Christmas for the Dead
In the graveyard
with holly and mistletoe
on old oak trees
bare limbs and tinsel
a celebration past sundown
paper snowflakes on headstones
and candy cane bouquets
that can’t be eaten by those with
missing fingerbones and teeth in odd places
and no nose to redden
from the biting chill of eve
but they gather and lounge
on hills that are their final home
to proclaim the festivities are for all
and to all a goodnight
I wish that would help… like, abracadabra! That’s how you do the [-] problem! Gee, thanks.
Central Campus Transit Center, 9:00AM, 10/18/2024
i am seven and the dust bunnies morph into a creature under the mattress, tickling my ankles and stealing my socks. i am fifteen and i learn the taste of love from from a dog abandoned on the roadside. i am thirty and you speak to me in whispers, your voice like tendrils, bending cartilage, bypassing cochlea. i am sixty and the conscience is subdued, the voice tragic. the magic, left to rot with the monster under the bed.
I’m sick of looking at screens! I mean, that’s what you’ve been doing all day… my eyes feel like I just wanna take them out, wash them in the sink, and push them back in.
Chem Building, 4:30PM, 11/14/2024
at some point the force of habit kicks in and your mind checks out. this is the death of a life, this drudgery. routine makes the mind numb, the soul weak. a counterclaim against optimism: if the rest of the journey is forgotten, you have converted your adventure into a chore. one foot in front of the other, nothing more than a machine. my fingers beg for rest, one letter scribed, one letter typed. this hope hovers above all of us, a claw half-grasped, holding us in place. step out of bounds, slip up, and you will be crushed–the claw does not care, it suffers from the force of habit as well…
They’re in the nice heat of their car, we’re in the cold. They can wait!
Central Campus Transit Center, 9:00PM, 11/14/2024
a beam of sunlight washes down the flank of the mountain, a bear in hibernation. some days the snow recedes and exposes the conspiracy of survival: the weeds that bloom false flowers, the dandelions that slither between sidewalk slabs. concrete yields to tree roots, roads forked like lightning and runways cracked like eggshells. an apocalypse, a tragedy, a return of equilibrium. the gardens have long degraded, but the soil is still slick with sorrow: a name mother nature remembers, but a face she forgets.
be free the insects labor tirelessly dutifully carrying out an agenda of an agenda drone bees lose sight of who they are without realizing they drone into workers without realizing worker bees forget why & who they are laboring for - sappy
Last Winter
ice webbing
a glass floor fallen
through thudding ear drums
driving choking breaths
borrow seconds
weigh options
hold for saving graces
the cold weighing
down
down
down
give organs pause
slow the trickle of blood gone bad
vicious is the water
speaking silent thoughts
goodbyes to those
not drowning
He didn’t go to jail, they put him in a cage. Solitary confinement, for two years!
Mujo Café Duderstadt, 10:00AM, 11/20/2024
you come out a shell, you understand that? i didn’t believe it, i grew up alone and confident, but it was a confidence bred to impress others. you spend your whole life stealing from the spotlight, taking attention by force, and it gets you in trouble, you know… you’re running from the law, from the past, and you’re running from yourself–that’s the worst part. they don’t care about your body, they care about your mind. the most important weapon. they take it, and they turn it on itself. a captain that sinks with the ship, a noble death at your hands. and you only have yourself to blame.
That’s one of my theories, that King Tut’s tomb was an elaborate theory. Cuz it makes perfect sense! It was discovered in the age of circuses and freak shows and fake artifacts—oh, this is the one perfectly preserved tomb?
Digger’s, 3:30PM, 11/29/2024
but curiosity got the better of you, didn’t it? you bring it up quickly, too casually, in a way that implies you’ve been thinking about it all day. it’s never left your mind, i know it and you know i know it. why dance around the campfire after it has burned to ash? a stutter-step, a dewdrop on a leaf, a bomb disguised as a blessing. my tongue hovers on the edge of detonation–so this is how rooftops become tombstones–as the granite slides open. the hieroglyphs twitch, awakened from slumber.
It’s my lucky Hot Wheels car, see… I can fidget, play with the wheels when I get stressed.
Angell Hall, 6:00PM, 12/3/2024
ready. where there are no riddles i am met with rhymes: a fifty-meter sprint, a poetic dash, an impossible distance to cross. set. the eye of the needle shimmers: a twinkle, a rumor, a tumor lying in wait. what’s the magic word? the engine squeals and the rubber drags its nails across the asphalt and the wall becomes ceiling. is it true that people don’t remember words, they remember feelings? a face, a mouth, a scream, the word go. a single moment crystallized, heat-shocked and left to rot. a neural pathway, brittle and dehydrated, ready to snap at the thought of you.
With 1 Being the Worst, on a Scale of
1-100,
I feel like I’m a solid 45.
1-10,
I think I’m about uh 3(?) or maybe 4? Nah, 3.
1-5,
I’d say 2, only because I don’t want to say 1.
0-1,
I’m not a fraction’s worth.
- Sappy
