POEM A DAY

i don’t know guys
i ran into soph at the grocery store
a place where i’m always avoiding everyone
what was i doing? i was getting food my dad had
texted me to get i was in a spiral of doing 
everything but poems, or sewing, or feeling the air
lately i know i am unfriendly with anything i want to do
have to make it something i have to do to do it
soph and i drifted toward each other
by the potatoes or citrus
and said we felt like we’d been hanging out
we haven't but here we have been on blogspot
despite the radiating hellscape i hate saying hellscape
why did i say that i want to be the furthest distance 
into the mountains from being that
already two rentals have demanded my
pre-determined sign removal
no judgment all the judgment in the world unfounded
will we laugh one day will we find
things from now beautiful after all?
of course we will this narcissism is literally
liter-olly my dead friend Pearson would say on
a manic spree, he was also Ashley eventually 
but then later not and everytime i say the other name-pronoun 
i wonder what is right-wrong i will never know
he and she are dead but he loved me and she  
had love for me Ashley Pearson was found naked
with her clothes on fire climbing up a telephone poll
in Oakland, at the time i could not handle did not
know but now i can call it beautiful, so maybe that’s
the metric like how her love letters made me feel 
like i was choking I sob smeared his charcoal portrait 
dutifully i tried to mend the smudges 
when he asked for it back for a college portfolio
glad to begone my shaded curse face frozen
though now somehow i cherish whatever papers remain
don’t want death to be the thing that makes
possible, it isn't and is, plays its part
the death space opens
i don't know guys, it's not up to me to figure out
though lord knows i will always try
that’s my signature move
on a whim i said my new years resolution was
“indulgence + diligence”
like a jane austen novel my knowing brutal
coworker said, more like a perfume they would sell 
at tj maxx, which is not a place that sells things
but rather a place that sells things
that didn't sell
cursive pastoral harkening 
ampersand austen, i can see it now
Pearson told me to take myself more seriously
and there is some erosion i feel some days
that may be getting me there
the landslide involves not being serious, also
and a poem clock calendar, and an expensive bag
of co-op kumquats eaten mostly in the aisles
avatar confessions making the month holy
against all odds, like carrying a camera around
i always say, anything could be a photo
to give these eyes the rest the taste
that they’ve been blinking for