Obligated

Trying to make sense of the world
Without a steady cash flow, or a matriarch,
is well,
rather trying.

JK

i'm growing dependent upon the things i thought i had finished
refusing and healed from already
i healed so long ago i forgot they scarred me in the first place
it's all pre-Mediterranean civilization
it's all trace fossils and charred ceramics

the problem is
me
the trouble never arrives as
tulips or daffodils
when it revisits me
even before it's over
it's always as
ash
and
ash
and ash

the problem is
i won't
the problem is
i refuse to see

"This storm is what we call progress."

Entartete Kunst, Dada wall in Room 3, Munich, 1937;
photo credit: Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art Resource, NY

“Art history was formed by the same impulse that created the advertising agency, the department store and even the labor union: the need simultaneously to reveal and disguise the comodification of culture.”

—	“Art History and Modernism” by Elizabeth Mansfield, in Art History and Its Institutions: Foundations of a Discipline

Two Poems

1.

A limited arrogance
tends to ready any failure.
Don't think more of this
negative without need.
The restlessness is important.
Problems night and day
tempt life to deal,
to feel at risk.
It might be positive too,
might help put foolish, unexpected,
romantic difficulties to rest.
Even dim futures can feel special.









2.

Sweetness teaches
us the unmistakable
seal of serendipity,
that single little wonder.

Even through the things we said,
the things we always told,
we could still be the low
quiet rushing of glorious
retreating needs.

We could ask,
but we know not to ask.
We come, and we
become possibility

After we have done what
no will might want,
when we share as much
as two away from another,
I'm certain this must start.

I'm whatever you'll pull
after futures recollections.
I'm running within
with you.

Three Poems

I.

the fun of

belonging

of hope

of being bored as hell




II.

worst day ever

pay attention mother fuckers

whatever

the thrill is gone

what the fuck have you done



III.

let's pretend none of this ever happened

show me don't tell me

we see what we want

come back

I really should cure us

but

there will be no miracles here

I woke up wanting to kiss you

that would have been wonderful

I can't explain and I won't even try

it is what it is, it was what it was

please come back I'm sorry about what happened before

sometimes I think sometimes i don't

please go make tomorrow better

you make me ha ha ha ha happy

I love you so much

come back

If not now then when?

one hour

until then if not before

little known thought

everything is going to be alright

more soon