little black rubber faucet washers

Posted on by J.T. Homesley

And how exactly did taking the skin off your knuckles help?
Yeah. You remembered. At Lowes.
And bought the right sized little black rubber faucet washers.
But now you can not find them.

How is knocking dents in the wall helpful?
I’d like to know. Curious. Concerned. Impressed,
even, at how much childishness you kept
up with over the years, and yet
can not find a simple thing
you need to stop
a dripping
shower.

How did you refind the frame of mind
that beats a world into curled submission
over the infinitely personal matter
of your own frustration?

How is a man who for no decent reason
throws punches at a wall,
any use, to any of us, at all?

That word.

Posted on by J.T. Homesley

You used that word. You posted as many pictures as you could.
You wrote impotent love songs and tricked innocent people to play along.
But worse. You used that word. Love.
And whether it came from your heart or rolled off your tongue,
I want to cut it out of you. I want it gone.
I never want to hear it used again.

And it might be sin. But it is also true.
I would take on hell to take on you.
I need the world to know who and what and how you are.
Though only you will ever know why. Well. You and I.
See I saw your sad, small-peckered heart.
I heard your flaccid, trickle-down art.
I played my part. Because I didn’t know.
I didn’t know you could caress a neck you also choke.
I didn’t see callused fingered fists leave dark blue weakness
swollen beneath her eyes. None of us wanted to realize.
Not even you. Not even you. Yet you used that word. Love.
And whether it came from your heart, or rolled off your tongue,
I want it gone. Whatever it was.
I need the whole world to know your definition of love.

And if I’m being true, I would like to take that definition,
and try it out on you.

Anger’s eyes are in its fists

Posted on by J.T. Homesley

Anger is like a blind tour guide walking you through the town you were born in.
No eye for sights you see. Teaching you only what you never noticed before.
All the steps in between.

Anger’s eyes are in its fingertips.
Anger’s blind curled firsts can’t resist feeling up stranger’s faces.
Showing you places it has never seen.
Taking you down roads to where you’ve always been.
Tapping sidewalks like a telegraph with a long scrape
and a short knock and another long scrape.
That is how anger asks for help.
With a stick and a fist.

Whispering how if you say the word what it will spell hell
in brale across the side of your face. Behind sunglasses.
Shade shaded eyes from stranger’s pries and useless light.
Blind. But still out looking for a fight.
A tour guide for your own home who keeps falling down
and demanding why didn’t you say there was a curb.
Rising to darkness in a world where suns never climb.
Eyes only cry. And the world is just that place below the sky.
And anyone who gets in anger’s way will learn to step aside.
Because any one of them can see, anger is blinding.

Using someone else’s affliction to play out a lame analogy.
And if a blind person gets angry at me for writing this, fine.
It will be worth it to see, so perfectly, the blind lead the blind.