O

lost contact walking
in circles around franklin

village you wanted to be alone
at the festival of rockets

you paid for everything
we met at the coffeepot

concert steamer summers
spent in a young galaxy

where we both loved
desert guitars

the avenue droughts
and cold

basements

(originally published in Rabid Oak, Spring 2022)

Blown-Minded

      “I was born blown-minded
      with an eye on oblivion.”
                      Young Galaxy

I’ve been sitting at my desk,
no artistic talent, drawing
a primate, the universe,
a fetus, a circus, and
with each I realize I’m
just drawing myself
over and over again–
hurtling through space
and time in my muddled
mind to conclude I don’t
know shit. So all these
lines connect where?
I don’t know whether
I’m looking to God
or to get laid. It’s both
the same, really, accessing
the part of the brain that
activates to a higher calling.
Whether that’s the faith
that I exist right now!
Or I must reproduce!
doesn’t matter.
I am a goddamn mess
made of star matter
and the more I try to
laser-focus my brain
at understanding,
the more I learn
there’s nothing
there. I feel as empty
between my ears
as the space between
Earth and the moon,
but then I learn that
all of the planets
in the solar system
can fit in the distance
between those bodies?

Gray matter.

(originally published in Cacti Fur, Winter 2019)