Midlife

With age came an uncaring

A recipe without measurments

thrown together on the stove

and left to simmer 

I am so young and hot and 

in on the joke 

I've been plucking the greys

Not for shame but for the

curiosity to see their thickness

up close and kinky

Imagine a whole head like this

going every which way

SHORTAGES

beds, gloves, masks, hand sanitizer,

and nurses always, someone who will stay, who will get the vaccines, not get pregnant right away.

also ferry operators. ones who will wear the orange vests and work the holiday weekend.

pipes that aren't frozen. plumbers if they are.

men to run the tire center on a Sunday. 

grocery store checkers that know where the temporary tattoos are.

children's swim instructors who don't mind being the ones to notice the wall is sagging, 

the Chinese restaurant upstairs is sinking into the pool,

calling the alarm, canceling the classes, being the hero. 

a self-portrait
half my day i painted 
and nearly perfect 

could have stopped, should have 

nearly perfect 

for me
i ruined the nose

predictably 

a gray blob of wet paint

my face an appropriate mess

too impatient to wait for anything

Were It Not

Now I'm still waiting to see what I get to 

do outside of now

I'm still waiting to get to see

where to look for messages from the

the past, could be from tape uploaded

and degraded since some of the pixels

are missing maybe were fished from a

crate of binary were ground

to powder went through a rolled

note past the biro blacked out eye

of the Queen who hadn't felt dust blown

or witnessed the past or needed to see the

future just needed me

for the here and now 

looking for messages

from the recent past, the night and

morning pulverised, 

still pulsing for posterity.