Diagnosis

The Condition My Condition Is in

Often too drunk to read.
Never too drunk to write.


Field Study

Don't call me lazy.
I am studying the way
dust bunnies emerge, grow
and apparently reproduce.
From the cat hair, lint,
and dead skin cells,
agglomerations
of surprising scope and scale.


Dead to the Dying

Oil- the poisoned gift
of one mass extinction
to another- ours.


On the Beauty of the Universe

The nebulae you ooh
and ahh over in the Hubble

photographs would kill you
in a millisecond were you

close enough to touch them.
Were they still there.


Any Given Day

The gray day bears down
with cloud-soft but persistent force.
It doesn't so much crush the spirit
as it smothers it.


Hearing that Someone Beautiful Is in Hospice

Instead of killing someone beautiful,
kill me. I'm fine with my dying
and so are those closest to me.
I am ready to die. She is not.

Take me instead, Death, you
detached and numerical shit.
I'm a number. Take me instead.
The tally sheet will look the same.