ENGL 211 Poetry Workshop, Prompt 3, Untitled

march 2022

i love your extravagant double takes

you love to act, you’ll never admit it,

your eyes lower with a lumber hoping to hide that brazilian

cherry shine

you work a double with the flu, it's fun to act like you’re fine

you ask me why you have to stay alive, and melt

coldly into my arms when i answer, it’s me

you hold my head close to your left ear and my neck is strained but you need the song of my desire and i need

to give it to you

you eat milk and broken prepositions and past tenses that break my little brain

you slepted in the train, did you? you ate to much?

you think you can hide your ugly intelligence, how sure you are that you are the best one, the

chosen one, the greatest one

in this room?

i see it, i’ve read your letters and heard your

heated words, even when i know that all you want

to do is strangle me (pinned against a ford excursion, the target parking lot, remember?)

my little brain absorbs your big lies.

if i didn’t know you, i’d worry that maybe that’s all you are in front of me

an act

that you will disappear like the whispers in the attic when i listen too hard

like the exact shade of lime jello green that once sung these nervous

hands to sleep

but i don’t know you

i know i don’t

i don’t know if i do, i know how it sounds,

i do

when i met you, you were an actor that hated acting and loved living

i know now that you were just a man who hated living,

but loved acting

oh, i wish i could tell you