town’s end point to. you better hit the ground running, or you'll catch your death and you know it. run until you forget where you're from. maybe then, you'll find your way home. if you've lost the map, you won't know the difference anyways. you can eat overripe tomatoes on the road and call it justified, because at least you're on the move. at least you're on the move. at least you're not stuck.

stuck. you ditched one route for another. the red lights are long and the green ones don't stop coming. you can’t point towards home. where is home? how can you find north when the sun sets in any direction you please? a rail for a road is no way home. you’re stuck on the move. 

get yourself a goddamn map. pick a place to rest. put your tomatoes on a sandwich and call it lunch. learn street names, carry a compass, carry bandaids, and never get lost again. never get lost again. learn to breathe on the street where you live, and never run to be lost ever again.